Congratulations, Mr Clueless, you have just made yourself the greatest laughing stock on the Web!
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=85904& ci d=0&pid=0&startat=&threshold=0&mode=thread&comment sort=0&op=Change
How the hell can you say "Longhorn is far more impressive technically than Panther" when Panther is a reality while Longdelayhorn is no more than a blurred vision without even a firm release date and many of its promised features are still in the conceptual stage? In all likelihood, Longdelayhorn may well be Windows 2007, judging by MS track record.
Even if the slow moving and grass chewing beast exists today, it's still not much more than a also-ran knockoff of Mac OS X in many respects. Let's have a quick look at the 3 pillars of Longdelayhorn:
(1) Aero / Avalon has nothing new compared to aqua / Quartz: Mac OS X has offered transparency, shadow, animation, 3D effects right from the beginning 3 years ago, and Quartz Extreme in Jaguar only made it faster.
(2) WinFS: live search that refines as you type is built-in for many OS X apps (Address Book, iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Mail, Finder, Preview, Xcode), and Finder has its own dynamic database for fast search by name / content / type / size / date / visibility / label.
(3) Indigo: there are many OS X apps with built-in Web services, Sherlock and Watson have channels for dictionary / translation / eBay / flight / movie / restaurant / etc, and even the humble Calculator can do currency conversion based on live exchange rate on the Web.
How about other great OS X features like Expose, Finder column view, spring-loaded folder, folder action, system wide spelling check and word completion, speech recognition, and so on?
Longdelayhorn was initially planned to be Windows 2004, and after so much hype, now MS doesn't even promise a release date, so it could be 2006 or 2007. After that, it will likely take another 2 or 3 years for bug fixing, so your poor Windows victims may have to wait till 2010 for a usable version, what a joke!
How the hell does he know that "Longhorn is far more impressive technically than Panther" when the thing doesn't even have a firm release date and many of its promised features are still in the conceptual stage?
The guy is clearly a troll who knows little about Panther, but his ignorance is obviously not enough to stop him making bold claims that he doesn't bother to back up with facts or logic reasons other than the utterly meaningless concept of task based UI. And then in his <a href="http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/longhorn _4051.asp"> Longhorn Build 4051 Review </a>, he confessed:
"I had joked with Microsofties and coworkers that the PDC almost had to be a letdown after all the pre-show hype. And as the Longhorn build 4051 download completed, I thought back on what I'd been told to expect from this build, poured over my experience with previous builds, and came to a simple conclusion. There was no way this build was going to be anything less than excellent. It would kick the pony out of the recently released Mac OS X "Panther" and quiet the doubters. Longhorn build 4051 was The Promised Land (tm) and it would not just meet, but exceed, my expectations.
Reality sets in
Of course, we had to get it installed first. Contributing news editor Keith Furman and I eventually headed over to the Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC) for our pre-show press briefings, which mostly consisted of background technical information for the largely uneducated media types who probably had no business being at a developer-oriented show anyway. Bored and not learning anything, Keith worked on figuring out how to get the Longhorn 4051 ISO to install without blank CDs, which we had forgotten to bring. It didn't take long, and Keith was soon installing the build on his Compaq Presario X1010, a widescreen notebook with sufficient muscle to handle the build. By mid-afternoon, I had also installed the build on an IBM ThinkPad R50 and a Dell Latitude D800, and was starting my first install to a Virtual PC-based virtual machine.
And it was horrible. Longhorn build 4051 features a new Luna-like visual style called Slate, which basically takes the Aero user interface (revealed first on the SuperSite) and back-ports it to Windows XP, and it's decent looking, if only half-realized. In other words, it looks like XP. Worse, it performs horribly. Most damning, build 4051 doesn't appear to offer any dramatic changes over previous alpha builds, the most recent of which came out way back in June, and the much-vaunted WinFS (Windows Future Storage) stuff is broken. Hardware detection lasts an eternity, especially on the notebooks we had at the show. A memory leak in explorer.exe quickly killed whatever performance the systems had left. It was almost heartbreaking.
