According Jobs, you can buy Pro GPUs from some other vendors and just plug then in.
Re:No bitching about the price?
on
Jaguar is Over
·
· Score: 1
I use both XP and OS X too, and everything just looks so much better on OS X, smooth anti-aliased text, scalable icons, soft shadow, transparency, color scheme. Luna is just a cheap and amateurish copy of Aqua. Take a closer look, XP doesn't even draw window frame smoothly, and often leaves long trail of ugly broken frames behind when a window is dragged quickly.
MS just don't know how to design UI, and it shows everywhere - stupid things like placing Shut Down in the Start Menu really insult my intelligence. In terms of usability and stability, OS X wins hands down. My iBook runs for weeks or months without rebooting and it sleeps and wakes in a second or two, while most PC users shut down their machine at least daily and XP still crashes.
Based on MS road map and recent leaks, Longhorn doesn't even match Jaguar, let alone Panther. You have to watch Jobs keynote to see why Apple is so far ahead of MS. There are so many features like the user-centric Finder, Expose, FileVault, live searching, fast user switch with stuning visual effect. While Quartz Extreme (GPU-based window rendering) has been available in Jaguar, MS is only planing to do that in Longhorn which is still 2 years away.
Given that Itanium currently peaks at 1 GHz, cost over $3000 per chip and consumes 3 times more energy that the G5, and there is virtually no software for the Athlon 64, is there any immediate competion to the G4?
Apple just confirmed that 64-bit apps is as easy to build as a recompilation with GCC 3.3, and lots of OS X programs like PhotoShop and Mathematica will run natively on the new G5 PowerMac by August. In contrast, it's very difficult to write software for the Itanium.
No other company can pull off so many cool things so quickly like Apple, not MS, not Sun, not HP, not even IBM, and certainly not Dell the box maker.
You have to watch Steve in QuickTime to fully appreciate how many amazing things Apple has done. Panther Developer Preview has already left Longhorn (Windows 2005) firmly in the dust bin: the new user-centric Finder, search-as-you-type, Expose, fast user switch, iChat AV, FileVault, Xcode, FontBook, and so on.
The PowerMac G5 is just amazing, 2 GHz 64-bit CPU with 2 independent FPUs and Velocity Engine, 1 GHz FSB, PCI-X, Serial ATA Drive, FireWire 800 & 400, USB2, Bluetooth, 802.11g, etc.
In terms of SPEC2000 floating point performance, the 2 GHz G4 is 21% faster than the 3.06 GHz P4, and the dual 2 GHz G5 PowerMac is 41% faster than a dual 3 GHz Xeon Dell which cost $1000 more. In real world tests (PhotoShop, Mathematica, 3D rendering, music), the PowerMac is more than 200% faster than the Dell.
It's clear that Apple has all the vital pieces nailed - harware, OS, applications, developers, Apple Retail Stores, iTune Music Store, iPod. It's time to buy some more Apple shares.
Re:No bitching about the price?
on
Jaguar is Over
·
· Score: 1
How stupid can you be to compare XP Home with Panther? It may be just $99, but still a POS.
It's clear that Panther in its current form is already way cooler than Windows 2005 Longhorn could ever be. You really have to watch Steve in QuickTime to appreciate how far Apple is ahead of MS.
Win XP 64-bit Edition is NOT a desktop OS, although MS claims otherwise. It's designed for Itanium which is a server CPU, and the chip alone costs over $3000 - more than the Dual 2 GHz G5 PowerMac.
>> Except that the Octane's bus is theoretically much, much faster. It has an end-to-end point speed of only about 3 and half GB/sec, but it can connect any of the individual systems to each other simultaneously at full speed; the memory can talk to the processor while the processor writes to the disk subsystem while the video card...and none of it ever has a collision and can operate at Crossbar's full point-to-point speed without effect from other subsystems.
I maybe wrong here, but Apple appears to claim similar memeory architecture.
With Altivec, the G5 would have awesome floating point performance per cycle and run at much higher clock speed than Itanium2.
Apple will likely launch Xserves with quad G5 processors soon. But unlike the G5, the Itanium is exclusively a server processor, so who give a toss about its FP performance.
Further more, there are very few software programs written for Itanium, and it's hard to optimize the code. In contrast, all current 32-bit Mac applications run natively on the PPC970, and it probably takes not much more than a recompilation with a new version of GCC to build 64-bit versions.
With Gigabit Ethernet and Firewire 800, you can easily configure hundreds of Xserves and Power Macs into clusters.
Currently, Itanium2 peaks at 1 GHz and costs $3000 per chip, and the next version (Madison) runs at 1.5 GHz and consumes 130 W.
