90nm 3GHz PPC 970FX by Summer

POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by rkz · 2003-12-23 05:00 · Score: -1, Troll

I haven't bought a PB since the G3/333 PB Pizmo Lombardi Wallstreet Whatever edition without Firewire Bronze Keyboard.
But if there were a G5 PB, I am all for it. That would be birthday present to myself. However, I would have to wait until the second generation of that machine b/c I would like to make sure that Apple just isn't unloading G4 parts with a G5 chip.

Glaskowski has a very good track record when it comes to processors. If you look at this objectively, a 1.6GHz or slower G5 would be an easy fit into the current PowerBook chassis. As has been said many times before, the G5 actually does run cooler and consume less power than the G4 at equal clock speeds. If the 90-nm process is employed, then we're ahead of the game.

When the G5 was introduced last June at the WWDC, it didn't go on sale for another month or two. So the idea of introducing the PB G5 at MacWorld, but not selling it for another month or two is not that hard to imagine.

--
There is no god

Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by Leroy_Brown242 · 2003-12-23 05:10 · Score: 0

The only issue with G5 powerbooks are heat and power consumption. A G4 powerbook gets pretty darned warm. The only way we would see a G5 powerbook is if they choked off the MHz in order to reduce the wattage.

--
Pretty Pictures!
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by American+AC+in+Paris · 2003-12-23 05:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

I would have to wait until the second generation of that machine b/c I would like to make sure that Apple just isn't unloading G4 parts with a G5 chip.
I agree with the wisdom of letting others find the flaws in a first generation laptop--It's too easy to get burned with a brand new laptop design, pun intended.
That said, Apple puts more effort into laptop design than just about any other manufacturer I can think of. I seriously doubt they'd slap a G5 processor into a G4 design and call it done.

--
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by micsaund · 2003-12-23 05:13 · Score: 5, Interesting

You missed the part about the G5 running cooler than G4 and also, the switch from .13 to .09 processes should help as well. The net effect may be an overall cooler machine which does not sacrifice MHz.

--
Pinball, arcade video, tech and more: www.micsaund.com
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by Ham+and+Egger · 2003-12-23 05:19 · Score: 1

I'm not so sure.... G5 for the PowerBooks is probably not until next summer/fall, I bet there are at least one or two more updates to the 15' and 12'. What wouldn't surprise me too much is adding a G5 to the 17' first or dual g4's. It does have the most room to play with.
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by Admiral+Llama · 2003-12-23 05:29 · Score: 1

The heck with new Macs... I already bought 3 this year. When are we going to see G5 upgrades for MDD (windtunnel) macs?
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:38 · Score: 0

When the G5 was introduced last June at the WWDC, it didn't go on sale for another month or two.

The minute the G5 was announced, it was on sale. The 1.6 and 1.8 GHz machines shipped immediately (same day as the announcement). The 2x2 GHz machines were delayed because VA Tech bought 1,100 of them.

So the idea of introducing the PB G5 at MacWorld, but not selling it for another month or two is not that hard to imagine.

Apple never announces a machine until they're ready to ship it. (Or at least until they think they're ready to ship it.) To do anything else is business suicide: it says to your customers, "Whatever you do, don't buy anything for the next two months."
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by Frymaster · 2003-12-23 05:47 · Score: 1

I seriously doubt they'd slap a G5 processor into a G4 design
well, they've done it in the past on the desktop model... when the g4 debuted the first model was the "yikes" line that was, essentially, a g4 chip on a g3 motherboard. it was a couple of months until the "sawtooth" line with the g4-specific mobo came out.

--
2 1337 4 u!
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by Starla1979 · 2003-12-23 06:04 · Score: 1

boo
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by bhtooefr · 2003-12-23 06:24 · Score: 1

However, it's completely impossible to put a G5 on a G4 board. You wouldn't stick an Athlon 64 on your Socket A board, would you? Think of it this way:

The G4 is to the G3 as the Pentium III is to the Pentium II. That's why a Slot 1 P3 worked on a P2 board, and also why a G4 CPU ran on a G3 board.

The G5 is to the G4 as the Athlon 64 is to the Athlon XP. Apples to oranges (no pun intended).
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by shaitand · 2003-12-23 06:36 · Score: 1

That's true, keeping quiet helps con the customers into spending more money with apple by screwing them on the details. Yes yes, but this 2ghz system today because we are keeping our mouths shut about the 3ghz system we already have in back that will be the same price in 30mins.
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by Master+Bait · 2003-12-23 06:40 · Score: 1

You must be new to the Apple world. No upgrades!

--
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by Pope · 2003-12-23 06:48 · Score: 1

I doubt you'll see them at all. The G5 series advantages, like the much faster bus and memory, would be dead on the constricted pathways of the old G4 series. Heck, as it is, if you're upgrading a Sawtooth you better get one with L3 cache, or the processer starves for data on the 100MHz bus.

Doesn't mean we can't hope, of course! :)

--
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by Sketch · 2003-12-23 07:05 · Score: 1

I missed that too...probably because it wasn't in the linked article. They did mention that the switch from .13 to .09 would help heat production, but no specifics or even percentages relative to the current G4 or G5.

If you have a link to another story with more info, I'd like to see it as I'm curious how much cooler it does run.

--
-- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by carney1979 · 2003-12-23 07:09 · Score: 1, Informative

YOUR SIGNATURE IS OBSCENE.
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by bnenning · 2003-12-23 07:37 · Score: 1

You must be new to the Apple world. No upgrades!

If you're claiming that Macs can't be upgraded in general, that's wrong. However, I'd be very surprised to ever see G5 upgrades for G4 Macs. The architecture is so different (much faster bus, true DDR support, Hypertransport, etc) that it just doesn't make sense.

--
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 08:31 · Score: 0

Actually, when Steve Jobs unveiled the G5 at 2GHz, he told everyone that they'd have 3GHz within a years time. Nobody is keeping their mouths shut.
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by Jon+Abbott · 2003-12-23 11:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

As I have read previously, the G5 runs cooler than the G4 only when running at the same clock speed as the G4. The temperature gets hot however when you run the current 130nm G5 at its native speeds. I think as long as Apple can get a hold of 90nm G5s, and use very effective processor speed ramping, they can create a Powerbook G5 without too much trouble. I don't think they'll need nitrogen cooling or anything like that. :^)

--
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by Trurl's+Machine · 2003-12-23 11:25 · Score: 1

The G5 is to the G4 as the Athlon 64 is to the Athlon XP. Apples to oranges (no pun intended).

Or maybe like the PowerPC to the 68k? If yes, then actually Apple has a (bad) record of making crippled machines with PowerPC stuffed into a 68k motherboard like the early performas. Much earlier, they also did put a 32-bit CPU on a 16-bit motherboard crippling the LC. Early adopters, beware; especially if you want to go the el cheapo way.
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by burns210 · 2003-12-23 12:12 · Score: 1

the later revisions of the G4 Powerbooks seem to be better at staying sub-10000 degrees, but still get somewhat warmer than ideal...

The G5, which someone mentioned might be out as early as this summer, will need some impressive engineering to stay cool.
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by bhtooefr · 2003-12-23 12:15 · Score: 1

Actually, the PowerPC to the 68040 would be like the Pentium to the 486, except I don't think anyone actually built a Pentium Overdrive system - it was almost cheaper to do it right (although, a Socket 2 or 3 mobo COULD handle 50MHz FSB Pentiums without breaking a sweat).
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by bhtooefr · 2003-12-23 12:19 · Score: 1

BTW, the first system by Apple that WASN'T a 32-bit CPU on a 16 or 24-bit bus was in the Mac II family. Don't believe me? The 68000 is a 32-bit CPU on a 16-bit bus. Apple never used it, but the 68008 was a 32-bit CPU on an 8-bit bus (!) The Sinclair QL (Linus's second computer, if you didn't read his book) ran it.
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by Phroggy · 2003-12-24 05:32 · Score: 1

You must be new to the Apple world. No upgrades!

Um, sounds like you're the one new to the Apple world. Of course installing a CPU upgrade will void your warranty, but if it's still under warranty, you shouldn't be upgrading it yet anyway.

--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Re:POWERBOOK EATS YOU. by drunkenbatman · 2003-12-27 09:22 · Score: 1

That said, Apple puts more effort into laptop design than just about any other manufacturer I can think of.

They sure as hell do, although they can't seem to design a hinge to save their life, they pair their beautiful designs with $0.15 fans that are atrocious, and their rubber feet/display buffers can be gone in a week. They cut corners in the oddest places sometimes.

I seriously doubt they'd slap a G5 processor into a G4 design and call it done.

Well, yeah that'd be a bit scary. But they've come very, very close to that with some of their laptop models, starting with the tibook on up, specifically starting with the original 667 model.

Basically they just threw the newer G4's into the same case, although from time to time they might have modified some of the heat piping and the like. What you end up with in many cases is a computer that, under 20-30% sustained load, sounds like a hair dryer.

The 550MHz & 667MHz models were a good example of this- the 550MHz were fine, but the 667MHz were atrocious... they couldn't even speed-step down as newer models could. They'd just been slapped in.

High culture. by (TK)Max · 2003-12-23 05:00 · Score: -1

'Twas was the night before Goatse, when all through the house Not a penis was stirred, not even with mouth; The Giver was hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Goatse soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of anal-sex danced in their heads; And Katz in his 'kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled down for a fuck in the sack. When up in my anus there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see Katz start to splatter. Away to the bathroom I flew like a flash, Tore open my anus and looked at the gash. The moon in the glass had a vibrant red glow Gave the lustre of sunset to my nutsack below, When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer! With a little old driver, so lively and quickse, I knew in a moment it must be St. Goatse. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name; "Now, TACO! now, JAMIE! now, MICHEAL and TIMMY! On, CHRISD! on HEMOS! on, PUDGEY and CLIFFY! To the top of the ass! fronts to the the wall! Now pound away! pound away! pound away all!" As faggots that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with a hetero, mount the next guy, So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, With the sleigh full of sex-toys, and Goatse pics too. And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The moaning and pawing of each little poof. As I drew in my ass, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Goatse came with a bound. He was dressed as a furry, from his head to his feet, And his clothes were all tarnished with urine and shit; A bundle of sex-toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a hooker just flapping his sack. His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! His ass cheeks like roses, his cock like a cherry! His cute little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard of his scrotum as white as the snow; The stump of a blunt he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face and was a bit smelly, He shook, when he wanked like a bowlful of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him beat off himself; A wink of his eye and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread; He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings with smelly big turds, He layed a big log right under my nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose; He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like a fucking great missile. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, "HAPPY GOATSE TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!"

Pissing match by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:02 · Score: -1, Troll

sounds like another pissing match.

You know a women didn't come up with this idea... by phaetonic · 2003-12-23 05:02 · Score: 4, Funny

where smaller is better.

With no Volume. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:03 · Score: 0, Interesting

You supply 3% of the computer market with chips, you can hand pick your chips and speed bin the rest.

On a side note, I have heard that AMD plans on using Apple's experience to help them with Athlon 64 chips with the .09 transfer.

It rather makes you wonder if the IPC is going to be dropped with new stages to the pipeline to up the clock. Afterall, IBM has already said they are going to remove unneeded chip die components to reduce costs for Apple... HRm.

Re:With no Volume. by msgmonkey · 2003-12-23 05:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

Why would AMD be talking to Apple? If anyone AMD would be talking to IBM but even then unless IBM will be manufacturing the chips or has some kind of partnership agreement with AMD they would n't be inclined to pass on that kind of valuable experience to AMD.
Re:With no Volume. by ischorr · 2003-12-23 05:22 · Score: 1

Apple DOES still have chip designers employed, and pretty good ones at that. Remember they were a key player in designing the PPC in the *first* place.

However, it does make more sense that AMD would be talking to IBM. They already have a very cozy relationship, and this isn't quite the kind of thing that would play to Apple's role in chip design anyway...
Re:With no Volume. by msgmonkey · 2003-12-23 05:33 · Score: 4, Insightful

I think you're over estimating how much apple technology went into the PPC, nearly all of the technology came from IBMs POWER risc machines (Wikipedia entry). Apple probably had a hand in specifiying the bus interface for their chipsets and other interface level stuff but I doubt anything more than that.
It takes a lot of R&D whenever you move from one feature size to a smaller one and since chip fabrication R&D costs $$$ that's why unless AMD have some kind of technology sharing agreement I doubt they would just "give away" something they've put a lot of money into.
Re:With no Volume. by proj_2501 · 2003-12-23 05:45 · Score: 1

aren't both amd and apple part of the hypertransport consortium?
Re:With no Volume. by ischorr · 2003-12-23 05:50 · Score: 1

No, most of the IBM PPC 970 technology (G5) came from the POWER series of processors. Much of the POWER stuff is based off of Power PC (PPC) technology developed by IBM, Apple, and Motorola.
Re:With no Volume. by Wildcat+J · 2003-12-23 06:29 · Score: 1

Actually, the parent post is correct. While you're correct in saying that the PPC 970 is a direct descendant of the POWER series (the POWER4 to be exact), the POWER series was in fact the basis for the PowerPC architecture. Read more at IBM's site.
-J
Re:With no Volume. by emerrill · 2003-12-23 06:30 · Score: 1

When you are supply 3% of the market you cant just hand pick them and speed bin the rest just the same as you cant when you are supplying 50% of the market. If you did that then you would drive cost too high. They dont ship the chips until their production % of the level chips they want is high enough. The cost of the G5's to apple and 3rd party developers os about on par with the cost of processors that AMD and Intel sell. Its all just a matter of you have to scale the number you toss with the number you use to keep the % the same
Re:With no Volume. by Dumass · 2003-12-23 07:18 · Score: 1

AMD and Apple both have manufacturing contracts with IBM. I imagine this is where the sharing would be taking place, as both are using .13 SOI processes in their chips. It is quite feasible that what IBM learns from making PPCs could be applied to Athlons.
Re:With no Volume. by stingerman101 · 2003-12-23 09:52 · Score: 2, Insightful

Apple had a lot to do with the 970 design. If you loot at the design, Apple's fingerprints are all over it. The used the ALU and the FP2 unit from the Power4, then they specified the SIMD unit, they specified new PowerPC 32-bit to 64 bit protected instructions to allow for their OS X 32bit VM to work in native 64-bit mode. Apple developed the proprietary hyper-transport derived "coherent interconnects" (3 in all that would allow for 8-way systems and cache sharing when more than one processor is present, similar to Opteron.) and of course the non-coherent hyper-transport connectivity for all other bus interfacing. IBM was not previously a hyper-transport proponent. In addition, Apple developed a unique 130NM ASIC controller that is described as more complex than the 970 itself. This ASIC is just as important as the 970 in the G5 computer, if not arguably more important as it enables the fastest and widest FSB among mass produced computers. As far as volume, in this price range, I bet Apple is one of the volume leaders right now. It would be nice if the analyst would segment their market share numbers better. Who cares how many $400 PCs are sold. (At least I don't, IMO they are throw away computers with very short desk life.)
Re:With no Volume. by stingerman101 · 2003-12-23 10:00 · Score: 1

Apple and AMD are both founding members of hypertransport. Intel, Motorola and IBM are each promoting different bus technologies. IBM was modest enough to allow Apple to not only specify the bus architecture (non-coherent interconnects) but to also develop the coherent interconnects (which was, at least at the time, not part of the hypertransport spec) which allow for SMP configuration up to 8-way, so I understand.
Re:With no Volume. by stingerman101 · 2003-12-23 10:23 · Score: 1

Well, when you own 95%+ of the 64-bit desktop market and are the largest Fishkill production customer for IBM, I imagine you get treated pretty well. How many Itanium 2's were sold 2003, maybe 10,000 and 20,000 Opterons. Apple has sold over 500,000 processors (two per dual mac) in a 5 months. We are not talking the cheap low margin stuff, these are prime sales for Apple and IBM. Volume isn't everything when you have such a huge margin.
Re:With no Volume. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:18 · Score: 0

Coherent Hypertransport was part of the orginal HT 1.0 spec submission made by AMD back in 2001. Now back then you had to sign a NDA to even look at the HT spec documents, cHT still remains NDA'd.
Up until July 24, 2001 hypertransport was legally AMD property in fact the said first version of the spec had the legal block...
"AMD, the AMD logo, HyperTransport, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc."

The Hypertransport implementation inside G5 systems is actually not in the processor but in the northbridge ASIC. The CPU bus is some undisclosed and propietory interconnect most likely a slimmed down varient on IBM's Power4 bus. The power4 bus features everything you discribed and then some, infact you can scale it upto 128P+ and it can read from another CPU's cache at 40 GB/s. PPC970 comes nowhere close in bus performance to Power4 even taking into account that it clocked at twice the speed.
The vector SIMD unit used in PPC970 is basically IBM's implementation of Motorola's Altivec which is in turn based upon based on a SIMD ISA co-developed by IBM and Motorola. IBM and Motorola are the assignee's and inventors of the patents covering Altivec style SIMD, I can't find a single patent assigned to Apple that would cover any part of Altivec.
IBM Power4 was orginally designed with full 32bit PowerPC ISA support and for that matter a hybrid mode, now these features aren't used much in proper Power4 systems but exist none the less.

YOU FAILeD IT. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:03 · Score: -1, Troll

Re:YOU FAILeD IT. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:06 · Score: -1, Troll

Failed what, my cock sucking friend? FUCKING FILTHY LINUX USERS________SWINES__ ______ ________ ________________________________,i,.`.__ LINUX__\`ii-.`-._..--...-iii________```--i:_ )a)_ SUCKS____`-.._` 'asasasasasasas-..asasasasa__ia/_ _,'`..__..'' -. _ `._asasasasasasasasasasasasa\__ ('';` . . ._ ,'' . .as.-'asasasasasas,'asasasa:__ _`-._ . . `*/ . . ,asasasasasasasasas'asasas.asl_ ____.:._ . `-'`-'as;asa\asasasasasasasasa,'as;___ _.':::::'` . .,' \,'asasa:asasasasa;asasasasas/__ __`-..__ . . . .,'/asasas|asasasa,'asasasasa,'___ _________``---;'` \ `asasa;.____..-'`.asasa,'\___ _TROLLKORE__/asa/ \:asas:____________:asa(\ `\___ _________ ,'as.'___\asas:__________;'asa/ )__)___ _________/,_,.;::.__`.asa\________/asa,',',_(:::. FUCK THE CORRUPT______`.as`._____,'as;'__________ SLASHDOT SYSTEM________/,_,'::. `-'`':___________ WHILE YOU FUCKING FILTH STUFF YOUR FAT MOUTHES WITH OPEN SOURCE, COMMUNISM IS TAKING OVER THE WORLD. Trollkore - I hate you, I hate your country, and I hate your face.

7th prost by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:04 · Score: -1, Offtopic

that's right bitch # Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. # Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. # Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)

Apple by KoolDude · 2003-12-23 05:05 · Score: 5, Funny

wow... with this Apple will be dying much faster ! ;)

--
getSexySig(); /* returns sexy signature */

Re:Apple by StarManta · 2003-12-23 05:19 · Score: 0

*growl*

--
StarManta
I don't think BMW has ever complained about their 2% marketshare. Neither has Apple.
Re:Apple by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:11 · Score: 0

Man, by that logic apple has been dying for 20 years
Re:Apple by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 07:33 · Score: 0

Given the core of Mac OS X is FreeBSD AND the old 'Apple is dying' meme...Apple is beyond dead.

speed by Graspee_Leemoor · 2003-12-23 05:06 · Score: -1, Flamebait

Does anyone even care about the leetness of their speed with Apple stuff? I always thought the sort of people who used "the other computer" were more interested in doing normal everyday things that don't require much cpu power: word processing, email, web etc. Most of the people encoding audio and video and playing games are running x86.

graspee

ps sorry if this is taken as flamebait, it's not meant to be.

Re:speed by Scrameustache · 2003-12-23 05:09 · Score: 4, Informative

Does anyone even care about the leetness of their speed with Apple stuff?

Why my friend converted: Final Cut Pro, he's in the movie/TV biz.

--
You can't take the sky from me...
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:10 · Score: 0

That's kind of an odd comment... I totally agree with the playing games part - but "encoding audio and video" ??

I suppose when you mean "most of the people" you are excluding major movie studios and professional recording engineers - as well as 80% of other media creation professionals?

In that case, yeah, you might be right.
Re:speed by the_consumer · 2003-12-23 05:11 · Score: 4, Informative

Most of the people editing the audio and video you're encoding on your x86 are using macs. Well, maybe not most, but a hell of a lot of 'em.

--
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:11 · Score: 0

only on slashdot: news for zealots, apple news that doens't matter, does the FUCKING TRUTH get modded as flamebait.
Re:speed by the+Man+in+Black · 2003-12-23 05:12 · Score: 5, Interesting

Most of the people encoding audio and video

Macs have been the native platform of artists and designers doing serious image creation/manipulation, video editing, and music composition for a long time. OS X just continues that tradition, but makes it simple for the end-user to also get into how powerful a multimedia machine the Mac is with tools such as iMovie, etc. And of course, on the other end, you've got these two.

So, to answer your question, ramping up speed on the G5 chips is not only good for the whole marketing "Mine is bigger" approach, but there is also real value to Mac users, from casual to hard core.

--
El riesgo vive siempre!
Re:speed by StarManta · 2003-12-23 05:15 · Score: 0

"Most of the people encoding audio and video and playing games are running x86." I don't guess you're counting the majority of video and graphics profressionals that use Apples? They're the ones the high-speed G5's are targeted at. Unless by "the other computer" you're talking about the eMacs....

--
StarManta
I don't think BMW has ever complained about their 2% marketshare. Neither has Apple.
Re:speed by TempusMagus · 2003-12-23 05:17 · Score: 5, Interesting

Most of the people encoding audio and video and playing games are running x86.
I'll take the bait. You sir are incredibly ill-informed. You confuse the needs of the home-fiddler with the needs of the media professional. I'm sure most audio encoding that takes place in people's homes is PC based, while most audio encoding, recording and mixing done in professional studios is mac based. I'm sure most wedding videos, bar mitzvahs and "baby's first steps" videos are editied on PCs while more independent films, music videos and documentarys are editied, composited and compressed on Macs (Powerbooks even!). You mention that mac people are folks who are more interested in doing normal everyday things. And on that point, it wins hands down in terms of user experience. Speed is important there as well I might add. I own a crap-can of computers running a variety of OSes and when people ask me what I prefer I always tell them "I love them all 'cause they all make me money!". Macs suck for games and they don't run 3DSMAX. Macs arent good choices for low-cost render machines either.

--
-_-
Re:speed by ickoonite · 2003-12-23 05:19 · Score: 1

Encoding audio and video? Steve would cry if he read this. Where have Macs been widely been used all these years? The music and film industry...??? In fact, whilst it is a little irresponsible to say the reverse is true, it is certainly not unfair to suggest that people on a budget buy a low spec PC (i.e. even worse than the Mac's "meagre" specifications - i.e. 700Mhz x86 = 700Mhz PPC) to do "normal everyday things that don't require much cpu power: word processing, email, web etc." There are , I am sure, a few that use their Macs for just this, but I would have thought the majority might like to flex the power of iLife (i.e. DVD burning, movie editing, digital photography, music), Final Cut Pro, Logic, Photoshop, etc. The list is not small... True, Macs don't do as many games as PCs, but that's more a marketing/business-sense decision rather than any inherent weakness on the Mac's part. Indeed, of course, time was when Mac games were vastly superior (I am going way back to the time of Prince of Persia here, folks, so...) iqu :s
Re:speed by Graspee_Leemoor · 2003-12-23 05:20 · Score: 1

" Most of the people editing the audio and video you're encoding on your x86 are using macs."

I know what you mean, because I was talking about people doing DVD rips and anime fansubs rather than professionals, and true, lots of professionals use macs, but:

a) editing (especially mpeg2 "on an iframe" editing) takes virtually no cpu power
b) I was only talking about home users, even if that meant I was ignoring professional people, to whom the superleetspeed Apples could be advantageous.

graspee
Re:speed by barawn · 2003-12-23 05:22 · Score: 4, Interesting

Does anyone even care about the leetness of their speed with Apple stuff? I always thought the sort of people who used "the other computer" were more interested in doing normal everyday things that don't require much cpu power: word processing, email, web etc. Most of the people encoding audio and video and playing games are running x86.

Well, a huge number of design people use Macs, and image processing can be very processor intensive. Everyone knows Apple always quotes Photoshop benchmarks when trying to say that their computers are faster (with this version of photoshop! with these patches! with this filter! On Tuesdays! In March!)

That being said, there's one interesting point here - there are a lot of people who, after OS X, are switching to Apple because it's a Unix derivative that, for desktop use, is more polished than Linux. The scientific project I work on has just ported all of the analysis tools to OS X, because they like the Mac desktop better than the Linux one, so I think in addition to image processing/design tasks, developers may slowly switch to Mac as well.

One other interesting point now is that the reasons for sticking with x86 are quickly dwindling. It used to be a joke that Macs were faster. Macs, in many things, were three to four (yes, 3 to 4!) times slower at general-purpose tasks. Ever since the G5 was introduced, maybe it's still a joke because of Jobs's overzealous description of Apple's prowess, but it's not that much of a joke anymore. A dual 2GHz G5 is not a slow machine. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

At this point, the only things that can seriously keep people on x86 are software and price, and considering people still pay more than $1K for computers, I think it's safe to say that people are perfectly happy to spend way too much money on computers if they look nice and are well supported.

