Mac OS X 10.1.3--How Fast Is It?

You didn't think that we had forgotten, did you? The most common complaint about Mac OS X when it first came out was its speed, i.e. the lack of it. Since Mac OS 10.0 was delivered in March we have performed speed benchmarks on every version. The latest, version 10.1.2, is located on this web page. Apple has improved the performance of Mac OS X, the biggest jump coming with version 10.1.

Our test platform has been a 450 MHz G4 Cube with a Rage 128 Pro graphics card. It has remained the same over time except that we have steadily increased its RAM to 896 MB. We added a 512 MB chip since we benchmarked version 10.1.2.

The benchmarks consist of the startup/shutdown sequence, launching Classic, Carbon and Cocoa applications and two 2D video tests. Here are the results along with those since version 10.0.3:

450 MHz G4 Cube Average Launch Times in Full Seconds

Application	10.0.3	10.0.4	10.1	10.1.1	10.1.2	10.1.3
Startup Chime to Login	-	96	68	60	59	75
Login to Desktop	-	20	9	11	12	18
Shutdown	-	-	4	4	3	4
Classic Mode	53	40	46	46	46	46
Netscape 4.77/4.79	3	4	2	2	2	2
AppleWorks 6.1b/6.2/6.2.1	5	6	2	1	1	1
IE 5.1/5.1.1/5.1.2/5.1.3	8	9	2	2	2	2
OmniWeb 4.0/4.0.1/4.0.5	13	10	3	4	4	4
System Preferences	2	3	1	1	1	1
Scroll in Acrobat 5	72	69	82	86	87	82
Let1kWindowsBloom	-	-	-	61	62	57

There are two remarkable results. First, the startup sequence is significantly slower. It is possible that the difference is due to adding a 512 MB RAM chip adding additional time for RAM checking at startup. There is no way to turn off the RAM check in Mac OS X, as there is in Classic OS versions, that we know of. However, the time from the login window to a complete desktop is also longer so we suspect that the startup sequence has slowed down for some reason. Second, there is finally an improvement in the two 2D benchmarks, scrolling and Let1kWindowsBloom. It's not a lot but it is definitely an improvement. The scrolling test took only 71 seconds on our other 450 MHz Cube with a faster GeForce2 MX card so maybe OS X is finally using the graphics chip for 2D acceleration.

Mac OS X is still not as snappy as OS 9.x and it may never be. For the most part, however, it is adequately fast for us except for 2D graphics. Images in html email load faster in Mail and Mail has yet to just quit on us since the update. The spinning color wheel cursor "freeze" still happens with some applications but it happens less frequently with each update and 10.1.3 is no exception.