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Updated Power Macs at Apple.com
Gropo writes "Same old 'scary cyclops' quicksilver face. Up to 1.42 Ghz, FireWire 800, 802.11g and entry-level pricing has dropped. " With the SuperDrive and one of those massive LCD screens, you have a one highly desirable chunk of hardware.
err, fist probe?
uhhhh why to tax that ass nial!
For only $1999 ... Do you know what kind of PC I could build for that much money?? Then I just need the beowulf cluster..
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
1.42GHz!
Still a long way to 3GHz but we're getting there, revision by revision.
Still happier with my silent 600MHz iBook than a roaring G4 monster though...
#define ROSE any_other_name
Uunforetunately, My budget likes the $400 EMachine 1.5 ghz (of sometihnkg like that) a lot more than even the entry level powermac at $1499
I would wait on the IBM 970 (G5 whatever) that is coming out this next fall/winter. 64bit, 900MHz Bus, Altivec(or whatever it'll be called), approx 2ghz...
Unless you want a laptop then a Powerbook is a good buy (except 15", there are new bodies for 15.4" powerbook and iBooks on the way).
Just my 2cents being an Apple/Linux/Windows/Solaris user.
Think Differe-- BIGGER FASTER BETTER, Must...Catch...Up...
--
"pain is weakness leaving the body."I mean, is it?
Why dont you be fair and report on the next model eMachines, Dell or Compaq sells at Best Buy.
I mean whoopity-doo "This Just In: Apple Sells Computers"
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Looks like apple blocked slashdot again. Here's the text. Posted AC to avoid karma whore.
The new Power Mac G4 combines rock solid engineering reflective of the full-throttle Xserve architecture with new technologies for massively enhanced output and connectivity. And it's a digital media powerhouse that delivers tremendous value across the line, with dual processor performance starting at just $1999.
Steve Jobs announced that apple has joined Jihad against slashdot because of the stupidfucking pidity of the editors. "I thought I was some draconian shit, trying to censor people...but the editors at slashdot take the cake! My God, they're assholes." He said that $200.00 of every mac purchase would go towards the destruction of slashdot for the next 10 years.
Power PC G4 Processors Twin-engine power
This turbocharged Power Mac rips through digital video and 3D projects faster than Pentiums can say "uncle." Designed for creative, scientific and business environments, the new Power Mac G4 comes in 1.42GHz and 1.25GHz dual-processor configurations and in a 1GHz single-processor model. The twin-engined Power Mac G4s are supported not only by generous reserves of L2 and L3 cache on each processor, but also by Mac OS X's robust foundation, which features multithreading and symmetric multiprocessing for an additional performance boost.
The Power Mac G4 can be built-to-order to fit any professional use. You can fill it with 2 GB of high-speed DDR SDRAM, get it with a 4x SuperDrive that's twice as fast at burning DVDs, choose up to four internal hard disk drives up to a mind-boggling 720GB, get unwired with an AirPort Extreme Card or with a Bluetooth wireless connectivity module and add scorchingly fast graphics. Every new Power Mac G4 also gets the benefit of a built-in FireWire 800 port, two FireWire 400 ports, four USB ports (two on the computer, two on the keyboard) and four full-length 64-bit, 33MHz PCI slots and Gigabit Ethernet for shooting large files across your LAN at phenomenal speeds. What's more, FireWire, PCI expansion and Gigabit Ethernet are integrated directly into the main system controller, reducing latencies and providing superior I/O performance.
Dual Cinema HD Displays
Expand your digital domain
The Apple Display Connector (ADC) makes it a snap to connect your Power Mac G4 to your choice of three brilliant displays. Combine your G4 with the 17-inch Apple Studio Display or 20-inch Apple Cinema Display -- or the gorgeous 23-inch Apple Cinema HD Display -- and you'll have the perfect environment for creative professionals. While you're at it, expand your workspace even farther. The all-digital Apple flat-panel displays are so unbelievably affordable that you can easily take advantage of the Power Mac G4's dual display support. And you can also rejoice in the fact that there are no controls to adjust and no tweaking required: the all-digital signal between your Power Mac G4 and your display delivers pristine image quality.
FireWire FireWire 800
The new Power Mac G4 features the best built-in FireWire connectivity in the industry -- two 400Mbps (megabits per second) ports and one 800Mbps port. The industry-standard serial input/output (I/O) technology for high-speed data transfer, FireWire is one of the fastest peripheral standards ever developed -- and now, at 800 megabits per second (Mbps), it's faster than ever. Fact is, FireWire 800 doubles the throughput of the original technology, dramatically increases the maximum distance of FireWire connections -- up to 100 meters -- and supports many new types of cabling, making it indispensable for transferring massive data files and for working with uncompressed high-definition (HD) video and multiple standard-definition (SD) video streams. And it's way faster than USB 2.0.
AirPort Extreme AirPort Extreme connects wirelessly at up to 54Mbps
The Power Mac G4 supports AirPort Extreme, the new wireless networking technology based on the proposed IEEE 802.11g standard. Just add an AirPort Extreme Card to the the Power Mac G4 and it can wirelessly connect to an AirPort Extreme Base Station at speeds up to 54Mbps. That's nearly five times as fast as the data transfer rates of the current 802.11b wireless standard.
BlueTooth Sync with Bluetooth
The Power Mac G4 is Bluetooth-enabled and therein lies another big advantage. Like AirPort Extreme, Bluetooth connects digital devices wirelessly. Operating within a much shorter range than AirPort, it enables wireless data transfers between a rapidly growing list of Bluetooth-savvy products. Using iSync, for instance, you can use Bluetooth to synchronize your personal information between your Power Mac G4, your PowerBook G4, your mobile phone and your Palm OS-based handheld.
Off-the-charts graphics
NVIDIA and ATI logos The Power Mac G4 features 4x AGP graphics and your choice of four fearsomely fast graphics cards that turn on the afterburners. The ATI Radeon 9000 (1.42GHz and1.25GHz dual-processor configurations) and the NVIDIA GeForce4 MX (standard on the 1GHz model) pump out billions of textured pixels to kick your projects into overdrive. And if you want to push those hot new Quake engine-based 3D games -- ahem, we mean heavy-duty 3D graphics -- into the ultrafast realm, may we suggest the built-to-order options of a NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti graphics card or the hot new ATI Radeon 9700? Both feature a whopping 128MB of DDR SDRAM.
L3 Cache Cache advance
The Power Mac G4s lightning fast processor speeds get an additional boost with an advanced cache memory architecture that provides ultrafast, dedicated memory with massively enhanced throughput. Accessing data from main memory is significantly faster than accessing data from the hard drive and the Power Mac G4's system architecture takes this one step further with an even faster level of memory called L3 cache. The L3 cache uses up to 2MB of high speed, Double Data Rate (DDR) SRAM, boosting processor function by providing fast access to data and application code at up to 4 gigabytes per second (GBps).
Maccentral has an excellent summary of the new Macs. To me, the most interesting part of the story isn't the incrementel improvements in the desktops, but the extremely steep price cuts surrounding Apple's flat panel displays. You can now get a 20" widescreen flat panel from Apple for $1299. That's just $300 more than Apple was charging yesterday for a 17" standard aspect model.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
I love OS X. I think it is a great OS. I'd really like to have a Mac to run OS X.
But, seriously, why did Apple even release this? It's a joke. For $1499, you can get a single processor 1GHz machine. For $2699, you can get a dual 1.4GHz. They should just wait until they get the new IBM Power4 based processors. Work on laptops until then. Try to make the iMac a worthy purchase for the Average Joe.
. . . the fact that it immediately makes "last years" models much more affordable. Resellers like MacMall, Smalldog.com, & the others have great prices on these older models.
Of course, Apple may still have a problem selling these newer faster machines because they've managed to produce an OS that works fantastic on even older models like the dual 533 I'm writing this on!
Faster, more expandible, and more affordable than ever... The Power Mac G4 also comes with a library of creative, productivity and communications-specific third-party applications that leverage the strengths of Mac OS X.
But evidently not a spell-checker...
One of the options is for a $50 "Bluetooth Module".
I'm inclined to believe that this isn't just the old USB module.
"Faster, more expandible, and more affordable than ever"
I thought 'expandible' was misspelled, but dictionary.com says otherwise:
expandible
adj 1: able to expand or be expanded [syn: expandable, expansible] 2: (of gases) capable of expansion [syn: expandable, expansible, expansile]
Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University
I'll be darned: Apple was just thinking different.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
At first glance, it looked like the headline said "Underpowered macs at Apple.com"
From what i understand, the pervious models
of the Powermac were noicy ass hell. Does
anyone know if this is true?
If so why can't Apple deliver the Mac
with a decent Zallman fan?
Editors have somehow once again confused their ad department with the news posting department. C'mon, really? I'm a reasonable Mac fan, but this isn't front page news.
Who's hat did they pull the 1.42GHz chip out of? Nice to see that Apple is catching up to PC's of two years ago in terms of clock speed. Any word on the PowerMac/64?
then you're obviously clueless when comparing to an Apple. It's like saying my 1974 Pinto is much better than the 2003 Mach I Mustang. Where an Apple is like a Jaguar (no pun intended, being a ford fan).
