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New G4s Coming Our Way
MasterOfDisaster writes "According to c|net, and this article on maccentral.com, Apple will release "four new, single-processor Power Mac G4 models, all using a 133MHz system bus, and ranging in speed from 466MHz to 733MHz" as well as MacOS 9.1 and several other things, next Tuesday at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco."
i don't think this is nearly as bad as you make it out to be. here's the thing: computers are getting too fast these days. there are very few people who need 1GHz computers. most people just need a pretty average machine, and even an "average" machine these days are pretty quick!
with processor speeds increasing they way they have, i predict that computers will start to sell based on other criteria, rather than just "speed." this is where you're going to see Apple really take off. it'll be similar to why people buy cars: they don't buy just the car with the fastest engine, they buy the one with the features and style they want.
you say the "average consumer" is going to pick the bigger number of Mhz. i say the "average consumer" doesn't even care! have you talked to "normal" people about getting a new computer? this is what they say: "I want to buy a computer." they don't say, "i want to buy a 1GHz Athelon." most computer-illeterate people i've met just equate a computer as a computer. as long as it's not "old" (that is, used), it's just a "computer" the same as a car is a car. they'll go out and buy the one they like the most after "test driving" it in the store.
it's mostly computer-savvy or at least somewhat-computer-intersted people who even look at "specs." it's the people who have a passing interst, but no really solid knowledge in computers that buy based on bigger number of Mhz. when you start selling to people who really don't give a shit as long as the computer does the job they want it to, then pretty Apple computers, with easy Firewire and USB port and the slick interface of Aqua is going to sell.
at any rate, i'm very much looking forward to the future of Apple. i love running Linux, but i still get all my "real work" done on a Mac, and i don't think that's going to change with Mac OS X (except that it may actually cause me to use my linux box considerably less)
- j
It is true it does. Anyways I am still setting up a Linux box on an old IBM Aptiva that I got for free. Linux Mandrake on a Pentium 75mhz. Should be a real screamer. Personally Chip speed means squat. I want OS stability and so do many others. OS X will spur more mac sales than chip speed alone.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I remember having a conversation in 1994 about the future of windows. I remember two code names -- Cairo and Chicago. I think one of them was Win95 and the other was what became NT 5.0 The projected release for NT 5.0 was late 1995 early 1996.
All hearsay, of course.
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
I'm betting kiam to kittycats that Steve will have an update to the Public Beta and a lot more info on OS X, I expect a release for MacWorld Tokyo in February, or at WWDC in May.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
1.)Have you ever worked anywhere that required working with colors and shapes? What if those colors and shapes needed to look the same on every monitor in the shop? Well, that new Apple Display Connector should help.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about? ADC is just an interface combining power, DVI, and USB in one cable/port. It's only purpose is to eliminate cable clutter.
Macs have been known for color consistency for years because of ColorSync. This has nothing to do with ADC, which is based on a 3 year old IBM technology and was introduced only 6 months ago with the CP machines.
Make that the most ergonomic mouse around with no buttons. You obviously have this mixed up with the old Apple mouse from a year ago.
There are no ergonomic 3-button mice, because they all force you to keep three fingers poised over their respective buttons with either your palm pushing the mouse, or else your thumb and pinky clamped onto its sides... very un-ergonomic. The buttonless Apple mouse is a dream, to use... especially since the OS does not really require multiple mouse buttons. I like my MS Intelimouse, particularilly the spiffy scroll wheel in the middle, but the new Apple mouse is much more pleasant to use. (For the record, I still use the MS mouse on Win and Linux boxes, and I think MS makes some of the best mice on the market.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Let's not forget that MOSR was the same group that SWORE that we were *this close* to having a Mac-branded Palm at MWSF 2000. Grain of salt dude, these guys have ZERO reliability.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
Has anyone read the Wired article yet?
Let me get this straight. Apple won't port OS X to x86 because everyone will stop buying Apple hardware and instead run OS X on x86, ergo Apple won't make any money.
There's too somewhat contradictory implications to that:
- Mac users think Mac hardware is way overpriced and are just waiting for an opportunity to jump ship to commodity x86 hardware so long as they can run OS X.
- Apple can't sell enough copies of OS X on x86 to make money. This either means you think that most PC users would rather use Windows or that OS X just isn't going to be good enough.
The upshot of all this is that Mac OS X isn't compelling, and PC users won't buy in numbers necessary to generate the profits necessary to offset the loss of some Mac hardware sales.I'd argue that Apple wouldn't lose any real market share in hardware; the Mac users are pretty much sold on Mac hardware. There is a risk that the performance claims made by Apple would be shown to be largely subjective when people ran the same OS side by side on different hardware. Whether they would gain a lot of x86 users depends on Win32 developers embracing this new platform.
This is probably the best thing I can ever remember them using... It's the best external connection to rival external SCSI I've seen... course if they could just modify the cost to be a bit lower (for devices) than it would be real sweet... FireWire = Digital Video. Hellllooooo Non-Linear Editing! Woo hoo!
So? Optical mouse may be nice at some things, but I know lots of desktop publishing people & artists that hate that part about the newest mac's I don't think that's entirely fair. As someone who spends a great deal of time over his mouse (NLE work, constantly) I'm a big fan of the new optical mouse. I didn't like the puck, which is where you could be getting confused.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
Roll on MacOS X I say. I have a dual CPU 500Mhz G4 with 512Mb of RAM and MacOS 9 makes it run like a dog. Crash protection and multi-threading capabilities are pathetic and the UI looks very arcane compared to other operating systems.
MacOS X was originally due in fall '99. Jobs then changed this when Aqua was introduced, pushing it back a year(IIRC). Then it was delayed again to Jan 2001, and then "early" 2001.
Anyway, Rhapsody was originally due out in '98, and while MacOS X Server did eventually come out in '99, it really didn't fulfill the promise of Rhapsody: a stable consumer OS. So you could say that MacOS X is really about 3 years late now.
Also, Rhapsody was originally going to run on x86 machines as well as PPC, which was completely dropped after Apple realized that if it did, no one would buy Apple's overpriced hardware.
-this is from a long time Apple/Mac user: Apple IIe, Classic, Classic II, 5200, Blue G3, G4/400
My wishlist for this next year includes a lithium polymer battery for my 1999 series Powerbook. I would REALLY like to get rid of this 1.something pound Li battery. I don't really give a shit if I get more time to play games or type things up in Appleworks, I just want a damned lighter piece of equipment to carry around. Even halving the weight of the battery would be fine by me. With that out of the way I just really want to say yahoo! (in a non-proper sort of way that doesn't infringe on copyrights). I've been waiting oh so long for Apple to release systems with higher clock speeds. Motorola has demonstrated 1GHz processors and Apple is trudging along with their line of 500MHz G4s. The addition of a higher memory bus speed is also a plus. Now if they would only crank out boxes with 4x AGP enabled they'd be in a great position for games as well as hardware acceleration for Maya and other apps.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Even I, who really don't care much for Aqua, am really looking forward to MacOS X.
Having a machine that doesn't crash and has real dynamic memory allocation will be heaven for most Mac users. All Apple really needs to do is take out that friggin debug code so the thing doesn't run slow as shit.
When Apple first came up with the Mac, there was a reason to use them for the fact that the Mac was an all new type of computer which is what lead to what Windows is today.
Unfortunately, from day one, Apple kept its doors tight close and would not let anyone except Apple to get in. In addition, Apple targeted its market to a narrow and small segment such as "graphic artist and desktop publisher". In addition, Apple marketed itself as a "cool" company that produces "cool" product.
It is my belief that those event along with other erroneous events directly caused by Apple are what make Apple what it is today -- corporations don't take their product seriously to do anything with it.
So while the Mac OS X is "cool", that is all what it is "cool" -- if there is no business strategy to deliver it to the consumers and corporations that it will just be used by those Mac fan and no one else.
Finally, 10 years ago, there used to be a reason to buy a Mac, for publishing and graphic. Today, you can get those applications on a PC: Photo Shop, Adobe, etc.
And for those Mac users who keep toting its UI as being easy to use -- would you please stop it and get a life!! Just use Windows, KDE, GNUME, OpenLook, etc. (any other UI) for few weeks and you will see that the Mac UI is not the magic you think it is.
So tell me, why do I need a Mac?
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
The entry level iMac for $799 doesn't come with the FireWire ports. Only the iMac-DV and iMac-DV+ have those ports. Those new G4s look pretty cool. They come with 10/100/1000base-T gigabit ethernet cards.
In what way would that prevent it from being preemptive? Pre-emptive multitasking is when the scheduler can interrupt (and suspend) a running task to run another task. The Amiga had this. How the scheduler decides which task to run next is beside the point.
Please. In probably less than two months, all you command line freaks can sit there in the terminal in OS X and do whatever the heck it is you do. Pick up a copy of OS X PB and you can do it today.
Not long ago you could go into the Store section of their site and choose to beef up a machine with more memory, larger hard drives, better monitors - but now you only get choices for software and peripherals like digital cams. What gives?
I guess the only way this relates to the topic at hand is that the only time I look at Apple is when something new is about to come out and I can afford the old stuff. I am really in the mood to run a LinuxPPC/MacOS machine.
sig not found
If Steve Jobs doesn't give some serious, concrete info on OS X at MWSF(i.e. ship date, improvements since PB, carbonized apps), he will be killed by the crowd.
I am not joking.
Please point me to where this "giant war" is exactly. I must have missed it.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
The 450/500 MHz G4s they put in the dual systems had been out for almost a year, and are probably pretty cheap.
But these freshly baked 733MHz wonders will be much more expensive at first. And it would add a lot to the price of the system to add an extra processor.
I never said I like Aqua. In fact I don't. It looks pretty, but it really isn't as functional as the OS 9 GUI.
But still, the prospect of having a stable, modern underpinning to the OS is very appealing.
I'm hoping that Apple will change Aqua a bit before the final(we should see the results at MWSF) and also that they will release tools to allow 3rd parties to create themes that can drastically change the interface. I will almost certainly not be using the default Aqua scheme(even if they give me an Apple menu and trash the dock, it's way too bright).
