[CS-FSLUG] Macs and Memory

[Nathan T.]

I realize this is an old topic, but I'd like to revisit it if that's  
alright.

I was using Audacity the other day on my Mini, and I was disappointed  
to see that the line that tracks progress as the song is playing was  
lagging behind and then speeding up afterwards to catch up, and this  
was happening somewhere around once a second. I remember Tim saying  
that OS X is an OS that's designed around multi-threading, but I  
can't help feeling that this issue is mainly due to the graphics  
being underpowered or the driver for the graphics not being  
optimized. I had a look at other macs and to my disappointment if I  
want something with more than 64MB of graphics memory, and preferably  
something with discrete graphics I would have to go with at least an  
iMac model which is unacceptable. Do any of you others in this list  
have an Intel Mac with 64MB of memory on an on-board graphics chipset?

What I'd really like to know is if I got a core duo mini, would I get  
rid of that second delay every time I scroll, pause for a fraction of  
a second, and then scroll again in iPhoto? Would FireFox allow me to  
scroll down on web pages that have flash or video content without the  
motion being slow and jagged (such as http://www.apple.com/macosx)?  
Would Audacity be able to keep up to the music playback when I'm  
zooming in on a section of music? Has anyone tried photoshop on a  
core solo/duo Mac Mini with ~1GB of ram, and how responsive was the  
software? Would third party apps run in OS X without bogging down to  
the point of always giving me jagged motion.

I was on Digg the other day and when I wanted to look at someone's  
flash mockup of what Digg would look like in 3D my mini couldn't  
handle it, the motion was jagged and the thing seemed like it was  
ready to barf on me in Safari and Camino. FireFox can't run without  
lagging and giving me jagged motion when I'm scrolling as soon as  
there's the slightest bit flash or video content in a page, so how  
can this thing even be considered a decent internet and word- 
processing machine?

I'd really like to decide now whether to invest in another Mac, and  
if so which one. Don't get me wrong, the design is wonderful and the  
computer is beautiful, but for the performance this thing is giving  
me is worth about half what I paid for it. I'd like to know if there  
is a headless Mac out there that would give me the kind of  
performance I'm looking for. I want something that'll handle FireFox  
showing me pages with flash and video content without scrolling  
jaggedly, that'll run iPhoto the way I see Steve jobs running in it  
his keynotes, without annoying delays when scrolling or resizing the  
images. I don't want a screen attached because I've already got a  
nice Samsung 940BW monitor and a KVM switch so I can use it with my  
Mac and PC.

If someone could refer me to that Christian Mac Mailing list that  
would be good too, in fact you have my permission to forward this e- 
mail over, just tell them to write me back directly because I'm not  
subscribed to their list.

My current Mac is a Core Solo 1.5GHz, I upgrade the ram myself to 1GB  
(Kingston brand).

PS. If I do get a faster Mac, will these performance issues crop up  
again with the next release of OS X? I got the impression that was  
the case since Tim was saying that with the addition of dashboard the  
minimum ram requirements jumped up with Tiger. I'd like to get a Mac  
that performs well even with graphical apps for at least a whole two  
and a half year run.

If Macs can't do that, and I just got the wrong impression from Job's  
keynote presentations then please just tell me that Macs aren't for me.


Nathan T.