Slashdot Mirror
New Mac System Specs
xyankee writes " Think Secret appears to be dishing more of the dirt that Apple loves to hate so much, this time dropping details on updated Power Mac G5, iMac G5, and eMac systems soon to be released. Looks like speed bumps all around: Power Macs get to 2.7GHz, iMacs to 2GHz, and eMacs to 1.42GHz. Video cards and SuperDrives are also upgraded."
If my memory serves, a judge passed a ruling on this a little while ago. Shouldn't they be at least slowing down a bit while this is resolved? And if not, why didn't someone give some sort of cease-and desist order?
(Disclaimer: IANAL, and watching them on TV gives me a headache.)
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
...on whether these use the already-known-to-exist IBM PowerPC 970MP, a dual core version of the G5. This could mean that we'd have >2.5GHz dual-dual core Power Mac systems.
Further, an update to Apple's CHUD tools (subsequently pulled) had clear references to quad processor capability, as well as references to the 970MP, and the single core 970GX.
What could essentially be called "quad G5" systems (including Xserves) are just a matter of time. And with dual >1GHz frontside busses and PC3200 DDR RAM (8GB max in Power Mac, 16GB max (also ECC) in Xserve), these machines are nothing to sneeze at.
What will be interesting to see is when the Power Macs will have PCI-X and Blu-Ray. From the most current round of rumors, it looks like that's still another upgrade away...
I am still waiting for a subnotebook from Apple. My 12in Powerbook is nice, but what I would really like is a subnotebook, perhaps even an Newton replacement. I've made an argument for Apple's reentry into the "PDA" market here. If such a device could be made, I am sure it would have huge sales. The market is moving towards smaller devices that are even more portable and there are folks that are clamoring for it. Mark Cuban also makes a compelling argument for smaller portable devices here.
Don't get me wrong....Apple needs to keep its Pro level line on top of things. In fact, I will likely be ordering a new G5 to replace my dual 2.0 G5 if they are in fact announced, but as the numbers are showing after Apple's financial conference yesterday, portables are where the market is at.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
You mean, like, to keep them all from going too fast?
I decided a couple weeks ago that I wanted to Switch(tm). Tiger release gets announced, I'm good there. Now I have another reason I have to wait for! It's all good though, the Dual 1.8 is the one I want, and I expect the refurb prices to drop like a rock once the new ones come out. Anyone know if this will be the case?
Too bad there is no speedup for the Mac mini yet, I'd love to see a Mac mini with a base G5. However it does look like they may begin putting dual core processors out in this update.
just an 's' shy of immaculate...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Doh.
That's what I get for not thinking before I type.
My XP laptop's dying, and I've been looking for a new computer. Had ThinkSecret not put this rumor out, I may have gone for another windows machine. Now it'll be a mac for sure.
Nice to see the iMac getting a more decent video card. (Yes, I know it probably 'sux0rs for gam3z' but honestly, a mediocre gaming card these days will slay practically any other reasonable computing task. It makes me laugh when you see the gamers dis something like, say, a nVidia 5200. That card sucks rocks! but it will also do realtime previews in Motion on uncompressed DV. That used to take some heavy hardware. Just sayin'.)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
So, do you think they fixed the midplane capacitor issue? I've had to replace one already, and the replacement didn't work... I'm still trying to get my 20" iMac working again. Any insight on this? I really hope they redesigned the board!
The real question is when where there be G5 power books. I've heard that it will be several months to a year or so, since they can't really get it working right.
new ibooks are also expected to be shipping around the same time, if not a few days later.
Looks like all the systems are beefing up the Video Cards to support the latest and the best from Tiger (i.e. at least 64Mb and programmable GPU required to support core image).
As much as I like my Mac mini, I am torn apart wishing they would either#:
a) upgrade their video cars to something like an ATI 9600 with 64 Mb of Ram
b) don't change anything so I won't feel the *URGE* to upgrade to a Higher Spec Mac Mini.
ARgg, Apple has embraced drug dealer like methods; I am now hooked and I won't be able to quench my thirst until something else hits my desk!
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
But that is a totally different operating system! Oh, wait ...
iDrool.
:::: the insomniac's digest
Bring back the eMate plastic clamshell casing, stick a G4 in it, and sell it for $350. I love the eMate, but I can't figure out any way to get the information I type on it into my Mac. So it collects dust these days.... The form factor is perfect. Sure, they can make it white instead of ugly dark green (personally I like the green), but if Apple comes out with something of that form factor at a reasonable price, I will buy 2 of them!!
Two eMac models, code-named Q86J
I remember reading about different techniques to track leaks of top secret documents from the CIA, one method was to use synonyms of different words in each copy of the document and see if the leaks used the same synonyms in their materials. While I doubt the code-name is an example of this, I wonder in Apple's quest to track it's leaks what kind of internal tracking/security features it's using for documents about new products.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
The exclusion of keyboard, display and mouse makes the Mac Mini a great value, and the forced repurchase of KD&M makes the iMac a bad value. Customers accept it with laptops for the sake of compactness, but not desktops. Apple should bring out a Micro ATX desktop with the same specs of the iMac G5, but it should be as easy to open and swap the components as a Shuttle PC, and let you BYOKDM. Apple could probably sell it for $900, making it a great machine to go between the Mac Mini and Power Mac.
so I can tell my wife we -need- to get a new iMac (clutter is bad)...
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
How into linux are you? Linux runs on so many platforms, PPC being one of them.
Good day fot iMac G5 buyers. They have finally put in a graphics card that can play modern games(Radeon 9600 with 128MB of video RAM)
Creative Demolition
What's keeping you from installing Linux on a PowerBook/iBook? There are a bunch of distributions for PPC, and they even have decent hardware support.
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
Because a G5 powerbook is "the mother of all thermal challenges" (direct quote from Apple).
You don't want a G5 powerbook. You want a dual-G4 powerbook. the new Freescale dual-G4 chip breaks the G4 166 MHz system bus bottleneck, *and* gives you dual-core as well. It would breeze past any underclocked G5 Apple could fit in a laptop the size of a Powerbook.
You do realize that you can run Linux on Apple hardware, right? In fact i think that Linus Torvalds (you may have heard of him) does this.
You would have bought windows again if not for a tiny processor speed bump on the macs? Of course, once you turn on your new Mac you'll see the real reason to switch.... OS X, not sheer processor speed.
Linux runs on many architectures. You can run Linux on Apple hardware if you want - after all, Linus does.
No it wouldn't. There's little to no benefits from 64-bit computing on a portable. The G5 was built for machines that can draw a fair amount of wattage. A G5 PowerBook would be hotter, larger, and more power hungry than a machine based on Freescale's 8641 series, a branch off the G4 family.
The only limiting factor of the G4 today is the memory bus, which Freescale has to keep compatible with the ancient 60x bus because of their other clients (like Cisco). The 8641 is a G4 with a totally rebuilt memory controller onboard and RapidIO, an alternative to HyperTransport.
You'd be happier with an 8641-based PowerBook than a 970-based PowerBook. Trust me.
