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More on the PowerPC 970
functor writes "Ars Technica's Jon Stokes has a treatise up covering the microarchitecture of the high-performance 64-bit PowerPC 970 microprocessor, due to be released by the end of the year, that goes over in detail how this chip is put together, and how we can expect it to perform. This is the follow-up to Stokes' article detailing the PPC 970's design philosophy. 'It appears to hold quite a bit of promise in bolstering Apple's currently almost obsolescent product line, and it appears to have been designed explictly to fulfil Apple's requirements. To say the least, the second half of this year looks to be pretty interesting as Apple's product line promises to become competitive performance-wise with IA-32 and x86-64-based PCs again.''
This implies that the decision of how much bus bandwidth to give the G4e was up to Apple - which it was not. Motorola designed the processor (for Cisco, depending on who you believe), and Apple made do with the anemic MaxBus at 133mhz that they got from Motorola.
Apple'd be putting DDR400 on the G4 right now if they could. None of this (well, except the decision to go Moto) was their fault.
Why this had to be posted the morning before my presentation to my supervizor is a clear indication that the universe is against me.
Time to hide my network cable until the end of the day.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
I sold my G4 tower some time ago becuase it was not fast enough to compete with my winders boxes. I'll jump back on the Apple platform when the 970 ships, assuming it's all that. Lets just hope the entry level unit is ( for Apple ) somewhat affordable.
The current pro line of G4 is a joke. They cant come out with 970 computers fast enough.
Who knows whether it will still be competitive in several months when they actually want to offer it.
On the other hand Apple users won't have much of a choice, and neither has Apple.
The PPC 970 will not really make the Macintosh competitive with modern PC's. It will make it competitive with PC's from the beginning of this year, which are not the fastest available any more, and will be even slower when compared to the machines that are available when the PPC 970 ships, which is the very earliest that Apple machines based on it can ship. It will however go a long way to catching up, and take off a lot of the pressure caused by the abominable performance of today's dual processor G4 machines when compared to even inexpensive PC's.
The other unkown in this is the price. PPC 970 based Apple computers may be significantly more expensive. Motorola loses hundreds of millions of dollars each year on their semiconductor business, and IBM does as well. Still, IBM may want to look at Apple and the PPC 970 as a PROFIT center, rather than a LOSS center, like Motorola does with Apple and the G4.
The PPC 970 is great news for Apple, but it is still a bone thrown to them while the x86 PC is feasting on the meat of the Intel and AMD processors.
It's nice to see how these 64 bit systems will compete. I'm going to army for atleast 6 months and when I come back it would be nice to buy some super fast 64bit system :)
Though.. I'm a bit suspicious about the x86-64-system? Yet again a system that expands it? Not so sure about it :P
telax - Just another vim and c hacker.
Yeah, yeah, they are hog-tied because you can't easily re-compile the entire windows platform to use new instruction sets. Linux users, of course, don't have this problem (muhahahah).
Did anyone else catch the bit on the twin FPU's? I'm just imagining what this thing is going to do with vector operations and frequency transforms.
For most of you non-engineers:
Most 3d vector operations are affine tranformations. Using a 4x4 array of floating point numbers you can translate, rotate, and scale. Works beautifully, but it's a lot of calculations.
The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is used a lot in signal processing. It's a floating point monster.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
This is still a PPC chip. No changes to programs are necessary for them to run on it. The only change that will have to be made is if a software vendor decides to run in 64-bit mode which many don't have to do. Performance of the new chip is not dependent on whether the program runs at 32 or 64 bits. This is not a migration like moving from the 680x0 line of processors to the PPC which was an overall change in architecture.
According to some rumor sites, Apple may already have ordered several thousand of these chips for new machines to debute in middle of June.
I'm not buying into it 100% myself, but as I don't plan on buying a new Powermac until next year (and turning my current one into either a Yellow Dog or OS X Server), I'm in no big rush.
My expectations is that the Powerbook/iBook line won't be updated until next year, when IBM can get the power requirements down for the 970 or its successor.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Why would it seem weird? PowerPC was a IBM/Motorola/Apple joint-venture from the beginning. Besides, all iBooks have a G3 from IBM already, so it would be nothing new.
There's also absolutely no porting required, as the PPC970 is a (duh) PowerPC! Everything will work fine, nothing needs to get recompiled and everybody is happy.
-- The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
The vast majority of applications ought to run without modifications, since the instruction set is backward compatible (i.e. there are instructions for 64-bit addressing and with 64-bit-wide operands, but as far as I can tell, that's all). CPU-intensive applications would benefit from a recompile using a compiler that is aware of the PPC 970's unique pipelining and queueing, and can order instructions in the instruction stream that will allow for maximum execution unit utilization.
;)
Some applications, e.g. large databases and applications that deal with very large integers, will benefit from being rebuilt with 64-bit addressing and 64-bit instructions, but for the vast majority of (desktop) applications that run on OS X, all 64-bit binaries will do is to increase the utilization of CPU instruction cache (and often data cache), and hence reduce performance as the cache miss rates go up.
So, in the end, don't worry; your OS X applications will run fine (for the most part) on a PowerPC 970-equipped Macintosh.
Most users of Macs are in the graphics industry. Having BEEN there, I can tell you the 68k to PPC transition was a non-issue. The PPC ran the 68k code as fast as the old machines. The real transition was in restructuring applications, since they no longer needed to work around the brain-deadedness of the 68k series. Again, old apps were not affected.
The other point I would like to make is that they HAVE taken a page out of the GNU/Linux BSD page. MacOSX is an alternative window manager sitting on top of BSD!
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Target multiple architectures. Let the users decide!
Y'know, I don't know why this keeps coming up. Apple's bottom line has always depended on keeping tight control over the hardware to allow maximum integration with their own software. And it works.
Keep in mind that Linux and BSD aren't targetted towards consumers who want to just "rip, mix, burn" or have plug-and-play that's actually exactly that. Even Windows can't deliver consistently on its promise of universal ease-of-use because so many vendors have so much hardware that may or may not work with the system and its existing drivers.
Whatever else you think about Apple's computers, they are without a doubt the easiest PCs on the planet if you're a neophyte. Take it from me, I've got two young women in my home who are all but completely computer-illiterate, and if I didn't have Mac OS X running they'd be constantly lost at sea. I'd love to try hooking up a Linux box for either or both of them, but there's no way I could expect them to use it. Macs are easy, and their users like them that way.
Yeah, I know it's a profit issue for Apple as well, because without business software sales like Microsoft relies on they'd be bankrupt without hardware profits. But I like to think it's more than just money. Apple cares about making a good and easy-to-use product, or else they'd just be chasing Windows like (sorry, not trolling here, but it's true) GNOME and KDE are instead of constantly innovating their own hardware and interface designs.
