I think that's the same here in the UK. I don't see why mod-chips are different! And even then (using it) unless you're copying software (you don't own) I don't see a problem.
Of course the whole "own" thing is open to some debate, do you own your software, or not?
Ohh - not that's not true! I've seen games consoles modded so they can play Japanese games - not even to save money, just because the games were released in Japan first.
I think you're too ready to shallow the hype - M$ seem to be forgetting fair use, and that the customer has bought the Xbox - if they want to mess with it, well I think they have the right. Sure if they rip off games then MS have a perfect right to stop that, but to say I can't mess with a machine I bought is not on. And there are legitimate reasons for modding an Xbox.
I thought you guys (people living in the USA) could buy radar detectors to scan for speed traps, but some guy sells mod-chips for Xbox and he's done for it?! (I'm not familiar with this aspect of US law)
Seems to me that this is quite unfair - in what way does the mod chip help pirates? I thought it:
A) Allowed Linux to boot and run
or
B) Allowed to machine to play games from another region.
I see no piracy on either count here. Have I got this wrong? (Help me out - I don't own an Xbox so I'm a little lost)
Well lets look at it another way, NASA have had problems getting parts (so that's not so good) and there may be scope for more modern systems to do more safety checking and redundancy. I'd also suggest that vibration might also be the cause of problems in older kit.
OK, I guess I should be more precise. The computers in the shuttle are really old, and have been shaken, used and must be near the end of their useful lives.
What I'm saying is newer (burnt in) computers using robust OS would be better. Not some nasty PC running Windows or anything like that. Personally I'd expect single board systems running somekind of real-time Unix. And yeah something well off the "bleeding edge".
It's probably overdue that the shuttle was updated, shame it takes something like this to make it happen. Personally I hope that manned space flight can continue, and get safer.
It seems unlikely that computers were to blame for this, but the kit in the shuttle is pretty old - if we're going to ask people to risk their lives like this we must give them the best kit we can.
I know I was shocked at the loss of the shuttle, and it should remind us of how brave these people are.
50,000 - Worldwide. Not a vast number to be sure. However they were very nice machines, and well built (so quite a number survive). The NeXT also gave us several advances. The UI in Windows95 was hugely influenced buy NeXTSTEP, as are many of the Linux UIs (AfterStep, WindowMaker etc). Doom was created on the NeXT, as were the first implementations of the World Wide Web.
Ooh NeRD bonding!!! Yeah I can understand where you're coming from - but I have all the toys (in Mac OS X) switched off (no bouncing, no genie-ing, no magnifying, no deskicons, no blue, no desk-picture and no ball-games). I can live with it. True the scrollers are on the wrong side, the menus are very non-functional and the hardware is distrurbingly "unblack" but when I run Chess or Interface Builder it's like nothing has changed! (Oh the nostalgia of it all)
Of course I still have my NeXT (A NeXTstation Turbo Color) and have even added a few new boxes to my collection (A NeXT Computer - complete with NeXT asset tags, A NeXTstation Turbo, and even a double headed NeXTdimension - truly a living legend). They actually look pretty good - I have the NeXT Computer, MegaPixel Display & NeXTlaser displayed in my lounge.
So you got any NeXT boxen? Anything you want to get rid of? (You see I'm hopless!!!)
Well it seems the Apple isn't a (as in single) subculture anymore.
Firstly there are the old time Mac users - they used a Mac found it easy to do what they wanted and just attached themselves to the system. Many have had Macs for years and will tell you how the Mac "changed their life". Often these users work in "arty" jobs (DTP, Graphic Designers, etc)
Then there are Windows switchers - they got fed up with the Wintel PC, some it was system crashes, some it's more religous reasons.
Linux switchers, often those who were working in Windows/Linux for various reasons. Lots have PowerBooks.
Then there are old NeXT users (not many of us actually!).
