No More Power PC Support

[Anonymous]

I suppose this is common knowledge, but according to a GS press release Power PC will no longer be supported beyond 2009 (or I believe version 12).

While this makes sense the way hardware is moving, it does makes life a little harder for us PPC users. As it is, AC 11 runs very slowly on my dual G4 and dual G5. Disabling auto rebuild etc, helps, but for the moment I have gone back to AC 10.

Had I know 11 would be so slow I would have waited to upgrade.

Don Lee

[TomWaltz]

Don wrote:
I updated AC11 and tried it again today, based on your post. You say that you have many stock G5s running AC11 with no problems. To restate, AC11 runs without major glitches (so far) but to me is irritatingly slow on the 2d redraw.

If I think of it, I guess it is acceptable, but really any amount of delay is a big pain. I guess it's worth the trade off, but it seems to me things should get faster not slower.

Do you not experience any slowing at all? And have you done any adjustments to compensate

The only time I think AC11 runs slower than AC10 is if the Trace Reference uses difference layers than the foreground working view. It is slower, but it's tolerable. It's also something that I only use for a few minutes at a time.

[Anonymous]

TomWaltz wrote:
To be blunt.... this is such a load of crap it's unbelievable.

I have 50 (five-oh, fifty, funfzig) stock Dual 1.8 or 2.0 GHz G5's running Archicad 11 on OS 10.4 without any problems. I also have 15 Intel machines, also stock, running without any problems. Projects range from 4000 to 300,000 SF. People run Archicad, Thunderbird, Firefox, iTunes, iCal, and sometimes even CS2 (or CS3, depending on whether they are on the G5 or the Intel) all at the same time.

Nothing custom, nothing special, and above all, no fear mongering involved.

I'm grateful for the slow response because it slows the spread of such bull-oney.

Thanks Tom,

Blunt? And your point being-..? Oh right, blunt means that you have no point. Or maybe you are just saying you're not too sharp?

Raahaahaam-.. Raahaahaam. Sounds more like it's sheep sh_t being spread here. Baahaahaad Raahaahaam. I'm surprised you didn't mention that. That is usually the number one reason given when more or new RAM didn't work and the answer really should have been "I have no Clue". Funny how utilities designed to check/find it never do and new or more only fix the problem 1%± of the time.

Unbelievable? Yes, I couldn't believe it myself at first either and-.. I still can't. Still, far more believable and credible at least than your recommendation that "more RAM" will make someone's computer faster ( which is not "bordering on", but, indeed-.. highly "improbable").

All you are telling me is that you have 65± unorganized, underpowered, overworked machines loaded with more RAM than they know what to do with and that even without this error are set- up for plundering time anyway. I guess it's all relative. Some of us are not paid by the hour or salaried so don't have the time or desire to watch the progress ball spin waiting for a finder window to open. For some time is irrelevant. A "stock" Dual 1.8 G5 has a 64 MB graphics card and 80 GB HDD. I couldn't do anything on these machines with 10.4 other than watch the ball spin-.. IF-!-.. there are enough resources left on the graphics processing unit to display it.

The question I still have, and assume Don does too, exactly what are the specs on your 1.8? Apple Menu > About this Mac > More Info > Hardware (copy and paste) > Graphics/Displays (copy and paste). If you are using a shared memory machine that would explain the reason you don't experience some of the other symptoms related to the graphics card. The PPC with shared memory that support Core Image and Quartz Extreme display less symptoms than a comparable intel. It is not that the problem is not there but they display different symptoms.

Do you install over a network? Do you use ArchiCAD's 2D HW acceleration? Any AC enabled HW acceleration ? Are they grayed out to prevent selection? This is using the same GPU (graphics PROCESSING unit) that displays your trace references which are not the problem but displays symptoms of the underlying problem which is most likely an underpowered overworked graphics card.

As for my recommendation I would assume someone who is responsible for 65± computers and has been using AC for a while, and has an idea of the changes in OS X.4+, would understand the concept and have at least one machine set up and partitioned the same way. No backwards compatibility concerns?

Why you should partition your HDD:

1. Quicker data access and less wear and tear on the mechanical parts, namely the head/reader. Instead of recursively scanning 1.5" and 500 GB of HDD surface you limit it to 1/8" 50GB± Keeping your OS on a partition by itself allows for easy upgrades or a re-install of corrupted OS or an older OS if the new proves unstable. The OS partition would be almost ignored as it loads most of what it needs into the RAM. This also aids the Mac OS extended formats already efficient way of allocating blocks.

2. Orginization. Dedicating volumes to a particular app and or file type allows for easy back up of your important data without the need to have to pick and choose what is backed up when. i.e. My music library is only backed up when I add new music. My user info is backed up when I shut down my machine. And projects are backed up upon quitting the app. I used to use Silver keeper but have resorted to manual for the time being. Silver keeper is a free app from LACIE and if you look at some of my old post from the email forum days you will note I recommended against LACIE FW HDD's as starting with OS X.3.9 the ports started melting of the PC board. My bad. I have since discovered that this was due to this very same error in the OS and not a design flaw by LACIE.

