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Next-Gen Apples To Include 1394b, USB 2.0
seletz writes: "According to this article on The Register, Apple will ship its next-generation PowerMacs with USB 2.0 and double FireWire.
USB 2.0 boosts data transfer up to 480Mbps, FireWire 1394b goes up to 3.2Gbps." It may seem a minor point, but the more and faster connections are built in, the less frequently the upgrade gremlins have to strike. 3.2Gbps!
this is old stuff... macNN (a rather silly mac site) had this a week ago. Shouldn't you be announcing flat panel iMacs ? Anyway, its pure bollocks : G5 procs aren't coming out in another 1.5 years. It's the G4 story all over again. They were announced 2 years early, came out at an insane price tag and lowerer MHz than expected, and stuck to a MHz barrier for 2 years. Apple should buy out Moto sommerset facilities and rent them to IBM. That might help a bit.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
So now the mouse will have the bandwidth to have more than one button?
Actually, it will be nice to have the speed for video editing on external harddrives without having to use a firewire one.
Probably takes someone like Apple to be the first to make boxes with USB 2.0 and 1394b. Hopefully, PCs will have them too, in a not-too-distant future.
From what I remember (from the distant 20th century), Apple where first with "regular" USB too. Some PC:s had it (I had an old pentium MB with a USB bracket (sold separately)), but noone where able to use it (no drivers or hardware).
Think it was the same with FireWire too.
Why is this? Are Apple more daring and adventureous than all PC manufacturers? Or is it because noone wants to spend money on a technology that might not be "wanted" (meaning: Windows won't support it)?
There are 010 kinds of people. Those who understand octal, those who don't, and 06 other kinds of morons.
I don't think Apple supporting USB 2.0 is going to make the technology be worth the effort. Realistically if Ms doesn't add the support to the OS what manufacturers are going to create USB 2.0 items?
I think the bigger effect here might be seeing real processing power from the G5s and DDR. Its been way to long for the powerpc to remain so far back in the "apparently important" mhz race.
Still, I don't think faster interfaces mean diddly when it comes to upgrading PCs, my PCs get upgraded when the components inside, meaning processor and memory, cannot be upgraded to sufficient levels for what I need to run... (stuff outside the computer has a tendency to get upgraded when it developes legs of its own)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I am an electronic musician, and just recently purchased an EOL dual g4 450.
:-)
This almost makes me wish I would have been a little more patient. With as much bandwidth as these new mac's will have, one could reasonable expect to be able to master full surround dvd's without even spiking processor usage. I'm glad to see that apple is still innovating on the technical end. It's this type of innovation that reminds me why I use a mac for all things music
If you are at all interested in my music, click on my link above!
Moderators: you should browse at 0. I may have made some dumb ass comments in the past, but I frequently have something worthwhile to say. Take a look!
Shouldn't 1394b ("double FireWire") be FireFireWireWire and not just FireFire?
The speed of the bus in a computer is a big point these days. Processors and RAM are getting so fast that now the limiting factor on overall speed is the device that moves data around in a computer: the bus.
~ now you know
Remember too that SuSE and some others have PowerPC versions of Linux for these boxes as well. Imagine Linux on this? Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Although I'd like to believe the story and wish it were true, I don't think we'll be seeing any G5s until this time next year at the very earliest.
Moto have a topnotch chip design unit, but their fabs suck big time and can't produce the chips in large enough quantities
It was an incorrect rumor; to the fault of Apple.
Apple made an annoucement that they were laying off some of their sales force, yet they did not disclose the number of employees. This led to rampant rumors that Apple was laying off a large number of employees - following the downward spiral of the other PC manufacturers.
As it has turned out, Apple eleiminated 50,that fifty, total employees. The move was not a cost cutting one, but the result of a re-organization of sales regions. The new zoning was not finalized when they made tha announcement, which is why they did not give an exact number at that time.
I am Slad.
[sigh] This is a borderline troll, and I probably shouldn't waste my time replying to it, but on the off-chance it's legitimate, I'll make an honest answer.
The "massive Apple layoffs" thing seems to be a massive rumor, and no more. In fact, all the legitimate news indicates that Apple is weathering the storm much better than PC makers such as Dell. If someone has information to the contrary, please let me know.
