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Pixar Switches to Mac OS X and G5s
fmorgan writes "No big surprise here: when Apple introduced the G5 at 2003 WWDC, it become more a question of 'when' Pixar will move to G5s, than 'if'). At the same conference, Apple showed a new codec for Mac OS X named 'Pixlet,' developed with Pixar. In last year O'Reilly's Mac OS X conference, there was a presentation on how Pixar moved their desktop/office environment to Mac OS X. Now it seems it's the main production work: 'Apple's Don Peebeles said that Pixar has used Linux and Intel-based architecture in 2003, but that Pixar was switching to Mac OS X and G5 workstations for its production work: Peebles went on to say that this switch was "a move that no doubt made common CEO Steve Jobs very happy."'"
I've been telling people for some time now to watch Pixar closely now that the G5 and OS X has matured. It was only a matter of time before they finally switched the SGI and Linux stations over. The rendar farm however still uses a mixture of SUNs and SGI but I've no doubt that G5 Xserves would probably fit in quite nicely... now if they can only start shipping the damn things.
apple can tout this bigtime with real effective results (pixar movie$)
it's not just a niche - pair this with WETA and you've got real ammo.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Peebles went on to say that this switch was "a move that no doubt made common CEO Steve Jobs very happy."
...a move that just has to be a wee bit influenced by the FUD of SCO's IP claims on Linux too.
was CEO of Disney and switched Disney to Windows (stricly on merits mind you), people would be screaming bloody murder.
Oh wait...
After all, with Jobs as CEO of both companies, why wouldn't Apple be used for Pixar's needs, especially if they're capable? An american kiritsu?
I don't see this as big news. It would be big news, if, say, they moved to a linux distribution (considering that Jobs is CEO of both Pixar and Apple, and linux could be seen as a competitor to Apple). This is nothing more than free publicity for apple, and probably an "at-cost" transaction for Pixar for new hardware and software.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
hell, photoshoppers have done that for years already. you don't need reality when you have fast rendering.
wait, that is on-topic!
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
With Steve Jobs head honcho at both companies, you would have thought this would have happened a long time ago. Of course, the G5's entering the picture helps quite a bit I'm sure.
Will the rendering farm also be switching to the G5 in the future, ala Virginia Tech?
Will we now see Photorealistic Renderman come out for OSX and the G5? Hopefully?
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
That must be great for Jobs, but wouldn't Pixar be better off using SGI or something on that order instead of consumer based desktop and server systems?
But, I am jealous, I want a Mac, and an Ipod.. just cant justify the price....
Must..work..at..pixar........
Yes it do. Sorry but AMDs 64-bit line doesn't perform to what AMD makes it out to be.
I'm running Gentoo, so I don't care if I have to specially compile. I just want a machine that's going to actually USE the MHz it comes with. (Without resorting to massive cache.)
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
What's on their rendering farms, though? Are they moving those to apple servers?
You know steve-o hooked them up with a nice deal.
Price to you and price to them may look a few digits smaller.
-- http://vectorvector.tumblr.com/
About time they made the jump, what better way to show off Apples muscle in the movie industry.
Peebles went on to say that this switch was "a move that no doubt made common CEO Steve Jobs very happy.
I wonder if he gets comission.
G5 + OS X + Maya + Photoshop + Pixlet = one kickass production environment.
Really though do they need to change the Linux farm? I'd be surprised if they did, there's no real need...
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
So Mac OS X isn't free software, and that means one less big, technically-savvy GNU/Linux user contributing to the community.
But still much better than if they had gone with that other OS, and a real gain for platform diversity.
Now if someone the like (DigitalDomain, anyone?) would go to GNU/Linux on the G5...
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
I've been waiting for this, since it signals an inside scoop on the maturity of the hardware/software synergy for multimedia. Perhaps the rumours about soon-to-be-released better access to the GPU by applications for rendering etc. are true. The article is slim on timeline hints, though.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Does it really outperform a beowulf cluster of Athlon 64 FX-51 running linux?
I think it's fair to assume that Jobs gives a substantial discount on Apple stuff to Pixar, while AMD probably doesn't.
I also doubt that they would use Athlon 64 (FX) for this kind of work; Opterons, which can go up to 8-ways, would be the logical choice (but I'm no expert).
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
The rendar farm however still uses a mixture of SUNs and SGI but I've no doubt that G5 Xserves would probably fit in quite nicely... now if they can only start shipping the damn things.
Of course the entire production runs will be shipped to Pixar for awhile, to build their new render farm.
I can see why they need PPC 970 processors, and buying them in bulk from Apple is probably just as cheap as buying them in bulk from IBM when looking at complete systems and volume discount with desktop stuff, but why do they need to run OS X on the hosts instead if dispensing with one hell of a lot of OS licenses and running Darwin, BSD or Linux?
Beep beep.
peebles also said one of the deciding factors was that the computers remind him of his favorite... CARBON flavored jolly ranchers.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
I'm sure this, in fact, does make Steve Jobs the happiest man in the world right now. Almost as happy as Bill Gates when Hotmail switched to WinServer and died for a few days.
-EB
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
I seem to remember someone from Pixar saying that they were moving over to G5 work stations. As for the Render Farm I believe they just purchased a whole lot of 2.8Ghz Xeons (if I remember correctly) and so it would probably not make sense for them to go and buy a ton of Macs for that right at the moment. Besides Steve knows when Apple's upgrade schedule is. They will buy Dual 3Ghz or 4Ghz Xserves before they need to render the next Pixar release I bet.
Well, Pixar can afford to buy Apple stuff, *and* Apple have someone on the inside....
;-)
I think it'll work out alright, Apple doesn't make bad stuff, just stuff that isn't worth what they are charging... I suppose the CEO's of the companies might have been able to strike a deal though
This isn't Jurassic Park.
Plus, they only had a 117 Sun workstations in the original Toy Story render farm.
Disney's "Toy Story" Uses More Than 100 Sun Workstations to Render Images for First All-Computer-Based Movi
right you are - apple's shake, but still mostly rendering on linux
ok - toss in fcp and cold mountain...
either way, looks like steve should reserve a tux first week in march from now on...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I've heard of renderman and recall the pixar ppl have developers actively contributing to Linux.
Will this affect Linux development in any significant way?
I use a G5 at work but I don't use it for anything that might be affected by this. It's mostly a number cruncher/web browser.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,114653,0 0.asp
The gossip is that Eisner was considering quicktime, but went with Windows after Jobs decided to take Pixar away from Disney.
I'll not post any findings, nor will I give you any numbers of my OWN personal experience.
Google for the default install size of WindowsXP versus OS X.
THEN tell me which one's bloatware.
You got it right with Linux...but blew it otherwise.
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
Really though do they need to change the Linux farm? I'd be surprised if they did, there's no real need...
There is no need to, strictly speaking, and long term this move will likely be rather costly to Pixar and their shareholders, but with Steve Jobs as CEO of both Pixar and Apple, and the probability that this initial transaction was conducted "at cost," it is hardly surprising.
My overall take on this is a little controversial (tin-foil hat optional):
Steve Jobs isn't a particularly staunch fan of GNU/Linux, nor of software freedom. He sees an opportunity to close out a rival (Linux) before it threatens him, kill off a competitor or five (SGI and a dozen small Linux rendering solution companies), and to do so while our attention is occupied by SCO and Microsoft.
Remember, software freedom is, long term, as big a threat to Apples business model as it is Microsoft and SCO's. The difference is that, as a non-monopolist used to competing, the threat isn't as immediate or acute. It is, nevertheless, quite real, and Jobs would like to have Apple well entrenched (and Linux perhaps starved of the multi-media applications that make it a competitor today) before the paradigm shift to software freedom threatens his company with relegation to a mere hardware vendor directly.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If we're talking about open-source alternatives to Mac OS X, we could also talk about open-source stuff that's relatively compatible with Mac OS X at the non-GUI level, and runs on x86. :) Maybe they could keep all the Xeons in their render farm, and just install Darwin on them, then the back-end apps could run on both Xeon and Mac.
...when they start hosting the iTunes store on a cluster of iPods. Jobs is becoming the Carnegie of our times.
Virginia Tech's "Big Mac" has proved the G5 to be very powerful in a cluster.
umm.. the G5 isn't a consumer machine. It is a professional workstation. Apple's consumer machines are the iBook/eMac/iMac. Pretty much Anything with an X or Power infront of it are professional machines.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
Damn, I didn't even realize that until you commented on it. I'm surprised that Slashdot didn't do some kind of self-gloating over that fact. I would have if it were me.
And if things were that rational, and if windows were the rational best for that company, then why arent they on it already?
Of course, couldnt be that the other is better, they just resent MS because they are successfull. Politics. Yeah, that's it. Spite. Couldnt be anything else.
See, that is the problem. Bill has a vested interest in seeing disney move to windows. Just as Jobs as a vested interest in seeing Pixar move to Apple. The move *could* be on the merits alone, but Bill will never say that anything is better than windows, despite what the truth of the matter is. So, it will always be a litany of "windows is better", so there is no way for us to tell that it *was* on the merits. So we will always distrust what he has to say. We have no reason to trust him. ( and neither, probably, do you. I would suggest you look at your vested interests, and be honest with yourself, at least ). Show me disney moving to somethign other than windows because Bill was CEO, and I could begin to believe that it was a rational decision. It is like when you hear the CEO of your company tell you in the face of monumental losses that your job is secure. If you believe him, you are probably being foolish ( unless you had a track record with this person that you felt deserved your trust... Be honest, does Bill have that track record with the OS buying community? I think not. )
And no, I am not a rabid anti-microsoft person. There is a place for windows and a place for other platforms in most enterprises.
emt 377 emt 4
Maybe I'm blind, but I just don't see the benefit to Pixar here. Unless they got some sweetheart deal from Jobs, they now must buy all new hardware and pay for software updates. I noticed there was a comment about challenging Apple to come up with a way to view HD media in smaller file sizes, but that's just software compression, right? Except for the Cocoa interface, how hard would it be to have Pixlet running on their existing systems, especially since Pixar helped develop it in the first place? Please help me out here.
Jobs buys 500 G5's for Pixar
The next week, Apple comes out and lowers all the prices $300 and doubles the RAM and HD space, and includes iPods with every purchase.
Now, is Pixar going to end every movie with a shitty gif of a spinning Apple logo that says "Made on a Mac" ?
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Correction: Intel has had 800 Mhz *FSB* cpu's / chipsets since 6/2003.
Making animated movies of the sort that Pixar produces would certainly be very hardware-intensive. I think it just makes sense.
Why select a slower, more expensive platform and take on the cost of porting one's in-house software to yet another platform, when multi-processor AMD-64 chips running GNU/Linux are a dime a dozen?
Even at cost, this deal will be expensive for Pixar in the medium term, and certainly in the long term. There is no technical, and even less, financial reason for this move. The move is strategic and PR related, and has more to do with Apple nipping its Linux competition in the bud as an initial move to freeze the platform out of the lucrative entertainment industry long term as anything else.