At 1:45 pm, Keith and I finally provided an update about the new build to our daily live posts to WinInfo Daily UPDATE. "At the risk of sounding a bit negative, Longhorn build 4051 is, sorry, boring," we wrote. "Once you get over the mildly amusing Slate theme, and the slow and painful hardware detection, it's basically the same as previous alpha builds, albeit in more usable form. Explorer windows feature the Aero-like look that I first revealed on the SuperSite for Windows and... well, that's about it. There really isn't that much more to say, at least not yet. We've installed 4051 on three machines so far and we're not that impressed." Later that night, after spending a few hours playing with the build, we updated the posting with some more thoughts. "While we're still not overly impressed--tomorrow's Gates keynote better kill or these guys have some explaining to do--we have at least gotten the gist of what's going on in this build. First, it's a dog on any system with less than 512 MB of RAM, so consider that a base amount (up from 256 in Windows XP). The new content aggregator Libraries are more usable in this build than in previous alphas, and it's clear that a lot of the graphical elemen
I ordered mine for $2399 on Tuesday, it's a 1.25 GHz 15" PB with 512 MB DDR without Superdrive. It should arrive by the end of next week, I can't wait.
This baby has everything I dream for: beautiful design, fast G4, 512 MB 333 MHz DDR, 80 GB HD, DVD / CD-RW, 64 MB ATI 9600, 802.11g, Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet, Firewire 800, USB2, illuminated keyboard, S-video / DVI / VGA output, and so on.
I have looked the P4 and Centrino laptops from IBM, Sony, Toshiba, HP / Compaq, Acer, and nothing comes close in terms of prices / features.
>> IMHO the lack of ECC RAM is the only flaw in an otherwise perfect machine (well that, and the massive HEAT.
You have to look a little further, and don't let the number fool you. The reason for the huge heat sink and 9 individually controlled fans in the G5 is reduce noise level.
The G5 consumes about 40W at 1.8 GHz, which is much more efficient than both the 1.5 GHz Itanium 2 (130 W) or the 3 GHz P4 (75W ?).
>> Presumably, Dell would have given them a better deal due to educational and/or prestige factors, if Dell really wanted the deal. If that was the case, the uni may have been better served with the Dell option.
Oh, really? Does Dell have a competitive 64-bit solution? I don't think so. Even the 32-bit dual Xeon Dell is more expensive the dual G5 Power Mac. Don't bother mention Itanium2, because it's too hot and expensive, and there is hardly any native apps, which might be why people are not buying them.
>> Would anybody know why Powermac G5s are a better choice here?
To start with, Intel doesn't offer a 64-bit CPU remotely comparable to the G5 in price. The Itanium 2 costs $3000 per chip, which is more than the price of the dual 2 GHz Power Mac that comes with GPU, RAM, SATA HD, Firewire, USB, Gigabit Ethernet,...
Furthermore, the dual 2 GHz Power Mac beats the dual 3 GHz Xeon Dell in both 32-bit performance and price ($3000 vs $4000), and of course the G5 can do 64-bit computing that the Xeon can't.
In short, the G5 is cheaper and more powerful than x86, and also future-proof.
Yes, OS X comes with/bin/bash/bin/csh/bin/sh/bin/tcsh/bin/zsh, so you can change your default shell to any of these by entering it in the Terminal Preferences panel. Or you can switch to a different shell from the terminal by simply entering the shell name.
There are no less than 12 references to all things Apple in the article, and he also said:
"As you know, Mac OS X: The Missing Manual has been one of the bestselling computer books of the past couple of years, and O'Reilly's biggest seller since The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog, the book that launched the consumer internet revolution."
which is quite remarkable given that OS X is such a young technology and remains a minority platform even in the supposedly tiny and dwindling Mac universe. Maybe the 5% market share is another myth.
>> Now, that isn't to say that in a year or 2 they don't switch to Itanium 2s or Opterons.
I am pretty sure they won't. Itanium 2 is very expensive ($3000 just for the chip) and inefficient in enery consumption (130 W at 1.5 GHz vs 40 W at 1.8 GHz G5), and has very few native apps (about 450 according to Intel and HP). In contrast, there are 50000 native OS X apps, including all the best pro digital tools such as Final Cut Pro, Maya, Shake, Logic Platinum, After Effects, PhotoShop, Flash, Director, and so on.
People are not buying Itanium servers. In 2002, Apple sold more G4 Xserve boxes in 6 months than all the Itanium servers sold in 12 months. For the last 3 months, IBM has managed to sell 0 and Dell 14!
