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Indeed, the "bloat" is universal and not only due to advanced featores or no optimization but often due to frameworks decreasing development time.

Of course everything ran fast when developed in c or assembly, but when you start using java or python or whatever, development costs go down and speed decreases (which is offset by hardware improvements)

Hopefully Moore's law decline will bring back the great coders from the 80s that used to be able to write a real time 3D game for a monochrome 8bit microcomputer with 64 k of addressable memory.
If people cannot just upgrade to a new computer, fast programs will be profitable again.
Linux, Apple and Microsoft will have to change their ways.

Just because something is written in C or assembly doesn't make it fast. One can write crappy and slow C/ASM just like they can write crappy and slow Java code.

Case in point: GNOME

:-)

Sadly, this is true for most modern Linux distributions and modern Linux / UNIX applications in general. In some cases you can say: You cannot take advantage of faster hardware and grown ressources because they are squandered by underlying OSes, libraries, or the grown requirements of the said applications.

Furthermore, I agree to your last statement. I thing some developers don't care about optimization of their own code ("Hey, it runs fast enough on my machine!") or they simply rely on the functionalities provided by a library that they just have to include and call functions from, so existing bloat is "inherited", and they don't care about it.

Another thing is the tendency to integrate as much functionalities into one application / an OS as possible.

In a result, there is a imaginable quotient:

hardware ressources
---------------------------------- = overall usage speed
application requirements

Due to technical development, the numerator increases, and due to bloat, the denominator increases, too. The quotient seems to stay the same over the years. Yesterday's applications are as fast on yesterdays machines as today's applications are on today's machines. To benefit of the faster hardware of today, you seem to need to run older software on it. Simple math. :-)

There's a difference between utilising new hardware resources as they become available, for example, Compiz, the new KWin and various 3D enhancements that have been made, and wholesale requiring said resources and then eating them. I don't know of any distribution that has the graphical hardware requirements of Vista.

Vista basically requires at least a couple of gigabytes of RAM if you want to run any applications at all, especially Office 2007. I don't know of any Linux distribution that has that requirement to run well. If XP ran well on it then a Linux distribution certainly will.

Your hitting the nail on the head. There are other issues as well, most programmers find it difficult to take advantage of multiple core CPU's which seem like the direction that CPU manufacturers are having to go in as clock speeds are not increasing like they used to. Hopefully the problems programmers are having will change, but its going to take some effort on the coders part. Some will get better and they will probably see improvements in market share because of it. I think users are at a point where they have enough with simply adding more features and would like to simply have the OS or application developers work more and more on getting the product to be more responsive.

Actually, each major release of Mac OS X has become more efficient and, for most people, has run faster than the previous release on the same equipment. Leopard (10.5) seems to be the exception for me, as it runs significantly slower on my not so current machine than Tiger (10.4) did though the Intel-based machines are doing much better with Leopard.

RAM usage has been pretty consistently high, but Leopard seems to be higher than previous releases. You could always get decent performance out of a Windows machine running applications with only 384 MB while a PowerPC machine would need double that.

Bloat is inevitable as people have forgotten how to write efficient code and depend solely on the compiler's optimisations to make things better. There was a time when that worked, such as IBM getting better performance out of Win31 within OS/2 by using the Watcom C compiler. Microsoft's version 5.1 C compiler often had to have optimisations disabled to produce correct code.

Apple is a hardware company so here's my take on what happened. First of all, mac os x started out very slow. They were still on ppc at the time and it was looking really bad for them as that cpu just couldn't keep up with intel. So they had a huge push to optimize their code on the one hand while claiming that the ppc was somehow better than x86.

Now, mac hardware is basically like pc's so it is apples to apples. They don't need to worry about being slower than Windows anymore so they add features to show off their stuff.

My own anecdote:

Microsoft Office 2003 under the latest wine starts waayyyy faster than the latest OpenOffice on my Ubuntu Hardy system. Not only that but its just a much more responsive and effective piece of software.

Something to think about.

Edited 2008-04-16 04:26 UTC

My anecdote:

Any part of OpenOffice under Linux opens in roughly the same time as any part of MS Office under Windows XP on the exact same dual-boot machine, and faster than any part of MS Office under Windows Vista.

Any part of KOffice under Linux opens waayyyy faster than any part of MS Office under Windows XP on the exact same dual-boot machine.

Any part of GNOME Office (Abiword+Gnumeric) under Linux opens waayyyy faster than any part of MS Office under Windows XP on the exact same dual-boot machine.

Have you tried OpenOffice.org Quickstarter? Or other configuration options to make OpenOffice work faster? See, for example, here: http://www.zolved.com/synapse/view_content/28209/How_to_make_OpenOf...

I'd like to know where you are getting your facts from.

Seriously...

I run os x leopard server on a 9 year old apple g4 450mhz cube w/ 1.5gb of memory

It runs like a dead dog. Yet it still runs better than 10.4 Tiger server did (and even that was usable as a server)

Sure, I cant use 3D graphics stuff... but then I do only VNC into it. Also the transparency effects are disabled... but hey *shrugs*

Point is, it still runs faster than tiger, yes it does have the alex voice bloat (600mb single voice library) but what is a cd amongst friends?

I'd LOVE to see how Vista ran on equivalent hardware .. oh wait, it wont!

Vista running on almost 10 year old hardware? just not going to happen is it?

I suspect OS X is on par with Windows XP and perhaps less than Vista in regards to memory consumption in a non scientific sort of feel I get from using the two systems. I also figure at least with XP and Mac OS X that most new systems have more than enough memory for the majority of users. I sort of assumed Mac OS X would be more hungry, but they have made great leaps in memory management from 10.0 (they HAD to, it was awful slow), and I keep an eye on memory consumption in Mac OS X. I have a gig of ram in my G5, and I have not used all the memory while doing development work in XCode and the usual things like checking email/web etc that most people do, so I am pretty happy with it. It seems to hang around the 500 meg mark or so max. I think Windows feels about the same. I do notice that the mac double buffering the windows may make it seem a little slow or unresponsive on occasion, but I like the way it draws its stuff (especially the PDF quality of the graphics) and am willing to accept that VS Windows, which does seem like a mishmash in comparison. I don't see that as eye candy which I often hear people state, its more of an elegant way that the windows are drawn VS Windows. Some people could care less. Vista may have improved that, but I had so much trouble with drivers I went back to XP. I also like Linux as much as Windows, so I use that whenever I can. The biggest problem I see with Windows is virus/malware and all that. I am not a fan of having to run all this stuff to protect my machine. That problem may come to Mac in the future, but right now it is not as in your face so that always feels like a relief and is a plus. I do have problems with task management in Mac VS Windows. Windows, especially sound stuff seems to have less hiccups and problems. This may have more to do with Mac OS X not getting the best drivers, but I can do more sound stuff on the Windows box where the Mac one seems to hiccup. I really don't like flamewars and arguments about what system is better. I do think what is out there gives much more then old systems which used less memory/cpu. I do agree with the feeling that all of this could be MUCH faster and more responsive, but I suspect that making programming more reusable and general purpose is at least one factor that led to bloat in code. Concurrency in programming is going to become more and more of an important tool to combat this VS trying to get higher clock speed.