OSX on POWER4, Sparc, x86; for enterprise/edu only
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OS X on x86?
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Listen up all, before OS X get's ported to x86 it's going to go to POWER4 and then Sparc, and a maybe to x86. Why? in their meeting last night they mentioned that Apples Enterprise is Education, helping them solve problems versus just selling boxen (iMacen?:-) To be a solutions provider, you need big iron or know how to play nice with big iron. Apple right now doesn't have the resources to develop that, nor to compete with best friends number 2 and 3, Sun and IBM. (Motorola's the old girlfriend that Apple just keeps coming back to:-) , Best friend number 1 is Ole Bill)
Any how, if you can't beat them, join them right? POWER4, as I understand it, runs the same ISA as the G3's, so that should be binary compatible (ppc is a low power derivative of the POWER chipset). Expect that first. Aqua on an RS/6000! UFS is there, and the drivers wouldn't take that long to port. You probably wouldn't have classic, or carbon, but you got Cocoa and the BSD API's. Remember this is enterprise, so you don't really need the old Mac apps except on the clients. For IBM, the ease of use of OS X could be a real big selling point, and just the leverage apple needs to ask IBM to help Moto's faltering yields.
Ok, the next path is Sun. takes a bit longer to port Aqua, Quartz, and all the goodies, but it's all there, with the old next API's.
Ok then, we get to x86. They probably have this ready in house, and just not committing it to public CVS. (the new revisions to the APSL let's them do this) Apple doesn't release it to the public, but for their own enterprise solutions needs. Upgrade for compatibility with hardware, drivers when they need them.
Don't expect anything consumer level. They have had three really good years of the PPC, and there is no way they are going to screw up something good (so they had a bad quarter, a lot of people did) Keep it simple, stupid.
It's sneaky, but Apple hasn't leveraged their Next Enterprise muscle yet, and OS X lets them do this. If you listen to the latter half of the Apple's analyst meeting, there are some subtle hints there.
So this is all speculation, but still if you're going to get OS X on x86, that's how it will happen.
I think you might be right , if k and GNome catch up, things could fall out for apple. However, the one thing that Linux lacks as far as GUI goes is leadership that can make some strong decisions.
While gnome is great because you can tweak every little morsel of it, that is a really hard sell to people. Eazel does an allright job of it, but I really think Apple does take the cake in this, by hiding all the unixy aspects in the gui. It's a trade off. Abstraction vs full control? What do the consumers want vs what do the developers want? A strong sense of management is what really is needed to make these decisions. While using linux, you may have that, but a lot of people don't , or just want something prescribed, that they can work around if they want.
Apple is in tune with this, and I think they finally 'get it.' Linux on the other hand, empowers the user incredibly, which is truly what linux is all about. But in the wrong hands, it can become quite unyieldy.
Re:Affect hardware sales?
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OS X on x86?
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Macs ARE niche computers nowadays. This is a fact. Most of the dedicated Mac users I've seen ARE media types.
John Carmack is a media type. He uses macs. He's in a niche (He's one of the best:-) He started the xFree86 port to the Mac.
who else except graphics pros need Cinema Studio Displays?). For these professionals, they don't think twice about spending a few 1000 more on their PC if it helps them do their work better
I'm sure on any IDE, the extra horizontal space is much appreciated for project windows and the like. Altivec is a really compelling reason to pay another $1000, especially if you need to crunch large chunks of data.
However for the average monkey running Office, the Mac makes no sense.
Actually, Microsoft Office 2000 for the Mac is much better than the current Windows version. Even, people within microsoft have said so. Ok, so it was Kevin Browne, MacBU lead at Microsoft. Still, Gates pays him and it shows. There's not a day that goes by that I don't sing praises of him.
And for the home user we have to add in the lack of games and cutting edge 3D hardware.
All right, uncle. You win on this one, but with a big wait. When Metrowerks fixes their compiler, Graeme Devine will be releasing the Altivec/OS X version of Quake III. (by the way, the only reason someone uses Metrowerks is if they want to dev for mac and PC simultaneously) If that's not good enough, nVidia is in cahoots with Apple.
Back to Carmack. I'm pretty sure the biggest reason why he's back to doing Doom is that he gets to play with the codebase again. Since the original was developed on NeXT using Objective-C, he can play around with it happily on his Mac.
Applications for OS X on x86... how about Gimp?
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OS X on x86?
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Darwin, the underlying 'fifth BSD' that OS X runs on, has an intel port being worked on. What's really exciting now is that a whole ton of GNU stuff is getting ported. XFree86 now includes a Darwin in it's source tree, earlier this year, and since then it's really exploding. Gtk+ was ported so you can build Gimp. Qt was recently ported so you can build KDE.