I do think Apple will _call_ the 8641-based laptops 'G5's though, they'll say it has to do with the 'generation of the technology, not a specific type of CPU'.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
If I were to buy a laptop, it would not be an Apple Computer, cause I can't see why I should have one that would only run MacOS, when I am more into Linux. But I gotta admit they do look good, but question is; ain't they going to be a bit heavy?
/ 1314250&tid=181&tid=106
Um, if you are so into linux, you should know that you can run linux on a mac, and quite well. Even Linus torvalds himself uses a mac now. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/09
I'd rather have a dual core G4 in a laptop than a single core G5. Top speed
isn't as important to me as smooth operation.
*sigh* back to work...
Just be thankful that we don't have PCI Extreme. Yet.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
It's got to be good for Apple's marketing that their MHz ratings are properly competing with modern PCs nowadays. The whole "MHz myth" argument always sounded a bit weak, even though I knew intellectually that it was a fair point.
I do think Apple will _call_ the 8641-based laptops 'G5's though
How about "G5 Mobile"?
--a Camino user with a very long /etc/hosts file
Less hardware equals better drivers. Additionally, mention one feature expansion that won't work on a mac (not bound to vendor, bound to functionality).
Agreed, I had very pleasant experiences with Linux on the PPC architecture. Ubuntu went onto 10 emacs in under 30 minutes, the install was a no-brainer. Everything worked out of the box save the Airport (of course).
I went on with wiping OSX and loading Ubuntu on a G4 tower recently. Interestingly I noticed big speed-ups in 3D applications (with Quake3 as my benchmark), compared to performance on the native OSX platform. Blender and Alias Wavefront's Maya also performed much better in Linux; thoroughly reccommended if you want to squeeze some juice out of your hardware, especially in 3D applications.
If only IBM would add PPC laptops to their Thinkpad range..
"No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
Should've included the link.
Some entertainingly wrong comments in the discussion there, heh.
Looks like the Mac mini will miss out on this one.
This is mainly because the mini is primarily a 'switch' machine, not a power-user's box. A good intro for the PC folks curious enough to try a Mac, but not so committed as to spring for the more powerful systems.
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
Power Mac G5s
Dual-2GHz: 160GB
Dual-2.3GHz, Dual-2.7GHz: 250GB
iMac G5s
1.8GHz: 160GB
2.0 GHz: 160GB or 250GB
eMacs
Combo Drive: 80GB
SuperDrive: 160GB
If I am not mistaken, these are all with one single hard drive.
Imho, it seems like a generally better practice to have, say, two separate 100GB hard drives than one 200GB one - even if it's more expensive.
Granted, I'm a non-Mac person so I'm not very familiar with the ins-and-outs of MacOS file management. But for Windows/Linux I like having actual separate hard drives, not just partitions. One smallish drive for OSes (or 2+, one for each), one massive drive for multimedia (^_^), and another drive for all the other stuff, like work/school/programming or whathaveyou. Or, depending, maybe just partitions on one drive for all that data (only so many slots).
But anyhow, my main point, isn't there a reliability issue with having only one (relatively) massive harddrive? Wouldn't you be better off having multiple, smaller harddrives? Or would you just backup all your data on separate, external mediums anyways?
I'm interested to know what Mac users think.
How about "G5 Mobile"?
That's exactly the sort of thing that'll hopefully happen. Apple will probably just call it a 'G5' though, and leave the 'mobile' for the techies to know.
I'd like Freescale to get their act together and release these CPUs though, they've been talking them up for a long time now.
And BTW, there are dual-core 8651 CPUs coming 'real soon now' according to Freescale. I'd DEFINITELY want a dual 8651 with RapidIO over a single underclocked 970 in a portable.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I've had my new Mac iBook (my first Apple purchase) for a little over a month now. My old compaq (750 MHz) laptop died finally from the compaq white screen of death and I needed a replacement. I'm still at University so money is tight; I wanted the PowerMac but the iMac was much more in my range (1300). The one thing I've noticed about it is that you never really notice lag from the processor... BUT... if you don't have like a gig of ram, you can get a lot of lag while multitasking (think all 4 Office apps, firefox, X11 and a couple terminals). Fortunately, adding ram is easier than I thought, and aftermarket ram for them is pretty cheap. Overall, I will probably be saving up for a new G5 desktop whenever I can afford it. I'm hooked!
according to nvidia website, ge force 5200 and 5200 ultra only support opengl 1.5 and earlier. tiger has a new version of open gl i believe, so they have to upgrade the gpu's.
Dain Bramaged
well said. It's also meant to be thermally very good. 25W @ 2Ghz. On-Board quad gigabit ethernet controllers, PCI-E controllers and dual DDR controllers. It's a great chip and it saves having a few others on the board as well. It ought to make a killer apple sub-notebook.
I'm really torn between deciding to get a Mac Mini and an iMac. I'd like the additional power and LCD screen the iMac provides. Problem is that I will still continue to use the Dell I currently own (hey, it was a gift, couldn't exactly say 'no') for various things such as testing web pages in IE, rading something up in VS.Net, a few games etc. With a Mac Mini I could use a KVM to switch between the two systems seemlessly. So my question is there anyway I could hook up an iMac as an external monitor to another computer? Considering I'm using a CRT and was thinking of replacing it anyway this would be ideal.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
Maybe he *does* want a G5 powerbook. G4s are only PPC CPUs, but G5s are PPC-64 CPUs...
Luke-Jr
Yes, please attach some chrome, neon strobes, and some super loud fans, I want my computer to feel just like my chainsaw! I am a real man! hear me (and my computer) roar!
Seriously...
The only reason I'd consider a RAID for a personal desktop (as opposed to a server - to which fault tolerance becomes a whorthwhile issue) is speed.
I've never known Mac's to be hurting for HDD transfer speed in the same way windows boxes do... they tend to lag in RAM instead.
Even with mirroring, I wouldn't consider that safe back up, so "external" backups are still a must.
I believe you mean the flux capacitor issue. Get those babies up to 88 mph and they just fall apart on you.
They won't get too excited about clock speed until they can replace the G4 chips, at least in the PowerBooks.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Um...you don't need to make the exact same comment twice. I think we got the point the first time. Dual-G4 good, gotcha.
G4s are only PPC CPUs, but G5s are PPC-64 CPUs...
Unless he's got more than 4G of RAM in that powerbook, all PPC-64 will do is slow him down.
I've been using Alpha almost since it was released, and unless you really need the address space you're better off with 32-bit pointers.
Maybe he's doing a lot of 64-bit integer math?
Apple once again reiterated that putting a G5 in a Powerbook is the 'mother of all technical hurdles' at their earnings conference call the other day. Unless they're just saying that as a smokescreen (and who knows w/ them), don't expect a G5 PB any time soon...
If I buy a powermac now, will I be able to return it , and purchase one of the newer models in two weeks?
This news is making me hurt! I've been considering purchasing one, as I've got a big project coming up, and my PowerBook is just not quick enough for my liking (Bryce). Literally TEN MINUTES AGO I made the decision to purchase it (planning to go to the apple store after work).
