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G4 Powerbooks Predicted For January 2001
Spittoon pointed out this ZDNet article claiming that development proceeds apace on G4 portables for Apple's PowerBook line, and that if all goes well, they'll be shown off at Macworld Expo in January. I could live with ads claiming that "The new PowerBook is a supercomputer" in exchange for knocking a couple notes off the price of a G3 PowerBook ;) Slot-loaded CD / DVD drives are long overdue in notebooks, anyhow, so I hope at least that part of the story pans out.
My iBook's battery can run a screen bright enough to use as a flashlight for four hours straight (longer if I turn it down); I don't think the energy required for loading and ejecting CDs is significant. Worrying about that would be like wearing less when you go driving so your car gets better gas mileage due to carrying less weight. Sure, in theory it will, but it doesn't matter.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
It's not just a simple port, but it's not nearly as hard as making the program from scratch, particularly if it's a game. Since games often have so little to do with the OS anyway, it's easier to translate the little interaction it does have. Most Mac game ports these days are the work of only one programmer over a few months. The art is already done. Advertising is much cheaper, since you don't have to reach as many people. Sales are low compared to the Windows world, but plenty to get by.
As far as original apps go, from what I've heard it's no easier or harder than making an original app for Windows. The good side is that there's less competition, and more room for a little guy to get in and sell something. Also, there is a large base of established developers. If the MacOS were to appear out of nothing tomorrow, it would probably fall flat for lack of support, but there's no chicken-and-egg problem here. The egg was created long ago.
Lastly, there's the fanatic factor. You can't forget that when dealing with Macs. Some developers would rather kill themselves than contemplate working on a non-Mac system.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Check out
http://www.linuxppc.com
http://www.linuxppc.org
http://www.penguinppc.org
Apple System Profiler reports that the slot-loading CD-ROM drive on this iMac is from Matshita, product ID is CD-ROM CR-1750 revision 0A0C.
Lots of two-button mice are available that work great with a Mac.
In other words, I'm glad to see that you no longer have any reason not to buy a G4 laptop when it comes out. :-)
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Apple reportedly will clothe the system in a new chassis that is more streamlined than the current generation of G3 PowerBooks.
More streamlined? Jeez, I hope it doesn't hurt anybody. Pretty soon all Apple products will either be completely round or 2-dimensional.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
It's a simple answer: there are tens of millions of MacOS users around the world. Those people are willing to buy software and, as a result, there are companies who will develop and sell software.
The article was talking about laptops. Why would you rack-mount laptops and use them as servers?
Of course, there's not a bat's chance in hell I'll buy it, because (AFAIK) it won't play Diablo 2
Yes, it will. And does.
and I tried to use Cakewalk for Mac once, but that one-button thing kept causing me to delete my songs.
Then you sound like the perfect customer for the new no-button mouse. Even less chance of clicking on the wrong thing. ^_^
I think we can all rest safe in the knowledge that some random manufacturer will close this thing and stick in IBM-compatible components within the next two years.
Lets see...the iMac is now 2 years old. PC manufacturers tried to clone it. They all failed. Some for legal reasons, and some because the clone they came up with wasn't worth buying. Anyhow, it would be interesting to see a passively cooled IBM compatible that was smaller than a file cabinet. I doubt it could be done, though.
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- A subnotebook with a G3 at up to 700 MHz and a 14.1" 1024x768 LCD, available March/April 2001
- A PowerBook G4 with a 600 MHz+ G4e, 15.3" 1280x1024 LCD, available January 2001
See their article for more specifics.What's coming, it's speculated, is some form of subnotebook or tablet.
:)
:)
That space is for Pismo, which is not the 1999 Powerbook G3 as everyone thinks. It's a superslim notebook enclosure, all curvy and sexy but pretty much what you'd imagine the Elle MacPherson version of the PBG3 would look like. About the only nifty innovation is that there's speakers in little forward-pointing 'ears' on either side of the screen that give this sucker really remarkable sound for a portable.
I'm eagerly anticipating this... watch Seybold very, very, carefully
Actually, it was supposed to be introduced in Japan this spring, the Japanese being the kind to have a collective orgasm at the sight of this thing. Heat problems have put Pismo on indefinite hold until a suitably cool processor can be found, since of COURSE they couldn't POSSIBLY compromise on the design. That would be like SO not Apple
I keep asking myself how the mac, with its limited install base, keeps developers?
Perhaps you could intersperse that by asking your obviously cretinous self how Ferrari, with its limited install base, keeps parts suppliers?
