Apple Issues New G5 Benchmarks

rocketjam writes "According to an article in The Register, Apple has issued SPEC benchmarks for the new dual G5 2GHz machines, comparing it to a two-way Dell Xeon and a 3Ghz Pentium 4 machine. The article says the G5 lagged behind the Dells in integer performance, however in 'the parallel "rate" benchmarks, which tax both of the CPUs in the test machines, the G5 edged out the Xeon 17.2 to 16.7 in the integer score and 15.7 to 11.1 in the floating point tests, suggesting Apple makes far better use of its two CPUs than the Xeon machine....the results augur well for Apple G5 performance in technical and scientific computing environments and for playing games.'"

Comments

All I need......

[trompete]

now is to be able to play Battlefield 1942 on OS X/Motorolla. I really like the OS X window manager and the fact that I wouldn't have to patch my system every time a new worm came out for wintel.
Is there some sort of free product like Wine for running wintel software on OS X?

Sure, I'll fan this flame :-)

[sootman]

>The Mac is easier to use.

Arguable. Mostly depends on what you're used to. I've been around plenty of noobs with their shiny new boxes. I've seen people take to Windows with no problem, and I've seen people trip up over Mac OS X. Could go either way. The other question is what do your friends, who will (hopefully) guide you through your dark days, use?

>Now it's also as fast (or significantly FASTER) the the PC.

For the sake of argument, let's just say that both are equally well suited for common consumer tasks: web browsing, digital cameras, email, burning CDs, average 3D games. Stay away from fancy stuff for a second--no firewire 800, no DVD burning, etc. Still with me? OK, good.

>It runs all the commercial apps you need.

Unless you want games, or cheap clip art, or scores of other things. Most people do *not* buy MS Office for their home computers--the use MS Works or AppleWorks or whatever comes with them. Most also steer towards cheap photo editors (more than jusr rotate & enhance that iPhoto offers) like PSP or the cheap Adobe products, rather than Quark-Photoshop-Illustrator stuff.

>It can emulate proprietary in-house apps with VirtualPC.

For only $300 more (Win XP version). Yes, you can put your pirated copy of Win98 on if you buy the $120 DOS-only version, but how many noobs know to do that?

>It can play all the latest games, even if they laga couple months (get a PS2, also!).

So after you've bought your expensive (see below) Mac, you recommend a $150 console too?

>It's UNIX under the hood and runs X11 for added compatability.

True. But what do noobs want UNIX for? Without a nearby geek, they don't. Period.

>All of this, and it's not any more expensive than comparable PC hardware.

store.apple.com: base 1.6 GHz G5, $2000. (no monitor.) 1.4 GHz G4s, get'em while you can, $1300. Base 800 MHz eMac, $800.

dell.com/tv: 2.4 GHz P4, 17" monitor, sometimes a free upgrade to a 15" LCD: $500.

PCs will continue to dominate (what is it, 20:1?) due to economics alone. Will they cost more in the long run due to viruses and whatnot? Who knows. Will the user have a more pleasurable experience with one or the other? Who knows. Is it better to spend $500 today than $800 today? Yes--*everyone* knows that one.

Not saying Macs aren't great (I'm sure the last few major viruses changed some minds), just saying what reality is. Also, I'm not saying Apple is going under. Far from it--they've got high-margin hardware (plus iPods and iTMS and whatnot) that sells just fine, thakyouverymuch. The BMW/Ford analogy explains it all.

PS--FYI, I work (two jobs, no less) as a (primarily) Mac tech and own both Macs and PCs.

PPS--the Red v. Blue page was a joke, a parody, that made use of exaggeration. Just so you know. :-)