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Interesting (and funny) look at the review As the Apple Turns

Monday, 5:57 PM: Virginia Tech's G5-based supercomputer is (sort of) running-- with 17.6 teraflops of theoretical performance. Meanwhile, Dell tries to build something (sort of) similar, but it winds up with a quarter of the power and seven times the price, and Apple (sort of) announces Xgrid, a product for "parallel and distributed high performance computing"...

Monday, 5:57 PM: Today's holiday episode is now broadcasting. Don't forget to take your shot for a free AtAT shirt (tee or turtleneck) by entering the Q4/03 Beat The Analysts contest; guess closest to Apple's final reported quarterly profit or loss, and you get the garment-- or your choice of creaky old software from the Baffling Vault of Antiquity(TM). You've only got until Wednesday at 4 PM, and in the likely event of a tie the earliest entry wins, so why wait? Enter now!

Up, Running, & Kicking Tail (10/13/03) Fun fact: believe it or not, folks, AtAT's wild success isn't confined to these here United States. No, seriously, it's true! The show actually has semi-regular viewers holed up in such far-flung corners of the world as Iceland, the Dominican Republic, and Delaware-- and for the benefit of those fans, we thought we'd explain that, here in the U.S., today we celebrate a holiday called Columbus Day. Columbus Day, for the uninitiated, is one of our most sacred occasions: a day on which we reflect on the many cultural and technical achievements of the city of Columbus, Ohio. We celebrate Greater Columbus's world-famous quilts, its shrubberies recreating Pointillist masterpieces, and (most importantly) its commitment to the preservation of really old TV sets by wondering why the bank is closed and our mail never came. A good time is had by all.

So if this is such a major holiday, why are we broadcasting, you ask? Well, normally we wouldn't, but faithful viewer Nathaniel Madura pointed out that Slashdot just referenced a BBC World report on that G5 supercomputer down at Virginia Tech, and we're just a little giddy about the existence of a Mac-based cluster than can chew through 17.6 trillion floating point operations per second. Yes, the thing is up and running (at least enough to run performance testing), and reportedly it pumps out 17.6 teraflops of raw perforated aluminum muscle while sucking down enough juice to power 3,000 average homes. Wow, is it getting warm in here, or is it just us? (It's just us-- the G5s are cooled by means of 1,500 gallons of chilled water pumped through every minute. Ooooo, frosty.)

Kudos to the Virginia Tech team who pulled this off, because frankly, this is the sort of technological triumph we'd normally only expect to come out of, say, Columbus, Ohio. Now, what's interesting about that 17.6 teraflop figure is that if you scope out the last compiled list of the world's top 500 supercomputers (from last June), you'll notice that, if 17.6 teraflops is Virginia Tech's "theoretical peak performance" score, it'll probably slot in nicely at number three. (Scores are ranked by "Maximal LINPACK performance achieved," so it's just guesswork so far.) The top-ranked Intel-based cluster is currently ranked at number three, with 2,304 2.4 GHz Xeons and a theoretical peak performance of 11 teraflops. Gee, more processors, a higher clock speed per processor, and 63% of the performance. Now that's efficiency, baby!

We'll have to wait until the next top 500 list comes out in November to see if "Big Mac" (as the VA Techies apparently call it) really takes third place, or if the real-life LINPACK scores push it down lower-- but we figure a top five placement is a safe bet. One of the world's bestest supercomputers made of Macs and running Mac OS X? Why, it's a Columbus Day miracle!

4x The Bang, 1/7 The Buck (10/13/03) Meanwhile, we know that the G5 supercomputer is delivering more pluck per processor than any other supercomputer out there, but what about bang for the b

Next week: Sculley confesses to WIRED that, in hindsight, it may have been a mistake to mention to Bill Gates that "if anybody copies the Mac interface and slaps it onto cheap IBM clone hardware, I'd probably be dumb enough to let them get away with it via a legal loophole, and then, hoo, boy would we be in trouble."

Capitalism holds the answer - provide a better alternative

There already is one...

that takes away their market share

Dammit, you had to stick that qualifier in there, didn't you?

