PowerBook, Because Lives Are On The Line

WCityMike writes "Major Shawn Weed, an intelligence planner with the Third Infantry Division, eschewed his Panasonic Toughbook because it wasn't fast enough in processing giant satellite and reconnaissance images. He put in a requisition for and received a PowerBook G4, the only Apple currently being used in the entire Middle East theater. 'Frankly, lives are in the balance here, so the quicker I can get stuff done accurately, the better,' Weed says."

Comments

Bullet Proof

[Anonymous Coward]

AND you can stop bullets with the case!

You think Apple's prices are high?

[Nipsy356]

If the military can pay thousands for a toilet seat, imagine what they paid for a PowerBook.

Re:You think Apple's prices are high?

[rampant mac]

"If the military can pay thousands for a toilet seat, imagine what they paid for a PowerBook."

Oddly, I'm going to attempt to explain this...

Most of the equipment that the Armed Services pay "too much" for aren't your run-of-the-mill items. It's not like they can run out to Home Depot and pick up a crapper capper.

We have tie hooks that are rated at 2 or 3 thousand pounds, yet are made of titanium, to keep weight down as much as possible.

Imagine designing that same item in your garage. How much would it cost if you had to make such item from scratch, with a guarantee that the item would work as intended, under such extreme circumstances? Factor in the engineering, labor work, logistics, and planning and see how much a "simple" item like a titanium tie-down hook (with a 2k weight rating & MTBF rate of 1000 flight hours) would cost.

Re:You think Apple's prices are high?

[Nipsy356]

I can understand inflated prices on aircraft parts. I can understand inflated prices on boomers. I can understand inflated prices in missile control silos.

However, aside from the fact that the initial post was intended to be humorous, the military spending is still out of control, and full of pork.

From: Price Trends for Defense Logistics Agency's Weapon System (GAO November 2000), which found that between 1997, and 1998, prices of 2,993 different spare parts purchased by the military increased over one thousand percent, and 14 percent of the total spare parts ordered from defense contractors increased at least 50 percent in price in that one year. Contractors have been underbidding the prices, then jacking up the prices upon time for billing. Parts like a bolt, initially quoted at $40, ended up being $1,887, or a self-locking nut, quoted at $2.69, ended up costing $2, 185. These are not nearly the worst examples of cost increases . . . A linear microcircuit, original 1997 price $0.11 cents, cost $5,788.76, thermal insulation that really cost $1, ended up costing $3,390, or the boss nipple, costing $1, cost the US military $1,498.48.

Re:You think Apple's prices are high?

[nettdata]

Also, there are SOME projects that don't even have a budget so they don't show up on the radar screen, if you know what I mean.

The costs for these "other" projects are absorbed and hidden by other purchases in some cases.

This means that when they're paying $1,000 for a $20 hammer, they're only paying $20 for the hammer, and the rest is being used elsewhere.

It's not ruggedized.

[More Karma Than God]

The article says it's been fine so far, but sooner or later the lack of military-grade durability is going to be a factor.

Re:It's not ruggedized.

[C0LDFusion]

Perhaps you guys missed the demonstration where the Powerbook G4 was run over by an 18-wheeler, then it backed up (over the powerbook) and ran over it again...then someone walked up, picked it up and started it up fine? I've seen it done, and I've never met anyone who has had physical damage disable a powerbook, except when the LCD was directly struck (while it was open).

Re:It's not ruggedized.

[Tumbleweed]

It depends on what kind of environment the guy's using it in as to whether it even needs to be ruggedized. If he's in a nice C&C type area, there's precious little need for a ruggedized computer. I'd say the guy probably knows his needs better than anyone on Slashdot does. As mentioned in the article, the military buys computers in bulk, rather than specific to individual needs, so I'd bet a great many of those ruggedized machines aren't needed in a ruggedized form factor. Which also means they could save some money if they used a bit more fine-grained needs analysis. But hey, that's the military for ya. Sure, the regular machine may only be a PIII-800MHz, but it'll stop a bullet! :)

Re:It's not ruggedized.

[usr122122121]

Yes, but remember that Iraq is a desert. Do you want your military equipment to end up like this? Baked Apple

Considering it still booted just fine after being stuck in a 400 oven for 20 minutes, I think it can withstand desert temperatures for longer...

then again, who knows.

