>These are not Pro keyboards! We need a PRO keyboard >(and a multiple-button scroll mouse to boot) now.
While I am not entirely sure what you are missing to make it a "pro" keyboard, I am sure that Logitech or Kensington would be happy to have your business when it comes to either a different keyboard or a multiple-button scroll mouse.
Look, you can even buy them from the Apple store! Wasn't that nice of Apple?
>Where's the innovation here? The mouse *still* has only >one button (yeah, go ahead, start the button wars flame >game)
I fail to see how a multi-button mouse qualifies as innovation? Logitech and Kensington have been making them for years.
>while the mouse has rechargable batteries, neither the >kbd or mouse has a "dock" to plug in to so they can be >recharged easily.
The question is how long do those batteries last. If I have to replace them once every five years that they aren't rechargeable doesn't matter. If I have to replace them every 48 hours its more of a problem.
I *imagine* apple did this to cut down on costs and because rechargeable batteries--particularly when you leave them plugged in all of the time, which most people would with their mouse when they weren't using it--tend to lose their ability to hold a charge so they go for less and less time. I do find their choice a bit odd, but I'm waiting to hear how long these batteries last before I decide whether it was a good decision on Apple's part.
>And, at ~140.00USD MSRP (more if you don't have a >bluetooth-disabled Mac) for the Apple combo, it seems >like the Logitech bundle would be a better choice.
I think you mean bluetooth-*enabled*. That said, if you think that Logitech offers the better deal, buy logitech. You can pick up your peripherals from the Apple store.
Personally, I place a wireless mouse and keyboard very very low on my list of priorities. Something akin to ducks and chainsaws or somesuch. Although, I honestly don't know, are the logitech keyboard's communications encrypted?
>Since Apple used bluetooth, they could have at least done >something extra with the kbd (like add a mini-tablet area >or speakers or *something*).
To what end? Who would those extras appeal to and for what price?
When I got this machine, speed was not the reason why I purchased it. Performance was part of the reason why I chose it over an iBook--which I am pleased to report it is much faster than my old iBook (with its 8MB graphics card and lack of Altivec, which I needed) ever dreamed to be--but you could have made it significantly faster beyond that and it would not have held more than marginal appeal over this model.
I purchased it for the form factor. The weight and the size. 802.11g and Bluetooth were both positive points in its favor but the true "killer app" here was that it was smaller than my iBook and I needed a small laptop.
Apple looked at their target market and said "who is buying each of these systems and why? How much does performance matter to them compared to size and weight?"
"Odd electronics should not be allowed as a carry on. They should go in a shielded luggage compartment, or be required to be in a shielded case to prevent such attempts."
Odd Electronics would include laptops, cellphones, game boys, and anything else which could conceivably carry such a chip. Then we have to extend it further: can we detect such a device? What is required to detect such a device? How big would such a device have to be and what level of density would it have to be at?
Then we ask how much damage said thing could do and how complicated it would be to get one aboard without anyone noticing today, combined with how complicated it would be to manufacture one.
Seriously. We aren't talking about an EMP here, we are talking about something which will cause interference but isn't capable of bringing down the plane so long as a competent pilot is at the helm.
A degree of paranoia is a good thing, but you are being slightly excessive. Whenever you encounter a threat you have to ask if the cost of implementing the defense is worth preventing what you are trying to stop (as well as whether those defenses are effective).
In short:
If cost(defenses) + cost(damages_after_defense_implemented) * risk(after_defense_implemented) > cost(damages_without_defense) * risk(without_defense) then it isn't worth implementing.
(yes, you can factor human lives and whatever into this, it doesn't affect the equation).
Re:Hypocrites - Try a Google and you'll understand
on
Beatles Bite Apple
·
· Score: 1
Try Apple Records instead of Apple Music and see how many are about Apple.
The guy keeps an ongoing watch for the news articles and makes legal commentary wrt what's happening. He tends to be very insightful and makes good points.
You can also enable root from the GUI by opening/Applications/Utilities/Netinfo Manager From there, go under the "Security" menu, authenticate and then select "Enable Root User."
If you prefer the command line then "sudo passwd root" should do the trick and is somewhat more elegant:-)
"The G5 is NOT going to excel at Altivec optimised code, the G4 will remain the Altivec champ until IBM puts the kind of Altivec resources onto the 970 that Moto put onto the 745x series. "
Another poster has already mentioned the execution sterilization that occurs thanks to optimizations that worked quite well in the G4 (vec_dst et al), but there is another point on this issue that needs to be mentioned.
