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How Windows 10 Performs On a 12-inch MacBook
An anonymous reader writes: As Microsoft prepares for the launch of Windows 10, review sites have been performing all sorts of benchmarks on the tech preview to evaluate how well the operating system will run. But now a computer science student named Alex King has made the most logical performance evaluation of all: testing Windows 10's performance on a 2015 MacBook. He says, "Here's the real kicker: it's fast. It's smooth. It renders at 60FPS unless you have a lot going on. It's unequivocally better than performance on OS X, further leading me to believe that Apple really needs to overhaul how animations are done. Even when I turn Transparency off in OS X, Mission Control isn't completely smooth. Here, even after some Aero Glass transparency has been added in, everything is smooth. It's remarkable, and it makes me believe in the 12-inch MacBook more than ever before. So maybe it's ironic that in some regards, the new MacBook runs Windows 10 (a prerelease version, at that) better than it runs OS X."
True, though there is some precedence. OS-X does not seem to be particularly zippy in the few cross platform app benchmarks that are to be found. A good example is DAW bench's test on Cubase, Protools, and Kontakt: http://dawbench.com/win7-v-osx.... What you see is that Cubase has a much more efficient engine than ProTools (no surprise) and that on Windows either one gets a lot more polyphony than the Mac. At any given buffer size (lower buffers are harder to deal with) Windows did better.
Pretty good test too since you are dealing with tools that have long been cross platform. Kontakt has been cross platform for its entire life, Pro Tools was Mac only until version 5 (1998ish), since when it has been cross platform, and Cubase has been cross platform since back in the DOS and Atari ST days. All the software has long development histories on both platforms, yet Windows gives superior results.
None of this means OS-X is unusable or anything, but it doesn't appear to have the performance Windows does, when pushed.
That benchmark is a bit dated, there must be a newer benchmark than OS X 10.6? Hower, now that I have let fly the obligtory nitpick of your post, the fact that Windows 10 performs well does not surprise me. I have long been aware of the fact that Microsoft quietly sank a lot of resources into rewriting Windows and improving performance so I'm not exactly thunderstruck by news that they succeeded. What I'd like to see is a benchmark shootout between Windows 10 and the most recent OS X AND Linux distros. Something tells me that if Windows 10 also turns out to be faster than Linux the atmosphere around here would shift from shadenfreude to righteous fury and calls for a Jihad.
Well for registry file, we'll see, I think it might only be for universal apps but win 10 is supposed to have a virtual registry similar to how WoW works. An app sees a registry but in actuality it is a private clone of the registry. When the app is uninstalled the OS just blasts away that clone and no cruft is left. At least that is the theory. For the desktop user, I think Mac has the cleanest installation process. Drag and drop. Things are installed in a single folder. Drag and drop the app to the trash and it is gone. For the power user: debian like is my favorite: apt-get is great. But still always having to remember what's in bin, whats in sbin, etc etc. Things do get scattered all over the place in Linux. Oddly it is the command line friendly OS that requires a lot of jumping between directories (which is a pain in the ass from command line) to get anything done. VS windows where everything is pretty much dumped in the windows folder and or available in the ui from a single (albeit huge) widget (control panel).
It has long appeared to me that all the best talent at Cupertino is being assigned to work on iOS, and OSX is suffering as a result.
One upon a time, a new MacOSX release meant you might need to put more RAM in the box, but even some seven-year-old piece of hardware would go faster, and there would be fewer bugs or crashes. [Consider a late G3 iMac, upgraded all the way from Public Beta to Tiger.] These days, you put more RAM in (if you can if you have a machine old enough that Apple didn't solder all the memory in during manufacture) just to make it less sluggish.
Drawing performance seems especially poor, which makes me wonder: if I bought a top-end top-of-the-range Mac Pro, would it be any better at being a desktop computer than what I have now? I'm not sure it would.
Apple has been optimising OS X for years, but not for Graphics Performance. They've been optimising it for longer battery duration.
It's been years since I've needed or even noticed needing better graphics performance yet battery performance of OS X pure versus Windows? Oh yeah, THAT I notice. On the occasions I forget a charger I have to minimise running Windows or I'll be running out of battery at least twice as fast as when using OS X. I can get work 7 Hours using just the battery on my rMBP with occasional excursions to Windows to check mail but or use corporate windows only tools but running windows will only give me 3 hours. Windows isn't even doing much, it just does it all the time & never lets the CPU sleep for any significant time - see here for reasons why.
Yeah, the pure graphics performance may be poorer on OS X. Most people don't care as long as it's good enough.
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