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Mac Rants
There's a piece by Scott Wasson regarding the claims of Apple, of late, and his...feelings on it. It's a pretty ranty piece, as he says in the beginning, but it's a good discussion starting piece - even tho' I disagree with him to a degree.
Well, if the value metric is how well your computer complements a black turtleneck sweater, then a Mac has to win hands down. :-)
I swear that I must be the only one that remembers the days of impenatrable Mac cases. the whole point of the apple case design way back when was to make it so the end user wouldn't be able to easily get into it. they wanted you to go to a certified apple repair tech (like I was at the time.) the really, really old macs required torx with 12" shafts to get open without breaking or forcing anything. anyone else remember those days? of slowly removing the power supplies just so you could add memory? what a pain.
Sometimes I think everyone forgets that apple's "easy access" case design is a complete about face from their previous efforts. I don't always think pulling a 180 is good, since that means you were going half-assed to start with.
that, and from an old crusty apple tech... pretty cases do not a powerful impressive machine make (apple OR x86.)
EOM
why people get so worked up about this.
I've never seen a flame war about why people drive $60k luxury cars when they could buy a ford mustang for $20k that will crush it in 0-60.
Why don't people flip over commercials that unscientifically compare dishwashing detergents or make outrageous claims like most products.
Of course apple is going to use benchmarks that make their product look better. If their market share grows enough to threaten dell or gateway, they'll do the same thing.
Even if one platform is better than the other - who cares? It is just a machine; people who call mac users 'fags' or pc users 'morons' have some other issues they need to work out.
btw: How come I don't see many touting that the 1.2 Ghz Athlon is some how lacking in ability when compared to the 1.8 Ghz Pentium 4?
Because the 1.2GHz Athlon4+DDR is as fast, if not faster, in most real world applications* than the 1.8GHz Pentium4+RDRAM. No one touts that it's lacking because it's not.
Here are some Linux benchmarks (do some sniffing around for some Win32 benchmarks, they're everywhere) that illustrate my point:
http://www.gamepc.com/reviews/hardware_review.as p? review=p4xlsmp&page=1&mscssid=&tp=
* The P4 platform has more memory bandwidth, but contemporary apps don't need it. The only thing that consistently runs faster on the Pentium 4 is Q3A. :-)
I was particularly amused by the rant's dismissal of Mac's lower risk from viruses. Yes, Macs can't run x86 code, and if the Mac had a bigger market share, it would probably have a bigger virus share--but is that relevant to a buying decision? If computer X is comparable to computer Y for all of the applications that you use, but computer Y has an enormously greater exposure to viruses, which is a better choice?
I would think that if one really wants to do a comparison between different systems, be it P4 vs Athlon, P4 vs G4, Athlon vs G4, etc, then benchmarking suites should be bundled by type. For instance, you come up with a suite of benchmarking apps that are specifically targetted to a specific type of use: If you wish to compare systems for use as a graphics development setup use Photoshop, various renderers. Include in this not just the time for the machine to complete a task once it is initiated, but also include timings on how long it takes a user to get initiate the final transforms/rendering. Here you would measure speed to complete the task for the machine as well as how long it takes an individual using it to do the deed. You could, in theory, have a Mac that does the graphics transforms, etc, faster than the PC but see that it takes more keystrokes (or mouse clicks) to get to the point of actually initiating the render/transform.
Next, have a suite of apps/tasks specific for a server: fileserver, webserver, printserver, etc. Then have a suite specific for office and research-related tasks: wordprocessing, database, spreadsheet, presentation type apps.
I think we can ignore actions like email and web browsing since this can be done effectively on ANY system and is not a problem/bottleneck for any system.
Games are a problem: there are way more games for the PC than the Mac. There are some games that you can find for both but they are still rare so I am not sure if this is really a relevant test at this point. Perhaps once MacOS X is more ubiquitous on Macs and Mac software is standardized on it, you will find more cross-platform games and be able to do some game benchmarking. Until then you would need to take each benchmark as provisional and not all that useful. Right now, if you really like to play computer games the Mac is not the platform to go with (yet, at least).
It is nonsensical to mix and match this stuff the way it seems to be done right now. The Mac creams the PC with photoshop filter transforms! Oh yeah? The PC creams the Mac on database access speed and updating! Apples and oranges and not generally something that is heavily mixed on a machine. You usually have a server that does just that - acts as a server. It doesn't get used for graphics design and games. You have a Mac, you can't avoid doing some productivity crap with wordprocessors and the like but you are likely mostly using it for some specific task like web design, graphic design, and the like. Benchmarks should be so focused so that people can see how each system stacks up for specific tasks - then they can decide which system does what they will be doing better and more cost-effectively.
It would also provide some nice clean measures of weakness that each system designer can use as goalposts to reach.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Regardless of which side of the fence you sit, the fact is that for some operations, the fastest G4s outperform the fastest Pentiums. If you're a graphic designer or video editor, Mac is the way to go, hands down. If you're a programmer or gamer, you'll probably be just as happy with x86. However, for those of us who don't have the time to be mucking around with our equipment, the mac os is much easier to trouble shoot for software conflicts, and the layout of the os makes it much easier to know just what is in the system.
It's Slashdot. What did you expect? Seriously.
max
Mac OS may have tiny marketshare, but Apple sells more computers than anyone, so why should they switch? Sure they could cut costs on R&D but the profit margins are cut a lot thinner too.
From any user's standpoint it makes even less sense for Apple to do this. Apple makes great software, but moving to Wintel would throw them in the same boat with all the other Windows developers. That is to say at the mercy of MS un-documented APIs and other dubious Windows problems.
This is to say nothing of what would happen to the future of Windows development if there was no consumer OS to compete with MS. Honestly, I don't see how you could think this would benefit ANYONE except MS and Intel.
For someone who claims to hate Microsoft, that is a pretty bad idea. Linux is a fine alternative to Windows for geeks, but Mac OS is the only consumer OS that competes with Windows. Sure it only runs on Apple hardware, and it has tiny marketshare compared to MS, but at least it forces MS to keep improving Windows...
Not that linux doesn't/can't/won't, but Apple does a great service to x86 owners running Windows.
I'll admit 3-D games come in a close second for potential for "fair" benchmarking, but have a few problems:
a) they are games, rather than productivity (ie: financially justifiable) applications
b) a very limiting factor in frame rate is the video card, rather than the CPU or the motherboard bus/cache.
c) multi-platform video games are usually released first for the larger PC market, and therefore invariably have better and more thorough PC driver support for all those fancy 3-D video cards.
When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said, "To know one's self." And what was easy, "To advise another."
don't they sell usb port clusters with all the standard stuff (serial & parallel, for instance)?
Reboot macht Frei.
It's certainly true that on a slow news day (if any such thing ever afflicts /.) a good Apple-oriented flame war does wonders for the blood pressure. But both those silly AAPLtalk comparison charts and the (slashdotted) "rant" above deserve some credit for trying to shine some light into the darkness of "why do people care so much?"
Though this forum, populated as it is by many thousands of folks who go neither way in the Apple/MS debate, may not be the most sympathetic place to say it, there are big fat differences between Windows and the Mac OS.
The "MHz myth" and shitty GeForce drivers are part of what sets us apart, but the rationale of the rabid Mac user (I am one, I admit it) revolves around esthetics, both artistic and operational. I'm not talking only about pretty translucent plastic cases or sexy PowerBook curves - but the truth is, these things matter. Gaba's dismissal of the floppy's importance might ring hollow to some, but his awarding of points for the G4's easily-accessed interior is easily overlooked. Design issues have a strong bearing on how people interact with the machines that serve them - whether that relationship feels adversarial or cooperative depends on many small factors that, together, determine quality design.
Easy-access cases are just one of those; clean, uncluttered user interface, reliable hardware (something many people forget is how tough Apple products are), and genuinely useful, user-friendly bundled apps (iMovie, iDVD, iTunes) are all important parts of the Mac design ethic. You only needed to look at an issue of the Mercury News a few weeks ago to sum up the difference: Microsoft made headlines for, again, lobbying John Ashcroft to drop the Justice Department's historic antitrust suit; Apple became one of a handful of companies to begin recycling harmful computer components like mercury and boron.
It may sound simple, but it works for me: everywhere I look, whether at my computer screen, the business pages, or the aisles of a computer store, Apple products are better-designed and better-made. Dare I say, by better people? For a better world? It's easy to laugh, and then turn back to an unrecognizably ugly Windows interface that still reminds me of playing Boulderdash II on an EGA screen.
My means are as tight as anyone else's (more so, I sometimes think over my Ramen noodles), and the Apple premium's a bitch. But we are ever sub specie aeternitatis - and we must do what we can.
> tomorrow zdnet stories will be posted ad nausem
Not exactly, they'll somehow manage to mispell a few words and probably give an unsupported opinion
as well.
Don't read this sig cause it's not worth it.
Read the parent again. He's saying that Apple will have cause to worry when x86 boxes can do it. Which, incidentally, they can, if you're willing to buy some pretty expensive hardware.
Which we tried, but we heard the front cover creak as if it were ready to crack. If you look up "good thing" in the dictionary, you won't find that listed as an example.
you know, now that you mention it, i suppose that could be considered a bit ominous. probably even more so when you actually paid good money for that system and aren't just pulling it out of storage and pulling out parts before sending it to the knacker's.
--saintDid you read the GNOME usability study posted here a while ago? Average users, even after years of computer use, still have lots of trouble with two button mice. Not including one is still the right choice -- if you want one, go buy any USB mouse and plug it in. OS X has native support for multi-button mice, and even scroll wheels, although that's a bit incomplete and buggy still.
As for games, OS X has Quake 3, Alice, The Sims, Tony Hawk 2, and a bunch of other stuff. Not bad for a 4 month old OS.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Indeed.
and more importantly, a small thing compared to the added functionality of multiple buttons.
...claims the /. commenter, who obviously has no experience with the average computer user, or just can't understand that what he takes for granted isn't always generalizable to everyone.
-- Colin
I've written for a Mac-specific hardware site and a Mac-specific gaming site, and it always riles me when I see Mac-intoxicated fools talk about hardware comparisons. Jobs knows it, I know it, you know it -- Macs are not faster across the board when compared to WinPCs.
;^)
/.'d, obviously), it basically just says that some self-professed Apple loving schmoe has a charted comparison where the PowerMac wins out against P4 toting p33c33z.
But here's the key: Apple doesn't try nor need to be the fastest. As Jobs and the Mac team have realized, Apple's niche is the "solution provider". On the consumer front it's digital video (iMovie and iDVD) as well as hobbyist music trader/burners (iTunes, which is a wonderful application, imo). Naturally, the Mac also needs solid consumer software to round out consumer needs, thus Appleworks and (on OS X) Mail.app (another great app). This also explains Apple's partnership with MS for Office as well as IE.
This is also why Apple emphasizes design as much as they do -- to get the sales to these people who will never need a 1+ Megahertz ANYTHING, the casual daily computer user. Believe me, Granny don't need no Celeron 800 MHz, but that's the cheapest thing she's going to find these days. The processor doesn't matter with this market; the experience (which I'll wager you can get on Windows or Apple nearly equally) does. Don't underestimate the importance to the consumer of feeling like they look cool. (enter Exhibit A, my new iBook *sigh*)
For professionals, Macs target, obviously, Photoshop users. The whole freakin' processor is designed, by no small coincidence, around speedy Photoshop use! Nor is it any secret that many filters are optimized for Macs. Once Apple stops winning these biased comparisons, they'll have finally lost their niche market -- that of being the provider of a niche solution. They've thrown all their eggs into one (okay, a few) basket[s] and decided to, "Watch that basket!!!"
That Macs play games, run Java, crunch numbers, comes with vi installed, etc, all of these are secondary priorities if not downright lucky fringe benefits of Apple's targeting to provide niche solutions. Please, for heaven's sake, stop comparing Apples to WindowsPC or vice versa to see which computer you should buy. In a general comparison, Windows *should* always win. In certain specific cases, Apple should win. That's the way [for the short run at least] Apple wants it! Let what you want to do with your machine determine which you buy. Stop feeling like you have to apologize for it (or dupe others into silly "MHz Myth"-like arguements) to retain your dignity. If you like your Mac or your BillBox, it doesn't matter what zealots like myself think.
Ruffin Bailey
In case you're having a hard time getting to the article (it's been
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Fuck you man, vi totally rules all over emacs....
Hey, you think your house is cool?
In my case, it has to do with what I do with computers.. Being that I develop web applications, I'd typically have a Linux box, which I do my development on, a Windows box, mostly for testing browsers, and a Mac box, for Photoshop and the like.. Admittedly, I could use Photoshop in Windows, but it's a matter of preference. Additionally, I do DV in my spare time, so Firewire is a must. And then there's the problem of portability.. I can't be carrying 3 machines around with me all the time, laptop or not, and reducing it to 2 by using VMWare is not something I want to do.