Yeah, mod me down, I could care less.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
It's great to see Apple leading the pack in new hardware. They are bringing 802.11g and FireWire 800 to the people just as they did with SMP (that "1.4GHz" sounds a lot more impressive next to a 3GHz P4 when you realize there are two of the suckers in there) and 1Kbase-T.
Funny, Macs used to be faster than Pentii, but crippled by their other hardware (SCSI, memory, ADB) and OS. Now they have the advantage everywhere except CPU speed, and I think they're a whole lot better off.
I see the new PowerMacs as a gift. With their power, used wisely, we might be able to save my people from the growing Shadow in the East.
Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
Oh, I'm a Republican
I got a small schling
I like to bomb niggahs
and make a lot o' bling
I got a bunch o' friends
in high up places
They helps me get dem
government graces.
You think I'm smart
I just know who's who
I couldn't run a fruit stand
without the red white & blue
I'll drop some crap
about Jesus the Christ
You'll buy it all
and vote for me twice
'Fact, Jesus is comin'!
Real soon, now!
So we gotta prop up Israel
That ol' sacred cow
Don't need no history
Don't need no schoolin'
I got my ideology
To keep me a shootin'
Liberals! Faggots!
Commies and queers!
Socialist hippies
Full o' pussy tears
Facts? No! Don't need em here!
We're conservatives! We work on FEAR!
Don't like what we say?
Well FUCK YOU, bud!
We'll shove it down yer throat
and tell ya it's good!
Propaganda's m'friend
But I calls it "fact"
Even though I don't read
'Cept for Chick tracts
Breaking news:
"Macs still more expensive than PC's"
News at 11
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Despite the slow proc's, Apple managed to throw a piece of hardware on the market that's very competitive. As it going for a couple of years now, Apple has inferior hardware at the hart of the system, but superior hardware on the edge.
was in the original article...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
don't forget that the 1.42 GHz, yeah that's right, 1.42, will still operate better than the latest greatest overclocked crap intel spits out.
~ now you know
For that price I can get a PC with a much faster CPU, gobs more RAM and a much better video card. For that much money they can at least include a Radeon 9700.
I am suprised no one noticed that the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro is now a BTO option.
Still listed as "coming soon" though.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Having yet to start repaying my $3500 Apple loan for my dual 1.25GHz machine, I couldn't believe the $1500 price drop. But check the specs -- no SuperDrive, less RAM, smaller L3 cache, smaller hard drive. Still, though.
But no one wants to pay Apple's high-end prices.
...) I'll be sticking with OS X on the client side and Linux/Solaris on the server side. Blue curve is a great try at a good desktop, maybe it will take off.
Until Linux has a decent desktop (where installing an application actually integrates with the menu) and has some decent apps (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator, Premiere,
Linux has a long way to go to match the ease of use of even windows much less comparing it to OS X. I have no problems with linux b/c I've been using it since around '95 (ah slackware). However, trying to find all the workarounds to keep things playing friendly isn't fun on higher end or newer hardware.
Ah yes the Power Mac, it is a very desirable machine......... For me to poop on!
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
$1,499.00
Image
1GHz PowerPC G4
1MB L3 cache
256MB DDR266 SDRAM
60GB Ultra ATA/100
Combo drive
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX
64MB DDR video memory
FireWire 800
56K internal modem
Bluetooth Ready
Sell this to me for $899. Please.
For $500 more you get 1.25GHz, dual processors, and a 80GB HD.
They just cost too much to justify buying, since I wouldn't be using it for DTP/other Mac stuff.
DIY Bigot: I could get a 60's chevy nova and put a blown 350 hemi in it with slicks and run circles around that BMW 7 series...
Yeah, but it's still a junky chevy. Rather go to the opera in the 7 series.
Because OS X needs all the speed it can get. It still is laggy on the fastest machines.
Did I miss something, or is the prices without a monitor. Im trying to build one at Apple store now. Why would they quote prices without a basic display.
I have an older PowerMac by my left knee and at ear level it generates 44 dB of soft white noise. The new-style mirror-face PowerMacs also generate about 44 dB of noise. But it's whining, tonal noise. It's a note you can hum. It's a hum that cannot be ignored.
Also, apparently, when the mirror-face PowerMacs' auxiliary fan kicks on, it's described as a "leaf blower." It's a lot louder. (I haven't heard that -- the main fans are bad enough -- and it's possible that the recent firmware upgrade helped keep the leaf-blower fan mostly off.)
The hum is so annoying that there's a website devoted to complaining about it and trying to get rid of it: g4noise.com.
A friend of mine has a music lab with 20 old-style PowerMacs that he'd like to upgrade to newer models. He got one mirror-face PowerMac just to see what it was like. The noise is totally unacceptable for a music lab station -- there's not even any question -- I sat down in front of the keyboard and it took me three seconds to realize there's no way I would use this computer for music.
The best solutions seem to be building a plywood case, lining it with foam, and putting the whole PowerMac inside!
So I hope the new models have quieter fans...
I've heard that one before :)
*time travel back to 2000*
Ran over to Best Buy, bought 3 eMachines.
2 machines Celeron 366
1 machines AMD K6 400
One machine is the DNS server (RH 6.2)
One machine is the mail/web server (running Windows 2000, even)
One machine is the firewall (RH 6.2)
These machines still run to this day (we did replace the power supply in one of them though). Not bad machines at all, and they were like $189 each, floor models, no software, box, etc.
ISP that has about 700 users. Sure, not a big one, but the boss loved it. Cheap.
BSD rocks, Linux clunks
and one huge CC bill when it arrives.
yes yes I know you get alsorts of yummy things on it, but when trying to get this past the "government at home" they only see how much it costs.
When I can all need h/w wise from Dell/../.. for under £1000 why should should I fork out all this extra and STILL have to pay extra for the display.
All I do at home is a little word/email/surfing and my 1Ghz PIII runs all the games I have fine....
OK if I was into video editing etc it would be worth it...
ya pays ya money ya makes your choice...
Does anybody know if it is possible to drive one of these displays from a standard PC graphics card with a DVI output? Is there such a thing as a DVI-to-ADC adaptor?
You can't compare clock speeds for a RISC processor to an Intel CISC processor. The clock speed only tells you how fast each instruction is executed, not how fast the CPU runs an application compared to a different architecture. A 1.42 GHz RISC processor may well be faster than a 3 GHz CISC processor in actual performance.
Would that be Iraq or North Korea? ;-)
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
When the PowerMacs came out with DDR SDRAM support, I remeber a lot of people claiming (I don't know much about memory so, go easy on me if I'm wrong) that the PowerMacs didn't really take advantage of the DDR capabilities. I think they said the Macs actually operated pretty much like the regular SDRAM PowerMacs and that the DDR RAM was just wasted on the system.
Now I see that these are advertised as having DDR333. Can anyone elaborate on that? Do these PowerMacs make use of the advantages of DDR333 over regular SDRAM?
How often do you upgrade your computers? One of the big selling points of a Mac is it's stability. Yet, they release new products all the time.
I come from a PC world where the next gen of OS and Games usually means I have to upgrade my PC or I can't run these applications. I'd like to switch(tm), but I don't want to spend $3500 for a Powerbook just to find out that it breaks down in a year and parts cost a bundle. I'd rather spend $1200 on an iBook. See if the wife and I like it.
Do these new machines mean that much to Apple users, or can they happily chug away on their old iBook or Powerbook?
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
$1500 for an entry level machine? I spec'ed out a $1500 AMD box at the local whitebox store, let me show you what I get for $1500 there.
MFG Apple Generic
CPU 1 GHz G4 Athlon 2600 XP
RAM 256 MB 1024 MB
HDD 60GB ATA 100 80 GB ATA 1000
CD\DVD DVD/CD-RW DVD and CD-RW drives
Video GeForce4 MX Radeon 9700 Pro
Does anyone see the rip-off here? Apple makes a great OS, and their systems are way cool, but the prices are insane! Apple is a software company that makes their money selling overpriced hardware. Their business model is crazy! Is it any wonder that Wintel boxes continue to dominate Apple in the market?
Is Apple Paying for the free promo?
I believe that the last iteration used a controller that didn't fully make use of the speed of the RAM. Does anyone have insight as to 1) what processor is in here and 2) if there's an updated controller that's able to fully maximize the new faster RAM?
We all know that the IBM 970 chip is going to come, but these systems are testing new technologies (FW 800 and BlueTooth to name a few - plus, some people will buy them, they are the same price as the old stuff - if not a little less so)
When the 970 does come out, they should have ironed out all the bugs with FW 800...
What's this "laggy" people are bandying about?
I have a PBG4 500 with 512MB of RAM and it runs OS X beautifully for everything I need. The only thing that kills me is WORD. Hmm.. Everything else is fine.
I love this PB w/ OS X. It's an absolute dream compared to my ThinkPad running XP. The XP machine has innumerable problems.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
that the 3.06ghz cpu from Intel has hyperthreading -- appearing to work identically to a dual CPU box.