And where the hell were you pricing laptops (and if so, why were you looking at iMacs anyway?) IMO the iBook offers the absolute best price-performance ratio of any laptop on the market. Yes, the standard 64 MB RAM sucks, but you can bump that up cheaply enough. In every other way, the iBook is the best low- to mid-range laptop you'll find for your money.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I don't quite believe this rumor, but let's just suppose its true.
Apple would be including USB 2.0 and faster firewire (800 Mbps, not 3.2 Gbps), for two reasons. First, it would be accomodating a standard that many peripheral manufacturers would be supporting for LOW speed hardware. Second, it would be including it to showcase Firewire's supremecy as a HIGH speed interface.
Remember, Intel has bee trying to market USB 2.0 as a FireWire killer. Everybody knows that the 480 Mbps spec. makes 1394's 400 Mbps look slower. Unfortunately for Intel, USB is a poorly hacked technology which is not capable of producing real-world results of this speed. Theoretically, it works this fast, until you add a slow device like a mouse or keyboard, peripherals which predominate the USB connected equipment today.
Actually, they might use USB 2.0 for some integrated telephony and modem type devices, as that is what USB was originally developed for.
Primarily, Apple would include the technology to maintain a pool of peripherals, since 2.0 devices will not work on 1.x buses. It will not be able to replace FireWire for high speed stuff, so they wouldn't be dropping 1394, even to save a few bucks on low-end models, since the "Digital Hub" requires high speed DV capabilities.
-- Len
Yes, it's most likely that Apples next revision of hardware will include USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394b (Firewire 2.0?). However, 3.2Gbs is not the number.
The next step for Firewire is actually 800Mbs. 1.2Gbs, 2.8Gbs and 3.2Gbs speeds are possible with this new protocol though, given the use of copper and fiber for the physical connection.
What I find more interesting, though, is that the next revision of PowerMac should sport some form of DDR SDRAM... and either the new "Apollo" G4 at around 1.2GHz or the brand new 64bit capable G5! Both Bandwidth Hungry CPUs... that should give the P4 and Palomino (?) a run for their money.
RSN
The layoffs were in the sales force. With the Apple Stores and the online store, FtF sales are not as essential.
There are several reasons we pay a little extra, quality of hardware, tight integration between hardware and software, and it is not Windows. If you are into the creative arts, Apple is the first choice. The Mac has always been geared to the Artist, publisher, teacher, and scientist. These people will tend to buy from those who care about their concerns.
I don't mind paying extra for quality. I know people that are still using the original Mac II. One uses his for fonts, another for HyperCard.
One lady bought a new Compaq, but went back to her 6200, citing the difficulty of using Windows for making class projects. It didn't have HyperCard.
BTW the 6200 line is probably the worst Apples made.
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It may seem a minor point, but the more and faster connections are built in, the less frequently the upgrade gremlins have to strike. 3.2Gbps!
Yeah, I remember back in '89 when I upgraded to a 40MB hard drive and said the same thing. The upgrade gremline will never stop striking!
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
Sorry but Apple's overall head count has been increasing. While Dell, HP, Compaq, and so on have been laying off literally thousands of employees Apple has laid off 50 or so. But they've hired more than 50 or so in that same period.
Apple has over $4.2 billion in the bank. When Steve Jobs originally took over they had like $200some million.
Apple is an extremely efficient company these days. When their CFO last spoke recently (about a month or so ago) he remarked that they had their inventory down to 2 days. Apple is efficient for the same reason Dell is efficient: excellent inventory management.
There are also a number of major factors which are working toward's Apple's favor. OS X 10.1 is coming out and within the next year virtually all of the major applications will be converted to OS X. Because of its UNIX and NeXT roots and Java capabilities OS X appeals to a much wider crowd than Mac OS 9. Also, while Apple has languished somewhat with their G4 processors (2000 was not a good year) Apple will actually be in a better position going forward with the G5. The G5 is 64-bit and also runs existing 32-bit Macintosh applications. While the Wintel world will be split between the Itanium, P4, and the AMD Sledgehammer architectures, the Macintosh will on one chipset architecture.
Apple most certainly won't be crushing the Wintel world but they will most certainly continue to survive and yes, thrive in the marketplace.
Just wait for the 10.1 update. All reports indicate that this should be one hell of a speed bump.
Also, now that RAM is so cheap, load up with that. OSX is RAM hungry.
Oh, and the founder/creator of IEEE 1394, darn it I can't remember his name, said recently in a report on CNET that 1394b products will be shipping by the end of the year. So an Apple intro at MWSF in January, or Tokyo in February makes the most sense.