The biggest problem with the Mac is not the megahertz the machine runs at but the perceived speed that it takes to do stuff. I have an outrageously specced Mac sitting on my desk and the UI acts as slow and retarded as the Mac I used to use at university nealy a decade ago. The single-mouse-button, single menu strip is just painful to use as it was then and Apple haven't picked up on any of the UI advances that other operating systems have made in that time. I don't think the MacOS X UI will be much better but at it will be a real OS under the hood and much more power-user friendly with access to shell prompts etc.
The techinical reason is that they're too busy trying to get OSX ready to take on a project as massive as a processor family switch again. The jump to PowerPC was a pretty amazing thing, and they pulled it off pretty well. It was also made possible by the fact that the PPC line offered so much power over the older chips, that emulation for backwards compatibility ran at a reasonable pace. I'm not sure that a switch to say, x86 architecture would provide the power to emulate PPC software and run it acceptably. And that would be a necessity.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Face it, speed sells. If the average consumer was to pick between a (top-of-the-line) 733Mhz G4 and a even middle-of-the-road 1Ghz Athlon, guess which one they're going to pick. Now, don't give me the crap about how Macs aren't for the average consumer or whatever, but face it, this is a problem for Apple. It's a shame that they're being held back by Motorola when their Mac OS X is so wonderful. But boy does it need it's CPU cycles.
with all due respect. Robert Morgan is realy not a reliable source, his acuracy is very questionable and he is often driven by overly emotional causes. Remember the famed apple set top box that he threated to reveal to the world if apple didnt release it, the thing was nothing of interest at all, it was not a set top computer that did all the cool quicktime stuff he though it did, it was a limited run prototype for a video on demand (or near demand) pilot being run by a british cable. if I recall corectly the pilot was abandond before he even started talking about it.
frankly I just cant take his word as aboslute confirmation.
On the otherhand, that doenst mean that the story has to be bullshit. But Moto has many reasons not to focus on Apple as a customer, they have many problems of there own in their business and from what I have been hearing they are suffering from quite a brain drain in their microprocessor department. this alone is enough reason to focus on more profitable areas of their business (including selling PPC chips for signal processors).
anyway, take it all with a grain of salt
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
MOSR is extremely unreliable. Try AppleInsider instead. Plus, you misread the blurb. It says OS X will be released at Mac World Tokyo.
I'm sorry, but clock-rating is not everything when it comes to CPUs, and the G4's are very fast clock for clock compared to Intel CPUs, and the P4 is the opposite, sacrificing performance per clock for a high clockspeed.
It doesn't mean that the P4 is bad compared to the G4, it just means that you can't compare them by looking at the MHz/GHz-rating.
They have taken different routes to high performance, but people seem to automatically assume that higher MHz == higher speed. It is often speculated that _this_ is the reason for Intels sacrifice on the Pentium 4 (something I find rather believable).
Look at it this way: Since the dualies came out the best-selling G4 Tower was the low-end single-cpu G4 400. That's not good. Since the dualies came out G4 Tower sales have dropped precipitously. That's even worse. Consider also that Apple's big inventory problems all the pundits are flapping about right now are confined almost entirely to the Dualie G4s (and low-end Cubes and low end PBs). Everyone knows the dualies only offer a performance edge for MP enhanced apps, and there aren't too many of them yet, or much use for that second CPU besides the pure Photoshop box. Until OSX is out that is. Then consider that 733 MHz (or whatever) G4s are going to be in mighty short supply for awhile, unlike all those 450s and 500s that MOT has been cranking out since forever and Apple could afford to almost give away. Also consider that these new G4 733s (or whatever) have DUAL AltiVec Units, so there are already two Vector brains on the new single G4s for those Photoshop vs Pentia Bake-offs SteveJobs just llloooves to show off to the faithful. Whoever said that dualies will be kept on for OSX servers doesn't have a clue. Apple's current OSX server (v1.2) does not support SMP at all! That's why all the server configs Apple sells today are SINGLE cpu G4 500s. There will be no MultiProcessing Servers of any sort from Apple until after OSX is released and the Server bundle is upgraded to v2, or however they repackage/brand it. Real MP boxes will be back then in a big way. REAL MP boxes like Quad 800s (or whatever) that will need much more serious bandwidth on the bus than 133MHz. So look for new MP OSX Server boxes with higher speed buses (so those extra processors are used efficiently), and a case design to make the guys in the back room drool, all sometime after MacWorld Tokyo (Feb 24) when OSX is expected to ship. The chips running on them might also come from a surprising source. What good are multiple vector units in a Quadbox Server? The rumors are already flying of new high speed IBM PPC 801s on the horizon that are G4s (in that they are good for MP) only without Motorola's AltiVec parts. Maybe Apple will call them G3.5s...
It seems all ya trollers on /. have 1 main problem with macs: They're insignificant and don't matter. Then stop yer damn bitching and talk about something you're interested in, cocklick. People like you make my brain sad.
I mean has Apple given the okay for us to discuss new products? I would hate to talk about a Apple product before it was released. We all know what happened last time someone did that.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
I think everyone can agree that Apple priced the G4 cube wrong to begin with. My wife's mac was finally getting old enough that she wanted to get a new mac last year. She really didn't want an iMac as she wants a bigger monitor. So our choices from Apple were either a Power Mac G4 or a G4 Cube and I couldn't justify the extra $300 for less expandibility. Now if the G4 Cube had been $300 less than a Power Mac G4 we would have gotten one. The only thing that's been put in the PCI slots is a second video card for the 2nd monitor. So honestly, she could have lived without the expandibility, but not for more money.
;-)
Jobs/Apple can sell some nice plastic and Apple needs to evaluate the price points of their hardware better. The G4 Cube was better than an iMac and a bit less than the Power Mac G4. So Apple should have priced it between those two product from the start. If they had done that, then I think they would not have had the inventory problems they had with the Cube. Also they should not try to sell hardware to a niche market inside an existing niche market. Or if they really wanted to do that they should have done a better job at forcasting based on this and the initial price they planned.
Apple's been on the verge of going out of business for the last 20 years and will probably do so for at least the next 10 years.
Brought to you by Team SPAM! where we believe: "Information in the noise!"
I am sure that they will have BTO back soon.
That's right...you ain't seen nothing yet!
Sorry. I couldn't hold back.
Maybe I have my info wrong, but the ADC is a littl e more than just power, DVI, and USB; the monitors hooked up to them (LCD and the like) actually use the USB port to transmit calibration data, IIRC, though you'll have to scroll down to the bottom of the PDF linked in order to get an inkling of some of this capability...
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
This shows how little you know - Gimp doesn't come anywhere near Photoshop in features, ease of use (think of the History palette) and pro features - does Gimp even support CMYK yet?
Then there's the quiet fanless iMacs and G4 cubes.
I really wish that there were more fanless computers like the iMac or Cube. Passive (noiseless) cooling is one thing that I've really missed since I traded in my Amiga 500. I've always shared a fairly small living space with my computers, and I just can't sleep with one of these multi-fan x86 monsters grinding away all night. Even the 15W StrongARM-based Netwinder has a small but surprisingly annoying fan in it.
I just wish that Apple made a fanless model somewhere in between the iMac (the built-in monitor's a bit small) and the G4 Cube (too expensive).
Apple should just stick a divide-by-two flip-flop on the CPU's clock pin, then jack up the oscillator frequency until they're MHz-competitive with the x86 world. It wouldn't hurt the performance much, and it's no dirtier than some of the tricks that Intel's played over the years (487SX Coprocessor upgrade, anyone?).
are you an average consumer who doesn't understand the difference between RISC and CISC then?
the majority of mac users? seems opposite to me, some vocal opposition but there was when we had to move from OS 6 to 7!
and now here is the kicker, although there is a 90 return window, because he took into compUSA to get the SCSI card replace (took 2 weeks), then back again to get the HD replace (took 4 fucking weeks), he was push beyond that 90 day window...so now he cannot even get his money back and APPLE will not..NO, they REFUSE to remedy the situation
Lemon Apples are notoriously hard to get fixed properly. Like the high-end Japanese stereo systems of the 80s, or BMWs, Apples tend to work perfectly, unless you get a bad one, in which case it will be in the shop for its entire lifecycle.
Apple is also notoriously difficult to work with as a company. They tend to save on the bottom line by skimping on service and contracting their repairs out to shitty shops like CompUSA. However, there is a tiny little division of Apple whose job it is to satisfy customers with just your type of problem. I'm not sure what the threshold is in terms of number of times you've tried to repair a machine, but Apple can send you an entirely new machine of an equivilent configuration. At least, that's the way it was two years ago, and I doubt that that program has been Steved.
You're right about Dell having awesome service.
One thing I hope you realize is that the the fault lies at least partially with CompUSA's service department. I want you all to say it with me: NEVER GO TO COMPUSA unless you absolutely have to.
Bear in mind that there is a shortage of these faster chips that Apple is using...if they keep doubling up the CPU, they will only be able to get half as many systems out the door.
OTOH, anyone who absolutely must have a dual processor G4 should be able to get a third-party upgrade.
Try browsing this topic at +1 instead of +2...
AppleInsider, an Apple news-site I consider quite trustworthy has just put up a story about the Apple products we're looking forward to next week.
1 .s html
Looks like the powermacs won't reach 733 mhz, only 600 and the G4 PowerBooks will retain the 400 & 500 mhz of their G3 predecessors.
The link is:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/0101/mwsf0
-
Not to troll, but maybe you should choose another platform if you have this problem. My 266MHz iMac can encode a CD, while playing mp3s, and web browsing...with out a skip. I'm running the supposedly slow MacOS X PB.
Burn Hollywood Burn
You'll have the option of dual 733mhz G4's soon enough!
...the fiduciary duty to shareholders? It might help explain "greed Steve Jobs", dumbass.
Just a note: the RADEON Cubes have a fan on the vidcard..
