Ars Technica Reviews Intel iMacs

Milton Waddams writes "Ars kick off what I'm sure will be a torrent of reviews of the of the new Intel iMac. Overall it looks like it's a bit faster than the iMac G5 and a bit slower than the PowerMac G5 dual core. I'm sure it will surprise many slashdotters to find out that Jobs' statements about the new iMac being twice as fast as the iMac G5 as being slightly over optimistic. AND it doesn't run Windows...yet..." I'm still waiting for the most important benchmark: frames per second in molten core combat.

Comments

Benchmarks, accuracy, and choice

[Space cowboy]

To be fair, Steve's statements were absolutely 100% accurate (assuming the figures are accurate, which I expect them to be). For that benchmark, the intel machine is 2x-3x faster. If anyone really expected them to provide not-the-best-benchmark-results, can I have some of what you're smoking ? And I have several bridges to sell you too...

My point is that the story write-up makes it sound like SJ is lying, and he's not. He's just presenting the best set of benchmarks he can, which is pretty much what I expect from the CEO of the company...

As for the multimedia-style benchmarks presented in the review, I think you can expect those to improve as Apple gets its collective head around SSE3. I would have thought the G5/G4 implementations would have been altivec'd to hell and back, and SSE doesn't have the immensely useful 'permute' operation, so the transform operation will have to be rewritten to SSE's strengths - I doubt that has happened yet...

Simon.

Re:Benchmarks, accuracy, and choice

[AKAImBatman]

You've really just shown your bias haven't you? Absolutely 100% accurate, oh, unless they're not accurate.

I think you've missed his point. This is a common industry practice used for just about every piece of hardware and software on the market. To single Steve Jobs out for this practice rather than accepting it as the "norm" shows a distinct anti-Mac bias.

Steve Jobs may not have been lying, but he was most certainly being deliberately deceitful.

It's hard to be deceitful when it comes to something as nebulous as benchmarks. Every benchmark you run will tell a different story. The result is that you can pull a variety of different conclusions from the benchmarks depending on how you spin it. Given that Steve Jobs is the CEO of Apple, we can expect that he will spin the benchmarks positively. On the flip-side, we can expect that the Mac haters will spin the benchmarks negatively. The ones to really listen to are the moderates who tell us whether we're generally being delivered what we're promised or not.

Re:Benchmarks, accuracy, and choice

[Andy Dodd]

AMD set about dispelling the "myth of the megahertz", but they did it in a reasonable fashion. Let's face it - clock rate isn't everything (the Pentium 4 proves that without a doubt), and the public needs to stop thinking that the clockrate of the CPU is important. Yes, the AMDs are clocked lower. Despite that, they routinely kill P4s clocked at over 1.5x their clock rate in nearly all applications. Cases where Intel wins are the rare exception and not the norm. Hell, even Intel has had to move away from publishing actual clock rate in preparation for the Netburst architecture's imminent demise.

Average performance on a wide variety of applications is an excellent performance indicator. Raw clock rate and peak performance on a single app (the former being a favorite of Intel and the latter being classic Apple) are both crappy methods of measuring performance.

Re:Benchmarks, accuracy, and choice

[pi42]

This isn't entirely accurate -- most people can tell the difference between 25fps and 60fps in a computer game, while they can't on a film or video. I believe 3dfx released an infamous demo back in the day with a spinning cube at 30fps and 60fps and you could always tell the difference.

What's the difference? Video and film have motion blur, which makes for smooth transitions between frames whereas games display things in discrete frames with no blur whatsoever.

Ever tried waving your hand underneath a strobe light going at 30 cycles/sec? That's 30fps yet the motion still looks strange, since it's like you're seeing discrete frames and not continous motion burred between frames.

Re:Why?

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

But what about if someone wants to run games (and perhaps other software that runs only on Windows) *and* still get the superior OS/apps found in Macs? Why should they be forced to buy two computers just so that they can preserve their "entire Mac experience"?

Shut up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you heard? It's cool to hate Apple now. It makes you '1337.

Anybody who says anything remotely positive about Apple, or especially about Steve Jobs, is a "fanboy." You don't want to be called a fanbody, do you? Then get with the program. Talk about how cheaply you can get a Gateway that's just as good as the new iMac or something, and insist that Woz is the only person who ever had anything to do with Apple worthy of any respect at all.

Oh... and maybe Tog, if you are a UI nerd.

Re:Shut up!

[NanoGator]

"Haven't you heard? It's cool to hate Apple now. It makes you '1337."

[Warning: This is an OT rant, no hard feelings if modded down.]

Wish I had known that before I made a not-so-nice comment about Apple which resulted in several mods going well out of their way to mod me down until I couldn't post on Slashdot for a couple of weeks. (From a certain IP, anyway. At least now you understand the origins of my sig.)

If it has suddenly become a little too cool to hate Apple now, I blame extremist mods for it. Over the years I've made silly little quips about Apple that nobody on Earth should have taken too seriously and have been mod-bombed over it. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if, out of anger, they were finally M2'd out and the replacements came in to even up the balance by shifting over to the extreme opposite view. (i.e. over-modding anti-Apple sentiment.) Too much zealotry will always lead to people with too much opposition to your view.

This has already happened with regards to Microsoft. Go back a few years and ANY comment ridiculing or insulting MS would be modded up, but polite criticisms of Linux would be modded down. Even uninformed posts (i.e. there still seems to be some impression that Win2K was built on the same kernel that Windows 98 was) would get modded up. 2K is nearly 6 years old now, XP is 4, and the BSOD is virtually gone. Yet, the blue screen jokes STILL fly with full karma around here. The result? People stand up and say "uh, you guys need to get with the 21st century." People whinge about MS fanboys flooding Slashdot. Sorry, can't see that from my point of view. Fire is being fought with fire. My advice? Don't give Apple praise for being wrong or Microsoft scorn for being right.

No, I'm not pro-MS or anti-Apple, I'm just tired of these karma-fueled battles happening every year. I appreciate Taco's desire to keep Slashdot 'democratic', but it's irritating that ordinary Homer Simpson'ish people are allowed to be cops.

Re:Shut up!

[nathanh]

Wish I had known that before I made a not-so-nice comment about Apple which resulted in several mods going well out of their way to mod me down until I couldn't post on Slashdot for a couple of weeks.

You hit the nail on the head, Nanogator.

I have also noticed extremist Apple fanboy moderation around here lately. My Mac credentials extend back to the late 80s on System 6 and I've owned a half dozen Macs over the years. I'm even typing this from a Powerbook (running Linux admittedly). I'm a strong supporter of Apple and I love to read books about their history. Yet even the most mild criticism of Apple or MacOS on /. will result in my comments being moderated down as Flamebait, Troll and Overrated. I never get similar mistreatment for negative comments about Linux or Windows. It seems Apple fanboys have no qualms abusing the moderation system to ensure that only positive Apple comments are seen.

Unfortunately this isn't new behaviour for Apple fanboys. As far back as I can remember - including the glory days of Usenet - the Apple fanboys have been the most intolerant, the least receptive to criticism, the most judgemental and often the least educated of all the enthusiast groups. The negative moderation of any criticism of the latest Macs is yet another example of this behaviour. Anybody who thinks Linux fanatics can be over the top has never seen an Apple fanboy in full swing. Even the Amiga users were never so extreme. That sort of stupid fanatacism is what led to one of my earlier sigs: "I love Apple hardware but goddamn I hate Apple users".

The example at the start of this thread epitomizes everything I hate about Apple fanboyism. Steve said something that deservedly should be called out for being deceitful bullshit. If any other CEO - Gates, McNealy, Ellison - had said something similar we'd have people throwing figures around and using datasheets to prove that the CEO was a lying bastard. Even when a relative nobody from GNOME or Xorg attempts to massage the figures there will be 100s of /. comments crying "Bullshit". Yet when Steve does the same thing the Apple fanboys are rallying behind him, providing him with excuses, apologising for his behaviour, rationalising the lies, and moderating or shouting down anybody who points out that the emperor has no clothes. Apple gets "special treatment" and I find that despicable.

Cell isn't a desktop processor

[Andy Dodd]

It has insane floating point throughput capability which will help on some apps, but for most desktop apps the Cell is extremely slow. It was designed for a very specific set of tasks.

Existing PPC binaries won't run fast on the Cell. In fact, they most likely won't run at all.

There is no way we'll see a general purpose desktop system based on the Cell - it's just not designed for that kind of purpose. We might see some sort of Cell coprocessor board become available though.

Re:Why?

[tgd]

Thats a bad analogy. Its more like buying a race car and deciding you really want to have turn signals, seat belts, emergency brake and other stuff you need to drive your vehicle once in a while on the same roads everyone else is on.

Memory Anyone?

[puppetluva]

These benchmarks don't seem entirely objective.

The older imac was sporting twice the memory, and the g5 desktop had 9 times the memory.

Clearly the memory disparity was a factor in many of the tests.

I would give more credence to a test where all three machines had the same amount of memory so that paging/swapping/caching would be more at parity.

amount of ram in benchmark

[DietFluffy]

What is the significance of arstechnica benchmarking the 3 macs with the following ram configurations:

iMac Core Duo: 512MB
iMac G5: 1GB
PowerMac G5: 4.5GB

Wouldn't such a large difference in the ammount of ram have a significant impact on benchmarks?

Re:Why?

[gstoddart]

But what about if someone wants to run games (and perhaps other software that runs only on Windows) *and* still get the superior OS/apps found in Macs? Why should they be forced to buy two computers just so that they can preserve their "entire Mac experience"?

IT's not Apple's job to help you run Windows software. Least of all on their hardware.

As the OP said, if I bought a new Mac, the last thing I'd want to do is try to figure out how to run software for Windows on it. Period.

Nobody is forcing you to buy a second machine to do anything. You can do without that software, buy a second machine, or (possibly) void your warranty by trying to get Windows to run on it. That doesn't mean you should expect Apple to roll over and give you a machine which it is easy to make run both OS's. They want to give you a good user experience if you bought their stuff.

If I buy a Honda Accord, is it reasonable to expect Honda to ensure that the turbo-kit I got for my Ford Escort runs on that Honda? Of course not. What does Honda care? And it's not about "the full Honda experience", I'll tell you that.

Apple would probably prefer you leave them out of the equation when it comes to running your Windows games. Specifically so they don't get calls from people who have either bodged their systems together from spare parts, or generally done stupid things with them.

You have complete freedom to buy, or not buy an Apple computer, and all that implies. Whining about being 'forced' to own a second computer to be able to have another platform is a completely specious argument in my opinion -- how is this any different than from when the computers were on completely different platforms?