86 Mac Plus vs. 07 AMD DualCore. You Won't Believe Who Wins (2007)
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It certainly cold boots faster (almost instantly as soon as there is display output), and 10.5 feels as rock solid as ever.
I could even deal with that computer offline, and sometimes do as it doesn’t have a wifi (never bothered), which alleviates security concerns; too. (As does the PPC platform itself, somewhat.)
I’m not sure when the bloat became so severe that it started impeding performance in a serious way, but it seems to be late 90’s to early 00’s to me, with it peaking like hell in the early-to-mid 00’s - everyone remember all those Internet Explorer ‘Toolbar’ malware addons? XD
I’d go to my friend’s computer and they’d have like so many of them it covered a significant portion of the screen but it never seemed to occur to them to disable them, even if they knew how.
The mouse movement stutters at about 5-20 FPS. Shut down every application on the system, disconnect every peripheral, it still stutters.
I can type at normal speed. I can put video on each of my three monitors and play simultaneously with almost zero skipping. I can render extraordinary realtime 3-D. But I can't move the mouse across the desktop any better than I could on my Apple IIgs in 1986.
If I pretend it's a bug and search for information I get dozens of forum posts where Microsoft reps recommend trying hours of intense "troubleshooting" procedures that amount to percussive maintenance: kick the machine and maybe it'll start working.
So either I can spend days trying to find the answer or I can accept that mouse pointer movement hasn't improved in 34 years. Acceptance has come slowly.
1:1 linear with disabled acceleration is still the gold standard for responsiveness and accuracy.
I'm using a Microsoft Windows Mobile Mouse 3500. It's not expensive but it's not a weird cheapo device.
Since that's a wireless mouse, let me say: it's not interference. I have used the mouse in metal lockers five stories underground. I have used it next to giant towers of mechanical equipment. Nothing gets worse or better.
1:1 linear takes about three meters to cross a triple-monitor space. I had to move the mouse onto the floor to even try.
None of this happens on my wife's Mac, or if I run linux on this machine. It's some dumb sampling issue with USB and the display driver and the windowing manager. It's definitely FPS, not spatial sampling.
The mouse moves to the right place. The system just doesn't show it moving often enough.
The mouse isn't a first-class citizen. Nothing on windows is a first-class citizen. You get what you get and can't get upset.
It makes me miss BeOS.