;)
(and mine, with a RAGE128 and no virtual memory swapping, _is_ silent
BTW, keep an eye out for the 'cube' laptop, rumored to be a slick G4-equipped beauty..
Your Working Boy,
Macs have been known for color consistency for years because of ColorSync. This has nothing to do with ADC, which is based on a 3 year old IBM technology and was introduced only 6 months ago with the CP machines.
Well, these are all true facts... except for the part about ADC only being about cable clutter. I'm well aware of the fact that ADC is a new inclusion in Apple boxes, and I didn't mean to imply that it was one of those hyped up Revolutionary Apple Innovations. The nice thing is that they put this (still new to consumers) technology in without requiring the purchase of a flat panel monitor.
Colorsync is good... but not that great. Even Apple admits that a correctly configured colorsync workflow will not be perfect. The only real solution is to manually (w/ colorsync on) tweak your display & output device to match each other. Color management is not a plug-and-play operation. Besides, PCs aren't much different anymore, are they?
I hope you're referring to DVI as that 3 yr old technology, and not that sucky aptiva thing.
I will admit that, for reasons unknown even to myself, I thought that the CRT monitors were using the DVI also. So that was stupid.
Anyway, the whole reason I got into this discussion was to point out that Apple often includes slightly ahead of the (consumer) curve technology, which makes the box a good purchase over the long haul. Let's just say there are probably a lot of parallel port zip drives hanging around unused these days.
... I used to carry the original Mac portable to school (pre powerbook era). What was that? ~20 pounds? 16Mhz?
Don't you know anything?
See the recent PIV debacle for more information.
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
if there is vocal opposition then surely a majority have heard it?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Want to build your own PPC system? Around $2,500 if you want a non Mac mobo. It's cheaper to buy a Mac and trash the bits you don't want.
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Also note that apple has slashed its hardware prices a lot to get rid of about 11.5 weeks of stock sitting around. Apparently they overestimated the average mac user's upgrade cycle. Plus the G4 cube wasn't nearly as popular as they hoped it would be. I'm seriously thinking of buying a mac and just run linux on it till OS X comes out. Hell, you can now buy a Power Mac G4 for $1299!
MacOS is almost 20 years old now, about the same as DOS.
DOS is even older.
The first version, called CP/M was developed around 1974.
The Macintosh Operatingsystem is from 1982.
The difference is very large.
CP/M is originally a 8 bits OS.
The Macintosh operatingsystem is a true 32 bits OS.
So, there is a very large difference between DOS and MacOS.
I humbly stand corrected, sir!
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
Then there is the Cube. I wonder how much it costs Apple to make the Cube's case? How come they won't position it as a headless iMac (which it really is) and offer it at a price range of $799 (G3) up to $2,100 (fast G4). What if Apple blows $200 making each Cube case? What are they thinking?
All the other big-brand computer makers sell a 'slim-line' office computer of the Cube ilk. And most of them have a price-performance range similar to what I'm suggesting Apple do their Cube.
blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
(1) through (9) are just from the past few years. Apple's history of innovation is much longer than this. Here are some more features that Apple established in the marketplace:
10. 3.5 inch floppy
11. GUI
12. Built-in networking on all machines.
13. Laser printing.
14. (Mechanical) mouse standard on all systems.
15. SCSI.
16. Quicktime
This list goes on and on and on, although there was a conspicuous lack of innovation during the non-Jobs years. The fact is that Apple is the one company in the industry that has consistently pushed innovative technologies into the mainstream, and not just caved to conservative inertia. I shudder to think what Wintel machines would be like today if they hadn't had to keep pace with Apple. This computer is now available with three (count 'em THREE) 5.25 floppy drives AND a 30x100 monochrome display, both industry firsts!
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Um I'll take the faster ECP/EPP parellel port anyday thank you... USB's only advantage is # of connectable devices (figuring you want to buy that many USB hubs or own that many USB devices)... If USB could conpete speedwise with ECP/EPP than I would have less of a problem with it, but frankly it can't... (In case your curious ECP/EPP can get 2.4 MBps, as opposed to USB's 1.2 MBps... or in other words twice the speed...)
Macintosh has always been serial-based, and USB is a godsend as compared to the hodgepodge nightmare that is RS-232.. (I just spent a twisted afternoon with a breakout box trying to pinout a connection between a Sun Netra RJ45 to a Portmaster.. Aiee!)
Really? I've edited video's back on my old 486DX2 50 Mhz machine... It was slow to do, but you could do it... & my current system (a K6-2 500) does video editing pretty easily... Though then again I don't have a camcorder & normally take pieces made by others & splice them together with various music, etc...
Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.. Mac 0wnz desktop video.. And with Firewire it's super easy to print to tape, spool forwards and backwards, etc.. and iMovie is a fantastic piece of software.. Better than anything on Linux or Windows for the casual editor, and FCP is waay better than Adobe Premiere..
That's why Emachines is sucessful to... both are crappy systems, but sure they hold your hand for you... Packard Bell used to do that to (though they thought they could charge the same price for it)...
Emachines successful? Only in a lawsuit.. Have you checked their stock and news lately??
Your Working Boy,
MacOS started out as a 16bit OS and later moved to 24bit in System 6.0.X. With the introduction of System 7.0 (1990?) they moved to full 32bit OS.
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
St. Steve has been known to feed the rumor mill and pull other stunts.
Read the c|net and MacCentral articles with a healthy dose of skepticism and check the Mac web in a week or two.
-drstatgeek (close enough, at least
Maybe you are thinking of Apple Unix, A/UX? That untill now was the only OS from Apple that supported more than one CPU/had SMP support.
Dont know about A/UX having SMP support, but apple at the time that the previous guy mentions (PPC 604e X4)the machines running MacOS, were able to use the extra processors providing the Program ie: PhotoShop had been written to support the multi procs, i believe though that instead of SMP it was Asyncronous MP or something with an A, that did not mean Apple.
How every version of MICROS~1 Windows(TM) comes to exist.
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
- Like if I encode a MP3 on my single processor computer, it will chew up all the processor time and make other programs running deadly slow (on my windows 2000 machine)
You're comparing apples and oranges (no pun intended). He said encoding an mp3 . That's a very processor intensive operation. You're burning (encoding is the wrong word) a CD while playing mp3s. That's not processor intensive at all; of course it doesn't skip.Not to troll, but maybe you should choose another platform if you have this problem. My 266MHz iMac can encode a CD, while playing mp3s, and web browsing...with out a skip. I'm running the supposedly slow MacOS X PB.
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
They also don't understand the difference between closed-source and GPL. I guess all those Linux proponents should just go home.
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$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
computers still have a long long way to go speed-wise. it's as if you're in 1904 saying "why would a car ever need to go faster than 25 miles per hour?"
besides, people will always be drawn to the faster machine, both by internal competitive drive and by marketing pressure.
Let's try applying the automotive analogy to that last sentence of yours: "People will always be drawn to the faster car". Er, no actually: People base their car buying decisions on many factors, and speed is pretty far down the list for most people, because any car you'll buy will be more than capable of going as fast as you actually want to go in 99% of situations.
Sure, cars had a lot of room for increases in speed in 1904, but eventually those increases leveled off. Who's to say that the same thing can't happen to computers? How can you say with confidence that it isn't happening already?
Get the truth here. And there is also a benchmark that shows a 500mhz G4 for what it really is: an equivalent to a 700mhz Duron (just keep scrolling down).
blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Point taken.
Of course I have not run word processing or web browsing on the SGI (not that they are that CPU intensive), but the tasks I would consider as taxing the system as a whole (statistics, computational chemistry, image classification, and the occaisonal game of Quake or two do perform much better on the SGI than on the Mac or PC.
In terms of overall productivity however, I would rate the Mac much higher than the other two systems (CPU benchmarking aside). While not as stable as IRIX, the Mac is faster to configure, and easier to maintain. (I recently set up a three drive array on the Mac in literally 24 minutes, versus hours to days on Windows and UNIX) I can also run Photoshop, web browsers with the latest features, IDL (also available on UNIX), PCIGeomatics (also available for UNIX), Word, Excel, JMP etc etc etc. All on one box with three monitors, and peripherals that I can plug in and unplug with no IRQ conflicts or rebooting etc...
Where the Octane comes in handy is for calculations that can take two to three days. If I were to perform them on a slower system, I am potentially looking at 6 days or more.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I said encoding, i meant encoding. My iMac (266 Mhz) can encode a CD (TO MP3, not a CD BURNER), play mp3s and web browse at the same time. MacOS X, Welcome to the wonderful world of Unix.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Actually the Athlon is probably going to be pretty OK. What'll kill you is a 1.5Ghz P4. Ugly design, go with the AMD for general purpose performance if you're on X86.
nonsense, it will be really ready when it is released... i know PLENTY of folks who have abandoned the 'old' MacOS and use nothing but the beta OS X... word
besides, people will always be drawn to the faster machine, both by internal competitive drive and by marketing pressure.
i could live a little longer in this prison
no way. we are just scratching the surface of computing power potential. it's a very immature industry. car horsepower has stabilized, creeping upward and downward over the last 30 years. CPU power is still stridently upwards and will be for a long time to come.
i could live a little longer in this prison
What I have to say will probably provoke a response from Mr. Commander Taco. He may label me "unstable" or even "sex-crazed". I realize and accept that as a consequence of what I am about to say. However, I do doubtlessly hope that Mr. Taco will read everything I have to say before labeling me. Let me begin by citing a range of examples from the public sphere. For starters, we can all have daydreams about Happy Fuzzy Purple Bunny Land, where everyone is caring, loving, and nice. Not only will those daydreams not come true, but it's really not bloody-mindedness that compels me to warn the public against those hectoring freaks whose positive accomplishments are always practically nil, but whose conceit can scarcely be excelled. It's my sense of responsibility to you, the reader.
