The "%5" figure comes form "computers sold this year" and does not include computers sold thru the Apple store, small local apple dealers and apple retail stores. That %5 is the percentage that Ingram and tech data sell that are Macintoshes, ignoring the huge numbers of machines sold thru apple's online stores and other retail locations.
Or, put another way, Apple has %5 of the NEW IBM PC market, not %5 of the PERSONAL COMPUTER market.
Also, since Macintoshes last a lot longer in use than PCs- at least twice as long- at any point in time, the number of Macs out there to sell into are going to be a lot more than the percentage of machines recently sold.
This is a serious problem because marketing dweebs everywhere are underestimating the installed Mac base by %75.
Just like there are far more Linux boxes than there are computers sold with linux pre-installed in the market.
Note that this under reporting of Linux and MacOS both helps Windows, and of course the companise doing this under reporint- IDC and Dataquest are doing so under contract from microsoft to do "market research".
The funny thing is that when Jobs talks about getting the "other 95 percent" he's being ironic, but nobody seems to realize it.
I worked on two games that shipped simultaneously on the Mac and Windows platforms in the late 90s.
The development of parallel versions did not add significantly to the development time nor expense.
Because we had good mac developers (I was one) we simply had our development team spread acrosss platforms -- rather than porting. So, for instance the "scound guy" was a mac programmer, and his code was written to run under windows and Mac with a small hardware specific sound API that was common.
BTW FWIW, its much cheaper and faster to develop a game for the mac-- and this was under the classic os-- than for windows. The APIs are much better and more consistent.
The only reason there are less games on teh mac is because of stupid marketing dipshits. Mac games are actually 20-200 percent more profitable -- meaning the mac version may make that much more money even though the prices are the same because support for windows products is so expensive. And while the mac marketshare is only %20 of the market or so (not %5 - that's new machines sold and they don';t count any sold at the apple store or at apple retail locations, its a bogus number) -- that %20 of the market has far less competition than the windows market, and so your sales may well be split 50/50 depending on the games appeal.
But most companys, and game companies, make such decisions without actually doing the math, and so perception causes there to be fewer games out for the mac.
This same set of perceptions is going to be hurting Linux gaming for the next 5-10 years as well.
This even though I suspect its very cost effective to develop games under linux, as comapred to the windows API set.
I made a comparison, I explained why. You repeating the myth does not make it true-- it just makes you thick headed.
You pick a high priced machine and compare it to a low end machine? No you don't even tell us what machine you're comparing to... this is so weak. It says you have no point to make, other than to just repeat a tired old line.
You say a 1700 machine without a monitor- but you can get an eMac for $1100 WITH a monitor. Doubt you can find a PC that has comperable CPU performance for less than $3,000.
Macs are cheaper than PCs whenever you do a fair comparison-- I gave one in my post, even.
For all Macs superiority, why do they not exceed PC's when it comes to accomplishing the same tasks quicker.
They do. Regular studies have shown this-- any given secretary, programmer, accountant is much much more productive using a mac than a PC.
And lets not forget the regular photoshop or other examples where a top of the line PC takes 3-5 times aas long to accomplish the same task as a mac.
Bring the top of the line Mac, keep the reciept. I'll build a PC for the same price that'll outperform it.
Never happen . Hell all the way back in 1994, Microsoft was having to special code their Excel and Word apps to make the mac run slower because they were embarrassing PCs in the benchmarks.... course now people use photoshop which has been optimized on both platforms.
And in the photoshop test, there's no comparison. (course now you're going to say that the only fair test is Intel designed benchmarks.)
But you don't see people running around saying "Don't buy cars- you're wasting money."
Yeah, an XBOX is only $200, but it isn't comparable to my iMac.
And YES there ARE macs for $400. The PCs made at the same time as them are worthless, though. Macs hold their value because they are so much faster and can run modern software much longer than PCs.
This brings up another point- PC users switch out their PC every 18 months-- mac users, 3-4 years. The machines last longer...
So, at this point PCs are about 6-7 TIMES the price of a mac in terms of TCO and performance if you really do the math.
But people have a vested interest in not doing the math and so they insist macs are expensive.
Given that the Mac in question has an 800 MHz processor, and the PC has a 2 GHz processor, it is extremely unlikely that the Mac would be faster
Except that the CISC instructiosn take ten times as many clock cycles to execute.
This is a fundamental aspect of the difference between risc and cisc and you didn't know this?
When it takes 17 clock cycles to execute an instruction and the other processor does them in one-- how is having 2.5 times the processor speed an advantage? You'd only be 1/5th as fast at 2GHz, that's all.
I explained all this, and any basic microprocessor textbook will as well.