So, with all those things in mind, the perfect platform for me ends up being MacOS X. I get to use all the unix tools I'm used to (in a better GUI), I have IE, Netscape and Mozilla all in the same box, and I have Photoshop and all my DV tools. Throw that into a tiny notebook (the iBook) along with Airport, and I have a pretty kick-ass all-in-one solution.
The value of a computer depends on an individual's needs.. It just so happens that a typical user can get everything he or she wants in a cheap PC (albeit less aesthetically pleasing), for less than your average Mac.
The music industry isn't worth addressing here, it's pretty much a lost cause. But just imagine what might happen if x86 manufacturers started trying to beat Apple at their own game? Or even more importantly, if the Linux community stopped griping about what a pack of lemmings we all are and started appealing to the public's odd sensibilities. Put some ease of use in there (well-designed GUIs, plug & play drivers, etc), instead of thumbing your nose at the people whose life doesn't center around computers.
The root problem is that different people have different definitions of "superior", and techies often don't seem to understand that to the common user, ease-of-use is a lot more important than underlying technology.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
-- John Carmack (2001-06-04)
-jfedor
Nuff said.
True.. I guess it depends if you want to test the actual CPU speed, or real world speed, since alot of progs don't use altivec. But I guess that will change.
What will happen if we flame macs out of existance so that MS is able to pick up its megar market share? To the common user, Macs have a high market share to Linux (I believe this is true, mod me down if I'm wrong.. I have no data), and so MS will effectively have the entire monopoly. This will screw linux users because then new hardware will be even more MS (read not=Linux) friendly. (ie, Plug and Play, winmodems)
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
... why doesn't yours?
I do not use the mouse that came with my PC; why should I use the mouse that came with my Mac?
..complain about if this benchmark wasnt performed? Basically he's saying the benchmark was unfair, but on the same token, he fails to mention that comparing apples to pcs is like, um, well, comparing apples to oranges.... it's about as pointless as comparing a dump truck to a minivan. both have their similiarities, but also their specialized uses. I still cant, after reading the article, tell if this guy is simply upset that somebody is making an apples to oranges comparison, or if he's just trying to start a "PCS ARE BETTER BECAUSE I SAY SO. WE ARE 3R33T!!" type holy war. If thats the case, he needs to study up on how to properly degrade a competing product. If he's trying to have any journalistic integrity, i surely cant tell...
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
I use a PowerBook G3 400 because it meets my day-to-day needs; runs Mac OS 9, Windows 98 (in emulation fast enough for most of the games I play), and UNIX (Mac OS X); allows me to do computational modeling and analysis (neural modeling); has region-free DVD; and is pretty well invulnerable to most security problems. Even when I upgrade next week to a G4 500, I'll keep it around to watch DVDs on.
No, Photoshop isn't the only application that has the same versions, capabilities, etc. and can tax the machine. Have you ever seen gaming benchmarks between a Mac and a PC? How about benchmarks between a Mac and an overclocked PC? (Some guys are hitting >2.0GHz with their ATHLONS, believe it or not. See www.hardforum.com in the Overclocking & Cooling section).
macs are based on a RISC instruction set therefore more likely that it will take the Mac 3 instructions where the PC would take 1
To what degree do you disagree with Damage? His argument against the article he references is pretty convincing. The "Decision Matrix" the guy uses in the original article is full of mistakes and far from an objective comparison of Macs vs. PCs. The original article's author is also one of those people who *still insist* the G4 is faster than the Pentium 4 (and he conveniently "forgets" about the Athlon!) Damage calls the guy to the carpet over these things, and it's hard to find holes in what he says.
So, how do you disagree with him?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Not to forget that if you have a Mac, it's impossible to play any games on the thing. Apple's done a poor job of seeing what people want in their computers. Pong for the Mac Game Designer - "Well, to make the thing profitable, we had to remove the little ball." Gamer - How do you play it? Game Designer - "Well, you do have to move the paddles up and down pretending that the ball is there, but it's almost the same."
*Supply-Sided economics rock my world*
I have submitted a ton of relevant news as well, but have not had any posted. The news here is starting to get weird.
> This author really doesn't know what he's talking about.
This message is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. In other words, you made this claim about the person, and you then followed up by making a statement that rather conclusively proves the same about yourself.
> The G4 processor is very powerful and the Mac architecture is well designed.
> As far as speeds go, Macs use a different
> instruction set technology, so an operation on a
> PC might take it 3 instructions, while on a Mac
> it only takes one.
This is the sentence to which I object. The x86 instruction set is referred to as CISC, while the PPC instruction set (I don't know its proper formal name) is referrer to as RISC. In reality, the distinction is not so clear, since CISC and RISC are really just idealized philosophies. But to the general point, one of the basic tendencies of RISC-based instruction set are that the instructions are more basic. By this, I mean that there is often a leaning towards RISC having fewer instructions, with each instruction performing a more primitive operation. In a CISC-based instruction set, it is more likely to have a larger array of more complex instructions. Due to these philosophical differences, it is more likely for a RISC instruction set to require *more* instructions per action than a CISC instruction set. The benefit on the RISC side is that the simplified instructions sometimes, even in combination, can offer lower latencies and higher throughputs, though in modern processors of today, this advantage is not very apparent save for the current required x86 increase in decode stages, which seems to only be a significant factor in cases of branch misprediction (and, even then, the relative penalty is pretty small).
Anyway, current PPC processors do buck that particular RISC trend in some ways. The G4, for instance, has a MAC (or Multiply-ACcumulate) instruction which acts like a multiply then an add. Still, in general, in the real world, the latency of a processor is more a function of the microarchitecture than of the instruction set. And the instruction throughputs typically matter more for actual performance. In this area, I do not believe that the G4 family has a significant advantage in most cases (save for MAC and PERMUTE commands).
-JC
In all seriousness, this is probably the worst opinion piece I've read ever. He provides no support for his contention that the Mac is underpowered (he made a comment about not being able to run more than one app at a time, has he used a Mac in the last 10 years?). I run a G3-500 iMac at home that easily outperformed the PIII-700 IBM Thinkpad I was using for Win2k Pro. Open up Outlook, Excel, and Photoshop on the thinkpad and you have to reboot. Open Entourage, Excel, and Photoshop on the iMac and no problem (both machines with 192M RAM). So this guy hates Macs, big deal. Hardly makes him a credible source of critique since he made his mind up long before he wrote the article.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
This author really doesn't know what he's talking about. The G4 processor is very powerful and the Mac architecture is well designed. As far as speeds go, Macs use a different instruction set technology, so an operation on a PC might take it 3 instructions, while on a Mac it only takes one. In that case, if the PC does 2 instructions per second and the Mac only does 1 (so the PC would be 2 times as "fast") The PC would take 1.5 seconds to complete the same task the Mac completed in 1 second. This is why you can compare an 833 G4 with a 1500 P4.
~ now you know
I started using macs when I was kid. I used one at my dad's work around '85 and got hooked. Anyhow, here's my two cents.
*Every* OS I've ever used has had something about it that was a huge pain in the ass.
Weaknesses:
Mac OS: NO: Preemptive multitasking, Dynamic memory allocation, Large amounts of software, Protected memory.
Windows: 'The registry', Lower quality software, DLL Hell , security / bug / driver updates and problems.
Unix: Lacking good web browsers, install / boot problems, X11 config problems, cryptic errors during config and installs.
Mac OS X: I'll form an opinion when I get it and use it for a while, I refuse to form one on second hand information.
Strengths:
Mac OS: Lack of driver problems, More fluid workflow, Simplicity of hardware and software.
Windows: Defacto standard, Wider rage of hardware choices, Most used browser, Large selection of software.
Unix: Nearly impossible to crash, It's *free*, Roll-your-own, Best web and database serving and networking.
Mac OS X: Part Unix, part Mac. (See above)
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
I'm not sure that they should be attacking the "MHz myth" either, but at least they don't seem to be targeting the propaganda at consumer/education users, but at the pro users, who would have more time at stake with regards to CPU power...
When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said, "To know one's self." And what was easy, "To advise another."
You said: c) multi-platform video games are usually released first for the larger PC market, and therefore invariably have better and more thorough PC driver support for all those fancy 3-D video cards. If I recall correctly, Photoshop was developed for the Mac platform first, and is more optimized for it.
Although I believe the bake-offs are honest, I don't claim that the G4 is always as fast as the big boys, just that it is NOT as slow as its Mhz would otherwise suggest. I am quite sure, however, that it is a more efficient and flexible chip design. I would not ever want a laptop with any non-RISC kind of processor in it.
While iMacs cannot be upgraded (in the standard ways), I would say that Apple pro towers with their side opening doors, 4 full-length PCI slots plus AGP 4X, plus the fact that most drives and cards are mac compatible (often without driver voodoo hell), make upgrading even easier than on a PC equivalent.
Yes, you can build a very suitable PC for less than a grand. I don't think you would find it that easy to build one that really compared to an Apple G4 tower (think about the firewire, 1.5 Gb RAM support, Gigabit ethernet, DVD burning options, etc.).
Yup, the high end Apple machines tend to have high-end price margins on them. The same goes for Dell, Sony, HP, Compaq, IBM, or any other brand name manufacture you can think of.
When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said, "To know one's self." And what was easy, "To advise another."
I'd have to argue on your definition of 'web development'. Personally, as someone whom uses no flash or other animation type stuff on my web sites, I prefer to stick with either using BBEdit for the Mac, or as the need arises, vi.
For graphics, I stick with Photoshop, again, on the Mac side.
That's not to say, however, that I don't check all of my sites in Netscape & IE for both Mac & Windows.
I have no idea what macromedia did wrong [it may be writing non-thread-happy code, as they're handled a little differently between macos and windows, which was why so many java programs ran like shit on a mac]. However, to say that all web development on a wintel box is better than a Mac is a great disservice to those of us whom don't use point-and-click interfaces for web page creation.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Howdy all, I'm the guy who created the original "shootout" comparison at AAPLTalk.
:))
Before you start tearing me to pieces (as I'm sure you will), I thought I should clear up a few things.
1. I am not an engineer or scientist, and never claimed to be an expert on the more technical issues. I'm a simple website designer who was curious as to whether the ancient "overpriced Mac" reputation was still valid, and my conclusion is that while there is still some discrepency between a Mac and a MAJOR BRAND NAME PC, it is not NEARLY as much as most people think. I also CLEARLY state at the bottom that this is in NO WAY intended to be a complete comparison of every possible spec.
2. I never once claimed that the systems I put together were, are, or will be the best that can be bought. These were the best systems *I* could find ON that day, ON that site. I clearly state SEVERAL times that you may very well find a better system, and if you can, good for you! I also clearly state that any number of promotions, bundles, rebates may have changed from day to day (especially with Dell; the day I configged the system they had no real promotions going on; over the weekend they added a free CDRW upgrade. Today (Tuesday) I believe they dropped that in favor of...something else).
3. I emphasize MAJOR BRAND NAME above to remind the "built from scratch" crowd that, again, my comparison CLEARLY STATES that I'm including systems COMPLETELY CONFIGURED off of the six listed brands online stores. I agree that you can certainly put together a killer system for far less by putting the components together yourself. This has nothing to do with THIS comparison. You can change your own oil for the price of a few quarts of 10W-40 as well instead of paying Jiffy Lube $35 as well, but most people tend to prefer not to do so.
4. I do want to thank those who have e-mailed THOUGHTFUL, USEFUL information (and error corrections) to me, from both sides of the fence. Sadly, as I expected, 90% of the mail has been venomous, incoherent ramblings. Why on earth is everyone so ANGRY about this stuff? I started these charts as a mildly interesting observational study, not to start a cyber-riot.
5. However, I have also learned a LOT from those who had something useful to contribute. Based on your e-mail and postings, the number one thing I've discovered is that NO ONE likes the Pentium IV, whether it's a Mac, Windows, Linux, or other user. EVERYONE seems to agree that the 1.4 GHz AMD Athlon kicks the snot out of the 1.8 GHz P4, and most likely the 867 MHz G4 as well. The single biggest oversight on my part (evidently) was not including an Athlon system. I will definitely do this next time (assuming I'm not lynched by then).
6. The scoring system used is, as so many of you have pointed out, somewhat arbitrary. If you aren't a gamer or graphic designer, you might not give a crap about the graphics card. If you're a wedding videographer, iMovie & iDVD might carry 10+ points for you. If you have a bunch of older peripherals, the legacy ports are invaluable. If you're a new computer buyer without any, having a dozen different types of ports might confuse you. The point system, while probably needing some refinement, at least gives SOME sort of quantifiable measurement. How does one "measure" ease of use, or pride in ownership?
7. Many people criticize me for using Photoshop as my processor criteria. However, as a few have pointed out, what the hell else am I supposed to use? The Mac-biased MWNY bakeoff had the G4 kicking the snot out of the P4, while the PC-biased TechTV comparison still had them coming out "even". Since my original posting of the chart, a few people have e-mailed me other benchmark test results; I'll check these out and will do my best to incorporate them the next time I do one of these.