Hrm. Well, at least in the portable market, Apple's market share isn't quite as much of a joke as it used to be...

p

This is not a new trend. Dell has copied most of Apple's innovations since at least '99. They just copy the guys with the highest margins. Since the ones with the highest margins have them so that they can afford to develop interesing new technologies, Dell is just outsourcing its R&D and market research for free.

A brief history.

From As The Apple Turns:

"The two devices are targeted at different markets: whereas the iPod is obviously meant to appeal to consumers with an appreciation for engineering, design, and style, the Digital Jukebox is for sewer-dwelling CHUDs with a taste for human flesh."

"As the Apple Turns" describes it as "an iPod after a 20-minute beatdown with the Ugly Stick."

"...in 2001, Michael Dell told BusinessWeek that Apple should liquidate all of thir assets and close down shop."

Isn't it kind of pointless to call Steve Jobs's Apple Expo/Macworld speeches "keynotes" when he gives them every flippin' time?

> Metallica is boycotting the iTunes Music Store; their music isn't available for sale there. More info here

Excellent link, parent deserves +Mod

Metallica is boycotting the iTunes Music Store; their music isn't available for sale there. More info here (the linked Reuters article is a 404; perhaps someone can find a copy of it elsewhere?).

In response to another post (could you call it a nephew post? that sounds kinda wrong), this has nothing to do with what Mac users want, and everything to do with what Metallica wants.

As The Apple Turns reports here, that the supercomputer cluster's main purpose will be to "impress the living crap out of everyone."

Just thought you'd all like to know

As The Apple Turns reports here, that the supercomputer cluster's main purpose will be to "impress the living crap out of everyone."

Just thought you'd all like to know

G5: Deliverable today

Well, deliverable this weekend if you order 1,100 of them at a time; everybody else has to wait... but yeah.

the fan configuration will make it extrordinarily loud

Apple specifically engineered these systems to be quiet - the compartments are set up the way they are so they can get maximum airflow with minimal blowing. Just because you think "loud" when you hear nine fans doesn't mean they're actually any louder than anything else. You're spreading FUD.

it's built to cater to the end user, not to the embedded machine market.

Perhaps your definition of "embedded" is different from mine, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit this application. This is a supercomputer cluster. However you are correct that these machines were designed to be desktop computers. Apparently that's not all they're good for.

Many companies build physically smaller machines that still pack a lot of power,

Yeah, so does Apple, but these are faster.

or sell parts to allow someone to design their own layout in a chassis.

If Virginia Tech wants to order 1,100 of them, don't you think Apple would be flexible if this was a concern?

Remember, individual cases, power supplies, and the like become way overkill in such a large computer, and it would probably be cheaper to convert electricity once for a large section of the computer, supplying 12v, 5v, and 3.3v without each computer converting itself.

This is an interesting point I hadn't considered. Feeding 110v into each of 1,100 individual power supplies can't be as energy or heat efficient as what you describe. However, it's possible that they will actually be doing this - I don't think I've seen it mentioned anywhere.

Another consideration - apparently VT was pressed for time and they needed something that would be available quickly; Apple was able to deliver quickly. This may explain why they'd be more inclined to use stock off-the-shelf boxes instead of something more customized.

The only problem will be finding a desk big enough to fit the guys...

It'll also be one of the five largest desks in the world.

I knew this sounded familiar, and for once its not a Slashdot repeat. Here is an article I found. Its pretty weak, but it describes the attitude Adobe had two years ago at a Macworld Expo.

I remember at that time, When X was in its infancy and people were hyping it, that Adobe was really against the hype.

I can't say why they are doing this, but I think all the speculation on the post so far is too short sighted (they must have had this planned for a while) and I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe has had an exit strategy for years. This doesn't bode well, because while I don't use Premiere, I do use some of their Acrobat products.

...it will weaken the tendency for people to build isolated self-referential extremist commmunities of delusion...

[T]his is starting to seem like the technology equivalent of Days of our Lives or something!

No, that's actually over here...

Many of my predictions are indeed based on a number of different rumor sites, but not copied directly. Some of the rumors I've read I disagree with, and some I agree with.

