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Apple to Award Workgroup Clusters to Scientists
Graff writes "Apple is giving away five Apple Workgroup Clusters for Bioinformatics (each worth approximately $40,000) to four higher
education researchers and one non-education researcher. A panel of independent scientists and Apple will choose the lucky researchers."
For the mad scientist who has everything!
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
must be a 1.8 ghz G5 with monitor to add up to that size of cash.
Imagine a beowulf.....
Apple (as well as other computer companies like IBM) are getting very interested in bioinformatics. They have loaned us a ton of equipment for free even though our product is linux based. Of course, Apple has always had a stronghold in academics.
Please, no beowulf cluster jokes.
So writing puff pieces about your great accomplishment means they own it? Bull.
You know what?
Are you suggesting that for some reason Giant Pandas are not worthy of this prize?
Apple should give a set away to United Devices (Profit) or Grid. Both of these ventures specialize in distributed Cancer/Drug simulations. Let's find a cure for breast and prostate cancer!!!! Go Go Go!!!
Only a tiny fraction of the science-related software out there runs on Macintosh.
For gui-based stuff, that might be true. But a very big percentage of bioinformatics is done on the command line. And there is a wealth of free unix based bioinformatics software out there.
True, that. But the majority of it that doesn't run exclusively on Mac OS runs on a UNIX or on Linux, and a fully functioning Mac version is usually only a recompile away. Also, Apple is giving away the iNquiry software toolkit which claims to include over 200 applications preconfigured for the Workgroup Cluster environment, which is pretty damn spiffy.
Every cloud has a silver lining (except for the mushroom shaped ones, which have a lining of Iridium & Strontium 90)
Apple gives some Apple computers away, and they are celebrated on Slashdot for their generosity.
Microsoft gives some Windows computers away, and they are scorned on Slashdot for their monopoly.
While admittedly, Apple's donating computers is certainly a marketing move, to compare it to Microsoft's donation of 'doze boxen, usually in lieu of paying some fine for one of their many misdeeds, is a bit disingenuous.
Nice try though.
Gates foundation gives billions to 3rd world countries, and it doesn't even make a slashdot story.
Why should it? Did the billions to 3rd world countries foster some technological happening that would fall under the catch-all, "news for nerds"? Probably not. But again, thanks for playing. The Gates foundation should be donating to third world countries, hell anyone with that sort of money should be doing what they can to improve the lot of the less fortunate. But that's running into offtopic territory.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
Though not saying you (like every other person you mistakenly interchanges the term market share for the word install base) are assuming that the company's install base is declining... something that there is no proof of. Declidining "market share" could simply mean that Windows market share increased while Apple's stayed the same... (end result is still declining *market share* for mac users) or that Mac users are simply getting more life out of their computers (end result is still declining *market share* for mac users)... or that PC users are suddenly getting less life and are having to upgrade more frequently (end result is still declining *market share* for mac users). What I'm getting at is that market share is NOT an indicator of the increase or decrease in a platform's install base. Apple's install base is probably in the 7%-12% range... though you would never know it because the major research companies are only shoing *market share* statistics. This information is of no use to anyone EXCEPT stock holders in the company the stats they refer to as it is an indicator of profit and loss. If market share indicates profit and loss... its important that we understand that Apple is one of only two profitable computer companies these days and that their computers are priced exactly in tune with the rest of the industry (not over priced as is so commonly suggested).
Companies give research grants to universities all the time. A DEC grant paid for two years of grad school for me in the early 90's, and gave my lab a bunch of sweet Alphas. Why is this news - because it's Apple?
I've come to the conclusion that Apple must have some sort of market share that defies the natural laws of the universe. For years now, Apple's market share has always been reported at ~4% with numbers as low as 2% in some places and as high as 10% in others. But the one thing that has remained constant throughout these reports is that it's adwindling market share and it's falling rapidly. Now, how is it that 6 years ago, they could have 4%, 5 years ago they had 4%, 4 years ago they had 4%, 3 years ago they have 4%, 2 years ago they have 4%, one year ago they have 4% and this year, they still have 4%, yet every year it was declining?
This leads to the conclusion that Apple must have invented purpetual self sustaining marketshare, a graph of which could make MC Escher proud, and that they must patent this immediately so that they can increase their marketshare to -pi
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
The award should be for PCs.
Apple should give away competitors' hardware? To what end?
Only a tiny fraction of the science-related software out there runs on Macintosh.
