The Tables written up by the military are based on a young seaman who is in good condition, using normal air, with no known medical conditions, doing exactly the depth we are talking about for exactly the times we are talking about.
Tell me one diver who actually does that? I know and associate regularly with rescue divers, dive masters, and a crop of other experienced divers--none of them are young, fit seamen in the military form of good condition and none of us do exactly the depths we say we will--some err shallow, some are a few feet deep.
It is also based on averages and says nothing about how you will personally react.
I was talking to my Advanced Open Water (PADI) instructor the other year (long overdue, I probably have over 100 dives) and he had a woman he was training at one point who was doing just the open water tests for the basic certification. Nothing deeper than about 20 feet all day, did everything correctly, didn't stay too long, ate right, wasn't overly stressed, &c. Never left the "A" category on a PADI dive table.
She got bent.
Furhter, we don't know that absorbtion is the same on repeated dives. We don't even know quite how absorbtion works (though we have a few equations that help). If you do more than 2 or 3 dives, throw your computer out since it is worthless for that day--the tables are no better in this regard.
The point is this: whenever you dive, you are taking a risk. We have tables and computers which lend to us a false sense of security but there are no guaruntees. You can stay about 98+% confident diving within the tables, you can stay in about the same range diving on most computers, but you never, ever even approach 100% confidence any more closely.
Computers track your actual depth--not the one you planned (whether it be deeper or shallower). Thus they can actually be far more accurate and still let you get your dives in without a difficulty. They keep a record of useful information--their best guess at how much nitrogen you've absorbed (see above, its a guess), your maximum depth, bottom time, and a variety of other things for you. This is conveinant more than anything else and, while they may not be as conservative as dive tables, they do increase my bottom time while still keeping me in that range of "as certain as anything else."
You throw the dice every single time you step into the water. Don't think that tables are any better or worse than the computer--they both lend a false sense of security.
"I do believe by 2005 when Longhorn is out, Apple will have made amazing OS X gains, heck it might even be OS XI by then, but I do NOT buy first to market wins."
1) Most people don't care if it sounds bad on $2,000 speakers, we don't have them.
2) Have you actually *listened* to the AAC files? I have found only a handful of encoding fragments and most of those were *really* minor. On the all, using headphones and not being an audiophile, I either can't tell the difference or can barely tell.
3) There is a key on your keyboard that is severely underutilized. It is called the "return" key and you can locate it beneath the \ key and to the right of the ' key on most keyboards.
2) Recognizability (a lot of the people who would normally consider emusic an option are now going to be looking much more closely at Apple).
3) 128 kbps MP3s sound horrible, 128 kbps AACs that have been ripped/from the masters/ sound CD quality (at least to me).
4) The DRM included is pretty nonrestrictive unless you own more than 3 modern macs. I can offload it to as many ipods as I like, burn it to as many CDs as I like (shifting songs a bit every ten burns, but I can still burn all of the same songs). About the only thing I can't do with it is host it on a p2p network.
To preface this: I am not a professional listener in any capacity.
I have been informally comparing with 256+ kbps (up to 320 kbps, some are VBR, some aren't) mp3s with 128 kbps AAC songs from AppleMusic and 192 kbps AAC songs that I ripped myself. The quality difference *is* noticable--the AAC is a hell of a lot better in both cases than the MP3.
I personally can't tell the difference between the 192 AAC I ripped and the 128 AAC from AppleMusic, though I haven't done a side-by-side comparison of the same song yet.
"Do you seriously believe the bands are going to see $.10 out of that buck we send Apple for that song?"
Do you seriously believe they won't?
"And yes, I do know something about the technology involved in a professional recording studio. I know that it is all being replaced big-time by computers, and that the recording studio itself is easily built out of soundproofing board that goes for $5 per eight-by-four panel."
One word that you are obviously not familiar with: Acoustics. IIRC, soundproofing board sucks for this, as a rule.
As other posters have pointed out: Microphones (and other Microphone acoutrements--mic preamps, &c) are a *big* issue and a good A->D converter that won't introduce signal bias just adds to the cost.
The computer is another cost, we aren't exactly talking about a $500 bargain system that can do such.
Not to mention a professional who can competently use software such as Pro Tools.
". I never once bought an album because of the advertising"
Good for you.
" In case you haven't noticed, the tracks that are making the rounds on the p2p systems are doing very well without it."
