Buzz Out Loud Lounge forum: Random Question: Why does OSX seem to run smoother than Win7

Android does not render the UI using the GPU, scrolling etc is entirely CPU bound. And slower. This is because Google hasn't given enough importance to smooth animation to put that much of an engineering effort towards it.

And I still hit a wall from time to time. Enough never seems to be enough :-P

While OS X may have debuted roughly in 2000, NeXTSTEP which it based on started way back after Jobs was fired from Apple in the mid 80's. Much of what you see in OS X, the Dock, the Finder/FileBrowser, Apple Mail, the amazing expandable Color Wheel tool, drag and drop application installations came from NeXTSTEP. I used to use it and it could run circles around Windows and MacOS 7,8,9 in it's day. Screen redraw would clobber anything from Microsoft and Apple. Rock solid. All based on Display PostScript. This while running on Motorola chips and later x86 Pentium 90's. Yes, much of what you have in OS X was around in the late 80's. It's just gotten even better and more stable.

Since Apple knows what hardware is in use they can make it work nicely. Microsoft has no control over the hardware so you get it rough to smooth depending on hardware in play and beyond that, the settings.

If you expect smooth you need a walled garden.
Bob

Try the new beta version of IE9. It is optimized to use the GPU as much as it can.
It is noticeably faster then other browsers when it comes to graphic handling.
Since both Apple and Microsft hardware suppliers use the same chips, it is dependent upon the software to improve the "look and feel".

Because I still haven't figure out a real reason. thanks

I don't accept the "OSX runs smoother" premise at all. That's a purely anecdotal comment. I don't notice that when I use a Mac at work vs. a similarly-outfitted (accent on similarly) PC at home. So?

But to Bob's point above, nothing could be truer, notwithstanding he might see that as some kind of "good thing". If Apple can't optimize its platform to run slick on a very, very, VERY limited number of machine types, then they've got a real problem. Windows has to run on a virtually unlimited number of different hardware combinations, and is beholden to third party OEMs to get their drivers optimized and for everything to play well together. Apple has never, ever had that problem.

Even so, I love Windows 7. Every so often I might find some little glitch here or there, but it's stable as hell, has lots of bells and whistles, AND runs EXCEPTIONALLY WELL on older hardware! I put it on my ancient Dell 600M Pentium M laptop, and it runs much better than when I had XP on it!

Try a few old and G3 systems if you think any Intel Mac is slow.

Apple do not have it easier. If anything they have it harder because they aren't outsourcing driver development but have to do it themselves.
Windows and OS X run on a similar range of hardware, as everyone used the same chipsets these days.

And I would wager AMD does way more to support windows than Microsoft does to support AMD.

Bob that is the best answer I have heard on this question. And this is coming from a Mac user. Great job. That is the one thing I hate about Mac is the closed experience on it.

If we're talking about desktops, PC users have an almost infinite variety of ways to customize them with various pieces of hardware. Mac desktops? I'm sure you can TRY to customize them to your liking, but there's no guarantee everything you would want to put in a Mac hardware-wise would even have drivers. They just aren't available.

And that goes directly to the point that Microsoft's Windows needs to run with all of these variant combinations of hardware--and they have no real control over how well OEM's have designed their drivers-- whereas Macs/OSX is designed to run on a very small lineup of equipment by comparison. And when I'm talking about hardware, I'm starting with the motherboard, the various chipsets, the various CPU's, the various internal components, etc., etc., etc. It stands to reason, then, that OSX should run very efficiently on the very limited set (by comparison) of hardware that's utilized by Apple by design.

that your argument is pretty tortured, right?! Microsoft has a lot more help to support the hardware? Isn't that another way of saying "Microsoft Windows ABSOLUTELY needs hardware manufacturers to write their drivers well so as not to in any way encumber the operating system and/or user experience"? I'd venture to say that the overwhelming number of hardware issues that might come up on a Windows system can probably be attributed to some driver issue, where the developer just didn't do something right or in the most efficient way.

Isn't that also another way of saying "Since Apple selects a very small set of hardware for their PC's, they have the luxury of engineering and/or tweaking the performance of this eminently manageable number of devices"?

If a company has complete control over the driver set --and doesn't have to deal with an unlimited number of devices-- then they are assured the drivers will (at least should) work well. Since there are literally millions of combinations of hardware in Windows-based PC's, there's no way Microsoft could write drivers for each and every piece of hardware, nor ensure that the ones that do run are the most efficient or might somehow degrade performance.

That, my friend, is a distinction WITH a huge difference.

Why does Apple "have to do" these things you speak of??? Is there some kind of law that says they can't engage OEMs to assist in driver development for OS X? Or is it by choice (assuming it's true to begin with)?

Frankly, I can't believe that OEM's don't do that already, as Apple would have to reverse-engineer proprietary products if they didn't have at least a baseline of information on how to get a piece of hardware to work. If a hardware OEM isn't using open-source methods of accessing their hardware, where and how is Apple going to utilize the products??? It doesn't make sense.