That's Bruce Tognazzini. Author of Tog on Interface and Tog on Software Design. Both are excellent (nearly mandatory) for anyone designing systems to be used by people. Interface is out of print at the moment but amazon.com has ToSD.
The former book is mainly drawn from his experiences in the development of the Macintosh interface and covers such niceties as how and why to do user testing. He covers the perceived time as an important factor in design (I'd rather walk a mile in 15 minutes than wait 10 for a bus). The Software Design book is largely a case study of an advanced software interface project he did as a Sun fellow (the Star Project.
I've got Swing running on my system (Mac OS9 G3/300 192/6000) and the performance is remarkable, so I will. I've only tried a few short applications on my own just to see if I could make it go (it goes:-), but the Swing example apps run very well. I just tried SwingSet, which loads most of the UI classes, and it loaded in 38 seconds. That's a long load, but not so bad as to be unusable.
Once everything compiles the interface elements respond with native speed so I have to declare (based on the evidence before me and subject to review) that Swing is fast enough to be used in applications if run on a modern workstation.
There seems to be something wrong with the server, the MIME types or suchlike. I'm set up to handle.xls files, but the download gave me a text file. I'm on a Mac so I had to change the type of the file, but then Excel98 was able to read it, embeded chart and all.
Okay folks, someone finally did the three-way comparison we've (almost) all been waiting for: this URL contains a comparison of todays three leading processors, the G4, the PIII and AMD's Athlon.
The centerpiece is the SPECfp95 comparison. At the top of the three lines we have:
AMD Athlon 650MHz: 22.2
Intel Pentium 600 MHz: 15.9
PPC G4 500 MHz: 22.6
There are a few caveats about these numbers, most notably are the fact that the faster systems aren't currently shipping.
Honestly, I expected the Athlon to beat the G4. But even an extra 150MHz didn't do the trick.
At my last jobsite, they were running 10Mbps, unswitched. I still don't know how they managed to have hubs crash, but that happened monthly (in a 3 building, 800 user network). And never mind the WAN links, routers and Internet connection.When the proxy server got flaky, the Notes servers start crashing (webmail and SMTP gateway connections start timing out and the server doesn't recover it's resources properly, it's a Lotus thing, not any OS at fault). Yeesh.
They won't spending the money to upgrade anytime soon. Then again, they need to rebuild their IT department from scratch...
As of right now, AAPL is at 68.125. I was watching the keynote yesterday with a colleague. He jumped into AAPL at 63.5. I currently think AAPL is making a run for 75...
As for OS X, that's going to be BSD Unix (free), gcc for G4 (free) with a Mac GUI ($) and an updated version of the NextStep API. I suspect the full development tools will not appear in the OS X Client release, I hope they'll be free (in the best possible sense), but I'll settle for cheap with source code available (if not Open Source in some form).
Mac OS 8.6 (the current shipping version) is very stable. I just finished a support contract with a Fortune 100 company, and I had our 8.6 machines running perfectly (with the exception of the occaisonal packet storm on the network and of course well all know Lotus Notes isn't (very) stable on the Mac (although 4.57b cuts the random crashes to a minimum, and those probably reflect insufficient error checking given the unstable TCP/IP environment at that site).
A few notes on the 'benchmarks' shown during the keynote. Photoshop is a valid single-app benchmark, since tens of thousands of people spend all day using it. I expect the G4 acceleration to be similar in scope to the MMX or PIII acceleration. Watch the canned video of the tests, they show marked superiority in Photoshop, QT video compression (admittedly an Apple technology and almost certainly more optimized for a G4 than a PII), SETI@HOME and some scientific analysis (3D rendering of Mars Observer data).
I'm looking forward to Intel's rebuttal of these tests, and I'd also like to see someone run some of Intel's tests in the PIII performance area (PIII benchmarks). Speaking of whom, Apple does have the specs of Intels' tests online here. Note that without the Convolve test, their average is 2.24 times faster than a PIII (adjusted for MHz) instead of 2.94. Still...
Intel's explanation of the tests Apple ran are available here.