Hmm. Interesting, broad comment with no support. In the Life Sciences, my experience is that about half of us use Mac OS X. Not a bad cut of the market. If only a "tiny fraction" of the applications used are available, why do so many people use it over Linux, Windows and other platforms?
Word to the wise: think before you make senseless observations.
"...skin. Yeah that's right. I study female skin exposure and do extensive analysis using digital photographs and videos. I need a powerful computing solution to work with some of my experimental data."
Um, no.
Market share and install base are definitely linked. If Apple's only selling 3% of computers, their install base is going to trend to 3% over time, holding all other things equal.
Mathematical example: total market is 100 computers, Apple has 3% market share)
Year 0: 6 Macs, 150 PCs (so Apple has about 3.8% of the install base when we start)
Year 1: 9 Macs, 247 PCs (install base is 3.5%)
Year 2: 12 Macs, 344 PCs (install base is 3.3%)
Year 3: 15 Macs, 441 PCs (install base is 3.2%)
I think you get the picture. Market share is not representative of total install base RIGHT NOW, but is certainly a good indicator of what's going to happen in the future. If you disagree, that's too bad, because I've just mathematically shown that you're wrong. Market share and install base are definitely linked.[1]
Apple's profitability really has nothing to do with their install base so much as their margins. If I'm selling stuff with a huge mark-up on actual costs, I could sell 30 pieces of it and still make money, even if the total market is 3 billion pieces.
-Erwos
[1] As for your "PCs don't last as long as Macs": prove it. I've used Macs for years, and Apple's build quality is not as good as people make it out to be. I'm not going to factor in differing "computer decays" without any kind of proof for them.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I would like to formally propose an educational study in which the effect that faster Photoshop and Quark X-Press productivity would have on my pocket book would be studied. I'd also like to crunch some numbers on the effect of staggering frame rates in UT2K4 would have on my on-line gaming experience, as I currently suck. My studio would be the happy receipient of one of your donor G5 machines. Thank you for your time.
Yeah, I guess I'm funny like that.
Microsoft is a monopoly. Apple is not.
Is that so fucking hard to understand?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Seriously, unless these are Photoshop scientists, what good will they be?
If your definition of "mad scientist" is "person working on weapons of mass destruction", ie, nuclear weapons, most of them already have the world's largest clusters. Pretty sad that we still consider it important to build better nuclear weapons even though we've got thousands of them, and not a single legitimate target for them(the whole deterrence thing is ridiculous- if it's just about deterrence, we only need a dozen or so).
It'd be nice to see some computing horsepower, if only a small piece, go to those trying to do something other than make better nuclear bombs or look for little green men...ie something (gasp) productive.
Please help metamoderate.
So lets run some numbers:
/. readers saw it. Does this influence them to but a $40,000 cluster? that's a big nope. Does it influence them to try the Xserve? well perhaps it helps reinforce the production applicability of the Xserve (it runs iTMS and the V-tech super computer and these $40,000 clusters so maybe I shoudl give it a try) Does it make people want to but PowerBooks and iPods, again, doubtful.
5 $40,000 (retail) prizes = $200,000 retail
only 4 ($160,000) are educational and after looking at the awards, there is no stipulation the 1 non-educational award must go to a non-profit so there is only the $160,000 tax right off guaranteed.
Now if you are a reseller, I don't know if you can right off the retail value of the goods & services donation or not, so that would make the value even lower.
Now the return on the investment:
Well you get smart people in research institutions all over the country dreaming up ways to use 5 Xserves and the 10 way G5 64=bit computing power they bring. So even if they don't win, somebody may get some dollars budgeted to actually buy this type of system outright. Or perhaps they win a different grant and use those moneys to fund it.
Then you have publicity. At least a few hundred
So what's left
So after Apple ponies up $200,000 in hardware and software, less their margins and tax deductions, they still spent six figures on a marketing stunt and some good Karma. Will it pay for itself? Well if only ONE of these institutions who wins a cluster actually adds on to it within an order of magnitude of V-tech, I would say 'yeah' it will pay for itself.
Have other companies (Big Blue, Hp, etc) had success with similar programs?
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Thanks for sharing your polital views.
Now go away.
"Microsoft is a monopoly. Apple is not."
So Gates isn't allowed to donate to 3rd world countries because two of his products is a de-facto monopoly that the market decided it likes?