Why is it people who don't know what they're talking about always say "get a clue" or "everyone knows".
You don't make something a RISC processor without changing the instruction set. x86 has a CISC instruction set. They never changed the instruction set on the x86 side. Tehy have made some isntructions go in one clock cycle, but they have to have a 386 compatibility co-processor there to run the CISC instructions.
You get a clue, dipshit. I already told you this, but you didn't pay attention, or you're just ignorant. Fine.
I said nobody gives fair comparisons and now you guys are proving me right.
You pretend that the Macs run OS 9-- two of you now, and that its unstable. Well, os 6-9 were NOT unstable- they were far far more stable than windows. The only thing that made them unstable was runnign buggy system extentions. AS recommended, and set up by a competant person (or average user) rather than a bleeding edge kid who installs any piece of crap that looks interesting, they are extremely stable.
Anyway you want me to make a comparison between Mac OSX ant Windows 3.1? After all, that would be fair, given your comparison.
Sheesh. The lengths people have to go to in ordrer to bash macs. Why expend the energy?
Calling things names? Gee, that's a real intelligent argument.
I notice that you didn't give the specs for this el cheapo gateway machine. You know I once bought four identical gateways at once for a company, when we got them, there were four different brands of power supply, two different motherboard versions, three different memory vendors. ETc.
And the power supply on one of them went out within the first year, and another had regular BSODs in NT.
Somehow a %50 failure rate does not sound like a good deal to me. I'm sure not all gateways are this bad, maybe they had a bad year.
But those who make these claims always compare a Yugo to a Toyota and claim that they are the same and that the toyota is priced like a mercedes. They aren't.
If you had a legitimate point you'd make a comparison between equal quality machines (And comparable specs... notice you ignored the differences in the specs.)
Gateway is a tier two manufacturer, if not tier three.
Hell, you might as well compare an Xbox to the Xserve-- Microsoft is a tier one manufacturer at least in that comparison. After all, they're both "computers".
This is another common myth. People seem to think Apple had never heard of a second button mouse when they invented the macintosh.
IIRC the original Engerbert mouse had two buttons, but certainly the idea of putting mutple buttons on the mouse was evaluated by apple.
What they found in usability testing is that it slows people down-- significantly. It slows everyone down, power user and newbie alike.
But, like the command line, you don't think its slowing you down becuse you're working with subjective time and hte apple tests were using objective time.
Its subjectively faster to right mouse on something and get a popup than go to the menu and select what you wanted. but having to remember which button to use (which you're certain you don't but you actually do) slows you down *all* the time.
I use a three button trackball, but the I only use the second and third buttons in quake. The wheel works great and doesn't break the interface.. but the second button does and while I'll sometimes use it, I recognize that it is a convenience....so conciously its a one button mouse to me.
Macs do not cost more than other brands for what you get. They actually cost less, and there's good reason for it.
First off, every PC maker, inclduing Apple, uses standardized commodity parts. The only question, or form of differentiation, is quality. You can buy a really cheap power supply and get random BSODs like you get with many PC makers, or you can buy quality power supplies that don't die on you or cause over and under voltage- like you get with IBM (IBM Made) and Apple computers. (And I'm sure *some* dells and compaqs but certainly not the "cheap" PCs that people are always claiming are typical for cost comparisons.
For other parts, such as PCI controller chips, Firewire, USB, memory, etc, they are pretty complicated and you have to buy form only a small number of vendors - you cannot cut cost by buying low quality, but the volumes of them make them not too expensive. Which is why PC motherboards go for $100-$200, while the processor may be more than twice as much. There's a lot of work in the silicon of them otherboard-- it is only volume that makes this disparity possible- the controller chips are commoditized but the processor isn't.
So, other than the Processor, Case and Power Supply Macs use essentially the same components as a PC from a quality vendor.
Now, I addressed the power supplies- lets talk about Cases. Yes, Apple pays probably more on average than most PC vendors for cases. But these cases are plastic. We're talking $5-20 a unit, not $50-$200.
Thirdly, processor. Apple pays FAR LESS for their processors than any PC Vendor for a comperable processor.
First off, lets point out that there are no comperable processors-- a G4 is the fastest processor on the market. Which brings us to another myth- processor clockrate is its speed. The clock rate is not its speed. (I got moderated "1 Overrated +2 insightful -1 flamebait" for pointing this out before.)
A G4 Processor, being a risc chip, has far less complicated instructions to break down. The pentium, which is a combination RISC and CISC processor is extremely complicated in its design.
Instructiosn go to one of two processors on the same die-- a 386 compatibility, and a RISC one. The problem occurs in that this parallelization causes out of order instruction execution... because some instructions take longer to execute than others. CISC instructions take many stages (And thus, many clock cycles) to execute. That's why a 2GHz pentium has, maybe, 250MIPS, while a G4 running at 1GHz (a pure risc processor) will have 1000 mips- an instruction finishes every clock cyle.