Flame will get you no where...
Despite the fact that you are comparing Apples to Oranges (no pun intended), your case is weak and flaccid.
Windows 2000 is a business OS; built on NT. Mac OS 9.x and before were more consumer operating systems. You should compare Windows 9x with Mac OS 9.x, and Win 2000/XP to Mac OS X.
On those levels, both have advantages and disadvantages. Personally, I favor the Mac OS, but I can't condemn someone for using Windows.
As far as your comment about Macs crashing all the time - that is due to Mac OS 9.x not having protective memory, something corrected in OS X. I have had OS X since its initial release. Since that time, it has not crashed. My Win 2K box has crashed three times - in a year. Does that mean that the Mac is more stable? Probably not, but it does further diminish your argument.
I am Slad.
I run bove macosX and linux on my macs. I could not live without both of them!!!
Sig you!
I belief my macosX box(ibook rev A) will beat your win2000 box at just about anything. same goes for my linux box (imac rev B)
Sig you!
Isn't that repetitively redundant?
"I'm a man... But I can change... If I have to... I guess..." -- the man's prayer, Red Green Show
I'm interested, now. I'd like to have a Linux-running laptop. What are the advantages of buying an iBook and running a PPC port of Linux on it, as opposed to buying a cheap used PC-based laptop?
Hiya,
I week ago I got to check out a friend's iBook - the new ultra-portable white polycarbonate model. The engineering was fantastic, you have to understand this thing weighed around 2KG or less and had a 1024x768 12" screen, twin USB, single Firewire, 500 Mhz G3 CPU, 128MB RAM, 8MB ATI Rage128 Mobility graphics, single DVD-ROM inbuilt. 3 year warranty too. All for around AUD$3,500 - which is very competitive to an equivalent Dell-brand machine. My friend uses it for office work and DV video editing.
The workmanship appeared to be top notch when I checked it out. Specs are one thing, but when you check it out you get the impression of a very well built machine.
"Next-Gen Apples To Include 1394b, USB 2.0"
When I saw this, I didn't know what to think. How can an apple be edible with all these new ports? Is Granny Smith going Hi Tech?
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
Try 10.1
it's safe to say that speed/responsiveness is no longer an issue.
I like to think of old 3.5 inch disks, with 1.4 MB on each. The new double FireWire will be like shooting 2,000 disks a second through a wire. Blazing. Slung from a sling shot, that is 2kHz. Listening to this, the band on the shot would sound like a high note on a violin. (440 hertz is assigned the note middle A)
For those of you who have never used FireWire, it is amazing, especially compared to USB and SCSI. The ease of hot-plugging is astounding, not to mention the data transfer. For example, I recently copied files from one PowerBook (Mac laptop) to another, with one laptop acting as a hard disk ("FireWire Disk Mode"). Boy does it fly. Megabytes of files flew though that cable. There seems to be much more than the raw speed of the protocol, the CPU, bus, etc., are all vital, and on these newer computers, the speed is impressive.
I'm sure most Mac fans would love to have gigahertz G5s with DDR and FireWire 2. But there really is not a clamor of interest in USB 2, and I don't see a reason to include it.
USB 2's entire purpose is to compete with Apple's own 1394 standard. USB2 is slower, uses more CPU resources, and has done surpisingly poorly in the marketplace. FireWire devices outnumber USB2 by huge proportions.
Apple knows that iMac (which had no legacy ports) is the event that got USB 1.x rolling. That was a good move, since Apple needed to get with standards. But in FireWire, Apple has set the standard. Adding USB2 would have little benefit and a lot of risk for Apple.
I tend to go to a lot of Apple seminars and follow the Mac world pretty well and I would be exceptionally surprised if Apple was laying off employees at this stage. They are really working hard to get OS 10.1 out the door on time and make sure it's really polished. I have certainly seen no indication that they are slowing down at all. I would say if there are any lay offs they'd be in marketing/management positions rather than the research and development areas.
I can't understand is how Apple can stay in business when their computers cost a hell of a lot more than the Intel based PCs?
There have been a large number of studies which suggest that the total cost of ownership of owning a Mac is significantly less than owning a Windows based PC. Admitedly, people and business' don't tend to notice these things, and go for the immediate lower price. Apple stay in business by actually making a profit on their systems rather than trying to continuously undercut the competition - note how many PC manufacturers are going out of business.