3. Data security.

a. Being that I have never been victim to malware or any such virus on the Mac this is not my concern but sometime HDD's just fail. As one who has spent a lot of time recovering data I can tell you it is quicker and easier for me and less expensive for you if I don't have to wade through piles of OS stuff trying to determine what's yours. Most services charge by the GB they have to try to access and recover.
b. Virtual Memory/scratch disks: Keeping an empty partition allows you the free space to allocate to the apps and OS helping you avoid the "insufficient memory" time to quit apps messages. One will note that on OS X.4 quitting such apps does not free up the memory though.
c. I can protect or hide any single volume on my HDD without doing so to my OS home or applications as they due take a performance hit when encryption is enabled.
d. Spotlight: Spotlight is a very powerful search engine and "hiding" volumes speeds up it's ability to find what you are looking for. Spotlight searches the contents of the files and not merely the folders or file names. You are simply eliminating the least likely place you'll ever find what you are looking for.
e. If there ever is a virus etc. it will most likely be like the majority and keep to the OS's volume and not go everywhere especially if your other volume name are unique.

f. If you install more than one OS on a machine it allows for quick troubleshooting of HW and SW alike provides a safe way to upgrade apps and OS's with a quick revert if there is any problems, i.e. driver issues etc..My G4 runs almost every app and OS that I have ever owned and can boot into OS 9 through OS X.4. I am experimenting with Xgrid at the moment so that I can use the G4's idle processor on my MBP and it seems that AC is looking at this as well. I don't know if they have implemented it's use as of yet though.
g. Journaling: Journaling is a safety feature to prevent against HDD failures do to power fluctuations/failures. It is constantly reading and writing to the HD putting place markers down so that if power does fail the reader can find it's place upon reboot and not slam itself on the extremes (click, click) trying to figure out where it is supposed to be. Turning this off will help to speed things up but you are risking your HDD to a certain extent if you fail to use a backup power system that is always on.

4. A larger graphics card: Mac OS X.4 contains an "all new" way for the OS and the apps to use it. As I posted earlier the Mac OS uses Open GL for the entire desktop. Windows should be almost instantaneous and not produce a progress ball. That statement was copied directly from Apple and is not my opinion or what I "believe". It is what is. The OS allocates a small percentage to VM and it does not seem to be able to access anymore than what it captured at startup. So regardless of how AC or any apps has implemented it the OS/QT is still taking charge. I don't have so don't know much about AC 10 or 11 but even if they are still non multithreaded the OS still breaks the tasks into threads, as is evident by the posts showing the Activity Monitor. (Mac OS - What does this mean?) Note the virtual memory is greater than the real by almost 200% on a single processor 1.8 G5. This is why it is using 66% of the processor and WOW-!! Safari is efficiently giving up it's unneeded resources? My question is what was Safari doing in the background?

5. As for my "complaints" they are not, but more an observation or a thought to ponder. Did GS send old versions of SW along with their latest after stripping itself of all it's tools/functions? No. iMovie may as well be stripped because of me as Apple has been unable to get beyond the fact that my discovery of this very real issue started with iMovie. This is an OS error. The reason why AC users may be experiencing less symptoms especially with AC is that AC provides it's own time management and does not sync with (or even use Core Audio, AFAICT) at the app level. It also appears that AC writes to the lower levels of both the OS and QT bypassing the numerous time formatters and "flippers" whenever it can.

So if the number of machines one has lends any credence I still have you beat with only 3. It used to be 4 but the HDD that contained the 10,000± floppy disks that were needed to install the SW on the Apple II has been destroyed-.. by OS 10.4.

I can open any piece app or use any piece of HW from 7.0. And this is how I know what I know. When 10.5 comes out if I choose to upgrade will be installed on the partition containing the full OS 10.4 and if still has the same issue will be reverted back to 10.4. but will not disrupt anything I am currently working on

Here is some more of that last Bug Report to Apple. I got no response until it was sent to the legal dept. on June 11 2007. (Information Assurance is a major requirement for some of us) I Finally got two responses. One from Apple's CH and the other on July 31 2007 in the security Updates. So if you are curious why it takes you 3600 seconds to do something that should take 36 or maybe you have wondered recently WTF time it really is when you see 1:5243 for a time stamp-.. this is why.


1. Bug Header Information 
 
1.1 : Product/Component: 

Mack OS X.4.0+, BSD (POSIX API), Core Audio, Core Video, Core Image, Quartz Composer, iDisk, .Mac QuickTime, Mail (including PLP), Safari, iTunes, iLife and PPC apps iWork 05, Appleworks. Firewire, Graphics Cards, Batteries, chargers and other hardware, Superdrive, UDF, ISO 9660(?)

1.2 : Classification: 

Security: 

 Information Assurance is not attainable nor is Common Criteria as the very basic requirements of an OS cannot be met. Mac OS 10.3.9+ has an error with a time formatter that is arbitrarily changing dates and times (most often times only, though I recall date issues with 10.0 &.1). The OS is altering and or destroying data and devices as it appears unable to protect against reentrant or concurrent access to resources. Function calls are not being serialized properly rendering work loops and events incapable of performing their functions and/or accessing critical resources across four architectures of hardware. (G4-IC2D). It appears that the algorithms are correct (to my limited knowledge) and these errors would not be caught by any debugging method or software intended for such use. Whenever dependencies are on time calculations applications crash, hang and/or data is lost and hardware failures occur as the time formats being used are not able to properly sync as many of the applications are using too many time formats that are not being properly transfered and are instead being transposed.Seconds are calculated as minutes, decimal seconds as seconds and so on depending on the specific application and the time formatter it uses locally and/or internally.