8. Regarding the earlier iMac/iBook comparisons--I've already applied the new multi-point scoring to the 733 and 867 G4 shootouts; I'll try to apply it to these two when I get a chance as well. You wouldn't believe how much time I've already put into what was supposed to be a light-hearted "snapshot" look at the current brand-name PC situation.
9. Perhaps I'm being a bit naive here, but it would have been nice if the guy who wrote the original "Rant" chewing out my comparison had sent me a short e-mail note letting me know about it. I'm an individual, not a faceless corporation; I really think it would have been simple politeness to do so. Guess this is a lost art in cyberspace...
Anyway, ultimately, I have to take all this fuss as something of a compliment. Never expected to stir up such a hornets nest over what is, ultimately, a very silly argument, like debating whether a stick shift or automatic is a better car!
Thanks for your time, Charles Gaba aka BlueDjinn
In my country, government tells us what computer is best, here anyone can decide for himself or hisself!!! Let us determine now, in a free and democratic fashion, if it is Macs or Wintel machines which are best for everyone. Let us not cease our open and candid discussion until we all agree. For many years I wonder about the answer to this question, now we shall all know, once and for all!!! God Bless America!!! I love this country!!!
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
If a non-unix person wants a good computer without the bull shit of blue screens, then a mac is the way to go. Since apple started having different colored cases, how many PC companies started changing their cases? Have you seen a compaq lately? Wait until Windows XP comes out, its elementary school looking interface makes OS X look even better.
if ( random(10) >= 9 )l ");
      acceptStory();
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      sendStory("/dev/nul
Ok so maybe I'm lying, but it seriously seems like it. I totally agree with what you said... I've made 8 story submissions (about 6 in april/may,then I gave up, then I tried again of late) and had them all denied, and it wasn't because someone else posted the story either. I've submitted new stuff on 2600 vs DeCSS (or at the time), new stuff on cloning that I've never seen here, and articles about how 802.11 is dying, all to no avail. WTF is going on here? Is there just a
If God gave us curiosity
Suppose two authors did a shootout between Windows and Linux. One was pro-Linux, the other was pro-Windows. I would be shocked if the reviews didn't come out in favour of the reviewers favourite operating system.
The linux reviewer could point to the potential for stellar security and performance. The windows reviewer could point to the wealth of applications and industry support. Neither would be wrong, yet both would be biased articles.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Okay, I'll admit, I'm a bit biased towards the Mac. I bought my first one at a time when you still had to pay M$ for the Windows license whether you had Windows or not. I'm a capitalist, but that struck me as being closer to Naziism. So I got a Mac and didn't look back. Wow, were you able to get that Mac without the MacOS? Or do you just prefer your Nazis in black turtlenecks?
Oh yeah. I can build my own dream PC, but I'm not good enough to write my own dream OS. So trying what others make, I've always liked Apple OS's the best.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
There will always be rants by disgruntled former Mac users, about "What's wrong with Apple."
There will always be rants by the Apple-Ignorant, who don't understand why anyone would NOT want to use Windows. Or why you can only have one mouse button.
There will always be Mac Zealots who think, "If you aren't for us, you're against us." And then rave like lunatics against anyone who dares question them using logic and reason.
In the middle, there's Apple; a company that really seems to be holding a niche market by making good products that are pretty, get the basic jobs done, and are generally easy to use.
Who's right? Everyone. No one. I don't know, I just wish I could read about Apple without any sense of fanatacism coming into play.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
"I bought my first one at a time when you still had to pay M$ for the Windows license whether you had Windows or not. I'm a capitalist, but that struck me as being closer to Naziism" As if you didn't have to pay the Apple tax for a Mac? How is this better than Windows?
... certainly hasn't brought the company back to the top of the heap. But Scott has clearly forgotten how things were before Jobs got there. Performa anyone?
The Mac Team mostly runs 9.1, because some of the development tools we use don't run under 10 yet.
The 10.0 GUI was pretty slow, and our game ran much slower under 10.0 than under 9.1, but 10.1 seems to be much better (so they tell me; I'm working on PCs myself)
People have been picking cars for years differentiating between power, features, styling, and cost.
I think they can do the same for PCs.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
- Pop-under ads. Everyone needs an X10 whatsits.
- Flash ads. The advertisers needn't know many
/.'ers don't have a Flash plugin installed.
- Ressurect old flamewars. Mac vs PC. CPU Architectures. How many mouse-buttons. Window managers. Big or little endian. ANSI C. Open Sourcing . BSD vs Sys V.
- Articles on old/obscure products with fanatical followings. Amiga. Tandy CoCo. VMS. CP/M. Z80. Toss these folks a bone to gnaw on.
- Use misleading headlines or mischaracterize stories. Chapter-11 means "going down in flames." Wall Street Journal saying "Linux not for everyone" is "Capitalist pigs bash plucky OS".
- Report on a topic. Follow up with how the topic is overhyped. Followup yet again pointing out how the topic is really important. Repeat ad infinitum. see "Code Red" for tips on this strategy.
- Report on "interviews" where someone has selectively edited together various public statements. See Sony Pictures on how to use clips to attribute misleading sayings ("Planet of The Apes... not... as bad... thought.")
In orfer to boost pageviews these strategies will be rolled out on a daily basis. Expect to see one application every 24 hours. Should our income not rise as projected we will then have to move on to targetted marketing projects with our new "partners".I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Two types of administrators will be coming to ten. The Mac weenie, and the Unix weenie. The mac weenie will enjoy his GUI tools. A portion of the Mac weenies will think "Wow this my oppurtunity to learn some Unix." The other portion will sit their and bitch and wine. The portion that does not bitch and whine will learn shell, perl, and python. And learn that they know have a OS with a GUI that Grandma likes. And the ability to write a python script that can run as a cron job and fix her computer every night. The Unix weenies will rejoice at having Unix and MS Office on the same computer, and push Apple to include features found in other Unix's. These two groups will meet up at a weenie roast, and the Mac users will be telling the Unix users of all these great features that Darwin has, and the Unix people will simply respond with a resounding "DUH, where have you been!!!" PS. All VMS weenies will still be pissed off after the weenie roast.
I went to K5 for a while, but it just didn't cut it. There seemed to be very little news and a whole lot of ranting about pointless topics that may or may not have anything to do with technology. But maybe that was just my perception. To each his own.
Then the curious statement is made that the G4 is faster than Pentium 4 despite the slow clock speed because the G4 RISC instructions do more per cycle. Clearly the several people who made the statement would fail their comp arch course.
Well, I don't see any IA32 instruction while will multiply two floating-point registers, add a third register to the result, and then store the whole thing into a fourth register. PowerPC's been doing that forever. Seriously, translate some moderate FP maths into IA32 and PPC assembly, and you'll surely see that the "CISC" IA32 code has a lot more instructions to perform..
Don't even get me started on how much Altivec spanks MMX, 3DNow and SSE..
So before you make a blanket condemnation of the claim that a G4 does more per cycle, please do keep in mind that the "complex" part of the IA32's CISC architecture is the number of stupid, deprecated instructions that nobody ever uses anymore..
I agree as well. I read this ranty article yesterday, and decided that it wasn't really worth forwarding on to anyone. I didn't even send it off to any of my Mac-Zealot friends. Gosh only knows how it made the cut and got on here.
-Freed
"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love." -Turkish Proverb
This sums it up...
Macintosh for Productivity,
Linux for Development,
Palm for Mobility, and
Windows for Solitaire.
Here's a rant for ya....The G4 is really just a tweaked G3, much like the PIII is just a tweaked P4. The G3 achitecture is WAY more efficient than the Pentium. As for the Mhz yard stick, well that is really becoming a thing of the past. The G3 at 600 should work like a PIII somewhere along the line of 800. The reason is its design not speed. As for the P4, well not exactly the greatest design, but a step in the right direction however it sucks because the rest of the software world doesn't fully support it...much the same as the G4. That is why Photoshop performance is the Yard stick for Apple. It's optimized to use all of its power. Why would Apple want to advertize you can save a file faster in Word...who the hell needs that!!! If the game on the Mac used the same photoshop style optimization they would very much kick ass, but they don't. So, to end this long ass rant, GET WHAT YOU NEED NOT WHAT YOU DON'T. You want games PC's and Game consoles are great...you want photoshop, get a Mac, you want 3D design...hang on for a while cause the mac seems to be able to compete in that market in the VERY near future.
You don't decide between a Mac and a PC because of MHz, MB, or $.
You decide what user experience you want -- from the operating system and application software to the design and user interface.
Trying to compare all these numbers just creates flamewars because it's fundamentally an unwinnable argument. When you buy a car, do you decide between a Honda and a Toyota exclusively by its top speed or weight or fuel tank capacity?
Numbers are not worthless, but they're irrelevant to 98% of the computing experience (all but Photoshop :).
I primarially use PCs, but recently obtained a second-hand iMac (Rev C. 266MHz G3, 6GB, 32MB RAM) to get familar with the platform and possibly port some of my Windows programs I've written to it. First thing to go was that stupid urinal puck mouse, I replaced it with a USB trackman marble.
;) playback, cause "it ain't happenin' mon!" While even on a measily PII 233MHz you can play MP3s in the background with Winamp with no skipping or noticable performence hit, the iMac's MP3 playback via Quicktime skipped and slowed the system to a crawl. Yuck. As expected, Photoshop was fast and stable. Connectix virtual game station (PSX Emulator) ran at roughly the speed the PC version does on a PII 350MHz... Not bad, not bad at all. SNES9X seems to perform better than the PII 233MHz, but not as good as the PII 350MHz. Shockwave web animations seemed sluggish, but no worse than the PII 233MHz. Web pages seemed to render much faster on the PII 233MHz, though. So much for the Mac as a browsing platform.
Opinions about Windows aside, 98lite runs at acceptable speeds in 32MB of RAM. Sure, RAM is cheap, so there really is no excuse to have *that* little amount of RAM... On the Mac however, 32MB with OS 8.6 is unusable. With virtual memory disabled, you get "Out of memory" messages left and right - with it turned on, the system swaps, and swaps, and SWAPS. Yuck. Okay, time to buy more RAM.
The system didn't seem terribly stable for web browsing... Browsing the web with the latest IE or Netscape would frequently crash every few hours or so, Force quit almost never worked, usually it just brought up the dialog box and left the system in a frozen state. Overall, MacOS 8.6 seems roughly as stable as Windows 3.1. I hope OS X is a lot better.
Performence widely varied with the task being performed. Forget about good performence Divx
Overall, this wasn't a bad system... Not cutting edge, but at least as useful as my low end PII PCs. Well, it *was*... Then it got an Invalid PEOF error after an application crash and refuses to boot from the hard drive unless I reinitalize and reinstall. I can boot from a MacOS CD, but it refuses to let me eject it so I can insert one with Norton on it. If the damn thing only had a floppy drive... Eventually, I'll get around to buying a bootable Diskwarrior CD so I can get the damn thing working again without reformatting.
All things considered, it has been a nice learning experience; however, PCs are still my platform of choice.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
/. has defnitly gone downhill in their news. A this article was just baseless ranting and very ill informed and even the biased link the author was ranting against was A LOT less biased and informative than this crazyness. What is going on here? I thought i. was a forum for geeky information not articles dedicated to whiney people with chips on their shoulders. Please /. you recent Mac bashing has gotten ridiculous.
The "Value" of computers.
Some people value their computers as gaming platforms, utilizing the latest Athlon processors and (obviously) reluctantly running windows OS. Polygon-power and compatability are the most valuable things to them.
Some people use them as simple web and word processing boxes. Any box will do, and so choice of Opera, Netscape, IE, KDE, OSX, OS9, Be, 98, NT, etc is purely an aesthetic choice, reflecting tradeoffs between simplicity, conformity, and access. To them, the Computer might as well be a television, and occupies an intimate, relaxing space in the mind where clutter is not acceptable.
Some people run servers, where Linux / Unix / BSD is essential. Some people restart servers, obvious NT users. Bandwidth, ram, requests per second are all valuable.
There are graphics professionals. Some use windows and some use the Macintosh. Many things that previously could only be done on the Mac can now be done under Windows, leveling the playfield quite a bit. Still, though, graphics professionals also appreciate the aesthetic qualities of the internals of the tools they use, and if anyone has opened their windows folder in the past 10 years they know just how unappealing it can be.
Then, of course, there is business or specialized software composed soley to run on a single platform. That user much is buying a system for a killer-ap, so anything that may optimize that (or reduce costs) is essential.
Finally, we have the pundits, ranters, and corporate iconographers who bask in the reflected glory of their chosen OS, and staunchly support it as a lifestyle representation. Their macs, windows PC's, Linux boxes, dusty old OS2 machines are symbols for other people to judge them by. It's distinctly possible that these are the people who say that coke is delicious and pepsi is undrinkable crap, but I haven't done any research into that connection. Scott "Damage" Wasson appears to fall into this category, though I cannot tell if he's a wintel pundit or a disgruntled mac pundit. We here all know that the evidence is in favor of the G4 and Athlon architectures and against the P4 marketing device, so why is this hardware guru ignorant on the subject if not either a sworn enemy or a lover scorned?