The number of units you ship is far less important than whether or not you make enough profit to cover your development, production, management and other costs. Apple's pricing does this, Gateway Australia's pricing didn't (hence they've gone out of business). Apple has made a profit for something like 11 out of the last 12 quarters which is better than most PC manufacturers.
Apple also has a very dedicated (fanatic) installed user base which helps a lot. Mostly though they have innovation. They put firewire and USB in their computers, they popularise wireless networking and "Apple ignited the desktop publishing revolution" (to take their marketing speel).
was pricing laptops a couple weeks ago, and for the money it would have cost me to buy a moderately loaded iMac, I could have gotten a Thinkpad for roughly half the cost, comparably equipped.
This surprises me, though it obviously depends largely on what you want from your laptop. I went out pricing laptops about 6 months ago (long time in IT I know) and found that Apple's laptops were far and away better value than the PCs. Not that they were cheaper, but they were clearly sturdier, more feature packed and most significantly had better screens and battery life. The cheap PC laptop world makes a lot of sacrifices in functionality. Either they have ridiculously small screens or poor quality screens and two or three hour battery life was normal. Then you tended to give up a CDROM to make the laptop smaller and many PC laptops (nowhere near as many these days though) don't have ethernet as standard. Then there's the lact of dual head ability (most do video mirroring) or a lack of video output options (note that the iBook does not do dual head either, which is why I type this on a Titanium PowerBook). Now, for some people these trade offs are worth the cost savings - for some people they aren't even trade offs, but just remove unwanted features. For many people (including me) these features are invaluable.
The final big advantage that I find with Apple is the OS. Mac OS X is a joy to use (I look forward to the reported responsiveness improvements of 10.1 naturally), there are rough edges and it is not perfect but the combination of UNIX and a solid, simple, clean, user friendly GUI is an absolute God send. I can happily use vim to hack away my perl scripts, test them with apache and postgresql and follow the design document which was written in Word. The lack of responsiveness that is currently in OS X is more than made up for by the fact that I don't have to reboot between Linux and MacOS anymore (for the record I don't remember the last time I booted into OS 9).
The morale: sometimes paying more in the short term is worthwhile in the long run, but it all depends on what you want to do.
I kind of like that. Double-fast FireWire=FireFire.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Unfortunately, that comparison is not accurate...
:)
Your PC-laptop will far outweigh my iBook and when you find the lighter PC-laptops they both cost more and usually for an external optical drive on you. Mine has built-in DVD-ROM and a firewire port which is very useful for video editing (Something important if you are interested in it). Also, if you want Mac OS X (which I am very impressed with), then there is only one choice
Plus it has built in ethernet and an internal antenna for an internal wireless add-on card.
There is no definitive winner, it is all about what is important to you. I wanted a light laptop that could handle video editing, games, and one that would just work. Apple has done that while besting the equivalent sized PC-laptop in terms of price and features...
Bill
It should also be mentioned that your average non-techie computer user is likely to feel more comfortable plugging in cable than a card. As the computer becomes a comodity item, then more and more of your stuff will be plugging in from the outside, unless you are a techie and then you will insist on putting everything inside because it takes less room and because there are less wires.
Actually, I'd suspect integration would be the order of the day. Joe User neither knows nor cares what a hard drive is, or a graphics card. The more things that are "just *there*", the more comfortable the average user will likely feel.
The average user probably won't ever upgrade any one part of the machine; they'll just dump the old machine and buy a new one, especially when computers come closer to being commodity items. The only cables needed would likely be for things that the user doesn't consider part of the computer.
"It may seem a minor point, but the more and faster connections are built in, the less frequently the upgrade gremlins have to strike."
Yet another reason the industry hates Apple. They build their computers to last, even moreso than other manufacturers.
I know there's an itanium version and one for 64bit power4 or whatever the big ibm's are running, but would there be a g5 64 bit linux in january?
Howls of derisive laughter, Bruce! Read his message - AUD $3500 is _Australian_ dollars. The Basic iBook is US $1300 for 64MB/10GB/DVD-ROM/2xUSB/100Mbps-Ethernet, so it is much closer to the Compaq price range, but the hardware is sooooooo much nicer.
I'm sure their IT department didn't mind the extra staff positions required, though.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Some people are pointing out that the revised Firewire spec only supports 800mbps over the existing twisted pair cables, but does anyone know of how the rev can be implemented? Is there the possibiliy of a backwards compatible combination twisted pair/optical plug, or can two plugs service the same port? This might mean that new macs might have an optical plug in addition, which would be very cool (and fast).