Interestingly (and some will find suspiciously), these tests aren't in the PIII benchmark area. Of course, most of those that are use Microsoft software and so aren't really suitable for testing Apple systems. If anyone optimized the test suite for the G4, it would have been Motorolla, since AltiVec is their baby.
and their RealPC product is $50 because it's the only mass-market (as mass market as any Mac software is) PC 'clone' that ships without an OS. No Windows, just (I think) QDOS. I've got Win98 on my copy (spare license) for games and various small utilities that haven't a mac equivalent.
Unlike VirtualPC you can run any OS that'll run on generic x86 compatible hardware. At work were're looking at setting up our Powerbook G3 users with our standard Y2K build (NT4). That'd put them ahead of the poor SOBs stuck with Win95 laptops.
Come to think of it, the metro Phoenix area has terrible air quality. I still remmeber seeing a great dome of pollution looming over the horizon as we drove ever closer to Phoenix (Pink Floyd concert, no smoking done, but the contact high was nice).
If I had asthma I wouldn't live within 50 miles of that great dome o pollution...
Yup, that's exactly what I thought when I first saw the EasyPC hardware spec. Hmmm, don't I own a computer that was excoriated for not having a floppy ? Yes. Have I needed one ? No.
Again, certain manufacturers getreamed by the trade press for machine configs that, a year later, are presented as a standard... And self-same manufacturer is also building a Unix variant with a modern GUI. I've got two of their machines at home. One runs its standard OS, plus Win98 under emulation (for games ok ?) and the other is running Linux.
Sparkle for the Mac is sort of dying out now that Quicktime can handle MPEGs. The only advantage to a 'true' QT for Linux vs using MPEGs is that Sorenson compression is really, really good. Other than that, MPEG makes a great cross-platform format, and the QT Streaming Server can stream those from a Lintel box.
I just tested an old game called Missile 3.0, dating from 1985. It runs fine even with Explorer, Eudora, and RealPC (running Win98) open. Old stuff almost never breaks when Apple updates their OS.
According to Mac OS Rumors (a usually reliable source) MS is releasing some hardware for Macs (courtesy of USB).
see:..why not check out the MacWorld Expo exhibitor list at http://www.macworldexpo.com/mwny99/exhibitor/frame .html - you'll find a rather interesting entry under M under stand 1937 for Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer...
Maybe if MS started using a cross platform API ? Nahh, never happen...
Frontier is an interesting tool. It's a scripting language; it was the first OSA language on the Mac and had a much better language than Applescript. It's heritage is as a very powerful scripting language and in part from Symantec's MORE outliner. Data and scripts are stored in an object database. The hierarchy is browsable as outlines, as are scripts and (the special data type) outlines. A few years back work was begin to make Frontier a content management and dynamic html system.
The feature list is impressive: supports WebDAV, interprocess communication with XML-RPC, support TCP/IP access for distributed computing as well as TCP/IP server and client capability, can serve http content from the object DB (static or dynamic) or the local filesystem, handles XML better than Java does, and has a great deal of groupware functionality plugged in. It even plays nice with Dreamweaver, and it runs under Linux with WINE.
The kernel of Frontier isn't open source, which is a pity. Most of the functionality, however, is available and fixes and improvements are available.
Frontier has a very powerful and clean language called Usertalk. Meatt Neuburg ons wrote an excellent book available from O'Rielly.
Works on IE4.5, MacOS8.51, QT4b22. Gee, QT crashes a Windows machine...
Re:IBM offers black monitors, mice, yadda, yadda..
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Translucent PC Cases
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· Score: 1
One of the supervisors in my office got his hands on a set of IBM black monitor, mouse and keyboard.
Gorgeous, simply gorgeous. I've got a G3 at home (and yes, I did just replace the keyboard and mouse today; the Macally keyboard is a nice unit, and the Contour UniMouse has a very nice, solid feel, plus three buttons; both are USB only)
I like the IBM matte black look better, translucent blue and white is nice, but mate black... man... Do they make a USB version ?