For example, I think it was Mac OS Rumors that said the G5 will not be called the G5, and I disagree with them. This issue was also mentioned by As the Apple Turns, who said that according to AppleInsider, it would be called the PowerMac G5. I agree with them. That doesn't mean my prediction is based on theirs, merely that we both made the same prediction.

The nature of the PPC970 chip, and that Apple will use it at all, is based largely on a couple of articles at ArsTechnica, but they didn't say anything about when it would ship.

The 1.4, dual 1.6 and dual 1.8GHz clock speeds are consistent with Mac OS Rumors, although I'm sure I've seen other speeds suggested elsewhere. I believe I've heard 2GHz suggested, and I don't agree with that (not for WWDC). I forgot to mention pricing, but I predict the low-end and mid-range models will be $1499 and $1999 respectively; this is based on Apple's current pricing, not on any rumor site.

USB2 support I heard somewhere, but don't remember where (it had to do with motherboard specs). Bluetooth, FireWire 800 and Airport Extreme are currently shipping features.

I've heard about the 15" Aluminum PowerBook from a few sources I think. The PowerBook G5 has also been mentioned in multiple places including this Slashdot article, but I don't expect to see it until next year, possibly announced at MacWorld San Francisco but probably not.

The G5 shipping with 10.2 was a possibility I had been considering, but was confirmed by ThinkSecret and eWEEK. Same source for gcc 3.3. Pricing is based on Apple's history.

The multiple simultaneous users feature I heard from a few places quite some time ago; I don't remember where. Apple's WWDC material says Panther and WebCore will be demonstrated at WWDC; that's no secret. As for PAC and WPAD, I haven't seen that suggested anywhere.

In any case, a rumor is "A piece of unverified information of uncertain origin usually spread by word of mouth." Many of my predictions are based on rumors. The sites I got the rumors from are mostly just passing on rumors they've heard. I don't feel that not citing sources was inappropriate, since these are MY predictions, BASED ON what many others have said, not simply a copy of someone else's predictions. I would expect others to be able to make similar predictions, based on overlapping sources.

If you're going to mention As The Apple Turns, you must also mention its evil twin site Crazy Apple Rumors.

I visit them both daily.

appleturns(100% reliable news by Steve Jobs's alter ego)

Parent was probaly tongue in cheek, but for the uninformed: As the Apple Turns, now back after a long hiatus, is nothing like an actual rumor site. It is an Apple themed 'soap opera', very funny, by a guy with a great sense of humor and writing skills to match.

JP

(won't someone think of the pr0n collections?)

Speaking of pr0n, here are some on-topic boudoir photos of the PowerPC 970 (attribution: As the Apple Turns)...

1. Chip with feathers 1 [ibm.com]

2. Chip with feathers 2 [ibm.com]

3. Chip in the eye of a peacock feather 1 [ibm.com]

4. Chip in the eye of a peacock feather 2 [ibm.com]

Thanks IBM for posing this beautiful little G5 in its natural environment.

those rumors have been floating around for a few weeks, if not months on other sites. For the wannabe-mac fanatics among yuo : here are other rumor adresses :

macrumors (reliable, good forums)
macosrumors (unreliable, bloated, no forums)
looprumors(reliable, low traffic forums)
thinksecret(reliable, low traffic content, low traffic forums)
macwhispers (reliable, mostly hardware info, no forums)
macslash(slashdot for mac, mostly blahblah)
macbidouille(french, rather new, so reliability unconfirmed)
appleturns(100% reliable news by Steve Jobs's alter ego)

So Steve wrote him an email offering him the job, and got Larry Ellison to send him a message of congratulations. The guy took it seriously and showed up at Apple and security kicked him out.

Link here. Pretty mean, if you ask me. And don't billionaires have better things to do?

Somehow, strangely, someone at Dell claiming that Unix is dead fits this bizarre, ongoing story, given that Apple has become a Unix machine.

Somehow, strangely, someone at Dell claiming that Unix is dead fits this bizarre, ongoing story, given that Apple has become a Unix machine.

Somehow, strangely, someone at Dell claiming that Unix is dead fits this bizarre, ongoing story, given that Apple has become a Unix machine.

Has Apple announced it's not going to make a PDA? They've got laptop expertise from the ti-book, small portable commodity electronics expertise from the iPod, etc.