Then I check slashdot. Great. Just frigging great.
And the project is due in a week and a half.
What to do, what to do.... Argh...
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
http://www.thinksecret.com.nyud.net:8090/news/0504 macs.html
yes weight is more important than size here. Also price -- show me a powerbook g4 for $350!! Of course the original eMate was $800.... The other factor that is important (to me) is the plastic case. I have dropped eMate on concrete with no damage other than cosmetic. I wouldn't try that with a powerbook g4 even though I know it could probably take some abuse.
No no no. It isn't confusing at all. This is from the same people that brought you EMS and XMS memory back in the Win 3.x days
The other factor that is important (to me) is the plastic case. I have dropped eMate on concrete with no damage other than cosmetic.
The other thing about the emate was that it had no moving parts. No floppy drive, no cdrom, no hard drive. With no moving parts, everything can be "strapped down" so a fall doesn't hurt too much.
TTFN
256MB DDR SDRAM ATI Radeon 9650 video card??? Give me a break. It's supposed to be a high end system.
The new Freescale chips aren't out yet, and except for thermal issues they're going to take as much of a redesign as G5s would. Probably more because they don't have any chipsets for them. I seriously doubt Apple is prepared to put that much work into redesigning PowerBooks when IBM will probably have a low-power G5 within the same timeframe. Particularly since much of the power saving work with a laptop chip would be shared with the dual-core chip we know they're going to release.
The question in my mind is whether or not they're going to put the new G4 chips in the other lines. And the answer to that is probably 'no' as well, IMO. Once they have a G5 suitable for laptops, Apple will be able to fit it into all the other lines, and they'll have a PowerPC 980/G6 by that time (end of 2006 or so) to maintain the separation between the lines.
Another consideration is that Apple is going to want to move to an all 64-bit lineup as soon as possible, so they can start EOLing the 32-bit stuff. The new Freescale chips will not be 64-bit (at first).
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
How well does it run Photoshop and iMovie?
(D'oh.)
You'd be able to cook breakfast on it. Or at least warm your cup of coffee. ;-)
the best thing about this has to be the default amount of RAM. currently the iMac's only come with 256. And Apple is damn'd expensive with upgrading this (yes, I know you can buy 3rd party and install it yourself). Think Secret is reporting that the entire iMac line will start with 512... i can only hope it is one dimm
Maybe a VNC client instead ro access the PC from the Mac. Just and idea.??
Original Famous Ray's Pizza? Famous Ray's Original Pizza?
Anyway, I'm in the market for a new Power Mac now that my Sawtooth is over 5 years old, and though after a number of upgrades (processor, video card, optical+hard drives) it does everything I need/want it to, it's time to get a new machine. A dual 2.0 on the low end is basically perfect for me.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Ohhh, never mind, then.
Though I guess this attempted pun beats both the iPod and mp3 encoding in the "lame" department.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
If you look at it statistically, you have better MTBF on a single drive, than you do on two...
for example, 1 drive = 500,000 hrs mtbf
1/500,000 + 1/500,000 = 2/500,000 or 1/250,000
so two drives give your a MTBF or 250,000 hrs for your drive subsystem.
Also given, MTBF is more useful for calculating the amount of failures that you will see over a large population of drives as opposed to your single machine experience.
Using things such as RAID does not put a dent in your drive MTBF, but it does make a huge difference in your data preservation!
What kind of "various amounts of hardware" are you talking about in an argument that was started about laptops?
The motherboard is vertical and like many components these days, has a conformal coating.
Furthmore, do you really think Apple and Delphi would be stupid enough to use conductive coolant?(no) Does the system pass UL & CE safety standards, among others? (yes).
Please help metamoderate.
Oops - Thats technically two.
[1]I suspect that Apple will want to go dual-core as soon as possible. The iBook and eMac are likely to be the only single processor machines, with the PowerBook and Minis getting dual-core G4s, and the iMac and PowerMac getting dual-core G5s (with the PowerMac getting 2 of them - hence the focus on fine-grained locking in the Tiger kernel).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Photoshop fine, with a wrapper http://codeweavers.com/, though I far prefer Gimp for all my design and image processing. iMovie? i don't know what that is, though iTunes runs fine apparently.. most Linux users use gtkpod http://gtkpod.sourceforge.net/ as an iTunes replacement however.
Nope, not heavy, actually among the lighter portables you'll find. Also without the hopeless add-ons most windows portables have. It's either integrated or for sale by a third party supplier. And in case you haven't read it already, Linus is currently using Linux on a G5, no reason why you shouldn't...
I think, therefore I am...I think.
"... I hope Apple releases a product for heterosexual men...."
Do you have a issues with your own sexual orientation? Apple's products are for hetersexual men. The only ones that take issue with it as being "gay" are the closet cases who don't want to be reminded of what they are.
Apple are in no hurry to move to 64-bit. Unlike x86, PowerPC was designed as a 32/64-bit ISA from the start, and so 64-bit code has no benefit at all unless you are addressing more than 4GB of RAM, or doing 64-bit integer arithmetic. In fact, it gives you a performance penalty - pointers are larger, thus taking up more cache space, and load / stores take longer. On x86-64, this is offset by making the architecture marginally less GPR-starved in 64-bit mode. Note that Carbon and Cocoa are still 32-bit, for exactly this reason - Apple don't want people complaining that their G5 is slower than a G4.
IBM have been launching a low-power G5 Real Soon Now(TM) since before the G5 was released, so don't hold your breath on that one. A dual-core G4 would out-perform a single-core G5 (remember the dual 1.42GHz G4 Vs 1.6GHz G5 benchmarks? The dual 1.8GHz G5 was only slightly faster, and that's with the low FSB speed of the current G4s), and performance per watt is what counts in a laptop. If IBM can produce something that will beat a 1.5GHz MPC8641D at 15W, I would be very surprised - we're talking at least a 2.5GHz G5 here, and the current ones are around 45W.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
When's the G5 Mac Mini due? (I'm only half-serious.)
Sam
I am in the market for a new market for a new Macintosh. However, since I am poor, I would like Apple to put dual cores or dual processors in every damn system they make. Don't hold back. Just think of it, dual processor eMac. See Dell top that!!! Have mercy on me please, I can't afford a PowerMac in this economy!!! Rant done, I crawl back to my shanty.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
/unimpressed.
Wake me when they announce the Powerbook G5.
Until then, meh.
I can say that I've used several VNC implementations and Microsoft's RDC for Mac, and MSRDC rocks the house. I find that it's almost as snappy as 'the real thing' when you disable the XP fancypants appearances and use a W9X theme.
I do Mac and PC support at work, so I have to have a PC handy to run virus scans on NTFS drives (god bless firewire enclosures!). Our ticketing system also runs on PC only. Since I switched from VNC to RDP, I've been enjoying work more, opening and closing tickets is much snappier.
VNC is great, but if you must remote in to a Windows box, RDP is really a much better way to go. I hate the idea too, but it's profoud enough of a difference to ooutweigh my 'use open stuff' policy.