>> I'll bet dollars to doughtnuts that commondity Intel/AMD whips a G5 mac in terms of rendered frames per dollar.
Don't ever bet without doing your homework. A dual 2 GHz 64-bit G5 Power Mac costs $2999 and is more powerful and $1000 cheaper than a $4000 dual 3 GHz 32-bit Xeon Dell.
>> Remember, Apple's CEO == Pixar's CEO.
By your stupid logic, RenderMan should have been ported to G3 and G4 long time ago. Don't forget that Pixar is in the business of making best movies and lots of profits, not to subsidize Apple, so they choose the best tool for the job. Steve Jobs makes most of his money from Pixar, and only gets $1 per year from Apple.
Pixar president Dr Ed Catmull has said on record that the dual 2 GHz G5 Power Mac is the fastest desktop computer for RenderMan to be released for Mac OS X very soon.
>> I still fail to understand why you'd want PPC linux rather than X86 Linux. You've just got more choices with X86.
Because the G5 is more powerful with a more efficient instruction set, capable of simultaneously processing 215 instructions, consumes less energy, has 2 double precision FPUs and a vastly better vector unit.
The strength of Mac OS X is that it combines the style, simplicity and power in a way that suits both novices and experts alike, which is something no other OS including Linux can match.
>> Similarly, the appearance of OS X, while more intuitive and easier to grok for the beginner, has higher contrast levels and more colors. this increases the number of apparent objects in the field of vision and forces widgets into the group of perceived objects.
You can hide the Doc, the desktop, the toolbar, and even switch off the red / yellow / green window buttons. What's your problem again?
>> That's bull. Mac OS X only helps "just getting work done" if you're functionally computer illiterate.
That's the most stupid and pompous statement I have ever heard.
Obviously you don't know that alpha geeks are switching to Mac OS X in droves, including James Gosling (Java inventor) and his Java team at Sun Microsystems, Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the Web), Tim Bray (XML pioneer), James Duncan Davidson (original author of Apache Tomcat and Apache Ant), and many editors at O'Reilly Network and Slashdot. Many people have suggested that 50% of laptops at the recent OSCon and JavaOne were Apple PowerBooks and iBooks
>> When Mac OS X just "gets it right", it is really just "simplifying" for people who don't know more advanced methods (yes, that's what they are) and who don't feel it's worth their time to learn more advanced methods, if they happen to be a little more numerous, a little more intimidating or a little less intuitive.
What the hell do you mean by advanced methods? If you think that automation and Unix shell scripting are advanced, then nothing can beat Mac OS X in that respect, which comes with bash, sh, csh, tcsh, zsh, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, gcc (C/C++, Objective C/C++), gdb, Project Builder, Interface Builder, Apache, and many other programming tools, not to mention that it's even possible to do GUI scripting (to programatically click buttons or menu items) AppleScript. So next time, please do a little research before opening your mouth.
According to http://www.hardmac.com/niouzcontenu.php?date=2003- 07-17#198
"We have demonstrated yesterday that Panther can support n processors, and really large amount of RAM. Several different sources have confirmed the circulating rumor that we already had received in the past: Apple and IBM could be associated to developp and manufacture computer with n processors, where n could go til 64 G5! The project is internally named "Dark Star". Each processor will have 4 memory slots, for a maximum allocated RAM of 16GB (when the 4 GB RAM modules). The 64 processors-based configuration will support up to 1 TB of RAM. It will be possible to install in those computer many ATI graphic cards, and to use them in paralell, in order to allow a very high quality rendering. Prototypes based on 8, 16, 32 and 64 processors are already working fine. those machines will be available with an enclosure similar that to the G5' one. The pre-production should start next month, but the availability should only be at the end of the year together with Panther Server. Price will vary from 12 000 $ for the 8 CPUs version to 50 0000 $ for the top version including all the optionis. Some people will probably consider this as a risky project. However, it seems that Apple and IBM could have already pre-sell some of those machines to prioritized clients, such as: - Industrial Light and Magic - Raytheon - General Dynamics - Genentech - Amgen - Pixar - NASA There are other names such as large american administrations."
