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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."
The developer version of OS X can run on non-apple hardware, but only if you think troubleshooting is fun (read: not well). The versions that will reach consumers on Intel systems will be DRM'ed to prevent this. It will be crackable, but the 1% of the population that can do this isn't Apple's target market anyways.
The real litigious bastards...
Yes, the other factors are that the dev kits don't support any kind of special features. It's standard PC BIOS so it doesn't have to bother to search any of the many other places/buses a standard mac can boot from.
Also, since plugins cannot be emulated, there is no way for anyone to install kernel extensions that slow down the boot times of OS X.
In other words, the speed these people think they're seeing are actually do to a horrific lack of features.
This just means that the G5 crap being better performing than the Intel stuff was pure marketing BS
Maybe G5s are not so fast. But:
"It's fast," said one developer source of Mac OS X running on Intel's Pentium processors. "Faster than [Mac OS X] on my Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5."
So, uh, a 3.6 Ghz P4 is faster than two 2 Ghz G5 - 4 Ghz? - SMP, but 4 Ghz.
Sorry, I don't buy that. Even more if you take into account that Intel isn't exactly the performance/Hz leader - in fact it's the worst performer these days, Opteron and PM beats the sh*t out of that P4 at much lower speeds from what I've read.
There're lots of factors that can change things - freebsd algorithms, are, for one, optimized for i386 variants. Also, Mac OS X is compiled with -Os - optimized for size, no for speed. (Paranoic mode on=Hey, maybe this switch was planned and it's not a coincidence)
And then there's the Placebo effect. IOW: Show me numbers, don't tell me "it's fast", I don't trust you. In Linus' words: "If we can't measure it, it doesn't exists". Unless someone writes a decent comparative, I'll take this article as Apple Marketing - Apple has been very critized for this change, I wouldn't be suprised that Apple is interested in articles like that, showing how good move has been the switch to intel
Apple has really been pushing people to Sleep the machines instead of turning them off. Sleep mode uses a very tiny amount of power, and you get your instantaneous boot (with apps open and windows positioned...). I have been doing this with my Macs since OS X appeared and let me tell you it is the only way to go. Especially on laptops. In fact I am still using a CRT on my G5 and the computer 'boots' faster than the monitor (warm up).
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
As someone that's built thousands of Windows machines over the past few years, let me be the first to say this: Out of the box, on current hardware, Windows XP is blazing fast. What slows it down is all the bloatware and DLLs that you load up as you install software.
Take XP, load Office 2003, Norton AV, the standard CD burning and DVD viewing apps, and watch the performance (and boot times) degrade considerably.