Performance:

The overall user experience has been degraded considerably as things that (according to the written code) should, and have in the past, work without a moment of thought now require a considerable amount of time to accomplish. i.e. sending an email from a .mac address to an Apple address or  accessing or using an iDisk requires an exuberant amount of time and free hard disk space. My last attempt consumed 8GB of HD space that I could not recover until a kernel panic "released" the space. I assumed it would have consumed more but that is the scratch disk space on the startup disk that is reserved for the apps. no documents are saved to or stored to this disk. This is always free with the exception of using Safari or Mail. No other apps seem to use it at all and if they do it is minimal I don't believe any use more than 250 MB±.

 All audio and video apps have numerous glitches that are otherwise inexplicable (i.e. stuttering or echoing sound, dropping frames (all frames) resulting in all black or white video tracks.). Inexplicable, much like the ongoing battery/charger issues of five± years and four generations of machines that (I did not experience this on my G4 667 non DVI until I installed 10.4) one notes that the damage occurs while the PMU or SMC is "Calculating Until Full" which can go on for hours unless you unplug the cord from the computer and re-plug it or access energy saver. No changes are required just open and close. 

 Firewire devices are incredibly unstable and unreliable. Most notably HDD failures and data corruption when the device cannot  properly handle unscheduled events. I would recommend against the replacement of HDDs based upon DISK WARRIOR results as they are different each time and often have been the cause kernel panics for me and disk Utility Lists the S.M.A.R.T. Status as OK.. Kernel panics are quite frequent with FW HDDs. Most often a machine will not start up or shut down with a FW HDD connected.

Then if you look at what they are telling you (or not telling you) you will see the products and components I have listed are pretty much all there in one form or another and most are even at a lower level than I have gotten. Now it is rounding my files of less than 1 second in duration to 10 seconds. So you decide who's more credible 65± machines running a single OS or three machines running 11 OS's (15 if you include W95, 98, MLM and XP) You can also look at the separate 10.3.9 update and all the QT updates. All deal with time, syncing and data access.

About Security Update 2007-007 (10.4.10 PPC)
Security Update 2007-007 is recommended for all users and improves the security of the following components:

bzip2
CFNetwork
Core Audio
cscope
gnuzip
Kerberos
mDNSResponder
PDFKit
PHP
Quartz Composer
samba
WebKit
WebCore

Security Update 2007-006 has been incorporated into this security update.

Coincidence?

You say no issues yet Apple says you had/have serious issues.

But then again I am what Apple refers to (within the code) as an "idiot user" and being that this issue has gone all the way to the legal dept. that could very well be why Apple stripped iLife of all the code that makes reference to such "idiots" as myself. I for one knew the Y2K thing was a major pile of BS yet this is the same but different and is not the slow train rolling with plenty of time to jump off or repair the tracks ahead. I have hours of audio and video of Apple's tech support and various machines doing all types of bazaar things (or not doing anything at all) and most have a well timed rhythm. Thousands of other documents provided by numerous sources all seeing similar symptoms and none being resolved. One issue that I do have with many documents though is incorrect dates and times.

The first HDD to fail did so in such a way that the data was not recoverable and the disk was blued indicating an electrical arc that was confined to a couple of spots on the disk again indicating it was happening at the same frequency each time.

So the short end of the long list, partitioning your HDD and installing a larger, properly supported graphics card should show an increase in performance to those who care or can understand what I am saying. Having to provide support for various OS's (namely 9 and 10.0 back in the day) and versions of AC is what lead me to start partitioning my HDD's and when I would get to someone's office at the 11th hour my machine would be getting the required task done while we figured out what the issue was on theirs. Maybe you couldn't tell by the clip (especially with a small shared GC) but it all had to do with time. I have not needed iMovie for some time since creating this app. (which by the way puts all the functionality/effects/transitions back in iMovie 08(7)) and need the OS fixed so that when I create something at a particular duration it stays that way or the audio and video clocks at least sync properly.

[Dwight]

Even though this exchange appears to be sword play, thank you for such a wonderful essay.

It has given me good reason to consider drive partitioning again, since over the years I've just kept adding drives to the system rather than considering a more finely-tuned approach.

[Anonymous]

Dwight wrote:
Even though this exchange appears to be sword play, thank you for such a wonderful essay.

It has given me good reason to consider drive partitioning again, since over the years I've just kept adding drives to the system rather than considering a more finely-tuned approach.

Hi Dwight,

Foiled again-.. eh? Lucky me the foil was blunt.

My apologies to everyone as I did not come here to engage in a competition of supremacy by seeing who can pass water further, faster or in a larger quantity but came to get some information on a very serious issue (for me anyway).