Also these processors are super scalar- meaning that they have many execution units. This means that a G4 may well actually produce 4000 MIPS at 1GHz because on average, every clock cycle, 4 instructions are finished. The pentium, may well produce 1000 MIPS in this same way.
But notice that the pentium has to have 8 pipelines for that 4 times increase because its got both the RISC procesor and hte 386 compatibility processor to deal with. The simpler PowerPC just duplicates its execution units.
Then there's the branch prediction issue. Since there are mutliple execution units they may well execute code out of order-- while a slower instruction is being processed, other instructions are executed to keep the processor busy, and when some of those instructions are on the other side of a conditional jump, the processors speculativly executes them. If it turns out that jump wasn't to be made, it has to flush the pipeline and start over.
The G4 has a much shorter pipeline than the Pentium, and thus when this happens it incurs much less overhead and hassle having to refil the pipeline.
So, in the end all these issues (and it really boils down to backwards compatibility for intel keeping it down) mean that the PowerPC is a much simpler, yet much faster processor.
And this means costs-- first in the size of the processors die. If you have a processor with a smaller die you get far more dies to a wafer and exponentially better pricing.
Secondly this addresses cost when comparing computer's prices you have to take performance into a ccount, toherwise, a 286 for $100 is a "Better deal" than a new computer for $1000. And I didn't even go into the vastly superior floating point unit on the PowerPC-- which makes the disparity even worse.
So, Apple gets its processors from Motorola or IBM for a lot less money, its parts from the same suppliers Dell, et. al. do and spends more on cases, but in the end is able to sell computers for LESS MONEY and make MORE PROFIT.
The problem is that its hard to quantify the performance of a computer. So people invariably lie when they compare Apples to Oranges. They pick a really cheap PC from a fly by night company (such as a low end dell) with a crappy power supply, and compare it to a high quality Macintosh with a much faster processor and point out that the mac is overpriced. And to add insult to insult, they claim that the Mac is even a slower computer becuase its clockrate is lower!
If you still buy that myth, look at this quote from: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,361877,00.asp
"Intel claims its 1GHz Itanium 2 offers up to twice the performance of its 800MHz predecessor, which has suffered from poor sales since its release in May 2001."
Do you really think an Itanium is slower than a Pentium??? After all , the Itanium runs at 1GHz and the pentium runs at 2!
Or how about this-- how could a 1Ghz processor be twice as fast as a 800MHz one? Think intel is lying, that this is impossible?
This basic myth (and the bogus comparisons of price that come from it) is at the root of the "Macs are more expensive" myth.
At first I addressed this issue by grabbing comparisons fro mthe most recent dell flyer and the apple vendors, but those were ignored. Here's a quicky, the IBM intellistation ProE with 2GHz P4 is $1639, compare that to a PowerMac at $1599 and you see that you get a better video card (3d vs 2d), the same Hard drive (literally, I bet) same memory, CDRW instead of CD, and a MUCH better case with the Mac for $100 less.
But that's pointless to tell people- they will ignore it, as the PC comes with Windows, for instnace. Is that worth $100? not when the alternative is OS X. Etc. etc. and people will quibble over the tiniest spec differences, such as a faster bus (that is half as wide) and stuff like that. The PC world is clearly optimized for numbers that give the sheen of performance insteaf of actual perfomance-- like Intel processors with twice the clock rate but half the bus size (meaning zero performance improvement but doubled perception.) A great example of this is the fact that Apple uses slower Ram, but has a wider RAM path. People ignore that all the time.
But my point is not to quibble on these things but to make the broader point: MACS ARE NOT MORE EXPENSIVE.
When you have th choice of a much better looking computer, more ergonomic, uses OS X uses a REAL Gui, uses better peripherals, and is more expandible, not to mention better performance, it isn't really a choice at all. If you value those things, the Mac is worth twice the price-- but that doesn't mean it IS twice the price. IF you don't value those things, or detest some of them, the mac isn't worth half the price-- but that doesn't mean you can compare it at half the value with some other machine and call it twice as expensive.
What it really comes down to is what the value is to you. If you enjoy fscking with your hardware, tracking down faulty power supplies, then you get lot more enjoyment out of a machine that you can obsess over for 3 months which motherboard to upgrade it with.
If you'd prefer to go 3 years with a fast machine performing well and not having to mess with the hardware, then you'll value a machine that lets you do that.
But the economics of the situation dictate that there is NO price premium between the two-- and in fact, given the illegal stranglehold over the industry that Microsoft has, Apple has to be better AND cheaper in order to compete. And they are.