If you want to see OS X on x86, do it yourself! Darwinfo has a howto to get it booting on Intel" It's very pre alpha, and seems to run only on a few mobo configs, but still, I think this is the only way you'll see Apple port Aqua to x86. They are really into leveraging the Open source community for Darwin already, and they've reiterated their loyalty to PPC, so they need all the persuasion that they can get.
Also, a really interesting note about OS X that is strictly mac, but applies peripherally. Last night at the analyst Meeting, Tevanian, their Software lead, said that they've doubled their number of paid developers in the last 12 months. We can expect the amount of applications for the mac to at least double when OS X comes out.
Still, IIRC, as part of the patent deal that Apple and MS did, gates didn't want cocoa to be put on x86 in exchange for Office (and it is really better than the x86 version:-).
Again, if there is a compelling reason for Apple to go through another hardware transition, it'd be the fact that Darwin is implemented and tested already on that platform.
Personally, I think they'd port it first to SPARC and POWER4 rather than x86 since that iron doesn't conflict with their consumer market.
I remember being in second grade when this happened. It was a real let down for all the teachers, since many were excited that Christa McAuliffe was on board the mission.
I remember back then when the books foretold of a future where everyone would be living on space stations and the space shuttle would be a passenger station. The demise of Challenger deflated all those dreams...
All right on wincent.org they show the vertical dock, from the build at macworld. Apparently, it's now a defaults option. That is, orientation right, and pinned.
Pretty darn cool. Remind's me of the old next bar. I'll probably choose this option over the centered dock, and Desktop icons.
It'd be pretty easy make Tivo like software. Tivo runs on PPC.:-) Linux PPC. It's really great for that camp, following along the scalability of linux.
The problem was more a ratio between price and experience. be wanted ~300 Million for a new untested, yet promising OS, and Apple offered Next 430 million for a dying, yet battle tested OS.
What was most important though? Time to market. They released MacOS server about two years after they bought next. Not bad when you consider it took MS 8 years to dev NT.
//many of the same individuals and companies that used and supported the technologies when they were owned by NeXT have continued to do so now that the technologies are owned by Apple
I think I have to agree with there. While digital video isn't quite there yet without enough broadband access, but I bet it will when DVD-R's proliferate.
Remember, Apple got screwed this year because they focused on video too early, without considering distribution. FCP and iMovie are great and good authoring tools, but I had to use my schools DV to SVHS deck to make copies for my friends, and lost a lot of audio nuances in the process. If I had a DVD-R, I could easily burn them, and give them to the friends with dvd boxes.
Still, I'm all for open codecs, as a video student, since more people will able to view my work.
I'm pretty sure that Nvidia didn't want to reengineer their mobile offerings for apple, either. Not that they didn't desire to, it's just that it's impractical. They only did the MX proabably because it easiest, and since this is the first foray into the Mac market, they wanted to keep it simple this time, and keep the endian issues in mind when designing the new chips.
I think it's impressive that they don't usually make cards but did so for Apple ( or does apple manufacture the cards? not sure).
"but what happens if you need a combination that is already occupied by the "workaround?" "
a note about this. the reason why Macs come with one button mice, is because the os is designed around it. I now own a two button mouse, but still, with the one button mouse things were pretty simple control clicking everywhere. I didn't have to worry about the workaround/combination conflict, as all mac apps have to adhere to certain key combinations for the same function. It's a benefit of having both hardware and software control.
Still, as nice as the new apple mice are to use, I wish they'd have scroll wheel. That feature, I feel, is completely necessary.
Linux ppc is backward compatible with a number of Older macs. I can run it on my old 7200 as a personal web, file server, whereas my Beige g3 is at the bottom of the barrel for OSX compatibility (it is freaking slow!).
Also, geek parity. Linux PPC has a lot more ready to go ports for it in terms of linux software. Darwin is far more exciting as an Open OS, though, since it's just starting to grow and accelerate. I'd love to run Gnome along side Darwin, and get all the nice gui apps, but it's not quite there I think. I know gtk+ is ported, as is the Gimp, but I don't think the rest of the gnome libraries are.
Why run gnome and it's apps? As of Public beta, my workspace is far more customizable in Gnome and OS 9 than in OS X. I'm not a big fan of the rough draft of aqua in OS X, as I don't feel I have control over my workspace. Even getting on the sparc stations at school, I had a lot more customizability with owvm. The dock to me sucks, because I pay attention to the things that are centrally located on the monitor. For a system utility, the dock begs for too much attention, in my eyes. I much prefer the 'four corners' approach in os 9, (apple menu with disk aliases top left, app menu top right, control strip bottom right, tabbed folders and app menu buttons bottom left) or the top right corner, multiple desktop approaches in gnome and owvm.