It would be interesting to see a head to head with hyperthreading enabled. I don't think ht makes a 3.06 equal to a 6.12 -- the best you can hope for in normal use is probably 1.5 times the speed of the cpu so that dual 1.42 ghz is really only worth about 3.2ghz (not counting hyperthreading).
You'll have a helluva a fast graphics machine. Of course, you'll go deaf in no time, at least if they're both as loud as reported. I guess it's all about compromise, right?
Did anyone notice that "expandable" is spelled "expandible" in the main header graphic on http://www.apple.com/powermac/ ?
Or, like the 1.25 GHz powermacs, they were just 1.0 GHz chips overclocked and "certified" by apple? I don't know about you, but I'm not paying a premium of $2000 for a pair of chips that are the same as the lower model just with the "oops, hee hee" switch turned off.
Still, a bit expensive for the casual user. For a small business, this baby rules.
Future is looking good!
Could somebody please add a posting FAQ to slashdot including (at least - additions anyone?) the following points:
1)"Apple Macs are more expensive than a decent x86 box. "
We know that, you're paying for the engineering that goes into their design and their quality.
2)"Kde3? I use blackbox/ratpoison etc. Kde is slow! "
No, KDE3 runs very fast on a reasonable machine. If you don't want to use it, that's ok.
3)"In every discussion about either MySQL or Postgres, I must mention how much better Postgres/MySQL is at $FEATURE."
No, you don't. Anyone who needs to know the differences can go to the relevant websites and look them up.
4)"A new graphics card is out. When will it end!/I only just upgraded/they're too expensive"
This has been said many times, and is generally said about 100 times in every relevant story. I'm guilty of this one too. Please stop.
My only worry is that nothing at all would be posted to slashdot, and I'd have to start doing some work occasionally.
Well, how about me then?
I'm an indian student and it's been three years since I even saw an Apple anything. (and that was through a shop window.) Guess we third world geeks will just have to make do with assembled stuff.
*Sighs, and rides his elephant off into the sunset *
I have found a truly wonderful proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, but unfortunately this sig is too small to contain it.
It wouldn't be hard to explain at all if the numbers were genuinely invalid. Apple could pull out the specmark, the MFLPs, topmark, or any of fifty other benchmarks (or all of them) and show people the numbers were invalid. For the Pentium I and the pre 3ghz Pentium IV apple had the advantage that the chips had problems with non optomized code, so you could use some alternate benchmarks. But even using non optomized code you get the following:
The G4 was equal to a Pentium 3 that is 20% faster so
800mhz g4 ~ 1ghz PIII
The first edition of the Penium IVs were very fast but terrible chips so
1.4 ghz G4 ~ 1.75 ghz PIII (if it existed) ~ 2.6 ghz PIV.
The problem was really that the 1.4 ghz G4 wasn't out to this year while the 2.6 was out last year and at a lower price. Now however at the 3+ghz range the PIV have instruction reordering of the PIII + hyperthreadng. That means it is at least as fast as the PIII and probably faster. That is a 3.0 ghz PIV would test somewhere between 2.4 ghz G4 and a 3.0 ghz G4.
So you really can compare ghz with a high degree of accuracy relative to Intel's consummer x86 line. Now if you want to play the cache game Intel can play that too since the Xeons are available for a few hundred dollars more.
Apple has a serious CPU problem. Motorolla has done horrible damage to Apple, lets stop trying to deny the problem exists. It is by far the single biggest flaw in the line.
I think you mean Joe Longneck.
Actually, Apple has been offering a $400 rebate on the 17 inch for quite some time (well, you had to buy a CPU, too).
Same old useless ram performance. The only reason Apple moved to the DDR was to use current commodity parts. The memory bandwidth is still SLOWER than the old pc133-based ram systems.
...why is this *news*? We don't report on every time Toshiba, or Dell, or Acer comes out with an upgrade of a desktop configuration. I mean, no offence but there's no innovation here. I understand reporting on the iMacs (first and second designs) because they were way out there, but this is just irrelevent.
Bitterman
The reason that PowerPC processors have remained at lower clock speeds than Intel chips is because they can get the same amount of work done, if not more, in less clock cycles than it takes for an Intel chip.
Things that make you go hmmmmmmmm? So, um, tell me again what kinds of applications the G4 was supposed to be good at?
It is supported by any card supported by apple (I know, oxymoron) that has T&L and at least 16MB of VRAM (32 recommended).
Which includes everything ATI from the Radeon forward.
Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need, not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
Apple provides a technical note on how to remap the keyboard, but provides no solution to the hardware problems caused by the design of the ADB keyboard. This tech note helps foreign language users, but does nothing for the CapsLock/Ctrl problem.
Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 12 years. I expect that trend to continue.
Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.
This turbocharged Power Mac rips through digital video and 3D projects faster than Pentiums can say "uncle."
I'm not a big fan of Apple in many ways, but this is what just burns me. I will never, ever deal with a company that is this dishonest. Benchmark after benchmark shows that a top of the line Intel KILLS the Macintosh, and is half the price to boot. How can Apple get away with bald-faced lying to the public like this?
Can't they just sell on the merits of their hardware and software, and just stick to the truth?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
That's the ugliest abbrev. I've ever seen.
I prefer GbE.
Never refuse a breath mint.
Someone @ MacNN noticed that the Apple home page now features a Space Shuttle on the cinema display, ironically on the aniversary of the Challenger incident:
d id =142864
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=&threa
Ironic? Coincidence? Intentional?
Make nice computer, write about how powerful it is. Then, to reinforce the subconcious impression of power, show a picture of space shuttle taking off. Then release this picture on ... January 28th. D'oh!
I guess some x86 box-maker will counter some day, releasing a picture of a new machine in a twin tower box with Pentium 4s, and release the photo on September 11th or something.
... can the Apple-supplied DVI-ADC adapter be used or is "DVIator" from Dr. Bott the only option? Any experience to share? Thanks Ralf
I heard AMD had a license to make PPC chips (despite the fact they haven't done so). Hence, the AMD based Macs may not be such a ridiculous suggestion- damn good one actually!
... that's for the machine at home, which is primarily used for AppleWorks/Quicken/web browsing/email.
Our home Mac history:
1994 - Quadra 605
System 7.1 - 8.1
1997 - UMAX C500
System 7.5 - 9
2001 - 466 MHz G3 tower
System 9, OS X to the present
And I expect to not need to upgrade the current machine for at least another year or two - OS X runs just fine on it with 384 MB. We tend to buy machines near the end of their production runs - they have a little less performance than the front of the line, but cost lots less.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
And it still doesn't even come close to the price/performance of an Intel or AMD box.
.edu environment than to have a single box capable of running MacOS, command line Unix (apache, perl, etc.), and Windows (in emulation) at the same time?
Doesn't come close to the quality, either. (Price is a non-starter, as has been proven by other commentators on this article.)
How many Macs do you see that need liquid cooling for their CPUs? For that matter, how many need to have extra fans or heat sinks installed? Hmm, that may not be as valid of an argument, considering the reputation of these new "Windtunnel" models... but still, how many Intel / AMD enabled boxes could you have run in the last few years without having a cooling fan?
And to attempt to poke a hole in your "educational use" argument... how much more competitve do you want in an
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
rpm -Uvh openssh*.rpm
Where is the menu item? Look at all the kick ass gui tools for OS X Server that make running Apache as easy or easier than IIS.
Until everything is integrated it's not there for the end user. I have no problem with linux on the server side (with the exception of a thread error in the smp kernel that comes with my rocket raid 100, killing my server dead using ssh/sftp).
Why does a cooling fan or the absence of it make any difference? Does the fact that one car might be air-cooled or liquid-cooled make any difference?
I've said it before, and I will say it again: Apples are made of the same cheap Taiwanese/Chinese shit that all the other machines in the world are made of. Reliability is psychological now, unless you buy Fujitsu or IBM hard drives.
When kids come out of school not knowing how to use a two-button mouse, there is something wrong.
is faster than my P4 2.53 (especially in Photoshop). Steve Jobs says it's a super-computer. I tend to believe him, except about the computer part. Most computers can play games. Not mine.
No it's not. SMP does not give you 2x the horsepower. If you get 80-90% of the horsepower you're doing well... and even then you only get the horses if you're actually doing something that take advantage of SMP. Which most users don't. Ever.
... heck, even the Finder, they're taking advantage of SMP.
If these users ever run Photoshop, Illustrator, iDVD, iMovie, iTunes, Final Cut Pro, VirtualPC, Mathematica, Flash, Quake,
If it's true these machines won't even boot Mac OS 9, there's pretty much no way you can avoid the benefits of SMP. (No wonder Apple is shipping so many dual-processor systems, eh?)