I think Apple is quite healthy: I'd be really surprised if Apple's market share doesn't continue to grow. If you're willing to shell out the money to shift to a Mac for the ease-of-use of OS X, then I don't think you're likely to shift back to x86.
Re:speed by ickoonite · 2003-12-23 05:22 · Score: 1

(damnit! forgot that I have to put >br< tags in!)

iqu :(
Re:speed by scrod · 2003-12-23 05:22 · Score: 5, Funny

Does anyone even care about the leetness of their speed with Apple stuff?

Yeah, I'm willing to bet that the people who make 80 million dollar movies with them do. Your friends who encode Simpsons episodes into DivX don't count, sorry.
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:23 · Score: 0

Well, since the main thing I use my G5 for is email, web, script writing, and audio and video encoding, I think I'd say you're wrong.
Re:speed by natelr · 2003-12-23 05:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

Does anyone even care about the leetness of their speed with Apple stuff?

Yes I do... The more speed, the faster my photoshop projects render.
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:25 · Score: 0

He forgot that there are people in the world different from the guys at his LAN party and his mom's friends.

There are lots more uses for computers than browsing the web, playing games, and making DivX rips of netflix DVDs, but, hey, your world is pretty small when you're 13.
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:29 · Score: 0

Because the poster is either an idiot or just naive. I suppose anyone that thinks that a $1200 computer (plus monitor) should be used to *just play games* or rip Divx movies/mp3s needs to rethink how wisely they're spending their money...
Re:speed by Graspee_Leemoor · 2003-12-23 05:31 · Score: 3, Funny

" He forgot that there are people in the world different from the guys at his LAN party and his mom's friends.

There are lots more uses for computers than browsing the web, playing games, and making DivX rips of netflix DVDs, but, hey, your world is pretty small when you're 13."

I am extremely confused by your comment, because all the statements in it are wrong. Please reply with the source of this misinformation so I can correct their computer records.

graspee
Re:speed by bfg9000 · 2003-12-23 05:35 · Score: 1

<br>

--
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
Re:speed by pocopoco · 2003-12-23 05:37 · Score: 1

Let's see: the fastest PC workstations beat the Mac's in Photoshop. QT6 didn't even have two pass mpeg4 encoding for a long time and even now the quality/features are a joke compared to Xvid/Divx (which make use of things like b-frames, qpel, gmc). On Windows the QT browser plugin is terrible and doesn't even allow you to zoom or fullscreen from the right-click menu (and windows media player does) so I'm stuck digging the freaking URL out of the page just to watch the stream in something other than a miniscule box (I use high res and I'm not changing it for a video in a web page). The few professionals doing DVD work I've ever talked to used Maestro and Scenarist, both PC apps. IME the parent is right on about macs having lost their spot re encoding.
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:45 · Score: 0

The company I work for makes software and hardware for tv broadcasting. They are currently looking very hard at using G5 instead of the existing Xeons in the next generation of encoding and broadcast servers. These will first the company has produced that will do away with hardware MPEG-2 encoding. G5 is looking very strong at the moment.
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:07 · Score: 0

Your friends who encode Simpsons episodes into DivX don't count, sorry

What you are trying to say is that regular computer users or nerds or geeks or everything not in the top 1% of the population aren't gay enough for a Mac, right?
Re:speed by Durandal64 · 2003-12-23 06:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

QT6 didn't even have two pass mpeg4 encoding for a long time and even now the quality/features are a joke compared to Xvid/Divx (which make use of things like b-frames, qpel, gmc).
3ivx D4.5 is available for both Mac and Windows platforms, and it produces output just as good as, if not better than, XviD, and DivX is a joke compared to either 3ivx or XviD. 3ivx has all those fancy buzzwords you love but know absolutely nothing about (or didn't you know that b-frames are inappropriate for lots of encodes because they reduce quality and can kill compression efficiency?).
On Windows the QT browser plugin is terrible and doesn't even allow you to zoom or fullscreen from the right-click menu (and windows media player does) so I'm stuck digging the freaking URL out of the page just to watch the stream in something other than a miniscule box (I use high res and I'm not changing it for a video in a web page).
I knew that browser plug-ins were relevant to video encoding somehow ...
The few professionals doing DVD work I've ever talked to used Maestro and Scenarist, both PC apps. IME the parent is right on about macs having lost their spot re encoding.
Really? My uncle won two Emmies for his online editing work on the Oprah show, and he is a Mac user.
Re:speed by natelr · 2003-12-23 06:09 · Score: 2, Interesting

the fastest PC workstations beat the Mac's in Photoshop Could I ask where you are getting the statics to back that up? Every test I have read shows the G5 beating the fastest PC in photoshop renderings,
Re:speed by SlamMan · 2003-12-23 06:10 · Score: 4, Funny

I'd answer, but I'm busy working on a documentary in Final Cut.

--
Mod point free since 2001
Re:speed by Junks+Jerzey · 2003-12-23 06:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

Does anyone even care about the leetness of their speed with Apple stuff? I always thought the sort of people who used "the other computer" were more interested in doing normal everyday things that don't require much cpu power: word processing, email, web etc. Most of the people encoding audio and video and playing games are running x86.

But there's getting to be quite a leet-geek crowd using Macs now, thanks to OS X. It's a huge draw for people who understand the advantages of UNIX, but don't want to get into the Linux fray (because of lack of certain commercial applications, for example).
Re:speed by macthulhu · 2003-12-23 06:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

Most People? You must mean most people trading Paris Hilton WMVs... For those of us who do not live in our mom's basement, who actually make a living in the audio/video industry, Macs are still the dominant platform. Yes, I know PCs have been gaining ground, but they've hardly sent the Mac home with a pink slip. I work in 5 different OSs daily (2 Mac flavors, and 3 Windows flavors)... In the 8 years I've been doing this work for this company, the Macs have always been more reliable and offered more flexibility. Though they may not be as fast per se, the amount of time a stable system can save you over a cheap system adds up... and of course in this business, time is indeed roughly equal to money. We've had this argument a few hundred times in the last few years, so I will spare everyone the usual lengthy comment. Suffice to say that I work in that industry, use those machines, and you are mistaken. I'll grant you the games comment though... But I have to tell you, it's not exactly breaking my heart.

--
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:36 · Score: 0

Well, when you cant come up with an argument, ad hominem works just as well.

Great job with that anecdotal evidence. That made your stupid generalizations even more retarded.
Re:speed by aldoman · 2003-12-23 06:38 · Score: 1

I shifted to Mac due to the apple notebooks. They are very competitively priced and you know you are getting a good solution instead of a crappy flimsy piece of crap, which most PC notebooks are like. Also, I like the fact i can bring up fink and install most decent unix apps. Hopefully someone will port Gnome 2.4 into it. I think that Apple should try and get more games developers on board. Sadly, without direct X, most of the processing power of the Radeon 9600/9800 Pro's are going to waste. Maybe Apple should work on some sort of official wine port... it would be very interesting indeed.

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IntechHosting - Free domain, 2GB, PHP, £4.95/$8.95
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:47 · Score: 0

That being said, there's one interesting point here - there are a lot of people who, after OS X, are switching to Apple because it's a Unix derivative that, for desktop use, is more polished than Linux.
For that matter, there are plenty of people who want a PowerPC64 system to run GNU/Linux on. One of the nice things about GNU/Linux is that it runs on just about every modern architecture with few differences, and still takes advantage of all the features of each architecture. If Apple comes out with a G5 PowerBook, I would almost definitely switch for my next purchase. Not to mention all the upcoming unwelcome changes to the x86 architechture.
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:52 · Score: 0

Wow. You are completely talking out of your ass. Any mods want to slap this troll down?
Re:speed by TomorrowPlusX · 2003-12-23 06:54 · Score: 5, Interesting

Well, I for one am doing robotics & AI simulation on a mac.

In fact, it wasn't until I *left* x86 (linux) that I got a platform where opengl worked well enough that I could write a proper display layer on top of my system, not to mention that my PB g4 was actually cheaper than the pIII thinkpad it replaced and in my tests was significantly ( e.g. more than 3x) faster.

Now, I don't do any audio, and I don't do any video; but my simulation is pretty f*cking heavy on the cycles -- and it rips. I have no complaints.

People who gripe about mac performance just haven't actually *used* one. And they certainly haven't written any code for one.

--

lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:55 · Score: 0

pc's have been faster at photoshop for a while now.....

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/07_jul/fea tures/cw_macvspc2.htm

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/11_nov/rev iews/cw_macvspciii.htm
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 07:13 · Score: 0

Using "br"'s to visually make paragraphs is wrong, because you have no document structure in doing that.

You should use "p"paragraphs"/p" instead.
Re:speed by natelr · 2003-12-23 07:22 · Score: 1

Both of those articles are compleatly outdated. They are comparing G4's not G'5s... big difference.
Re:speed by jafac · 2003-12-23 07:22 · Score: 1

. . . sad, however, how all the serious (prosumer) 3d modeling and rendering software has fled the superior hardware platform in favor of WinTel.

Who, out there, wouldn't like to see an AltiVec enhanced infini-D beat the snot out of a complicated model on a dual 2GHz G5?

Oh well. Maybe Pixar will get on the stick and start porting to OS X. . .

--

These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Re:speed by zpok · 2003-12-23 08:28 · Score: 3, Funny

Oh come on!

Macs are everywhere, turn on the TV, go to the movies.
Now if you want to be a bad guy, buy a PC, but all the good guys and hot chicks use macs.

QED

--
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 08:44 · Score: 0

Tell me this: can I turn off aqua and run something
else? I like the simple grey Win95 look and I
loath the newer XP themes. Can I make my Mac look
at least superficially like Win95?
Re:speed by macthulhu · 2003-12-23 09:40 · Score: 0, Troll

Dear fuckwit AC... Ad hominem... stupid generalizations... anecdotal evidence? How about personal experience in a real world setting? I'm not quoting marketing drone propaganda from the brochures, or laboratory benchmarks, or anti Mac FUD. I use these systems every day. For a living. How about "when you can't come up with an argument, contributing nothing to the discussion and posting as AC works just as well."? Blow me.

--
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
Re:speed by jo_ham · 2003-12-23 09:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

We're a 100% Apple shop running Final Cut Pro 4 and DVD Studio Pro 1.5 and I assure you we need that power.

We upgraded from a DP 450 G4 box (which was no slouch itself) to a DP 2.0GHz G5 recently and we've more than quadrupled our productivity when it comes to big renders, mpeg2 encodes and multiplexing.

I don't know of anyone in our business using x86 for video editing. None seriously anyway.

I know a couple of shops who use x86 boxes as cheap horsepower in render farms - but ultimately controlled by a Mac at the nose end.

We use our DP G4 as a Quake III server for company LAN matches when it's not encoding mpeg2 on a job. I know Q3A isn't exactly a taxing game on today's graphics cards (none of our client machines even break sweat) but you can't beat it for gameplay.
Re:speed by jo_ham · 2003-12-23 10:01 · Score: 1

I had the time to answer because I'm watching my editor friend make a documentary in Final Cut Pro that I finished shooting last week.

On a DP G5 no less.
Re:speed by ITR81 · 2003-12-23 10:47 · Score: 1

Well it's been a big rumor but apparently Apple is looking to buying Discreet or atleast a good portion of it's products. One them included was 3DSMAX. Which means once that happens it would no longer be updated on the PC platform and only would be updated on the Mac side. Why do Macs suck for games? Because you don't have a wide selection or because they just play bad on the Mac? Most games coming out for the Mac now play well and the only limits is due to it's gaming lib. In reality more people probably play on consoles then computer games these days. Also isn't ILM that uses only Macs and SGI machines for all their CGI animations?? Pixar also uses mostly all Macs as well. Most people I know in college go with Macs for their low-cost render machines not a PC.
Re:speed by Saeger · 2003-12-23 11:27 · Score: 1

So lets see some demo video of your sim environment! :)
I love stuff like that.
--

--
Power to the Peaceful
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:45 · Score: 0

You gotta admire people who send you links to WO time limited URLs and tell you their friends are in the movie/TV biz. They're great fun at cocktail parties, and something of a cause celebre too - like fighting to keep the local zoo from closing down.
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:58 · Score: 0

it's a Unix derivative that, for desktop use, is more polished than Linux

DUH... My outhouse floor is more polished than Linux...

But you mean the 'desktop', no? KDE? Gnome? They're horrible. The Linux kernel is fine...
Re:speed by FunkyChild · 2003-12-23 15:52 · Score: 1

Oh well. Maybe Pixar will get on the stick and start porting to OS X. .

You mean like this?
https://renderman.pixar.com/products/news/G5_relea se.html
Re:speed by macthulhu · 2003-12-23 16:03 · Score: 1

So, are you bitches modding me as a troll because I prefer macs, or because I have a job? Seriously. My having real world practical experience with equipment that's relevant to the parent post somehow seems troll-like to you? Whatever.

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Someday a real rain is gonna come...
Re: Speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 17:08 · Score: 0

The 3DS max rumor is complete hogwash (sad to say). I've talked to reps at Discreet and there is no way in hell they would ever sell their flagship product at this point. It would be like Adobe selling Photoshop. Aint gonna happen. They looked at the market a few years back to consider a mac version of 3dsmax and didnt think it would be worth the development costs.

Most large shops use just about every platform to create animations since so many parts of the job have different needs. Pixar may be increasingly using macs for obvious reasons but I seriously doubt thats a 100% true. The RenderMan Artist Tools still havent been ported to OSX.

Using macs for render-machines is just a waste of money and your comment about "low-cost" render machines is silly. Please let me know how much a low-cost mac based render box is. I'm sure I can beat that price.

I'm a die-hard mac fan, its just not where it needs to be in terms of 3D applications and not as many games get ported to it. Don't be such a zealot - the mac can't be #1 in everything. Just because I'm saying you can't use a Mercedes to mow your lawn doesnt mean I'd rather own a mercedes over a lawnmower!!!
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 19:00 · Score: 0

Yes troll, there is an Xfree86.
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 19:30 · Score: 0

You must mean most people trading Paris Hilton WMVs.

How do you know the file is traded in WMV format? I don't download porn, but I do download quite a few movies. Never seen one in WMV format. My guess is you know a little more about that file than you seem to admit.

Anyway, you are a fucking troll. You insult the people who read this site, so fuck you and your shitty job too. When the revolution comes, your mac skills will be useless.

Enjoy your precious job and skills while there is still an economy to support your useless existence. After that, you will die!
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-24 01:13 · Score: 0

Man, you bite!
Re:speed by TomorrowPlusX · 2003-12-24 04:32 · Score: 1

OK
let's hope not too many people look at this or Earthlink'll get PO'd.
Walking-new.mov

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lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
Re:speed by Phroggy · 2003-12-24 05:25 · Score: 1

There are , I am sure, a few that use their Macs for just this, but I would have thought the majority might like to flex the power of iLife

Um, no, the majority of Mac users don't edit and burn their own movies on DVD. It's cool that the option is there, but come on - average people do average things with their Macs.

I do some Perl hacking with BBEdit (text editor of the gods), and I do have a USB MIDI adapter so I can connect a keyboard, but I own neither a DVD burner nor FireWire camera and have no plans of buying either in the near future. I don't use Photoshop; GraphicConverter is fine for what I do.

--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Re:speed by macthulhu · 2003-12-24 06:28 · Score: 1

Aside from my comment about downloading porn in mom's basement, the rest of my original post was simply an observation based on actual experience in the industry that was being discussed in that thread. Since I would never purposely insult the slashdot community, please accept my humble apology for making a joke at the expense of basement-dwelling porn viewers... Since I'm apparently not privvy to the planned "revolution", I can only assume that you must have 133t 5k1llz or better kung fu, or some such thing. Keep me posted on the target date for my death... I'd still like a chance to go skydiving, learn how to use a real computer, and do a little traveling before I'm lined up against the wall. Seriously. From now on, my comments on slashdot will be limited to sidetracking threads by complaining about anyone who might have any insight into the topic. Viva La Revolution!

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Someday a real rain is gonna come...
Re:speed by Saeger · 2003-12-24 06:58 · Score: 1

Interesting, thanks. (vid added to my collection).
Your bot seems to be limited by slow actuators, though. It needs some spring in its step so it can evade predators. :)
Evolutionary optimization fascinates me to no end.
--

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Power to the Peaceful
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-26 16:26 · Score: 0

Oscar-contending movie, Cold Mountain editor gets interviewed. Use Final Cut pro for a very expensive movie:

http://www.apple.com/pro/film/murch/
Re:speed by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-02 07:30 · Score: 0

I'm just a casual reader, I dont have an account, but I must say, you got screwed by the moderators and the other AC's who find it fun to flame you simply because they dont like mac's and live in their parrents basement.
Your post was one of the more informative ones in this thread. Rock on.

(Yay for run-on sentences!)

Xserve G5 leaked by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:09 · Score: -1, Offtopic

I found a site for an OSX based webhosting company that shows what appears to be the long-awaited Xserve G5. What do you all think - the real thing, or just a hoax? What will Steve do?

Re:Xserve G5 leaked by happystink · 2003-12-23 05:10 · Score: 1

I think this doesn't even raise to the level of hoax, I think it's a cheap publicity stunt by the hosting company who then go and post it on slashdot hopign to get some hits. Good try!

--
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.

Sweet by Unregistered · 2003-12-23 05:09 · Score: 4, Interesting

This will also mean they can fit a G5 in a powerbook. Time to start saving up.

Re:Sweet by rupert2000 · 2003-12-23 05:15 · Score: 5, Funny

If you haven't already started saving, its probably too late.
Re:Sweet by tomstdenis · 2003-12-23 05:16 · Score: 1, Insightful

Hell, if you have to "save up" for anything Apple chances are you can't afford it anyways.

Tom

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Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Re:Sweet by tomstdenis · 2003-12-23 05:25 · Score: 1, Flamebait

Whoever modded me insightful is a fucking moron. No shit posted on /. is ever insightful, specially from me. My god you guys live sick fucking lives!!!!!!!!

Now mod the parent down already! He's an idiot!

Tom

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Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Re:Sweet by edalytical · 2003-12-23 05:57 · Score: 1

I once linked to a comic strip as a joke and got modded informative, WTF.
Anyway, I can't afford a Mac, so I'm in debt about $2000. Making payments is kind of the reverse of saving up. So you're right, but the grandparent was more funny than anything.

--
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
Re:Sweet by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 07:23 · Score: 0

Staring to this giant G5 here which is bigger than my previous Task 10 case, testing 9 fans one by one after waking from sleep I really wonder how will that happen.
If they do some real new way of cooling maybe?
If so... Go Apple!
(posted as AC for some freaks modding my NICK down)

Great for consumers by pissoncutler · 2003-12-23 05:09 · Score: 5, Interesting

It's a boon for consumers. Now we have a real choice in architecture (ppc vs. x86) as well as brand (amd, intel, ibm) without sacraficing performance.

Perhaps this will force Intel to to up the ante.

Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:15 · Score: 0

Intel's version of upping the ante is : "Increase the clock speed, that will always make everything run faster...." AMD and IBM are laughing in the background at Intel. Speed isnt everything when it comes to chip design.
Re:Great for consumers by dgrgich · 2003-12-23 05:19 · Score: 1

. . . not to mention lower their prices! I can't believe how much more money I have to pay for an Intel chip than a comparable performing AMD. In discussions I had with a buddy in the industry last year, we both agreed that Apple producing fast systems was going to be the impetus for Intel to start convincingly reclaiming their previous throne.
Re:Great for consumers by tommck · 2003-12-23 05:22 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Except for that whole... pretty much locked into a single OS on ppc (unless using Linux, of course... oh wait... I'm on slashdot...)

--
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:25 · Score: 0

Perhaps this will force Intel to to up the ante.

You mean, tack on another 100MHz to their existing electricity-munching space heaters and throw a few million into adverts that claim the faster processor will whiten your teeth and speed up the intarweb?
Re:Great for consumers by Leffe · 2003-12-23 05:30 · Score: 1

Now we have a real choice in architecture (ppc vs. x86) as well as brand (amd, intel, ibm)

That depends on what consumers we are talking about.

If we are talking about the only ones that really need(want) some kickass performance, the gamers, they will not be interested, there is not support enough for Windows games. Not even Linux, which cured my AIDS, could solve this problem.
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:32 · Score: 0

And how is that different than a machine that runs either Windows or Linux or BSD? At least with the Mac you can emulate x86 and run up to 55 operating systems, as shown recently on /.

Posted anonymously because I don't want to bother finding my password..
Re:Great for consumers by Zelet · 2003-12-23 05:32 · Score: 1

You are locked into a single OS on x86... unless you consider Linux. You, sir, are a dumb-ass.

--
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Re:Great for consumers by DuSTman31 · 2003-12-23 05:35 · Score: 1

Perhaps this will force Intel to up the ante./I>
No, it won't. People who are interested in getting a mac will probably already have one or be getting one soon. People with Intel PCs are probably staying with Intel PCs. I think the market divisions are strong enough that Intel doesn't need to worry about this too much.
Re:Great for consumers by DiscoOnTheSide · 2003-12-23 05:37 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yes, but look at it this way. Would you rather be locked into Windows and Linux (and if Paladium goes thru, just Windows) or would you rather have Mac OS X (a UNIX derivative as it is, that lets you run XWindow apps alongside apps like Photoshop and Dreamweaver) and Linux (with no Paladium crap in sight)?

--
Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
Re:Great for consumers by ThrasherTT · 2003-12-23 05:37 · Score: 1

And you, sir, should think before you berate someone...

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All Your Memory Are Belong To Java
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:44 · Score: 1, Interesting

...Or BSD. Or Darwin. Or BeOS. Or.. Jeeze, exactly what choices do you have on x86 that you want on PPC? Windows and Solaris? No thanks...
Re:Great for consumers by cpeterso · 2003-12-23 05:50 · Score: 2, Informative

Since no one gets my username, I must educate the world] Dave Cutler, NT 1.0's chief architect (and a rabid unix hater

btw, there was no NT 1.0. The first version of NT was NT 3.1, magically version-synced with Windows 3.1.

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cpeterso
Re:Great for consumers by Cajun+Hell · 2003-12-23 05:54 · Score: 1

Now we have a real choice in architecture (ppc vs. x86)
You're out of date. The real choice, now, is between PPC and x86-64. It's IBM vs AMD. Intel (and their obsolete IA32 (a.k.a. x86) and IA64 (Itanium)) are on the sidelines, rapidly fading into irrelevance.
Buy yeah, it's good news. Computers were exciting 15 years ago. 5 to 10 years ago, they were boring. Now it's starting to get a little exciting again. The dark ages (1990s) have come to an end.

--
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Re:Great for consumers by PygmySurfer · 2003-12-23 06:09 · Score: 1

No, it won't. People who are interested in getting a mac will probably already have one or be getting one soon. People with Intel PCs are probably staying with Intel PCs. I think the market divisions are strong enough that Intel doesn't need to worry about this too much.

That's funny. I used to use Windows, then I bought a Mac. Obviously, SOME people aren't staying with Intel PCs.
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:10 · Score: 0

you're giving me a booner...
Re:Great for consumers by Lussarn · 2003-12-23 06:13 · Score: 1

As it stands today many (if not all) closed source Linux software require x86. That makes x86 quite a bit more attractive than PPC.
Re:Great for consumers by shaitand · 2003-12-23 06:22 · Score: 1

Solaris is great and all, but I seriously doubt you'll find many who are willing to call it an x86 OS.
Re:Great for consumers by shaitand · 2003-12-23 06:24 · Score: 1

Yeah, but pretty much all the interesting linux stuff is open source not closed.

There are like what, 3 closed source applications that could be useful to more than 3 people that are natively designed for linux?

Not to say that the open source stuff doesn't meet or beat the closed windows equivelents, just the opposite. But there isn't at present a whole lot of interesting closed stuff. Unless you count games.
Re:Great for consumers by ThrasherTT · 2003-12-23 06:47 · Score: 1

Solaris is great and all

Since when? :-p

The point was that you were giving someone shit about being locked into a particular OS or two when purchasing x86 hardware. Just like with any reasonable architecture, you have more choices than most people think. Of course, the possibilities have differing levels of support and usefulness, but if you're talking about such things, you're basically locked into 3-4 OSes regardless of your architecture, anyway!

--

All Your Memory Are Belong To Java
Re:Great for consumers by BorgCopyeditor · 2003-12-23 06:49 · Score: 1

pretty much locked into a single OS on ppc
Perhaps IHBT, but there's always NetBSD. :)

--
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Re:Great for consumers by dryeo · 2003-12-23 06:54 · Score: 2, Informative

btw, there was no NT 1.0. The first version of NT was NT 3.1, magically version-synced with Windows 3.1.

It went like this
MS + IBM OS/2 ver 1.x
IBM OS/2 ver 2.x (my OS/2 ver 4.5 internally reports ver 2.45 as ver 3 was)
MS OS/2 NT ver 3
Windows NT ver 3.1

--
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Re:Great for consumers by tommck · 2003-12-23 06:54 · Score: 1

ummm...

Solaris?
*BSD?
BeOS/x86? ...

You sir are an ignoramus.

--
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Re:Great for consumers by tommck · 2003-12-23 06:57 · Score: 1

If I were to run Linux, I'd much rather the uber-abundant and cheaper x86 architecture hardware, thank you very much.

