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The G4 and Apple's Second Coming
Anyone who's been anywhere near true computer geeks soon comes to realize that the driving ethic behind the Internet isn't pornography, technology or money-making. It's not even freedom.
It's the yen for cool stuff - designing it, programming it, acquiring it or trying it out.
This week, Apple unveiled its Mac G4 series, somewhat exaggeratedly described as the world's first supercomputer for the desktop, with TV spots that show a G4 being encircled by Army tanks while an announcer points out that this is the first personal computer so powerful that it's been declared a military weapon (translation: the federal government has declared certain technologies off-limits to specific foreign governments, including Iran and China, because of potential military applications).
Don't worry about the Pentium chip, adds the announcer. "It's harmless."
You could practically hear countless geeks and nerds inhale sharply and breathe heavily. Judging from Web chatter on tech sites from C-Net to Linux World to Slashdot, the G4 was an instant smash. Geeks are forever on the prowl for the coolest, fastest, most powerful new thing, and the G4, clearly, is it.
In America, corporations often become cultural or even political symbols that transcend the products they make. IBM, AT&T, Ford, Linux - all are icons as much as manufacturers, programs or communications giants.
With the possible exception of Bill Gates's Microsoft, no company embodies a particular corporate approach to the digital world more than Apple Computers; no individual personifies a corporate view more than Steve Jobs.
From the early days of the boom, Gates and Jobs have been the yin and yang of the computer world: Gates is intrinsically corporate, rapacious and big, ferociously competitive, monomaniacally focused, Jobs straight out of the alternative entrepeneurial wing that saw computing as a wondrously liberating tool.
His buddy Steve Wozniak grasped almost instantly that this philosophy was unlikely to withstand the looming capitalist assault on the computer industry and bailed out. Jobs was driven from Apple, but stayed in the game, before a desperately failing company asked him back.
In conventional financial terms, Gates was by miles the more successful, becoming the global poster boy for the Long Boom and the world's richest man.
Jobs, always more quixotic and, if such a thing is possible, even more egotistical than Gates, positioned Apple as the anti-IBM, and the anti-Microsoft, each, at different times, versions of the same thing. In so doing, he created a company that brought millions (including me) into networked computing. But in a corporate sense, he fell far behind and out of grace.
Now it seems the wheel has turned again. If there's an ideology at the heart of computing, it's to be forever on the lookout for the coolest, fastest, most powerful thing. The G4 clearly, is it.
At least for a while.
Apple has been enjoying a remarkable renaissance with the runaway success of the iMac, the G3 desktop and Powerbook series, and, more recently, the iBook. The G4, from early accounts, is an impressive accomplishment, an unprecedently powerful desktop machine that costs little more than the too-cutesy, candy-colored iMacs. Because it is new and powerful, it is cool. Because it is cool, they will come.
Although substantially more powerful than the G3s they will replace, the G4's price increments are the same: $1,599 for a Mac with a 400-megahertz processor; $2,499 for 450 MH available in September, and $3,499 for 500 MH, available in October.
The G4's microprocessor, co-developed by Apple, IBM and Motorola, uses a circuit called the velocity engine, (similar to the vector processors used in supercomputers), that allows it to process 128 bits of information per cycle, compared with 32 or 64 bits in most processors. It can, according to Jobs, tackle tasks, from encrypting Net messages to processing digital video, that are beyond most ordinary PC's.
Apple's engineers and designers have again radically changed public perceptions of computing, offering machines for non-computing professionals as well as loyal Mac-adherents that are colorful, portable, powerful, easy, and/or cheerful, depending on one's tastes.
Apple has always had the strange distinction of being uncool and cool simultaneously. To legions of professionals - writers, artists, designers - the Apple was a godsend, permitting creative work while eliminating the sometimes nightmarish process of struggling with computer mechanics. To geekdom's macho wing, Apples are for ignorant wimps who use graphic interfaces to avoid ever really coming to understand how computing works. For years, no self-respecting geek would be caught dead on a Mac.
Now the G4 signals the return of an Apple Age, or at least Round Two of the original Apple Age, though it's significance may be more metaphorical than real. The new Apple doesn't allow us to think differently so much as it enables us to compute more simply and powerfully, two very different ideas. For some years, Apple alone offered individuals an alternative to corporatism. Now that mantle belongs more to the open source and free software movements. (A telling example of the new, greedier Apple ideology is that the G4 was deliberately built so that owners of the new G3 can't upgrade to it - they have to buy a new one. Doesn't sound like very different thinking after all).
The irony of the Apple story, especially for people like me, is that these machines made it possible for us to use computers, but kept us perennially ignorant about how they really worked. In my own case, this was a mixed blessing. (For the past year, I've been struggling to learn and use Linux, in many ways the antithesis of the Apple experience. It's been rough, but I'm close. I have a working Linux computer and am getting lessons in how to use it. More on that later.)
The G4 is the crowning achievement to date of the Jobs-engineered Apple comeback, because he's not only created a machine the wusses will love; he's pounded the macho geeks at their own game and exposed behemoths like IBM and Microsoft for the clunky and unimaginative entities that they are.
For all that, apart from the fact that Jobs has calmed down considerably and sports a graying beard, this second Apple Age is sadly different from the first one. Mac made its national debut (remember the famous anti-IBM ad?) during the 80s. The computer was presented as an anti-Orwellian device, a revolutionary affirmation of individual creative spirit versus corporate domination.
The Macintosh, Jobs was saying, wasn't about technology, but creativity. It wasn't about big business, but about individual aspiration. Accurate or not, lots of people fell for the line, and the Apple brought part of an entire wary generation into computing. Even the most severely technically-impaired were able to approach computing and participate.
The new Apple Age is more consumer-oriented and profit-driven, and far less honest and idealistic. You have to wonder: Is the G4 really necessary? Do people actually need a desktop that's classified as a military weapon? Or portable computers that resemble translucent toilet seats? Will this generation of Apple computers, like the first, keep affluent computer users happy, more powerful and even more ignorant?
The good news is that the resurgence of Apple is a rebuke to the way big corporations do - or don't - think. No board of directors or mega-company with squadrons of vice-presidents would have come up with the G4, or with anything like the iMac.
Apple's comeback invokes the long-ago days when companies reflected the stubborn, idiosyncratic visions of individuals, instead of the tepid, amorphous conglomerates that dominate new and old media.
If Apple may no longer lay claim to its anti-Orwellian ideological roots - always personified more by Wozniak than Jobs anyway -- it has made computing fun and accessible again, and has provided consumers with more real choices and alternatives.
For that alone, the second coming deserves to be hailed.
I love your comment about MS being a money making machine. OF COURSE IT IS. SO IS EVERY OTHER PUBLICALLY TRADED COMPANY IN THE WORLD! If it is not a money making machine, then they can and will be SUED by the stock holders (including me!).
Naive boy. Remember Apple and their high profit margins of the early 90s? That was really atruistic.
I think that all the people that have gotten too technical and picky about the details of the article and the G4 itself. I dont think that apple was aiming their product towards hardcore techies who refuse to own a computer unless it was hand built by themselves with a custom built kernel (linux of course), cooled down to absolute zero, overclocked to 4000 petahertz, with a floppy drive. You got to understand that these kind of people (including myself) are only a very tiny part of the computer market. My personal take on the G4 is neither like or dislike, I just think that it is something 'different'. Which is probably what Apple intended it to be. You do have to give them credit for introducing neat stuff. What other computer company can make a product that can be the topic of discussion for even non-techies. Ive heard my non-techie friends talking about Apple products and when I look at it through their eyes, I realize how great Apple technologies really are.
First of all you would never execute a vector instruction on every tick. Even RISC can't be that effecient...your premise and the following math are absurd. The 128 bit wide bus is beneficial simply because it can keep the processor saturated. Not to mention most vector calculations are repetitive in nature and benefit from a large cache. The G4 has healthy on-chip caches as well as a 1 MB L2 cache (2x PIII, etc.) Even better, Altivec (Velocity Engine) executes separately from the other logic units on the chip core. MMX stole cycles from floating point, etc. Well you know the story. Best yet, apps and system software (read Linux too) can benefit from Altivec by a simple recompile. Yee ha. In case you haven't noticed Code Warrior runs on Linux now. It is nice technology. Do you really want the world to run on one hardware platform? Your narrow minded, Intel PCs at all costs, world view is terrifying in its simplicity. Try another platform at least once in your life. It might prepare you for the one day you realize there are certainly equal, and maybe better alternatives out there in the big, bad world. You obviously fear what you don't understand.
Sun and Apple are not competing in the same market at all. Sun sells workstations and servers for "serious computing", Apple sells computers for end-users. Anyone who considers a Mac and a Sun Ultra alternatives for the same kind of computing use are crazy. Unless they're planning to replace MacOS on the Mac, but that is not the market Apple are after.
I read it the first time. I just wanted to point out that the comparison of Sun and Apple ads makes about as much sense as comparing Ford and Boeing ads, i.e. none at all. That's all. I could have been clearer about that in my original post, I suppose.
- 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?"
There are many different types of creativity. What I'm assuming you're talking about is the artsy/desktop publishing type creativity (if I'm wrong about you, please let me know) that is popular among Mac people and is really the reason Apple exists as a company today. Linux may stifle that creativity because you have to learn commands and things that take away from the "art experience" but there is another type of creativity where not being able to get into the guts of the OS and play around is stifling. Programming under Windows (never done any Mac programming but I think it would be the same) is stifling to my coding creativity because of all the overhead involved. Macs with the MacOS will probably never appeal to people like me (and the majority of Slashdotters I suspect) because they want to keep the "fun" label and not get a "techie" label like Linux, which is unfortunate because I think one OS can easily be both (and I must confess I hope that OS is Linux!)
Oooh... we have a proprietary machine, that, wait, has to run a proprietary operating system. To top if off, every 6 to 9 months you have to upgrade your OS for 90 dollars.
Don't like it, put Linux on it. Yes, you can do that.
Hell, imagine the scream here and elsewhere if every 9 months to 1 year you had to pay microsoft for MINOR updates. (which is all the Mac OS ever gets... gee a better internet search engine and prettier graphics)
Mac OS 8.5 added to Mac OS 8 prettier graphics, a better internet search engine, better virtual memory (improving on the already improved vmem of OS 8), improved networking, improved all sorts of other stuff, and just like all the other updates it was faster and more stable. OS 9 will add Carbon compatibility to prepare for OS X consumer, multiuser capability, TCP file sharing, and more. Windows 98 added to 95 a bundled web browser, little sliding menus, and fixes for dozens of security holes for the same price. Which was worth it?
Yeah, but if Apple's ripping me off that much on the upgrade, how much am I getting ripped on the basic system? Since it's not itemized, I'm thinking a lot. Note that if I spend $1500 on a PC, I'll get a LOT more than if I spend an equivalent amount on a Mac.
$1500 approx. - PII 400, 17 inch monitor, 128M RAM, 13 gig HD.
$1500 approx - G3 350, no monitor, 64M RAM, 6 gig HD.
Which is the better deal? I'd say even the bare Mac is a ripoff. And don't pull that "but the G3 is a better processor." on me - A fast processor does NOT make a good system. Note that my K6-2/300 kicks the crap out of a lot of those #1500 PII-400s because the rest of the system is fully decked out. Especially note my previous rant about Apple's love affair with ATI.
As far as MacOS support for other video cards - Do you realize how anal ATI is with their specs? If Apple can get specs from ATI, they can get specs from anyone. Especially NVidia, who is not only supporting Linux with an open-source driver, but is also supporting BeOS.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The hardware is (for the most part) standard. But there are some EXTREMELY proprietary things in Macs. I think the biggest example is the firmware being written to prevent an upgrade to a G4 for any G3 owners. Oh yeah, and let's see you try to get a good video card for a Mac. The latest ATI cards can be described as "acceptable" at best, but they're still more than a generation behind PCs - The Rage 128 is slower than an original TNT and has lower visual quality. Meanwhile, the PC world currently has TNT2s available for $90, and TNT2 Ultras in the $170 range, with the GeForce on the horizon. Yes, they may be PCI (or AGP), but I don't see MacOS supporting 3D on anything except the crap ATIs. There are two main things that have to happen before I'll buy a Mac: a) Apple has to end their love affair with bottom-of-the-barrel chipset maker ATI. The only worse manufacturer is S3 IMHO. b) They have to stop charging $324 (academic pricing) to upgrade from a 6 gig to 12 gig HD when I can get a 12gig for $120 outright. c) Sell a mobo, case, and nothing else. I think the Linux cloners using the IBM specs will beat Apple to this.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
...but they sure are expensive. The price of a G4 based Apple will buy you a pretty loaded PC. I think Ars Technica said a dual PII-600 - maybe a slight exageration there but only just.
/. people) Apple's latest system always seem a bit like Nike trainers. Fancy label, fancy price tag but nothing special compared to the £20 clones.
For me (and most
Long live the "PC" technology steamroller...
at from /. it seems they are more likely to go
for the IBM PPC boards or alpha (EV6 comes on a
pretty sweet board, too bad compaq is greedy with
thier compiler tech. lets hope IBM/motorola
wont be. im certain apple would if it were up to
them).
sad the the g4 macs have only a 2x agp...
maybe apple should look at matrox or number nine.
Until the G3 arrived, Macs ranged from insanely difficult(those stupid "pizza-box" cases on the 6100 for example) to nearly impossible(the SE) to get inside of.
I think you are confusing the 6100 with some other model. I had a Centris 610, which uses the exact same case as the 6100 series and to get into it, you pop two catch tabs on the back and the cover comes off. Everything was completely accessible after that.
How long till they run on the Sawtooth boards, though? I really want to get a 500MHz but there's no way I'm going to do it if Linux isn't there as well...
Hey, Jason, mail Jobs! Tell him Lnux got him an extra sale!
It wasn't that clones were eating into Apple's profits. They were gnawing off limbs. Power Computing had an exit strategy - kick Apple's ass by making machines that totally put Apple to shame, and charge much less for them. They did that. Apple was so far behind it wasn't even funny, but Power Computing was beginning to dictate standards for the CPU, down a dead-end route, a faster version of the 604, instead of moving on to a G3. The faster 604 (Mach5) would have been a developmental dead-end for the PowerPC, but it was faster than the G3 - and maintained not only FP performance, but multiprocessor capability, which were both tradeoffs for the G3.
Once Apple was decimated, Power Computing had hoped to switch over to x86, and if you recall, at the time Apple shut them down, they tried to go into the x86 market, but it was too soon for them, their designs weren't quite there yet. Had they more time, and more Apple-crunching capital, they could easily have shut down Apple, AND made a successful transition into the x86 clone market, and probably would be a worthy competitor to Dell and Compaq today. But we would have no Apple.
If Apple were to reopen cloning, they would have to simply quit the hardware market, because they simply can't compete on price/performance. Power Computing didn't have to design the motherboard or the ROMs.
I AM glad that Apple's back, but I really wish there was some way to get the great hardware they're making now, out in the open so those of us who don't drive porsches can afford to buy clone systems, or build our own. (as it is, Apple is even afraid of the upgraders eating their lunch, hence the ROM hack to prevent G4 upgrades to B&W G3s. thank god I have a G3 beige!).
"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.
Maybe if Steve Jobs would fire a couple of neruons and have a Tech Note written to explain why the block is there, people wouldn't have to speculate on why Apple did this.
As it is, Apple has already shown their dark side when they brutally stomped Power Computing into the dust. (yes, it was self-defense, but if Apple had simply quit the hardware field, because it was obviously not on par with the cloners), we could be in a much better PPC hardware world today, and not have so much trepidation about these very suspicious looking maneuvers.
"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.
ha. If it weren't for contractual obligations, Motorola would not have completed Altivec, and would have dumped the PPC two years ago. Motorola apparently hates the PPC more than Intel does.
(anyone at Moto who disagrees with this statement - please demonstrate otherwise: affordable, open PPC Clones NOW!)
"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.
"Processor
upgrades aren't useful until a year or so into the lifecycle when competition and age have brought the
cost to levels close to the resale difference"
If that's the case, why were people buying B&W G3's last February and slapping CPU upgrades in them right away? Because even Apple's top of the line was not as fast as the fastest upgrade cards, again proving that while the PPC may be faster than the P III (debate, argue), Apple is NOT cranking out the fastest systems they could be. They were behind the curve during the clone wars, and that's why they stomped cloning, and they're behind the curve now, and ONLY the accelerator manufacturers illuminate the truth. Apple's ROM upgrade shuts out the light on that truth.
I love my Macintosh. I hate Apple.
"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.
"Apple has fucked me over for the last time. When a company tinkers with their computers' firmware ."
to preventprocessor upgrades. .
See? We're back to this one again. It's not whether or not Apple DID disable the upgradability, its the fact that they're so brain dead, as to sit and watch while the press tears them apart and customers jump ship in an information vacuum.
"Only president Clinton is better at warping people's perception of reality than this guy is"
You've been an Apple customer HOW many years, and you've never heard of the "reality distortion field"?
"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.
e) are there even similar-speed PII's in portables?
I think not.
"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.
I like my beige G3. I've been treated well by Apple, and I think I'm gonna spring for a G4 upgrade rather than buy a G4 machine, unless this B&W upgradability issue resolves itself, so I can trust the company again.
.
There we go again, back to that "information vacuum" thing. .
"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.
naw, Microsoft can't do anything to get busted up by the DoJ, because they were nice and included the "NSAKEY". The big bad gvt. is going to leave MS alone. The trial is just for show to keep Sun/Netscape/AOL/Novell happy.
"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.
Mac rumors site bullshit.
Until Apple releases a tech article detailing the hows and why's we're still living in an information vacuum, created by Apple.
"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.
According to the LinuxPPC people, writing an OS for the G3 "should be easy" too, but ask Be, that didn't happen either.
Technically easy, yes.
Politically expedient, no.
Don't hold your breath waiting for OS X x86, it ain't gonna happen, and judging by the information vacuum on the subject of YellowBox licensing for NT, that ain't gonna happen either.
"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.