You don't value the MAc OS, fine, don't buy it. But STOP telling other people that it is overpriced. Stop spreading your preferences as a bigotry and driving people who would rather have a computer that "just works" away from the platform.
There is such a history of this kind of bullshit bigotry that many first time users get a Windows box and are screwed from then on because tehy got talked out of a mac. If you want Microsoft to go away, talk them into a mac. When they are technically proficient, then maybe talk them into a harder to use but infinitely configurable alternative like Linux on the x86.,
Look at it this way-- every Mac sold is a lost windows sale and another person using open source Unix.
But every one of you who tells a relative or someone who believes you that Macs are more expensive is doing them a disservice, and yourself as well. They are not, they cannot be, and they never will be... After all, when you're fighting a market share battle and you have a magic weapon that lets you sell a better computer for less money and make more money doing so per unit, wouldn't you do it? Apple isn't stupid.
OSX, the PowerPC and good designers are that magic weapon for apple.
I'm sick and tired of dealign with fucking idiots on this forum.
SPEC is not a neutral performance benchmark. It is clearly biased as it does not measure floating point performance-- it essentially measures clock speed. We already know the clock speed is double you fucking idiot.
And trying to trot out the term "RISC" in this discussion is meaningless,
Yes because you don't care about architecture, you think the clock speed is what determines the speed.
A processor with a simpler instruction set can execute more instructions in parallel during a clock cycle, dipshit.
and only highlights your ignorance (to say nothing of "386 co-processor".)
No, this highlights YOUR ignorance. There is a 386 co-processor on the pentium die you fucking moron. Otherwise the Pentium could enjoy RISC benefits, but its hobbled by its CISC past.
Do yourself a favor and learn about CPU architectures before you post on the subject again, thanks.
Unlike most of the suppsed "engineers" on Slashdot, I actually knwo what the fuck I'm taking about.
Do you even know what RISC is? what it means?
Bleeping idiot. And to think there are a thousand more where trolls like you come from. Goosestepping around telling each other lies.
ut the leeches would never be able to pirate the appz without their help
this simply isn't true. I haven't seen a bit of cracked software since the late 80s. Companie have stopped using software protection and started using license key protection-- nobody has an incentive to crack the software anymore-- they just make keys, and that's the challenge.
Drug growers bear the responsibility to provide good clean heroin. Anyone who ruins their life with it bears the responsibility themselves.
If I sell you a car and you use it to kill yourself, or others, YOU are responsible, not me.
Its sad that so few people have any concern about human rights. you do not have the right to prosecute people who do stuff you don't like when what they do is morally correct. Drug manufacturers are morally correct when they make drugs. IF you think this is "obviously false" then you don't know what human rights or morals ARE.
You start of by describing natural forces... but do you not realize that it is natural forces that keep software prices high?
Some people seem to think $50 is a lot of money. But they will pay $7 to go see a movie. Is a game that gives you 50 hours worth of entertainmend worth $50? To some it isn't, but to others, its a much better deal than that $7 movie.
Piracy does distort this situation, but then the response brings it back into balance-- the $50 game wihtout manuals is the "balance" state we're currently at, pricacy is a known given, and CD Keys are the response that we're at now- balancing hassle with protection.
Slashdot Mirror
Neither of your numbers are accurate.
Apples market share is about %20.
The "%5" figure comes form "computers sold this year" and does not include computers sold thru the Apple store, small local apple dealers and apple retail stores. That %5 is the percentage that Ingram and tech data sell that are Macintoshes, ignoring the huge numbers of machines sold thru apple's online stores and other retail locations.
Or, put another way, Apple has %5 of the NEW IBM PC market, not %5 of the PERSONAL COMPUTER market.
Also, since Macintoshes last a lot longer in use than PCs- at least twice as long- at any point in time, the number of Macs out there to sell into are going to be a lot more than the percentage of machines recently sold.
This is a serious problem because marketing dweebs everywhere are underestimating the installed Mac base by %75.
Just like there are far more Linux boxes than there are computers sold with linux pre-installed in the market.
Note that this under reporting of Linux and MacOS both helps Windows, and of course the companise doing this under reporint- IDC and Dataquest are doing so under contract from microsoft to do "market research".
The funny thing is that when Jobs talks about getting the "other 95 percent" he's being ironic, but nobody seems to realize it.
I worked on two games that shipped simultaneously on the Mac and Windows platforms in the late 90s.
The development of parallel versions did not add significantly to the development time nor expense.
Because we had good mac developers (I was one) we simply had our development team spread acrosss platforms -- rather than porting. So, for instance the "scound guy" was a mac programmer, and his code was written to run under windows and Mac with a small hardware specific sound API that was common.