--
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Re:Great for consumers by the_2nd_coming · 2003-12-23 06:58 · Score: 1

umm, if you think that even 1% of the computer buying public care about alternative OSs then you are a dumbass.

--

I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Re:Great for consumers by shaitand · 2003-12-23 07:00 · Score: 0, Flamebait

I think you need to reread the thread. I wasn't claiming you were locked into any number of OS with any architeture. I merely stated that Solaris on x86 doesn't really count as an x86 OS, since it doesn't run any actual x86 hardware ;)

As for the OS lockdown, it comes down to this. The mac is closed up tighter than a drum and Apple does absolutely EVERYTHING they can to keep competitors out of their niche. They are far more aggressive about doing so than Microsoft.

If the Mac rather than x86 pc became the defacto system, apple wouldn't have to arrange agreements with anyone to suddenly kill off all other operating systems. They could nuke or alter the bios at will on all apple systems entirely by their own choice.

There would be no "if we can get a large enough marketshare in time". 90% of all apple computers out there could be running linux and it wouldn't stop or derail the change to eliminate linux from their systems.
Re:Great for consumers by the+morgawr · 2003-12-23 07:14 · Score: 4, Informative

ummm, hate to rain on your parade but apple uses industry standards in newer boards: OpenFirmware, USB, Hypertransport. To do what you are suggesting would mean dropping standards compliance, something that runs counter to their profit model.

--
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 07:19 · Score: 0

Same here! I *was* a windows user, till I met OSX. In my computer using lifetime I *purchased*:

1979-1991:
1 IBM DOS
1 MS DOS
1 MS DOS/Windows 3.1 (pre installed)

1992-1996:
1 IBM OS/2 Warp (without Windows)

1997-2001:
1 Windows 98 (pre installed)

2001-2003:
1 OSX 10.0
1 OSX 10.1 (update)
1 OSX 10.1 (pre installed)
1 family pack OSX 10.2
1 OSX 10.2 (pre installed)
1 family pack OSX 10.3

Also in the early days I purchased a TRS-80 ColorComputer 2, don't know if the "OS" was included in that price or not...

This is the list of things I have paid my $$ for. I have bought the OSX versions, and I AM HAPPY ABOUT IT. I feel I have gotten more $$$ worth out of my OSX than any other OS except IBM OS/2 Warp (which was way too short lived, but MUCH better than Windows 95 IMO).
Re:Great for consumers by WhiteWolf666 · 2003-12-23 07:20 · Score: 2, Interesting

To be honest, I'm not sure that you aren't out of date, either......

PPC simply isn't a real choice for many.

Apple could not ramp up to 10% marketshare, not anytime soon.......

I mean, they could not physically ship that many systems, nor adequately support them.

Beyond that, if they did have the infrastructure, it would lead to a holy price war from the x86 players like you would not believe (watch Dell literally give machines away).

x86-64 looks like it will be the mainstream future--eventually, Yamhill will come to fruition, and Intel will start shipping x86-64 processors.

I'd build a PPC system if I could get the parts at a reasonable price, just like I would try out OS X on my x86-64 box, if such a thing was possible.

But neither of these things is in the forseeable future.

What I would like to see is generic PPC boxes going out the door----

They don't have to be able to run OS X---linux or a BSD will do just fine----

I'd totally grab one of those to play with, and perhaps to serve stuff with.....Don't know that it would be cheaper, but I like my server boxen to have crazy pedigree....

--
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 07:26 · Score: 0

Actually, yes I would rather be locked into Linux, rather than giving money to a tool like Steve Jobs.

Aside from that though, I much prefer being able to buy parts and build the machine myself, than buying a locked box made by any single company. Anyway, x86 hardware is much cheaper, and everything I've read shows that the performance in many cases is superior or equal, and is always far cheaper (on a speed/dollars basis).
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 07:27 · Score: 0

You, sir, are silly.

Apple is not in the business of denying its developers access to hardware specs. Yes, it has happened in the past, but it seems more a function of red-tape than a function of vendor lock-in.

Now, as far as your inane trite about BIOS and what not, you do not understand anything about the Mac platform. All Apple machines ship with a Firmware defined by an open standard. This would be the Open Firmware. There is no more 'proprietary Apple BIOS,' that lock-in died around Mac OS 8.

Moreover, Apple machines have been using off-the-shelf components for RAM, hard drive, CD, video card, etc etc etc for long enough that the whole 'Apple = Proprietary' line shouldn't exist.

Linux is on the PPC arch and driver support for Apple-specific parts is all over it. Apple-specific NIC's, sound cards, it's all in there. Sure, the new Powerbook model that started shipping a scant few days ago doesn't work quite yet, but believe me, people are working on it.

And don't think it's just Linux. The BSD's are there, too.

Now, say what you want about Apple's methods. They exist simply to keep selling Apple hardware, by influencing people to use Apple software. But to call it 'closed up tighter than a drum' is just plain idiocy. Apple doesn't give two flying shits what you do with your Mac after you buy it, because you already paid them for the hardware and the software on the box.
Re:Great for consumers by Yoda's+Mum · 2003-12-23 07:29 · Score: 3, Informative

No, it didn't. OS/2 and NT are completely different products with a completely different code-base. As the parent said, Windows NT 3.1 was version-synced to fit with Windows 3.1. OS/2 was never called "OS/2 NT", and still had releases after OS/2 3.0.
Re:Great for consumers by Yoda's+Mum · 2003-12-23 07:34 · Score: 2, Insightful

IA32 may be obsolete, but the majority of software is still designed for it, and for many tasks it is still quite sufficient - The needs of the average desktop word Processing and web browsing system were reached years ago. That's not to say x86-64 isn't far better - it is, and the sooner it's implemented by intel, the better (I don't want an AMD monopoly, the same as I don't want an intel one). But as long as the majority of software is written for x86-32, it will still be a perfectly suitable architecture for most people's needs.
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 07:42 · Score: 0

Intel have been sampling their 90nm parts to various OEMs around the world for about six months now. Believe me, they're about to up the ante. See this website if you want to learn a bit more about the 90nm Pentium 4.
Re:Great for consumers by Zelet · 2003-12-23 07:55 · Score: 1

Besides Solaris - all those are also available for PPC.

But we also have Darwin.

--
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 08:11 · Score: 0

You seem to equate PPC to Apple as far as market share is concerned.

PPC is MUCH more than Apple. PPC is everywhere (cars, printers, instrumentation, desktop, portable and server computers, HDTV, games consoles etc).

Rumours currently claim that both Microsoft and Sony might use PPC based hardware in their next games consoles (Nintendo already does).
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 08:18 · Score: 0

My company has 50 G3/G4/G5's and they are all being changed to windows/Linux Intel PC's servers. Their poor performance and impossible to trouble shoot hardware and software is worthless to anyone who needs them to work 24/7/365. Apple is a lot more EVIL then Microsoft. Apple has all the Microsoft characteristics of closed source and buy out and destroy instead of innovate and compete. As well as for an added bonus they have closed source hardware. Just go to newegg or any of the billion other online hardware stores and build yourself a "white box" G4 or G5. Is there a page full of mobo makers? Are there cases you can buy? What about CPU's? The newest video card?

NO! It's all controlled by the all knowing all powerful apple stores. How is this good for anyone? And why would be proud of going with them? Are you communists? If you are its ok to be one just don't try to sell it as something else.
Re:Great for consumers by cosmo7 · 2003-12-23 09:11 · Score: 1

If you're going to troll, at least make an effort to hide the hook.
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 09:44 · Score: 0

Actually, the first version of NT to sell in shops was NT 3.1, but developers could obtain an NT 1.0, which ran, amongst other platforms, on the Intel i860 processor (not a typo).
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 09:50 · Score: 0

Oh, I thought you were pissing on the other cutler; the one who defended infamous mafia dons.
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 10:19 · Score: 0

yeah. I mean...who uses oracle?
Re:Great for consumers by stingerman101 · 2003-12-23 10:42 · Score: 1

That's not true, though I currently prefer the PPC 970, Intel has done on amazing job keeping such an old technology running as fast as it is. They implemented a new math unit, SSE2 (which by the way can SIMD of 2 double precision FP data, something not possible on the PPC SIMD till the 970's FP2 unit which can not only operate on two double precision data items but also perform multiple operations in one instruction cycle.) They also doubled the core speed of the integer unit (a 3GHz P4 actually has a 6GHz integer unit). Still the 970 is a new generation design while Intel has been wrestling with the legacy beast for some time. This year Intel started losing the battle, IMO, and I hope they have some surprise in their pipeline. Itanium 2 just "aint" cutting it.
Re:Great for consumers by stingerman101 · 2003-12-23 10:49 · Score: 1

Cheaper? You can get a powerful eMac g4 with a 17" flat display and combo-drive unit not to mention a Radeon AGP card, Firewire, USB2, Bluetooth and Wireless ready, etc for as low as 749. And, an uncrippled, well integrated OS X with a slew of OpenSource Apps built in not to mention the proprietary and awesome iLife and as well as Appleworks. A cheaper PC isn't less expensive, it is just cheaper components and cheaper quality wise with crippled software.
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 10:49 · Score: 0

More to the point, Apple doesn't give a fig leaf what OS you run. They make money on hardware, not software sales. If people want to groan again about OS Tax for Mac OS X, all I can tell you is that Apple will ALWAYS make more money from hardware than software. Even if they get 90% market share, because they make an absolute mint on the boxes they'd have to sell and give the OS away with it. Or you could think of it as they force you to buy the OS anyways. In either case, its the hardware they want to sell and they really don't care what you do with it.
Re:Great for consumers by stingerman101 · 2003-12-23 10:54 · Score: 1

I agree on OS/2 Warp. It was an awesome OS. Too bad IBM had their hands tied by the antitrust restrictions imposed on them in the late 70s and 80s. Kind of funny that without Steve Jobs at Apple, the only other force that could have counteracted Microsofts illegal distribution tactics had their own hands tied by the very same antitrust laws that they needed to protect the industry.
Re:Great for consumers by drsmithy · 2003-12-23 10:54 · Score: 1

No, it didn't. OS/2 and NT are completely different products with a completely different code-base. As the parent said, Windows NT 3.1 was version-synced to fit with Windows 3.1. OS/2 was never called "OS/2 NT", and still had releases after OS/2 3.0.
While today's OS/2 and NT are completely different code bases, NT was originally supposed to be the (new from scratch) successor to OS/2 - it was originally named OS/2 NT. It was renamed after the big IBM-Microsoft split.
Re:Great for consumers by stingerman101 · 2003-12-23 10:59 · Score: 2, Insightful

Marketshare is not what it used to be as an indicator of influence. Type of user may be more important as far as influencing technology. A lot of the exciting stuff is happening in the Multimedia and OpenSource world. In both these worlds Apple has gained a huge mindshare and marketshare. Go to any technology conference and half the people are walking around with Powerbooks. Look at these threads, you would get the impression that more than half the users on Slashdot owned a Mac.
Re:Great for consumers by stingerman101 · 2003-12-23 11:09 · Score: 1

"majority of software." That is such a general statement that it always fails. Consider this, you can run the majority of XP, x86, software on a Mac through VirtualPC, you can run almost all the Opensource software on a Mac, you can run almost all the OS 9 and previous software on a Mac and you can run all the OS X software on a Mac.

So which system runs the majority of software? The Mac. I am running Win2KPro and VS.NET 2003 at the same time I am typing this on Safari and running 5 other OS X Apps (Mail, Calendar, iChat AV, Konfabulator, iTunes) and have three Finder windows (Panther) open all at the same time. I'm doing it all on a 500MHz PM G4 with 512MB of RAM, ATI8500 and my system isn't skipping a beat. It's pretty snappy actually. If I add another 512MB, my VPC will double in speed (I already tested it).

Pretty awesome for a 4 and 1/2 year old computer.
Re:Great for consumers by shaitand · 2003-12-23 11:32 · Score: 1

You forget, every piece of software you purchase from them yields 95% profit. Granted they have very very hefty markup on the hardware as well, but that doesn't mean they are prepared to toss the software profits in the trash.
Re:Great for consumers by shaitand · 2003-12-23 11:36 · Score: 1

less than a fraction of 1% of linux users. And recent code inspections have shown the open source sql db's to be cleaner implementations. The only reason people use oracle anymore is that they don't have the balls to use the open source solutions where they are using oracle. Not because the open source implementations would work.
Re:Great for consumers by shaitand · 2003-12-23 11:47 · Score: 1

"dropping standards compliance, something that runs counter to their profit model"

Yes, until/unless they achieve market dominance. Then they no longer have any reason to care about open standards. They will define their own standards.

Apple does NOT care you, they aren't interested in being nice to you. They have no feelings or obligation or morals in regard to how they treat you. They are just as happy to throw you in a ditch and piss on you as they are to open their standards.

Apple exists for one reason, to make money, without regard to people, morals or consequences. If they have the have the market dominance to get away with doing something that will increase their profits. They'll do it, no matter how many people it fucks over. No different than any other corporation.
Re:Great for consumers by SnowZero · 2003-12-23 13:57 · Score: 1

Right now Apple is being pretty open, but the grandparent's point (I think) is that they have enough control over the hardware to change that at any point. Why do you need standards compliance when you control the hardware and the OS? You don't. Compliance also does not mean open; Sorenson encoded video is an industry standard, yet no Linux player can legally play it. (Yes I know you can play them, but that's in a really gray area wrt EULAs) All Apple has to do is start charging license fees to access the BIOS or some other key component, and Linux will die.
(-1: Anti-Mac, +1: Linux Paranoia, Total: 0)
Re:Great for consumers by mhbtr · 2003-12-23 16:25 · Score: 1

No you cannot. The eMac does not have USB 2.0. The eMac is as "Ready" as any computer for Bluetooth - it has no internal antenna or bluetooth option other than a USB Bluetooth option. Not that I don't think the eMac is a good deal, but you should not spew nonsense... Eytan
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 19:26 · Score: 0

Wow, I love the rhetoric.

If they are a corporation, the only thing they could possibly be interested in is gouging you.

You know, heaven fucking forbid they actually figure out that satisfied customers return out of loyalty. Oh, wait, that's Apple. That's why there are Mac Zealots, because they were once satisfied and became loyal. Apple has enough market dominance. They want to be special. They don't WANT to be Microsoft. They don't WANT to be Dell.

Still, I have to grin at your black and white view on corporatism and capitalism. Don't worry, we're all out here to steal your job, your way of life, your home, your standard of living and everything else. Just to make a buck.

Oh, and then we'll sell you for your organs. And sell your children into slavery. To make a buck.
Re:Great for consumers by Lussarn · 2003-12-23 22:21 · Score: 1

On my box I have Enemy territory, Unreal Tournament, UT2003, Q3, Diablo2, winex and probably some more closed source. Yes, I like those games and I need them.
Re:Great for consumers by Bert64 · 2003-12-23 23:21 · Score: 1

Solaris 2.5.1 was also available for PPC, but sun dropped support for it after that 1 version, it would be nice to get a copy and a machine to run it on tho... So anyone selling one, feel free to reply

--
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Re:Great for consumers by Bert64 · 2003-12-23 23:35 · Score: 1

But, atleast if you buy a quality pre-assembled system, care will have been taken towards build quality and airflow within the case, not so with a collection of parts, unless you want to spend all week looking through different combinations of cases , fans and motherboards to find one where the air flows properly and the cpu isnt stuck in a hot poorly ventilated corner with a small fan recirculating the hot air back onto it, or with components sitting above the fan and restricting airflow..
I HATE fans that just blow down onto the cpu, i would much prefer a flow of air in the front, over the cpu and out the back.. i dont want some little fan recirculating the hot air back onto the cpu..

--
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Re:Great for consumers by Snuden · 2003-12-24 01:32 · Score: 1

What I would like to see is generic PPC boxes going out the door----

How about these here:AmigaOne

These are fullsize ATX PowerPC G3/G4 motherboards capable of running Linux.

--
When you do things right, people won't be sure if you've done anything at all.
Re:Great for consumers by tommck · 2003-12-24 05:14 · Score: 1

You are such an intellectual person, I'm not sure how to respond.

My post was in response to a post stating "Now we have a real choice in architecture...". The people who care about a choice in arhitecture are most likely people who understand and care about choice in Operating System. Exactly what percentage would you guess cares about a choice in architecture, genius?

So, your post is actually out of context and you need to read a bit more before spouting such silly rhetoric.

--
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Re:Great for consumers by tommck · 2003-12-24 05:16 · Score: 0, Flamebait

I appreciate the info. Though I still wish that the hardware on macs didn't cost so much. I was impressed and psyched when Mac OS X came out, but I am not buying a Mac just to run it. I like the OS though(need a 2-button mouse though, is that available now?)

T

--
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Re:Great for consumers by Zelet · 2003-12-24 05:22 · Score: 0

If you do some research you will realize that 2 button mice have been available for years. Just because Macs don't ship with one doesn't mean it doesn't work. ANY USB MOUSE WILL WORK ON A MAC! Christ!

Secondly, if you do some research you will see that Apple laptops are cheaper or the same price as equitable x86 laptops.

--
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Re:Great for consumers by tommck · 2003-12-24 05:26 · Score: 1

From Apple's store for $799.00
17" CRT monitor
1GHz PowerPC G4
128MB SDRAM
40GB Ultra ATA drive
Combo drive

Ooooohh... a 1 GHz eMac! wow! Blow me away with the Stats!!

From Dell for $698:
17" LCD monitor
2.4GHz Pentium 4
128MB SDRAM
40GB Ultra ATA drive
48X CDRom
48X CD-RW

It's $100 cheaper and it's from Dell!
I could build this for even less!

stingerman101 == rhetoric and religion
tommck == facts

--
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Re:Great for consumers by tommck · 2003-12-24 05:34 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Hey butt nugget... I asked the friggin question, because I didn't know and I knew some asswipe like yourself would be glad to offer up the answer along with much flame and ignorance.

Apple:
$1,499

iBook 1GHz/14.1XGA/256SD/60GB/Combo/E/56K
1 GHz PPC
14.1" XGA
256MB DDR266 (128MB built-in & 128MB SO-DIMM)
60GB Ultra ATA drive
Combo Drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)

Dell:
$1,361
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4, 2.66GHz,
15.0 XGA
60GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive
512MB 266MHz 2 DIMM
24X CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive

Oh yeah... MUCH cheaper!

--
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Re:Great for consumers by shaitand · 2003-12-24 05:51 · Score: 1

winex isn't closed source, some of those games aren't even closed source. Commercial and closed source aren't the same thing. Data files aren't source code. If the game engine is open source and the data files aren't free, that doesn't make a game closed source.

And as I said, unless you count games ;) I was really refering to applications, games are never NEEDED. Rather they are a mindless way to waste your life away. Moreso even than TV, which could actually contain content that provides knowledge.
Re:Great for consumers by Zelet · 2003-12-24 06:03 · Score: 1

How much does that weigh? What about LCD quality? What if you compare a quality laptop like IBM or Sony to an Apple? I'll give you the ram but the processor difference isn't as big as it looks. I use an AMD 2500+ (Barton Core) and a 1Ghz G4 Powerbook and I have to tell you there isn't a speed difference that I can tell by using the machines. I'm sure if you benchmark the two the AMD proc will come out ahead.

I'm sorry to flame you - I really do apologize but I hear the "one button mouse" thing about a hundred times a day where I work and it starts to get really irritating.

$1,849 (1,549 with a $300 mail in rebate)

Inspiron 300m Pentium M 1.20GHz with 12.1 in XGA Display
384MB DDR, 266MHz
30GB2 Ultra ATA Hard Drive
24X CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive

--
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Re:Great for consumers by JDWTopGuy · 2003-12-24 06:33 · Score: 1

And that Dell will be worth its weight in spyware, adware, worms, etc.. Mostly because that's what it'll be loaded with after about a month (week?) of regular use by a non-geek.

The mac will endure the same month of regular use without getting a bunch of shit all over it.

A secure computer out of the box: Priceless.

(Yes, I'm in a trollish mood. So are you.)

--
Ron Paul 2012
Re:Great for consumers by JDWTopGuy · 2003-12-24 06:42 · Score: 1

I just had a personal experience with this. I haven't bought a new Intel-based computer since '96. When I build a PC, I use AMD. When I buy a system, I get a mac.

My aunt was going to buy three HP notebooks. I told her how the iBook was competetively priced and wouldn't get gummed up with spyware, adware, viruses, worms, etc. She just bought three iBooks, and I bet their next desktop will be a mac too, especially considering their "luck" with PCs.

So yes, Intel/MS does have something to worry about, because IMNSHO the "critical mass" for any other OS is about 25% market share. Sure, that's five times the current mac market share, but they're gaining.

--
Ron Paul 2012
Re:Great for consumers by JamieF · 2003-12-25 13:49 · Score: 1

>The only reason people use oracle anymore is that they don't have the balls to use the open source solutions where they are using oracle.

Or, because the current crop of open source DBs, pretty code notwithstanding, are demonstrably inferior in high-end scenarios to expensive closed-source products such as Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server.

Oh wait, I forgot, open source magically confers technical superiority over mature closed-source products that incorporate tens/hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of engineering investment and refinement. Never mind that bit about real world results.
Re:Great for consumers by shaitand · 2003-12-26 06:15 · Score: 1

"Oh wait, I forgot, open source magically confers technical superiority over mature closed-source products that incorporate tens/hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of engineering investment and refinement. Never mind that bit about real world results."

You realize that open source development encompasses literally MILLIONS of programmers and if the labor weren't free (and much of it IS commercially paid for) would constitute BILLIONS of dollars in investment? A sum oracle couldn't dream of paying out for coders.

Oracle and DB2 you at least can make an argument for, since they do scale to high end (whether or not they scale better to high end is a seperate issue). MS SQL Server however definately does not, if your claiming otherwise you've already admitted to ignorance of the subject your trying to debate.

Like any database MySQL needs to be tuned the system needs tuned and configuration needs tuned. An Oracle guru setting up MySQL in a high or even low volume environment IS NOT going to see better performance than he would with Oracle. However a MySQL guru setting up mysql on a platform he's familiar with is another story entirely.

The real reason is the admins are either oracle or db2 admins and arent going to fire themselves to be replaced by a mysql guru. And they also aren't going to put their balls in a vice grip ready to crush if the database hiccups. Mysql setup by a qualified administrator hasn't failed to scale in any environment it's been put in. I don't know what world you live in, but in my world you don't get better than never failed to perform.

If oracle and db2 never fail to perform, and mysql never fails to perform, calling one more solid than another is ridiculous. The difference is merely that with Oracle or DB2 you have the vendor to blame if there is a problem, you have accountability (e.g. the magical ability to shift your fuckups on someone else) whereas with mysql if it has a problem your the end of the chain in shift blame department.
Re:Great for consumers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-26 20:40 · Score: 0

Yeah, especially in portable equipment BIGGER IS ALWAYS BETTER!
Re:Great for consumers by pyite · 2003-12-28 16:11 · Score: 1

This summer, I found myself deciding between an IBM T series notebook and a Powerbook. The T series is nice. Relatively thin, metal, well made, etc. The Powerbook is thinner, metal, bigger screen, etc. When I spec'd the IBM similar to the Powerbook, the Powerbook was not that much more expensive. Also, the Powerbook has a bigger screen AND is thinner still AND had DVD-R available, whereas the IBM has/had (not sure of the DVD+/-R availability at the moment) none of those. I bought the Powerbook, I love it. I will never buy a cheap laptop again, it's not worth it. I have an HP from a few years ago. In its time, one speaker ceased to function, the motherboard fried (replaced under warranty), a hard drive might/might not have been bad (replaced under warranty before finally replacing the motherboard), the charging system completely failed to function (yes, I replaced the battery), one of the hinges tore the aluminum frame apart, so the screen would not stay up on its own, and last, but not least, the system will not boot at all, presumably due to a failure of the system to regulate its temperature anymore. On the other hand, I have an old ThinkPad from 1997 that, while thick as a dictionary, still runs absolutely fine, original battery and all. Dell laptops are horrible as well. My friend has one that reboots randomly very often. Every one we have at work has some problems (like random keys not working).

--
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Re:Great for consumers by tommck · 2003-12-29 02:49 · Score: 1

Well, as far as prices are concerned, IBM is about as high-priced a laptop you can get. I have different experiences than you with HP laptops though. I have an HP Pavilion N5190 that I even ran over with my car! It's still working fine after 3 1/2 years of ownership. It's always been a solid laptop for me.
For me, the choice between premium and cheaper hardware is a big plus for the PC. I can build a complete bargain machine tailored to my planned usage for it. For instance, I have one machine at my house that just plays MP3 files out of multiple sound cards. I would never have spent the $$$ to buy a mac for that. The flexibility of building my own stuff is of seriously great value to me.

--
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.

So slow..... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:10 · Score: -1, Flamebait

A mid-step between the current systems, which top out with two chips running at 2 Ghz, and systems with chips as fast as 2.6 GHz would be a logical move come January..."

Macs are so slow.... Real PC chips (not PowerPC chips which don't even run on PC's) have been sold that run at faster speeds for quite some time now.

Re:So slow..... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:05 · Score: 0

.....which is why the Big Mac super computer is the 3rd fastest in the world for a tiny fraction of the price Intel based super computers cost to build!