"Derp de derp."
year 0: 10 Macs, 10 PCs
year 1: 0 new Macs, 10 PCs replaced
year 2: 0 new Macs, 10 PCs replaced
year 3: 10 Macs replaced, 10 PCs replaced
year 4: 0 new Macs, 10 PCs replaced
year 5: 0 new Macs, 10 PCs replaced
total sold: 20 Macs, 60 PCs
install base: 10 Macs, 10 PCs
I have seen research that shows Macs have something like twice the life of a PC.
I've owned both Macs and PCs for years, and my Macs are capable of running more new software then the PCs.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
...if they have $40k (or are awarded the grant).
How many "ordinary scientists" have $40k burning a hole in their pocket?
And who would admit to being an ordinary scientist anyway!?
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
My personal experience supporting Macintosh computers for a medical school suggests to me that your assertion that very little science related software runs on Macintosh computers may be a bit inaccurate.
That said, I wonder what I might do to encourage developers to write more science-related software that will run on Macintosh computers? This would appear to be a step toward that goal.
As crazy as it appears, this pretty much echos what I see at the clients I've supported - especially in the laptop arena.
At least in the graphic arts and video sector, anyone who thinks that PCs offer better TCO is oblivious to reality and/or a zealot.
Yes. Mon-o-po-ly has more than two syllables. Windows users can't deal with that many at once. Their heads explode.
Show me that research because it makes little sense to me. The hardware that is in a Mac is nearly identical (and so components are identical) to a PC. Why should your hard drive (usually one of the first things to go) should last longer than the same hard drive in a PC? Is it something to do with how the OS works with files? I would love to see the research you refer to.
Even back before OS X, I think Macs had a big presence in the scientific community. I went to college before there was Mac OS X, and even though 90% of the school's computers were Unix based, the science and physics labs were all Macs.
From the website "he Apple sales team will be happy to help you with the purchase of your Apple Workgroup Cluster for Bioniformatics." It's not a bunch of stuff Apple put together just for the give-away. It's a packaged product, and Slashdot has helped sell it. Haloed by thou marketing company's name. I love this company.... I love this company, but some things are just crazy.
There is a rage in me to defy the order of the stars, despite their pretty patterns.
More to the point, Apple is doing this voluntarily, whereas Microsoft tried to settle an antitrust lawsuit by donating Microsoft products to schools (and extending their monopoly)--a whole different kettle of fish.
See, e. g., this and this.
Dells cost a lot to maintain.. lots of bum hardware... parts take so lon g to replace under waranty that if you need to have your system back up in under three months, you just go ahead and buy the parts yourself.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Sorry, Apple, but I can't accept your offer. You see, my IT department won't support Mac servers.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Gates foundation gives billions to 3rd world countries, and it doesn't even make a slashdot story.
Two words: gift culture.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
aye...Dvorkin, is the 'v' silent in your name?
Coming from a prepress background, just about every shop I've ever been in uses many 3-5 year old Macs as production machines and has a pile of dead/useless PCs in the back. I see the same thing in homes. Lots of people with new PCs and lots of people with old Macs. I think to increase marketshare Apple has to make computers that need to be replaced more often. :)
There's a lot of statements in this thread about about Macs not being useful for science due to software support. What the hell? That's like saying that HP, Dell, etc can't be used - Mac systems can take UNIX versions just like any other computer. Regardless, our university's physics department apparently uses nothing but Apple systems, although generally old ones due to the budget.
Agreed. As a chem major, I can attest that molecular modeling doesn't get much better than on a dualie-G5.
...Hell hath no fury like an MCSE scorned.
Watch them come out to play the moment anybody dares criticise MS...because to criticise MS is to criticise the MCSE's decision to throw away his trust fund on a laughably worthless certification.
I find your lack of faith ... disturbing.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Have you seen that research? Let's see a link, then. Because, frankly, I think you're pulling the whole thing out of your ass.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
No, they don't.
Never saw one here in Europe.
Who could be stupid enough to have such thesis?
And more that, who could stupid enough to tell them in public.
Nobody, or maybe in some third world uneducated country...
And yes, I understood the pun.
Before you start giving away Xserve clusters, could you please ship the Xserves that we ordered over a month ago?
How is Microsoft a Monopoly if Apple exists?
because they control the vast amount of the computing market. you don't have to own all 100% of it just to be declared a monopoly. perhaps you should also keep up with the news. the US and the EU have declared microsoft a monopoly.