Sorry if I can't offer much about AC 10 or 11 but I can offer a bit about the very new way the Mac OS handles all apps and HW and this same partitioning scheme applies for PC users as well and if you avoid using "reserved" names you can avoid much of the hassles of the viruses that do come around..

As a side note it seems that the Mac vs PC has become a mute point. The major difference was the processor and it's abilities. One thing that is very curious to me and most evident in this forum (an area of research that I had abandoned but am resuming) is that the Mac has begun to behave like a PC and this could very well be an Intel thing. IA 32? What was Apple thinking?

So much for Mr. Job's theory of "building your own computer".

Personally I thought it odd that there seemed to never be a question of using AMD's or anyone else's processors. The PPC died not because of inferior technologies but because of an infringement issue in regards to it's design. That is why we never saw the PB G5 and IBM exited the arena altogether. Having seen the temps on MacIntels reaching to 150°f± I don't by the heat excuse.

BTW Dwight,
Have you looked into XGrid yet?

The little that I have been reading the past few days of the AC developer downloads (mainly trying to understand the time management) indicates that AC is going to be (does?) supporting this technology. It will allow you to dust off your old machines back to the G4's and OS 10.3.9 and harness the processors to process tasks in the background keeping yours free for-.. whatever your doing. Even wirelessly over the airport as a "Render-Flock"

Having worn the now floppy eared pages of [i[Illustrations in AC I for one, at the moment I could use Animations in ArchiCAD? as my use of AC these days is very different.

And-.. in addition to Djordje's sound advice here is another consideration.

NEVER ASSUME THAT THE OTHER PERSON KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT either (Especially if your livelyhood depends on it.)

That bug report was full of typos (Apple understood though) as it was hastily written after many hours on the phone with Apple's tech's that were totally clueless about anything and the solution offered was to send the machine in so they could replace the RAM-.. and other various pieces of HW-.. again.

For those who are not familiar with Information Assurance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Assuranceand

Integrity and availability are where the Mac OS is failing the most. i.e. I can't access a USB HDD when OSX thinks it's a camera, I can't read discs on the machine they were created on, etc-... I'd be happier with a virus myself as they are easier to identify, find and fix.

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=252924518&s=143441&i=25292469...

[Ralph Wessel]

Jeffrey wrote:
The OS is altering and or destroying data and devices as it appears unable to protect against reentrant or concurrent access to resources. Function calls are not being serialized properly rendering work loops and events incapable of performing their functions and/or accessing critical resources across four architectures of hardware. (G4-IC2D). It appears that the algorithms are correct (to my limited knowledge) and these errors would not be caught by any debugging method or software intended for such use. Whenever dependencies are on time calculations applications crash, hang and/or data is lost and hardware failures occur as the time formats being used are not able to properly sync as many of the applications are using too many time formats that are not being properly transfered and are instead being transposed.Seconds are calculated as minutes, decimal seconds as seconds and so on depending on the specific application and the time formatter it uses locally and/or internally.

Jeffrey,

I'm still not sure what this posting is about - it certainly doesn't seem to relate to the topic.

You seem to have recounted almost every conceivable problem a computer can have and blamed it on the OS. If you pause to think about it, doesn't it seem more plausible that something is simply wrong with your hardware or installation?

The primary responsibility for the allocation and management of resources and concurrent processes rests with the kernel, in this case XNU, a Unix hybrid of FreeBSD kernel with a Mach 3.0 microkernel. No one can argue that a given operating system is perfect, and debates rage amongst experts as to which approach to the OS kernel is the best, but you can't seriously argue that the Mac OS foundations are fundamentally flawed. Security experts (and the competition) would be having a field day roasting Apple if this was the case.

The underpinnings of the Mac OS are very mature and stable. Of course there are security and bug fixes, but the nature of these bugs are well understood. Many components in the Mac OS are open source (to which Apple contributes a great deal now) and of course these components are patched for refinements or bug fixes as required. You can find all the documentation for these fixes if you really want to - there is nothing ominous or underhanded about them.

It might help if you simply list the specific symptoms of the problems you're having under a different topic and not jump to conclusions about the cause. One of my Powerbooks suddenly began to randomly freeze or suffer kernel panics, but I conclusively tracked it down to a failed RAM chip, replaced the RAM, and all was well again (no software was reinstalled).

Regarding partitioning of hard drives, this isn't really recommended any more. There is some debate, but there are no compelling gains to be made (on the Mac at least - Windows user might gain from it). I would only suggest partitioning if you intended to run multiple OS's on the same machine, but even that will run better with separate hard drives. Partitioning will only take time and eventually leave you wishing you'd left it intact. External hard drives are cheap, and will generally work faster than partitions (which depend on a single drive head).

Backing up only documents is made easy by the way Apple organises files for you. I recommend sticking to their model - it really is very well thought-out. Don't attempt to move the VM swap file to another partition - get it wrong, and it will be a disaster.

All in all, I wonder if some of your recommendations haven't in fact caused some of the problems you are experiencing? Start a new thread, focus a bit more on the symptoms, and hopefully we can get to the bottom of it

[Stress Co_]

Dwight wrote:
Dual processors and an excess of RAM let you keep more tasks running without slowdown.