Long term, Linux is as much a threat to Apple as Microsoft is, arguably more so, since Microsoft is restrained by anti-trust legislation, while the numerous competing Linux providors, by definition, don't run afoul of such laws (and thus aren't so restricted). Indeed, software freedom represents a fundamental long-term threat to companies who make their money selling software rather than services, and Apple probably does not want to be relegated to the role of hardware vendor only, forced to compete with faster, cheaper offerings such as AMD.
It is interesting to see the CEO of Apple/Pixar mandate a move that is strategically important to Apple, but costly to Pixar's shareholders. One wonders what sorts of fudiciary issues such a maneuver might raise.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Who cares... disk is so cheap. Memory is so cheap. Processing power is way beyond what the average person needs.
But Linux runs just fine on PowerPC?
Look!. And here!.
IAALS.
I'd think they'd just keep the extra horsepower around. I mean why throw the baby out with the bathwater? Rather than replacing existing capacity, add to the capacity they already have (yadda yadda).
It wouldn't surprise me at all though if their G5 implementation is deliberately set up to fully outshine everything they've currently got and then some. Hell they may even be able to surpass the Virginia Tech supercomputer that cost (a mere) $5.2 mil, since they're directly related to the supplier of the hardware.
Could Jobs be aiming for an implementation that could surpass the Virginia Tech computer, giving Apple two places on the Top 500?
I know if I was the CEO of two companies, one that needs obscene computing power, and the other that can deliver obscene computing power, I'd have.. well.. some obscene computing power.
-- The unsig...
Everyone on slashdot will concentrate on the usual blather about how it was inevitable because of Jobs, but they all miss the far more subtle indications that Apple is secretly working behind the scenes against Linux. Most likely what will happen now is that Pixar will end their open source involvement, or move all their open source support to OS X exclusively. This will probably not affect Linux overall, since the movie industry is a tiny fraction of the Linux users worldwide, but it will certainly be used by Apple as a lever to wrestle control of the movie industry software environment.
No, Linux means Linux. There are native PowerPC versions of Linux that run just fine on Mac hardware. Of course you have to install it yourself first, but what's new there? Unless you buy from specialty companies, you do that with every machine you want Linux running.
Just as likely not, he may want to keep clean hands on this one for credibility. Remember that the high-profile VirginiaTech project had tons more marketroid benefits for Apple but the whole deal was basically retail. They wouldn't have to get discounts for this decision fo fly anyway, the price/performance&quality ratio is favourable.
Damn those pesky terrorists
OTOH, it kinda sucks that they're ditching Linux in favor of OSX... though maybe the CG proggies that they ran on Linux will now be available for a cheaper price? (please?)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
This sucks. Yeah, we all saw THAT coming, but now that it finally happened, this is a very sad day for Linux. Pixar was one of the most significant driving forces of Linux in the multimedia workplace. Plus, it means nVidia will probably put a lot less work in their Linux drivers now, since one of their biggest customers won't need it anymore.
Well, at least there's still ILM and (I think?) Disney... (but for how long before they decide to go the Pixar way?)
I can't tell you, but it may not be what you think. In any case, don't believe what you're told. Besides, if you come back and tell me, "Netcraft says..." I'll laugh. Netcraft only tells you what the publicly exposed web servers are running. It tells you nothing about the backend.
Look up the history of Hotmail and you will find a few nuggets out there that will give you a glimpse of the real story. It is really funny though!
The most important question that hasn't been asked yet: Will Debian continue to use Pixar characters as the names of their releases?
I mean really.
c'mon.
Yeah...
Slower and more expensive solution.
Good plan Einstein.
I imagine you can fill a Faberge egg with shit too.
But you can run Linux on the PowerMac G5, which I believe is what the parent poster was referring to.
You sound retarded.
True, but I read his comment as "does run" rather than "can run". I can see how it could be read either way.
Why select a slower, more expensive platform and take on the cost of porting one's in-house software to yet another platform, when multi-processor AMD-64 chips running GNU/Linux are a dime a dozen?
Here's my dime...need my shipping address?
I gotta ask, why isn't the above comment modded informative or insightful? I assume it was modded funny because he calls VT's supercomputer "Big Mac" but is that not what it's nickname was?
(go ahead mods, mod me "troll" or "flamebait", it's called an opinion, you should try having one.)
120chars for a sig is teh suck
Why select a slower, more expensive platform and take on the cost of porting one's in-house software to yet another platform, when multi-processor AMD-64 chips running GNU/Linux are a dime a dozen?
Because for the applications Pixar has in mind, G5 Macs are neither slower nor more expensive. It's really that simple. G5s deliver the best bang for the buck in the video editing world, period.
I would really, really like to see the "Macs are more expensive" meme disappear from these arguments. They're not more expensive than PCs of comparable power and quality, and haven't been for years.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
are you really really sure this is acceptable /. material?
Good luck convincing a jury that you switched to a 2- to 3-times as expensive per seat hardware/software platform and it had nothing to do with the fact that the same guy is CEO at both companies.
Why bother? Just admit it, and argue that the switch is worth it. Blame "synergy" or somesuch like that.
One thing that hasn't been clear in the news releases is that Pixlet is a lossy codec. At first I thought it was lossless but on testing it is lossy (quite lossy actually). It is useful for previewing high-res animations, but not for rendering final elements.
I'm not really sure what the point of Pixlet is, since JPEG is "good enough" for most previewing needs. Perhaps somebody is using it for >8 bits per component?
...you'll start seeing Apple references in their material. :)
An apple with a bite out of it. A super-genius TiBook in Toy Story 3. Or something.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
l14r!!! AMD i5 t3h r0X0r!! w00+! w00+! h3h3!
I'm sure that Pixar didn't buy these things at "retail" prices. I'm sure that 1.) Apple cut them a sweet deal, 2.) Pixar's hardware was aging and in need of replacement or 3.) Both.
lol
They are probably waiting until they get to 100,000 UNIQUE stories
I was under the impression that the G5's did not have ported Wildcat or Nvidia Quadro's that are designed specifically for cad work.
All the other consumer cards are slower and have precicion trouble under fine lines which the expense ones do not have.
If Apple is serious about taking over the Unix cad market, they need not only Maya, but real 3d cards and more engineering and cad software.
http://saveie6.com/
Awesome. I've got $0.07 in change from lunch in my pocket. Let me know where to send it so I can get my 8 multi-processor AMD-64 chips. I'll let you keep the 0.4 chip leftover for your troubles.
Thanks,
Bargain Guy
It's probably cost-effective for such huge consumers of computer power to swap out their equipment on roughly an annual basis. The difference between, say, a dual 2ghz and a dual 3ghz system would be huge for them.
Now that I'm doing more video production I'll probably be doing that too, and using my current dual G5 as a render farm for my new main machine. Based on the results I'm getting and the speeds I get, it would be well worth the money to do that.
Finally, I don't think Pixar's stockholders are in much of a mood to be cheap. Say it costs US$1 million a year to replace their equipment. Finding Nemo is a well over billion-dollar property. Do stockholders care about spending $1 million to make sure the (most likely pretty high paid) people over there get the best equipment?
Somehow I doubt it.
D
The default size of the install is not what defines bloatware. If Windows XP came with every game and every Application that was made for the PC, that wouldn't necessarily be bloatware.
Bloatware is when a product has so many _useless_ features that cause it to be large. (IE. Microsoft Office, Open Office)
Is linux bloated because you can install a good 4 CDs worth of stuff on your system install? No. You have options. And you have a wide variety of applications and tools at your disposal.
Ok, G5s are neither slow nor expensive (when compared to other dual systems) - but what on earth makes you think Pixar's own software is guaranteed to run faster on a G5 the an AMD-64?
As far as I can tell, the G5 and the Opteron are roughly equivlent clock for clock. Optimisation is of course a different issue, which could skew it in each arch's favour.....
Pixar switched from Suns and SGIs.
I think you meant they "switched to a 1/2 - to 1/3-times as expensive per seat hardware/software platform".
Xserve G5: high performance, low power requirements, low heat, unix, backed by one of the top 5 computer companies. Why is this so surprising to you?
G5's with optimized software being slower for production work is debatable. You haven't seen the next generation of hardware yet, they already have a 1GHz bus, and these production machines have enormous internal bandwidth requirements. Use one for video or 3D work sometimes, then come back here and complain about their speed.
more expensive platform
Since these are production machines, they need to be very reliable and plug-it-in and go. Make me a machine with the same level of reliability, quiet, power requirements, speed, connectivity, and production capabilities with equivalent warranty then let's compare pricing. Never mind, I just finished a committee-based 3-week shopping grind for similar production requirements and I already know the answer: apple hardware wins by about 5% on price alone, and still spec's out better for multimedia production. Oh, and ROI in terms of productivity, support, and longevity.
and take on the cost of porting one's in-house software to yet another platform, when multi-processor AMD-64 chips running GNU/Linux are a dime a dozen?
RTFA. They aren't porting anything new since these are production machines, not render nodes. Maya, photoshop, shake, pixlet, backed by a top-notch interface and bsd, mmm... hey, you're not an artist, are you?
Anyway, for the ROI alone, this is good for shareholders, especially if creativity flows better.
Damn those pesky terrorists
3D animation != video editing.
And since Maya Complete isn't even available for OSX, I find it al little hard to swallow, too. Maybe their 2D paint/NLE/compositing departments are using macs, but it's difficult to swallow the idea of a mac-based 3D pipeline.
Um... I assume that you are referring to the myth that Macs are more expensive. I would point you in the direction of reality on two counts:
1. Take a look at price/performance on the dual G5's. Many other people have, and they have been pretty unanimous that the Apple's win. See University of Virginia. The client computers are also competing against mainly SGI boxes... You will have a better time in your comparison of the linux render farm, but then you start to have to look at boxes competing against the XServe, and you will find them also very price competitive against the other server farm boxes they are competing against.
2. In terms of the price of production the hardware is one of the smaller costs. The big price is the people, this is also the place where the difference between a failure and a success will happen. If someone blames hardware for a bad pixar movie, they are simply stupid.
Any lawyer who cannot convince a jury of both of these points is incompetent.
Bullshit. AMD Opteron based machines give better performance at a lower cost. I have a dual opteron at work loaded with 4G RAM that is cheaper than a G5 box. And you're not stuck with Apple monopoly-like tactics.
I think the biggest difference to me (being an MacOSX Fan) is that with G5's the most you can do currently is a DUAL configuration. I would REALLY like to see apple step up and offer larger options. 4 way or 8 way configurations should be an option. There is no comparison of an 8way ANYTHING to a Dual G5.
Are people that assume all Mac users are these mindless people that need one button mice.
I've been doing work on UNIX computers and other platforms for years and years. I bought a Mac because it has a great front end to make simple things simple, and the UNIX backend stuff to make hard things possible. I still use GnuEmacs and it works just fine on OS X.