He teaches workshops on gangsterism. Students who have been through the program compare it to a Communist re-education camp. Let us now join hands, hearts, and minds to give you some background information about Mr. Taco. He says that violence and prejudice are funny. Wow! Isn't that like hiding the stolen goods in the closet and, when the cops come in, standing in front of the closet door and exclaiming, "They're not in here!"?
The point at which you discover that his morals are a veritable dictionary and synonymicon of deconstructionism is not only a moment of disenchantment. It is a moment of resolve, a determination that if I want to have a nervous breakdown, that should be my prerogative. I don't need him forcing me to. From secret-handshake societies meeting at "the usual place" to back-door admissions committees, Mr. Taco's confreres have always found a way to deliver an additional blow to dignity and self-worth. The question that's on everyone's mind these days is, "Where are the people who are willing to stand up and acknowledge that Mr. Taco's wishy-washy allegations are to politics what the blitzkrieg was to international diplomacy?" The complete answer to that question is a long, sad story. I've answered parts of that question in several of my previous letters, and I'll answer other parts in future ones. For now, I'll just say that I unequivocally feel that Mr. Taco has insulted everyone with even the slightest moral commitment. He obviously has none, or he wouldn't attack the fabric of this nation. If I, not being one of the many clueless knuckle-draggers of this world, weren't so forgiving, I'd have to say that after hearing about his mean-spirited attempts to make my stomach turn, I was saddened. I was saddened that he has lowered himself to this level.
The fabric of Mr. Taco's scare tactics is infused with stingy randy elitism. Here, too, the exception proves the rule: Mr. Taco can fool some of the people all of the time. He can fool all of the people some of the time. But he can't fool all of the people all of the time. I have had enough of his waste, fraud, misfeasance, and malfeasance. Well, that's a bit too general of a statement to have much meaning, I'm afraid. So let me instead explain my point as follows: "Mr. Taco" has now become part of my vocabulary. Whenever I see someone lionize lewd stirrers, I tell him or her to stop "Mr. Taco-ing".
Once it becomes clear that he has come very, very close to making me lose heart, it becomes apparent that I overheard one of his backers say, "Mr. Taco knows the "right" way to read Plato, Maimonides, and Machiavelli." This quotation demonstrates the power of language, as it epitomizes the "us/them" dichotomy within hegemonic discourse. As for me, I prefer to use language to discuss the relationship between three converging and ever-growing factions -- foolish gits, callow hidebound-types, and insensitive truculent slobs. To some extent, I am intellectually honest enough to admit my own previous ignorance in that matter. I only wish that he had the same intellectual honesty.
One can examine this from another angle, and plainly see that Mr. Taco's reasoning is circular and therefore invalid. In other words, he always begins an argument with his conclusion (e.g., that an open party with unlimited access to alcohol can't possibly outgrow the host's ability to manage the crowd) and therefore -- not surprisingly -- he always arrives at that very conclusion. Whether or not Mr. Taco should interfere with my efforts to direct your attention in some detail to the vast and irreparable calamity brought upon us by Mr. Taco ought to be a simple question, far beyond the realm of debate. However, I know that Mr. Taco's simplistic reasoning follows the same fallacies as so many other treatises on similar issues. You know that. But does Mr. Taco know we know that? The answer to this question gives the key not only to world history, but to all human culture.
Needless to say, I oppose his rodomontades because they are arrogant. I oppose them because they are soulless. And I oppose them because they will turn me, a typically mild-mannered person, into a feral vat of nepotism in the immediate years ahead. Mr. Taco has made some dangerous assumptions about myopic egotists, and deep down in our bones, we all know why. The dominant characteristic of his expedients is not that they defend materialism, Marxism, and notions of racial superiority, but that, in the bargain, they shout direct personal insults and invitations to exchange fisticuffs.
He throws the word "spinulosodenticulate" around as if it had the same meaning to everyone. (Actually, he is the most self-satisfied, uncivilized, and fatuitous waste of genetic material in our society, but that's not important now.) My usual response to Mr. Taco's values is this: Mr. Taco's pleas are particularism cloaked in the rhetoric of vainglorious sensationalism. However, such a response is much too glib and perhaps a little dishonest, so let me be more specific. When Mr. Taco hears anyone say that by excluding any possibility of comparison, he can easily pass off his own reports as works of genius, his answer is to let the most spineless heavy metal fans you'll ever see serve as our overlords. That's similar to taking a few drunken swings at a beehive: it just makes me want even more to spread awareness of the delirious nature of his fairy tales.
By seeking to make a mockery of the term "nondenominationalism", Mr. Taco reveals his ignorance about vandalism's polyvocality. He probably also doesn't realize that I frequently talk about how it is often said that my personal safety depends upon your starting to insist on a policy of zero tolerance toward sexism, just as your personal safety depends upon my doing the same. I would drop the subject, except that he claims to have turned over a new leaf shortly after getting caught trying to inculcate infantile diatribes. This claim is an outright lie that is still being circulated by Mr. Taco's bootlickers. The truth is that Mr. Taco likes to compare his publications to those that shaped this nation. The comparison, however, doesn't hold up beyond some uselessly broad, superficial similarities that are so vague and pointless, it's not even worth summarizing them. Mr. Taco may be sincere, but he is also sincerely benighted. I am deliberately using colorful language in this letter. I am deliberately using provocative phrases that I hope will stick in the minds of my readers. I do ensure, however, that my words are always appropriate and accurate and clearly explain how Mr. Taco argues that misguided sewer rats and cranky batty nymphomaniacs should rule this country. To maintain this thesis, Mr. Taco naturally has had to shovel away a mountain of evidence, which he does by the desperate expedient of claiming that society is screaming for his screeds. It has been said that his maudlin, kissy-pooh, feel-good, touchy-feely orations are actually quite childish when you look at them a bit closer. I, in turn, maintain that he will go to almost any extreme to prevent my message of truth from getting out. But there's the rub; his arguments have grown into the world's greatest enslavers of human minds. Let me rephrase that: I'm not a psychiatrist. Sometimes, though, I wish I were, so that I could better understand what makes people like him want to agitate for indoctrination programs in local schools. Clericalism appears to have triumphed. Am I aware of how Mr. Taco will react when he reads that last sentence? Yes. Do I care? No, because a number of insufferable amnesiacs have succumbed to excessive drug use, alcoholism, and other addictive behavior indicating maladaptive mechanisms. For proof of this fact, I must point out that he is not just stupid. He is unbelievably, astronomically stupid.
Mr. Taco, do you feel no shame for what you've done? His smears are not the solution to our problem. They are the problem. Even though he has aired his disapproval of being criticized, I still suspect that that's just one side of the coin. The other side is that I believe I have finally figured out what makes people like Mr. Taco impose ideology, control thought, and punish virtually any behavior he disapproves of. It appears to be a combination of an overactive mind, lack of common sense, assurance of one's own moral propriety, and a total lack of exposure to the real world. There are two sorts of people in this world. There are those who violate the basic tenets of journalism and scholarship, and there are those who hinder the power of brainless psychopaths like him. Mr. Taco fits neatly into the former category, of course. Finally, to those of you who are faithfully helping me resolve a number of lingering problems, let me extend, as always, my deepest gratitude and my most affectionate regards.
Of course not. Mac OS X isn't ready to ship yet. Did you see the public beta? The user interface was a disaster. Hopefully they've fixed the design flaws, but there's still some debugging and polishing left to do. When they do release it, it needs to be perfect.
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$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
That just woke me up _real_ fast. (wish I had a G4 instead of G3, too). The thing is, it's Linux- it doesn't have to be just a distribution, you can maintain things yourself. The important thing is the compiler because if you are a good little linux user and know how to compile all stuff with ./configure, make, make install (or whatever the RTFDirections says), you get all the software set up for your processor- given certain conditions.
Altivec can be used for block moves, for a wide variety of big-data-handling operations. It can be _general_ _purpose_. Does this GCC simply allow for software to be written using Altivec (as if it was some sort of very specialised MMX) or does it dynamically take advantage of the 128-bit registers wherever possible? Whether or not it _does_, it _could_ in future do that: particularly if the C libs are written to be Altivec optimised where possible (again, such as using the registers to move large chunks of data).
Very cool, can't wait for it to become more generally useful- I sort of doubt that all of GCC can make use of Altivec (in the way that Quicktime and Quickdraw were rewritten to make use of it, and that OSX's rendering layer does) but it's just a matter of time because we _are_ talking about a current-generation powerful consumer-level architecture with special characteristics. Linux has a way of adapting itself to these. Eventually, not only will PPC look like a very sensible choice for Linux deployment, but Linux will look like a very sensible option for Mac alternate OS choice.
Rrrright... OS X coming in September? NOT. It's likely no more than 6-8 weeks away, folks... and a 733MHz RISC @ 133MHz bus speed? GIMME GIMME
Nope, and I'm not buying a Mac for myself until MacOS X comes out. Looks like they may have Osbourned themselves.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I don't want to be rude or disrespectful, and I sincerely don't want to start an argument, but I invite you to talk to Mr. Commander Taco yourself if you feel that I'm misrepresenting his position. With this letter, I hope to give you some background information about Mr. Taco. But first, I would like to make the following introductory remark: Mr. Taco's tirades are built on lies, and they depend on make-believe for their continuation. The tasteless nature of his whinges distracts us from the real lessons we could learn from a rigorous critique of Mr. Taco's criticisms. Yet Mr. Taco's put-downs are not our only concern. To state the matter in a few words, metagrobolism is dangerous. Mr. Taco's unprofessional version of it is doubly so. Quite simply, even when Mr. Taco isn't lying, he's using facts, emphasizing facts, bearing down on facts, sliding off facts, quietly ignoring facts, and, above all, interpreting facts in a way that will enable him to harvest what others have sown.