Targetting multiple architectures means that Apple's got to deal with unpredictable hardware configurations, cards, motherboards, drivers, all sorts of things that could cause inconvenient kernel panics, drive failures, or worse. Users are used to that with Windows, and they pretty much expect it with Linux. With Macs, they expect things to just work. Controlling the hardware is the best way for Apple to do that.
It appears that there's a lot of optimization to be had by recompiling for this processor, especially in getting around various scheduling pitfalls. Photoshop and other need-for-speed apps will probably be recompiled ASAP to give them the competitive edge.
" it still seems weird to see IBM (creator of the PC) making chips for Apple."
... is a PC. Furthermore while IBM may be in the computer making business they are a hardware supplier to. They will sell to anyone who wants to buy their stuff. By your logic it's also weird they would buy an OS from microsoft when they have some they wrote to, AIX, OS/2 , that DOS version, and more.
No it doesn't Apple created the first PC, IBM created the AT or was it the XT later on. Any computer you personaly own wether it be a mac or a computer running windows or linux
"s well, what % of the Apple line would be switched over to the new chip..whould they have to go back to FAT archives for the lower and upper end Apple machines (if they stuck with G$ for low end and 970 for high)?"
If they went with anything but the PPC970 this would be true, but the PPC970 is a straight upgrade, no recompiles and so forth. Hense it's the chip apple is almost certainly going with.
Lately many things have happened to apple, and if you take a brief look at thir lineup of both computers and gadgets you'll find that they are not dependent on anyone the same way they depended on motorola.
The music industry for iMS, AMD for the chips in the airport base station (and the iPod(?) don't know), Motorola for the non-pro lineup (iMacG4, iBook and the portables until they get 970), etc. etc.
I think Apple will go a long way to make sure they don't get stuck with one provider.
Also I think they are trying to be more competitive pricewise. By having a steady stream of income from selling iPods and songs via iMS, they get more money to develop hardware and software, and we just might get Powermacs970 below the $3k mark.
Be like the twenty-second elephant with heated value in space-Bark!
I mentioned gentoo because, short of Linux from scratch, what other distro can you completely recompile for a new platform? Hmm? (Tumbleweed)
Figures, I actually find a real application for Gentoo, and what happens...
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
An interesting troll. An enjoyably subtle introductory paragraph, with only a hint of flamebaiting with the 'XP/Unix' comment. This trend is continued with the C/C++/C# evolution stanza, with its clean upfront palate, but lingering pleasant aftertaste. However, the trollish aromas start to become overpowering a little too soon with the sudden transition to assembly advocacy. A mature, well rounded troll will usually lead the reader through a gentler, more meandering path before delivering the closing fruity punch. Perhaps with a few years of cellaring, this troll may rank with such classics as the 1999 'BSD is dying' and the memorable 2000 'VB Programmer for a Fortune 500 company'.
All in all, not a bad effort for a beginner. 7/10.
Donate free food here
I think most people use the term PC on computers that are made of parts that are cheap(something powerpc processors aren't) and parts that are easily changed to different ones. Though the new macs can nowadays be extended with pci cards and so on, so you could maybe say it's a PC.
telax - Just another vim and c hacker.
Maybe he was being sarcastic.. I atleast hope :)
telax - Just another vim and c hacker.
If by PC you mean personal computer, a phrase in common currency some time before the arrival of IBM's PC, then the answer is - Yes, many. If you mean a personal computer capable of running a Microsoft operating system natively, then (discounting early PPC NT ports) the anser is - No. But so what?
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
it still seems weird to see IBM (creator of the PC) making chips for Apple
It's not that weird right now - their cooperation on PowerPC started almost 20 years ago. But it was weird ineed back then. I heard that on their first date, pardon, meeting, engineers of both companies wore the other company's dress code. The IBM guys came in jeans and t-shirts, the Apple guys came in suits and ties. How desperate both sides were to show each other that they have no hard feelings about past!
Thank you for getting this article out! I need a new Mac with this new chip ASAP!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Interesting, if you look at the pipeline design of the PowerPC it is much closer to Intel than AMD. The PowerPC pipeline has sixteen stages, the Pentium 4 twenty, and the Athlon ten.
Presumably the P4 can reach higher clock speeds than the Athlon because there is less work to do at each pipeline stage. On the other hand a longer pipeline increases the probability of a stall, so the work done per clock cycle goes down.
I'd speculate that the PowerPC ought, therefore, to be able to achieve clock rates approaching but not equalling the P4, since they are both comparatively "over-pipelined". At the same time, the PowerPC ought to deliver slightly more throughput per clock cycle because the pipeline is slightly shorter.
Meanwhile, the Athlon will be running at a significantly lower clock rate, but delivering comparable throughput.
Let's see....
You've got Job(s) in both.
History of being a persecuted minority.
Use of an Apple to gain more knowledge in both.
Christianity? Isaac. Apple? Imac.
Christianity? Prophets. Apple? Profits.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
How much will this help out apps like PhotoShop and AfterEffects, once they are re-compiled for the architecture?
I've heard conflicting answers, one is that 64-bit will really shine with 3D apps but do little to help the performance of 2D number-crunching.
Does this mean we'll see only nominal gains with Adobe's apps? Someone enlighten me.
Kip Hawley is an idiot.
Have you ever programmed for the 68000 series processors? Perhaps "Primative" was a better word to describe writing your program in 64 KB chunks.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
"Oh, puhlease. Nobody in the Mac community referred to it as the brain-deadness of the 68k series until the marketing fax from Apple told them it was time to."
Considering that Steve wasn't in charge at the time, Spindler was.
The 68K had serious scaling problems (gee, where have we seen this before?) and it was holding the platform back compared to Intel processors.
Conglom-O: We Own You (TM).
I've got two young women at home too. One with a Mac, one with a Windows machine. The Maccie always watches longingly as we play games, use sites like Yahoo! Launch (Windows Update too...can't forget that one man). We used to be impressed with the translucent housed monitor with alien feet- now we scoff as she fires up Photoshop yet again.
No reason to lie.
It's not just AMD clocking lower either. The Itanium 2 isn't clocked that fast. Given that 32 POWER 4 1.7GHz processors smoked the 64 Itanium2 1.3GHz processors configuration in the latest TPCC non-clustered benchmark, the POWER and PPC architecture is capable of putting a lot more work through in the same number of clock cycles. There are a lot of nay-sayers trotting out the GHz-is-god line and it is particularly misleading for 64 bit architectures.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
P.S. Disclaimer - I work in SOFTWARE for IBM, not hardware.
