this article really ticked me off. first off, on a lot of points, he's just plain WRONG. plus, it's littered with that strange mix of defensiveness and euphoria that has always dogged advocates/apologists for any platform. these are COMPUTERS, not SPORTS teams for crying out loud -- tools we use, not teams we jeer or root for.
first, he pigeonholes john carmack with a "low-level programmer" stereotype, and then uses that stereotype to marginalize carmack's comments regarding the mac. fine, at least he admits his bias up front.
second, like it or not, after years of wintel playing catch-up to apple, apple IS playing catch-up to wintel on a number of issues, and these are *NOT* just "low-level details that most programmers won't care about". macOS does *not* have memory protection, pre-emptive multitasking, or (until now) a reasonable approach to hardware-accelerated 3D. like it or not, WindowsNT does.
face it: programmers make errors. if those programmers use C or C++, those errors may try to write to random locations in memory. if the OS lets them, they will blow away other apps, or poke holes in the OS.
Unix, and WindowsNT won't let you. MacOS will. ergo, macs will crash more during development. sorry, it's true.
next, to compare the quake performance of 3D-accelerated mac to a non-accelerated PC is ludicrous. of *COURSE* the mac will win; that's the whole point of having hardware acceleration in the first place!
also, notice that in one paragraph he says "OpenGL is a pretty mediocre implementation with lots of shortcoming", while in the next he admits "I am not a real 3D programmer. I only get the basics of the problems and issues and did some simple 3D stuff on my own (18 years ago)" i presume that didn't include writing any OpenGL code.
anyway i'm sure most of slashdot knows all this stuff already. i just wanted to get this of my chest. articles like this make my blood boil, and they certainly do nothing to help the image of mac enthusiasts.
btw, someone should tell him that ISA is a bus standard, not an instruction architecture (maybe he was thinking of IA32?)
one application which needs arrays of big drives with big bandwidth is uncompressed video editing/effects (which, coincidentally, happens to be the bread and butter of the company i work for). for example, real-time uncompressed video requires about 30MB/sec (or 240Mb/sec).
however, for a simple real-time dissolve (2 read streams and one write), triple it to 90MB/sec, and you're beyond what a single UWSCSI channel will do.
real-time film-res playback (2Kx1.5Kx48bits colour) is about 340MB/sec.
i'm sure there are other applications, such as serving many streams of high-quality audio or video over high-bandwidth net connections which require striped drive arrays connected over multiple SCSI channels as well.
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this article really ticked me off. first off,
on a lot of points, he's just plain WRONG.
plus, it's littered with that strange mix of
defensiveness and euphoria that has always
dogged advocates/apologists for any platform.
these are COMPUTERS, not SPORTS teams for
crying out loud -- tools we use, not
teams we jeer or root for.
first, he pigeonholes john carmack
with a "low-level programmer" stereotype, and
then uses that stereotype to marginalize
carmack's comments regarding the mac. fine,
at least he admits his bias up front.
second, like it or not, after years of
wintel playing catch-up to apple,
apple IS playing catch-up to wintel on
a number of issues, and these are *NOT*
just "low-level details that most programmers
won't care about". macOS does *not* have memory
protection, pre-emptive multitasking, or (until
now) a reasonable approach to hardware-accelerated
3D. like it or not, WindowsNT does.
face it: programmers make errors. if those
programmers use C or C++, those errors may
try to write to random locations in memory.
if the OS lets them, they will blow away
other apps, or poke holes in the OS.
Unix, and WindowsNT won't let you. MacOS
will. ergo, macs will crash more during
development. sorry, it's true.
next, to compare the quake performance of
3D-accelerated mac to a non-accelerated PC
is ludicrous. of *COURSE* the mac will
win; that's the whole point of having
hardware acceleration in the first place!
also, notice that in one paragraph he says
"OpenGL is a pretty mediocre implementation
with lots of shortcoming", while in the
next he admits "I am not a real 3D programmer. I only get the basics of the problems and issues and did some simple 3D stuff on my own (18 years ago)"
i presume that didn't include writing any OpenGL
code.
anyway i'm sure most of slashdot knows all
this stuff already. i just wanted to get
this of my chest. articles like this make
my blood boil, and they certainly do nothing
to help the image of mac enthusiasts.
btw, someone should tell him that ISA is a
bus standard, not an instruction architecture
(maybe he was thinking of IA32?)
one application which needs arrays of big
drives with big bandwidth is uncompressed
video editing/effects (which, coincidentally,
happens to be the bread and butter of the
company i work for). for example, real-time
uncompressed video requires about 30MB/sec
(or 240Mb/sec).
however, for a simple real-time dissolve
(2 read streams and one write), triple it
to 90MB/sec, and you're beyond what a
single UWSCSI channel will do.
real-time film-res playback
(2Kx1.5Kx48bits colour) is about 340MB/sec.
i'm sure there are other applications, such
as serving many streams of high-quality audio
or video over high-bandwidth net connections
which require striped drive arrays connected
over multiple SCSI channels as well.