Re:It's not ruggedized.

[jericho4.0]

In the desert, it's not about heat (although that is a problem) it's about sand.

Sand and dust gets into every single nook and cranny. The non-moving parts might last a long time, but his DVD drive will be toast if he uses it too much. Same with the hinge of the screen.

Re:It's not ruggedized.

[C0LDFusion]

his DVD drive will be toast if he uses it too much.

New Army officers directive: Do not watch pr0n during sandstorms?

Re:It's not ruggedized.

[lightflyer]

I have had a Ti G4 for about 8 months. It has not stood up to travel and mobile use at all well. It has had the CD unit replaced (under warranty); currently it does not charge the battery and that will be fixed when I get back to somewhere that has a Mac repair facility; it did not do at all well to operating in high temps; the case is malformed, the paintwork does not stand up to normal use and the hinges are fragile, plus the screen ripples (despite being carried inside its own protective case inside a large carry-on and always carried with me). Overall, it is a good looking but quite fragile piece of kit.

On the other hand I had a G3 Wallstreet for 5 years and it looked and operated as good as new at the end when I passed it on. I wish sometimes that I still had it with me.

Apple puts out lovely stuff but sometimes design flair and form is not sacrificed to necessary function. I will have to think very hard before I spend so much money again on a Mac beauty. And don''t get me started on function versus form of the iPod. I'll wait until a degree of everyday ruggedness is built in again for my next Mac laptop.

I wish the US military all the best and hope they go with Mac. But . . .

Military Intelligence

[Kalak]

Major Shawn Weed, an intelligence planner with the Third Infantry Division

So he's in military intel? Isn't this among the most famous oxymorons in existence? The jokes are too numerous to mention, all with Apple or the Army as the brunt of the jokes.

I can see the switch ads now...My name is Shawn Weed and I find Iraqis in the desert.

btw, I'm not trolling. I'm writing this from a TiBook using an Airport, behind a Linux server.

Is this a good idea...

[cuyler]

Although I'm an avid mac fac I always thought the glowing apple on the back of the LCD screen would be a bad thing in the field.

Re:Is this a good idea...

[dhovis]

Two words....

Duct Tape!

Re:Is this a good idea...

[quintessent]

Don't worry. They replaced the apple with a glowing camouflage design.

With my luck...

[(H)elix1]

I'll be the one pulling the laptop out from underneath the Major's corpse trying to figure out where the heck is the second mouse button went. Faster/better/different is great until you have to take over someones job unexpectedly. More of an occupational hazard in his area... though the Valley is not much safer (job wise).

Re:With my luck...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, Macs are damn near infinitely easier to figure out how to operate than PC's. Seriously, the chance that a rear eschelon intelligence officer is killed and some random soldier without the wits to launch Photoshop will take over for him is pretty slim. In the mean time, he's going to get his work done quickly enough to save lives (US soldiers and Iraqi innocents.) Any replacement qualified to interpret satallite imagry has their own equipment. In a pinch, anyone qualified to interpret satallite imagry is a little more capable with a computer than your average potato peeler. As a former US Army Ranger and RATT rig operator, I'm not comforted that your platform bigotry extends so far that it has you placing more importance on some tired two button mouse arguement than on people's lives.

Re:With my luck...

[2nd Post!]

As you say, you cannot always select what you consider the perfect tool for the job.

This case, however, is an exception, one of the times where Weed *could* select what he considered the perfect tool for his job.

You have to trust his judgement, since he's the one out in the desert doing his photo-manip stuff (probably), and as such, if his need for a PowerBook will let us win, and the military agrees, it's really out of our hands other than to backseat drive.

The issue here is that we're comparing a 1.8GHz (max) P4 to a 1.0GHz G4, where the speed delta is small enough that cache, ram, Altivec, and code optimization might make a difference. I mean, we don't know how fast the Toughbooks they can get, they may possibly get 1.3GHz P4s, or 1.2GHz P3s, in which case the performance/benefit analysis is much different than if they could get 3.0GHz P4s.

Also note, I think there's ram limitations; a G4 can get 1.0GB, I don't think the Toughbooks can. And a Toughbook actually costs more, to the public, than a G4.