Regardless, the Macintosh is light-years ahead of anything else I've used. As a very experienced Unix programmer and admin I know the OS will behave predictably and reliably. The GUI is simply second to none and blows anything available on Linux out of the water. The laptop itself is very fast and sleekly designed. The battery life routinely gives me 4+ hours of honest useful work, unlike the 2 hours or so from PC vendors. The screen is fantastic and closing the lid allows the system to sleep in under one second and opening the lid causes it to wake up just as fast. Not a big deal, but considering that most Windows laptops fail to even go to sleep after using them for a few months and the poorly designed drivers hang the system, you'll understand why this matters. The CD/DVD Superdrive is excellent and fast. The slot loading feauture of the drive is classy (just as your automobile CD player) and less prone to breakage as happens to PC laptops (everytime you open a PC laptop CD the lens and mechanics are exposed - a disaster waiting to happen). The default applications are functional, stable, and easy to use with no manual. The graphics are superb and fast for any task that I do, and the programming environment is dynamite. On top of that you have access to Microsoft Office X (which is far more beautiful than the PC version) and Quicken which is what most people use anyway. I simply have no complaints about the machine and fully intend to sell my Windows system to some other sucker.
Windows is predominant, but OS X is going to put up a really good fight. Linux isn't even in the running (Really, how many GUIs does one OS need and who wants to update their system every two months with a new OS version? Get real).
"My 4 THz Intel Pentium IIIVIXXX is father then your 16 KHz G101"
For those of you who have not read ALL of the CPU articles at ArsTechnica. Go there now and do so. Before posting any of your inane babble about clock speed and processor power.
It IS true that Motorola has fallen behind Intel - sort of.
There are other advantages to hardware other then Intel based systems.
Since this is an Apple thread I'll focus there - One of the most note worthy (My opinion) Is apple's System controller.
Go READ the articles at ArsTechnica!
Rather than re-writing I'll simply cut & paste.
Fast system controller: The system controller, first introduced in Apple?s highly-regarded Xserve line, coordinates and transfers data and instructions among the processor(s), PCI bus, memory, graphics and I/O buses of the Power Mac G4. Controller speeds in the new Power Mac G4 configurations run as high as 167MHz.The PCI bus is what really impressed me.
Direct PCI bus: In another example of superior architecture, the Power Mac G4 optimizes PCI performance by connecting the PCI bus directly to the system controller. In a typical PC architecture, PCI devices connect to the I/O controller through a bridge, a bottleneck in the data path where all connected PCI devices are slowed down to avoid overloading the system controller. Going through this bridge constrains PCI throughput to 133Mbps (the bus speed on Pentium 4 systems), even with otherwise fast PCI devices. This slowdown of data to and from PCI devices results in greater overall system latency. The Power Mac G4, on the other hand, features a direct 266-MBps bus to the PCI slots to guarantee high throughput and low congestion ? in effect, lowering latency. The Power Mac G4 also supports write combining, which allows write instructions to be grouped into one large instruction, further increasing data throughput.
Then Apple oficially slams PC architecture.
On the Power Mac G4, FireWire, Gigabit Ethernet and even the ATA/100 bus are built into the system and integrated directly into the system controller. (The ATA/66 bus has its own controller.) This dedicated connection reduces PCI congestion and guarantees low latency, resulting in optimal FireWire, Ethernet and hard drive performance. And as a side benefit, it also keeps the computer?s PCI slots free for your specialized audio and video cards instead of using them to provide basic technologies.
I got this info here.
Go READ the articles at ArsTechnica!
Apple is not the end all - be all of systems. Two of the greated systems are made by DEC & H/P. The UltraSparc kicks the crap out of anything Motorola & Intel have to offer.
And let's not forget the Alpha. The Pentium - Pentium III architectures were based on technology stolen from DEC. Technology that Intel is still paying for today.
It basically falls down to system preference. Mac users DO NOT CARE if you can build a PC for $400. Mac users DO NOT CARE if only a few of the best selling game titles are ported to the system.
Having more game titles available is a Good Thing - naturally -but I find myself being... PRODUCTIVE instead of having my time eaten away by games - Linux users also what I'm talking about - unless they've downloaded BZFlag or Crack Attack.
Go READ the articles at ArsTechnica!
___________________________
I'm not a geek, but I play one on TV.
Fall of next year is about 1 and a half years from now. Thats an eternity in computer years.
Yeah, I know Firewire 800 is way faster than USB2, and Firewire 400 (which is what most people will be using for quite a while, since there aren't many Firewire 800 peripherals) is slightly faster in real life (USB2 is theoretically faster than Firewire 400, but the benchmarks I've seen have Firewire actually getting a little more out of things like disks), and that Firewire's isosychronous ability and latency guarentees is essential for some applications.
However, when I go down to stores like Best Buy or Circuit City I see a busload (pun intended!) of USB2 hard drives and CD and DVD readers and writers, and just the occasional Firewire drive.
For those of us who like to buy the small things locally instead of mail order, and don't live in one of the areas where there is a nearby Apple dealer...we need USB2.
not that i don't like arstechnica - but you're getting a bit spammy. anyway, try a different news source, like this.
:) system.
i know you're too busy being productive to play games on your mac, but according to these results using real world productivity apps (photoshop and after effects), you're going to be waiting twice as long for your mac to finish the job (and paying $600 more to boot).
apple makes some great software and some great looking machines, but they're hamstrung by motorola's inability to compete with intel and amd on research, development, and manufacturing. until they find themselves a new core cpu architecture or motorola somehow figures out how to build a cpu that can clock into the stratosphere apple will never be able to produce a machine that can run as fast as a wintel (or lintel
and apple was right, megahertz don't matter - but gigahertz do...
um, 2.4*2*2 is 9.6.
:)
So you're right; it's not valid math at all.
The following companies have also released new products recently:
b e, ...
Microsoft,
Compaq,
3M,
Dupont,
Disney,
Ado
How about Firewire 800, Airport Extreme, Bluetooth, Superdrive, 2 MB L3 cache, 2GB RAM, 4 internal disk drives, Gigabit Ethernet, Mac OS X, dozens of free programming tools, iLife, the style, the reliability, the lower TCO, ...
/. readers are intelligent enough to look beyond the box.
Come on people, I thought
BBEdit, with CVS integration, is an amazing experience. Combine that with a built in copy of Apache, a double click install of mod_rendezvous, and I'm all set. I can work on my files and view them REALLY easily with rendezvous + Safari.
Then, check into CVS, check it out on the Linux or OpenBSD server, and I'm in business.
Double click installation for PostgreSQL and for PHP, and I have a mobile development system. On an airplane? No problem, I'm fully productive.
Sure I could get more horsepower on a PC, but I'm more productive on my Mac. The only thing missing is Quickbooks... the Mac version isn't feature complete w/ the PC version. I also need to share the files w/ PC users. Hopefully next year I can stop using an old machine as a Quickbooks machine, but no biggie, all in good time.
OS X has done tremendous things for my productivity, so I don't complain about the costs. The Xserve was a questionable purchase, but not if you don't think of it as a Unix machine. We've used it for what its been designed for, and we're happy. LDAP is great... we can now get a Linux workstation (or a Mac OS X one) in no time, and give authorization.
BTW: if you want a mod_auth_ldap that authenticates against Apple's Netinfo-style LDAP bindings, drop me an email. We haven't packaged it up for release yet, but WebDav + HTTPS + mod_auth_ldap is a pretty slick remote file access solution.
Alex
Alex
All the posts with the drawn-out spec sheets comparing the $1500 PC to the $1500 Mac are a little silly. It's no mystery that you can get more stuff thrown in your PC for less money. Unfortunately, when people see these side-by-side spec sheets with price tags on the bottom, that usually makes their decision for them. And more often than not, it's the wrong decision. As an example, my friend bought some no-name sweatshop-made Intel crapbox a few years ago, because he got an insanely speced-out machine for under a grand. And as months rolled by, everything in it started breaking one by one... not to mention the fact that it would BSOD all day long. Apple's quality is evident not only in looking at the hardware design, feeling the strength of the assembly, looking at how the inside is layed out, etc... but also in the lifespan of the machines. It's not uncommon to see people using 5 or 6 year old Macs on a daily basis, with little complaint. (Incidentally, this is what often skews the often-published statistics on Mac marketshare. Market research companies often base these numbers on number of computers sold, ignoring the fact that Macs tend to remain in use much longer than PCs.) Apple could easily compete in the cheap computer market, but they've decided not to. I don't know whether it's a good decision or not, but it's a decision that they've clearly made and are sticking with. Now the question is, when will we be seeing G5 machines from Apple? When those hit the market, Apple just might have a huge lead in the specs department. And with that lead, maybe they'll unleash Marklar on the world (OSX for Intel hardware). It would make OS X available to everyone, while still retaining a compelling enough hardware edge to get people to shell out the extra cash for Apple computers. I hope Marklar's more than just a rumor... it would cause the biggest shakeup the industry's seen in years
When kids come out of school not knowing how to use a two-button mouse, there is something wrong.
Oh, please. ADULTS don't know how to use a two-button mouse. Kids today are far more adaptable when it comes to technology and will pick it up in about a minute. You have just won the award for the most weak-ass argument I have ever read on Slashdot.
If I only had a nickel for every time this exchange has taken place during a tech support call I have taken from a Windows user:
Me: "Okay, now right-click on that icon to bring up the context menu, and
select 'Properties' from it."
Them: "Ok, I clicked on it, but the icon just goes dark."
Me: "Did you click, or right-click?"
Them: "What do you mean, 'right-click'?
Me: "Right-click, as in, click the right mouse button."