If that makes Microsoft a monopoly doesn't that make Apple an even worse monopoly (they control the hardware AND the software)?
sigh. i sometimes wonder if people will ever understand the truth about apple. apple makes the case, the motherboard, the power supply, and the operating system. that's IT. every other component of a mac (including the cpu, video card, hard disk, ram, cdrom, lcds, crts, etc, etc) is standard. if some other company came along and implemented a ppc chip that implemented the same instruction set as the g3-g5 chips and used hardware components (ethernet, video, sound) that are compatible with os x's drivers and implement the openfirmware STANDARD then it will run os x. now that may not be legal according to the EULA but you can do it. worst case you can run linux on your machine, or freebsd, or the various other free *nix operating systems that run just FINE on ppc hardware. heck even windows nt 4 ran on mac hardware (albeit a long time ago, not anymore). if you want more ppc hardware, send a nice letter to amd and intel to implement more ppc compatible chips. send a letter to the various mobo manufacterers to implement more motherboards that agree to said specs. its no different than companies implementing intel's x86 specs. stop spreading FUD
- tristan
Objectively, how is a five year-old 2x500Mhz Mac any better in 2004 than a five year-old 2x500Mhz PC?
It's not really. Just that Mac advocates typically engage in the intellectual dishonesty of comparing $3000 Macs with $1000 PCs.
Furthermore, it's pretty clear that G4 have had a pretty long lifespan because PowerPC development was so retarded. Until the G5s came out there really wasn't a compelling upgrade for PMac G4 users.
I'm not sure if the long shelf-life of Macs really help anyone. Mac users have to wait until they've saved up another $2000+ to upgrade, and in the meanwhile they're stuck wtih old machines, and Apple is getting no revenue. A PC user might pay less to replace a cheap machine every year and always have top-end kit.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
...that's like two iLamps and a bundle of CD-Rs, right?
Most bioinformatics software, Windows versions are barely supported. Blast, the SAM toolkit, Clustal_, belvu, BioPerl and BioPython, all of these work perfectly on Mac OS X. Among the more computational bioinformaticists it's very handy to be able to recompile the publicly available software for your needs. Also, it's very common in bioinformatics to have questions you need to answer that don't exactly fit the parameters of the software, so it's important to have an environment where it's easy to write scripts to analyze text files and control the (possibly distributed) running of algorithms. In short, the field of bioinformatics is a perfect fit for Unix-based OSes and a fairly godawful fit for Windows. I don't think this is pure slash-bias; I think most all bioinformatics researchers would agree.
This part slightly OT, but this reminds me how much better bioinformatics tools would be if there were more people who could contribute to the open source tools in the field. Often times a widely used program is released open source, but there are so few people who can code well and also take notice of bioinformatics tools that bugs don't get solved like they could. Somebody please make belvu stop crashing all the damn time, make phylip accept alternate data formats, et cetera... I've already got my advisor's software to debug.
"TV is great! Every New Year's I make a resolution to watch more TV." - Ann Coulter
Apple Mac OS X users can deploy their own iNquiry clusters on Xserve or G5 systems via a unique self-deployment method that uses an Apple iPod as a cluster installation and configuration device.
Now I need to get an iPod too. I've booted Mac for repair using a system on an iPod, but I had no idea it could be used for that kind of cluster too. I guess I just didn't think about it enough. Cool.
"Once these terriers and barifs are torn down, this economy will grow" - Gee Dubya
These are some of the things molecules do...... given 4 billion years -Carl Sagan
Im still using them today running Adobe CS and Dreamweaver.
This compaired to the 450 mhz AMD K6 I just worked on that is struggling to run anything AFTER I completely wiped the HD reinstalled and fully loaded it with ram. Same year, the G3 on new software runs circles around the AMD on new software (Win XP)
Oh and BTW that G3 was $1300 in 1999, you can still buy 1.4 gihz G4 mirror drives for $1000, its just to the Mac market you DONT have to buy the best gear to get your software to run, unlike the PC market. People are running Final Cut Pro and Maya on $700 eMacs perfectly fine with minimal speed reduction.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Microsoft is a monopoly. Apple is not.
Is that so fucking hard to understand?
Aparently so, since MS isn't a monopoly. They *have* a monopoly.. in consumer level commercial OSes.
Apple has a monopoly too.. in online music distribution.
You are not counting the rate at which the computers are removed from the market. This is anecdotal evidence but I find that Macintosh computers tend to be removed from the market at a rate 1/2 that as Windows computers. I have seen studies in the past that bear this out but I can't seem to locate one on the internet right now. I'll look around some more and see if I can locate one or two.