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
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As I read it, the new spec provides for speeds up to 1.6 Gbps (with room to grow to 3.2 Gbps), 100 Mbps on UTP out to 100m, 200 Mbps on Plastic Optical Fibre (POF) to 50m, 1.6 Gbps on MultiMode Fibre (MMF) out to 100 m.
So I don't know where they got this "room to drive data at up to 3.2Gbps over copper cabling" thing.
anyone know if this will/already supports networking over firewire?
and if so...Imagine a beow...
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Geez, get it right if you're going to bait Macolytes.
--Nik
Firewire is better, but the USB 2.0 devices I've looked at say that they also work on a USB 1.x connection, albeit at a slower speed (obviously). It would appear not be the case that "2.0 devices will not work on 1.x buses". Maxtor, for example, has USB 2.0 products that say they are backwardly compatible with 1.x USB ports.
--- What?
At the same time, you can also play around with MacOS X, which is honestly the one OS which has made me ditch Linux entirely. I get the same robust server applications (Samba, Apache, MySQL and PHP, namely), a much better integrated GUI than any window manager has managed (pun intended) to build, and access to thousands of useful day-to-day applications.
Really, as a part-time Linux geek (and platform agnostic -- which means I like Macs because they're better **grin**), MacOS X is the best OS since sliced bread, and if you want a Linuxy laptop, get an iBook just for the chance to try it out!
In all other regards, an iBook is going to be comparable to a PC laptop when running Linux, but for standard configuration differences. Linux-PPC runs lightning quick on it, though.
Author's note: I'm experienced with running Linux on an original iBook, but I'm assuming device support for the latest models. Let the buyer beware and check the documentation.
--Nik
Well, there's the benefits of PPC architecture- consider that IBM uses a similar chip for their RS/6000 servers that run AIX. The chip in the iBook is a mobile IBM PPC. You could do a LOT worse than to get the iBook and dual boot Linux (one of the many PPC distros) and OS X (which is a mach kernel with FreeBSD around it, wrapped in a pretty and responsive GUI.)
> 3.2Gbps!
One point twenty one jiggawats?! What the hell is a jiggawatt?!
DrPascal: Not the language, the mathematician.
When I said that they wouldn't work, I meant to say that they wouldn't work well. My understanding is that USB 2.0 adds peer-to-peer connection ability that was not in 1.x. 1.x requires a master computer.
Additionally, 1.x has the embarrassing problem of the differing protocol implementations for the host controller, UHCI vs. OHCI. Embarrassing because the "founding members" of the USB consortium used differing (not 100% compatible) host controller interfaces, the real reason that USB was doomed from the start on the PC. USB 2.0 having peering ability would certainly conflict with both of these controllers.
Microsoft wrote their drivers to the OHCI standard, while Intel flooded the world with their UHCI based chipsets. Great cooperation.
Anyway, I stand by my previous statement, as most USB 2.0 marketers are going to want to trumpet their new features, which will be lacking when their devices are connected to USB 1.x buses. Peer-to-Peer was in FireWire from the beginning.
-- Len
I know a lot of Apple users, and I know a lot of Windows/Linux users, and each of them love their own systems, but the other thing that I can't understand is how Apple can stay in business when their computers cost a hell of a lot more than the Intel based PCs?
<disclaimer> I hardly use Macs any more because I have to work with and support Windows users </disclaimer>
If you actually worked for a while on a Macintosh you would probably be willing to pay a premium.
Neal Stephenson once compared OS vendors to car dealerships. He was concerned with the marketing of OSs rather than the user experience. Imagine instead a business where you go to have an experience -- say a dance hall which provided guests with professional dance partners.
The Apple-land dance hall had beautiful hostesses who danced so gracefully they made an ordinary jerk feel like Fred Astaire. The Microsoft-land dance hall had ugly hostesses who stepped on your feet unless you shouted directions to them for where to put their feet. The owners of the Microsoft-land had managed to prosper in business by convincing its customers that real men had loud voices, but they knew this couldn't last forever. So they replaced the ugly hostesses with prettier ones that also stepped on your feet. And it didn't matter, because in time people got so accustomed to this that they think it's normal to buy throat lozenges when you go dancing.