" They can't make an official statement
regarding this yet, because they can't afford a fiasco if it takes a bit longer than expected, or doesn't
work right, or what not"
They've already got a fiasco on their hands. What did they think their loyal customers were going to think?
DUH! be honest! Make the statement through the Tech Article system or thru Apple Developer Connection. The technical people will understand if there are delays. just say SOMETHING!
(and while your at it, let's hear your plan for YellowBox NT licensing too. What? didn't think so.)
"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.
No, Steve Jobs didn't learn didly squat at NeXT, that's why he said about the Mac OS (back when Rhapsody was killed), that "the Mac OS is our crown jewel, our prized posession, and we should polish it, not throw it away".
That's complete horse shit - and so we have to wait an extra year and a half for this Carbon bastardization, instead of having had Rhapsody sooner - and continue to listen to the rest of the computing world laugh at dusty, crusty, rusty old Mac OS.
"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.
Grackle, IIRC
"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.
I've used it maybe twice in the time I've used it.
:-)
(joke)
Wow you must be from Microsoft Marketing Dept... I've never seen such a grasp on doublespeak.
(/joke)
Your reflexive flammage of anything that you perceive as a threat to yourself is exactly what I was criticizing: not Apple, not progress, not user-friendliness. If it is so plainly obvious that OSX is not a Unix, despite having a BSD UNIX core, could you please explain yourself? Insulting your listeners is not a good way to carry an argument.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Apple = forward, quality, simplicity, elegance. /. rulz.
unixes = backwater, cheesy, don't-change-if-ain't-broken, hacks rulz,
Thank you for your masterful summation of the situation. Your breathtaking clarity, wit, and insight have enlivened yet another mundane day on Slashdot. Confronted with this burst of genius, we readers can only stand in awe and marvel at the enlightenment being given to us. Clearly UNIX is an obsolete piece of junk, only suitable for complete computer nerds, with no future at all: Xah Has Spoken.
</sarcasm>
Daniel
PS - Apple's next operating system release *is* UNIX.
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Just because we don't like using command lines, makefiles, emacs, etc. doesn't mean we're any less geeks. We just have different tool and environment preferences.
My Windows 98: SE box has not crashed or needed a "maintenence" reboot since I installed it on May 9th, 1999. I've currently had it running for three weeks without a reboot, when I powered it up after returning from vacation. People who whine about how unstable Windows is ought to gain some expertise before posting.
Also, explain to me how a Macintosh is easier to upgrade than a PC? Here's how I install a new hard drive in my machine. Open case, plug HDD in, reboot into Windows and pick my partition settings. Just because a Macintosh has fewer configuration options doesn't make it better, or easier.
--Conquering the Earth Since 1978.
so, why the sudden spurt of belief in apple now that the G4 is out? probably because it signals all the technological merit that the PowerPC really represents... When Tom's Hardware is comparing 10% different rendering times between an Athlon and Dual Celeron, here comes a piece of APPLE hardware that whups them both
Dude, I have yet to see a web benchmark that compares the rendering performance of a 750 / 7400 (G3/G4) against a Pentium anything. Sorry, if Apple wants to get out of just having a 'Photoshop' niche, it should quit spouting photoshop benchmarks and start showing me performance comparision for an app suite and some SPEC marks. Showing some game performance on good, popular games and comparing them with their x86 versions, fine. But show me a useful set of comparisons. Photoshop is heavily abused as a benchmark to favor Macs, as it was designed for Macs in the first place, with a crude port to Windows. ByteMark doesn't cut it either.
Katz is on crack if he's going to claim that all of the success of the G4 will be because of the ultra-hyped processor power of Motorola's newest CPU. Face it Jon, both current Alphas (21264) and Althons (K7-650) can run circles around the G4, regardless of what Apple would have us believe.
I agree completely, Alphas can run circles around ANY other competitor and while I haven't tried a K7 yet, they look pretty sweet too!
And while these G4's may be pretty fast, they are still made by Apple and still come with MacOS installed - yes I know you can install Linux later, but why pay for the MacOS if you don't even like it? Also, does Linux even run on G4's (yet)?
LONG LIVE ALPHA!!!
It's worth noting that more than simply the clock speed changes in each of the standard configurations you've mentioned.
Not that this totally excuses the price increases, but it's not as draconian as you paint it.
(There are also other changes between the motherboard used in the 400MHz G4 vs. the one used in the 450 and 500MHz models, but I haven't mentioned them.)
- Mali
Oops, omitted something. The standard 450MHz and 500MHz models also include Zip drives.
- Mali
Here are a few Mac upgrade links....
http://www.newertech.com/
http://www.sonnettech.com/
http://www.XLR8YourMac.com/
http://www.macgurus.com/
Your baseless heterophobia shows your hatred of straight people.
That's the best comeback you could come up with? How about something like, "Well... your mother likes it..."
Re: Sawtooth: It'll be a while. It _will_ work eventually, but not right away. There's a lot of new chips on there that will need working on, so we're going to buy a few and send them to the best of the best out there. :) I don't have an ETA.
;) (e.g., the next Macworld party)
:)
I'll mention your comment to Steve the next time we seem him.
Later,
jase
-- haaz.
Good man. ;)
The 400 Mhz boxes should be running pretty shortly after they're out. The processor already can run Linux, and the patches are making their way to the right people.
-- haaz.
Actually, I think the second age of Apple began with the iMac. Sure the G4 is a cool and powerful machine, but the product that really turned their fortunes around was the iMac. The iMac brought a lot of new users onto the Mac platform, either from Wintel or first time computer buyers.
The high end G4, at $3499, is a heck of a lot more than an iMac, and is more likely to attract folks who already have Macs and are looking to upgrade (like me!).
However, I do believe that there will be more folks buying the low and middle G4s to run LinuxPPC....at least until some 3rd party PPC motherboards hit the market.
This post rediculously romanticizes Apple. Apple Computer is not salvation, and Steve Jobs isn't the savior. Apple is a computer company. They make and sell computers. In some ways they are good computers and in some ways they are bad. But they are not liberating. There is nothing individualistic or idealistic about the computers or the company. They are a large company out to make a profit, and do so unscrupulously. Apple has been no more reluctant to screw its customers and competitors than Microsoft, only less profitable at it.
The Motorola PowerPC 7400, which apple calls a "G4" and claims credit for, is a powerful chip to be sure. But it isn't as much faster than a Pentium as the carefully chosen benchmarks would suggest. Apple didn't invent it and had nothing significant to do with the development. All they are doing is riding on the coattails of a good product and claiming credit for it, all the while pushing an overpriced and underperforming system.
Sorry, it's just a product. And the only creative genius at Apple is their marketing. "Think Different" is just a corporate slogan. Just like "where do you want to go today?". Katz seems to have bought it hook, line and sinker - but it just aint so.
Apple is not undergoing a renaissance. They are blowing a lot of smoke and flashing a lot of mirrors.
"The new IMac! Now in color!"
I am really disappointed you bought into this garbage. A good quality P3 with well-picked components will run rings around a Mac. The Mac has a processor that does well on benchmarks, but the rest of the technology is second-rate.
Plus, you get all the joy of a closed system, which any self-respecting geek will loathe. Consider their G3s... which Apple has actively prevented from being upgradable by deliberately breaking the firmware. If you plug a G4 chip into a G3 machine, it won't boot up. On purpose.
No PC manufacturer would be able to get away with this, and I strongly suggest that you not let Apple do it either. They're not rebels. They're not making insanely great things anymore. They are, in my opinion, a bunch of thieves extorting way too much money from a captive market.
Yes, you should think different -- think open.
Remember 'Softalk'?
Remember 'Nibble'?
Remember peeling the shrink-wrap off the gorgeously decorated box of 'Wizardry'?
Remember when computer manuals ASSUMED you would want to explore programming?
I need a beer.
**>>BELCH
I'm sorry, but the G4 is nothing new. It's like the transition from 68k to PPC to G3 - it's even less revolutionary than the transition from 68k to the PPC. It's just Moore's law as usual.
The iMac was groundbreaking, yes. OS X was something new too. But the G4 is just another new computer faster than older computers - we've seen it for many years now, and no marketing will make a computer with a faster processor revolutionary.
%japh = (
'name' => 'Niklas Nordebo', 'mail' => 'niklas@nordebo.com',
'work' => 'www.pipe-dd.com', 'phone' => '+46-708-444705'
Usually I talk about my Mac in a positive light. My opinion hasn't changed - I still like it and prefer it over Linux and Win*.* for certain tasks. I'm not what some people stereotype somewhat disparagingly as the "typical Mac user" (i.e. The Mac is a threat to my Penis because it allows dumb people to use a computer without begging me to keep hacking their Registry or Init files.)
:)
:)
What I don't like about it is the dependence on Apple. I'm not worried about them going belly-up -- I also run Linux on it. I've read the G4 rom block is temporary - although if it's NOT my opinion of Apple will nosedive. My problem is someone else still controls the destiny of my computer. This happens in the wintel world also.. look at Intergraph's announcement this week, and this has nothing to do with Microsoft.
I hate the fact the Mac ships with no development tools. Apple has made the Mac Programmer's Workshop C++ compiler a free download, but it's difficult to install, and being a "non-revenue generator" that's still closed source, I doubt it will get many improvements. At least ship a BASIC...
Apple doesn't seem to encourage development by their users (see above). All those free Microsoft development tools look good, even if they are created mainly as a tool to perpetuate API lock-in. Windows is closed source, but an aweful lot of UNIX-based open sourced apps make it there (like GIMP, or FreeCiv).
I'm not decided on the mouse, but I hate the keyboard. At least make the arrow keys bigger so one can control Quake in a manner I'm used to already..
I hate Stuffit. This isn't Apple's fault directly, but by NOT bundling something better we're all hooked on that crappy Stuffit. Almost no one registers, so everytime you use it those sluggish 68000 CPU emulator libraries get loaded. Worse than Java... Bleck!
I also hate paying more for some Mac software. SOME software includes both Mac and PC software on the same disc, but Best Buy or CompUSA decides to mark it up in the Mac section by $10. Smarter users will buy the program from the PC section, which means the numbers are off.
Oh well. Not a perfect world, which is why I rely on more than one computer. I can't wait for SheepShaver for LinuxPPC to arrive so I can run Linux full-time on the thing (and not miss out on Infini-D and Premiere...)
Great ! a 20-Gigaflop beowulf cluster ! Fantastic !
Except that we're talking about a single consumer level PC here, which even YOU will admit is a different beast than a beowulf cluster.
Oh, and a Beowulf cluster built in the USA would probably suffer the same export restrictions as the G4's been slapped with.
Any questions ?
Um, Patrik, go back and read the post again, 'kay ?
Apple was on its last legs a year ago.
The IMac took a gamble with USB, no floppy, "fashionable" colours and design. It may or may not have been technically innovative, but it found a market that was so large that it pretty much saved Apple's bacon.
Groundbreaking may be more appropriate in a marketing sense, but I think it definitely applies.
OK..
There are some really important diffenrences between the 400 and the 450 model.
The more expensive model got a completely new motherboard, sporting a new ROM-chip, AGP-graphics, three times as wide I/O, twice as fast PC-bus, supports twice the ammont of RAM, 3 Firewire-ports, double USB-busses, UltraATA/66-bus and wireless LAN.
Besides that the more expensive model got twice the RAM, twice as large hard drive, a DVD-drive, 20% faster CPU and a graphics-card with two ports, one digital and one analog.
The cheaper one is crippled but it's cheaper new than the older G3's were on a reabate.
- Henrik
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
But tell me, how many people really need a TNT2 to run Microsoft Office? Fast video ain't the be-all and end-all of a high-performance computer. Case in point -- my wife runs Media100 on a Mac 8100/100, and the bottleneck is (you guessed it) the processor. Can't wait to get her a G4! I doubt that the "bottom of the barrel" video will present a problem.
As for preventing upgrades to current G3 systems, I expect the third-party providers to work around that in a hurry.
Finally, I'll repeat what others said about Apple's upgrade prices -- buy what you want mail-order and install it yourself. It's all standard parts these days.
-- Dirt Road
-- Dirt Road
Improvise - Adapt - Overcome (unofficial USMC motto)
Seriously, Microsoft "treats their developers like gold" only until it's time to slit their throats or swallow them whole.
-- Dirt Road
-- Dirt Road
Improvise - Adapt - Overcome (unofficial USMC motto)
With a little care, your MacTCL program will work on Un*x and Windoze too. Nice stuff.
-- Dirt Road
-- Dirt Road
Improvise - Adapt - Overcome (unofficial USMC motto)
What contractual obligations? I was under the impression that motorola disc'd the Starmax because of apple's license bomb - the program wasen't around long enough to show a clear profit/loss performance history.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Why are people attributing performance gains in the G4 to Apple? Altivec was Motorola's contribution.
Apple's contribution is being the biggest customer for the Altivec version of the G4. Giving Apple all this attention is in my opinion quite out of order.
I'm much more interested in whether or not an Altivec G4 can run one of the new IBM-spec NON-Apple mother boards that are starting to show up, and how well linux might do on such a system.
Apple is doing the exact thing almost every other big corporation does, which is to work very hard to market a product. I think Steve Jobs gets credit for putting Apple back in black, not the G4 Altivec technology.
Marketing is the root of all confusion.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Actually, I think he liked the iMac. He was just pointing out that if Apple 'listened to the customer', they'd be making beige PCs running Windoze. No one knew they wanted a fruity, floppy-less, with a kinda-small screen, but really fast processor and cool industrial design box.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
According to this story (Blue G3/Grey G4 upgrades -- good news! [16:37 9/7]) Apple will be reenabling the firmware soon, now that they have released G4 machines of their own.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
Anyone who's been anywhere near true computer geeks soon comes to realize that the driving ethic behind the Internet isn't pornography, technology or money-making. It's not even freedom. It's the yen for cool stuff - designing it, programming it, acquiring it or trying it out.
I disagree. The driving ethic behind the Internet is about communication. That was the focus of the ARPANet, and that was why researchers and universities jumped on board.
That's why e-mail (and, to a lesser extent, messaging services) is the Killer Application.
--
QDMerge 0.21!
how to invest, a novice's guide
Damn, I thought I censored his messages in the first place...
Put it bluntly, if Microsoft did what Apple does, it would have been already been broken up by the Justice department.
Oooh... we have a proprietary machine, that, wait, has to run a proprietary operating system.
To top if off, every 6 to 9 months you have to upgrade your OS for 90 dollars.
Hell, imagine the scream here and elsewhere if every 9 months to 1 year you had to pay microsoft for MINOR updates. (which is all the Mac OS ever gets... gee a better internet search engine and prettier graphics)
Sorry Katz, you must own their stock. Apple is NOTHING special. They just simply use propoganda to keep the angst ridden hordes of users lined up at the support Jobs feeding bucket. (talk about numero uno exploiter - gets them to buy his half-assed next computer company for buku bucks... )
. * Did aliens forget to remove your anal probe?
The general Apple buying public WON'T LOAD ANYTHING ELSE.
Its the same scenario over on the microshaft side.
So get a clue, dumbass. I am referring to the regular users, not the high and mighty geeks like yourself, who blow so much smoke up their own asses they would sure ascend into the heavens if not being so full of shit in the first place.
;)
Smile... and get over it.
. * Did aliens forget to remove your anal probe?
you can also upgrade the 4400 to G3 via the cache socket.
Agreed.
I like macs, but I won't be buying any more because of the difficulty in upgrading them. It's just like trying to upgrade a notebook computer: if an upgrade path exists at all, it's usually prohibitively expensive.
I think apple does best with "sealed" machines that users are willing to throw away when they have reached the end of their useful lives.
From what I've heard, the problem was that some G3s wouldn't notice the G4s processors at all, and some would think that they did, but they wouldn't, so it's basically a motherboard problem or such like.
To quote someone who is much more in the know than I:
>>Buy a SCSI card. get a serial port card for $50.
I'd buy an older mac instead.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You missed my point. The point is not whether Apple has good technology or not.
I too was once a die hard Evangelista. Times have changed for me. I hate windows, I like the MacOS, but the executivs of the company are assholes. I'm now a linux man. I use my Windoze box If Linus were to become an overnight asshole, I'd move on to something else.
>Do you know that the iMAC (the stupid "girly" computer introduced over a year ago) was the only computer with 10/100base-T ethernet built-in? It has a DVD-CD-ROM.
The iMac is two steps above garbage. I work with them every day. The iMac uses technology from last year's laptops. 66mhz system bus, flimsy CD drive. FYI, that's not a DVD in the iMac. It's a 24x CD. Roll on down to your local Blockbuster and rent a DVD disc and try to watch it in an iMac.
The iMac is not some great technological feat, it's just a rare example of Apple doing some good advertising.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I got my first Mac in 1990. I got my last mac in 1997.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The return of Jobs may have lead to more financial gains for apple, but it's also lead to some technological backstepping.
The elimination of SCSI, Serial Ports, and ADB has alienated many of their formerly loyal customers. I'm one of those people. I got my first Mac when I was 15, it was a Mac Plus. Then when I was 18 I got a Performa 550. Then when I was 21 I got a Performa 6400.
I don't plan on buying another new Apple system again. I've got several hundred dollars invested in my peripherals. I'm not going to trash perfectly good equipment just to use the new equipment. I began the transition from the MacOS to Linux, I have a new alternate OS of choice.
Apple has fucked me over for the last time. When a company tinkers with their computers' firmware to preventprocessor upgrades, radically changes system board design and refuses to work with other companies to help them develop alternate OSes, kills off cloning, leaves customers stranded with peripherals that won't work with their new machines and claims it was all done to ensure the company's survival, well if things are so bad that THIS is what you need to do to survive, then count me OUT. I don't want to be a part of that club anymore.
I'll buy a 7300 and put a G3/4 upgrade in it before I'll plunk down cash for a new machine.
Steve Jobs has convinced people that he's fucking them over for their own good. -Paraphase "We need to do these things to keep Apple healthy, we need to build incompatibility into out machines so you have to buy new ones instead of upgrading. If you just upgraded your machine instead of buying a new one, that costs Apple money."
What's worse is that people actually BELIVE THIS CRAP! There are idiots out there who'd line up to get kicked in the balls if Jobs said it would help Apple.