Them [astonished]: "You mean, it does something else?"
Mind you, these were all people who had been using Windows computers for years in the business world, and were still clueless.
I really wish people would just drop the God damned one button mouse argument altogether, because it's 100% bullshit. The one button mouse has been PROVEN in usability testing to be the way to go for the uninitiated user. People who aren't new to or afraid of computers who want more bells and whistles on their mouse will just buy whatever trackpad/trackball/mouse they want and toss the Apple one in a drawer.
If Apple left this input device choice up to people by not including a mouse at all with their systems, you trolls would be all over them for THAT, too.
~Philly
intended user of Photoshop. How about InDesign/Quark? Do you have anything for those. Oh yeah btw I tried to get PS 5, 5.5 and 6 (havent bothered on 7) running and they wouldn't run under Wine (I do run Textpad in Wine).
Bluecurve IS a desktop since the theme is what the user interfaces with and not the underlying Window Manager.
Apparently you don't have any hardware that is unable to work on your "real distro", however in the "real world" I don't have time to fuck with tweaking the system for several hours when on another system it just works.
Try running a Highpoint Rocket RAID 100/133 card on a SMP Intel based system. There is a kernel error that is caused in the smp thread implementation that I don't care to trace down. Also I have a new mobo using "Chipset: VIA KT400 / VIA VT8235" and it will not install 7.2, 7.3 or 8.0. How's that for "stable".
Like I said I'm a huge linux fan having used it since '95. It amazes me every day how far it has come. It also reminds me daily of how far it needs to go.
I upgrade every 4 years, but that is not quite true. Since I have a desktop and a laptop, a wife and kids it goes roughly like this...
:-)
Even year: upgrade my iMac, give old one to kids, give old kids iMac to my brother
Odd year: upgrade my iBook, give old one to wife, give her old laptop to my mother.
So each computer does 4 years service in my house but it migrates from my more demanding uses (development, multitrack audio recording) to the less demanding users.
What you need to do to ensure timely hardware upgrades is a bunch of dependents that don't need the fastest computers.
(And no, the 17" doesn't mean I can dispense with my laptop. I value "small" for many of my laptop uses. An iBook AND an iMac cost about the same as a 17" powerbook. Still, I'd like a superdrive in the portable...)
I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
huh?
Dude, I got a Peecee and a Mac, how about you? You presented specs for a peecee that was in no way equivalent to the new Powermacs and I just pointed that out. Sorry to burst your bubble, no reason for insults.
Lots of people, I dare say MOST people, will not ever build their own Peecee. So how about trying to configure a system from a manufacturer other than yourself and then tell me how Powermac is overpriced.
On second thought, forget it... You can now go back to your trolling.
"entry-level pricing has dropped" Actually all the prices have dropped.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
I know its a touchy subject with all these microsoft slash-dotters but I slept fine at night knowing that my apple was safe from the worms...
{ Pillar candles great for when the power fails and you cant see the keyboard..
How about Firewire 800, Airport Extreme, Bluetooth, Superdrive, 2 MB L3 cache, 2GB RAM, 4 internal disk drives, Gigabit Ethernet, Mac OS X, dozens of free programming tools, iLife, the style, the reliability, the lower TCO, ...
/. readers are intelligent enough to look beyond the box.
Come on people, I thought
I buy a new Mac when there is a model that is three times faster than the one I have at the same price I paid for it. I'm on my fourth since 1996.
MacMall is selling Dual 867**GHz** machines for $1494... And you still haven't even *invented* that yet!!! How do you expect to sell anything?!?
c /
http://www.macmall.com/macmall/families/powerma
Hurry guys, these won't last. Be 50 years ahead of all your friends!
This post will be modded down for no particular reason by a sweaty 14 year old who is not allowed out past dark.
...when every test puts it right w/ the Radeon 9700.
I read all the benchmarks in the article yesterday. It went back and forth between the 2, and it was on a windows box, it'll even perform better on the Mac w/ native open GL
I prefer ArsTechnica's analysis :
:
"The very slight increase in performance, the addition of two good connectivity options, and the steep price cuts combine to make the PowerMac line's price/performance ratio a little less embarrassing than it has been previously."
Seems more accurate to me. I own a couple of Mac's and they won't be getting any more of my money until they fix some stuff
"The FSB still clocks in at a pitiful 167MHz SDR, and of course the dual-processor machines in the line still use the same old shared-bus topology."
http://www.arstechnica.com/
Max.
Lots of software packages like AutoCAD are overwhelmingly run on PC's...and use a two-button mouse. Before you get out your flaming napalm, lets have a calm discussion. I'm not trolling, I'm stating my firm beliefs. Thanks for the award, too. But I don't think it's a "weak" argument. Kids that use Apples in general transition to the PC world and are lost. The one-button thing is just the tip of the iceberg. They have to learn all over again how to use a computer. The Apple interface might be nice and user-friendly, but I used to work in an architectural office...there were no Macs there. Summer-working kids came out of high school and suffered immediate PC-itis because of their limited exposure. I want what's best for the students just as well as the next...and in my view, they need to learn on the same machines they will eventually work on...PC's.
If Apple left this input device choice up to people by not including a mouse at all with their systems, you trolls would be all over them for THAT, too.
Apple could end the whole issue by having multi-button mice as a purchase option. I'm sure Logitech would happily whip up an Apple logo mouse in a week. I'm using a Dell-branded Logitech mouse with my PowerMac G4 and it works great.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Actually MMX was the start of the PII architecture shithead. Shut your fuckin mouth - oh wait, is Steve Jobs still shoving his cock in it?
Here's a spec'd out Dell so as you can compare:
$2676 gets you:
3.06 GHz P4 w/HT
512MB RAM
60GB HD
DVD-R/CD-RW Combo Drive
19" monitor
Radeon 9700 TX graphics card
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz DSP Sound Card
Harmon Kardon speakers
a couple apps
Windwos XP Pro
56K Modem
Ethernet
802.11b adapter
3 years support
The main advantage over the Mac being the addition of a monitor and 2 more years of support. I would imagine that Dual 1.42GHz G4s are roughly equivalent to a 3.06GHz P4 w/HT.
I wouldn't want the latest entry level model. Give me last year's entry level model. Let's see, a single processor G4 running at 1ghz... Or, dual processor G4 running at 867mhz. I know which one I'll take! Gimmie the dualie! I think Apple should have made their entry-level machine a dual-processor machine, but that would probably cannibalize the middle-level sales... :/
Sounds like your time is completely worthless
You ask why a completely subjective comparison on CPU speed would be modded up?
Answer: Perception is 9/10's of reality. This holds true in the courtroom every day (as any good lawyer can tell you), just as it does when it comes down to people using their computers.
No benchmark can account for the millions of combinations of hardware/software people run on a given platform. Why do you think most of the PC benchmarking sites (Tom's hardware, etc.) typically pick a few games like Quake 3 as "standards" for comparison? They simply chose popular programs that seem to heavily tax many aspects of a system.
I have a theory, too, when it comes to long-time Mac users. They've been stuck in a basically non multitasking environment for so long, they often get an overrated perception of their newer system's overall power in OS X. (Quite simply, their eyes are opened to how much more they can get accomplished on their new computer because things put in the background really do process in the background.) They forget that over on the "Intel" side of the fence, people have been doing this (and expecting it to work that way) ever since the days of Windows '95 and NT 3.5, not to mention all the Linux and BSD users).
When you put aside any personal efficiency gains obtained simply from the OS allowing true multitasking - I think you find OSX lacking in speed compared to Linux or even Windows XP on a P4 class computer.
(Not that OS X isn't still pretty cool.... I've got it running on a Mac system at home myself. I just accept that the hardware isn't as powerful as my PC's, and use it for other reasons.)
intended user of Photoshop.
Perhaps I'm not. Then again, neither are 90% of the desktop users out there. The absence of Photoshop is not an indication that Linux isn't usable on the desktop. Now, if you said it's not usable for graphic artists, I might agree with you.
Bluecurve IS a desktop since the theme is what the user interfaces with and not the underlying Window Manager.
By that logic, I could say that my mother runs the Dangerous Creatures desktop on her computer.
The theme just changes the look and feel a bit. The user interfaces with the desktop. Whatever features and limitations are in KDE or Gnome will remain regardless of what theme is selected.
Apparently you don't have any hardware that is unable to work on your "real distro", however in the "real world" I don't have time to fuck with tweaking the system for several hours when on another system it just works.
No, I don't have any hardware that doesn't work. That situation can usually be avoided by spending five minutes checking your distribution's hardware compatibility list.
Try running a Highpoint Rocket RAID 100/133 card on a SMP Intel based system.
Again, not exactly a common piece of kit for a desktop user, and thus not something that proves Linux isn't a decent desktop. Also, since this thread started off as a comparison of Linux and OS/X, does that card just plug-n-play in a PowerMac? Obviously you couldn't put it in an iMac!
Also I have a new mobo using "Chipset: VIA KT400 / VIA VT8235" and it will not install 7.2, 7.3 or 8.0. How's that for "stable".