Don't get a KVM, run RDP. You'll have a better time watching your Windows box from a nice iMac screen anyway.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Very funny, though you forgot to include the adjectives 'Beleagured' and 'Doomed'...
The Tiger specs at Apple.com state full OpenGL 1.5 support as a feature, so this is not an issue.
(DISCLAIMER: I am an Apple user at home and would love an Apple 'treo-type' device for myself)
Apple recognizes that their three audiences are:
(1) Video/graphics pros,
(2) education,
(3) and home users.
(Yeah there are others and all those segments are growing with the exception of gamers but lets focus on the main ones.)
Apple only has so many R&D dollars, even with $7B in the bank. They have to focus on what their audience wants and will pay for.
So what does the demand look like?
(1) Video/graphics pros are using PowerBooks in the field. They need access to a large 17" screen for editing so a sub-notebook really doesn't appeal.
(2) Education has no need for this. My highschool made headlines back when they piloted a program to equip all incoming freshmen with Palm Pilots. The program was not a success, more of a distraction.
(3) Home users just don't need this type of device any more than they need a Treo today.
The real market for sub-notebooks is the business world where the Blackberry and Treo dominate the market. Apple would have a major hurdle to get corporate IT to support a third (and this time "Apple" - tisk tisk) device.
All that said, I return to my disclaimer that I would personally really love an Apple sub-notebook with celular and Wi-fi that I could use as an iPod for music, share photos, and use Ink Well to interface to PDA functions with. But 'iDoubt' the market is full of folks like me.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
The Compromise of 1908
The company from which Wenger emerged had been a supplier to the Swiss Army as early as 1893, and its competitor, Victorinox, since 1890. Wenger is in the French-speaking Jura region, and its competitor is in the German-speaking canton of Schwyz. To avoid friction between the two cantons, the Swiss government decided in 1908 to use each supplier for half of its requirements. So while Victorinox can lay claim to be the "original", Wenger can state that its Swiss Army Knives are the "genuine". In any case, both have been manufacturing Swiss Army Knives for over 100 years and both must meet identical specifications laid down by the army.
Bwhy not ..
everybody
else
is doing
it
Once again, speculation != publishing NDA covered information and trade secrets.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
It bears as much responsibility as does AC.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
That's a bit misleading. The clock speed topping out at 1.67 GHz is a problem as well. Yes, I'm well aware of the myth, but the G4 topped out at 867 MHz on the Quicksilver Power Mac in July 2001. By June of 2003, the final G4 Power Mac only hit 1.42 GHz. A 64% gain over two years is well behind the competition.
The Powerbook did a little better. The January 2001 Powerbook topped out at 500 MHz, while the January 2003 Powerbook hit 1 GHz, and the April 2004 Powerbook hit 1.5 GHz. A year later, however, the fastest Powerbook stands at 1.67 GHz. So, from doubling in two years, to a 50% gain in 15 months, to an 11% gain in about a year. Do you see the problem?
ACs are moderated for their bad postings, and you're still and idiot and I make it a habit to not to argue with idiots. Enjoy your delusions, moron.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Appple owns 3% of the desktop market. That's not "dying," that's pretty fucking dead already.
You get back to us when your quarterly sales top $3 billion and your market cap is over $30 billion, mmmmkay?
He didn't say "unpopular". He said "lame". Many hella lame products become commercially successful.
Peter
There have been lots of rumours circulating about the upcoming NAB conference and Apple hardware updates... but I think most of these have probably been no more than wishful thinking by the Mac fan boys. It may be that Apple _will_ announce new hardware (Antares?!!) at NAB, but I don't think much (any?!) of the speculation has any basis in fact.
:-)
Anyway, can a rumour site be sued for publishing unsubstaniated claims from another rumour site?
Does it matter if the guesses are correct?
Anyway, if Apple announces new dual core dual cpu machines all well-and good. I'm rather happy with my Mac mini (and the fact that it's virtually silent!!
return 0; }
I dont think its slashdot. I wouldn't be surprised if someone got something nasty on your system. You might want to see if the spykiller programs can find anything.
At work I use a program called OSX2X that lets me control a Mac and a PC screen next to each other from the same mouse and keyboard, using VNC server on the PC side but only sending keyboard and mouse updates and not transferring screen contents.
about this is that all the "mac lifestyle" folks will dump their obsolete gear to us eBay used-system bottomfeeders, as they find their l337 systems are no longer the coolest.
The new Freescale chips aren't out yet, and except for thermal issues they're going to take as much of a redesign as G5s would.
That's like saying that apart from the mass murders and war crimes Hitler was a great guy. The thermal issues are huge, and the latency issues are huge... the G5 is a classic Pentium-style long-pipeline model... and the point of a long pipeline is to push ther clock. But, look, the G4 is catching up with the G5 on clock!
The G4, if not for the lousy front end bus, would get more done per clock than the G5... and the new Freescale chips finally get rid of that lousy bus. No, the new G4 could well be faster, clock for clock, than a G5... even before you count in the dual-core chips.
so they can start EOLing the 32-bit stuff
64 bit is not an unmixed win. The only reason the AMD 64 bit stuff gives such a boost is that they could use the 64 bit-ness to get rid of a lot of bad instruction set design. The Power PC doesn't have that problem to resolve.
Because a G5 powerbook is "the mother of all thermal challenges" (direct quote from Apple).
:-D
Yeah, I can see it now. The new G5 Powerbook -- with built in skillet!
There's never enough when you have too little
No it wouldn't. There's little to no benefits from 64-bit computing on a portable
Really? Then the AMD 64bit Notebooks that have been out for a year or two are not worth anything, it is just wasted performace or a waste of bits?
Even though they run on a NATIVE 64OS, and benchmark considerably faster than the 32bit counterparts?
Ya, your right, 64bits in a notebook would be insane (only for Mac users though). I guess if OSX was truly 64bit, it might be a bit more of an incentive to have 64bit computing in a notebook.
But hey, some people thought no one would need color screens, more than 128k of RAM, or a two button Mouse. To each his own.
Have you read Plato's Cave allegory btw, it might really help you with this reality thing.
Two engines...is twice as much to go wrong. KISS.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
When oh when will Apple innovate again?
Among the many things you're not getting, this is a key one. When Apple innovated with Newton, they were first to market and made a shitload of mistakes for the benefit of the latecomers.
They avoided that with the iPod by not being first but instead taking an existing idea with niche appeal and perfecting it for the mass market. Oh, how terribly stupid of them!
Of course, naysayers will look on one strategy and mock the mistakes; and then they'll look at the other and mock the "lack of innovation." Who gives a shit? Would you rather be first and a big fat failure, or second and most successful?
As for "3% of the desktop" representing "death", why not look at it as four million CPUs sold annually? That's a viable platform, whether you like it or not. (If it's so irrelevant, why do you even care?)
Oh, and look. Roughly 30% growth in CPU sales versus the year-earlier quarter. Gee, how does that compare to the industry?