Only president Clinton is better at warping people's perception of reality than this guy is.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You can give some credit to Gil Amelio, for starting the restructuring and setting a new course for Apple... He didn't understand Apple or its customers very well, though - he merely tried to plug the holes of the sinking ship, Apple.
When he brought Steve Jobs back, it was a godsend fo apple, but it also ended his reign. Steve Jobs has the personality to make people interested in and excited about things that Apple is doing. He also has much more perspective on the world than when he was at Apple 10 years ago.
So basically, I'd give some credit to Amelio for saving the company, but I'd give all the credit in the world to Jobs for making it prosperous, again.
>> ... Apple has done everyhting in it's power to
>> be the ONLY company allowed to produce PowerPC
>> based machines. Or perhaps you've forgotten
>> what happened to Power Computing et al?
Wrong. Apple has done everything in it's power to be the ONLY company allowed to produce PowerMac machines.
The PowerPC is about as open as you can get. Apple is just one of three companies that make up the PowerPC alliance (motorola and ibm being the other two). Motorola and IBM will be more than happy to sell you PPC chips to stick in machines running something besides MacOS. Heck, they probally don't care if the machine does run MacOS. They have a business of selling PPC chips to any customer, Apple or not.
dennis
Because it works, and it works well. No muss, no fuss. Despite its warts (like no memory protection), the Mac is the most effective platform to use and maintain that I know. Balancing its good points (consistency, usability, expandability, hardware capabilities) against its bad points (price, no PM, no PMT, apps lag Windows versions), the Mac is still the best overall package.
In day to day use, really, there's not that much difference any more between a Mac and Win9x. But I pity the Windows user who tries to manually configure or fix anything. And, as I mentioned once in the misty past, Macs don't experience System Rot like Windows machines do. At least, mine don't.
Linux? Don't even go there. Linux is for the "Mensa" of computer users, the top 2%. Even more than Windows, once you get everything set up right (if you ever do), it's great. But when it goes wrong, it does so catastrophically. Don't tell me otherwise, 'cause it's happened to me twice this summer. Plus, even more than Mac, Linux has an application gap.
The bottom line for me is, weighing the pros and the cons of all the contenders, the Mac is my preferred platform. The only system I see challenging that is BeOS, if it ever gets any apps.
Oh, and I'm not too proud to admit I like the eye candy, too. I think the iMac is cute, if a little small. I'm measuring my desk for a white 'n' silver tower with a 22" LCD display right now, maybe over there between the puddle of drool and that stack of extra Ben Franklins.
You're right, I am what I think should be the exact target for a Macintosh: Someone who wants a computer to work out of the box. (Don't you want your computer to work OOTB?) More to the point, I am an engineer and soi-disant computer expert who knows false economy when I see it. If being willing to spend a little more to get a better, less trouble-prone product makes me less of a geek, I'm okay with that.
I completely disagree with Apple's strategies - and I sincerely do not understand why anyone would like to invest in a platform that is so tightly controlled (G3->G4 upgrade? WHAT upgrade?).
:)
I'd like to think myself as a rational person, and not an anti-Mac fanatic and I do acknowledge that some people simply do not have a choice (for example some great hard disk recording tools are only available on Mac IIRC).
I agree with you that their strategies (good or bad, ethical or unethical, whatver) clearly are producing good results for the company.
Now the thing is: G4 looks like a decent processor. Can I get a G4 CPU and a G4 motherboard, like I can buy x86 components for example?
I ask this because I see two markets for the new G4:
Previous Mac users (small percentage of total computer users, say 10%) and users of other platforms that might be tempted to migrate.
Most seem to me of similar importance (ie
they could attract more or less similar sales).
These oter plaforms wether we like it or not means mostly windows. I consider it unlikely that any windows user will be migrating to MacOS any time soon, so they're pretty much locked in to x86.
Now, for people that are using unix on their production machines, there are several choices, including pentium, athlon, alpha etc. Linux runs well on all these platforms for instance, and is quite popular.
For Apple to gain a foothold in this potential market they will have to make their stuff available in the way that people using these OSes (like linux) like them: Ie not in 5 different predetermined take it or leave it configurations, but pretty much DIY.
I dunno. Good luck to apple.
Ewww... lots of ranting, apologies
-W
>My new Dell cost $1700. It goes 600Mhz. It has a >Diamond Viper 770. It is faster than a snake on >ice. The Athlon, which I do not have, but have >developed on, goes 700Mhz (800 by X-mas), and >has T&L instructions on the chip. Intel is >promising GIGAGHERZ next spring.
read macosrumors, g4's are expected to hit gigahertz next spring also, the key words here being "promising" and "expected" but when comparing two completely different chip architectures try and take differences in mhz speed with a grain of salt. i have a 9 month old g3 400, it's faster than a snake on ice, my brother has a brand new Dell 500, i set it up for him, right out of the box it feels sluggish compared to my mac. at work i use a dell optiplex 400, it *crawls* compared to make mac. now a lot of this has to do with the difference in the OS, yet you claim mac os to be worse than windows, when was the last time you used mac OS, system 6? also, i make the point of my brother's computer being right out of the box, this is important to note because any idiot who doesn't understand the OS he's using can fuck it up and bog it down over time(see my comments on linux later).
>With Apple, you get a relatively closed system, >an OS that is even worse than windows, crappy >ISV and IHV support, and you pay $1000 per 50Mhz >increment?
and if you bothered to learn anything about the architecture before slagging it you'd see that the 400's use the older yosemite MB while the 450's use the new sawtooth MB, now i do feel the price differnce between the 450 and 500 is somewhat excessive but it's by no means the "$1,000" you speak of.
>Hey at least it is in a cool color! Maybe >someday they will come out with a heterosexual >version.
i have a sense of design and aestetic, you have a sense of homophobia. takes all kinds...
>ps. Why does no body talk about Linux on Apple >Hardware? Do you guys really think that Apple's >12 year old OS is as good as Linux?
well, yes. linux has a use, mac os has a use, i wouldn't run a server using mac os 8.x, but i wouldn't run linux as a desktop os(yet). linux simply won't be ready for the desktop untill it has a *quality* GUI, i dual boot my mac, when i run linux i run CLI and it's screamingly fast, but when i give KDE or Gnome a go i have to periodically open up my case and make sure somebody didn't replace my G3 with a 68k... but again, i'm no linux guru and see my previous comment about any idiot being uble to mess things up.
>now i do feel the price differnce between the >450 and 500 is somewhat excessive but it's by no >means the "$1,000" you speak of.
oops! just checked the apple store again, it is a $1000 difference, but that's for the pre-configured systems that contain other upgrades besides just the processor, if you choose BTO and just upgrade only the processor it's only $350 more.
Anyone who thinks that Steve Jobs is not running Apple to the point of picking individual system characteristics(features, colors, shapes, etc.) has not had much contact with Apple. I have. Steve is running the place. Period. His mark is all over Apple today to an extent not seen since the mid-80's. It was Jobs who thought of the "Think Different" ad campaign, the idea of an iBook and the iMac. Jobs has fired people on the spot for not following his directions. Try that in any corporation today and the HR and legal eagles will tell a boss to forget it. But not with Steve.
Jim
Let us go to the stars, dream new dreams, and renew the embers of hope that have long since grown cold.
Apple did not use a neutral 3rd party benchmark to test their G4 to a Pentium III 600 processor. They used Intel's benchmarking software for the Pentium III processors. And the G4 sailed past the PIII's by over twice. That's gotta hurt.
Jim
Let us go to the stars, dream new dreams, and renew the embers of hope that have long since grown cold.
They haven't tried to monopolize PowerPC. They crushed PowerMac clones, not PowerPC machines in general. It was all about MacOS licensing. If you make PowerPC-based computers and don't want to sell them with MacOS, then there's isn't much that Apple can do about it (at least not legally).
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Could say the same about the pub surrounding Linux... At least Apple makes an easy-to-use operating system on which can run complex and easy-to-use software applications.
Be made a big mistake.
The G3's and G4's are straight forward design based ont the MPC106 "Crackle" chip.
The specs and a reference design can be found on the Motorola site.
If you take a look at the design of the iMac you'll see that they kept everything very simple.
The only part that Apple did design themselve is the Paddington I/O controler which is based on the Heathtrow I/O chip.
The problem is, that Be didn't wanted to do their homework.
The basic design of the G3 (beige), iMac, Wallstreet, Lombard and G3 bw is the same.
They all use a MPC106 chip and a Paddington or Heathrow I/O chip.
Apple is not the only company making PPC machines.
IBM is doing this for years (RS6000, AS400) and Bull is making large computers with 24 PPC chips.
Don't forget that Motorola is one of the biggest CPu firms.
They make more CPU's than Intel.
The problem is that only 7% of all cpu's are used in PC's. The rest is used in embedded systems, printers and a lot of other stuff including F16's.
What would your clone prices be if they had to do all of their own OS R&D and their own hardware R&D?
"I was there at the dawn of the third age of applekind"
;)
sorry, I couldn't help it
Y'know, not *ALL* artists thought "the mac was a godsend". I have a BFA....and the computers I started graphics on in college in 1991 (at the start of my major) were macs. Sure, they were neat, and I loved the results. But I HATED the interface. Of course I didn't know that's what the problem was: I just knew something about these little computers irked me. I discovered not long after that I was more curious about the workings underneath than my BFA classmates were: tah-dah! I was instantly labelled the geek.
So would I use a G4? Sure, but I'm not about to buy one. Mac is still basically a wasteland when it comes to mid-price professional 3d software: Lightwave is the only one I know of that has a version. I've yet to find out if there are Linux versions of any 3d programs yet that I already know. As for 2d programs, there is no longer a benefit to mac vs. pc like it used to be since companies such as Adobe have basically made their programs identical on mac & windows.
I definately can see lots of graphic designer types rushing out for the G4 so that they've got the "biggest & best" Mac. It's still a strong niche market for Apple. I'm definately in the minority of most in my field.
Read the report at http://www.macintouch.com/g4reader. html#compete.
-Snibor Eoj
(A telling example of the new, greedier Apple ideology is that the G4 was deliberately built so that owners of the new G3 can't upgrade to it - they have to buy a new one. Doesn't sound like very different thinking after all)
I'd like to clarify this a bit, if I may. According to information reported on MacInTouch, the block was put in place as a temporary measure because of technical issues. Apple is currently working on an update to resolve these issues, and remove the block. They can't make an official statement regarding this yet, because they can't afford a fiasco if it takes a bit longer than expected, or doesn't work right, or what not. Until it's done, they have to maintain the official position that it's not upgradeable.
Wait a little bit before you start tearing into Apple. This is not a done deal.
-Snibor Eoj
Silly macuser, if you're doing REAL number crunching, get an alpha. I don't understand the fascination people have with PowerPCs, if you're going to lose x86 compatibility, why go to another 32bit dead end? I mean, yeah, the G4 is a nice chip, but alphas are better, and you get get em pretty cheap nowadays too. You really hit it on the head there, Photoshop is the primary application on the mac that needs more speed. Most serious 3d modelling is done on an SGI or an intel w/ an intergraph or E&S.
True geeks build their own machine from parts that they carefully evaluated and picked out themselves.
Please don't call yourself a geek if you simply buy whatever massmarket crap comes out of our major corporations.
my comment was rather tongue in cheek, pointing out how silly the origional comment was by taking it to its logical conclusion. (I suppose I could have gone all the way to assembling your CPU with a soldering iron to make it more obvious). Sorry I was unclear in my intent, I'll tag my sarcasm next time.
"Obviously, you've been in the PC world too long."
Well, I've been using "PC"s (as in: compatible with the original IBM Personal Computer) for 15 years. I've been using Macintoshes for 10 years.
"You can still upgrade 'one piece at a time' with the Apple boxes..."
Yes, one piece at a time, but only selected pieces. I'd like to see you upgrade the processor. What if I want a better case? I will give apple credit, they have in recent years (minus the iMac) moved toward standardization a la AGP, etc, but they still have a way to go. Especially with the $#*! they pulled with the G3, making it non-upgradeable!
"...I did not have to mess with *ONE* friggin' IRQ number when I added the 2nd SCSI card..."
Neither did I. I took a motherboard out of the box, put it in my chassis, plugged in two RAID cards (in addition to the onboard SCSI,) plugged in my pair of CPUs, my industry-standard DIMMs (that I didn't pay double price for just because they were "Apple certified"...) etc. Didn't ever flip any jumpers, didn't mess with any IRQs, let my OS autodetect everything.
Maybe you've been in the Mac world too long... I didn't even have to copy a driver over.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Yes, but what if I bought a nice, shiny new G3, and decided that now I want the 300Mhz processor instead of the 233?
With my home PC (~2 years old) I just yanked out the processor, and stuck in a brand new Celeron 500Mhz. A processor more than two times as fast as the one I bought the PC with!
I don't dislike the Macintosh platform, I dislike Apple, the company.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Intel R440LX, a pair of Pentium II/333s, two 128MB DIMMs, two Mylex AcceleRAID 250 cards. And two external HD towers with (total) four 5-drive RAID 5 arrays. I set up the arrays using the enclosed CD, then stuck my NT Server 4.0 CD in, and let it do it's job. I never had to specify a single setting different from the default. Never touched a jumper, never set an IRQ.
Yes, this motherboard (and pair of CPUs) are getting up in age, but it was cheaper than the (almost identical, just 100Mhz bus) N440BX.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Speaking of getting facts straight, why are you calling him "WinTel Boy"? He never mentioned what OS he ran (You know....the "Win" part of that)? For all you know he runs Linux or FreeBSD and gets plenty of "serious work" done. (Heck...some people even get work done with Windows believe it or not) And a "drone"? Do you really know Mr. Anonymous Coward that well to make that accusation?
Well....as much as I'd like to throw some baseless put-downs back at you for your choice of architecture/OS, I'll just sit here and Think Different. (TM)
Sorry, but the AC was right, the G4's are multicore capable. I don't know if Motorola plans on making any, but IBM sure is.
According to the LinuxPPC people, writing an OS for the G3 "should be easy" too, but ask Be, that didn't happen either.
Not a very good point, since Be is getting money from Intel to develop for x86. Saying they couldn't devlop for Apple's G3 Macs was a little dishonest; they should have just said it wasn't in their interests anymore.
judging by the information vacuum on the subject of YellowBox licensing for NT
Sometime during the Rhapsody days, Apple said that Yellow Box apps could be developed royalty free for any platform. Rhapsody isn't around anymore, but the Yellow Box is. Unless Apple has specifically stated otherwise in the last two years, it wont cost you a dime to make NT Yellow Box apps.
Mac rumors site bullshit.
www.macintouch.com isn't a rumors site. Its good for technical info and other information.
While the G4 does look interesting, it is still made by apple! YUCK!
Actually, the chip is co-developed by Apple, IBM and Motorola, with the later two doing all the manufacturing.
Ohh yeah its a supercomputer, NOT!
Its called marketing. Every commercial company does it.
Two words: Alpha, SPARC!!
Well, set down an RS/6000 with PowerPC next to an Apha box and a Sunsparc and compare the three.
so you know what your post will look like before you submit it.
The question I have, is what point - at what threshold will M$ decide "Right, we've given them enough now, we'll pull applications/support" or do something that will seriously put Apple at a disadvantage.
Microsoft makes big money off of MS Office for the Mac, probably over $200 mill per year (just a rough guess based on last years Office sales, if somebody knows better step in).
If Microsoft dumped the Mac, it would be a golden opportunity for Sun (StarOffice) or Corel (Wordperfect), as they'd have a captive audience in Apple 15%+ market share. Or Apple itself could revitalize Claris Works (now Apple Works) if nobody else would provide an office suite.
If you're a student, you can get it for $200. If you're already a registered developer, you can get it for $99.
Or you could just download most of the operating system (Darwin) for free.
Face it Jon, both current Alphas (21264) and Althons (K7-650) can run circles around the G4, regardless of what Apple would have us believe.
Oh, so you must work at IBM or some other big company with access to Apple's G4 systems and had months of time to do in depth benchmakrs of the three architectures to make such an authoritative statement.
you need a good OS, and not just a pretty GUI face!
The Mac OS is a lot more than that. Installing new hardware and software is a cynch 98% of the time, you can switch settings like IP information without restarting, an advanced way of handing applications and files, along with other cool stuff. Like the best color calibration of any OS on any platform.
There is more to computers than running servers or playing games.
e) are there even similar-speed PII's in portables?
I think not.
Your point being what? Its not the fault of the PowerPC that Pentiums chips and K7's are hot, power greedy chips.
You'll see G4 laptops. I doubt you'll ever see a full fledged K7 in one.
So before you start spouting numbers make sure you know about hardware design and what those numbers mean.
Heh.
If you've ever taken a design class it takes usually 2-3 risc instructions to do the same operation a intel instruction takes.
That is why RISC is faster than CISC! It is faster for the processor to do 2+2+2+2 than 2^3.
When all is said and done I doubt the tests will show that the new 400Mhz marvle will be able to outperform a athlon or P3 chip.
It should outperform them (RISC, better FPU and integer calcs) even without Altivec. With Altivec, the P3's and the K7's will be blown out of the water.
Not to mention the other benifits the PowerPC's have, namely the low amount of heat generated and power needed. You'll probably see a G4 in a laptop in the next year. I doubt you'll see the same for a K7.
I bet you believed that a G3 333 was three times faster than a P2 400 too didn't you.
It was twice as fast, and yes it was a valid claim since it only talked about integer calculations and not floating point, where the PII was better.
If the G4 were actually 3 times faster than a P3 600, it would also be faster than an Alpha 21264 and the fastest HP PA-RISC processors.
For operations that make good use of Altivec, yes it could be that fast. And even w/o Altivec, the G4 should stack up nicely against those other processors at similar megahertz.
The "AIM" group broke up last year.
No they didn't. The relationship hit some rocks when Apple and Moto wanted to go with Altivec, and IBM wanted to go with higher mhz. They made up when IBM was shown how Altivec could be useful for servers.
