4.0b RC 1 performance

There seem to be some performance improvements in here but I'm surprised at how little has changed given the three weeks since the last update. Things continue to be more sluggish than I like and I continue to get better performance out of L4 PC in a VM than running L4 Mac natively.

Scrolling of linked resources is jumpy
Scrolling in areas like notes (greatly improved, still not where it needs to be), passage lists, reading plans, clippings continues to be sluggish and jumpy. There has been real and noticeable improvement, but it is still simply not acceptable for my regular, daily use
Clicking a note in a resource still does not scroll to that note
Text Comparison continues to forget my selected translations every time I open the tool. This is not a problem on the PC side but has been an ongoing issue on the Mac side.
This may be subjective, but to me the UI still lacks polish and looks unfinished, particularly in the background of panels with notes, reading list, etc, also the mouseover color in context menus, etc, also there is some lag time when mousing through a context menu. Nothing major in this, but in general my subjective opinion is the PC version is generally visually pleasing while the Mac version still feels unfinished.
On a plus side, highlighting speed seems to have improved somewhat, or at any rate I'm not noticing the long delays I remember having.

This is just a quick list but it touches on the main things that keep me in the PC version rather than the Mac version. I know work is being done to add new features and that in upcoming betas we will see things like diagramming, but please stop at some point and make the program work well. All the features in the world are useless if the program is too sluggish for me to bother with.

I am working on my patience with this, but I do confess to a bit of disappointment that with three weeks since the last update and with many discussions in the forum about performance issues we still aren't seeing any significant optimization. You Mac devs have done a great job and are delivering a great product, but you need to step back and focus on optimization for a bit before throwing in more shiny new stuff.

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Comments

Robert Mullen

I think the big push to get the release out the door probably took a toll. I can't speak for Logos specifically but being in the application creation space I can tell you that the first release wide release is a strange animal. Bugs that beta testing never uncovered come out of the woodwork and they tend to be obscure situations. That is before you factor in release quality. When release dates are set they tend to become very fixed and if things don't go to plan late in the development cycle the released product can still be rough around the edges. I would not be surprised to see the devs hard at work tidying the house which doesn't result in flashy new features. It also sounds like their may be some code collaboration going on with the iOS team which might slow things down.

I too have to work on my patience brother but am tempering my desire for printing, sentence diagramming, and iOS goodness with the enjoyment of the current release. It really is imminently usable for me and the features are impressive.

Cameron Watters (Faithlife)

This is just a quick list but it touches on the main things that keep me in the PC version rather than the Mac version. I know work is being done to add new features and that in upcoming betas we will see things like diagramming, but please stop at some point and make the program work well. All the features in the world are useless if the program is too sluggish for me to bother with.

First of all, we are working on performance improvements. The most significant improvements are not happening in the 4.0b lifecycle; they'll come in a later release. Additionally, the surface area of the app is far broader than the items you list. While those areas may be most significant to you, we also have a number of people that would like us to improve search results performance, passage and exegetical guide performance, etc. Initially, we're focusing on optimizations that have the broadest impact first.

I am working on my patience with this, but I do confess to a bit of disappointment that with three weeks since the last update and with many discussions in the forum about performance issues we still aren't seeing any significant optimization. You Mac devs have done a great job and are delivering a great product, but you need to step back and focus on optimization for a bit before throwing in more shiny new stuff.

A few of things to keep in mind, that I hope are encouragements:

1) This is a big app with a number of "pet" features. Perhaps you've seen the numerous threads calling it irresponsible or ridiculous that we shipped a Mac version that lacked printing support? Or the 15 or so threads which come almost like clockwork asking us when Handouts is going to be implemented on Mac? Or Sentence Diagrammer? There are as many people who want us to add features now and optimize later as want us to optimize now and add features later.

2) The easiest kinds of optimizations are the kind that require a few tweaks and result in orders of magnitude improvement. I wish we had more of those kinds of "turn off the slow bit" fixes we could just find and implement. Unfortunately, we don't. As such, some of the performance improvements require changes that affect app stability substantially enough that we need to let them bake internally for a bit before we unleash them on our users (even those in the beta channel).

3) As developers, we get feedback through 3 major channels, each of which works closely with end users and is a useful gauge of user expectations: our ministry relations team, our technical support group and the forums. The forums tend to be populated by a particular group of people—technically savvy, high expectations of Logos the organization and power users of Logos the software. We talk to you guys directly, but we've got to honor feedback from the other channels as well. We're working hard to try to keep everyone as happy as possible and continue to make progress.

I can't promise that our next beta will solve all of the problems you outline. What I can say is that all of those issues have received attention already and will continue to receive attention.

Ben

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/194672#Comment_194672

This was an interesting article on the nature of 1.0 products.

http://ma.tt/2010/11/one-point-oh/

Stuart Robertson

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/194672#Comment_194672

Hi Cameron,

Thanks for the clear, patient explanation. Looking forward to each new release of Logos for Mac...