Why buy a computer with a $500 chip if the rest of the system is going to be bargain basement stuff? What a waste of money unless all you want to do on it is run benchmarks and not actually use it.
Not with similar equipment to a G5 system. Let's see, Athlon 64 chips aren't exactly cheap, you'd need some fast memory, a fairly pricey motherboard, an SATA harddrive, a dvd burner, a good graphics card.. Unless you made everything in the box crappy except the CPU you wouldn't come in under a thousand dollars. Under three thousand you could get a comparable pc system I imagine, but it still wouldn't be able to run OS X, and I certainly know people who would take any Mac over any PC at any speed.
Operating systems make a hell of a lot more difference than CPU's, and Windows just doesn't cut it for some people. Then again some people don't like OS X and only will use Windows. Or Linux. Whatever. If you know enough about computers to need something as high performance as a Dual G5 or an Athlon 64 then do you really need benchmarks like this to tell you what to buy?
Intel and AMD have both used compilers which would not work in real use for their SPEC tests. You can reproduce the tests with different Fortran and C compilers, but you sure as hell won't get the same results as someone using a compiler specifically designed to perform well on SPEC tests at the cost of all else. You accuse Apple of handicapping competitors, but Apple used the same compiler for both systems. I haven't heard anyone list any actual problems with Apple's results for the G5. Just knee-jerk reactions from x86 enthusiasts who's egos would be too hurt if their precious pentium wasn't the best thing in the desktop marketplace. There were a number of articles which broke down every single one of the complaints made about those benchmarks, and showed they didn't have merit, and now that the G5's are out, people who are doing tests for real use are showing that the G5's are as powerful as anything in the x86 market.
And you seem to be under the impression I'm a Mac zealot. My primary computer is an x86 Linux/Windows box, so spare me. Do you honestly think I'm going to cry myself to sleep because some AC doesn't like Apple?
You're so right! Isn't it amazing how free software has solved almost every possible problem in the history of man? I was just thinking how about how I wished the menu system in my TV was open source software because then I could change the color of the menus. It would rule.
AAAAAAARGH! Why is it people have to blame every problem on the lack of open source software?
The post which said that taking it out would support atheism is stupid. The post which said that taking it out would support agnosticism is stupid. If I were to make some statement about what I want to have for lunch tomorrow, it probably wouldn't include any reference to God. Therefore based on that, one of you would think I'm an atheist and the other would think I'm agnostic? Taking under God out of the pledge of allegiance would mean it didn't say anything about religion one way or another, it would not endorse any particular view point.
You've got to be joking. You're suggesting that SPECmarks is a better judge of a system than well... anything? SPEC marks don't reflect any actual use. If anything I'd think SPEC tests have had a negative effect, since people use those as a judge of the quality of a processor when it's really just a judge of how well a company can specialize a compiler and chip to do well on this one test.
It would beat the eMac if the only thing you look at is speed. The operating system will make a much bigger difference to most users than the processor speed. Most users in most tasks won't notice the difference much. It isn't end user demand which keeps increasing processor speed..
I wouldn't be surprised if this law doesn't change, because I don't think anyone who considers it would take this as a threat to their business. Nobody in their right mind is going to want to buy or sell individual songs. There may be people who buy or sell whole libraries when they no longer want to use them, but I doubt it. Nobody could ever make money off of buying thing on iTunes and then reselling them, that's for sure. And a used market doesn't make sense because of the associated hassle. Is it even possible to have iTunes assoicated with more than one account.
And how on earth could this open the door for a user run digital library? You can't transfer the songs except by transferring an entire account, so basically, even if you wanted to, the effort required to listen to one song would be worth more than a dollar to most people, so they'd just buy them. Different online media distribution services have different methods of copy protection, but I dont' think any of them make it easy to copy files between users, and even if they did, is the online library going to destroy the copy on their server while someone has it checked out?
If the MPAA and RIAA want to switch to pay for play system this has nothing to do with changing the laws, but rather convincing people that they want to use pay for play services, which people are not exactly eager to do so far.