Would I be wrong in guessing you made these opinions more than five years ago? Unless you're talking about the current OS and hardware, I might as well bitch about Windows 3.11 or the crappiness of the 1.0 Linux kernel.
Yes, and most are a bit expensive too. The PPC 7400 chips in the G4 only cost about $450 at the high (500 MHz) end, and the announced pricing for these CPU upgrades from XLR8 and others is about $900.
I belive the price on the G4 only includes the chip itself, not the L2 cache. Also, there is competition among card vendors, but the demand isn't high.
Ok, let's see, let's try these costs on:
64MB of ram around $100
20Gig HD around $239
Zip drive internal around $89 (100MB)
Rage 128 around $200
DVD drive (unknown)
That's $600 for raw parts, not including the DVD drive. Now, let's subtract half that cost based on the lack of said parts or cheaper parts in the low end. That means $300 to upgrade (again, without DVD), so there's a hefty $700 to add DVD and that "smoking fast throughput". I might go up $500 or $600 from 400MHz to 450MHz, but when there's a large gap in price I have to question the price points. Your comments tell me that if I want a decent entry level machine, I should buy the 450MHz G4.
As far as "macho types with fat pockets", they usually sit in window offices and do little more with those machines than read email and create powerpoint slides for endless meetings. Meanwhile, those of use who really need that hoursepower slave away on what the beancounters allow because it's more cost effective.
The MacOS is the high point of the Apple computing experience? An iMac is analogous to a BMW roadster?
Sir, you are quite deluded. The MacOS in its current incarnation is quite old and shows its age. Perhaps when the next version comes out, it might be better. The iMac is not a BMW. It is the new Volkswagon Beetle.
You seem to miss the point that computers and software are commodities now. Apple has just assembled slightly different commodities and wrapped them in teal to appeal to the image conscious and ignorant.
This little company called "Intel" does a lot of its own R&D. The x86 world also has something Apple lacks: competition. Intel routinely slashes prices in order to destroy AMD--and assuming Intel does not succeed, we consumers benefit. There's also competition in just about every other segment of hardware (video cards, hard disk drives, motherboards), driving down prices. The exception, is of course, the operating system, in which case most PC users are no better off, as far as choice is concerned than if they were on a Macintosh.
The link, please? I can't find it anyware at Ace's Hardware.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
I started off with Macs. My first was a Mac Plus. Those first few years were the foundation I have using computers in general. For several years I claimed that I would never touch one again, but... Jon has a ponit: sometimes awesome technology grabs us by the pair and takes us for a ride.
Linux: Because rebooting is for adding new hardware.
You still haven't told me where I can buy a G3/G4 motherboard and processor separately and use them in any case I choose.
:)
Plus, when was the last time you were able to buy a brand new Motherboard and processor and rip the old stuff out of your existing case and reuse all of your peripherals for less than $180? How many new macs have you paid $1500 to $4500 dollars for outright in the last 10 years? I prefer to get by spending $100 to $200 dollars every couple of months to get exactly what I want every time, and see a noticeable improvement in performance every time. What I really object to is the initial large outlay of cash you have to make to buy the Mac in the first place. Why can't they get it through their heads that *I* want to build my *own machine* from the very beginning? Obviously the reason is that Apple could care less about the hardware geek market. They know that their money is in selling to people who have never taken the case off of a computer and will be happy to never have to do so. Give me some variety and the ability to build my own machine one piece at a time and I'd be happy to use PPC hardware. The problem is that they know if they do that I'm not gonna buy anything from Apple. I'll buy all my parts from third parties and run Linux instead of MacOS. Oh well...I guess I'm always gonna be a PC user
Show me where I can buy a G3 or G4 processor and a separate motherboard that will fit in any standard ATX case I choose. Allow me to buy all of the parts to build a G4 Mac separately that will still work with MacOS no matter what hardware I decide to put in it. I'll stay in the PC world until you can thank you very much. Some of us still like to upgrade a piece at a time and get our hands dirty trying to make screwy things work.
Thanks for the info, but a lot of this stuff is still above where it should be price point wise. Add to that the initial overpricing of Macs (IMO), and the small size of the cases (until recent years) and I'm still not very attracted to the Macs...I do stand corrected on the fact that there is more than one manufacturer for Mac upgrades though :)
Necessity is a big motivating factor for me as well. Some of us don't have $3500 to plunk down all at once for a brand new machine. We also don't want to pay hundreds of dollars a month to lease a machine we'll never own. If it were only a question of $200 I wouldn't bother building my own machines either, but I just priced an AMD Athlon 600Mhz with all of the same hardware specs (perhaps not the same brands except the video and Network card) as the $3499 Powermac G4 over at pricewatch, and even adding about 10% on top for shipping, it still comes out to about $2200! I think $1300 is worth building my own machine for. Is it quite as fast as the G4? No, can I buy a really nice 21" Nokia monitor with USB support for $850 and still come in about $450 cheaper than the G4? Yes. I can also put Linux on it for free and not have to worry about whether or not it will work. I can then go out tomorrow and buy any new expansion card from any manufacturer and be relatively sure that will work too.
You're right, apple won't make any money off of me, which is why they don't market to me, and why I won't buy from them...
Enough of the partisan statistic spewing. Lets get some real-world benchmarks.
Blar.
Guess what? The guy who created that 1984 TV ad (his name's Steve Hayden) for the Mac now heads up advertising work for... IBM. (I know this because he's arguably my boss.)
There's no ideology in this game, people, just the perceptions media helps create. It's just companies selling stuff, that's all. Don't forget that down the years it's Apple that's closed every machine into sealed proprietarydom, Apple who shut down clone vendors when they became too successful, Apple that makes it an invalidating offence to lift the hood.
It's not what companies build that matters; it's what users do with the machines. And in the ad industry I've grown very bored with the whiny dogma of the Macolytes in the design studio; they've sounded the same in all five countries I've lived in. Give me my rusty, ragtag box of thrown-together junk over a Mac any day.
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
LB
Here is the situation... Intel releases a new socket/slot design for each new generation of chip, no one says all too much. People herald this as the price of technological innovation, where most of the motivation is there to force consumers to buy a whole new computer instead of upgrading, and to cut off 3rd parties trying to offer alternatives.
But when Apple releases a new generation of their chip and they decide to keep the old socket, they have to do something to get you to buy a new computer. This is possibly part of their motivaiton to do this. And this motive is not necessarily one that really should be criticized quite so much.
Think different, Think double standard.
Much as geeks like to think otherwise, companies like Apple cannot afford to develop computer for the 10-15% of the population that are power-users. For many people good enough at reasonable cost would be adequate for their needs. Afterall, how many word processors need 1 Gflop performance?
The hardware is just the canvas, what are the killer applications that will drive the next generation of products? I suspect the consumers would be a lot happier for people to come up with good tools to make their life a little easier. I think we can accept that Apple has recognised this trend by reducing the range of choices into 4 product lines with perhaps the personal mobile device the only missing gap. Perhaps its time that geeks (and I mean it in the nicest way) get their grubby hands off the technology and allow normal people to define what they want. Smart salespeople don't sell products, they help the customer achieve their desires.
LL
Ok, so I own a G3, have always used Macs, and was interested in reading this article. But what the hell was your point? That somehow the G4 is the "second coming" of Apple? I think you're jumping the gun here. While the G4 is incredibly cool, this box isn't going to become the supreme power in the universe. It's just a computer (and a pretty fast one at that), and something else will come along in a couple months that claims to be faster than the G4. Are you going to then write an article about that box claiming it's the second coming for [insert company here]?
Yes, I agree that it's cool that MacFans can buy a 450 MHz system for under $4K, but let's not forget the other great advance that Jobs and Co. learned the hard way at NeXT -- you need a good OS, and not just a pretty GUI face! MAC OS X is the biggest news in the history of Apple, and the press is glossing it over. For anyone who didn't already know: OS X is UNIX! Yes, the NeXT OS is not dead, and it is the real reason Apple will thrive in the months and years ahead.
Anyone who remembers AU/X knows how badly Apple screwed this up, and any professional programmer knows that MacOS's ridiculous design is the major factor keeping REAL(tm) computing applications off the Mac. I'll bet I can count the number of existing scientific / engineering / medical apps developed specifically for the Mac on one hand. If Jobs really wants to tout the G4 as a supercomputer, let's see it running an app someone might want a supercomputer for, not just a really fast Gaussian blur in PhotoShop!
Jon, as always a nice bit of prose but I think you really missed the mark on this one. Good luck next time.
-- People who think they know it all, really annoy those of us who do!
The ATI card was chosen for its colour correction as the main selling point. They are probably locked into them for OEM purposes, but they may dig themselves out soon. This does make things easier to support from their side, though. Same drivers, same tech, very easy for the grandmothers and schoolchildren.
Lowmag.net
If I DID misread the post, my apologies to the original poster. I'm getting a little trigger happy with the flamethrower, eh? : )
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
And nobody bought one either, right? Ooops! No, I forgot. Two million sales so far in the last 12 months. Guess nobody wants these no-floppy-havin' fruity 15" monitor computers, right?
Note: Your computing tastes are not the same as everybody's computing tastes. This is axiomatic for all values of "your" and "tastes". Don't like it? Don't buy it. Why does its existence offend you? Did an iMac take your lunch money?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Let me see if I can summarize your posts.
You: There are no easy upgrades for Macs.
Several mac users: Here are links to sixty different ones.
You: Well, gee, even though I was totally wrong about my initial point, I still feel like they cost more than I'd like to pay.
Well, fine. Don't. Don't buy a Mac. Don't buy a Mac upgrade. There are plenty of us who DO like Macs and their upgrades to keep Apple solvent, despite the industry's (and Apple's) best efforts to destroy the Macintosh.
Sorry about the pointed comment, but people spouting off these tired, false statements about upgradeability/price/performance whatever are really annoying me.
*slashdot to Moofie* So stop reading, dumbass!
*moofie to Slashdot* Can't....stop...reading....
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
So, your point is that in certain circumstances, the G4 kicks a bit less shit out of every X86 PC on the market, right? So therefore, that G4 must be a big stinky pile of crap, right?
OK. Just checking.
*hears clue phone ringing from here...* I think it's for you...
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The only problem with this philosophy is when companies (like PowerComputing and the other Mac cloners) take advantage of Apple's R&D dollars and don't contribute to Apple's bottom line. The reason cloning was killed was because it was making Apple lose money. PowerComputing got some sort of SILLY cheap license for the MacOS and for Apple's motherboard designs (which was, of course, Apple's own damn fault for not having competent negotiators...) Why would any company want to do that, if it could stop it? Why should Apple let you use their prodigious R&D research (QuickTime, PlainTalk, OpenTransport, ColorSync, and a slew of other strangely capitalized innovations) without you paying for it?
If you want to buy a G4 machine that doesn't use any Apple technology, Apple doesn't give a shit. If you want to buy a G4 machine with Apple technology and not pay Apple, Apple does (quite rightly) give a shit. Simple economics.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Do you know how processor yields work? Apple can not buy enough 550 mHz parts to field a 550mHz G4 immediately. Newer or XLR8 or whoever (or PowerComputing, when they were in business...) sold fewer machines than Apple, so they can buy smaller batches of hardware and still not have the tremendous backlogs of orders that Apple was famous for. Apple is VERY WISELY guarding their sub-24 hour inventory numbers, because large amounts of unusable inventory has come close to bankrupting the company several times. The moral of the story is that Apple will release machines IFF it is confident that they will be able to build them. This is a wise strategy.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
This is the BIGGEST load of BS I've seen in a long time. Last time I checked, Apple marketed the hell out of their products. TV ads, web ads, billboards, you name it and they've done it. I might let you get away with
Skippy
"False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent." - The Stainless Steel Rat
Until they treat their g3 owners correctly, I wont be buying one, nor will i recommend one. I will point to the miserable g3 owners whenever asked about them though.
Ex Libris Veritas
The assertion that '50MHz costs $1000' is pretty erroneous. The 450MHz machine also sports an extra 64 megs of RAM, a 20 gig HD (twice the size), a zip drive, and an AGP-based rage128 (as opposed to PCI on the low end), as well as a DVD drive with hardware decoding. Not to mention a new motherboard design that provides smoking fast throughput on the system bus as well as 100 meg ethernet, etc.
This said, though, I won't contest your analysis of the 500 MHz -- Apple (and others too) have always charged a premium for the highest end machine. There will always be macho types with fat pockets who just want the fastest machine money can buy; Apple does well to make good money off them, because they generally won't care what it costs.
www.newertech.com
www.sonnet.com
www.powerlogix.com
www.xlr8.com
Try going to http://www.macbuy.com and choosing cpu upgrades from the hardware list. I currently see ~60 products from 6 or 7 companies for macs ranging from the 61xx series to the 7x00, 8x00, 9x00 series to the G3. Most of those open without having to remove any screws. I upgraded my 7500 to a 200mhz 604e in 5 minutes - it has worked flawlessly since I bought it. You can't tell me it was difficult to upgrade my Mac. (and th 200mhz card only cost me $99 a year ago).
Check out DRM-free movies at http://www.bside.com
www.newertech.com
www.sonnet.com
www.powerlogix.com
www.xlr8.com
Try going to http://www.macbuy.com and choosing cpu upgrades from the hardware list. I currently see ~60 products from 6 or 7 companies for macs ranging from the 61xx series to the 7x00, 8x00, 9x00 series to the G3. Most of those open without having to remove any screws. I upgraded my 7500 to a 200mhz 604e in 5 minutes - it has worked flawlessly since I bought it. You can't tell me it was difficult to upgrade my Mac. (and the 200mhz card only cost me $99 a year ago).
Check out DRM-free movies at http://www.bside.com
> Neither did I. I took a motherboard out of the box, put it in my chassis, plugged in two RAID cards (in addition to the onboard SCSI,)
> plugged in my pair of CPUs, my industry-standard DIMMs (that I didn't pay double price for just because they were "Apple certified"...)
> etc. Didn't ever flip any jumpers, didn't mess with any IRQs, let my OS autodetect everything.
No offense, but I find this a bit hard to believe. What motherboard? What RAID cards? What OS?
- gutter
Check out DRM-free movies at http://www.bside.com
Anyone who's been anywhere near true computer geeks soon comes to realize that the driving ethic behind the Internet isn't pornography,
technology or money-making. It's not even freedom.
It's the yen for cool stuff - designing it, programming it, acquiring it or trying it out.
Ah at last some word of wisdom from Katz. His distilled the next into a few throw away lines.
Chris
"neither facts absolve APLLE from lousy business practices and DEEP DEEP greed"
Aside from your inability to accurately spell (no offence!), what else do expect from a corporation like that. Of course they're going to be greedy - it's they're fackin' job!!
At least Apple are more innovative than most corps I could mention! (Red Hat maybe (!!!) one of the few exceptions - but we've yet to see what upfolds with them - come back in a few years time and we'll see).
"neither facts absolve APLLE from lousy business practices and DEEP DEEP greed"
Aside from your inability to accurately spell (no offence!), what else do expect from a corporation like that. Of course they're going to be greedy - it's they're job to!! You can't expect them to put themselves at a disadvantage in the cut-throat computer business.
At least Apple has the grace to be a lot more innovative than most corps in the industry.
Red Hat may be one of the few exceptions - but we've yet to see what unfolds with them - come back in a few years time and we'll see.
Ever since Apple was at it's all time low (stock/market share/etc), and M$ gave it some mindshare injection with it's $150M investment plus Application support they've been waiting.
Why? Because of the DoJ anti-trust case.
The question I have, is what point - at what threshold will M$ decide "Right, we've given them enough now, we'll pull applications/support" or do something that will seriously put Apple at a disadvantage.
You can be sure that M$ wont sit by and let Apple gain momentum like it is now for too much longer.
Then again, maybe Apple is in too much of a niche position for M$ to ever worry about them again... no, I don't think so!
Some of us wanted one for a BeOS machine
unixes = backwater, cheesy, don't-change-if-ain't-broken, hacks rulz, /. rulz.
Apple = OSX = BSD = Unix
Apple was broken, so they changed to Unix, where hacks rulz.
style vs. substance, perchance :-)
+&x
you got a link to that Tom's Hardware article? I just checked 'em out and didn't see it anywhere. Or are you basing this on Apple's "marketing specs"=="It's twice as fast as the PIII" (that was for the G3, which wasn't, just twice as expensive.).
+&x
Yes you can. It's called the Windows Scripting Host. I'm not sure if it's installed with a default install of Windows tough...
--
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
Macs are quite well documented and use mostly standard parts to keep the prices down and encouraged 3rd part hardware developers to develop for the Mac platform. Look here next time so that your opinions will actually be informed ones.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Yeah, but does it do Windows?
As if not running Windows was a bad thing.
By the way, you can emulate Windows, but I don't recomend it, not only is it not full speed, it's really, really creepy.
shudder
cheers,
Matthew Reilly
I'm afraid your speaking to the wrong audience. Slashdot readers only want an open and diverse operating system market as long as it's all based on Linux. Other OS's need not apply.
cheers,
Matthew Reilly
Not to mention that he also credits the G4 to some sort of personal vision, and says that the G4 could not have come about in a corporate setting, but wait a minute... Apple HAS a corporate setting. I don't think you can attribute a processor that took Apple, IBM and Motorolla to some sort of personal vision. I would be willing to bet that there were hundreds of people that came up with the design for the G4. Lets face it: the reason i'm not getting a G4 is that if Apple was given the power, they'd be just as bad if not worse than the devils at Redmont. Think different is an odd motto for a line of products where the only difference is the color of the case. -Shelrem
Apple computers are not great for their technological achievements. Neither are PCs. Macs are defined by their superiorly engineered user interfaces. I'm not just talking about the apple menu or the pop-up folder tabs. Macs are engineered to be easy to use from hardware to software.
The G4 campaign is just a way for Apple, a publicly held company, to give more dividends to its stockholders and raise its stock price. Who cares if it is technologically superior. Well, as Katz says, geeks do. This is not what a Mac is, was, or ever has been.
Just like a Saab or a Bang and Olfson stereo, the Mac is a cool toy that has an incredible user experience. Apple has also cornered the market in audio, video, MIDI, and graphics production.