And others I'm too stupid to identify. I'm not sure that the Mac is a single culture anymore. I hope this is healthy for the platform.
Of course I have omitted those who "co-exist" and use Mac and something else.
Quartz is the drawing technology in Mac OS X - like X-Windows in a traditional Uinx or Linux system. This part of the Mac OS isn't open source, so the only way to get it is to get a Mac running Mac OS X.
Modern Macs run a version of Quartz called "Quartz Extreem" basically a version where all the on screen windows (and everything on the screen in Mac OS X considered a window from this point of view) is composited onto the display by the GPU.
If you're interested in programming Quartz take a look at Apple's site in the developer section for information about Quartz.
Quartz includes the ability to render PDFs, QuickTime, OpenGL. Quartz also has the ability to deal with transparency, that is heavily used in the UI of Mac OS X (Aqua).
Well, there is a legitimate use for this information - you might well want to backup a number of machines against your own server - so I think this is ok. Assuming you own the machines and have a ".Mac" account.
Apple suggest using their service to sync your laptop, home Mac and office Mac - so I don't see an issue installing "Backup.app" on all the Macs you own. Anyone know if I'm reading this correctly?
Yeah, well Jay Miner really designed the Amiga as a successor to the Atari400/800 series (also really nice machines). So the main focus was to create a "home computer". Those were popular back then, and were considered quite distinct from "business computers". Personnally I think this schism was opened up with the introduction of the IBM PC, a machine that was hard to love as an "entertainment" device (no graphics, no colour, high price tag). Where machines like the Atari had hardware just for playing games ("Missle/Player Graphics" - an early form of hardware "Sprite" graphics, and of course joystick interfaces) and a display designed to be displayed on a TV - and therefore not suitable for business applications of the era (usually home computers had displays of 40 columns of text or so, business machines had 80).
What Jay produced in the Amiga was great "gaming" hardware with a high resolution display to show enough text for business applications (and require a monitor). What Commodore did when taking the project over from Atari was see the Amiga as a "Mac with hardware accelleration". Amiga proved to be such a flexible design, and AmigaDOS such a flexible OS that the Amiga became both the gamers system of choice and at the same time the hacker's system of choice while also making a dent into business computing (especially the Amiga2000 that could take a PC card).
The Amiga2000 is a machine that I always wanted, and I guess even now I wouldn't mind one. personally I liked the really ugly HUGE desktop case - towers are all well and good - but that big grey box had a magic all it's own. I think Commodore tried to make it look "serious" and the effect was that it looked "mean". For a while there seemed to be nothing it couldn't do.
So yeah, if this new system can bring back THAT feeling then I'll be very tempted - after all: "what price a dream?"
Re:Answer to title. (Actual experience)
on
Is Mac OS X Slow?
·
· Score: 2
Yeah the Finder was a major pain in 10.0 and a pain in 10.1 - in Mac OS X 10.2 - it's an irritation. Progress has been quite good (but I still find the Finder to be a little lacking).
You wanna know what - it's a Carbon app! Now there is no reason Carbon apps need to be slow (hard to write, maybe). Personally I don't really understand why the most important single App was written this way - I don't know. But it has got significantly better between 10.1 and 10.2 - I think it has some way to go yet - but it's okay now.
Mac OS X tends to do animations for LOTS of things (we've all seen the Genie effect). But what a LOT of users don't realise (and this is Apple's fault for not making the point) is that these animations aren't blocking - you can still interact with the system - it's not maxed out; it's showing the animation at a "reasonable" speed. So the Genie effect (as an example) is easy for the eye to follow and see where the Window "went" (that's the point). But you don't have to wait you can double click something or continue using the system while that's happening.
On slow Macs (or Mac under heavy load) Mac OS X drops frames - it doesn't allow the "eye candy" to slow down the system.
Also the spin wheel: it shows when it's over a Window that's blocked - it doesn't mean the system is blocked - just that App. If the mouse-cursor is moved off the Window it returns to an arrow - if it's put back it becomes a spin wheel again until that Window is no longer blocking. Again this is a subtle point thats often lost on casual users of the system.