In any case, I think it's hilarious how the highly opinionated Mac user invades slashdot whenever there's an apple article.
I see your point, but there is a slight problem with it. The SPEC Benchmark is not written for altivec, and therefore can't qualify as a legitimate benchmark for the G4.
First, I'm assuming here, as I haven't seen the code ($500!), but I highly doubt that the code is written to take advantage of the G4. My main hypothesis is that in order to take advantage of altivec, and concurrently the full potential of the G4, the code must be written with vector types. Check out this example from Apple's dev site. I highly doubt that SPEC writes using Altivec C, as other CPU's don't have vector execution units and don't need vector types. If my hypothesis is correct, then the SPEC is moot for comparing PPC's to x86's.
The assumption you make that it would scale linearly is hasty at best, however. One of the metrics on the SPECfp is computational fluid dynamics or 178.galgel.
If you'll check out
this study by NASA on this same subject, you'll see that the benefits would be much more impressive. An excerpt from the abstract:
In limited cases where AltiVec acceleration was available and tested under FORTRAN, the G4 showed a
clear advantage with 4-7X greater performance and a 5-8X greater cost effectiveness than all other workstation systems evaluated.
It's a very rewarding article, including a comparison between the Cray and G4 vector schemes. But what's important here is the question of deception. Since SPEC is basically useless to the advantages of the G4, the only cross platform benchmark that is possible is the real time tests. Also considering that the G4 is designed from the ground up to be a vertical market processor, that is, designed specifically with apple as the #1 buyer, I don't think the photoshop tests are deceptive at all. They are rightly geared for its audience. It might seem deceptive to the general public, but for the people who those machines are geared for, it is not deceptive at all.
to put it simply, when an application is optimized for the G4, it wollops the Pentium III.
I was really hoping to see something done to the iMacs. Apparently, IBM has been really pushing the mhz in their in house G3's but due to politics between the two PPC makers, the mhz is kept at the low level it is.
Now that I think about it, IBM hit 1 ghz about a year before Intel or AMD touched it. keep in mind this is an integer only embedded chip. Still it was based on the PPC.
I for one, think that Apple should propose a two pronged PPC strategy. Push the Hz with the IBM g3's as a general purpose processor, and add more altivec units to the g4 to accomodate to the vertical market of media creation.
On the packaging level, having a cd-r should have been part of the last revision to the imacs. Otherwise they are gorgeous machines.
Still, I agree with you on the consumer marketing. They really sat on their laurels with their machines. While they were wainting for Motorola to come up with decent production levels for the g4, they really could have been adding value to the iMac, which is becoming a tired design.
The towers are a real sign that Apple is listening to its customers. I mean, they added another pci slot, moved the graphics to nvidia, and added dvd-r and cd-r. The powerbook titanium hopefully appeals to the business user, although they should try a MS Office promotion with it.
// That's cool for you, and seriously, I've considered
// purchasing a Mac just to try out OS X (but will
// definitely wait until it has been out a while first).
Something in what you said really stirred something up in me.
A lot of the big talk on the Mac sites these days is how Apple is shifting to a software focus. Certainly OS X is numero uno on this list. Another big topic is the rumor of 'harder' advertising, meaning they'll focus on the merits of the functionality rather than calling their customers crazy:-)
I can't think of harder advertising than throwing one G4 Cube (it really is gorgeous) running OS X with internet access, and a loaded software package including Mac MS Office 2000 (it's Freakin' awesome!) in every Best Buy, Circuit City, and Sears in the nation, but carry only the G4 cube. (the colored iMac's were an inventory headache for Best Buy, that's why they stopped carrying them, in addition to Apple's strict price level.).
This way, potential switchovers like you would be able to make a really good shopping decision for themselves. Have you ever seen their current display model? Can you spell suck? It's some fluffy locked director presentation, while every other PC is actually running Windows. It's really no wonder they can't sell any of them. Certainly, it would help the Macs against the PC biased salespeople.
Maybe that'd be a better reason to buy a mac.
(Oh if you're PC biased salespeople, sorry about the generalization:-)
I tried out LinuxPPC on and off on my old 7200 a few years back. I ditched the whole project altogether when OS X came out.
there are two reasons at the time why I dropped Linux PPC that are inherently its fault:
1. HFS+
I could not store any of my files on the secondary disk as LinuxPPC couldn't read it. Not their fault, but Apple protecting themselves in their weak times.
2. Installer didn't work.
At the time, Linux PPC just started their Live install, where it would install from a perl based GUI. didn't work. Tried doing a RedHat Install. didn't work. I didn't even know what perl was at the time, so I couldn't tinker with it. ended up installing the previous version, which installed pretty well. tried updating. it told me to use the perl installer. didn't work.:-)
Give me a break, I'm an art student with some experience in java, and was trying to use it as a media server.