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I'm sorry, but I don't see anything even approaching obsolete in Apple's product line.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Not for developers it wasn't, and it was developers of whom I was speaking. And it wasn't even painless for users, who had to sort out all kinds of compatibility issues that were often only resolved by shelling out the bucks for an expensive upgrade.
This wasn't true for some time.
Which was my point, thank you very much.
The 68K was a beautiful architecture, and in and of itself had absolutely nothing to do with the migration issues.
Many apps were in fact affected.
You are wrong across the board here, but hey, it's a Mac topic.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
What makes them "clueless"? Maybe they advocate it because it really is as good as it sounds?
Well, if I do long compiles, I leave it compiling for the night (while I sleep) and it can continue in the next day while I go to work. So the computer has close to 20 hours of free compile-time that does not in any shape or form reduce my productivity, since I wouldn't be using the computer regardless.
And is there something stopping you from using the computer while it compiles? I don't think so. And that "5 day compile". You might get something like that if you compiled something huge (like KDE3 together with Xfree) on a slow computer.
There is such thing as responsivness. On general desktop-use, Gentoo IS extremely responsive. Apps load fast and the general feel of the machine is extremely snappy. As to your whining about the compile-times.... Read my comment above.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
This had little or nothing to do with the 68K processor, and everything to do with the Segment Loader.
That said, I would've made the same decision they did. Given the other complexities inherent in Mac development, organizing your code in segments was at best an annoyance.
The 680x0 was a truly *great* processor.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Y'know, I have no idea why this keeps coming up. Assuming you buy from a reputable vendor, the only time you have hardware problems with a PC is if you do upgrades manually, or if something breaks (rare). The fact that Macs have a reputation for good integration is mostly marketing - if you go down to your local PC World and walk out with a new box, that'll work just fine too. If you then try and plug in ancient or super new hardware in an attempt to recycle stuff for instance, then yeah, you might get breakage. But that happens with Macs too, the only reason you don't see it is because there is practically no upgrade path outside of buying a new machine.
Whatever else you think about Apple's computers, they are without a doubt the easiest PCs on the planet if you're a neophyte.
No they aren't. Everybody I've seen who has been sat down in front of a Mac found it hopelessly confusing and non-intuitive. The only people I know who stuck with them, are those who bought them personally (they would, wouldn't they). I know I had to have the owner of said Mac sit next to me and guide me when I was trying to use his machine, and I'm far from being a neophyte. Stupid differences from Windows and idiotic conventions that had seemingly no basis in actual usability just pissed me off. Perhaps for people who have never used a computer before in their life it's easier than Windows (but I doubt it) - for people who have (the majority) it's just a pain in the ass.
Apple cares about making a good and easy-to-use product, or else they'd just be chasing Windows like (sorry, not trolling here, but it's true) GNOME and KDE are instead of constantly innovating their own hardware and interface designs.
Sorry, but you are trolling here. Apple aren't chasing Windows because regardless of what the majority of users want, their existance is justified in their customers eyes by the fact that they are different. People just take it as read that different equals better, despite a lack of compelling (objective) evidence to the contrary. Go read some usability reviews of MacOS X by long time users of the platform.
If you think it's about "more than just money" you need to wake up and smell the roses. Quite how a publically owned company, with a shrinking market share can be allowed to be motivated by anything other than money is beyond me. They're a business, their legal obligation is to their shareholders first and foremost. Wishy washy ideas about design purity might have had some merit back when it was just Jobs and Woz in their garage, but that Apple died years ago.
Anyway, if you want something that isn't motivated by money and is about building a quality product, Linux is about the only thing that qualifies. At the end of the day, the product and the ability for people to use it (in both a usability and a licensing sense) is everything. Go read and take part in the desktop discussion lists if you don't believe me. You might not like what it is today, but that's an entirely separate issue. Money isn't, cannot be, a serious motivation for these guys as the vast majority are not paid for it.
Targetting multiple architectures means that Apple's got to deal with unpredictable hardware configurations, cards, motherboards, drivers, all sorts of things that could cause inconvenient kernel panics, drive failures, or worse. Users are used to that with Windows, and they pretty much expect it with Linux. With Macs, they expect things to just work. Controlling the hardware is the best way for Apple to do that.
CPU architectures have nothing to do with driver instability, nor mixing hardware. That would only be an issue if Apple tried to write a PC version (as opposed to an x86 version) of MacOS, but hey, you know what? The world is a messy place. People don
"the FSF does not make gcc (the Gnome C Compiler), it is written by RMS and the OSI (Open Source Institution)."?? http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/ :)
telax - Just another vim and c hacker.
Yahoo! Launch and Windows Update are definitely 'killer apps.' There's no way in hell I'll buy a Mac until they run Windows Update. Photoshop, Colorsync, etc are just toys, and so are computers that don't look like cardboard boxes!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Sorry, but as a small monkey, I must point out some inaccuracies in both posts. Zip disks store approximately 100meg, Jaz disks, approximately 1GB - and later models 2GB.
So why won't iTunes run on FreeBSD then? I tried it, it didn't work.
I think you get the point. Gross exaggurations are one thing. This is something else.
The market share is still south of 5%, and you want to tell us that selling slow computers works?
This would remain the case. Nobody posted to the effect that Macs should be made harder to use.
Not at all. Man, where do you get this stuff? Apple would still be making the computers. Apple would decide on the configurations, what cards can go in, what mobos to use, etc.
Nobody suggested otherwise.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
But I think he does make a good point. The whole "megahertz myth" presentation at MacWorld 2001 was about pipeline stages in the PCC being shorter = the main difference in speed between PPC and all other types of processors, even other RISC processors.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Unfortunately, Apple FUD'd, claiming that shorter pipelines were inherently faster.
Nothing to see here; Move along.
Most users of Macs are in the graphics industry.
You are an idiot. You can't actually believe that more than 50% of people who use Apple computers are graphic industry pros!?
Many are students. Many are just people who want to be "cool" and "different." Many are people who want something that just works.
Most are not in the graphics industry. Shit, most probably aren't in any industry at all.
Umm .. what?
.. ?
Now my memory might be failing me, but I wrote a _lot_ of 68000 asm programs on my Atari ST - and I can't remember any 64Kb issues
it's in my head
Mac Advocacy doesn't have to just be ignorant. It can be sexist, too.
"Flamebait" is right. Where did I say that most/all women are computer-illiterate, or that most/all computer illiterates are women? It just happens that these two individuals are both.
The ARSTechnica article specifically mentions the possiblity that IBM will use PPC970 in poweruser targeted Linux desktops, and no comments here about that yet, which surprises me.