...despite Apple making WebKit available, and despite Safari being based on freely available code in the first place.:)
IE using WebKit would be pointless. The only reason people use IE for the most part anymore is because it has the rendering engine which most websites are designed to work correctly on - or because they used Windows and think "it's good enough". And can you point me to the KHTML code modified to work native in Aqua without Qt? Safari is based on on KHTML but it's heavily modified to tie into Aqua and Quartz instead of Qt and the KDE libraries.
That is not to say that I think the real reason Microsoft quit producing IE was because they lacked the information about the OS that Apple had. Rather it just didn't make good business sense anymore. They probably just put that bit about not having the operating system code in there so that they could finally accuse someone else of one of the things they had always been accused of.
You're wrong, the scale is not shifted. The same scale is used now as always was. Originally IQ was tracked by your intellectual age versus your biological age, but there is no way to accurately track average IQ, so it can not be shifted accurately. Most people who take IQ tests voluntarily are intellectuals who want to prove how much better they are than the peons who are taxing them so much, and they are not administered universally, so even if anyone wanted to shift the scale it would be impossible to do accurately.
If not the exact same processors, then very similar ones, but does that even really matter for this argument? Linux will already run on PowerPC chips and has for quite some time. So hardware aside (yes, you are more "locked-in" with Apple hardware, but why this matters I don't know) you have two platforms, Mac OS X and Linux (and any other open source OS that will compile for PowerPC, FreeBSD and OpenBSD might, I'm not sure). How is that worse than having Windows and Linux, unless you prefer Windows, which isn't really a lock in issue as much as a personal preference.
wow, what a shocker that this was posted by an anonymous coward. Poor baby... are the slow witted people too hard for you to deal with? They're all probably happier than you.. But you're far superior to them, tortured soul that you are. Well, I'm sure Ill cry for you tonight, because you're life is so hard.. So, all these people with IQ 100 are dimwitted, huh? So, you ask everyone your IQ when you meet them? Or you're just going by what you assume is average? Average IQ isn't 100 anymore, it's shifted upward. I believe the average now is 110-120.. God, reading/. makes me ashamed to be a geek sometimes..
I said Microsoft understands it. i.e., they understand what people want. Whether or not they actually give it to them is an entirely different issue, which I don't really wish to venture an opinion on right now, since it's not really the point of what I was saying.
It's not that people are stupid. That's an incredible arrogant and geek centric way to look at it. Get over yourself. They don't want to have to know how computers work because they shouldn't have to know how computers work. They should just be able to use one. It's called specialization. if everyone had to go spend all of their time learning about everything they needed in their life and building their own house and growing their own food and so forth, nothing would get done. Instead they should be able to do whatever it is that they do and have those things made as accessible as possible by whoever's job it is to do those things.
UI simplification is a good thing. A very good thing. A lot of people loathe computers, because of software which was built on the mentality that it's not that hard to learn, so people can just read the manual and figure it out.
People should be able to buy computers, use them, and find the experience enjoyable. That means they shouldn't have to worry about reading the manual. Apple and Microsoft both understand this. The geek community and especially the open source community need to catch on now.
If I go to buy a steak, I shouldn't need to know how to birth a cow, I should just have enough money to pay for the steak, and maybe an understanding of how to use eating utensils.
I'll agree that there are glitches in OS X, but if you think there aren't UI glitches in Linux, you must not be paying attention or sticking to command line. OS X is in my experience much more integrated, and much more glitch proof than a Linux desktop. Linux may be rock solid with server software, but Linux as a desktop is far from mature. I've never had any of these problems when setting up fieries. I can't remember, the model number, because it's been a little while since I worked with a fiery, but ours worked perfectly with OS X 10.2.6 without any additional configuration.
I get the impression that you have a lot of experience with Linux and not so much with Macs, because my experience has been that getting anything installed on Mac OS X, especially anything related to peripherals or graphics, is inifintely easier on OS X. Don't even get me started on CUPS. Apart from the PITA configuration, once I got CUPS workigng with the correct drivers for my printer, the quality was atrocious. On the other hand installing a new printer on OS X was a two minute process and now it works perfectly.
Whenever says someone make the same uninformed, misleading comments that everyone else makes mod them down... More importantly, whenever someone defends Apple label them a zealot!