Even if the G5 performs slightly slower than the G4e with AltiVec enhanced code on an individual, it has the potential to be much much faster overall simply due to the architecture. One of the main problems with AltiVec on the G4e currently is that many of the apps that take advantage of it are/bandwidth limited/. The architecture that the G5 is based on is radically faster when it comes to things like loading from main memory or making optimal use of both processors.
Yes, if we want to compare a Pentium4 Xeon or a Opteron, and even in comparisons such as this, we have to take the results with a (largish) grain of salt and realize that the PowerMac G5 *will* perform better in these tests given time for further optimizations--using xlc/xlf (which/preliminary/ reports show for the Jet3D benchmark will raise the score for a single 2 GHz G5 to around three times that of 2.66 GHz P4), recompiling in 64-bit, a system which is better optimized to take advantage of the processor, etc.
This goes for everything.
OTOH, if you are thinking of upgrading/now/ from a dual-processor G4 to either a single or a dual processor G5 the current benchmarks are more relevant. Otherwise, you are absolutely right, when it comes to benchmarks we still are premature.
That being said, it is fun to look for the results:-)
". The code is optimized for the mac. My friends P4 2.8ghz is only a little faster than my G4 733. Apple took advantage of this for years and had test results based on photoshop."
Your working with outdated information--by about 7 years.
The code is optimized for both platforms very heavily. A large portion of Photoshop's userbase is on Wintel machines and they were also paid (by Intel) awhile back to optimize their filters for Intel processors. Presumably they care about performance and keep both versions highly optimized. Saying that it is "more highly" optimized for the Mac is a fallacy--it hasn't even had more time to become optimized for the Mac, due to processor changes. The optimizations for the G3 and G4 are/somewhat/ different than those for prior PowerPC processors and the optimizations that took place for the G4 (such as using vec_dst in the AltiVec optimized portions of the code) actually work against the G5.
I also heard a rumor, though I am not sure that it is true, that Photoshop would offload its interface to the graphics card for display on its own and that, with the introduction of QE, Photoshop was effectively rendering its display elements twice. This may be completely unsubstantiated though:-)
While in general your point is good--that apps which are highly optimized for one platform are not necessarily highly optimized for another--Photoshop is a bad example.
True, but it is entirely possible that they are building this for more than just to say "we have a computer on the top list and you all sux0r5". They are depending on the dual-floating point units on the G5 for LINPACK and AltiVec for whatever else they put it to.
1) As others have mentioned, AltiVec and the dual-FPU on the G5 probably were significant factors in this decision. The Earth Simulator is comprised of processors that are very slow at most tasks, but are designed to scream at vector-optimized code and, honestly, AltiVec makes SSE2 and 3Dnow! look like toys by comparison.
2) You would be hard pressed to configure a dual-opteron or dual-Xeon which could trounce the G5 in terms of speed and cost significantly less. MacOS X server also costs less than any version of windows (pure capital cost here for an 1100 seat license), which may also have factored in.
3) My guess is that they have struck a fairly significant deal with Apple (even so low as Apple provides them at cost, though I doubt its quite that low) in exchange for some degree of publicity when this thing is built.
"Um... if your a skilled pc builder then $800 is easy to build for a quality system"
Oh, I agree, you can build a "quality system" for $800, but not one that will compete with a dual 2 GHz G5, which is what the poster I was criticizing was specifying. Be my guest, talk about building an $800 system, but don't think that it is
As to overclocking: no thank you! I am good inside of a case and with electronics (I've even cut my share of PCBs), but I *like* having an intact warranty on all of my components.
" Also Prove to me that you can run the apple system at ddr400 with eight memory slots... Most motherboards have a hard time running at that spec after filling 3 slots."
Here is a better challenge. Tell me why you think it would have any difficulty doing so. This motherboard is designed explicitly for 8 RAM slots to be filled two at a time. There is nothing in the technical specs which would indicate why there would be a problem and no reports have come in yet indicating difficulties.
