Tag: PowerPC
TUESDAY TECH: Watch Out for Rosetta
When Apple made the switch from packing its computers with PowerPC chips to using faster Intel ones, it needed to find a way to let older, PowerPC-only software still work in OS X on Intel machines. Emulation was the answer that enabled most PowerPC programs to run fast enough to be useable. However, this emulation can also be troublesome when accidentally invoked, so…
Watch Out for Rosetta
I have an iMac PowerPC G5 in my office that I do most of my work on. My wife, Michelle, almost exclusively uses our newest computer, an Intel MacBook. For browsing the web, I use Safari in my office but have always used FireFox on the MacBook as I found it to be considerably faster than Safari. I chalked it up to the Intel build of Safari being less efficient than the PowerPC one.
Since we got the MacBook, Michelle has told me on a number of occasions that it was too slow. Every time I used it, I thought it was extremely fast, especially when compared to my older iMac. I could never figure out why she thought it was so darn slow when I thought it was quite speedy… until the other day.
I was using FireFox on the MacBook to look at a few web pages, including Yahoo. Everything was loading fine. Then Michelle wanted to check her e-mail, so I handed her the computer and watched her bring up Safari, followed by an extremely slow-loading Yahoo home page – much slower than I had just loaded it a few minutes prior. It was time to figure out why Safari was acting so sluggish.
After uninstalling the latest beta of Safari 4 and returning it to the more-stable Safari 3, I found that it was still equally as slow. I cleared the cache, cookies, and changed several more settings with no change in speed. Finally, it occurred to me to check to see if Safari had somehow been switched to running in Apple’s PowerPC emulation mode called Rosetta. Sure enough, it was.
Upon unchecking the box telling it to use Rosetta, I instantly found Safari to be just as fast as FireFox ever was. Michelle is much happier using that machine now as well. I have no idea why Safari was ever set to run in Rosetta, but I’m glad I finally figured it out.
The moral of the story is if you are using an Intel-based Apple computer and find a particular program to be running much slower than you think it should be, try the following steps:
- Locate and highlight the application in Finder.
- Right-click on it and select Get Info (or press command-I on the keyboard).
- Look for an option that reads “Open using Rosetta”.
- If it is checked, uncheck it.
- Celebrate.
TUESDAY TECH: Elgato Turbo264 and Turbo264HD
I do a lot of video compression. A LOT. My computer probably spends more time compressing videos than not and it’s probably in need of a break. Unfortunately, there isn’t much break time to give it when some videos take upwards of 7 hours to compress. However, my hopes are high that a certain gadget will relieve some of the strain on my CPU…
Elgato Turbo264 and Turbo264HD
I was listening to the Daily Giz Wiz podcast yesterday, as I often do, and heard host Leo Laporte finally discuss a gadget that I am actually considering purchasing. However, even after reading a ton of online reviews, I’m not sure if it works as well as I’d like it to. Hopefully someone reading this can tell me.
The Elgato Turbo264 and Turbo264HD appear to be nothing more than USB keys – but evidently they pack some powerful processing power inside. When encoding videos to the popular H.264 flavor of the MP4 video format, these devices kick in and speed up the process, cutting down compressing times by at least half. I’ve even read reports of videos that formerly took several hours to compress taking only 20-30 minutes with the Elgato devices installed. That’s one of those claims that I find hard to believe, but hope it’s true.
Both devices are for Mac OX and the Turbo264HD only runs on Intel-based Macs, supporting widescreen resolutions up to 1280×720 (it supports 4×3 resolutions as well but I’m not interested in those). The original Turbo264 only runs on PowerPC-based Macs but doesn’t support HD resolutions, as it maxes out at 960×540.
I do compress a good amount of 720p content for Orlando Attractions Magazine, but do most of my work on my iMac G5, which has a PowerPC chip. Generally, I am only in a rush to compress 640×360 video to get online (usually onto YouTube), so it seems like the cheaper Turbo264 would be the right option for me. But then there’s that part of me that’s telling me to just buy a new Intel-based computer and get the Turbo264HD for around $100 more.
So if anyone out there has either variation of this device, comment and let me know if it really works as well as some say it does. If so, I may just buy the cheaper one right away and hold out on the other until I have more of a reason to upgrade my main machine.
Tweet
