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Testing the 12-inch MacBook's Performance with Windows 10

alexvking.com

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Re: Testing the 12-inch MacBook's Performance with Windows 10

#161
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And guess what... We're using the same tools available to third party app developers, in an effort to ensure the dev platform is rock solid. The Start menu is just a universal XAML app. We don't have to do any special optimization on top of what the framework offers. Disclaimer: Microsoft employee working on the Windows 10 Start menu.

Well it does help that you can just email the perf people in devdiv and have the single largest concentration of low level windows performance experts available for free The start menu is great code but mom and pop dev shop doesn't have hundreds of top devs available :)

But in terms of the original comparison, it's not like Apple's UI team doesn't have access to the OS performance people, either...

Re: Testing the 12-inch MacBook's Performance with Windows 10

#162
post #135
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How buggy was it, really? I've heard several painful stories, but nothing concrete, except some changes Apple made to the DNS infrastructure. The same kind of stories I've heard for every release since 10.4, about how the new one is so buggy, etc. Then, the next release comes and people wax nostalgically about how stable the previous one was.

Yosemite was bad enough that I do not accept Apple updates until a few months have passed and I know what the fallout will be based on complaints on websites. List of broken things a) Battery life on my macbook pro plummeted after the upgrade. b) I get visual artifacts (black lines on screen and some flashing) when OSX auto switches between the intel gpu and the nvidia gpu. c) Cannot get nfs transfers to work with ac…

a) same battery life as ever on mine. Even better actually.

b) Seen some occasional flashes. Not sure why it happens, but I think it's related to the color temperature mananging "Flux" app (they seem to stop when I don't use it).

c) Sure not some network problem? I've had succesful NFS transfers, but usually small files, so never bothered to check.

d) Shouldn't Qt fix it? If it didn't broke drag and drop in native apps, then Qt emulated it based on some assumptions that weren't guaranteed.

e) Never had this happen, even when using Compressor on all cores. Top left might get a little warm at those times.

Re: Testing the 12-inch MacBook's Performance with Windows 10

#163
post #133
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post backs up the statement you hated so much though. That OSX is just a mod of various components plus an old era Unix kernel at the core. You literally validated the point. OSX is a strange OS to use. It looks and feels good at first glance but when you have used it for a year, one really longs to return to a pure Windows environment. OSX has weird bugs like the beachball cursor which is something that simply…

> That OSX is just a mod of various components plus an old era Unix kernel at the core. You literally validated the point. Mach is not an “old era Unix kernel” and OS X is not exactly a vanilla Mach: http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/ancient/whatismacosx/arch_xnu.... It has a BSD subsystem but plenty of other different things, like a completely custom device driver model (IOKit). Secondly, you just called everything abov…

The beachball on OSX frequently causes the whole UI shell to freeze solid. This literally never happens on Windows. Also all IO on Windows is asynchronous. It doesn't support synchronous IO.

Re: Testing the 12-inch MacBook's Performance with Windows 10

#164
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's windows trackpad drivers are indeed not that great, but I haven't seen a windows laptop yet that can provide a better trackpad experience in spite of the bad drivers.

For some ungodly reason, I haven't seen any windows laptop with a nice trackpad that doesn't break in 6 months :(. At least my Acer netbooks have reliable trackpads (no gestures or anything, but ...)

I nave a Dell laptop and it has a great trackpad. Gestures work consistently, I use them all the time. The only real annoyance is that the material of the trackpad is not the most comfortable for finger swiping but it's alright.

Re: Testing the 12-inch MacBook's Performance with Windows 10

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're completely correct, and it's unfortunate that you're being downvoted. I'm guessing this is due to idiots who have never used Windows on a Mac laptop and think they know more than they do.

As a universal, parent's claim is patently false. I have an Lenovo X1 Carbon that is a testament to how crappy a trackpad can get. I have had a few PC laptops in the last 5 years (HP, Lenovo) but have never found one with an adequate trackpad. So, if could you please tell me which laptop I should try? This is quite easy to test. I've heard good things about the new XPS trackpad, but haven't been able to try one in th…

Your issue is that you're misunderstanding the parent comment's claim. Izacus didn't claim that Windows laptop trackpads weren't bad -- the only claim made was that Apple trackpad drivers were worse. I've used a few friends' windows laptops, and while their trackpads certainly weren't good or perhaps even adequate (to borrow your term), they were without a doubt better than the Apple-laptop-running-windows combination, which I would classify as far below "adequate".

Re: Testing the 12-inch MacBook's Performance with Windows 10

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, who wants a touch screen on a laptop that converts into a tablet? That's just crazy. Man, fuck those people for adding functionality that I don't even have to use in laptop mode, but which is essential in tablet mode.

I don't want a touch-screen on a tablet, either, because I don't want fingerprints on it when I'm reading on it. Which is why my Surface Pro 3 is essentially only a laptop, because using Windows 8.1 (and 10) in pen-only mode is unpleasant and slow. I'd say the same about a phone, but I don't spend my day staring at my phone.