So if you want a car that is a little different, a stereo that comes alive when you wave your hand in front of it, or a computer that allows you to do your work without worrying about changing the way you work every five minutes, then you should get a Saab, a B&O Stereo system, and a Mac. If you want a car that is really fast, a stereo that is really loud, or a computer that works, then you can get a Corvette, a Pioneer, and a Wintel. (Oh wait, I said works...make that a Lintel(r)
Have you used a Mac for a length of time? If not then kindly refrain from telling me about the customization of my machine.
I can customize my machine to anything I want it to look like. I have plenty of industry standard components which allow me to use the same peripherals that PCs use (speaking of which, I have a USB mouse on my box now that was sold as a Win98 mouse).
Why, might I add, do you need the specs to the motherboard circutry? I know where everything is on my motherboard. I know quite a bit about my computer, and I haven't been sued.
Seriously, why must you continue the myth that Macs aren't good for anything really technological? Please reply to this, I would like your input so I may debunk whatever myths you might have gotten FUDed to you.
The Happy Blues Man
The Happy Blues Man
I accept on blind faith that Cincinatti exists.
True geeks build their own parts.
Anything that doesn't require a soldering iron sucks.
Josh
There are 10 different types of people in this world... those who understand binary, and those who don't.
I don't want to be too mean to Apple (after all, the G4 is a beast), but they seem to continually miss the point. Look at their history: they created a great OS back in 1980s, and then let it sit there and gather dust. Rather than continue innovating, they let Microsoft come in, take all their best ideas, and gain an even larger market share. Instead of innovating, the Apple community in general just sat there and cried "Foul!" Now, finally, they are beginning to see the error of those ways. There have been some great improvements to the MacOs (although OSX kind of bugs me: it steals some crappy things from Windows 9x that I'd rather see die). The iMac is a great idea for home computing, but the G4 is a powerful beast of a computer, and every geek wants to get their hands in it. Maybe it's time that Apple rethink their closed-system policy. At least in regards to the powerful machines like G4.
I'd be a devout Apple user (like I was early in high school), if only they'd listen to what I want.
"137!! Why 137!"
The $150 Million was part of a cash settlement of a copyright infringement case. M$ bought an interest out a small company (Grand Canyon) responsible for coding some of Apple's Quicktime software, and the code magically worked its way into Video For Windows, violating just about every aspect of the NDA terms of the contract.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
hardware.
Hmmm, is it the PCI bus, the IDE controller, the USB ports, or the FireWire interface that makes it difficult to upgrade? Oh yeah, maybe it's the ethernet port, or perhaps it's the SVGA connector? Maybe you meant the three-prong electric connection?
What, specifically, did you mean by "difficult to upgrade" and "proprietary hardware"? Have you used, owned, or even looked at a Mac since the Mac Plus? Your dogma regarding Macs needs to be upgraded to reflect something bordering on reality...
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
I think Katz is somewhat clueless again. Just because Apple candy coats its hardware doesn't mean it is any more creative and less corporate than any other company...it is merely selling to its audience, or in my opinion telling its captive audience what to buy. Apple is as corporate, or MORE corporate than any other computer company. I will not glorify Jobs...I think he's an asshole who screwed over Woz and thinks he's a hot shit, and that anything he touches becomes brilliant and insanely great somehow. Katz, you're sucking right up the exact media you were only decrying just a few articles ago. The same interface that you marvel at for its ability to hide the complexity of the computer for you has hidden from you the fact that Apple is just as corporate as any other, and in fact LESS consumer-oriented (umm...can we say firmware?) than any other company. Apple is the computer analogue of the epitomy of media-saturated pop-culture. Apple, I'll be "thinking for my self" thank you.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Actually I don't think he ever "left" Apple per se...I think at some point he was working on a side project and Steve thought that it competed with Apple so he displaced Woz or something...I don't remember...check out Woz's site.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Let's not get carried away. Apple isn't a couple of kids shooting a movie about a witch with a camcorder from Circuit City; they're a big company. Apple's advantage is that they have complete control over their machines, so they can make sudden changes in features (no more floppy drive) or technology (68K -> PPC) as they see fit. On the PC, harware companies are stomping all over each other to try to force their products to be a new standard, and the fallout is what makes things so messy for all of us.
ya gots to be kidding me.
/.? perhaps because Linux, like MacOS, is a minority OS. so a minority of people are going to talk about it. MacOS is as good as linux- and better- for some tasks, for some people. Linux is better -for some people, for some tasks- sometimes. There isn't one best tool for one universal job. and if there was, it would have an Apple logo on it.
platry 400Mhz? this is a RISC chip, not CISC. Mhz is kinda neat to say, but it's not the end/beginning of speed.
The G4 has AGP. x2
No possibility of a 'real' video card? the RAge 128 supports Open GL. As a "Game developer" you should know what this means. Plus, any AGP card with Mac Drivers (more every day) will work.
Small memory? what, 2G of RAM too small for you? so what _are_ you doing with your box? plotting to be the Galatic Overlord?
No T&L? What, and MMX worked, too, right? Blah. Altivec at least runs 128 vector processing (the 'velocity engine')
Intel sells 80's technology (cisc) and promises Vaporware. where is the Merced? hmmmm? How delayed is that?
Apple's 12 year old OS isn't 12. it's an evolved OS, making small changes over time- like alot of things, the Honda 4, the BMW opposed twin- both great, refined engines. MacOS is the same way. have you used MacOS 12 years ago? It's not the same now.
Why does no one ever talk about Linux on
In
guess you'll always be a PC user. do you think Apple cares at all if it loses your purchase? You upgrade slowly, bit by bit. There is no money for Apple at all in that. Apple would rather you purchase a new machine every 2,3 years (18 months is their prediction, i think). Apple obviously isn't hurting because they're missing out on sales to people who want to play with their HW.
;)
I used to want to do that- i've built my share of computers, even before it was techno-geeky-cool to do so. I did it from necessity. But at this point, Apple is doing a good enough job all by themselves. the extra $200 or so i might save i consider labor cost, and they few hours it would take me to put it together, load the OS, and etc... god knows i charge clients more then $200 for the same thing!
My time is money and more then that it's valueable, I'd rather spend it being creative/ having fun/ doing work then getting screws lost in an AT case.
getting greasy is for fixing my motorcycle
(which isn't a harley, btw...)
In
"True geeks" don't go around thumbing noses at posers and people who are labeling 'true geeks'.
who the ____ is a true geek anyways? isn't this all about individualism anyways? sheeeesh.
in my world, i can pick out a video card and buy a colored machine and load LinuxPPC (or MacOSX or OS9), and not have to worry about someone sticking their nose up and saying i'm somethingornothing.
blah.
name calling only labels the speaker, not the victim.
blah.
"one person, one computer"
In
i don't know if your "10-15 fps" figure is accurate, but i do know that mac 3d acceleration has lagged terribly behind pc standards: the macs that ship with 3d acceleration these days use a slowed down ati rage 128. this is a chipset that's well behind the technology curve at full speed. i understand that regular speed ati cards are available and 3dfx support is starting to appear, but in a world of cheap g400s and tnt2 ultras (i just picked up a creative tnt2 ultra for $165 delivered...), older expensive cards just don't cut it.
conform
... And one of my biggest complaints about apple is that they've sat on that feature set, more or less, ever since. the inability of the company to release a modern operating system (memory management, anyone?) has been irritating me for years now.
a bit of exaggeration, i know, but it really frustrates me.
i kept reading that subject line, at first, as "iMac is expendable".
which is a wee bit different than the intent.
i amuse myself sometimes.
We also need to remember that not only is the G4 impressive, but bringing a full featured BSD OS for consumers is mind blowing. I think this alone is something to make the Window$ jackasses wince in pain...
Argh. I have to jump in on this one.
I think the "Macs are toys." derision first came into vogue back when Apple introduced the original Macs which introduced to the -mass market- a graphical user interface, and a mouse. Example: "The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse.' There is no evidence that people want to use these things."(from a Dvorak quote, SF Examiner, 1984). The idea was that "REAL computer -guys- don't use a GUI".
However, I think it ironic that one of the most popular derisions of the Mac remains "Macs are toys", but then one of the most popular laudatories of Wintel is "there are more games".
"This little company called "Intel" does a lot of its own R&D. The x86 world also has something Apple lacks: competition."
No competition! Apple competes with the ENTIRE x86 industry--by itself.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
The $499 price tag, for a start.
OK, so it's nice hardware. I'd like one, and I could in fact go get one if I wanted. But - Apple don't ever see another dollar of mine until they deliver on the promise of a real operating system. You may have an Indycar in your garage, but unless you can drive like Fangio it won't do you any good. Same with the G4 - without real software you may as well have the go-kart that is the overclocked Celeron.
these new moderation rules are not very nice. this post gets a 0?
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
Here here!
I look forward to the day that I can put BeOS on a modern, cheap, dual PowerPC (courtesy of IBM?). I like my dual Celeron, but I would *LOVE* a dual (or triple) G4.
Hmmm...I guess I am a geek. I love the chip, not the computer. Oh well.
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
I do not see a single product where Apple listened to customers:
Nobody asked for a computer without floppy
Nobody asked for 15" screens
Nobody asked for "flavoured" cases
Before Steve Jobs came back to Apple, the Macs were just "boxes". Since then the iMac, the G3 and 4s and the iBook defined "fun of computing" again. Interestingly enough nobody had that idea before Apple but suddenly the only way to design all in one computers is the way the iMac looks like.
Actually 1 Gflop is the sustained performance, the theoretical limit is 4 Gflops.
Maybe now you want to user G4s to build your clusters, it might even be cheaper than using P3s.
I know about L2 caches. I didn't discuss em since it takes so long to explain. I'm still not convinced they give the G4 what I'd consider to be a "significant win" in the primary target market for G4 boxes: power Photoshop users. Those users are typically dealing with files larger than 1 MB, the G4 L2 cache size. (Manipulating smaller files, for monitor or web display are irrelevant here: if the filter finishes in .25 or .05 seconds as happens with smaller files, it doesn't matter. If the photoshop filter takes 6 seconds vs. 2 seconds with G4, or 6 minutes vs. 2 minutes as happens with larger files, *that* would matter.)
So, barring a statistically relevant survey of power photoshop users and the file sizes they deal with, let's employ a geek's look at the problem set (warning: a little math, again!)
Premise: one must scan in and manipulate pixels at a higher dpi/color-depth than the output medium (print) in order to avoid lossy artifacts. Compress images only after all manipulation to avoid other artifacts.
So, if you scan in a modest sized 3x5" image at 300 dpi at 16-bit color, that's a 2.7 MB uncompressed file (3*300*5*300*16/8). Hmmm, larger than that 1 MB L2 cache, isn't it? (Don't forget, part of the L2 cache is filled with OS and Photoshop code too.) And this isn't the worst case; you could have images larger than a postcard or you may want true 24-bit color, or you may want to print at 300dpi and so you'll scan at 600dpi. (Less than 2x oversampling might leave interpolation artifacts.) A full 8.5x11"*600dpi*24bit worst case image hits 100 MB. That's what lots of RAM is for! Don't forget that you have to store both the source and the result of the filter; memory bandwidth must include both reads and writes. Write memory bandwidths are often worse than the more-publicized read specs.)
Lest someone jump on me again for exaggerating the case, sure, sometimes you can clip the image size early in the process to reduce overhead, or reduce sampling precision of images you only plan to use as backgrounds, but these aren't always feasible, and hey, aren't these all "hacks" you'd rather avoid spending your time on (if the computer was fast enough)?
It's still not clear to me that the G4 is really better than a Pentium III (Xeon, if at a comparable price) for power photoshop users.
And really, this haggling over how my math overlooked L2 caches still doesn't address the main point of my argument - the only claimed *performance* advantage over PCs, the G4 chip, is limited by other factors in the system such as memory bandwidth due to motherboard and memory controller design. (Peripherals are also equal, or worse on Macs.) We could discuss L2 bandwidths; perhaps Apple has a slight win here? Not clear- L2 bandwidth specs are hard to dig up, but both have L2 caches that are half the speed of the CPU clock (Xeons have full-speed caches), and both offer 1 MB L2 caches on $3K workstations(PIIIs are 512K, PIII Xeons are 512K/1/2MB.)
As for Apple's published benchmarks, I'd consider a broad, well-characterized set of benchmarks to be illuminating and enough to overturn my whole case, but without that, there are lots of ways to slant the playing field.
The fact that the G4 is 6.44x faster in "32 tap x 1024 dim. Convolution" benchmarks, even from Intel, isn't terribly relevant. Intel invented these benchmarks primarily to sell MMX over non-MMX machines; they don't necessarily represent real world usage patterns, either for everyday use or for power photoshop users. They are indicative of strong performance on something, that I'll grant you, but I find it slightly odd that Apple compared themselves against this highly obscure "Intel Signal Processing Library Performance Specification" and an undisclosed set of 10 photoshop filters on files of unknown size.
Why didn't Apple at least measure against Intel's Image Processing Library, a more relevant metric for photoshop-type users? Signal processing is nice for SETI@home, and it is related mathematically to image processing, but I just find Apple's benchmarketing fishy. Of course, Apple isn't the first to practice such benchmarketing, but hey, that doesn't mean we should fall for it.
Personally, I wish Apple the best, but I sure wouldn't invest in their stock or their machines on such flimsy evidence. Remember the skeptic's credo: extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. I don't see it.
Skeptically yours,
--LP
Would Q2 be an acceptable game to benchmark the systems on? With equivelant 3D cards the G3's whooped the PIIIs by 10-15 fps. The link to the benchmarks are on www.planetquake.com somewhere, but I spent 20 minutes digging through the archives and couldn't find them again.
They haven't done anything with the G4 yet, but I imagine it will make the Athlon look sad, and slaughter the PIIIs...
I love the Mac hardware... I just wish the GUI didn't blow chunks...
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Hmmm...Apple gets a chip, working at a paltry 400Mhz. Small Memory. No AGP. No possibility of a real video card. No T&L on the chip.
My new Dell cost $1700. It goes 600Mhz. It has a Diamond Viper 770. It is faster than a snake on ice. The Athlon, which I do not have, but have developed on, goes 700Mhz (800 by X-mas), and has T&L instructions on the chip. Intel is promising GIGAGHERZ next spring.
Straight megahertz isn't the only deciding factor in speed. The G4 400 is about 3 times faster than your Intel 600. It performs more operations per cycle for one thing... Perhaps you should look into what those numbers you are spouting really mean...
Megahertz is just the number of cycles per second,
400 million vs 600 million.
the G4 performs something like 28 operations per cycle, for exact numbers you can check The Daily iMac, the P3 performs something like 8 operations per cycle. Now, that's 400x28 vs 600x8, or 11200 vs 4800 operations per second. The G4 is quite obviously faster.
Please point out any glaring factual innacuracies in my statements, leave the spelling and grammar to God.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Damnit, I know I closed that html tag... Oh well... It's a BIG link, sue me.>:)
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
> It's still difficult to upgrade
What are you? Smoking crack?
The G3/G4 is one of the easiest to open and thus get inside the machine for upgrades. The system accepts 1gb+ of RAM upgrades, 3 internal hard drives, internal ZIP, internal DVD-RAM/ROM, internal dedicated modem slot.
You can easily add more with the 3 PCI and one Fast-Video slot.
What the hell are you talking about!?!
Furthermore, the new motherboards that the 450/500 MHz versions are based on are of a far more modular and unified design.
I really dislike it when people spout off about things they know nothing about.
Harry
P.S. Here's a clue, Macs also don't have 9" monitors anymore, and they can display color.
...standard operating speed is 1 gigaflop.
Have fun squeezing that out of your PII 450mhz, wintel-boy!
Once again, Wintel drones can't even get their specs, or their facts right - no wonder they can't get any serious work done.
Harry
OK, another boring JK-bashing post: ...$1,599 for a Mac with a 400-megahertz processor; $2,499 for 450 MH available in September, and $3,499 for 500 MH... :)
Those are pretty large coils, I bet! Free link for Jon Katz' continued education: SI Derived Units. I recommend looking at the first one. It's frequently very useful when talking about processor speeds.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
Macs are toys.
Customization?
what, changing colors?
big deal.
The guts of the system are undocumented and locked up tight, and if you do figure something out, you get sued.
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
Culture?
Apples culture is a play, and goes down according to a script written by a marketing guru. You can go on and on about what you believe HE thinks he's doing, but if you look at his policies and what he has done, jobs only vision is that of a dollar bill. He has a cute way of exorcising his greed, and its not quite perfect yet, but in its core, apple is probably the greediest computer company out there.
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
true pnp?
who knows, the specs were all sealed.
external serial busses
now there's something to brag about.
Built in networking
Appletalk only counts to those who
think the pony express is better than
UPS.
Your right though, the apple 2 was a great computer, It was also insanely overpriced.
I keep hearing that the iMac is groundbreaking or a breakthrough or something. Other than it's sales recorods, could someone explain to me why?
-T
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
whattya mean fud?
It doesn't get more proprietary than
the mac ROMS.
sure you don't need them for anything
but macOS but come on.
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
Lets not start technological
Lets start in the mac-domain. Graphics.
Specifically high quality modeling in rendoring.
Oh wait... their aren't any...
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
Gee I'm impressed, NOT! If you've ever taken a design class it takes usually 2-3 risc instructions to do the same operation a intel instruction takes.
Just comparing raw Mhz is like compairing farenheit to celsuis, there is a slight conversion that you need to perform first. Then there's the issue of cache, how many main registers it has, main memory access speed, drive access speed, and other factors that can throw a cpu into an idle state.
When all is said and done I doubt the tests will show that the new 400Mhz marvle will be able to outperform a athlon or P3 chip.
And as far as the hype about it being a supercomputer, show me a computer in the work place that doesn't run faster than some of the first supercomputers ever designed.
So before you start spouting numbers make sure you know about hardware design and what those numbers mean.
http://www.macintouch.com/
Will this generation of Apple computers, like the first, keep affluent computer users happy, more powerful and even more ignorant?