SEEMS LIKE A GOATSE LINK TO ME! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:11 · Score: -1, Troll

fagit ^^

That's Process size by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:12 · Score: 1, Funny

You'd need an iMagnifying Glass to see a whole processor that small.

Re:That's Process size by Kenja · 2003-12-23 05:19 · Score: 3, Funny

The iMagnifying glass will be available for purchase from the Apple stor in 4Q 2004. It will have a retail cost of $99.95 which is mostly due to "Apple Engineering" costs. Sales are expected to be brisk despite that fact that a standard magnifying glass only costs $9.

--

"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"

Listen... by blackmonday · 2003-12-23 05:14 · Score: -1, Troll

I don't know about buying one of those, I heard the clock batteries go bad after a while.

PPC chips? by ed.han · 2003-12-23 05:14 · Score: 0

obligatory battletech comment...

will future iterations be named "gauss rifle" or "MRMs"?

ed

Re:PPC chips? by mekkab · 2003-12-23 05:24 · Score: 1

that was funny in 1994...

wait, no it wasn't!

--
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.

A small milestone by Otter · 2003-12-23 05:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

A compiler is a tool that converts high-level programming languages into the machine language specific to the chip itself. Currently programmers use an open-source compiler called gcc. An IBM compiler tailored to the PowerPC chips is already in the beta-testing phase, Glaskowsky says.

One thing that caught my eye is that the term "open-source" is used without any explanation, presumably because readers are expected to know what it means. It's a relatively technical article for Forbes, but they did provide a definition for "compiler".

Is there a name for this IBM compiler? Is there any word as to Apple's long-term plans for it versus gcc?

--
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...

Re:A small milestone by Mr+Pippin · 2003-12-23 05:38 · Score: 1

Yes, it is IBM's VisualAge compiler

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/vacpp/fea tures/vacpp-mac.html
Re:A small milestone by stevesliva · 2003-12-23 05:41 · Score: 4, Informative

IBM's PPC compiler is XLC.

--
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Re:A small milestone by sketerpot · 2003-12-23 06:18 · Score: 1

Yes, it's caught my eye several times when I see "open source" mentioned in an offhand and vaguely approving way in the addmittedly more technical Scientific American.
Smile and be happy.

Re:You know a women didn't come up with this idea. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:14 · Score: -1, Troll

It should be modded funny you fucking stupid bird brain morons.

Did yo mama drop you on the head when you was born?

Manage... by rice_burners_suck · 2003-12-23 05:14 · Score: 3, Interesting

Apple concentrates on innovation all the time, which means that the moment they're done innovating a particular product, it's out the door and they've forgotten it in their move to the next thing.

I think that if Apple would invest only a little bit more in managing their current products, they would be much more successful, and would therefore have more resources with which to innovate.

Think of it this way: Why is it that Apple has, what, 2% of the market, when Dell, which doesn't innovate at all in its product, has a huge chunk of the market? Dell does nothing but manage.

I'm saying all of these things because Apple's product is very promising, and I would be very happy if they would gain a larger chunk of the market, so that more people would use Apple computers, so that more software would be released for them, so that more hardware options would become available for them, and basically so that the computer world, as regular folks see it, won't be the monotonous Wintel platform...

Of course, I want to see my favorite OS (BSD) getting a big boost.

Re:Manage... by Mr+Pippin · 2003-12-23 05:42 · Score: 1

All that really demonstrates is the Personal Computer market has become a commodity market.
Re:Manage... by forevermore · 2003-12-23 05:43 · Score: 1

Why is it that Apple has, what, 2% of the market, when Dell, which doesn't innovate at all in its product, has a huge chunk of the market?
Could it possibly be because Dell doesn't have to compete with Microsoft? People have always been afraid to switch to MacOS because it's "incompatible" with the rest of the (business) world. OSX is changing this by including tools like samba, but it's a slow battle.

--
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
Re:Manage... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:44 · Score: 0

Why is it that Apple has, what, 2% of the market, when Dell, which doesn't innovate at all in its product, has a huge chunk of the market?

Because of a string of bad Apple CEOs and monopolistic actions by Microsoft-- but mostly just because the vast majority of people are short-term thinking, cheap fucking bastards who don't value their time. They'd rather plunk down $300 now on a Winshit box and spend their time trying to keep it running for 2 years, instead of paying more for a Mac, barely having to think about security holes or malware or 'worked-yesterday-not-working-today' type stuff, and getting at least 5 years out of it.

The last Mac I bought new, a beige Power Mac lasted me 6 years as my primary workstation. Right now I've got a used G4 that is capable enough to run OS X and was never meant to be more than a placeholder until the G5s came out. The next Mac I buy new will be the top of the line model of the next G5 revision-- and I fully expect it to last me until the 2009-2010 timeframe.
Re:Manage... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:47 · Score: 0

Two things. First:

Nobody cares about market share.

And second:

Nobody cares about market share.

Consider Apple's recent performance. Out of the past twenty-four quarters, Apple has posted a profit for twenty-two of them. One of the two remaining quarters was so close to being a break-even quarter that you might as well count it that way.

Apple has made its shareholders and customers very happy. That's the only criterion for corporate success.

Which brings me to my third and final point:

Nobody cares about market share.
Re:Manage... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:49 · Score: 2, Interesting

1996: 3.96 million Macintoshes shipped; 72.20 million total personal computers shipped.

1999: 3.45 million Macintoshes shipped; 112.70 million total personal computers shipped.

2002: 3.10 million Macintoshes shipped; 132.00 million total personal computers shipped.

Jobs rejoined Apple in 1997. Macintosh annual unit sales are down 22% from the year before he came back while the overall market is up 83%. And yet Macheads have yet to call for his removal in favor of somebody like John Sculley. Sculley was, after all, the only Apple leader in history who was able to consistently increase Mac sales in the consistenlty growing computer market.

Sure, under Jobs, Apple is adequately profitable. But its future is selling iPods to Windows users, because under Jobs the Macintosh platform is dying.
Re:Manage... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:18 · Score: 0

Thank your lucky spirit you posted AC. The Mac zealots would terminate your account if you didn't.
Re:Manage... by benedict · 2003-12-23 06:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

"post hoc ergo propter hoc"

--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Re:Manage... by aldoman · 2003-12-23 06:55 · Score: 1

Well, that's if you look at it from a pure unit point of view. Look at it from a revenue point of view and you will see that Apple is doing much better - the revenue of PCs slips and slips per unit while Apple keeps it pretty much the same.

Also, you've gotta realize that in this time they have made 2 huge changes - a _brand new_ OS, which is completely different to anything else they have done, and also getting rid of motorola.

Motorola held Apple back far more than any CEO did. I think we will see this trend reversed as the people who went over to x86 for the performance (which is totally valid) will start coming back. Especially with Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio. They are excellent applications and surpass anything Adobe or other companies do in that market.

--
IntechHosting - Free domain, 2GB, PHP, £4.95/$8.95
Re:Manage... by foniksonik · 2003-12-23 06:58 · Score: 1

As a Machead, what do I care if Apple sells *more* machines? The shareholders maybe should be a little pissed or at least concerned... but as a User of the technology I have absolutely nothing to complain about, what Jobs has let slip in sales he has more than made up for in innovation, bringing me and my peers argueably the best OS and Hardware available to anyone.

We've nothing to complain about and everything to be excited about.

--
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Re:Manage... by matt-fu · 2003-12-23 07:41 · Score: 1

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Re:Manage... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 07:47 · Score: 0

Even more proof that Mac's are overpriced. I can build a Linux x86 machine for about half of what Apple charges for a machine of similar speed.

Also, if Motorolla was so awful to Apple, why did Apple stick to them? Because of the CEO's decisions, that's why. A good CEO would have found a new CPU provider (or switched to IBM years ago). That's entirely Apple's fault.

And do you think everyone cares about your precious video applications? I sure as hell don't, nor does anybody else I know. Most people aren't creative, and couldn't care less about video editing.
Re:Manage... by gobbo · 2003-12-23 09:58 · Score: 1

This is trollish, but I'll bite.

"I can build a Linux x86 machine for about half of what Apple"

You're new here, right? Apples are a good value compared to equivalent hardware from other tier 1 manufacturers, especially the G5 and the iBooks. You're a tinkerer, unlike "most people." You have time, but it's cheap... to build a box to the level of compatibility, ease, and quality in a typical Mac, and assemble the software etc., you'd be paying yourself a lousy wage. Don't forget that Macs are generally kept in productive use longer, which amortizes any cost difference and then some.

Motorola has had some kickass processors. The '040 line, and the G3, were fast and powerful. Maybe Motorola was making promises that it didn't keep? Perhaps you should look into the PPC consortium's history, Apple had obligations.

"Most people aren't creative, and couldn't care less about video editing."

Hmm, so digital camera sales are no indicator of interest? Well, aside from market indicators, think about how much media you consume. Someone has to make it, d'oh! What do they (we) want to use? the solution that 1) makes the most money for them 2) is the fastest production tool (CPU less important than quality/reliability/integration here) 3) is the least hassle.

What you're saying is like this: "typesetting and layout, who gives a damn? No one wants to publish print materials!"

--
Damn those pesky terrorists
Re:Manage... by Raffaello · 2003-12-23 10:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

And these people will buy low priced, commodity, wintel boxes, on which the profit is next to zero.

The big profits are to be made in high end, near-workstation class machines, and high end laptops. In both of these markets, Apple's machines not only compete favorably, but surpass the competition in power, usability, and reliability.

Apple is in business to make money, not to compete in the low-to-no-profit arena of commodity boxes.
Re:Manage... by Jon+Abbott · 2003-12-23 11:21 · Score: 1

Sculley was, after all, the only Apple leader in history who was able to consistently increase Mac sales in the consistenlty growing computer market.
Keep in mind that Sculley is the man who wanted to make Apple computers use x86 rather than PPC, just because x86 sells more in volume. If that had happened, Apple would have just been another beige box clone company...

--
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Re:Manage... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:39 · Score: 0

I think your point would be more interesting if Apple, in fact, only innovated and Dell never did. Fact is that neither is true.

Dell may appear uninnovative to you, but they employ many engineers and contribute their share to the PC development world. They are simply more conservative.

Daring products may suit Apple's customers but they don't suit Dell's. While Michael admires Sam Walton, Steve admires PT Barnum.
Re:Manage... by brad-x · 2003-12-23 13:00 · Score: 1

Out of curiosity, where did you find the figures on total personal computer unit sales? I'd like to review that; it's been commonly bandied about that overall sales of personal computers has dropped in recent years rather than increased.

--
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ -- //
Re:Manage... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 18:18 · Score: 0

News reports for computers overall (do web searches for "computer sales 1996" and the like and you'll get appropriate articles), Apple's own SEC 10K filings for Mac sales (www.sec.gov).

Overall sales of computers has fallen in dollar terms, which is what they mean when they talk about the declining computer market; the price of the average PC sold has fallen faster than the volume has gone up.
Re:Manage... by Cinematique · 2003-12-23 18:33 · Score: 1

Someone just read Fast Company's latest Apple article.
Re:Manage... by Toraz+Chryx · 2003-12-23 18:34 · Score: 1

"Also, if Motorolla was so awful to Apple, why did Apple stick to them? Because of the CEO's decisions, that's why. A good CEO would have found a new CPU provider (or switched to IBM years ago). That's entirely Apple's fault."

It became apparent Motorola weren't going to pull out of their lull ~ mid-2001

Apple and IBM got started on the PowerPC 970.... ~mid-2001

you do the maths...
Re:Manage... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 19:22 · Score: 0

Well, that's if you look at it from a pure unit point of view. Look at it from a revenue point of view and you will see that Apple is doing much better

From the Apple 10-K filings with the SEC:

Apple Net Sales (Revenue) for 1996: $9,833,000,000
Apple Net Sales (Revenue) for 1999: $6,134,000,000
Apple Net Sales (Revenue) for 2002: $6,207,000,000

Macintosh (Net Sales) Revenue for 1996*: $9,405,000,000
Macintosh (Net Sales) Revenue for 1999**: $5,996,000,000
Macintosh Net Sales (Revenue) for 2002: $5,742,000,000

*Data not included in Apple 10-K filing; 1996 data esitmated by taking 1997 per-unit revenue (lower than the 1996 per-unit revenue according to the 1997 10-K filing) times 1996 unit sales.

**Data not included in Apple 10-K filing; reconstructed from unit sales times per unit revenue.

Thus, "Sure, under Jobs, Apple is adequately profitable." It is making quite a bit of profit, but on both lower revenues and lower unit sales in the Mac division. Apple under Jobs is quite efficiently milking a declining Mac buisness for profits. This is perfectly fine for Apple shareholders; as far as they are concerned, the purpose of Apple is to make money, not to make Macs.

But it is much worse news for Macintosh fans; the platform they love is becoming steadily more marginal. As volumes go down, either price will go up or quality will sag; ISVs and hardware developers will be more and more reluctant to invest in Mac ports; and the Mac will become ever more a niche product.

Jobs is slowly suffocating the Mac. Won't anybody speak out against him, or is the anoxic euphoria just too much?
Re:Manage... by Hawthorne01 · 2003-12-24 04:52 · Score: 1

Have you compared those figures to the industry as a whole? I seem to recall something about a bad tech economy these past few years, maybe that's part of the reason for the declining sales as well?

I'm just asking.

--
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Re:Manage... by agent+dero · 2003-12-25 08:44 · Score: 1

This is complete crap, take the iPod for example?

That's selling insanely! They aren't done innovating it, but someone once set, if your aren't moving forward, you're moving backwards. They don't _need_ to do as you say; they already profit with what they have now.

Dell has a huge chunk of the market because they got in early on the PC boom; and companies like that depend on companies like Apple, Sun, to innovate.

--
Error 407 - No creative sig found

Need OS by n0mad6 · 2003-12-23 05:14 · Score: 0, Troll

Personally, I'd hold out on getting a G5 based machine until software (particularly an OS thats not just processor optimizations tacked onto a 32-bit platform) that fully utilizes its 64-bit capabilities shows up. Although, given Apple's current once a year OS release timeline, I wouldn't be suprised if 10.4 came out in both 32 and 64 bit flavors.

Re:Need OS by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:20 · Score: 0

A Linux distro working on G5?
Re:Need OS by MasterVidBoi · 2003-12-23 06:40 · Score: 4, Informative

You don't need a "fully 64 bit OS" to get the speed improvements (although there still are memory limitations. see below). It would break a LOT of things, and really wouldn't be any improvement over the current offering. Unlike x86, PPC was designed for the 64bit transition from the start (even though it remained unused in Apple's product line for almost a decade), and so there is no speed penalty, whatsoever for running 32bit PPC code on a PPC970.

Specifically, the article states:
So far Apple's machines can see all the memory, they can't yet do 64-bit calculations. Present it with a 64-bit calculation, and a Mac with a G5 chip still breaks it into two 32-bit pieces. That's because, Glaskowsky says, Apple doesn't have a 64-bit operating system

Among it's other inaccuracies, it claims that a 32bit machine can only address 2GB.

They fault Apple for only allowing 8 GB of RAM in a desktop enclosure, even though this is still a significant improvement. This limit is still physical, there are 8 slots, and the largest capacity chips are 1024MB right now. They will work when 2048MB chips are released, increasing the max capacity of the existing line to 16GB.

As for the 64bit calculation bit, that's also incorrect. If the binary is compiled for the g5, then 64bit calculations will not be split as they are on 32bit architectures. The downside is that this binary will no longer work on 32 bit machines, for the obvious reasons. For best performance/compatability, two binaries, one 32bit, one 64bit, can be compiled and placed in the same Application bundle, making the difference between the two irrelevant to the user (only a single icon to click on, works on both systems, full 64bit calculation on the g5)
The biggest limit of the G5s at the moment is (and it's quite severe), to my knowledge, a single processes can still only address 4gb, because the size of void* is still 4bytes. Apple will need to duplicate all the libraries in 64bit form to make this work seamlessly, which will probably have to wait until 10.4.
Re:Need OS by zpok · 2003-12-23 08:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

Here's the thing: If you're a Mac user into high end whatever (gaming, video, music, graphics, art, ...) you automatically move up with the processors Apple provides.

Already the G5 gives a huge performance boost on all apps and an even greater one on those that are optimized - mainly the pro apps (FCP, Photoshop, Logic, ...).

So while it's perfectly possible to keep buying G4 processors in iBooks, Powerbooks and iMacs, there's no reason to go looking for G4 towers when you can buy very reasonably priced G5 towers that will blow away all previous models both in features and in performance.

While I get your drift - and don't want to interfere with your personal preferences- I feel that with the backward compatibility and the performance boost Apple provides, your point is utterly moot for everybody else.

--
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Re:Need OS by afidel · 2003-12-23 09:25 · Score: 1

What are you talking about, there are 2GB and 4GB sticks on the market today if you have the cash. They are extremely expensive and Apple does not guarentee that they will work although independant tests show that the G5's will work with 2GB sticks.

--
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Re:Need OS by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 09:40 · Score: 0

Actually, I believe you would be incorrect in stating the 8GB RAM limit is only physical. 8GB is the logical limit as well, but when large DIMMs are available, it is very reasonable to suspect that Apple will increase the logical RAM limit.

You see, don't you? by OrthodonticJake · 2003-12-23 05:15 · Score: 0, Funny

These new chips will, legally, constitute a fire hazard.

--
I regularly report MSN spam to the Hotmail admins.

powerbook upgrades by b17bmbr · 2003-12-23 05:15 · Score: 1

from the article: Faster chips will also migrate to the Powerbook notebook line. There's a pretty good chance that a Powerbook G5 notebook will appear no later than the summer of 2004.

if they take care of heat issues, this would be awesome. even though they will be somewhat pricey, apple will sell a ton of these. i'll buy one.

--
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.

Re:powerbook upgrades by thermopile · 2003-12-23 05:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

Here's the next sentence after your quote:
"There are no technical hurdles to producing a Powerbook G5. It could easily appear in January," Glaskowsky says.
I dunno ... that sounds more like rumor-mill feedstock. 'No technical hurdles'? Seems far-fetched. Reducing the heat output is a good start, but the 970 still eats power. Something like 74W, IIRC. Most portable chips draw something in the 20W range. Again, reducing the transistor size is a good start, but there are significant hurdles still to be jumped if it's going to fit in a laptop with a reasonable battery life -- and not burn poor, unsuspecting scientists' winkies.

--
"Diplomacy is something you do until you find a rock." --Richard Pound
Re:powerbook upgrades by obsid1an · 2003-12-23 05:31 · Score: 1

I agree. Seeing a G5 in a labtop doesn't seem to be in the near future. I mean the G5 needs to have the entire front of the case used for expelling heat. Even with a smaller die size I think it will be some time.

WARNING: Known Troll, and do not click sig link by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:17 · Score: 4, Informative

This guy trolls for these types of posts, hoping to get modded up. His sig is the most disgusting thing ever, please mod down.

Unofrtunately... by Guano_Jim · 2003-12-23 05:17 · Score: 5, Funny

The new G5 chips will require 1.21 jiggawatts of power to operate effectively.

--
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com

Re:Unofrtunately... by tommck · 2003-12-23 05:27 · Score: 1

So, instead of Lightning frying my PCs, it'll actually make them work!?

--
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Re:Unofrtunately... by Creepy+Crawler · 2003-12-23 05:44 · Score: 1

>>>So, instead of Lightning frying my PCs, it'll actually make them work!?

Yeah, and it'll make your computer go throught time! Course, the clock crystals'll probably be destriyed till you can raise the funds to rebuild them...
--
- Mod parent up! by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thurs, Nov 31, @13:37
Re:Unofrtunately... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:45 · Score: 0

Jiggawatts?
That's Black power, right?
Re:Unofrtunately... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:46 · Score: 0

And to cool it, you can slide it down a steep hill...in the snow. But you can only use it in the winter months.
Re:Unofrtunately... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:39 · Score: 0

The new G5 chips will require 1.21 jiggawatts of power to operate effectively.

No, but if you overclock to 88GHz the processor goes back in time and your programs finish before you start them.

You may however need a stainless steel case mod in order for proper flux capacitor dispersion.
Re:Unofrtunately... by Tumbleweed · 2003-12-23 06:52 · Score: 1

Yeah, it's those damned Klingon clock crystals...check around for a local nuclear wessel...but be careful, we ARE in situation ORANGE! Say, that reminds me, I'm hungry...*wanders off*
Re:Unofrtunately... by matt-fu · 2003-12-23 07:33 · Score: 1

The new G5 chips will require 1.21 jiggawatts of power to operate effectively.
..which means that it can only be powered by Jay-Z.
Re:Unofrtunately... by zpok · 2003-12-23 07:51 · Score: 1

"The new G5 chips will require 1.21 jiggawatts of power to operate effectively."

Woa, great news that!

First they break through the gigaflop barrier, and now through the jiggawatts barrier.

Go Apple go!

Seriously though, I heard the rumour that you will be able to plug those fans right into your air-conditioning, thus saving some serious bucks on hot summers.

--
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Re:Unofrtunately... by fermion · 2003-12-23 14:28 · Score: 1

So that is half of anything Intel currently makes, right?

--
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black

I wanna learn! by SpongeScrodSpareCock · 2003-12-23 05:19 · Score: -1

Hi All!

I would like to ask the slashdot crowd for a favor. You guys are so smart33!

You see my teacher is a faggot becuz he failed me when I NO my test wuz gud.

I saw that d00d Zero Kewl in that muvee "Hackers"! That d00d ROCKED! I wanna be just like h1m and fuck over pepple I don't like. Please teah me step by step how I can hakc and be "leet".

thatisall

--

|*l33z kOm3nT in m4h j00rnehl

Re:I wanna learn! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:21 · Score: 0

um, yeah, how about not, the last thing we need is people like you screwing things up.

Re:You know a women didn't come up with this idea. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:19 · Score: -1, Offtopic

No, it shouldn't.

SIG IS REDIRECT FROM SONY.COM by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

don't click, nasty goatse.cx and defecation pictures

Mod this asshole down as a troll, plz

Re:SIG IS REDIRECT FROM SONY.COM by bhtooefr · 2003-12-23 05:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

It's Nero Online's Last Measure, aka the worst use of JavaScript and IE's trust of the page ever created (it's still VERY bad on Opera, but IE is MUCH worse)
Re:SIG IS REDIRECT FROM SONY.COM by gobbo · 2003-12-23 09:23 · Score: 1

Whew, what a nasty rush! You should see what it does to Firebird... I was a 'suspecting' victim, I can't imagine what it would do to a poor unsuspecting cubicle victim.

I think I'll skip trying it out on IE. Glad this isn't my regular computer. Enough of this digital masochism, back to work.

--
Damn those pesky terrorists
Re:SIG IS REDIRECT FROM SONY.COM by bhtooefr · 2003-12-23 11:36 · Score: 1

I never did try it out on IE. I hit it with Links (I know, it supports JavaScript, but whenever something tries to pop up, it asks whether that's ok) and saved the source (my shell account didn't offer WGet). I then looked at it - the JavaScript told it to popup a new window whenever the woman with the crap all over her face was moused over (and there's a good chance you'll mouse over it in your rush to slam the back button), and then the popups came. Each one had code to move itself around, and when the image in it was moused over, it would make a new popup. The part about IE? In IE it hides the title bar, and intercepts attempts to hit or -, so that you can't kill the process. It also creates a window (with it's titlebar still intact) that runs a REALLY fucking annoying Flash animation - you can find a benign version here: http://www.originalicons.com/smile.html (the version that Nero-Online uses is an IE-only window-mover in JavaScript - didn't affect Opera when I navigated to the URL)
Re:SIG IS REDIRECT FROM SONY.COM by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-24 03:06 · Score: 0

Hit stats for my sig, since this story was posted:

Statistics / Editing

notlong URL: http://techgeek.notlong.com

Clicks: 127
Clicks from unique browsers: 120
Clicks from unique IP addresses: 115

Long URL:
http://www.nero-online.org/lastmeasure/

made me laugh tears man by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:24 · Score: -1, Offtopic

ah that was so great, I can't find words for. ignorant and proud of. politically uncorrect as heck, just like i love it.

I am ill-informed, apparently... by Graspee_Leemoor · 2003-12-23 05:26 · Score: 1

"You sir are incredibly ill-informed. You confuse the needs of the home-fiddler with the needs of the media professional"

I wasn't talking about the so-called "media professional". Since this is slashdot, (and I doubt that those high and mighty "media professionals" make up much of a percentage of the readership) I was talking about home users.

Home users encode things like dvd rips, anime fansubs, holiday videos etc. Here, not only does x86 rule the roost, but (very sadly) the OS used is Windows. There has always been poor support for video editing and encoding, subtitling etc. under linux and the BSDs.

graspee

Re:I am ill-informed, apparently... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:39 · Score: 0

So you're saying that x86 is the platform of choice for "anime fansubs" and general farking around, but not because it's a better platform?

So... How does that help your argument? "The best platform for doing *X* is looking to get much better at it. So what? Why should we care, since everyone else is, for god knows what reason, using something else?" is what it sounds like you're saying...?
Re:I am ill-informed, apparently... by scighera · 2003-12-23 05:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

Well, unless you're paying for Premier or something like that, I think most "consumers" are pretty much willing to pay for either open source tools (free) or Windows Movie Maker (free).