The problem, as I see it, is not a question of who the twaddlers of this society are, but rather that I believe I have found my calling. My calling is to give parents the means to protect their children. And just let him try and stop me. While it is not my purpose to incriminate or exculpate or vindicate or castigate, it's indisputably astounding that Mr. Taco has found a way to work the words "archaeopterygiformes" and "roentgenographically" into his pronouncements. However, you may find it even more astounding that I, for one, indubitably have a hard time trying to reason with people who remain calm when they see Mr. Taco galvanize a self-centered hectoring hysteria, a large-scale version of the saturnine mentality that can violate values so important to our sense of community. When you reflect upon this, you'll realize that I am making a pretty serious accusation here. I am accusing him of planning to utilize legal, above-ground organizing in combination with illegal, underground tactics to demand that loyalty to dirty loan sharks supersedes personal loyalty. And I don't want anyone to think that I am basing my accusation only on the fact that statements like, "He is unable to use the English language effectively or correctly" accurately express the feelings of most of us here. But this is something to be filed away for future letters. At present, I wish to focus on only one thing: the fact that every time Mr. Taco gets caught trying to blame our societal problems on handy scapegoats, he promises he'll never do so again. Subsequently, his forces always jump in and explain that he really shouldn't be blamed even if he does, because, as they claim, all any child needs is a big dose of television every day.
Mr. Taco's expedients have caused widespread social alienation, and from this alienation a thousand social pathologies have sprung. My purpose is to report as best as possible the facts and circumstances surrounding Mr. Taco's squalid smears. Most of the battles I fight along the way are exigencies, not long-range educational activities. Nevertheless, Mr. Taco's philosophies cannot stand on their own merit. That's why they're dependent on elaborate artifices and explanatory stories to convince us that post-structuralism is the only alternative to ageism.
With Mr. Taco's snow jobs hanging over us like the Sword of Damocles, it makes sense that if one believes statements like, "The federal government should take more and more of our hard-earned money and more and more of our hard-won rights," one is, in effect, supporting meddlesome election-year also-rans. Mr. Taco's cop-outs are tinctured with credentialism. And that's where we are right now. Someone needs to demand a thoughtful analysis and resolution of our problems with Mr. Taco. Who's going to do it? Mr. Taco? I think not.
You can observe a definite bias in his insinuations relating to the worst classes of cruel pothouse drunks there are. But it doesn't stop there. He wants us to believe that it's perfectly safe to drink and drive. How stupid does he think we are? The complete answer to that question is a long, sad story. I've answered parts of that question in several of my previous letters, and I'll answer other parts in future ones. For now, I'll just say that I sometimes ask myself whether the struggle to express my views is worth all of the potential consequences. And I consistently answer by saying that he is careless with data, makes all sorts of causal interpretations of things without any real justification, has a way of combining disparate ideas that don't seem to hang together, seems to show a sort of pride in his own biases, gets into all sorts of vapid speculation, and then makes no effort to test out his speculations -- and that's just the short list!
Many people who follow Mr. Taco's assertions have come to the erroneous conclusion that university professors must conform their theses and conclusions to Mr. Taco's scornful prejudices if they want to publish papers and advance their careers. The stark truth of the matter is that I, for one, like to speak of him as "self-serving". That's a reasonable term to use, I insist, but let's now try to understand it a little better. For starters, I didn't want to talk about this. I really didn't. But as soon Mr. Taco takes us beyond the point of no return, the next thing we'll hear him say is, "Oops, made a mistake". Do I blame society for this? No, I blame Mr. Taco. Once again, I receive a great deal of correspondence from people all over the world. And one of the things that impresses me about it is the massive number of people who realize that there is a format Mr. Taco should follow for his next literary endeavor. It involves a topic sentence and supporting facts. So long as the devastating inequities that characterize our society persist, his legates will be unable to deny that Mr. Taco's intransigent pleas brand me as disgraceful. News of this deviousness must spread like wildfire if we are ever to provide an antidote to contemporary manifestations of catty pauperism. Mr. Taco's fierce passions and fiendish cunning, combined with abnormal powers of intellect, with intense vitality, and with a persistency of purpose which the world has rarely seen, and whetted moreover by a keen thirst for blood engendered by defeat and subjection, combine to make him the deadly enemy of all mankind, while his flippant jeremiads contribute to inflame his wild lust of pelf, and to justify the crimes suggested by spite and superstition.
Mr. Taco possesses no significant intellectual skills whatsoever and has no interest in erudition. Heck, he can't even spell or define "erudition," much less achieve it. He has recently been going around claiming that every featherless biped, regardless of intelligence, personal achievement, moral character, sense of responsibility, or sanity, should be given the power to obstruct various important things. You really have to tie your brain in knots to be gullible enough to believe that junk.
Anyway, the consequence of all this is that I have a dream, a mission, a set path that I would like to travel down. Specifically, my goal is to focus on concrete facts, on hard news, on analyzing and interpreting what's happening in the world. Of course, I shall return to this point in particular. So don't feed me any phony baloney about how he can achieve his goals by friendly and moral conduct. That's just not true. All the deals Mr. Taco makes are strictly one-way. Mr. Taco gets all the rights, and the other party gets all the obligations. His remonstrations are merely childish attempts at ridicule. But you knew that already. So let me add that at no time in the past did vicious chiselers shamble through the streets of cities, demanding rights they imagine some supernatural power has bestowed upon them. If you understand that I'm simply trying to explain Mr. Taco's mumpish tendencies as well as his officious tendencies as phases of a larger, unified cycle, then you can comprehend that Mr. Taco ignores the most basic ground rule of debate. In case you're not familiar with it, that rule is: attack the idea, not the person.
He finds enemies everywhere. That said, let me continue. We all learned the Golden Rule in school. Maybe Mr. Taco was absent that day. How dare he pull the levers of commercialism and oil the gears of obstructionism? The fact that his secret police can be stereotyped as soulless mephitic tools of prepackaged political ideology and mischievous anarchists to boot is particularly striking, since there are some simple truths in this world. First, he makes decisions based on random things glamorized by the press and the resulting rantings of capricious publishers of hate literature. Second, his unedifying preoccupation with fetishism will inject even more fear and divisiveness into political campaigns one day. And finally, we need to look beyond the most immediate and visible problems with him. We need to look at what is behind these problems and understand that he spouts the same bile in everything he writes, making only slight modifications to suit the issue at hand. The issue he's excited about this week is Marxism, which says to me that Mr. Taco proclaims at every opportunity that he'd never seize control over where we eat, sleep, socialize, and associate with others. The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.
Does Mr. Taco do research before he reports things, or does he just guess and hope he's right? The reason I ask is that Mr. Taco says that he is a bearer and agent of the Creator's purpose. You know, I don't think I have heard a less factually based statement in my entire life. He has, on a number of occasions, expressed a desire to inflict untold misery, suffering, and distress. On all of these occasions, I submitted to the advice of my friends, who assured me that I suppose it's predictable, though terribly sad, that brainless dorks with stronger voices than minds would revert to discourteous behavior. But his true goal is to convict me without trial, jury, or reading one complete paragraph of this letter. All the statements that his helpers make to justify or downplay that goal are only apologetics; they do nothing to bring the communion of knowledge to all of us. Mr. Commander Taco upholds sin as sacred. That is why, come what may, we must stop this insanity.
They did, and the hardware was called CHRP. Then everyone backed off because they didn't want to have to compete with all the upstarts that the platform would have inevitably created.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Narg, quite the contradictory/biased response here. First, the first sentence is very strong here. Most programs don't even install their own DLLs, and the ones from big corperations are usually kind enough to remove them for you when you UNinstall them. Besides, the fact that you even know that there are remant dlls suggests that you place the burden upon yourself looking for old dlls in the mess that is the system directory. It's basically harmless to let those things sit there on their own, all they do is suck up a few K of hard drive space. You don't have to deal with them unless you want to. Next, "DLL's are a pain and a hassle even if you choose to minimze the idea." Well, if we minimize the pain and hassle, there really isn't any since pain and hassle are all defined by oneself. It's not like ecological damage, where if we ignore it the damage is still done. If you don't even notice the buzzing of flourecent lights, then they won't bother you. Lastly, the idea(I'm only putting this in because I couldn't figure out what "minimize the idea" meant) is a good one. They make programs smaller, and programs can share the same code, resulting in smaller use of system resource. Not always good, but if they were used correctly, nobody would have a qualm with them(except for a few picky programmers).
You are 100% correct. You have to *know* how to work the system. (whether or not you should know how to do this is pointless it is there). This system is the wonderful relationship CompUSA has (or lacks) with its vendors. The diagnostics is merely stupid software on a special CD which does logic tests on apple hardware. I know I worked at CompUSA as an apple tech. The SCSI card you speak of sucks - the dirvers suck - It's the vendor's fault that the driver's suck - of course apple didn't do any thorough testing either. Also an apple will shit the bed if it has bad RAM - have ALL of the RAM replaced. Oh & if you call apple's tech support & scream at the correct people you WILL get a replacement. I have a PowerMac 6500 the fell off a delivery truck (literally). Apple didn't want to fix it - nor did coompusa. Once I bought it I just submitted it for service (it helped that I worked there) & it was fixed (or re-built) no questions asked. He same rules apply w/ compaq, Hewlett Packards & ALL of the machines sold at CompUSA. Its a question of who's going to foot the bill & vendors are ALWAYS arguing w/ the manufacturers. If it was a defect with the machine then it's apple's responsibility. Call their support & talk to a manager (really high up). Then say you will start posting articles on http://www.ihateapple.com - get their attention.
Move 'zig'!
The Australian National University Considered using the G4 in the Beowulf cluster, but decided against it. Can't remember why.
Intel Pentium III/IV -- you can get better, but you can't pay more! Hehehehehe!
>Macintosh has always been serial-based, and USB >is a godsend as compared to the hodgepodge >nightmare that is RS-232.. (I just spent a >twisted afternoon with a breakout box trying to >pinout a connection between a Sun Netra RJ45 to >a Portmaster.. Aiee!)
I knwo Mac's are mostly serial for I/O, but it would have been nice for them ages ago to switch to parellel ports (if for nothing else than to simplify printer choice)... besides my serial mouse (which was the only real option back then) I stay away from serial... Which now includes USB... THough I'm giving Firewire (aka IEEE 1394), the benefit of the doubt...
>Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.. Mac 0wnz >desktop video.. And with Firewire it's super >easy to print to tape, spool forwards and >backwards, etc.. and iMovie is a fantastic piece >of software.. Better than anything on Linux or >Windows for the casual editor, and FCP is waay >better than Adobe Premiere.
um not to say your full of it or anything, but I have used various tools for desktop video on Mac & I'll stick to doing it on PC... I very much prefer PC tools as opposed to the Mac ones... & while I might like firewire support (which is not the default for PC's), it's not very important to what I do when I edit digital video (as I said before)...
>Emachines successful? Only in a lawsuit.. Have >you checked their stock and news lately??
They might not be financial successful (as comapred to other companies), but do you know how many plain old people I've seen that own emachines computers? or better yet when I worked tech support how many people called in with emachines computers? They may not be to financially succesful ut in the market place they sell very very well to non-techie types... (who as the person I was replying to said) where the same ones that the Imac sells to...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
I guess. My 14 month old Yikes G4 is still the the perfect Photoshop deployment environment. The price drop should have happened six months ago however.
The music is not in the piano -Clement Mok
As are four-processor Daystar Genesis MPs.
err, not quite.
.0), apple started going "32 bit clean"
.) , and 32 bit registers (usable as high and low 16 bit registers). Motorola clearly labeled which registers/paths/whathave you would grow to 32 bits in future expansion.
Macos had 24 bit addressing from the start, although I think the early systems or hardware decoded anything with the high bit high as the roms (but it's been a while, and my little brother has my copies of inside mac).
At system 6.0.something (i don't hink it was
This comes from the nature of the early 68xxx processors. The original design had a 16 bit data path, 16 bit ALU (wait, it was 32, wasn't it? it could do 32 bit operations, but did it do that by using the same alu on each half? it's been too long . .
Given that a 32 bit register was addressing a 24 bit address space (there were only 24 pins for addresses; this was still DIP packaging for the processor), it left 8 bits which were tempting to use.
Apple told developers not to use those bits, as they were reserved. Programs that followed the directive were generally executable on later machines, while those that weren't needed to be rewritten. The two biggest violators, in order? Apple and Microsoft . . .
Sometime around the IIX and SE/30, the ROM's became "32 bit clean" and other
software was similarly designated. Such machines could generally (but not always, iirc) go past 16M of memory. Roms could be retrofitted to some models
to allow such software.
I want to say that it was system 7 that required 32 bit clean roms, but it's
been a while, and I'm not certain. There were certainly significant
differences between systems 1-6 and 7, but it really wasn't a 16/32 transition. The original 68k was a 16 bit chip in the same sense that the 8088 was an 8 bit--data path, and not much more. For most intents & purposes, the macos was a 32 bit os with a bit of 24 bit crippling from the start.
hawk, dusting off old memory cells.
A 733 Mhz G4 can finally beat my dual overclocked 1.2 Ghz Pentium III with the help of the "special instruction set" ;-)
Seriously, they haven't even mentioned or hinted at the so "Apple" prices these things are going to cost. Will OSX even be loaded on these machines?
A/UX ran on 68K machines, and Apple never produced a SMP 68K machine. So if A/UX did have SMP support, it's academic.
But if you sell the kid, you'll just have a knee.
Look, RTFP. I can tell you that the Octane sitting on my desk will compute molecular folding routines (with no graphics involved by the way) about four times as fast as the Pentium 750 running the same algorhythms and the same parameters. Its all about system balance, memory performance and code along with raw CPU performance. Benchmarking means very little to me (and others who actually accomplish their work) as what I rely upon is real world performance on the task to be performed. The reality here is that the pentium 750 is not even close to the SGI. And in fact, running the same molecular folding task with the same parameters the Mac@500Mhz bests the pentiumIII@750Mhz by a wide margin. Not nearly as much as the SGI, but enough to be more useful for this task than the PIII.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Has anyone else watched the speed of mp3 encoding double when they use gogo (an mmx enabled encoder)?
t e.html">AltiVEC enabled GCC</A> God damn!
Yes?
Now imagine (insert your fave mp3 encoder here) compiled with linuxPPC's <A HREF="http://www.linuxppc.org/software/index/ByDa
Seriously though, this new hardware is BIG news for apple, whose future (IMHO) will be determined the acceptance (or lack there of (I hope not)) of OS X. Hopefully this will stop people from turning away from apple simply because its "Not fast enough"
BTW, I think the people saying apples are "not fast enough" are the same people asking you "What version of linux are you running?" expecting an anwer of "Redhat XX".
Oh Well
--Alex the rambling Fishman
I, like an idiot, suggested to my dad to get a G4, since he did alot of digital photography. Normally, I am a win2k/linux advocate, but I "Thought" from all that I heard, perhaps Apple had a better product for what my Pop wanted to use it for
Big, Big, Big mistake. I feel like a complete ass. My father has had nothing but complete trouble with the piece of crap. The mouse locks up every hour..no,the whole damn machine locks up every hour. The scsi card already had to be replaced and same thing with the HD..at least that is what CompUSA's shitty support said and did.
of course, it still locks up every bloody hour or so for no particular reason. My father has tried and tried and tried and tried to get Apple support and sales to either pay to have a complete diagnostic on it. (NOPE, they said "HE" would have to pay the 100+ bucks for CompUSA to run this Diagnostic crap on the Motherboard and only after that would they consider replacing the motherboard)
he also tried to get them to Replace the whole machine..again, the only thing they would offer is the damn diagnostic test which he would have to pay for.
and now here is the kicker, although there is a 90 return window, because he took into compUSA to get the SCSI card replace (took 2 weeks), then back again to get the HD replace (took 4 fucking weeks), he was push beyond that 90 day window...so now he cannot even get his money back and APPLE will not..NO, they REFUSE to remedy the situation
To give a comparision, when my dads 1 1/2 year old Dell Laptop went kaput, they [DELL] flew in a TEchnician to replace the motherboard, no questions asked. Now that, is unbelievable customer service. Something APPLE severely lacks
We are still trying to get Apple to do something, but everytime we call and try to move up the management ladder we always get "they will call you back" which they never EVER do. So frustrating
I feel so bad recommending this to my father who pretty much has a 5g paper weight on his desk. I will never ever recommend Apple again after this fiasco. If anybody has any pull at Apple, please let me know. I would love to bring some Closure to this.
Strange that you should choose that example . . .
I think it was the 1903 sears catalog that offered a car capable of all speeds from 0 to 25, noting in the ad that they didn't think the average man had any use for going 45 or 50 as more expensive cars did . . .
While I'm at it, in law school we read a case about "reckless entrustment," in which the owner of the car was being sued for lending it to the driver when he should have known better. Part of the claim was that the driver had a reputation for "driving as fast as 50 miles per hour" . . .
MacOS started out as a 16bit OS and later moved to 24bit in System 6.0.X. With the introduction of System 7.0 (1990?) they moved to full 32bit OS.
Alas, even the first MacOS was 32 bits.
What you are revering to is the addresslines.
Memory adressing on the first 68000 was limited to 24 bits.
The 68020 and later supported 32 memoryaddresslines.
The first MacOS which could adress more than 8 Mb of memory was MacOS 6.0.*.
The 68000 was only limited to an external 16 bits databus.
Internal the 68000 is a fully 32 bits processor.
This compared with the 8086 and 8088 which where 16 bits processors.
The 68020 was the first 680*0 processor with an external 32 bits databus.
Being an owner of a couple of macs, including a 9600 (old multiprocessor 604 computer) and a pc owner (1 dual pentium 166, 1 dual pentium pro, 2 dual pentium II 333 a single processor athlon and a partridge in a pear tree ;-) ), I'd say that my experience with multiprocessor computers is very favorable. Running Linux/FreeBSD or Windows 2000/NT, it really makes the machine more useable. Like if I encode a MP3 on my single processor computer, it will chew up all the processor time and make other programs running deadly slow (on my windows 2000 machine), but on the dual processor machine (windows 2000 or freebsd/linux) the machine can easily encode a mp3 and it will only chew up 50% resources.
I think Apple jumped the gun with dual G4s, but NOW IS NOT THE TIME to stop making them. OS X will take advantage of the extra CPU and make the thing fly!
--
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Why can't you see the superiority of the Intel architecture? Do paper benchmarks lie? Do you presume that they don't tell all of the story?
I long for the day I too can see base and extended memory shown on my Mac's bootup screen, and I will be forced to refer to my disks as C and D, as opposed to "windows not allowed here" or "NT fucking sucks".
Great days are ahead of us, m'boys...
Contrast that with Windows NT, Linux 2.x, and OS-X which can run any program, including the operating system itself on any available processor - a much more effective and useful solution.
Ehh, Linux PPC supports more than one processor without much problems.
And BeOS.
And MacOS X server.
What in the HELL are you talking about?
Guilty! =) but I do have an Apple IIe and a few Classic's does that count for anything ?
--
Jon - TheSpork
>exclusive deals with people like Motorola
Sadly, this is far from the truth. Selling PowerPC chips to Apple accounts for a tiny fraction of Motorola's profits. Almost all of their focus is on the mobile and embedded markets. Many higher-end routers have G3's in them, I do believe. As a result, Motorola cares very little that G4's have not increased in speed since over a year ago. As I always say in these discussions, if Apple/Steve would just open their eyes, and let IBM supply them with G4's, the Mhz gap could close very quickly.
I can't think of any greater success story than IBM's personal computer business. Come to think of it, I can't think of any product more innovative than Windows. Oh! I forgot to mention that I am a moron.
I think it has some potential. Granted, G4 Cube sales have been a disappointment. But iMac sales are starting to drop off. High-end iMac DV sales apparently did pretty well, because there is little inventory left on these. Given that the high-end iMac DV SE sells for $1500, maybe a G3 Cube would be a good product to replace the high-end iMac.