Umm, I definately get the impression that Katz was referring to the second generation of Apple computers... My first computer was a top of the line Apple ][+.
numb -- former sysop of Hard Rock Cafe ][ BBS/AE
>Apple has no competitors
Uh, they compete with a little group called Wintel. They make computers in the same price range as IBM, Compaq, Dell and Gateway, that run the same major applications. They have so much competition, they almost went out of business two years ago. They are gaining BACK market share right now. People who replaced Macs with Compaqs in 1996 are replacing the Compaqs with Macs in 1999.
Just because all the other PC companies choose not to compete against each other on anything but price and add-on features doesn't mean that they're not collectively a tough competitor for Apple.
You got all the inside information, but from a more mainstream perspective I can see where the second age is just starting ...
Two years ago, they were toast. Nobody thought they were going to make it. They got rid of Amelio and they did not have a direction at all. You could count that as the end of the first age. They went all the way up and then all the way down. Rock bottom.
Steve Jobs steps in as interim CEO and the next two years are the comeback. Change all the product lines over to iMac, PowerMac G3, Bronze PowerBook G3 and iBook. Simpler, more colorful than the past. Lots of much-needed OS revisions, new plans for making the transition to OS X developer-friendly, open sourcing stuff, standard hardware everywhere. The iBook was the last of the four lines to be announced, and it was the first of the four lines that wasn't greeted in the press with "Can this save Apple?". Instead it was Time and Newsweek stories and pictures everywhere and two million iMacs sold in the first year and a lot of people really feeling like the comeback is over. Once the comeback is over, I guess you enter the second age.
When they announced the PowerMac G4, they seemed like they were in a new, less defensive mode. It wasn't like "here's what we've come up with to save the company" it was just "hey, we've got some kickass shit here". The "we've been profitable for seven quarters in a row" speech was greeted with yawns. People didn't need to hear reassurances that Apple was still going to be around, they just wanted to see some new, exciting stuff.
The math would be better if it corresponded more closely to the evidence.
I've seen and tried that monitor...It'll never be as good as a Sony or any of the more expensive ones. You can have your TNT2 or the latest card, but if the monitor is crap, then it's all for nothing. I'll never understand this arguement that PC users are willing to buy the best video cards for the cheapest systems. Why not split the money and get a monitor that doesn't look dull or is brigher and a half decent card. It'll do you much better. Granted the PC is cheaper...but is it better?
enough of my griping...
When I went to work for Apple Computer in 1988, the company was hiring like mad (went from 8,000 to 10,000 employees in one year), and it was returning 54% margin on sales (that is, 54 cents of every dollar was profit). They were rolling in money. The mantra of the time was, "spend money, not time; money we have..."
Looking at the latest financial statements for Apple at Yahoo, I see a 9.4% margin. By comparision, the financials for Dell show 8% margin, and Gateway's financials show 4.9%; By this measure, Apple is not being any more "greedy" than any other computer hardware company.
As for disabling G4 processor upgrades for the existing G3 machines, this is almost certainly because the MacOS has to be changed to support the extra AltiVec context from the G4. The MMX stuff in the Pentiums were overloaded on the FPU registers to avoid this (and probably to cut down on the silicon real estate required for implementation), but that "optimization" has, in practice, been bad for performance.
Apple is just taking the up-front hit to make the G4 support work right, as opposed to having a whole lot of unhappy customers who buy a "G4 upgrade", only to find that their existing MacOS 8.6 fails in funny ways...
As for the RAM bandwidth issue, Motorola was aware of that, and included some L1/L2 cache manipulation instructions to explicitly make data available to the vector processor.
Cray Supercomputers don't have L1/L2 caches because they build their RAM subsystems to deliver data fast enough to keep the processors fed and full, however that's expensive and not a viable strategy outside the "money is no object" computing market where Cray plays.
Unless you want to pay L2 cache prices for regular RAM, be happy, and deal with reality as it is. The G4 kicks ass, and, provided that the software guys don't eat up all the new performance and then some with code bloat, some really cool stuff will result from all this power.
Good point, good point. My statement was a little unclear. I KNOW that Apple is a moneymaking machine. I KNOW that Apple is run by its marketing. I KNOW that it is a dirty, evil corporation. But that isn't the point.
Despite what you may think, Apple has been trying to create communities, cultures, societies. Yeah, it may all be a gimmick, a marketing trick for idiots like myself, but it is a gimmick in the right direction. Computers are not good for computers' sake, they are good because you USE them for something. Apple reinforces that motif: Use your computer to change the world, to make a difference.
Isn't that kinda the point of Our Little Movement? "World Domination"? Changing the World?
My point is that MS has no agenda, positive or negative just money making. They don't care if you buy their product and then put it in a landfill. Actually, they would probably support that. As evil as Jobs is, at least he (and others at Apple.... didn't Guy Kawasaki come from Apple? ANd Wozniak?) wants computers to DO something, to CHANGE something. MS just wants the money, they want to squeeze ever
A company CAN have good intentions and still make money. Is Apple doing this? I think so. I may be wrong. Maybe in this whole thing, MS is the white hat becuase they wanted to spread computer technology to everyone. Maybe us Open Source pukes are just getting in the way because we are lowering corporate profits, therefore forestalling growth.
Whatever. Think what you want. I realize the realities, I realize that greed and capitalism has eaten at Apple's core. But I'll tell ya, some intuition tells me that there is more to the story....
It's interesting years after the fact to watch Apple try to make up for old mistakes. I remember when the argument was that it was better to pay more for the Mac because it was so much easier to use than a PC. And it was. DOS was *hard*, dammit, for people who'd never used anything like it before. But Apple lost on their bet, which was that the typical user would drive the new era, and not the "technical" user. Jobs thought that he could make a computer that would make computing accessible to everyone. Who would have thought that the computers would make a new kind of person instead? This new box makes some steps in the right direction, more powerful, not quite *as* expensive. Still, wish they would release the internals...
His math is accurate for a large-working set scenario. Memory bandwidth is the limiting factor for any non-trivial vector computing problem. If you look at the original Cray computers, the revolutionary part of the computer wasn't just the CPU, but also the very wide, interleaved memories that allowed it to fetch new data on every clock.
The key is what you consider a "real world application". If it's Quake III, then quite possibly the full set of floating point vectors would fit in a 1-2MB L2 cache. If it's scientific computing, then it drops back to memory bus rate.
s/maclinux/mklinux/
8)
And if you can believe that, I've got this bridge I'm selling for a really low price...
Making a bigger LCD is innovative?
(Not to imply that the Cinema isn't one of the single most beautiful pieces of hardware I've seen and that I'm not calculating exactly how much plasma I'm going to have to sell to get one...)
hehehehe.
Katz does, in fact, annoy some Mac lovers. His prose is a little...overenthusiastic.
"The G4 is aiming for the geek market, but just doesn't have the features that would make it attractive for more than a few months."
Hardly.
No company (of any size at least) aims for the "geek market." There's no money in it. Apple's aiming for their traditional markets. DTP, graphcis, etc.
"If you're right (and I hope you are), then Apple is going to looked pretty bad when 3rd-party non-Mac-clone G4 computers start coming out (and that isn't very far away)."
Actually it is. IBM doesn't make the G4, Motorola does. But Motorola didn't relaese their specs, did they?
"Yes, one piece at a time, but only selected pieces. I'd like to see you upgrade the processor. " :>
eh upgradding processors has never been easier
i will kindly point you attention to newertech xlr8 vimage or any of the other numerous processor upgrade people. hell they even made my old box upgradable to a g3 via an l2 cache slot upgrade, now that was some ingenuity
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
because the orginal comment was asking " :>
Yes, one piece at a time, but only selected pieces. I'd like to see you upgrade the processor. "
so i was pointing to processor upgrades thats all, im not complaining i already ordered my g4.
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
Furthermore, I'd like to see the person whose eyeballs can differentiate between 65 fps & 75 fps. Movies in the theater have been 24 fps for years and no one's scramblin' to make that faster... TV's a marginally better 29.95 fps...
m l
for a true comparison of PII/PIII & G4, check out
http://www.mackido.com/Hardware/AltiVecVsKNI.ht
The PowerMac G4 has been considered a weapon. In Apple's ads, they jest at the fact that as the first gigaFLOPS computer, the US Federal Government deems the machine too dangerous to let into "the wrong hands". Everyone is either excited because they're about to get ahold of such a powerful chip - and rightly so; it is quite efficient - or simply because consumers can now purchase a "weapon" illegal to export for "the good of the nation". But is restricting exports truly good for the United States? Apple's term "the wrong hands" implies militaries of nations opposed to the United States. No big deal. But Apple also cannot export the PowerMac G4 to nations as critical to the U.S. economy as China. Already the United States looses several hundred billion dollars a year to the trade deficit; is that something to be proud of?
Some people argue the U.S. must withhold technological exports to China because they intend to go to war with us. But if they did so their largest supply of income - most of which ends up in private enterprise, despite popular belief - would be cut off, severely stunting economic growth, not to mention lose millions of lives and billions (if not trillions) of dollars in property damage. Does any nation you know want to suffer that kind of loss?
The apple G4's theoretical limit is 1 gigaflop/sec.
No!
Its base sustained performance is 1 GFlop/s
Its theoretical maximum (reachable if every cycle
managed to cram 4 32 bit operations into the 128 bit vector units) is 4MFlop/s.
So it is a minimum of 2.5X as fast going exclusively by MFlops. Actual results will vary depending on the actual applications and optimizations.
i agree with daniel, even though i want apple to live on so that there is a choice in life, but it is very true that unix is superior for now until the next great OS, so imho mr. xah, please stop being childish and keep the knowledge that an OS is an OS and until you make one, dont dis em.
personaly who realy wants the other side to go down? i want diversity that you can only get from having diffrent computers.
save diversity buy a mac os and a unix os(its for the future of lil computer nerds everywhere)
imho live and let live.
now go and get a new os and try it out, who know you might like it.
HaVoK "um ya im a loser" Tha MaVeRiK
this reminds me of a quote
"it seems that life is a race between the computer programmers making bigger better fool proof computers, and the universe making bigger better fools. so far the universe is winning......"
well i forgot the name of the qouter, but it is true at heart. so it raises the question, is this new imac any good for the people who have no understanding of how it is working, or is this a blessing for the lamen to show them that there is a computer out there that is just right for them, and with no need for them to know how to use it?
well that is a question that has plagued me, imho i kinda like the power of the new imac, and i hope it is the life saver that keeps apple alive, because without apple, then who could pc's fight with all the time?
well have fun all of you cyber savvy nerds (ya im a nerd myself, so dont take any offense because YOU are a nerds, ya YOU, i see you out there, and believe you me, your a nerd.)
HaVoK "um ya im a loser" Tha MaVeRiK
Would someone actually do their research. Especially Katz. Why is the company line recited here? I mean, the k6-2, k6-3, pII, and pIII all had the same export restrictionas the g4. And altivec is THE SAME THING as MMX/3DNOW and SSE. Also, if you actually look at spec-int and spec-fp benchmarks, the g4 is nothing special. a g4-500 is about as fast as a p3-600, and slower than a k7. I found the spec results at www.aceshardware.com. Go forth and do reseach. It is your job!
Also, it is really, really bothersome to see a columnist fall for marketing--too bad it happens all the time. Apple makes computers, not life changing hippy machines ruinning on pure air and doing nothing but good. Stop repeating what Jobs says, or what you want to hear.
Do you sing tide commercials? And drink bud light too? It makes you sexier, really. And tastes great and is less filling...If not maybe you should start, it would make your whole life make more sense--don't just believe apples little marketing hype, believe all of them!
On the contrary: there are many kinds of software of nature only a little more specialised than your word processors and ftp clients that are not available on the Mac or Linux. Linux has no serious mid-end business accountancy software, for example. Such software is vital to the continued operation of many small businesses.
I did not "point out that [a nannying user interface] was exactly what my non-geek friends want", and indeed I'm not sure how you got that impression - I said that they were more interested in cheapness and compatibility. And although game development is having a resurgence on the Mac, it is still miles behind the Windows PC.
As to the developing for Linux thing, both Qt and GTK can be persuaded to port to Windows, and hence as one aiming first for Linux then Windows I can hardly be called a Mac developer whether my stuff can be ported to Mac or not.
Savant
I for one do not believe that Apple will suddenly become a major player in the PC market with the release of the G4.
Like Linux, they lag behind Windows as to number of applications and games available; unlike Linux, there is no industry
movement to close that gap. As a developer I would prefer to work on Linux - where my heart lies - or Windows -
where there is money to be made - than trying to cater for the Apple niche market. I suspect most developers will
feel similiarly.
As Katz said, "For years, no self-respecting geek would be caught dead on a Mac." Why? Because they are about
abstraction, hiding details of how the machine works away from the end user. And this does not attract developers in the
same way as artists. For the developer, the Mac hardware is quite cool; the MacOS with its nannying user interface is not.
And thus Borland's poll, when it asked about platforms people were interested in developing on, showed that there was
little enthusiasm to develop for the Mac, the iMac's hype notwithstanding.
Why is this important? For one reason: the life of an OS depends on developers and applications. That is why the Windows
PC now dominates the desktop; it has more applications to its name than any other platform. That is why Linux is a
rising force; it has captured the imagination of developers, and they have put blood, sweat and tears towards its advancement.
The Mac does not attract developers by nature, and it has not the momentum that gives Windows its edge.
"It is cool", Katz says. To whom? To my friends who know nothing of computers, 'coolness' is not an issue. They want
something that meets their simple requirements; they want it to be cheap; they want it to be compatible with everyone else.
Those who have computers but are not geeks get hacked off by system crashes more than by PC user-friendliness. They
often listen eagerly as I tell them of the rise and rise of an OS that hardly ever crashes. Those who are geeks would not touch
the MacOS with a barge-pole. Gadget freaks who aren't computer-literate enough to have chosen Windows or Linux are the
only market left.
Coincidentally, this is the same market as computer games reach. And the Mac is weak here compared to the PC. The Mac
may look cooler; the PC's games ARE cooler, at least in their eyes. And so the Mac loses even here.
I would like to question what Katz sees as the 'Apple Age', too. If it existed, it existed only for that relatively small group
of computer users who used Macs; many of these have now left the platform. What would make for a second such age? The
return of old users? The gain of new users? I can't see so many new users coming to the Mac that it would become a major force.
Just my tuppence...
Savant
Let's start with learning English.
According to some Mac news site, an Apple rep claimed the upgrade-disabling was an unintentional by-product of some other fix. Whatever. Obviously, Apple hasn't made it "impossible" to upgrade B&W G3s, since an upgrade manufacturer would only have to come up with a minor firmware patch to remove the block. If Apple were so dead-set against users upgrading their processors, why did they move to ZIF sockets instead of welding the processor to the motherboard (a la the 7200?)
With IBM's recent release of a reference motherboard design based on the G3 processor several companies have stated they will be releasing systems. Though they may not run the MacOS, they will definitely run Linux. I would imagine that this might introduce some level of hardware costumization in the PPC marketplace.
I also heard a rumor that Apple will be adding the option of having Yellow Dog Linux installed on their build to order web site soon.
I guess the one that that confuses me though, is what options would like to see that aren't available at Apple's build to order Store? When I ordered my new G3, I just made sure to select the processor I wanted with a few built in's such as a zip and DVD-ROM. I then proceeded to order the rest of the components I needed from other sources to save money. Besides RAM, SCSI and Video options it seems that most everything else is included on the motherboard anyway. Currently there is really only one option for high-end video on a desktop mac that will work in the "high speed" PCI slot, so I didn't feel the need to shop around there. I would't be surprised to see Apple offer more options on their own site when more AGP cards get Mac driver support.
Anyway, I diverge...I guess what I want to know is, if the majority of components are part of the system, and the system is reasonably priced for your pocket book, what advantage does a more granular build-to-order option get you?
-- 23
You can use Mac specific or any Windows targeted Voodoo2 or Voodoo3 3dfx chipset card in a new mac. Rumors suggest Apple is courting many of the other 3D bigwigs to get Mac support in the near future.
I agree that Apple definitely overcharges for the extra's in a system. I think this matches a large percentage of their users who would rather get it all from one source in one package ready to roll, even if it costs a little more.
Personally I just ordered my G3 bare-bones as possible and then added 3rds party pieces to get it up to snuff...
-- 23
A well used line.
Reassuring for all the freakled 16 year old anti-socilites, sitting in their darkned bedrooms. Busily preparing themselves for the day technology rules and they become the rulers.
Computing is the next step in human evolution . True ? I believe so, but can human evolution be controlled by a handful of charasmatic and singleminded evangilists ? Aren't we as a species as a culture as a civilisation greater then this ? When one company controls 90% market share for a product essential to the operation of the single most important tool for out advancement, can we truly believe ourselves to be free ?
The G4 is a new processor. A new way of imprinting etchings on a piece of silicon. There are greater forces at play here.
sorry.
I normally like Katz's articles but when did he start working for Apple's marketing department? More seriously, why is claiming this is the dawn of Apple's second age? I see two major problems with this: Firstly - it's just a new processor, about as important as the 68030 was to those suffering with the venerable old 68000. Seondly - Apple has clearly already been through a *minimum* of two ages, and to my mind is not into their third. The first age was obviously the hacker age, centered around the Apple II and its successors. The second age would then have to be the advent of the Macintosh and the attempt to make computing easy for the drooling masses. I think their third age might have started with the release of the iMac (a renaissance in marketing if nothing else) but I think we'll need a little more historical perspective to determine that. Katz should learn some of the history of the industry he wants to pontificate about.
Yes, the Crays had 512 or 2048-bit wide data busses IIRC. The new G4s
The key is what you consider a "real world application". If it's Quake III, then quite possibly the full set of floating point vectors would fit in a 1-2MB L2 cache. If it's scientific computing, then it drops back to memory bus rate.
However I wasn't thinking of scientific computing (where you're of course right) nor of Quake III, but of everyday stuff like medium-sized Photoshop processing, C++ compiling, that sort of thing. If your working set stays below 10x cache size you can get very good throughput.
This would be a middle-of-the-roaf case between full-tilt in-cache only processing, where you would get near the theoretical maximum, and the other extreme of large-scale scientific processing.