Please, be my guest and spec out a (comparable!) dual-opteron or a dual-Xenon system with AGP 8x Pro, 1 GHz FSB, 3 PCI-X slots, FireWire, USB, Optical Audio, SATA, DDR400 (8 slots, 2 GB DIMM support), ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, a 56k modem, AirPort Antenna, Bluetooth, a spacious aluminum case, quality power unit, and a CD-RW/DVD-R system for $3000. Don't forget the operating system as well (sure, you can compile Linux from the ground up for it, but I consider my time to be valuable).
That is what you get if you buy a mac for $3000.
If you aren't willing to spend $3000 on a computer, you aren't going to get the highest-end mac that you can buy. Period. Yet that is what you seem to be specifying.
Because most of us have the brain cells to look it up if we are interested in what else is out there, and obviously there are more games out there considering how long the mac platform has been around.
> it is quite obvious the 1.6 g5 is the slowest machine in >this test.
Only if you average all of the scores (geometric mean, of course).
>Who cares if it has the 2nd most benchmark wins?
I would venture to guess those people who use predominantly those benchmarks?
If you don't use rotate 90, lens flare, pointelize, etc. but make heavy use of Gaussian Blur 1 (and it isn't shabby in the rest of them), Despeckle, RGB-CYMK, Reduce Size, or Polar Coordinates, then it really shines.
> Try adding up all the times to get a better picture.
This is quite possibly the worst way of getting a picture of how a system performs that you could do. It weights *very* heavily on those tasks which take longer for whatever reason. Indexed geometric means are much more reliable ways of comparing performance if you are going to do it over several tests.
Most interesting is that The G5 seems to perform extremely well on a few tests and very very poorly on a few tests. This could easily be because Photoshop7, even with the plug-in, is not yet fully optimized for the G5. I would find this likely, seeing as when the plugin was released and its relative size compared to photoshop. It is the only platform, for this test, where the first 12 tests performed radically different than the last 9--the first 12 being selected arbitrarily based on someone telling me that those were the ones that he used in real life.
I would say to look to Photoshop 8 for the most significant performance gains--such as a complete recompile for the G5, removal of all of the vec_dst() commands everywhere, etc.
Also I've heard a couple anecdotes that people's computers have been running photoshop faster when they installed panther development code. Panther should also be more heavily optimized to take advantage of the G5's, so it should be interesting to see the results.
Finally, the PSBench test that was run was on a 50 MB file. The one from Apple, which scored so well, was on a 600 MB file. 50 MB files don't stress the pipelines in any of the systems, but a 600 MB file almost certainly would. For that kind of work the G5 would rapidly close the gap in those areas where it is lagging, simply because of the size of its pipes. The G5 is going to absolutely shine when a lot of data transfer with the processor is required.
Except that programming is also about the tools that you use to create those programs.
A kid who learned on the Visual C++ IDE and nothing else and who has been thrown into a unix environment is going to freak. Why? Because even if he was only taught how to program ANSI C++ and could pick up a new language in his sleep, he still is not prepared to use the tools required to compile those languages.
Things like makefiles, gcc, VisualAge, etc. From experience its a hell of a lot easier to go from a command line to an IDE than it is to go from an IDE to a command line.
Once you are familiar with the class of tools then you can move on just fine and be expected to pick up other tools of that nature relatively quickly (e.g., once you know how to use gcc its not hard to get used to VisualAge; if you can use ProjectBuilder you can probably pick up the differences for Metrowerks or the Visual C++ IDE relatively quickly; debuggers all do similar things; etc).
"Oh, and for the record, anyone who has run OS X 10.2 on a B/W G3 would know better than saying they run "just fine". Yeah, they run just fine if you login to a text console."
Try upgrading the RAM.
10.2 runs "just fine" on a Snow generation iMac with 640 MB of RAM.
Slashdot Mirror
>These are not Pro keyboards! We need a PRO keyboard
>(and a multiple-button scroll mouse to boot) now.
While I am not entirely sure what you are missing to make it a "pro" keyboard, I am sure that Logitech or Kensington would be happy to have your business when it comes to either a different keyboard or a multiple-button scroll mouse.
Look, you can even buy them from the Apple store! Wasn't that nice of Apple?
>Where's the innovation here? The mouse *still* has only
>one button (yeah, go ahead, start the button wars flame
>game)
I fail to see how a multi-button mouse qualifies as innovation? Logitech and Kensington have been making them for years.