I ran "my first linux" on a DEC Alpha 512mhz 64 bit box that I got fed up running NT 4.0 on. I instantly became addicted, and eventually forced my company to switch to Linux on every computer (causing mass protest in the beginning, then mass praise over the years as we have grown and have no MS Tax on the books).
I now have a Powerbook G4 and love it, except it is a little lagging in punch speed sometimes. And, although I love OS X, now that my company is used to zero license and upgrade costs thanks to GNU/GPL/BSD software, there is no hope of mass migration to OS X and Apple hardware in the company. It just does not make sense after seeing the dollar savings of running Linux on all the desktops.
There is, however, always a need for powerful workstations that run Linux, and IBM might be pulling a rabbit out of its hat with this one. Will be very interesting.
At minimum, I would buy one for that "64 bit memorabilia" value, to bring me sweet memories of my first Linux love, the Alpha that rid me of winbloze forever.........
Real men don't need signitures!!!
But yes, he does make a good point. I just meant to point out that it would have been more informative/interesting (to me) if he had used the Hammer in his comparison instead of the Athlon. No big deal.
Nothing to see here; Move along.
And yet here we have the last man standing in the "RISC turned hopelessly complex" generation, the Power970. When you look at this things design they threw everything and the kitchen sink in there! Most interesting is that batch parallelism where an instruction for every type of execution unit is queued up and when they're all ready to go they're executed in parallel. It will be interesting to see if that can scale given the latency it introduces, and the likelyhood that you won't always be able to fill every unit.
So, you guys go after him with your axes and swords. Then when he is down, I'll cast burning hands to finish him off.
But.. but.. you have the same command line interfaces. You have fink to install all those other apps. You have X11R6. You have Office et al. I fyou don't wanna deal /w the gui, you can use cli or vice versa.
So.. what are you looking for in terms of productivity?
Speed would be an issue for long compiles, multimedia operations or games, but that's as far as I would go.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
the idea behind perl6 sitting on top of parrot, is to allow such elegant code as the following (remembering that perl6 will be a step back to perl's hardcore roots):
this way, perl6 will retain a "hard edge", while still providing programmers with access to the raw speed of parrot assembly. the best of both worlds. this is also the reason why the python community are enthusiastic about parrot as the saviour of python's poor performance and dying following.
This argument is pointless, and one oft-repeated unfortunately. Different people find different things work for them. Whereas you and other people may not find OS X a particularily productive enviroment, other people (including myself) find it to be, and moreso find Windows and Linux (especially Linux, IMHO) provide them with a mediocre enviroment to work in.
I'm not posting this to beat up on the parent but it's something that tends to come up often.
mrg
What, like this? Quote - "Introducing the Apple II. You've just run out of excuses for not owning a personal computer." Apple ad, June 1977.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
Ha-
I wish I could reply to all three asshats who think that running Photoshop means REAL computing- but I'll just choose one.
Sorry boys, but Photoshop runs faster on a Windows machine than a Mac. (Ask Adobe, not me- windows is their 'preferred platform') So you obviously assumed that the only thing we did on Windows was play games. Nope, we just got done with our work faster, and we have extra time- while the Mac is still re-drawing the screen.
The Windows box can run Photoshop (and does), and run it better. PLUS it can can run about 99% of the rest of the consumer software out there.
Oh yes...Apple has iTunes, can't forget that. When people at work on Mac's complain that they can't take part in NetMeeting presentations, I usually tell them to go play with iTunes, because that is their idea of productivity.
No reason to lie.
Hardly any software without an emulator? Microsoft Office - yes. Internet Explorer - yes. Virtual Valerie - yes. What more do you need?
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
May be sooner--the power requirements for the PPC970 at 1.2 ghz is actually lower than the current G4 that is used in the Powerbooks.
Apple created the first PC
Cough,... Altair... Cough!
While I agree with you if we're talking about established brands (Dell et. al), there is a signifcant chunk of sales that goes to the smaller shops who cobble the things together themselves, and problems are very common in this regard still. As usual, of course the experts need no help. People buy Dells - and Apples - partially because there's an 800 number to call when you're confused.
No they aren't. Everybody I've seen who has been sat down in front of a Mac found it hopelessly confusing and non-intuitive. The only people I know who stuck with them, are those who bought them personally (they would, wouldn't they). I know I had to have the owner of said Mac sit next to me and guide me when I was trying to use his machine, and I'm far from being a neophyte. Stupid differences from Windows and idiotic conventions that had seemingly no basis in actual usability just pissed me off.
Yes, they are. And it's not just a matter of opinion. There are tangible, measurable advantages in usability with Mac OS vs Windows. Check any TCO study on the matter, or any actual usability study (lost my Carnegie Mellon bookmarks for this but its there). Too numerous to list here.
You give yourself away with that last line - Mac OS can be frustrating if you are coming from Windows. Any transition is painful, from anything different. In fact the level of pain is often overlooked.
Trust me, put someone with little-to-no computer experience in front of the Mac and they will have a much, much easier time of it. I mean, c'mon, honestly, do you think that Windows conventions - still having to click Start to Shut Down comes to mind - are better? Things like that make no fucking sense to a newbie, because they make no fucking sense whatsoever - but we're used to that.
Blaming Apple for the majority of people having a lousy experience at their usual computers is nonsensical. Adjusting habits can be painful, but productivity is a highly personal thing. I use Windows XP all day and when I come home to my Mac.. it's like comfy slippers. WinXP is like a hard hat. I have no inherent reason to prefer one or the other frankly; I wish I could buy a cheap PC and be happy with how it works. But I can't. They aren't the same.
People don't upgrade their hardware because they like screwing about with drivers, they do it because they want to play Doom 3 but they don't want to buy a whole new machine when 80% of it is still just fine. If they don't know what they're doing the end result is mess and instability, but pretending people don't want to do that is the reason PCs dominated in the first place.
Ah, but you answered your own question. People playing Doom 3 might want to upgrade their CPU, but that's a vanishing percentage of the whole... I asked my dad if he ever used his PCI slots in his IBM machine and he really had to think about what I was talking about for a few seconds. Don't think that these silly upgrades are what drives the PC market, they are a sideline business. (Video cards possibly being the sole exception.) PCs are entirely commodity parts, that's all.
Frankly I think we need more Apples. More vertically-integrated computer companies who adhere to standards would be a good thing. Imagine such a company pumping out fantastic case designs for PPC970-based Linux boxen. That would rock.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Intel, AMD, but dont forget VIA. A pretty, little, quiet Mac running OSX on a VIA Epia, if priced reasonable, would sell me on a Mac tomorrow. Then, if you got hard core work, the loud,powerful Linux box in the closet could do the big lifting. That VIA Epia is real nice for anything but heavy lifting...