On servers the cost might be about the same. Note I say might though. Linux Is Not Unix. OS X is also not Unix, just based on UNIX. They have similar capabilities but they are certainly not the same. Though you could be right about a Mac server not costing any less to operate then a Linux server, I'm not sure about this. On a desktop if you think that a Linux desktop is as easy to run and support as a Mac desktop then I'd say that you're very poorly informed. Mac hardware tends to be more reliable than PC hardware. Say what you want about Linux being ready for the desktop - sure it's ready for my desktop but I can't count on my fingers the number of programming languages I know, I'm not the average user - but it's not. Setting up a printer on a Mac network requires significantly less work than even setting up a printer on a single Linux computer. My mother would have no problem setting up a new printer on her iBook and can find her files and get done everything that she needs to. On the other hand she would have no ability to deal with Linux, except for very basic stuff. And if you're going to talk about platforms being beliefs, spare me. I have at home a Linux installation, a Mac installation, and a Windows installation. It amazes me how afraid of new things most people in technology are. Anything but your own platform is obviously not worth looking into.
In response to your Mac-user bashing I'd like to repeat a statement from my previous comment - You are dumb.
Apple hardware has had horrible design mistakes.. but no Wintel hardware ever has had hardware flaws that ended up biting people in the ass? And don't only look at the price of hardware. The workforce needed to run a Mac network as well as support costs are almost certain to be lower than a Linux network. If you only look at the price of hardware for purchasing decisions, then you are dumb.
It's psosbile that they'll lose a lot of business because of this, but I sincerely doubt it. For one thing most people probably won't pay much attention to the warnings, plus I'm certain that there are ways to make claims other than over the phone. And most importantly, the average Joe Six-Pack isn't half as paranoid as the average Joe Slashdotter.
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Apple does support Hebrew. Microsoft does not support Hebrew in their Mac software.
Why buy a computer with a $500 chip if the rest of the system is going to be bargain basement stuff? What a waste of money unless all you want to do on it is run benchmarks and not actually use it.
Operating systems make a hell of a lot more difference than CPU's, and Windows just doesn't cut it for some people. Then again some people don't like OS X and only will use Windows. Or Linux. Whatever. If you know enough about computers to need something as high performance as a Dual G5 or an Athlon 64 then do you really need benchmarks like this to tell you what to buy?
And you seem to be under the impression I'm a Mac zealot. My primary computer is an x86 Linux/Windows box, so spare me. Do you honestly think I'm going to cry myself to sleep because some AC doesn't like Apple?
AAAAAAARGH! Why is it people have to blame every problem on the lack of open source software?
The post which said that taking it out would support atheism is stupid. The post which said that taking it out would support agnosticism is stupid. If I were to make some statement about what I want to have for lunch tomorrow, it probably wouldn't include any reference to God. Therefore based on that, one of you would think I'm an atheist and the other would think I'm agnostic? Taking under God out of the pledge of allegiance would mean it didn't say anything about religion one way or another, it would not endorse any particular view point.
You've got to be joking. You're suggesting that SPECmarks is a better judge of a system than well... anything? SPEC marks don't reflect any actual use. If anything I'd think SPEC tests have had a negative effect, since people use those as a judge of the quality of a processor when it's really just a judge of how well a company can specialize a compiler and chip to do well on this one test.
It would beat the eMac if the only thing you look at is speed. The operating system will make a much bigger difference to most users than the processor speed. Most users in most tasks won't notice the difference much. It isn't end user demand which keeps increasing processor speed..
Plenty good for just about everything but gaming actually. A bit more pricey but you get what you pay for.
And how on earth could this open the door for a user run digital library? You can't transfer the songs except by transferring an entire account, so basically, even if you wanted to, the effort required to listen to one song would be worth more than a dollar to most people, so they'd just buy them. Different online media distribution services have different methods of copy protection, but I dont' think any of them make it easy to copy files between users, and even if they did, is the online library going to destroy the copy on their server while someone has it checked out?
If the MPAA and RIAA want to switch to pay for play system this has nothing to do with changing the laws, but rather convincing people that they want to use pay for play services, which people are not exactly eager to do so far.