Actually I would say that advertising and radio exposure are exactly why many of these songs "make the rounds."
"Yes, I see from your post history that you're a Mac zealot. As thin-skinned a bunch as I've ever encountered (and I used to be one so I know.)"
Actually it had more to do with rampant stupidity on your part.
"If you price the song for a dime, more people end up buying it."
Yes, but how many more once you cut out advertising? Oh yes, theres another capital expense.
I posted how many so that 5 people can make $20,000 each *excluding* capital and upkeep costs--not even going into traveling expenses.
Give me *any* evidence that this would make it worthwhile for bands to do.
"That said, the studios are due for a little democratization as well, what with all of this new technology we have access to today."
Do you know anything about the technology involved or what a professional can do with the right tools and how much such a professional can reasonably ask for their time?
"Especially today, when the industry should be trying to wean kids off of downloading tracks for free. A dime a song had a chance of doing that. I doubt a buck a song will."
A dime/song doesn't earn back *the capital investment* and I *very* much doubt that it would *provide a sallary* on top of that. Thing otherwise? Then demonstrate it. Give me numbers, not fantasies.
"And selling 1437143 songs on an Internet where there are a billion downloaders or more isn't the mean feat you portray it to be"
Oh really. You who are the expert on this?
"(So I get on your enemies list for this post? Talk about a thin skin.)"
No, I've had you on my enemies list for a *long* time dealing with another argument we had.
"You can't. They deliberately prevent you from buying two tracks from the album, just to get you to pay an inflated price."
You obviously aren't familiar with the concept of "contracts" and "business." That was the deal they struck with the record labels, C'est la vie. The vast majority of their albums seem to be offered at a discount.
"Soon we'll see certain singles going for $1.50"
Maybe, Maybe not. I wouldn't assume as much and the evidence in this regard is not exactly what I would call damning.
"Fuck the studios. The Internet has made them obsolete. We don't need them. "
By studios do you mean recording studios? They would hardly be what I call "obsolete" unless all you listen to is low-quality crap from garage bands. Ever hear the difference between something professional recorded and something done in someone's basement? The difference is what makes it worth the price.
" The bands don't need them either. Let the bands sell their music direct on the Internet, let other web sites serve as portals to those band sites, and then let's do this dance again, this time without the fucking studios.
Charge a dime per song."
Truly you have a dizzying grasp of economics. I suggest you go out there and found your own company to do this right now and see how much you make.
"The artist sees the whole dime, and not only that, more people would pay."
Except for the cost of hosting the internet connection and the downpipe bandwidth, the cut for the credit card companies, the cost of the equipment that can make a halfway decent recording (you do remember that you are advocating cuting out recording studios?), someone to maintain the website, and a thousand other things that each amount to a piece of capital that 10 cents won't make up for by any stretch of the imagination.
Lets assume that a 'net connection at $50/month is sufficient (it isn't, but heh) and they do the webpage themselves. The group sees 7 cents on each trade because of the credit card cut and lets say that they have 5 members.
Now lets also assume that they don't have to buy their insturments or any recording equipment and that upkeep for these is free (bull).
Now lets say that each one wants to make $20,000/year. That's 1437143 songs that they have to sell online. Remember that I have excluded *all* capital costs and upkeep, time, travel, and recording fees.
Your grasp of economics is frightening.
You do realize that some people are trying to make their living off of doing this?
Only one USB port, no Ethernet card, an/external/ CD drive (which would not be added to the weight), and a processor that can't compete with a G3 at equal MHz (and it has less L2 cache and fewer MHz), for a similar price, and it weighs 2.9 lbs (it's travel weight is 3.7 lbs).
Oh, and it maxes out at 256 MB of RAM and has a maximum resolution of 800x600.
This is a better deal than a iBook why? Not even mentioning the 12" G4.
"The rather large difference is that Dell's el-cheapo mouse doesn't have *one button*"
Maybe because many MS Windows programs *require* a multi-button mouse simply to use? (We aren't even talking about efficiently here). MacOS X is not fundamentally flawed and only requires 1 button for 90% of its userbase to use it effectively and efficiently.
Incidentally, I should mention that Apple's Pro Mouse is not exactly a "bottom of the barrel" offering, unlike Dell's standard mouse.
"but the forced purchasing of a crap mouse is not cool."
"You can get a 802.11b card for your Dell and still come out less then $700. On price watch they're only $29."