The normal Apps that people run, run well even on flat panel iMacs or eMacs. The Mac isn't slow and the UI is responsive. Earlier implementations of Mac OS X has lots of blocking in the Finder and that made the system feel quite unresponsive (and it was really annoying).
Mac OS X runs well on my G3 400Mhz - sure not as well as on a modern G4, but it's okay.
One thing that makes a LOT of difference to performance is RAM, my advice to anyone running Mac OS X is to have at least 256Mb of RAM. Your analogy of XP is on the money - Mac OS X is optimised for CURRENT Macs - Quartz Extreem, low level support for Dual Processors and AltiVec - but wouldn't we be disappointed if they didn't build in support for all these new toys?
Well you're part right - Mac OS X is (largely) a rewrite of NeXTSTEP (or to give it NeXT's revised name OPENSTEP 4.2 for Mach).
All the interdependancies between OpenStep (the API Specification that Cocoa is a development on) were removed by NeXT when NeXTSTEP transitioned to OPENSTEP for Mach (usually just called "OPENSTEP") and OPENSTEP was also available on Solaris and even WindowsNT. So Apple could have quite easily used a different base OS for Mac OS X.
But it turns out that Mach is still a good choice even now (and Apple believed it to be the BEST choice - something I personally agree with). Much has changed down there deep in the OS - they are using a later version of Mach (with Apple's own customisations) and they are using a different BSD adaptor layer (here there are some commercial reasons as well as technical). They are also using a totally new windowmanager.
Much has changed in the OS, I agree that it's still quintessentially NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP but Apple have significantly updated the OS (I guess it's almost like OPENSTEP 5.x for Mac).
Okay, I've done it again and been less than clear. Mach (the Kernel of Darwin/Mac OS X) is written in C (using GCC - just like Linux).
Up from that the Objective-C runtime is also written in C (and can be called from C). This is actually a VERY quick system. You can call Cocoa from C if you want (but honestly, Objective-C is much easier you're better off using that). And there are ways to making Objective-C messages faster if that is needed (most of the time it isn't).
Objective-C isn't a slow language as implemented by Apple, but they don't use it in the Kernel anyway. Actually it's not used in the BSD adaptor layer or even the lower levels of Cocoa (Core Foundation). But it isn't anything to be afraid of, it's fast.
Mac OS X isn't actually slow but has a lot of technologies that have got a bad rap (though they didn't always deserve them).
Mac OS X is based on a Microkernel - now everyone agrees these are slow, right? Well, sure I can see where that's coming from - but Apple have gone to great lengths to make this as fast as possible without losing the benefits. So the Kernel isn't actually slow, it compares well with other BSDs and Linux.
The Mac is only 800MHz(ish) for low end machines so it must be slow? This is the classic "MHz Myth" the G4 has a short pipeline (a good thing) and executes over 90% of it's instructions in 1 cycle or less (the modern definition of RISC, TRIVIA: the old definition was implements less the 100 instructions). And then there's the amazing AltiVec (which Apple call the "Velocity Engine", if you see these terms they refer to the same thing). Macs have blistering real math performance (the G3 iBook doesn't have the AltiVec).
Macs are based on Objective-C - that's REALLY slow. Well sure if you just implemented Objective-C without optimisations then it would be slow, but NeXT (them that did the Objective-C implementation) didn't do that. They added a method lookup cache which speeds things up a great deal, and IMPs that can be used in tight loops to gain extra zip (healh warning, IMPs are not ususally needed and can cause stunning bugs if you're not careful with them - unless you have a large tight loop that REALLY needs speeding up - don't bother with IMPs). The use of allocation zones can also speed up the VM system a great deal (these aren't as troublesome as IMPs can be, but again aren't as often needed as you might think). The Kits make heavy use of these tricks so they are pretty fast.