The PPC 970 is reportedly significantly cheaper than the G4 with a power consumption of 40 W at 1.8 GHz or 19 W at 1.2 GHz.
Given that both are 64-bit chips with comparable performance, who the hell would pay 10 times more money for an Itanium2 unless he wants something to warm up the house?
It's like someone turns down a brand new BMW because he doesn't know how to drive it and refuse to learn the skill.
What's particularly stupid is that the school already has lots of Macs, so they should know Macs are easier to maintain. To deprive the kids of 30 computers rather than changing a senseless policy, he guy is clearly irresponsible and an idiot.
>> Apple doesn't have a prayer of competing in the Joe IT Worker space. Wintel rules business operations, Unix still has a mindshare in web services, Linux is making a LARGE dent in web services, Mac is a non-player.
First off, you obviously don't know that Mac OS X is UNIX, and Apple is now the largest UNIX vendor (by volumes, not revenues).
Secondly, Apple's server market share had grown nearly 300% in the second half of 2002 since Xserve was launched. In fact Apple shipped 60% more Servers in 6 months than the totla of Intel Itanium2 based servers in 2002.
Now take your ignorant FUD to somewhere else, idiot.
>> As for hosting a web site, surely you don't use IIS for that, do you? OSX has all sorts of great server software like Apache. You just have to install them and turn them on.
Apache (and many other server tools) is preloaded with every Mac, and it's a one-click operation to turn it on.
>> Why on Earth would you want to pay 2 or 3 times as much money for hardware that is less than 1/2 as powerful just to run Windows or Linux?
WTF are you talking about? Check the prices at http://store.apple.com/ before dishing out more stupid misinformations like that, and you will find Macs are actually cheaper than most Wintel PCs with similar features.
For instance, you can get an eMac for $799, iBook for $999, iMac for $1299, PowerMac for $1499, PowerBook G4 for $1599. Even the cheapest Mac is more powerful and comes with more features and free software than most people can handle, not to mention Mac's sex appeal that just doesn't exist in Windows land.
There are many Linux distros for Mac, but why would anyone bother? I have been programming for Windows and Unix for over 10 years, and to me nothing (not any version of Windows, nor Solaris or HP-UX or Linux) comes close to Mac OS X in terms of usability, style or stability.
Mac OS X also comes free with so many best-of-class programs (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iSync, iCal, Safari, and many more) that you can't even buy on other platforms. There are also dozens programming tools (not only the usual OSS like gcc / Perl / Python / Ruby / PHP, but also the highly sophisticated Apple tools such as Project Builder and Interface Builder) that would cost hundreds or thousands of dollars (MS Visual Studio.NET costs over $3000).
>> Apple uses Akamai for the high-bandwidth quicktime movie trailer delivery and Speedera for other things - not sure which.
>> So Apple either doesn't have the proper infrastructure or hasn't truly found the right cost/performance ratio to handle "ocean's of bits".
Akamai has the best technology to speed up content delivery, with perhaps millions of computers distributed around the world acting as intelligent proxy servers. For instance, if a company's Web site gets lots of hits from users around London, Akamai would set up a few servers near London and preload some of the content so that the data don't have to travel from the other side of the world.
Many if not most of the top companies including CNN and Microsoft use Akamai technology to avoid overloading their own Web servers.
Apple is also a very early investor in Akamai and a major stake holder (20 or 25% before IPO).
The hardware is similar to Dell's, but the over all cost is cheaper because Xserve comes with unlimited Mac OS X Server licences while MS would charge a lot for that.
Another huge benifit of Xserve is that it also comes free with a world-class application server called WebObjects which NeXT used to sell for $50k! There are also lots of other nice sysadm tools such as Apple Remote Desktop. There is no way that Lintel or Wintel servers can compete with Xserve if the truth is known.
Slashdot Mirror
>> Also, they disabled SSE2 on the PC.
This is only fair because Apple didn't use Altivec on the G5 either, otherwise the G5 would have a even greater advantage.
Why do people focus on the SPEC2000 rather than real world performance?
/
According to Apple
http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance
the dual G5 PM is 2.2x the 3GHz P3 for PhotoShop, 3.3x for Logic, 6.9x for BLAST.
>> Say you have compiler A which rocks for architecture A and sucks hard for architecture B. You run SPEC with this compiler, and A wins.
In this case, everyone knows that GCC is vastly more optimized for Intel than PPC, let alone the G5 is a new chip.
The case is just beautiful, so are the 9 individually controled fans.