Yes... watching the WCT webcast while running Archicad works much better now

[Anonymous]

]

Ralph wrote:
Jeffrey,

I'm still not sure what this posting is about - it certainly doesn't seem to relate to the topic.

It is an esoteric topic about the imminent end of support for a particular platform/processor and it's current lack of performance. together with the original poster's return to an older version of an application (AC) and other backwards compatibility concern that has been addressed in this thread as well. I gave a solution that works in either direction providing the only reasonable explanation of why performance has taken a hit and numerous updates and patches have failed to fix. What is yours?

GS cannot provide a backwards (x86 to PPC) solution for technologies that no longer exist on a current platform that is the resposibility of the OS. Apple is the only one who's OS runs most processors both old and new PPC and Intel. Furthermore why should GS continue to support a processor that is no longer available or used by Apple? Apple's only commitment of continuing support of the PPC is through xGrid and they have even provided an update for 10.3.9 to provide a longer life for the G4 processor. When you install xGrid on OS 10.3.9+ you can use any combination of processors through a single interface to allocate tasks to be performed on any or all of them simultaneously. The most familiar are PPC, PPC64, IA-32, x86-64 and they can be in any machine (i.e. Dell, HP/Compaq, etc.) and not restricted to Apple's HW. This is the code that makes the processors do what they do.

Ralph wrote:
You seem to have recounted almost every conceivable problem a computer can have and blamed it on the OS.

No I am identifying a single problem and recounting how it can conceivably be the be the cause of any or every problem a computer can have including performance or the lack thereof. I also have a machine that runs multiple OS's where I can see the differences and the most concerning are the HW differences. Go to Apple's ADC site and enter "Keep Out" in the search field.

Ralph wrote:
If you pause to think about it, doesn't it seem more plausible that something is simply wrong with your hardware or installation?

It's been a long pause. This coming Dec. will be three years. It took about a year to identify the error. Your machines suffer the same ills you just don't have the same symptoms or they have not been intrusive enough for you to care or it is something you would consider "acceptable". I can reinstall a new OS on my machine in about 2± hours depending on the type of install and have done so numerous times every conceivable configuration. I have had numerous pieces of hardware replaced, Replaced two G4s with two new MacIntels that displayed many of the same symptoms as the two G4's that they replaced and even worse. My MBP1,1 was replaced with a MBP 2,2 and the other was recently replaced (finally after numerous HW replacements) with the latest MBP and immediately sold as it displayed the same and the person who owns it has had enough and as purchased another G4 so that they can actually do what they need to do. They use Apple's Pro tools.

Ralph wrote:
]The primary responsibility for the allocation and management of resources and concurrent processes rests with the kernel, in this case XNU, a Unix hybrid of FreeBSD kernel with a Mach 3.0 microkernel. No one can argue that a given operating system is perfect, and debates rage amongst experts as to which approach to the OS kernel is the best, but you can't seriously argue that the Mac OS foundations are fundamentally flawed. Security experts (and the competition) would be having a field day roasting Apple if this was the case.

It depends on which definition of argue you are using. I am citing evidence in support of what I am saying. You are not. Can you cite anything supporting your position. I am providing a reasonable explanation of how and why and if you actually read the bug header information you can see I am identifying that an issue is indeed in the kernel. The quote that you posted was not a "complaint" to this forum but part of a bug report that had been disregarded until legal dept. became involved and if you look at your time-stamps and the limited information available on Apple's updated and security patches you will see the evidence that they are finally tracking the issue down.

If security experts were such "experts" there would be no issues on any platform. Most issues are found by users/hackers.

The type of error I am identifying is called errata (an error in printing or writing) and there is a missing or misplaced "T", ":" or "." and/or in addition too "." seems to be under/undefined or misunderstood between between apps and with the OS and other devices or it could be the difference of " " or ' '. It starts out less than one second. Maybe the engineers don't have a handle on floating point arithmetic or IEEE 754. Maybe all the HW manufacturers can no longer produce reliable equipment as the specs are irrelevant as nothing can be isolated to a single manufacturer.

Ralph wrote:
The underpinnings of the Mac OS are very mature and stable. Of course there are security and bug fixes, but the nature of these bugs are well understood. Many components in the Mac OS are open source (to which Apple contributes a great deal now) and of course these components are patched for refinements or bug fixes as required. You can find all the documentation for these fixes if you really want to - there is nothing ominous or underhanded about them.

Bugs are well understood? What evidence supports this? Well I really want to find this documentation and can assure that no you cannot find out about the details of the fixes especially if they pertain to security issues and Information Assurance would not even be acknowledged as an even remote possibility by any computer/SW manufacturer.

The Mac OS X kernel is an Open Source project. The kernel, along with other core parts of Mac OS X are collectively referred to as Darwin. Darwin is a complete operating system based on many of the same technologies that underlie Mac OS X. However, Darwin does not include Apple’s proprietary graphics or applications layers, such as Quartz, QuickTime, Cocoa, Carbon, or OpenGL.

