Mac OS X multitasking speed: a follow-up

Regarding yesterday's report that OS X's multitasking does not work well when downloading or transferring files across a network, a reader replies:

"The iDisk problem is an isolated case that actually is a Finder problem. The Finder application is, in fact, a carbon app. The Finder app doesn't 'multitask' well and so when you're doing network access, such as iDisk, the Finder can sometimes be unresponsive. But, that's just the Finder! While the Finder is spinning its beachball, you can still do anything else you want in your other applications.

Internet Explorer isn't multithreaded at all! [When you issue a 'top -u' command in Terminal, you can see how many threads each app has. Compare Explorer to Omniweb, and you'll fall over on your chair.] So, the fact that it takes up 75% of your CPU is not surprising at all. This has been well known since OS X PB. Omniweb is more stable, CPU friendly, and downloads very well (the transfer rate remains the same no matter what other tasks I am doing)."

The reader also has posted some multitasking benchmarks on this page.