IE using WebKit would be pointless. The only reason people use IE for the most part anymore is because it has the rendering engine which most websites are designed to work correctly on - or because they used Windows and think "it's good enough". And can you point me to the KHTML code modified to work native in Aqua without Qt? Safari is based on on KHTML but it's heavily modified to tie into Aqua and Quartz instead of Qt and the KDE libraries.
That is not to say that I think the real reason Microsoft quit producing IE was because they lacked the information about the OS that Apple had. Rather it just didn't make good business sense anymore. They probably just put that bit about not having the operating system code in there so that they could finally accuse someone else of one of the things they had always been accused of.
You're wrong, the scale is not shifted. The same scale is used now as always was. Originally IQ was tracked by your intellectual age versus your biological age, but there is no way to accurately track average IQ, so it can not be shifted accurately. Most people who take IQ tests voluntarily are intellectuals who want to prove how much better they are than the peons who are taxing them so much, and they are not administered universally, so even if anyone wanted to shift the scale it would be impossible to do accurately.
If not the exact same processors, then very similar ones, but does that even really matter for this argument? Linux will already run on PowerPC chips and has for quite some time. So hardware aside (yes, you are more "locked-in" with Apple hardware, but why this matters I don't know) you have two platforms, Mac OS X and Linux (and any other open source OS that will compile for PowerPC, FreeBSD and OpenBSD might, I'm not sure). How is that worse than having Windows and Linux, unless you prefer Windows, which isn't really a lock in issue as much as a personal preference.
But everyone knows Tobacco is bad for you.
wow, what a shocker that this was posted by an anonymous coward. Poor baby... are the slow witted people too hard for you to deal with? They're all probably happier than you.. But you're far superior to them, tortured soul that you are. Well, I'm sure Ill cry for you tonight, because you're life is so hard.. So, all these people with IQ 100 are dimwitted, huh? So, you ask everyone your IQ when you meet them? Or you're just going by what you assume is average? Average IQ isn't 100 anymore, it's shifted upward. I believe the average now is 110-120.. God, reading /. makes me ashamed to be a geek sometimes..
I said Microsoft understands it. i.e., they understand what people want. Whether or not they actually give it to them is an entirely different issue, which I don't really wish to venture an opinion on right now, since it's not really the point of what I was saying.
UI simplification is a good thing. A very good thing. A lot of people loathe computers, because of software which was built on the mentality that it's not that hard to learn, so people can just read the manual and figure it out.
People should be able to buy computers, use them, and find the experience enjoyable. That means they shouldn't have to worry about reading the manual. Apple and Microsoft both understand this. The geek community and especially the open source community need to catch on now.
If I go to buy a steak, I shouldn't need to know how to birth a cow, I should just have enough money to pay for the steak, and maybe an understanding of how to use eating utensils.
I thought #2 world wide was the Two Towers?
Did you really just say "I don't like their music, so it's not really stealing if we take their music for free."?
I get the impression that you have a lot of experience with Linux and not so much with Macs, because my experience has been that getting anything installed on Mac OS X, especially anything related to peripherals or graphics, is inifintely easier on OS X. Don't even get me started on CUPS. Apart from the PITA configuration, once I got CUPS workigng with the correct drivers for my printer, the quality was atrocious. On the other hand installing a new printer on OS X was a two minute process and now it works perfectly.
I"ve said it before, I'll say it again. Zealots for ANY platform are idiots.
Whenever says someone make the same uninformed, misleading comments that everyone else makes mod them down... More importantly, whenever someone defends Apple label them a zealot!
In response to your Mac-user bashing I'd like to repeat a statement from my previous comment - You are dumb.
Apple hardware has had horrible design mistakes.. but no Wintel hardware ever has had hardware flaws that ended up biting people in the ass? And don't only look at the price of hardware. The workforce needed to run a Mac network as well as support costs are almost certain to be lower than a Linux network. If you only look at the price of hardware for purchasing decisions, then you are dumb.
It's psosbile that they'll lose a lot of business because of this, but I sincerely doubt it. For one thing most people probably won't pay much attention to the warnings, plus I'm certain that there are ways to make claims other than over the phone. And most importantly, the average Joe Six-Pack isn't half as paranoid as the average Joe Slashdotter.