Ever see the external antenna on one of these things break? I have.
The iBook's is built in.
"And besides, I prefer smaller laptops."
Mine is a little over an inch thick and smaller in profile than a piece of paper. It weighs 4.6 lbs (including the battery) and is as full featured as they come--with 2 USB ports, built in 802.11g, a firewire 400 port, and the ability to hook up to an external monitor. Not even mentioning the 60 GB HD and that I regularly get over 3 hours of battery life out of it.
Apple's are too big? If you want anything smaller you are no longer looking at a laptop, but are going to start trading features common to most computers.
1) Compare and contrast the x86-64 assembly and the PPC 970 Assembly. This is *nontrivial* and we are talking about a tremendous slowdown.
2) The PPC line has more registers. This means caching, which is *slow*. Even assuming full use of the registers, a good scheduling algorithm, and lots of L1 cache this is going to *hurt* performance. Even 50% speed emmulation is too slow if you want people to have a reasonable chance of switching.
3) AltiVec support. SSE/MMX is a completely different beast from AltiVec and Apple has put far too much emphasis into marketing AltiVec at this point. Also, having AltiVec, it is a hell of a lot easier to work with than SSE.
4) Testing and quality control. 'nuff said.
>Then why haven't they? Traditional processors like the G4 >need special chipsets to hit 4-way. Opteron doesn't.
Lack of a market to support development costs.
You can parallel a series of systems easily enough that I think they just concluded individuals looking for a four processor were more likely to get two dual rackmounts than to actually bother with the additional cost.
The G4 supports multiple cores as well. It all comes down to development cost versus how much they expect to make.
>In your humble opinion.;-)
You are the one advocating that Apple support two platforms.
>No, it means that software vendors should be strongly >encouraged (or forced) to supply fat binaries for the two ' >architectures...and in the commercial software world, this means that they have to be thoroughly tested and reviewed on both platforms, and optimized separately for both platforms (particularly if you mean for your software to be used on both), maintained on both platforms, synched with the hardware/drivers for both platforms (heh), and then supported on both platforms.
Brilliant.
Do you even realize why the 68k-PPC transition worked or any of the difficulties that were involved?
>Intentionally stupid, perhaps.
They are making money in a failing economy, have good economic outlooks, and you call them stupid?
>This limits their market tremendously, since many large >government and private organizations won't buy single- >source equipment, period.
Big fish, little pond.
Little fish, big pond.
Take your pick: either-or.
>or b) Apple can't manufacture enough to meet demand. >White box MacOS X boxes would solve these problems >nicely...and increase their development costs by an order of magnitude trying to support so many additional pieces of third party hardware, it would also through hardware-software integration out of the window.
>Think Different.
First you have to Think before you can Think Different: consider the implications of what you are proposing, what it would mean from a marketing standpoint, and the difficulties involved.
Do you know anything about emmulation and the difficulties involved with this or are you just running off on this one?
" and Apple could immediately offer 4-CPU systems, which it has never had"
IIRC they could offer that now with the G4 and they can *certainly* offer it with the PowerPC 970.
"I also feel Apple should stick with PPC on the notebook side. "
Credability is *gone*.
This would mean that they would need an Opteron Emmulator on the mac, or else this would horribly schism the market.
Nevermind, it would horribly schism the market either way--you do realize that emmulation between these is not going to be a walk in the park? Further, getting people to support fat binaries, such as what happened in the 68k switchover, or to recompile and/or *test* for two separate platforms is not going to happen in most development companies?
"f PPC 980 (or whatever) turns out to be a big win over Opteron2, it's not that big of a deal to switch back."
You've hit rock-bottom in your credability and started digging.
" if they choose to keep their (poor in my mind) current business model"
You do realize that they are turning a profit in a failing economy and that they are horribly undervalued at the moment?
"If Apple chooses to take that approach, it won't solve some of the bigger problems regarding Apple hardware. For instance, Apple being a single-source supplie"
You *do* realize that this is intentional on their part, right?
"and also limited hardware availability at times."
I generally don't notice this. I plugged in a wireless--two-button--mouse into an iBook the other day that the PC crowd had just been using for their presentation and it just worked.
" Regardless, Opteron looks like a very good option."
Only if you completely don't understand the way Apple works as a business.
While I appreciate your point, your math is way way off.
