Interesting OS X observation from Firefox development

OS X has memory issues, and APIs that don't do anything ...

Firefox 3 Memory Usage pavlov.net:

... On Mac, If you look at Activity Monitor it will look like we’re using more memory than we actually are. Mac OS X has a similar, but different, problem to Windows XP. After extensive testing and confirmation from Apple employees we realized that there was no way for an allocator to give unused pages of memory back while keeping the address range reserved.. (You can unmap them and remap them, but that causes some race conditions and isn’t as performant.) There are APIs that claim to do it (both madvise() and msync()) but they don’t actually do anything. It does appear that pages mapped in that haven’t been written to won’t be accounted for in memory stats, but you’ve written to them they’re going to show as taking up space until you unmap them. Since allocators will reuse space, you generally won’t have that many pages mapped in that haven’t been written to. Our application can and will reuse the free pages, so you should see Firefox hit a peak number and generally not grow a lot higher than that....

My sense is that OS X does a lot to test the patience of application developers.

I've been using Firefox 3 beta 5 on OS X, and I feel that it's faster and much less likely to peg my CPU.

WiTopia personalVPN - need custom DNS configuration

I've been paying for the Witopia personalVPN service ...

Gordon's Tech: WiTopia personalVPN 

...PPTP VPN: This is built into OS X, though in 10.4 it works through the peculiar 'Internet Connect' application rather than the network preferences (where I looked for it). Easy to use, requires no additional software. This style of VPN is disdained by experts for some security issues, but of course it only has to be better than nothing -- which is what everyone else at the Hotspot is using. It's the old 'park next to the better bicycle' theory...

Problem is, it really slows down my browsing. Long delays for every transaction. I'll send them a note and see if they have any ideas, but I'm inclined to disable renewal of the service and try another vendor ...

Update 5/1/08: Both Witopia and a helpful commenter tell me that it's essential to use the Witopia DNS servers to get good performance. I think that's the problem, so I'll change and test. If it fixes the problem I'll amend my post title to "Use the DNS servers!". (The recommendation is down in the Witopia FAQ, I'll look over their site again but I think they could do with a bit of rework on setup documentation.)


Update 5/31/08: When I was running 10.4.11 I didn't see a way to specify a DNS address for the PPTP connection alone, and I didn't want to change my usual DNS address. With 10.5.3 it's fairly obvious how to change the DNS address for the PPTP connection alone (advanced button).

I added the DNS address from the Witopia FAQ: 38.119.98.220 Performance seems quicker, but, oddly enough, the Witopia Wiki won't open. Other sites seem fine, so perhaps the wiki is coincidentally offline. I'll test this out for a while.

Why was my OS X mouse behaving so badly?

It had been bugging me for a while, but now I was going over the edge.

OS X 10.4.11 wasn't responding to my mouse clicks. I was double, triple and quadruple clicking where one should have done.

What had gone wrong? Some recent update? Something stealing the mouse clicks?

I keep my system very plain, so I decided to check into a new mouse driver. It had been a while since I'd updated my Microsoft IntelliPoint driver -- years, come to think of it.

I installed the new IntelliPoint and IntelliType Pro driver from Apple's site. The reboot took a long time, the mouse install seemed to require some major rebuilding.

The new driver had loads of new options, but my mouse clicks were still being missed. Now, however, the driver told me my battery was low.

New batteries, but the problem remained. The driver had one more diagnostic though ... my signal was oddly weak.

Yes! The small wireless receiver (this is pre-Bluetooth) had fallen off my desk, and was now buried between the back wall and the back of the desk. Restoring the receiver restored the signal -- and my mouse clicks.

Of course the real problem was that I'd lost my receiver, but it was odd that I didn't get the battery and signal warnings until I installed the new driver. My IntelliMouse driver was ancient, probably inherited from a 10.3 build. I wonder if some recent update didn't knock out the battery warnings it used to give; Apple can't possibly test against ancient drivers.

Really, these computer systems are a wee bit complex.

I do like the new mouse options however, especially Microsoft's acceleration support. I feel as though I got a new mouse out of the deal.

Google Docs: still no working clipboard

I've been using Google Docs for ages, and there's been no progress in providing any kind of reasonable clipboard functionality with any OS X browser. We're told to use ctrl-c to work with the system clipboard instead of using the native Google Docs clipboard. Of course that shortcut works for Firefox on OS X, but not Safari.

Honestly, Google Apps is still a semi-useful toy compared to a desktop application. Progress is very slow.

Firefox noscript add-on - time to start using it

A recent large scale hack of Microsoft's IIS web server means that lots of reputable web sites may be hosting exploits more commonly seen on the shady side of the net.

So it's probably time to start using the Firefox NoScript add-on ...

Hundreds of Thousands of Microsoft Web Servers Hacked - Security Fix

There is a great add-on for Firefox called "noscript," which blocks these kinds of Javascript exploits from running automatically if a user happens to visit a hacked site. Currently, there is no such protection for IE users, and disallowing Javascript entirely isn't really an option on today's World Wide Web. True, you can fiddle with multiple settings in IE to add certain sites to your "Trusted Zone," but that option has never struck me as very practical or scalable.

I've been using it for a few days. I whitelisted a number of the Google sites I use (if they're hacked we're all doomed) and so far it's been easy to enable JavaScript when needed by clicking on the S icon.

Video editing - lord, this is ugly

I'm pretty disgusted with iMovie '08, so I decided to read a review of Final Cut Express 4.

Yuck.

MacWorld desperately tries to say nice things about Apple, but despite the "4 mouse" rating the review reveals a right mess. Different behaviors on different processors, inability to import some formats iMovie '08 handles, etc, etc.

Video editing was always pretty complex, but I think the profusion of codecs and file formats has driven it over the cliff.

Apple's offerings are pretty sad at the moment (iMovie HD was the closest they got to a good solution, and they abandoned it). Unfortunately I think Apple is the only consumer video option for the Mac.

Digital-TV converters: choices for the Saint Paul area

A local paper's tech blog reviews Digital-TV converters available locally. His preference is the "Digital Stream DTX9900 sold by RadioShack". I need to spend my vouchers before they expire, so I'll probably follow his lead here.

From what I've read elsewhere broadcast digital may require a fairly expensive antenna investment. So the converters are only a part of the cost. We have very cheap antennae; I'll report on what we find in our real world testing. All we need is for one sports channel to come in so my son can spend his tv-time credits.

Update 5/4/08: Bloody 'ell, it worked.