I wonder why people spend so much time doing mac ports of software instead of *bsd and linux ports.
Well, personally, it's because I get $125/hr (and could probably get more if I insisted on it) for doing Mac ports and nobody's offering me that for *bsd and linux ports. But perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places. Illuminate me if so.
Anyone out there a Mac developer?
Since Inside Mac was photcopies delivered in 3-ring binders, baby. You don't get more old school than that.
Is it just an easy port?
Depends how well-factored the code is, like any other port pretty much. In general it's not terribly difficult.
That said, I think that the G4 powerbook will not be in the sixth square - the black units will simply move to the G4. What's coming, it's speculated, is some form of subnotebook or tablet. I'm eagerly anticipating this... watch Seybold very, very, carefully :) Jobs is on a roll.
Good god, I was impressed with the iBook size and weight, often weighing less than an iBible. I wonder what the official name will be, iSheet?
Err wait, I just said that out loud and it doesn't sound like an attractive name.
No mystery -- they can make money with the Mac port!
In the MacOS market, you have:
As opposed to:
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I wonder how the mac keeps it going? Anyone out there a Mac developer? Is it just an easy port?
I've done minor development under MacOS, Windows, and Linux.
In my experience, the MacOS development environment is just cleaner. APIs "feel" neater, simpler, and more cleanly packaged, and the developer help pages on Apple's site are extremely useful.
Under Windows, the API has a fair bit of bloat and isn't as neat, and digging through the help files is annoying as all heck, because they aren't sanely organized and often skimp on important details.
Under Linux, I'll spend a few days of research to write a few hours' worth of code. There isn't any unified API - there are several competing APIs for window managers, and a patchwork of micro-APIs for other aspects of the system. It's great fun to dig into, but it's not a cakewalk.
Just my personal experiences and opinions.
No, the clock speed of a chip is a quantative measure. A synchronous chip runs at its quoted speed (unless you overclock it :-)
"Clock speed" means different things on different architectures, as there are *different ways* of clocking a chip.
You can have a single square-wave clock (single-phase). This is a bugger to design logic for, because eliminating race conditions is difficult, but allows you to push your circuits a little harder because you don't have to worry about keeping non-overlapping multi-phase clocks non-overlapping.
You can have two non-overlapping square-wave clocks with a duty cycle lower than 50% each (two-phase clocking). This makes functional units *much* easier to design, but you have to add enough padding between pulses on alternate clocks that clock skew won't cause them to overlap anywhere.
You can have four non-overlapping square-wave clocks with a duty cycle lower than 25% each (four-phase clocking). This is very hairy to design logic for, but if you can pull it off, the resulting logic is a bit more forgiving on timing constraints and can be clocked a bit faster than might otherwise be possible.
Now, this is relevant because the shortest possible pulse _length_ under any clocking scheme is roughly constant, but the number of pulses per full clock cycle is the number of phases. If I can make clock pulses 0.5 nanoseconds long, a single-phase clocked system would be running at 1 GHz, while a two-phase clocking system would be running at 500 MHz, and a four-phase clocking system would be running at 250 MHz - while doing the same amount of work.
So, comparing the clock speeds on two architectures that use different clocking methods islike comparing apples and oranges. It just doesn't work. Compare performance instead.
A lot of it quite honestly comes down to psychology rather than rationality. There are enough developers who enjoy being Mac users that they want to develop for the Mac as well. A case in point is the game industry, where developers very much want to make Mac games even though the company's support for them is imperfect at best (even though there are big problems now, mainly in Apple's level of secrecy, it's a lot better than back in the day when Apple actively dicouraged game development because they didn't want companies to think of the Mac as a toy).
Another reason is the same reason that anyone supports niche markets--there's good money to be made. Microsoft's Mac Office products give them huge profits. The Apple userbase is a pretty nice subsection of computer users: loyal, affluent, experimental. Apple users generally reward quality products.
You wondered why people spend so much time doing mac ports instead of *bsd and linux ports. There's a lot more money to be made, especially in the consumer arena, porting to mac instead of the freenixes. The freenixes may be awesome, but they have a much smaller share of the consumer market and people who use them are less likely to pay for software than the average mac user.
My suspicion is that there's more porting of server-type software (see IBM, SGI, etc.) to Linux than there is to Mac. The audiences are different.
That said, Apple has had and still has problems getting developers because of their size (or lack of it). Apple's all-in-one hardware+software package is both its greatest benefit and biggest problem for developers. The transition to OS X will definitely be a very interesting test, as a successful transition is very much dependent on developer support.
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