The original poster:
"Apples market share could go up 10x overnight"
Not by 10 people, but an order of magnitude--the original poster is way off in this assertion, but let's run with it for the moment. Let's also work with raw numbers because I don't know the number of people who currently own a computer off the top of my head (it also doesn't affect calculations, so long as we are consistent).
Thus, lets say that 1 million people currently are using MacOS X (yes, I know that this is low--but it makes math easy). This means that, for their marketshare to go up "10x overnight" 9 million people have to purchase MacOS X.
9 million * $129 = $1.161e+09 > $1 billion dollars.
Now, I still disagree with the original poster's assessment and think that your point is valid, but I had am impulsive need to correct the math:-)
"Open Source requires participation; coding and community."
Does it? I don't think I have ever joined in the R-Project's mailing lists, but I use their software regularly. I know a lot of Linux users who lack the time or the skill to be kernel hackers.
You/do/ realize that most of us choose a platform that/does what we want it to/ and/works for us/ and not for religious reasons? For my purposes, Linux isn't ready for the desktop. If I joined the team, I could help it get ready, and in a matter of years, it might be with my help (it also might be without my help).
OTOH, I could just continue using my Mac and actually meet my deadlines and get my work done.
My spare time, incidentally, does go into an Open Source projects, either: The Swarm Project or Equation Service. You want me to start working on Linux now as well?
Slashdot Mirror
Neither do you--iTunes is comming to Windows later this year.
The Tables written up by the military are based on a young seaman who is in good condition, using normal air, with no known medical conditions, doing exactly the depth we are talking about for exactly the times we are talking about.
Tell me one diver who actually does that? I know and associate regularly with rescue divers, dive masters, and a crop of other experienced divers--none of them are young, fit seamen in the military form of good condition and none of us do exactly the depths we say we will--some err shallow, some are a few feet deep.
It is also based on averages and says nothing about how you will personally react.
I was talking to my Advanced Open Water (PADI) instructor the other year (long overdue, I probably have over 100 dives) and he had a woman he was training at one point who was doing just the open water tests for the basic certification. Nothing deeper than about 20 feet all day, did everything correctly, didn't stay too long, ate right, wasn't overly stressed, &c. Never left the "A" category on a PADI dive table.
She got bent.
Furhter, we don't know that absorbtion is the same on repeated dives. We don't even know quite how absorbtion works (though we have a few equations that help). If you do more than 2 or 3 dives, throw your computer out since it is worthless for that day--the tables are no better in this regard.
The point is this: whenever you dive, you are taking a risk. We have tables and computers which lend to us a false sense of security but there are no guaruntees. You can stay about 98+% confident diving within the tables, you can stay in about the same range diving on most computers, but you never, ever even approach 100% confidence any more closely.
Computers track your actual depth--not the one you planned (whether it be deeper or shallower). Thus they can actually be far more accurate and still let you get your dives in without a difficulty. They keep a record of useful information--their best guess at how much nitrogen you've absorbed (see above, its a guess), your maximum depth, bottom time, and a variety of other things for you. This is conveinant more than anything else and, while they may not be as conservative as dive tables, they do increase my bottom time while still keeping me in that range of "as certain as anything else."
You throw the dice every single time you step into the water. Don't think that tables are any better or worse than the computer--they both lend a false sense of security.
This reminds me of a statement I saw on /. a long time ago:
Python: Executable Pseudocode
Perl: Executable line-noise
You care to make this argument for cars?
When was the last time you personally put together your own car?
"I do believe by 2005 when Longhorn is out, Apple will have made amazing OS X gains, heck it might even be OS XI by then, but I do NOT buy first to market wins."
Ever study Increasing Returns or Market Lock-in?
"They need firewire,"
Got it. 2 Firewire ports.
"USB2"
Why? They have Firewire.
"256MB starting RAM"
http://macseek.com
Or you can just add it in their online store.
"and a good useable mouse, not a hockey puck."
Um, the Apple Mouse that comes with it ain't a hockey puck.
" DVD authoring would also be preferrable, but maybe not on the base model."
It is. Just not on the base model.
Of course, if we are upgrading for the base model, the one that is automatically equipped with a Superdrive has 256MB of RAM.
1) Most people don't care if it sounds bad on $2,000 speakers, we don't have them.
2) Have you actually *listened* to the AAC files? I have found only a handful of encoding fragments and most of those were *really* minor. On the all, using headphones and not being an audiophile, I either can't tell the difference or can barely tell.