Now, for the two reasons that are entirely my fault:
1. no net connection for support
I had one modem, and i decided to put it on my spankin' new G3. (I played a lot of Myth at the time)
It's pretty interesting you say this, because the only public reason that this is happening is because the Darwin OSS development community is working on it.
If I'm keeping up correctly, then the darwin distribution right now simply boots on a few select mobo configs.
even so, if it does get up and running, no Aqua, Cocoa, Quartz, QT, ColorSync. None of all the cool Apple technologies we Mac users are dying for or need. Still, it would be great if apple ported all these technologies to x86, but PPC is its priority numero uno.
Forget not the elitism of the mac faithful. During apple's dark days, they ran the evangelist, which _promoted _ mailbombing journalists who gave even slightly ignorant info on the mac OS.
It goes both ways dude.
I think your idea has a lot of merit, but there are a lot of wrinkles to work out.
First of all, it couldn't be done on a federal level. That much overhead of buying the capital, and maintaining it would be tremendous. It could never be done overnight. That being said, it could be outsourced, but who would want to automatically give every citizen an email address? The name collisions would be horrendous.
One solution to this is to start something grassroots in your own community, especially if you live in an affluent community. Maybe the idea will spread to others.
Plus there is also the fact that only half the country has a computer. half the population would be alienated. It only costs 30 dollars to buy a mail box, but several hundred to buy something that is capable of email, not to mention the phone bills.
The security would be nice, but we are definitely not there yet. Hopefully some congressperson is a slashdot reader and proposed the idea.
First off, artists have always been keen on the changes in technology. Look at Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings. At the time, paper was finally becoming affordable, and he was really one of the first to make a deluge of sketchbooks to hone down his style. Look at what photography did to painting. Up until the mid 1850's most of all the work that was being created was either naturalistic or iconic. After photography was introduced, it dramatically changed the ways painters looked at an image. from this came fauvism, impressionism, cubism and abstract expressionism, all different way to look at things, and to express their soul. look at michael rees's work. He does all his models in lightwave, and sends those to a company that 'prints' them in 3 dimensions using a resing drip process. But through all these technolgies, one thing is hard and fast : The artist is always expressing him or herself.
Don't let the medium fool you. The artist is always there. ( this can be said of code too:-)
I think I can see what you mean by many of the great works of art "depicting the soul-less nature of machines" ( though, I'm not completely sure since you provide no examples ) I feel that this is humanistic, which is definitely admirable, but I also feel that it is some what of a soft approach to it. As humans, we are both functionally extended through our technology, and physically far removed from it. I argue that there are many great works of art that DO exalt our functional extension through technology. Particularly, Raymond Duchamp-Villon's Horse (At the Art Institue in Chicago) is a bronze abstraction of a horse rearing, but it is done with many suggestions of 'train-ness.' Struts connected to circular forms are really what lend to this idea in the the piece, with the black patina suggesting on peripheral of the cast iron of a train. Here the train is analogized to being an animal that was the traditional mode of transportation for a long time.
On to your point about us humans being 'creatures who make analogy and represent our analogies in external form' I do believe this is true, but I don't see how this piece would make you uneasy considering that. If it is because of the idea that we as humans are only digital simulations, then you're probably not alone. This is the fundamental fear that provided the backdrop for Rene Descartes cogito and the Warchowski Brothers' Matrix. However, I think you're looking at the piece more from a literature based perspective, rather than an art based perspective, where the medium has much more weight.
These images are not an active simulation, they use the medium of a computer simulation to portray historical events or film narratives. While this may be a bit jarring, it is not unlike watching film footage of a historical event, nor like reading a comic book documentary, which we have naturalized into our existence. We accept these illusions, film, tv, as signifiers for something else that is true. Here, however, the medium sends a strong message when portraying these events. I think it really says something by representing these events in a game in which you effectively play God, it begs the question, would you allow these events to happen as they did? Would you revert to your last save? or would you let that event stand, and define us as humans?
Also, as an art student, I think this is a great cop-out for a critique:-)
How can the iBook hardly be considered a contender when the Wintel alliance has been pumping out laptop products with displays that rival most desktops?
When they were introduced, one thing I noticed of the iMacs/iBooks was the reaction of my female friends, kid sister, her friends, and even my mother. They all got excited about the cuteness/design. Before, if they considered buying a computer, it was out of neccessity, but never, a techno/design lust. To actually see a desire in them was something that I had never seen before. Furthermore, since my sister and her friends are all kids, and they were begging their parents for one, I would definitely consider the iBook a contender (Have you ever worked in a toy store, and see how much parents are willing to spend on their kids? It's pretty amazing, even shocking.)