>> word processing, spreadsheet, small database, and drawing (a la Visio) need to be done (though you could argue that FileMaker Pro is the database app.. they need a FileMaker Lite version that reads/writes Access)
AppleWorks has all these functions, which could be polished a bit or rewritten in Cocoa.
>> Wanna know why? Two reasons. First: CPU-to-memory bandwidth in the Chimera (b.k.a. Tezro) is 12.8 GB/s.
Do your math, man. The dual 1 GHz FSBs in the G5 gives a 16 GB/s CPU-to-memory bandwidth which is 30% greater than the Tezro, and with the dual channel DDR RAM having a bandwidth of 6.4 GB/s, who need cache?
>> Wouldnt the new Apple G5's with dual 2 ghz cpus crush it?
It most certainly will, in probably every single aspect. The dual 2 GHz G5 Power Mac has 2 independent 1 GHz FSBs, dual channel 128-bit 400 MHz DDR RAM, dual 800 MHz HyperTransport interconnects, dual SATA drives with 1.5 Gbps throughput per channels.
Not only the G5 is 3x faster than the MIPS R16000 in clock speed, it also has 2 FPUs and can handle 215 simultaneous in-flight instructions, so most likely will beat the MIPS per cycle as well, not to mention the Altivec vector unit.
Of course, there are much more native Mac software, and the G5 is probably much cheaper. The only place where SGI beats Apple is at the high end super computing market, but even there it's probably better to use G5 clusters.
Currently SGI is only valued for $260, about 6% of Apple's $4.5 B cash pile, so maybe Apple should acquire SGI in order to move into the scientific computing and visualization market.
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations, Mr Clueless, you have just made yourself the greatest laughing stock on the Web!
& ci d=0&pid=0&startat=&threshold=0&mode=thread&comment sort=0&op=Change
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=85904
How the hell can you say "Longhorn is far more impressive technically than Panther" when Panther is a reality while Longdelayhorn is no more than a blurred vision without even a firm release date and many of its promised features are still in the conceptual stage? In all likelihood, Longdelayhorn may well be Windows 2007, judging by MS track record.
Even if the slow moving and grass chewing beast exists today, it's still not much more than a also-ran knockoff of Mac OS X in many respects. Let's have a quick look at the 3 pillars of Longdelayhorn:
(1) Aero / Avalon has nothing new compared to aqua / Quartz: Mac OS X has offered transparency, shadow, animation, 3D effects right from the beginning 3 years ago, and Quartz Extreme in Jaguar only made it faster.
(2) WinFS: live search that refines as you type is built-in for many OS X apps (Address Book, iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Mail, Finder, Preview, Xcode), and Finder has its own dynamic database for fast search by name / content / type / size / date / visibility / label.
(3) Indigo: there are many OS X apps with built-in Web services, Sherlock and Watson have channels for dictionary / translation / eBay / flight / movie / restaurant / etc, and even the humble Calculator can do currency conversion based on live exchange rate on the Web.
How about other great OS X features like Expose, Finder column view, spring-loaded folder, folder action, system wide spelling check and word completion, speech recognition, and so on?
Longdelayhorn was initially planned to be Windows 2004, and after so much hype, now MS doesn't even promise a release date, so it could be 2006 or 2007. After that, it will likely take another 2 or 3 years for bug fixing, so your poor Windows victims may have to wait till 2010 for a usable version, what a joke!
How the hell does he know that "Longhorn is far more impressive technically than Panther" when the thing doesn't even have a firm release date and many of its promised features are still in the conceptual stage?
... well, that's about it. There really isn't that much more to say, at least not yet. We've installed 4051 on three machines so far and we're not that impressed." Later that night, after spending a few hours playing with the build, we updated the posting with some more thoughts. "While we're still not overly impressed--tomorrow's Gates keynote better kill or these guys have some explaining to do--we have at least gotten the gist of what's going on in this build. First, it's a dog on any system with less than 512 MB of RAM, so consider that a base amount (up from 256 in Windows XP). The new content aggregator Libraries are more usable in this build than in previous alphas, and it's clear that a lot of the graphical elemen
The guy is clearly a troll who knows little about Panther, but his ignorance is obviously not enough to stop him making bold claims that he doesn't bother to back up with facts or logic reasons other than the utterly meaningless concept of task based UI. And then in his
<a href="http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/longhorn _4051.asp"> Longhorn Build 4051 Review </a>, he confessed:
"I had joked with Microsofties and coworkers that the PDC almost had to be a letdown after all the pre-show hype. And as the Longhorn build 4051 download completed, I thought back on what I'd been told to expect from this build, poured over my experience with previous builds, and came to a simple conclusion. There was no way this build was going to be anything less than excellent. It would kick the pony out of the recently released Mac OS X "Panther" and quiet the doubters. Longhorn build 4051 was The Promised Land (tm) and it would not just meet, but exceed, my expectations.