HenryJamesFeltus.com
But this is a full-bodied classic of 2002 vintage from the cellars of the maestro (The trademark 'Gentlemen' introduction gives it away). The google groups link is well worth following to see just how many supposedly clever biters he reeled in!
--
Reverse outsourcing: it's the future
Sooooooo....
How long until the others have to worry about the Inquisition? Or are we skipping that since we've already seen the Second Coming of Steve?
(How many thought I was going to go with that math that showed B.G. = The Beast from Revelations?)
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Um, your argument for the switch to x86 is to increase Apple's CPU supplier options ...by one?
So Apple can be the tiny tail that wags the Intel/AMD dogs?
It seems to me that from Apple's viewpoint,
a) x86 is effectively monolithic, in that it is designed to serve a Windows-centric market, regardless of what you can run on it, and,
b) x86 offers Apple no hardware differentiation or integration hooks at all.
This isn't a strategy, it's just a way of surrendering.
After all, even if Apple goes all-970, Motorola still has a vested interest in providing CPUs for Apple. All that switching to x86 would accomplish for Apple is to trade two devils it knows for two it doesn't know.
At massive cost, by the way.
"I wish I could reply to all three asshats who think that running Photoshop means REAL computing- but I'll just choose one."
You make you ass wear a hat? Why?
"Sorry boys, but Photoshop runs faster on a Windows machine than a Mac. (Ask Adobe, not me- windows is their 'preferred platform') So you obviously assumed that the only thing we did on Windows was play games. Nope, we just got done with our work faster, and we have extra time- while the Mac is still re-drawing the screen."
Adobe does not have a preferred platform, we've been over this already.
"The Windows box can run Photoshop (and does), and run it better. PLUS it can can run about 99% of the rest of the consumer software out there."
Well why are you surfing Yahoo! on it then?
"Oh yes...Apple has iTunes, can't forget that. When people at work on Mac's complain that they can't take part in NetMeeting presentations, I usually tell them to go play with iTunes, because that is their idea of productivity."
Shit, I'd bet that 99% of people would rather play with iTunes that get involved with NetMeeting.
That was classic intercourse!
Having worked in the "graphics" industry (design/production/pre-press) since 1989, I can assure you that you are the idiot. It's all Macs, all the time.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
Apple have made a bunch of 'em. They have a website where you can go and gawk if you like - www.apple.com.
That was classic intercourse!
And Apple/Mac has got exactly how far by being sane? They take chances. Big ones. Sometimes they fail. (Lisa, Newton) Sometimes they don't. (The orginial Mac, iPod, iMac, (actually, most of the i* stuff...)) The one sure thing is that if Apple stopped taking chances Apple would fail.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
I manage labs of macs, totaling over 300 of them. The users of my labs have no complaints about performance. (They usually only start to whine when the find out the processor speed, but then they are conditioned to think that MHz is MHz; and when asked if their work is slowed, compared to what they do on a PC, they answer "no" it is not slower.)
:-)
What is this every non-mac user keeps saying that their performace is out of line with PC's? I have on my desk a hepped up dual P4 and a hepped up dual G4. XP on the dual P4 does not "feel," in day-to-day operations with standard apps like Office or Photoshop, much different from the dual G4. Comparing the MHz does not tell me anything. Using both side-by-side tells me a more "real" story about things. Now, perhaps XP is significantly slowing things down?
I only notice a difference with some high-end 3D apps like Maya or Lightwave, *maybe* also with some high-ed vid apps like Avid's.
I am looking forward to the 970 though. Actually, I am very curious about any 64bit CPU. Hopefully the "growing pains" for anyone to move to 64bit is negligible.
SCSI over IDE
Apple went pretty much all IDE about five years ago.
USB over PCI
Mac's have had PCI slots since the first PowerPC based units became available. In fact, back in those days many PC's still had VLB, and only Pentiums had PCI slots. Further, since they were 100% PCI there was no bottleneck due to legacy support (ISA) Also, USB's importance was such that it replaced SCSI for external, high speed devices...
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Actually, the first PowerMacs used Nubus, not PCI. I know, I have 3 of them. The 6100, 7100 and 8100 (and workgroup servers, etc on such variations) as well as the 9150 all shipped with Nubus slots. I don't believe it was until the 603 and 604 chips appeared in PowerMacs that they came with PCI.
Yes. SCSI is one of things that "didn't pan out." But desktop Macs had SCSI LONG after it died on the PC market, for the extended MTBF and reduced CPU utilization. As I understand it, the HD inside my iPod is SCSI.
When I say "USB over PCI," I mean that Apple chose to eliminate PCI and PCMCIA slots from its most popular machines (iMac, iBook) because USB served the same purpose of extendability, was easier to install and manage and was cheaper to produce and support. USB was faltering until Mac made that hard decision. Now it's everywhere. Apple did the same for IEEE 1334, though it could be argued Firewire's time had come anyway.
Thanks for reminding me about VLB...I should have said "PCI over VLB/ISA/Microchannel," and pointed out that Mac tried to popularize 66 MHz PCI as the successor for graphics, not AGP. Another thing that didn't pan out, but it wasn't a bad idea...to have the same slot and bus for EVERYTHING is a pretty good idea from a simplification and unification point of view, even if it's slow as shit.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I guess I don't quite follow.... As someone else already asked, what exactly are you trying to accomplish with your machine(s)?
I've been using strictly PCs for 5 years or so now, after a brief stint with a "Performa" Mac mini-tower that didn't turn out too well.
My "high end" PC system is a Pentium 4, 1.8Ghz tower with Promise EIDE RAID and a GeForce 4 video board.
I'm pretty happy with it, but I really wanted a good system to run OS X and some of Apple's incredibly well-done video editing packages (Final Cut, iDVD, etc.). I just broke down and bought a dual-processor G4 1.42Ghz tower. I certainly don't feel it's "slow" at all! I'd say it performs at least on par with my P4 system, if not a little faster at certain tasks. It boots into OS X a lot more quickly than the P4 boots into Windows XP, for one thing.
Sure, the 970 processor will be great -- but the people complaining that the current PowerMacs are "horribly underpowered" must be "benchmark junkies", worried about having the best stats for the sake of stats (bragging rights?).
Like I say, I consider myself very much a "power user", and for a long time, I didn't think Apple really had the "price vs. performance" in the right place on the curve. But with their recent price drops, plus "speed bumps" to their G4 offerings - I think they still have a very competitive setup to tide them over until the 970 is done.