Yup, I say appealing to the other, fashion concsious half of the population really makes the ibook a contender. Congrat's on the great marketing, Apple.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Listen up all, before OS X get's ported to x86 it's going to go to POWER4 and then Sparc, and a maybe to x86. Why? in their meeting last night they mentioned that Apples Enterprise is Education, helping them solve problems versus just selling boxen (iMacen? :-) To be a solutions provider, you need big iron or know how to play nice with big iron. Apple right now doesn't have the resources to develop that, nor to compete with best friends number 2 and 3, Sun and IBM. (Motorola's the old girlfriend that Apple just keeps coming back to :-) , Best friend number 1 is Ole Bill)
Any how, if you can't beat them, join them right? POWER4, as I understand it, runs the same ISA as the G3's, so that should be binary compatible (ppc is a low power derivative of the POWER chipset). Expect that first. Aqua on an RS/6000! UFS is there, and the drivers wouldn't take that long to port. You probably wouldn't have classic, or carbon, but you got Cocoa and the BSD API's. Remember this is enterprise, so you don't really need the old Mac apps except on the clients. For IBM, the ease of use of OS X could be a real big selling point, and just the leverage apple needs to ask IBM to help Moto's faltering yields.
Ok, the next path is Sun. takes a bit longer to port Aqua, Quartz, and all the goodies, but it's all there, with the old next API's.
Ok then, we get to x86. They probably have this ready in house, and just not committing it to public CVS. (the new revisions to the APSL let's them do this) Apple doesn't release it to the public, but for their own enterprise solutions needs. Upgrade for compatibility with hardware, drivers when they need them.
Don't expect anything consumer level. They have had three really good years of the PPC, and there is no way they are going to screw up something good (so they had a bad quarter, a lot of people did) Keep it simple, stupid.
It's sneaky, but Apple hasn't leveraged their Next Enterprise muscle yet, and OS X lets them do this. If you listen to the latter half of the Apple's analyst meeting, there are some subtle hints there.
So this is all speculation, but still if you're going to get OS X on x86, that's how it will happen.
I think you might be right , if k and GNome catch up, things could fall out for apple. However, the one thing that Linux lacks as far as GUI goes is leadership that can make some strong decisions.
While gnome is great because you can tweak every little morsel of it, that is a really hard sell to people. Eazel does an allright job of it, but I really think Apple does take the cake in this, by hiding all the unixy aspects in the gui. It's a trade off. Abstraction vs full control? What do the consumers want vs what do the developers want? A strong sense of management is what really is needed to make these decisions. While using linux, you may have that, but a lot of people don't , or just want something prescribed, that they can work around if they want.
Apple is in tune with this, and I think they finally 'get it.' Linux on the other hand, empowers the user incredibly, which is truly what linux is all about. But in the wrong hands, it can become quite unyieldy.
Macs ARE niche computers nowadays. This is a fact. Most of the dedicated Mac users I've seen ARE media types.
:-) He started the xFree86 port to the Mac.
John Carmack is a media type. He uses macs. He's in a niche (He's one of the best
who else except graphics pros need Cinema Studio Displays?). For these professionals, they don't think twice about spending a few 1000 more on their PC if it helps them do their work better
I'm sure on any IDE, the extra horizontal space is much appreciated for project windows and the like. Altivec is a really compelling reason to pay another $1000, especially if you need to crunch large chunks of data.
However for the average monkey running Office, the Mac makes no sense.
Actually, Microsoft Office 2000 for the Mac is much better than the current Windows version. Even, people within microsoft have said so. Ok, so it was Kevin Browne, MacBU lead at Microsoft. Still, Gates pays him and it shows. There's not a day that goes by that I don't sing praises of him.
And for the home user we have to add in the lack of games and cutting edge 3D hardware.
All right, uncle. You win on this one, but with a big wait. When Metrowerks fixes their compiler, Graeme Devine will be releasing the Altivec/OS X version of Quake III. (by the way, the only reason someone uses Metrowerks is if they want to dev for mac and PC simultaneously) If that's not good enough, nVidia is in cahoots with Apple.
Back to Carmack. I'm pretty sure the biggest reason why he's back to doing Doom is that he gets to play with the codebase again. Since the original was developed on NeXT using Objective-C, he can play around with it happily on his Mac.
Darwin, the underlying 'fifth BSD' that OS X runs on, has an intel port being worked on. What's really exciting now is that a whole ton of GNU stuff is getting ported. XFree86 now includes a Darwin in it's source tree, earlier this year, and since then it's really exploding. Gtk+ was ported so you can build Gimp. Qt was recently ported so you can build KDE.
:-).