Re:Apple said we don't need floppies *wise up*
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Translucent PC Cases
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· Score: 1
Actually, in my limited NT admin experience, NT has to have floppies. WinNT requires 3 floppies on installation (it's actuially optional, but you'll want 'em if something goes wrong) for the emergency rescue disks. On a Mac, the emergency rescue disk is the system CD that came with the computer (or any more recent system CD). That's why Macs can get away without a floppy. And since the drivers for the, well everything... are on said same CD, Macs don't need a floppy for drivers.
Of course, any Lotus Notes shop probably makes great use of floppies for moving user.id files between machines. It's networkable, sure, but a floppy works out handy sometimes. Other than that (and the occaisonal Quark installation), Macs don't need floppies. They're just an occaisonal convenience.
Screenshots don't do this game justice.
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Mac Q3Test Shots
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· Score: 1
The screenshots don't show the sheer speed of motion in the game. Everything is very smooth (I didn't check my framerate) and with multiple netplayers running around in a room there are no slowdowns at all.
All in all, I was very impressed with how well the engine performed on my system (B&W G3/300, 16MB Rage128, 64 MB RAM) even with virtual memory on. Q3Test requires 70MB of RAM and I only have 64MB real memory.
I had one or two crashes while starting the game, but no errors at all once it got started.
Still, it is just a 3D first person shooter. It's exactly the sort of thing that people who like this sort of thing will like.
Slashdot Mirror
The former book is mainly drawn from his experiences in the development of the Macintosh interface and covers such niceties as how and why to do user testing. He covers the perceived time as an important factor in design (I'd rather walk a mile in 15 minutes than wait 10 for a bus). The Software Design book is largely a case study of an advanced software interface project he did as a Sun fellow (the Star Project.
Once everything compiles the interface elements respond with native speed so I have to declare (based on the evidence before me and subject to review) that Swing is fast enough to be used in applications if run on a modern workstation.
Try downloading it again, it is there.
Does Raisa Gorbachev count ? If so, we may be fnord in for another reaping by the Law of Threes.
wait... was that a game or not ... ?
The centerpiece is the SPECfp95 comparison. At the top of the three lines we have:
There are a few caveats about these numbers, most notably are the fact that the faster systems aren't currently shipping.
Honestly, I expected the Athlon to beat the G4. But even an extra 150MHz didn't do the trick.
The major problem with using older devices is likely to be MacOS drivers, not that older devices may not have Win2k drivers developed for them anyway.
Aside from the motherboard and some ROMs/ASICSsApple is using industry standard parts.
They won't spending the money to upgrade anytime soon. Then again, they need to rebuild their IT department from scratch...
As for OS X, that's going to be BSD Unix (free), gcc for G4 (free) with a Mac GUI ($) and an updated version of the NextStep API. I suspect the full development tools will not appear in the OS X Client release, I hope they'll be free (in the best possible sense), but I'll settle for cheap with source code available (if not Open Source in some form).
Mac OS 8.6 (the current shipping version) is very stable. I just finished a support contract with a Fortune 100 company, and I had our 8.6 machines running perfectly (with the exception of the occaisonal packet storm on the network and of course well all know Lotus Notes isn't (very) stable on the Mac (although 4.57b cuts the random crashes to a minimum, and those probably reflect insufficient error checking given the unstable TCP/IP environment at that site).
A few notes on the 'benchmarks' shown during the keynote. Photoshop is a valid single-app benchmark, since tens of thousands of people spend all day using it. I expect the G4 acceleration to be similar in scope to the MMX or PIII acceleration. Watch the canned video of the tests, they show marked superiority in Photoshop, QT video compression (admittedly an Apple technology and almost certainly more optimized for a G4 than a PII), SETI@HOME and some scientific analysis (3D rendering of Mars Observer data).
I'm looking forward to Intel's rebuttal of these tests, and I'd also like to see someone run some of Intel's tests in the PIII performance area (PIII benchmarks). Speaking of whom, Apple does have the specs of Intels' tests online here. Note that without the Convolve test, their average is 2.24 times faster than a PIII (adjusted for MHz) instead of 2.94. Still...