The Unix-land dance hall? It is chock full of ugly but muscular hostesses that will have sex with you if you know the right way to ask. The ones in the Linux and the BSD rooms will even do it for free (in the Solaris room, you have to pay if you want more than eight girls at once). The fact is that Unix started out as bordello and added dancing as a gimmick. As a result the dancing is a bit awkward, but you can get any kind of sex you can imagine, provided you can master the technique. As you might imagine, this has attracted a loyal customer base.
But the management's been trying bring in new business by dolling up the girls and teaching them a few new steps.
The Apple-land customers who wander in to the "new" Unix-land are dance snobs who look around, decide the dancing isn't up to snuff, and go back to Apple-land to cut a rug. This mystifies the regulars, who say, "Some of our hostesses look just as good as the Apple ones, maybe better! They'll even let you dress them up any way you like!" (This last point is a common fetish with the Unix crowd). Of course the Unix-land regulars really only come for the sex. These days most Unix-land customers spend a little time dancing, but they aren't very demanding about that and don't let it distract them from their real interests for long. For that reason they don't understand that for the Apple market segment, the core experience isn't about sex. The Apple experience is about gliding over an expanse of mirror polished bakelite floor with a responsive partner who can almost read your thoughts. It's a wonderful thing -- almost as good as sex (OK I'm a Unix guy). For the Apple-lander, it's nice that the girls are pretty, maybe even essential, but it is not enough.
Having good looking hostesses is not core to the Unix-land experience either -- it's more of a competitive bullet-mark. The Unix-land crowd's a pretty relaxed judge of pulchritude. For years the standard management trick was to stick a polka dot dress and yellow bow on a one-eyed bull dog. Many of the customers judged the results to be "real purty.."
Of course, those days are over (except for a few incorigble retrograde types who cannot be persuaded to give up their dogs). Now when the Microsoft customer wanders in,he looks around and is maybe impressed by how much better the hostesses look than he expected. But he also sees that by in large his usual crowd isn't there, and usually heads out. The Unix-land regulars are puzzled by this. Why would anyone walk out on sex, especially when you can get fairly sophisticated sex for free? Again, it is because the core experience for the Windows-land market segment is not about sex; nor is it about dancing. It is akin to the schooling instincts of fish. There is safety in numbers -- the sharks won't be able to eat all of us at once etc. Everyone has a little bit of this instinct in them. This is why the Microsoft-land dominated press likes to spread rumors about the imminent closing of Apple-land. But by now the remaining Apple-land regulars have heard this story so much they're pretty much immune. In fact the clever ones probably start buying Apple stock when the rumors reach fever pitch.
So, there you have it. Why the typical Apple customer is willing to pay some premium for Apple hardware.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Apple has something like 5% market saturation. The widespread use of USB means that peripheral makers can FINALLY make the same mouse, keyboard or what have you for Macs and PCs without Mac users getting all irate. FireWire has the same ambitions, and while it has a little ways to go, the growing popularity of 1394-enabled digital video cameras bodes VERY well for this interface. That's really what it was meant to accomplish; hard drive connectivity is an added bonus.
And now competitors are looking to release USB 2.0. If, and that's still an IF, other manufacturers decide to move to it, then Apple stands to lose royalties from FireWire. But if they do, it makes sense for Apple to already have it installed on their popular machines. It makes the Mac more marketable, because they can say it will connect with any USB 2.0 peripherals no matter when they arrive. If PCs have these additional ports and Apple doesn't, it's one more strike against the Mac market.
Yes, Apple will lose royalties from FireWire if developers move to it. But do you seriously think that Apple refusing to support USB 2.0 will stop developers from wanting it? "Oh no, a tiny sliver of the peripheral-buying public won't be able to use our stuff! Whatever shall we do?" Exactly what they usually do, which is not care about Apple users one way or the other.
FireWire has a huge head start on USB 2.0, especially in the digi-vidicam market. And while that doesn't guarantee anything, it does mean that USB has to promise a lot more to beat it out. Meanwhile, Apple stands to lose more in lost hardware sales by NOT supporting USB 2.0 than it stands to gain in royalties. Economically, it's a sound and sensible move.
just bought my sister an imac to replace a centris 650 i bought in 1992.
the centris is running, but it's down to one internal hard drive and rather than wasting gigabytes of storage on a machine with limited capabilities, i got a flower power on the cheap. add one gig and it will last into the next decade.
guess the standard slashdotter will sustain half a dozen motherboard gashes in that time, but i have enough scars.
i promptly got rid of my mac keyboard AND mouse when I got my G4: I have a MacAlly keyboard and a MICROSOFT Intellimouse Explorer! can't live without multiple buttons!