I know for a fact that OS/X won't install on that, so obviously it isn't ready for the desktop either.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
I am so fucking sick of hearing this kind of bullshit. Not only are you being condescending, but you are factually incorrect about both platforms.
First of all, the old MacOS sure the fuck was multitasking. Multitasking means the CPU is doing more than one thing over the same period of time. What you are trying to parrot from half-remembered articles bashing the old MacOS is that it was did not do preemptive multitasking, which is the way that UNIX and NT does it, but instead did cooperative multitasking.
Secondly, a system that does pre-emptive multitasking tends to feel slower to a single user, not faster. Reboot an OS X system to OS 9, and marvel at the zippiness of it. A preemptive multitasking environment means the CPU is always sharing out time, even when it doesn't need to. This is awesome for the old big-iron UNIX and VMS systems, which were being used by 50 users at a time, and is still very useful for the way most of us use computers today, but it comes with a performance cost. A cost worth paying, yes, but a cost.
Thirdly, Windows95 did not do pre-empive multitasking either, so your comment about how people expected it on the Intel side of the fence since those days is also bullshit. NT did it, but even Windows2000 was incapable of running a lot of home software, like games, which means that preemptive multitasking did not really come to the typical home Windows user until XP arrived, because 95, 98, and ME never had it.
Also, overlooked in this entire thread is that Apple is not selling a 1.43 GHz Mac. They are selling a dual 1.43 GHz CUP Mac. I'll take that over anything Dell has to offer right now, thank you.
I thought I was looking forward to this announcement. I'd been eying an 867 G4 dual processor Powermac built-to-order with a Superdrive for a while, but wanted to hold on to my cash and wait for the next speed bump, hoping a DP 1 GHz model at yesterday's 867 DP price was right around the corner.
Well, the speed bump hasn't come. The entry level model, incredibly, has less "power to burn" now than before, with a single 1 GHz G4 processor. Sure the price is lower, but from what I've seen at the Durham, NC Apple store comparing single processor e & iMacs against the DP Powermacs, OS X still needs that second processor and its extra processor power. Now I have to shell out for the much more expensive to "Faster" Powermac to get the power I want (programming Java with iTunes and other apps running in the background, running iDVD, and, well, okay, I admit it, playing Doom3).
You can get 867 DP Powermacs for cheap at MacMall et al now, sure, but with built-to-order Superdrive? Nope. Entry-level options that include Superdrives have just gotten a lot worse, not better.
(Mind you, the "true power Powermac users" still get a great speed bump. I just wish it'd trickled down to people looking at the look end. And if I can hide the receipt from the rest of the fam, it might do exactly as Apple intended as have me throw down an extra $200 on my next Macintosh [to get the DP].)
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Imagine ordering a Powermac G4 867 MHz a week before the new models come out... It was after the Expo so I thought there wasn't anything new pending. Someone at the Apple store decided to give me a break, phoned and offered to deliver the new 1,25 GHz DP instead for the same price. What would have happend if I had ordered a week earlier?
When Dell or Compaq release new models, does that make it into Slashdot's front page too? Could we please restrict the Apple advertising to the ad banners? Thank you.
Slashdot covers when Intel or AMD improve their processor speed, but the business model in the PC world means Dell and Compaq have little importance to it. In the Apple/Motorola business model, new Mac models and the release of faster PPCs go hand in hand.
Yeah dell's great value, gotta love the dell, i'm off to buy a dell woohoo
Just don't try calling Dell for after-sales support. Their special blend of ASS does everything you expect them to do for a dull company with no shopfronts ie make you wait for hours, send you to India, and stonewall your requests until you give up all hope.
apple OTOH seems to have a good reputation for service.
you know how to configure your OS but what are you going to do when you're dell monitor/laptop/processor breaks down?
There is a standard benchmark for unix systems and it shows that the ppc is much closer than we think. It has a 1.8ghz dell just about tying a dual 500mhz G4 in everything besides memory tests which show the rambus based dell as faster.
I have a KT400 board and it works fine. Maybe you should lay off the crack. And good working calling GNOME and KDE "window managers" and a theme a "desktop." How did you manage to install linux in '95, pup, when you obviously have shit for brains?
I had a compaq before I got my 500mhz iBook and it runs XP like OS 10.2 and this was a 500mhz p2-p3 compaq presario that was a year old and cost like $2,000 but it was a flaming pile so iWent iBook.
You know, the 1.25GHz macs were never overclocked. Take off the heat sink and see "7455A 1250" on the chips. This rumor started to spread after Motorola didn't update their G4 specs to include 1250MHz availability. The likely explanation is that these parts are only available to Apple.
Marko Karppinen
Sorry for the typo, I meant to say grammar
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Personally I find the fact that I have never had to rebuild my mac (my machine) from scratch has been a huge saving as I have had rebuild my PC several time (gets slow after installing crap).
The fact that I can move all my apps and preferences from my old mac to my new one in about an hour is a great saving. This includes all my prefences etc. It would take that long just to reinstall all my PC software.
These are the things that make the Mac fast for me, not how fast the CPU is every once in a while when I do some rendering.
Go out and get sailing!
Does it seem eerie to anyone else that such a story would make the front page (when other much more relevant tech stories are rejected)? Do I smell a paid advert in disguise?
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
Maybe you're "sick of hearing this" because it's the truth, and people keep trying to get you to understand the facts?
I've used the older versions of MacOS quite a bit, thank-you. I'm not just talking from some magazine quote here. If you launch an application on, say, System 7.x, what do you get? The spinning ying-yang cursor and an inability to click on anything else until the application returns control to you! That is NOT the behavior in a Windows environment (except for the Win 3.1 days, with the dreaded "hourglass").
And yes, of course a reboot from Mac OS X into 9.2 feels "zippy"! Booting into MS-DOS feels pretty darn "zippy" on a Pentium 4 system too! That wasn't really my point.
The original discussion was dealing with the latest generation of system offerings from both Intel and Apple, and a perception of which seemed "faster" by the users. That means, we're basically talking OS X vs. Windows XP or 2000 on the OS side.
I've heard more than a few OS X users try to justify their Mac's supposed performance increase over a P4 by using the multitasking arguments. "Oh, sure, my OS X desktop seems to take forever to boot up and things don't pop right up when I launch them -- but the performance is really still there. I can keep launching stuff and have 6 or 7 things going at once, and it doesn't really get any slower than it is now!" Nope, sorry.... flawed argument! Any WinTel user could say this to the same degree. (In fact, if everything else was equal and the Mac and the PC user kept opening up the same apps at the same time, I suspect the Mac system would finally get unresponsive slightly before the P4 did.)
It *is* nice to see Apple finally selling a dual 1.43Ghz G4 though. I don't dispute that's speedy. Nonetheless, at 100% efficiency (which you never really hit on a multiprocessor system), that would equate to 2.86Ghz of total CPU power. You can buy an Intel P4 that goes faster than that....
Apple really made usb one by not including any other port on the original imac.. USB which had been on pcs for a while and never caught on finally did.
Now for the towers its not a huge issue because of the pci slots but for the notebooks its just annoying.
I know apple is pushing firewire and you can buy firewire hard drives (I have one and it works great). And I've heard even though it has a slightly slower speed firewire actually works ever so slightly faster than usb2, so for speed we'll call it a draw..
But choice is good.. Most digital cameras will probably come with usb2 instead of usb1. Camcorders all are firewire and will probably stay that way.. the post is correct there are bus loads of usb2 stuff out there... Its built into every PC so its not going away.
Green screen, TWO! floppy drives,128k , 80 column card, and dot matrix printer..
Welcome to the wonderfull world of computer depreciation.. Sometimes when you buy a new machine its best not to look at new hardware prices for a couple of years..Saves a lot of malox moments..
Lamer.
and releases Xpress for OSX which is what most current Mac graphics/design owners are waiting for. Upgrades are nice, but APPS drive hardware sales. OSX runs just fine on a Dual Gig from a year ago, but until there's a reason for IT buyers to replace the systems in graphics departments, no one will buy these. And by the way, NOBODY RUNS Quark 5. It sucks ass, broke the interface rules they themselves set up and is dogshit next to InDesign. And these won't boot into 9, and Quark runs only 'acceptably' well in Classic. Apple has the boot on Quark's neck with this release. This is all about turning up the heat. Now who wants to buy me a Cinema HD?
Never pet a burning dog.
For most people the fact that the system is stable and that it works predictably is more than enough.
Can you quantify this statement? As software becomes more usable, more and more people are finding the benefits of MP3 and Video encoding, Home video editing, and other multimedia activities that are not fast enough even on the best Nforce2 based Athlon.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
The problem is that you can't compare Apple to Intel all the time. Look at AMD with NVidia's Nforce2 platform. Look at Hypertransport. It looks a like some of the benefits that Apple has, with a faster CPU (real world performance, not ghz) and cheaper price tag.
Don't get me wrong, a part of me want's a MAC, but my audio editing has strict performance requirements. These performance requirements are easily met by my ~$800 1.5 year old Athlon (firewire, UWSCSI (10K rpm), etc.) and can barely be beat by a $1500 G4 TODAY. Sure, the powermac is much more elegant, and has a cooler OS (for A/V, at least) but I still can't justify the price/performance margin.