I'd say for most consumer editing, the iLife Suite (free or $49 with iDVD) is a pretty compelling package. And power users can get their paws on Final Cut Express if they want to shell out some more bones for something a little more full featured.
Re:I am ill-informed, apparently... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:42 · Score: 0

Home users encode things like dvd rips, anime fansubs

No, they don't. To a home user--hell, to a normal person!--the phrase "anime fansub" is gibberish.

In other words, you are out of your fucking mind. Quit trying to defend yourself, because you just end up looking pa-fucking-thetic.
Re:I am ill-informed, apparently... by Graspee_Leemoor · 2003-12-23 05:51 · Score: 1

I'm not saying anything about the superiority of one system over another. I'm saying that home users tend at least in my (naive or idiotic according to one poster) opinion, those who own x86 tend to be the ones playing games and encoding lots of (illegal) video, while those who own Apple are web browsing, writing letters and stuff like that.

Of course there will be exceptions, and I WAS only talking about home users, not professionals.

The bottom line is, I wonder why it's so exciting (that we have to post it on slashdot) that Apples are going superleetfast, when Apple owners don't need speed (in my idiotic and/or naive "13 year old" opinion).

graspee
Re:I am ill-informed, apparently... by Lussarn · 2003-12-23 06:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

Windows Movie Maker (free).

Since everything bundled with windows is free (IE, mediaplayer, explorer, the kernel and whatever) why isn't the cost 0.0 USD. Nothing is free, thats the answer.
Re:I am ill-informed, apparently... by FVK · 2003-12-23 06:29 · Score: 2, Interesting

I wonder why it's so exciting (that we have to post it on slashdot) that Apples are going superleetfast, when Apple owners don't need speed...

2 reasons:
One, we really do need all the speed we can get. OS X is getting really fast and nice on the new G5's (with Panther only helping the matter).
And Two, because for a long time Apple wasn't competing at the high end of performance, and now they are.
Re:I am ill-informed, apparently... by Graspee_Leemoor · 2003-12-23 08:24 · Score: 1

Hey, now I'm an idiot, naive, 13 years old, out of my fucking mind, living in my mother's basement, and pa-fucking-thetic.

It's quite a persona people are building up for me. When do I get sent on my super secret mission with this new identity?

graspee
Re:I am ill-informed, apparently... by HTH+NE1 · 2003-12-23 08:59 · Score: 1

"Of course there will be exceptions, and I WAS only talking about home users, not professionals."

Though I risk being classified as one of your exceptions (and thus conveniently discounted in your arguments), I use Apple's Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro tools at home, and I'm no video professional. I'm a programmer, but I like playing around with video and want the best tools (on the platform that's best for me, YMMV).

Though I am getting by using a Blue & White G3 upgraded with a 550 MHz G4, a new G5 is in my future. More speed would be welcome to make two-pass VBI high quality DVD encoding take less than 2 days for 3 hours of video.

I do own one PC with Windows XP installed, but it is really just for gaming. (I concede that some games never come out for the Mac.) I also plan to replace it with a faster machine, turning this one into a Linux-based game and file server with gigabit Ethernet so my Mac doesn't need to be filled to (beyond design) capacity with drives.

"The bottom line is, I wonder why it's so exciting (that we have to post it on slashdot) that Apples are going superleetfast..."

If you have to ask, then you're not in Slashdot's target demographic.

"...when Apple owners don't need speed"

Here's a clue: that phrase is irrelevant to why it is Slashdot-newsworthy.

(And you're generalizing to all Apple owners again, not just non-professionals.)

--
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?

Go IBM! by obsid1an · 2003-12-23 05:27 · Score: 1

IBM sure seems to be popping out some great CPUs there.

Dont need 64 bit OS by goombah99 · 2003-12-23 05:29 · Score: 4, Interesting

Why do you need a 64 bit OS? What does the OS do that requires 64 bits. It will be more stable and have better backwards compatibility just to leave it 32 bit mostly, and tweak around the edges for speed. I would guess that if anything unoptimized 64 bit code would be slower than 32 bit code since its bound to be pulling unneccessarily long instruciton and data words from memory.

My understanding is that applications are free to use 64 bit instructions if they wish.

Am I mistaken? Does the system, stack organization or memeory management some how preculde the use of 64 bit instructions?

--
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.

Re:Dont need 64 bit OS by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:56 · Score: 1, Insightful

at least the memory addressing and memory management need to be 64 bit, otherwise your limiting yourself to 4GB of ram or some overhead to get 32 bits to address >4GB (like 16 bit dos did with expanded/extented ram)

but your right, you probably won't see much difference in using 32 vs 64 bit instructions to read your 200GB harddrive or 32 vs 64 bit idling.
Re:Dont need 64 bit OS by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:01 · Score: 0

The article is wrong. You can use 64-bit math in a program running on OS X on a G5. It is just that legacy apps don't. However, any apps that matter have already released G5 optimized versions or preliminary extensions to pick up this benefit (or at least use it in some places). In any case, this has nothing to do with the OS.

The OS is 32-bit in that the pointers are still assigned within a 32-bit address space. It just means that one app is still limited to 4 GB of logical address space. That will change soon but there isn't any rush since nothing really needs that yet.

The only change that needs to be made for 64-bit ints and pointers to work correctly is that the OS needs to use the 64-bit load/save instructions when performing a context switch. I assume that current OS uses these when running on a G5 (otherwise the 64-bit math wouldn't work at all).
Re:Dont need 64 bit OS by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 07:52 · Score: 1, Informative

You are mistaken. The problem is that the upper half of 64-bit registers are not guaranteed to be safe across system calls. So while you _could_ use 64-bit instructions to, e.g., add two large numbers together using a single instruction, your program might be trashed if a context switch occurs between the time you compute this addition and the time you use the result. There are ways and means around this but they're painful, not the kind of thing realistic for a software project of any typical size.
Re:Dont need 64 bit OS by Cyno · 2003-12-23 08:18 · Score: 1

About the only advantage to having a 64-bit system I can see is the ability to edit a single 4GB+ file without breaking it up into smaller chunks and being able to read/write it to your filesystem.

The 4GB filesize limit of 32-bit systems was a pain when I was working with uncompressed video. But now most of the data I want takes up less than 2GB per file. All my DV is compressed at least 4:1 and I almost never use more than 512MB of RAM, even editing and processing this data.

It will be comforting to know that if I wanted to I could record a few weeks of video from my mini-DV cam into a single file. Maybe one of these days I'll find a use for something like that. But for right now 64-bit is just a new buzzword and a new generation of CPU technology.

More performance == good.
Re:Dont need 64 bit OS by VojakSvejk · 2003-12-23 08:25 · Score: 1

Believe it or no, there are some out there who read "64-bit computer" that "breaks the 4 GB barrier" and allows applications to access more memory as an indication that that's what they would get if they bought one.

Many of us who have worked with 64-bit systems (alpha, mips, and power) find Apple's idea of what that means a little novel. Rumor has it that apps running in 64-bit mode on the ppc970 will be a little slower than those in 32-bit mode (as was the case with mips, and power, too, I think) but if you need to access large amounts of memory you might put up with it, especially if it means not having to go to disk.

No, 64-bit integer arithmetic on the chip is not much of a consolation, tho it does compress mpeg2 awfully fast.
Re:Dont need 64 bit OS by gobbo · 2003-12-23 09:19 · Score: 1

Maybe when you buy that mini-HD cam in early 2005 you'll be glad you have 8GB of RAM waiting for you...

"One of these days" seems to come quickly in digital video land.

--
Damn those pesky terrorists
Re:Dont need 64 bit OS by robsimmon · 2003-12-23 10:31 · Score: 1

It just means that one app is still limited to 4 GB of logical address space. That will change soon but there isn't any rush since nothing really needs that yet.

Actually, I think OSX apps are limited to 2GB of memory. And those of us who push Photoshop and After Effects (think HD video) could easily use 8GB.
Re:Dont need 64 bit OS by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:11 · Score: 0

Hey everybody! Over here! We got another one!
Re:Dont need 64 bit OS by Johnathon_Dough · 2003-12-23 12:44 · Score: 1

after much time spent on tech support hold. it is adobes fault not apples, don't know about the full 8gb, but there is no hurdle in OSX to cross to reach the 4gb limit.
"I will pass that on to the devlopment team notes" says the supposed high level adobe support, it will be labled as a "feature request"
bah
My average file size has grown to 1.2 gigs, even if i get the full four gigs i have in my box now i will still not have enough ram to work a file in memory
(photoshop works best with 4x file size in RAM available)

--
If you are one in a million, then there are six thousand people who are just like you.

What I love about Apple by Decameron81 · 2003-12-23 05:31 · Score: 1, Insightful

What I love about Apple (in this case it's IBM but they're doing it for Apple) is they how look for alternative ways to improve performance appart from the obvious CPU clock speed increase. For instance:

"Shrinking the features on the chip allows it to consume less power even as it speeds up, making it easier to cool and easier to use."

and...

"An IBM compiler tailored to the PowerPC chips is already in the beta-testing phase, Glaskowsky says. Once it's released in its final form, software written to the Mac running on PowerMac G5 machines could speed up as much as 50%, he says."

Computers are more than raw CPU speed, and this is what Apple has learnt. I can only imagine how cool the 3 Ghz Macs will be when compared to other PCs. And the fact they're lagging behind on the Ghz race is not a big deal as long as they keep making high quality hardware/software that actually squeeze every single drop of potential our of your computer.

Diego Rey

--
diegoT

Re:What I love about Apple by be-fan · 2003-12-23 05:47 · Score: 4, Insightful

That's a completely bogus post. Every chip manufacturer does die shrinks periodically. And Intel also makes a line of optimized compilers specialized for its chips. Apple and IBM are nothing special in this regard!

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:What I love about Apple by Imazalil · 2003-12-23 06:06 · Score: 1

The Athlon64/FX/look at my 64 bits line of CPU's has all that covered. I think that optimized compilers are pretty standard, and die shrinks too. One thing that I'm sure that the G5 will have/has is power saving software built in even for desktop usage, just like the Athlon 64. Do you really need 3 Ghz to check email and chat on MSN? (providing you're not running Seti in the background). Helps extend the life of the chip, and saves a buck or two on electricity.

Not to bash, go IBM go!
Re:What I love about Apple by Decameron81 · 2003-12-23 06:09 · Score: 1

Of course they do, but not even close to the depth that Apple does (ie. on both hardware and software).

Take for instance the x86 architecture that Intel CPUs use. As opposed to Apple they decided to maintain compatibility with old processors thus sacrificing a lot in performance and development costs. Apple, instead, chose to offer the FAT file format and a sort of 68k emulation for the same purpose, thus sacrificing the speed for the old programs, but making new programs far easier to develop and far faster than they were previously. Right now, the level of optimization on a PPC CPU is far greater than that of current Pentium CPUs at same clock speeds.

But it's not only about hardware. Just take Mac OS X for example. As an OS I really feel it to be much faster in my 450 Mhz Cube than Windows XP is on my 850 Mhz PC. Just do simple things like opening windows, opening programs, accessing the network, and you'll see what I mean. Even the simple fact that Apple chose to take BSD as their OS's core is a clear sign that they are looking for ways to improve the quality of what they do on all sides.

Diego Rey

--
diegoT
Re:What I love about Apple by arhines · 2003-12-23 06:10 · Score: 2, Funny

Name one chip manufacturer that doesn't do both of these things...
Re:What I love about Apple by presearch · 2003-12-23 06:19 · Score: 2, Funny

Pringles.
Re:What I love about Apple by Decameron81 · 2003-12-23 06:24 · Score: 1

The Athlon64/FX/look at my 64 bits line of CPU's has all that covered. I think that optimized compilers are pretty standard, and die shrinks too.

Agreed. I was not talking about these two improvements only tho, but rather about the fact that improving the overall system performance is a higher priority to Apple than I feel it is to other companies. Of course this may be just my impression but I am ready to bet that a PPC computer running at the same clock speed than that of it's Pentium or Athlon counterpart can heavily outshine it. For instance when you use a G4 or G5 you really feel the system to be much more responsive (I do).

Do you really need 3 Ghz to check email and chat on MSN?

We will always be wondering if we need more. The question is, will 3 Ghz be enough for tomorrow's MSN? I think not, and that's why overall system optimizations (in both hardware and software) are as important, if not more, as speed boosts in the CPU.

For instance, imagine having a multiprocessor computer with X processors of your choice. If you get a slightly better performance in each G5 processor you choose, over a Athlon or Pentium processor at the same speed, don't you think that will make a difference?

Diego Rey

--
diegoT
Re:What I love about Apple by Decameron81 · 2003-12-23 06:27 · Score: 1

Try to stick a pentium processor in a Mac Cube with no heatsinks and make sure it doesn't make any sound. That will answer your question.

Diego Rey

--
diegoT
Re:What I love about Apple by SaDan · 2003-12-23 06:32 · Score: 1

That was a pretty ignorant post. Of course you can stick a Pentium processor in a case the size and shape of a Mac cube, and use passive cooling.

The question is: Who wants to?

Apparently the answer is: Not enough people give a crap about that kind of stuff. Otherwise, you'd see more demand for that kind of system.

Does Apple still make the cube system? There's the real answer.
Re:What I love about Apple by Octorian · 2003-12-23 06:37 · Score: 1

It's not really just an x86 vs Apple thing, but rather an x86 vs "Everyone Else".

Around the 1990'ish (give or take), lots of companies who had been using antiquated CISC architectures decided to break compatability and move up to the world of clean RISC architectures that were easy to make the 32-to-64-bit jump with, and not break software compatability.

For example:
Apple: M680XX -> PowerPC
Sun: M680XX -> SPARC
DEC: VAX -> Alpha (64-bit from the start)
HP: M680XX -> PA-RISC
Re:What I love about Apple by be-fan · 2003-12-23 06:37 · Score: 1

What are you talking about? We were specifically talking about die shrinks and optimized compilers. IBM doesn't die shrink any more often than Intel, and its compiler isn't any more well tuned than Intel's.

And OS X isn't fast. Lmbench numbers show it to be a lot slower than Linux on the same machine. It *feels* faster, because the GUI back-buffers all windows, but in absolute terms its rather pokey.

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:What I love about Apple by Decameron81 · 2003-12-23 06:44 · Score: 1

Of course you can stick a Pentium processor in a case the size and shape of a Mac cube, and use passive cooling.

It is possible to keep a Pentium CPU cooled down and silent in a Cube nowadays, although I doubt it can keep as cool and as silent, but it wasn't feasible when the cube was first released in July 2000.

The question is: Who wants to?

Apparently the answer is: Not enough people give a crap about that kind of stuff. Otherwise, you'd see more demand for that kind of system.

I wasn't stating that the Cube is a computer people wants. Reread my post if you had trouble understanding it. My point was only that Apple was able to achieve that 3 years ago, while it was compleltely unfeasible to expect a Pentium or Athlon CPU to achieve something similar. And while you may think that having a CPU that could run under those conditions was nothing important, it was.

There is no way someone could claim a x86 CPU to be as optimized as a current PPC one.

Diego Rey

--
diegoT
Re:What I love about Apple by Decameron81 · 2003-12-23 06:49 · Score: 1

What I love about Apple (in this case it's IBM but they're doing it for Apple) is they how look for alternative ways to improve performance appart from the obvious CPU clock speed increase.

I was talking about optimizations and took those two quotes from the article as examples. You then said that every manufacturer does it, and I replied to you that they do, but the level of optimization you will find in a Macintosh is not only limited to those two examples I took for the occasion, and went on citing other differences that show how Apple cares about such optimizations.

Diego Rey

--
diegoT
Re:What I love about Apple by be-fan · 2003-12-23 06:54 · Score: 1

You used them as examples when they weren't good examples. Its like saying that Ford introducing new models every year is a sign of their commitment to product innovation! Its something that everyone does, so its not an example of standing out.

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:What I love about Apple by Decameron81 · 2003-12-23 07:06 · Score: 1

I don't agree. It is important to learn about a feasible 50% speed increase from compiler optimizations plus a CPU size / heat / voltage reduction in the same article. These optimizations are NOT comming from the same modification to the hardware / software, which means they are working on different sides to improve performance simultaneously.

You see, my whole point was that such news are not uncommon when you hear them coming from Apple developments, and I was pointing out those two as an example of what I meant. I understand that my post has been a bit missleading as many people thought I was talking exclusively about those two examples, but still my point stands. Apple concentrates a lot on optimizations. Much more than other companies do. Quality over quantity or something along those lines.

Diego Rey

--
diegoT
Re:What I love about Apple by the+morgawr · 2003-12-23 07:40 · Score: 1

> its compiler isn't any more well tuned than Intel's. Yes and no; while they havn't spent more time tunning it, the PowerPC instruction set was designed to be very easy for compilers to optimize for. This leads to an optimizing compiler being far more important on the PowerPC line then on the x86 line. Hence the IBM compiler probably produces better code for the PowerPC then the Intel Compiler for the x86. Also IBM chip production tech tends to be between 6 and 9 months ahead of Intel, and their chips tends to use less power at the transistor level.

--
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
Re:What I love about Apple by the+morgawr · 2003-12-23 07:43 · Score: 1

oops, should have been:

> its compiler isn't any more well tuned than Intel's.

Yes and no; while they havn't spent more time tunning it, the PowerPC instruction set was designed to be very easy for compilers to optimize for. This leads to an optimizing compiler being far more important on the PowerPC line then on the x86 line. Hence the IBM compiler probably produces better code for the PowerPC then the Intel Compiler for the x86.

Also IBM chip production tech tends to be between 6 and 9 months ahead of Intel, and their chips tends to use less power at the transistor level.

--
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
Re:What I love about Apple by Temporal · 2003-12-23 08:03 · Score: 1

Your logic is as follows: "Apple does things to improve their performance that everyone else does too, therefore Apple does more than everyone else." This is not a sound argument. Why should we believe that just because they do stuff everyone else does, that they also do things that other companies don't do?

Besides, it is IBM that is improving the PPC, not Apple. No, IBM is not doing it specifically for Apple, nor are they doing it because Apple asked them to. IBM is also improving the PPC for the sake of, for example, Nintendo (Game Cubes use PPC processors). Sorry, but all Apple is doing here is sitting by and saying "Yay! Faster processors!".

Now, I am a big Apple fan myself; not so much for speed as for the fact that their products are so elegantly designed at every level, from the processor to the hardware layout to the operating system to the applications. However, your argument is still bogus.
Re:What I love about Apple by p3d0 · 2003-12-23 08:40 · Score: 1

There is no way someone could claim a x86 CPU to be as optimized as a current PPC one.
I do. SPECcpu2000 results: Pentium = 1620, Opteron = 1477, POWER4+ = 1113. Granted, the POWER4+ result was from May, but even at that time, PPC trailed Pentium and Opteron.
But seriously, I'd rather believe you're an over-exuberant Mac fanboy than a troll, so let me explain to you that nothing is cut-an-dried when it comes to statements like which processor is "more optimized".

--
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Re:What I love about Apple by Decameron81 · 2003-12-23 08:40 · Score: 1

Your logic is as follows: "Apple does things to improve their performance that everyone else does too, therefore Apple does more than everyone else." This is not a sound argument. Why should we believe that just because they do stuff everyone else does, that they also do things that other companies don't do?

My logic is "Apple does MORE things to improve performance than any other company that's working for similar target markets that I know of, and I like it". Those two are just ONE example of the many things they do, but not the only ones (as I keep stating but you seem to prefer to ignore). I wasn't trying to prove the whole point with those, just pointing out that the improvements coming from Apple are rarely just about raw CPU speed.

I like Apple because they give me the impression to be always looking for new ways to improve overall system performance over raw clock speed. They make systems that have an excellent balance between each one of it's components, and you will rarely find one component that doesn't match the quality of the product you bought. Apple gives me the impression that they care a lot on performance because with every new computer they make or article I read, I find out about a really load of cool enhancements. The fact that this article talks about two different optimizations that are going to further improve on G5s performance is just ANOTHER example of this. No THE example. And a compiler that improves the performance of programs by 50% IS an achievement, no matter how much you try to put it as something common.

Besides, it is IBM that is improving the PPC, not Apple. No, IBM is not doing it specifically for Apple, nor are they doing it because Apple asked them to. IBM is also improving the PPC for the sake of, for example, Nintendo (Game Cubes use PPC processors). Sorry, but all Apple is doing here is sitting by and saying "Yay! Faster processors!".

Of course it is IBM that is improving the processors, but Apple will take advantage of it because they are going to be using the PPC processor in their systems. I don't care about who builds the hardware Apple uses, in the end the new Macs will be taking advantage of such optimizations. If the PPC processor wasn't as good as it is, Apple would probably not be using it. So stating that Apple has nothing to do with how their systems perform sounds a bit misleading to me.

Now, I am a big Apple fan myself; not so much for speed as for the fact that their products are so elegantly designed at every level, from the processor to the hardware layout to the operating system to the applications. However, your argument is still bogus.

Oh yes they are. I don't know what your concept of elegance is but do you think you would have any of that elegance if the bases upon which it was built were not good enough?

As I said in my first post, RAW cpu speed is not all, and Apple learnt that. All those nifty features and design choices you take for granted are given by the way Apple decided to work, and that is to keep improving the system, not the CPU.

Diego Rey

--
diegoT
Re:What I love about Apple by Decameron81 · 2003-12-23 08:53 · Score: 1

But seriously, I'd rather believe you're an over-exuberant Mac fanboy than a troll, so let me explain to you that nothing is cut-an-dried when it comes to statements like which processor is "more optimized".

Believe what you want, that's your problem, not mine. Hell I could think you're a troll as well, but I don't see what that has to do with the discussion.

The fact is that the x86 architecture at the core of the Pentium and Athlon processors IS complex, IS large and inefficient (outdated you could say). A CPU that supports 8 bit instructions just for backward compatibility is doomed to be such. And by optimized I didn't mean faster, which is what you seem to have understood.

Diego Rey

--
diegoT
Re:What I love about Apple by be-fan · 2003-12-23 10:44 · Score: 1

the PowerPC instruction set was designed to be very easy for compilers to optimize for.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Wrong. The PowerPC, like all RISC instruction sets, was designed to be more dependent on compiler optimizations for good performance. RISC processors are generally harder to optimize for, only because more aggressive optimizations are necessary to get the same level of performance.

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:What I love about Apple by drsmithy · 2003-12-23 11:44 · Score: 1

As opposed to Apple they decided to maintain compatibility with old processors thus sacrificing a lot in performance and development costs.
The difference is, at the time Motorola's CPUs were an acknowledged dead end. Intel, OTOH, were still actively developing and increasing performance on their chips. Apple didn't have a choice - they had to switch to something. On the x86 side, there was no compulsion to move to another architecture, because the CPUs were still regularly increasing in speed.
Right now, the level of optimization on a PPC CPU is far greater than that of current Pentium CPUs at same clock speeds.
Firstly, clock speed is irrelevant - trying to compare against equal clock speeds is just a stupid and meaningless thing to do. Secondly, what makes you say that ? If anything, the opposite should be true - and inferior architecture like x86 needs to be much more heavily optimised to keep up with something like PPC.
As an OS I really feel it to be much faster in my 450 Mhz Cube than Windows XP is on my 850 Mhz PC. Just do simple things like opening windows, opening programs, accessing the network, and you'll see what I mean.
It boggles my mind when people say this. I've done all these things and OS X is *much* slower than any version of Windows I've ever used. Either there's something seriously wrong with your PC, or your Mac is faster than a G5 (a 1.6Ghz G5 *still* can't resize windows smoothly, even under 10.3). OS X is relatively slow and unresponsive to use. I ditched my 667Mhz PBG4 a year or so ago because it was so unresponsive (running 10.2) that it was annoying to use. I've never used an OS X machine that fel as snappy and responsive as my Windows machines.
There are many good reasons to like OS X (Expose being one of the biggest). Speed and responsiveness aren't amongst them.
Re:What I love about Apple by mixmasta · 2003-12-23 13:06 · Score: 1

Resizing windows is still problematic in OS 10.3, as they haven't resolved the underlying technical issue yet. I think arstechnica has an article describing the problem.

However 10.3 has many other optimizations and should be speedy in most operations though. I don't resize windows that much for it to be a big problem really.

Keep in mind that OS 10 is still quite new and is getting better every year, there is still much optimization ahead. Don't give up on it yet.

--
#6495ED - cornflower blue
Re:What I love about Apple by drsmithy · 2003-12-23 14:02 · Score: 1

I wasn't trying to prove the whole point with those, just pointing out that the improvements coming from Apple are rarely just about raw CPU speed.
That's because until very recently, their CPUs have been so far behind the curve. Heck, their entire range was, until the G5, stuck with technology 2 - 3 generations old in the PC world. Even now, the majority of Macs available are still in that situation.
I like Apple because they give me the impression to be always looking for new ways to improve overall system performance over raw clock speed. They make systems that have an excellent balance between each one of it's components, [...]
You must be forgetting the last few years Macs have been languishing with slow buses, slow memory, poor graphics cards, slow hard disks and limited expansion.
Or are you trying to say that until the G5s all the components of Macs were equally slow ?
Re:What I love about Apple by Decameron81 · 2003-12-23 14:22 · Score: 1

Equally fast. I'm not sure what Macs you're talking about but the PowerBook G4, the Cube, the G3 266 Beige and the PowerPC 6100/66 were all great boxes at the time I bought them. The only one that wasn't too fast was the Cube at the time, but it made up for all that for it's great design and some cool features like build in firewire (which I was looking for at the time).