Powerbook G4/1.5GHz 12", Toshiba Satellite 1135-S1554
Um...you can run KDE and Enlightenment on OS X. Why is it that you think that windowing environments have anything to do with the operating system?
Once the XFree86 people get hardware-accelerated rendering on OS X, you're going to find that all of the normally Linux-based windowing environments work just as well on OS X as they do on any distribution of Linux.
FireNet 2.0 is a third party software package that support AFP over TCP/IP through Firewire. So yes, it's been done.
Guns don't kill people - bullets do!
Mac VS DOS, Mac VS Windoze, Mac VS Linux/BSD/Solaris/Whatever. Same unoriginal rant, same envious anger.
3.2Gb/s sounds nice. . .it translates to about 400MB/s. . .but with a 32-bit 33Mhz PCI bus that would be restricted to AT MOST 133MB/s.
:(.
Everyone seems focused on reducing the memory, CPU or peripherial bottlenecks, however the biggest bottleneck I keep running accross is the PCI bus -- especially with storage.
I wish more vendors (especially PC mobo makers) would embrace a faster bus such as 64-bit 66Mhz PCI (which would kick it up to 532MB/s and be able to handle 1394b). Sun and DEC have been using it for years, however since mobo makers don't like it there aren't many cards for it.
I find it ironic that wires outside of the box are now faster then those hard-wired on the mobo
The biggest and most annoying thing they've done is to persist in promoting the 1-button mouse. This is no longer a usability feature but a millstone around the Mac's neck.
not only are they just laying off 50 people, but with all the new people they are hiring for the apple stores, they will end up with MORE employees AFTER the layoff. hardly a sign of struggle if you ask me
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
yes, i have a 6220, which was often considered the worst PowerPC machine ever made. It served me just fine for a few years tho, and i occasionally still use it for the tv card, which was quite a big deal back then. When I got my first playstation, I didnt have an adapter i needed to hook it up to my tv, and didnt realize till I got home. Not wanting to go back out that day, I simply plugged it into the tv card and played on the 6220 :)
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
My own experience of Apple is that by the time the thing comes down to a sensible price, it's no longer supported, and will not run current OSes or software.
I know, I shouldn't feed the trolls, but --
I assume by "current OSes" you mean the lickable goodness that is Mac OS X. The oldest supported machine for this, as far as I know, is the desktop model G3 powermac.
Available from a reseller, macofalltrades.com, this unit costs $499 and includes a USB card. So there's all the legacy ports, USB -- pretty much everything you need except FireWire. 128 megs of RAM and a 4 gig drive, not huge, but definitely usable.
(And these guys aren't that cheap compared to the Pricewatch fodder people usually post here. I just thought of them because my main machine is a refurbed iMac I bought from them last year and they do splendid work.)
On ebay, on the other hand, a G3 desktop goes for about half that. (As I write this, there is an auction for the same machine with 64 meg of RAM ending in four hours, currently at 202.50)
Throw in some standard memory (say, an extra 256 megs for 40 dollars or so) and a bigger drive if you want one, and you've got a machine that runs anything Apple sells.
Traditionally, things haven't been this way, so I do understand the "Apples are expensive" knee-jerk response. But the pace of speed bumps and upgrades from Apple in the last couple of years has really made items on the used and refurb markets very attractive from a price point of view.
--saint
As a former USB 1.x developer, OHCI vs UHCI has nothing to do with the compatabilty of end devices. A keyboard will work the same for both implementations.
The difference lies in how the chip handles the USB "packets" in reagrds to DMA. OCHI slapps the "packets" into memory in a different fashion then the UHCI controllers -- much like different ethernet cards handle DMA differently. The main difference is in parsing the data streams.
BTW UHCI is the "intel" implementation, and ohci was the implementation of a consortium led by Compaq.
OHCI vs UHCI is much like the DEC 21143 vs the 3com 3c905b for ethernet -- both work with any other ethernet device and the fact that there is more then one ethernet card out there has not doomed ethernet. Same with USB.
A friend of mine just got a brand new Sony VAIO for US$999, Apple's got nothing close that in the low end. Some Dell and maybe Toshiba and perhaps some other manufacturers make notebooks with better price performace ratios than the iBook.
He (or his UI design team) have made good decisions and some absolutely fucking stupid decisions.