On the flipside, for a casual user who would be just fine on a "low end" G4 with 256MB of RAM, I'd recommend a $1199 iMac over a $899 DELL any day.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
The eMac and iMac don't have L3 cache or a 133+ MHz system bus; both of those are major factors in why the PowerMac is faster, as the G4 depends heavily on having lots of bandwidth (memory and otherwise). Even the 667 MHz PowerBook from last year can beat the current eMacs or iMacs in some cases, simply because of how much room it has to work with.
If you can, wait until the iMac is updated (which should be soon, possibly within a week), and compare their speed to the dual-processor PowerMacs. If the iMac gets a 133 MHz system bus, you might not see as much of a difference between it and a similarly-clocked PowerMac.
new retail Athlon XP 1700+, $60 .20mm, $200
new nForce2 mobo, $100
new 19" flat CRT
People talk about PC software (most of which also exists for Macs), or new PC cards (which, I believe, also work in Macs). I do not see articles announcing the fact that Dell or HP or Gateway or Compaq or any other PC brand has released a new model. Maybe they should start sending the Slashdot editors some gifts, too...
Tell me, does Steve Jobs pay you well to suck his cock, or do you like the taste so much that you do it for free?
He spent 2 hours trying to find an MP3 encoder for his computer, trying different software etc. I drop my CD into my machine and iTunes imports it into my playlist for me. Now the CPU advantage his machine has over mine was all but lost when he had to spend more than a couple of minutes trying to find MP3 software.
I find this over and over again. I organised a new iMac for my Dad, who is computer literate, but not a developer or anything like that. He picked it up in the middle of the day, had it setup, printer working and had installed MS Office. All within 30 minutes of arriving home with the computer. I might have spent an hour with my Dad fixing stuff on his computer. My sister with a PC, took longer than that just to get MS Office installed. Office on the Mac's software installation routine is this: Drag these folders to your computer, click application. I am sure you know the PC routine. Moving computers, just drag all your files and app s from one computer to the other. I did this and 1 or 2 apps prompted for license keys again, but apart from that a painless process.
I develop and do support all day on a PC, I use a mac at home because I don't want to have to spend my time fiddling with setting and pissing about. It just works.
Go out and get sailing!
Must it always come down to the same discussions, in no particular order:
* Performance, or lack thereof
* The Mhz/Ghz gap with Intel
* OS X on Wintel
* Price (why are Macs compared to eMachines when they are more comparable to Sony VAIOs?]
and, oh yes
* the one button mouse (although no one seems to care about this so far)
The Mac platform has value to those that value what it has to offer; bundled applications, innovative technologies, style, and ease of use.
Its critics can easily dismiss those things and can instantly point to spec sheets, market share, and applications availability, notably in games. There is no denying that this is true and the trends are not encouraging.
To the cynics that consider stories like this to be insidious attempts at advertising, they should realize that Apple is, arguably, one of the most visible PC manufacturers whose R&D efforts (others that come to mind include HP, Dell, Sony) often find themselves adopted soon after by other "me too" makers *cough* Gateway *cough* and thus a portent of what may soon find its way into PC cases.
So, what I would like to hear more about and become more informed about, given the (often) informed qualities of the Slashdot crowd, are the implications of the new G4 on the computing community:
* PC users have been slow to adopt Firewire, will Firewire 800 spark any interest?
* will the newest Mac unleash pent-up Bluetooth integration and applications?
* is there any interest in the new technologies and how they might play into Apple's current efforts with open source?
* will the new machine and its new features make any difference whatsoever in the PC market?
* does the USB2.0 omission bother anyone?
FWIW, I am still chugging along on a 433Mhz G3 running OS X but the last computer our family purchased was a 2Ghz P4 for my wife who, as the primary user, wouldn't need more than what a bargain PC box has to offer. For myself, as the family's dominant Mac advocate, this new machine carries a high lust factor and punctuates Apple's commitment to keeping their product line fresh, but I'm not in the market for a new Mac. At least not yet.
I dont hate apple or anything, i have one, an iBook. but the fact is when i got OSx.2 installed with that new apple X11 fully quartz enhanced shit, glxgears only gets 70fps while my two year old PC gets 900+FPS so i couldn't give a flying rats bum as to what's technologically superiour. All i know is that my PC is faster. oh, and p.s. i work in a used mac store, and i can honestly say that there's no lifeform lower than a mac zealot.
1992: Parents purchased a Macintosh LC. Worst. Computer. Ever. Me: "Fuck this shit I'm never buying a goddamn Mac again!!!!!"
1997: Parents (finally) purchase a PC from a local shop. Windows hard locks and corrupts video driver within first hour of use. Me: "Fuck this shit I'm never using goddamn Windows again!!!!"
1998: Purchase UMAX prebuilt for $900. Absolute crap. Me: "Fuck this shit I'm never buying a prebuilt again!!!"
1998: (a month later) returned UMAX, spent the $900 building 1337 Pentium-II 400 box. Installed Linux. (sigh of relief). Finally I am happy...
2000: Huh What? OS X is Unix based? Hmm...
2003: Powerbook for ~$2000?? w00t! Purchased 12.1" PB, waiting for it to be shipped (2 to 4 weeks... grumble grumble).
My PII is still runnin' strong after 5 years, a testament to the saying 'If you want something done right, do it yourself.' I can't exactly 'do it myself' with a laptop, so here's to hoping Apple can do it right this time.
Kids that use Apples in general transition to the PC world and are lost. The one-button thing is just the tip of the iceberg. They have to learn all over again how to use a computer. The Apple interface might be nice and user-friendly, but I used to work in an architectural office...there were no Macs there. Summer-working kids came out of high school and suffered immediate PC-itis because of their limited exposure.
Either the interns rode to work on the short bus
or you're full of shit. The pickup from Mac to PC
is virtually nonexistant and has been since MS
"innovated" the interface world with Win 95. I
went from Mac hardcore to 'doze user in about 30
seconds flat. Most of the Mac users I've known
who've had to transition to PCs for whatever
reason, especially those under 30, have also had
absolutely no problem.
I want what's best for the students just as well as the next...and in my view, they need to learn on the same machines they will eventually work on...PC's.
Take your "real world" arguments to somebody
who'll actually buy that crap. Kids should learn
on as many platforms as possible so they actually
have a choice, rather than having one option
rammed down their throats and being ignorant (as
you seem to be) of the validity of other OS/
hardware choices.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
I happen to work for a software company and I am looking at an old Pentiom 133 that I use for a print server which has to be from 97-98. This thing is as generic as you can get for a cheap PC from that era and it runs 24/7 with only occasional reboots. (NT4) Does that mean that I go around telling people how great PowerSpec PC's are and how they're better than Macs because they cost 1/3 of what a new Mac cost and run for 5-6 years with no maintainence???? No, of course not.
I deal with clients (government) who are still running old 486's with DOS on them. I see lots of old pentiums with Win 95 on them. Does that mean I run around telling everone how great 486's were? No, of course not. Christ, I still have a commodore 64 that was given to me in 1984 that boots up so by your method of proof it was the best computer evar.
Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you? Is any of this making sense to you?
All the best,
--Bob
Even if Intel processors are faster than PowerPC processors (and I really haven't investigated enough to know for sure), that's not the whole story. Others have already pointed out:
- Macs have the apps that Windows does (e.g., Photoshop), with the stability Unix has, so people can be more productive
- Macs have better architecture, so Firewire, Ethernet, PCI, etc., are faster
What I haven't heard anybody talk about yet is Quartz Extreme: with a relatively recent graphics card (from the past year or two, I think), compositing windows to the screen is done entirely in the graphics card.
In a test of how fast some FORTRAN code runs, maybe the Pentium 4 is faster. But in the real world, people move and resize windows a lot more than they run FORTRAN code. On a Pentium system, dragging a window uses CPU. On a Mac, it doesn't. (Well, not nearly as much.)
A) If you are a .NET developer, how do you use a mac? I primarily code in C# (a little Perl, Java, Cold Fusion, etc.) and I use VS.NET. If I could get VS.NET on OS X with reasonable speed (emulator?) that may be enough to push me to buy a mac.
B) You can't compare the 2 hours that your friend took to find an MP3 encoder. It's an innacurate comparison. A "PC" is not a "PC" as a Mac is a Mac. So what if he bought a poorly equiped PC? If he bought a Dell (for example) all the software is included. Maybe the software isn't quite as slick, but the CPU difference would easily make up for a minor usability difference.
C) Most of your evidence is Anecdotal (thefore, you haven't quantified as I asked you to). So what if you spend an hour fixing your dad's stuff? It's an isolated incident with too many variables. My machine at home has been running fine and I don't waste time "fixing it".
In my experience, Mac's are definitely slicker out of the box. But you can't compare it's usability to the significant performance gap (for the price). For the most part certain tasks like MP3 encoding will always be faster than the mac, until Apple finally goes to a closed, proprietary, but x86 based solution.