Now, could he have gotten a Dell instead? Sure. However, he is also most comfortable with a Mac; he *knows* he can get his job done with the PowerBook-at this point then, we have to trust him that he is performing his soldierly duties, and performing them well.

It does make some sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to have at least one of the computers different from the others. When a virus written by some 9th grader wipes out the Windows boxes at least the PowerBook will be up and running.

Or vice versa...

It also kinda goes with the whole "Power of One" ad campaign the Army has going on.

Used to be SSG Nichols

Re:I sure hope he's using MacBibbie...

[crhalpin]

Oh yes, and we also all know that benchmarks are the be all and end all of performance evaluation. Especially those benchmarks that conform to no known standard, and aren't terribly well documented.

Please, spare me.

Benchmarks can give you a general idea of how performande might compare if you used exactly the same programs, input files, OS configuration, network load, other running processes, etc...

What are the chances that the military uses Photoshop for their image processing? I'd think not very high (unless there's a series of photoshop plugins I am unaware of that will process an image looking for convoys of trucks, bunkers, and other such things that the military cares about satellite images for). If he is not using photoshop, then the benchmarks you're getting so excited about are meaningless.

MacBibble has shown us that a Macintosh can perform quite well on image processing, if you run optimized code.

Benchmarks are just that, benchmarks. If this guy finds that for his application a Macintosh is faster, then let him use a Macintosh.

Re:Ok serious question

[2nd Post!]

There's no reason he couldn't be doing imagine manipulation, enhancement, and analysis using Photoshop; so long as the image is in a standard image format (and why not?), it's just pixels and filters.

I mean, even if it's just simple stuff:
Overlays of two images taken in different spectrums (IR and visible)
Time-lapse animation (multiple layers transformed into an animation, not unlike an animated GIF)
Edge detection/feature enhancement
Cropping to remove useless data
Rotation, perspective, and skewing to transform poorly captured or framed images into more easily understood images
Overlay of before/after shots (perhaps using difference blending)
Comparison of two different photos with an identical feature (perhaps identifing buildings, known vs unknown, performed again with overlays and blends)
Scaling of a photo so a comparison to a similar photo, taken with different settings, can be accomplished
Enhancement of a photo to compensate for low light levels (levels, etc)
Normalization of a photo (perspective, levels, colors, scale) so comparisons between two different photos can be accomplished

All of those are trivial with Photoshop.

Re:actually, its a moot point

[2nd Post!]

Um... well, the fastest Toughbooks out there are like 1.8GHz P4s.

If he's utilizing Altivec optimized code (quite possible), it's quite possible that his 1GHz PowerBook can outperform a 1.8GHz P4.

Which tasks are Altivec optimized? Photoshop, for one. Certain encryption/decryption tasks are another. Certain video tasks, as well.

It's certainly within the realm of likely possibility, given the description that "Weed declined to specify what he does exactly, but said he works with giant satellite and reconnaissance images,"

Sure, a P4 is fast but when you're talking about a 800MHz difference, the other things (like cache, registers, Altivec, pipeline depth, etc) make more of a difference.

Now, if they were talking about 2.4GHz P4Ms or 3.0GHz P4 (desktops), that would be different. However, Toughbooks don't scale that fast (yet).

Not the only...

[Dak RIT]

Actually it's not the *only* PowerBook G4 being used here right now. I've got an 867MHz PowerBook G4 I bought back in July 2002 that I am using while stationed in Camp Va, Kuwait. I use it for very similar reasons to Major Weed, although I had to purchase mine myself.

Apple makes it easy for the govt to buy

[daveschroeder]

Q: If the military can pay thousands for a toilet seat, imagine what they paid for a PowerBook.

A: About the same as Apple's academic discounts!

Apple Federal Home Page

How to buy for federal agencies and miltary - Includes:

Using a GSA SmartPay purchasing card

Apple Federal Store (for SmartPay) or Apple Retail stores

Federal Employee Purchase Program, via Apple Federal Employee Purchase Store or Apple Retail stores at Tyson's Corner, Clarendon, VA, or Towson, MD

Any number of various federal, GSA, and military contract resellers

Major Weed / Mac

[BobWeiner]

Cool that he's using a Mac. If Saddam's forces defect over to our side, will that make them switchers? :)

Bob