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Intel Developer Macs Outperform G5s
bonch writes "Developers working with the new Intel-based, developer-only Macs are impressed with the performance. The machines take as little as 10 seconds to boot from Apple logo to desktop, and apparently run Windows XP at 'blazing speeds.' Rosetta tests demonstrate the PowerPC-native build of Firefox running just as fast as it does on a high-end G5."
I get 7 hours on my p4-m notebook.
so I'm thinking they may see an increase.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
That's becaus you're running the wrong builds. :)
Methinks you've been had. This is an update of a quite famous rant made about one of the earlier PPC Macs, the 8600/300, as found here.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Memory test.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
It's likely that Rosetta is pulling a lot of tricks, I/O level and otherwise, and when you're reading data from a hard disk or the network, using a few spare CPU cycles to swap some bytes around isn't going to be noticed *at all*, because if you're doing that sort of I/O bound processing, you'll likely have plenty of CPU cycles laying around to swap bytes in memory.
If you're not talking about Rosetta, but about multi-platform applications more generally, the long answer is in the Universal Binary Programming Guidelines PDF. The short answer is that you abstract away from your own code byte-order issues where possible, and where not possible, you otherwise have separate code paths that do the right thing depending on the targeted platform.
Seasoned developers who coded applications under NeXTStep have been through this once before, remember. This is not a new problem. We've been here before... I avoid binary data formats where it's reasonable to do so.
Surely the OS has to know what memory is in use, otherwise there would be chaos. How would it allocate blocks of memory if drivers were "secretly" allocating their own blocks?
As for detecting new hardware - that's such a rare event that it should be treated as an exception, rather than the norm. Most days I boot my computer, there's a marked absence of strange new hardware...
If your default boot disk is available then a normal Mac doesn't take anytime looking for other boot devices. These Intel dev Macs do support booting from USB drives so that is not the case anyway.
What makes you think they support booting from USB drives?
OSX kernel extensions are very rare. Almost no program uses them except Norton products(anti-virus and disk doctor). I recommend staying away from Norton stuff for this reason and using Alsoft's Disk Warrior. Third party kernel extensions are a bad idea on any OS.
Uhm, I hope you realize that apple includes many as well that aren't exactly usable on these Dev kits. Such as Bluetooth kexts, ATI kexts (or Nvidia kexts), Airport kexts, netboot, FWTDM kexts, Audio kexts (there are 8 audio kexts loaded on my G5), CHUD kexts, fan control kexts, slew, voltage, sensor kexts, and other kinds of kexts that either lack the hardware or software support on the Intel Dev Kits.
Then for third party kexts there are Logitech Drivers, Norton Utilities kexts, Virtual PC kexts, the Ambrosia kext, DiskWarrior kexts, and many other third party drivers and kexts that shouldn't be loading at startup and shouldn't even be kexts but are.
What features are lacking?? The Intel dev Macs have Firefox, iPhoto, iDVD, and Quicktime installed. The average user may install some extra dashboard widgets and a driver or two, but I doubt that would add more than a couple seconds to boot time.
What makes you think these dev kits have either iDVD or Firefox installed on them? Did you see iDVD in use during Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote?
See above for a large list. You don't need to load a kext for hardware that doesn't exist.
G4 Optimized Firefox 1.1 pre-alpha nightlies (fast!)
http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/
For instance, as ubiquitous as Creative Labs hardware is, Apple can't support it because it's really low quality compared to Apple's on board audio (designed by Bang Olufsen)
I won't get into the debate about the quality (or lack therof) of Creative's products, except to say that there is a thriving market for aftermarket audio products for the Mac platform (M-Audio being one such vendor).
My point of contention with your post is your assertation that Apple employs the aid of Bang and Olufsen for its built-in audio. While searching on Google reveals others using superlatives that compare Apple's design to the afformentioned company's products, there is no evidence of collaboration. There are aftermarket products made for lines such as the iPod, but that's as close as it gets.
A few more little known facts: Apple uses all Bose speakers even down to the smallest speakers in their systems. And Bose designs the case section where the speaker will be housed in order to provide high quality, room filling sound no matter what system you have.
Furthermore, Bose has only had a limited relationship with Apple, starting and ending with the PowerMac 6400 family. And for the record, the logevity of this particular piece of design has been lacking. Apple has collaborated with other companies on their speaker design, such as utilizing Harman Kardon enclosures/speakers starting with the iMac DV.
Your references to startup tones are tangential, more a matter of taste and style than metrics. Apple succeeds in the the fields of arts primarily because of their decent first-party applications, and additionally because of their ISVs and aftermarket hardware. Many creative types still call the Mac home, and I don't think it's because of trendy start-up tones or hardware companies.
As to Apple's success and appeal, I wholly agree it is due in large part to the bottom-to-top control they have of the platform. I may have made mistakes in calling you out on some of these facts you are presenting. I have spent nearly 10 years working in and around Apple's various offerings, and have admired their industrial design (with a number of exceptions). That said, I would like to think that whatever zeal that I may have for them is grounded in reality. If you can find reference to any of your above claims, I would appreciate that they be presented for sake of perusal.