Not that it means much, but yes they did, two months ago. But don't forget Inkwell...

Linked by AtAT.

Not at all a bad thing...

As pointed out on As the Apple Turns, the difference is, while the PowerMacs reach higher performance levels (233 vs 217 Gflops) they take up a whole heap more space than a single rack of 42 IU servers...

Btw incase you hadn't noticed geeks like apple now (similar to how we like linux), so your definatly going to hear more about them in the future. It's just the way the apple turns (ha ha funny!)

Credit where credit is due.

Mac Rumors and AtAT's 6 month old predicted this.

As The Apple Turns is another excellent site for commentary and rumors.

And how could we forget the Naked Mole Rat's reports over at MacEdition? He's the grand-daddy of all rumormongers; he got his start as Mac the Knife way back when MacWeek was still around.

Did anyone else read this:

from the daemon-goodness dept.

from the daemon-y goodness dept.

One of the TechNotes contained this;

A dogcow is what I want to be.

Pictured in dialogs,
Running through the weeds,
In and out of advertisements,
Loving my naughty deeds.

Feeling in black and white.

Over the edge of cliffs,
Out with the tide in the sea.
Living life to the fullest,
Sweet survival in 2 D.

*moof!* :)

Extended username and password

I'm not writing this essay as a Dvorak basher to get attention, although plenty of people will accuse me of doing that. I recently noticed a lull in the Dvorak buzz, however, and I'm now beginning to see Dvorak as an old commentator that needs to retire.

Let's look at the recent Dvorak offerings. The columnist's rant against the DMCA, usually a "gimme" topic for tech-industry pundits, garnered and underwhelming 59 posts. He also attempted to lambaste Microsoft's mistakes, and predictably cited opinions that many agree with but no one seems to be able to do anything about. The obvious next iteration of his ratings grab was to smear Apple for no good reason in particular. After that, what is Dvorak going to do?

Remember that in 1999, Dvorak drew eyeballs the Internet over by accusing the iBook of being too "girly" a computer to survive. This rant was an improvement, but there hasn't been a new idea since.

There was a moment early in the new millennium when it looked like Dvorak was going to stop taking unfounded pot shots at Apple. This was actually a good idea, but eventually it fell apart, leaving PC Magazine with a neutered opinion column from which it never fully recovered.

The most interesting aspect with Dvorak is the way he's able to consistently attack everything under the sun with little support beyond his own worldview and not only get away with it, but receive attention and praise for his efforts. Curiously, no other columnist has been able to manage anything like this. Hiawatha Bray is said to have legions of anti-Mac fans in his pockets, but after playing with an iMac DV in late 1999 he changed his mind. Apparently Apple has done the impossible.

Having said that, why can't Dvorak take his griping to the next level and bring out a completely valid complaint against the Macintosh? Here's the problem. This supposedly creative business of technology journalism has been completely co-opted by Microsoft for over 10 years. All the alternative approaches to computing have been sabotaged, absorbed by Microsoft, or simply wasted, withered, and died in the anticompetitive marketplace. Most of the big alternative computing publications have been closed or cut back. In that environment, unfounded accusations against all things non-Microsoft are the easiest way to collect a paycheck.

So perhaps I have answered my own question regarding putting down the old dog called Dvorak. PC Magazine has no one it could possibly replace him with. There is no new idea out there short of a Linux desktop for grandma. And the technology for a Linux desktop for grandma is decades away.

In fact, the old dog will not be shot, but propped up with ads, and patched with reconstructive PR, instead. Dvorak will go in the only direction possible: increased cynicism. In fact this is the only direction for tech industry commentary in general.

But... Apple constantly have better profits then anaylists predict.

Apple are by no means struggling to profit.

Really? Where'd you heard that? Maybe I should be paying more attention to the unofficial forums...

If it's true, this is great news! I'd be so happy even if Jack only posted one or two new 'shows' a week; anything is better then nothing, and it'd be totally understandable with 'the intern' and all.

I've been feasting on Random Episodes for weeks now to help with the withdrawal symptoms, and honestly the quality of the stuff that Jack has put out daily for so long is amazing. Most people couldn't write three long pieces like that each day and still be funny, informative, and entertaining.