3) There is a key on your keyboard that is severely underutilized. It is called the "return" key and you can locate it beneath the \ key and to the right of the ' key on most keyboards.
Apple has many advantages:
/from the masters/ sound CD quality (at least to me).
1) Selection and better support from the labels.
2) Recognizability (a lot of the people who would normally consider emusic an option are now going to be looking much more closely at Apple).
3) 128 kbps MP3s sound horrible, 128 kbps AACs that have been ripped
4) The DRM included is pretty nonrestrictive unless you own more than 3 modern macs. I can offload it to as many ipods as I like, burn it to as many CDs as I like (shifting songs a bit every ten burns, but I can still burn all of the same songs). About the only thing I can't do with it is host it on a p2p network.
5) Full integration with my music client.
To preface this: I am not a professional listener in any capacity.
I have been informally comparing with 256+ kbps (up to 320 kbps, some are VBR, some aren't) mp3s with 128 kbps AAC songs from AppleMusic and 192 kbps AAC songs that I ripped myself. The quality difference *is* noticable--the AAC is a hell of a lot better in both cases than the MP3.
I personally can't tell the difference between the 192 AAC I ripped and the 128 AAC from AppleMusic, though I haven't done a side-by-side comparison of the same song yet.
"Do you seriously believe the bands are going to see $.10 out of that buck we send Apple for that song?"
Do you seriously believe they won't?
"And yes, I do know something about the technology involved in a professional recording studio. I know that it is all being replaced big-time by computers, and that the recording studio itself is easily built out of soundproofing board that goes for $5 per eight-by-four panel."
One word that you are obviously not familiar with: Acoustics. IIRC, soundproofing board sucks for this, as a rule.
As other posters have pointed out: Microphones (and other Microphone acoutrements--mic preamps, &c) are a *big* issue and a good A->D converter that won't introduce signal bias just adds to the cost.
The computer is another cost, we aren't exactly talking about a $500 bargain system that can do such.
Not to mention a professional who can competently use software such as Pro Tools.
". I never once bought an album because of the advertising"
Good for you.
" In case you haven't noticed, the tracks that are making the rounds on the p2p systems are doing very well without it."
Actually I would say that advertising and radio exposure are exactly why many of these songs "make the rounds."
"Yes, I see from your post history that you're a Mac zealot. As thin-skinned a bunch as I've ever encountered (and I used to be one so I know.)"
Actually it had more to do with rampant stupidity on your part.
"If you price the song for a dime, more people end up buying it."
Yes, but how many more once you cut out advertising? Oh yes, theres another capital expense.
I posted how many so that 5 people can make $20,000 each *excluding* capital and upkeep costs--not even going into traveling expenses.
Give me *any* evidence that this would make it worthwhile for bands to do.
"That said, the studios are due for a little democratization as well, what with all of this new technology we have access to today."
Do you know anything about the technology involved or what a professional can do with the right tools and how much such a professional can reasonably ask for their time?
"Especially today, when the industry should be trying to wean kids off of downloading tracks for free. A dime a song had a chance of doing that. I doubt a buck a song will."
A dime/song doesn't earn back *the capital investment* and I *very* much doubt that it would *provide a sallary* on top of that. Thing otherwise? Then demonstrate it. Give me numbers, not fantasies.
"And selling 1437143 songs on an Internet where there are a billion downloaders or more isn't the mean feat you portray it to be"
Oh really. You who are the expert on this?
"(So I get on your enemies list for this post? Talk about a thin skin.)"
No, I've had you on my enemies list for a *long* time dealing with another argument we had.
"You can't. They deliberately prevent you from buying two tracks from the album, just to get you to pay an inflated price."
You obviously aren't familiar with the concept of "contracts" and "business." That was the deal they struck with the record labels, C'est la vie. The vast majority of their albums seem to be offered at a discount.
"Soon we'll see certain singles going for $1.50"
Maybe, Maybe not. I wouldn't assume as much and the evidence in this regard is not exactly what I would call damning.
"Fuck the studios. The Internet has made them obsolete. We don't need them. "
By studios do you mean recording studios? They would hardly be what I call "obsolete" unless all you listen to is low-quality crap from garage bands. Ever hear the difference between something professional recorded and something done in someone's basement? The difference is what makes it worth the price.
" The bands don't need them either. Let the bands sell their music direct on the Internet, let other web sites serve as portals to those band sites, and then let's do this dance again, this time without the fucking studios.