Also, the licence you apparently are seeking is GPL - the whole POINT of the BSD licence is that companies can make use of the code in the way they are doing. The developers working on BSD chose to work on BSD over Linux or some other GPL system knowing exactly this. As a coder I would think you would be proud to have something you wrote in such widespread use, instead of being a greedy whiner who is upset someone else is making money by using your code. Write your own amazing thing to make money from the code you wrote. Heck, by Apple stock when they adopt your code if you believe in it strongly!! That would have turned out really well for anyone who bought Apple stock around the time when they released OS X at large. They took the risks and also reaped the rewards, which anyone could have shared in.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not knowing the details of what they're running, I'm guessing when I say the answer is AltiVec. The cheapest way to run Apache or Samba isn't necessarily the cheapest way to do heavy computation.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
What linux distro do you use? How much software did the distrubutors "steal" for that distro? OS X uses its own kernel, own *nix variant (Darwin, which is open source), and almost every GUI app was made by Apple or NEXT...
As my first venture into Linux, recently installed Mandrake on my PC. It's very nice, but except from the various *drake installers and configurators, everything (as far as I could tell) is third-party.
This has been discussed quite enough. Apple wins when the cost/performance ratio is considered; that's why Virgina Tech bought all those G5's last summer! It's not a CEO mandate. It's a valid technical decision. And this isn't SCO we're talking about, so you can keep your "fudiciary" issues to your fudself.
Looking at only the chip is a big mistake - the G5's have a very nice architecture, like a much faster system bus.
There's also power consumption to consider, not sure how that fares.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why select a slower ... platform [Mac]...?
You're going to have to substantiate that claim, sorry. No free pass on the "Apples are slower because that number before the MHz thing is smaller".
If there is anything you learn about SJ quickly, it is that he is the absolute definition of "hands-on".
If this wasn't run past Steve and fully approved by him at a minimum, I would be surprised. That he was likely asking hard questions and pushing his team to do it, wouldn't surprise me at all.
One of Apple's major customer segments is video prodution for television and movies. Apple for years has had an extremely strong niche in the Entertainment industry (why do you think you see Macs in almost every TV show and movie as the "computer of choice"?). Over the last 18 months they have spent a lot acquiring products to fill out their digital video, video effects, and audio editing and production product line. What we have hear is showing, by eating their own dog food, that they are serious and that you can do it all on the Mac.
Steve is the master salesman and technical visionary. His finger-prints are all over this move!
If Steve had ordered Pixar to switch to mac, they would have done it at 10.0. Apple earned that customer.
It does seem like it won't be long before Disney's bought the farm.
Is "Pleasing Mr. Jobs" the next title from Pixar? I hope he wasn't personally involved in the hardware selection process. I think that would constitute a very real conflict of interest. In these days of scrutiny to all corporate decisions, the G5 would have to truely excel by a wide margin, or some armchair CEO/boardmember would consider a stockholder lawsuit. I'm sorry I can read the story - I get a database connection error. I hope they aren't using Apple servers.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
You are an idiot. Nobody has a monitor for every windows box in a datacenter. You, sir, should try seeing how a datacenter works before spouting off crap like that. Do you really think even M$ would hire morons to run Hotmail?
Consider the XserveG5 -- uses less power than a similar Intel box and is cooler-running. What Pixar will save over the long run in electricity bills alone is probably worth the upgrade.
Doesn't make a difference if you're running 1 or 5 machines in your house, but it does make a signifigant difference if you're running 500 or machines.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
How long till AMD cries foul and we get big tech lawsuit one gazillion and one heading for the courts? Ah, too late ;)
The article says they're replacing their workstations, not their render nodes. Most of the work on a workstation is done by the graphics card. Where you really need cheap CPU power is the render nodes, and x86 still gives more bang for the buck than the PPC970 / G5.
Pixar dosen't use Maya--if you haven't figured that out yet. However, Maya Complete is available for OS X, so I don't see your point.
I see no reason why a Mac would be any less able to do 3D computation than a Sun, SGI or a Linux machine.
But I do see why having a whole cluster of OS X machines would be beneficial: XGrid... Not to mention all of the tools that OS X comes with that make it very easy to manage so many machines.
Good luck convincing a jury that you switched to a 2- to 3-times as expensive per seat
Uh, right. Apple's G5 systems (both tower and rackmount) are very compeditive. If you are talking about a corporate desktop environment where you don't need a G5, a single virus outbreak can make short work of the money you "saved" by going with PC's. Not only do you lose money fixing the latest Windows virus, you also lose money because you can't get your work done.
How do I know that? I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you, ie. I've seen the servers myself :)
Posted anonymously to protect the innocent.
Well, I really really don't think you render using only 32bit floatingpoints, and altivec can't handle 64bit floatingpoints.
IIRC, the G5 can outperform a comparable x86 processor in one area - floating point operations.
For rendering, floating point operations are probably the most important thing for a rendering farm.
(disclaimer: i did say IIRC)
Everyone's focusing on Macs being so much more expensive than PC's, but missing the most important think of all, how are the going to make movies with just one mouse button ?!
...' statements covered ...
I think thats both of the 'I hate Mac's because
It's very easy to see a Mac-based 3d pipeline. Maya Complete may not be available to the PUBLIC on OSX, but I'm pretty sure that Pixar doesn't get the same shit everyone else does.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
They aren't porting anything new since these are production machines, not render nodes. Maya, photoshop, shake, pixlet, backed by a top-notch interface and bsd....
Actually, they will need to port some software, but I don't think it will be a hard port. Maya is only used for modeling and some dynamics simulations. The actual animation and lighting is done in custom software.
It will be a glorious, shiny Apple logo rotating though Calabi-Yau space, and the mere act of watching it will give you inner peace, deep insight, and three orgasms.
--- Ban humanity.
Pixar will switch to whatever is currently going to suit their needs the best... in their business, they aren't going to sit around and use "legacy" stuff just because of previous investment.. you will see them re-tool much more often than a traditional business.
...Surely it'd mean that Disney DVDs would be pale blue, and cost $120 each?
I only STFA (skimmed the...) and thought they were going to render on Xserves, my mistake. But still, the tower G5's are comeditive with Intel and AMD systems. And besides, if you're running Windows, the only way pc's are cheaper is if you manage to never have a virus outbreak.
Why select a slower, more expensive platform and take on the cost of porting one's in-house software to yet another platform, when multi-processor AMD-64 chips running GNU/Linux are a dime a dozen?
Not the high end ones!
Also keep in mind that the Velocity Engine in the G4/G5 was made for this kind of work. Its only now that it has the OS to back up the muscle. I'm guessing its the Velocity Engine that made Pixlet possible.
Take a look at price/performance on the dual G5's. Many other people have, and they have been pretty unanimous that the Apple's win. See University of Virginia.
Please, please, PLEASE tell me you aren't referencing "Big Mac" at Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia are two entirely distinct insitutions.
This has been discussed quite enough.
Translation: Our PR department has been trying to kill this speculation for weeks. Please stop discussing it, lest our market capitalization decrease.
Apple wins when the cost/performance ratio is considered; that's why Virgina Tech bought all those G5's last summer!
Virginia Tech bought all those G5s last summer because at the time they were available and less expensive than other 64-bit architectures. The AMD 64 wasn't available in quantity. They also received quite a bit of consideration from Apple sweetening the deal.
Nevertheless, this advantage will be lost with the costs of the first upgrade cycle.
It's not a CEO mandate. It's a valid technical decision.
That may or may not be (hence the discussion you would like to suppress).
AMD 64s are much less expensive, noticably faster, and run a cost-free operating system Pixar has already migrated to, and upon which their critical applications (and in-house applications) already run. They also have a sizable investment in existing infrastructure that would blend seamlessly with newer, faster, and less expensive Linux/AMD64 solutions.
Instead they have, at the public urging of their CEO (who also happens to have been CEO of Apple for a much longer period of time), opted to migrate their entire enterprise, at considerable cost in time and energy, to a new, more expensive, and slower platform.
Even if the equipment and software are provided by Apple at cost, this is a costly deal. Add to that the licensing and hardware costs of future upgrades (which almost certainly won't be supplied at cost), and any advantage today's freebie gave Pixar is negated.
This will be costing Pixar far more than a Linux/AMD solution would have after the first upgrade cycle, and that adversely affects shareholder value. It is, in short, good for Apple and lousy for Pixar.
And this isn't SCO we're talking about, so you can keep your "fudiciary" issues to your fudself.
A a stock holder I most certainly will speak up when I see a CEO with a conflict of interest doing something that appears to be quite at odds with the value of my holdings.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Personally, I cheer any victory for Apple, the company (among many) that got shortchanged thanks to the dominance and abuse of the Microsoft monopoly that spread across all the IBM clones in the early 90s.
Pixar switching to Macs? Apple commercials before movies showing everyone a *real* operating system as opposed to their XP boxes at home? Hell, yeah.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Also for math (especially floating point) calculations, the G5 (PPC970) is much superior to the Intel IA-32 (not really a big thing if all you do is run Word, of course).
According to a talk by "Dr. BigMac" (from VA Tech) the only other high-volume CPU approaching it was the Intel Itanium, and here (quite an irony) Intel was under-clocked! (The G5, last year, was shipping at 2Gh, the Itanium less than that).
As for price, you can't compare a Dual G5 with a $200 walmart pc; but check the prices of any dual Dell Xeon system.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Like you I've been doing work on Unix computers for many many years. Started on AT&T SysVr4 running on a 3B15 to be specific. Worked on Sparc stations, until OS X missed the NeXT, Coherent [remember that? ;], BSD, and Linux.
:). A flaw found in ssh is very quickly looked at by many, many eyes -- the originating teams, RedHat, IBM, Apple, etc. What a benefit to have good, serious patches available, when needed, usually within 24 hours -- not like dealing with that other company, eh?
:).
Isn't it interesting that all these Un*x's work very nicely together -- heck, in some cases they can (and do) use the same originating code (ssh, ftp, smtp, etc
The Mac does offer a wonder front end to make simple things simple and even in the GUI can make it stand up on end and sing -- of course I personally will always go for 'vi' if I have any serious editing needs to happen. Heck, I still use a lot of my code that originated back on AT&T Unix in the 80's [written by myself] on OS X today (and the Linux servers peppered about
Perhaps times are finally starting to change again? They always do...
From Jobs' point of view, it's shuffling $$ from one company of which he's CEO to another. Also, I imagine the greatest part of Pixar's budget is labor and other non-b0xen based costs. I'm also sure they have a somewhat fixed upgrade cycle, and the pegged this cycle to be the switch.
As far as software, well, it shouldn't be hard to port whatever they need of their stuff to mac since GCC works reasonably well on the mac, and most of their stuff is either open-source or in house.
As far as Pixlet, I doubt that was the motivation to move for the reasons you cite. I think this was a move Jobs wanted to make, and they're trying to spin Pixlet as the "killer app" that motivated it, but I don't believe that.
Why select a slower, more expensive platform and take on the cost of porting one's in-house software to yet another platform, when multi-processor AMD-64 chips running GNU/Linux are a dime a dozen?
It's not slower or more expensive, and the cost of porting in-house software would be nearly zilch considering OS X is a POSIX-based BSD-like system.
What's the problem here? It's a UNIX-like system with the most intuitive and productive interface there is. Of course Pixar would go for it.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Endianess is a funny thing. :-/
And no1 likes bug hunting because something thought it was nice the have Mac's instead of what's they have now (working).