I suppose I'm the only guy here who's never played Quake, Doom, or similar 3D games...? I must say I care more about accuracy than speed in 3D rendering - meaning Bryce and VectorWorks stuff.
Yes, the Crays had 512 or 2048-bit wide data busses IIRC. The new G4s
Many non-Apple users lump "Apple the company", "Apple products" and "Apple hardware/software designers" into a single unit... for most companies this might be convenient, but for talking about Apple that's a mistake.
I'm an Apple user since 1977, a Mac user since 1984. In that time I've liked many Apple products (and despised a few), complained about many of Apple's policies as a company... but I've no complaints about the hardware and software designers, many of which are top-notch.
If sometimes (or often, depending on whoever you ask) the effective results could be better, that's only to be expected; getting these 3 vectors into alignment seems to be nearly impossible. Meanwhile, I own a Daystar Genesis and a B/W G3 on which I do 90% of my work, very nicely... and a much-accursed Pentium II for running a high-priced Windows-only EDA package.
Linux? I've hired a Linux consultant to set up a server... for my desktop it's not ready. I'd rather wait for Mac OS X (workstation). DR1 looks promising.
Your math would be correct 10 years ago, but not today. That's what caches are for, especially the PPC backside cache. With the new cache prefetch channels, the math comes out very differently. For real-world applications the G4 can hit 10-25% of the theoretical 4 GFLOP-limit while using full memory bandwidth.
Jobs can say anything he wants. but "express your individuality by buying our mass-produced product" is silly. The G4 is cool, but my buck will go to putting linux on it.
How come everyone assumes that Macs are toys. You can customise you system just as much as you can with Win9*. True it is not as good as Linux, but it is powerful for new users and since when is complexity better? You don't want to have to type in web addresses every time you go to a site so you use bookmarks, but that is simpliar, we sould throw it out. No there is a good balance. I think that OS X will have enough power like in Linux but also the simplicity of a Mac.
"Why is the G4 necessary?"
Why is the PIII necessary? The Athlon? The PIII-Xeon?
Etc.
TheITguy
one happy owner of a new Powerbook Lombard, which
a)runs linuxppc
b)has a FIVE HOUR battery life off one battery(maybe if you put two batteries into your Intel notebook, you'll get this; if I put two in, I can work ALL DAY and spend two hours working at home before I'll have to plug in.)
c)supports 384MB of ram(only high end intel laptops support this)
d)supports TWO independent displays, one at 24 bit, other at 16 bit, if you plug in an external monitor; no other notebook in the world will give you two displays with no extra hardware, except a powerbook.
e)is FASTER than ANY other notebook on the planet(1MB backside cache, 400MHz G3, which has been proven to be faster than a similar-speed PII)
f)has builtin SCSI, SVIDEO out(great for DVDs), g)can "sleep" indefinately(instead of a few hours like most intel notebooks)
h)Superdrive or Zip available for the hot-swappable expansion bay(only a few intel laptops have Zip drives or Superdrives that will fit in them; usually only certain IBM thinkpads, which cost a fortune for lackluster features.)
i)weighs 5.9 pounds with battery and CD drive(cd drive removable, for a high performance laptop that comes very close to being an ultralight; how much are those Dell 7000's? 7-8lb?
j)has BUILT IN FAST ethernet(how many intel laptops have builtin ethernet AT ALL?)
So, what's this about Apple being technically inferior? I have yet to see a intel laptop that offers similar performance, flexibility, and features. How much did I spend? $3,000 for a "reconditioned" unit that's like new. $3500 for a brand new 400MHz machine; $2500 for a 333 w/no DVD.
Is it just me, or does this article try to compare Apple's hardware engineering talent with Microsoft's software monopoly? I realize it is only natural to compare anything non-MS to Microsoft but in this case I would think Intel would be a better enemy of Apple. THEY'RE the one's making the new chips, Microsoft just makes them run slower...
Steve Wozniak left Apple because he was in a plane crash, and obtained "selective amnisia". He couldn't remember the project he was working on, and that freaked him out, so he quit. Steve Jobs on the other hand, was fired in an ugly power struggle, then was worshiped when he took the job again, but that's a different story.
It seems to me that we have all overlooked the new Cinema display unit from Apple. Who care's about the stupid G4 processor. Give me one of those nifty Cinema display units for my Intel box.
Computers are tools. The average user doesn't care how they work just as long as they can get what they want out of computers. Think of computers as tools. The easyier and faster the computer is, the more productive you can be. The average user probably doesn't need the power of a G4(unless they want to play games). This is also benificial scientists, desktop publishers, game designers, and crackers. The nice thing about the G4 is that it brings the prices for high performace machines down to affordable levels. And as for the dummying down of geeks. If you really want to learn about how a Mac works, just go to http://www.apple.com/developer/ and download all the tech manuals. A computer is a computer, you don't need a cryptic text based interface to know how a computer works. Home Page -> http://www.execpc.com/~zirman/
Keep in mind that certain parts of quake were written in asm for x86. And using the frame rate as a bench mark just shows how little you know about what makes a computer work.
Sorry, G4s are not multi-core capable. Motorola dropped that for multi-processor capabilities. The G5 however will be multi-core capable.
There's a lot of anti-Apple spewage going on about the G4, and that's understandable, given the audience. Give Apple credit for helping bring the chip to market, however. Without them, Motorola might've dropped it, and then you wouldn't have the possibility of an AltiVec-enhanced G4 PowerPC Open Platform box running LinuxPPC, and cracking what can only be described as a buttload of keys for the Slashdot RC5 team.
On top of that, companies like Total Impact can now bring to market open platform multiprocessor G4 systems that will likely be really screamin' fast.
Forget iMac - now *that's* yummy.
-Zebe
Greed sums it up nicely. Try to put any SCSI HD in a Mac, a PCI modem, or a network card. Won't work. Why cause I have a Mac instead of a PC? No. Lay it all on the third party corps.? Sure. Jobs' 3 billion dollars of cash is not enough to make Apple's PCI bus compatible with PC. Whats up with Firewire. According to MacAddict, Fireware isn't the 200MB speed demon but a whimpy 5MB. Another technology from Apple we'll regret? (Newton,OpenDoc,GX)
Job's revitalization of Apple is finally coming to fruition. With the G4, they have a chipset which Intel, etc. will not be able to compete with performance wise for the next 2 years, at least--and if the PPC consortium has their act together, maybe never again. Their is a lot of expense in pushing technology, and that is part of the premium price that you pay for an Apple product. What many will not realize it the enormous amount of energy that Apple put in behind the scenes--the Altivec/Velocity Engine idea came from an experiment at Motorola and Apple engineers realized its potential (IBM fought tooth and nail against the idea and had to be shown the potential). Intel hasn't done much at all in the innovation department--the PIII is basically a PII with a couple of problems fixed, and an extremely limited vector unit. In addition to the cpu innovation, Apple has led the PPC consortium into what Apple calls the universal motherboard architecture. This makes things cheaper to manufacture, as you can use the same basic technology to make multiple somputer products. This architecture change is why the G4 is not going to be readily available from Apple to upgrade your old G3 machine--there is a hardware revolution going on. This will ultimately bring the price of PPC's down to be even more competetive with PC's--and they are competetive with **well built** PC's now. Nobody has ever gotten rich trying to compete with the bottom of the market, and much of the griping about the price of Apples in the past, and in this article, is based on resentment that nobody in the PPC consortium is bottom fishing the market. Simultaneously with all this hardware inovation, Apple has done a lot of software innovation. This is just over the horizon, with OSX. Imagine, a year from now having a computer which will let you operate mindlessly in an updated version of the Apple gui, or since the Apple OS will run as an application , let you drop the Apple OS application and drop back into (Free)BSD and fire up X windows, with the window manager of your choice. Not happy yet, you can bootp and fire up LinuxPPC. Any geek who doesn't understand the implications of this is brain dead.
How do you get that. The first age of Apple is clearly the Apple ][ Era. They were at the forefront of the new, blossoming, personal computer market, before IBM and its clones hit the market like a ton of bricks. I'd say the second age was the Macintosh age, with their Anti-Orwellian, personal empowerment bent. Their third age kinda started in two steps, first with the Macintosh II, then with the G3, as they moved from a completely closed, monolithic design to a more open (compared to the early Macs), expandible, modern design, their ads started to focus more on the professional designer, rather than the rebel artist that was the early Mac target. The G4 system, far from revolutionary, looks like it's a power and performance boost for their third age systems, but nothing as earth shattering as the beginning of a new era.
If there is a new era forming at Apple, it's the iMacs and it's relatives that are making it. It's a return to the completely closed, unexpandable, monolithic design, but with a more network-centric approach than before. I'd still be reluctant to call that a new age either.
However you count it, you can't say that Apple is just starting their Second Age now, that is very short sighted.
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Open mind, insert foot.
I think the G4's 128-bit registers are a serious breakthrough, and that Apple in the corporate sense is not to be underestimated (they still keeping inventory lowest in the industry?), but Katz still talked a lot of nonsense. To be expected.
The interesting thing is this: given an article that is _so_ much of a troll, and makes it _so_ difficult for any selfrespecting geek to agree, it's expected that the anti-Apple folks are out in force with burning torches, aggravated beyond tolerance. That said, there are still slashdot geeks willing to stick up for Apple despite Katz's shenanigans! That says a lot.
ObSlashdotCred: regarding Altivec vs. MMX: two words for you- context switches. >:)
Right now the higher-ups at Be are clearly indulging their hatred of Apple rather than making clear technology decisions. They claim that BeOS can't run on a G3 or G4 because Apple sabotaged it, tied the hardware up to lock users in to MacOS. This is a claim similar to that of the barber, back in the days of desegregation, who said that he wouldn't serve black customers because he didn't know how to cut black people's hair.
... does anyone know if Be has gotten to the starting line on IA-64 yet?)
If Linux runs on a G3 or G4, why shouldn't BeOS be able to? Linux has no secrets, no NDAs with Apple that let it get around lock-in. There is no lock-in. Be's hierarchs are whining about Apple at BeOS's users' expense, while hoping beyond hope that x86 will pull ahead of the G4 in performance and save their asses before Be's user base all turn to Linux on IBM PPC boards, or (worse yet, from Be's perspective) to MacOS X.
(Speaking of BeOS and Linux
The "AIM" group broke up last year. Apple has put themselves in the position of relying on Motorola, but the reverse isn't true; Motorola's original intent for AltiVec was embedded systems. From a business standpoint rather than a geek standpoint, Intel isn't competing against the PowerPC at all; chip customers are motherboard manufacturers, and the only way PPC and Pentium could be competing for the same space is to be compatible with one another. Motorola has no competition in their space, and Intel's competition is AMD. (Anyone who thinks the "Intel Inside" campaign was targeted against Apple, call me--I have a 64-bit TRS-80 to sell you. It'll be the next big thing.)
In anti-defense of Intel, our Anonymous friend is not exactly correct that the Pentium III is a tweaked Pentium II--it's even older than that. Both of them are using the P6 core from the Pentium Pro, which was the last major upgrade to the 8086 CPU family. Everything else has been either pushing the speed level or integrating separate units onto the CPU.
However, given that Intel hasn't released any specs for the P7 processor other than noting it's going to be using a .13-micron manufacturing process, it's premature to say that Intel won't be able to "compete performance-wise" with the G4 chip "for the next two years, at least." P7 is due in about a year (Q3 2000), and given AMD's Athlon processor, it's a good bet that Intel will be motivated to keep to that timetable. Let's wait for the P7 specs to be leaked before we slag it, hmm?
(To those not keeping score, by the way, the P7 is not Merced. The IA64 line is a separate dark horse from Intel, and I think Merced's successor, McKinley, is going to be one to watch.)
I think you're forgetting the "glue logic" that keeps BeOS from being cleanly ported.
...which is one reason that Linux has taken longer to gain a foothold on Mac hardware (and the open-source mechanism allows distribution to other free OS's but BeOS finds it needs to do it in a "clean room" environment to retain their copyrights- rightly or wrongly).
When there are closed sections of the box, it's more difficult to take advantage of...
Seriously, consider that IBM's release of specs for PowerPC-based motherboards (which includes the artwork...) will make G4 technology (with documented glue logic) more available for Linux-o-philes. Heck, my main system at home is 4+ years old - it's an AMD 5x86-133; I haven't upgraded it since I didn't consider a Pentium as an upgrade path- I wanted an Alpha or a PowerPC (and I had expected cheap CHRP MBs to become available as "commodity parts").
Apple (apparently) did not want to allow for cloning since it'd reduce their H/W profit margins to (effectively) zero- which Steve Jobs wanted to retain. Against BeOS (much less Linux or FreeBSD) the MacOS would show it's senility on open hardware- so there needed to be a software margin too.
Now all I want is to get some PPC CHRP motherboards cheap...
-soup
-soup (GNUrd, Speaker to Machines) "Laugh at yourself- Why should everyone else have all the fun?" -Romanchek's 6th Ru
this is what i heard from a friend who tried:
OS 8.X get into some VERY funky issues with G4 boards
OS 9 is fine (that's what the G4's ship with, AFAIK)...
with the new ROM, you can boot into a G4 with OS 9.X, but not with OS 8.X
simple, not malicious, and from apple's point of view, no one should be playing with either OS 9 or G4 upgrades, as they are not out! (and all the manufacturers are on NDA)...
If that's the case, then why is a relatively small-time company like Phase 5 expecting to ship G4-based processor boards for Amigas on October 15? If Phase 5 can get specs and chips in quantity for such a small/niche product, then any serious computer manufacturer can. (This is not intended as a put-down against Phase 5. :-)
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Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If you're right (and I hope you are), then Apple is going to looked pretty bad when 3rd-party non-Mac-clone G4 computers start coming out (and that isn't very far away).
Apple's recent minitower machines really are quite nice (except for the exterior part of the case), but they are also overpriced. Part of this is due to greed (Apple has no competitors) and part of it is due to the development cost of MacOS. PPC machines that don't MacOS licensing or compatability are going to be price competitive with x86 PeeCees, but faster.
So if you want a G4, just wait a little while. Apple's machines are going to be a joke compared to the Real Thing. On the other hand, a lot of people do buy Macs because of MacOS, so I doubt Apple is really in serious danger.
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Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Ah, but look at what the consequences are: Apple is mass-marketing PPC-based machines to consumers in addition to geeks. This is giving the PPC enough economy of scale to avoid becoming another Alpha (fast, but expensive).
Next year when you buy a brand X G4 machine to replace the old stone-knives-and-bearskins x86, remember: Apple (inadvertantly) made it possible.
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Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I almost couldn't bring myself to read the posts when I saw an article by *Katz* about *Macs*! But then I started to think about it, and it is kind of an interesting little experiment: Are Katz-despisers and Mac-haters mutually exclusive? What proportion of /. readers bash both of them? Will Katz annoy the Mac-lovers, even?
:-)
Regardless, no matter what Katz actually says, you had to know there would be some heated discussions here!
YS
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
What is wrong with Photoshop benchmarks? Apple unveiled the G4 at Seybold, a desktop publishing, web, and media convention... Photoshop breeding grounds if ever I saw it. As the web grows, so too does the Photoshop niche, btw.
Regardless, I actually did see the Apple G4s at Seybold, hooked up to gorgeous 22" Cinema Displays playing Q3.
Full resolution, highest detail, flawless framerate. Not that I can claim the G4 is faster, but if I do Photoshop for a living and play Q3 on the side, *nothing* can beat a G4. Likewise anything that does raw number crunching I suspect nothing beats a G4(for now)
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I dunno, they don't seem to occupy that radically different markets...
Apple *is* planning to replace MacOS on the Mac, with OS X, which rests atop a (hopefully) stable underpinning of BSD with a MacOS/NeXT hybrid UI. Likewise the G4 seems to be pretty powerful, so I don't see why Apple wouldn't try to market it as a deskstop workstation...
iMacs for the consumer desktop, and G4s for the professional desktop, no? Including researchers, scientists, desktop publications, animation, visualization, etc. Why wouldn't Apple want this market? It's not as if Apple can't compete...
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
You forgot some other stuff.
You get:
64MB ram
20 GB HD
Zip internal
Rage 128 Pro w Digital output(not Rage 128)
DVD drive
plus
2 Airport wireless networking antennas
the ability to use 1.5GB memory(up from 1.0GB)
Three times the memory throughput(so Apple claims)
133MHz AGP 2x
An additional Firewire port(how many PCs have a firewire port anyhow?)
MacOS 9
As well as the price for speed boost from 400 to 450 MHz
I may have forgotten a few items as well.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Which might be why you and PC magazines love to use it. Along with MS Office benchmarks and operations that did heavy floating point calculations but light on the integers.
Quake was ported by Westlake Interactive, not id. While they are good programers, they went for compatibility before performance, so the Mac version lags.
A Quake benchmark is just as biased as a bytemark benchmark. That and the game is four years old! At least use a newer application like Photoshop or Quake 3.
John Katz seems to have missed the extreme irony of his first paragraph: that while the new G4 Macs were released with the usual Apple hype and with Jobs' reality distortion magic, Apple remains a "creative" company.
Where Apple had technical brilliance in the 80s and early 90s, it now possesses amazing marketing skills--it is, in fact, one of the best corporate marketers right now. The iMac's success stems from Apple's ability to seek out a large consumer base (non-techie, aesthetically sensitive persons) and make a computer that aimed right for that mark. However, open up an iMac and one finds little, if any, technical innovations. The iMac, technology-wise, is no different than the $1000 celeron-based offerings of Dell and Gateway--but it was Apple's marketing and attention to design and aesthetics that gave them a winner (although not with the orange ones).
True geeks, technophiles, and the digirati will acknowledge that the G4 is an impressive CPU. But these people will also point out that Apple has coupled their G4 with the same uninspiring graphics chipset from ATI, as well as with the aging MacOS (we are, of course, promised Apple's next OS real soon now). And let's not forget the Apple strategy that has remained unchanged throughout its history: the Apple price premium. Why, most geeks would ask, would I pay 10-20% more for a machine simply because it has translucent plastic and the Apple logo?