It's not about "all hailing Apple's great success", it's about letting go of the idiotic idea that a small percentage share of a gargantuan market is a sign of impending doom. While we're at it, how about letting go of the equally idiotic idea that a company that scores a success outside its core market has somehow done a bad or irrelevant thing.
Mmmmmkay?
The G5 pipeline is 14 stages. That's considered long? Granted, the G4 is only 9...but the Pentium M is around 15 or so, and the P4 was 20, now 31.
G5 a "classic long-pipeline model?" Hardly.
Ironically, you say this and then use benchmarks that effectively measure megahertz to say the raw processing power is not keeping up.
Not true. I'm not basing their performance off their frequency, I'm basing their performance off their proven power in benchmarks. The AMD chips in these benchmarks also runs at a lower clock speed than the Intel chips, yet they are faster than both the P4 and G5.
Frankly, the reality is, for any kind of serious work, there are no machines out there that are as fast as the PowerPC G5 series.
The fastest Intel and AMD chips outperform the top of the line G5's. See how the G5 machines compare to the Intel and AMD machines: http://www.systemshootouts.org/processors.html
Apple has been ahead in performance since moving to the PowerPC. But people are in denial of it because they have some sort of machismo wrapped up in thinking their machine is faster (And there's more non-powerpc users out there than powerpc users.)
Apple has *not* been ahead in performance since moving to the PowerPC. They weren't even close until the G5 came around. And even now, they're close but still not able to compete with the high end Athlon64's. No legitimate hardware tester would come to this conclusion, not even an Apple fan. Only the least technical and hardest-core Mac zealot would knowingly turn his head away from reality and keep on believing that his machine is faster when other chips have proven themselves to be faster.
Take a look at this link http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/31867.html
Since the time that this article was written, AMD and Intel have released multiple increased speed grades, while the G5 has only just now been able to increase in one small speed grade.
And please don't attempt to tell me that this is a Pro-AMD, anti-Mac website saying this, since the site is a Macintosh-fan site.
There are some objective Mac fans out there, but there are too many people who are so into it that it has become a religion for them, and trying to convince them that the G5 can't compete with a high-end Athlon64 is like trying to convince them that their God doesn't exist. As soon as you show them conclusive evidence shooting down their belief, they'll close their eyes and let blind faith take over... and at that point, there is no reasoning with them.
you forgot "a hooker's ass"
Okay, so a philosopher, a philologist, and a philatelist walk into a bar...
Then again, if the parent doesn't know about iMovie/iDVD, he's probably never used OS X/PPC hardware, so any arguments would be silly.
The G5 pipeline is 14 stages. That's considered long?
For a RISC processor, that's enormous. Even a 9-stage pipeline is pushing it: MIPS topped out with 8 stages and the Alpha had a 7-stage pipeline. Itanium was considered dubious because of its 10-stage one (not that that was the only thing that hurt the Itanium). The only RISCy processor I've run into with a >10 stage pipeline was the XScale... and its long pipeline REALLY hurt its clock-for-clock performance compared to the StrongARM.
Well, do consider that the Pentium 4s are now around 95% RISC, yet they have pipelines much longer than even the G5...
...To hide the source, you could then run your document through a similar program that varies punctuation and word choice.
My other first post is car post.
Some of the current Powermacs have PCI-X. The 2GHz and 2.5GHz do but both 1.8s don't.
I'm concerned that they will cut PCI-X from the 2GHz systems like they did with the 1.8DualProcs.
The older 1.8DP had 8GB max RAM and PCI-X (1x133,2x100). When they "upgraded" them in July '04, the new ones had 4GB max RAM and 3 plain ol' 66MHz PCI.
Apple will want everyone to go for the top end so they will probably cripple the mid range. Look for the 2GHz systems to be missing something.
The industry has been using the term "KVM" for "keyboard-video-mouse" for years and years. Never in my life have I seen a "KDM switch"; it's "K V M", and everybody knows it that way. Why did Apple change this? Just to be soooo different? It's like when IBM calls them "planars" and "hardfiles" instead of "motherboards" and "hard drives"; it's just annoying.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
You're right, I don't know whether CodeWeavers do support the PPC architecture, I was answering hastily to the more general question of Photoshop on the Linux platform. Currently I have a Linux/G4 at my disposal which is garnering my interest in the hardware. I also know many people running Linux on their PB's; the PPC as an install target has alot of momentum which will only improve performance and base compatibility. The only time I'm in contact with OSX itself however is when I have to teach on the platform, something I don't find very easy.
A VIDell?
No way Emacs and VI products are coming out of the same company. The employees would constantly be keying each others cars in the lot and poisoning the coffee.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Pentium 4s are now around 95% RISC
No they're not. RISC is an architecture design model, not an implementation tool. A P4 is a CISC processor implemented as two or three separate processors pipelined together: there's the first stage that rewrites the CISC code as RISC code, then there's a vertical microcode processor that resembles RISC only in so far as early RISC processors were modelled on vertical microcode machines (the IBM 801 could be said to have been both), then there's the FPU and some post-instruction fixup and the hardware that manages the whole mess.
But having a RISC-like core to do the heavy lifting doesn't make it RISC, any more than having a VLIW-like horizontal microcode core makes the AMD processor VLIW. It's better to say that the P4 is a hardware emulator for the x86 instruction set with a RISC-like processor as part of the emulation. It's not RISC, though, any more than running a software Playstation emulator on a Windows box makes the MIPS RISC processor being emulated into a CISC.
the leak is Phil Schiller, or another high level executive ?
After all, who knows ? And really, that'd be damn funny.
It's not because the AMD64 chips are 64-bit.
It's actually due to AMD64 using their 64-bit mode to defeat the crap of the x86 legacy - more registers, etc, the onboard memory controller, and the other upgrades AMD brought to the table with the AMD64 cores.
Just because it's 64-bit, doesn't automatically make it better.
PPC64/G5 would not be that big of a boon, portably. PPC wasn't as braindamaged as x86 was, so the only real upgrade is the on-board memory controller and 64bit pointers/huge memory space.
In the rest of the world, 64bit actually takes a speed hit unless dealing with things that cannot be dealt with in a 32bit space. MIPS, Alpha, PPC, SPARC, etc. all take a hit to speed.
AMD doesn't, because there were massive design improvements added to their 64bit mode.
The onboard memory controller in the Freescale chips will provide pretty much the same boost that AMD64 gets over the 32bit counterparts - massive memory bandwidth. 32bit CPUs run the memory controller off-die, and get, what, 400MHz? The AMD64 and G5 run on-die, and get 1GHz or so. Major difference. The other boost to AMD64, the registers, aren't needed - PPC already has lots of registers, and the G5 has maybe a few more, but not enough to make a difference
I advise, you know, a little research and fact-checking before you spout off. A few clues go a very long way.
You are not entirely correct here.
I will agree that for the average user, MTBF does not mean a whole lot. No single drive is going to last 100+ years!
There are some of us that run server farms of 20,000 drives or more. When you calculate the MTBF across the farm, and then compare how many drives you fail in a week, the numbers are pretty close.
This factors in for how many techs I am going to need to keep up with drive replacements.