According Jobs, you can buy Pro GPUs from some other vendors and just plug then in.
I use both XP and OS X too, and everything just looks so much better on OS X, smooth anti-aliased text, scalable icons, soft shadow, transparency, color scheme. Luna is just a cheap and amateurish copy of Aqua. Take a closer look, XP doesn't even draw window frame smoothly, and often leaves long trail of ugly broken frames behind when a window is dragged quickly.
MS just don't know how to design UI, and it shows everywhere - stupid things like placing Shut Down in the Start Menu really insult my intelligence. In terms of usability and stability, OS X wins hands down. My iBook runs for weeks or months without rebooting and it sleeps and wakes in a second or two, while most PC users shut down their machine at least daily and XP still crashes.
Based on MS road map and recent leaks, Longhorn doesn't even match Jaguar, let alone Panther. You have to watch Jobs keynote to see why Apple is so far ahead of MS. There are so many features like the user-centric Finder, Expose, FileVault, live searching, fast user switch with stuning visual effect. While Quartz Extreme (GPU-based window rendering) has been available in Jaguar, MS is only planing to do that in Longhorn which is still 2 years away.
>> And it is notable that the new Apple systems had a similar margin on the Photoshop tests.
The real world tests using PhotoShop and Mathematica shows over 200% margin in favor of G5.
>> I'd love to see a comparison against the, er, what is it, 1GHz Itaniums?
You don't want to know. The Itanium2 chip alone cost over $3000 which is more than the whole dual 2 GHz G5 PowerMac!
>> Sure, the dual Xeon may yet be cheaper, but that doesn't mean it's something I want.
Actually, the dual 3.06 GHz Xeon Dell is $1000 or 33% more expensive than the dual 2 GHz G5 PowMac.
Given that Itanium currently peaks at 1 GHz, cost over $3000 per chip and consumes 3 times more energy that the G5, and there is virtually no software for the Athlon 64, is there any immediate competion to the G4?
Apple just confirmed that 64-bit apps is as easy to build as a recompilation with GCC 3.3, and lots of OS X programs like PhotoShop and Mathematica will run natively on the new G5 PowerMac by August. In contrast, it's very difficult to write software for the Itanium.
It also cost over 10 times more than G5, and consumes 3 times more energy.
No other company can pull off so many cool things so quickly like Apple, not MS, not Sun, not HP, not even IBM, and certainly not Dell the box maker.
You have to watch Steve in QuickTime to fully appreciate how many amazing things Apple has done. Panther Developer Preview has already left Longhorn (Windows 2005) firmly in the dust bin: the new user-centric Finder, search-as-you-type, Expose, fast user switch, iChat AV, FileVault, Xcode, FontBook, and so on.
The PowerMac G5 is just amazing, 2 GHz 64-bit CPU with 2 independent FPUs and Velocity Engine, 1 GHz FSB, PCI-X, Serial ATA Drive, FireWire 800 & 400, USB2, Bluetooth, 802.11g, etc.
In terms of SPEC2000 floating point performance, the 2 GHz G4 is 21% faster than the 3.06 GHz P4, and the dual 2 GHz G5 PowerMac is 41% faster than a dual 3 GHz Xeon Dell which cost $1000 more. In real world tests (PhotoShop, Mathematica, 3D rendering, music), the PowerMac is more than 200% faster than the Dell.
It's clear that Apple has all the vital pieces nailed - harware, OS, applications, developers, Apple Retail Stores, iTune Music Store, iPod. It's time to buy some more Apple shares.
How stupid can you be to compare XP Home with Panther? It may be just $99, but still a POS.
It's clear that Panther in its current form is already way cooler than Windows 2005 Longhorn could ever be. You really have to watch Steve in QuickTime to appreciate how far Apple is ahead of MS.
Win XP 64-bit Edition is NOT a desktop OS, although MS claims otherwise. It's designed for Itanium which is a server CPU, and the chip alone costs over $3000 - more than the Dual 2 GHz G5 PowerMac.
>> Except that the Octane's bus is theoretically much, much faster. It has an end-to-end point speed of only about 3 and half GB/sec, but it can connect any of the individual systems to each other simultaneously at full speed; the memory can talk to the processor while the processor writes to the disk subsystem while the video card...and none of it ever has a collision and can operate at Crossbar's full point-to-point speed without effect from other subsystems.
I maybe wrong here, but Apple appears to claim similar memeory architecture.
Many people including myself beg to differ with you, and QuickTime looks so much better than other media players.
The front window has color buttons instead of grey ones, I can't see how anyone could miss the difference.
I don't think either of your points is true.
