Mac OS X 10.0.4 Update--How Fast Is It?

The latest Mac OS X Update, v10.0.4, was released by Apple last Thursday. Since then we have installed it on many different Macs with no problems and no new issues have cropped up in our experience. The latest update fixed a number of outstanding issues, mainly the iBook sleep/coma and PowerBook 2000 battery life issue. While the Read Me claimed to have fixed the disappearing cursor issue, we have experienced it twice now, once on a PowerBook 2000 and again on a new iBook. It also did not fix the proliferating network connection icon issue. So far we've not experienced the most annoying repeating key issue.

However, the principal complaint when Mac OS X first came out March 24th was that Finder operations were much too slow. So we timed application launches for a number of Classic, Carbon and Cocoa applications in Mac OS X 10.0, 10.0.1, 10.0.2 and 10.0.3 on our 450 MHz G4 Cube with 448 MB RAM. Each new version was more or less faster than the one before. So how about 10.0.4? Here are the results:

450 MHz G4 Cube Average Launch Times in Full Seconds

Application	10.0	10.0.1	10.0.2	10.0.3	10.0.4
Classic Mode	-	-	-	53	40
Netscape 4.77	7	6	4	3	4
Word 2001	5	4	2	2	2
Scroll in Acrobat 5	-	-	-	72	69
AppleWorks 6.1b	-	-	6	5	6
IE 5.1	9	10	8	8	-
IE 5.1.1	-	-	-	8	9
OmniWeb 4.0cf3	14	13	-	-	-
- v4.0rc1	-	-	9	9	-
- v4.0	-	-	-	11	-
- v4.0.1	-	-	-	13	10
Mail	4	4	4	4	7
System Preferences	3	2	2	2	3

With the release of a carbonized Adobe Acrobat 5.0, we added scrolling the Virtual PC 4 Manual PDF to the application launches. We also added the launch time of Mac OS 9.1 in the Classic mode.

There are three notable results: Mail slowed down considerably, the launch of Classic mode significantly sped up and OmniWeb continued its torturous path toward faster launches.

It has been more than a month since the 10.0.3 release and we have been using Mac OS X Mail as our principal mailer. The number mailboxes with archived mail have grown substantially which may explain why the launch time for Mail significantly increased percentage-wise but seven secods is still not an appreciable time.

The start up time for Mac OS X, including the launch of Classic mode, is unreasonably long. Fortunately, one shouldn't have to do it too often. However, some times it is down right embarrassing like when restarting to initialize a digital projector.This has happened to us after plugging in a USB device that caused a kernel panic. Mac OS X is agonizingly slow while all eyes are on you waiting several minutes for you to begin--have a good story or appropriate suite of jokes ready. We welcome the decrease in launch time for Classic mode.

OmniWeb 4.0.1's launch time decreased in 10.0.4 after launch times increased for v10.0.3 as OmniWeb went through three different versions. Loading of pages, scrolling and menu dropping all seem a bit faster though.

Generally, however, launch times did not decrease. Still the fixes in this release are welcome. With less than a month to Macworld NYC 2001, though, we wonder if there will be big improvements in the release expected then.