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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 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).
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
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*
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...)
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.
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.
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.
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.
while (os.worksfor(user)) { user.use(os) }
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
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?
Oh yes, indeed. Looks like some quality goodies can be had here. (disclaimer: I'm not a hardcore Mac fan) I've had an itch for quite a while now to delve into the PPC. I'll admit I was a little dissapointed at the G3 vs PentiumII claims so I'm a little skeptical about the 200% faster than a P!!! claims, but I'm willing to be convinced!
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.
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.
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in a world without bounderies or fences, who needs Gates anyway?
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).
Ten million years or so...
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People actually buy computers base on the color of their favorite Life Savers candy. Just plain sad! It's a computer people not funiture!
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
Great, that's very encouraging. With the amount of flak they got the last time around, I would have to imagine they'd have to have their story together this time around. Can't wait.
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...
>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
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*
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*
$1509 vs $1599 is within the same order of magnitude; it depends on the mouse and keyboard you buy, for example(USB or otherwise, name brand or not, etc).
Why NT? Because NT can do the same things, mostly, that Mac can do; desktop publishing, prepress, color correction, etc. If we are targetting different markets, then sure, throw in Linux or BeOS. For Seybold, I think NT would be appropriate.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
They used Intels OWN TESTS to benchmark the G4. They grabed all the tests Intel used on the PIII to make it look good, ported 'em to G4, ran them and beat the shit outta Intel...
;-)
Now thats funny.
Another thing about the G4... when typing it, if you give it a little SHIFT, you get G$
does Apple know something we dont
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*
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?"
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.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.