So saying that MTBF has absolutely nothing to do with reality is in itself, a myth.
3% might sound small. Indeed, it would be small if the market for computers was a few dozen a year. But it's not. 3% of a colossal market is still an enormous amount of revenue. Witness how Apple's market cap has now overtaken Sun's.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
"The MPC8641D is from FreeScal's System on Chip (SoC) range, and includes more or less everything except GPU (PCIe controller, memory controller, GigE controller) on die. Designing a logic board for it is going to be significantly less of a challenge than designing the existing logic boards - and they've had six months since FreeScale announced the chip to be working on it."
I knew that, but I figured Motorola would be making a version of the chip for Apple that didn't have so much of the system logic on the chip. However it's an interesting idea that Apple might be prepared to leverage the rest of the chip as it stands. They could probably get some power savings from doing that as well.
I have my doubts that they'll do it, but it's an interesting idea.
"Apple are in no hurry to move to 64-bit. Unlike x86, PowerPC was designed as a 32/64-bit ISA from the start, and so 64-bit code has no benefit at all unless you are addressing more than 4GB of RAM, or doing 64-bit integer arithmetic. In fact, it gives you a performance penalty - pointers are larger, thus taking up more cache space, and load / stores take longer. On x86-64, this is offset by making the architecture marginally less GPR-starved in 64-bit mode. Note that Carbon and Cocoa are still 32-bit, for exactly this reason - Apple don't want people complaining that their G5 is slower than a G4."
Even if the processor and the OS are 64-bit, it doesn't mean everything has to be. As you say, key parts of the OS will remain 32-bit, even though Tiger is fully 64-bit capable. However, applications can be 64-bit if they need to be, given hardware support. Things like Photoshop will be available in 64-bit versions, and PowerBooks will not be able to leverage this.
People expect PowerBooks to be powerful machines, and that is increasingly not the case. I think the expectation of 64-bitness is at least as important as performance.
"IBM have been launching a low-power G5 Real Soon Now(TM) since before the G5 was released, so don't hold your breath on that one."
Conversely, we know IBM is launching a dual-core G5, and the chances are very good that they would not have been able to do that if they had not made serious progress in keeping the power usage under control.
"A dual-core G4 would out-perform a single-core G5 (remember the dual 1.42GHz G4 Vs 1.6GHz G5 benchmarks? The dual 1.8GHz G5 was only slightly faster, and that's with the low FSB speed of the current G4s), and performance per watt is what counts in a laptop. If IBM can produce something that will beat a 1.5GHz MPC8641D at 15W, I would be very surprised - we're talking at least a 2.5GHz G5 here, and the current ones are around 45W."
If we assume that Apple is willing to take a clock speed hit (say <= 2 ghz for example) and that IBM has made progress in keeping the power usage under control (very likely for dual-core chips), then they may be a lot closer to a viable laptop chip.
The real question is: who did Apple think was the better alternative when they comitted to the chip they were going to use? They must surely have already done this, and if you look back a year or two ago, Motorola/Freescale was doing a lot worse, and IBM much better. They were convinced IBM would be delivering a 3 ghz G5. In that situation, I probably would have gone with IBM. I think Apple did too.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Oh, okay. /me loses argument, heh.
"the G5 is a classic Pentium-style long-pipeline model..."
If by "Pentium-style", you mean "half as long and much wider than a Pentium", then yes. Yes it is.
"and the point of a long pipeline is to push ther clock. But, look, the G4 is catching up with the G5 on clock!"
AFAIK Freescale hopes to get G4s to 2 ghz some time next year...
"64 bit is not an unmixed win."
That's why 64-bit OSes (including Tiger) can run 32-bit code.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
"... I hope Apple releases a product for heterosexual men...." Amen, Your arguement is illogical. Just because you like it doesn't mean all men who own macs are gay.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Your probability is a little off, even though your overall point remains valid as far as I know (but I'm not too familiar with MTBF ratings or how they're calculated).
:)
You calculated the probability using the incorrect assumption that event A (drive 1 failing) and event B (drive 2 failing) are mutually exclusive, i.e. that it's impossible for both drives to fail, only one or the other. You forgot to subtract the intersection of the 2 events (the probability that both events occur). A Venn diagram would help here, but I'm not very good at ASCII art. The proper way to calculate the union of 2 events is:
p(A U B) = p(A) + p(B) - p(A intersect B)
since the events are independent (we'll assume that one of the drives failing or not doesn't affect the probability that the other drive will fail):
p(A intersect B)= p(A)p(B)
so p(A U B) = p(A) + p(B) - p(A)p(B)
so you're off by (1/500000)^2
As I said, it's a slight quibble, but I hate to see such a reckless disregard for the statistical method
This is a warmed over RUMOUR. It's not NEWS. For fuck's sake, let's not let Slashdot become just another Mac rumours site - god knows there's enough of them already. This isn't even original, I read this a couple of days ago elsewhere. These are not specs, they're speculations.
Look, I'm a Mac guy, I occasionally look at the rumour sites like everyone else, but I come to Slashdot because it's not full of one-sided Mac fanboyism. Sure, there's a hell of a lot of ignorance spouted, but at least there are different perspectives on things, and I like that. If I want to read rumours, I'll go to the rumour sites. If I want to read actual released specs of newly announced Macs, I'll go to Apple.com when they are officially released. Neither of these are Slashdot's role. This is a bad article, pointlessly posted, and it just a waste of space. Please, let's restrain ourselves - stop posting every damn tidbit about Macs just because they are flavour of the month at the moment. Keep focused, dammit! The worthwhile articles ar srtaing to get drowned in teh noise, and that doesn't serve anyone's interests.
If by "Pentium-style", you mean "half as long and much wider than a Pentium",
No, I don't mean that. Unless by "Pentium-style" you mean "only Pentium 4" rather than "any Pentium-style processor", you don't mean that either.
The G3 had 4 stages, the G4 started with 4 and ended up with 7 or 9 depending on who you talk to, the G5 up to 25 for MIMD instructions... again depending on how you define "stages". Regardless, the G5 is a "brainiac" long-pipeline multiple-functional unit processor. This means it's more sensitive to pipeline stalls and cache misses, and requires much more power than a simpler design.
And, yes, I think "2 MHz sometime next year" is reasonably close to "3 MHz sometime next year we promise, honest, I know we said 2004, we meant 2005, uh, 2006" given that the G4 gets more work done per stage and thus, for typical code, will probably get more work done per clock IF it can get its bus problems resolved.
See, the G4 vs G5 question has a lot in common with the similar PIII vs P4 debate, except the G4 has had both arms tied behind its back by the crummy memory bus. If Freescale solves that problem, dual-core will just be icing on the cake.
That's why 64-bit OSes (including Tiger) can run 32-bit code.
You're being disengenuous. Tiger is primarily 32-bit, all the graphic code is still 32-bit, and any Cocoa software is 32-bit. It just has the ability to run 64-bit command-line programs, which is more than enough for most 64-bit software: for example, tthe 64-bit software I've been working on on Tru64 (which IS a native 64-bit OS) for most of the past 10 years... most of that is server code.
