Slashdot Mirror

Not that I'm going to really dispute anything you said, but never is a very long time. There's a huge section of the smartphone, tablet and console gaming market that doesn't and won't run DirectX, so even ignoring Steam and the PC there's a solid future for OpenGL. And with Vulkan doing significantly less there's hope that Linux support in general and open source support in particular will be much better. I mean, Valve has already written an open source driver for Intel, it took two developers two weeks and is ~27 kLoC - though I assume they generously copied bits and pieces from the mesa driver. The GLSL to SPIR-V compilation comes on top but it's generic and already written, it's only the SPIR-V to target that is unique for each card. Android has already picked it as their next-gen API, that's certainly not a bad ally.

If Vulkan can become a first party rendering target for Source 2, Unity, Unreal Engine 4 and CryENGINE which I assume they will since they don't want to lose the smartphone/tablet business, the hurdle to produce an AAA game on Linux is that much lower. Maybe the bar still won't be low enough, but lower than it is today. Particularly if Valve paves the way with a good first party title or two, if a year from now Half-Life 3 launches with same day Linux support a lot could change in the next few years. Then again, it might also be just wishful thinking...

also why other pro apps will not be in other app stores.

adobe CS 30% cut is way to high and sand boxing.

autocad 30% is to high as well.

So, that means they won't be in the Windows App Store, either, nor will they ever be in the Google Play Store.

Yes, the Windows App Store goes down to 20% after so much volume (which Apple would do, too, if there were actually any pressure to do so); but I'm pretty sure that won't be sufficient to both of those TRULY money-hungry publishers.

Interestingly enough, both of your example companies actually have plenty of touch applications.

In fact, speaking of Autodesk, the long-standing Mac-centric Architectural site, Architosh, in a review of the Autodesk app "Formit", said the following:

"We are getting deeply impressed by Autodesk’s commitment to Apple’s mobile iOS platform. No other CAD or 3D company has gone so far this fast in creating a stable of interesting “apps” for Apple’s platform–targeting both iPhone and the newer iPad."

So, not exactly sure where you're getting your "lack of interest", especially in regard to iOS, by these companies.

Not only games...Autocad, ProEngineer, Photoshop, Cubase, Altium, AvrStudio, AlteraQuartus...etc..

There are alternatives to some of these. "BRL-CAD is a powerful constructive solid geometry solid modeling system". Architosh: "the leading Internet magazine dedicated to Mac CAD and 3D professionals and students worldwide." Pro/ENGINEER runs on Solaris and Red Hat Linux. There's a version of Photoshop for OSX and Photoshop CS 2 runs in CrossOver. For those who do not need all that Photoshop has they can use GIMP, Cinepaint, or Krita. Cubase runs on OSX. For Linux there's the AGNULA Project and other alternatives.

I'm in a rush now so I won't go through the rest of your list but I bet there are alternatives for them as well.

Falcon

Did I need Windows? For anything? No

You don't need windows. I don't need it for anything other than testing sites under IE. That freedom plus and awareness of alternatives make us fortunate, but also a small percentage of the computer-using population.

Name two things a lot of users need that is only available for Windows, tasks that need to be done not specific software. I have only found one specific software some need, so they say, that is available only for Windows, Autocad. There are however other CADD programs for OS X. There is even a community of CAD users on Macs, Architoch.

As for IE, you've just pointed out the danger of vendor lock-in and not using industry standards. That and many others use Macs and Linux for web development, though not professionally I use both.

Falcon

CAD software is almost non-existent on OSX

While Autodesk doesn't release AutoCAD for Macs, I believe architosh would disagree about CAD software being non-existent for OS X.

Falcon

IBM?!? That's a joke, right?

http://www.architosh.com/features/2006/reviews/macpro/images/macpro_inside-lg.jpg

When you buy a mobile chip designer what else are you going to do with it?

The same you do when you buy a 3D graphics chips designer - not much? The only thing we see coming out of it is a person: Bob Mansfield - Senior Vice President, Mac Hardware Engineering

I've been using macs for the bulk of my computing for over a decade, so I'm well aware that there's plenty of software available for most every need. Most of my issues have been with a few very specific pieces of software, but unfortunately life puts me in positions where I can't always choose how I'm going to solve a problem.