Computers have gotten to the point, thankfully, that the question of a single overarching "performance" measurement is irrelevant to most people. Most people have objectives, preferences, skills, and a budget. None of these rubrics have yet to take into account, for example, people's preferences for a quiet computer, or one that doesn't waste a lot of space. People want webcams, DSL, DVD / CDR drives, and big moniters. They want their particular cherished trackball or mouse to work, they want something that gets their work done, and they want it so that it doesn't become obsolete right away. I doubt anyone cares anymore if their cpu is 800 mhz or 900 mhz. Long gone is the day where that is the most important factor.
-Wintel machines would be great if it wasn't for the Win part.
The ______ Agenda
This is silly.
Apple uses the PPC architecture.
IBM uses the PPC architecture in their RS/6000 and AS/400 boxen.
IBM even provides some of the PPC chips to Apple for their boxen.
If you've ever considered serving with AIX, OS/400, or Linux running as a virtual server under OS/400, then there ought to be nothing wrong with buying a commodity box from Apple and serving with Darwin / OS X.
Yes, the photoshop benchmark gets dragged out against windows, because it's a real world use.
I wonder what you -one-mouse-button haters would say to an AS/400-RS/6000-G4-dual athlon bake off.
Having covered Apple and the Macintosh community with a top-three visited Macintosh resource site and run my own Mac OS X site, I find it silly that the inference is that this discussion doesn't take place every single day.
Discussions amongst people who find Mac vs. Windows, RISC vs. CISC, Apple vs. anyone else cuz Apple sux, or any of these types of completely "to your own taste" topics are really sad when they are cast as "a good discussion starting piece" when the starting point is years in the past, and the journey has been beaten to death.
The G4 vs. Pentium tests are not for /.ers, and you all know that to be true - they are for the Mac zealots (zealot, n. - one who engages warmly in any cause, and pursues his object with earnestness and ardor) and for such magazines as PC Magazine where Apple efforts to keep its moderate mindshare by using the trade show equivalent of the "bully pulpit."
When "[Adobe Photoshop 6 is] an application highly optimized for the G4 and known to have problems on the Pentium 4" is used against the G4 and its apparent ease of exploitation and quality of performance at particular clock speeds and the article gets /.'d, it makes me wonder how low the individual requirements of objectivity and lack of bias have shrunk amongst the "digital learned"...
I was thinking of getting a Mac, but it is hard to find a decent mother board, CPU that I can buy off the self... Any suggestions?
I want to build it myself (hobby of mine), but pricewatch.com doesn't list any parts. Can I get some pointers on where to look for Mac parts? Do PowerPC motherboard fit in standard ATX cases? If not, any links to Mac cases I can get?
Thanks.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
If that's what you want then buy it, but the typical mac user doesn't care. I've seen more and more people buy TiBooks than Dells recently, simply because of the "fashion statement". It's the reason why people go to Bannana Republic instead of Wal-Mart. I use both PC and Macs, I don't care about games, I just want a nice graphics editor, word processor, and browser. If I sit down at a computer I want to be able to use it. That's pretty much a preference. It's not about worth it's about choice. Don't forget, that the Mac has the same marketshare as Linux too.
m.kelley
life is like a freeway, if you don't look you could miss it.
It was the fact that I had to pay for it whether or not I even had the product. Apple's approach was "Here is what you get for your money." Like their product or not, at least it's a straightforward deal. M$ was "Whether you get it or not, you have to pay for it." *Bzzt!* Sorry, no dice.
I'm still not sure I get your point. You complain about PC's because you have to buy Windows, but you defend Macs because they say "Here's what you get for your money" and still make you buy the MacOS?
I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense to me.
Do not waste your time...
Eric Aitala
www.f1m.com
(hardware that, except for VirtualPC and Linux, has NO alternative operating systems), because of Windows licensing costs? "Nazism?" I'm not Windows fan, but what kind of logic is that? You don't even have third party choice of hardware for the Mac, let alone software diversity.
current apple hardware will run linux, netbsd, openbsd, darwin, os x, and os 9. older apple hardware will also run things like beos, a/ux, developer releases of rhapsody and copland, etc. so you're wrong on that point.
as for third party hardware, its true that apple produces all the full systems. but i've got a ton of third party hardware in my machines, ranging from IBM drives to no-name PCI cards for USB and ethernet.
try looking at some reasonably recent statistics before you make sweeping claims, eh?
(incidentally, this whole "story" is flamebait shite, in my ever humble opinion.)
--saintTaking that to the logical conclusion: I'm confused by all of these buttons on my keyboard. The right choice is obviously to reduce them. I want just one big key. (It could say "Duh".)
Seriously, though: might a better approach be to label the two (or better, three) mouse buttons, just like keyboard keys?
Look, different boxen for different people.
First, I got my son and my mom iMacs. I don't have to spend hours telling them how to use their boxen. They just work.
The apples come with built in Ethernet cards - you can hook them up fast, out of the box, and they work - the same can't be said for Win machines. And the users don't care about things that *nix people do - so what's your prob?
I mean, c'mon, the difference in throughput for the average person between a 500MHz Pentium II with 128MB of RAM and a 1.7GHz Pentium IV with 128MB of RAM with similar hard drives is maybe 5 percent at most.
You should be spending your time porting your BSD apps for the Mac, not wasting it talking about silly CPU benchmarks that mean nothing to most endusers. The real world is still using old Mac SEs at my Bank of America branch - as someone said today "hey, at least we don't have to worry about system failure or viruses".
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I've been using Macs since 1987. I have both a Mac and a PC on my desks here at work. I owned a Mac until 1992 (at which time I bought a PC). The one-button mouse has gotta go. It's an example of Apple stubbornly clinging to an inferior solution. I have OS X on the desktop. It's OK (I like Unix). But unless they do something to catch up in games Macs are going to slowly become photoshop-only machines. And the market won't support that; there just aren't enough photoshop users to maintain a market.
I agree with what you are said. I hate reading comments that don't belong. Take the one above this for instance...
i think the past is behind us, be real confusing if not --BT
It's also funny that people are moding me to offtopic, troll, etc., when I'm doing EXACTLY what /. just posted: ranting. How fscked up has this site become?? It's sad.
Really, we like that kind of stuff at K5. And, while you're there, check out Bubba.
Best Slashdot Co
I think a lot of folks focus on the CPU and forget all the other components.
I've got a G4 sitting here running LinuxPPC. It's not bad, until some I/O starts happening. Then things slow way down. IDE, SCSI, doesn't matter which device it is, interactive performance (no X, just console) goes down the tubes.
I'm not saying this is general of all the Apple stuff, but there is certainly more to a computer than just the CPU.
Anything is possible given time and money.
Take it as you will, but although this is a problem for some, it's a blessing for others.
Yes, as there aren't as many people developing hardware for the Mac, there's a less competition, and there were higher prices. But they're not using NuBus and ADB anymore, so you can make use of PCI, USB and FireWire/iLink devices, if you so choose.
Hard drives have come down significantly as they've switched to UDMA, which many of the mac purists are still pissed off at, as they don't do tagged queuing, so there's inheriently more contention for disk I/O when doing multiple tasks. But you still can't get a machine with no hard drive, and put in one of your own.
Is this a bad thing? Well, for the sake of people who want to put in some drive that apple doesn't sell, yes. For those people who already have a nice drive that they want to move into the new machine, yes. However, in exchange, you get a hard drive with the software preloaded [okay, not a big deal], but more importantly, it's been tested. You're not going to get a DOA HD.
Memory's a similar issue. Yes, Apple charges too much for memory, but it's pre-tested, so you don't have that 'My machine came in, but I have to wait 3 more days for my new memory to come in' problems.
With the restrictions on hardware, there's better testing for interoperability. Personally, I wish I never had to learn what an IRQ was. For those who've always been Mac users, and never strayed, they've never had to worry about 'em. In all my years as a mac user, I've only had one piece of mac hardware that I ever had problems with. [NuBus video card for a Radius Color Pivot...had to get a new ROM when I went to MacOS7] I've lost count of wierd wintel interactions I've had. [eg, modem cards that just 'don't support' IRQ 4 when used in combination with a certain kind of video card, and other crap like that].
With every new piece of Mac hardware I've bought, I've plugged it in, and it's worked out of the box. And the simple reason is, that Apple's not as open with their hardware development.
I'd also argue your comment on 'It took them ages to finally put several expansion slots in their boxes', as anything since the MacII line [1987], other than the 'all in one' style boxes had expansion slots. Many of the 'all in one' boxes had expansion slots, but they couldn't be accessed easily, however, those boxes were intended for a drastically different market.
Not every item in the world, even computers, were designed for you. If that were the case, we'd all be driving the same sort of car to our same sized house, so we could watch the same TV while sitting on the same style couch. What's a problem to you may be a benfit to others, and visa-versa. [And yes, it still pisses me off when I'd let someone drive my car, and they'd completely deflate the lumbar support]
[And for those wondering what I use at home... a wintel box... because I play games, and try as much as possible not to do work from home these days. I do have 5 pre-1995 macs that make decent terminals, but they were taken down to make space for game machines]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
i cant believe this actually got posted on /.
the ranter is unhappy with some irrelevant, biased, uninformed articles, and counters with an irrelevant, biased, uninformed article of his own. newsflash: the web is full of irrelevant, biased, uninformed articles. why are we posting scriptkiddie flamewars on /.?
apples official position is here. there is nothing wrong with it. as they point out at expos, they use photoshop benchmarks because it is the app their customers use most (they actually use real jobs their customers have done, like movie posters, etc).
as anyone who knows anything about benchmarks can tell you (hopefully all of /.) different benchmarks tell you different things. use the benchmark that applies to your job/situation. yes, the g4 is much faster at floating point. yes, the pentium runs office apps much faster. whoop-de-doo. whats new here?
i will leave all the inaccuracies of the article to other posters (no, photoshop /is/ optimized for sse)
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
His complaint is about a page showing that a Mac, set up more or less like a PC with about the same performance is about the same price. And his major gripe is that they use Photoshop for a performance comparison. Never mind that Photoshop is pretty representative, and that other software tends to show about the same level of performance (some faster, some slower).
The best part is about the mention of the TechTV comparison. During the MWNY keynote, the live TechTV commentators were bitching and moaning about how the Mac and the PC were set up differently (they weren't), that the Mac had more RAM (it didn't), et cetera. So the TechTV folks decided to run their own comparison, to justify their comments.
The Mac, of course, won. So now the rest of the Wintel droids are out screaming that the comparison isn't valid, for... well, for no particular reason. If the PC had won, it would have been valid, of course.
For years now, the Mac/PC speed bakeoffs have been funny. Remember, Photoshop is a valid comparison until the PC loses. Then it's databases, until the Mac wins. Then it's Office. Then it's 3-D rendering. Then it's on down the list, until the PC nuts get really desperate, and the Quake framerates start geting pulled out of the basement...
Okay, sure, Apple has a great OS. But there are lots of people who, for reasons valid or not, want a Windows-based computer. But, as the iMac has demonstrated the last couple of years, there are also people who want a computer that just looks cool, and Apple can clearly deliver in that area.
Yeah, Dell and Compaq and other vendors have started making their own versions of cool-looking computers. They're okay, but I'm guessing the designers at Apple could build something that would blow them all away visually. It seems like it would be a good money-maker for Apple (and could help fund their non-Windows efforts), and Windows users could finally have a stylish-looking computer (on the outside, anyway).
Well, it's just a thought...
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"
I have been waiting for the release of OS X for years, back when they were trying to get copland put together... But I moved to the pc world and the ease of buying parts for cheap and installing them yourself is SOOOOO nice. Macs are just too damn expensive. If the price would drop for a decent g4, I would probably by one.
Aliens? Magnetic Rings?! Bah! Who needs that when we have
There are always problems when comparing apples to oranges, like what always happens in the computing world. Hell, they were having discussions much like this back when the transition from 486 to Pentium was going on. A fast 486 (which was probably cheaper) was faster than a slow Pentium. You can't even compare Athlons to Pentium III or IV chips very easily.
I'd be happy to get a PowerPC system in certain situations, though. It's generally considered to be a cleaner architecture. PPC systems aren't restricted to less than 15 interrupts like Intel systems. They make good laptops, if you only need one mouse button..
My problem has always been that Apple doesn't like to let other people inside their boxes. It took them ages to finally put several expansion slots in their boxes.
I doubt that I'll ever go out and buy a pre-built `consumer' desktop system. I will probably always go from parts. If I want to do that with Apple hardware, I think Steve Jobs will have to keel over first.
