Friday Apple Quickies

An anonymous reader writes "Steve Jobs' $78 million Apple income tops Fortune magazine's list of CEOs whose companies lagged behind the S&P 500 performance last year. The number 'reflects the value of five million restricted shares Jobs got this year in exchange for 27.5 million underwater options.'" markomarko writes "Well, despite Charlie White making all us Mac users eat crow over his comparison of render times between a dual 1.25 GHz Power Mac and a Dell 3.06 GHz P4, it seems that that Dave Nagel has given us a reason to take another look at the Mac. His article shows how After Effects render speeds can be doubled with the Mac, by using both CPUs."

So in other words....

[Squidgee]

Adobe is technically screwing over the Mac.

By releasing a product which uses 1/2 of the Mac's power, they've crippled it. It would be similar to capping that 3ghz pentium to 1.5ghz, in which cause the Mac would (Guess what) slaughter the PC.

Yea, Adobe's a real good Mac software maker.

Re:Frustrating

[Niles_Stonne]

Read both of the articles, you will see that After Effects only uses one processor - hence the ability to "double your performance" using the dual processor "tip" from the second article. My calculation is correct, given that the second processor is roughly equivalent to a brick as far as After Effects is concerned in it's standard configuration.

The entire point of my post was to extrapolate from given data what the data may have looked like if White's testing had used the dual processor tip, instead of just using a single 1.25Ghz G4 vs a 3.06Ghz Intel.

Re:So in other words....

[arloguthrie]

Oh, right, it's Adobe's fault. *rolls eyes*

Damn right its Adobe's fault. It's Microsoft's fault that Windows sucks, is it not? It's not Intel's fault that Microsoft is not writing an operating system that runs smoothly and efficiently on their processors and chipsets. So if Adobe isn't willing to optimize their software to take advantage of Altivec and dual-processors on the platform that made their company what it is today, then I say, "Adobe -- j'accuse!"

I have many of the same feelings about Adobe as I do Microsoft. Adobe had a nearly monopolistic place in the design industry (Photoshop, especially) and they abuse it by filling their software with bloat and not actually improving it. They have a history of making their software incompatible with others (see this article [pennnet.com]). And let's not forget when they sued Macromedia for using a fairly common UI widget.

When optimized for G4s and multiple G4s, software can be very zippy on a Mac. In raw power, they are still lacking behind in Intel, all us Mac lovers are sad to admit. But this article proves that Macs, compared to PCs in their price point neighborhood, can hold their own if developers like the marketing-driven ones at Adobe, took the time to make their software take full advantage of the machine they're working on.

Re:Frustrating

[GlassHeart]

Mr. White is [an idiot], if only because he believed the results of his tests enough to publish them, and make a fool of himself

I don't think there is reason to believe that the White benchmarks are invalid. First of all, they are out-of-the-box configurations, still valid for those who don't want to hack their software. Secondly, it predates this dual processor hack.

Its conclusion can now be called into question, but I think "idiot" is far too harsh. If he is intellectually honest, he will redo his benchmarks applying this recent discovery.

Re:Frustrating

[dtfarmer]

but I think "idiot" is far too harsh. If he is intellectually honest, he will redo his benchmarks applying this recent discovery

Yes, idiot might be too harsh, but from what I've heard of him and his demeanor towards macs, I seriously doubt he will redo the benchmarks using the full power of a dual processor mac. I certainly hope he proves me wrong, for the sake of his "intellectual honesty".

Take for instance the entire tone of the article, which can be summed up by the title he used "mac slaughtered again." Now ask why he never once questioned the performance of the Mac, and why it performed as such? He never even asks if the fault of the performance lies with Apple (hardware) or Adobe (software). He wants to lead you believe it is the Mac hardware that falls short, when the software is as much or more to blame for the performance. Had the software he was using been threaded properly (and Adobe knows how to do this, see Photoshop) to take advantage of the multi-processors, which this "hack" allows you to do, his precious new Dell with it's hyperthreading might not have fared so well.

Nonetheless, when we get right down to brass tacks, my only point (which I admit I overdid in using the term idiot) is that Mr White has a bias, and his tests were meant solely to reinforce that bias, just as Photoshop bakeoffs are meant to reinforce a pro-mac bias.

Re:Frustrating

[yomegaman]

That's nice that a 3 GHz G4 would whup a 3 GHz P4, but who cares? There's no such part. I agree that clock speed isn't everything, but Intel processors still whip any G4 that actually exists. Sure, you can go dual, but you could also go dual Intel with the same trick and we're right back where we started.

is speed important to everybody?

[nuckin futs]

Speed is not the reason why some people use Macs. They use it because of the OS and bundled apps. Having a nice looking computer,complete with dual processors and altivec to speed things up is just a bonus.