Quartz has lots of tricks to make it fast, and now all current Macs can make use of Quartz Extreem (uses the compositor on the GPU to dramatically speed up the whole windowing system).
So no Macs aren't slow. Apple's site includes server stats and they are very impressive too.
But the implementation details aren't widely understood so a lot of people's initial reaction is "Oh that's gotta be slow" - it really isn't.
Well I couldn't agree more - there are far too few platforms at present, it's a bad situation. BeOS looked really exciting, and it's a shame that it's lost (on the desktop) I do hope one of the projects to rework it can comeup with something as interesting as the original. (Of course it's not actually totally lost, it seems Palm OS 6 will be heavily influenced by the BeOS).
So I'd like to see Amigas like the old ones, exciting and different, but as capable (well ideally, more so) as modern PCs. There seems to be no reason this can't happen - and this is an important second step (the first being the original developer boards).
Of course I did! But we've seen Macs before. They are exciting (I've got one) and great and the world would be totally boring without them - but there is plenty of room for more platforms.
Is it just me, or does anyone else thing we really need this? The original Amiga was a strange beast, originally developed as a pure games machine, then retooled as a "business computer" it had the genlock device (video could be pumped through and mixed with the machines graphics). It was always an "odd" machine. And I guess that's why these people love it, how can you categorise it? Good at games, useful for video and able to do things like DTP, it was very exciting as a machine.
Now I don't know about everyone else, but I for one get a bit bored these days - machines are dull - really dull. Sure they have whizzbang new CPUs and there are some amazing graphics cards, but they don't quite capture the excitement of those earlier machines.
I for one am glad to see the Amiga haul itself out of the past, maybe it's nostalgia, but whatever if these things can help capture any of the excitement of the Amiga1000 or the Amiga2000 (you could put a PC card in one of those - so you really could "have your cake and eat it") then this will be worthwhile.
Sure I don't think the PC is going to become an endangered species or that this thing will even make much impression over the Mac, but does it have to? If they can make a profit out of these and a few nostalgic geeks can have some fun, it all sounds good to me.
Sorenson encoding is what we're talking about here (decoding is pretty easy - even quite feeble processors can do that) but encoding is hard.
G4s are encoding video at better than 1:1 speed last time I looked a high spec P4 was doing this at 1:25 (one hour of video encoded in 25 hours). Now that was a while ago, so I'd expect P4s to be doing better now (but are talking about 2GHz(ish) P4s here, they have got better since then).
This dramatic speedup for the G4 was the result of a "discovery" at Apple on how to do this. This lead directly to the SuperDrive. On the PC people use custom boards to do the encoding. Of course if you don't want to create DVDs that play in domestic players then this is a total non-event! But a lot of Macs are being sold on the back of this, from the eMac (cheap CRT all in one Mac, very much like the old iMac, but with a G4). Of course this also means that the SuperDrive won't appear in the iBook (no AltiVec).
Of course, you bring up another thing that requires AltiVec, FinalCut Pro RealTime Effects, again VERY important to Apple.
BLAST sells lots of Mac's sure you need to be a genetics researcher to need it, but in that field it's like MS-Office! Yeah, most people here won't care - but it's important to Apple - there are reasonable numbers of machines to be sold into this area, and it makes good marketing copy.
Well yeah that's right, if you don't protect the information (and "not making the URL public" isn't protection) then you have to realise that people can look. I can't see what they're expecting to gain by this. All they have done is make the information MORE visible and highlight that they have NO CLUE.
Once this information was in the puiblic domain then I think their best policy would have been to do nothing, perhaps just issue the information with the best spin they could.
Taking them to court seems like a REALLY BAD idea.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that's the same here in the UK. I don't see why mod-chips are different! And even then (using it) unless you're copying software (you don't own) I don't see a problem.
Of course the whole "own" thing is open to some debate, do you own your software, or not?