Apple's business is not to cater to the needs of diehard geeks, but to cater to the unwashed masses for whom simplicity and aesthetics are more important than one's framerate in Quake.
I think John Katz has it backwards: In years past, "macho" geeks touted their Macs as superior to any Wintel offering, because, in fact, they were. However now, these geeks, and especially the more frugal amongst them shun the Mac not only on technical grounds, but financial ones. And John Katz shows his adherence to the religion of Apple by stating the same old 80s Apple rhetoric of shaking up the rest of the computer industry. The emergence of Apple in the 80s no doubt changed the industry forever, but now, in the 90s, with Jobs' greying beard, Apple is just another entrenched veteran in the most competitive industry around, and has, apparently successfully used its storied past to both sell decent machines at a premium and keep its faithful believing in the myth that is the Apple Computer Company.
For the most I have to agree with you...personally I never cared much for Jobs and I did not think that his return to Apple was going to do much for the Company. They have managed to answer to customer's needs and even though they got an influx of cash from M$ a couple of years back they don't seem to be "Slaves to Redmond".
But the real question is: "Is Apple's success due to Job's return or to finally listening to consumers or does the answer fall somewhere inbetween ?"
Maybe not everybody agrees with Apple's stategies, or simply the way Jobs does his job. But one must admit it works.
.02
Apple was almost dead a couple of years ago, and now it's back on top. I say "bravo". They have managed to answer customer's needs, and we have to remember they are *not* M$ slaves all the way. Most users don't need and don't want to put their hands in the system, and Apple knows that.
Just my
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
"pounded ... IBM and Microsoft... at their own game" (sorry for the paraphrasing) but didn't you say a couple sentances before, that IBM Motorola and Apple were working on this project together? :)
So, is Apple just "pounding themselves"?
yeah yeah ok -1 me allready!!!
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
Let's face it: Apple is cool because it has CULTURE.
...we'll do what Jobs envisioned: change the world.
Bzzz... Sorry, Apple has about as much culture as an average California corporation. What you mean is that Apple has a good MARKETING DEPARTMENT and spends money to hire good ad agencies. That's a little bit different, I believe.
Apple makes a cutlural statement, a leap into the imaginations of its users.
Again, you are judging a company by its advertising. Not a very good way to go about it. If you want to talk about making leaps into imagination, find out which ad agency made the ads that you liked -- they are making these leaps.
From everything I've seen, Jobs is an evil bastard, even more so than Gates
Hear, hear!
But he's a bastard in the right way. He really beleives that by giving people 'insanely great' technology, he can change the world.
I wouldn't state so confidently my opinions about Job's beliefs. In any case, you are probably thinking of the time long past, time when the computers were only starting to appear and things like Macs were really new and exciting. Now (and for many years already) Apple is just another corporation out to make a buck and Jobs is a CEO with a flair for public relations. I doubt very much that he is thinking a lot about changing the world with Apple technology. Besides, what technology is that? I haven't seen anything radical (except for colors, that is) come out of Apple for a looooong time.
Err... thank you very much, but I don't think I like the idea of changing the world according to Job's ideals (I am pretty sure they include a lobotomy for all non-Apple users like me, among other unpleasant things). And since you are so enthusiastic about changing the world, can you please be a bit more exact about how you will change it and what Apple has to do with it?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Sorry, but I read the article (don't) so I figured I should comment on it.....
after I take a quick nap.zzzzzzzzz
O.K., so is JK impressed by this amazing machine (WOW, look at those benchmarks! um.) or by another good commercial? I mean to totally buy into the hype like this is poor journalism, it's even poor consumerism. The same limits being placed on the G4 are placed on the Dreamcast, why, because we haven't adjusted our belief in what makes up a supercomputer. Or maybe they all are supercomputers now. Wouldn't that have been more groundbreaking? Not, ooh, a new color and number, but, ooh, anybody can have a supercomputer on their desk (and play solitaire, yippee!)
Sorry anytime you just add a number to a product precludes it from being amazing in my book, or anything other than a blip on the big screen.
non-story, non-article, non-event.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz
+&x
The G4 chip has Altivec, the PPC platform's SIMD extensions. These are 128-bit (vs. the P3's 64-bit) vector math additions that have their own dedicated parallel units on the CPU (vs. MMX's need to turn off the FPU and use its registers). They are well supported in PPC C compilers (unlike MMX and SSE, which require nasty direct use of x86 assembler -- ). They will be extensively supported in the main OS for the machine and many of its applications (unlike MMX and SSE which are really only supported in a limited fashion in DirectX and a few games). In other words, this is one of the reasons Mac OS X will smoke the competition. Oh, and the better SMP support than the P3's hardcoded 4-way (which require serious hardware hacks to get around for the new 8-way machines) and the new, improved FPU don't hurt either.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Most users don't need and don't want to put their hands in the system, and Apple knows that.
That's the kind of thing I like to hear... too many people say the iMac is crap (for the wrong reasons). And always , and without exception, their first reason is that it doesn't have a floppy drive. Usually second is that it doesn't have a lot of upgrade options. I have a floppy drive, and I've used it maybe twice in the time I've used it. Far too many people (usually geeks) forget that "normal" people have to use computers too. People who would rather spend time with other things besides their computers (hell, some people are actually afraid of the things!). Simplicity is what will get more people using computers. As well as Linux runs, someone who doesn't know what to do will be content with using Windows (even through the crashes) or MacOS (they don't care if it's preemptive and memory protected).
But, say what you want about Apple (btw, it's the G3 that was "sabotaged" to not accept the G4, not the other way around)... that they are greedier and more coporate, etc... but then, Jobs isn't a 20-year-old hippie from Berkeley anymore. You can't deny that they haven't tried to bring computers to the more computer ignorant, though. And damn it, I think they did a good job.
The Happy Blues Man
The Happy Blues Man
I accept on blind faith that Cincinatti exists.
I found a few minor errors in JK's latest piece..don't know how significant they are but here goes. >>The G4's microprocessor, co-developed by Apple, IBM and Motorola, uses a circuit called the velocity engine... Then Katz goes on to say: >>...he's pounded the macho geeks at their own game and exposed behemoths like IBM and Microsoft for the clunky and unimaginative entities that they are. In light of IBM having a major part in producing the G4 processor, I doubt Apple's infusion of the new G4 chip 'exposes' IBM as a clunky and unimaginative entity. If anything it shows that Apple and IBM are on the same page, agreeing that Altivec was a good idea and investing in it. Katz, you should re-edit your stories occasionally. My two pesos.
I applaud Apple simply because I appreciate healthy diversity within the market. No single operating system is appropriate for all users. Today we have several healthy choices: NT, Linux, Solaris, PalmOS, and, yes, MacOS. Likewise, not single chip manufacturer should dominate the scene. Today we have Intel, AMD, and Motorola. You may not like Apple's products, but the company has helped maintain a competative and creative environment over the last decade.
Where does Apple go from here? Personally, I'm attracted by the possibility of a multiprocessor G4 running a Unix core with a slick window-based environment - Mac OS X. This vision may not work for everyone, but damnit, it works for me.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
But I wonder about a company that, with version 1.0 of the G3 firmware, allowed a G3 to be upgraded to a G4, but then disabled this option in version 1.1 of the firmware.
If I understand the Wired article correctly - it appears that Apple intentionally crippled its G3 firmware to prevent users from upgrading a G3 to a G4 with a CPU swap, presumably in order to "encourage" folks to buy a whole G4 box rather than just the chip upgrade.
At least with Intel, I may need a new motherboard for CPU swaps... but at least I can keep the video card, sound card, and, umm... plain white case :)
Can any Mac folks out there explain what's up with the G3/G4 firmware issue?
Feh. And generally I like Katz's posts. This one was really lacking, though.
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
I have used macs for almost as long as I can remember. I remember many people claiming that Apple is dead for so many years and their claims were not without reason. Now Apple seems to have turned themselves around. They have started to inovate again and come out with some cool products.
There are still some things about Apple that they need ot fix. The need to stop the idea of not letting people upgrade their computers. I would be more hesitant about buying a G4 if I knew that there was a good posibility that I would not be able to upgrade the thing. I know that upgrades usually transform into less of a profit, but it is something that the industry is used to haveing. Don't take it away now.
Second, I think that Apple should allow the clones to start up again, although they may not have a choice. I know that the clones did dig a little into Apple's profits, but they also force Apple to inovate and keep prices down. The clone makers were able to create better computers at a lower price, which force Apple to try to do the same. The results was better computers on both sides.
Whether you like Apple's computers or not, you should be glad that the company is comming back. They help create competition, however little, for the rest of the PC industry. Without competition, there is no incentive to create better products or keep the prices low. There are still some things Apple needs to fix, but they are at least on the right track.
You see? It's like I've always said. You can get more with a kind word and a 2x4 than you can with just a kind word.
...putting aside the issue of which CPU (Pentium III or G4) is better at general purpose tasks (anything non-Photoshop, or non-signal procesing-related), true geeks recognize that even in "supercomputer" vector processing, the numbers don't quite add up to a significant win for the G4.
Let's take the 128-bit vector processing operations. Say, best case, you wanted to issue and execute one of those every clock cycle, at 500 MHz, that would require 128/8*500= 8,000 MByte/sec memory bandwidth. The Apple available today has 20x less!
Only 400 MB/sec (half that of today's PII/PIIIs). And next month they'll ship a better 800 MB/sec motherboard, matching today's PCs. Even if execution rates are one every two clocks, or one only uses 64-bit wide data, the 10x gap between chip horsepower and memory bandwidth remains the crucial performance-limiting bottleneck for vector processing operations.
If both PCs and Macs have equivalent memory bandwidths, and memory bandwidths are the single largest constraint on vector processing operations, how does the wider 128-bit circuitry in G4 yield a worthwhile advantage?
(Answer: a few tweaked benchmarks aside, it doesn't.)
Yours for a more educated, critical-thinking populace,
LP
> Fancy label, fancy price tag but nothing special
> compared to the £20 clones
I assume your £20 clones have gigaflop performance?
Of course they don't.
Check your specs before making a fool of yourself.
Harry
Computers == freedom
A well used line.
Reassuring for all the freakled 16 year old anti-socilites, sitting in their darkned bedrooms. Busily preparing themselves for the day technology rules and they become the rulers.
Computing is the next step in human evolution . True ? I believe so, but can human evolution be controlled by a handful of charasmatic, singleminded, power-hungry, egotistical evangilists ? Aren't we as a species as a culture as a civilisation greater then this ? When one company controls 90% market share for a product essential to the operation of the single most important tool for out advancement, can we truly believe ourselves to be free ?
The G4 is a new processor. A new way of imprinting etchings on a piece of silicon. There are greater forces at play here.
It's still difficult to upgrade and loaded with proprietary hardware.
Difficult to upgrade? What have you been smoking? With the possible exception of a total motherboard replacement, the G4 (and its B&W G3 ancestry) is quite possibly the easiest-to-upgrade machine I've ever seen in every aspect.
As for "loaded with proprietary hardware" I'd watch what you're saying. Pretty much every single thing on that motherboard is now an open standard: Ultra-ATA for hard drives, PCI and AGP for cards, standard PC100 memory (or is it PC133 now?), USB and Firewire for peripherals, 10/100 Ethernet for networking, OpenFirmware for booting (yes, OpenFirmware is itself an open standard; check FirmWorks if you don't believe me), and so on. I should, by the way, note that the G4 AGP no longer has a proprietary Mac ROM on the motherboard anymore (the PCI graphics still do, as they use the legacy Yosemite motherboard rather than Sawtooth, but even the ROM's on these no longer contain any OS-level code). Proprietary hardware? Perhaps one or two things still, but don't even think of calling it "loaded" anymore.
The power user demands a machine that he/she can not only be proud of when it first comes out, but can remain potent for years to come (through upgrades to both operating system and hardware).
True, very true. I don't think you'll argue that the G4 isn't a machine to be proud of when first purchased. Now, look to the studies. It's been shown that Macs have a much longer useful life than any other desktop computer (indeed, usually double or triple that of the average PC in a given establishment); I have a seven-year-old machine at home which now has a G3 processor, a good amount of RAM, great storage space, and so on and so forth. Not only that, but it is still running all the latest software out there. In other words, Macs can and do remain potent for years to come, years longer than even most PC's, through upgrades of software and hardware, just as you said.
The G4 is aiming for the geek market, but just doesn't have the features that would make it attractive for more than a few months.
And what, pray tell, are those "features"? I don't see any glaring lack, except possibly that I'd like a couple more PCI slots and there are ways around even that problem.
By attempting to appeal to higher-end users but not changing its hardware strategy to one of modularity and maximum control, Apple will find that it has sown the seeds of bitter resentment.
Not changing its hardware strategy to one of modularity and maximum control? Perhaps we're on different wavelengths. The G4, as I see it, appears to be just about as "modular" as any PC I've ever seen (sure, there's the mobo issue, but that's the only problem I've seen and considering the way Mac upgrades tend to run this problem is actually quite minor). As for "maximum control" I don't see any real trouble in this area here either. Looks to me like I can dictate more or less exactly what does and doesn't go into my machine.
You did a good job of describing what the average power-user wants. Trouble is, the Mac fits your description perfectly. That's rather countrtproductive to your argument, which is thereby reduced to the level of "Macs suck because they're Macs" (since you have no arguments to support your claim). Perhaps you should actually look into these machines, rather than refer to 10-year-old FUD which hasn't been true for quite some time now.
good read, but it's a little bit on the side of repeating what the 'buzz' in the real world has been for a while - the iMac and Steve got on the cover of time, now with the iBook and the G4 full spreads in other glossies are appearing - that's not the kind of stuff you see when a new pentium is introduced... why? because, IMHO, apple has always build COMPUTERS, not COMPUTER PATRS - they could design the ibook from the beginning to have a low-power chip, a built-in handle, and an antenna - why? because they designed the whole thing and had to rely on no one else for critical components (they still relied on the engineers and manufacturers, obviously)... the mainstream consumer wintel world is stuck with, well. windows, and intel... kinda limiting, huh? (go powerpc, go linux...)
/. fans will be able to run the coolest hardware with the coolest OS (be it WHATEVER flavor of unix or linux you want, that's not what this post is about)
:>
anyway, how do we REALLY see the resurgence? the sales! people LOVE the iMac, and perhaps more importantly, EVERYONE recognizes it, and EVERYONE knows who built it... i have one on my desk in the office here at Rutgers, in a residence hall, and it never ceases to get compliments
so, why the sudden spurt of belief in apple now that the G4 is out? probably because it signals all the technological merit that the PowerPC really represents... When Tom's Hardware is comparing 10% different rendering times between an Athlon and Dual Celeron, here comes a piece of APPLE hardware that whups them both - exotic, fresh, and it has a cool case - who wouldnt want one on their desk?
and one issue not mentioned: soon, the G4 will run a full BSD unix - so even Unix heads and
also, one issue: individual creativity? it took more than a few people to design the 7400 (G4 chip), and a LARGE crew to do the system - you can't hack together a complex beast like that in the same way Steve and Steve did the Apple 1... and AFAIK, Apple has a board, with plenty of hot-shots from much less flexible computer firms sitting on it... so what is apple's resurgence due to, in my opinion? they got back to their original goals: produce powerful, affordable, easy to use computers that REDEFINE how we can use them... With their last few products, they have done excellently, and the world has taken notice... may they continue to do so for a long time, as JonKatz says, i want the cool toys
Apple deserves credit for acting on what has been so obvious for so long, and that is computers are intimidating. Apple has borrowed from other industries (cars, consumer electronics) and carefully crafted a warm and fuzzy way to sell computers. That does not make them technically superior, just more easily marketable.
Let's face it: Apple is cool because it has CULTURE. Microsoft has no culture. Not even corporate culture. It exists solely as a money making machine. Apple makes a cutlural statement, a leap into the imaginations of its users.
From everything I've seen, Jobs is an evil bastard, even more so than Gates. But he's a bastard in the right way. He really beleives that by giving people 'insanely great' technology, he can change the world. Of course it is a world and culture that HE envisions, but at least it is something more than more and more money.
The best thing that could happen is when OSX really gets going that geeks will be attracted to it (Anyone ever used a NeXT machine? Weren't they just THE COOLEST?). Then, between a real OS like OSX, a movement like Linux and OpenSource, and real technology like the G4 instead of X86, we'll do what Jobs envisioned: change the world.
So the new Apple Renaissance is simply a revival of culture in Apple, a thing they have missed since Jobs the Conqueror left (dang he can do a great keynote, can't he?)
Of course, it won't be in Jobs' image, but the geeks....
I think the point that most authors miss about Apple is that they make computing fun, not cool or hip. When the G4 came out, countless geeks didn't say, "Ooo, I want an Apple," they said, "Ooo, I want a G4, cause I try and put Linux or something that will really take advantage of it on it." Geeks think the chip is cool, not the machine. Where Apple's success now lies (and it's evident by their marketing campaign and their product line) is in the fun of using a computer. Compare Apple's commercials to that of Microsoft or Sun. Apple uses music from the Beatles and touts ease-of-use and the funny little quirks of their machines. MS and Sun tout business applications and corporate development and how to use the computer for balancing the bank statement of a cow farm in Idaho or Wyoming or something. Which is more fun? Who are the majority of computer buyers (not Slashdotters)? And companies are noticing. They're copying the case designs, but really, that's only half of it. Apple has this image that their marketers, Katz almost points out, has created. G4s and tanks is serious stuff, but Apple says, "Hey, look, we're fun. We got a supercomputer here, but it ain't military, it's fun." And when consumers (not hard-core users) start up their new fun Apple, they find what really is a rather fun GUI to use, especially now that it's more stable.
Many people would say that having a bunch of consumers start using an Apple would be a bad thing, that they're not seeing how computing really is, but aren't they? I mean, they're hopping on the 'Net where invariably, they're going to learn about computing and general and the philosophies (open-source, closed-source, ie. alternatives) associated there-in and they'll be doing it in a comfortable environment that screams this isn't a work machine, this is a play machine, so have fun. Apple's always been good at that (I remember when my father got his first Mac in 1984), but now they have that image and the success only follows naturally.