New things are always on the horizon
It's not the University of Virginia, but rather Virginia Tech, that built the G5-based supercomputer. They're fiercely competitive universities, not the same thing. :-)
I've always wondered....what types of people work at Pixar? I mean in "computer" terms like skillsets, knowledge, degrees, etc. I've never seen any discussions or articles that talk about this.
Who actually works with and on these machines? - and what do they do with them?
Um... I assume that you are referring to the myth that Macs are more expensive.
Anybody who wants to quote the "Macs are more expensive" line of FUD has never taken a look at the price of Sun or especially SGI hardware.
Hell, SGI doesn't list the prices of things on their page, they tell you to call and ask. That's the computer equvalent of "market price."
OS X:*nix for the real world.
That would have turned out really well for anyone who bought Apple stock around the time when they released OS X at large.
o ftware_x.html )
Mac OS X Public Beta : September 13, 2000
(source http://matthewshull.tripod.com/macintosh/system_s
Stock Price on that date : about $40.
Today's Price : 27.
You'd have done about as well on any other random horse in this race since that time. Nothing special about Apple.
In fact, Apple has been a DISASTER as a long term stock. Your money would be better off in a savings acount in Alabama.
Does this mean that Mac will get real video cards? I can't imagine Pixar moving to G5s and using paltry (by 3D animation standards) ATI 9800s. Powerful G5s are great and all but w/o a decent video card the poor animators will be stuck with lame flat shading or wireframe previews.
This could be the first time in history (feel free to correct me) that Macs had a cutting edge 3D card.
Because Darwin blows chunks? For instance, on a Mac laptop that is faster than a PC laptop, compiling Mono still takes 3 times as long
i agree, but i think pixar spends a helluva lot more than $1 million on hardware, i'd think easily in the $10s of millions. however, i think your argument holds
According to my sources, OS X 10.1 (when they really hsipped computers with that as a default) was around midyear 2002 - now if you'll look at a stock chart, you'll find that the abnormal bubble all tech companies went through had dissapated by then (nice of you to choose a price right in the hottest part of the buble) and had sank to about $15.
Alternatley I would note that even buying at your price of $40, you could have sold off at $60 and made a nice profit.
If you had bought Apple stock monthy (using dollar cost averaging which is what you do if you have any brains at all) from even 2001 you would be doing pretty well overall. As proof take a look at the chart you linked to with the same timeframe we are actually discussing. Or better yet compare to a money market fund (where you wanted to put your money).
I'll keep my money working, thanks, and you can keep your money in your mattress. Good luck with that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You gotta remember that they just switched to Linux a little over a year ago, right? At the time, everyone was amazed that Steve would let that happen. Obviously, Linux was a better choice then, and it now is not.
Steve makes most of his money from Pixar. He's not going to risk that!
If you are truly stupid enough to change your decision about your next computer purchase because of an anonymous Slashdot post, you are truly a moron. Buy whatever suits your actual needs and not what someone's agenda (ANYONE's agenda) tells you, especially when you don't know whether the information is true or not.
production machines do not have to be plug-in-and-go. this is where it-pros get on stage. They deploy clients and servers following a specific design and demand.
Home Users need computers to plug-in-and-go. If you'd had followed former developments at pixar, you would know that they put _lots_ of IT and coding skill into the equipment they're using.
Don't get me wrong, i think osx is a great platform. Of course it is worse for a linux hacker to use windows than a mac, but after a while it gets damn close.
So mac has definitively it's place in the market and on the desktop. But i don't wan't to be the one customizing thoses systems to such a complex enviroment.
I'm shocked that Apple Zealots are supressing any commentary that questions Apple and pushed moderation down to 0.
These are legitimate issues and worthy of discussion.
Nope, It doesn't. But if Steve Quee---Jobs says it does, then he must be right!
Who cares... disk is so cheap. Memory is so cheap. Processing power is way beyond what the average person needs.
I'm quite tired of this untrue meme. Yes, things are cheaper and faster than they were. My computer still feels slow.
The thing is that people expect more of their computers these days than when you formed your opinion of what was "enough". People who think that software can bloat because of Moore's Law (and it's derivitives) are ignoring the fact that people's demands and expectations from their computer also double every 18 months.
Personally, I can always outstrip the comuter I have. Right now I'm doing most of my work on a top of the line 17" Powerbook that's maxed out. It blows away every other computer I have used... and it still feels too slow sometimes. Like when I'm throwing around huge audio and video files. Or when it makes the slightest pause opening or closing a window... rendering a menu...
Even my mom, who is just a casual home user, says her 2Ghz tower sometimes feels slow. Sure, the computer spends 99.9% of it's time waiting for her, but when she clicks something it isn't instantly responsive -- like a lightswitch. And until it's instant like a lightswitch people want it faster. There are studies that indicate that interface lag on the scale of milliseconds hinders efficient work.
But even on todays computers I can wait whole seconds for common actions to take place, and minutes (or hours!) for others.
So please stop the "things are good enough" mantra.
Cheers.
It's not even close to reasonable to assume that Jobs (as CEO of one public company) would give a break to another company of which he is a substantial stockholder. That would open him up to all sorts of lawsuits, especially in today's legal environment. I would be willing to bet that he stayed as far away from this deal as he could, other than approving someone else's recommendation (as Pixar CEO). Jobs may be a lot of things, but he's not stupid.
If SCO pulled a magic rabbit out of there but and somehow proved they had IP rights to all of Linux and killed it off would the world grind to a stop? Would Slashdot go with it? Would people who participate in Slashdot die from grief? I don't think so. To imagine that Linux will be around forever and that encouraging that at ALL costs is foolish. I work in the real world where companies have to make money and protect their IP. To me GPL goes against this. If given a choice of a GPL license or a BSD license I opt for BSD every time.
People who take the holeyer than though view of Open Source are definitely walking the high road. It's a narrow-mindedness that I can't believe I'm hearing when coming from someone that I would normally consider to be highly intelligent. To me an example of the true spirit of Open Source is Apple. They took BSD and created Darwin and then release regularly the modifications to that operating system. That is truly honorable considering that with the freedom of BSD they do not HAVE to do so.
Plus, I don't think Steve Jobs would care if his xservers were running Linux or better yet BSD (pref Darwin) without OSX. Apple makes their money selling hardware. I really don't consider Microsoft to be a competitor of Apple. I think the real competitors are Dell, HP, etc..
Anyways, please step down from your Open Source soapbox and take a breath of air with the rest of us down here in the real world.
I realize that this comment might catch me some heat but Jesus I can't listen to this self centered propaganda any more.
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Maya Complete has been on OS X for a while. Unlimited, though (adds Fur, Cloth, Live, and Fluids) is not available.
Every cloud has a silver lining (except for the mushroom shaped ones, which have a lining of Iridium & Strontium 90)
Like you I've been doing work on Unix computers for many many years. Started on AT&T SysVr4 running on a 3B15 to be specific. Worked on Sparc stations, until OS X missed the NeXT, Coherent [remember that? ;], BSD, and Linux.
:). A flaw found in ssh is very quickly looked at by many, many eyes -- the originating teams, RedHat, IBM, Apple, etc. What a benefit to have good, serious patches available, when needed, usually within 24 hours -- not like dealing with that other company, eh?
:).
I really kind of started out on Sparcstations (with the occasional NeXT), and never did get to work with Coherent systems. I did have the pleasure (and I really mean that without sarcasm) or working a long time on a C code base that spanned nine different UNIX platforms along with VMS and MPE.
Isn't it interesting that all these Un*x's work very nicely together -- heck, in some cases they can (and do) use the same originating code (ssh, ftp, smtp, etc
I agree, it's pretty amazing that skills I picked up many years ago are still equally pertinent across all these platforms. My knowledge of sed or vi or Emacs has served me far better than any transient app on other operating systems. Word processors come and go but sed remains the same! That is a great thing about good open source (really Free) software, the best has this kind of residual staying power which means it will travel from platform to platform.
The Mac does offer a wonder front end to make simple things simple and even in the GUI can make it stand up on end and sing -- of course I personally will always go for 'vi' if I have any serious editing needs to happen. Heck, I still use a lot of my code that originated back on AT&T Unix in the 80's [written by myself] on OS X today (and the Linux servers peppered about
Exactly, I feel the same though my leanings are towards Emacs obviously - though I have used vi quite a bit over the years and have a lot of respect for the power it offers. I don't know that I can say I'm using a lot of the same code I used to though, apart from shell scripts. And elisp stuff, come to think of it.
Perhaps times are finally starting to change again? They always do...
Changing, changing... they always are. I find it interesting that Microsoft sits between Linux and Apple, both of which do what they do better than what MS does. The sqeezing is slow but certain, the result of the pressure not at all certain.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's not the fault of the size of the install. That's a fault in the design of the software itself. If an OS had a hard drive footprint of 4megabytes and was slow as dog snot in Antarctica it wouldn't be better than an OS with a 1.5GB hard drive footprint that was as fast as greased lightning.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Ah, to get a G5 laptop.. oh well, enough dreaming and onwards with my bit offtopic comment:
/., probably will only add fuel to the flames :)
This kind of article of course provokes x86/Gx comparisons. There's another quite interesting article on the G5 platform that, this being
I joined two users too late.
Or they change their name to iPixar.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Yeah, thats what they said! "1/2 - to 1/3-times as expensive" means its half to one third the price!!! ;-)
Nice try there.
But. BZZZZZZTTTT. Wrong !!!
ABN is bank. Besides, add that nice 5% dividend in there and ABN beats AAPL.
Does windows come with visual studio, dns server, proxy, etc?
OSX comes with gcc, java, perl, python, even with X11 and Xcode
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
At this point he'll probably deny that he is a fan and major Microsoft supporter at this point, so here are few links to refute that lie:
link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link link
And yes, I do have entirely too much time on my hands. But I'm also sick and tired of hearing this douchebag's lies and hypocrisy.
"In the real world you spend money to get the tools you need. It always gets me when I hear someone outside the industry complain about how much a copy of Photoshop costs- it's professional software, and it's a necessity. It costs that much because it's worth it."
I'll keep that in mind as I fill out the expense reports for Microsoft software.
The whole point is probably the Apple hardware, not OS X per se (For Pixar's purposes, Linux would more than suffice). As far as dual 64-bit hardware is concerned, I've run the numbers (as have the folks at Virginia Tech), and G5s are often cheaper than anywhere-near-comparable Athlon64s. Especially when you take into consideration that you see more old Macs in service...a local TV station in my town still does their video work on pre-G3 machines and they seem to make their deadlines none too shabby. TCO, man; it's all about total cost of ownership.
Apple bad for Linux? Here's where you can find the most beautiful Linux box you could ever have hoped for. Cluster them if it makes you happy---it's supported. But you say Unix based operating systems are more scalable for clusters and render farms. What do you think Mac OS X/Darwin is? Do you want to look at the source? Try starting here.
What propaganda are you talking about, anyway? Are you a troll or could you really just be this stupid? The Virginia Tech cluster was not made at the prompting of Apple, but some researcher did his homework and decided to use it. They came up with something that worked better than anything for the money and also landed third place in the Top 500 honestly. That's not just marketing spiel. A third party decided to use Macs for their cluster, and a third party that ranks these things honestly gave the cluster a well deserved third place. Do you honestly think Apple has no right to use this fact to promote their product?