It all depends on what you're looking for. I found Macs not to require as many expansion slots as PCs, as you always get them with a audio cards, video cards, Gigahertz ethernet, firewire, plenty of usb connectors... and the best thing is I used to use an "unsupported" voodoo 3 back in the days when it was quite a good card.

No matter what people say I have worked extensively with Macs and PCs, and the difference between ANY version of Windows and ANY version of Mac OS is incredible when it comes to speed. Please keep in mind that now that Mac OS X is out, the speed of the Mac OS system does not degrade over time as Windows still does.

The time it gets to get a job done in Mac OS X is exponentially lower than it is in Windows XP. Simple tasks like opening docs, moving files, etc can still crash XP for instance. Since I got Mac OS X I haven't had a single OS crash here. So, that's what I mean with optimizations.

And as you stated earlier, speed is a subjective concept. To me the most important thing is how long it takes me to get a job done, and Macs are great at that.

Diego Rey

--
diegoT
Re:What I love about Apple by SaDan · 2003-12-23 14:38 · Score: 1

Excellent. So you're prepared to provide examples of how ineffiecient x86 is compared the the almighty G5?

You're making the arguement. Back it up.
Re:What I love about Apple by drsmithy · 2003-12-23 15:21 · Score: 1

I'm not sure what Macs you're talking about but the PowerBook G4, the Cube, the G3 266 Beige and the PowerPC 6100/66 were all great boxes at the time I bought them.
The last few years worth. The Cube era machines were probably the last time Macs were somewhat competitive, and even then a 450Mhz G4 with a 100Mhz bus and 2X AGP was up against ~800Mhz P3s with 133Mhz system buses, 4X AGP with price tags hundreds of dollars less.
The problem was that then the G4 line stagnated for a few years (until the G5s). Even current G4s only have ca. 166Mhz memory buses and ~1.3Ghz processors, while PCs have moved up to 3+Ghz P4s and 800Mhz memory.
And that's only consumer PCs - not taking into account higher end workstations.
No matter what people say I have worked extensively with Macs and PCs, and the difference between ANY version of Windows and ANY version of Mac OS is incredible when it comes to speed.
I agree, but from the other direction. I've never used a Mac - running Classic or OS X that was as snappy and responsive as Windows. Classic suffered from its terrible multitasking and OS X is just slow.
Please keep in mind that now that Mac OS X is out, the speed of the Mac OS system does not degrade over time as Windows still does.
That's because OS X started off so atrociously slow it didn't have anywhere to go but up. As I said, even 10.2 on my old PB667 I considered to chunky to really be comfortably usable (having since used 10.3 on an identical machine, it's much better - usable even - but still nowhere near as fast as Windows on a similarly specced machine). Even with 10.3 on a G5, it still feels chunky at times, which is ridiculous given the raw power of the machine.
The time it gets to get a job done in Mac OS X is exponentially lower than it is in Windows XP.
Rubbish. Maybe for you because you don't know how to use Windows as well as a Mac, but as someone who is quite competent in both environments, I can't think of any common activity that would be even close to "exponentially faster".
Simple tasks like opening docs, moving files, etc can still crash XP for instance.
If they are, your PC is broken. Actions like those are about as likely to crash XP as they are OS X.
Since I got Mac OS X I haven't had a single OS crash here. So, that's what I mean with optimizations.
I've been using Windows NT (and derivatives - 2k, XP) since early 1996 when when I switched from OS/2 to the NT4 beta. I can count on one hand the number of crashes I've had that weren't directly related to broken hardware, catastrophic hardware failure, or poorly written drivers. Even counting them, it's less than ten. I've seen about five kernel panics on OS X systems, mostly when trying to access network resources (even 10.3's handling of network resources can't hold a candle to Windows', although it's a big improvement on earlier versions).
Re:What I love about Apple by jkovach · 2003-12-23 17:51 · Score: 1

And a compiler that improves the performance of programs by 50% IS an achievement, no matter how much you try to put it as something common.

It's a new architecture - big advances in compiler performance are very much to be expected. On the x86, people have had 20+ years experience writing optimizing compilers. Most of the tweaks that can be made have already been made. As a result, recent advances in x86 compiler technology do not produce spectacular results. The PPC970 has been around for a lot less time, so they haven't had as much experience with the compilers and can find ways to tweak for major performance increases. Several years down the road, you aren't going to be seeing 50% performance increases from new compilers. This is true with any new architecture - the poor performance of the first generation Itanium was blamed on lousy compilers, and it's gotten much better now.

(I'm asking for it tonight, I've tried to inject sanity into TWO slashdot mac/pc flamewars. I should go to bed before I get hurt.)
Re:What I love about Apple by Temporal · 2003-12-24 03:32 · Score: 1

Wow... Either you are a troll and you're just saying these things to invoke flame, or you are completely clueless.

Please keep in mind that now that Mac OS X is out, the speed of the Mac OS system does not degrade over time as Windows still does.

Having had my Win2k system up for over two months at a time, playing games frequently, I can pretty much assure you that Windows no longer degrades over time either. You are thinking of Win9x, which has been discontinued.

Simple tasks like opening docs, moving files, etc can still crash XP for instance.

No, no they can not. Not unless your hardware is broken.

The time it gets to get a job done in Mac OS X is exponentially lower than it is in Windows XP.

You clearly don't know what the term "exponentially" means.

Like I said, I personally believe that OSX is a much better OS than Windows XP, and that typical Mac hardware is far superior to typical PC hardware, but the kind of stuff you are saying is pure BS.
Re:What I love about Apple by Decameron81 · 2003-12-24 05:31 · Score: 1

Wow... Either you are a troll and you're just saying these things to invoke flame, or you are completely clueless.

You are the clueless one. Let me tell you why...

Having had my Win2k system up for over two months at a time, playing games frequently, I can pretty much assure you that Windows no longer degrades over time either. You are thinking of Win9x, which has been discontinued.

I suppose Microsoft likes to fall back in their improvements then, given that Windows XP DOES slow down over time, and that Windows XP is their latest OS. I am not thinking about 9x at all here.

For instance I found it impossible to run XP for more than 6 months without a clean reinstall in such a period of time.

No, no they can not. Not unless your hardware is broken.

Even if they didn't, a simple program that crashes can bring down your entire system, as windows doesn't have protected memory. That's not possible in Mac OS X.

You clearly don't know what the term "exponentially" means.

It was properly used. What I meant there was that getting a job done on a computer that really lets you concentrate on working is going to be less than the time it takes you to get the same problem solved in a computer that makes you worry about making it work as well. I said exponentially because the harder the work, the bigger this difference in time will be.

I'm sure you can find the meaning of "exponential" in your favourite dictionary... but if you have any more doubts just feel free to ask.

Diego Rey

--
diegoT
Re:What I love about Apple by Temporal · 2003-12-24 15:00 · Score: 1

I suppose Microsoft likes to fall back in their improvements then, given that Windows XP DOES slow down over time, and that Windows XP is their latest OS.

Honestly, I haven't used XP, so I'm not going to pretend I know. However, the "Windows Rot" effect was a hallmark of the 9x series. I have never heard of the NT kernel having any such problems, and Win2k certainly hasn't had such problems for me, but whatever. I suppose it's remotely possible that XP took a huge step backwards. (Based on your next statement, though, I am inclined to believe that you have no idea what you're talking about.)

Even if they didn't, a simple program that crashes can bring down your entire system, as windows doesn't have protected memory.

This is absolutely, positively, 100% FALSE. Not only is it false, but it is an absurd claim. Windows most certainly does use protected memory. Even Windows 9x used protected memory. The last release of Windows to not use protected memory was 3.1 (almost a decade ago). The very first version of Windows NT used protected memory.

Hell, protected memory is so commonplace that people don't bother mentioning it anymore. It is simply assumed that any modern OS uses protected memory, because otherwise it would be an embarassment to the people who created the OS. It is only in the Mac world than you hear the term "protected memory" used in advertising because it is only in the Mac world where this is a new thing.

I suppose next you'll tell me that Windows doesn't have preemtive multitasking.

I said exponentially because the harder the work, the bigger this difference in time will be.

"Exponentially" suggests that the harder the work, the greater the percentage difference in time will be. You're suggesting that, if writing and sending a single e-mail is twice as fast on OSX, then writing and sending 10 e-mails is 1024 times as fast, and writing and sending 20 e-mails is 1048576 times as fast. I don't think that's the case. Maybe I'm just being pedantic here, though. I'm a programmer, so "exponentially faster" has a very specific meaning to me.

Besides that, I completely disagree with your statement. I never feel that I have to work to make my system run well. Win2k never crashes on me, never rots, never needs to be rebooted, etc. It's the software I use which determines my efficiency, and the software I use works great for what I do. OSX does not make me any more efficient. (I own both a Mac running OSX and a PC running Win2k, so I say this based on experience.)

This year!? by dema · 2003-12-23 05:33 · Score: 4, Funny

ready to deliver a new version of its PowerPC processor to Apple by the end of this year

So, within the next week? (:

Re:This year!? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:34 · Score: 0

No, within the next 200 hours (depending on where you live... lucky europeans!)
Re:This year!? by godawful · 2003-12-23 07:07 · Score: 1

it's possible

the rumors have been around for months

--
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
Re:This year!? by matt-fu · 2003-12-23 07:36 · Score: 1

Well really, if Apple is planning on having 3Ghz G5s out by this summer then they probably already have at least a few prototypes of the new version, if not some early production runs for doing production mock-ups.

robbIE: 90k members/gnu dating service buy summer? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:41 · Score: -1, Offtopic

a real colonel? finally? (Score:-1, Troll)
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23, @08:25AM (#7793749)
we were beginning to tire of all these corepirate nazi shills telling us that 'stuff that matters' is about .asphyxiating/deleting all of you hobbyist dogooders buy 'law', so that we could all be payper liesense stock markup FraUD billyonerrors again?

yOUR question, although not directly related to colonel promotion/maintainence, is of interest to at least won of us, so here goes:

have you joined robbIE's gnu dating service yet? &, if so, have you any information as to the existence/legitimacy of the won-eyed girl in the jump-you ads?

one more question:

we're not promoting our colonels until all the shysterious phonIE litigatory h00plah dIEs DOWn. do you have any notion when that might be? thanks?

who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:43 · Score: -1, Flamebait

apple sucks ass

Apple: The Promising Newcomer by Infonaut · 2003-12-23 05:43 · Score: 4, Interesting

it's out the door and they've forgotten it in their move to the next thing.

I'm not really sure what you mean by this comment. How do you invest a little more in managing your current products?

Do you mean that Apple doesn't market their products aggressively enough? Maybe you haven't seen their ads everywhere. Remember that Apple is one company marketing an entire platform, while Dell, et. al. only have to market their products, not the OS.

Dell owns a huge chunk of the market because of their assembly and distribution mechanism. Dell started out with no retail mechanism to support, which allowed them to beat other Wintel OEMs on price. When a price war heats up, Dell can take a smaller margin on each unit sold without going under.

Apple is not "promising". It has led the personal computer industry for a quarter of a century. The fact that you're saying, "I would be very happy if they would gain a larger chunk of the market, so that more people would use Apple computers, so that more software would be released for them, so that more hardware options would become available for them..." reveals that you haven't used a Mac lately.

There are over 17,000 software titles available for the Mac. There are zillions of Open Source packages you can use with OS X. Besides that, how many crappy "me too" Windows programs do you really need? There are great software choices in every category for the Mac, and a lot fewer shovelware products than in the Windows world. Mac users just don't tolerate that sort of sloppiness for long.

As for hardware options, Apple is able to make computers that are relatively problem-free specifically because they control the hardware and the OS. Apple has tried the hardware licensing thing in the past, and it only cannibalized their own sales. The Mac will never dominate computing, but then again, Apple's desire to grow and profit has never been predicated on wanting to rule the world.

For that, look north to Redmond. ;-)

--
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ

Re:Apple: The Promising Newcomer by ErikZ · 2003-12-23 08:23 · Score: 1

You linked to Apple to support you claim?!

And I work at CompUSA. We actually have to lug these "Problem free" computers beck to storage when they break.

--
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Re:Apple: The Promising Newcomer by b-baggins · 2003-12-23 08:39 · Score: 1

Um, the apple symbol is SUPPOSED to be on the screen, not the Microsoft logo. It doesn't mean the computer is broken.

--
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Re:Apple: The Promising Newcomer by pkphilip · 2003-12-23 19:03 · Score: 2, Interesting

Apple has a low market share not because their technology is inferior but because it does not concentrate on international markets as much as other manufacturers like IBM, Dell and HP. This has resulted in the following problems:

1. Lack of availability
For instance, here in India where I stay, it will be difficult for a person to purchase Apple even if they wanted to. The number of shops stocking Apple or dealing in Apple parts is very low - around 3 or 4 in this entire city of Chennai and Chennai is one of those happening IT places - outside of Chennai in the smaller cities you just cannot purchase Apple at all. I know this because I have tried to purchase Apple Macs before and I found out about these shops only after doing a lot of looking around.

Getting software for Apple is another problem altogether.

2. Inflated Pricing
Apple computers are priced very high compared to PCs in India..(the price difference is much sharper in India than in the US) and this difference in price (this is just a guess) is probably due to the fact that Apple computers are directly imported into India - that is, they are not assembled locally. The import duties differ significantly between any product which is directly imported and that which is imported as parts and assembled locally.

Apple might be able to reduce their prices considerably in India if only they imported parts into India and assembled them locally here..

I find is astonishing that Apple does not do more to market themselves in countries like India when the local companies are investing so heavily in IT purchases.

As Apple's visibility increases this paucity in Apple software will also disappear. But for this Apple really needs to pay more attention to their marketing and manufacturing strategies.
Re:Apple: The Promising Newcomer by falconwolf · 2003-12-27 15:13 · Score: 1

And I work at CompUSA. We actually have to lug these "Problem free" computers beck to storage when they break.

From the mid '80s through the early '90s I used predominately Macs and never had a problem with them. Since then I've used mostly WinTel and every Windows OS I've used has crashed, some repeatedly. The first tyme I used Win2000 it froze and I had to reboot it. With WinXP it crashed only after a few uses. Currently I'm using WinMe and while it's the second most stable Win OS I've had, I have had to reinstall the OS, the last tyme 2 weeks ago.

The most stable WinOS I've used so far is WinNT 4 which as never crashed for me, but then again if I used it more it may crash. I rarely ever use it though because it runs on a DEC Alpha and the only commercial app I've been able to install was Borland C++ Power Builder which I haven't used in quite some tyme.

--
Should there be a Law?

ooo surpise! by NanoGator · 2003-12-23 05:48 · Score: -1, Flamebait

Macs will run at 3 ghz? WOOHOO! That means AMD and Intel will have 6gig chips!

--
"Derp de derp."

Re:ooo surpise! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:16 · Score: 0

That means AMD and Intel will have 6gig chips, and winblows "Longwait" will crash 3 times faster than now!
Re:ooo surpise! by Junks+Jerzey · 2003-12-23 06:16 · Score: 5, Interesting

Macs will run at 3 ghz? WOOHOO! That means AMD and Intel will have 6gig chips!

Realistically speaking, though, performance increases have slowed down in the x86 camp. The jump from 2.8GHz to 3.0GHz came with a much larger increase in power than than the 7% increase in raw clockrate. Ditto for the 3.2GHz P4. Now Intel is apparently having a lot of trouble just getting bumped up to 3.4GHz, a CPU that dissipates over 100 watts. I'm not saying Intel won't break past this barrier--of course they will--but diminishing returns have kicked in hard. A 4GHz P4 is going to dissipate 150W at this rate. How long can it keep up? These are not the kind of CPUs you can easily put in a desktop, let alone a small-form-factor PC or notebook.

IBM is going to have the same troubles with the PPC970, but at least they're ahead of the game. The cleaner design of the PPC line has suddenly become a powerful advantage.
Re:ooo surpise! by NanoGator · 2003-12-23 06:27 · Score: 1

"Macs will run at 3 ghz? WOOHOO! That means AMD and Intel will have 6gig chips!"

Flamebait? Nobody saw the humor in that?

--
"Derp de derp."
Re:ooo surpise! by Tumbleweed · 2003-12-23 06:59 · Score: 1

*cue dramatic entrance music*

NOOOOOObody expects the Flamebait Inquisition!

Our main weapon is surpise!

And karma damage! Our two main weapons are surprise and karma damage!

And a ruthless ignorance of moderator tags.

Amongst our weapons are surprise, karma damage, and a ruthless ignorance of moderator tags...*sigh* I'll come back in...
Re:ooo surpise! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 08:20 · Score: 0

the only reason Intel hasn't yet released the P5 with all sorts of new leet-speed is because they don't feel threatened by AMD, or, for that matter, IBM. The P4 is at its end-of-life (actually it's way past it), but Intel keeps selling it just because it still kicks ass. The moment that ass kicking is challenged they'll whip out the P5 and the maccies will have yet another masterpiece to denegrade.
Re:ooo surpise! by akuma(x86) · 2003-12-23 10:24 · Score: 1

The performance increases are slowing down because we're reaching the end of life for 130nm technology. We can't squeeze much more speed out of it. I don't see any 130nm IBM chips running faster than 2.2GHz...

You're quoting numbers from 130nm x86 processors. Make no mistake, Intel and AMD will have 90nm processor offerings that will have the same benefits that IBM is claiming, and dare I say - much higher performance and performance/watt. That 4GHz P4 you're quoting will be on a 90nm process but it certainly won't be 150W.

No one except for Intel is currently sampling/shipping 90nm products.
Re:ooo surpise! by Junks+Jerzey · 2003-12-23 10:56 · Score: 1

You're quoting numbers from 130nm x86 processors. Make no mistake, Intel and AMD will have 90nm processor offerings that will have the same benefits that IBM is claiming, and dare I say - much higher performance and performance/watt. That 4GHz P4 you're quoting will be on a 90nm process but it certainly won't be 150W.

The 100+ watt dissipation figure is for the 3.4GHz Prescott, which is based on a 90nm process. It was supposed to be out this year, but was pushed into 2004.

Mac users and horsepower by ScottSpeaks! · 2003-12-23 05:48 · Score: 1

I use a mixture of OSes for various things. I use Linux for cheap servers and at my desk for day-to-day web/mail use. I use Windows for things where I need compatibility with Joe Sixpack, such as web site testing or running niche products only available for Windows. But I'm about to buy a G5 running OS X, to put in my studio for all my image manipulation and 3D rendering work.

Fobes just reads the rumor sites by joekra · 2003-12-23 05:56 · Score: 5, Interesting

As has been seen time and time again, Forbes.com simply reads and summarizes the Mac rumor sites. This is not new information.

See MacRumors.com for Forbes' "sources".

Re:Fobes just reads the rumor sites by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:21 · Score: 0

Yeah, but at least they know how to read.

Interesting... by mykepredko · 2003-12-23 05:57 · Score: 1

I suspect the article got cut down for size and the non-technical editor left in the explanation for "compiler" after reading both it and the explanation of "open-source".

This is interesting because you could probably ask yourself if the concept of "open source" is so simple and obvious to a non-technical editor that they would delete it from an article then why is it so difficult for some many companies to understand?

I'm asking this question because of my conversations with a senior technical manager at work. He seems to interpret "open source" as there being an army of coders out there waiting to work on his projects as soon as he gets around to putting up some example code and the final requirements on sourceforge.

Sigh.

myke

--
Mimetics Inc. Twitter

Speed doesn't matter... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 05:58 · Score: 0

Moore's law tells me that G5 and Pentium lines will be head to head for some while to come, regardless of clock speed... pretty much you are correct - this isn't a speed bump, it just means we can look farward to faster Intel chips! Hooray!!

Re:You know a women didn't come up with this idea. by JohnwheeleR · 2003-12-23 06:07 · Score: 0, Flamebait

i been modding you bad. i even went back in time and modded down one of your past comments. I think you are a moron

Big Mac super computer to be expanded by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:08 · Score: 0

....with new dual 3Ghz machines. Will Big Mac hit #2 in speed?

not moving from GCC by johnjones · 2003-12-23 06:10 · Score: 1

they wont move from GCC its just getting too good...

also they can change objc compiler when they plese

if Apple want CONTROL freakery then they should stay with gcc

regards

JJ

Re:not moving from GCC by netsrek · 2003-12-23 08:20 · Score: 1

perhaps you should investigate how crap gcc really is at optimizing, especially for Alitvec, and especially in comparison to xlc.

--

i don't read slashdot anymore.
Re:not moving from GCC by tyrione · 2003-12-23 09:31 · Score: 1

The responsibility of Altivec Optimizations within GCC lie solely with Apple. Just as the responsibilities for ObjC optimizations are Apple's as they were NeXT's. That is the relationship they have garnered.

The updates to GCC from Apple don't also reflect the updates that have been made internally to GCC within Apple. Those updates always trickle down after thorough testing and SQA bug flushings.

Unless Apple Engineering has done a 180 degree on this than my comments are moot.

Whether or not Apple adopts IBM's PowerPC compiler should be self-evident.

Such would increase costs. Engineering does not want to be dependent upon the time schedules of IBM for the Compiler, not to mention the politics/business issues involved with Co-licensing and thus increasing the cost of ownership passed down to the consumer.

Display Postscript even cost more than what was acceptable, at NeXT now Apple, which was one of the reasons it just made sense to develop a Display PDF Model within Quartz.

Regarding the compiler, the folks that work on the GCC issues within Apple Engineering spent several years on the run-time to make Java and ObjC work like direct siblings. Now that work has blossomed expect more time spent on making sure if this PowerPC compiler from IBM can reduce overhead by 50% you can bet GCC will get this as well.

What would be a big boost in performance would be the eventual EOL (End of Life) support for Classic and Carbon which means switching to a pure Cocoa environment that supports C/C++/Java/ObjC/ObjC++ and Fortran 77/Ada 95, etc.,.

If you notice O'Reilly is publishing more literature on Cocoa and less on Carbon. Carbon is just a Transitional API. How long that transition will be in effect only Apple knows. The biggest gripe people how about ObjC is the syntax. Ironic since it is quite logical and grammatically more readable than C++ let alone Java.

In the end whether or not GCC becomes as fast as XLC is not what will determine the visibility of OS X. Its compelling third party applications that make equal quality as Apple.
Re:not moving from GCC by stingerman101 · 2003-12-23 16:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

Carbon is a procedural API, Cocoa is OO. There is room for both and we should expect both to continue evolving together for the next 5 years. Carbon isn't going anywhere.
Re:not moving from GCC by York+the+Mysterious · 2003-12-25 18:07 · Score: 1

For the most part cocoa has not proven to be a real speed increase when applications are rewritten

--

Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land

Time traveling computers? by pavon · 2003-12-23 06:16 · Score: 1

Damn, I though Y2K was a problem, now my 64 bit unix time isn't even good enough.

Re:speed - Pixlet by mcwop · 2003-12-23 06:17 · Score: 3, Interesting

High-end Video Codec Pixlet is the first studio-grade codec for filmmakers. Pixlet provides 20-25:1 compression, allowing a 75MB/sec series of frames to be delivered in a 3MB/sec movie, similar to DV data rates. Pixlet lets high-end digital film frames play in real time with any 1GHz G4 or better Panther Mac, without investing in costly, proprietary hardware.

--

"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX

thats right you dont need a *fully* 64 bit OS by johnjones · 2003-12-23 06:21 · Score: 1

you dont need to be fully 64bit

things like the VM subsystem and the dynamic linker etc....

but really you need a compiler and a good ABI (look at sgi n32 O32 been there a long time)

they have the compiler (PPC64 linux has the same back end )
really if you want speed on these things run linux....
(check out the data access using ext2)

the real niceness is thet you can run photoshop 8
(cs or whatever adobe want to call it )

and then munch through a bunch of filters hmmm floating point goodness.....

regards

JJ

Forget Powerbooks by k_killmore · 2003-12-23 06:23 · Score: 1

Let's hope that Apple decides to revive the Cube once again. I small form factor business-ready 64-bit Mac might be able to break into the corporate world with all the talk of Macs superior security and ease. Besides, I'm still kicking myself for not picking up one of those things the first time around, though they would need to adjust the price a little lower too, to convince me. $999 for a G5 Cube might sell pretty well.

Re:Forget Powerbooks by Master+Bait · 2003-12-23 06:37 · Score: 2, Interesting

It wouldn't hurt either if they made a headless imac. Not quite a cube but at least a snowball.
It would also be nice if they put back Quartz support over tcp/ip (they took it off in the NeXTStep days because of security issues). Apple has lousy market presence in the business/office world, but a high-powered QuartzTerminal(tm) and a headless imac might be nice. In the meantime, I buy my Macs used on ebay!

--
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Re:Forget Powerbooks by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:27 · Score: 0

$999 is OK, as long as it's dual 970s, includes the 23" Cinema Display, and the Extended Version Boxed Set of Lord of the Rings Parts 1-II-III on DVD.

Also, they can throw in one of those new mini-Pods. ;P

3gig! Noo... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:27 · Score: 0

I'm still trying to playing PAC-MAN (DOS 5) on my P4 2Gig!

Its just all too much!

Spot the troll... by Kjella · 2003-12-23 06:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

You supply 3% of the computer market with chips, you can hand pick your chips and speed bin the rest.

Right... How does the *size* of the market relate to the yield? If a certain fraction of the chips you produce are exceptionally good, Intel/AMD can "hand pick" just as much, or as little as Apple. Their chips aren't 3% hand picked from 100%, they produce 3%, and a fraction of those again could be "hand picked".

The rest are just unsubstantiated rumors, following up a good troll. And the moderators are falling for it hook, line and sinker.

Kjella

--
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings

Re:Spot the troll... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 08:00 · Score: 0

You are definately failing...

If you produce 100,000 chips and hand pick them for the 10,000 machines you sell, you speed bin 50,000 chips, and you scrap the rest. That leaves you with 40,000 chips to eat.

If you are Intel and produce 27,000,000 chips a year and hand pick them for 7,000,000 million machines and speed bin 10,000,000, you are having to eat 10,000,000 chips in production.

See the numbers we are working with here? How is Intel going to Niche market the chips to pay for the scraps.

Really you seem to not understand the scale as being a factor.
Re:Spot the troll... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 10:29 · Score: 0

You're right.

The parent poster has no clue whatsoever about volume manufacturing or economies of scale.
Re:Spot the troll... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:29 · Score: 0

So is Apple manufacturing its own PPC chips now?
Re:Spot the troll... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-24 07:07 · Score: 0

Right... How does the *size* of the market relate to the yield?

If you have a tiny market, you don't need to get high yields.

I can't believe I needed to tell you that dude :\

Not SGI anymore?... by PaulBu · 2003-12-23 06:28 · Score: 1

Yeah, it was a pity to see SGI going, going, going, almost gone... ;-( Or are people in video business still use them?

(They did have very beautiful and powerful boxes for the time)

Paul B.

Re:Not SGI anymore?... by jo_ham · 2003-12-23 09:50 · Score: 1

SGI can still be used with Pixar's Renderman software. The artist tools at least. The server portion of the software only runs on Linux, Mac and Windows although no one would really run it on the last of those three..

The article is wrong on this, as are you ;) by kuwan · 2003-12-23 06:30 · Score: 2, Informative

From the article:

Where 32-bit chips are limited to addressing only 2 gigabytes of memory, 64-bit chips can theoretically address thousands of gigabytes of memory, though Apple's G5 boxes are limited to 8 gigabytes. Secondly 64-bit chips can perform complex calculations in fewer steps than 32-bit chips.

So far Apple's machines can see all the memory, they can't yet do 64-bit calculations. Present it with a 64-bit calculation, and a Mac with a G5 chip still breaks it into two 32-bit pieces.

First of all 32-bit chips can access 4 GB of memory, not 2 GB. And second, he's got it backwards. Apple's machines CAN do 64-bit calculations, but they can't do 64-bit addressing.

As others have mentioned, there's no great benefit in changing from 32-bit pointers to 64-bit. The optimizations for the G5 that you see in today's apps are from handling complex 64-bit calculations. In this regard Mac OS X is fully up to speed.

--
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes

Re:The article is wrong on this, as are you ;) by afidel · 2003-12-23 09:20 · Score: 1

Well actually he's mostly correct in that without specific hacks both of the major OS's for 32bit platforms will only allow 2GB for the application space, with hacks NT based OS's will go to 3GB and Linux will go to 3.5GB (I guess more if you really wanted). You are correct though that he flubbed the calculation vs storage thing though. Then again there isn't a real world machine that can address a full 64bits =)

--
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Re:The article is wrong on this, as are you ;) by akuma(x86) · 2003-12-23 10:37 · Score: 1

First of all 32-bit chips can access 4 GB of memory, not 2 GB. And second, he's got it backwards. Apple's machines CAN do 64-bit calculations, but they can't do 64-bit addressing.

I think you are the one mistaken.

32 bit chips can address 4GB of memory. On typical operating systems, a portion of that is dedicated to the OS leaving the user with much less than 4GB (The upper 2GB for Windows and I believe 1 GB for Linux).

Apple's new machines (IBM PPC970 processor) can do both 64 bit arithmetic and can address 64-bits of virtual memory.

As others have mentioned, there's no great benefit in changing from 32-bit pointers to 64-bit. The optimizations for the G5 that you see in today's apps are from handling complex 64-bit calculations. In this regard Mac OS X is fully up to speed.

Except that your pointers double in size which puts more pressure on your data caches and memory bandwidth which causes you to lose performance. There is also opportunity cost. 64-bit datapaths in the processor are wider in the critical path of the chip and will slow down your top frequency.
Re:The article is wrong on this, as are you ;) by stingerman101 · 2003-12-23 16:35 · Score: 1

To be more specific the Motorola processors have always had a 36-bit address space and are able to address 64GB.

Megahertz Myth no longer needed by Vandil+X · 2003-12-23 06:32 · Score: 3, Insightful

Apple has always stated that there is a Megahertz myth when comparing computer platforms, to which I agree.

However, non-technical people are still buying Intel/AMD-based computers because they have the largest processor speed posted on the shelf (More MHz/GHz = more power, right?).

It's interesting that Apple's upcoming 3+GHz G5 processors will now tout the same speed numbers as Intel/AMD chips.

Surprisingly enough, if "3.xGHz" is on the Mac's box, Apple just might win a few Joe Sixpacks and a few PC converts.

Only time will tell.

--
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START

Re:Megahertz Myth no longer needed by NerveGas · 2003-12-23 06:38 · Score: 1

However, non-technical people are still buying Intel/AMD-based computers because they have the largest processor speed posted on the shelf

I don't know a single non-technical person that's made their paltform choice based on that - they do it on the fact that they've had some exposure to Windows and Office, and aren't really up to trying anything different.

Like Lothar of the Hill people said, "Because it is different, we naturally fear it!"

steve

--
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Re:Megahertz Myth no longer needed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:49 · Score: 0

It's interesting that Apple's upcoming 3+GHz G5 processors will now tout the same speed numbers as Intel/AMD chips.
Same clock speed as the Intel chips, but not the AMD chips. The AMD chips have consistently lower clockspeeds, especially at the high-end (Opteron).
People buy AMD chips for the same reasons they buy PPCs: for how fast they run code, not how fast the clock ticks.
Re:Megahertz Myth no longer needed by chipset · 2003-12-23 07:35 · Score: 1

Not really. A number of years ago, Apple had commericials saying how fast their computers were compared to WinTel boxes.

They had the commericial with the snail, etc.

Mhz, Ghz...What's it really matter? Most systems today (within the last few months) are reasonably fast. For most end users, it doesn't matter how fast the box is, really. It's responsiveness and user experience.

Who cares how fast Solitaire bounces the cards?
Re:Megahertz Myth no longer needed by burns210 · 2003-12-23 08:18 · Score: 1

na, unless the iMacs come along with a 3ghz proc, and i doubt they will(they are normally a generation hind the g5... so like a g5 1.6-2ghz iMac this january), then joe sixpack won't care. Powermacs are aimed and priced at POWER usersm iMacs are aimed at the consumer, and are priced closer to their budget.
Re:Megahertz Myth no longer needed by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:30 · Score: 0

However, non-technical people are still buying Intel/AMD-based computers because they have the largest processor speed posted on the shelf (More MHz/GHz = more power, right?).

Sadly, there are people who think MS Windows is good. Seriously: I have heard comments from real live human beings like 'Isn't Microsoft my friend?', 'I always heard they were the best', and stuff like that.

It's shelf real estate, it's OEM agreements, it's all those things TP Jackson got so pissed off about.
Re:Megahertz Myth no longer needed by GlassHeart · 2003-12-23 12:43 · Score: 1

if "3.xGHz" is on the Mac's box, Apple just might win a few Joe Sixpacks and a few PC converts.
3 GHz G5s will be shipping in the summer of 2004, undoubtedly in the form of high end Power Macs. They will not be marketed to or be affordable to "Joe Sixpacks". Joe Sixpack will continue to spend $500 to $1,000 on a computer, and maybe buy an eMac. The 3 GHz Power Mac will be targeted at professionals who will spend $3,000 or more on a computer.
That's the way this has always worked. G4 computers have just recently broken the $1,000 mark.
Re:Megahertz Myth no longer needed by Sentry21 · 2003-12-23 15:05 · Score: 1

No, non-technical people are buying Intel/AMD-based computers because they're only $500, not realizing that they're pieces of shit.

What Apple really needs to focus on is the 'Value Myth' - that just because it's 1/4 of the price of a Mac doesn't mean it's 4 times the value of a Mac. You get a shitload more for your money buying a good computer, but people don't realize (or don't care) about that.

--Dan
Re:Megahertz Myth no longer needed by nuckin+futs · 2003-12-23 23:17 · Score: 1

Surprisingly enough, if "3.xGHz" is on the Mac's box, Apple just might win a few Joe Sixpacks and a few PC converts.

Sadly, not if joe sixpack likes to play the latest and greatest games on it. There's only a handful of companies that do simultaneous releases of games on both platforms.
Re:Megahertz Myth no longer needed by Tokerat · 2003-12-26 21:01 · Score: 1

You'd think for such a starving market, game developers WOULD put the time and energy into simultanious releases. Macs are quickly catching up hardware-wise (IMHO, already surpassing x86), and the software is undeniably awsome.

Mac users like games too, what are developers waiting for?

--
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Re:Megahertz Myth no longer needed by Patrik+Nordebo · 2003-12-29 09:59 · Score: 1

Developers (or publishers, really) are probably waiting for Mac users. With only a couple of percent market share, and with many of those having a PC or console too, the added sales don't add up to that much more money. And porting games isn't free, especially when the games aren't originally designed for portability.

Sad, but true.

G5 upgrades for G4s not likely by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:33 · Score: 0

You won't see these upgrades -- unless the upgrade replaces the entire motherboard, which would probably cost as much as a new G5. A G3 is almost the same as a G4. A G5 is an _entirely_ different animal.

Smaller feature sizes mean ... by Bassman59 · 2003-12-23 06:34 · Score: 3, Informative

... that they can fit more chips on a wafer. Which means that the price per chip is reduced. That's the REAL reason for die shrinks and moving to processes with smaller feature sizes.

Not that cheaper PPC970s are a bad thing, mind you...

Re:Smaller feature sizes mean ... by StarManta · 2003-12-25 12:45 · Score: 0

That's not the only reason though.... smaller IS faster, due to the time it takes for the signals, which travel at the speed of light, to traverse the chips. You're right though, cheaper is good as well. :)

--
StarManta
I don't think BMW has ever complained about their 2% marketshare. Neither has Apple.

Credit where credit is due by p3d0 · 2003-12-23 06:39 · Score: 4, Informative

What I love about Apple (in this case it's IBM but they're doing it for Apple) is they how look for alternative ways to improve performance appart from the obvious CPU clock speed increase.

You're making a mountain out of a mole hill. This is a little like congratulating Ford for working on their fuel injection and valve timings instead of the "obvious" horsepower increase. Well, how do you think they get the horsepower increase?

The two things you quote are very mundane and ordinary ways to get more performance from a CPU. Barring redesign, miniaturization and voltage drops are the ways to make hardware faster, and compiler optimizations are the way to make software faster. These are the bread and butter of performance improvement, and you give Apple/IBM entirely too much credit for doing these things. (And this is coming from someone who works on an IBM compiler.)

Having said that, the PPC compiler team's work has been amazing, and congratulations are due for the sheer magnitude of the performance boost. In a field where a 2% improvement is an achievement, 50% is incredible.

--
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....

Re:Credit where credit is due by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 09:59 · Score: 0

The 50% improvement doesn't come from the IBM compiler being any good (it's just average), it's that GCC is _shit_. Compare e.g. GCC versus:

Pro64 on MIPS
Intel C on Itanium
Compaq C on Alpha
HP C on HPPA/Itanium

etc etc.
Re:Credit where credit is due by p3d0 · 2003-12-23 12:20 · Score: 1

Thanks for the correction. I need to RTFA a bit more carefully.

--
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....

90nm Soft Error Rate by holland_g · 2003-12-23 06:43 · Score: 5, Interesting

To quote Intel's own engineers: "As semiconductor technology advancing to 90nm feature sizes, radiation induced soft errors have become a major reliability concern." C.Dai Presentation

I wonder how many software errors will be caused by neutrons hitting the processor and upseting logic gates? I have not seen any test results from Los Alamos for 90nm processors using EIA JESD 57, (1996) JEDEC Standard - Test procedures for the measurement of Single Event effects in Semiconductor Devices from Heavy Ion Irradiation. Unfortunately the Radhard server at NASA is down right now so I can't check the server for the latest test results.

Some people think Failures in Time (FIT) rates will get better at 90nm than 130nm. Some think the opposite. Xilinx and Actel are arguing over it. Caches are epecially vulnerable. In a critical software application, this is unacceptable, and sometimes the cache needs to be disabled altogether.

One method of addressing this is built in checksumming on the cache, and triple redundancy on certain registers like program counter, etc... This does induce a performance hit.

--
Holland

Re:90nm Soft Error Rate by barawn · 2003-12-23 07:17 · Score: 4, Insightful

Some people think Failures in Time (FIT) rates will get better at 90nm than 130nm. Some think the opposite. Xilinx and Actel are arguing over it. Caches are epecially vulnerable. In a critical software application, this is unacceptable, and sometimes the cache needs to be disabled altogether.

Actually, it'd be better stated that Actel is arguing with the rest of the FPGA industry, as Actel's the only one that makes antifuse FPGAs. Xilinx is vocal, but almost everyone else would agree with them as well.

I've got a guess that Actel might be a little bit biased.

If you had to believe one or the other based on equal information, you'd tend to believe Xilinx: they can afford to give up the rad hard market, as it's not that large, so they really have very little incentive to lie. Actel, however, is completely unable to compete on price issues (god, their development kits/hardware/programmers are insane!) and so they'd have a strong incentive to lie about the reliability of the competition to get people to switch to them.

However, I also know that if I had wanted to fly a PLD on any NASA mission, I'd have to choose Actel. So someone believes them...

I wonder how many software errors will be caused by neutrons hitting the processor and upseting logic gates?

Er? I don't see many free neutrons running around in a normal environment, unless you're working near a nuclear reactor. That 11-minute half-life tends to make them go away - they're a negligible component of cosmic rays. Do you mean alphas? Alpha particle strikes on electronics are a known thing - that's why ECC is around.
Re:90nm Soft Error Rate by HermanZA · 2003-12-23 07:27 · Score: 1

I think they are worried about smaller things than neutrons. Gamma rays are more of a problem.
Re:90nm Soft Error Rate by holland_g · 2003-12-23 09:28 · Score: 2, Informative

Er? I don't see many free neutrons running around in a normal environment, unless you're working near a nuclear reactor. That 11-minute half-life tends to make them go away - they're a negligible component of cosmic rays. Do you mean alphas? Alpha particle strikes on electronics are a known thing - that's why ECC is around.
I don't mean alpha particles. I mean neutrons. One source of the neutrons is generated from cosmic ray interaction with our atmosphere.
I do know the industry uses Neutron Flux as a unit of measurement:
A measure of the intensity of neutron radiation in neutrons/cm2-sec. It is the number of neutrons passing through 1 square centimeter of a given target in 1 second. Expressed as nv, where n = the number of neutrons per cubic centimeter and v = their velocity in centimeters per second.
The level of measurable Neutron Flux fluctuates with changes in altitude and latitude. Also solar flares can cause a 10 fold increase in measureable flux levels.
For soft error rates, the neutron particles are the most important.
I don't have a doctorate on this subject and cannot claim to be an expert in heavy ions. I would not be able to comment about half life and decay. A nice article by Dr. Eugene Normand is my source.

--
Holland
Re:90nm Soft Error Rate by afidel · 2003-12-23 09:28 · Score: 1

Just do what HP does, put two CPU's on die and have them both run the calculation and checksum the results, a non-zero result means the calcs are run again by both CPU's, a second non-zero result and that CPU is disabled. This is why it's a real shame that HP decided to go with Itanic, it's a toy compared to their existing equipment.

--
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Re:90nm Soft Error Rate by Jeff+DeMaagd · 2003-12-23 10:26 · Score: 1

AMD's Hammer architecture has ECC in cache. I think Intel had ECC cache since around 400MHz PIII, the very first PIIIs might not have it. I really don't know about PPC chips.
Re:90nm Soft Error Rate by Jeff+DeMaagd · 2003-12-23 10:32 · Score: 3, Interesting

I think that feature is called lockstepping where two CPUs run the same operation side by side where the results are compared. To my knowledge, Itanium has lockstepping too. As a point of reference, AMD does not have lockstepping and doesn't plan to put it into Hammer or the generation after Hammer.

Keep in mind that Itanium is an HP architecture, Itanium2 is an HP designed chip. I don't know what it is about Slashdotters, from what I've seen, I2's performance is generally second only to Alpha EV7.
Re:90nm Soft Error Rate by afidel · 2003-12-23 11:08 · Score: 3, Interesting

Itanium2 does have lockstepping but it is being removed in future models in favor of an I/O based checking method which Intel's engineers claims is needed because lockstepping exposes transient soft errors as errors to the software layer, I say GOOD! The software SHOULD know when errors are happening so that you can spot trends. It's a lot easier to do trend analysis for failing components if you have the information, if you only get reports on some percentage of errors then you might miss an oportunity to catch failing hardware before it becomes too late. Also Itaniums performance in the real world is far below synthetic benchmarks for most applications because the design requires smart compilers, VERY smart ones, but the design is so new and so divergent from everything else that the compilers for EPIC are immature.

--
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Re:90nm Soft Error Rate by holland_g · 2004-01-05 09:08 · Score: 1

However, I also know that if I had wanted to fly a PLD on any NASA mission, I'd have to choose Actel. So someone believes them...
FYI: It is common knowledge that Xilinx Virtex devices are on the mars rovers.

--
Holland

Microsoft and Intel the way to go by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:52 · Score: -1, Troll

Why would anyone want to use slow Apples that have no software and incompatible hardware?

The way forward is to use Windows and Intel, you get lots of software plus fast fast Intel Processors.

HELLO.... Why bother with a platform that has 3% of the market?

Re:Microsoft and Intel the way to go by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 07:04 · Score: 0

>HELLO.... Why bother with a platform that has 3% of the market?

Has it ever occurred to you that 3% of the market require superior solutions to what the ignorant masses use? ....not all cars are Toyotas!
Re:Microsoft and Intel the way to go by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 07:14 · Score: 0

Tell me:

5 things that Windows + Intel can't do what an Apple can do.

Windows has video editing software, music editing software, word processors, excellent and reliable MS software. Even Adobe prefer Windows over Macs.

If it wasn't for MS, we would be in the stone ages, people would not have Computers.

I just love MS and bill gates. A modern day hero.
Re:Microsoft and Intel the way to go by DancesWithBulls · 2003-12-23 07:44 · Score: 0

You sound bored. Instead of trolling did you think about tipping cows. That could keep you entertained for hours!
Re:Microsoft and Intel the way to go by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 08:27 · Score: 0

You can't run Final Cut Pro on Windows, and don't tell me Windows video editing software is just as good!

Idiot!
Re:Microsoft and Intel the way to go by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-27 03:00 · Score: 0

The year: 1976... two guys (Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs) make a personal computer, one of the first if not arguably the first home computer. Where the fuck was Bill Goddamned Gates and his pile of shitcode at this time?

It was Apple that started the home/personal computer revolution.

If it were not for all of Apple's continuing innovation, you'd be in the stone ages.

Now, crawl back under your rock.

PARENT IS TROLL by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 06:58 · Score: 0

How is he a troll? Either actually disprove what he says or shut up. Oh wait, you can't.

If you click a link that contains urinalpoop or lastmeasure, then you are an idiot and deserve to see it.

Not so strange... by Kjella · 2003-12-23 07:01 · Score: 1

What I love about Apple (in this case it's IBM but they're doing it for Apple) is they how look for alternative ways to improve performance appart from the obvious CPU clock speed increase.

In the PC world, everybody is in for creating a market for *their* part of the system. Intel, AMD are pushing GHz, nVidia, ATI are pushing GPU, Abit/Asus/MSI/whatever is pushing mobo features and so on. Dell and others assembling computers are mostly just responding to consumer demand (read: buzzwords, MHz numbers etc.) delivering the most at the lowest price, even if they realize the consumer is "stupid" and might be better off with a different configuration.

Apple on the other hand, is mainly looking at total performance. It's part of their entire brand, taking care of the "behind the scenes" technology. "We know how to build computers, let us worry about what should be in a well-performing computer. You don't need to know PATA vs SATA vs SCSI or SDRAM vs DDR vs DDR-2 or 32bit vs 64 bit. Just trust us that the choices we make are good."

Compared to some purchases I've seen, I think it's maybe for the best. A few examples:

High MHz CPU, but so low RAM you'll spend half the time waiting for the HDD.
GFX card bought, based on memory size, not chip or memory speed.
A friend considering purchasing a 64bit machine because it's twice as much as 32bit.

Now this may be unusual on slashdot, but for most people, they should stop looking at specs and try to "feel" performance. Unfortunately, where do you really get to test what it would be like? Nowhere really. Not even demo machines give you a good impression. With online ordering, there's even less opportunity than before. All you do is order, and know it'll be a lot faster than your last machine. That's pretty much it.

Kjella

--
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings

Nope by michaelggreer · 2003-12-23 07:05 · Score: 0

At issue is not the "size" of the chip, but the heat dispersion. I do not see how this solves the heat issue, and thus how it could be engineered into a powerbook.

Re:Nope by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 10:15 · Score: 0

smaller feature size -> lower core voltage -> lower wattage -> lower heat dissipation % gross oversimplification.
Re:Nope by stingerman101 · 2003-12-23 10:34 · Score: 2, Informative

The heat is addressed not only with the 90NM process but with the new PowerTune technology which scales the voltage along with the frequency providing a quadratic decrease in power and heat whereas frequency only scaling only provides a linear decrease. Too, if IBM is including their "voltage island" techniques under the PowerTune umbrella, then IBM can use lower voltage components for none core processor sections. Too the efuse technology can dynamically switch and turn off redundant components that may become defective improving the life of the processor and of course more importantly the yield.
Re:Nope by Datafage · 2003-12-23 18:38 · Score: 1

The smaller the transistors are the less power they take and thus the less heat they generate. A finer die process is EXACTLY what is needed to cram a chip into a notebook.

--
Nicotine free Amish .sig.

Yes, but... by chadjg · 2003-12-23 07:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

These days, when people say video editing they mean video editing, compositing, sound sweetening, re-recording and a bunch of other fun stuff.

In my end of the market, mid-low end, nobody hires a second person to do the extra jobs. Once you get the raw goodness, that's it. You get to do it all, and then do it over when the producer changes his mind.

That being said, horsepower is very important in video editing. It seems that everybody wants multi-layer titles, stuff flying around the screen, translucent layers, and then we get into color correcting. Tonight for instance, I will probably give my Dual 500mhz G4 two or three hours of tendering to do, and this is just for a couple of dozen titles on two half hour programs! I could very easily keep two computers busy with work.

Graspee Leemoor was talking about the home user, not the pro, but the difference is narrowing. The full version of Final Cut Pro is not that expensive, and Final Cut Express is only $300! With signifigant editing goodness being that cheap, people are starting to do more than just chopping together their clips. Once they get a tast of all the fancy crap that these programs can do, they start loading up their video with all kinds of stuff, and that's what will perk up their appetite for computing power.

I'm not saying that this is a good thing, by the way. Most people would be better served by getting a decent tripod, spending some bucks on microphones and recording equipment, and spending time thinking about whether they really need that fourth shot of little Jim-Bob playing in the mud. Quality production is never easy or cheap, and people think post can fix anything, damn it.

Basically, the DV video format has broken the prosumer market wide open. This will introduce people to decent video editing that wouldn't have had a chance before. Some of those people will start playing around and feel the need for more power.

When a post production facility is paying editors big bucks per hour, ten grand for a machine that saves just a little time per day is nothing. This is good for everybody downstream. Sadly I don't get paid much so the bosses don't see the need for anything faster than what we have..

Need some video help?

--
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.

Buying Big Blue by joeytsai · 2003-12-23 07:23 · Score: 2, Interesting

I think Apple makes great stuff, but at the end of the day, I really do believe in free software and can't wait to own a (dual?) Power4 workstation so I can run Linux on it.

When I saw this article, I followed the procedure that I've done whenever I saw something new with the Power4 (Apple calls it the G5) chip - I went to IBM's site to see if they sell their own
workstations on it.

This time, however, I was incredibly happy to see that this was the case! The IBM website advertises Intellistation POWER series available for purchase. There are two large buts, though - and are probably related. Firstly, they are ridiculously expensive. As in, 8K+ for a 1 CPU at 1.0 GHz. Without a monitor. Secondly, they aren't running Linux - they're running AIX.

Does anybody know this situation? Has Linux been ported to the Power4 chip? I remember reading that it has, but I've never heard any success stories. Secondly, is IBM planning on releasing a workstation running Linux? I imagine the AIX license is a big part of the hardware and hopefully this would make the package much more affordable.

--
http://www.talknerdy.org

Re:Buying Big Blue by Knobby · 2003-12-23 07:55 · Score: 4, Informative

The Power4 is not the same chip as the PowerPC 970. IBM will probably begin selling PPC 970 machines eventually, but they haven't begun to ship them yet.
Re:Buying Big Blue by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 08:09 · Score: 0

Why not buy one of the (much cheaper) Apple boxes and run Yellow Dog Linux on it?