Mac OS X provides support for numerous types of file systems, including HFS, HFS+, UFS, NFS,
ISO 9660, and others. The default file-system type is HFS+; Mac OS X boots (and “roots”) from HFS+, UFS, ISO, NFS, and UDF. Advanced features of Mac OS X file systems include an enhanced Virtual File System (VFS) design. VFS provides for a layered architecture (file systems are stackable). The file system component provides
? UTF-8 (Unicode) support
? increased performance over previous versions of Mac OS.
(Apple's Kernel Architecture Overview)

OpenGL an Apple proprietary layer?

Available Everywhere
Supported on all UNIX® workstations, and shipped standard with every Windows 95/98/2000/NT and MacOS PC, no other graphics API operates on a wider range of hardware platforms and software environments. OpenGL runs on every major operating system including Mac OS, OS/2, UNIX, Windows 95/98, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Linux, OPENStep, and BeOS; it also works with every major windowing system, including Win32, MacOS, Presentation Manager, and X-Window System. OpenGL is callable from Ada, C, C++, Fortran, Python, Perl and Java and offers complete independence from network protocols and topologies.(OpenGL.org)

This is Apple's implementation of OpenGL. The entire desktop is OpenGL.

Ralph wrote:
It might help if you simply list the specific symptoms of the problems you're having under a different topic and not jump to conclusions about the cause. One of my Powerbooks suddenly began to randomly freeze or suffer kernel panics, but I conclusively tracked it down to a failed RAM chip, replaced the RAM, and all was well again (no software was reinstalled).

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=16929

Ralph wrote:
Regarding partitioning of hard drives, this isn't really recommended any more. There is some debate, but there are no compelling gains to be made (on the Mac at least - Windows user might gain from it). I would only suggest partitioning if you intended to run multiple OS's on the same machine, but even that will run better with separate hard drives. Partitioning will only take time and eventually leave you wishing you'd left it intact. External hard drives are cheap, and will generally work faster than partitions (which depend on a single drive head).

This isn't recommended anymore by who? For what reason? I give a reason. Even my externals are partitioned because of the fact that they do rely on a single head and I don't need it to wast time reading and writing something I am not going to use. I prefer a direct flight and avoid stops and layovers as much as possible because It is quicker.

Being that external HDDs are so cheap it would be a very worthwhile investment for anyone here to get one and partition it with all the PPC OS's ( they can't boot their Intel from this). But if you have an empty slot in your machine you may as well use it as an external HDD cannot be as fast as an internal unless it is connected via FW 800 and if you read the well known, inexplicable, documented limitation of FW800 on the Mac pertaining to HDDs together with a remote understanding of the "underpinnings" you would understand that when they locate this time formatting error this will most likely be resolved as well.

Ralph wrote:
Backing up only documents is made easy by the way Apple organises files for you. I recommend sticking to their model - it really is very well thought-out. Don't attempt to move the VM swap file to another partition - get it wrong, and it will be a disaster.

I avoid many of Apples apps for this very reason. They don't organize anything according to how I use them and are often not too friendly with other apps. i.e. iPhoto. As for orginization, I don't care what the dates the images were created and don't want them re-organized accordingly as well I don't want/need a hierarchy of hundreds of empty folders to sort through when I need to access them in other apps., nor do I need excessive thumbnails for every image.

A more common disaster is when auto-save features do not work for lack of free space on your scratch disk or not enough memory errors when saving/encoding or doing many other seemingly minute things. When I finalize a project of 20± GB the free space required to encode and create a temp file for burning is 2x the file size.

Ralph wrote:
All in all, I wonder if some of your recommendations haven't in fact caused some of the problems you are experiencing? Start a new thread, focus a bit more on the symptoms, and hopefully we can get to the bottom of it

Not surprising as you appaerntly have never used partitions and have not provided any advice whatsoever to the original post. In addition to lack of performance, the symptoms are that Mac OS has destroyed and or can't read files and discs it created. Applications crash too often, primarily Apple's. Safari crashed numerous times while trying to post a reply. PPC apps work the best on an intel Universal apps don't and a PB G4 on 10.3.8 outperforms a fully supported MBP. Hardware just doesn't work. Again painfully obvious on the G4 booting into different OS's.

[Ralph Wessel]

Jeffrey wrote:
I am identifying a single problem and recounting how it can conceivably be the be the cause of any or every problem a computer can have including performance or the lack thereof. Go to Apple's ADC site and enter "Keep Out" in the search field.

I've been a registered member with ADC for many years now, so that makes it easy. Just give me a link to the article which best describes this problem and I'll look it up. Another link to an outside source substantiating the problem would help too. Then everyone can understand the issue.

Jeffrey wrote:
Your machines suffer the same ills you just don't have the same symptoms or they have not been intrusive enough for you to care or it is something you would consider "acceptable". I have had numerous pieces of hardware replaced, Replaced two G4s with two new MacIntels that displayed many of the same symptoms as the two G4's that they replaced and even worse. etc.

It seems you've had a bad run with the hardware. But most people don't, myself included. I push my hardware to the limits and performance matters to me, but Apple's kit has almost always been very solid.

Jeffrey wrote:
I am citing evidence in support of what I am saying. You are not. Can you cite anything supporting your position. I am providing a reasonable explanation of how and why and if you actually read the bug header information you can see I am identifying that an issue is indeed in the kernel.