You showed my point, it's not so much that Macs can't do what's needed or don't have the apps to do them, it all boils down to what apps the employer demands be used. You say you're an architect and use AutoCAD, is there anything AutoCAD can do that CAD software for Macs can't do? I don't know if you know of it but there is a community of Mac users of CAD program, Architosh. I found it when I searched for CAD programs for Macs, I plan on getting a Mac and wanted to see what CAD was available for Macs. Also though AutoCAD is probably the most widely known CAD isn't CATIA the 800 lb gorilla?

Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you want to look a it, currently I am on disability and don't work but I'm hoping to start my own business this year so I'll be in a position to decide what sort of software will do what I want then choose the hardware and OS based on that. So far I haven't found any software app I will need that is not available for Macs. Linux is another matter, it has some but not the big or important app I'll want to get, Photoshop, otherwise it would work for me. What I want to do is to become a pro photographer as well as develop websites for other photographers.

Autocad

Architosh is a community Mac users of CAD programs.

Visio

OmniGraffle 4

Primavera

Minimum Requirements: Apple Mac OS X 10.3

All of these were specific apps not tasks the apps needed to be able to do however of the three one specific app does have a Mac version and the two other have equivilent programs. In each case a Mac can to the task needed.

Activation, WGA/WPA! You know, the spyware that phones home and won't run if you don't allow it to do so. I don't know about you but I believe in innocence before being proven guilty, however MS wants you to constantly prove your innocence.

Corporate versions that are volume licensed don't have this "feature"

I am an individual not a corporation.

The last price comparison I saw had the Mac as a better value than the PC it was compared to which was a Dell.

Read what I wrote. This is only true if you take into account all of the features of the Mac that nobody cares about, like the integrated webcam or Firewire. Most PCs offer far better expandability than Macs, something many Mac advocates often ignore. There are also glaring weaknesses in Mac desktop configurations, the most important being the incredibly poor graphics capabilities of most Macs.

I did read what I replied to, but again:

Macs remain overpriced. Mac zealots like to point out that Mac systems often have lots of features not widely available (as far as I'm aware, there is no hardware feature unique to any Mac system) on Windows desktops. This is largely because there is little demand for those features, like Firewire, Wifi on desktops, remote controls, etc. This is especially true in the business world.

I still stand by what I said regarding direct comparisons. And as far as demand, there may not be much of a demand now but that doesn't mean there won't be a demand in the future. For instance there was no demand to edit photos on a computer until after Photoshop created the market, the demand was for darkrooms, which I loved working in. There was no demand for USB but now there is, apply that to Firewire. And yes, there is a demand for it now, especially amoung photographers who shoot digitally. Wifi? Have you ever tried to setup a wired network, and run cabling? My sister runs her own business and she frequently works at home, especially at this tyme of year as she's a CPA working on taxes, and she now uses one long cable she runs whereever she feels like working on her laptop. That's not a good idea as she has a two year old running around the house. Admittedly though she uses a laptop. Just think how much better using wifi would be for her. Now with the remote control, do you ever use one watching tv? Or maybe two or three, one for the tv, on for the tape/dvd player, and one for the stereo? Doesn't Vista have something like it?

I agree with you though on desktop configurations. Apple needs a desktop Mac that fits between the iMac and the Mac Pro, something that is expandable.

but can you name one app for Windows which Macs don't have an equivalent app?

AutoCAD, which is the first app everyone mentions when this comes up.

There are CAD programs for Macs. Actually there's communities of CAD users running Macs such as Architosh. Mac Googling "CAD" I get 1,690,000 results. Quite simply there are CAD programs for Macs.

This always irritates me. Dell makes cheap commodity crap. There used to be company called Packard Bell that also made crap computers that always broke down, they were bought by NEC and they NEC stopped making desktops. If you're going to compare Apple to a PC ventor you should compare them to another BOUTIQUE vendor, like Alienware.

And who owns Alienware? Dell, that's who. As for whether Dell is good or bad, I've heard people say both. SOme say it's good whereas others say it's bad.

The main advantage of Apple systems is their asthetics, which is far and away the major argument I've heard for putting them in business.

For me the main advantage of Macs over Windows PCs is they last longer. I've bought 4 b

It's also for those of us that need access to applications like AutoCAD from time-to-time or some other application that only runs under Windows.

