It's interesting that many people are critical of the benchmark results Apple trumpets. Certainly there are many that can address that topic. Depreciating the numbers, however, doesn't address the more interesting topic, which is:
How do you like the rest of the motherboard?
1 Gig frontside bus X2, PCI-X X3, Serial ATA X2 with separate channels for each drive, USB 2.0/FW 800 & 400, AGP 8X, DMA for every I/O function without bandwidth contention, etc.
Seems to me this may be the most advanced motherboard ever put in any desktop, affordable computer. And even if you don't believe the SPEC stuff, how about the software demos? Just lies, I suppose.
If y'all had taken the system diagram Apple is showing and substituted 2 Pentium 4's or 2 XEONs for the 2 970's, it would be touted as an Alienware-buster and proof that Wintel is King.
Better check your bubbles for bursting.
I think a lot of these comments have the scenario backwards. Suppose Apple can get OS X ported to x86 (or Itanium) hardware. They then build an Apple branded box using x86 hardware & bundle OS X. They only have to write drivers for the hardware they include in the box. The selling point is that you can also install Windows on it if you need/desire to, since Apple would only include components easily found in the compatible-hardware world. They already use IDE drives and ATI cards (3dfx soon to come), sound cards are being ported now. USB and Firewire are cross-platform. In other words it would be completely x86-world hardware, since OS X will be disk-based (no ROMs). Add Windows (not an emulator) if you want to run that legacy software app you must have. Apple would only want NEW hardware sales, and wouldn't need to be backward-compatible with your old x86 iron with the bum---- video card. But you might want to buy new hardware that would give you a chance at a new operating system, while not shutting you out from your old one if needed. So Apple wouldn't lose (and would probably increase) hardware sales, would open up their possibilities for increased operating system market share, wouldn't have to worry about legacy drivers and such, and would bless developers by giving them the chance to develop apps using the old NeXtStep development environment, which is rock-solid, proven, and enhances productivity. Now that's a plan. Hope Apple's listening.
Slashdot Mirror
It's interesting that many people are critical of the benchmark results Apple trumpets. Certainly there are many that can address that topic. Depreciating the numbers, however, doesn't address the more interesting topic, which is:
How do you like the rest of the motherboard?
1 Gig frontside bus X2, PCI-X X3, Serial ATA X2 with separate channels for each drive, USB 2.0/FW 800 & 400, AGP 8X, DMA for every I/O function without bandwidth contention, etc.
Seems to me this may be the most advanced motherboard ever put in any desktop, affordable computer.
And even if you don't believe the SPEC stuff, how about the software demos? Just lies, I suppose.
If y'all had taken the system diagram Apple is showing and substituted 2 Pentium 4's or 2 XEONs for the 2 970's, it would be touted as an Alienware-buster and proof that Wintel is King.
Better check your bubbles for bursting.
I think a lot of these comments have the scenario backwards. Suppose Apple can get OS X ported to x86 (or Itanium) hardware. They then build an Apple branded box using x86 hardware & bundle OS X. They only have to write drivers for the hardware they include in the box. The selling point is that you can also install Windows on it if you need/desire to, since Apple would only include components easily found in the compatible-hardware world. They already use IDE drives and ATI cards (3dfx soon to come), sound cards are being ported now. USB and Firewire are cross-platform. In other words it would be completely x86-world hardware, since OS X will be disk-based (no ROMs). Add Windows (not an emulator) if you want to run that legacy software app you must have. Apple would only want NEW hardware sales, and wouldn't need to be backward-compatible with your old x86 iron with the bum---- video card. But you might want to buy new hardware that would give you a chance at a new operating system, while not shutting you out from your old one if needed. So Apple wouldn't lose (and would probably increase) hardware sales, would open up their possibilities for increased operating system market share, wouldn't have to worry about legacy drivers and such, and would bless developers by giving them the chance to develop apps using the old NeXtStep development environment, which is rock-solid, proven, and enhances productivity. Now that's a plan. Hope Apple's listening.