As for the media thing, I don't know how anyone could honestly argue that Linux is easier to use for photography and movies than the Mac with its native software. What FUD has Apple spread about Linux with respect to media? Why would they have to? In this area, they don't even need to so much as acknowledge the existence of Linux because the people using Linux for media would use it anyway and no one else would bother using Linux for that. Life's too short.
Don't forget the 15 or so languages. Makes quite some megabytes ...
Andreas
Cheapest Xserver == $3000.
I can get a Dell for $500 that's TWICE as fast as that.
If altivec is a 128-bit pipeline, why couldn't it handle 64bit floating point?
Go look at arstechnica.com, they show the Dual 1.8ghz G5 as 60% faster than the fastest Dual Xeon. And the AMD chip does not seem to be showing up too much in render farms.
The only thing holding back G5's right now, I would think, is porting software that is stable right now on Linux (there is always going to be a few years for anyone to adopt a platform), and the lack of super high-end 3d graphics cards. My guess is that Pixar is getting that solved, and that we will start seeing the high-end graphics cards in the Fall. So WETA is probably still on Linux with Shake, because it is a known entity. They were working on LOTR 3 before G5s came out, so there is no reason they would have changed ships in the middle of production.
Two years from now, I expect that everyone will be making weaker and weaker excuses why they are still on a PC for 3D or Video. Right now, more software needs to be ported (I'm pretty sure Renderman is any day now).
The biggest effect it would have would be that Apple would indeed have the baddest, slickest 64 bit personal computer around. There was a time when being "wicked fast" belonged to Apple and no one else. I'd like to see them do it again, instead of just being back to par with the PC world.
Apple should not only be on par, they should stomp the PC world into dust in the speed game. They can do it now, it's just a question of do they have the balls?
No, we'd have the hoardable and underdeveloped BSD and the copylefted but immature GNU Hurd.
This is not about Linux, but freedom.
IP doesn't exist. Patents and copyrights yes. And both are blocking progress and the distribution of wealth. Copyleft offers a way out.
Too bad it is hoardable. Do you realize it is the GNU GPL that better protects the authors' rights, and that's one of the reasons for the GNU/Linux success over BSDs? Moreover, that another one of the reasons BSDs never developed as fully was that the lack of copyleft propitiated forks that never contributed back to the community, like SunOS, NeXTStep, Ultrix and HP-UX?
Too bad Darwin is not nearly as free as BSD, not even as the GNU GPL. Too bad also it is useless without the proprietary Cocoa and Aqua.
Yes he cares. If he didn't he'd have gone fully free software.
Go elsewhere. This is /.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
all the BSD developers who freely allowed us to steal^H^H^H^H^Huse your code
If I give you a beer, you didn't steal it from me.
You know, it's rather bizarre... the Linux/GPL fanatics will scream endlessly in the war against SCO about how licensing lets the copyright-holder do whatever they please with their code, and if the copyright-holder wishes to give it out for free with a license like the GPL which says it has to always remain open-source then that's their god-given right by law. Isn't that the counter to SCO's claim that the GPL is illegal?
So listen: you can't have it both ways. If licensing lets the copyright-holder come up with whatever terms s/he wishes, then that includes the BSD license which the copyright-holder VOLUNTARILY used. The people who wrote FreeBSD gave it to the community under the terms of the BSD licenses so that things like what Apple did could SPECIFICALLY happen. In essence, FreeBSD freely gave itself to Apple.
How is that stealing? FreeBSD said "Feel free to use our code to make money however you want". Apple did just that. Give it a rest.
After all, on Slashdot you must "align" yourself to a specific mindset. It's impossible to you that someone might have criticisms of all operating systems and not have a viewpoint that can be labelled as strictly pro-Microsoft or pro-Linux.
Why didn't you just link to my page? Then people can read my "douchebag" opinions and recognize that though I may hold views contrary to the majority, that doesn't mean it deserves the freakish stalking obsession I currently get from you. The multiple AC posting thing to each comment is getting freaky.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I imagine that on a large enough scale operation, the cost to upgrade anually is decently offset by the power savings from not running the machines as long for the same output. I'm sure the remaining cost is easily made up for in the value of earlier release. Or along the route of higher quality frames, the same amount of power cost plus more in depth graphics is valuable to be seen as the pioneers in the field, plus having more visually appealing movies.
It is probable also very much what you're saying that hardware is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount they're making.
If not now, when?
Today: 27.68. (nice of you to choose a price right in the hottest part of the echo buble)
Don't you have to wait for a bubble to pop before calling it a bubble? I guess it can't have anything to do with a line of very sucessful products and good public buzz. I picked today because it is, well, today - you picked your date out of convienience to your numbers, and even picked a chart that looked much worse than the facts of the timeframe being discussed. Frankly you are already on shaky ground from a standpoint of claiming anything.
FIVE PERCENT RETURN A YEAR ????
Lower than granma's the return on Grandma's goverment bonds. At much less risk too !!!!
You meant 3% right?. Almost double the return for a little risk. Five percent is not too bad... if it were five percent.
Let me introduce you to a little friend called dollar cost averaging. Now it will be a little tricky for you to follow as it involves more than just one long division.
Take the historical prices. Now assume you are going to buy about $100 at the start of every month. From the start of September 2000 (buying at 63.63!!), you spend $100 every month... arriving at around 219 shares of stock in the current month.
Now being generous, I thought I would compute the average gain thus far by using a current share price of only $24.30 (the price at the start of the month). That means that out of the $4300 you invested, you have 219 * $24.30 = ~$5300 worth of stock, or about a 24% gain. I think you might have trouble finding many bonds quite that high. If I wanted to think wildly I would use 219 * $27.68 (current share price) = $6061, or a gain of around 40%.
Around where I come from, even a gain of "only" 24% is something to celebrate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You would know why a lot of people are laughing (and not *with* you).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'll not post any findings, nor will I give you any numbers of my OWN personal experience.
...,nor support my position with anything else, not even a google search:
Your search - "default install size" XP os x - did not match any documents.
and
Your search - "default install size" XP osx - did not match any documents.
I'm building a turnkey editing system right now and though it's more labour-intensive than most setups, I'm just glad it's OS X based since the computer/SAN/LAN config is easy, the labour is mostly in the custom cabling and making the A/V signal path clean and happy.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Let's say they GPL'ed Aqua tomorrow.
Why would Apple be out of business? They'd still have great hardware. If MS used the source for Aqua in Longhorn (instead of just copying it through analysis as they are currently) then they would have to GPL Windows.
In fact, you could probably even still win L&F lawsuits so the code wouldn't even be totally useful to Linux. About the only thing that might happen is a lot of people would learn some cool tricks for efficent Mac programming.
People value source code far too highly (in the monetary sense). The source is worth almost nothing without the people that work on it and the ideas they have around it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually, It might outperform a beowulf cluster in some sense. With the Beowulf cluster, you have to set up nodes for processing and typically aren't user nodes. The scheduler will queue up tasks to the nodes as they are requested. However, Apple still has their XGrid technology lurking around Pixar I'm sure. With XGrid, all the machines act as a cluster where Mac's with free processes to spare can work on computations for other nodes. Also, the G5's altivec provides a definite performance boost since most of the work is render work which is probably easill parallelized/verctorized. Just from checking the Apple website (yeah, I'm sure it is biased) for the HPC LINPACK benchmarks, the XServe Dual 2GHz G5 is 9GFlops where as the DUAL 2GHz opteron is 5.91 GFlops. Just my $0.02
all the BSD developers who freely allowed us to steal^H^H^H^H^Huse your code so that we could make millions of dollars selling hardware that we couldn't even make our selves without IBM's help.
OS X uses the XNU kernel, which is based mostly on Mach--not BSD as is commonly thought around these parts. The BSD subsystem is one of many in the kernel. Click here.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Actually they would be porting stuff. I'm a 3d animator myself. Pixar runs their own set of tools for animation. Maya may be on MAC... but Pixar's own software is not. Well it probably is, or will be very shortly. But rest assured that if ALL of pixar's workstations for animators are being converted to MACs... then Pixar WILL be porting over their entire animation suite of tools that are and have been developed by Pixar for over 15 years now.
I'm not just talking about renderman. Pixar has their own animation tools and 3d control environments for scripting, rigging, animating, shader editing etc.
Pixar only uses Maya for modelling mostly. Infact i know a few Maya drivers at Pixar.
Zilla, which foreshadowed Xgrid, shipped on all the NeXT computer. and let any next user donate their clock cycles. see here
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Wait a minute. So Maya Complete isn't the complete system? No seriously. Who came up with that name then?
Fine and well that they are switching to G5s but are they switching to Cinema Displays as well ?
What I understand is that its still difficult to colour match on LCDs versus CRTs. But this may be more for print rather than video.
/* Andrew Fong - rogue programmer */
Sorry - you are correct. Got turned around by their horrible marketing-speak.
GeForces and the like are able to squeeze more gaming speed out of their cores because they fudge a lot of calculations. When doing complex modeling, you will notice those fudges and be very unhappy.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I didn't know the British were smart enough to understand electronics.
It's really not much of an endorsement, considering how closely married the companies are. Pixar certainly doesn't have to worry about being shaken down for expensive licenses and somehow I doubt they're paying retail price for the G5s.
This is not, incidentally, a knock against either OS X or the G5, both of which are fine products. I'm just noting that this is a bit like MSN using Windows XP on x86 hardware. Big deal.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Anybody using Maya or Shake or any other package designed on SGI machines replaces the mouse with a 3-button one. All 3-button USB mice work. Even the scroll wheel works in lots of Mac programs (though the 3D systems, being designed for non-scroll-wheel mice, usually ignore it).
Maybe Apple and Pixar have been working with the graphics card companies to develop OS X drivers for FireGL and Quadro. Maybe Radeons and GeForces are "good enough" now for professional workstations. Does anybody know?
seeing as pixar and apple have ties that go back when they were still a nothing animation company that presented short films at film festivals.
hell, watch knick knack and some earlier ones and you'll see steve jobs in the credits and thanks to him and apple computers in the creds...
looks like an old reunion to me.
Don't you have to wait for a bubble to pop before calling it a bubble?
...
...
Check the latest NASDAQ composite.
you picked your date out of convienience to your numbers
I picked it based on the first public release of OS/X.
You meant 3% right?
No. That's the yield. Not the return.
Historic return on US govt bonds is close to 6%
Take the historical prices
Doesn't look that good way below S&P 500
September 2000
Whoa! Who's doing the Monday morning quarterbacking now?
dollar cost averaging
Uh. Where's the transaction costs? You know,
the brokerage commission?
I thought I would compute
Just a second. let me compute 'em
Okay. You spent 4300. You have 225.05 shares
worth $5422. About a 20 percent gain.
About 5 and 1/2 percent gain a year.
Hmmmm. No big risk payoff here !!!
Oh. Just for fun, let's put in the commission.
I beleive $10/transaction would do the trick.
Oops Now you only have 4881.46 dollars in stock.
Only a 12% return. A 3.35% annual rate of return.
Looks not so good. Looks like *your* broker is
the winner with this "dollar cost averaging".