So you get this situation:
market is 1000 computers
Mac is 3% of yearly sales
Windows computers remove from market at a rate of 30% per year
Mac computers remove from market at a rate of 15% per yearThere may be some small rounding errors in there, but those are minimal. I can't get the table to display correctly but the numbers go:
(year) (removed: {Mac Win}) (added: {Mac Win}) (total: {Mac Win}) (% Mac installed base)
As you can see, the installed base of the Macs actually grows past the 3% market share. This is because less percent of Macs are being removed from the market than are being added.
Sapere aude!
Has anyone run benchmarks on old machines? If you took a machine that originally came with, say, Win 98, has anyone wiped the HD, done a standard install, run the benchmarks and then compared them against original ones? We always our computers are getting slower because of the crap we put onto them, but perhaps there's something more nefarious at work...
Objectively, how is a five year-old 2x500Mhz Mac any better in 2004 than a five year-old 2x500Mhz PC?
Well, for one thing, OS X gets faster with every release, rather than slower. Unlike certain other operating systems.
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OK -- I have a 333mhz G3 Powerbook. At my old job, I had a 300Mhz PII ThinkPad. They were about the same -- If anything the ThinkPad was faster than the PB, especially under OS X. For web/mail/office stuff, the ThinkPad still works great.
If you can do your job on a X year old $Y Mac, you can do it on a X year old $Y PC. Period.
However, you can replace the PC for cheaper and get a hugely faster machine, which still isn't true for Macs, except at the top end. I'd buy a new Mac, but the low-end of their laptop line isn't very appealing.
(Most AMD K6 machines were junk, sorry. We could ask how long Performa 6200s lasted as well.)
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Given enough memory, XP is faster than 2K is faster than NT4. The difference isn't as dramatic as with OS X improvements, but 10.0 and 10.1 were half-baked.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
You can sell one for more money than the other on eBay. Four such Macs are currently getting $625, $550, $465, and $51.50. 500 MHz Pentium III computers are getting between $89.95 and $9.99. It's not particularly easy to search for a dual PIII (any ever made?), but that should give you the picture.
A PC user might pay less to replace a cheap machine every year and always have top-end kit.
If you need or want to stay in the "top end", then you cannot be buying "cheap machines" every year.
I don't think anyone has complained about Gates donating money to third-world countries. It might not get much attention on Slashdot, but that's probably because Slashdot is a tech news site, not a site for news about the developing world.
When Gates donates large numbers of Windows machines to e.g. school districts which have traditionally be Mac-based, that's quite a different story. It's very obvious that such actions are more of an investment than a real donation -- and they may actually constitute illegal product dumping (not that the government will do anything).
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Hmm,
Working hard in the USA to dominate the software industry,
then shifting all the money to the third world...
Think - cheaper outsourced overseas programmers ?
maybe not so nice a guy after all...
maybe just investing in his own future?
Well, the used Mac market only reflects how out-of-wack the new Mac market is. If Apple introduces a 2Ghz "G5 Mini" for $1000, as discussed on the rumor sites, those old PMacs would cost $200 just like the old PC workstations.
Also, Mac buyers on ebay are completely insane -- a CDRW drive for my 6 year old powerbook goes for like $400. You could buy a whole fuckin PC to burn CDs for that.
> If you need or want to stay in the "top end", then you cannot be buying "cheap machines" every year.
Well, in the PC world, you are usually paying a premium for things like SCSI/SATA and huge cases -- the machines aren't priced by CPU speed.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
That's nice, but the fact is that that old installed base is running MacOS 9 and isn't buying new software. So, it's basically "dead" for everything but bragging purposes.
And face it, the longer those people sit on their ancient Macs, the more likely it is that they will be assimilated into the PeeCee ecosystem -- I've seen happen to a few friends of mine.
The cool thing about the original iMac was that it got all those old ass Mac users into the store to buy a new Mac. And that drove software and perpherial sales and made apple lots of $$$. It did this because it was price & speed competitive with home PCs of the day.
Apple really needs to get a product out to encourage people to upgrade, rather than pointing to worthless installed base numbers.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
And now that OS X does exist Mac's are even more appealing to *NIX geeks:
Mac OS X for UNIX Users (~500KB PDF)
And that was modded troll why exactly? Astroturfin' mods?