Reality sets in
Of course, we had to get it installed first. Contributing news editor Keith Furman and I eventually headed over to the Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC) for our pre-show press briefings, which mostly consisted of background technical information for the largely uneducated media types who probably had no business being at a developer-oriented show anyway. Bored and not learning anything, Keith worked on figuring out how to get the Longhorn 4051 ISO to install without blank CDs, which we had forgotten to bring. It didn't take long, and Keith was soon installing the build on his Compaq Presario X1010, a widescreen notebook with sufficient muscle to handle the build. By mid-afternoon, I had also installed the build on an IBM ThinkPad R50 and a Dell Latitude D800, and was starting my first install to a Virtual PC-based virtual machine.
And it was horrible. Longhorn build 4051 features a new Luna-like visual style called Slate, which basically takes the Aero user interface (revealed first on the SuperSite) and back-ports it to Windows XP, and it's decent looking, if only half-realized. In other words, it looks like XP. Worse, it performs horribly. Most damning, build 4051 doesn't appear to offer any dramatic changes over previous alpha builds, the most recent of which came out way back in June, and the much-vaunted WinFS (Windows Future Storage) stuff is broken. Hardware detection lasts an eternity, especially on the notebooks we had at the show. A memory leak in explorer.exe quickly killed whatever performance the systems had left. It was almost heartbreaking.
At 1:45 pm, Keith and I finally provided an update about the new build to our daily live posts to WinInfo Daily UPDATE. "At the risk of sounding a bit negative, Longhorn build 4051 is, sorry, boring," we wrote. "Once you get over the mildly amusing Slate theme, and the slow and painful hardware detection, it's basically the same as previous alpha builds, albeit in more usable form. Explorer windows feature the Aero-like look that I first revealed on the SuperSite for Windows and
On my 400 MHz iMac, OS X has been perfectly usable since 10.1, and Panther is definitely faster than jaguar in every way, even Expose feels fluid.
I ordered mine for $2399 on Tuesday, it's a 1.25 GHz 15" PB with 512 MB DDR without Superdrive. It should arrive by the end of next week, I can't wait.
This baby has everything I dream for: beautiful design, fast G4, 512 MB 333 MHz DDR, 80 GB HD, DVD / CD-RW, 64 MB ATI 9600, 802.11g, Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet, Firewire 800, USB2, illuminated keyboard, S-video / DVI / VGA output, and so on.
I have looked the P4 and Centrino laptops from IBM, Sony, Toshiba, HP / Compaq, Acer, and nothing comes close in terms of prices / features.
>> IMHO the lack of ECC RAM is the only flaw in an otherwise perfect machine (well that, and the massive HEAT.
You have to look a little further, and don't let the number fool you. The reason for the huge heat sink and 9 individually controlled fans in the G5 is reduce noise level.
The G5 consumes about 40W at 1.8 GHz, which is much more efficient than both the 1.5 GHz Itanium 2 (130 W) or the 3 GHz P4 (75W ?).
>> Presumably, Dell would have given them a better deal due to educational and/or prestige factors, if Dell really wanted the deal. If that was the case, the uni may have been better served with the Dell option.
Oh, really? Does Dell have a competitive 64-bit solution? I don't think so. Even the 32-bit dual Xeon Dell is more expensive the dual G5 Power Mac. Don't bother mention Itanium2, because it's too hot and expensive, and there is hardly any native apps, which might be why people are not buying them.
Here is a proper link"
In fact, there are 8 iPods in the top 20 best sellers. The question is would the new models kick the competitions out of the top 10 altogether.
5 663
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t g/browse/-/300330/ref=br_bx_c_1_5/002-8192629-304
>> Would anybody know why Powermac G5s are a better choice here?