BTW FWIW, its much cheaper and faster to develop a game for the mac-- and this was under the classic os-- than for windows. The APIs are much better and more consistent.
The only reason there are less games on teh mac is because of stupid marketing dipshits. Mac games are actually 20-200 percent more profitable -- meaning the mac version may make that much more money even though the prices are the same because support for windows products is so expensive. And while the mac marketshare is only %20 of the market or so (not %5 - that's new machines sold and they don';t count any sold at the apple store or at apple retail locations, its a bogus number) -- that %20 of the market has far less competition than the windows market, and so your sales may well be split 50/50 depending on the games appeal.
But most companys, and game companies, make such decisions without actually doing the math, and so perception causes there to be fewer games out for the mac.
This same set of perceptions is going to be hurting Linux gaming for the next 5-10 years as well.
This even though I suspect its very cost effective to develop games under linux, as comapred to the windows API set.
I made a comparison, I explained why. You repeating the myth does not make it true-- it just makes you thick headed.
You pick a high priced machine and compare it to a low end machine? No you don't even tell us what machine you're comparing to... this is so weak. It says you have no point to make, other than to just repeat a tired old line.
You say a 1700 machine without a monitor- but you can get an eMac for $1100 WITH a monitor. Doubt you can find a PC that has comperable CPU performance for less than $3,000.
Macs are cheaper than PCs whenever you do a fair comparison-- I gave one in my post, even.
Sheesh.
Except with Apple you get twice the computer for $100 less.
Its just people lie and claim that the Apples aren't really all that much better....
but its a bald faced lie.
I didn't. That was an interim step. I included the fact that a CISC instruction gets about 1.5 times as much work done as a RISC one.
Course people have ignored this.
People are picking apart my argument, but invariably their "points" are ones I've already answered. I guess its airtight.
No, in INITIAL COST, as well as total ownership, Macs are cheaper. That's my point.
When you claim that PCs are cheaper, you're not comparing apples to apples.
A no-brand PC with random parts from fly-by-night suppliers is not comperable to a well made machien.
Use real Dells (not the fly by night ones) or IBMs to compare and you'll see Apple's are cheaper.
For all Macs superiority, why do they not exceed PC's when it comes to accomplishing the same tasks quicker.
They do. Regular studies have shown this-- any given secretary, programmer, accountant is much much more productive using a mac than a PC.
And lets not forget the regular photoshop or other examples where a top of the line PC takes 3-5 times aas long to accomplish the same task as a mac.
Bring the top of the line Mac, keep the reciept. I'll build a PC for the same price that'll outperform it.
Never happen . Hell all the way back in 1994, Microsoft was having to special code their Excel and Word apps to make the mac run slower because they were embarrassing PCs in the benchmarks.... course now people use photoshop which has been optimized on both platforms.
And in the photoshop test, there's no comparison. (course now you're going to say that the only fair test is Intel designed benchmarks.)
Bycicles are cheaper than cars too.
But you don't see people running around saying "Don't buy cars- you're wasting money."
Yeah, an XBOX is only $200, but it isn't comparable to my iMac.
And YES there ARE macs for $400. The PCs made at the same time as them are worthless, though. Macs hold their value because they are so much faster and can run modern software much longer than PCs.
This brings up another point- PC users switch out their PC every 18 months-- mac users, 3-4 years. The machines last longer...
So, at this point PCs are about 6-7 TIMES the price of a mac in terms of TCO and performance if you really do the math.
But people have a vested interest in not doing the math and so they insist macs are expensive.
Given that the Mac in question has an 800 MHz processor, and the PC has a 2 GHz processor, it is extremely unlikely that the Mac would be faster
Except that the CISC instructiosn take ten times as many clock cycles to execute.
This is a fundamental aspect of the difference between risc and cisc and you didn't know this?
When it takes 17 clock cycles to execute an instruction and the other processor does them in one-- how is having 2.5 times the processor speed an advantage? You'd only be 1/5th as fast at 2GHz, that's all.
I explained all this, and any basic microprocessor textbook will as well.
get a clue, p3 and k7+ shit is all risc.
Why is it people who don't know what they're talking about always say "get a clue" or "everyone knows".
You don't make something a RISC processor without changing the instruction set. x86 has a CISC instruction set. They never changed the instruction set on the x86 side. Tehy have made some isntructions go in one clock cycle, but they have to have a 386 compatibility co-processor there to run the CISC instructions.
You get a clue, dipshit. I already told you this, but you didn't pay attention, or you're just ignorant. Fine.
I said nobody gives fair comparisons and now you guys are proving me right.