8. Enflame readers overtly (JonKatz) or subtly (Articles: Mac Rants) , thus eliciting a torrant of world-weary posts about slashdot itself.
The OS X version of Giants is using Cocoa's MP-aware multithreading on Tim Wood's dual-processor Mac. Good point about the GF3, but I don't find it hard to believe that Giants is also processor-bound. Elsewhere in the article he describes the Athlon running at 20fps.
Hemos, please don't feed the trolls. God, let's see if we can take a look at this argument in a slightly more rational light.
Mac guy sez: Mhz don't matter. Look at my Photoshop benchmarks!
PC Guy sez: My 1.8 Gigahertz monster will crush your 866 Mhz weenie machine! Photoshop sucks.
I say: Apple has a point. If Mhz was everything, Sun would be sticking Pentium 4s in all of their boxes instead of sticking with their 900 Mhz UltraSPARC III. The G4 is an awesome processor, but for many functions raw Mhz will carry the day. If you're doing vector calcs all day then use a Mac, but for Linux I'll take a dual Athlon setup any day of the week.
Mac guy sez: My box is pretty! Your box is a boring beige bland POS.
PC guy sez: Your fruity colored box looks like a toy. Behold my case mods!
I say: A pretty case does not necessarily make for a better computer. Yes, the iMacs look like toys. On the other hand, what's wrong with having a good looking machine? The Cube was one of the most elegant computers in ages.
As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. For christ sakes people, let's stop this nonsense and get back to arguing about Linux vs. Windows.
This
I was thinking of getting a Mac, but it is hard to find a decent mother board, CPU that I can buy off the self... Any suggestions?
well, while i have a feeling that you're being facetious and i'm being trolled, here's what i did for a friend of mine that wanted a mac.
i picked up a motorola starmax 4000/200 barebones somewhere, just the case / motherboard / cpu. i think i got mine on ebay, but i've seen them on surplus hardware sites as well.
from there, it was just a matter of adding standard components. a scsi hard drive and cd rom, a 32 meg DIMM, a ps/2 mouse, a USB card, an ethernet card, etc. total cost was about two hundred dollars for the whole package.
it's not as easy as putting together a pc, which is really a shame - my affection for apple has a lot more to do with their hardware than anything else. but it can be done.
--saintThe "Decision Matrix" the guy uses in the original article is full of mistakes and far from an objective comparison of Macs vs. PCs. The original article's author is also one of those people who *still insist* the G4 is faster than the Pentium 4 (and he conveniently "forgets" about the Athlon!)
...
More interesting news might have been the drop in stock price of Intel, due to the fact they're engaging in a price war with AMD, because AMD has been eating up their market share like crazy.
So articles about how important CPU speed are just ignore the fact that we don't care anymore. Face it, you can get an Athlon running at 800MHz with 256MB of RAM for way less than an Intel running at 1.7MHz with 128MB of RAM and the Athlon will beat it six ways to Sunday.
So G4 has a slower clock speed - how does this impact the users? If it doesn't, so what?
Analyze, think, then post
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
There are a lot of benchmarks you can apply to different machines, and plenty of arguments you make about why one is better or worse than another. The solution to this dilemma is to run a broad spectrum of tests, and carefully examine the results. You don't get anywhere by running a handful of Photoshop plugins and calling it quits; you might as well test a person's intelligence by measuring their performance on the Computer Science GRE test. You also don't run silly comparisons between emulated and native code. Enough said.
While it is true that most G4 to pentium bake-offs are done running photoshop filters, I don't think it is a particularly unfair test. After all, Photoshop really is the only standard application in existance that:
a) has the same version and capabilities for both the PC and the Mac, and:
b) can actually tax a current machine's processor.
Other eligible apps (ie: Office) fail on both these counts.
Dismissing "Multimedia" apps out of hand is naive. Almost all the CPU intensive work done today is digital video and audio, two tasks that the G4 design permits it to do rather well. There is hardly difference between using a 1.8 Ghz Pentium 4 and a 500 Mhz Pentium 3 when surfing the web or typing a paper in Word.
Check out the ArsTechnica take on G4e design compared to the Pentium 4.
btw: How come I don't see many touting that the 1.2 Ghz Athlon is some how lacking in ability when compared to the 1.8 Ghz Pentium 4?
When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said, "To know one's self." And what was easy, "To advise another."
1:29PM up 29 days, 18:58, 1 user, load averages: 3.01, 4.39, 3.75
And thats just on a Powerbook G3. :)
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
My suggestions:
My overclocked G3, running dual monitor cards, running apps from Photoshop to Oni to GoLive to IE to Outlook, has uptimes measured in weeks. Learn how to use/maintain your Mac before you cry to us about it.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
With OS Z now running apache the possibilities for perl and appletalk interactions is my biggest interest. I'm not sure if IBm will liken to the idea of moving DB2 in this direction, but it would be a simple port (i'm still not totally happy with Postgres). The biggest thing that i'm still waiting on is a performance test on the data serving capabilities of OS X vs. linux/BSD solutions. anyone with a good source please reply
-shpoffo
Somehow I doubt that. Giants: Citizen Kabuto is fill-rate rate limited, if I recall. Therefore, a GeForce3 with it's massive fill rate would EASILY pull away from ANY GeForce2 MX. And regarding the original post, a Dual P3 is the same as a single P3 when it comes to playing games.
I read the rant, big whoop. He's citing a comparison by someone I've spoken to on a Mac forum from time to time. The point of his comparisons (he's done several) is not that the Macintosh will solve world hunger or anything. He was trying to debunk the myth that Macs are expensive in a bang-for-your-buck method. In other words, he tried tricking out systems from various windows OEMs and Apple's online store, compared prices, and guess what? The Mac came out even and sometimes ahead of the others.
This, apparently, caused an uninformed rant that /.'s dieties decided was newsworthy. Boy, this place has gotten so far downhill I may have to turn to NFL Fantasy League boards for higher levels of erudition and intellectual stimulation.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
You may have a point there. The Windows machines (running 98) mostly have 64M. My Mac has 128, though I invariably have PhotoShop, QuarkXPress, FreeHand, Distiller, Acrobat, Outlook Express, IE, and NiftyTelnet open.
Though 98 is cleverer about virtual memory than OS9 (what isn't?) so one would expect better results.
The PS files are in the 20+M range (lots of TIFFs, though what really seems to slow it down on the Windows side is documents with large numbers of fonts.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
The Mac will still continue to sell as long as it retains its appearance.
Speaking as an Amiga owner (though not a user anymore), I can say that Macs will sell as long as Apple stays in business to sell them.
I've met many Mac users who did not care that the performance was lower, they just liked the thing because it looked cool.
I've met zillions of Windo... er, make that ... Intel based PC users who didn't care that the machine they were using couldn't even run Windows 95. My next door neighbor finally replaced her old computer. A Mac classic.
I'd be surprised if as much as 15% of computer users care enough about their computer's performance if it means buying a new computer. That's just the way it is; I've learned it takes two or three generations of new computer hardware to come and obsolesce before most people even consider buying a new computer.
Well, it's not true that Macs run slowly; that's a sweeping generalization. It's not even true that the fastest Intel running Windows can run Photoshop faster than the fastest Mac.
Now that is the truth.
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
The fact that mHz aren't the ultimate measure of speed can be seen even when comparing PCs to PCs (aka Intel to AMD). In an article in PC World, it was determined that a 1.3GHz outperformed a 1.5GHz Pentium 4 in many cases, despite the lower clock speed. I have worked with a few Macs over the years (although admittedly not many), and while they have generally been slower than most PCs by a hair, the difference is negligible to your average Joe Six-Pack user. Macs and PCs both have their places, and it's useless to try to argue that one or the other is better is every situation.
"I just want to thank my coach Eric a.k.a. Disco for shattering my reality..."
Someone does not have a clue ... and it is NOT the guy who wrote the machine comparison.
Please read what he was trying to say rather than what you wanted to hear.
This is too sad. Don't waste my time. Delete this entire article. It is a shame this ever made it to /.
>>>I just wish I could read about Apple without any sense of fanatacism coming into play. Amen to that - I'm a diehard Apple user, have been for many years - but it sure would be nice to if there were more intelligence & less emotion from both sides. >>>In the middle, there's Apple; a company that really seems to be holding a niche market by making good products that are pretty, get the basic jobs done, and are generally easy to use. Perhaps the single most unbiased, factual, & reasonable comment I've EVER seen re: the Apple/Windows debate - & one might note that Apple has managed to surrvive in it's "niche" for many years now, despite repeated claims that the company "is finished". So . . .thanks for the post, GeekInTraining - after reading many of the posts in this thread, my belief that there might indeed be some intelligent life on this planet had once again been shaken - thanks for restoring it.
BTW - I've followed the boards here at SlashDot for some time, but never posted before - registered & posted just to thank you.
Specifically, TechTV's benchmarking geniuses ran a total of six Photoshop filters. From this meager selection of tests . . .
Great, so he sees one badly done benchmark comparison, and uses that as a basis for trashing Apple entirely, including Steve Jobs. Like incompetent or rigged benchmarks are something new and shocking. I'm not an Apple fan, but this is a bit of ranting nonsense. If he wanted to trash the comparison, he could have stuck to that. Or at least, to the facts.
1Alpha7
Live to be Moderated
I have never seen a post that even compares to this article in the flame bait arena.
Everyone knows that the only Good Endian is a Dead Endian!
Don't make me prove it with a VisiCalc chart that compares the number of cooling slots and the physical size of the ram chips.
-- Spaz!
Gee. Here I discover I have five new moderator points.
First, this thread is not going to start much of a discussion, much less a good one. Flames and unsupported accusation from all sides, but not much in the line of discussion in the usual sense of the word.
Second, I saw the referenced page, the "piece of pro-Mac propaganda beats all". If there's any agreement is the rating system the author used wasn't very good -- and I'm a staunch Mac person.
Third, there is no third.
Fourth, Macs are great at running Photoshop and the Mac OS. Intel and Athlon machines are not. End of story. The rest is pretty much irrelevant (which means you don't have to read any further).
Thank yew. Thankyewverimuch
.
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
The Mac Team's machines run our game noticably slower than the guys running hard-hitting Athlons, but I have a (dual) 800Mhz P3, and the G4 450's seem to keep pace with it reasonably on our game builds.
One thing I will say it this: the Mac GUI feels faster to me than the Explorer Shell on Win2K...
Must be a really slow news day.
What next? Big endian vs. little endian? Vi vs. Emacs?
Is there somewhere he proves his point that I missed? Saying "That's dumb. Macs are slow, and people who like them suck." in various creative (?) ways doesn't amount to anything close to proof. Even if I can accept his rant as an "anti-proof" (which is impossible, of course) he doesn't even offer the alternative - that of course being some benchmarks that disprove the pro-Mac analysis.
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
I use my linux box quite a lot, since I'm a student of computer science and wannabe developer. The free tools are there, and they work well. I also have Visual Studio on my windows machine, but I'm not much of an end user application developer. I also serve some webpages off my dsl, and like to do geeky things... the linux box is great for that
I use my windows machine to play games. It also has the software support for my TV tuner and DVD player, and thus it is used as somewhat of an entertainment unit in my bedroom. However, things like web browsing and general computing (IE, word processing), are more a matter of OS taste and 1.4GHz vs 500MHz really doesn't make a noticable difference.
The Mac is great for photoshop, flash... all those creative things. That's what people buy macs for. Those who are buying the top of the line G4 are the professionals who spend most of their time in apps like photoshop and use a lot of filters. Joe User is just gonna web surf and word process, and the only useful comparison in that area between the 500Mhz iMac and the Gig+ PC is just a matter of OS preference.
This story was just flamebait, pure and simple. People should spend less time ranting about what platform is faster, and just pick a computer that fits their needs.
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Let's see. You said in your original post that you might be off-topic, but now you're complaining that being moderated as off-topic is fscked up?
BTW, complaining about or posting about moderation at all is not improving the site. Do your part and stick to the story, or at least the tangent thread at hand. If not, there's always metamoderation, if you want to provide feedback about the practice of moderation.
I do not have a signature
This is not the problem. The problem is that people expect a benchmark to make their decision for you. If they just went down to their local CompUSA and tried out the darned machine, found that it was sufficient for their needs, and felt the price was reasonable, instead of just looking for the best deal, you would get a lot more people happy with their machine cause they TRIED IT OUT, and cause they prolly found a slower machine would do just fine.
I hate the benchmark approach to purchasing a machine.
Yes, Apple makes nice looking machines and soon when I decide to dump the G3 it will look nice with an Asus mobo and an Athlon in it.....
But don't tell me that your shitty Mac is the most stable machine around since that is fucking bullshit. The only box that I have never had any problems with is the Sun Ultra10 that I used at work and I won't make any claims about Sun equipment since I don't know overall how well they work throughout the industry. An example to those idiots who think their personal anecdotal evidence accounts for something industry-wide.