...
To start with, Intel doesn't offer a 64-bit CPU remotely comparable to the G5 in price. The Itanium 2 costs $3000 per chip, which is more than the price of the dual 2 GHz Power Mac that comes with GPU, RAM, SATA HD, Firewire, USB, Gigabit Ethernet,
Furthermore, the dual 2 GHz Power Mac beats the dual 3 GHz Xeon Dell in both 32-bit performance and price ($3000 vs $4000), and of course the G5 can do 64-bit computing that the Xeon can't.
In short, the G5 is cheaper and more powerful than x86, and also future-proof.
Yes, OS X comes with /bin/bash /bin/csh /bin/sh /bin/tcsh /bin/zsh, so you can change your default shell to any of these by entering it in the Terminal Preferences panel. Or you can switch to a different shell from the terminal by simply entering the shell name.
There are no less than 12 references to all things Apple in the article, and he also said:
"As you know, Mac OS X: The Missing Manual has been one of the bestselling computer books of the past couple of years, and O'Reilly's biggest seller since The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog, the book that launched the consumer internet revolution."
which is quite remarkable given that OS X is such a young technology and remains a minority platform even in the supposedly tiny and dwindling Mac universe. Maybe the 5% market share is another myth.
GabrielBenveniste and BethanyHanson from Pixar Animation Studios are going to talk about Deploying and Maintaining Mac OS X in the Enteprise in the upcoming O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference.
>> Now, that isn't to say that in a year or 2 they don't switch to Itanium 2s or Opterons.
I am pretty sure they won't. Itanium 2 is very expensive ($3000 just for the chip) and inefficient in enery consumption (130 W at 1.5 GHz vs 40 W at 1.8 GHz G5), and has very few native apps (about 450 according to Intel and HP). In contrast, there are 50000 native OS X apps, including all the best pro digital tools such as Final Cut Pro, Maya, Shake, Logic Platinum, After Effects, PhotoShop, Flash, Director, and so on.
People are not buying Itanium servers. In 2002, Apple sold more G4 Xserve boxes in 6 months than all the Itanium servers sold in 12 months. For the last 3 months, IBM has managed to sell 0 and Dell 14!
>> I'll bet dollars to doughtnuts that commondity Intel/AMD whips a G5 mac in terms of rendered frames per dollar.
Don't ever bet without doing your homework. A dual 2 GHz 64-bit G5 Power Mac costs $2999 and is more powerful and $1000 cheaper than a $4000 dual 3 GHz 32-bit Xeon Dell.
>> Remember, Apple's CEO == Pixar's CEO.
By your stupid logic, RenderMan should have been ported to G3 and G4 long time ago. Don't forget that Pixar is in the business of making best movies and lots of profits, not to subsidize Apple, so they choose the best tool for the job. Steve Jobs makes most of his money from Pixar, and only gets $1 per year from Apple.
Pixar president Dr Ed Catmull has said on record that the dual 2 GHz G5 Power Mac is the fastest desktop computer for RenderMan to be released for Mac OS X very soon.
>> I still fail to understand why you'd want PPC linux rather than X86 Linux. You've just got more choices with X86.
Because the G5 is more powerful with a more efficient instruction set, capable of simultaneously processing 215 instructions, consumes less energy, has 2 double precision FPUs and a vastly better vector unit.
The strength of Mac OS X is that it combines the style, simplicity and power in a way that suits both novices and experts alike, which is something no other OS including Linux can match.
>> Similarly, the appearance of OS X, while more intuitive and easier to grok for the beginner, has higher contrast levels and more colors. this increases the number of apparent objects in the field of vision and forces widgets into the group of perceived objects.
You can hide the Doc, the desktop, the toolbar, and even switch off the red / yellow / green window buttons. What's your problem again?
>> That's bull. Mac OS X only helps "just getting work done" if you're functionally computer illiterate.
That's the most stupid and pompous statement I have ever heard.