At the end of the day, you don't plunk down $2000-3400 for a "pro" Mac G4 or PowerBook because you're worried about having the "most Ghz". You do so because it offers an OS and specialized applications you can't get in the PC world. (These days, you might also do so to avoid the Microsoft licensing nightmares. A "family pack" of OS X lets you load it on any 5 systems of your choice for a price not much more than 1 single copy of Windows XP Pro, for example.)
You are right, but 601 units had PCI. The 7200 was a 601 machine and had PCI slots.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
As Hannibal (Jon Stokes) notes in the article in question:
"The fact that the Altivec unit was slapped onto the design, leaving some room for improvement in future iterations, leaves no doubt that the 970 achieved its present form under pressure from Apple and that Apple will be rolling out systems based on the new processor. This is the most plausible and reasonable explanation for the way the vector unit looks. If the 970 were solely intended as a Linux desktop platform for IBM, they would've preferred to reduce the 970's die size, power consumption, time-to-market, etc. by just leaving out the Altivec unit altogether, instead of shoehorning it into the design the way they did."
Most Linux variants and apps aren't Altivec-optimized, so there wouldn't be very much incentive for IBM to include the functionality in a Linux-only box given the engineering work involved in doing so. It makes much more sense to do it when you know that you could easily sell hundreds of thousands of these CPUs to another company whose customers are desperately eager for that level of performance, i.e. Apple.
If the Athlon 64 and Opteron have on-die memory controllers and the 970 has an off-die memory controller, does that mean that even though the 970 has the same theoretical bandwidth as the Opteron, it will have higher latency and lower real-world bandwidth?
Back in my day I had to write games in BASIC, on a 4.7Mhz computer with no hard disk and 128K of RAM. And I was grateful
:)
You had it easy... Back in my day I had to write in BASIC on a 1Mhz computer with no hard drive and it had 38,911 bytes available for basic. C=64 anyone?
There is a big difference between the graphics industry mostly uses Macs and most Mac are used in the graphics industry. One does not imply the other.
The graphics industry may mostly use Macs, but most of the Mac users don't come from the graphics industry.
Or do you the graphics professionals were the ones buying all those gumdrop iMacs?
Who's the idiot now?
From what I remember when I got my first PowerPC-based Mac, there was only one lage incompatibility, but it was a real humdinger - the 68K emulator did not support 68K FPU code. Any 68K app that required a FPU did not run (none of my 3D rendering apps worked). Someone wrote an extension to "render" 68K FPU instructions to 68K integer instructions, which allowed these apps to run, but the performance sucked hard.
Probably the most amusing incident from the migration was Connectix's SpeedDoubler application, which replaced Apple's 68K emulator with its own version that ran twice as fast as Apple's. Apple implemented Connectix's emulator, abanonding their own, in Mac OS 7.6, IIRC.
You're thinking of the Intel 808x series. The 68k was fully thirty-two bit internally - 8 32 bit "A" (address) registers and 8 32 bit "D" (data) registers.
There was nothing braindead about the 68k. It was a very, very, beautiful processor to program.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Well, Linux and its apps don't have much AltiVec optimization because AltiVec wasn't in many Linux chips. But if IBM or licensees start making 970 based Linux workstations, it seems this would be likely to change.
And this would be a good thing for Apple, since there would be a lot more *NIX codec that could compile and run a LOT faster on their boxes, and there would be a larger pool of AltiVec and PPC coding talent for them and their ISVs to draw from.
My video compression blog
This discussion has come up repeatedly in the Cinema4D discussion forum. (C4D is a cross-platform 3D app from Maxon.)
Athalons are so much cheaper and faster for rendering that the Mac isn't even arguable as a 3D platform based on bang-for-the-buck, and for rendering that is the entire argument. So people will occasionally say, "Hey, if you took advantage of AltiVec, the Mac would be competitive."
The official answer is that C4D (and most 3D apps) need 64-bit precision for rendering calculations and AltiVec is 32-bit so it's only useful for screen updates, etc, not for rendering. Evidently, you can use AltiVec to help with 64-bit numbers, but it requires enough additional work that you don't gain anything.
So if they add 64-bit AltiVec, the Mac could jump into the lead as a 3D rendering machine.
Clearly your incompetence with the English language is showing. It's not with arrogance that I correct you but with a desire to admonish those that perform the written equivalent of running your fingernails down a chalkboard.
Oh and, I'll just let you know now before you commit the inevitable - it's supposedly, NOT supposebly. Yes, you know you say that too. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to correcting it.
I don't think that the SCSI vs IDE situation was really one that was decided by Apple - SCSI devices are substantially more expensive and Apple had to make a move to be competitive.
-- $G
I think you missed the point... that post was so obviously full of factual holes, it had to be written as a humorous piece! Nobody could be that stupid, especially not someone claiming to be the CTO of a Fortune 500 company. (That claim just made the post all the more delicious.)
Come on, a CTO of a Fortune 500 company posting as Anonymous Coward?
If you are referring to their low speed - yes, they were slow by today's standards. But slow is not the same as braindead.
Your mind is controlled by Microsoft.
I believe IBM had plans for the PowerPersonal. I'm not sure if they ever shipped any or not. I think there are a bunch of linux distros that run on PPC tho...
So Apple catches up (almost) to desktops (eventually) but then what about notebooks? By the time these are out we'll be seeing 90nm pentium-m notebooks. Say the reviewers, pentium-m's perform extremely well per clock. What I'm wondering is whether these can scale (as the pentium-m's can to 500mhz) because if they can't, then Apple is going to lose performance *and* battery-life in notebooks.
If apple dosent announce this proccesor in the wwdc. than i will have no choice but to go with an opteron cluster. the main reason why ive been holding off is because, the current G4's cant hack the scientific computing that we do intel beats the crap out of apple. i can only hold off projects for so long and then i have to get whatever is the fastest and most powerfull. there is speculation that apple wont announce this at the wwdc. if they dont i fear that apple will die on the vine.
Heh, you know.. you CAN light them. Flame thrower attack!
--
"I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo
What you do with your computer *does* make a difference! You seem to quickly discount this as pointless, because you claim you can "do everything with the PC you could do with the Mac".
I disagree with that assumption!
Granted, there is a LOT of crossover with applications. Most of the popular ones are written for both PC and Mac. Still, the Mac has a number of niches the PC isn't quite there with.
I pointed out in a seperate message thread, for example, that for WYSIWYG HTML work, "Freeway" for the Mac blows away anything I've used on a PC. For video editing, many folks think iMovie/iDVD and Final Cut (Express or Pro) are more powerful, stable, and easier to use than the PC counterparts. (I liked them enough that they pretty much sold me on a Mac by themselves!) For music creation, the PC has the edge in some areas (such as ACID Pro for working with sound loops), but not in others. The new Digital Producer 4 (DP4) from MOTU (Mac only) seems to have the edge over anything like it on the PC side. For hard disk recording on the high-end, more professionals use ProTools on a Mac than any single PC alternative I know of.