Here's the page for the GNU Darwin distribution
If you want to see OS X on x86, do it yourself! Darwinfo has a howto to get it booting on Intel" It's very pre alpha, and seems to run only on a few mobo configs, but still, I think this is the only way you'll see Apple port Aqua to x86. They are really into leveraging the Open source community for Darwin already, and they've reiterated their loyalty to PPC, so they need all the persuasion that they can get.
Also, a really interesting note about OS X that is strictly mac, but applies peripherally. Last night at the analyst Meeting, Tevanian, their Software lead, said that they've doubled their number of paid developers in the last 12 months. We can expect the amount of applications for the mac to at least double when OS X comes out.
Still, IIRC, as part of the patent deal that Apple and MS did, gates didn't want cocoa to be put on x86 in exchange for Office (and it is really better than the x86 version
Again, if there is a compelling reason for Apple to go through another hardware transition, it'd be the fact that Darwin is implemented and tested already on that platform.
Personally, I think they'd port it first to SPARC and POWER4 rather than x86 since that iron doesn't conflict with their consumer market.
I remember being in second grade when this happened. It was a real let down for all the teachers, since many were excited that Christa McAuliffe was on board the mission.
I remember back then when the books foretold of a future where everyone would be living on space stations and the space shuttle would be a passenger station. The demise of Challenger deflated all those dreams...
Ars Technica has a pretty good article on Quartz
Fizzilla is here.
All right on wincent.org they show the vertical dock, from the build at macworld. Apparently, it's now a defaults option. That is, orientation right, and pinned.
Pretty darn cool. Remind's me of the old next bar. I'll probably choose this option over the centered dock, and Desktop icons.
It'd be pretty easy make Tivo like software. Tivo runs on PPC. :-) Linux PPC. It's really great for that camp, following along the scalability of linux.
The problem was more a ratio between price and experience. be wanted ~300 Million for a new untested, yet promising OS, and Apple offered Next 430 million for a dying, yet battle tested OS.
What was most important though? Time to market. They released MacOS server about two years after they bought next. Not bad when you consider it took MS 8 years to dev NT.
//many of the same individuals and companies that used and supported the technologies when they were owned by NeXT have continued to do so now that the technologies are owned by Apple
FYI
This is a good site for a lot of the old Nexties, and the new Darwinists and OSXer's built on Webobjects and
is an old Next developer leading the fray into Cocoa development
It is Linux, but it is LinuxPPC. Apple did miss the boat on this one.
I think I have to agree with there. While digital video isn't quite there yet without enough broadband access, but I bet it will when DVD-R's proliferate.
Remember, Apple got screwed this year because they focused on video too early, without considering distribution. FCP and iMovie are great and good authoring tools, but I had to use my schools DV to SVHS deck to make copies for my friends, and lost a lot of audio nuances in the process. If I had a DVD-R, I could easily burn them, and give them to the friends with dvd boxes.
Still, I'm all for open codecs, as a video student, since more people will able to view my work.
I'm pretty sure that Nvidia didn't want to reengineer their mobile offerings for apple, either. Not that they didn't desire to, it's just that it's impractical. They only did the MX proabably because it easiest, and since this is the first foray into the Mac market, they wanted to keep it simple this time, and keep the endian issues in mind when designing the new chips.
I think it's impressive that they don't usually make cards but did so for Apple ( or does apple manufacture the cards? not sure).
BM
"but what happens if you need a combination that is already occupied by the "workaround?" "
a note about this. the reason why Macs come with one button mice, is because the os is designed around it. I now own a two button mouse, but still, with the one button mouse things were pretty simple control clicking everywhere. I didn't have to worry about the workaround/combination conflict, as all mac apps have to adhere to certain key combinations for the same function. It's a benefit of having both hardware and software control.
Still, as nice as the new apple mice are to use, I wish they'd have scroll wheel. That feature, I feel, is completely necessary.
Linux ppc is backward compatible with a number of Older macs. I can run it on my old 7200 as a personal web, file server, whereas my Beige g3 is at the bottom of the barrel for OSX compatibility (it is freaking slow!).
Also, geek parity. Linux PPC has a lot more ready to go ports for it in terms of linux software. Darwin is far more exciting as an Open OS, though, since it's just starting to grow and accelerate. I'd love to run Gnome along side Darwin, and get all the nice gui apps, but it's not quite there I think. I know gtk+ is ported, as is the Gimp, but I don't think the rest of the gnome libraries are.
Why run gnome and it's apps? As of Public beta, my workspace is far more customizable in Gnome and OS 9 than in OS X. I'm not a big fan of the rough draft of aqua in OS X, as I don't feel I have control over my workspace. Even getting on the sparc stations at school, I had a lot more customizability with owvm. The dock to me sucks, because I pay attention to the things that are centrally located on the monitor. For a system utility, the dock begs for too much attention, in my eyes. I much prefer the 'four corners' approach in os 9, (apple menu with disk aliases top left, app menu top right, control strip bottom right, tabbed folders and app menu buttons bottom left) or the top right corner, multiple desktop approaches in gnome and owvm.