Obviously you don't know that alpha geeks are switching to Mac OS X in droves, including James Gosling (Java inventor) and his Java team at Sun Microsystems, Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the Web), Tim Bray (XML pioneer), James Duncan Davidson (original author of Apache Tomcat and Apache Ant), and many editors at O'Reilly Network and Slashdot. Many people have suggested that 50% of laptops at the recent OSCon and JavaOne were Apple PowerBooks and iBooks
>> When Mac OS X just "gets it right", it is really just "simplifying" for people who don't know more advanced methods (yes, that's what they are) and who don't feel it's worth their time to learn more advanced methods, if they happen to be a little more numerous, a little more intimidating or a little less intuitive.
What the hell do you mean by advanced methods? If you think that automation and Unix shell scripting are advanced, then nothing can beat Mac OS X in that respect, which comes with bash, sh, csh, tcsh, zsh, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, gcc (C/C++, Objective C/C++), gdb, Project Builder, Interface Builder, Apache, and many other programming tools, not to mention that it's even possible to do GUI scripting (to programatically click buttons or menu items) AppleScript. So next time, please do a little research before opening your mouth.
According to http://www.hardmac.com/niouzcontenu.php?date=2003- 07-17#198
:
"We have demonstrated yesterday that Panther can support n processors, and really large amount of RAM.
Several different sources have confirmed the circulating rumor that we already had received in the past
Apple and IBM could be associated to developp and manufacture computer with n processors, where n could go til 64 G5! The project is internally named "Dark Star".
Each processor will have 4 memory slots, for a maximum allocated RAM of 16GB (when the 4 GB RAM modules). The 64 processors-based configuration will support up to 1 TB of RAM.
It will be possible to install in those computer many ATI graphic cards, and to use them in paralell, in order to allow a very high quality rendering.
Prototypes based on 8, 16, 32 and 64 processors are already working fine.
those machines will be available with an enclosure similar that to the G5' one.
The pre-production should start next month, but the availability should only be at the end of the year together with Panther Server.
Price will vary from 12 000 $ for the 8 CPUs version to 50 0000 $ for the top version including all the optionis.
Some people will probably consider this as a risky project. However, it seems that Apple and IBM could have already pre-sell some of those machines to prioritized clients, such as:
- Industrial Light and Magic
- Raytheon
- General Dynamics
- Genentech
- Amgen
- Pixar
- NASA
There are other names such as large american administrations."
>> word processing, spreadsheet, small database, and drawing (a la Visio) need to be done (though you could argue that FileMaker Pro is the database app.. they need a FileMaker Lite version that reads/writes Access)
AppleWorks has all these functions, which could be polished a bit or rewritten in Cocoa.
>> Actually it is good. It does not conform 100% to the apple OSX guidelines, but it is close enough for me. Its also fast and stable.
MS Office is nothing but fast and stable. Word is probably the slowest app on Mac OS X ever, even with only a few pages of text.
>> Wanna know why? Two reasons. First: CPU-to-memory bandwidth in the Chimera (b.k.a. Tezro) is 12.8 GB/s.
Do your math, man. The dual 1 GHz FSBs in the G5 gives a 16 GB/s CPU-to-memory bandwidth which is 30% greater than the Tezro, and with the dual channel DDR RAM having a bandwidth of 6.4 GB/s, who need cache?
>> Currently SGI is only valued for $260 I mean $260 mln.
>> Wouldnt the new Apple G5's with dual 2 ghz cpus crush it?
It most certainly will, in probably every single aspect. The dual 2 GHz G5 Power Mac has 2 independent 1 GHz FSBs, dual channel 128-bit 400 MHz DDR RAM, dual 800 MHz HyperTransport interconnects, dual SATA drives with 1.5 Gbps throughput per channels.
Not only the G5 is 3x faster than the MIPS R16000 in clock speed, it also has 2 FPUs and can handle 215 simultaneous in-flight instructions, so most likely will beat the MIPS per cycle as well, not to mention the Altivec vector unit.
Of course, there are much more native Mac software, and the G5 is probably much cheaper. The only place where SGI beats Apple is at the high end super computing market, but even there it's probably better to use G5 clusters.
Currently SGI is only valued for $260, about 6% of Apple's $4.5 B cash pile, so maybe Apple should acquire SGI in order to move into the scientific computing and visualization market.
>> I would guess that the opteron is better then both
the mips and the G5.
Not necessarily. According to a recent benchmark by Tom's Hardware, Opteron doesn't even match P4 or Xeon, so I can't see how it could beat the G5.