Slashdot Mirror
Pitting a Mac Plus Against an AMD Dual Core
In the Age of Computer Bloat someone has decided to do a performance comparison between a 1986 Mac Plus and a 2007 AMD Dual core, each running appropriate software. Computer Bloat does not fare so well. "In order to keep the hoots and hollers of 'unfair comparison' at a minimum, we designed the tests to be as fair and equitable as possible. We focussed on running tests that reflect how the user perceives the computing experience... And no, we didn't include processing-heavy modern software like Photoshop or Crysis! We selected very basic everyday functions that were performed equally by the 1980's and the 2007 Microsoft applications."
I cannot really agree with these tests that just compare "start up tasks" like opening a file or booting the OS. There often is a good reason not to focus too much on these events, because don't happen that often. Responsiveness during use is a better comparison, and this is much harder. Modern machines do a lot of things in the background, like running full blown TCP/IP stacks, something the Mac Plus could not have done. And while opening a file 0.2 seconds faster will not really improve my productivity by much, having instant access to Google and Wikipedia does.
But anyway: Here is a quote from Andy Hertzfeld about how Steve Jobs motivated them to make the Mac boot faster (taken from the documentary The triumph of the nerds by Robert X. Cringley.)
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
Software from 1986 didn't have scalable fonts, 32-bit colour, etc, but the interface was usually snappy. Menus dropped down snappily, and dialog boxes opened immediately, for example.
Operations that took a long time (such as reflowing a page in a desktop publishing program) at least appeared deterministic - you knew it would take a second or two to reflow, so you weren't anxiously waiting for the system to do something.
Paid Q&A/Research
I've been troubled for years on how generational improvements in computation equipment don't seem to result in improved USER experience. Now, important to realize that in the comparisons selected, we're talking about 1-bit bit-mapped operations on a screen 512x368 in size (from memory - might have botched the Y coord limit). Might be interesting to see what happens on that PC when dropping the display to 640x480 and 256 colors. That'd be a little closer to apples-apples comparison.
I digress. The point is - nothing seems much better in the user experience than before, for the vast majority of things we do - and that includes MacOS X, to my thinking. Nothing that makes me jump up and down and twist and shout anyway. What apps have I added in the last 10 years? Music players. Video players. Browsers. Pretty much it. I wonder where the hell my 4.5 billion clock cycles a second are actually going.
I don't know - computing just doesn't seem very exciting anymore. Help.
sloth jr
I used vi on a VT100 attached to a vax running BSD back in 1990 and I use vi (vim) today on a MacBook Pro that could handle more simultaneous users than the vax did. It was always fast to start then, and it's fast to start today, though now I have colors, split windows, and a bajillion other features I struggle to remember.
It's interesting to see that the machines have gotten faster, software more complex, etc., etc., but software like vim just keeps on truckin'. Too bad we don't have more software like this.
This result (what I can glean from comments, as the site is being pounded) doesn't surprise me.
.... I have (single-CPU) WinXP machines (haven't stepped up to any dual-cores yet, but I wonder what good it'll do), have run a couple GUI-distros of Linux on them over the years and have seen Apples at work--and nothing new I've yet seen is as fast as that clunker 98 box is, running 98. :|
I have an aging Win98-era Pentium II@350 Mhz with 392 megs of RAM, and running Win98, it simply flies.... I keep it around to run some era programs I like, and every time I power it up, I am simply stunned all over again at how blazingly fast it responds. It responds to user input and opens regular programs noticeably faster than the few computers I've bought since--computers that have faster drives, much faster CPU's and way more RAM.
Of course Win98 has a number of problems now--a lot of vulnerabilities and no antivirus I know of still supports it, so getting online is walking in a minefield. And even used for local apps it needs to be rebooted every 4-6 hours to be safe... but even then, warm-rebooting only takes like 20 fucking seconds, and that's just the usual OS install, no optimization ever undertaken. Did we used to bitch about bootup times? Have they gotten longer or shorter?
For a whlie I had Mandrake on it too, but Mandrake ran like a dog. With Linux and WinXP there's all this fucking-about with the hard drive that has to occur, for some reason..... any time you do something, even with the hard drives spinning, these bigger/better OS's seemto have to go off and piss away a couple seconds before actually doing anything.
All your boxen belong to bloat.
~