Well if they built fair use into their consoles ...
Ohh - not that's not true! I've seen games consoles modded so they can play Japanese games - not even to save money, just because the games were released in Japan first.
I think you're too ready to shallow the hype - M$ seem to be forgetting fair use, and that the customer has bought the Xbox - if they want to mess with it, well I think they have the right. Sure if they rip off games then MS have a perfect right to stop that, but to say I can't mess with a machine I bought is not on. And there are legitimate reasons for modding an Xbox.
Oh okay - so why doesn't that normally work? Afterall if it's a binary copy how does the Xbox know?
Seems a little heavy handed to ban something that has a legitimate use.
I thought you guys (people living in the USA) could buy radar detectors to scan for speed traps, but some guy sells mod-chips for Xbox and he's done for it?! (I'm not familiar with this aspect of US law)
Seems to me that this is quite unfair - in what way does the mod chip help pirates? I thought it:
A) Allowed Linux to boot and run
or
B) Allowed to machine to play games from another region.
I see no piracy on either count here. Have I got this wrong? (Help me out - I don't own an Xbox so I'm a little lost)
Well lets look at it another way, NASA have had problems getting parts (so that's not so good) and there may be scope for more modern systems to do more safety checking and redundancy. I'd also suggest that vibration might also be the cause of problems in older kit.
OK, I guess I should be more precise. The computers in the shuttle are really old, and have been shaken, used and must be near the end of their useful lives.
What I'm saying is newer (burnt in) computers using robust OS would be better. Not some nasty PC running Windows or anything like that. Personally I'd expect single board systems running somekind of real-time Unix. And yeah something well off the "bleeding edge".
It's probably overdue that the shuttle was updated, shame it takes something like this to make it happen. Personally I hope that manned space flight can continue, and get safer.
It seems unlikely that computers were to blame for this, but the kit in the shuttle is pretty old - if we're going to ask people to risk their lives like this we must give them the best kit we can.
I know I was shocked at the loss of the shuttle, and it should remind us of how brave these people are.
50,000 - Worldwide. Not a vast number to be sure. However they were very nice machines, and well built (so quite a number survive). The NeXT also gave us several advances. The UI in Windows95 was hugely influenced buy NeXTSTEP, as are many of the Linux UIs (AfterStep, WindowMaker etc). Doom was created on the NeXT, as were the first implementations of the World Wide Web.
For those interested here is a URL:
http://next.z80.org/
Ooh NeRD bonding!!! Yeah I can understand where you're coming from - but I have all the toys (in Mac OS X) switched off (no bouncing, no genie-ing, no magnifying, no deskicons, no blue, no desk-picture and no ball-games). I can live with it. True the scrollers are on the wrong side, the menus are very non-functional and the hardware is distrurbingly "unblack" but when I run Chess or Interface Builder it's like nothing has changed! (Oh the nostalgia of it all)
Of course I still have my NeXT (A NeXTstation Turbo Color) and have even added a few new boxes to my collection (A NeXT Computer - complete with NeXT asset tags, A NeXTstation Turbo, and even a double headed NeXTdimension - truly a living legend). They actually look pretty good - I have the NeXT Computer, MegaPixel Display & NeXTlaser displayed in my lounge.
So you got any NeXT boxen? Anything you want to get rid of? (You see I'm hopless!!!)
Well it seems the Apple isn't a (as in single) subculture anymore.
Firstly there are the old time Mac users - they used a Mac found it easy to do what they wanted and just attached themselves to the system. Many have had Macs for years and will tell you how the Mac "changed their life". Often these users work in "arty" jobs (DTP, Graphic Designers, etc)
Then there are Windows switchers - they got fed up with the Wintel PC, some it was system crashes, some it's more religous reasons.
Linux switchers, often those who were working in Windows/Linux for various reasons. Lots have PowerBooks.
Then there are old NeXT users (not many of us actually!).