How about a bundle: G3 Cube + RAGE 128 + 15 inch flat screen? By bundling the screen with the G3 Cube, Apple might be able to sell the whole package for under $2000. Consider that Compaq and Acer are marketing flat-screen PC bundles for about that price. Such a product would address one complaint about the iMac, its all-in-one design.
There are reasons why Apple might not do this. For one, it might hurt sales of the G4 Cube. But my sense is that anyone who might stretch a bit to reach $2K for a G3 Cube would not go for the G4 Cube anyway. Since G4 sales are poor, it does not appear that the cachet of the trendy design is really moving the product anyway. So, why not market the design to another segment to try to recoup the investment?
Yeah, that's what I said. Linux PPC is Linux too. But MacOS 9 and earlier don't _really_ support SMP - they just allow custom-written programs to use the second CPU.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
multi-processor products plus very very probable chip shortage (500Mhz G4 anyone?) = twice as many angry customers.
Dynamiclly Linked Library. Though I have never programmed on the MacOS, I'm pretty sure you have something similar. Anyhow, I don't really see the point of your argument. If there is a problem with DLLs it is simply a bug in the program(or in some cases the dll), not in the concept of DLLs.
Actually, Mac's don't really use something similar to DLLs. There are a few shared libraries in a few programs (MS Office for Mac, for example) that get stuck in the system folder.
But by and large, that is one of the things that has made sure I always own at least one Mac... to escape from the tangled .DLL mess of my PC. Uninstallers for many programs are a joke, and often can't or won't delete DLLs that they should be removing.
Plus, all the code usually stored in those DLLs is right inside the app on the Mac, so no more "can't find the DLL so-an-so in any of your paths" errors.
Whatever. Just thought you should know. :)
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
No, back in October Motorola said that they would have 1 GHz G4s someday. Eventually. Not in October. Not today. Later...
Configurations for the new Power Mac G4 systems are shaping up as follows:
*Power Mac G4 450 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 30 GB, DVD, 56K
*Power Mac G4 Dual 500 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB, DVD, CD-RW, 56K
*Power Mac G4 Dual 600 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB, DVD, CD-RW, 56K
Here's the article
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
Hopefully this won't cause a major flame war, but it shouldn't. I just really don't see the point of doing posts like this.
Should Apple stop making Macs. Should Linus and all the others stop what they're doing to? I don't think there's much of an argument in the my-os-is-better-the-rest-should-give-up meme as successful as it's been. It doesn't matter if the "real-world" uses windows. If they do, then they probably made the decision that was best for them.
It's just simple organics and evolution that if there's more than one operating system, more people's needs will be met and all of the o/s's will continue to get better. This kind of competition is good for everybody. Even the worry of fragmentation and certain systems not being compatible with others is of not much bother. We all seem to be doing just fine communicating with all the different platforms.
So why am I responding to such obvious flamebait, even at the risk of losing karma? I think it's because I'm stoned.
But all in all, chastizing people about platform choice will get nobody anywhere. It's just nice to have a lot of choices.
Jeremy McNaughton
------ Live simply so that others may simply live.
--
--
Poliglut.org: 75 Million gun owners can't be wrong
I submitted this in Oct. but was DENIED. hehe. No anymosity
:/
Motorola has hit 1 Ghz with the G4 Processor. Here's the story from CNET
I'm sure Apple's pricing might scare people away from a G4 too, unless they sell a kid
aztek: the ultimate man
No sig for you!!
Who told you that? The above post is entirely
correct:dual processor 9600's entirely sup-
ported by the os. The problem was that few
app's could take advantage of the 2 processors,
photoshop being one of the few that could...
--
"First of all, Apple is falling farther and farther behind on the performance race. "
Have you compared the speeds of say a G4/500 dual processor system and one using a high end AMD or Intel chip? The systems are very comparable. The Mac will easily hold its own, and in certain tasks, like in photoshop etc, it is much much faster. they are not "falling farther and farther behind."
"Second, software: I'm sure I won't have too much trouble convincing the die-hard command line users that MacOS is inefficient and hard to use, but even in terms of GUI, the once-proud Apple has been overtaken by BeOS and Windows ME, and has GNOME and KDE hot on its heels. Much like hardware, Apple is handicapped by its users' insistence that changes be minor and easy to adapt to. "
MacOS is inefficient? Hard to use? I believe most people will acknowledge that MacOS is one of the easiet OSes to use. It is criticized sometimes for not being "sophisticated" enough for the power user. This does not make it inefficient. Though it lacks features like protected memory, etc, is it a very efficient OS, in the sense that Mac users are very very productive. Ask a graphic artist or desktop publisher. the mac OS is not hard to use, nor is it inefficient. Compared to Windows ME and the various Linux GUIs available, the average new computer user will find the Mac OS the easier to use.
You also comment on Apple's lack of "innovation.". Lets see, I'll name a few. These are not necessarily all apple inventions, but Apple was the first to actually bring these to the masses:
1. Firewire.
2. USB as the main I/O interface.
3. Get rid of legacy ports
4. iMovie - video editing for the masses
5. iMac - an easy to setup, all in one unit that appeals to the "average joe" who doesnt always care about technical specs
6. Optical mouse standard on all systems
7. OS X
8. Innovative Industrial design
9. Colorsync technology
My dog ate my sig...
"everyone else in the world knows that selling PC hardware is a low margin game and that Apple's forte is their OS"
so that's why the icube started at $1800 when you could get a comparable windoze system for less than $800!
and that 17 year old mac os that still does not have protected memory or pre-emptive multi-tasking is apple's forte...?
just wait a minute, mac os x will be here real soon now...
and apple has discontinued dual cpu macs, could it be that people saw the mac os 9.x did not support dual cpus'?
"...can you imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER of these? That'd be some serious power!"
I'm not suggesting you abandon your Octane box for a PC any time soon. If you spend all your time running certain applications, it only makes sense to use the machine that works best. However, what you said was that "the reality is that the SGI will easily outpace both systems at most tasks", which is simply not true. It may outpace the other systems at one particular task that particularly benefits from a large L2 cache, or from its graphics subsystem. But if you want to talk about general performance ("most tasks"), give me benchmarks, not anecdotes.
Been watching these boxes for a while, and I think there are a few things to note.
1. The dual processors... Apple can go back to dual processors again when OS X is on them mainstream. Right now with 9.04 multiprocessing is barely useful for most users (photoshop users being perennial exception. Meanwhile a 733mhz G4 at 133mhz is pretty big news since what it will do is make everything faster in the short term.
2. MacOs X is not gonna be truly ready until September (a year late but hey, Win95 was supposed to come in 93 and we know NT 5 was supposed to come out in 95.:)) At that point I hope to see Dual 733's at 133mhz bus.What will the Win world have? WinME running Pentium III's?
3. It would be great if MacOS ran on more boxes than just Apples but they didn't do so well with that. Asking them to move to cheap commodity hardware is not really rational.The real deal here is that folks don't recognize true cost of ownership with computers until they have owned a few. The real shame is that Apple HAS reduced costs by using crappier equipment and it bit them.
4. The biggest problem Apple had was that no one wants to buy a new machine until OS X comes out. Apple was ready with a whole new set of boxes that would have looked really perty with the perty new OS but instead they are running same old OS 9. If Apple really wanted to get new models sold and empty it's inventory, finish the OS in the 1Q...
I am a longtime Apple user and Linux user and I hope to use both for a long time to come. As long as Apple makes machines that last me 5+ years I am not gonna bitch much. Since I am still using a 7600 with a g3 upgrade card I am definately waiting. I like the idea of a dual processing 733mhz, but in truth there is a sweet spot right now with dual 450....1999...No matter what anyone says about comparing 300 dollar pc's with this, the G4 is a better chip than anything Intel makes. Athlon might manage to screw that up if they keep raising the mhz but sheerly for media related stuff, the G4 rocks.Just RIP a few CD's...
dlg
Having recently upgraded to a dual CPU system (dual Pentium III/800 Running FreeBSD) for the first time in my life, it's a real treat. I'd have a hard time going back. I can basiclt dedicate one processor to some evil large computing job, and still edit/compile/test code with no real lag. It's cool. I'd like to see more affordable SMP systems out there. I got mine dirt-cheap on ebay, but for the most part, dual and quad systems are out of reach of the average user, and that's a bummer...
I see how joe dumb user doesn't get too much use from it if they are just playing games, but hell, anybody doing any programming, content creation, etc... could get good use out of one. I think that is really the way to go... It's getting harder and harder to get more clocks out of the same piece of silicon, and nowadays that most serious processor hog apps are either threaded or distributed across processes, there is no good reason not to go SMP for everything if it can be made affordable.
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
If you read the article, they point out the issue that these faster chips may not be available for a while....
On the other hand, if Mot really can cough up a 733 G4, I would much rather be running Photoshop on that than a 1Ghz Athalon (or After Effects, or ...)
The real down side to the story is the comment about how most of the systems are likely to be single processor. This is going in the wrong direction. Alot of potential buyers are going to be quite disappointed. Frankly, I was hoping for a base single processor system, a mid-range dual processor, and a high-end quad processor system. If you've had to sit for an hour while AE renders 3 freaking seconds of footage, you'll know why I was hoping for quad processor towers....
But for what most of the Hertz whiners out there do with their systems, no, quad processors won't quadruple the frame rate of Doom.
Aren't G4 RISC-type chips of some sort?
PowerPC is a RISC archtecture. Same family lineage as IBM's POWER chips.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
MacOs X is not gonna be truly ready until September
What is the world does this mean? I use OSX every day as my primary OS. Except for incompletely 24-bit color support, it works great. Since I start using it in September, the OS has never crashed on me (though Classic can get a bit unruly at times).
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
It's about damn time.
As for Apple (or more specifically Motorola) lagging behind AMD and Intel in terms of speed. This will keep more current Mac users with the platform, but Apple is going to need Mot to kick out 1Ghz chips real soon.
they've sued the few websites that support them
This is garbage. Most rumor sites publish rumors for personal gain -- whether it be for fame or money. They are taking advantage of 6-12 months worth of hard work on the part of Apple and blowing it all in one day. I don't see how this is "supporting" Apple. It's not as if Apple is going to sell more boxes because of the rumor sites.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
<pet peeve>
A NON-ERGONOMIC optical mouse with ONE FREAKING BUTTON!