The PC is also straddled with competing "standards" for plug-ins to MIDI/music packages. Most people seem to agree that Steinberg's VST's are one of the best options, yet many PC packages (such as Cakewalk Sonar) prefer to use DirectX based plug-ins. Going all Mac for a music workstation at least bypasses some of these issues, too.
If you primarily play games on your computer, then a fast PC makes the most sense. If you just use the Internet - then whatever's cheapest that runs a modern browser is probably the best bet. (You simply have more money than sense if you buy a high-end system to do nothing but get email and look at porn on!) For video editing and DVD creation, or MIDI/music work, I think a Mac *may* make the most sense.
Not quite just an alternative window manager, it's a hacked Mach running the IOKit , with a BSD interface on top of Mach and a bunch of BSD and GNU apps along with an updated Openstep called with Cocoa, with the display engine ripped out and replaced by the (for this task anyway) functionally superior PDF-based Aqua / Quartz stuff. It's really quite modular - one can leave out the BSD during the installation process by choosing Custom... and unchecking the 'BSD Subsystem' option (for that backup OS X installation to the iPod, for example), and customize the system in innumerable other ways. It truly feels like home to me!
Y'know, I have no idea why this keeps coming up. Assuming you buy from a reputable vendor, the only time you have hardware problems with a PC is if you do upgrades manually, or if something breaks (rare). The fact that Macs have a reputation for good integration is mostly marketing - if you go down to your local PC World and walk out with a new box, that'll work just fine too. If you then try and plug in ancient or super new hardware in an attempt to recycle stuff for instance, then yeah, you might get breakage. But that happens with Macs too, the only reason you don't see it is because there is practically no upgrade path outside of buying a new machine.
Your point, please? So both Macs and PCs break occasionally. With Apple it's usually NOT a hassle to get customer service. With many other companies, you encounter all kinds of BS. Like HP. If you delete the stupid XP restore partition, you will have to buy a DVD-ROM from them to reinstall a copy of Windows that you already bought! And why don't PC users balk at the $400 price tag of XP 'pro' (a questionably worse option than the older Win2K) when Mac folks shout and kick and scream at a paltry $129 fee for a vastly improved OS? It's because Windows users are so used to being fucked in the ass by MS!
Sorry, but you are trolling here. Apple aren't chasing Windows because regardless of what the majority of users want, their existance is justified in their customers eyes by the fact that they are different. People just take it as read that different equals better, despite a lack of compelling (objective) evidence to the contrary. Go read some usability reviews of MacOS X by long time users of the platform.
I call you out as a counter-troll. Apple's current vision is largely Steve Jobs vision right now. He has had a knack for pursuing and marketing great technology and quite frankly isn't as neurotic as Bill and isn't a has-been frat boy like Ballmer. Apple isn't just motivated by money, they are motivated by the money you can get by having the best computer available. Not the fastest necessarily, because the system is only as good as the weakest component. But the most integrated, capable platform out there(we're talking software and hardware integration here people)! Not just money.
CPU architectures have nothing to do with driver instability, nor mixing hardware. That would only be an issue if Apple tried to write a PC version (as opposed to an x86 version) of MacOS, but hey, you know what? The world is a messy place. People don't upgrade their hardware because they like screwing about with drivers, they do it because they want to play Doom 3 but they don't want to buy a whole new machine when 80% of it is still just fine. If they don't know what they're doing the end result is mess and instability, but pretending people don't want to do that is the reason PCs dominated in the first place.
If your old desktop Mac lacks an AGP bus, you are probably screwed, but if you have a newer Mac which needs more balls in the video department, there are quite a few options! The reason that the Mac's current drivers tend to be very stable is that they are written with the IOKit, which is very VERY easy to use!
lets be honest, in regards to 95% of the shit 95% of people do on a computer, there's virtually no difference in speed between a K6-3 450 & A P4 2.8.
So really, unless one's into 3D games, compiling code, rendering 3D or encoding video, & one already have a 500+mhz PC, replacing it with a new computer is just wanking off, well that is if one's trying to justify it as a need. Of course if one's treating oneself & being honest that one's treating oneself, then it isn't wanking off.
Afterall I'd love a nice new Holden One Tonner, but I'd be wanking off to claim I need one for work, afterall in that regard it performs no better than my old Daihatzu van.
Not to mention that if you actually put this laptop on the top of your lap, you might get your testicles hard boiled.
Somebody mod the parent -1 Stomach-Turning!
Eeeeyuch!
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
What's up with the way Apple computers always "smoke" their brethern? An Apple never "out performs" or "runs faster".
You've got to be kidding. They're built around 2.5" laptop drives.
Really don't want to flame or anything, but having worked at a support desk I really wonder why the parent wasn't modded +5 Funny... What is a "reputable vendor"? Surely not Dell and co...
A 24 bit *external* address bus. Internally, the A registers were fully thirty two bit. The external address bus merely determined the maximum amount of memory you could attach physically to a 68000 without implementing some kind of paging.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
1.8 in drives connected via ATA. I was wrong about the SCSI. I misread info from this page which mentions that the iPod connects to the mac as a SCSI block device, which makes sense...that means more of the functions of copying and reading data are controlled by the iPod's processor and not by the mac's processor. And that may be one of the big keys to the iPod's download speed, which really is fast as hell. Faster than copying across my own HD, at least.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I wrote 68000 assembly code for the Amiga and I don't remember any need to write in 64KB chunks. Can you elaborate?
Your point, please? So both Macs and PCs break occasionally. With Apple it's usually NOT a hassle to get customer service.
I haven't used Macs since OS9, but back then their support, particularly for developers, was AWFUL.
As an example, a few years back (1999 I think) I was testing our company's audio player on a shiny new iMac and I received a confusing error that was clearly a system error. It wasn't in the thin online manual, nor our developer manuals, nor could I find any reference to it in the incredibly poorly-organized support website so I tried to call Apple. They absolutely refused to offer me any support at first before I began bitching about how we were part of the developer program and were PAYING for support. Eventually, after a week of trying, I got an engineer on the phone who steadfastly refused to admit that the error message existed. By them we had hew builds of the software that didn't generate that error so I forgot about it.
This experience (compined with the general crappiness of OS9) pretty much permanently turned me off Apple.
And why don't PC users balk at the $400 price tag of XP 'pro' (a questionably worse option than the older Win2K) when Mac folks shout and kick and scream at a paltry $129 fee for a vastly improved OS? It's because Windows users are so used to being fucked in the ass by MS!
Because most of us are using free illegal copies. Duh.