Hey, you think your house is cool?
yesterday we got the ask/. story which laptop should i buy i just dont know
i think someone has hacked /. and is toying with us to see just how flamebait can the articles get before we figure it out
tomorrow zdnet stories will be posted ad nausem
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
Are you aware that a Mac can already render MPEG-2 video in real time? Steve demonstrated it in iDVD 2 at Macworld.
I agree that it is difficult to measure all the features of such different platforms, but the pointsystem he uses is totally screwed.
Example: The Apple-box gets 2 points for 2MB L3 cache, but the pentium-boxes only get 0.5 point extra for 400MHz System Bus against Apples 133MHz. What is the need of L3 cache when you have a such fast system?
And that he gives points for both hardware and software in the same test isn't quite the way to do it. He gives points in the range 5,5-7,5 for major software included, while giving 2,5-3,0 points for the size of the harddisk.
Those things aren't exactly in the same area. He should rather have done to test, a hardware, and a software. But nowadays, what software you can run on the computer is less important, because you can do what you want no most computers today anyway. So I would say that hardware alone is a better method of comparision.
Though, in the earlier days, the major problems with running different architectures and platforms, was that you didn't have the same programs, they were quite incompatible with eachother, and there was major differences in performance in similar programs.
I know I bought a Mac because it looked good and felt good, and that has no bearing on MHz or performance.
That is a much better argument to buy a Mac, than because "it is better (because I read it in a test...)" :)
"The assembler gave birth to the compiler. Now there are ten thousand languages." - Tao of Programming
You've been hawking Adequacy pretty hard lately. Do you get kickbacks or payola?
This is probably a bit off-topic, but how does a story like this (someone ranting about Mac) get posted, and the article I submitted last week about PCI 3.0 (only the future of next-generation I/O for PC's) doesn't get posted? I believe the gods of priority for "News for Nerds" and "Stuff that matters" have sold out. Sorry for the additional rant, but it is a bit frustrating to be reading something completely and totally useless where something more useful and informative should belong.
I had a 6500, a large array of Craftsmen tools, a mind trained to perform n-dimensional geometry without aid of computers or pencil-and-paper (thanks to an astronomy degree), and a father who was a toolmaker-turned-design-engineer, yet we couldn't figure out how to get to the hard drive of the 6500.
push the buttons on the bottom and pull off the front bezel. i just stripped a pile of them for the recycler's. no tools necessary.
how many dimensions, again?
--saintDon't guage a Mac solely on MacOS X - at least until next month... ;)
Anyway, rather than running comparisons of emulated vs native code, why not something like Python, Java, or Perl benchmarks, on the assumption that none of those languages are native, all of them are widely available, and most of them are very utilitarian/useful?
GPL Deconstructed
Hehe, ah, well.. moderators have always been strange... ;)
Webbrowsing is faster on Macs, I've tested it myself! *
*(Webbrowsing in this case being downloading the html and images files and then drawing the output by hand in Photoshop.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Ok, back when I was shopping for my first serious computer that I actually had to pay for myself (by that time I'd gone through a ZX-Spectrum and a PC clone [8088 based]) I really, really wanted a Mac. Mostly because of what they could do (this was when the LC had just come out). Actually - when my parents bought me the PC clone I really, really wanted a Mac (at that time the Mac SE had just come out) but they couldn't afford it.
That was pretty much my decision at the time as well - I already had a lot of software for the PC (Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, + a lot of freeware/shareware stuff). For the price of an LC I could get a 386sx, bigger HDD, keep my existing software and buy a lot more.
Apple (with the Macs) have always been lean on expandability, high on price and they have always been the minority system. The days of the Apple II should have taught them that low price, high (relative) performance and a lot of expandability makes money but it didn't!!
These days (after using ia86 based machines - windows & linux - for a long time) I wouldn't consider going near a *new* Mac. I finally fulfilled my dream of owning an SE and an LC by buying them second-hand though. Both of them are networked via MacPPP through the serial ports of a P166 linux box though because the cost of a *real* ethernet card is more that what I paid for both machines put together.
I'm a developer - I want to run development software. Mostly C++ but also Java, Pascal (and variants like Delphi), FORTH, LISP, and any other language I can get my hands on - preferably with an IDE. In the region I was in most of these languages were available for the PC from my local BBS for the PC - I was lucky to find a single lame clone of Zork for the Mac (and even then it was a hyperCard stack that probably didn't run).
If you are buying a new machine - think about what you want to use it for. And then look at the benchmarks that cover those types of application. Then look at your own price/performance guidelines.
For me - a Mac doesn't cut it. If you are a graphic artist or work with DV a *lot* then it may. If you want something that just plugs in, turns on and works - a Mac may be for you (the iMacs seem to do that nicely) if you (or a friend) are willing to do the extra work to tune it and get it working you may be happy to save a few bucks and use a Windows box. If you are a developer, or have a friend who is willing to spend a *lot* of hours setting up a machine for you then Linux on ia86 may do it for you.
And before anyone flames me - I use Linux on my desktop for most development, Win2K in a VMWare session for Word, Excel & Outlook and a Mac LC for any graphics work I need to do.
....to brighten everyone's day.
This flamewar seems to show up every time someone makes a performance claim about the Macintosh. It's aggravated by the fact that the Macintosh doesn't run the SPEC benchmarks and no-one seems to be submitting SPEC results for similar PPC based systems.
From everything I've seen about the PowerPC architecture, back in the day (usually RS/6000 machines), PowerPC machines of a given generation ran a little faster than similar Intel-based machines running at the same clock speed. So, a 604e system at 450Mhz outperformed (slightly) a Intel-based system at 550Mhz.
Granted, SPEC benchmarks are hardly perfect, but they are a much, much better measure of overall CPU performance than a couple Photoshop filters.
Using one application (particularly Photoshop filters) is practically what is known as a "microbenchmark", particularly when it isn't necessarily a broadly chosen set of uses of Photoshop but a carefully culled set of highly optimized filter operations that are written in beautifully crafted PPC assembly. If you want to claim that your machine is better for designers, then you'd need to try an array of applications being used in plausible fashion, not a couple features out of a single application.
The amount of drivel posted about the miraculous ability of the PowerPC to get so much done per cycle is amazing. When the PPC chips get their maximum instruction level parallelism they're pretty damn good, but this doesn't happen much in real code. Yes, it has a shorter pipeline than the equivalent class of Pentium. Yes, the Pentium has to translate out of a ISA that is a total dog's breakfast. Nonetheless, in most comparisons, while the PPC gets more done per cycle, we're talking 1.2 or 1.3, not 2x or 3x. Remember that the performance of most real applications are determined chiefly by memory subsystems and cache speeds, not ILP trickery or branch-mispredict stalls.
If you want to buy a Mac, buy a Mac. They have decent performance and run a few applications (Photoshop, some video authoring tools) very well. They have an interface that many people find delightful. But spare us all the corrupt micro-benchmarking and utterly ignorant "armchair microarchitecture critic" gibberish. If you want to talk about that sort of thing, read Hennesy and Patterson and the last year of Microprocessor Report and hit the SPEC web site before sounding off, please!
Since I use both left and right hands for "mousing", having two buttons would be confusing to say the least. Depending on which hand I used to mouse, I would either get a click or a right-click when I clicked normally. I.e. for me it would hurt my productivity to have two buttons that do different things. Still, I can see your point. However, with a one trackpad (or mouse or whatever) in Mac OS you can do anything a two button device can do - you hold control down to do a "right click" (in the Mac sense, bring up the contextual menu), so it's not much of an issue regardless. Moreover, I find it awkward to use a second button on a trackpad - indeed I have a two-button trackpad that I sometimes use with my G4 tower but eventually I just set its software so that both buttons did a normal click.
--- What?
So what exacly is the problem? Apple gives out numbers that put their computer in the nice light? My god, you mean marketing would actually tweak the facts?
As for the site comparing different computers, there again what is the problem? This review is biased, but then again what review is not. Giving points for a case that is easy to open and the box having handle is a choice, some people might even agree on it. As for not mentionning Athlon, obviously all computer are supermarket type brands...
The end conclusion is that for brand computers, you get more or less the same for the same price. It's not a message that is exaclty controversial.
Why the hell does this need to be on slashdot? A link on a article with nearly no content linking to a biased comparison of computers. Stuff that matters alright...
My dream PC is a Titanium Powerbook which, incidentally, should be shipping in the next day or so.
I don't care how cheaply you can put together your fancy 3.7GHz quad-Athlon system. I want portability, and I want usability, and the PC end of things can't give me those two in anything like a decent combination.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
It is important to bear in mind the scope of this article; it is deriding what is obviously a flawed benchmark test. It should not be interpreted as a scathing review of all of Apple's innovations. In particular, it focuses only on hardware and skips over the great strides Apple has made in its software developement.
And the software is perhaps where the real appeal of the Mac lies, something even good benchmarks wouldn't reflect. And this has special significance to Linux users.
Install Linux alongside Mac OS and you have a much nicer Operating System to fall back on when something hasn't been Linuxized yet. Your alternative in the desktop market is basically Windows and we all know how painful that is. It's much nicer to boot back into OS X or OS 9. And since the new Macintoshes use Open Firmware, so you don't have to worry about mucking around with your boot blocks and Lilo.
Furthermore, the state of open source Mac emulation on Linux is, in my opinion, much nicer than the comparative Windows emulation (see http://www.maconlinux.net)
Of course, this won't solve your needs if you intend to dual boot for games, but if you want another operating system alongside Linux, Mac OS is very harmonious. But you're going to need a Mac to do so.
There are plenty of cross platform apps which can potentially be used for benchmarking both PPC and x86 computers. Here's a short list:
* d.net rc5-64
From the distributed.net client speed page:
I guess we've settled the issue of Mhz vs. performance once and for all. ;-)
A guy writes a propaganda chart, saying an L3 cache is four times as important as a floppy drive, and other dubious, yet totally subjective claims. He says, "If you don't like my results, come up with your own chart. YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY."
./ and they put it up saying that the 'some guy' is flaming the outrageous claims of Apple.
/. actually thinks someone flaming Apple is newsworthy, and the utter lack of investigation, in thinking the referenced piece is a flame against Apple, and not some other guy's homegrown opinion.
Then, some other guy writes a piece saying how wrong he feels this post is.
Then some third guy (Hemos) posts the 'story' to
The only thing newsworthy about this article is that
Get a grip. There's plenty of cloning stories to post about before we let drivel like this make it to the top of the page.
Kevin Fox
64 MB? 128? Wow... 256 MB is about $40 these days. I advise you to require all of your coworkers to upgrade immediately. You will want at least 512 MB in your Mac, of course. :-)
Oops, sorry about that. It should look like this: You said: c) multi-platform video games are usually released first for the larger PC market, and therefore invariably have better and more thorough PC driver support for all those fancy 3-D video cards.
If I recall correctly, Photoshop was developed for the Mac platform first, and is more optimized for it.
Having said that, if I was buying a new notebook today, I'd be taking a long hard look at that TiBook.
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
I hate to break it to him, but clock frequencies are never a good indicator of overall processor performance when comparing against different processor families. There can be some truth to the claim that a G4 at a given MHz is faster than a P4 at the same MHz -- after all, when I took my Computer Architecture a few years back, the PPC 603 had a much shorter pipeline relative to the PPro, and from what I've read since then, nothing has changed in that respect.
However, that doesn't mean that I think the G4 really is faster now, even if Intel's push for more MHz is mostly about marketing. After all, back when I took that class, we all thought RISC chips would eat CISC chips for lunch because the simpler instruction core for RISC chips would let them be run faster. Meanwhile, Intel figured out a way to engineer themselves out of that hole (using a form of microcode on the Pentium Pro, if I remember correctly), while Motorola couldn't engineer itself out of a paper bag (with 500 MHz written on it) for quite a while, as he mentions.
Anyway, as a proud new iBook owner (and an NT and Solaris user at work), I don't care who is faster, as long as I can do what I need to do.
The rant lays out a good question, then. What do you use to gauge value if not Photoshop benchmarks and CPU MHz?
My first intuitive guess would have to be dollars, but then people have the unfortunate habit of trying to get the absolute damn cheapest product out there, which does nothing for quality and performance.
We would need a value per dollar metric to compare systems, then. What value?
Features? That gets hard to compare, as different people value different options, and some people don't even know what features they value until they grow into the system.
Then there is the hard to even see metric, quality . Fit, finish, durability, ease of use, etc. Short of using a system for a couple of days, most laptops/PCs are superficially the same, until you need to open the box, swap video cards, add a new hard drive, etc.
Performance? At least you can use time as a measure, but what would you be measuring with time? Photoshop? Office? It would be twisted, but how about comparing a Windows benchmark running under Virtual PC vs a Windows benchmark on a Windows machine? Given that the virtualization would take a performance hit, you could apply some scalar or multiplier to try to normalize the scores.
I dunno. I know I bought a Mac because it looked good and felt good, and that has no bearing on MHz or performance.