I didn't see that Autodesk had AutoCAD for Macs, it does have AutoCAD LT ported to Macs though. Also there are other CAD packages for Macs, Architosh is a community of Mac based architects and other CAD users. There may be a specific requirement to use AutoCAD but there are CAD programs for Macs if there isn't a requirement. Otherwise I agree with your post.

Does Apple think a mac is a supercomputer?

At least in the past they did: http://www.architosh.com/news/1999-08/0831-supperc .phtml

We already have 65 nanometer process chips in production. Even this article, after parroting the NEC press release mentions that Intel is building a 45 nm process plant, which is a step further along than "NEC has developed a technology" to make 55 nm chips.

Here is an article from two years ago with an expected timetable for chip process width that exactly matches what we have seen since then: 90 nm in 2004, 65 nm in 2005-2006 and 45 nm in 2007-2008. There really isn't anything exciting about this press release from NEC.

no CAD tools for OSX

The folks at Arcitosh will be interested to hear that...

If you're just referring to AutoCAD, emphatically not knowing anything specific, my educated guess is they'll soon be reconsidering leaving the Mac market.

22. The method of claim 20, wherein the first operating system is selected from the set consisting of Mac OS X, Linux, and Microsoft Windows.

23. The method of claim 20, wherein the second operating system is selected from the set consisting of Mac OS X, Linux, and Microsoft Windows.

CADintosh from lemke software. Is $33 cheap enough? You might want to start hanging out at Architosh.

http://www.architosh.com/features/2005/features/ap ple-intel/051001_intelapple-1.html

better not tell the people at Architosh.com that there is not a MacOS CAD workstation

don't forget:

http://www.architosh.com/news/2001-04/2001-0409-os xcore-3.phtml

"Mac OS X has a completely new graphics technology called Quartz. Many longtime Mac users understand that QuickDraw has long been the graphics technology behind the classic Mac OS. QuickDraw isn't completely dead yet however.

Quartz is special in that it is based on Adobe's PDF and PostScript technologies the standards in the publishing world. No other current OS has this intrinsic advantage, including any version of Windows. An example of this advantage is that any OS X application which can print can save to a PDF file format, enabling users of various applications the ability to share data with users anywhere around the world, regardless of platform. PDF is the lingua franca of the Internet."

"Core Graphics Rendering

This is the second component of Quartz and is the graphics rendering library for 2D shapes. It is a rendering library "client" of Core Graphics Services (the window server). QuickDraw, the legacy graphics library, is also a "client" of CGS.

CGR uses PDF internally as its model for vector graphics. Advantages to PDF beyond its market share influences and lingua franca "status" include: good color management, internal compression and font independence."

Not in floating point.

It's two years old, but interestingly, the TCO advantage of Mac OS X over Windows is... 36%! perhaps this magic 36% is some sort of universal "Windows lameness" constant that these studies are revealing...

Mac OS X Gartner study (via archintosh)

Hello, Mr. Anonymous Coward. Apparently you don't understand the difference between a render farm and a cluster.

A cluster is something that appears to software as a single computer, and does its own load distribution. Assembling a cluster requires some specialised hardware and software, which are anything but trivial. You can either develop your own (like Cray are currently doing with Opteron CPUs) or you can use ready-made components and just adapt them to your configuration, like Virginia Tech did with their G5 cluster. The fact that the G5 is actually an IBM PPC970 enabled them to use existing technology for the clustering, cutting costs dramatically (compared to a x86 cluster).

A render farm, however, is something completely different. It doesn't require any special hardware or software; just a simple network connection. It's up to the renderer to detect and distribute the tasks by the various nodes. Which any decent 3D rendering package can do. In this situation, the price is just the price of the base system (plus a network card, if one isn't incuded). And this means that, besides being faster, x86 hardware is also cheaper.

If you are interested in the relative performance of different systems in 3D rendering, I recommend visiting this site. It compares over 50 different CPUs, all rendering exactly the same (10) scenes. I suggest comparing a dual G5 to a dual Xeon. And before you complain that Lightwave "isn't properly optimised for Altivec", let me assure you that it is. It just happens to be "properly optimised" for SSE2, too, which I'm sure you agree is only fair.