And others I'm too stupid to identify. I'm not sure that the Mac is a single culture anymore. I hope this is healthy for the platform.
Of course I have omitted those who "co-exist" and use Mac and something else.
Quartz is the drawing technology in Mac OS X - like X-Windows in a traditional Uinx or Linux system. This part of the Mac OS isn't open source, so the only way to get it is to get a Mac running Mac OS X.
Modern Macs run a version of Quartz called "Quartz Extreem" basically a version where all the on screen windows (and everything on the screen in Mac OS X considered a window from this point of view) is composited onto the display by the GPU.
If you're interested in programming Quartz take a look at Apple's site in the developer section for information about Quartz.
Quartz includes the ability to render PDFs, QuickTime, OpenGL. Quartz also has the ability to deal with transparency, that is heavily used in the UI of Mac OS X (Aqua).
Well, there is a legitimate use for this information - you might well want to backup a number of machines against your own server - so I think this is ok. Assuming you own the machines and have a ".Mac" account.
Apple suggest using their service to sync your laptop, home Mac and office Mac - so I don't see an issue installing "Backup.app" on all the Macs you own. Anyone know if I'm reading this correctly?
Yeah, well Jay Miner really designed the Amiga as a successor to the Atari400/800 series (also really nice machines). So the main focus was to create a "home computer". Those were popular back then, and were considered quite distinct from "business computers". Personnally I think this schism was opened up with the introduction of the IBM PC, a machine that was hard to love as an "entertainment" device (no graphics, no colour, high price tag). Where machines like the Atari had hardware just for playing games ("Missle/Player Graphics" - an early form of hardware "Sprite" graphics, and of course joystick interfaces) and a display designed to be displayed on a TV - and therefore not suitable for business applications of the era (usually home computers had displays of 40 columns of text or so, business machines had 80).
What Jay produced in the Amiga was great "gaming" hardware with a high resolution display to show enough text for business applications (and require a monitor). What Commodore did when taking the project over from Atari was see the Amiga as a "Mac with hardware accelleration". Amiga proved to be such a flexible design, and AmigaDOS such a flexible OS that the Amiga became both the gamers system of choice and at the same time the hacker's system of choice while also making a dent into business computing (especially the Amiga2000 that could take a PC card).
The Amiga2000 is a machine that I always wanted, and I guess even now I wouldn't mind one. personally I liked the really ugly HUGE desktop case - towers are all well and good - but that big grey box had a magic all it's own. I think Commodore tried to make it look "serious" and the effect was that it looked "mean". For a while there seemed to be nothing it couldn't do.
So yeah, if this new system can bring back THAT feeling then I'll be very tempted - after all: "what price a dream?"
Yeah the Finder was a major pain in 10.0 and a pain in 10.1 - in Mac OS X 10.2 - it's an irritation. Progress has been quite good (but I still find the Finder to be a little lacking).
You wanna know what - it's a Carbon app! Now there is no reason Carbon apps need to be slow (hard to write, maybe). Personally I don't really understand why the most important single App was written this way - I don't know. But it has got significantly better between 10.1 and 10.2 - I think it has some way to go yet - but it's okay now.
OK, well here goes.
Mac OS X tends to do animations for LOTS of things (we've all seen the Genie effect). But what a LOT of users don't realise (and this is Apple's fault for not making the point) is that these animations aren't blocking - you can still interact with the system - it's not maxed out; it's showing the animation at a "reasonable" speed. So the Genie effect (as an example) is easy for the eye to follow and see where the Window "went" (that's the point). But you don't have to wait you can double click something or continue using the system while that's happening.
On slow Macs (or Mac under heavy load) Mac OS X drops frames - it doesn't allow the "eye candy" to slow down the system.
Also the spin wheel: it shows when it's over a Window that's blocked - it doesn't mean the system is blocked - just that App. If the mouse-cursor is moved off the Window it returns to an arrow - if it's put back it becomes a spin wheel again until that Window is no longer blocking. Again this is a subtle point thats often lost on casual users of the system.