Can't say I've had the same experience. On all of my touch devices, I can only see the fingerprints if the screen is off and if it bothers me at that point, I just wipe it off.

Given the prevalence of touch devices these days, I'm surprised that I don't hear this complaint very often.

Re: Testing the 12-inch MacBook's Performance with Windows 10

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want a touch-screen on a tablet, either, because I don't want fingerprints on it when I'm reading on it. Which is why my Surface Pro 3 is essentially only a laptop, because using Windows 8.1 (and 10) in pen-only mode is unpleasant and slow. I'd say the same about a phone, but I don't spend my day staring at my phone.

Can't say I've had the same experience. On all of my touch devices, I can only see the fingerprints if the screen is off and if it bothers me at that point, I just wipe it off. Given the prevalence of touch devices these days, I'm surprised that I don't hear this complaint very often.

I don't mind a touch screen on an iPad. But my Surface attracts fingerprints like nothing else (I have generally oily fingertips--it's not a function of washing, it manifests very shortly after I wash my hands), and it's really hard to keep it clean. If I use it for a full day, I probably wipe it down six or seven times. It's super distracting when I'm writing code or something.

Re: Testing the 12-inch MacBook's Performance with Windows 10

#168
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That OSX is just a mod of various components plus an old era Unix kernel at the core. You literally validated the point. Mach is not an “old era Unix kernel” and OS X is not exactly a vanilla Mach: http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/ancient/whatismacosx/arch_xnu.... It has a BSD subsystem but plenty of other different things, like a completely custom device driver model (IOKit). Secondly, you just called everything abov…

The beachball on OSX frequently causes the whole UI shell to freeze solid. This literally never happens on Windows. Also all IO on Windows is asynchronous. It doesn't support synchronous IO.

> The beachball on OSX frequently causes the whole UI shell to freeze solid.

The beachball is a very infrequent occurrence on OS X, and if it does happen, it usually doesn't freeze the whole shell. If you're seeing it a lot, this is often an indicator of faulty hardware. That being said...

> This literally never happens on Windows.

Not true, the exact same thing can and does happen on Windows, with similar rarity.

> Also all IO on Windows is asynchronous. It doesn't support synchronous IO.

I'm not super-familiar with Windows IO, but at the very least it has blocking, synchronous C stdlib file I/O, and blocking, synchronous WinSock network I/O. Also, anything asynchronous can be trivially be made synchronous, whether it is a good idea or not.

Re: Testing the 12-inch MacBook's Performance with Windows 10

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step one: Install Cmdr http://gooseberrycreative.com/cmder/ Step two: If on !Win10, use the chocolatey nu-get package manager ( https://chocolatey.org/ ), but if on Win10, I _think_ the native package manager will be a drop-in, tho I'm not sure. That is literally _all_ you have to do to get 90% of what I do on a linux terminal into a windows console.

Be careful with Chocolatey, it will install the software without unchecking those nastly tools: search bars, etc. To be honest, it makes Chocolatey absolutely unuseful.

Source for this? I use Chocolatey on Win7 and haven't had anything unwanted installed. No Ask Toolbar (from multiple JRE and JDK installs), etc.

Re: Testing the 12-inch MacBook's Performance with Windows 10

#170
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That OSX is just a mod of various components plus an old era Unix kernel at the core. You literally validated the point. Mach is not an “old era Unix kernel” and OS X is not exactly a vanilla Mach: http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/ancient/whatismacosx/arch_xnu.... It has a BSD subsystem but plenty of other different things, like a completely custom device driver model (IOKit). Secondly, you just called everything abov…

The beachball on OSX frequently causes the whole UI shell to freeze solid. This literally never happens on Windows. Also all IO on Windows is asynchronous. It doesn't support synchronous IO.

> The beachball on OSX frequently causes the whole UI shell to freeze solid. This literally never happens on Windows

As TazeTSchnitzel said, this happens on both and is quite rare. If you're not just trolling and actually see this on a regular basis, it's either a hardware problem, misconfiguration, or something like using an unreliable LDAP server (this was the last time I saw it, back somewhere around 10.5 and, surprise surprise, Windows clients also wedge solid with a slow/flaky domain controller – I see this every time I use a Windows 7 domain client on a VPN).

> Also all IO on Windows is asynchronous. It doesn't support synchronous IO.

Please contact the folks at Microsoft so they can correct the first hit on Google:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa3...

Remember how we were talking about backwards compatibility? All of those traditional ReadFile/WriteFile/etc. calls aren't going away anytime soon. Even the teams at Microsoft who work on things like Outlook, Word, IE, etc. use synchronous I/O a lot since it's so much easier and there's no major downside on a local file system, particularly now that even a cheap computer can dispatch thousands of IOPs.

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