Apple's current vision is largely Steve Jobs vision right now. He has had a knack for pursuing and marketing great technology and quite frankly isn't as neurotic as Bill and isn't a has-been frat boy like Ballmer. Apple isn't just motivated by money, they are motivated by the money you can get by having the best computer available. Not the fastest necessarily, because the system is only as good as the weakest component. But the most integrated, capable platform out there(we're talking software and hardware integration here people)! Not just money.
Why should I care one little bit about the "personalities" behind my computer? Do you care about the personal life of the guy who designed your toaster? Of course not. The whole notion is stupid.
And Apple is purely motivated by money, like every other corporation they are REQUIRED to ONLY care about the money BY LAW. Apple has made countless moves (like killing the clones) that screwed their customer base that the expense of making money. This current marketing/design approach of making "boutique" computers was crafted because the folks at Apple thought it would make them more money (considering the company was practically going down in flames before these changes), and snowing people like you to "Think Different" or fight the Great Satan Bill Gates is part of that moneymaking strategy. If you prefer Mac, for whatever reason, that's great. But don't pretend that Apple is somehow morally superior to Windows/Intel because it's less successful.
I find your naivete rather amusing actually.
OS 9 sucked for certain reasons, but was still a lot more stable than even Windows 2K with good tuning. OS X is great, though. You are missing out if you have been turned off to them forever.
The notion of the personality behind certain technology isn't stupid. Doug Englebart, Vennevar Bush, Alan Turing and other people including, yes, Steve Jobs and even Bill Gates (but probably not Ballmer) have made their marks on computing as a whole. You are pretty ignorant if you think that a personality can't have an affect on your computer, or toaster for example. Have you ever heard of Tesla or Edison?
The "botique" look is being copied (2 years late, I might add) by every 2 bit PC manufacturer out there, and do you see their shareholders lining up and filing minority lawsuits? Fuck no, because Apple has been doing great in this fucked economy.
I would also argue that my 13 month old "botique" powerbook is quite a bit more stable and usable, than my newer, top of the line Media Center Edition XP machine from HP! It's also easier to program in Objective C than C++, and quite a bit more powerful IMHO, multihomes automatically, can interface with at least 16 different kinds of digital cameras, both pro SLR and consumer WITHOUT driver upgrades or installation of ANY kind, ditto with any video camera with a 1394 port and iMovie, etc. Which is one reason why the newer Macs are attracting a different crowd than the old Macs. You've got your mind made up, however, so have fun fondling dross and calling it gold, buddy!
OS 9 sucked for certain reasons, but was still a lot more stable than even Windows 2K with good tuning. OS X is great, though. You are missing out if you have been turned off to them forever.
You're missing the point. I wasn't complaining about the technical merits of OS9 (or lack thereof) but the incredibly poor direct support and overall lack of support resources for Macs. I've only had to call Microsoft support a few times in my life (I'm a professional network enginner and IT manager) and they was usually because a Knowledge Base article told me to (You need to contact support to download certain patches, those calls are free). And just about anything I needed to know I could find in a refrence manual (If I cared to look it up) or, MUCH more often, on the Internet. In 1999 I found a distinct lack of such resources for the Mac.
The notion of the personality behind certain technology isn't stupid. Doug Englebart, Vennevar Bush, Alan Turing and other people including, yes, Steve Jobs and even Bill Gates (but probably not Ballmer) have made their marks on computing as a whole. You are pretty ignorant if you think that a personality can't have an affect on your computer, or toaster for example. Have you ever heard of Tesla or Edison?
Does the fact that Edison backed DC and Tesla backed AC have anything whatsoever to do with the technical merits of DC or AC? NO. Did Edison's and Tesla's personalities have any effect on their business? Hell yes.
Edison was a very shrewed businessman who knew all the dirty tricks. He was the first to hit on the idea of a "skunk works" for new inventions, which he all took credit for. Needless to say, he ended up rich and famous.
Tesla was a loon which didn't know anything about business. What little he had was stolen by Edison. He ended up a footnote in history.
Replace Edison with Gates and Tesla with Jobs.
Personalities can affect computer designs, like everything else, but ultimately we should evaluate products on their own merits. If the best computer in the world is built by neo-Nazis I'd buy from them. Not because they were neo-Nazis, but because they were selling the best comupter in the world. It's called "capitalism". Look into it.
What you're doing is called "hero worship".
The "botique" look is being copied (2 years late, I might add) by every 2 bit PC manufacturer out there, and do you see their shareholders lining up and filing minority lawsuits? Fuck no, because Apple has been doing great in this fucked economy.
Back when the iMac was first released, and selling quite well to the Mac devotees, within a few months a great number of PC manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon to make clones of the design. Gateway, Futurepower, Sony, etc. Several of thse companies were sued, with some success, by Apple for stealing thier design.
As it turns out, it wasn't necessary because the "clones" were a total failure. People simply didn't want an "all-in-one" PC. Now why was that? Several reasons, but mainly because they were no cheaper than tower PCs and generally less capable.
IMHO, PRICE is the reason the iMacs were popular. Mac devotees bought them because they were relatively cheap Macs, which was a novel idea at the time. That's why I bought a few for QA (see my last post) rather than Powermacs.
But the point remains that unless you want a PC that looks like a desk lamp (I'm certain Apple has patented this design), you can buy a Wintel system in every form factor offered by Apple, and countless others.
PC companies have been having problems due to fierce competition BETWEEN THEMSELVES, notably Dell vs. everyone else. Dell is doing just peachy. I've met Michael Dell and he's a fucking genius. I don't know wether or not he'll make the history books, I guess he'll have to take billions of dollars as a consolation prize.
I would also argue that my 13 month old "botique" powerbook is quite a bit more stable and usable, than my newer, top of the l
Before I get flamed, a disclaimer: I know that Gentoo has its proper uses, but on the other hand, 'wannabe hacker' types do tend to use the flavour-of-the-month, preferable on the unstable side, distros.
Before Gentoo it used to be Mandrake. I used to cringe when reading mailing list archives at the kind of questions that get asked.
A friend of mine I made the mistake of converting to Linux now swears by his Gentoo system. He claimed he could not figure out RPM, finding all the flags impossible to memorise (eh? you might ask), and blaming the fact that some obscure software he needed were not available in RPM packages.
Today he was wondering why his kernel broke the binary nVidia drivers and so he's stuck without X since he did not know how to edit XF86Config to move back to the free nv driver, or down to VGA. He could not get help online because it did not occur to him, should all else fail, to use a text browser.
Believe me, this is a true story.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
You've just described Judaism. Yeah, Chritianity has a lot of the same symbols, but all the ones you describe are "borrowed".