Charge a dime per song."
Truly you have a dizzying grasp of economics. I suggest you go out there and found your own company to do this right now and see how much you make.
"The artist sees the whole dime, and not only that, more people would pay."
Except for the cost of hosting the internet connection and the downpipe bandwidth, the cut for the credit card companies, the cost of the equipment that can make a halfway decent recording (you do remember that you are advocating cuting out recording studios?), someone to maintain the website, and a thousand other things that each amount to a piece of capital that 10 cents won't make up for by any stretch of the imagination.
Lets assume that a 'net connection at $50/month is sufficient (it isn't, but heh) and they do the webpage themselves. The group sees 7 cents on each trade because of the credit card cut and lets say that they have 5 members.
Now lets also assume that they don't have to buy their insturments or any recording equipment and that upkeep for these is free (bull).
Now lets say that each one wants to make $20,000/year. That's 1437143 songs that they have to sell online. Remember that I have excluded *all* capital costs and upkeep, time, travel, and recording fees.
Your grasp of economics is frightening.
You do realize that some people are trying to make their living off of doing this?
You beat me to it!
:-p
Just finishing up a degree and looking into getting into the workforce and actually having freetime
Now back to those three papers I have due by midnight...
You aren't allowed to pirate it and it actively keeps you from doing so.
This is kind of like arguing that deadbolts are more restrictive than latches.
" $0.99 per 128kb/sec song is overcharging."
It is only overcharging if no-one buys it.
Supply-and-demand.
All the trimmings?
/external/ CD drive (which would not be added to the weight), and a processor that can't compete with a G3 at equal MHz (and it has less L2 cache and fewer MHz), for a similar price, and it weighs 2.9 lbs (it's travel weight is 3.7 lbs).
Only one USB port, no Ethernet card, an
Oh, and it maxes out at 256 MB of RAM and has a maximum resolution of 800x600.
This is a better deal than a iBook why? Not even mentioning the 12" G4.
Welcome to /., you must be new here.
"The rather large difference is that Dell's el-cheapo mouse doesn't have *one button*"
Maybe because many MS Windows programs *require* a multi-button mouse simply to use? (We aren't even talking about efficiently here). MacOS X is not fundamentally flawed and only requires 1 button for 90% of its userbase to use it effectively and efficiently.
Incidentally, I should mention that Apple's Pro Mouse is not exactly a "bottom of the barrel" offering, unlike Dell's standard mouse.
"but the forced purchasing of a crap mouse is not cool."
Then buy a laptop.
"I can't afford to spend $1000 on a bottom of the range computer."
Is there a "bottom of the range porsche"?
Only when you compare to other Porsche cars.
Most of us care about value and what we will get out of our systems for the price we pay. Frankly Apple comes out in spades in that regard.
"You can get a 802.11b card for your Dell and still come out less then $700. On price watch they're only $29."
Ever see the external antenna on one of these things break? I have.
The iBook's is built in.
"And besides, I prefer smaller laptops."
Mine is a little over an inch thick and smaller in profile than a piece of paper. It weighs 4.6 lbs (including the battery) and is as full featured as they come--with 2 USB ports, built in 802.11g, a firewire 400 port, and the ability to hook up to an external monitor. Not even mentioning the 60 GB HD and that I regularly get over 3 hours of battery life out of it.
Apple's are too big? If you want anything smaller you are no longer looking at a laptop, but are going to start trading features common to most computers.
>What difficulties do you forsee, exactly?
;-)
...and in the commercial software world, this means that they have to be thoroughly tested and reviewed on both platforms, and optimized separately for both platforms (particularly if you mean for your software to be used on both), maintained on both platforms, synched with the hardware/drivers for both platforms (heh), and then supported on both platforms.
...and increase their development costs by an order of magnitude trying to support so many additional pieces of third party hardware, it would also through hardware-software integration out of the window.
1) Compare and contrast the x86-64 assembly and the PPC 970 Assembly. This is *nontrivial* and we are talking about a tremendous slowdown.
2) The PPC line has more registers. This means caching, which is *slow*. Even assuming full use of the registers, a good scheduling algorithm, and lots of L1 cache this is going to *hurt* performance. Even 50% speed emmulation is too slow if you want people to have a reasonable chance of switching.