>while the mouse has rechargable batteries, neither the
>kbd or mouse has a "dock" to plug in to so they can be
>recharged easily.
The question is how long do those batteries last. If I have to replace them once every five years that they aren't rechargeable doesn't matter. If I have to replace them every 48 hours its more of a problem.
I *imagine* apple did this to cut down on costs and because rechargeable batteries--particularly when you leave them plugged in all of the time, which most people would with their mouse when they weren't using it--tend to lose their ability to hold a charge so they go for less and less time. I do find their choice a bit odd, but I'm waiting to hear how long these batteries last before I decide whether it was a good decision on Apple's part.
>And, at ~140.00USD MSRP (more if you don't have a
>bluetooth-disabled Mac) for the Apple combo, it seems
>like the Logitech bundle would be a better choice.
I think you mean bluetooth-*enabled*. That said, if you think that Logitech offers the better deal, buy logitech. You can pick up your peripherals from the Apple store.
Personally, I place a wireless mouse and keyboard very very low on my list of priorities. Something akin to ducks and chainsaws or somesuch. Although, I honestly don't know, are the logitech keyboard's communications encrypted?
>Since Apple used bluetooth, they could have at least done
>something extra with the kbd (like add a mini-tablet area
>or speakers or *something*).
To what end? Who would those extras appeal to and for what price?
As a note: I'm typing this on a 12" PowerBook.
When I got this machine, speed was not the reason why I purchased it. Performance was part of the reason why I chose it over an iBook--which I am pleased to report it is much faster than my old iBook (with its 8MB graphics card and lack of Altivec, which I needed) ever dreamed to be--but you could have made it significantly faster beyond that and it would not have held more than marginal appeal over this model.
I purchased it for the form factor. The weight and the size. 802.11g and Bluetooth were both positive points in its favor but the true "killer app" here was that it was smaller than my iBook and I needed a small laptop.
Apple looked at their target market and said "who is buying each of these systems and why? How much does performance matter to them compared to size and weight?"
"Odd electronics should not be allowed as a carry on. They should go in a shielded luggage compartment, or be required to be in a shielded case to prevent such attempts."
Odd Electronics would include laptops, cellphones, game boys, and anything else which could conceivably carry such a chip. Then we have to extend it further: can we detect such a device? What is required to detect such a device? How big would such a device have to be and what level of density would it have to be at?
Then we ask how much damage said thing could do and how complicated it would be to get one aboard without anyone noticing today, combined with how complicated it would be to manufacture one.
Seriously. We aren't talking about an EMP here, we are talking about something which will cause interference but isn't capable of bringing down the plane so long as a competent pilot is at the helm.
A degree of paranoia is a good thing, but you are being slightly excessive. Whenever you encounter a threat you have to ask if the cost of implementing the defense is worth preventing what you are trying to stop (as well as whether those defenses are effective).
In short:
If cost(defenses) + cost(damages_after_defense_implemented) * risk(after_defense_implemented) > cost(damages_without_defense) * risk(without_defense) then it isn't worth implementing.
(yes, you can factor human lives and whatever into this, it doesn't affect the equation).
Try Apple Records instead of Apple Music and see how many are about Apple.
Can be found here:
Lamlaw.com
The guy keeps an ongoing watch for the news articles and makes legal commentary wrt what's happening. He tends to be very insightful and makes good points.
You can also enable root from the GUI by opening /Applications/Utilities/Netinfo Manager From there, go under the "Security" menu, authenticate and then select "Enable Root User."
:-)
If you prefer the command line then "sudo passwd root" should do the trick and is somewhat more elegant
The G5 supports PCI-X.
"The G5 is NOT going to excel at Altivec optimised code, the G4 will remain the Altivec champ until IBM puts the kind of Altivec resources onto the 970 that Moto put onto the 745x series. "
/bandwidth limited/. The architecture that the G5 is based on is radically faster when it comes to things like loading from main memory or making optimal use of both processors.
Another poster has already mentioned the execution sterilization that occurs thanks to optimizations that worked quite well in the G4 (vec_dst et al), but there is another point on this issue that needs to be mentioned.