Intel's explanation of the tests Apple ran are available here.
Interestingly (and some will find suspiciously), these tests aren't in the PIII benchmark area. Of course, most of those that are use Microsoft software and so aren't really suitable for testing Apple systems. If anyone optimized the test suite for the G4, it would have been Motorolla, since AltiVec is their baby.
Can you say Hackintosh ? The G4 is made for cracking long encryption keys. Anybody have an estimate for how fast this thing will crack 128-bit keys ?
Unlike VirtualPC you can run any OS that'll run on generic x86 compatible hardware. At work were're looking at setting up our Powerbook G3 users with our standard Y2K build (NT4). That'd put them ahead of the poor SOBs stuck with Win95 laptops.
Why limit yourself to one OS at a time.
Heh, like the Post Office nearest my house ? On the plus side, it's open on weekends, but closes at noon one Sunday a month. Every month.
I certainly hope so. It's an amusing vision, but you've made it all dark and scary now
As a considerate smoker^h^h^h^h^h^h person, I'm in favor of a ban on inconsiderate people. Imagine all the open space...
Come to think of it, the metro Phoenix area has terrible air quality. I still remmeber seeing a great dome of pollution looming over the horizon as we drove ever closer to Phoenix (Pink Floyd concert, no smoking done, but the contact high was nice).
If I had asthma I wouldn't live within 50 miles of that great dome o pollution...
Again, certain manufacturers getreamed by the trade press for machine configs that, a year later, are presented as a standard... And self-same manufacturer is also building a Unix variant with a modern GUI. I've got two of their machines at home. One runs its standard OS, plus Win98 under emulation (for games ok ?) and the other is running Linux.
Any questions ?
Sparkle for the Mac is sort of dying out now that Quicktime can handle MPEGs. The only advantage to a 'true' QT for Linux vs using MPEGs is that Sorenson compression is really, really good. Other than that, MPEG makes a great cross-platform format, and the QT Streaming Server can stream those from a Lintel box.
I just tested an old game called Missile 3.0, dating from 1985. It runs fine even with Explorer, Eudora, and RealPC (running Win98) open. Old stuff almost never breaks when Apple updates their OS.
that's not as unlikely as it seems on the face of it. there are some very clever people out there...
The feature list is impressive: supports WebDAV, interprocess communication with XML-RPC, support TCP/IP access for distributed computing as well as TCP/IP server and client capability, can serve http content from the object DB (static or dynamic) or the local filesystem, handles XML better than Java does, and has a great deal of groupware functionality plugged in. It even plays nice with Dreamweaver, and it runs under Linux with WINE.
The kernel of Frontier isn't open source, which is a pity. Most of the functionality, however, is available and fixes and improvements are available.
Frontier has a very powerful and clean language called Usertalk. Meatt Neuburg ons wrote an excellent book available from O'Rielly.
It's cool, check it out
Works on IE4.5, MacOS8.51, QT4b22. Gee, QT crashes a Windows machine...
Gorgeous, simply gorgeous. I've got a G3 at home (and yes, I did just replace the keyboard and mouse today; the Macally keyboard is a nice unit, and the Contour UniMouse has a very nice, solid feel, plus three buttons; both are USB only)
I like the IBM matte black look better, translucent blue and white is nice, but mate black... man... Do they make a USB version ?
Of course, any Lotus Notes shop probably makes great use of floppies for moving user.id files between machines. It's networkable, sure, but a floppy works out handy sometimes. Other than that (and the occaisonal Quark installation), Macs don't need floppies. They're just an occaisonal convenience.
All in all, I was very impressed with how well the engine performed on my system (B&W G3/300, 16MB Rage128, 64 MB RAM) even with virtual memory on. Q3Test requires 70MB of RAM and I only have 64MB real memory.
I had one or two crashes while starting the game, but no errors at all once it got started.
Still, it is just a 3D first person shooter. It's exactly the sort of thing that people who like this sort of thing will like.