The normal Apps that people run, run well even on flat panel iMacs or eMacs. The Mac isn't slow and the UI is responsive. Earlier implementations of Mac OS X has lots of blocking in the Finder and that made the system feel quite unresponsive (and it was really annoying).
Mac OS X runs well on my G3 400Mhz - sure not as well as on a modern G4, but it's okay.
One thing that makes a LOT of difference to performance is RAM, my advice to anyone running Mac OS X is to have at least 256Mb of RAM. Your analogy of XP is on the money - Mac OS X is optimised for CURRENT Macs - Quartz Extreem, low level support for Dual Processors and AltiVec - but wouldn't we be disappointed if they didn't build in support for all these new toys?
Well you're part right - Mac OS X is (largely) a rewrite of NeXTSTEP (or to give it NeXT's revised name OPENSTEP 4.2 for Mach).
All the interdependancies between OpenStep (the API Specification that Cocoa is a development on) were removed by NeXT when NeXTSTEP transitioned to OPENSTEP for Mach (usually just called "OPENSTEP") and OPENSTEP was also available on Solaris and even WindowsNT. So Apple could have quite easily used a different base OS for Mac OS X.
But it turns out that Mach is still a good choice even now (and Apple believed it to be the BEST choice - something I personally agree with). Much has changed down there deep in the OS - they are using a later version of Mach (with Apple's own customisations) and they are using a different BSD adaptor layer (here there are some commercial reasons as well as technical). They are also using a totally new windowmanager.
Much has changed in the OS, I agree that it's still quintessentially NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP but Apple have significantly updated the OS (I guess it's almost like OPENSTEP 5.x for Mac).
Okay, I've done it again and been less than clear. Mach (the Kernel of Darwin/Mac OS X) is written in C (using GCC - just like Linux).
Up from that the Objective-C runtime is also written in C (and can be called from C). This is actually a VERY quick system. You can call Cocoa from C if you want (but honestly, Objective-C is much easier you're better off using that). And there are ways to making Objective-C messages faster if that is needed (most of the time it isn't).
Objective-C isn't a slow language as implemented by Apple, but they don't use it in the Kernel anyway. Actually it's not used in the BSD adaptor layer or even the lower levels of Cocoa (Core Foundation). But it isn't anything to be afraid of, it's fast.
Mac OS X isn't actually slow but has a lot of technologies that have got a bad rap (though they didn't always deserve them).
Mac OS X is based on a Microkernel - now everyone agrees these are slow, right? Well, sure I can see where that's coming from - but Apple have gone to great lengths to make this as fast as possible without losing the benefits. So the Kernel isn't actually slow, it compares well with other BSDs and Linux.
The Mac is only 800MHz(ish) for low end machines so it must be slow? This is the classic "MHz Myth" the G4 has a short pipeline (a good thing) and executes over 90% of it's instructions in 1 cycle or less (the modern definition of RISC, TRIVIA: the old definition was implements less the 100 instructions). And then there's the amazing AltiVec (which Apple call the "Velocity Engine", if you see these terms they refer to the same thing). Macs have blistering real math performance (the G3 iBook doesn't have the AltiVec).
Macs are based on Objective-C - that's REALLY slow. Well sure if you just implemented Objective-C without optimisations then it would be slow, but NeXT (them that did the Objective-C implementation) didn't do that. They added a method lookup cache which speeds things up a great deal, and IMPs that can be used in tight loops to gain extra zip (healh warning, IMPs are not ususally needed and can cause stunning bugs if you're not careful with them - unless you have a large tight loop that REALLY needs speeding up - don't bother with IMPs). The use of allocation zones can also speed up the VM system a great deal (these aren't as troublesome as IMPs can be, but again aren't as often needed as you might think). The Kits make heavy use of these tricks so they are pretty fast.