My position is that I know of no evidence of a serious flaw in the Mac OS kernel. If you can provide links to qualified sources, I would change my mind.

Jeffrey wrote:
If security experts were such "experts" there would be no issues on any platform. [...] Maybe the engineers don't have a handle on floating point arithmetic or IEEE 754. Maybe all the HW manufacturers can no longer produce reliable equipment ...

This sounds like conspiracy theory - all the security experts, engineers, and manufacturers are all deceiving us, and don't really know their stuff? I don't buy it.

Jeffrey wrote:
Bugs are well understood? What evidence supports this? Well I really want to find this documentation and can assure that no you cannot find out about the details of the fixes especially if they pertain to security issues

Almost everyone posts details of bug fixes, including Apple. It's not a secret - all the security updates back to '05 are listed:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798
There is more detail about each specific update, e.g. for Security Update 2007-007:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306172
And within that, you there are links to bugs fixed in open source/3rd party projects, e.g. Kerberos, in this case credited to a security expert (they do exist!) at McAfee Avert Labs. You can see specific bug fixes at pages like this:
http://krbdev.mit.edu/rt/NoAuth/krb5-1.5/fixed-1.5.1.html

Jeffrey wrote:
Not surprising as you appaerntly have never used partitions and have not provided any advice whatsoever to the original post. In addition to lack of performance, the symptoms are that Mac OS has destroyed and or can't read files and discs it created. Applications crash too often, primarily Apple's. Safari crashed numerous times while trying to post a reply. PPC apps work the best on an intel Universal apps don't and a PB G4 on 10.3.8 outperforms a fully supported MBP. Hardware just doesn't work. Again painfully obvious on the G4 booting into different OS's.

Sorry mate, you're on your own there. There are a heck of a lot of Apple 'power users' out there, and they wouldn't stand for the problems you describe. Apple is practically the standard for some industries - often very resource hungry, e.g. media, film, art, etc - and they like this kit because "it just works". BTW - I used to partition drives, maybe 15 years ago. External hard drives are easier, faster, and cheap.

[Thomas Holm]

Ralph, I'm with you, but I think it's no use. You'll never make this guy change his mind. Safer to ignore!

[Anonymous]

Ralph wrote:
I've been a registered member with ADC for many years now, so that makes it easy. Just give me a link to the article which best describes this problem and I'll look it up. Another link to an outside source substantiating the problem would help too. Then everyone can understand the issue.

So Ralph again what's your point? You suffer from narcissism? I have been a member for many years as well and it doesn't make me any smarter. One must read, comprehend and use the code for any of it to be worthwhile.

This problem is classified as errata and symptoms are described like this.

Audio not synced to video after import, Image files seem to get damaged when copied on new Mac, Incorrect time-zone info for Brazil, Kernel Panic, but no multilingual alert, Macbook Pro C2D wireless issue after 10.4.10 (resolved same issue for MacBook though), Macbook Pro just shuts off after Battery 1.3 update, Problem with event dates in iMovie 08, USB Hard drive not detected after update to 10.4.10, Very slow Illustrator CS3, Photoshop performance, 0.1 second clips, All footage dates off by one day, Dates on some of my events showing as 1 January 1904, December 31, 1903?? (Same as former a day difference), External HD not recognized, iLife unexpectedly quits A LOT, Wake up with keyboard or mouse not working, Installation failed on disk 2 - I/O error - now I am stuck, MBP 8600M GT oddity (256 MB shows as 512 in Boot Camp XP), Hard disk crashed after updating to Tiger from Panther, External HDD does not appear-.. The list goes on and on. Apple Discussions, MacFixit-.. most Mac forums are full of the same issues. The ones I list here are just some of the challenges that I have experienced first hand with the exception of the time-zone for Brazil but my G4 is still getting ready for the upcoming release of Leopard and I can still pre-order today on the 29th.

These are titles of posts of others and one will note that many forums have changed to more of hardware/software troubleshooting forums. How do I fix instead of how do I create.

"Your computer's clock is set to a date before March 24th 2001. This may cause some applications to behave erratically."

This error message best describes the nature of this problem. It is also considered to be an esoteric topic as even many developers don't/can't understand it (Y2k proved this) However the dates and time in any individual app are usually correct and it does not occur until you combine technologies, access hardware (POSIX), create, move or modify time dependent files. Based upon the design of Apple's API (called OS X) you are always combining these technologies.

My intel displays time-stamps as 1:5234 and my PPC displays 1:52 regardless of my System Preferences > International > Formats > Time > Customize). 10.4.5 displays time on the intell as 1:52. Either way it is miscalculating time that is less than 1 second so this new time-stamp indicates they are looking, but the relevant information is what comes next.

I have turned to AC for animating VR objects as IT DOES NOT PROVIDE A TIME STAMP and therefore works while other software (Apple's) designed for this very purpose does not. Anything less than 1 second becomes 9.0333667 (or since latest update) 10 seconds.

Would you "change your mind" if AC was taking anything less than an inch and changing it to 9 or 10 inches? Would you even notice if everything you did was based upon whole numbers?

Ralph wrote:
It seems you've had a bad run with the hardware. But most people don't, myself included. I push my hardware to the limits and performance matters to me, but Apple's kit has almost always been very solid.