GPL Deconstructed
When an x86 box can render dvd video in real time Apple may have a need to worry. For now the reasons people buy macs are video and other media creation. The fact that Photoshop is that much faster on the mac is a reason to buy one. Of course if all you do is run word and outlook you might as well get a pc.
With respect to processor speed, faster is better and necessary, as always, is a myth. I run a 400 MHz G4. At my last job I ran a 600 MHz or so Pentium. MS office on both machines ran about the same. Netscape on both machines ran about the same. SETI@Home ran faster on the G4. For most of my purposes, the platforms are to close to call. The clock speed for Windows machines needs to be fast not only for hardware reasons, but because MS, unlike Apple, has a tendency to shamelessly waste cycles.
The same is true for hard disk space. By current standards I have a very small hard disk on my G4, around 9 GB. With MacOS 9 and a very full compliment of programs and data loaded, including Virtual PC, and 640-MB virtual disk, I still have 3 GB left. Again, MS like to waste space, so a machine that runs windows needs a larger hard disk.
I may get a Windows machine if I use it regularly. The hectic upgrade and patch schedule has kept from acquiring one in the past. Likewise, I need to get a *nix machine up and running again. I just haven't had the spare hardware. Until then, my trusty G4 will serve and protect me for the evil empire. It costs more, but what can you do.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
This may be hard for some /. readers to believe, but there does come a time in life when you don't just need a fast, loud and cheap box. You can argue specs and benchmarks all day long, but you cannot convince me that 99% of PCs aren't ugly. When I'm shopping for a system, well-designed boxes like the iMac and G4 Cube rank high on my list because they work well, look good, and are quiet.
What do I mean by work well? I mean when I add a new piece of hardware or software to the mix, I expect it to work on the first try. It doesn't always happen, but I expect it. Nearly every application works in a predictable way. The OS doesn't interfere with me getting my job done. The system is well thought out, reliable, and easy to maintain. Macs don't have CMOS or Plug-n-Pray; that alone should be worth an extra $50.
Looking good is, of course, subjective. But Apple certainly does have a flair for enclosures that are different from the usual beige box, even if not everyone agrees that they are easy on the eyes. I happen to think the 20th Anniversary Mac is one of the slickest looking pieces of electronic goodness ever, and I don't care that it has only 2 PCI slots. I get a kick out of just looking at a TAM, even when it's off. It's worth something to me fill my environment with items that please to the senses, and Macs do that. Okay, so they don't smell like anything; you know what I mean.
Finally, the ears ringing issue. Sure, you can buy quieter parts for PCs, but why should I have to build my own system - and pay extra for special 'quiet' components - just because I want a little peace?
I have 2 PCs at home, and they are fast, loud, and cheap. Either one of them makes more noise than any 4 Macs put together (I have verified this empirically). Their razor-sharp sheet-metal cases are held together by about a million little screws (no two the same size), and only a contortionist can add RAM to them. Their PCI backplanes align poorly with their cases, making it difficult to add cards. Once cards are added, they seem to be too stupid to tell Linux what their capabilities are. Their hardware clocks gain or lose minutes per day. In short, they are crap. If they weren't fast and cheap, I would want absolutely nothing to do with them.
I don't mind having the occasional PC running Linux in the server closet. But when it comes to a workstation I have to sit in front of, give me a Mac every time. Apple sweats the details; PC companies don't. It shows in every aspect of the system. I can't sit down in front of a PC without thinking about how Apple would have done it better. Macs are nice to be around and feel good to use. I'm willing to pay a little extra to put Apple's elegance in front of me.
I'm not a starving student anymore. I don't want my environment to resemble a college student's hand-me-downs. I decorate my house with attractive works of art and furniture, and I decorate my computing life with a Mac.
"PCs running Windows are faster, better made, more reliable and make you thinner and smarter as well."
I want to be thinner and smarter, Rev. Matt! Show me the way, the way to Redmond, the way to Bill, amen!
the only machine OSX run on, thats good enough for me.
If I wanted a fast *nix box I'd rather buy [insert fast cheap stuff here] box
Who let the mac heads out...who who who who let the mac heads out...who who who Must mac heads I know only think they are hackers. I just can't wait for all the misconfigured OS X boxes to hit the net. ...what's that?.... ...mac on has a 2% share...
Well, guess I'll just have to stick hacking all the misconfigured windows boxes.
Trying to declare that your machine isn't really slower isn't very productive, even if it's true. First, it isn't something most users will ever hear about, or understand. Second, it's just far too easy to rig the game in your favor, so performance claims by either side become pretty worthless. But third, and most importantly, performance just doesn't matter anymore to the vast majority of users. Everything out there is more than fast enough. Nobody (almost) buys a car based on top speed; most people don't even buy based on engine power -- people buy cars based on design, comfort, handling, safety, gas mileage, extra features, etc.
Apple clearly wants people to buy computers the same way. The great industrial design and things like iMovie, iTunes and OS X, with its stunning user interface, make this clear. Apple wants people to buy based on user experience, and on what they, as non-geeks, can do with their computers. Sure, it's possible to edit digital video on a Wintel machine. But is it as easy as iMovie? The capability is worthless to an average user if it's too difficult to use.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
- Watch the Megahertz
- video at apple for another benchmark with the same results (at the mac expo).
I can't get over that this was allowed to be posted. The guy has excellent points that the benchmarks done with the G4 vs P4 all use photoshop and macs always win. He points out the bias quite easily but...He doesn't offer any solution. Ok, so maybe the G4 isn't really as fast as they say it is. PROVE it. Let's see some benchmarks that are more fair and then re-evaluate the position.
I would agree that 733 MHz beating a P4 1.7 GHz seems wrong. But this guy is no better than faulty benchmarks. He makes it sound like G4 733 is only as good as P3 733. I would not agree with that.
Apple is about delivering a total end-user experience that is pleasant, integrated, and straightforward. The apps are attractive and performance is always "good enough" and the details aren't so important. Compare this to the PC world where people choose what video card to buy based on intensive Quake benchmarks; Mac users don't even worry about their video card. They just buy a computer.
And even though I'm more inclined towards the PC way of doing things, myself, every time I have an opportunity to use a Mac (whether it be an older iMac or a 400 mHz G4 Cube) I find the experience pleasant. Apps are responsive, scrolling is smooth, the hard drive never grinds for ten seconds on end when I run two apps at once, etc.
I just wish both Apple and everyone else would realize that fact, and stop trying to promote the G4's as being in competition with PCs for performance.
PC Guy sez: My 1.8 Gigahertz monster will crush your 866 Mhz weenie machine! Photoshop sucks.
:)
What does the PC Guy say about the dual G4/800?
PC guy sez: Your fruity colored box looks like a toy. Behold my case mods!
The stuff isn't so fruity at the moment -- take a look at the Ti PowerBook, the new G4 tower, and the iBook. These things are just flat out sleek. Only the iMac is colored at the moment. Of course, this will all change eventually.
Yes, I realize this was all in fun.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
K5 has it's problems, but so does slashdot. It's not like one site is unquestionably better than the other.
Not true. One my of laptops is a Mac (PBG3) and I use it all of the time. It is up for months (with exceptions for reboots after software installs) without crashing.
Much better than my NT (4.0SP6) box which is good for about 3 weeks or my 98SE (running 2 apps and one of them is IE) which can't seem to go for more than about 2-3 days before it crashes.
(I don't leave the Linux box on long enough to test uptime. I suspect it would have not these troubles.)
______
Once: you're a philosopher. Twice: a pervert.
It is not a bad thing when someone hits a group right bang smack between the eyes with the facts causing them to gibber impotently as their ideological sacred cows are slaughtered.
McWeeniedom is much like membership of Scientology they take all your money and give you something in return that only members of the cult call 'advanced technology'.
The laughable comparison chart is as ridiculous as the folk flaming "go do Comp Arc. 101 and learn about the difference between CISC and RISC". Then the curious statement is made that the G4 is faster than Pentium 4 despite the slow clock speed because the G4 RISC instructions do more per cycle. Clearly the several people who made the statement would fail their comp arch course. The RISC strategy was to reduce the complexity of individual instructions, specifically avoiding the type of complex instructions that cause pipeline faults. The other part of RISC was to simplify design to allow faster to market exploitation of the latest Fab.
In short to defend the G4 the traditional RISC/CISC argument is turned back to front. You go to RISC architecture because it allows you to push for higher clock speeds faster.
There are plenty of good benchmarks around. SPECMarks, CERN Units, MFlops, etc. and most of them are cross platform. Any benchmark that fixes on a particular piece of code that was hand coded in assembler for one platform is utterly bogus.
The biggest flaw in the article however is that the majority of the marks are given for allowing the user to select their own configuration. The whole point about the PC is that you get to choose exactly the configurtation and price point you want.
So scoring 1 point for a crappy Iomega Zip drive I would never use is beside the point. Anyone who wants to pay Iomega for their overpriced faulty trash can do so. Compact Flash is rapidly approaching the cost of ZIP disks, is smaller, more reliable and has capacities up to 1Gb.
Other folk have pointed to the bogosity of giving the Apple 2 points for L3 cach and the PCs 0.5 points for a 400MHz system bus. But the fundamental error is that the processor ratings are on the basis of benchmarks that test the whole system but are then applied to the processor alone. So on the basis that an Apple was found to be equivalent to last years model of PC on a dubious benchmark the Apple gets 12.5 points and the PCs get 10.5 or less.
The 802.11B scores are also bogus, to enable the apple you need to buy an extra card, to enable the PC you need to get an extra card. The only difference is that only Apple can supply the card for the G4.
The stupidest of all is the 'virus' line. The only reason that the Mac has not been plagued is that the population of Macs is too low to allow contagion to spread. If the Mac ever became popular again it would be slaughtered. All this reflects is the fact that virsu writers have abandoned the Mac along with almost every other software maker. If you really want to be guaranteed Virus free go run Open Genera or Multics.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I put a mirror here. The original seems to be slashdotted.
my tests
which part of the subjectivity of benchmarks didnt you understand?
remember gagganators third law of benchmarking: for every benchmark showing product a faster, there is an equal and opposite benchmark showing product b faster
(see also linux vs nt benchmarks)
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
This time I remembered to use
tags! Sorry...
My problem has always been that Apple doesn't like to let other people inside their boxes
Sure, if you buy an iFruit, Apple definitely doesn't want you opening one of those up, since the target audience is those who couldn't tell a resistor from a capacitor. However, the G4 tower case designs are very accessible, and make it really easy to install new hardware.
Beside that, Apple is making an active effort to help PCI hardware vendors write drivers for MacOS X in their upcoming I/O Kit PCI Kitchen on August 28th. This is a free workshop for developers to bring in hardware, and get help writing drivers.
It took them ages to finally put several expansion slots in their boxes.
If you look into the history of Apple computers, you'd find out that the fifth Macintosh model released, the Macintosh II (1987) had 6 NuBus expansion slots. I've got one in my basement, it's quite a beefy chunk o' plastic.
Article on the Mac II for those interested.
Three years since the original Mac 128k. So it took a while, but I don't think that qualifies for "ages". Especially considering this was back in the day when a 40 MB hard drive waas still optional.
I have tried it, and that second processor doesn't buy you much. This is what everyone said when it came out too.... Newer games where they try to use other processors for heavy AI might benifit more. Read Carmack's discussion about multiprocessor Quake. I can't find the link right now but if you search a little you probably can.
Everyone knows this debate has been beaten to death. Arguing one way or the other isn't going to change anyone's mind anyway.
The fact of the matter is that in today's market both Mac and Windows offer perfect solutions for 90% of consumers. Combine Microsoft Office with an email client and a web browser and you solve the needs of MOST people out there.
The pros and cons of each are quite minor. Speed differences matter little considering how fast most common tasks get done anyway, MacOS and Windows are equally easy to use and stability seems to depend on individual configurations, MacOS has higher quality in exchange for fewer options and higher prices, Windows has more software in exchange for lower average quality of software.
There are many INDIVIDUAL reasons to choose one platform over the other, but there is no clear superiority.
In the past I chose a PC because I wanted to play more games and have an easier time programming. More recently I choose a Mac for BBEdit and Mac OS X.
In short, I think the best thing is to have both, or at least use both, and make an informed decision for yourself. Rants like the one posted are just ignorant and pointless.
Yes, that's exactly what we need more of - More Financial Institutions using hardware that approaches the legal drafting age.
...
So where do you think Linux grew from? - people using their old boxen for servers. It's a perfectly good box, why toss it? Besides, they don't need high speed access and they don't need to spend time and dollars when it does what they need.
Besides, we got rid of the draft last century. Get with the millenium
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
The stats speak by themselves.