In any case, I think it's hilarious how the highly opinionated Mac user invades slashdot whenever there's an apple article.
First, I'm assuming here, as I haven't seen the code ($500!), but I highly doubt that the code is written to take advantage of the G4. My main hypothesis is that in order to take advantage of altivec, and concurrently the full potential of the G4, the code must be written with vector types. Check out this example from Apple's dev site. I highly doubt that SPEC writes using Altivec C, as other CPU's don't have vector execution units and don't need vector types. If my hypothesis is correct, then the SPEC is moot for comparing PPC's to x86's.
The assumption you make that it would scale linearly is hasty at best, however. One of the metrics on the SPECfp is computational fluid dynamics or 178.galgel.
If you'll check out this study by NASA on this same subject, you'll see that the benefits would be much more impressive. An excerpt from the abstract:
It's a very rewarding article, including a comparison between the Cray and G4 vector schemes. But what's important here is the question of deception. Since SPEC is basically useless to the advantages of the G4, the only cross platform benchmark that is possible is the real time tests. Also considering that the G4 is designed from the ground up to be a vertical market processor, that is, designed specifically with apple as the #1 buyer, I don't think the photoshop tests are deceptive at all. They are rightly geared for its audience. It might seem deceptive to the general public, but for the people who those machines are geared for, it is not deceptive at all.
to put it simply, when an application is optimized for the G4, it wollops the Pentium III.
I was really hoping to see something done to the iMacs. Apparently, IBM has been really pushing the mhz in their in house G3's but due to politics between the two PPC makers, the mhz is kept at the low level it is.
Now that I think about it, IBM hit 1 ghz about a year before Intel or AMD touched it. keep in mind this is an integer only embedded chip. Still it was based on the PPC.
I for one, think that Apple should propose a two pronged PPC strategy. Push the Hz with the IBM g3's as a general purpose processor, and add more altivec units to the g4 to accomodate to the vertical market of media creation.
On the packaging level, having a cd-r should have been part of the last revision to the imacs. Otherwise they are gorgeous machines.
Still, I agree with you on the consumer marketing. They really sat on their laurels with their machines. While they were wainting for Motorola to come up with decent production levels for the g4, they really could have been adding value to the iMac, which is becoming a tired design.
The towers are a real sign that Apple is listening to its customers. I mean, they added another pci slot, moved the graphics to nvidia, and added dvd-r and cd-r. The powerbook titanium hopefully appeals to the business user, although they should try a MS Office promotion with it.
// That's cool for you, and seriously, I've considered
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// purchasing a Mac just to try out OS X (but will
// definitely wait until it has been out a while first).
Something in what you said really stirred something up in me.
A lot of the big talk on the Mac sites these days is how Apple is shifting to a software focus. Certainly OS X is numero uno on this list. Another big topic is the rumor of 'harder' advertising, meaning they'll focus on the merits of the functionality rather than calling their customers crazy
I can't think of harder advertising than throwing one G4 Cube (it really is gorgeous) running OS X with internet access, and a loaded software package including Mac MS Office 2000 (it's Freakin' awesome!) in every Best Buy, Circuit City, and Sears in the nation, but carry only the G4 cube. (the colored iMac's were an inventory headache for Best Buy, that's why they stopped carrying them, in addition to Apple's strict price level.).
This way, potential switchovers like you would be able to make a really good shopping decision for themselves. Have you ever seen their current display model? Can you spell suck? It's some fluffy locked director presentation, while every other PC is actually running Windows. It's really no wonder they can't sell any of them. Certainly, it would help the Macs against the PC biased salespeople.
Maybe that'd be a better reason to buy a mac.
(Oh if you're PC biased salespeople, sorry about the generalization
I tried out LinuxPPC on and off on my old 7200 a few years back. I ditched the whole project altogether when OS X came out.
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there are two reasons at the time why I dropped Linux PPC that are inherently its fault:
1. HFS+
I could not store any of my files on the secondary disk as LinuxPPC couldn't read it. Not their fault, but Apple protecting themselves in their weak times.
2. Installer didn't work.
At the time, Linux PPC just started their Live install, where it would install from a perl based GUI. didn't work. Tried doing a RedHat Install. didn't work. I didn't even know what perl was at the time, so I couldn't tinker with it. ended up installing the previous version, which installed pretty well. tried updating. it told me to use the perl installer. didn't work.
Give me a break, I'm an art student with some experience in java, and was trying to use it as a media server.
