I have a cpu meter (menu meters) in my menu bar, so I usually notice
pretty quickly if some process is taking up too much power (thereby
draining my battery). I pity the fools that only notice this because
their battery is suddenly gone.

Anyway. Apparently when iTunes pops up a message "rental period of
so-and-so tv show episode is over" it needs a whole core for that,
pretty much at 100%. And since iTunes is on a different desktop, I only
notice because my CPU suddenly goes through the roof.

Where on earth do these guys learn to program? And do they never test
before release? Apple should hire someone to be the official
gadget-freak, who installs every possible app and uses every feature.
That should shake out such bugs pretty quickly.

Victor.


-- 
Victor Eijkhout -- eijkhout at tacc utexas edu

In article <1jp7u9g.rdbc9k11y1hj4N%see@sig.for.address>,
 see@sig.for.address (Victor Eijkhout) wrote:

> I have a cpu meter (menu meters) in my menu bar, so I usually notice
> pretty quickly if some process is taking up too much power (thereby
> draining my battery). I pity the fools that only notice this because
> their battery is suddenly gone.
> 
> Anyway. Apparently when iTunes pops up a message "rental period of
> so-and-so tv show episode is over" it needs a whole core for that,
> pretty much at 100%. And since iTunes is on a different desktop, I only
> notice because my CPU suddenly goes through the roof.
> 
> Where on earth do these guys learn to program? And do they never test
> before release? Apple should hire someone to be the official
> gadget-freak, who installs every possible app and uses every feature.
> That should shake out such bugs pretty quickly.
> 
> Victor.

iTunes is a classic example of work from engineers that never learned 
multithreading.  It's full of lock contention and what appears to be 
spin loops wasting CPU time.  It probably has enough features piled on 
top of its poorly written core that it can't be fixed now.
-- 
I won't see Google Groups replies because I must filter them as spam

+ see@sig.for.address (Victor Eijkhout):

> Anyway. Apparently when iTunes pops up a message "rental period of
> so-and-so tv show episode is over" it needs a whole core for that,
> pretty much at 100%.

On a smaller scale, but still at least a minor irritation, I wonder why
firefox, sitting on a different desktop and doing nothing at all,
requires at least 10% of a core. And no, none of the open tabs contain
any animations.

-- 
* Harald Hanche-Olsen     <URL:http://www.math.ntnu.no/~hanche/>
- It is undesirable to believe a proposition
  when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
  -- Bertrand Russell

Kevin McMurtrie <mcmurtrie@pixelmemory.us> wrote:

> iTunes is a classic example of work from engineers that never learned
> multithreading.  It's full of lock contention and what appears to be 
> spin loops wasting CPU time. 

Ah. Spin loops. That would be the explanation.

Victor.
-- 
Victor Eijkhout -- eijkhout at tacc utexas edu