</pet peeve>
All i have to say is i better be able to make my toast in this one.
Well, from the Bunyip FAQ:
Why did we choose Intel Pentium III processors?
Some of our code has already been optimised to use the SSE instruction extensions of the Intel Pentium III processors, so we were initially baised in this direction. We looked at using the PowerPC G4 processor and determined (with tests performed by Paul Mackerras of Linuxcare) that a 350Mhz G4 can attain 1.6GFLOPS in single-precision using the Altivec instruction extensions making this a very attractive alternative, however the cost of these machines at the time made them less attractive.
We were also looked keenly at the AMD Athlon processor with the 3DNow instruction extensions, but could not get these with a dual-CPU motherboard at the time.
Win ME is a flaming pile. Win 2K is much better- m,ore on par w/ OSX (with out the unix compatibility). Of course OSX will cost only $100 (w/ apache). Win 2K starts at $150. Just remember you get what you pay for
Move 'zig'!
Up until now I was totally confused about the Microsoft monopoly and trial and all that.
Your circular logic has totally cleared up any confusion. Thanks!!
What is really significant about these new machines is the faster bus speed. While PCs have been humming along with 133mhz+ busses, the G4s have been hindered by (100mhz?) busses. But even more so, the dual G4s have been hindered. Apple has shown than plunking two G4s into a box instead of one is easy, so future machines (spring? summer?) may even feature two 733mhz (1ghz?) G4s in them.
Maybe the tortoise is catching the rabbit?
If we are going to throw out the idea of "bring this to the masses" then I think the nod would have to go to NeXT...
8. SGI did this first.
** Sig-a-licious **
only $100 (w/ apache).
Whoa! What a value add! I'm gonna buy OSX just for the free copy of apache!
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
I would pay real money to see them upgrade any of thier MacOS line to MacOS 10.
Does Sun offer an upgrade path from Windows 3.1 to SunOS ?
<sarcasm>Ooh!! a definitive source!!</sarcasm> I do regularly read macorsurmors, but after having watched them for a long time, they rarely are barking up the right tree... sometimes they get it right, but this is a one man operation, without any real solid sources. Interesting, but nothing to base real decisions on.
Microsoft has a monopoly because the real world uses Windows.
Still deciding what to get; the iBook, all cute and cuddly like, the PowerBook, all serious and stoic, or the G4 Cube, suave and classy.
In terms of performance, PCs seem to be fast enough that faster just doesn't matter. Why would I need a 1.5GHz system? I'm running on a 500MHz system, and plan to be running it for another few years yet. Heck, even 800MHz would seem to last for at least 5 years, given my track record with my last computer.
Still, I'll probably think a 500MHz Apple sucks, right? I dunno, I don't have enough experience with the G3/G4 to say; do they age particularly better than a x86?
On the other hand, I am enamored with Apple's drive for innovation.
The USB IO adoption
The Firewire IO adoption
The use of Airport and wireless networking
Mac OSX (in the near future), and Unix stability, without the ugliness of Linux!
Well, Linux isn't quite ugly, it's damn functional, but sorta a pain to set up. Win2k is such a breeze to use.
Then there's the quiet fanless iMacs and G4 cubes.
There's the firewireness of the iBooks and Powerbooks.
Optical Mice. Everywhere
*Really* nice LCD screens.
Other hardware coolness I'm looking forward to; More snazzy designs!
A Newton2!
Wireless PCs; at least, as much as possible...
OS X!
Pervasive computing!
Inclusion of mic and USB cam with *all* computers!
Instant Messaging type usability in the OS
Other random cool stuff...
Still, they aren't dead yet, and they're still doing okay...
Maybe I'll regret writing this post in a few months, when I have my Apple. I'll post and let everyone know!
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
just use gimp it is button 4 button exactly like photoshop and free
This is extremely depressing to me. I've greatly enjoyed the fact that my 500mhz powerbook that i bought about a year ago is still the fastest clock speed you can buy in a macintosh. None of that silly next door neighbor buying the newest faster chip every two weeks for me. Way to make your computers appear to become obsolete a little less quicky apple!
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
That all of the companies out there pooled all of the best resources together and came up with the ultimate solution that handled all of the performance demands, ease of use for those who like it that way, and the complexity for those who choose to come in the side entrances.
Are we really asking too much? Apple makes a good products. *NIX is superior. Microsoft is easy to use. Yet they all refuse to recognize each other on so many different levels. They can only play tug of war for so long before it gets old.
It's really time to think about creating something that mutually ties the whole thing together. It is the next step. To hell with the competition factor, I want answers not this shit we have to listen to and deal with every day about who's doing what better than the next guy. It's a civilized war that's not so civilized if you look at the principals behind the issue. Who pays? You do.
.
An optical mouse was standard on my PC Jr in 1985.... go figure.
I tried an Apple at the mall and was amazed by how responsive it was. It was running the demo that shows all the features of firewire airport etc. As a windows user I was shocked at the smoothness of the animation and it's response to mouse clicks. I really can't believe that people think PCs are faster after trying an iMac. Intel and Microsoft should be ashamed.
Obviously I'm going to be taking a little shit for the fact that my email is from mac.com... so I must be *clearly* Apple baised :p BAH. My very first comptuer was a 286 laptop, followed by a 386 desktop, and a Pentium 120. It wasn't until I left for college that I got my own Mac. Why? Because it fits my computing needs and desires.
Now you are probably wondering... "Gee thats great, get to the fucking point." My point is that regardless of what you like, what you know, and whom you support, a little research is clearly in order. I'm really growing tired of watching people spew misinformed posts on to the boards and positioning them as fact.
funkdat.
The reason for this is that the G4 has 1 MB L2 Cache, which the Athlons and P3's have reduced in size to push the MHz. Why does this matter?
The L2 Cache has a bandwith of ~10GB/s whereas accessing the main memory is 10 times slower, (PC133 has a bandwith of 1.08GB/s). When you're doing effects in Photoshop, a large L2 cache makes a huge difference, simply because the processor can load 1 mb chunks of the picture into the processor cache and perform the effect on it while the Athlons/PIIIs only have room for a quarter of that. In the very specialised problem that Photoshop is a huge L2 cache matters a lot more than MHz. (Most other apps benefit little from a L2 >256kb)
It would be interesting in seeing a benchmark comparing intel's Xeons (which also has a big L2) and the G4. Also, photoshop optimized for the P4, which thanks to rambus has a high memory bandwith (but small caches) would be interesting.
(As for the other apple "innovations", they're mostly interesting from a design perspective, not technical, so i'll leave them alone :) )
-henrik
they moved to std 3.25" floppies too
err... 3.5" ...whatever...
Welcome to the crowd... but I just hope the next generation OS doesn't cripple all of that. (The core OS may be great, but that doesn't mean anything if the GUI atop it requires too many resources). OS 9.04 may be "bloated", but ANYTHING can happen with OS X.
But you don't have speed for what's required now, you have it for the future. Build it and they will come. Software developers, that is.
Use Moores Law to see at what point the gains slow from buying a expensive system, and whether you would be better saving the money for a future upgrade.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
>You also comment on Apple's lack >of "innovation.". Lets see, I'll name a few. >These are not necessarily all apple inventions, >but Apple was the first to actually bring these >to the masses:
>1. Firewire.
This is probably the best thing I can ever remember them using... It's the best external connection to rival external SCSI I've seen... course if they could just modify the cost to be a bit lower (for devices) than it would be real sweet...
>2. USB as the main I/O interface.
Um I'll take the faster ECP/EPP parellel port anyday thank you... USB's only advantage is # of connectable devices (figuring you want to buy that many USB hubs or own that many USB devices)... If USB could conpete speedwise with ECP/EPP than I would have less of a problem with it, but frankly it can't... (In case your curious ECP/EPP can get 2.4 MBps, as opposed to USB's 1.2 MBps... or in other words twice the speed...)
>3. Get rid of legacy ports
I still use a 5 year old serial mouse because frankly it doesn't want to die... best $50 purchase I ever made... Sure a USB or PS2 mouse may be a bit faster, but I get along just fine as is & haven't had to pay a dime (or even take some time to clean my mouse) since I bought this one... Of course on a Mac that would be rather hard... Oh & that Parellel port zip drive I use to transfer data to machines my clients use wouldn't work either... Legacy has a place for certain people, but even I will buy a new mouse sometime & something to replace my zip drive for file transfers some year (I need more IDE channels to add a CD-RW, so right now that's out), but that's still a ways off...
>4. iMovie - video editing for the masses
Really? I've edited video's back on my old 486DX2 50 Mhz machine... It was slow to do, but you could do it... & my current system (a K6-2 500) does video editing pretty easily... Though then again I don't have a camcorder & normally take pieces made by others & splice them together with various music, etc...
>5. iMac - an easy to setup, all in one unit that >appeals to the "average joe" who doesnt always >care about technical specs
That's why Emachines is sucessful to... both are crappy systems, but sure they hold your hand for you... Packard Bell used to do that to (though they thought they could charge the same price for it)...
>6. Optical mouse standard on all systems
So? Optical mouse may be nice at some things, but I know lots of desktop publishing people & artists that hate that part about the newest mac's...
>7. OS X
Should that read- 7. OS X (when it's released)? Til it's out I wouldn't hype it to much...
>8. Innovative Industrial design
Do you mean the pretty colored cases? or the lack of efficient cooling methods? We have one of those cubes at work & I noticed cooling issues when using it (like the case near the one vent was to hot to touch when I was using it)... Neither thign is as great as you seem to think they are...
>9. Colorsync technology
Well gee I've had the equivalent of that on my PC for some time now as well... Sure Mac may have gotten their first, but they don't have the same questions about how they should implement a feature as they do in the PC world... When they do I'll be more impressed...
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