3) AltiVec support. SSE/MMX is a completely different beast from AltiVec and Apple has put far too much emphasis into marketing AltiVec at this point. Also, having AltiVec, it is a hell of a lot easier to work with than SSE.
4) Testing and quality control. 'nuff said.
>Then why haven't they? Traditional processors like the G4
>need special chipsets to hit 4-way. Opteron doesn't.
Lack of a market to support development costs.
You can parallel a series of systems easily enough that I think they just concluded individuals looking for a four processor were more likely to get two dual rackmounts than to actually bother with the additional cost.
The G4 supports multiple cores as well. It all comes down to development cost versus how much they expect to make.
>In your humble opinion.
You are the one advocating that Apple support two platforms.
>No, it means that software vendors should be strongly
>encouraged (or forced) to supply fat binaries for the two '
>architectures
Brilliant.
Do you even realize why the 68k-PPC transition worked or any of the difficulties that were involved?
>Intentionally stupid, perhaps.
They are making money in a failing economy, have good economic outlooks, and you call them stupid?
>This limits their market tremendously, since many large
>government and private organizations won't buy single-
>source equipment, period.
Big fish, little pond.
Little fish, big pond.
Take your pick: either-or.
>or b) Apple can't manufacture enough to meet demand.
>White box MacOS X boxes would solve these problems
>nicely
>Think Different.
First you have to Think before you can Think Different: consider the implications of what you are proposing, what it would mean from a marketing standpoint, and the difficulties involved.
" The should do a G4 emulator,"
You are losing credability fast here.
Do you know anything about emmulation and the difficulties involved with this or are you just running off on this one?
" and Apple could immediately offer 4-CPU systems, which it has never had"
IIRC they could offer that now with the G4 and they can *certainly* offer it with the PowerPC 970.
"I also feel Apple should stick with PPC on the notebook side. "
Credability is *gone*.
This would mean that they would need an Opteron Emmulator on the mac, or else this would horribly schism the market.
Nevermind, it would horribly schism the market either way--you do realize that emmulation between these is not going to be a walk in the park? Further, getting people to support fat binaries, such as what happened in the 68k switchover, or to recompile and/or *test* for two separate platforms is not going to happen in most development companies?
"f PPC 980 (or whatever) turns out to be a big win over Opteron2, it's not that big of a deal to switch back."
You've hit rock-bottom in your credability and started digging.
" if they choose to keep their (poor in my mind) current business model"
You do realize that they are turning a profit in a failing economy and that they are horribly undervalued at the moment?
"If Apple chooses to take that approach, it won't solve some of the bigger problems regarding Apple hardware. For instance, Apple being a single-source supplie"
You *do* realize that this is intentional on their part, right?
"and also limited hardware availability at times."
I generally don't notice this. I plugged in a wireless--two-button--mouse into an iBook the other day that the PC crowd had just been using for their presentation and it just worked.
" Regardless, Opteron looks like a very good option."
Only if you completely don't understand the way Apple works as a business.
While I appreciate your point, your math is way way off.
:-)
The original poster:
"Apples market share could go up 10x overnight"
Not by 10 people, but an order of magnitude--the original poster is way off in this assertion, but let's run with it for the moment. Let's also work with raw numbers because I don't know the number of people who currently own a computer off the top of my head (it also doesn't affect calculations, so long as we are consistent).
Thus, lets say that 1 million people currently are using MacOS X (yes, I know that this is low--but it makes math easy). This means that, for their marketshare to go up "10x overnight" 9 million people have to purchase MacOS X.
9 million * $129 = $1.161e+09 > $1 billion dollars.
Now, I still disagree with the original poster's assessment and think that your point is valid, but I had am impulsive need to correct the math
"Open Source requires participation; coding and community."
Does it? I don't think I have ever joined in the R-Project's mailing lists, but I use their software regularly. I know a lot of Linux users who lack the time or the skill to be kernel hackers.
You /do/ realize that most of us choose a platform that /does what we want it to/ and /works for us/ and not for religious reasons? For my purposes, Linux isn't ready for the desktop. If I joined the team, I could help it get ready, and in a matter of years, it might be with my help (it also might be without my help).
OTOH, I could just continue using my Mac and actually meet my deadlines and get my work done.
My spare time, incidentally, does go into an Open Source projects, either: The Swarm Project or Equation Service. You want me to start working on Linux now as well?
According to nmap 3.0 (for what its worth): Remote operating system guess: Linux Kernel 2.4.0 - 2.5.20