Remember when AMD was pushing its XP line of chips, or how about how Apple shut out all Gen 2 power PC's with OS X. Its not the work of anything more evil than we want you to upgrade and buy more of our products.
Seriously when is the last time outside games and maybe video that you couldnt do anything on a older machine you could on a new
even with video I did a lot of work on a 5500 with the AV cards, most old macs can encode mp3's AND worked with iTunes and replated mp3 Players (my rio worked great with my PowerComputing Powerbase 180) Word prossesing, Adobe products just add to a already base software, same with Macromedia.
There is no reason to upgrade other than to use the few tools that dont work with older machines, and to run things faster and thus produce work faster of which word prossesing isnt included cause the only thing stopping you there is your typing speed.
But then all the computer manufacturers wont have anyone to sell to!
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
.deviatefromtheabsolute.
while we're clearing things up, NT4 could run on some PPC hardware. The NT4 supported hardware and MacOS supported hardware were mutually exclusive groups.
NT4 never ran on the same machine that could run MacOS, though it could run on that processor. Microsoft later killed NT4's PPC support due to lack of interest. Well, yeah. Very few people had non-mac PPC hardware.
-theed
Trust me this Xserve's are "best". We had it in our lab (we are a bioinformatics research lab at a University in Los Angeles). We liked it so much because a) We had to reboot this "Server" atleast once in a week. The reason was its "awesome" filesystem b) We had to call Apple atleast 5 times in a month and listen to their "smart" technicians. Mostly we got the same answer and that is "We don't have the required level of service subscription from Apple" c) Recently, because of this Xserve atleast 15 people in our lab did nothing, waiting for it to comeup from its crash for 2 full weeks (this 15 people includes 6 post-docs and professors, 8 graduate students and 1 undergrad) Result: We got a debian box from Fry's which has 65 days uptime with no restarts required or no problems conclusion: Xserve's are good aesthetically and they are good webservers too. But if you really want to do some bioinformatics research work instead of you and your team administering computers, DO NOT BUY THIS CRAPY BOX. IF SOMEONE GIVES IT AS A GIFT, SELL IT ON EBAY AND GET ATLEAST 5 PC BOXES FROM FRY'S. I CAN BET THAT THEY WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE MORE EASY AND YOU WON'T REPENT FOR ALL YOUR LIFE
Unlike the ip ban that is akin to shutting the barn door after... It's nice to see some policing going on, but c'mon - a bit late, and the way its' being done...sledgehammer approach - seems a bit inelegant, almost scud-like.
>
I'm not sure what kind of science you're talking about, but Macs are extremely popular in the life sciences, and many of the apps my lab uses--Vector NTI, Sequencer, etc.--most certainly do run on Macs. At my university, both the neurobiology and the biochemistry departments use macs, and in the labs, PCs tend to be in the minority. Our bioinformatics group is split about 50:50, but the head of the group has fallen in love with his new TiBook and is trying to switch everyone over. So if you're right that only a fraction of science software runs on Macs, it's clearly the important fraction.
Clicky here!
Anyone who supports Apple is welcomed to join Linux and PC, just pop #1971 as your team number!
Thanks!
The problem with the 'old school' Mac advocacy community is that when it comes down to it, they're all fucking liars. 5 year old Macs don't run OS X well. 5 year old Macs don't run Abobe's latest RAM and disk sucking version of PhotoShop well. Macs on the whole aren't better built that name brand PCs of similar prices. A 450MHz G4 system isn't as fast as a 2GHz Pentium 4. A prerequisite of becoming a die-hard Mac zealot is drastically lowering any expectation of performance...and an ability to lie through your teeth.
The best thing that could happen for Apple's market share is for the typical Apple zealot to shut their fucking mouth, and crawl back to their G3/300 system and never connect to the internet again. Not only are you full of shit, but you haven't bought a new Mac for years!!!! SPEND SOME FUCKING MONEY RETARD!!! Apple needs it to stay in business. You're just making the whole situation worse.
Now get the fuck off my internet.
...for the rest of us.
You're to be congratulated on collecting what sounds like a fair sized group of rather stupid people in one place.
I'm doing IT for a group of solar physicists, and we're running a rather high percentage of Macs. [I'd say over 50% of the physical systems, with Suns and Alphas coming in roughly tied for second, with Intel based systems a distant fourth].
With 64bit macs, I'm guessing they're going to get an even stronger foothold, especially as we look at the G5 XServe [which if procurement ever gets right, might actually come in sometime this year].