Quartz has lots of tricks to make it fast, and now all current Macs can make use of Quartz Extreem (uses the compositor on the GPU to dramatically speed up the whole windowing system).
So no Macs aren't slow. Apple's site includes server stats and they are very impressive too.
But the implementation details aren't widely understood so a lot of people's initial reaction is "Oh that's gotta be slow" - it really isn't.
Well I couldn't agree more - there are far too few platforms at present, it's a bad situation. BeOS looked really exciting, and it's a shame that it's lost (on the desktop) I do hope one of the projects to rework it can comeup with something as interesting as the original. (Of course it's not actually totally lost, it seems Palm OS 6 will be heavily influenced by the BeOS).
So I'd like to see Amigas like the old ones, exciting and different, but as capable (well ideally, more so) as modern PCs. There seems to be no reason this can't happen - and this is an important second step (the first being the original developer boards).
Of course I did! But we've seen Macs before. They are exciting (I've got one) and great and the world would be totally boring without them - but there is plenty of room for more platforms.
Is it just me, or does anyone else thing we really need this? The original Amiga was a strange beast, originally developed as a pure games machine, then retooled as a "business computer" it had the genlock device (video could be pumped through and mixed with the machines graphics). It was always an "odd" machine. And I guess that's why these people love it, how can you categorise it? Good at games, useful for video and able to do things like DTP, it was very exciting as a machine.
Now I don't know about everyone else, but I for one get a bit bored these days - machines are dull - really dull. Sure they have whizzbang new CPUs and there are some amazing graphics cards, but they don't quite capture the excitement of those earlier machines.
I for one am glad to see the Amiga haul itself out of the past, maybe it's nostalgia, but whatever if these things can help capture any of the excitement of the Amiga1000 or the Amiga2000 (you could put a PC card in one of those - so you really could "have your cake and eat it") then this will be worthwhile.
Sure I don't think the PC is going to become an endangered species or that this thing will even make much impression over the Mac, but does it have to? If they can make a profit out of these and a few nostalgic geeks can have some fun, it all sounds good to me.
I for one need some excitement!
Sorenson encoding is what we're talking about here (decoding is pretty easy - even quite feeble processors can do that) but encoding is hard.
G4s are encoding video at better than 1:1 speed last time I looked a high spec P4 was doing this at 1:25 (one hour of video encoded in 25 hours). Now that was a while ago, so I'd expect P4s to be doing better now (but are talking about 2GHz(ish) P4s here, they have got better since then).
This dramatic speedup for the G4 was the result of a "discovery" at Apple on how to do this. This lead directly to the SuperDrive. On the PC people use custom boards to do the encoding. Of course if you don't want to create DVDs that play in domestic players then this is a total non-event! But a lot of Macs are being sold on the back of this, from the eMac (cheap CRT all in one Mac, very much like the old iMac, but with a G4). Of course this also means that the SuperDrive won't appear in the iBook (no AltiVec).
Of course, you bring up another thing that requires AltiVec, FinalCut Pro RealTime Effects, again VERY important to Apple.
BLAST sells lots of Mac's sure you need to be a genetics researcher to need it, but in that field it's like MS-Office! Yeah, most people here won't care - but it's important to Apple - there are reasonable numbers of machines to be sold into this area, and it makes good marketing copy.
Actually I don't think they can (counter-sue) because the libel or slander was made as part of a legal claim (ironic).
I actually hope I'm wrong. This action seems bogus on every level, perhaps there is some legal recource. There should be.
Well yeah that's right, if you don't protect the information (and "not making the URL public" isn't protection) then you have to realise that people can look. I can't see what they're expecting to gain by this. All they have done is make the information MORE visible and highlight that they have NO CLUE.
Once this information was in the puiblic domain then I think their best policy would have been to do nothing, perhaps just issue the information with the best spin they could.
Taking them to court seems like a REALLY BAD idea.