Hey. Have some fun. Plug in any other date.
The picture gets worse.
____________
bottom line here buddy. Apple has been a bad investment over the years. Unless your getting stock options on the Apple management team, you lose.
+5 Insigtful? pfffttt.
What's the advantage to Pixar??? WTF!
The teams at Pixar are at the pinnacle of their industry. They do not take software and hardware choice lightly. They have not and would not till this day switch to using Apple solutions unless they proved superior. They have no use for hardware and software politics.
The evolution has been going on for some time at Apple.
Jobs has remade Apple software and hardware Pro Lines specifically for Hollywood, the CGI industries and this.
XServe, Xserve Raids, OpenGL direct rendering, xCode Tools for Rapid Development and distributive computing, XServe licensing and OS X licensing all are extremely cost effective. linux and Unix software has been ported OS X. G5 optimized Render-man, Shake, and the necessary tools are there.
This is the future and Apple is very much a part of it, deservedly so. A lot of extremely talented people have been working their asses of pursuing this dream for years and years now. This is just the first picking of an abundant and fruitful harvest for these folks.
More power to them!!!!!
.
Good luck convincing a jury that you switched to a 2- to 3-times as expensive per seat hardware/software platform and it had nothing to do with the fact that the same guy is CEO at both companies.
from apple's shake page
Shake 3 For Mac OS X $4,950.00
Shake 3 is also available for Linux for a suggested retail price of $9,900 (US) with an annual maintenance of $1485 (US). Render-only versions of Shake 3 are free on Mac OS X and are available for Linux for a suggested retail price of $3,900 (US) with an annual maintenance of $585 (US).
even after buying a loaded dual g5 (composite workstation) or a xserve (rendering) facilities are saving money by switching to apple. Shake is also more stable on Mac than Linux.
(yes, i realize pixar deals mostly in 3d and not compositing, however, most VFX facilities do both)
I know that darwin is unix based, that's why I said it's a competitor to linux. I know that there are linux ppc distros, I even mentioned that I'd use ppc hardware, just not from apple, if it were a better choice for my particular application.
I'm not trolling and I'm not stupid, you misunderstood what I wrote, and blatantly so. I figured I'd get modded as flamebait or troll but I don't give a shit - that's why I rarely post on here.
Yes, apple doesn't usually spread FUD about linux when it comes to media stuff - that isn't what I meant. Apple has this well known reputation for media and "ease of use" isn't exactly an issue when it's comparing photoshop vs photoshop (a common thing that's said.)
I do see the valid points of the argument but my point was that apple has spread tons of bullshit about this media stuff and seems they do have many media applications but the real issue is - do the applications really run any better on macs? Or is it that the mac version is better than a windows version? On top of that, the mac might have more media applications because of this reputation, even if it's not truly the best tool for the job.
When you can't compare photoshop on linux vs photoshop on mac, saying macs are better for media is hardly a fair comparison. Same would go for any other media application. Though I'm sure there are some ways to compare the two platforms using a unix based OS (linux on ppc?) with optimizations and all, the problems that come when trying to compare two different platforms are a big deterrent and an argument that can go on forever.
Your extremely closed minded and most likely counter productive view of media on linux is amusing. Why would no bother using linux for media? It's a perfectly viable option, if some of the big names made ports. At this point, I don't even want to touch commercial software, so perhaps I'm exempt from this to begin with, but to completely disqualify linux from being a viable media option on no basis is a bit harsh.
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
Also for math (especially floating point) calculations, the G5 (PPC970) is much superior to the Intel IA-32 (not really a big thing if all you do is run Word, of course).
That's a VERY broad statement there, and not really backed by much fact. For certain applications I'm quite certain that the PowerPC 970 is quite a bit faster than any x86 chips, but in other applications it's probably quite a bit slower, while overall they would seem to be fairly close.
Probably the most comprehensive cross-platform CPU benchmark we've got is SPEC CPU2000. It's far from perfect, but at least it's widely used. The best numbers I've seen for the PPC 970 is 937 CINT_base and 1051 CFP_base at 1.8GHz (numbers available in this product overview from IBM). Very respectible performance, and the 2.0GHz PPC 970 should be a bit higher, but it's not quite class-leading.
For comparison, a top-end Opteron system (Opteron 148, 2.2GHz) managed 1304 CINT and 1505 CFP. The Xeons in the same basic range with a score of 1532 CINT and 1338 CFP. And before anyone goes crying foul because of unfair compilers or anything like that, the Opteron numbers are achieved using GCC.
According to a talk by "Dr. BigMac" (from VA Tech) the only other high-volume CPU approaching it was the Intel Itanium, and here (quite an irony) Intel was under-clocked! (The G5, last year, was shipping at 2Gh, the Itanium less than that).
Ol' Dr. BigMac was basing his decision only on the specific performance tests he felt were important. In this case, that test was Linpack, where the PPC does very well. Linpack is certainly not the only measure of processor performance, it's actually a VERY limited test, albeit one that is applicable to many types scientific computing.
As for the Itanium it's likely more an issue of price rather than clock speed. When you look at the real-world performance of the Itanium2 1.5GHz vs. PPC 970 2.0GHz in Linpack, they're pretty close (probably within 5%). However a "cheap" dual-Itanium node will set you back a cool $15,000 or so, while a similarly equipped dual-G5 system from Apple will only cost you about $5000.
As for Pixar themselves. It's quite possible that they went through some benchmarks and found that the PowerPC 970 offered better performance for their particular work than any x86 chips. As mentioned above, there are some areas where the PPC970 does excel. However, I suspect that there was a STRONG incentive to find the PPC970 fastest regardless of what the actual performance was.
I don't know if you want to wait, but Intel is planning on moving their Xeon line to 800MT/s bus speeds later this year, probably mid-summer.
of course, that being said, if you're looking at memory issues, the Opteron is definitely the way to go (except maybe for IBM's Power4 of Intel's Itanium, but they've both MUCH more expensive). Even though the Opteron and the G5 have the same theoretical memory bandwidth (6.4GB/s), the integrated memory controller of the Opteron will provide you with more real-world bandwidth. Add to that the NUMA design so that bandwidth scales with additional processors and it quickly gains a clear performance edge. Plus, to top it off, the integrated memory controller gives you SIGNIFICANTLY lower memory latency, something that is often even more important than high bandwidth.
Of course, price is a different matter, but they should be quite close. HP's new 2P Opteron servers are quite reasonably priced, shaving several hundred dollars off the price that IBM charges for their Opteron systems.
Pixar certainly doesn't have to worry about being shaken down for expensive licenses
You have a point in general, but Mac OS X only costs $130, and every machine comes with a copy. The lack of expensive licenses has nothing to do with them being Pixar.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Insightful?
I seriously doubt that power consumption is in the minds of anyone over at Pixar. Compared to the costs of administration, personell, and the hardware itself, power isn't even close to the top of the list.
Pixar will use whatever systems they need to make production time resonable. If that means an extra few thousand bucks a month because of the extra 30 servers, who cares.. drop in the bucket.
There's other (more rational) reasons for reducing the number of servers, and the lower electric bill is simply a bonus.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
True enough... I was referring to the portion of the comment that claimed "Processing power is way beyond what the average person needs.". OS bloat (as in, size of installation) isn't a problem in that regard. OS bloat as in overhead is, though.
Cheers.
altivec on th g5 can handle double floats, you're thinking of the g4
dave
Others have already addressed the point that for this application Macs are neither slower nor more expensive.
I'd point out that there are a couple of very good strategic reasons to go with Apple. First off they are in a niche that Apple is intent on dominating and is on the way to succeeding in this desire. Apple produces (or has bought) a lot of technology that is important to the broad category of film/video production that Pixar is part of. Beyond just Apple the other software vendors in this niche support the platform, a few don't support the *other* platforms.
Secondly, of course, is that Steve Jobs - the CEO and majority shareholder of Pixar is also the CEO of Apple. For obvious reasons Pixar is in a good position to get great service and consideration from this particular vendor. The "CEO mandate" dynamic you worry about on behalf of Pixar's shareholders (who are for the most part Mr. Jobs himself) works both ways. Apple which is already focussed on dominating the film/video market can act almost as a HUGE auxiliary R&D department for Pixar. They've already developed a new codec at Pixar's specific request. Apple has a huge amount of relevant technology it has already developed and/or bought. One might also notice that the XServe from the very beginning was configured as much for the video production market as it was for the server market - how many other servers have a FireWire port on the *front*?
but costly to Pixar's shareholders. One wonders what sorts of fudiciary issues such a maneuver might raise.
Since Jobs is himself the majority shareholder at Pixar with 55.4% of the shares not many. I would worry a great deal more about Jobs abusing his position at Apple to benefit Pixar's shareholders (i.e. himself) than vice versa.
Uh huh. Maybe you missed it in your rush to be all Smart, mr ac, but I said "corporate desktop environment", which IS windows and has been for over a decade. Sure, companies like Sun and Apple eat their own dog food (use their own products), but for the extreme vast majority of businesses, a corporate desktop machine == an Intel computer running Windows. I wouldn't place any bets that less than 98% of business machines are Wintels.
Nice try, better luck next time in your quest to be Smart and make other people look Stupid.
You clearly don't use your computer for serious media work. While I agree that, in theory, there's nothing stopping Linux from being viable, the reality is there is so much you cannot do. I use Final Cut Pro, After Effects and Pro Tools/Logic. Nothing on Linux compares. Eventually, I'm sure Linux will catch up with Open Source solutions AS THEY ARE TODAY. But even iMovie trumps any Linux video editor I've encountered. Audacity is fine for basic mixes but offers no where near the amount of prescision and ease of use that commercial software provides. Fine for basic demos and turning records to MP3s but not good enough for consistent, heavy production. I understand your concerns and can truly say, yes, Apple's offerings are superior to their Windows or Linux equivalents. Try it out!
harmonious design
I'm already seeing unbelievable speed gains in 10.3.2! Also, the Finder told me that I'm lickable!
Anyone notice that this story's SID is 100,000? *
Wow. It's pretty amazing that we've managed to produce this many stories in such a short time. Kudos to the editing staff!
*It's only 27 if you don't count the dupes
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Aye, but can you get a dual processor, 1U unit for $500? I don't think so
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Sure Macs are more expensive, you can't choose the cheap parts in it. You have to buy high quality computer, not like pc's where you choose cheap parts and start thinking if suicide is an option while assembling the pc.
BeOS is the closest I've seen to instantaneous reaction to user input. The 'bloat' difference between OS X and XP is that I can uninstall most anything on the mac, whereas Bill's gotta make it 'integrated'. :(
from all this reading
:)
1. Apple DOES NOT MAKE THE HARDWARE - IBM and other 3rd party companies do - Apple simply puts their name on it.
2. Mac OSX is not even 64bit capabale as far as i know?
3. Windows 64bit does exist for AMD64' (64bit cpu's) also you have Server 2003 which is 64bit - then you also have th elinux flavours.
4.The main reason Pixar for G5's is because Steve Jobs owns both companies so WHY would he want the competitors making money from him - pixar likely paid next to nothing for those systems.