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
"Microsoft is a monopoly. Apple is not."
Not true... Apple has a monopoly on computers that can run OSX.
if some other company came along and implemented a ppc chip that implemented the same instruction set as the g3-g5 chips and used hardware components (ethernet, video, sound) that are compatible with os x's drivers and implement the openfirmware STANDARD then it will run os x.
That's not actually true. It won't run OS X unless the board has the proper Mac ROM that can only be had from Apple that allows MacOS to run on a particular machine. OS X will not run without this ROM chip.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Think of the time saved by being able to buy a preconfigured cluster. Just open the box plug in, fire up and go. Now Beowulf may be cheaper, butthink of the time saved by just being able to buy a cluster off the shelf. Think of the time saved by not having to set up and configure. I don't really mind who's selling this kind of solution but I'm glad someone someone is.
Roll on clustered Shake and FCP renndering though.
And how is it off topic given that both this and the parent were talking about the meta-data on slashdot about the article? If my Karma is going to be bad because of ONE offtopic post, despite the positive scores I've had recently elsewhere- then let it be bad for one complaining about moderation.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Somebody just paid, if memory serves, $104M for a painting. Markets don't have to make sense. The money you get from selling your old Mac is still real. You are exhibiting what some critics of the iPod often fail to understand: the iPod is not "overpriced", because people are buying it. The price is whatever the market will bear.
If Apple introduces a 2Ghz "G5 Mini" for $1000, as discussed on the rumor sites, those old PMacs would cost $200 just like the old PC workstations.
Sure. Until it happens, so what? Consider also what a $1,000 G5 will do to the eMac and iMac when guessing Apple's intentions.
in the PC world, you are usually paying a premium for things like SCSI/SATA and huge cases -- the machines aren't priced by CPU speed.
I wasn't talking about CPUs only. The point remains: buying a $400 PC every year doesn't put you in the "top end".
No. It's not.
Wrong. There are no "proper Mac ROMs". Infact, MacOS X runs on the AmigaOne (via Mac On Linux).
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Just to clarify, something is worth what someone will pay for it.
The point is that used mac values aren't so much of a feature, but a fault. Who cares if you can sell it for $500 on ebay if a replacement costs $3000?
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
and well my 900 mhz iBook and 1st gen iPod would tell you your wrong about not buying Apple gear.
see this is where the older generation mac users have you beat... we know how to TAKE CARE of our macs and get them to perform as fast as they are supposed to, not bog them down. Honestly the one G3 works great with CS and Vectorworks, maybe not lightning fast, but it works, it doesnt crash,and best of all, it gets the job done.
its so sad to see they arnt modding down the trolls to -5 these days :-D
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
And I was on the internet well before you my young friend... which is sad considering I most likely am younger than you
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Stop, you're killing me!
I'm dragging around a five year-old Apple laptop and it's still a very usable system (unlike my two year old Dell laptop). It's stable, light, and "just works". I recently handed out an old G3 laptop as a testing system to a co-worker. It's a bit slow, but it still gets the job done.
And no. I'm not some mindless Mac drone. I've been using and admining x86 and SPARC boxes since forever.
I use Solaris, Linux, OS X and Windows on a daily basis, and I'm totally blown away with the stability of OS X and how well the OS is integrated (ah, the joys of a propriarity system).
That being said, there are a few "Mac-isms" that drive me nuts (like command line user management, for instance).
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
Idiot. Mac OS X may *RUN* on the AmigaOne, but it will not *BOOT*. You can run it through linux, via MOL, but it will not boot by itself without the ROM. This has been the case for ... forever.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
There is no special magic voodoo Mac ROM. It's just Open Firmware. And you fucking said "It won't run OS X unless the board has the proper Mac ROM". Run, not boot. Idiot indeed.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
It (the machine) is not really "running" the operating system if you have to emulate it (using MOL, which stands for Mac On Linux). The machine is *running* linux, which in turn is *running* OS X. The machine itself is not technically running OS X. It uses OpenFirmware, but there is a proprietary Mac ROM which is required for the machine to be able to (directly) run OS X. This is why the homebrew PPC machine from Yellow Dog cannot have OS X installed, only linux.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
MOL is not emulation. Heck, you need MOL to run Mac apps when you have Linux running on a Mac. Are you telling us that running Linux on a Mac changes the hardware and lets the magic Voodoo Mac ROM disappear?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck