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Apple announces the G4
Roger wrote to us with the news that Apple has announced the G4. Apple's website has all the news. This is /really/ fast. Anyone wanna let me test one? It's got up to a 500 mhz G4, one meg of L2 cache @ 1/2 processing speed, 100mhz system bus. And check out the 22 inch display that can be ordered along with it.
"The future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed yet" - William Gibson
"The future is already here,
it's just not evenly distributed yet"
"The future is already here,
it's just not evenly distributed yet"
- William Gibson
>
... it is a great OS, and I like the OperSource idea. I am getting ready to install LinuxPPC on my "piece of crap" G3. I just don't like some of the PEOPLE who use Linux.
... but only if you use the "cool" operating system like us (whatever).
.....
But make sure you criticise the Mac the most because it's uncool to those who use a "REAL" operating system right?
Well, I've HAD it.
I am absofreakinglutly SICK of people telling me that Apple is dead and that people who use MAcs are a bunch of freaks. Get off you goddamn high horse and stop telling us how we're idiots. WE like the Mac, that's all, and WE ARE NOT GOING AWAY.
I'm sorry for being a hypocrite, do you forgive me, computer god? Or should I just throw away my "piece of crap computer" and forget that I even bothered learning C and C++ and trying to be a part of some "great society" circle of gurus.
Excuse me for actually giving a sh*t about a platform.
You know, I am VERY happy for Linux
OSes are great for whatever you use them for
i feel like Im in high school again.
But if you want to go ahead and tell me how my IDIOTIC OPERATING SYSTEM is not memory protected, go ahead. Chances are, I've heard the line before
Try rendering. Try rc5, seti and des for the hell of it. Try 100 more things. After all that trying, then lets Talk. And the winner is...place your bets.
:)
Sadly 'if at first you suceed, try, try again' doesn't play well in the computer world.
Quake3 was just a suggestion. Its gameplay is pathetic anyway (HL/TF'er here) but the graphics are perfect for stressing new hardware (and now smp)
Anonymous Coward, get it?
Anonymous Coward, get it?
Not bad spelling, bad typing
2) The rage128 is ssssssssllllllllloooooooowwwwwwww by any desktop standard.
:)
:) Apple sez 4 its G3 'My toy! Hands off! [Closed specs]' At least the G4 has a good chance of more specs coming from Motorola, as they did more of the design and have more rights to it this time.
:)
3) Marketing? Um no, this is equivilent to a papal mandate. This one is all opinion unless you happen to be one of the weasels, so cut the list to 3
4) Any the $64,000 question is...WHY? Guess why? Hint: first letter A, ryhmes with Snapple
Anonymous Coward, get it?
Anonymous Coward, get it?
Not bad spelling, bad typing
No. It's not. You've obviously never installed Solaris.
...
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
At my old job, I loaded a math program for kids which wouldn't load because of this. Had I not known (since the OS didn't point out the problem), and been there to help, it would have been a problem since the app was needed.
However, lack of true multitasking and good memory protection are my greatest concerns. (My machine crashes and freezes up too much.)
They still have some OS magic to perform with OS X Final. If they can extend the BSD and Mach foundation with Finder-like magic and some of that new fairy dust they've been sprinkling around the last few months, I'll buy in. Otherwise, I'll just upgrade my LinuxPPC software. :-)
(I'm still using OS 8.0 because 8.6 is bloated and slow. I've got LinuxPPC on a second partition.)
I have BeOS, but it doesn't run on my machine. And since they've switched to PCs, I know there's no hope for us anymore. :-]
I can't be seen in public with an orange "toilet seat," (or a blue one) however, so I'll be saving for a "normal" PowerBook, or whatever succeeds it--just something good and classy.
Because USparc and Alpha really have no market outside of servers. I don't know how well the G4 stacks up against the other guys mhz for mhz, but a G4 would make a kickass server but you could also play games on it.
Because G3 and G4 have much more marketing appeal than meaningless numbers- 601, 603e, 604 etc.
The graphical clients are WAAAY slower. My friend runs the client on his Gateway with a 400mhz Celeron and it takes him about 40 hours. His G3 was taking about 15 hours on the graphical client (don't know if there's a non-graphical client for Mac).
Huh? Did not know that... Who make this boards? Why Apple do no sell them?
Anyway.. why does not Apple compare there new G4 to a 800Mhz Kriotech Athlon (which cost $2200, can use much better video cards and other hardware)
Sure G4 is a fine processor. But Apple's marketing drivel is annoying. It is so clearly exploits people without a slightest clue about computer usage, its sickening.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
It's true that a machine acting as a file server rarely crashes, and OS 8.x is a lot better than previous OSes, but you must not be doing very much if your machines never crash.
Write software, use Communicator, open apps: Bugs happen; Communicator happens; memory problems happen.
i'm averaging about 12 hours with version 1.06 (compared to about 36 hours with 1.0 or whatever) of the seti GUI client, on a pII-450, not overclocked, running in winblows 98. that's not too horrible, is it?
SuPz.orG
yes. totally. If I remember correctly, Sun helped them do it back when their processors were so slow they had to resort to multi-processor machines to try to keep up with HP, IBM, and DEC. I remember the result being some photoshop results that showed pretty close to 1 to 1 scaling (i.e., on a 4 proc sparc it was virtually 4 times as fast).
It was many moons ago, and the dust in my brain may be clouding the facts a little, but rest assured that photoshop is well tuned for multiple processors.
A really good friend of mine is also an Apple fanatic. I'm pretty sure that Apple packs some type of neuro-toxin into their boxes, that gives them 100% mind control over their users, because this kid is insanely sick with convincing me that Macintrashes are SOOO much better than "PC's" that I sometimes just hang up on him, or walk away during a conversation. Now I want to know, are ALL mac users like that?
SuPz.orG
My P3 500Mhz Intellistation does it at 8-9hours a unit. Nyah.
I would hope so, since his CPU is at least two years old and you have 200 mhz on him. It also depends on what OS you're using; Unix is a lot faster than the Mac OS or NT.
I haven't seen the cinema display, but I assume they're using the same kind of LCD tech that's in their existing flat-panel displays, and boy are they ever sweet. Anyone who lives near a computer store, get down there and look at Apple's new flat-panel screens. They just totally blow away any ideas you may have had about LCD's being blurry and dark. This thing looked better than my sony CRT. And then go wander over to the wintel section and look at (for example) Viewsonics flat-screen. Doesn't look so cool anymore, all of a sudden. If only Apple would stop crippling all their great hardware with MacOS... if only... sigh.
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Permedia III
Don't get me wrong - I'm not shitting on Linux. Linux is a wonderful operating system, one that I've used in the past. If somebody asked me about setting up a server, I would certainly recommend one of the Unices (Linux, *BSD, or one of the commerical Unices), the specific one being dependent on their needs. If anybody told me they were running BeOS as a server for more than a handful of home users, I'd probably laugh at them.
I've simply found that *I*, personally, can get things done faster and with less hassle using BeOS as opposed to Linux, contradicting the original poster who claimed (paraphrasing) that no one could ever find BeOS more productive than Linux.
PPC chips were never the problem, the problem is getting new G3 chips to work. And what did IBM do??? They released specs to PPC so people can build new PPC computers? Is there a major manufacturer that just suddenly sprang up out of nowhere and mass produced and sold these new PPC computers? No, there wasn't, and we have yet to see if there ever will be. So don't say that Be's claims are invalid because IBM did something that has so far caused no effect on the PPC market. That's just kind of silly. I like the BeOS, and I hope that there is a place for it in the current market. I understand that it doesn't have the userbase or strength of linux yet, but as long as Be Inc. continues to work on it, I will support it. Although I would really love to use BeOS on one of those pretty new G4's. =(
Must have hurt when they sewed your mind shut. The G4 is SMP capable. Did you see dual-PIII's on the market before the first PIII shipped? I think not.
Meanwhile, you can call me "Rip" if you like. At least my user name doesn't profess to perform fellatio on theater-range ballistic missiles. ;)
:)
:) Actually, it comes from my early Quake days when I played with the keyboard becuase my mouse wouldn't work. So I got beat up. A lot.
and another undisclosed sum to settle a lawsuit. However, Apple had over a billion in cash sitting around at the time, plus assets that could have been liquified.
The 150 mill didn't do squat. It didn't change anything one way or the other.
...buy a shaker of salt. Maybe even a 5lb bag.
:)
Now, if the specs can get out so Linux and Be can make their oses *fully support* the g4, great. But of course, Apple won't share its toys. They have a burning bridge mentality. Sad.
As for "8X faster!" or whatever ridiculous claim they're making (I don't even have to check, its up there for sure a la G3) you don't think that'll show up in any app that means shit? One filter for photoshop or a looped benchmark all in risc microcode doth not count. Try something like...o...quake3 when its finished? Among other things
Anonymous Coward, get it?
Anonymous Coward, get it?
Not bad spelling, bad typing
...g400.
:)
You didn't compre it to that. It would make all your points, and more. Plus, it has higher image quality in 2D and 3D.
The rage is the oldest 'newest' card from any 3D OEM. All the other guys have come out with new stuff, and then some. (nv10 and v4 on horizon)
Anonymous Coward, get it?
Anonymous Coward, get it?
Not bad spelling, bad typing
Don't be so sure... Mac OS X (yet to be released) and Mac OS X Server (already shipping), as well as Darwin OS (the open source basis of OS X) are based on BSD Unix, which would most likely make it very easy to port it. I have read that some Unix programs could even be run under OS X with a simple recompile. So if they did it under Mac OS X Server or Darwin OS, it would have been possible for them to use those tests.
Why on earth would you waste silicon translating CISC instructions to RISC instructions? Use that space for somethign valuable like cache.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
I personally dislike MacOS, so this would instantly become a Linux box. As such, does anyone know if they're good for that? Any glaring software deficiencies?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
This is a link to the cinema display......
This thing looks SOOOO awesome... I might die of envy right now...
RateVegas.com - Vegas Reviews
Was Apple just /.ed? I think so. Perfect timing.
__ While you sleep, I creep... gaining ground by the week.
Is it just me or is Apple's site about the slowest site on the net? I think it's only been up about half the times I've tried to go there...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
The G4s aren't the only thing apple announced at Seybold SanFran. The also unvailed their Cinema Display [22 inch LCD] as well as OS9 shipping in October.
Cool stuff: New Colours! The G4s are "silver and graphite"
Also bundled in Airport functionality [actually a card]
It's like christmas in August!!!
Blocklevel: Practical Information Architecture
I've sold my soul to intel, but I want one of those displays!
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Quit your whinin'. Since when is "there's a new processor available for the Mac, and it's fast" equitable to "Gee whiz, the case sure looks neat!"
Negative knee-jerk reactions to everything with the word "Apple" in it doesn't make you look too smart.
TheRegister has an article comparing the specs of the different boxes. The 400 Mhz machine will not support some of the key features of the 450 or 500. That is why it is available now and price competive with Pentiums and G3s.
They are still getting the bugs out of the SawTooth Mobo, maybe when they have produces enough of them they will come out with a SawTooth based G4/400.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
All in all, they're a happier group at the moment than most Amiga users. :-(
TedC
Agree. Intel has even worse drivel..
But as for SMP support, my original comment was that with PC architecture we have it HERE and NOW. It there is also some pretty good competition in this area. So Apple's bragging about "supercomputer on a slice of silicon" is what it is - irresponsible bragging.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
You saved me alot of typing =)
Not significantly.
$1507 vs $1599 is the difference in price of a USB mouse and keyboard vs non USB, or name brand over cheap, or the difference in price due to hard disk manufacturers.
A $200 difference is cheaper; $1307.
A $92 difference is not big enough for me to put up with making a system from scratch when Apple has already done it for me.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Quick corrections:
DVD-RAM is standard on the faster models.
The standard Ultra2SCSI on those faster machines is much faster than Firewire. Firewire is capable of 400Mbs, but that doesnt mean the drives are. =)
Actually, I don't have a desk chair at home right now, so I'm using an old tower case instead. Works pretty well.
"Be Happy or Die." -- AoN
This machine isn't for you! It's for me! They aren't marketing it with you in mind, as well they shouldn't!
If they claim to be twice as fast as the fastest PIII and if they hide the fact that this is restricted to Photoshop, they are doing marketing with all PC users in mind. It's as simple as that - period. Nobody (including the original poster) denies they have a fast machine, it's their extremely wrong-leading type of advertising one can criticize.
Umm....the voodoo3 does support 32 bit color.....if it only supported 16 bit color that would be kind of extreme.....it doesn't support 32 bit TEXTURES!!!! much less important....its still rendered in 32 bit color....
Actually, my Mac mouse has four buttons. *grin*
-The Cheese
That's one more reason Linux is great, if Linux becomes the dominant OS for the average user it would most likely be one of the bigger distrobutions, like RedHat or Caldera, in which case the die hard underdogs will simply side with smaller distros or *BSD or build their own thereby keeping them in an elite group.
Hey, it runs MacOS better and faster!
Stop complaining about what it doesn't do because it was never meant to do it.
Its people like you that make my day just a little better than it was before.
well... an easy reply is that if you get oem pricing for nt while buying all that hardware you can get it for around $100... plus, ars technica lists a dual processor Tyan S1832 Tiger 100 for $157. throw those two options together and you've saved about $300, which goes a long way (256Mbytes of memory is one option...)
Well, then there is the top performer Alpha processor as well. Today you can get an Alphaserver DS10 from Compaq for around US$2500.
:-)
(AXP 21264 @466MHz)
SpecInt 24.6
SpecFP 47.9
Once again, Alpha just doesn't play in the same ballpark. And it runs Linux quite well too (not like those PowerMac which are hard to support). Alpha Processors Inc. and Compaq even seem to have a support service for running Linux on those beasts.
If you don't want to shell out the cash, you can still find AXP 21164 from 533MHz to 667MHz:
533HMz: 16.1 SPECint95, 22.5 SPECfp95
600MHz: 18.0 SPECint95, 27.0 SPECfp95
667MHz: 20.8 SPECint95, 32.4 SPECfp95
OK, integer is a lot less sexy, but it's the same price as a Pentium II (at least for the 533MHz version) and noone can touch the floating-point performance, yet.
Moreover, if you insist on having the fastest double-processors micro-computer ever on earth, you can still buy the all-new UP2000 from Alpha Processor Inc (a fully configured system costs around US $6000).
SpecInt 31.8
SpecFP 49.0
...and wait for the coming upgrade to 750MHz, which should have top perfs at around 45 SpecInt and 60 SpecFP
just great, I buy a really fast Intel based platform then Apple and AMD decide to release their new uber-chips. Thats ok, maybe I can play with one of these at school. I really do enjoy the PPC chipset and can't wait until IBM releases to someone besides Apple. But even so, the G4 450 is 1,599$ (US) which is about the same price as a 400mhz G3 was going for about a month ago. I really like what Apple has done this time with giving you alot of options for the box, something that Gateway and Dell learned to do a long time ago. An optional DVD-RAM is great for anyone doing multimedia anything. Lots of extra space for your rendered movies and source video. Then if you want a really fast drive you pick up a FireWire hard drive to plug into it. I really don't think 1,599 is too much to pay for one of these considering the kind of power you're getting, the equivilent P3 system hasn't even been released yet. I am hoping maybe they will up the main bus to 133mhz for a higher memory throughput, 100mhz is fine but it wouldn't be terribly difficult to go a little faster. Apple is really doing things right this time, Steve Jobs had his work cut out for him and I think has performed well, about a year ago I expected Apple to be ready to go out of business by now but they're recording massive revenue.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Oh yeah, you're right I was smoking something.
Shouldn't mix SlashDot and HashPot...
Yeah, I'm a Mac programmer. You got a problem with that?
-- thinkyhead software and media
I think $1000 and $1999 are within the same
order of magnitude as well... but I'd rather pay
$1000. What's your point?
The choice of OS is not the point. It's the
cost of hardware. If anything, I wouldn't bring
up the OS issue here... it just shows how many
more flavors run on x86 than on PPC, and goes
further to show the value of a cheaper system.
Doink.
-WW
--
Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring
it can't be exported to certain countries.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
>>(who whether they were good or not, sapped apple's money, especially since how is apple supposed to compete with companies that apple is paying for the R&D budget of, leaving the other companies with little to spend money on besides advertising and tweaking?)
Increase the licensing fee to the cloners. Problem solved. The ones who can pay it will, the ones who can't pay it won't. I'm not concerned with what's good for "Apple" I'm conscerned with what's good for the platform. Steve Jobs is definately not that.
Getting rid of the floppy doesn't bother me, it's obsolete anyway, but eliminating ADB and SCSI are the two things that have caused me to decide not to buy a new mac system. I'll buy my old mac from work and put a G3/4 card into it before I buy one of the new Blue and White or Charcoal and Graphite macs.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
If stock perfomance is all your concerned with, think about buying into Micro$oft. If ethics don't matter to you Apple isn't the only company that does well.
While I'm at it, Hitler did a wonderful job of building the German economy, many people loved him too. As long as you don't mind sacrificing a few Jews along the way, I suppose that you can side with anyone to make a buck.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There is a pretty good reason why there a no AGP drivers yet for Macintosh AGP cards... There aren't any currently shipping Macs with AGP.
Don't you think a couple companies will write drivers when Macs have AGP?
G4(450, 500+)= AGP
8Ball iMac= AGP
iBook= AGP
Next Rev of Powerbook= AGP
Next Rev of Servers(the multiprocessor ones)= AGP
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Hey it worked for SUN
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
I'll ignore the obvious troll-like qualities to your response and attempt to engage in some sort of meaningful dialoge.
LinuxPPC is not in the same boat as Be. LinuxPPC has the excuse in the event of a lawsuit that they are simply repackaging an existing operating system, that they are only contributing to a community-designed operating system. Be doesn't have that excuse. If they reverse-engineer the specs, they could conceivably be held legally accountable. Further, unofficial specs also leave them at the whim of Apple (as is the case with LinuxPPC as well) - if Apple decides to change something that the MacOS understands, but screws all alternative OSes... oops.
The common complaint is, why doesn't BeOS just use the Linux base? Because most likely that would contaminate the BeOS source base with GPL code. Be doesn't want to open-source their operating system yet, so they can't incorporate GPL source into the underlying operating system.
As for BeOS has on Linux, ease of use, ease of installation, ease of configuration, GUI speed (after trying both GNOME and KDE, BeOS is by far the more responsive performer - although non-DEs, like the "basic" window managers, are on par with it), the SMP tricks (some of which you simply can't do on the Linux kernel, because of the differences in kernel architecture), pervasive multithreading, a clean, intelligent, and simple C++ API, built-in GUI scripting, built-in standard , powerful messenging system, the MIME-based file system (of which GNOME has, been virtually no applications use), and lastly, a 64-bit journalled file system with attributes that can handle very significantly larger file and volume sizes than even XFS.
Yes, however, hardware support is lacking. On the other hand, my machine (as listed below) works perfectly with absolutely no problems. The situation is analogous to how Linux used to be a few years ago - you'd have to buy Linux-compatible hardware, instead of buying hardware and pretty much knowing it would work.
Dual Pentium-II/400
384M PC100 Memory
Matrox G200 8Mb AGP
Creative Labs Voodoo2
SB Live! Value
3Com 3C905B-TX Fast Ethernet adapter
Intel PRO/100+ Fast Ethernet adapter
10.2G Maxtor UDMA HDD
8.4G Western Digital UDMA HDD
Iomega Internal Zip Drive (100M)
40x UDMA CD-ROM Drive (generic)
"While the rest of the world Slumbers"... are you referring to the fact that all Apple boxes since 1984 have been Y2K compliant? Or the fact that eventually Apple won't need the "monotonous wheezing" that is Micro$oft and move on?
BTW: It wasn't Bill Gates that made Apple arise from its ashes... it was the buyout of Power Computing's kickass 604e & the return of der führer, Herr Jobs.
No, the ATI's are infact lowend gamming & consumer OEM cards. They are not the sort of thing Apple should be subjecting it's high end graphics customers to. It's simply not that sort of product.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
http://www.mackido.com/Hardware/AltiVecVsKNI.html
'nuff said.
Not true. *() implies a method call since it implies paramaters; so this is definetly the form object.method(), and the original poster is right, this is obviously fake code written by someone who wasn't thinking about how real code is written.
You are dumb, aren't you? Sure I have seen
dual PIII boards BEFORE PIII shipped. It uses the same MB that PII.
Any ETA for dual G4 from Apple, wise ass? And what about OS support for it? It will take a while. PC will have i64 and SMP 1Ghz Athlons long before that.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
sheesh, ye mac freaks are such... freaks! i said i liked the hardware, is that not enough for you?! i have a friend who is a TOTAL mac fanatic and works in testing at Apple so i probably know more about COOL MAC STUFF than the average Linux punter and have put up with his ranting for years because i like the guy. i was seriously thinking about buying an imacII and making it dual boot yellow dog linux but with snide remarks like the one from your fawning sub-poster compatriot I may not bother. believe it or not i would not use it for "color correction, proofing, pre-production, graphics arts, and desktop publishing" i would use it for coding and surfing. cheers mac fans, its been swell
Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
The discussion that follows this thread is nice....people stopped flaming (mostly)...
I'm lucky enough that I had to wait to get the loan for My new computer. I was going to get a 350MHz G3, but I managed to get everything I wanted AND a 400MHz G4.
There is another "real-world" bench toted on the site...or maybe an article. At the unveiling of the system, Jobs ran SETI-at-home on both the 600 PIII and the 500 G4...the G4 was makeing 3 to 4 graphs per every one of the PIII...Not bad I'd say.
~Donald / Just RTFM
Hmmmm. Didn't realize I was "falling for the pro-Linux hype," just bemoaning the state of software bloat in general -- I detest having to buy faster, bigger processing and disk hardware to support the latest applications. Meanwhile, I'm never getting the kind of display technology I need at an affordable price.
By the time I'm ready to take a deep breath and plunge into Linux for a productivity platform, I figure OpenLinux et al. will be mature & robust enough that I won't be beating my brains out as long as my hardware's nothing too exotic.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
I stand corrected, *if* they've begun consolidating all those damned add-ons into the System and Finder executables themselves. Trying to keep track of all them pieces-parts is major distraction, too.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
I stand corrected, *if* they've begun consolidating all those damned add-ons into the System and Finder executables themselves. Trying to keep track of all them pieces-parts is major distraction, too.
Meanwhile, you can call me "Rip" if you like. At least my user name doesn't profess to perform fellatio on theater-range ballistic missiles. ;)
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
As for OS X, that's going to be BSD Unix (free), gcc for G4 (free) with a Mac GUI ($) and an updated version of the NextStep API. I suspect the full development tools will not appear in the OS X Client release, I hope they'll be free (in the best possible sense), but I'll settle for cheap with source code available (if not Open Source in some form).
Mac OS 8.6 (the current shipping version) is very stable. I just finished a support contract with a Fortune 100 company, and I had our 8.6 machines running perfectly (with the exception of the occaisonal packet storm on the network and of course well all know Lotus Notes isn't (very) stable on the Mac (although 4.57b cuts the random crashes to a minimum, and those probably reflect insufficient error checking given the unstable TCP/IP environment at that site).
A few notes on the 'benchmarks' shown during the keynote. Photoshop is a valid single-app benchmark, since tens of thousands of people spend all day using it. I expect the G4 acceleration to be similar in scope to the MMX or PIII acceleration. Watch the canned video of the tests, they show marked superiority in Photoshop, QT video compression (admittedly an Apple technology and almost certainly more optimized for a G4 than a PII), SETI@HOME and some scientific analysis (3D rendering of Mars Observer data).
I'm looking forward to Intel's rebuttal of these tests, and I'd also like to see someone run some of Intel's tests in the PIII performance area (PIII benchmarks). Speaking of whom, Apple does have the specs of Intels' tests online here. Note that without the Convolve test, their average is 2.24 times faster than a PIII (adjusted for MHz) instead of 2.94. Still...
Intel's explanation of the tests Apple ran are available here.
Interestingly (and some will find suspiciously), these tests aren't in the PIII benchmark area. Of course, most of those that are use Microsoft software and so aren't really suitable for testing Apple systems. If anyone optimized the test suite for the G4, it would have been Motorolla, since AltiVec is their baby.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
"So, if you compare Apple to their closest commercial OS competitors (Microsoft and Be), they've made further steps than them. The problem with open source is for a company to not end up losing sales with movement to it, especially if they begin releasing the product for free."
Very true, but it is always important to remember that Apple makes its money selling hardware, not software. The first 6 system releases were free. It was only 8 years ago that Apple started charging for new versions of the OS, and the latest version is always included with a new Mac.
The software market could 'die' an open-source death tomorrow, and Apple would probably just sell even more boxes as a result. Microsoft, on the other hand...
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Here's a Motorola link with spec scores, MIPS, and lots of other G4 info:
d uctor/cpu/7400.html
http://www.mot.com/SPS/PowerPC/products/semicon
Not really. The machine I have my eye on is a dual P-III 450 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 20 GB HD, G400 AGP, etc etc.
Price? about $1300 from here. Of course, this place doesn't give you snazy colored boxes.
uh huh... so lack of adb and scsi prevents you from upgrading to a new G3/G4.
According to the Apple store, you can add scsi for 50 bucks. If it's that important to you, there is a nice option.
And how many ADB devices do you have? I can count 3 that I have, keyboard, mouse, and joystick. But I'll gladly take USB over ADB any day of the week.
Oh, and if ADB is important, buy a B&W G3. It still has a ADB port.
By the way, this sort of nit-picking is bordering on insane. Were you one of those who complained that there wasn't a 680x0 chip in your new fang-dangled PPC Mac? Or how about that your new Mac II made your investments in Monochrome monitors go bad?
It's progress. Thank god we don't have to keep every obsolete piece of technology ever pursued at Apple. We'd probally still be on 680x0 machines with NuBus and the old style keyboard connector from the original Mac. Apple has done a wonderful job in moving the platform forward. You can't satisfy everyone with every decision, but Apple has tried to make the best of it anyway.
dennis
Actually, if you are going to pay the extra money for a G4, doesn't a G400 make more sense? They have much better 3D speed (almost that of a TNT 2 Ultra plus the latest GL drivers make it faster than a TNT 2 Ultra in GL) , much better quality (3D and 2D on the Matrox are unmatched) and at only a slight price increase ($100 at most) The Rage 128 doesn't even outperform a TNT for most things, and the GL driver doesn't seem to support AGP.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Your are kidding right? ATI is and always has been crap. The Voodoo2 came out a month after the ATI, and the G4 came out long after the V3. The TNT beats the Rage 128 anyday (except in 32 bit), but nVidia ha better things to do then write drivers for Apple. The gamer market pushes technology foreword, so I don't see what your thing against gamers comes from. If it wasn't for Carmak, Apple would never even have put GL in MacOS. And yes, you can write drivers for an OS before the next chip comes out. My Riva 128 drivers were written long before the PIII came out yet, my 128 works fine on the P3. The driver interfaces with the OS, not the CPU. (Unless the wanted to add AltiVec.) Face it, the reason people don't make drivers for Apple is because until recently, Apple had no gaming community (Nanosaur yeah!!!!) gamers push the advancement of the low end hardware, thus no low-end 3D hardware on Apple. (no high end or midrange, because those people use Unix or NT)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
>>uh huh... so lack of adb and scsi prevents you from upgrading to a new G3/G4.
Yes. Apple has just lost another customer. I'll buy an old PowerMac with a G3/G4 upgrade, but I'm not buying a blue and white. Or I'll get one of those generic PPC MBs and get a CPU to run Mac OS 8.0, I think I still have a copy around here somewhere that was designed for CHRP machines.
>>According to the Apple store, you can add scsi for 50 bucks. If it's that important to you, there is a nice option.
Great, a way for Apple to milk more money out of their loyal supporters.
>>And how many ADB devices do you have? I can count 3 that I have, keyboard, mouse, and joystick. But I'll gladly take USB over ADB any day of the week.
Unimportant. Some dongled software products need an ADB dongle to run, not everyone wants to run out and pay $1000 for the new version of the software when the old version still gets the job done. USB doesn't have the kind of integration that ADB had. It was a hardware reset to three finger salute a mac with an ADB keyboard. A tight lockup on a USB keyboard equipped mac means that you have to reach down and hit the interrupt button.
On an Imac it's easier to unplug it than to hit that button.
So we've got Keyboard, Mouse, Joystick, Dongle, Wacom Tablets, Bar Code readers, and even though I don't remember the name there is a home automoation device that used ADB.
>>By the way, this sort of nit-picking is bordering on insane.
Insanity is believe that Apple can do no wrong. That every boneheaded decision that the Apple executives make is insanely great.
>>Were you one of those who complained that there wasn't a 680x0 chip in your new fang-dangled PPC Mac?
No, I was just pissed off that the Machine that Apple told me was PowerPC upgradeable really wasn't. Yes, I was an original Performa 550 owner, I got rid of the thing before the FTC and apple settled on a remedy.
>>It's progress. Thank god we don't have to keep every obsolete piece of technology ever pursued at Apple. We'd probally still be on 680x0 machines with NuBus and the old style keyboard connector from the original Mac.
The 68060 was supposedly a pretty sweet chip. If 680x0 technology had been persued there'd have been advances in that platform. I don't fault Apple for taking the PPC path, because they included an '0x0 emulator.
There was and is nothing wrong with the nubus architecture. A G3 equipped 8100 can (under certain circumstances) outperform a factory configured beige G3.
>>Apple has done a wonderful job in moving the platform forward. You can't satisfy everyone with every decision, but Apple has tried to make the best of it anyway.
Even though I understand that one man can't make adifference in this case, I'm done buying Apple hardware. (you're talking to someone who has been a part of a one man boycott of nintendo since 1994)
When Steve Jobs is ousted, maybe I'll reconsider.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Throw things like Beowulf into the mix and the sorts of things that Apple has been showing off no longer really need a single box to be that powerful. Even without Beowulf, rendering is the sort of thing that parallelizes quite well with a collection of cheaper, less powerful machines.
$3500 buys a lot of machine for a PII based renderfarm these days.
Cool! That sounds great! Has Adobe released Photoshop for Beowulf yet? Oh, the Gimp, that does CMYK right? Can I edit & composit digital video on it?
Today's lesson is: Use the right tool for the job.
cheers,
Matthew Reilly
OS X server is already out, and OS X client will be out within 6 months. Preemptive multitasking, fast modern memory management, SMP... with all the advantages of the current Mac OS GUI and API's. By early 2000, we can expect multi-processor boxen running 600 MHz+ G4's, running OS X. They're gonna be the fastest desktops on the planet. If I had some money to invest, I'd buy Apple stock.
Poor assumption. Real chips can retire more than one operation/cycle. That's one of the things that makes a superscalar chip superscalar...
-jon
Remember Amalek.
which is why they're calling it a supercomputer - it meets or exceeds the qualifications for a 'supercomputer' by the us gov't, so it can't be exported to 'sensitive' countries. anyone have the exact specs/requirements for this dubious honor? and are there any other shipping desktop machines that meet it?
as the new tv commercial (watch ABC tonight) says - "pentium-based systems.. they're harmless"
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
bah. it can do 4 at a time, but each one still takes one cycle.
KMFDM Sucks
I'm sure the G4 is an excellent processor, but there must be some drug Apple users take that makes them believe benchmarks. Nobody in the short history of computing has flaunted inflated benchmarks as shamelessly as Apple.
TedC
While maybe a little crude, there is a reasonable point here. The hardware looks promising (mainly, the processor since the other components aren't really unique to Apple machines). I wish I had the choice of hardware platform and OS. Yes, there's LinuxPPC. But, I can't (yet) use Linux to do everything I do. Nor do i want to be forced to use Linux. It's all about choice. The problem is, the software has to exist. It would be nice to pair your choie of OS with hardware.
GET OVER THE FLOPPY WOULD YA!!!!!
If you love legacy hardware soooo much, go get yourself a nice XT with a 8 1/2 floppy drive and 2400 baud modem.
GET OVER THE FLOPPY!
If Apple wants to market to the top end of the PC user market, they'll have to sacrifice some "friendliness" for utility.
How do you PPC Linux people get anything done, anyway?
I'll wait for linux to run on the G4 first thank you very much. That, or MacOS X
Hasdi
Take a good look at the windows registry and tell me again about Apple's "OS incompetence". Apple's main problem is that Steve Jobs and most of it's big cheeses have been absolute dickheads. Apple's engineers are some of the best in the industry.
Apple has always brought new technology to the forefront and delivered it to the masses before the others. Namely the indroduction of the new 3.5" floppy in the 80's, the CD Rom, power management, RISC processors in computers for consumers, the GUI, Apple was supporting MKlinux before the media blitz, the elimination of the obsolete 3.5" floppy in the 90's, multiple monitors on one comuputer,,,,,, the list goes on and on.
Apple is run by a group of mental midgets no doubt, but their technology is and has always been top notch. They should have their advertising exec lined up against a brick wall and machinegunned, they've been screwing the pooch ever since the "1984" ad.
Even though I'm using an Apple machine right now, I'm not planning to purchase another one again because of the changes Steve Jobs has made to the core technology. Maybe he's on another acid flashback.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
1 - Emulation went away in OS8... They re-wrote the chunks of the OS that were still being handled in emulation in either 8 or 8.1... Yes, there is still an emulator as part of the OS, but that's there only to support 680x0 apps... If you're using native applications, you're not at all involved in emulation
2 - The ATI Rage 128 is a very fast chip... Probably not as fast as that other thing announced here today, but it's still damn fast.
3 - They're marketing it to their core audience: creative professionals, scientists, etc...
4 - Be's mostly (if not entirely) pulled away from developing future versions of the BeOS for PowerPC's...
IBM recently released specs on motherboards capable of handling a G4. G4 + Linux = Cray kicker?
BTW, MacOS Rumors quotes Steve Jobs from his keynote, mentioning that a G4 machine running a CD fresh copy of MacOS 9 can process a block of SETI data in 6 hours. That's a lot of power in a US$1500 machine.----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Hmmm, I wonder how much that screen will cost.
Or maybe I just missed it on the web site.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Or wait, haven't you ever seen those cardstock inserts Intel sticks in almost every computer weekly?
. . . geez, talk about selective memory . . .
again, business schmisness.. there's a reason they announced this at a publishing convention. these are for the apple-niche: publishing/creative/graphics professionals.
i agree, the os leaves something to be desired, but what can you do?
"realistically, i can build a machine cheaper and more efficiently for 1/3 the cost"
i assume you meant one that's faster, rather than being redundant. i'll challenge you to do that. maybe with a nice fat cluster of cheapo celerons.. unless you get the new ones that won't let you SMP.. or a beowulf cluster..
but are those really the solutions that the "business market is looking for" either?
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
If you were following standard practice, you should have used worksFor
:)
but it's your program.
Civ CTP is awesome! Thanks Loki!
Romans 10:9-10
will it run linuxppc? because, no matter how fast os8 or 9 are, the real processing power won't be accessible until osX or linux are pumping it for all it's got.
/. apple icon have to change? now that the systems are 'graphite' instead of blueberry...
It almost certainly will. The LinuxPPC folks typically get new machines running in a matter of weeks. It might take a little longer to get decent AltiVec support, but even without that, these machines can hold their own against x86 boxen. And OS X server is out NOW, and I'd guess that Apple's already got it running on these machines. Again, altiVec support might not be ready quite yet, but it will come.
2: will the
They use a variety of colors. The iMac is five different flavors, the iBook have two of the same flavors, and the Powerbooks have white Apple logos. I say stick with blue.
Can you really get a K7 motherboard? I thought they weren't on sale to the public yet (despite the availability of the processors).
What you don't understand is that for the target audience of this machine, artists, 3D modellers, publishing folks, web designers, Photoshop tests *are* usefull benchmarks. I spend all day in Photoshop, and let me tell you, I don't care ONE BIT about SEPCthis or ThatMark, those don't tell me anything about it. But doing Photoshop filters twice as fast, addressing 1.5 gigs of memory, now THAT's usefull data!
This machine isn't for you! It's for me! They aren't marketing it with you in mind, as well they shouldn't! You won't buy one no matter what, but I might! I personally don't care if it runs BeOS, LinuxPPC, or whatever. I want a machine that runs Photoshop. (and a handfull of other high end apps)
I hope this helps you understand this machine (and Apple in general) a bit.
Rejemy, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.
The apple store says "400 Mb/s memory bandwidth for the cheapest system. Sounds crazy to me. Is that sdram at 50 MHz or what????!!!!!!!!!
Also about this crap about the processor being many times faster than other is only valid for applications specifically suited for AltiVec, but o.k. that is good for something. F.ex. memory bandwidth intensive applications will suffer under the 800 Mb/s limitation (i assume the 400 Mb/s is bogus).
A year ago I thought getting an alpha would be great. Run linux on the thing and everything runs just fine... nope. All you people saying you are going to go out and get one of these things and just run linux are going to have a big surprise. First problem is alot of source will not compile or if it does it won't work correctly on your system (alpha still doesn't have a web browsers yet), next when you go out and get your copy of wordperfect or star office for linux, its not going to work for you. So you'll be sitting there with a computer that doesn't even have a decent word processor. If you people want a real computer get a real computer, Ever heard of Solaris? beats the hell out of linux any day. Linux is written by a bunch of kids all over the place, Solaris is written by compitent programmers getting paid to program. If you want a real computer don't waste your money on a Apple, go out and get a Sparc. Or at least an alpha, people at least make binaries for alpha. ok.. flame away for me making fun of your baby linux operating system, becuase we all know linux is great, linux is wounderfull, linux is.... blah blah blah
Gee, that's odd. I find BeOS to be significantly easier for me to accomplish my everyday tasks in than Linux, and less intrusive on my computer experience to boot.
Then again, perhaps it's because I simply want to get things done without the hassle of struggling with the operating system - something that Linux, despite all of it's window managers, desktop environments, and pretty installation programs has yet to master.
The 400 shipping now is Yikes, the 450 and 500 available in october will be Sawtooth. Definatly wait for Sawtooth!
We just cancelled the order. Turns out that, even though we ordered first, we don't get it until *October*. WTF? Jobs said that these systems are available today. We were bummed enough that we didn't feel we that it was worth buying one yet.
Ah, well.
There are TWO new G4 boxes coming. The one you can buy now does not have a AGP slot in it. The ones coming in a couple of months do (450 and 500) versions.
The details are kind of short at the moment but take a gander at: http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n584 18 for some official info and http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/9908/power-ma c-g4.shtml for some higher level commentary.
Once again Jobs et. al. are oversimplifying the model descriptions so there is only one name for two different boxes. I imagine the PCI box will quickly die off once the AGP box is in full production.
As for as ATI cards go, you can't look at the G4 boxes in isolation from the iMac. Since Apple is usingATI chips there, they'll go with ATI chips in G4. Simply for purchasing economies of scale. Secondly, it is a two way street. If these other graphics makers made Apple an offer they couldn't refuse they'd probably switch. Apple isn't trying to market the ultimate gamer's box.
[ Hopefully that isn't a "winmodem" in the new models. I wouldn't get one of those internals anyway. ]
Oh Jesus. Do we have to go throught the whole Be is evil/Apple is evil thing yet again?
Actually, they do quote ByteMarks on the page. And now there's new tactic of taking Intel's benchmarks, and throwing out the scores that don't show what they want them to show.
Taken from the bottom of the page:
"The 500MHz G4 Processor, with Velocity Engine, is an average of 2.94 times as fast as the fastest Pentium III (600MHz)
Based on BYTEmark integer index processor scores."
I sincerely doubt that the G4 SpecInt and SpecFP (which they don't quote strangely enough) is twice as fast as the Pentium III's.
OTOH, that LCD monitor sure looks great. I wonder where and when I can get one of those - and more importantly how much will it cost.
Low-end $1500, Mid-range, $2500, high-end, if memory serves, $3500. Low-end comes with 64MB of RAM. Mid-range, a DVD-ROM and 128MB. High-end, a DVD-RAM and 256MB. All of them have obscenely large hard drives.
Actually, the assumption is poor because it is an orev-estimation, not an under-estimation.
G4s can DELIVER up to 4 FP ops per cycle, but each operation takes more than a cycle to execute.
This might look like playing around words, but the fact that you can calculate more than one operation in a cycle doesn't mean that any one operation gets executed faster.
the only parameters to the execution time are clock speed and pipeline depth (assuming the latter is constant).
If it's anything like the G3, it'll be great at integer math (which I don't use that much) and kinda mediocre at floating point (which I do). If I were given one, it would instantly be loaded with the most convenient Linux distro at hand.
If you have the gumption to put together a renderfarm then more power to you. Find the best bang/buck and buy all you can afford. My guess is that you'll be buying some of the soon to be announced G4 clone systems. Especially if IBM/Moto (Or whoever it is now) partners up with Cygnus and get's altivec support into gcc.
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
I guess you never attended a Computer Architecture class???
Polluted RISC??? err didn't you mean PA-RISC? hacked together? Err, again... look at the Pentium class processors for clues about how to keep hacking the same old architecture until it looks like they put it together glueing pieces of Cadence designs with magic glue...
Array of small RISC chips==Very huge board...
Come on, I don't have a G3/G4 but the architecture is CLEARLY superior to the x86 architecture...
ZoeSch
I hate to agree with davecrazy but...
Can you say Hackintosh ? The G4 is made for cracking long encryption keys. Anybody have an estimate for how fast this thing will crack 128-bit keys ?
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Silly MacVocate, only seeing that part of the argument or those contemporary aspects of the competition that don't threaten your rather skewed view of your pet OS.
Photoshop isn't the only graphics package available. Others will parallelize quite well on NT and Maya has even announced their renderer for Linux.
You also ignored the bit about Beowulf not being necessary for a renderfarm, even a serious one that renders for film.
The fact remains that people have been using loosely coupled collections of less powerful machines to do SERIOUS rendering without Apple for quite some time.
This machine likely wont send those who actually do run renderfarms running to Apple.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Jobs said Apple had the biggest(I'm assuming the deal with Samsung helped them out).
I can't believe that in this day and age, people just don't make a cross-over cable, especially if they have a mac. It's just too easy and too fast. floppy disks and sneakernet is just too much hassle. And for the price of the floppeis and the drive, I can get a hub and cables. Hook up even more computers. This floppy arguement must really stop. The only thing a floppy is good for anymore is to boot that windows computer when it's crapping out...and even that use is fading. Try a zip even, or an imation superdrive, still I argue the network is the way to go.
Oh the humanity...let it die in peace.
The prevailing thought is that Macs suck. However, the G4 is being dragged into unfairly. The G4 is not married to the mac architecture. In any other case you guys would be drooling over the specs. AltiVec kicks SSE's ass all over the place. The PIII can issue 4 but only process 2 FPs per sucond using SSE. But it looks as if the G4 should be able to process the 4 floats granted by its 128 bit vector unit, in one cycle. (128/32=4) Add to this a RISC architecture, that is good at spliting ops between multiple pipes (great for matrix math AKA 3D) and a good FPU (descendant of the 604e instead of the 603 that the G3 was based on.) The 604e was and still is an FP powerhouse. The 603 was a cheap consumer chip while the 604 was used in the high end. In any case, these chips look to kick ass, and remember MacOS X is just around the corner. Besides, this time they actuall used real programs. Go to Motorola's website, G4 with AltiVec blows x86 away. My last comment is that I am not a mac users, in fact I can't stand apple. But if I had the jingle, I would buy a G4 right away. (And load what? this great chip has a choice of LinuxPPC (no media support), MacOS (buggy as hell and half emulated), and MacOS X beta (a server OS and still in beta).
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I think I saw something like $3999 when it ships later. look here as I think it was on MacCentral that I saw that.
ROFL!!!!!!! Well done!!!
why is it that so many people are 'anti-appleist'? anyone have a link to a site that explains why? ( i dont care if its pro-apple or anti-apple )
"some people have too much freedom" - george dubya bush, facist, err republican presidential hopeful and domain name squ
UCLA built a cluster of Macs. Check it out here .
I never thought I would see the day when people would be crying foul for not benchmarking a single processor PPC system with a SMP x86 system. As far as cost is concerened, reading some of these posts makes me wonder if /.'ers aren't some of the cheapest bastards on the planet. Oh well, I guess computers are like the automobile industry. I mean, Ford is still selling Escorts.
Wakko Warner wrote:
..his original point, that the Mac OS sucks, is still valid.
Only in so far as all operating systems suck.
Nothing's good at everything, MacOS isn't good for what you want, that doesn't make it universally bad. Even in a web production company I know well, where everything's done in ASP and served on NT (the 17/6 server!), all three graphics guys use Photoshop on macs for a good reason. They're better for that.
Quibbling about an absolute that is inherently impossible is silly.
Do you have a
Well well, apple says G4 kicks ass... apperantly not with macos, which I would even kick away for win3.11 - but I hope for some real Operating-Systems :-)
:-/
I hope the G4 will continue the earlier success of the PPC-CPU, because the G3 terribly SUCKS.
My standard-tests (bzip2, make-ing and using, pov-ray) showed a Celeron-433 to be ca. two times faster than a G3-266) - a ppc604e-180 was faster than a G3-266
But the independent benchmarks for the G4 do not look to powerfull at all. Not bad, hey, even very nice, but not kicking ass. Apple may state that the fastet G4 quite beats the fastest PentiumIII-Xeon, but they shouldn`t compete with others, like K7, Alpha.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Yes, I also noticed the Apple site was a lot slower than usual for a short period of time. Fine now though. And even then, it was still more responsive than Slashdot itself; as is usually the case. Of course, Slashdot doesn't have as much money behind it, don't get me wrong, I don't mind...
"These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others." --Groucho Marx
"Grandmas, children, or artists"
Do you know how _huge_ that market is?
-awc
There's rack-mounts available, but not from Apple, I think you have to buy that stuff fm 3-rd party (don't remember the name of the company - maybe DayStar?) Then scoop the guts out of the hated Apple case, put them in the rack-mount case.
SMP is coming, be patient grasshopper. It's now an OS issue, not a CPU issue (G3 had some problems with SMP - G4 does not).
I'm not sure if THIS G4 is what I've read about, but I've read that some G4's are planned with multiple cores on the same die, hows that for SMP?
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It also costs slightly more than what 2 pre-built Dual PIII/500 systems would set you back.
The 500Mhz G4 costs the same as 2Ghz worth of PIII.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
There's rack-mounts available, but not from Apple, I think you have to buy that stuff fm 3-rd party (don't remember the name of the company - maybe DayStar?) Then scoop the guts out of the hated Apple case, put them in the rack-mount case.
SMP is coming, be patient grasshopper. It's now an OS issue, not a CPU issue (G3 had some problems with SMP - G4 does not).
I'm not sure if THIS G4 is what I've read about, but I've read that some G4's are planned with multiple cores on the same die, hows that for SMP?
Anyway, as far as cost/performance goes, doesn't a single Xeon chip cost something like $4k?
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
now THAT is sad.
I can't believe Jobs stated that they are available TODAY! Wait, yes I can. He's done it before. Duh. What a crock. If they aren't available for 30 days then f*cking SAY SO. Then again, resellers may have them before then, so who knows. Ah, doesn't matter to me. I'm broke. = )
I agree with you that it could use more expansion bays and PCI slots, but I think I'd have a difficult time filling it up, at least for my personal use.
Of course, for Apple's market, many were upset with the release of the G3 because it didn't come with SCSI (though it was optional) and they were running out of room to hook in their legacy hardware. But how often is that going to happen? With the daisy-chain functionality of USB and FireWire, I doubt we'll see much of this happening in the future.
As far as floppies, the only use they get now is serving as boot disks on my PC. A floppy-drive-less Macintosh would be just fine with me.
The power of the G3/G4 is in FPU performance, roughly 1.3 to 1.5x (in the real world) faster than the Pentium family equivalents, depending on whose numbers you subscribe to.
This is why Photoshop filtering is faster on PowerPC processors, they're an FPU intensive process. Thus,
Where PPC, through the G3 falls behind the Pentium slightly is interger performance. This, other than secret Os tuning, is likely why non FPU intesive applications get slightly better performance on Intel than PPC at otherwise equivalent clock speeds, IMHO.
Where Intel has fallen behind, is with the G4's Altivec graphics instructions.
--Humpty Dumpty was pushed!
CausticPuppy wrote:
"The G4 will probably be king for publishing, like you said, although that's about ALL it will be best at. That's fine.
With an ATI 3D card, the G4 will never be good at real-time 3D rendering, the video subsystem just doesn't have the horsepower"
Of course, the PC hardware isn't any good for that either. If you want real-time 3D rendering get a nice Unix workstation with a high-end 3D graphics card.
As reported on http://appleinsider.com I'd just like to inform /.'s that the 400 mHz "currently available" model is based on the same motherboard as current G3's, and that the delayed 450, 500mHz configurations are based on the next gen motherboard, Sawtooth.
I'll get one as soon as they get into Canada (1 month).
Question: Did they revamp the keyboard/mouse? Outlook not so good....
This is a 1600x1024 display selling for $4000. SGI has had one of these out for a while now, selling around $2500. It's called the 1600SW flatpanel. So far only works with a NumberNine video card that's not great for 3D, but hey.. if you have $2500 to burn, just use it as your second display. :-)
See the SGI Flatpanel page , and check out places like shopper.com for the best price deal.
I would say... go for it! As long as your willing to deal with having to compile almost everything for yourself, and you don't mind LinuxPPC's RedHatishness.
:D It may be a while, or never, before they do that. Of course, it would still be fast as hell, but Altivec would make it faster than hell. (Oh, would they have to modify GCC? Hmm. That could definitely be a problem...)
Oh, and they optimize it for Altivec.
Still, it looks like a fucking righteous computer!
Moo.
You can't get an SGI with a screen as nice as that 22" LCD.
--
This space unintentionally left unblank.
. . . and good riddance.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Makes keeping the kind of specs needed to get Linux running on high end gear hard to keep secret... SoupIsGood Food
No one is going to dispute that the Mac OS doesn't have excellent multitasking and virtual memory, but that's going to change very soon. Mac OS 9 is getting closer, but Mac OS X should be a killer.
It's BSD with a pretty face!
It's a nice piece of hardware. It's pretty, well-designed, and has a fast CPU. It's also a closed architecture. Apple is making the same mistake it made back in the 80's. I won't buy a new computer that can only run MacOS just because it looks nice. Good luck Apple.
Integer performance is likely about the same, as that was the big strength of the G3's. The FP, performance, however has been substantially improved. I saw a description of this on Apple's web page, which I can't find now, but this is interesting...
The secret of the G4's revolutionary performance is its aptly named Velocity Engine. It's the heart of a supercomputer miniaturized onto a sliver of silicon. The Velocity Engine can process data in 128-bit chunks, instead of the smaller 32-bit or 64-bit chunks used in traditional processors (it's the 128-bit vector processing technology used in scientific supercomputers--except that we've added 162 new instructions to speed up computations). In addition, it can perform four (in some cases eight) 32-bit floating-point calculations in a single cycle--two to four times faster than traditional processors.
Aside from the stupid name change (the "Velocity Engine" is Altivec) That sounds very impressive.
Keep in mind that Apple is re-writing OpenGL, Quickdraw, Quicktime, and other OS components to take advantage of Altivec. So once that code gets out (probably with OS X if not sooner) it will provide dramatic speed-ups of all apps that do intensive graphics operations.
And the non-Alitvec FP unit has also been improved, although I don't remember offhand what was changed.
Give me a RISC processor any day...
Um... The G4 is RISC.
You made a lot of negative comments, but you never actually refuted anything. You never said what was wrong with the machines.
-awc
nopes. sorry. correct installations of *every* mac os upto 8.1 (last one i tried) have btree problems that slowly corrupt the filesystem, bad disk labels, freezes etc etc. its not a 24 x 7 system and will never be (unless you consider mac os x which looks pretty good on paper)..ive had macs since 92 and they *all* crash consistantly..less than windoze but much more than any unix system.
Enough to sell a sh*tload of iMacs.
;)
Why, oh why did they decide to call AltiVec the "velocity engine" ? -- that makes it sounds like a victorian era mechanical technology. But aside from that, I can only drool and dream of OSX Client. I want.
Most of Apple's G4 speed claims this time come from (I believe) the fact that these apps were AltiVec enabled (esp. that Pshop demo), and because the G4's FP kicks ass over the G3. Those apps that aren't optimized would probably see a 50% speed boost at best.
I've been waiting for this chip for a while (still have a 604ev). Maybe when I get back from my honeymoon I can convince the (future) missus that we need one of these
just my blog and pix
An anonymous coward wrote:
"The customer is
always right, and the customers immediately hated the lack of support for floppies in the iMac."
Which neatly explains why Apple has sold over 2 million iMacs, right???
A SPEC_fp number would be interesting, not some integer benchmarks from a computer magazine. I'd use a FFT for a DSP benchmark not for a state of the art microprocessor.
thank you. you make sense. i use win for the stuff it's good for, mac for art and general goofing around and linux for learning about OSes.
nowadays, you need to know how to use all OSes.
This happens every quarter. Whenever The Steve stands before the troops, the site turns into cold molasass.
Just wait for those G4 chips to hit the laptops. From what I read, they run even cooler than the G3 chip. A 500MHZ Powerbook running LinuxPPC, surfing wireless using the airport, while you are sitting on your roof, catching a breeze. Now that is how it is done.
Al
photosMy Photostream
registered user = automatic 1
Hmm? Can't be an intel test suite running on a G4... and ``32 tap X 1024 dim. FIR Filter (bFir)'' doesn't mean anything to me. But what's this?
``Based on BYTEmark integer index processor scores.''
Pretty small font. Pretty much at the bottom of the page. Now I might be missing something here...
But these benchmarks seems to be a couple of integer algorithms. My points regarding this are:
I don't doubt that the G4 is damn fast, but Apple seems to have a preference for beautifying the truth somewhat in these press releases.
ZZ
You speak as if x86 architecture doesn't exist. I've never heard a valid arguement for why an x86 isn't a good work stations. And dispite what you say, linux is a perfectly good desktop operating system.
Maybe linux isn't developed enough for alpha, I can accept that. I highly doubt that you've even investigated Linux on a Mac (which *is* what his article is about).
You obviously have way too much money at your disposal, seriously suggesting that people go out and buy an Alpha or a Sparc for desktop use. I've never seen a "decent word processor" for Solaris, yet you praise it so faithfully.
Maybe you should think about what you're saying before you go out flaming linux.
...
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
> They grabed all the tests Intel used on the PIII
:-)
> to make it look good, ported 'em to G4, ran them
> and beat the shit outta Intel...
You are dreaming.
They didn`t use intels tests, because they don't have access to intels sourcecodes and intel wouldn`t port em either
And while the G4 is not bad, it is NOT twice as fast all the day. Basicly today speed depends on RAM/Cache-Speed and not internal bellsnwhistles.
But the G4 doesn`t bring something new to the bandwidth-arena: half-speed-2nd-Level Cache, 100Mhz-RAM-Access.
And even AV will not widen the RAM-Bottleneck - a P3 fills its 100Mhz/64Bit-Bus to 80% in general.
As the G4 uses a similiar bus - 100Mhz/64Bit - even AV can`t push more data through the bus.
Nothings gets eaten as hot as it was cooked.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
They did use Intel's tests. Nothing in "Intel's tests" says anything about code written by Intel for Intel.
When the G3 first came out and there was all the controversy about the BYTEmark tests that Apple ran showing them to be faster than the P-2, Intel countered that what really mattered was real-world tests and not benchmarks.
So this time they did real-world tests just like Intel said they should. I don't know exactly what apps Intel used in theirs (and I don't care enough to go look for the info), but they've been known in the past to do Photoshop demos that have been set up just right to work well with MMX. I'm guessing that the Photoshop demo pitting the G4 against the P-3 was probably using Intel's settings. But with the ass-whooping Intel got, I wouldn't bet too much on that.
I hear you. BeOS is much faster (even while doing 10 tasks) than Linux doing one. Linux is a waste of time, because of all the tweaking and kernel building a user has to do to keep things optimal, or even just get working. Hell, I even found FreeBSD more friendly than Linux. And BTW, BeOS can use all my hardware, Linux does not even come close.
BeOS has the best file system in the OS world. This is a journaling filesystem, meaning it is next to impossible to corrupt or lose data on.
The BeOS is going to suprise all you Linux geeks over the next year. I am placing my bets that it will be running on the next Nintendo console (based on PowerPC). The system sounds like it will be cool enough to sell many thousands, not to mention that BeOS will be installed onto all those systems.
The BeOS PPC version is not dead, and may never die. The x86 version works great for me, however.
EverCode
What I would like is more slots. The thing just doesn't have enough.
-awc
If you think 30,000 stars is impressive, wait till you see what a $1200 PC with a GeForce-256 can do.
Granted, nVidia's GPU won't do much for calculating the trajectories of stars. But just think what 2000 shiny, environment-mapped space gerbils would look like, instead of 30,000 stars!
The G4 will probably be king for publishing, like you said, although that's about ALL it will be best at. That's fine.
With an ATI 3D card, the G4 will never be good at real-time 3D rendering, the video subsystem just doesn't have the horsepower-- it'll be 2 generations behind the PC hardware coming out in a month! Only AGP 2X?
I'm seriously considering the G4 for Linux in the future though... kickass floating point performance, without the backward technology in the current macOS.
Oh... and I *WANT* that 22-inch screen. Now.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Both.
The 400 MHz model available now is Yikes!, which is basically a Yosemite mobo with the ABD port blocked of. The 450 & 500 MHz models will be Sawtooth.
the right tool is an SGI.
Actually, it's a Rage 128, not a Rage 3D. The Rage 128 isn't as fast as a TNT2 Ultra or G400 MAX, but it's not a POS either.
Toting a file from home to office to classroom and legacy machines is a whole lot easier with a floppy.
Easier? I have such bad luck with floppies that I have to carry three of them with me, and copy the file three times. It's much easier for me to email the file to myself (if it's small enough) and read my email at work.
They don't have to do it, but wouldn't it be nice if they did for a change. The customer is always right, and the customers immediately hated the lack of support for floppies in the iMac.
You're right; the iMac sold horribly. Apple still hasn't recovered from that fiasco. And those new Blue and White G3s? Those were a flop as well.
Raise your hand if the lack of a built-in floppy drive (and unwillingness and/or inability to purchase one of the cheap USB drives) was the main factor preventing you from buying any non-floppy Mac.
I can understand that with Linux, you can built a "root/boot" floppy setup to resurrect a crashed machine, but I think System 7 was the last Mac OS that could fit a System Folder and Disk First Aid (or something comparable) onto a 1.4 MB floppy. Every piece of software I've bought for my Mac in the past two years has come on a CD-ROM.
Sure, Apple was bold in saying "no more floppy drive" but in an increasingly wired world, where disk requirements for software keep growing (well, for most non-open software anyways) the floppy is going the way of the cassette drive.
And good riddance.
Jay (=
So yes, as usual, Apple's selling hardware before it's ready. Amazingly enough, it doesn't seem to hurt them. According to the Seybold keynote, there are 140k pre-orders for the iBook in the United States alone. This is the iBook which was announced at Macworld NY in July, and isn't due to ship until September 15th.
SPEC numbers can be had at here.
SPECint95(est.): 21.4 @ 450Mhz
SPECfp95(est.): 20.4 @ 450Mhz
Those are numbers without counting "Velocity Engine" aka AltiVec, however.
From Motorola:
l eases/7400_pr.html
350MHz: $210
400MHz: $275
450MHz: $355
500MHz: $475
Can someone post P3 and K7 prices in comparison? They must be cheaper, but these look better than I thought.
Here's the document:
http://www.mot.com/SPS/PowerPC/library/press_re
Here's AltiVec info:
http://www.motorola.com/AltiVec/
Sounds real spiffy..... but I have only one question... can it render a webpage faster than an intel based box??? My 400MHZ Mac I hate to say is slower than my 200MHZ pentium at that task........
We can argue endlessly how the G4 stacks up price/performance wise with Intel or AMD chips. One area where the G4 will dominate is in laptop computers. The drastically lower power requirements of the PPC chips vs any of the x86 chips, and the associated decreased demand for heat dissipation, will lead to longer battery life and smaller hardware packages for the same performance.
When can we expect these in either the PowerBooks or any other portable system?
Excuse me while I wipe the drool off of my shirt.
Although my heart burns for a new G4, monetary concerns limit me to the prospect of a nice used G3...and I'm sure others are in the same boat...how much you want for it?
--"You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think."
Cool! That sounds great! Has Adobe released Photoshop for Beowulf yet? Oh, the Gimp, that does CMYK right? Can I edit & composit digital video on it?
Today's lesson is: Use the right tool for the job
umm, maybe a obscure OS named NT might run Photoshop on a dual processor Pentium III?
I know this is /., but Beowolf isn't the only SMP solution. And NT definately not worse buggy than Mac OS, though they both might be bad compared to everyone's favorite zealot trip.
Yes, this is marketing hype. Apple relies on really screwed up benchmarks and worse, they post them partitially. The only CPU benchmark I trust is spec95, and for some reason they haven't posted that.
I disagree with you regarding the iMac comment.
:-)
I think most people didn't care because floppies are less and less relevant for today. The fuss was not made by customers, but rather by the media and the kind of people that read slashdot. If the customer didn't like it, then Apple wouldn't have sold iMacs as well as they have.
Yes, it would be nice to see a floppy drive as an option for the G4, but I think that floppies would be rather irrelevant to the people to which the G4 is being marketed. Graphic design and video editing professionals aren't going to fit much on a floppy disk. If they need to take something home, they can use a Zip drive. (And they most likely already have one.)
But seriously -- not having a floppy drive would be a great excuse NOT to work at home.
You have all missed something really important!
These Sawtooth-based PowerMac G4's (450 and 500 flavour) have RAGE 128-cards with two ports.. one analog as usual, and a digital one specially made for the Cinama Display which is all digital.
I guess that this card can drive 2 separate displays simultaneously, not mirroring.
Give me anon ATI-carn with those specs in high volume at low price. Think not.
- Henrik
- Henrik
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
rofl
AltiVec is what Apple calls the Velocity Engine. I like AltiVec better, but however Apple wants to do it. I'm surprised more aren't discussing AltiVec, it is maybe the G4s most amazing feature.
I'm really amazed that there's not more of a backlash against the pre-order concept. To be fair, the *concept* isn't a problem, but when it's disguised as an available product...that's what gets me.
It seems like a classic Tantalus story: We've got this great new product but you can't have it!
I'd hoped that, since Jobs explicitly said that it was available, that this wouldn't be the case with the G4. Ah, well.
Which one, in the end, is faster, a K7 or G4????????????????
Complaint ca. 1988 - "If you need a mouse, you're a wuss."
Complaint ca. 1995 - "If you don't need a 2-button mouse, you're a wuss."
Complaint ca. 1999 - "If you don't need a 3-button mouse, you're a wuss."
Like others, I have been using a 4-button mouse for years, but...
If this makes you more comfortable, try this 3 button Mac mouse from a well known PC vendor.... Yes, it's Microsoft. Yes, it's 3 buttons, and yes, before you add it to your list of must-haves, it scrolls.
And yes, you can buy a Unix-like MacOS to run on a G4 today, or you can wait for the baby version in January. Or you can download an open-source Unix-like OS for a G4 today for free.
And the hardware costs $1600.
while (os.worksfor(user)) { user.use(os) }
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Gee, imagine that Steve Jobs talks about creating digial media on a Mac when doing the keynote at a conference on digital media...
-jon
Remember Amalek.
If we look at apples reasons for choesing the rage 128 rather than just comparing it with all of the other cards on the market i think it will be a little bit easier to see why it was used
good reason 1) ATI put a lot of effort into the OEM market they dont do fast they dont do big scary bastard cards they do well made easy to install cards at a very good price for system builders
good reason 2) Apple currently only has one target market for these computers, the graphics profesional not the hardcore gamer and for photoshop work (or gimp or Xres or even PSP) nothing comes close to touching the rage 128 for pure image quality for the money
good reason 3) ATI are willing to help apple how many other card companys are willing to spend time with apple to make there products better
**** lying is wrong even for sleeping dogs
Can you tell me where to get them, and exactly what flavor they are?
Sorry, no cigar. The G4 has FPU performance the G3 has nothing. I'll elaborate. The G3 is based on the PPC 603. It was a cheap, consumer processor used in early PowerMacs. The G4 is based on the 604e, a powerhouse of a CPU used in some high end PowerMacs. The 604e makes the fpu of the 603 eat dirt. (Some versions of the 603 don't even have FPUs.) The G4 inherits the awesome FPU of the 604e, instead of the crappy FPU of the 603.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I could image running PPCLinux on the machine. Now if only I could upgrade my Mac IIfx to G4 status...
fear... and stuff
AHA... I could even imagine running a BSD on the machine. No offense of course to the Mac OS... But its too BeOS'y for me
Want Root?
Come on, a Rage 3d in 1999-2000 ? If not a new generation card, like the newly announced NVidia offering, why didn't apple include at least something with a decent speed, like a Matrox G400 ?
No flames, but the G400 has better 2d quality (note -2d-, meaning 1600x1200@75Hz that looks really crisp) and this would go hand in hand with Apple's users main priorities (i.e. Photoshop et al) as well as provide some more juice for Mac gamers.
Oh well
-- the cake is a lie
OK... I had my heart set on AMD Athlon. Was gonna get one around christmas time... but this thing is amazing.... obviously Linux will be optimized for it sooner or later... so I'm thinking.... G4?
Whadya think? Linux on a G4....
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
The object doesn't have to be linux centric (like most of slashdot seems to be.) Could just be a swither object. If you want to switch between os's, what makes more sense, a switch object, with members for each OS, or OS objects, with one member for the switch? And you could always use some ASM code, to reboot into different OSs.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
That's why Motorola's fabs are outside the USA.
And Apple assembles Mac's in Ireland and Singapore.
No problems with exportlaws in those countries.
It is absolutely true that object code will not take advantage of AltiVec until it is rewritten and recompiled. As of yet, I know of no AltiVec-ready QuickTime, because it needs to be rewritten.
Photoshop is one example of a program that does _not_ depend on QuickTime for its functionality. Warnock has made it clear that Adobe takes great pride in the fact that the Photoshop engine is homemade as a portable, in-house platform for graphics.
The AltiVec situation has been hyped more than enough. Application developers are currently performing updates to make use of AltiVec; we'll soon see the actual performance benefits it provides. Until then, it will only be more nauseating to hear so much unfounded speculation.
The best indicator of AltiVec's impact comes from the strategies of Motorola and IBM. The former has shifted PowerPC focus to embedded uses (where AltiVec will be more than marginally useful) and IBM all but ignored the technology for the sake of higher clock speeds, which it says will have a more cost-effective impact than AltiVec at lower clocks.
MJP
Don't try that "protecting the children" shit you people use to keep the tits and bad words off my TV. --Seanbaby
I've known about the G4 for a year...I've been saving my money for that long.
The facts are this: The P3 is a souped-up pentium pro. It's a 4 year old core, whose insides are based on a 20 year old concept. There is RISC stuff on the outside. X86 is a crunchy outside with a chewy center...the G4 is crunchy all the way through.
Not only is the G4 made with copper, but the core is newer, runs cooler, and just plain has more registers to work with. KNI/MMX and 3dNow are ok SIMD implementations which are hobbled by the x86's lack of enough registers. AltiVec has lots of registers, and is 128 bits wide.
Regardless of the OS you run on it; and regardless of how fast it is compared to other processors, it is better hardware based on newer concepts. I would take a G4 over an x86 right now simply because it isn't an implementation who's core growth strategy is to work around the limits of a 2 decade old concept.
I don't care what you think of Apple or the MacOS, the G4 is simply superoir CPU tecnology compared to the kluge that is known as the modern x86.
dan
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
I've never been a big fan of Apple, but I also hate x86 hardware with a passion. My next computer will probably be a PowerPC in some form, but I expect this G4 is out of my budget at present (and Apple's online store appears to be slashdotted at the moment). Still, it's a nice-looking machine.
Apple claims that the a 500 Mhz G4 is 2.94 times as fast as a 600Mhz PIII.
What you have to realize is you should compare performance for price, not raw cpu performance. I'm sure a sun workstation could run circles around everybody, but it is obviously in another price range.
The 400Mhz G4 with 64mbytes of RAM costs $1499. Let's assume that it will run Photoshop 3 times as fast as a PentiumIII 500Mhz. For competition, let us look at the Ars Technica Hot Rod, picking the dual overclocked celerons. This system costs $1287, and includes much better peripherals (20gb harddrive, 128mb ram, tnt2 video).
According to Ars's benchmarks, dual processor systems are significantly faster than single processor systems at performing Photoshop tasks. You could make a dual processer PIII 450 for the same price as the 400Mhz G4 (PIII 450 = 2x cost of Celeron 366). That's a bench mark I'd like to see, and one which might reflect the true cost/performance comparisons between a high end mac and a high end x86.
What does this mean? Apple claims that the G4 Velocity engine complete 2-4 times the computation of standard CPUs. But single processor x86 boxes are not the competition for the g4 (except maybe the Athlon, but Apple didn't benchmark that, did they?), since you can easily afford smp systems for the prices that they are charging.
Furthermore, this is hardware optimized for graphics production work only. Apple servers are a long way away. LinuxPPC is probably your best option, but since apple has been stingy about releasing the details of their architecture in the past, you probably wouldn't get a Linux box as optimized for the G4 as the Apple OS is. If you could get similar (and more flexible) performance on another box, why else would you want to deal with the only OS more fubared than MS?
Who can tell me if this new G4 runs on the Yikes! or Sawtooth motherboard?
As for the display, it's amazing. The only thing is that due to the limited quantities they can make (for now), you can only buy it with a G4 right now.
-Rafi
-Rafi Remove the Spanish to email me.
Watchthe keynote here:
y bold99/
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/showcase/live/se
and then go to www.apple.com and look at the pics
HOLY SHIT
BTW, you can only get a cinema display w/ a G4, not separate. What will PC users do?
yes, you could. the processor daughter cards with cache are in a ZIF socket. However, I still can't go to Fry's and buy a PPC processor. I would like to able to do this. Maybe those new IBM based PPC CHRP boxes will help out.
Of course, I was planning on running my current G3/233 as a Linux PPC IP masquerade/apache server at some point anyway. Just waiting til they hit the 650 MHz range with dual processors.
--Humpty Dumpty was pushed!
Ya, ATI bites ass, but next month MacTell will be selling Voodoo3 boards for the Mac. I can't imagine they won't do an AGP version considering that's the way Apple is moving (The non-AGP mobo is just something to get them out the door until the AGP mobo is ready).
Also, if the GeForce is that superior, and NVIDIA continues to reinvent themselves as a company that sells chips instead of boards, we'll probably see a GeForce board from some enterprising 3rd party for the Mac as well. God I hope so. A G4 + that LCD monitor + a GeForce, the mind just boggles...
What is wrong with is us that we have to interact with the rest of the computing universe. In this respect, a CD burner would be remarkably more useful than a DVD-RAM. The standards for them (dvd-ram) haven't even settled down yet.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Looks like October according to the Apple Store... Linux(PPC or YD or otherwise) you might have to wait longer for.
-nicole
Dude, you are about 6 years behind. How do you figure an LCIII looks the same as a G3?
:)
The last time I checked I couldn't get a pci card in my pizzabox LCIII
This is laughable, do you understand benchmarking? Do you understand that benchmarking is usually pretty pointless? Benchmarks are really poor for comparisons across architectures. That's why you need to use actual applications. Why do you think MIPS means so little?
That's why their tests focused on apps. I'm not saying they showed a wide variety of applications, but what they did show were VALID differences. Not some silly benchmark. If they tried to get more apps to benchmark they'd be as stuck as intel was when their SIMD instructions came out. No one had optimized apps for those. Luckily Metrowerks has at least some support for AltiVec already, shouldn't be too hard for developers to start including AltiVec optimizations.
Learn about benchmarking before you claim it to be reliable and useful.
Cameroon
Here at WAM! we just ordered one. We called the moment it was announced.
... could you hold on?" He came back 10 seconds later and said "Um...we just released that. Just now. You're the first person to order one."
:)
Max, my business partner is on the phone with Apple ordering a G4. The sales rep was like "Huh? We haven't released that ye-
God, that feels good.
Please. Aside from the fact that x86 is the ugliest architecture in any sort of wide use today*, and PPC is a very nice RISC one, the G4 is simply better. Apple is simply better at building good computers. And, of course, Mac OS X has a strong UNIX engine under the hood.
I can't imagine any reason except compatibility for sticking with x86, for those that haven't already left it. All you get is Windows NT and decades of baggage.
--Matthew
I thought the Cork, Ireland, plant was closed earlier this year. Hmm. Does anyone know for sure?
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
1. BeOS kicks MacOS's ass, and they are just now gaining steam. Studio Pro is being ported to BeOS, and its only in its 2 or 3rd year on x86. In Linux's third year, I doubt they had a word Professional word processor.
2. BeOS kicks Linux's ass for speed. BeOS lightweight threads have 10 times less overhead that Linux threads. The API is a dream, there is a consistant programming interface, SMP is ingrained into the kernel from the beginning, ease of use is a fundemental part of the OS, etc etc. So what if there is no multi user support? It will be in R5. I can say the same thing about Linux and 3D. Where is the good OpenGL HW acceleration? Where is the USB and Firewire support? Where are the 3D sound APIs? Where is the OO Api? where is the consistant interface.
Sure they are coming, but are they here NOW. BeOS many of those NOW, and is working on making the TCP stack better. Final point. When Intel wanted to show of it's PII and PIII, what did they use? NT, no, Linux, no, BeOS, yea.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
"For a machine whose performance no PIII or Athlon can touch at any price?"
Not really true unless Apple starts shipping multiprocessor boxes. Anyway, the $1599 machine doesn't have AGP and has half the memory bandwidth of the more expensive models. It also can't hold as much RAM (limited to 1 gig) and has some other minor shortcomings. I think I will hold out for one of the fancier G4s that has these things.
I just bought a G3! What is Apple trying to do with this price competive BS?!?! My machine just dropped in resale value LIKE A ROCK.
Of course, it runs Linux really ducky, so it ain't wothless.
Damn, DAMN DAMN!!!!!
-K
One day, you'll learn to watch what you post...
This is true, if perhaps not all that relevant for most Mac users, but there are expansion chassis with up to eight slots available. That should be enough for pretty much anyone.
"You're not a cyber-warrior surfing the Net, you're alone in your room, typing."
Or wait, haven't you ever seen those cardstock inserts Intel sticks in almost every computer weekly?
I haven't read (paper) computer mags for years, and I don't watch TV, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. If it's not on slashdot, Linux Today, or LWN, chances are I don't know about it...
TedC
If you people don't think the MacOS is good enough for the PowerPC 7400, then why don't you start advocating the Open PowerPC Platform?
Anybody can get IBM's motherboard design and do what they want with it. I can imagine some dream configurations using such hardware, and the speed would be great for any OS you choose. Even Mac OS X might be able to run on this open motherboard spec.
It would be extremly cool to tear out the motherboard in the my Dell and replace it with a kick butt board with a G4 on it. How about 2 G4s instead of one?
I am a BeOS user, and let me tell you, a tweaked up BeOS would fly on this thing. Optimize for Velocity Engine, and you will see some amazing stuff out of this OS.
Linux would kick butt too, especially if you are doing a lot of server-side multimedia processing (streaming video, music, etc). Isn't Quicktime Streaming Server supposed to be available for Linux?
I believe that the PowerPC is going to become something bigger than what Apple can control. It is time for Apple to share the PowerPC, and I thank IBM for taking the first step in making it happen.
EverCode
Yes it sucks, but now that the G4 has AGP, you can toss it for a TNT2 or what not.
how can you say it's playing catch-up? that's totally unsubstantiated.
the G4 processor, which has a sustained speed of 1 gigaflops and a peak speed of 4 gigaflops.
Apple's new systems are available in 400 Mhz, 450 Mhz, 500 Mhz speeds. The 500 Mhz version will include a DVD-RAM drive, which can record several gigs of data to a CD-sized disk.
The 400 Mhz system will be priced at $1599, the 450 Mhz system at $2499, the 500 Mhz at $3,499.
Apple will be immediately shipping the 400 Mhz system, with the other two systems shipping in a "few weeks."
Jobs said that the new systems will ship with a Photoshop plug-in that will recognize the G4 processor.
In a head-to-head race against a Pentium III system, the PowerMac G4 handily blew away the Pentium III system, rendering a scene with Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story more than twice as fast as the Pentium machine, which was running at 600 Mhz.
The next demo tested memory bandwidth. Again facing the fastest Pentium III currently available, the PowerMac G4 crushed the Pentium system.
Next came a QuickTime encoding demo, where the trailer for the James Bond movie was compressed in real time on the PowerMac G4, but took about twice as long on the Pentium system. In fact, the PowerMac G4 could actually compress the James Bond movie and play it back before the Pentium system could encode the clip.
A college professor then took the reins to demonstrate the supercomputer capabilities of the G4.He demonstrated the popular SETI@Home project, where a G4 was able to process in 6 hours the same amount of information that a Pentium III could process in 25 hours.
To demonstrate encryption speed, a 1000 bit encryption key was decoded on both a G4 and G3, where the G4 was almost seven times faster. Standard cryptography applications run at 3 to 8 times the speed of Pentium III systems, according to the professor.
The last demo showed actual data from the Mars Pathfinder mission. A G4 and a Pentium II system set up head-to-head showed the rendering of data from a probe flying through a valley on Mars. The G4 played like a movie, while the Pentium III played more like a slide-show.
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
in a world without bounderies or fences, who needs Gates anyway?
Here's some Photoshop benchmarks from a Mac site. Got G3s, overclocked G3s, P3s, Dual P3s, etc.
h tml
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/tips/photoshop5perf.
Are you talking about Mac OS X Server, which is nothing like the client version will be (and nothing like future versions of Server will be), or Mac OS X Client DR1, which is an extremely early developer release that you are violating your NDA by talking about?
Point is, making judgments about OS X using either of these as a guide is worthless.
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Okay. For one, the PPC 7400 chip is not based off the PPC 750 chip. It was based off of the PPC 604 chip, and the PPC 750 was based off the 603.. Reasons why AIM (The PowerPC Alliance... Apple, Motorola, and IBM) didn't decide to just use the 604 when making the 750 are unknown to me. Probably dealing with Price/Temperature concerns. AltiVec is not your ordinary add on to a processor. Unlike MMX, a program can be optimized for AltiVec with a single click of a checkbox in Codewarrior, yet still run on machines that do not have AltiVec.
The Floating Point preformance has been at least doubled on the chip, and with the addition of the vector unit (which normally has only resided on high end supercomputers), this processor has really shown the others up.
Oh yeah, don't be stupid anymore... all PowerPC processors are 100% RISC. Always have been, always will be.
IF x86 == SLOW THEN BUY PowerPC
>>if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
I prefer:
if (nt = unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
;o)
Things get moderated up because people login. It has nothing to do with intelligence :)
I for one like the new mac. I'm glad they dropped the colour thing in the g3 line. That blue was nauseating to me. This is more like the silver powerbooks, and i likes it!
Lowmag.net
i'm disappointed-- there would be rumors that an extended keyboard would be an option with the new gray G4s.
:P
please note that i'm probably just nitpicking through sour grapes, as i have been sitting and waiting for the G4s to come all year, and yet will probably wind up continuing to use this here 7200/75. I don't have the money for a new computer.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I think it's because it's so easy to confuse G3 with LCIII... I mean, the boxes obviously look exactly the same, and the G3 isn't that much faster, is it? And besides, the latest Mac OS is still 7.1, isn't it?
Now only if the LinuxPPC peop;e used this computer for their "little" challenge :)
I think your wrong (whoever you are AC) Look at the Microsoft / Intel specs for PC 2000. Guess what? NO FLOPPY DRIVE! I guess everyone is stupid but you.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
Damn, that's a nice screen...
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Well, there are many people with semi-decent reasons...and then the many many more with no reasons whatsoever, or strecthing it.
One decent reason is Apple's past. They screwed many developers over and die-hard fans of certain platforms...but they were/are a small company (larger now than in the 80s), and they had to compete with the goliath IBM+MS (which of course wasn't a goliath in the early, mid, or even late 80s...but was under IBM's wing) plus IBM clones. They were a new compant, personal computers was a whole new thing, the market wasn't as big then as it is now...so the changes were just kind of expected, if you ask me.
I feel bad for those people, but those same people aren't the ones you'll see with petty flames and name calling. They may be more reasonable, but still hold some bitterness towards Apple for something that hurt them in the past. If there wasn't Linux (or any of the other free Unix-spin offs) on the PC, there would probably be a group of bitter PC users mad that DOS was being phased out to be completly replaced by Windows. Instead, those people just migrated to Linux or any of the other choices.
Most of the stuff, I think, can be traced back to Apple's past. Being a new company compared to IBM, and taking on a huge task in a completly new market...through my own reasoning, I understand this. I mean, if Apple didn't change anything, we could still be using the OS based on BASIC (MAJOR brain fart...my computer history prior to Lisa has just disappeared). In the process of "evolving" in the computer market, you'll have to piss off some people...unless you have the money and resources to keep up production of older OSs.
With the new open source/free software band wagon (which I think is a "good" thing for the consumer, not SO good for corporations, despite the arguments you could make money from support...truthfully, I'd rather have working software closed, than shitty software open), people now complain about Apple being a "closed" company, and the software being "closed." Right now...this matters to very few people. Plus the recent news with IBM, the closed hardware argument is basically no longer valid, and as for software, there is Linux and *BSD on the Apple platform, plus Mac OS X Server is semi-open source (the main part of it at least), and the quicktime server software. So, if you compare Apple to their closest commercial OS competitors (Microsoft and Be), they've made further steps than them. The problem with open source is for a company to not end up losing sales with movement to it, especially if they begin releasing the product for free. This doesn't matter for non-corporations (a collective of a community of people) because they don't need to survive in the same manner, economically. They have a day job (or night) and come home and code on their free time. The coding they do on the side isn't the source for the money they need to survive...nor is the collective of people working on software employed under a corporation. The survival of the software is dependent on it's demand (how necessary it is) and that at least SOMEONE is working on it. If a piece of software was no longer being developed for, and had no use to anyone, it would die. It isn't quite the same for a company. They need employees. They need money to pay the employees and conduct research, and advertise. The survival of the software is dependent on the survival of the company...which needs money to survive. If it dies, so does all of it's software. Giving away their main product for free isn't wise because they need money from the sell of that product to keep the company alive. Only if the software they created was loaded with bugs, and they charged a hefty price for support, could they survive mainly on technical support. Opening the source partially isn't as bif of a prolem. Nor opening the source, but still charging for the software. But this alienates the die-hard free software people.
So, Apple, among other software companies (although Apple isn't really a major one), is stuck in a tough spot. They have a growing group of people demanding the source code to their products under specific licensing...and some of them demanding the software be completly free...and they have the problem of making money. Sure, they can hope they'll get enough money from tech. support due to shitty software...but that's EXTREMELY unwise for a company since that is incredibly unpredictable. That may also prove bad for Joe Average because the company is dependent on problematic, unfriendly software for the survival and groth of their company. It's sort of that way today, but now due to Linux and the popularity of more crash/problem resistant OSs and software, software companies will have to get their act together.
So, in short...the 2 main reasons I see for reasonale Anti-Apple feelings is problems in their history, and not being completly open source/free software friendly. The rest is usually petty nitpicking, or childish behaviour ("My toy is better than yours! Na-na-na-na-na")
Let's take it from the top.
Firstly - yeah, Apple aren't the best marketers in the world. This should be a given by now, surely?
Secondly - MacOS has one advantage over UN*X-like OSs, BeOS and Windoze and that is ease of use and elegance in the UI. It walks over the competition in size 13 hob-nailed boots in that respect. MacOS users don't really care about the core OS, as long as their machine is relatively stable and reasonably speedy. Things may get better with OS X but time will tell.
Thirdly - Apple may be making the wrong choice about graphics cards but I am unsure as to the existence of drivers for other hardware under MacOS 8.x/9. At present, there is no graphics acceleration support under OS X Server but this should change with X Client.
Apple have always made the mistake of believing that because they have the best product they will win market share. Microsloth have proven this assumption utterly invalid.
Mr Q. Z. D.
Systems admin, drinker, musician and all-round bastard. "Now we see the violence inherent in the sysadmin."
Well, it's darn near impossible to talk facts about anything involving computers, but here's my take on it.
1. I don't like Apple's philosophy. (closed hardware, closed software)
2. RISC is superior to CISC. We've known this for a long time. Intel continues to use a CISC design for backwards compatibility. This is why my heatsink is twice as big as my PII 350. But I can still run wordstar 1.0!
3. If i manage to wean myself off of windows completely (yes, i'm writing this in IE 5.0), and switch to linux, my next computer will be a G4 running LinuxPPC. A dual if they exist. CISC will die someday, i hope not to own anything CISC when that day comes.
Some folks think it might just have a bit more to do with Intel's multi-million dollar investment in Be than anything Apple did.
--
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What happned when it tried to support the G3??
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I'm in the boat with you because I really don't like the USB keyboard and mouse that comes with the Macs of today, but the best solution (unless you've got a really unique ADB keyboard that you must keep) might be to purchase a full-size USB keyboard. I know such beasties exist.
guacamole wrote:
"The only CPU benchmark I trust is spec95,"
Don't you also trust the results of tests with the applications you use on a daily basis? Those should be a lot more useful to you than SPEC.
"and for some reason they haven't posted that."
Well, I don't know if there are numbers available for them to quote. I can't find any G4 SPEC numbers at www.motorola.com, and the PPC SPEC results at www.specbench.org are woefully dated.
I have a hard time taking specbench.org seriously these days given that they don't even have ANY results for the PowerPC 750 (aka G3) let alone the G4. The most recent numbers they have are some ~333 Mhz 604e numbers submitted by IBM, and those numbers are getting pretty old. If major CPU manufacturers quit submitting SPEC results SPEC will not be very useful any more.
You sound _scared_ that people will be able to get one of these and run Linux on it.
P'raps you _should_ be. >;)
It's Rage 128, not Rage Pro or Rage II or any of the others.
Rage 128 is actually pretty decent. Depending on what you're looking for in a card, it can be the best one out there. Here's the thing: Voodoo3 has the fastest renderer, but there's a reason for that: it can't do any more than 16-bit color (and yes, I've read that little excuse^H^H^H^H^H^Harticle from that 3Dfx guy; I've seen the cards back to back and I don't buy it in the least). In other words, each frame won't look as good as one from a Rage 128. Then there are NVidia's offerings; reasonably good framerate, but the renderer is still of pretty low quality. Rage 128 has a relatively slow renderer (key word "relatively"; it beats Voodoo2 handily and I've never seen it more than five FPS slower than a Voodoo3) but its frames look better than the others do.
Personally, I'll sacrifice a few FPS for better-looking graphics. Then again, that's just me; some people can't tell the differences between the three renderers, just as some people (myself included)_can't tell the difference between an MP3 and the original CD recording.
Besides which, 3Dfx and Matrox are still flaky with MacOS support. The cards do work, but I don't think either is OF-compliant at this point. ATI, on the other hand, is (and has been since Apple started including their chips, which is probably why Apple did it).
The FPU performance will be much better than the G3 (which was geared for integer performance).
AltiVec can provide anywhere from 100%-2400% speedups for many operations. From what I've read, the technology and the development tools make it much easier for a developer to use AltiVec than something like MMX. The rumors have it that Apple's been using AltiVec in OS X to speed up not just the graphics things but even stuff like the TCP/IP stack. The developer feedback that I've seen suggests that this is very definitely more than just a graphics accelerator.
32 128 bit registers running in parallel. Imagine how they can be used to pipeline operations that would otherwise require a bunch of instruction cycles... The possibilities are staggering. Want to optimize an app for G4 - Just recompile it for Altivec.
Let's not forget who uses the Mac-only app Mathematica - the gods of our industry, that's who!
Yeah, I'm a Mac programmer. You got a problem with that?
-- thinkyhead software and media
so then, the outsides are based on something 20 years old? regardless, the core is still based on the pentium pro. i'm not sure if anyone could dispute that. toss in a better fab, couple extra instructions (SIMD, MMX), pump up the MHz and boom. P3. least intel could do is give a go like amd did.
You couldn't be more wrong. I can configure a linux system on 400 megs that could easily match your MacOS system. I think you should actually try LinuxPPC before complaining about how bloated it is.
Try it before you bash it. Those 1gig installs are complete installs.
...
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
i wonder how the folks at apple feel knowing that they put their heart and soul into programming macos, yet as soon as it hits a linux users desktop it's fried off there as fast as the head on their hard drive can fly?
Ten million years or so...
-
Actually, the previous G3s had a 100MHz FSB, it's the other Apple models that have the 66MHz one.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
People actually buy computers base on the color of their favorite Life Savers candy. Just plain sad! It's a computer people not funiture!
Correct me if I'm wrong... but they ship these with the MacOS 8. That is braindead. If they shipped it with LinuxPPC or something NOT MacOS, i would have no qualms.
Patrick Barrett
Yebyen@adelphia.net
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Run Norton once in a blue moon and fix all you're B-tree problems if you think that is the source of your problems.
I agree with the earlier comment that once properly configured (read all the useless and buggy 3rd party extensions removed) and the OS almost never crashes. In fact I can't remember the last time my 8.6 B&W350 crashed where I needed a forced reboot. I do have apps crash, but a cmd-opt-esc almost always saves me from a reboot.
I do however realize there a number of inherent problems with the MacOS, but crashing is the least of them. The fact that clicking on a menu brings the system to a grinding halt, for example, is simply inexcusable.
Yo
An anonymous coward wrote:
"Show me SPEC_int and SPEC_fp for CPU performance, application suite benchmarks for system level performance, and a few game benchmarks."
Well, Motorola and IBM both seem to be more or less ignoring SPEC these days. Go over to www.specbench.org and note how there aren't any results available there for the G3, let alone the G4.
And what "application suite" do you want to use? Microsoft Office? Microsoft doesn't exactly produce fast Macintosh software. Would you want to benchmark a Linux system with Microsoft apps? I thought not.
This machine is being positioned as the ulitmate boot legger. Apple's page is talking about dvd-ram and digital camera's and the ultimate cimematic experience.
I can just see it now, an army of people in theatres with their digital camera's going home and uploading it directly to their computer and burning it on vcd or better yet(for Apple that is)onto a dvd-ram in Quick Time format.
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
We could *always* rely on apple overpricing...thi is...is...an OUTRAGE!!!
:)
-K
One day, you'll learn to watch what you post...
As a technical writer and admittedly one of the less technically adept of the posters around here...
This display is a step in the right direction -- what we TWs and DTPers crave is something an eensy bit bigger, say, able to show an 11 x 17 spread actual size, plus a little bit o' desktop/windowframe/menu area. And to be that big, it'd have to be a concave display to keep the user from constantly craning his/her neck port and starboard.
I'm unreconstructed Macophile -- they've been good to me since 1984 -- but somehow I can't get too excited anymore about a merely faster, more powerful Mac. From where I sit, it seems like Cupertino just keeps on coming up with these great technological innovations (Publish and Subscribe, CyberDog) that somehow wind up withering on the vine. Their designs are to die for and their marketing's bitchin', but I'm beginning to appreciate why they get dissed so much around here.
Their bloatware problem rivals a Certain Other Notorious OS Vendor's: The last time I bothered to look into upgrading a Mac, I realized that if I turned on half the extra inits that shipped with System 7.5, I'd never get any production work done without getting a faster Mac with twice the RAM. To stay at the cutting edge of Mac technology is to be constantly buying newer, faster boxen to keep up with the spiraling demand for raw thruput.
When I can run FrameMaker, PageMaker, Quark, and all the Acrobat tools on a Linux box without really much caring what platform it was originally compiled for and without going through hell first, that'll be something. Gearheads take note (God love ya).
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
A sniveling groveler says: I have a black G3 for anyone who wants to buy one... please buy it... I wanna buy one of these new things...
*sigh* Expect to see mine on eBay or uBid sometime in the next couple of weeks... considering how badass these new machines are gonna be, I'm not sure how much demand there'll be for used G3's...
binarybits wrote:
"Keep in mind that Apple is re-writing OpenGL, Quickdraw, Quicktime, and other OS components to take advantage of Altivec. So once that code gets
out (probably with OS X if not sooner) it will provide dramatic speed-ups of all apps that do intensive graphics operations. "
Given that Apple apparently used QuickTime video compression to good effect against a PIII machine in its demos today, I would expect that QT at least ought to have it with the release of OS9...
Apple is making the same mistake it made back in the 80's. I won't buy a new computer that can only run MacOS just because it looks nice.
I don't know about anyone else, but my Power Mac runs Linux/PPC. It may take a while to get the bugs worked out, but these new machines will run it as well...
Jay (=
(Out of curiosity, what color is the G4 machine? Ice and what?)
actually, it begs two obvios questions:
/. apple icon have to change? now that the systems are 'graphite' instead of blueberry...
1: will it run linuxppc? because, no matter how fast os8 or 9 are, the real processing power won't be accessible until osX or linux are pumping it for all it's got
2: will the
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
>why is it that so many people are anti-appleist'?
... let's move on and
Why do you need to find a website that explains
why? It should be pretty obvious.
There are always people that will hate anything.
For example, I hate lots of things; probably even
some things that you like.
The next part is whether I'm bored enough to
vent about those things in front of you. This guy
was, apparantly.
If you want a specific answer on why people might
specifically hate Apple, here are a few ideas with
which I may or may not agree:
1. Apple makes closed hardware and software. This pisses off Linux folks.
2. They won't share their G3/G4 specs with other OS companies. This pisses off BeOS folks.
3. They bend the truth with numbers (i.e. claiming
their G3 was twice as fast as the current intel
chip, even though this was for integer performance
only). This pisses off x86 folks.
4. They complain about Microsoft, and then turn
around and do Microsoft-ish things (as well as
except money from MS). This pisses off lots of folks.
5. They rely/relied on their zealots to carry them
through the past 5-8 years where they were no longer
innovating. Merely claiming Win95 == MacOS '89 (or
whatever) is not the same thing as innovating.
I'm sure there's more.
Honestly though, if you can't answer your own
question, then perhaps you are not very objective
about software companies? I love BeOS, I use
Windows, I don't like Linux or Mac, but I can
understand why people love and hate all of those
products.
-WW
P.S. They're all just tools
work.
--
Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring
That's a horrible thing to say, I wouldn't wish windows on my worst enemy or his best friend.
Patrick Barrett
Yebyen@adelphia.net
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Well, personally I think this was almost a no brainer for Mac. Now ATI is known amoung most design professionals to be THE chip to go with since the Mach64. WHY? Well the truth is: color calabration. The ATI line of products offers more options for color calibration and color management than any other line of chips out there. This includes both hardware support (your windows drivers doesn't even SCRATCH the surface of the color support embedded into those chips) and software support. EFI (de facto in meduim sized color print production) has long used ATI gear, and STILL uses its Mach64 in some of its top of the line material. Now MOST users using MacOS are NOT intrested in gaming OR 3d rendering. Lets face it, there isn't MUCH of a market for EITHER. MOST high level 3d work is UNIX work. Most games have windows. Being IN the industry myself, Macs are used for PhotoShop, Quark, and things of the like which require VERY little 3d rendering. And if you know anything about RGB to CMYK conversion for printing, then using an ATI chip is the only real way to go. Despite any person opinion, EFI, Splash, Xerox, Dell's 2d design stations, IBM's own RS6000 2d design stations are packed with SOME variant of an ATI chip. If you are using a Mac for 3d redering, chances are you have a different OS, and then you probably are going to pack it with a different card and so fourth. But since Mac design work goes for 2d work (including film) and COLOR is critical: ATI, hands down, holds the market for entry level-to mid level price range color calibration. BortBox
Alright, I concede. However, to get that high end server I'm sure you will be paying through the nose. And quite certainly you will be paying more than you would with an open architecture. I'm sure for 3000+ you could get a dual Zeon, matching peripherals, etc.
I don't have experience with servers, so I have to admit that you may have me here. I am a graphic designer. When I was shopping for a home graphics workstation some time back, I got a Cyrix with 256MB of RAM, zip, a scanner, and a large Wacom Tablet for the same cost as a G3 box. These are significant upgrades for Apple's targeted niche of designers. I doubt if Apple's price line plateaus as you reach the top end.
I don't think that the G4 hardware wouldn't make a good (and overpriced) server, I just don't think that the OS's available for the mac seem to be suitable. I'll trust mac os x when I see major servers running it. Where I work, we used to be a mac (including servers) house, and now we run a combination of nt, linux, and irix for our servers and most of the desktops, with macs being used by the designer.
I don't think that a line of above average performance computers that starts at $300 more than a computer with comparable performance as giving away gold.
NT is thrown in for the desktop publishing/graphics arts/proofing software, which doesn't exist for Linux yet.
Darn but I wished formatting was kept.
But subtract the $309 for NT and you do get a cheaper SMP system, Be or Linux.
Be *might* be able to function in a similar manner to a G4 in terms of graphics and multimedia.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
True.
[Mike Meyers Mode On]
Because if it's not Linux, it's crap!
[Mike Meyers Mode Off]
But how much will it cost for the Linux machine to do color correction, proofing, pre-production, graphics arts, and desktop publishing?
For those fields(under which the G4 was released, at Seybold) there is no comparable machine in the market. DIYers can cobble together the above/previously mentioned SMP PIII, but not at a significantly lower price point.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Hm.
These machines are still playing catchup with x86 machines, AND they come at a hefty price premium...The G4 costs 1600$, to start, and tops off at 3400$. A PIII will start in the mid-two-grand range, and top off well above four thousand dollars.
The G4 is - and I am probably understating here - at least as fast as the PIII at comparable megahertz.
Case closed.
You are forgetting, the major speed increase is the AltiVec unit (128bit processor, to do my bidding =) ). Its like with good ole MMX, intel boasted a major speed improvement from a pent 166 to pent 166 with mmx if I remember properly, but the 200MMX wasnt a HUGE just. I mean, yeah the 1600 PowerMac G4 isn't as fast (nor does it have the internal airport/agp capabilities), but the 2.94 times faster is cpu cycle based, not video card based.
So yeah, the $1,600 version may have some bottlenecks in it, but those bottlenecks arent neverly as severe as in the Pentium Systems
-pfhor
(remember, a GIGAFLOP, apple would not shit you about something like that, and a possible 4 gigaflop peak proformance. Now all we need is a shirt saying "This shirt is a munition, on the front, and on the back, So is my computer!)
i'm surprised that someone here would fall prey to the good ol' MHz war. especially since you're talking about the athlon. even with the numbers, is there anything terribly wrong here?
500, alright that looks a little bit on the low side. 1 MB of L2 @ 1/2 bus speed, last i checked that trumps both the P3 and athlon. 100 MHz FSB, there with the P3, trumped by the athlon. so rattling off the advertisers numbers the G4 sits somewhere betwixt the P3, and athlon. well maybe not quite. but...isn't the important thing performance?
Yeah, like most of us use Photoshop...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
i watched the keynote, and i think the coolest spec to quote on the new g4 is that, in the time it takes to run one operation, the light from your monitor hasn't had time to reach your eyes.
gigaflops, baby...
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
As someone with a good amount of Linux, Macintosh, and Mac OS X experience, let me share the following insights.
1. LinuxPPC is one of the most used Linuces, but not the only for PowerPCs. Debian is quite good, even on the iMac, MkLinux is essentially a Linux version of Mac OS X's core components, and Yellow Dog/Black Lab Linux is alleged to be better configured than LinuxPPC. As someone currently running LinuxPPC R5 on my 7500, I can tell you that anyone looking to get a good Linux box should look into the PowerPC.
2. The G4 is available from Motorola for $475 in quantities of 1000+. The specs for a modern MB are available FREE from IBM. Now, if only someone with enough money and a good track record would take advantage of this...
3. The Mac OS X/G4 server might be the thing someday soon. Not quite as cool as an Alpha, but still much better than IA-32, the architecture formerly known as x86. IA-64, though a challenge, should it ever be implemented properly, is causing M$ headaches due to its 64 bit nature, just as Alpha did. Thus, unless you want to spring for an Alpha or wait on the Linux port to Merced (which I am sure is underway, but I don't recall hearing much on it), get a PPC or an Athlon.
4. The likely reason for Apple not going with a Matrox card is lack of drivers, if I am not terribly mistaken. ATI has drivers for Mac OS, Win32, and even Linux. I don't know that Matrox has drivers available for the Mac, not does it seem likely they would develop some if they did not. The G4 looks to be a milestone in computing, somewhere beneath the migration of Linux from the x86 to other platforms but somewhere above Billy boy getting pied.
5. This machine is beautiful, both externally and aesthetically, and internally and structurally. While there are still areas in need of improvement, this DieHard computer user is going to snatch one of these up, soon as OS X is available with them.
Flame away!
R_DH
I am a hardcore Mac (I make my living supporting them), but even I have to admit that Apple blew it with the exaggerated G3 speed claims, especially since the thing was fast enough not to require that sort of marketing BS anyhow.
The G3 was optimized for integer operations, Apple/Motorola figuring that that was more important for the majority of the applilcations that people use a Mac for. However, with the G4, they've optimized floating point operations, so the claims may really be valid this time.
"You're not a cyber-warrior surfing the Net, you're alone in your room, typing."
It's on it's second developer seeding
--"In dreams begin responsibilities" - Delmore Schwartz
they back up the claims with actual, live footage of actual, live tests in actual, live applications. Granted they probably did a very careful job of selecting the tests, but Photoshop performance is a lot kmore realistic than a benchmark....and when the Mac takes 1 minute to the PC's 2, well, that's 2x as fast in my book.
KMFDM Sucks
er i think that was sarcasm
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
$1509 vs $1599 is within the same order of magnitude; it depends on the mouse and keyboard you buy, for example(USB or otherwise, name brand or not, etc).
Why NT? Because NT can do the same things, mostly, that Mac can do; desktop publishing, prepress, color correction, etc. If we are targetting different markets, then sure, throw in Linux or BeOS. For Seybold, I think NT would be appropriate.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
what gives?
hmmmm...
you go boy, or girl
Get the latest system software, update the hard disk drivers, run norton's on your disk, and throw away any crap 3rd party extensions -- you'll find your Mac is much more solid than you think.
Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. Been supporting Macs at a top-10 ad agency for 6 years. Owned more Macs than you can shake a stick at. On my B&W G3, I've tried a) stock apple installation, b) minimal extension versions of (a), c) custom installation, and d) minimal extension version of (c).
It still doesn't make the overall OS more stable, and it will never overcome the weird multitasking model, bad memory management, etc etc. MacOS isn't linux, and it isn't even WinNT for memory or process management.
Further rant: Apple would be lightyears ahead of everyone else if they had made a decision to walk away from the 680x0 architecture when PPC was introduced. That they wasted too much time making 680x0 apps run on PPC instead of making a PPC-native OS with protected memory, preemptive multitasking, SMP and other taken-for-granted-on-Wintel features.
Instead they're locked into this never-ending, dead-end OS that they can't seem to shake, and I think it seriously undermines their growth potential.
Bro, that's the name of the game with computers. As soon as you buy one, there's always something better around the corner. Sorry.
You might want to note that Apple did sell multiprocessor 604 boxen a few years ago, and they even wrote special semi-SMP drivers for MacOS. Now that they've got OS X on the verge of shipment (~6 months) and OS X server available today, I can guarantee that they'll release an SMP G4 Server box. SMP G4 workstations wil probably have to wait till shortly after the release of OS X.
There are definitely good things to come from apple on this front.
-earl
I think you're all jealous 'cuz we macheads have much cooler machines than you all. Nyah.
I have a G2 8600 300mhz 604e and it rips apart SETI data at 24 hrs/unit! I think G3s were for home and school users so I'm waiting for late/evolved G4 with superior multimedia/server OS. Meanwhile, I'm kicking your Pentium asses!
I especially liked the smoky, neutral color of the G4 because it will appeal to professionals and uber-geeks alike. The screen is awesome! Imagine ripping dvds for your own private home letterbox theatre...drooooll...
Apple makes high-quality hardware and software in general, though I've had a particularly nasty experience with a G2 PowerBook design whose disk rattle caused the adjacently touching memory to pop out! They are beginning to open-source, and there is a hell of a lot of good freeware/shareware/etc mac software available. Besides, the new OS will run Java, Windows, etc, and everything is getting standardized and distributed, so shouldn't we all just use machines that express our style instead of bickering over details? ;)
a prophet on the burning shore
They used Intels OWN TESTS to benchmark the G4. They grabed all the tests Intel used on the PIII to make it look good, ported 'em to G4, ran them and beat the shit outta Intel...
;-)
Now thats funny.
Another thing about the G4... when typing it, if you give it a little SHIFT, you get G$
does Apple know something we dont
Fastest personal computer available...whatever. There's a vague claim, just like other vague crap that spills out of that clown's mouth. All the hype made it sound like you could pick up the phone and have one of these new Mac's shipped same day...30 day wait? 60 day wait? He's just as arrogant as Gates, only more obnoxious. Couple that imbecile frontman with too-many forthing Mac-Fanatics and the whole company makes me slightly nauseous....still, they sure are pretty boxes...
Blar.
Since when is a complaint about the crash-prone mid-80s MacOS equitable to "Macs suck"?
I like the Mac well enough, but it's pretty tiresome to have every Mac afficianado act like you've accused them of child molestation everytime there's a complaint about the OS.
Apple has gotten their hardware act together, but their OS is still a bad dream. I use both NT and MacOS side by side on a daily basis, and my NT machine (with a minimum of 6 apps, often nearly a dozen open) just doesn't die with the Mac's frequency.
DISCLAIMER: I own 3 Macs and develop for the platform...
You have some good points. I consider myself a technical person and the dumbed down explanations on their site are laughable...
The truth is though, these G4's are REALLY FAST. You should go check one out. I think you will be impressed...
RateVegas.com - Vegas Reviews
Lets have a little dose of reality here. These machines are still playing catchup with x86 machines, AND they come at a hefty price premium. Unless you have a religious attachment to Mac (which I can understand, some people just like the Mac way of doing things), this is not the best bang for the buck.
OK - I'll be the first to admit it. In many ways the x86 platform is not the most elegant in the world. Looking back at various historical chips from both Motorola and Intel, Moto's get my vote everytime - their implementation is simply better. Don't fool yourself - the "G4" is a Motorola chip, why Apple insists on their own naming convention, I don't know. In any event, this is the new PPC with Altivec instructions. They are simply SIMD instructions for both floating point, and integer operations. A first for the PPC family of chips - the x86 has had these since MMX (in integer form) and with AMD's 3D-Now! instuctions on the K6-2 (for floating point), and later with Intel's own SSE instructions for the Pentium III. Oooh 128bit registers able to operate on multiple 32bit values. Ahhh vector processing like super computers do. Damn - Apple's buyers must be stupid. Yeah - it's true, but it's not revolutionary - and other CPUs were there first. Gotta love all those Cray references in there. OK - so their theoretical maximum thru-put is 4 GFLOPs - what they aren't telling you is that is on single precision floating point instructions. There are 2 Altivec instruction units, and if each is maximally processing a bunch of 32 bit values, You can mulitply the MHz of the chip by 8 (500MHz * 8 = 4000) to see the Millions of Floating point instructions it can do. Guess what The AMD Athlon has the same setup. 2 3D-Now! execution capable units - and these chips run faster, up to 650MHz, so theoretical maximum for one of them is 650*8 = 5200 Millions of Floating Point Instructions - or 5.2 GFLOPs. Yeah the new PPC is a good chip, and it's internal architecture is cleaner than just about any x86 chip on the market. But hey - don't let Apple's marketing hype fool ya. - Porter
Gee..and once again all the Linux trolls come rolling out brandishing overclocked celerons and calling for Apple's death. This is becoming quite predictable. Well anyway this looks pretty cool ;) although I'm not a fan of MacOS I would personally like to have an iBookish type notebook with a G4 processor running BeOS in the near future. It's always interesting to try out new things. Just my two cents.
"The new PowerPC G4, architected by Apple, Motorola and IBM, is the first microprocessor that can deliver a sustained performance of over one gigaflop. In fact, it has a theoretical peak performance of four gigaflops."
You should have seen the Photoshop and scientific model demos.
If Apple keeps this up, I'm just going to start endorsing my paychecks checks to One Infinite Loop.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
So building a dual PIII 450 is cheaper or comparable? I don't believe it. Last I saw, a PIII 450 is $219; Here's a rough breakdown G4 + 64MB + ATI Rage 128 + 10GB 5400 ATA/33 + 32x CDROM + 2 Firewire ports + 10/100baseT + 56.6k = $1599 2xPIII 450 = $438 64MB memory = $65 ATI Rage 128 16mb = $79 10GB HD Western Digital = $135 Dual Motherboard(Microstar) = $239 40x CDROM = $35 Firewire card(Siiig) = $107 Ethernet = $45 Modem = $50 Case+PS = $85 WindowsNT = $309 That's $1507 That's not cheaper...(I won't argue power since I can't actually benchmark either setup!)
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
>It's got up to a 500 mhz G4, one meg of L2 cache >@ 1/2 processing speed, 100mhz system bus. Is this supposed to be impressive ? How weak. Benchmark this against the Athlon. I'll take the Athlon.
604e fp faster than g3? sure, at the same MHz. 604e MHz > g3 MHz? no.
603/603e no fp? no. every ppc has an fp.
603 cheap? yes. poor performing, well no worse or better than a pentium.
Apple isn't doing anything different from what was done when the Pentium 3 came out, from both Intel and the trade press. Photoshop tests were run with the P3 against the G3, and they used filters that were optimized for the Katmai extensions. Now they're running the G4 with Altivec against the P3 with Katmai, and you're crying foul? You should know by now benchmarks are useless anyway. ;)
Mostly what I gleaned from the keynote is that the floating point on the G4 is better than the P3. That was the big emphasis. Since integer on the G3 has been faster than the P3 for a while now anyway, I figure the P3 won't do terribly well in general benchmarks. I'm sure they won't be as nice as Apple's been touting, but those demos were pretty darn impressive - they not only compared Photoshop filters, but also SETI @ Home and picture encryption-decryption in the keynote demos.
Naked.
Can anyone argue me when i say that one thing Apple has always had in THE coolest logo. Come on..nerds care about these kind of things sometimes! We're not all one sided!
-brandon-
-"hacking for the kiddies that need scripts"
"when i needed you most, when i needed a friend, you let me down now, like i let you down then."
i'm gonna have to agree. if we're talking about talked on hack architecture, we need look no further than the pentium class.
speaking of arrays. the g4 is purported to support multiple processors on a single die a la the power4. that'd still come out smaller than a merced, k7, and probably marginally bigger than a p3.
The U.S. Government has approached Apple and has let them know that Apple can not export the new G4's to sensitive countries because the speed of the new G4 falls under the supercomputer catagory.
If you don't like the MacOS, run Linux/PPC on it. Better yet - wait for MacOS X.
But I'm still waiting for Copeland, er, Rhapsody, er, wait, what am I waiting for? I can buy a dual processor Wintel box for less than a G4 today and get an operating system with at least a 1990s design to it.
If the damned thing is fast, show me *useful data saying so*, not some bullshit Specmark and one-singular-application tests. That'll never happen, though, because then they wouldn't be able to make such ridiculous "200% faster!!" claims.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
i believe that the "intel benchmarks" referred to were specifically floating-point benchmarks. Just FP, nothing else. It was mostly a demonstration of altivec. Don't quote me on that though. Still, good FP scores are a good thing..
And you're right, benchmarks are mostly useless. The Real-world app tests, such as the macro'd Photoshop "bake-offs" are a much better indicator of speed..
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The problem is that no one has DRIVERS for any othe AGP card than ATI. As far as ATI is concerned, they can kiss my butt. They are Vaporware-sellers and never deliver. hell, the freakin' V3 using BETA drivers kicks its ass in games like Unreal. Hopefully, we can use a TNT in these things soon.... Until then, get used to old ATI garbage.
I still think it's great that others are now following mac news enough to know our codenames ... but *i'm* still waiting on the next version of windows to be shipped tomarrow ... i mean next week ... i mean definatly next month ... imean , hell, just wait for windows 2095 ... x | x thalooser
The keynote is available in streaming Quicktime from Apple's site, although it's probably overwhelmed right now. They have a G4 and a P3/600 side by side, and the G4 is at least twice as fast as the P3 in every single test: Photoshop, movie encoding, SETI@home, encryption, 3D rendering.
And remember: It's not the case this time, it's the processor!
In the PC market, this isn't a horribly impressive figure...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Megahertz, a popular (but simplistic) measure of performance, usually increases around 35% annually.
Rather than being just 35% faster, the new Power Mac G4 is up to a stunning 100% to 200% faster than the fastest Pentium III-based PCs.
I mean... the P3s are at 550 MHz IIRC... The 64 is at 500 MHz... and there's a 35% increase? Gimme a break.
o/~ All God's children shall be free in Pirates of the Caribbean, when we reach that Magic Kingdom in the sky... o/~
If you don't like the MacOS, run Linux/PPC on it. Better yet - wait for MacOS X. If the MacOS over a *BSD variant on the Mach 3 microkernal isn't 'modern' enough for you, you're just another biased mac hater. I appreciate macs for their good points, I appreciate linux for it's good points. The point of the article was the _awesome_ G4 hardware - not to give you another excuse to whine about the MacOS. If you don't like it, don't use it - just quit bitching about it. I don't bitch about linux's shortcomings to you.
Check out DRM-free movies at http://www.bside.com
Pauvre Con!
Triste Enflure!
Tu n'es qu'un "Sys Admin" parmis une tétrachiée d'autres insiginifiants de ton genre.
Va apprendre à penser d'abord, avant de t'exprimer:
ça aide, d'avoir plus d'une demi-idée
Tëte Creuse!
Andouille Pathétique!
Mais tu ne peux même pas comprendre que si une chaussure t'aide à marcher, une bécane t'aide à penser?
Malheureux Crétin!
Tu croyais que c'était pour devenir cordonnier?
Triste Imbécile!
À ton niveau de stupidité, je ne vois plus qu'une seule solution: à ta place, j'essayerais le Gaz!
Quadruple Connard!
Quintuple Illettré
Pauvre hacker qu'a pas compris que les gens normaux, ça existe aussi, et ça possède les mëmes droits que ce minus abens!
Affligeant Troglodyte!
Consternant Trou-du-cul!
Désolant Écervelé!
Piteux Codeur!
Qui as élevé l'addition binaire au rang de philosophie!
Qui confonds les "man" pages avec Victor Hugo
Qui crois encore que les machines sont faites pour étre programmées
Qui pense que la vérité est ailleurs...
Tu n'es qu'un déchêt de l'humanité.
--
Jean-Francois Brouillet
> you're just another biased mac hater
Very funny indeed :-)
An 80's consumer OS over technology from the early 70's on the greatest hype from the 80's.
How old-fashioned can you get?
Flame on bro!
:)
The problem there is convention, Moto and Apple talk about different things when they mention G4, for Apple is their Line of PPC-740 machines. For Moto is a different version of the PPC-740 whith a MCM packaging (The 740 is a direct descendant of the Power4)
Damn! yeah sue me guys I loved computer architecture @ college
ZoeSch
I hate to agree with davecrazy but...
My P3 500Mhz Intellistation does it at 8-9hours a unit. Nyah.
Blar.
Some models (or a custom-built machine, if you choose that option) can have DVD-RAM and/or a Zip drive.
I'm sure you've heard this before, but in today's world floppies are not very useful - they're slow and small. They seem insufficient even on this old 33MHz Mac I'm using with a 250meg (yes, 250meg) hard disk. Many files you'll find on the internet are far larger than a floppy anyway, so it is much easier to transfer files over my LAN than to put them on a disk.
So I think this means everyting that this computer does will be video card limited. That is a really big bummer.
I would like to see a set of tests run on games. Did anyone notice how games were ignored at this conference. Supposedly, there was a new focus on games at apple. Mostly, I think, because there isn't any other good reason to have a faster computer. Intel knows this. They demo games or game-lijke things all the time. Now, I think apple is giving up that market again (ha, lets screw our loyal customers again!!!--I am sTeve Jobs and I wear black turtlenecks because I am eVil). Forgive me, sCary. Anyway, if apple makes an awesome q3 machine, and then POINTEDLY ignores the game playin mojo this box has, then there is a big problem for those interested in this box as a home machine.
Anyway, I would like to see macs succeed, and if I could get IDL and Matlab, I would consider it--but Apple screwed over all the developers, and now I can't even consider their product
Doh
I'd love a PPC, but Steve Jobs is still making closed, proprietary systems that can never be upgraded.
I have a blue G3 here with two empty PCI slots, 62 empty Firewire spots, 119 empty USB spots, two empty DIMM slots that can each take 256MB to bring me up to 1GB of RAM, three empty hard drive bays and the CPU is in a ZIF and can be swapped for a G4. On top of that, the whole guts of the machine come out onto the desktop when you pull the latch so it's easy to put stuff in and take it out. The last thing I added to it was an external 18GB Firewire hard drive (about the same price as a similar SCSI drive) that hot-plugged in and went right to work with no configuration at all. Are you really telling me this machine can't be upgraded, or is that just something you read in PC Magazine in 1994?
I haven't tried running the Mac Seti client (I doubt my wife would let me tie up her iMac for that long), but I've been averaging 8hr 43min seti work units on my Celeron 450 (300a overclocked) running linux. I've heard the GUI clients are a lot slower, but almost 3x slower is riduculous! I suppose that prof didn't mention the Alpha system cranking out seti units in about 50 minutes did he? I like Apple, but their stuff can be so expensive! I wonder if this machine would be able to handle IBM's PPC chip that has multiple processor cores on it.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Thank god it doesnt come with fucking windows
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
Umm, no. They know that a lot people who use Macs need to get certain kinds of tasks done quickly and easily. I work all day on one and it does what I need it to do. When I get my G4, it'll do it faster. Please tell us, what tasks do you use for computer for? Or is the computer then end in and of itself? There is nothing wrong with that, just don't put down other people who actually need to get things done and don't want to spend all their time trying to figure out who to do it.
I'm not being facetious, tell us what you do with your computer.
cheers,
Matthew Reilly
If you missed it, Apple just announced MacOS 9. While it is still based on the old code base, it is an improvement. The MacOS has been getting timely, regular updates.
When the MacOS X code base is ready for prime time, it too will be updated regularly.
I am using MacOS X Client now and it is very nice thankyou very much. As I said X Client is available to those that want it. As is the DEV builds of the Linux Kernal.
Need I say more.
yeah, i have to agree that they are fast, butlook at the facts. scalability blows, the os blows, and even steve jobbs blows (hippy computing for the pop culture of the nineties works really well except when u cant upgrade.) im sure it would be great if we had apple pc hybrids that actually worked, but realistically, i can build a machine cheaper and more efficiently for 1/3 the cost. and that is what the buisness market is looking for.
-------------------------------------------------
- IBM has decided to release the specs for the PowerPC (G3 at least...) series of processors.
This makes me think that Be will have an easier time porting their OS to the newer hardware.IBM has also released the design for a PowerPC mainboard. (And it doesn't use Apple ROMs.)
The reasoning is that the open source community will be able to use IBM's hardware more easily. (Read: more sales)
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
i thought they sucked at first as well, but now ive gotten used to it and they seem ok, now the mouse, that i had to replace...
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
First, the spec95's have been posted on the G4 or PowerPC MPC7400 as it's really called. They are
;-). Interger performance on G4 is somewhat faster than G3 and the FP is much faster on G4. The Velocity Engine (altivec) brings a whole new level to the G4 also.
:~)
~21 for specint at 450mhz and ~20.4 for specfp
The interger is about on par with a PIII but the FP is about 50% faster when comparing to a PIII at the same speed. This doesn't, however, take into account the power of Altivec, or Velocity Engine as Apple is now calling it. As if all that wasn't enough, G4 support a 128 bit bus between processor and main memory. It is also MERSI compliant so it will be a totally bitchin SMP cpu. Look out Xeon.
Second, the use of altivec benchmarks are valid, they are afterall a part of the chip. In fact they are an integral part of the chip. Altivec can do a matrix multiplication in only a few cycles and it can pass up to 4 float or up to 16 interger operations through it in ONE clock cycle. That is power, not vapor benchmarks!
Third, Support for Altivec is as easy as recompiling in Metrowerks. They already have shipping Altivec support.
Fourth, Benchmarks are relative to what you are trying to measure. If you want to measure raw CPU performance, without measureing the performance of the OS or the Memory or the whatever, BYTEmarks ARE a good benchmark. They are just unpopular because the don't go the way that most people want them to! If you want a 'real world' benchmark that is processor intensive, timing a series of Photoshop filters or timing a long rendering is a valid benchmark when the software is optimised for both test systems, as the packages that Apple used are. People are just complaining again because the benchmarks didn't go the way they wanted. Please remember that Intel provides programmers to Adobe to optimise Photoshop for Intel CPU's and not only did Apple humiliate the PIII/600 in photoshop tests, PC Mag also said the G3/400 beat the PIII 500 in 10 of 13 Katmai enhanced plugins and the G4 is faster than the G3 on all levels! Also remember that Apple took the INTEL SUPPLIED benches of PIII that were ment to impress and it made them look pitiful. Some operations were 7X faster on the G4
Fifth, the G4 IS NOT a G3 with Altivec. The core is really different (not different like a PII vs a PIII
Sixth, Apple plans to optimise core OS functions for Altivec. Not only will Quicktime be accelerated, but Quickdraw will also. For those who don't know, Quickdraw is the code responsible for rendering screen display. Imagine, 128 bit vector processing when every you move a window!
Now that is cool.
Ok, end rant mode
..but does it support SMP?
Somehow I do not believe it will actually outrun my dual PIII 500 Dell in my simulation code.
Say nothnig about our 16 head Suns...
And on my home box PIII450+TNT2 will kick G4
butt in any game you find (if it supported on Mac,
which is a rarity).
Apple marketing drivel make me sick. "Think different", my ass. More honest would be "Do not think, just believe all the buzzwords..."
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
..you correct me, even if PPC can support SMP theoretically - there are no dual/quad G4 boxes offered..
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
These cases are 19" tall without the handles (deliberately so). You unscrew the handles and screw on rack ears from a third-party and you're done.
"1394 --> fire wire 802.11-->airport"
Well seeing as iMacs dont have FireWire or AirPort, I really dont see how that's relevant. Oh yeah, I'm sure first time computer buyers would be a lot less confused if they were calling then IEEE 1394 and IEEE 802.11. I also hear they like to talk in binary, and make their own processors.
--- Apparently I have an old
You are thinking of the Power3 (64-bit) and Power4 (multiple cpu on die, under development) chips. These are only made by IBM and used in their AS/400 and RS6000 systems. While closer to being PowerPC than previous "Power" generations, these aren't exactly stuff you find in boxes at your friendly neighborhood store.
Power3: http://www.chips.ibm.com:80/news/power3.html
Power4: http://www.eet.com/story/OEG19990804S0023
Anything you permanently put in your living- or work-space in furniture, whether you want it or not. That is just an undeniable reality. Deal
with it.
Hmm.. dvd and a special display...
but no mention of any cool sound systems?
I'm a musician/composer and I know the macs kindof have a niche in the realtime sound proccessing area... yet, this is always in the concert hall.
I'm surprised, for all that money, you don't get an amazing dolby digital set of 6 speaks!
anyone have anything else to say re: sound/macs/G4s..?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Looks like the Voodoo 4 (or whatever they end up calling it) wi ll support the G4 Macs out of the
box.
> first off, i cant even connect to their sight!
..."
> this might be due to the hit rate, but still. it
> should be able to handle it. (?)
yes, ladies and gentlemen, the slashdot effect in action, combined with the fact that, as you and half the civilized (read: slashdot readers) and about half the mac-owning world were beating on it, they were trying to update their new pages.
> second, the g-4 sight , when i reached it, had
> the same "think different" campaign ideas. this
> includes explaining what mhz means!!
wait until they post the update explaining what a gigaflop is. oy, the humanity. but what do you expect from a company that tries to cater to the professional, as well as the consumer. yes, my grandmother likes the tangerine, but what do all the numbers mean?
> apple once again has claimed fastest machine. i
> dont know if its true or not, but i doubt it.
i'm skeptical myself, but in the keynote they said they performed the operations specified in Intel's own benchmarks (as published) and beat their own published results. no actual hard numbers, but it sure as hell flew on the tests they did in the address. granted, they were optimized for altivec, but then, all the pentium tests were optimized for MMX, etc..
> "So, if you're one of those professionals
> what? its like they are trying to portray mac
> users to some sophisticated guy in a 3000 $ suit!
no.. the professionals they're talking to are graphics and creative professionals. we creative types don't wear suits. you're lucky if you see us in shoes. enterprising, business-types can continue using PCs until they burn up in the all-consuming fire of the apocalypse, but the creative guys have been getting a lot of flak lately for sticking with the mac in the face of better performance from NT boxes, so this is more ammunition for the "i'll use the mac till you pry the trackball from my cold, dead hands" crowd - namely graphics folks.
> "the first desktop with wireless computing"
> uh huh, suuuure.
built-in? that you can use as a wireless hub? i'm not in the wireless market myself, but i, for one, haven;t seen any other pc with it built in from the factory.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
well before all these people get their panties wadded up on the stuff apple said....go read about the g4...I think you'll see it's as fast as they say. Remebre it's more than just Mhz that matters...
128 bit vector processsing.....droooooooool
multi core(though not supported, yet)....droooooooool
Alti-vec(MMX sucked, 3dnow was cool)......drooool
I like the Mac well enough, but it's pretty tiresome to have every Mac afficianado act like you've accused them of child molestation everytime there's a complaint about the OS.
/. crowd when one points out a flaw of Linux (which there are some of...)
Not like that ever happens with
A flat, larger screen and it's a G4 alright. Maybe wiley toons also design macs in their spare time :)
4 99.html
http://www.wileytoons.com/homer/again/homer_031
Tim
It's hype vs. truth in sort of the same way as Intel's claims about MMX were: It really is that fast, but only for those tasks that happen to benefit from vector-processing and whose code is optimized to use it. So it's true, but with a huge "Your Mileage May Vary" sticker attached for real-world applications.
However, it's a lot better in the real world than MMX, since (as has been posted countless times) the optimization can be done by flipping a single checkbox in CodeWarrior, with no need to drop into assembly code (though I guess you would still do that foe even better optimization). Also, Apple is optimizing (or has already) a lot of system-level routines to use it, e.g., QuickTime, networking, etc., so even an unoptimized application that spends a lot of time waiting for those routines will see major speedups.
Also, the range of tasks that can benefit from AltiVec is supposedly far wider than that of MMX: they're both the same sort of thing, i.e., a vector-processor, meaning they perform the same operation on multiple data elements with a single instruction, but AltiVec is supposedly much better-designed -- its new instructions are more useful and more powerful, it doesn't have MMX's problem of sharing registers with the FPU, etc. Part of that is due to the PowerPC's overall superior achitecture, which makes it easier to add new stuff without it all getting crowded and jumbled together.
And Jobs claimed in his speech that it really is true that they were contacted by the DOD telling them that these machines are subject to the export controls for supercomputer technology. Hence the ad "For the first time in history, a personal computer has been classified as a weapon by the U.S. government. With its ability to perform over a billion calculations per second, the Pentagon doesn't want it to fall into the wrong hands. As for Pentium PCs... they're harmless." This thing really is technically a supercomputer, since, with vector processing, its speed is in the GFLOPS.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
./ can't even spel bayta. Me can't no spel alfa.
So it really crashes? And you accept this? You know it really doesn't have to be like that. An OS for your kinda work(any kind work) should really be based on a UNIXoid kernel and a sufficient GUI slapped on. I'd relly complain my ass of if something i had paid money for crashed. Even if it was only once in two weeks or something like that. The whole system going down because of an app-crash whould make me complain even more.
LINUX stands for: Linux Inux Nux Ux X
FRA: STFU GTFO
Just two points which have been made before:
-Apple killed the clone-builders because they weren't drawing new customers, they were sucking the return customers away from Apple, which is a Bad Thing for Apple business-wise.
-BeOS runs on non-G3/G4 PowerMacs. Why the LinuxPPC group can figure out how to get a different OS running on the chip and somehow Be can't is a little odd, wouldn't you say?
Right on. So poor little Be supposedly couldn't reverse engineer Apple's G3 motherboard. But they do manage to figure out how to reverse engineer around the various bugs and defects for the gazillion PC motherboards and BIOSes out there.
I would love to see IBM sink some money into Be to keep BeOS/PPC alive, but would imply that IBM would actually have to support the PPC platform beyond the point of just re-releasing some old motherboard specs.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
No way in hell that it is faster than the Alpha(tm). Not in fp anyway int has alway been the playground of the G, PPC-60 whatever. The Alpha scored SPECint 35 and SPECfp 65 respectively thinks i. The G4 only got 20 and 20 (thinks i(maby that was the 400?)). The bus of the G4 is also silly: 100MHz when even IA32 is leaving that.
LINUX stands for: Linux Inux Nux Ux X
FRA: STFU GTFO
I wasn't aware Compaq was selling Alpha's as personal computers. I had the silly impression that they were for servers, thanks for correcting me.
The points in your post would have been relevant- if you were making them three or four years ago. Apple has quit the habbit of developing interesting but unviable products only to dump them later on.
Their bloatware problem rivals
What bloatware problem? Show me one piece of Mac OS software from 8.0 or later. Apple is one of the best companies around for deciding if something is a usefull feature, something that needs work or something that gets discarded. With that certain other company, they do 1 and 2 but never get to 3.
People have been saying this, virtually word for word, for the past 10 years.
Your talking at least an extra 350-400 dollars...for a decent fire wire card
/mouse/floppydrive is a little optomistic...
and while your at it:
Win NT which is say about 250$ (I think it might be more..) (Most publishing isn't Linux yet..)
Plus I think there 40$ for a keyboard
Also companies don't buy overclocked chips.
plus you get a cool case with the mac although I will say the keyboard and mouse need to go (add 60$)
And ATI rage 128 isn't the best but its no slouch in 2D (Acceptable in 3d)
I believe we all know the real answer:
while (nt == unstable) {
switchTo.linux()
}
...
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
The machines from VA that I saw at the LWCE we're pretty purrdy.
...
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
You can't run anything on Alpha hardware besides Linux. Unless you like running old bootleg copies of Windows NT.
BX: $100 and less, dual $150 :) ;)
:)
Athlon: $200 flat
Apple: $400 and way way way beyond (btw, can't buy one
P3-500 is rapidly approaching $200. P3-450 is under now. K7-500 is around $350 afaik, but you really can't get one. Anyone who buys the fastest chip at any time is a complete idiot or is spending someone else's money, they're always 2X (or more) than the 'slowest' of a speed grade. Case-in-point, P3-600. Save the $$$ for more memory.
Anonymous Coward, get it?
Anonymous Coward, get it?
Not bad spelling, bad typing