However, to make the G5 a viable alternative for rendering, Apple (IBM, to be more precise) doesn't need to make it faster. They (Apple) just need to make it cheaper. Unfortunately, the dual Xserve G5 is still overpriced (and not even available yet).

... these /. mac fags should go get their own site and leave real enthusiasts/nerds alone.

Okay. I'll bite. Dear Mister Troll sir...as to us having a site of our own...we do. In fact we have several from which to choose. And, pray tell, what in your tiny little troll-like mind leads you to believe that Mac users are all of a particular sexual orientation of any kind at all? Or that mac users don't qualify as nerds? And by some strange twisting path of logic that we don't in some way belong here?Newsfalsh! The mac now not only sports a command line environment, but you can set your environment to your shell of choice!

I know, I know, please don't feel the trolls. Move along. Move along...

I am actually not too familiar with the high-end CAD design space, so I am not too sure how the following programs compare, but I did find these:

Pro/Concept 2.0 (only just coming out to be sure)

CADENCE

Solidworks Licence server is running on OS X, which would aty least enable them to consider a port - and there are petitions calling for them to do a port.

The people making Catia appear to have some bits working on OS X (C++ component library).

This site looks to have some cool Mac related CAD info.

I think that overall, the release of the G5 will convince a number of high-end companies to port to the Mac as the system architechure is really a great improvement.

How can people talk about price vs. performance when the machines were discounted more than 25%! (read at bottom)
Is price/performance a factor or something to boast about when a company is drastically reducing price just to get thair name in the news?

I mean, I gave my brother a dual 466 celeron last month, that's better price/performance than this super computing cluster.. bleh..

You'd be interested in Architosh.com then.

It might be more than you're looking for but whenever CAD is mentioned don't forget an underappreciated Mac resource in architosh.com.
The site for all things CAD.

=tkk

While it is true that Pixar is replacing their Sun/Solaris rendering farm with Intel/Linux, the comment makes it seem that Pixar has ripped out all of their Sun boxes which isn't quite true. In the article the author mentions that the back-end systems (databases, filesystems) are still run in UNIX.

In another note, Pixar replaced their SGI IRIX workstations with IBM workstations running Linux last year. It does appear that IBM is merely supplying hardware and software as they would normally do to any company willing to buy.

Is this enough bits for most scientific calculations?

Look at these:

Pixar moves to Linux from SGI

Pixar switches from Sun to Linux

None to be found anywhere.

Certainly no links to be found about Mac CAD.

What a shame.

Check out Architosh for the latest news on bringing AutoCad to OS X.

Architosh has some interesting info about the PowerPC roadmap.

There is also a 4th wireless technology, wireless Firewire. Even tho the name sounds funny, Firewire is already widespread in DV hardware. Next logical step should be VCR and TVs. And going from the wire to the wireless version should be the next step.

I found the news of wireless firewire a lot more interesting.

FW is really nice technology if everything falls in line - several meters at 200Mbps wireless, 400Mbps in long range cables and 800Mbps in "short" cabling. Cool.. :)

sulka

Wait a minute.... first, the G4 500 numbers are estimated, second, I have actual results for http://infopad.eecs.berkeley.ed u/CIC/summary/local/ where the K7 650's SPECfp score is 0.2 points higher than the one given by Archintosh, third... Maserati failed to mention the SPECint95 results:


CPU Int FP

K7 550 23.6/20.6
K7 600 27.2/21.6
K7 650 29.4/22.4

P3 550 22.2/15.0
P3 600 24.0/15.9

G4 450 21.4/20.4
G4 500 23.8/22.6***


please note: I estimated the G4 500's SPECint score by dividing the G4 450's score by 450 and then multiplying by 500, rounding up

the SPECfp95 estimate is from the Archintosh website...




_______________________________________________
There is no statute of limitation on stupidity.

The centerpiece is the SPECfp95 comparison. At the top of the three lines we have:

1. AMD Athlon 650MHz: 22.2
2. Intel Pentium 600 MHz: 15.9
3. PPC G4 500 MHz: 22.6

There are a few caveats about these numbers, most notably are the fact that the faster systems aren't currently shipping.

Honestly, I expected the Athlon to beat the G4. But even an extra 150MHz didn't do the trick.