Getting back to the original point, for a laptop (which is what we're talking about) the ability to run 64-bit code is pointless to all but a tiny minority of the population... mostly software developers who want to test their server code when they're working on their laptop.
Just to add to the confusion, here's what APPLE says about the pipelines:
A much longer execution pipeline (up to 23 stages vs. 7 stages for the G4).
That doesn't sound like "twice as long" as the G4 or "half as long" as the Pentium 4 to *me*.
I think more people will want a single-G4 iBook that uses the single-core version of Freescale's next-generation, fast bus (up to 667MHz) G4 chip. Yes, a pin-for-pin compatible single-core version has also been announced. If these products ever get released, I think they will make nice low-power alternatives to the Pentium-M/Celeron-M platform.
Here's a nice, short article on about Freescale's next generation G4s: Freescale Discloses Dual-Core PowerPC's Details
From the article:
Shweet.TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
I think 64-bitness is more important, and you think performance is more imporant. I concede that a dual-core G4 would probably perform better than a single-core G5 given the power constraints of a laptop, but I disagree that that's the primary consideration.
What will determine the outcome is what Apple thinks is important, and what Apple thought the two companies could do at the time that they comitted to their next generation laptop processor, which I believe must have been some time ago.
That interpretation favors the G5, even though IBM has subsequently failed to deliver on their promises. We can infer that Apple didn't know that would happen in 2003, since the broken 3 ghz promise made Jobs look like an idiot. They had to make the decision based on what they knew. What they knew in 2003 was that Motorola had nearly killed them by consistently failing to meet performance requirements, and IBM had just saved them by meeting theirs.
"See, the G4 vs G5 question has a lot in common with the similar PIII vs P4 debate, except the G4 has had both arms tied behind its back by the crummy memory bus.
So did the P3: it had a 133 mhz bus compared to the P4 with a 400 mhz bus.
"You're being disengenuous. Tiger is primarily 32-bit, all the graphic code is still 32-bit, and any Cocoa software is 32-bit. It just has the ability to run 64-bit command-line programs, which is more than enough for most 64-bit software: for example, tthe 64-bit software I've been working on on Tru64 (which IS a native 64-bit OS) for most of the past 10 years... most of that is server code."
Software vendors can write their own graphics libraries or fork off helper processes. The sorts of software that would benefit from that kind of optimization is the sort of software that can ultimately make or break the PowerBook. Stuff like Adobe Photoshop.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I think the reason that moto/freescale didn't aggressively clock the G4 had to do with the slow memory bus. Eventually there's only a tiny advantage from boosting the clock, when it's so far past the bus.
Right now Apple only feeds the bus at 133MHz (maybe 200, but I'm not sure) and it's not 'double-pumped' or anything. Also, from what I understand, even if you fed the chip more, there are limitations of the MPX bus and the chip design that would still limit the performance. The 8641 aims to fix those problems by widening the paths both inside and outside the chip.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
And, besides, the Tiger new features list includes
Dunno if it works on ADB keyboards, though.
But the posting to which you're responding is flamebait (I don't know whether it's posted enough to count as a crapflood), so it's probably best ignored.
I think 64-bitness is more important, and you think performance is more imporant.
I think 64-bitness is only important when it improves performance. And I've been working with real live gotta-be-fast 64-bit software since Apple was still using Nubus, and, well... the performance advantage of 64-bit is much overrated. If you really need 64-bit you know you really need it because you're running into 32-bit limitations.
The 64-bit address registers are the big win, especially for database apps. The 64-bit integer registers are nice, but Altivec already operates on multi-word objects... I'm not sure there's really a lot to gain there. Do you really know about algorithms that are faster in 64-bit mode, or are you guessing?
I use three macs for my business: dual 1GHz G4 (coding), old 400MHz G4 (web server), and an old 600MHz G3 iBook (travel and 'deck time').
Seriously, for software design and coding, how much speed do you need? I would rather spend computer upgrade money taking my wife on an extra vacation.
My Dad does lots of video editing and 3D animation - he needs the speed and upgrades often. But for most users, older hardware with software upgrades matter more (I can't wait to get Tiger on my development Mac).
"I think 64-bitness is only important when it improves performance."
It improves capabilities too. There's some jobs you just can't reasonably tackle (read: they're a huge PITA) on 32-bit machines no matter how fast.
"I'm not sure there's really a lot to gain there. Do you really know about algorithms that are faster in 64-bit mode, or are you guessing?"
Well encryption should benefit assuming someone optimizes the libraries (and yes I care about this as I use scp a lot), but for the most part I want a bigger address space so I can just throw everything into memory and let the OS worry about swapping it out, instead of the horrible hacks you need to do to juggle things in and out of disk yourself. That is none of the application's business.
I'm not into graphics stuff, but it's not difficult to imagine something like Photoshop benefitting (assuming they roll their own libraries, which I believe they do).
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
This may finally have been the straw that broke Apple's back. The domain resolves, the server pings, but the site is not serving web pages at the moment. Interesting.
i stand corrected. not that better gpu's are a bad thing....even though i got my imac under 2 months ago..timing is everything.
Dain Bramaged
I'm not going to "switch" but I'd like to add a Mac to my Windows, Linux and Solaris collective. A Mac Mini with 512megs of ram and 1.25GHz G4 would cost me under $600 so why is it that you find used G4 towers with less memory and cpu power for more than that? I mean seriously I'm finding 733 G4s for $100 more than that. It is utterly ridiculous.
No one seems to get the point of my post.
Everyone seems to think that Apple or OSX is going to make a large impact on the computing world.
In reality, Microsoft and even the Linux world doesn't see Apple as a threat, they are not a big enough fish in the market at this point. If they were or are a threat Microsoft would not have supported Apple in the tough times, or continue to make Microsoft Office for the Mac, when it is not a large revenue product.
Secondly, Apple could of been a LARGE contender, they blew it, several times.
I advise, you know, a little research and fact-checking before you spout off. A few clues go a very long way.
I suggest you consider who might be on the other end of the conversation before you pretend to be the definitive expert.
I wasn't addressing the technical aspects of the 64/32 world but would love to carry this debate if you feel up to it.
You assessment of the 64bit AMD processors and their performance advantages and equivaqly the G4 and G5 performance miss many aspects of the good and bad of each.
1) Address space - This is very important when we are moving to larger needs for RAM. Unfortunately the G5 paired with OSX is still limited to 16gb. Unlike the AMD which can do full 48bit (and higher) memory address allocation depending on the OS. A specific OS example would be WindowsXP that is not limited to 16gb of RAM on the AMD architecture.
2) The 16/32bit debate days were much like the current 32/64bit debates. The extra bits can cause more overhead, la la la. Sure a finely tuned 16bit application could potentially out perform a 32bit application, but could it do as much as the 32bit application? Even as you stated it isn't just the 'extra' bits that give the 64bit CPUS an edge.