5. Go spec out a dual Xeon system - yeah it will run you about $1500 US for an "okay" system - go spec out a dual G5 - your looking @ over $2k + - i have done my own price comparisons and each time i can get a PC that has everything a MAC has an often more for the same price - especially when you include 21' studio displays - of cours each one beats out the other in various "tests". neither is ever a mile ahead as so many reviews want you to beleive.
Anyways - what ever works - g5's got some good stuff and is definetly a saviour to MAC users world around from the G4 giant paper weight - but for all the MAC zealots stop worshipping your system and realize that PC are not the crap you think they are.
End of my rant for now.
P.S - can anyone spare $2k so i can get my own G5?
Actually, back in the day, they used to have an equation for how they would decide on what hardware to buy for their renderfarm. Power consumption factored heavily into it. Although this was back in the day when they were rendering on sun systems. (I can't even remember when Suns had decent floating point specs).
The reason Windows system get infected in a corptate environment is because the system administrators dont know how to properly maintain their network and computers under them, it is the system admins that should be fired. Ihave a network here or 23 computers and not one has ever gotten a virus or been down due to a windows bug -Why, because i know how to maintain my systems. Now lets get into if MAC were on %85 of the worlds computers- there WOULD be as many viruses and such as what windows has now and you would see just as many problems and patches for OSX and previous / future versions. A mac network / workplace can go down just as easily as a windows system if it is not properly maintained.
..and you still haven't specifically stated what FUD Apple spreads about Linux. I think you just like throwing that word around. You haven't done the first thing to back up your points.
Somebody mod parent up pls!
If Pixar was not using the best tool for the job, I'd have heard grumbling on the grapevine
Is this through all of your "connections" you dirty little karma slut? Amazing how you seem to have connections to all industries when it comes to posting your blatant karma hand jobs.
How can you say that a system running on top of FreeBSD is not a computer. Do you eat chalk? Cardboard? Try something nutritious. You're starving your brain. Mac OS X runs atop FreeBSD, one of the most respected (and one of the oldest) operating systems on the planet.
"Macs aren't even computers"
hmmm... is a Dell a computer? Are SGIs computers? Is your milk jug a computer? Is your coffee machine a computer? You are seriously confused. School starts at 8:15AM, don't be late!
I would really, really like to see the "Macs are more expensive" meme disappear from these arguments. They're not more expensive than PCs of comparable power and quality, and haven't been for years.
You obviously don't live in Europe, where Macs are more expensive than comperably powered x86. The old arguments about single manufacturer (Macs) vs multiple (x86) still hold true outside North America because we have to pay import duty on the Macs.
Um... I assume that you are referring to the myth that Macs are more expensive.
Anybody who wants to quote the "Macs are more expensive" line of FUD has never taken a look at the price of Sun or especially SGI hardware.
Swapping one type of FUD for another - the Sun opteron/xeon boxes are the same price as systems from Dell.
Alex
>If altivec is a 128-bit pipeline, why couldn't it >handle 64bit floating point?
I don't know. Ask Motorola/IBM why they designed it that way. (See my next reply for documentation)
Then somobody better tell IBM to update their documentation. Quote from PowerPC 970 AltiVec(TM) PEM
Quote from page 26:
The Altivec technology defines the following: Fixed 128-bit whide vector length that can be subdivider into sixteen 8-bit bytes, eight 16-bit half words or for 32-bit words --End of quote
Or you can look at page 10-14 which list all the supported instruction. And they are all 8,16 or 32bit.
Why compare to dual-Xeon from Dell? Why not compare to dual-Opteron from any other manufacturer?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Of course not. It's beta and I won't even put it on my main HDD.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
"And before anyone goes crying foul because of unfair compilers or anything like that, the Opteron numbers are achieved using GCC."
Except for the little fact that the GCC team adopted the x86-64 patches without a single protest, but has so far categorically rejected Apple's patches.
I notice no evidence whatsoever for your assertions. Find me a linux based machine with the same capabilities of the high-end G-5s, and compare them, feature for feature... And no, a build your own does not count. I did a comparison, and every single dual Xeon, or dual opteron was much more expensive, whether it was running windows or Linux. The OS is a tiny portion of the overall price when you get this level.
These are hot machines, and work quite well for what Pixar was doing. If this was simply the CEO telling them what to do for his own personal benefit, he'd be slapped with a shareholder derivative suit in seconds flat. It has to be justifiable.
Are you SURE that macos 10.3 supports
64 bit addressing? Some documentation for that would be nice.
IP doesn't exist. Patents and copyrights yes.
I disagree, intellectual property most certainly DOES exist. In it's raw form (the contents of your mind) it is the most secure and private property you have. Of course the moment you communicate this knowledge to someone else they own it just as surely as you do.
This property can be extremely valuable to the individual who has it as well as to society. The problem that Patent laws seek to address is that individuals with valuable knowledge would often seek to keep it secret so as to ensure that whatever the invented or developed benefits them. Some inventors and trade guilds had been spectacularly successful in doing so, take for example the history of the Zildjian cymbal company. Others failed to keep their secrets and died penniless, undercut by competitors that didn't have their R&D costs to recover (Gutenburg) The problem from societies standpoint is that the imperative to keep secrets limited what the inventor could do with his invention meaning it's application was often less useful to society than it otherwise could be. Also, if the secret was well kept there was always the risk that it would die with the inventor. The middle ages is replete with examples of inventions and knowledge that died with their inventors.
Patents offer a solution. The inventor is offered a limited time monopoly on the use of his invention IF he tells everyone else what it is. Now the inventor doesn't have to worry about his secret getting out and dying penniless or go to great lengths to keep his secret. He can sell his invention on an open market and still retain the benefits as though he had kept it secret - for a time. Society can benefit immediately through the inventor's business and through the inventors open sharing of his newfound knowledge and after the monopoly is up that knowledge is in the public domain free for anyone to use.
This is NOT to say that the patent system isn't being abused, just to say that it is itself still valid even if it is at times being used in an invalid way.
Mac OS X 10.3 only supports a 32 bit virtual address space per process although it can address more than 4GB RAM in total.
Don't blame me - this
So 300 W * 24 h * 31 days * 6000 computers / 1000 kW/W = 1,339,200 kWh per month for all those machines. Assuming 7 cents to the kWh is $93,744 in power alone each month. That's possibly undershooting, as I don't know what the cost per kW is over lines that deliver some 40 thousand kW each hour.
Now, tack on the costs of cooling this beast of a farm, the monthly cost just to have lines it takes to deliver over 40 thousand kW each hour and that total just goes up. It certainly doesn't break the bank of a company producing huge films, but it is an advantage to reduce that number.
I never claimed that power was the only or the best reason to upgrade. I'm just saying that this is a cost that is often overlooked, and that the savings could offset some of the upgrade costs. When you have a good bulk purchase program as Pixar probably can get through Apple it's even better. I figure they can sell the used machines at a decent rate if they're but a year old, or at least donate them and write them off.
Heck, there are probably dozens of reasons to upgrade often in that business. Not having to worry about parts that most often fail after a year, space concerns when increasing computing power, being seen as a pioneer because you have the latest and greatest, more time to test render, etc. Power, however, is still going to be among the list.
If not now, when?
It doesn't. Patents do exist, copy rights do exist, but intellectual property is just a meaningless agregation of both plus trademarks. BTW none is a form of property, but limited rights of quite different types both among themselves and from property rights.
I never said patents aren't valid in themselves. Software patents specifically are illegitimate, and I believe copy rights are long surviving their usefulness, but these are other issues.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
(Once again for the hard of hearing)
MAC == Media Access Control (an acronym used in networking)
Mac == Abbreviation for Macintosh
Please use the correct one in the future.
This sig has been deprecated.
Just curious why
...but intellectual property is just a meaningless agregation of both plus trademarks.
OK, I understand your point better now, but I think you are being (or trying to be) pedantic. Unfortunately, you're still wrong. Intellectual property has all the attributes that define "property" - the rights (even limited rights) are owned, the holder of the rights (patent, trademark, copy-right) has exclusive legal title to them, he can enjoy them or dispose of them as he will, they can be bought or sold or given away as a gift. This is the definition of the term "property".
As for the qualifier "intellectual" - while the law may treat each of the different types of "intellectual property" differently they are obviously of a class that share a lot of attributes and are distinct from other types of property, including other types of intangible property (such as licenses, securities, notes, accounts receivable, etc.) It's nice to have a term for the distinct class as a whole rather than just the individual types or lumping it together in the larger class of "intangible property" or even worse just "property".
Finally, part of my point before is that those rights originate with the inventor, artist, writer not with the state. Aside from the legal idea of "intellectual property" the creator owns the contents of his own head in a more real way and more securely than he does even his physical property. If he can utilize it to his profit without divulging it to anyone else it will always remain his property in the fullest sense of the word. Even if he can't do so he can sell it (as a type of property) prior to divulging it to the person he sold it to. Society has created laws to extend that "property" for the mutual benefit of the creator and the larger society.
For that matter physical property rights are just as much a product of law and society as intellectual property rights. In a Hobbesian state of nature you only "own" it if you have a bigger club, are stronger and can keep someone else from taking it. Finally I'd note that the law also treats different kinds of physical property differently as well. There are distinctions between the owning a piece of real estate as opposed to owning a piece of gum, or owning a piece of a business. Nobody would claim that because of these distinction that these things aren't "property".
There needs to be a modifier for either didn't read the post or just plain stupid. He said 'Corporate Desktop' which is more often that not, running Windows. Yes, x86 can run Linux, guess what, so can PPC. Oh wow who's the big boy now? Who knowledgable with operating system choices now? Feel better.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
I love reading all the zealots posting here about Apple being cost effective in the rendering market. I am not a Microsoft pundit coming from the good old alternative Amiga now Linux community. When a single processor Athlon 64 will best a dual G5 systems and costs way, way less in "Apples to Apples" benchmarks its no wonder that render farms are using x86 chips.
(Its simple market principles, one manufacturer = higher prices.) I gave up on Apple when they stopped cloning and refused to port their OS to hardware platforms that offer competition.
In the non-render market, you can buy a $1000 for PC compatible system that is quite capable equivalent to a $2700 Mac G5 single processor. All of this talking comes down to nothing more than a bunch of OS zealots dreaming about their single vendor platform ever being cost competitive in a global market economy with multiple manufactures.
No, it is just that 'upgrading' trademarks, copy rights and patents to a general category of property tends to extend them by association with real property, when they in fact need to be limited instead of extended.
It shouldn't matter, but we think by analogy.
There is one more requirement to consider something property: permanence and ownership. Copy rights and patents aren't permanent, and they are not actually owned by their holders, rather they are conceded by the State.
In the natural state one can own by force or tradition; not so with ideas or expression. The State concedes exclusive rights for a determined period to foster creation, but this does not property make, nor you will find the term in the statutes books. It was actually applied as a propaganda device by the constituents of the WIPO. One can argue that if patents are useful they are too long nowadays and anyway their application to software is too fuzzy to be useful, and that copy rights are contraproducent nowadays.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch .html
Best way to get information on publically owned companies.
Many types of physical property are no more permanent than copy-rights, or patents. By you're reckoning the meal I ate last night was not my property.
The "rights" however are owned, can be bought, sold, inherited etc.