Even if the G5 performs slightly slower than the G4e with AltiVec enhanced code on an individual, it has the potential to be much much faster overall simply due to the architecture. One of the main problems with AltiVec on the G4e currently is that many of the apps that take advantage of it are
Yes, if we want to compare a Pentium4 Xeon or a Opteron, and even in comparisons such as this, we have to take the results with a (largish) grain of salt and realize that the PowerMac G5 *will* perform better in these tests given time for further optimizations--using xlc/xlf (which /preliminary/ reports show for the Jet3D benchmark will raise the score for a single 2 GHz G5 to around three times that of 2.66 GHz P4), recompiling in 64-bit, a system which is better optimized to take advantage of the processor, etc.
/now/ from a dual-processor G4 to either a single or a dual processor G5 the current benchmarks are more relevant. Otherwise, you are absolutely right, when it comes to benchmarks we still are premature.
:-)
This goes for everything.
OTOH, if you are thinking of upgrading
That being said, it is fun to look for the results
". The code is optimized for the mac. My friends P4 2.8ghz is only a little faster than my G4 733. Apple took advantage of this for years and had test results based on photoshop."
/somewhat/ different than those for prior PowerPC processors and the optimizations that took place for the G4 (such as using vec_dst in the AltiVec optimized portions of the code) actually work against the G5.
:-)
Your working with outdated information--by about 7 years.
The code is optimized for both platforms very heavily. A large portion of Photoshop's userbase is on Wintel machines and they were also paid (by Intel) awhile back to optimize their filters for Intel processors. Presumably they care about performance and keep both versions highly optimized. Saying that it is "more highly" optimized for the Mac is a fallacy--it hasn't even had more time to become optimized for the Mac, due to processor changes. The optimizations for the G3 and G4 are
I also heard a rumor, though I am not sure that it is true, that Photoshop would offload its interface to the graphics card for display on its own and that, with the introduction of QE, Photoshop was effectively rendering its display elements twice. This may be completely unsubstantiated though
While in general your point is good--that apps which are highly optimized for one platform are not necessarily highly optimized for another--Photoshop is a bad example.
True, but it is entirely possible that they are building this for more than just to say "we have a computer on the top list and you all sux0r5". They are depending on the dual-floating point units on the G5 for LINPACK and AltiVec for whatever else they put it to.
Without more details its hard to tell
1) As others have mentioned, AltiVec and the dual-FPU on the G5 probably were significant factors in this decision. The Earth Simulator is comprised of processors that are very slow at most tasks, but are designed to scream at vector-optimized code and, honestly, AltiVec makes SSE2 and 3Dnow! look like toys by comparison.
2) You would be hard pressed to configure a dual-opteron or dual-Xeon which could trounce the G5 in terms of speed and cost significantly less. MacOS X server also costs less than any version of windows (pure capital cost here for an 1100 seat license), which may also have factored in.
3) My guess is that they have struck a fairly significant deal with Apple (even so low as Apple provides them at cost, though I doubt its quite that low) in exchange for some degree of publicity when this thing is built.
"Please desist in pretending your Mac is a sports car. It's a plastic box."
Well, if you have a G5 or one of the new powerbooks (12" or 17"), its an aluminum box.
>Now how would overclocking void any warranties?
Tell you what, call ATI up and ask them.
" I looked at the specs at the apple site and the dual g5 only supports 4 slots. That makes more sense for a desktop cpu."
No, the 1.6 GHz only supports 4 slots.
" The dual processor system has eight DIMM slots...:"
http://www.apple.com/powermac/architecture.html
Look under heading 5.
"The dual processor system can hold
up to eight DIMMs for up to 8GB of memory."
The latter comes from the technical overview.
"
Eight DIMM slots supporting up to 8GB of main memory"
From the techsheet:
http://www.apple.com/powermac/printversion.html
"Um... if your a skilled pc builder then $800 is easy to build for a quality system"
Oh, I agree, you can build a "quality system" for $800, but not one that will compete with a dual 2 GHz G5, which is what the poster I was criticizing was specifying. Be my guest, talk about building an $800 system, but don't think that it is
As to overclocking: no thank you! I am good inside of a case and with electronics (I've even cut my share of PCBs), but I *like* having an intact warranty on all of my components.
" Also Prove to me that you can run the apple system at ddr400 with eight memory slots... Most motherboards have a hard time running at that spec after filling 3 slots."