Most popular user operating systems used for access to my website, yesterday: Windows 98 with 942 sessions (75.97% of all sessions) Windows 95 with 137 sessions (11.05% of all sessions) Windows NT with 65 sessions (5.24% of all sessions) Windows ME with 58 sessions (4.68% of all sessions) Macintosh PPC with 22 sessions (1.77% of all sessions) LINUX with 11 sessions (0.89% of all sessions) Amiga with 3 sessions (0.24% of all sessions) Windows 3.1x with 2 sessions (0.16% of all sessions)
That certainly was a waste of time. Let's keep the topics informative at the least. Don't let the trolls get what they want.
This is not entirely correct. IBM for the most part uses POWER processors in the pSeries and iSeries machines. The POWER line is a direct descendant from the arch that spawned the PPC. The processors used in these boxes are 64-bit implementations of the ISA and for the most part are a LOT faster than the PPC's that Apple sells. These machines have numbers listed on the spec.org (the only benchmark organization who's sole goal is to provide a cross platform level playing field) page. You would do well to
look at SpecINT/SpecFP if your interested in processor bound workstation type system loads.
First off, you ping by downloading MacPing or WhatRoute.
Secondly, if you had to "constantly" rebuild desktops and delete preference files and reinstall the OS, you either had some amazingly clueless users, or must have been pretty worthless as a Mac support tech. Having to reinstall the Mac OS on any machine I ever took care of was considered "worst case." The Macs (including servers) at my last job hummed along so well, if they hadn't also had PCs there I probably would've gotten laid off because I had nothing to do.
IME, there are only two things you need to support Macs effectively-- a copy of Norton Utilities, and a book, preferably a thick one, to read between support calls.
~Philly
I don't really know why this needs to be an argument, though. It is really good to have variance in the industry. If we were all running the same OS and processor and software, worms like Code Red would have the potential to take out the whole internet. (don't get me started...)
Let's let the Mac folks be Mac folks. If they say their stuff is faster, who cares? There's no point in getting upset. It's not as if you actually designed the Athlon processor, and need to feel offended that someone says their potentially inferior favorite chip is better than the one you poured your heart and soul into designing. All you did was read Tom's Hardware Guide or Ars Technica. Every side has its own propaganda, and it's easy to convince someone of anything.
Tell them that you'll believe it when you do benchmarks on your own apps. Use the standard compilers and see which one wins. Until then, speculation is only wasting all of our time!
I had a blast on the MacNN forums pointing out all the flaws in the guys scoring formula. No matter WHAT systems were compared, he rigs the scoring so the Mac always wins. Example: he compares the iMac ($900-$1200) to Dell's cheapest offering and declares the iMac the winner. Would he have claimed the same results had he compared it to Dell's Pentium IV 8100, which can be had for under $1000? That Dell destroys the iMac, which is probably why he didn't mention it.
Likewise, in his "$2500 tower shootout", the G4 has similar components to the Dell. Yet when I configure the Dell using their website, it's $1899! If I jacked it up to $2500, I get double the memory of the G4, bigger hard drive, GeForce3, two optical drives, etc. Yet he can't seem to configure the same system on his end, even after I sent him a URL containing the shopping cart!
Other errors: earlier iterations of his charts claimed "each PC loses a PCI slot, because you have to add a USB card to make them equivalent to the Mac". Bull SHIT. Every PC has USB on the motherboard. He knows it's wrong, and prints it anyway.
I could go on and on... the whole 'comparison' is such a joke, it's not even worth ranting over. I believe in honest comparisons - this one is not, and is no better than those created by PC people that slam the Mac without knowing the facts. Pure FUD.
it is funny of what is happening around the internet community about this website. people seem to overlook the fact that the pc won. dispite the Super Drive which put it over the top. which is understandable. People need to understand that windows are better for certain things, while macs are better for certain things. graphics mabe macintosh is better, windows maybe games are better. but in the real world Both machines should be awesome. but adobe is working closely with apple in developing there products. while gameing companies are working closely with windows to get there product out there.
is dead.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
K5 doesn't nearly have enough linux news, linux advocacy, first posts, hot grits, and Jon Katz. And everyone knows that's all that matters.
Could someone honestly complement another person by saying "Right on the money Weasel Boy!!"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Come adding up dozens of subjective measurements does not make you objective. Those numbers are totally arbitrary. And the machines come out almost the same in the end. Tweak any one of the measurements and you could have any box you want 'win' by a large margin.
It doesn't, and shouldn't, convince anyone who isn't already convinced.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
PPC systems aren't restricted to less than 15 interrupts like Intel systems. They make good laptops, if you only need one mouse button..
*sigh* why do people who have no idea about what their talking about constantly feel the need to talk anyway?
The Intel ISA has 256 interrupts and 256 exceptions. There is a limitation on Interrupt Requests but that was a limitation of IBM's original PC design (just two cascading Interrupt controllers) for the CPU/pretrial interface.
While IRQs are still around for compatibility, modern machines don't have any problems anymore (PCI and USB devices can share IRQs)
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I'm frustrated that, in price/performance comparisons, no one brings up a Mac's benefit to video production professionals. Today's G4 with SuperDrive, Final Cut Pro, and DVD Studio Pro costs about $90,000 less than the comparable solution in recent history. These are the people Apple's really shooting for, and Apple's pleasing them.
Yeah OS X all the way... Up with hope down with windows err i mean dope......
-- The one and only 5H071M3
To the other extreme, as they say. What precisely is the issue here? Is it bad that the Mac supports one-button mice too, unlike Windows? If you want more buttons than buy one that has them. Can't we all just get along?
--- What?
This Rant by "HANK" or who ever sounds more like a worried PC user on the brink of buying a MAC because they "COULD" be better. I don't have a problem with them using Photoshop as a Benchmark, because most of the mac community uses some type of graphic application to work on. PC users tend to crunch large amounts of data or play lots of games. I am not sticking up for apple, I think they have a long way to go... but don't bash something that has the potential to be a better product in the long run. Let us also not forget that MAC osX has a BSD core which is the heart and soul ( LINUX, and it's variants included )of all intelligent pc users out there.
who would unscrew a pulugged in and powered mac?
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I was in MicroCenter just this weekend looking at a loaded G4 with the gigundo LCD display. 30 seconds into clicking around looking for something that would play a movie so I could see what the LCD looked like with moving pictures on it, the system locked up.
Ahh, takes me back to the old days of Mac lockups with no chance of recovery, not even the chance that the BSOD is an overreaction, just hit return and keep working.
Every time I've tried to buy into the Mac hype, I've spent a few days using one, and the lockups chased me back to PCs or UNIX.
This time, brand new in-store HW chased me out before I even had a chance to get an impulse to buy.
Macs are pretty computers for pretty people who don't use them very often or for very long.
--Blair
It was all rant and dull rant at that. There are 3 reasons to read brain drool like this: 1. It interesting 2. It is not interesting but makes you think of other things that are interesting 3. It is not interesting nor does it make you think of other interesting things but it is well written Unfortunately we all read it for the worst reason: it was posted on /.
--
- clever sig here
Well, since the real point is real world performance, you wouldn't want to use the GIMP. No serious graphics professional would ever use it as a serious tool... at least for now. It's pretty much on par functionality-wise with PS 2.5. Things like printing PostScript files or Acrobat Distillation, etc. are the things that people who use apps like Photoshop or XPress actually care about. The faster I can print a 200 page catalog rife with images the better and I'm sorry, but postscript support in Windows is just unbearable.
Pooty tweet
This statement is surely a far cry from "3 steps out of the box", isn't it?
I would hazard to say that most Mac users are just as dense as Wintel users, as I have had to show countless people how to do just the things you're saying. This doesn't lend itself to the claim that the MacOS is more stable than Win9x, because I can make both OS's run great with no freezes, bluescreens or lockups. Besides, in my experience, most lockups are not caused by the OS anyway. It's the shoddy software that does people in.
Apple Computer today announced they would be shutting down effective immediately. The choice to ship Macs with one-button mice by default was sighted as the primary cause of the blighted company's failings as many potential buyers had not yet saved up enough allowance to afford the $20 2-button mouse they had been dreaming of.
One-time customer Bobby said, "My iMac looked great and did everything I wanted, but I just couldn't believe it shipped with a one button mouse." Bobby returned the iMac and bought a computer that came with a 2-button mouse in the box. 5th grader Sally remarked, "I was going to get a G4, but my friend Joey said that one button mice where for wussies." Her friend Timmy added, "Yeah, they're gay!"
Nearby the local CompUSA was having no luck selling their backlog of iMacs and G4s for wholesale prices. Owner "Tom Dashel" said, "We just can't sell these one-button-mouse-in-the-box machines at any price. What was Apple thinking? Two is more than one isn't it?"
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, said in an interview, "It's so depressing."
--- What?
Carmack put this in his .plan file shortly after beginning development mac development of q3a.
I rebooted my mac system more times the first weekend than I have rebooted all the WinNT systems I have ever owned
-- john Carmack
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Here's the thing: I don't care what machine you use. But, both the Mac and the Winboxes are marketed as 'computers', which in supposed to mean a multi-purpose number-crunching and symbol-manipulating machine. To say the Mac is a better computer because it kicks ass running Photoshop is a lot like saying the PS2 is a great computer cause it rules video games. The bozo that put together that 'comparison' knows this, but doesn't care. If you know this and don't care either (or have other criteria besides 'speed'), then by all means enjoy your Apple.
Just don't waste time telling people what a fast computer it is.
My Macs are under my desks; I don't particularly care how they look.
Where I see the elegance is on the screen, and selling Windows machines won't help with that.
For instance, all the Photoshop benchmarks in the world can't explain why I vastly prefer the Mac for Photoshop: The mouse movement is much more smooth and natural. I can't do any fine-detail work with a mouse in Windows (as an experiment, try moving the mouse pointer in a little circle repeatedly as fast as possible with both machines. On the Windows machine, if your hand is anything like mine, the circle tracks across the screen and takes on a NW-SE ovoid shape). Worse still, when you have the mouse speed/acceleration set to any reasonable levels on Windows, it actually SKIPS PIXELS even when you're moving it as slowly as possible. So you end up having to zoom way all the time to get things done.
And don't even get me started on fonts, default locations for open/save dialogs, etc.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
How much RAM do you have, how much do they have, and how big are the .ps files? If they're hitting the disk, that could make a huge difference.
...except that Apple hasn't shipped any machines with puck mice for the past year+, so who cares? BTW, I actually like the puck mouse OK, and never found a problem with the orientation. I like the new pro mouse much better though.
also, Apple monitors are IIRC just repackaged Sony(or some company's) trinitrons. Personally I prefer my 19" Mitsubishi Diamondtron. cheaper than Apple's 17", bigger, and a nicer picture. doesn't match my machine, but who really gives a fuck?
c|net is reporting that Apple is letting the mole they caught "worker bee" off the hook pretty lightly http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-6804697.html
The Big Number Game is a dandy favourite of any marketroid, however. How else are they going to get the uninformed to buy the whiz-bang systems?
(Yes, yes... it's prolly been said many times. No, I didn't read all the comments... No, I haven't been home yet and am running out the door now, hoping my DSL is still switched on. Yes, I'm getting off-topic!)
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
Um, hm...story's about Mac benchmarks, there's assholes posting whiny rants about how their oh-so-important stories about unrelated subjects didn't get posted, yet this post gets rated "Offtopic." Time to lay off the shrooms, man.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
... but rather those of rabid Mac zealots, who take Apple's reality-defying marketing hype and inflate it to ridiculous extremes. I met one fellow in my Usenet days who actually claimed that a G3 processor was faster than the fastest Alpha chips. Yeah, right. In PhotoShop?
:)
One of the reasons, I think, why Macs are considered to perform so much better is because MacOS (pre-X) is a compact, well-designed, well-modularized little OS whereas Windows is a bloated mess. If your OS stays out of your way, you can get more done, it's that simple. Also, from a more technical standpoint, if you can bogart the CPU in a CMT environment you will get more performance than a PMT environment where your timeslices are enforced by the kernel.
OS X is significantly more heavyweight, of course, and I've seen some fast Macs stutter on it. (Not like it isn't sweet, though.)
I really don't care about the platform wars, I've used both. I'm just sick of the hype and BS, and people flaming each other over nebulous and inconsequential issues. I'd like to get a new Mac sometime soon... well, maybe when the prices come down a teensy bit more. Till then it's Athlon all the way.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
There are important reasons why Apple says Mhz isn't the only factor in a processor. Pipeline lenght, while being more complicated than it's state, still affects performance. A long-ass pipeline like on the P4 gives it the Mhz, but it takes away on performance as well. That's why an 866 Mhz processor can kick a 1.7 Mhz processor's ass. Plus, I don't like the homophonic tones in his "fruity" references.
Oh shit yes... I can't say how many little things there are about winXX the piss me off so much, that never get fixed.
It's the little things that count, casue when your using a computer, you end up doing these little things so many times, they become a big pain in the ass. Of course, app programmers do share a little of the blame for this to.
That's why I ended up liking Mac OS so much when I was using Macs. And it's also why I'm holding off my opinion on OS X, since they still have a lots of little things to fix up.