You pretend that the Macs run OS 9-- two of you now, and that its unstable. Well, os 6-9 were NOT unstable- they were far far more stable than windows. The only thing that made them unstable was runnign buggy system extentions. AS recommended, and set up by a competant person (or average user) rather than a bleeding edge kid who installs any piece of crap that looks interesting, they are extremely stable.
Anyway you want me to make a comparison between Mac OSX ant Windows 3.1? After all, that would be fair, given your comparison.
Sheesh. The lengths people have to go to in ordrer to bash macs. Why expend the energy?
Right, that's because they are cheap and shitty.
No, because they're better engineerd, dipshit.
Calling things names? Gee, that's a real intelligent argument.
I notice that you didn't give the specs for this el cheapo gateway machine. You know I once bought four identical gateways at once for a company, when we got them, there were four different brands of power supply, two different motherboard versions, three different memory vendors. ETc.
And the power supply on one of them went out within the first year, and another had regular BSODs in NT.
Somehow a %50 failure rate does not sound like a good deal to me. I'm sure not all gateways are this bad, maybe they had a bad year.
But those who make these claims always compare a Yugo to a Toyota and claim that they are the same and that the toyota is priced like a mercedes. They aren't.
If you had a legitimate point you'd make a comparison between equal quality machines (And comparable specs... notice you ignored the differences in the specs.)
Gateway is a tier two manufacturer, if not tier three.
Hell, you might as well compare an Xbox to the Xserve-- Microsoft is a tier one manufacturer at least in that comparison. After all, they're both "computers".
Sheesh, what an idiot.
Algerian is not a font on any mac I've used.
Frontpage is NOT a mac product and never has been since Microsoft's owned it (dunno about before.)
Sheesh. Just believe what you want despite the evidence.
We're used to it.
Clearly you've never actually worked in tech support for a cross platform product.
Your silly, make believe, bigotry is pointless.
Thanks for your
"Ever hear the story about the lazy nigger/spic/cracker/jew/honky/faggot/president who..."
story.
This is another common myth. People seem to think Apple had never heard of a second button mouse when they invented the macintosh.
IIRC the original Engerbert mouse had two buttons, but certainly the idea of putting mutple buttons on the mouse was evaluated by apple.
What they found in usability testing is that it slows people down-- significantly. It slows everyone down, power user and newbie alike.
But, like the command line, you don't think its slowing you down becuse you're working with subjective time and hte apple tests were using objective time.
Its subjectively faster to right mouse on something and get a popup than go to the menu and select what you wanted. but having to remember which button to use (which you're certain you don't but you actually do) slows you down *all* the time.
I use a three button trackball, but the I only use the second and third buttons in quake. The wheel works great and doesn't break the interface.. but the second button does and while I'll sometimes use it, I recognize that it is a convenience....so conciously its a one button mouse to me.
Please, can we put this tired old lie to rest?
Macs do not cost more than other brands for what you get. They actually cost less, and there's good reason for it.
First off, every PC maker, inclduing Apple, uses standardized commodity parts. The only question, or form of differentiation, is quality. You can buy a really cheap power supply and get random BSODs like you get with many PC makers, or you can buy quality power supplies that don't die on you or cause over and under voltage- like you get with IBM (IBM Made) and Apple computers. (And I'm sure *some* dells and compaqs but certainly not the "cheap" PCs that people are always claiming are typical for cost comparisons.
For other parts, such as PCI controller chips, Firewire, USB, memory, etc, they are pretty complicated and you have to buy form only a small number of vendors - you cannot cut cost by buying low quality, but the volumes of them make them not too expensive. Which is why PC motherboards go for $100-$200, while the processor may be more than twice as much. There's a lot of work in the silicon of them otherboard-- it is only volume that makes this disparity possible- the controller chips are commoditized but the processor isn't.
So, other than the Processor, Case and Power Supply Macs use essentially the same components as a PC from a quality vendor.
Now, I addressed the power supplies- lets talk about Cases. Yes, Apple pays probably more on average than most PC vendors for cases. But these cases are plastic. We're talking $5-20 a unit, not $50-$200.
Thirdly, processor. Apple pays FAR LESS for their processors than any PC Vendor for a comperable processor.
First off, lets point out that there are no comperable processors-- a G4 is the fastest processor on the market. Which brings us to another myth- processor clockrate is its speed. The clock rate is not its speed. (I got moderated "1 Overrated +2 insightful -1 flamebait" for pointing this out before.)
A G4 Processor, being a risc chip, has far less complicated instructions to break down. The pentium, which is a combination RISC and CISC processor is extremely complicated in its design.
