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Quicksilver Goes Open Source

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Darwin:
Ooh! Thanks for the pointer about itStat Menus! I'll disable Dashboard (and Expose) and reclaim (a modicum of) resources. I should probably just run with an alias to the Activity Monitor stuck in the dock, though.

I've been wondering about iWorks... Will have to take a look  :Thmbsup:

Darwin:
Hmm... I like iWorks! It's funny, though: Office 2008 apps take a LONG time to open, but once open they're responsive. iWorks opens more quickly and is responsive as well. However, Office apps barely touch my CPU but leave only about 80MB of RAM free. iWorks, on the other hand, pegs my CPU to about 90% used and leave me with 180MB 70MB of RAM free... If I could figure out how to start up Office apps more quickly I'd be content with it. Right, off to google that now...

Just to note, though - iWorks is visually stunning, even on my old computer with no fancy graphics capabilities. Just how underpowered the graphics card is was driven home for me yesterday when I decided to show my parents some of QuickSilver's (great, this post script gets this post on topic!) power. On my iBook when I open Quicksilver for the first time I get the QS splash screen. It's innocuos and pleasant enough, but that's as far as it goes. On my parents' iMac, wow! The QS sort of emerges, shimmering, as if rising out of perfectly still water... I don't really care about this, but did *note* it!

EDIT: changed iWorks' reported RAM usage... I ran this test four times for each suite using the same xlsx file and checking usage with iStats Pro (under Dashboard). To make this test really valid, I'll have to restart the computer between each usage of one of the suites... As one might perhaps expect (at least if one is approaching this from a Windows background), opening Excel was much more brisk the second, third, and fourth times, though I did ensure that it wasn't running when I had Numbers running and vice versa. Because I am running iWorks as a trial AND it has to convert Office 2007/2008 document formats before opening them, I am not concerned with its load time.

nontroppo:
Yeah, QS animations make it shimmer indeed! QS uses core graphics APIs and then builds on them, this is another example how the core OS X APIs enable QS to shine. And at least on a G4 iBook use minimal CPU; I think core graphics scales its effects to the hardware really well.

I think iWork is showing higher memory use because it has to convert the documents from office format right?

Darwin:
I think iWork is showing higher memory use because it has to convert the documents from office format right?
-nontroppo (November 03, 2008, 05:30 PM)
--- End quote ---

Hadn't thought of that... perhaps, but then, once the document is converted and opened I would expect CPU usage to fall off. Lots more testing required, in any case. FWIW, Googling reveals that Office 2008 is considered a bit of dog no matter what hardware it runs on. Dog slow loading, that is... People have reported that using Leopard's firewall to block Office from connecting to verify DRM dramatically reduces load times. However, Tiger's firewall doesn't allow me to do this. Another trick is to disable WYSIWYG previewing of fonts in the General tab of Word's preferences. This had an indiscernible effect on my system, likely because the limiting factor is power under the hood (or rather, the lack thereof). I think I'll just live with it. I'm not going to be doing much with the iBook anyway so can't see spending $80 on an iWorks licence when I've already got Office 2008, especially given that I can't be sure that it's going to be that much quicker, anyway.

Darwin:
Dang! I'm sitting in the library on the iBook with Mail, Safari and Word open. Word has two documents (two separate chapters of my dissertation) open and I have been editing them... and it all works. Seamlessly. Impressive given that Office 2008 is not supported on a G3 and most forum postings I've read about doing so suggest that Word runs too slowly to be useful. I shouldn't be THAT surprised - I also run Office 2007 on an (even) old(er) Compaq Presrio under Win2k and it's very smooth there as well and that machine will easily handle what I'm asking this iBook to do, but still...

QuickSilver is such a pleasure to play with and learn. I really should be keeping notes so that I can detail my discoveries.

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