3) You have no account for future growth and direction. This is what stagnated thee 32bit market for several years, as the application and OS vendors (like IBM), couldn't see past the 16bit world. Right now we are again on the edge of a budding market where applications and demands for RAM and the 'extra features' in the 64bit processors are going to be needed and used. And hopefully the industry will be a bit smarter about the transition this time, than they were in the 32bit era.
However if they keep the current mindset, that posts like yours continue to propagate, we will still be using G5s with 32bit OSes, and AMD64s with 32bit versions of Linux and Windows. I for one would love to see the desktop market move in this direction and have truly photorealistic environments, and other unforeseen uses for the 'extra bits' taken advantage of as fast as possible.
So yes, I stand by my statement, I think it is important that we can buy 64bit notebooks, and are NOT limited to ONE mindset that is SET BY ONE COMPANY LIKE APPLE.
It's great that you're so bigoted and insecure in yourself that you take up applying sexual labels and stereotypes to products you have a problem with, because it gives a clear signal to the rest of us that you're unable to review something based on its merits rather than the values you apply to it yourself and that we therefore can safely ignore your bullshit.
Nothing to see here, please move along.
Now why would trade secrets be protected so extensively when journalists are free to publish governments secrets
In a democracy, citizens have a recognized right to know what their government is doing. Why would this extend to design details of products developed by a corporation of which you are not a significant owner? Should journalists be free to publish video from inside your house that was obtained illegally by your plumber?
Look, I'm all for more corporate reform. I've done work for organizations that want to limit corporate power and have written an article on the subject. However, confusing the rights of citizens to access government information with access to trade secrets just doesn't make any sense. It sounds like the argument that trade secret disclosure should be protected just like whistle blowing, even when the secrets are not causing harm to anyone.
It improves capabilities too. There's some jobs you just can't reasonably tackle (read: they're a huge PITA) on 32-bit machines no matter how fast.
Multiple precision arithmetic libraries that make bignum (both extended and arbitrary precision) calculations trivial have existed since the '60s, and have been integrated into high performance programming languages (eg, Maclisp) since the '70s.
There is absolutely nothing I can think of for which the difference between 32- and 64- bit processing comes down to anything but a performance issue, except for large address spaces. And for GUI applications, Tiger doesn't provide a way to use large address spaces directly... and we're talking about laptops here.
I'm not into graphics stuff, but it's not difficult to imagine something like Photoshop benefitting
I'm only peripherally into graphics stuff, but I am into encryption, and it's hard for me to see anything that 64-bit integer code can do that Altivec can't do better in either area.
I'd like you to show me where I said Apple was a threat to Linux or Windows.
What I have said is that Apple is a successful company and the Macintosh is a viable platform.
If you're reading that as "Apple is going to make a large impact" you're reading too much into it. What I do think is that the computing world is large enough for Apple to be successful -- even wildly successful -- without posing a significant threat to other platforms.
Besides, so many Mac users buy Office and/or VPC that Microsoft actually loses very little, if any, money from people switching to (or sticking with) the Mac. (And Office may not be a large-revenue product, but it is a high-margin one.)
Is the 8x drive on the most recent eMac the same drive?
I bought one about 9 months ago, and that would be SO NICE!
My point that the 64bit AMD processor isn't a good judge of the shift to 64bit still stands; more was done than just the 64bit memory addressing/pointers.
Aside from that, the other upgrades are being added to conventional 32bit Freescale core. Like the on-die memory controller. Altivec was already there. It already has a huge register bank.
What else did AMD64 bring, again?
64bit notebooks have been around since long before you could buy your AMD thing. SPARCbooks, Alphabooks, some PA-RISC ones. Even a limited-availablity notebook based on an SGI O2 design. Are they inherently better through having 64 bits?
The move to 64bit is a great move. Letting apps talk to all 8/16GB of main memory is a lovely thing. Just don't confuse AMD fixing the x86 crap and adding a 64bit mode, as 64bit being the major performance boost you seem to think that it was with AMD.
Also, if Apple -could- build a G5 into a laptop, they would. All reports say it's thermally unfeasible at current.
My 386 can address 4gb of memory, theoretically. Would I really want it to? Really? It's a notebook, by the time 16GB+ machines are common, it will be so outdated so as to not even be funny.
So basically, to hide the fact that you are the canary, run the document through a very similar process. Would enough leftover original changes make a statistical difference?
64bit notebooks have been around since long before you could buy your AMD thing. SPARCbooks, Alphabooks, some PA-RISC ones. Even a limited-availablity notebook based on an SGI O2 design. Are they inherently better through having 64 bits?
The move to 64bit is a great move. Letting apps talk to all 8/16GB of main memory is a lovely thing. Just don't confuse AMD fixing the x86 crap and adding a 64bit mode, as 64bit being the major performance boost you seem to think that it was with AMD.
Also, if Apple -could- build a G5 into a laptop, they would. All reports say it's thermally unfeasible at current.
My 386 can address 4gb of memory, theoretically. Would I really want it to? Really? It's a notebook, by the time 16GB+ machines are common, it will be so outdated so as to not even be funny.
Again, no one will drop the mindset that 32bit and straight architectural advantages are enough for the future.
That is insane. We will hit the 32bit memory Cap, in fact we ALREADY have for many users. 4GB of addressable space is just not enough. Even the Apple 16gb of address space truly isn't enough.
If you think it is plenty, they maybe you should do a quote like '4gb' of RAM is more than anyone will ever need, and then you can be laughed at in 5-10 years.
Secondly I never said the AMD was the first 64bit notebook, or 64bit portable. As for general market, it maybe is the least expensive and first that is readily available to the non-technical world. But I never even previous made that assessment.
It is sad that Apple has no direction for a full 64bit version of OSX, it is also sad that they have no way or intention of getting a 64bit processor in a portable form factor.
Which is something that notebook makers using the AMD CPU have been able to pull off for quite a while.
Leaks at Apple
u e?newslette rIssueEntityId=250
Published: April 16, 2005
By Charles Jo
Staff Writer, CharlesJo.com
There has been a lot of discussion on tech sites about Apple going
after Mac rumor sites which posted supposedly leaked information. I
believe all corporations -- big and small -- should be concerned about
any leak of proprietary informations, especially if they have the
potential threat of hurting revenue and profit. That said, without
having any inside contacts at Apple, let me look into my crystal ball
and divine future announcements from Apple for those of you who have
not figured it out yet:
1. Apple will introduce boxes and laptops that will have faster CPUs,
faster busses, and fatter hard disk drives.
2. Apple will introduce software updates and/or new software.
3. Apple may introduce neat, pricey monitors, keyboards and other
peripherals.
4. If Steve Jobs is making the announcement, he will be sporting a
dark turtleneck with blue jeans, drinking 1+ bottles of water, Keynote,
appear to be in his 40s or 50s but still sound like an 18 year old.
News that would be interesting is if Apple reversed the trend and
suddenly decided to make slower computers with smaller disk drives
across the board and charged more for such products. Retro.
Source:
http://www.charlesjo.com/newsletteriss
www.charlesjo.com | We are captives of our own imaginations so let's
dream big.
Send comments to: charles@charlesjo.com
charles AT charlesjo DOT com
Charles Jo