Kudos to Jack, and I can't wait for the big return from hiatus.

Umberto Eco (best know for his novel "The Name of the Rose") is a professor of semiotics. (Semiotics could be defined as the study of symbol systems and their interpretation, or a better definition). "Symbol systems and interpretation" - sound familiar? Our dear Professor of Theobiology is all about finding 'hidden meanings' and 'concealed connections'! Pokemon=evolution! chmod+base 8=satan! Steve Jobs' reality distortion field "mind control"(hmm, maybe he has a point on that last one... ;^) )

In his novel "Foucault's Pendulum" he tells the story of a publishing house editor who gets way in over his head working on a project on books on the occult. He and his friends keep finiding more and more wild connections between elements that at first seem unrelated, but when put together form a wild web. (If you read it, don't get bogged down in the hundreds of names, most aren't that important) Because the characters are willing to form connections between things that aren't really proveable, their world turns into a madhouse of hidden meanings and sinister powers. Sound familiar? Our dear Professor of Theobiology lives in just such a world.

For a more in depth (but not too dry) look at how and why connections between ideas should (and shouldn't) be made, look at Eco's essay "Interpretation and Overinterpretation" (A little more at this link). Basically, Eco is reacting to the excesses that can take place in the academic world.

This brings us back to our Professor of Theobiology. In "The Name of the Rose", Eco used the conflict between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance to illustrate the distinction between two different modes of thought. The medieval monks were trapped in their way of thinking - full of hidden meanings and sinister connections. In contrast, the protagonist used reason and science to deal with the problems at hand (a series of murders).

All in all, it's rather frightening that here in the 21st century we're still trying to deal with the Taliban and our Professor of Theobiology.

And As the Apple Turns will be covering it tonight.

Anyone with a Mac and a sense of humour should be reading AtAT daily.

... yes, and it was a damn shame that it ran only on 68k macs. We managed to get a copy and ran it on an old Quadra - imagine a System 7 version of OS X and you get the rough idea. It's a pity they didn't port it to PPC. If someone pesters me enough, I might upload some pics, if what you saw at As The Apple Turns didn't satisfy your curiosity.

Then you can walk around in you're AtAT t-shirts and have good-looking graphic artists all over you.

Spymac sucks... they're as bad as MacOS Rumors.

Think Secret and As the Apple Turns are the only reliable (heh) sources for good rumors.

MacMinute usually gets it right the day of the keynote.

Soft Wi-Fi is just for access points. This has nothing to do with making winmodem-like 802.11 devices. Their idea is that if you have a few computers with wi-fi cards, you might as well use one as a bridge to the internet rather than buying a wi-fi router.

Apple hit this years ago.

You'd think that on Slashdot people would be familliar with the concept of sharing an internet connection by using a spare computer as a router. Oh that's right, this particular solution has "Microsoft" in the title, therefore it must be bad.

That benchmark is pure FUD. It's many, many problems are pointed out on slashdot, macslash, and probably best, at appleturns.com. The tests:

• Use only a single G4
  
• Are designed to occasion a minimal number of failures (if any) in the pipeline, thus making CISC chips looks more effective than they really are in normal use.
  
• Do not use altivec.
  

Hence the Army's move 2 years ago to a more secure system. Who's the jarhead now?

(is there a '-1 Mactroll' option?)

• Macfixit
• AFP548
• Maccentral
• MacNN
• MacMinute
• As The Apple Turns
• MOSR
• Mac OS X Hints
• Versiontracker
• MacSlash

Here's a fun fact:

iexplore.exe (aka IE, Internet Explorer) and explorer.exe (aka Windows Explorer, the file browser) are identical binaries with different names.

If you can still browse your C: drive with explorer, IE is still on your system.

Now, this makes one of two things true:
1) IE really IS an integral part of the OS
2) Microsoft intentionally commingled the code for IE with that of WE

Since IE came about after WE, we have to assume that case #2 is true, despite Microsoft's continued assertations that they did no such thing.

Wait a minute... Microsoft lying in court? Why would they do such a thing? And how could they get away with it?