Instructiosn go to one of two processors on the same die-- a 386 compatibility, and a RISC one. The problem occurs in that this parallelization causes out of order instruction execution... because some instructions take longer to execute than others. CISC instructions take many stages (And thus, many clock cycles) to execute. That's why a 2GHz pentium has, maybe, 250MIPS, while a G4 running at 1GHz (a pure risc processor) will have 1000 mips- an instruction finishes every clock cyle.
Also these processors are super scalar- meaning that they have many execution units. This means that a G4 may well actually produce 4000 MIPS at 1GHz because on average, every clock cycle, 4 instructions are finished. The pentium, may well produce 1000 MIPS in this same way.
But notice that the pentium has to have 8 pipelines for that 4 times increase because its got both the RISC procesor and hte 386 compatibility processor to deal with. The simpler PowerPC just duplicates its execution units.
Then there's the branch prediction issue. Since there are mutliple execution units they may well execute code out of order-- while a slower instruction is being processed, other instructions are executed to keep the processor busy, and when some of those instructions are on the other side of a conditional jump, the processors speculativly executes them. If it turns out that jump wasn't to be made, it has to flush the pipeline and start over.
The G4 has a much shorter pipeline than the Pentium, and thus when this happens it incurs much less overhead and hassle having to refil the pipeline.
So, in the end all these issues (and it really boils down to backwards compatibility for intel keeping it down) mean that the PowerPC is a much simpler, yet much faster processor.
And this means costs-- first in the size of the processors die. If you have a processor with a smaller die you get far more dies to a wafer and exponentially better pricing.
Secondly this addresses cost when comparing computer's prices you have to take performance into a ccount, toherwise, a 286 for $100 is a "Better deal" than a new computer for $1000. And I didn't even go into the vastly superior floating point unit on the PowerPC-- which makes the disparity even worse.
So, Apple gets its processors from Motorola or IBM for a lot less money, its parts from the same suppliers Dell, et. al. do and spends more on cases, but in the end is able to sell computers for LESS MONEY and make MORE PROFIT.
The problem is that its hard to quantify the performance of a computer. So people invariably lie when they compare Apples to Oranges. They pick a really cheap PC from a fly by night company (such as a low end dell) with a crappy power supply, and compare it to a high quality Macintosh with a much faster processor and point out that the mac is overpriced. And to add insult to insult, they claim that the Mac is even a slower computer becuase its clockrate is lower!
If you still buy that myth, look at this quote from: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,361877,00.asp
"Intel claims its 1GHz Itanium 2 offers up to twice the performance of its 800MHz predecessor, which has suffered from poor sales since its release in May 2001."
Do you really think an Itanium is slower than a Pentium??? After all , the Itanium runs at 1GHz and the pentium runs at 2!
Or how about this-- how could a 1Ghz processor be twice as fast as a 800MHz one? Think intel is lying, that this is impossible?
This basic myth (and the bogus comparisons of price that come from it) is at the root of the "Macs are more expensive" myth.
At first I addressed this issue by grabbing comparisons fro mthe most recent dell flyer and the apple vendors, but those were ignored. Here's a quicky, the IBM intellistation ProE with 2GHz P4 is $1639, compare that to a PowerMac at $1599 and you see that you get a better video card (3d vs 2d), the same Hard drive (literally, I bet) same memory, CDRW instead of CD, and a MUCH better case with the Mac for $100 less.
But that's pointless to tell people- they will ignore it, as the PC comes with Windows, for instnace. Is that worth $100? not when the alternative is OS X. Etc. etc. and people will quibble over the tiniest spec differences, such as a faster bus (that is half as wide) and stuff like that. The PC world is clearly optimized for numbers that give the sheen of performance insteaf of actual perfomance-- like Intel processors with twice the clock rate but half the bus size (meaning zero performance improvement but doubled perception.) A great example of this is the fact that Apple uses slower Ram, but has a wider RAM path. People ignore that all the time.
But my point is not to quibble on these things but to make the broader point: MACS ARE NOT MORE EXPENSIVE.
When you have th choice of a much better looking computer, more ergonomic, uses OS X uses a REAL Gui, uses better peripherals, and is more expandible, not to mention better performance, it isn't really a choice at all. If you value those things, the Mac is worth twice the price-- but that doesn't mean it IS twice the price. IF you don't value those things, or detest some of them, the mac isn't worth half the price-- but that doesn't mean you can compare it at half the value with some other machine and call it twice as expensive.
What it really comes down to is what the value is to you. If you enjoy fscking with your hardware, tracking down faulty power supplies, then you get lot more enjoyment out of a machine that you can obsess over for 3 months which motherboard to upgrade it with.
If you'd prefer to go 3 years with a fast machine performing well and not having to mess with the hardware, then you'll value a machine that lets you do that.