No. My hardware was fine until I installed 10.3.9 and QT 7 then my projects and hardware started to fail. The G4 running anything other than 10.3.9+ is fine and all my hardware works correctly. Before I discovered the nature of this error I replaced it with a MBP 1,1 and the issues were worse finally got it replaced with a 2,2 and the issues still prevail.

Ralph wrote:
My position is that I know of no evidence of a serious flaw in the Mac OS kernel. If you can provide links to qualified sources, I would change my mind.

So who are you? Because you don't know about it it doesn't exist? Please. You apparently have no clue about security issues. There are tons of articles about the Y2k BS that was a major farce. Many believed this maybe even yourself. I am saying open YOUR computer and look.

What I am telling you is what I have found by trying to resolve an issue that Apple has yet to find/correct.

How does paying someone a few thousand dollars to join their club make you qualified? There have been a number of updates since my last post and still the issue exists. Yes, on your computer as well.

If I could provide links to "qualified" sources we'd be talking about how the patch/update has resolved the issue.

Ralph wrote:
This sounds like conspiracy theory - all the security experts, engineers, and manufacturers are all deceiving us, and don't really know their stuff? I don't buy it.

If I wanted to conjure up a conspiracy theory I would have asked if they finally "knifed the baby"

I'm saying there is an error and this error can effect everything on your computer.

So, I'm not say they don't "know their stuff" but you are. Same components different manufacturers same failures. Maxtor, Seagate, Toshiba, Sony, Mitsubishi etc-... But I also would not say they never make typing mistakes either.

This is what I am saying:

There is a missing or misplaced "T", ":" or "." and/or in addition too "." seems to be under/undefined or misunderstood between between apps and with the OS and other devices. Or maybe there is a " " " in a string where there should only be a " ' " instead.

So if you can't believe that an error such as this can exist-..

Ralph wrote:
Almost everyone posts details of bug fixes, including Apple. It's not a secret - all the security updates back to '05 are listed:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798
There is more detail about each specific update, e.g. for Security Update 2007-007:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306172
And within that, you there are links to bugs fixed in open source/3rd party projects, e.g. Kerberos, in this case credited to a security expert (they do exist!) at McAfee Avert Labs. You can see specific bug fixes at pages like this:
http://krbdev.mit.edu/rt/NoAuth/krb5-1.5/fixed-1.5.1.html

Almost everyone. APPLE DOES NOT. PERIOD-!! They won;t even provide details after the fix. I remind you that you missed that first paragraph and that this is not "fixed" apparently not even in Leopard.

(First paragraph from your link)
This document outlines security updates for Apple products. For the protection of our customers, Apple does not disclose, discuss or confirm security issues until a full investigation has occurred and any necessary patches or releases are available. To learn more about Apple Product Security, see the Apple Product Security website.

I'm not talking about the boogie man creating malicious content I am referring to Information Assurance and Common Criteria. I came here to gather info like "APPLE HELL" and GS's provided version of QT seems to work better than that downloaded from the web" with hopes of maybe finding an intelligent person who understands and can help me resolve this issue. Not play to one's narcissism. While I was here I gave sound advise on the issues being discussed as well as a reason why a machine that should have experienced a performance boost has received a hit instead.

BTW have you ever tried the PGP key? It seems it is stricken by the same issue. Go figure.

Ralph wrote:
Sorry mate, you're on your own there. There are a heck of a lot of Apple 'power users' out there, and they wouldn't stand for the problems you describe. Apple is practically the standard for some industries - often very resource hungry, e.g. media, film, art, etc - and they like this kit because "it just works". BTW - I used to partition drives, maybe 15 years ago. External hard drives are easier, faster, and cheap.

Yes apparently so as it seems many are accepting the lack of performance and the play with it until it works as being part of Apple's new human interface guidelines. I have used Macs way too long and have glommed through too much of the code to believe that this is "normal".

I chose the the Mac platform primarily for ArchiCAD as it was not ported to PC and have experienced the stability of a Mac and can say with certainty this is no longer the case. I could open anything and use most any hardware now I can't even read discs on the machine that created them.

15 years ago there was not much point in partitioning hard drives and external SCSI drives were rare to the "normal" user as floppies were still adequate for most. External HDDs are not faster than an internal with the slim possibility of it being faster on an "older" (todays) machine if the OS allows the 3200 mb/sec while the SATA is still 1200. It is my position from reading the code along with Apple's, IEEE's, ISO's,, etc-. documentation that the reason for the high rate of HDD failures is that the OS produces an error in anything less than a second.

The number one reason I began partitioning my HDDs was for ArchiCAD and Mac OS/Backwards compatibility and performance issues.

P.S. Thomas
Why not head your own advise? "Better to ignore" and my favorite "but of course there is no point in replying if you don't have anything to add to the subject"

I will not change my mind but may make a new decision based upon new information. So far neither of you have provided anything on this topic. Being that I still can't finish a project that should be very simple for the Mac (as it was going fine until 10.3.9 + QT 7) and my hardware continues to fail there is no chance in the world I would ever just arbitrarily "change my mind" especially as I am waiting for a shipping box-.. again.

Thanks for your insight.