Here is a better challenge. Tell me why you think it would have any difficulty doing so. This motherboard is designed explicitly for 8 RAM slots to be filled two at a time. There is nothing in the technical specs which would indicate why there would be a problem and no reports have come in yet indicating difficulties.
Simply put.
Please, be my guest and spec out a (comparable!) dual-opteron or a dual-Xenon system with AGP 8x Pro, 1 GHz FSB, 3 PCI-X slots, FireWire, USB, Optical Audio, SATA, DDR400 (8 slots, 2 GB DIMM support), ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, a 56k modem, AirPort Antenna, Bluetooth, a spacious aluminum case, quality power unit, and a CD-RW/DVD-R system for $3000. Don't forget the operating system as well (sure, you can compile Linux from the ground up for it, but I consider my time to be valuable).
That is what you get if you buy a mac for $3000.
If you aren't willing to spend $3000 on a computer, you aren't going to get the highest-end mac that you can buy. Period. Yet that is what you seem to be specifying.
>> Obviously the list goes on
>Why?
Because most of us have the brain cells to look it up if we are interested in what else is out there, and obviously there are more games out there considering how long the mac platform has been around.
http://www.apple.com/games/
> it is quite obvious the 1.6 g5 is the slowest machine in
>this test.
Only if you average all of the scores (geometric mean, of course).
>Who cares if it has the 2nd most benchmark wins?
I would venture to guess those people who use predominantly those benchmarks?
If you don't use rotate 90, lens flare, pointelize, etc. but make heavy use of Gaussian Blur 1 (and it isn't shabby in the rest of them), Despeckle, RGB-CYMK, Reduce Size, or Polar Coordinates, then it really shines.
> Try adding up all the times to get a better picture.
This is quite possibly the worst way of getting a picture of how a system performs that you could do. It weights *very* heavily on those tasks which take longer for whatever reason. Indexed geometric means are much more reliable ways of comparing performance if you are going to do it over several tests.
Most interesting is that The G5 seems to perform extremely well on a few tests and very very poorly on a few tests. This could easily be because Photoshop7, even with the plug-in, is not yet fully optimized for the G5. I would find this likely, seeing as when the plugin was released and its relative size compared to photoshop. It is the only platform, for this test, where the first 12 tests performed radically different than the last 9--the first 12 being selected arbitrarily based on someone telling me that those were the ones that he used in real life.
I would say to look to Photoshop 8 for the most significant performance gains--such as a complete recompile for the G5, removal of all of the vec_dst() commands everywhere, etc.
Also I've heard a couple anecdotes that people's computers have been running photoshop faster when they installed panther development code. Panther should also be more heavily optimized to take advantage of the G5's, so it should be interesting to see the results.
Finally, the PSBench test that was run was on a 50 MB file. The one from Apple, which scored so well, was on a 600 MB file. 50 MB files don't stress the pipelines in any of the systems, but a 600 MB file almost certainly would. For that kind of work the G5 would rapidly close the gap in those areas where it is lagging, simply because of the size of its pipes. The G5 is going to absolutely shine when a lot of data transfer with the processor is required.
Except that programming is also about the tools that you use to create those programs.
A kid who learned on the Visual C++ IDE and nothing else and who has been thrown into a unix environment is going to freak. Why? Because even if he was only taught how to program ANSI C++ and could pick up a new language in his sleep, he still is not prepared to use the tools required to compile those languages.
Things like makefiles, gcc, VisualAge, etc. From experience its a hell of a lot easier to go from a command line to an IDE than it is to go from an IDE to a command line.
Once you are familiar with the class of tools then you can move on just fine and be expected to pick up other tools of that nature relatively quickly (e.g., once you know how to use gcc its not hard to get used to VisualAge; if you can use ProjectBuilder you can probably pick up the differences for Metrowerks or the Visual C++ IDE relatively quickly; debuggers all do similar things; etc).
Yes, a version of it is.
[ravensroost:~] raven% bash
bash-2.05a$
I'd agree with most of this except for the G3 CPU Upgrade. Running new OS software has always been a bit iffy with these.
RAM should be the first step, followed by a new video card.
No, maximum.
"Oh, and for the record, anyone who has run OS X 10.2 on a B/W G3 would know better than saying they run "just fine". Yeah, they run just fine if you login to a text console."
Try upgrading the RAM.
10.2 runs "just fine" on a Snow generation iMac with 640 MB of RAM.