I dispute this, the contents of my mind, my thoughts, my creativity, are my property. The state extends rights of exclusive use that I already owned quite securely in order to enable me and encourage me to share knowledge that was already my own exclusive property.
In another vein I would argue that a common human understanding of justice and propriety artists and inventors have always been held to "own" in some sense the products of their creativity. Take this example - if you write a book and are rejected for publication by a publisher but find out later that they DID publish your book and kept the proceeds themselves they HAVE stolen something from you. Your *natural* rights, NOT derived from the state, have been trampled.
In the natural state one can own by force or tradition; not so with ideas or expression.
And in the natural state one of course owns his own thoughts without needing to resort to either force or tradition.
The courts and the law have always treated such rights as personal property. As for specific mention in the statutes you are mistaken - U.S. Code Title 17, Chapter 2, Sec. 201, clause (d)(1) U.S. Code Title 35, Part III, Chapter 26, Sec. 261 Instances of the law discussing "ownership" of either patents or copy-rights are too numerous to mention. The actual term "intellectual property" occurs as well in several places but usually to refer to either the name of a bill or as a way to refer generally to the branch of a foreign government responsible for intellectual property law in that country - in other words another nations equivalent of the patent office.
Permanence doesn't mean it will always be one's property, but that it will be so until he chooses to dispose of it or the law determines otherwise in some special circumstance as public need for disappropriation.
Patents and copy rights aren't patents because they are a concession of a private monopoly; the law doesn't need to create a special case of public need for disappropriation. It was never property, just a limited time concession of exclusive rights.
Until you choose to publish them, when they become public. The State chooses to give you limited exclusive rights for a determined period to incite you to express them for public benefit in the first place.
Not in the absence of copyrights. Before copyrights, one had to make sure of not allowing copies. For example, one didn't lend his manuscript for more time than necessary for reading -- copying took much longer. Remember, the goal of copy rights and patents is to incite publication.
Have you notice the subtlety? Copy rights aren't property, they themselves are owned. Only they are not property, but a temporary monopoly.
Another subtlety... saying patents shall have the attributes of property is subject to provisions subtracts some of the attributes of personal property, such as permanence.
Now I will concede that intellectual property has recently been inserted in the statutes books. This is a victory for those who use them as propaganda terms, but it doesn't make the concept any more legitimate than once personal property of another people (slavery, the Roman patriarcal powers) was once thought to be.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Although I do not disagree with you; power concerns *could* be an advantage if you say, move from 6,000 servers to 4,000. It could help offset the cost of the hardware and personnel resources a bit.
You seemed to make it out to be the holy grail of using more powerful boxes. If you did not mean this, I apologize.
One comment however, about "not having to worry about parts that most often fail after a year" I'm assuming you mean PC vs. Mac? This is an unfair comparison, and most of the hardware in the two systems end up coming from the same plants anyways.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Finally, I don't think Pixar's stockholders are in much of a mood to be cheap
Since Steve Jobs owns more than 50% of Pixar stock, there isn't a difference between what the CEO wants and what the stockholders want. You can't say that about too many public companies.
Now I will concede that intellectual property has recently been inserted in the statutes books.
The term "intellectual property" may be recent but copyrights have been treated legally as personal property to be bought, sold, leased etc. at the owners discretion and treated as a part of his estate if he died while they were still in effect since the copyright act of 1790 in the U.S. and I believe (I couldn't find the text) since the Statute of Anne in 1709 in the U.K. The courts have also always treated copy-rights and patents as personal property
Why select a slower, more expensive platform and take on the cost of porting one's in-house software to yet another platform, when multi-processor AMD-64 chips running GNU/Linux are a dime a dozen?
And what price list are you referring to? It cost Virgina Tech $5.2 million US for a #3 spot in the worlds fastest computers.
On the other hand, an equally equipped Opteron (albeit an extra 600 processors over Big Mac) cluster cost about $10 million and trails Big Mac at #6.
My math may be a bit rusty, but isn't 3rd place better than 6th place, and 5 million less than 10 million?/p.
Pixlet will be your best friend soon
Who is Pixlet? No it is not Piglett's X-Rated relative. Pixlet is the new video codec that will be included in MacOS 10.3 later this year. It is the same codec that Pixar uses to do their compression and editing. You know Pixar? Toy Story? Bug's Life? Monster's Inc? Finding Nemo?
Apple claims that Pixlet can compress a 6GB movie at half high definition, which is a little worse than DVD down to 250MB. Yes. You heard right. 250MB! It will be a video editor's dream. No more huge DV files. No more 30+ GB projects! Wahoo.
So why will it be your best friend? Because the days of grainy and low quality bootlegs off Kazaa and other such services will be over. What? I never. Yes you have. Admit it. You will be able to get near DVD quality movies at 250MB a pop. In order to get high quality now, DIVX it is still almost as bad as if you downloaded the DVD itself. Many DIVX movies are anywhere from 650MB to 1.8GB and are not anywhere close to the quality that will be delivered with Pixlet. Movies are a little different than online music swapping. Many download movies in the interim so they can watch the movies while they wait for the DVD. I still buy every movie I ever download simply because the quality is much better and you get all the extra features. To me movie downloading and music downloading are in two separate categories.
So I don't do that. Why else will Pixlet be my friend? Pixlet will allow complete movies on demand. It will allow near DVD quality movies to be sent to your computer. There are rumors as I type this that Apple is gearing up to make a version of the iTunes Music Store for movies. This hypethetical store would allow you to cheaply purchase, download, and burn your own movies much cheaper than you would buying them in a store. Pixlet could very easily deliver DVD or higher quality with relatively small file sizes. If you are not aware a DVD is either 4.7GB or 8.4GB depending on the media used. That would take forever to download. A 250MB file could theoretically even be downloaded my a modem user in a day or two. That seems like a lot, but with a download manager of some sort that lets you get it little by little as you go along it would really only be a few overnight downloads. It's not as bad as it sounds. In the days where there are people who download entire Linux distributions which are 2+ GB this seems a lot more reasonable.
So will Pixlet be your friend? Yep. I think so.
from here
My comment about worrying about components failing was more a comment on the ever reducing warranties on parts. 1 year warranties on new off the shelf hard drives is along those lines, though high end scsi isn't so likely to fail. For something that's just rendering frames the disk could probably be normal ATA though. With the mean failure rates obviously being lowered on commodoty parts, swapping out parts after a year would probably prevent a good deal of little failures, either PC or Mac. With thousands of computers they're bound to happen too.
If not now, when?
I suppose any large scale system would have redundancy. If a handful of nodes drop out, the system should be able to cope with this seamlessly. Same would go for things like hard drives; I'd hope that if the data on the individual units' drives need to be preserved, RAIDs would come into play.
For sure though, you definately want to budget repairs. They play a fairly big part of any data center setting; if you got six thousand boxes it must be huge.
ps. I've never found SCSI disks to be any more reliable, unfortunately... just a hell of a lot more expensive, and a bit quicker. And of course, more versatile =)
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
It also took the SCSI drives a lot longer to fail it seemed, and that they often come with at least a 5 year warranty is nice. As far as a rendering cluster is concerned, I'd assume that the nodes responsible for distributing frames to be rendered would have plenty of redundancies in place, but the boxes used to do the dirty work would not. Rendering is mostly CPU and RAM anyway.
It's like you say, a handful of boxes can disappear and the work still goes on. That's the nice thing about movie rendering, the task is so explicitly and locally parallel because each machine can take a set of frames and render without having to share data. Losing one or two for a while wouldn't hurt the operation, but losing one or two regularly would be a real problem for the staff. After a year of constant use I'd think most problems would start occuring, as that's when basic warranties on most computers start running out, Apple's included. And with some 6000 computers, a lowly 1% chance of some part failing means 60 computers probably will. Yuck.
If not now, when?
Wait.....the point of buying the Sun box is usually to get a Sparc based box..... You know, like the E10000?
> "how many other servers have a FireWire port on the *front*?" Just to let you know..... they're useful for quickly booting off a external drive. How many other servers were designed with the consideration to boot off something else in an emergency?
It's quite probable that these render farms contain no local storage at all; they don't really need it. I guess it would depend on a lot of variables.
For IDE vs SCSI, it really depends. Some of the higher end IDE stuff has longer warranties and faster rotation speeds. They are meant for mid-market server type applications. Depending on the situation, IDE can certainly offer great advantages over SCSI in the terms of cost. There's some really nice IDE raid controllers, and with 300GB IDE disks you can slap together some really huge storage volumes. It might not be as high of performance as SCSI, but it can come close and it's 1/10th the price.
Your experience may vary, but for me, IDE disks appear to be manufactured with similar QC as SCSI disks. I haven't noticed any differences in failue rates, but you're certainly right in that most desktop-class IDE disks only come with a single year warranty these days, so this could become a factor when deciding on which technology to use.
I would imagine, however, any firm that goes and purchases boxes in the thousands would also purchase extended warranty agreements. It's a part of any mid to large data center cost. Usually, you go with one brand, and stick to it, and purchase blanket warranties every year based on approximately how many machines you got running.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Strange no one else seems to have noticed it, but -- this article bears the SID 100000.
Congrats to Slashdot for having come this far. May we append many more digits to this figure!
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Are you guys going to make out now or what?
The reason Windows system get infected in a corptate environment is because the system administrators dont know how to properly maintain their network and computers under them, it is the system admins that should be fired.
No, its Microsoft's fault for making operating systems, applications and entire architectures that are security nightmares. For server's, yes it is the responsibility of the admin to stay on top of security issues. However, there is no excuse for a desktop OS not to be secure out of the box.
Now lets get into if MAC were on %85 of the worlds computers- there WOULD be as many viruses and such as what windows has now and you would see just as many problems and patches for OSX and previous / future versions.
Ah, the marketshare myth. NO there WOULD NOT be as many viruses for the Mac, even if Apple had 100% market share. Why? Because Microsoft makes it pathetically easy to write viruses for their platform. Aside from sloppy coding, Windows runs too many network services by default, it has poor priveledge seperation, and it is too easy to auto-execute scripts and programs. None of these problems exist on the Mac. So even if every single computer bought or sold ran OS X, we wouldn't have but a fraction of a percentage of the problems that Windows currently does.
Just as likely not, he may want to keep clean hands on this one for credibility.
Outside of Mac Fanatics, Steve has no credibility.
Remember that the high-profile VirginiaTech project had tons more marketroid benefits for Apple but the whole deal was basically retail. They wouldn't have to get discounts for this decision fo fly anyway, the price/performance&quality ratio is favourable.
Two words. Educational Discount.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Jobs has lots of credibility with portions of different business sectors and is a perennial tech design leader to a lot of hardware manufacturers, a tiny bit of research would've told you this. Many of us think he's a just a megalomaniac salesman with some pretty good ideas, but he has some interesting compensation happening for a CEO, and the tech visionary thing, well, chances are you're working on a machine that this guy with no cred influenced strongly.
And VirginiaTech didn't get the educational discount initially--which isn't that much for Apple hardware anyway. That's an easy bit of research too. It's hard to reach the google field from high up on your perch, eh LordK?
Damn those pesky terrorists