But the economics of the situation dictate that there is NO price premium between the two-- and in fact, given the illegal stranglehold over the industry that Microsoft has, Apple has to be better AND cheaper in order to compete. And they are.
You don't value the MAc OS, fine, don't buy it. But STOP telling other people that it is overpriced. Stop spreading your preferences as a bigotry and driving people who would rather have a computer that "just works" away from the platform.
There is such a history of this kind of bullshit bigotry that many first time users get a Windows box and are screwed from then on because tehy got talked out of a mac. If you want Microsoft to go away, talk them into a mac. When they are technically proficient, then maybe talk them into a harder to use but infinitely configurable alternative like Linux on the x86.,
Look at it this way-- every Mac sold is a lost windows sale and another person using open source Unix.
But every one of you who tells a relative or someone who believes you that Macs are more expensive is doing them a disservice, and yourself as well. They are not, they cannot be, and they never will be... After all, when you're fighting a market share battle and you have a magic weapon that lets you sell a better computer for less money and make more money doing so per unit, wouldn't you do it? Apple isn't stupid.
OSX, the PowerPC and good designers are that magic weapon for apple.
Yes, because spending went up even faster.
Proof that republicans, just like democrats, are irresponsible with money and cannot be trusted.
I'm sick and tired of dealign with fucking idiots on this forum.
SPEC is not a neutral performance benchmark. It is clearly biased as it does not measure floating point performance-- it essentially measures clock speed. We already know the clock speed is double you fucking idiot.
And trying to trot out the term "RISC" in this discussion is meaningless,
Yes because you don't care about architecture, you think the clock speed is what determines the speed.
A processor with a simpler instruction set can execute more instructions in parallel during a clock cycle, dipshit.
and only highlights your ignorance (to say nothing of "386 co-processor".)
No, this highlights YOUR ignorance. There is a 386 co-processor on the pentium die you fucking moron. Otherwise the Pentium could enjoy RISC benefits, but its hobbled by its CISC past.
Do yourself a favor and learn about CPU architectures before you post on the subject again, thanks.
Unlike most of the suppsed "engineers" on Slashdot, I actually knwo what the fuck I'm taking about.
Do you even know what RISC is? what it means?
Bleeping idiot. And to think there are a thousand more where trolls like you come from. Goosestepping around telling each other lies.
There are no benchmarks anywhere that will show a 1GHz G4 is faster than a 2Ghz P4 in general usage.
This is bald faced lie.
ut the leeches would never be able to pirate the appz without their help
this simply isn't true. I haven't seen a bit of cracked software since the late 80s. Companie have stopped using software protection and started using license key protection-- nobody has an incentive to crack the software anymore-- they just make keys, and that's the challenge.
Drug growers bear the responsibility to provide good clean heroin. Anyone who ruins their life with it bears the responsibility themselves.
If I sell you a car and you use it to kill yourself, or others, YOU are responsible, not me.
Its sad that so few people have any concern about human rights. you do not have the right to prosecute people who do stuff you don't like when what they do is morally correct. Drug manufacturers are morally correct when they make drugs. IF you think this is "obviously false" then you don't know what human rights or morals ARE.
I think your an idiot. you should read the comment before you reply and reply with something more useful than "WRONG."
Notice how the drug war (another immoral non-crime "crime") and software piracy war are both failing miserably.
"Stopping it at the source" does not work,... that's just stupidity. Or at, more precisely, this kid ripping the software is NOT the SOURCE.
The software company is.
Furthermore, only the software company has rights that are being violated not society. Therefore this is a civil issue, not a criminal one.
Why am I repeating myself, you didn't pay attentio n the first time.
Sheesh.
You start of by describing natural forces... but do you not realize that it is natural forces that keep software prices high?
Some people seem to think $50 is a lot of money. But they will pay $7 to go see a movie. Is a game that gives you 50 hours worth of entertainmend worth $50? To some it isn't, but to others, its a much better deal than that $7 movie.
Piracy does distort this situation, but then the response brings it back into balance-- the $50 game wihtout manuals is the "balance" state we're currently at, pricacy is a known given, and CD Keys are the response that we're at now- balancing hassle with protection.
And rightly criticized if I might add.
Really? You read my comments? Sheesh. From what I can tell you don't use any real programming languages so maybe you've never been trained.
The code was not obscured by comments. In fact, by my standards, I under comment.
But most programmers, in my experience, and almost all the programmers at microsoft, put no comments in there at all, and write quite poor code.
Anyway, In all my years of professional work, I've *NEVER* seen a case of "too many comments".
Copyright infringement is a criminal offense, not civil.
Duh. That's what I'm protesting-- it is a civil offense that has been made into a criminal one.
That is WRONG.