On Stability of XTension

[Michael]

On Oct 9, 2013, at 9:23 AM, Chuck <xtension4osx at mac.com> wrote:

> Like you, I am searching for something that is more stable. I am growing weary of constantly working on the system to keep it functional. In the last year or so the system has become increasingly more and more unreliable. I lose connections with interfaces, XTension freezes, and it takes forever to have a light come in so we are always turning on the lights manually.
> 
> Something has to change for my wife and I.
> 
> Chuck

Hello Chuck,

This is very worrying.  I definitely want to hear more, specially about the 'freezes'.
Please give me a update on your system.

I have of course kept multiple macs going here for years, and I only a few moments ago
mentioned to James that the older iMac on the left running 10.4.11 was much faster
than the newer iMac in the middle on 10.8.5 … both running the same version of XTension, and
a similar group of apps.

But this was not in response to seeing XTension do something, but rather a group of apps that
I use to develop code (xcode, text edit, excel etc).

The difference in the smallest things is quite obvious, and often really annoying.
Delays between things like window pop-downs, window select/front, app start, file open etc.
And these are significant.  Often taking many seconds before the window fronts etc.
With the older 10.4.11 system, there is nothing more than you would expect, sub-second times.
And with 10.8.3, I did see many outright 'freezes' of the system requiring reboot.

( I only last week switched to 10.8.5, and I've yet to see the worst of those delays I saw on 10.8.3 )

As an aside, I have an old PPC 9600(?) running OS 9.2, and it always announces the same
"Speak" verb, just slightly faster than this honky new iMac…  and I forget the last time it failed.
And it is not on the UPS, so it gets hit with brownouts and fails pretty often from this.

But, I have not seen any hang-up of XTension, on any of my machines, that could not have been 
attributed to something deep in the bowels of the MacOS.  
Even with me debugging ISF's on a running Main System, I've not seen any such behavior that 
'degrades' or periodically stalls etc.  And, I sit in front of these things most often 12 hours a day.


All of this brings up an old saw of mine… I've suggested this and still believe in it.

Put XTension on an older Mac.  A Mini ?
Settle on an Mac OS that you're happy with.  
(This can be headless, as even an iPad can VNC to it.)
Buy at least one identical spare Mac.
Maintain a complete set of backup drives.
Dedicate a closet or corner shelf to it.

I don't even suggest that you run things like a music server etc on that mac.
Don't put anything on it that you might want to continue to upgrade.

And yes, that just perfectly squashes any kind of continuing profit we might make,
and I know that there are a lot of folks out there who are still running XTension for OS9,
I'm suggesting it… 

The hardware is so much less reliable today.  And the more we reduce the 'die size',
the greater possibility for anomalous events.

And I just won't get into the subject of what's happened to the OS.

Now don't believe for a moment that James and I don't ever have real world failures,
and we are certain that there are still bugs in the system, but we're still here, and
very much addicted to our systems :)

michael



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