Until then, I'd like a Mac for all of my audio software. The problem is, my 1.2Ghz Athlon is not quite fast enough for complex software synthesis (only super complex songs in Reason - 90% of songs only use only 50% of the CPU). If I knew that a dual 1Ghz G4 could beat the pants off of that, AND that I could get one for ~$1600 WITH a 17 or 18" flat panel, then I'd be sold.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Apple's revised prices are still way too high. Here in Singapore, I can build my own machine with the following specs:
Pentium-4 2.53 Ghz CPU (PGA-478 533Mhz FSB)
80GB HD (IBM 120GXP ATA-100 7200rpm)
Motherboard (Gigabyte GA-8IEX L3 cache ?)
Full Tower Casing
450W Power Supply
256MB DDR333 SDRAM
ComboDrive (Plextor PleXCombo 32cdr/16cdrw/40r/16dvd)
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro (64MB DDR video memory)
Gigabit LAN
FireWire
Creative Live Platinum II
Microsoft office Keyboard
Microsoft Optical Mouse
56k Internal Modem
for SGD 2,336,
whereas the Apple Store Singapore lists the Dual-1.25ghz G4 PowerMac for SGD 3,879.
This is absolute madness on Apple's part.
(ok, so no software license is included in the PC's price, but PC software is cheap)
No, it's an insult when you tell an intelligent guy he's stupid. When tell an idiot that he's an idiot you're just stating a fact.
I understand perfectly.
The evidence I have given you is perfectly acceptable. Were I called on to testify in a court, my 13+ years of experience would more than satisfy any judge's requirements as to my knowledge, as would the last five years I have spent teaching and consulting in production and pre-press.
This said, I do not understand your call for "scientific" evidence, as in all of the Slashdot threads I have read, almost no "scientific" evidence is given. People offer their experience, and that experience is taken at face value. If, in another thread, I say that I have worked with such and such a tool and that it behaves like X and Y, people do not say, "Show me scientific evidence!". They say, "well, when I worked with such and such a tool, if behaved like Y and Z," and so forth.
So, I have no "scientific" evidence, but I will bet $1000 that you don't, either. You have your opinions, which are clear, and, it seems, nothing but your own conviction to back them up. I have my experience, and the experience of others in the thread to show that Macs stay around for a long time and remain useful for a long time. Do they do this more than PCs? I don't know, and it was never part of the argument.
Now, as to your "logic": it was said that :
to which you responded with a long attack that computers don't get faster as they age. This is undoubtedly true, but has nothing to do with the posters comment, which was talking about utility, not speed.
Then it was said that:
To which you replied with another long comment, beginnig with an ad hominem attack on all Mac users, ending with asking for "scientific" evidence, which, as I've already said, is not the standard here at Slashdot.
Then was said:
To which you responded with a list of some of your older machines, proceeded to give your own antecdotal reasons for why you wouldn't use them, and then used you subjective judgements as a standard of measure fort the whole world.
Having said all this, the burden of proof is on you. Read on in this thread and you will find a lot of people offering their own experience as to the longevity of Macs. As you have offered neither antecdotal or "scientific" evidence to the contrary, I think the ball's in your court.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
I've actually heard a lot of them say that the don't like OS X's multi-tasking. They prefer the multi-tasking model of Classic Mac OS because the foreground application had the CPU almost dedicated to it.
I disagree, obviously, but I was just stating the fact that your assumption is incorrect.
mbbac
A) Not sure if I said, but Work == PC Home == Mac B) None of the Dell's here at work came with an MP3 Decoder, maybe the home editions do. MS Media player I beleive decodes to wmf files but that does not help his in car MP3 player. C) Sorry I didn't have the time to do some significant statistical analysis. I go on my own experience. BTW Using your own logic your finding are flawed because your answers aren't quantified. How many people do you know where "reinstalling the OS" is the solution to there support problems?
Go out and get sailing!
From xlr8yourmac.com come a few benchmarks.
:^)
Straight benchmarks
"Real-world" apps
Quake 3 and friends
I think you can follow links to the rest of the review as easily I as I can paste them.
I believe the most interesting bit is how well the dual processor 533 G4 holds up against the 800 MHz and 1 GHz G4 upgrades with many tasks. In Quake 3 and many other tasks that can take advantage of multiprocessing, the 533 DP comes out ahead of one or both of the two upgrades (depending on how efficient the DP support is).
Apple has not done the entry level any favors taking out the second processor, I'm afraid.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Well, as you can probably intuit Home machines are vastly different then Corporate machines - esp. from major players like Dell and Compaq.
.NET development at home? What is your development platform of choice on OS X (for web applications particularly)?
Using your own logic your findings are flawed because your answers aren't quantified.
No, because you were the one who made the contention. I'm not saying that you are right or wrong about that contention (although my anecdotes contend the antithesis), I'm saying that you didn't provide sufficient basis for it.
So, if you have a Mac at home, do you not do any
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
As for MacOSX development, I dabble in the Cocoa framework which is a lot of fun to use. This is a direct decendent of Nextstep (most of the classes are still prefixed with NS), uses ObjectiveC which is some OO extensions added to C. I have been told it has a lot of features that smalltalk has, and is no where near as strict as Java or the .net languages.
As for web stuff most of it is done in PHP, mySQL, and a bit of Java. I also do a bit of work with Flash. Nearly all of the sites I deal with are FreeBSD or Linux based so any of those solutions can be emulated on the MacOSX.
Go out and get sailing!
There are plenty of good reasons for running OS X even with the Mac speed penalty - as I'm doing right now, indeed - but making exaggerrated claims will only mislead consumers and hurt Apple's sales in the long run.
I don't know what you guys are doing, but I'm writing this from a 400 mhz G3 iMac running 10.2 and it has been satisfactory for my purposes (i.e. web, web building, office, games, etc.). If I were making a movie or something I might need a new machine, but . . . Two processors at more than 3X the speed must be enough for most of us.
So, you wouldn't even want an Apple computer that was as fast as their x86 counterparts? Don't you think Apple could find some interesting things to do with all that processing power?
Not being as fast as PC:s _is_ a problem. Admit it.
Aah, to be back in '95, when the 8100/110 was marketed as "faster than the fastest PC" on the grounds of having a higher clock rating. The MegaHertz myth apparently mattered more in Cupertino when they were in the opposite seat...
Using slashdot as a means for a proof is just silly when you consider that slashdot caters to a very small percentage of people on the planet (althogh most slashdotters seem to think otherwise) who tend to have strong biases one way or the other (Mac zealots, Linux zealots, Windows zealots, Amiga zealots, etc.) In fact my whole point relates directly to debunking the person who has a 5 year old Mac that's still running so they think that that means that Macs are the best value or "Cheaper in the long run" or a better long term value proposition or whatever. I pointed out how this means nothing and gave similar anecdotal evidence from my experience showing old PC's that were much cheaper that are still servicable. Yet you don't seem to think that has any bearing on the discusion....
The fact that my evidence is anecdotal, which I readily admit, IS THE WHOLE BASIS FOR MY POINT. You provide anecdotal evidence and I provide anecdotal evidence yet you claim that yours has more value because it's yours???? That's basically your argument as I understand it.
Now to address a few of your latest points:
to which you responded with a long attack that computers don't get faster as they age. This is undoubtedly true, but has nothing to do with the posters comment, which was talking about utility, not speed
I need you to define what you mean by "utility" here. As I understand it a computer is a tool and I can install software on that tool to accomplish a certain goal(s). I'm not sure how an old slower Mac would offer me more utility than an old slow PC or a cheap new blazing PC. I need a little help with that.
To which you responded with a list of some of your older machines, proceeded to give your own antecdotal reasons for why you wouldn't use them, and then used you subjective judgements as a standard of measure fort the whole world
Then you did miss my point. My RS/6000 has a PPC 233 Mhz chip and is actually a very functional box. I could use it as my main computer if I had to. The reason I wouldn't is simply because I can buy a PC for less than a grand that would quite simply blow the doors off that old box, thusly making me much more productive and offering me much more utility.
The premise that a Mac has some kind of magic associated with it that would keep it modern as it grows old versus that of an aging PC is severely lacking in logic.
All the best,
--Bob
It's been a while, but wasn't Boromir son of Denethor and brother of Faramir? And wasn't Denethor a Steward (i.e. not king), hence the "Return of the King" - Aragorn?
Move on. There's nothing to see here.
I am not ignorant of the benefits of a multi-platform education nor am I opposed to Macs in education. But for the most part, school boards and teachers want a real-life computer experience. Which means that the vast, overwhelming number of computers in a school should be PC's. As they are in the school district I supervise. There are Macs, but they are few and far between. Now as for all of the people that called me an "intern" and "full of" various things, how many school districts have YOU been the head computer honcho of? I am in them all day, every day, and I see what problems kids DO have. They DO have problems transitioning between them. They transition to PC's, and end up pushing in the MIDDLE of a PC mouse, rather than the left button as they should. There are many more problems than that. Are they insurmountable? No. But all of my experience says that the majority of their education should be in machines they are going to use in their future lives. Your multi-platform argument could just as easily support the use of Amigas, Commodore 64's, and VAX's. Again...for all of the people that would rather talk trash than have a legitimate debate...I do not hate Macs...but until the majority of the world uses them, they will continue to be in the minority of machines that make up my school district.