Couldn't agree more.
The biggest and most annoying thing they've done is to persist in promoting the 1-button mouse. This is no longer a usability feature but a millstone around the Mac's neck.
The only thing they could possibly do better here is offer a multi-button mouse as an OPTION from their online store, and support it better in their OS*. I would be rather upset if they started shipping multi-button mice by default. You have no idea how many computer users are idiots - I've spent too many years in tech support to be able to recommend multi-button mice to anyone who isn't willing to go out of their way to get one.
Remember that the Mac OS is specifically designed to only require a single mouse button. Windows is designed for two, and X is designed for three. The Mac OS emulates a right-click with a control-click, so even with a single button, you can still get the same functionality, just not quite the same convenience.
Apple's Human Interface Guidelines (which the vast majority of Mac developers actually follow) specifically state that everything that can be done with a control-click should be doable another way - you should never be required to control-click (or right-click). This philosophy does not hold true for any other OS.
By the way, shortly after buying my iMac, I bought a Logitech Wingman Gaming Mouse, which has three buttons. I bought it for Unreal Tournament, but use it for everything. The original Apple mouse is in a drawer somewhere. I should probably sell it on eBay; I'm sure there's someone out there with a hockey puck mouse that would prefer the Apple Pro optical mouse.
* Apple's OS needs to recognize that some of us have multiple mouse buttons. Applications should be able to check for a right-click, instead of checking for a control-click. The OS should take a control-click and make it behave as a right-click as far as the app is concerned, instead of taking a right-click and making it emulate a control-click.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Not anymore. Have you used Mac OS X? In OS X, you *need* to either use a multi-button mouse or control-click, because contextual menus are an indispensible part of the UI.
I have used Mac OS X, and I have not noticed this to be true. Can you give me a specific example?
Even the dimmest users are going to find using extra mouse buttons easier than key-button combinations.
This is arguable, but you may be right. Obviously, users with previous experience will find the control-click to be awkward and strange.
Besides, every piece of modern technology has a multi-button interface. The average car today has dozens of buttons for various purposes, microwave ovens have multiple buttons, televisions, radios, etc.
Absolutely not the same thing at all. A microwave or remote control uses multiple buttons like a keyboard, not like a mouse. Apple's usability testing from the early 80s showed that the brain considers the mouse to be an extension of your arm - you're not positioning the mouse and pressing a button, you're just pointing to something, as far as the brain is concerned. It takes a few minutes of getting used to, but once you've mastered it, that's how the brain deals with it - and expecting people to point to something with different fingers to mean different things is unnatural. The original Mac philosophy was that the computer should adjust to fit the way people work, not make people adjust to fit the way computers work.
Obviously, people can adjust, and have. For these people, a multi-button mouse is acceptible, and can indeed be very convenient and time-saving. However, it should not be a requirement for new users.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Also, IBM makes PowerPC chips too, and uses them for things other than Macs, like in the Game Cube. Same with Moto... they use PPC chips in a lot of embedded applications.
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
Define "slaughters".
Slaughters by being easier to use? No.
Slaughters by being easier to initially configure? I doubt it.
Slaughters by being easier to maintain? Unlikely.
Slaughters by having more applications available? Doubtful.
Besides, why are you comparing a window manager to an operating system?
> 2. The trackpad has only one button. You can map
... 5 hours on the iBook and 2.5 on most PC notebooks.
> other keys (e.g. function keys) to emulate additional
> buttons, but it's annoying.
Note that Macs have more keyboard modifier keys than most PC's. You can map all kinds of Command key shortcuts in Linux without changing the function of Shift and Control and Option (alt). Your standard three-button USB mouse will work fine, of course, even in Mac OS.
> 3. Battery life is 50% longer than the competition.
Actually, it's more like 100% longer
> For once, an Apple product is actually a better
> value than its competition.
Actually, what's exceptional in this case is that the Apple product has a lower STICKER PRICE than the competition. Their products are often a greater VALUE than the competition for many users (features, TCO, quality, ease of use, support).
For experienced users like myself I agree: two button mice are great. That's why I went to a computer fair and bought a cheap, optical, two button mouse with scroll wheel. I took off the PS/2 adapter and plugged it into a USB port. And you know what? MacOSX, from the moment I plugged it in, supported both mouse buttons and the scroll wheel. No driver installation. The idea that Macs don't support more than one mouse button is just plain wrong. So drop it already.