Now, for the two reasons that are entirely my fault: 1. no net connection for support
I had one modem, and i decided to put it on my spankin' new G3. (I played a lot of Myth at the time)
2. I turned 21
It's pretty interesting you say this, because the only public reason that this is happening is because the Darwin OSS development community is working on it.
If I'm keeping up correctly, then the darwin distribution right now simply boots on a few select mobo configs.
even so, if it does get up and running, no Aqua, Cocoa, Quartz, QT, ColorSync. None of all the cool Apple technologies we Mac users are dying for or need. Still, it would be great if apple ported all these technologies to x86, but PPC is its priority numero uno.
Forget not the elitism of the mac faithful. During apple's dark days, they ran the evangelist, which _promoted _ mailbombing journalists who gave even slightly ignorant info on the mac OS. It goes both ways dude.
I think your idea has a lot of merit, but there are a lot of wrinkles to work out. First of all, it couldn't be done on a federal level. That much overhead of buying the capital, and maintaining it would be tremendous. It could never be done overnight. That being said, it could be outsourced, but who would want to automatically give every citizen an email address? The name collisions would be horrendous. One solution to this is to start something grassroots in your own community, especially if you live in an affluent community. Maybe the idea will spread to others. Plus there is also the fact that only half the country has a computer. half the population would be alienated. It only costs 30 dollars to buy a mail box, but several hundred to buy something that is capable of email, not to mention the phone bills. The security would be nice, but we are definitely not there yet. Hopefully some congressperson is a slashdot reader and proposed the idea.
First off, artists have always been keen on the changes in technology. Look at Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings. At the time, paper was finally becoming affordable, and he was really one of the first to make a deluge of sketchbooks to hone down his style. Look at what photography did to painting. Up until the mid 1850's most of all the work that was being created was either naturalistic or iconic. After photography was introduced, it dramatically changed the ways painters looked at an image. from this came fauvism, impressionism, cubism and abstract expressionism, all different way to look at things, and to express their soul. look at michael rees's work. He does all his models in lightwave, and sends those to a company that 'prints' them in 3 dimensions using a resing drip process. But through all these technolgies, one thing is hard and fast : The artist is always expressing him or herself.
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Don't let the medium fool you. The artist is always there. ( this can be said of code too
I think I can see what you mean by many of the great works of art "depicting the soul-less nature of machines" ( though, I'm not completely sure since you provide no examples ) I feel that this is humanistic, which is definitely admirable, but I also feel that it is some what of a soft approach to it. As humans, we are both functionally extended through our technology, and physically far removed from it. I argue that there are many great works of art that DO exalt our functional extension through technology. Particularly, Raymond Duchamp-Villon's Horse (At the Art Institue in Chicago) is a bronze abstraction of a horse rearing, but it is done with many suggestions of 'train-ness.' Struts connected to circular forms are really what lend to this idea in the the piece, with the black patina suggesting on peripheral of the cast iron of a train. Here the train is analogized to being an animal that was the traditional mode of transportation for a long time.
On to your point about us humans being 'creatures who make analogy and represent our analogies in external form' I do believe this is true, but I don't see how this piece would make you uneasy considering that. If it is because of the idea that we as humans are only digital simulations, then you're probably not alone. This is the fundamental fear that provided the backdrop for Rene Descartes cogito and the Warchowski Brothers' Matrix. However, I think you're looking at the piece more from a literature based perspective, rather than an art based perspective, where the medium has much more weight.
These images are not an active simulation, they use the medium of a computer simulation to portray historical events or film narratives. While this may be a bit jarring, it is not unlike watching film footage of a historical event, nor like reading a comic book documentary, which we have naturalized into our existence. We accept these illusions, film, tv, as signifiers for something else that is true. Here, however, the medium sends a strong message when portraying these events. I think it really says something by representing these events in a game in which you effectively play God, it begs the question, would you allow these events to happen as they did? Would you revert to your last save? or would you let that event stand, and define us as humans?
Also, as an art student, I think this is a great cop-out for a critique
Just a little observation...
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How can the iBook hardly be considered a contender when the Wintel alliance has been pumping out laptop products with displays that rival most desktops?
When they were introduced, one thing I noticed of the iMacs/iBooks was the reaction of my female friends, kid sister, her friends, and even my mother. They all got excited about the cuteness/design. Before, if they considered buying a computer, it was out of neccessity, but never, a techno/design lust. To actually see a desire in them was something that I had never seen before. Furthermore, since my sister and her friends are all kids, and they were begging their parents for one, I would definitely consider the iBook a contender (Have you ever worked in a toy store, and see how much parents are willing to spend on their kids? It's pretty amazing, even shocking.)
Yup, I say appealing to the other, fashion concsious half of the population really makes the ibook a contender. Congrat's on the great marketing, Apple.