Mac OS X 10.1.2--How Fast Is It?

1999–2004December 26, 2001Macs Only!Reviews
As frequent readers and Gene Steinberg expected we put our trusty stop watch to the new update and ran the same speed benchmarks on our 450 MHz G4 Cube that we have run on every public version of Mac OS X. We did not expect any improvement in startup or Finder operations since their performance was finally acceptable with 10.1. But we were hopeful that 2D graphics would be run on the graphics accelerator chip rather than the CPU. Here are our 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 10.1 10.1.1 10.1.2
Startup Chime to Login
-
-
-
-
96
68
60
59
Login to Desktop
-
-
-
-
20
9
11
12
Shutdown
-
-
-
-
-
4
4
3
Classic Mode
-
-
-
53
40
46
46
46
Netscape 4.77
7
6
4
3
4
2
2
2
AppleWorks 6.1b/6.2/6.2.1
-
-
6
5
6
2
1
1
IE 5.1/5.1.1/5.1.2/5.1.3
9
10
8
8
9
2
2
2
OmniWeb 4.0cf3/4.0rc1/4.0/4.0.1/4.0.5
14
13
9
13
10
3
4
4
System Preferences
3
2
2
2
3
1
1
1
Scroll in Acrobat 5
-
-
-
72
69
82
86
87
Let1kWindowsBloom
-
-
-
-
-
-
61
62

The measured speed of the latest update is virtually the same as in 10.1 and 10.1.1. Unfortunately, 2D speed is not improved. Scrolling the 144-page Virtual PC 4.0 Manual PDF file is still very slow, taking nearly a minute and a half for the whole document. It only takes 34 seconds in Mac OS 9.2.1. Let1kWindowsBloom measures the time it takes to open and close 1000 windows in the Finder. 61-62 seconds is pitifully slow--it takes a mere 9 seconds in Mac OS 9.2.1.

We hope that Apple will address 2D graphics performance very soon.

Saw something? Send a tip

The archive ran on reader tips. What did you see, where, and do you want the credit?

Read by the editor. Never published without your say.

More in Reviews · This month in the archive