TerraSoft sells Dual 2GHz G5's for $2999 with Yellow Dog Linux preinstalled.
Re:Buying Big Blue by Mes · 2003-12-23 09:52 · Score: 1

Linux works fine on Power4's. I work on AIX on Power 3 and 4's but other people here work on the linux side (we're not allowed to mingle much owing to some frivolous lawsuit or something). Im surprised you cant get linux factory installed on those things.

Look for 970's to come out in IBM's pBlades soon.
Re:Buying Big Blue by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:34 · Score: 0

I really do believe in free software

Free as in beer?

If you really believe in it, do you write any yourself?
Re:Buying Big Blue by Henriok · 2003-12-23 11:38 · Score: 2, Informative

1) POWER4 and PowerPC 970 is two different chips. 970 was derived from POWER4 for the light server/desktop market.

2) Linux runs just fine on POWER4 hardware as does it on 970 hardware. IBM's first machines using 970 (the blade module JS20) will run soley on Linux for half a year until AIX comes.

--

- Henrik

- when the Shadows descend -
Re:Buying Big Blue by foniksonik · 2003-12-23 12:29 · Score: 1

You should consider buying a used G5 or G4 machine and installing Linux on it. By buying used you can forego the OS tax. If you wait about 4 months there should be some good G5 deals available through the usual channels, eBay, etc.

--
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.

perhaps more volume than credited by sharrestom · 2003-12-23 07:48 · Score: 1

I would expect that Apple's chip consumption is skewed beyond 3% based on its consistent use of multiprocessors in its powermac and xserve lines. Note also that Apple doesn't use but a few variants in any of its product lines. While the volumes of processors that Apple consumes are small overall, those volumes of 970's most likely exceed quite handily Opteron volumes. Add IBM's consumption for linux boxen, and were talking some real earning potential from PPC for IBM.

Premiere used to blow, by chadjg · 2003-12-23 08:00 · Score: 1

but I've been hearing good things from people about the new version. I can't say much, but it is exciting alternative for the prosumer these days.

--
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.

Lies, Damn Lies & Benchmarks... by chadjg · 2003-12-23 08:08 · Score: 1

Their both stinking fast. I'll take either one as long as it runs my app of choice. Please santa, can't something fall off the back of the sleigh? I've been really good!

--
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.

rumors rumors rumors by ColMustard · 2003-12-23 08:12 · Score: 1

I hate when Slashdot posts rumors.

--
Moof.

well, we'll see by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 08:30 · Score: 0

as the g5 was late in arriving after being announced at the special event, and when it did start shipping, it shipped in very low quantitities (esp for the dual 2ghz model) and people suffered through months of delays, I have no faith that jobs prediction of 3ghz g5's will be here by summer. note we are now something like 5 months into his prediction and not one speed bump as of yet.

also as a consumer, you have no roadmap that is officially announced so you can just take your chances when purchasing that no better models will be released a day later.

with x86 the map is pretty clear and you have a rough approximation of when price breaks and speed bumps are coming.

5 months into the g5 and all this yapping to generate interest in a platform that cant generate much on merit.

please

Big Mac super computer proves speed/price by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 08:31 · Score: 0

Big Mac blows away Intel based super computers on price/performance, it shows very clearly how good the G5 processor really is!

Windows/Intel fools are in total denial of the Big Mac running dual G5s!

Oh yay. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 08:39 · Score: 0

And again it will of course be the fastest processor on the planet. Yawn. Next.

Re:You know a women didn't come up with this idea. by elmindreda · 2003-12-23 08:55 · Score: 0

you are an incredibly sad person. please go away.

There are problems, then there are problems ;-) by Infonaut · 2003-12-23 08:57 · Score: 1

I simply linked to Apple because for obvious reasons (combatting FUD) they keep a pretty up to date list. You can easily see that there are a lot of Mac apps by checking out Version Tracker or MacUpdate. No conspiracy, bro.

I also said that Macs were "relatively problem free." I doubt you ever have to deal with malfunctioning HPs, Toshibas, IBMs, Dells (like my mother in-law's laptop which has been sent back to Dell twice with jacked motherboards). ;-)

--
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ

myth was a myth by penguin7of9 · 2003-12-23 09:02 · Score: 1, Insightful

On SPEC, the G4 performs comparably to the P3 (yes, P3) MHz for MHz. The Megahertz myth was a fabrication by Apple based on unfair comparisons and unattainable extrapolations.

What about the G5? Unlike previous PPCs, it is competitive, but no more. An Athlon64 or Opteron still gives you more bang for the buck. And comparing a planned PPC for next summer against today's Pentiums, like you did, also makes no sense.

Re:myth was a myth by jkovach · 2003-12-23 17:35 · Score: 2, Informative

I think you're missing part of the story here - megahertz for megahertz, the Pentium III outperforms a Pentium 4! The P4's "NetBurst Microarchitecture" or whatever is the ultimate incarnation of the megahertz myth - Intel made a bunch of design decisions to boost the clock speed at the expense of slowing down the number of instructions that could be processed per clock cycle compared to the P3. Why? Because Joe Consumer goes to Best Buy and looks at "how many megahertz it does" to make the decision about what to buy. Joe Consumer doesn't know what SPEC is. Heck, Joe Consumer probably doesn't know what a benchmark is.

The new Pentium M processors (used in Centrino laptops), based on the old Pentium III design, clock for clock outperform the Pentium 4. An AMD Athlon 64 3000+ runs at 2.17 GHz, yet AMD claims it runs like a 3 GHZ Pentium 4. AMD uses these model numbers because of the "megahertz myth." An Opteron or Athlon 64 at 2 GHz performs on par with a P4 at 3.2 GHz, thanks in part to a better cache design and higher memory bandwidth. The world's #2 supercomputer runs on 1.25 GHz Alpha processors. (ok, there's 8192 of them) and the #8 and #9 computers run on (8192 and 6656) Power3s at 375 whole megahertz!

The megahertz myth is alive and well. Trying to sum everything up with a single number is arguably a bad thing, but Joe and Jane Consumer want their single number. Look at digital cameras - before they became a mass market consumer item, companies said their camera had XGA resolution, or 1280x1024 resolution, or 640x480 VGA resolution, or whatever. Now you have megapixels.

But don't worry, by next summer, you'll be seeing 3 GHz Athlon 64s and Opterons along with the 3 GHz G5s. (AMD says they are going to start volume production of 90nm chips in Q3 2004 - i.e. the end of next summer.) If patterns hold, these will probably all perform about the same as a 4.5 GHz P4 (extrapolating from today's numbers.) And who knows what Intel will have by then? Rumors of an Intel 32/64 bit CPU a la Opteron have been flying lately. And even if they just could scale the Pentium M design up to around 3 GHz, it could be quite formidable...
Re:myth was a myth by penguin7of9 · 2003-12-25 23:36 · Score: 1

I think you're missing part of the story here - megahertz for megahertz, the Pentium III outperforms a Pentium 4! The P4's "NetBurst Microarchitecture" or whatever is the ultimate incarnation of the megahertz myth

Apple was claiming there was a "Megahertz myth" long before the P4 came out. They tried to create the impression that a G3 or G4 could best a P3 with twice the clock rate. In reality, the G3 and G4 were way behind Intel/AMD even at the time.

The megahertz myth is alive and well. Trying to sum everything up with a single number is arguably a bad thing, but Joe and Jane Consumer want their single number.

The "Megahertz myth" is a marketing gimmick created by Apple, intended to confuse buyers and hide the fact that the PPC is a less-than-stellar performer. Anybody who really cares knows what the different clock frequencies mean and looks at SPEC marks. And die-hard Apple customers really don't care anyway.

If this was really an issue for Apple, they could adopt AMD's successful strategy of using model designations incorporating P4-equivalent clock rates. But unlike Apple, AMD actually has the numbers to back up their claims: an AMD 3200+ really is comparable to a 3.2GHz P4.

Re:speed - Pixlet by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 09:08 · Score: 0

I read that PR too, but I actually compared Pixlet to MJPEG and DV (in NTS resolution of course), and I don't see where is the Pixlet revolution.

When you say "high-end digital film frames", what does that mean ? HD ? 2K ? 4K ? HD resolution Pixlet encoded clip doesn't play in realtime on my G5 2x2 at 100% quality. MJPEG does a much better job there.

What exact settings did they use at the pixlet presentation? I want to see that "mind blowing quality in film resolution playback in realtime on a powerbook".

Until someone reveals the pixlet secret, Animation, MJPEG and uncompressed 4:2:2 will stay my favorite toys.

Wetware and software integration by gobbo · 2003-12-23 09:40 · Score: 1

Hardware speed generally loses to wetware speed unless you have a monster render task.

If you can make things quickly and reliably, with consistent interface features (like keyboard commands) across applications, and apps are well-integrated into the OS, then your computer is much faster regardless of GHz. If your computer doesn't need rebooting when an app goes down, it's faster. If your GUI uses infinite sized targets (i.e. stuff at the very edge of the screen), or you have to click twice in an obvious place instead of 12 times in obscure dialogue boxes, you get a speed boost. If you can set some render job to work then switch to project planning applications without a hiccup, your computer is faster.

If you can learn new software in a pinch, print without headaches, move big files around the network effortlessly, and generally manage the computing environment without annoyingly fussy administration, then your computer is faster. If you have a powerful familiar far-reaching command line and can use it properly, your computer is faster.

Tell me you're using all those cpu cycles efficiently, and I'll put you on a pedestal and proclaim that your P233 is the fastest computer on the block. Otherwise, pay attention to your productivity skills and the quality of your software and stop worrying about cpu percentage points.

--
Damn those pesky terrorists

But I want it now! by Cyno · 2003-12-23 09:48 · Score: 2, Funny

I wanna 60nm G5 SMP system for under $2000.

Or maybe a laptop for around $1200.

The longer it takes them to bring it to market the lower my pricepoint drops. So.. Hurry! :)

uhhhh, yeah... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 09:55 · Score: 0

Yes, IBM will deliver its processors to Apple by the end of the year (or so says Forbes). This doesn't mean Apple will ship computers with this processor by the end of the week.

Re:uhhhh, yeah... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 10:02 · Score: 0

Good detective work Jeeves.

New Console War by Zangief · 2003-12-23 10:04 · Score: 1

I guess something like this new processor will be used in the next generation of consoles. Microsoft already anounced they would work with IBM for designing their Xbox Next. I guess that Nintendo may follow suit.

It also fits into schedule. For a new generation of consoles coming in 2005, SDKs must be available at least a year before. These processors will be here by 2004, so that lefts half a year to design and deliver SDKs, and a year to start production/distribution of Consoles in the last part of 2005.

Re:New Console War by ITR81 · 2003-12-23 10:37 · Score: 2, Informative

Nintendo is already going to use PPC processor for it's next console which is slated to debut in Japan late next yr. Microsoft was the last to go with IBM because both Sony and Nintendo had already been signed on with them for months and months in advance. ATi is also slated to be used in all 3 consoles as well.
Re:New Console War by ProfKyne · 2003-12-29 03:48 · Score: 1

Nintendo is already using PPC chips in the GameCube (Dolphin is a G4).

--
"First you gotta do the truffle shuffle."

Re:You know a women didn't come up with this idea. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 10:14 · Score: 0

Surely all these women driving SUVs should be the proof!

Disappointing progress with laptops.. by guacamole · 2003-12-23 10:28 · Score: 1

Two years ago I bought a 600MHz iBook with 12inch screen for about $1300. Today, for about this much I can get a 12inch iBook with a 800MHz G4 CPU. While I am fine with this screen size, the progress of CPU speeds on low-end portables is disappointing. Compare this to how much the CPU speed of PC portables changed since 2001. They're probably at least twice as fast. I am still thinking of replacing this iBook eventually with another iBook but only when they come up with the model that's at least twice as fast as the 600MHz iBook (actually CPU speed is the only reason I want to upgrade it).

Re:Disappointing progress with laptops.. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:37 · Score: 0

guacamole is a DIP, right?

Makes sense...
Re:Disappointing progress with laptops.. by Trurl's+Machine · 2003-12-23 11:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

I am still thinking of replacing this iBook eventually with another iBook but only when they come up with the model that's at least twice as fast as the 600MHz iBook (actually CPU speed is the only reason I want to upgrade it).

Now, while I would rather recommend holding all iBook/powerbook purchases (I think that major speed progress is intevitable in 2004), you would actually notice huge difference between your iBook and a contemporary one, sometimes even surpassing the "at least twice as fast" condition. Your old iBook uses ATI RAGE 128 with mediocre 8 megabytes of video RAM, the new one is a RADEON 7500 with 32 MB VRAM. If you play games, the difference is huge. But even if you don't, MacOS X GUI heavily relies on the GPU support, so your CPU has to sweat a lot just on calculating all those pretty widgets. And finally, many applications actually take the full advantage of the G4 architecture and they also could have a ~2x boost on a new iBook (a megahertz of G4 is not the same as a megahertz of G3).
Re:Disappointing progress with laptops.. by Enrique1218 · 2003-12-24 07:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

the new one is a RADEON 7500

Small corecction: the new Ibook uses a Radeon 9200. It is much better than the 7500.

--
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one

Yet another Apple hardware beta test? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 10:44 · Score: 0

All this is great news for Apple, but will the suckers that buy these computers get screwed into once again beta testing Apple's noise, cooling, and power for this new crop of systems? I know of at least 200 different reports of dual G5 computers that have had or are still having trouble with fan noise, temperature sensors, sleep mode, fan failure, etc.

Re:Yet another Apple hardware beta test? by Ffakr · 2003-12-24 17:38 · Score: 2, Informative

You know of at least 200 reports? Where? Did you see 200 posts in Apple's tech forum and assume that there are 200 different problems with G5s? Are you claiming that of the 500,000 machines shipped, you have personal knowledge of 200 defective units? What is it?
I ordered a dual G5 2GHz for the office and I've only noticed 2 issues...

1) It used to hang when the plastic cover was removed and replaced while the machine was running (Apple specifically says I shouldn't do this so it's my own fault). I think this was fixed with the recent firmware patch.
2) There is a very subtle high frequency noise when the machine becomes active from rest. It isn't noticable in a normal office, but in a very quiet room I imagine it could be annoying. You can, however, stop this with a command line argument (can be run from startup script if I prefer)

For a machine based on a completely new architecture, the G5 has been the model of great design. It's stable, it's blazingly fast, and I really have zero real problems to report as I consider the above to be incredibly minor issues.
I have had Zero issues with fan noise, termerature sensors, sleep mode, or fan failure. I've not had any service calls to repair any issues with G5s in my division either and I've seen new G5s poping up.

So, I know it's easy to come on here as an anonymous coward and claim there are hundereds of problems with "beta" G5s, but where's the pudding?
Put up or shut up.

--
I'm not feeling witty so bite me

I want it my way by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:08 · Score: 2, Funny

in sizes of 130 nanometers to 90 nanometers

Okay, I'll have mine at 115 nanometers please.

I don't remember that by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:26 · Score: 0

That is, I dont remember Apple being a key player in the design unless you consider "I want that" to be key input.

Black Adder reference: by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 17:47 · Score: 0

You've got a woman's CPU

Re:You know a women didn't come up with this idea. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 18:19 · Score: 0

I normally don't respond to flamebait but I took the time to read some of your previous posts and it looks like you are just an asswipe with no control. Try not to post here, it just makes you look stupid.

Commodity boxes by Renderdog · 2003-12-23 18:57 · Score: 1

The lack of a low cost commodity box does hurt sales of the high end machines.

People who begin with the cheaper commodity boxes will tend to stay with that operating system when/if they move up the line to the high end, and businesses also purchase mostly commodity boxes, but also buy a good number of high end machines.

Correction by protohiro1 · 2003-12-23 19:05 · Score: 1

Minor quibble: I suppose IBM sees this as the perfect solution for 64bit blades.

--
Sig removed because it was obnoxious

well hey... by Stevyn · 2003-12-24 01:39 · Score: 1

Think different!

When I used to use a regular maginifying glass, I'd go nuts. Nothing was where I thought it should be. I kept getting "wacky" error messages. So I ditched the beige magnifying glass and bought and iMagnifying glass. My name is Paul Allen, and I'm an iMag user

Please remember by Paradox · 2003-12-24 03:47 · Score: 1

Gaming should not be your final decision, for any general purpose computer. If you need to go make gaming decisions, make them for your consoles. They cost less money, so you're throwing less money away.

I dunno about other people, but I use my machine for work, for online interaction, and for music and media. Even when I was in the PC world, I never found most computer games terribly compelling.

Like, "Yay, I can play the same FPS concept hashed out again and again and again, this time with a sneak button!" "Look, now I have grenades and a car!"

--
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense

You should read this by 2nd+Post! · 2003-12-24 03:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

Here.

OS/2 and NT share a considerable code base, the first three versions of OS/2 and the first version of NT. OS/2 v3 became Windows NT 3.0.

--

GPL Deconstructed

Re:You know a women didn't come up with this idea. by JohnwheeleR · 2003-12-24 06:05 · Score: 1

loser

Apple and Microsoft by falconwolf · 2003-12-27 00:57 · Score: 1

Apple exists for one reason, to make money, without regard to people, morals or consequences. If they have the have the market dominance to get away with doing something that will increase their profits. They'll do it, no matter how many people it fucks over. No different than any other corporation.

Sounds just like Microsoft, except I haven't heard of Apple stealing others work.

--
Should there be a Law?

Re:Apple and Microsoft by shaitand · 2003-12-27 05:10 · Score: 0

Apple stole the idea on which they built the gui concepts microsoft in turn cloned, from xerox.

Granted xerox was stupid enough to let Jobs walk through their lab. But then Jobs was stupid enough to do a hell of alot more than that for gates, providing api's etc etc etc to get him to develop software.
Re:Apple and Microsoft by falconwolf · 2003-12-27 14:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

Apple stole the idea on which they built the gui concepts microsoft in turn cloned, from xerox.
Not quite, one reason Xerox invited Jobs to PARC was because Xerox was investing in Apple and than likely he'd be able to do better job of commercializing home/small computer technology than they could. And that's born out by history, PARC has come up with a bunch stuff but they rarely ever commerically release what they do. Done properly it's the smart thing, go ahead and create new stuff then incubate a startup to commercialize it.
Steve Jobs Tours Xerox
"In 1979, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center developed the first prototype for a GUI. A young man named Steve Jobs, looking for new ideas to work into future iterations of the Apple computer, traded US $1 million in stock options to Xerox for a detailed tour of their facilities and current projects. One of the things Xerox showed Jobs was the Alto, which sported a GUI and a three-button mouse. When Jobs saw this prototype, he had an epiphany and set out to bring the GUI to the public. "
www.smalltalk.org

--
Should there be a Law?
Re:Apple and Microsoft by ViolentGreen · 2004-01-05 09:43 · Score: 1

One of the things Xerox showed Jobs was the Alto, which sported a GUI and a three-button mouse. When Jobs saw this prototype, he had an epiphany and set out to bring the GUI to the public.

Too bad he didn't hand on to the three-button mouse too.

--
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.

2 button mice for Macs by falconwolf · 2003-12-27 01:27 · Score: 1

You can get a 2 button mouse for Macs though it's not standard. That's one of the few likes I like abouts pcs though even with the Mac's standard mouse you just hold down the mouse for the context menu (right click). I've got one for my Power Mac 730/200. I know it's "old" at least relatively but it's not nearly as old as my Mac SE.

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Should there be a Law?

Intels vs Macs by falconwolf · 2003-12-27 02:05 · Score: 1

No, it won't. People who are interested in getting a mac will probably already have one or be getting one soon. People with Intel PCs are probably staying with Intel PCs. I think the market divisions are strong enough that Intel doesn't need to worry about this too much.

Not this one. As I'm typing this I'm using a Wintel, but hopefully I'll be getting a Powerbook within a few months.

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Should there be a Law?

AmigaOne by falconwolf · 2003-12-27 12:07 · Score: 1

On the first result for the AmigaOne, at eyetech the most recent "Lastest News" dated 1 November 2002 is more than a year old. However the date for the lastest news on Amiga OS is 17 Dec 2003, much more recent.

Though it was years ago the Amiga used to be my favorite platform. Not only could it run the Amiga OS, but it could also run the Mac OS and dos/Windows. And from what I saw it actually ran the Mac OS faster than the Mac did.

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Should there be a Law?

Re:AmigaOne by falconwolf · 2003-12-27 12:20 · Score: 1

Oops, for some reason the links www.eyetech.co.uk/amigaone/ or AmigaOS didn't show.

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Should there be a Law?

apple, ibm, motorola by falconwolf · 2003-12-27 15:30 · Score: 1

if Motorolla was so awful to Apple, why did Apple stick to them?

Actually the PowerPC was a joint effort of Apple, IBM, and Motorola.

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Should there be a Law?

Concise, well-reasoned, and largely false by FredFnord · 2003-12-28 11:57 · Score: 1

If I weren't familiar with how Apple is working, I would have been completely taken in by your bundle of speculation.

> The updates to GCC from Apple don't also reflect the updates that have been made internally to GCC within
> Apple. Those updates always trickle down after thorough testing and SQA bug flushings.

You're wrong. Internal Apple developers work with pretty much the same dev tools that people outside of Apple do. At most, they're one set ahead, but even that is rare.

> Unless Apple Engineering has done a 180 degree on this than my comments are moot.

Nope, because as of two years ago your comments were just as wrong as they are now.

> Such would increase costs. Engineering does not want to be dependent upon the time schedules of IBM for the
> Compiler, not to mention the politics/business issues involved with Co-licensing and thus increasing the cost of
> ownership passed down to the consumer.

They, of course, would not be. In fact, during the MacOS 9 and before days, everything was built using XLC, and once they had a good version, they didn't care when it was updated.

> Now that work has blossomed expect more time spent on making sure if this PowerPC compiler from IBM can reduce
> overhead by 50% you can bet GCC will get this as well.

Impossible, and if you knew anything about the situation you'd know why. IBM has quite a number of patents on optimizations of code, and they license a lot more. These could potentially be licensed by Apple, but they most certainly couldn't be used in GCC. This is why gcc is still significantly slower than Apple's own MrC compiler, even after several years of development.

> What would be a big boost in performance would be the eventual EOL (End of Life) support for Classic and Carbon
> which means switching to a pure Cocoa environment that supports C/C++/Java/ObjC/ObjC++ and Fortran 77/Ada 95, etc.,.

And, of course, this is garbage too. Removing classic and carbon support would only be a major speed boost if the OS were hideously badly designed, which it's not. However, it might well reduce the memory footprint. But with a gig of RAM hovering around $200, I'd much rather keep classic and carbon in there.

Plus, of course, Carbon is just as valid an API, and just as efficient as well, as Cocoa. Cocoa is much nicer from a developer's point of view, but speed-wise they're not much different, and there are some things that are a lot harder to do in Cocoa than they are in Carbon.

> If you notice O'Reilly is publishing more literature on Cocoa and less on Carbon. Carbon is just a Transitional API. > How long that transition will be in effect only Apple
knows.

I'll give you a hint. Apple had a transitional API included in OpenTransport for legacy MacTCP applications which was supposed to go away sometime in MacOS 7-land. As of MacOS 9.2, it's still there.

And that's even assuming you grant that Carbon is some sort of 'transitional' thing. Which it's not.

> The biggest gripe people how about ObjC is the syntax. Ironic since it is quite logical and grammatically more
> readable than C++ let alone Java.

Wow. Something I agree with. Although I personally find Java a lot more readable than C++.

> In the end whether or not GCC becomes as fast as XLC is not what will determine the visibility of OS X. Its compelling
> third party applications that make equal quality as Apple.

Um. I have the feeling I would disagree, if I knew what you were trying to say.

Anyway. Stop spreading compost when you don't know what you're talking about.

-fred

--
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.

Wow, I like that by FredFnord · 2003-12-28 13:21 · Score: 1

> What you are trying to say is that regular computer users or nerds or geeks or everything not in the top 1% of the
> population aren't gay enough for a Mac, right?

So what you're trying to say is that only the top 1% of the population is gay, right? Which makes all gay people better than you.

I'm not sure about the 1% figure, but I sure do agree that all the gay people I've met are better than you.

-fred

--
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.

Re:speed - Pixlet by mcwop · 2003-12-30 05:47 · Score: 1

I believbe the advantage is in the compression of file size. 6GB down to 250MB, all while playing at rates near that of uncompressed DV (which is stated in Apple's info). So similar playback as DV with smaller file size. I don't know exactly what the MJPEG compression rate is, but I think Pixlet can compress files to a smaller size.

--

"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX

one addition by thatguywhoiam · 2003-12-31 13:09 · Score: 1

Good pose but I wanted to add a point:

Basically, the DV video format has broken the prosumer market wide open. This will introduce people to decent video editing that wouldn't have had a chance before. Some of those people will start playing around and feel the need for more power.

DV format = FireWire has allowed this revolution to happen. You have to have the hardware side to support the bridge... much like CD-ROMs allowed us to just start sticking albums right into the computer. Or Desktop Publishing for that matter; that revolution required both the WYSIWYG software and the laser printer to happen at the same time (roughly).

--
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.

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