Bindingly Obvious
By Mark Tennent in Reader
Posted in Uncategorized on March 20, 2007 at 12:05 pm
The ink has just dried on last week’s blog, about cavalier updating techniques that have always worked for me. Then those nice people at Unsanity have come up with a nasty scenario that is worth avoiding by not doing very simple things.
After installing new software, Mac OS goes through a process called “updating pre-binding” or “optimizing”. Since Mac OS x 10.2 this is done automatically whenever a new program is installed or if a program is launched and the pre-binding information is out of date. The end result of pre-binding is that applications running from the start-up disk will launch faster.
This looks like it…
I am not an engineer but my understanding is that this is due to how modern computer programs are written. Each application doesn’t have to come with everything it needs to do its business, possibly hundreds of little files and pieces of information. Instead, the computer’s operating system includes standard libraries which every application can access. This has many benefits including less Ram needed to run multiple applications because they can all use the same chunk of memory that is allocated for the relevant library. Once the first application has opened that library, subsequent ones will open faster because the information is already available to them.
When Apple makes a new operating system update, they rewrite many of the libraries to iron out bugs, add new features and so on, even moving things from one library to another. Any computer program that uses the libraries will automatically benefit from the changes. When the program is run it has to search through all the libraries finding what it needs before starting up. If it knew in advance where to look for the information it would be far quicker and this is where pre-binding comes into play by saving it into a cache ready for the application to jump straight to.
Avoid at all costs
The guys at Unsanity found that when the “Optimize System Performance” screen comes up – when pre-binding is updated – it is possible for an essential system file to be destroyed. All the information in it is deleted and nothing rewritten, possibly making the Mac un-bootable. The problem occurs only when one or more applications are trying to pre-bind at the same time and both work on the system file.
The answer is simple, don’t touch your Mac when the screen says it is Optimizing the System. I have been warned.
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