With Altivec, the G5 would have awesome floating point performance per cycle and run at much higher clock speed than Itanium2.
Apple will likely launch Xserves with quad G5 processors soon. But unlike the G5, the Itanium is exclusively a server processor, so who give a toss about its FP performance.
Further more, there are very few software programs written for Itanium, and it's hard to optimize the code. In contrast, all current 32-bit Mac applications run natively on the PPC970, and it probably takes not much more than a recompilation with a new version of GCC to build 64-bit versions.
With Gigabit Ethernet and Firewire 800, you can easily configure hundreds of Xserves and Power Macs into clusters.
Currently, Itanium2 peaks at 1 GHz and costs $3000 per chip, and the next version (Madison) runs at 1.5 GHz and consumes 130 W.
The PPC 970 is reportedly significantly cheaper than the G4 with a power consumption of 40 W at 1.8 GHz or 19 W at 1.2 GHz.
Given that both are 64-bit chips with comparable performance, who the hell would pay 10 times more money for an Itanium2 unless he wants something to warm up the house?
It's like someone turns down a brand new BMW because he doesn't know how to drive it and refuse to learn the skill.
What's particularly stupid is that the school already has lots of Macs, so they should know Macs are easier to maintain. To deprive the kids of 30 computers rather than changing a senseless policy, he guy is clearly irresponsible and an idiot.
>> Apple doesn't have a prayer of competing in the Joe IT Worker space. Wintel rules business operations, Unix still has a mindshare in web services, Linux is making a LARGE dent in web services, Mac is a non-player.
First off, you obviously don't know that Mac OS X is UNIX, and Apple is now the largest UNIX vendor (by volumes, not revenues).
Secondly, Apple's server market share had grown nearly 300% in the second half of 2002 since Xserve was launched. In fact Apple shipped 60% more Servers in 6 months than the totla of Intel Itanium2 based servers in 2002.
Now take your ignorant FUD to somewhere else, idiot.
>> As for hosting a web site, surely you don't use IIS for that, do you? OSX has all sorts of great server software like Apache. You just have to install them and turn them on.
Apache (and many other server tools) is preloaded with every Mac, and it's a one-click operation to turn it on.
>> Why on Earth would you want to pay 2 or 3 times as much money for hardware that is less than 1/2 as powerful just to run Windows or Linux?
.NET costs over $3000).
WTF are you talking about? Check the prices at http://store.apple.com/ before dishing out more stupid misinformations like that, and you will find Macs are actually cheaper than most Wintel PCs with similar features.
For instance, you can get an eMac for $799, iBook for $999, iMac for $1299, PowerMac for $1499, PowerBook G4 for $1599. Even the cheapest Mac is more powerful and comes with more features and free software than most people can handle, not to mention Mac's sex appeal that just doesn't exist in Windows land.
There are many Linux distros for Mac, but why would anyone bother? I have been programming for Windows and Unix for over 10 years, and to me nothing (not any version of Windows, nor Solaris or HP-UX or Linux) comes close to Mac OS X in terms of usability, style or stability.
Mac OS X also comes free with so many best-of-class programs (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iSync, iCal, Safari, and many more) that you can't even buy on other platforms. There are also dozens programming tools (not only the usual OSS like gcc / Perl / Python / Ruby / PHP, but also the highly sophisticated Apple tools such as Project Builder and Interface Builder) that would cost hundreds or thousands of dollars (MS Visual Studio
>> Apple uses Akamai for the high-bandwidth quicktime movie trailer delivery and Speedera for other things - not sure which.
>> So Apple either doesn't have the proper infrastructure or hasn't truly found the right cost/performance ratio to handle "ocean's of bits".
Akamai has the best technology to speed up content delivery, with perhaps millions of computers distributed around the world acting as intelligent proxy servers. For instance, if a company's Web site gets lots of hits from users around London, Akamai would set up a few servers near London and preload some of the content so that the data don't have to travel from the other side of the world.
Many if not most of the top companies including CNN and Microsoft use Akamai technology to avoid overloading their own Web servers.
Apple is also a very early investor in Akamai and a major stake holder (20 or 25% before IPO).
Have a look at this site http://bioteam.net/
The hardware is similar to Dell's, but the over all cost is cheaper because Xserve comes with unlimited Mac OS X Server licences while MS would charge a lot for that.
Another huge benifit of Xserve is that it also comes free with a world-class application server called WebObjects which NeXT used to sell for $50k! There are also lots of other nice sysadm tools such as Apple Remote Desktop. There is no way that Lintel or Wintel servers can compete with Xserve if the truth is known.