Do you develop on GitHub? You can keep using GitHub but automatically sync your GitHub releases to SourceForge quickly and easily with this tool so your projects have a backup location, and get your project in front of SourceForge's nearly 20 million monthly users. It takes less than a minute. Get new users downloading your project releases today!
Well I would still recommend waiting a year. Then they will have faster chips. And many flaws from long term use will be helped fixed (like the PowerBook paint peeling). Also you can hopefully get some more real benchmarks and not from people who are guessing. As well as seeing how people like them after a year. Lilke most things with computers never try to get version x.00 Try to get the next version up. That way they can fix many of the issues, that have not been expected.
The story is pretty useless until we get an idea of the quantity of shipping G5s we're talking about here. I'm betting it's just a trickle. When the PowerBook G4s first came out, the backorder queue remained quite long for weeks after Apple claimed the 'Books were "shipping," because the actual number of units being shipped was relatively small. I hope there's a flood of G5s making their way from Apple's factory in Taiwan, but from previous experience, I bet that isn't the case.
Well the neat thing about technology, When you get a faster computer you start working with it without really noticing a major speed change. But then after a week you go back to your old system then you see the difference.
well a quick look now shows that Intel have since then continued ramping up the old processors and these G5's aren't actually the fastest machines now you can actually buy them
A quick look where? These OS topics quickly desolve into unsubstantiated ramblings, so please post links not opinions...
I would tend to believe the numbers, no matter how large.
Many people have been in a holding pattern, using old machines running OS 9 for two reasons:
1) They would need a new machine to really make the most of OS X, and they wanted to wait until the successor to the G4 was available.
2) They didn't want to make the move to OS X until a native QuarkXPress was available for it.
Both of those conditions have now been fulfilled. Apple will not be able to crank out these things fast enough (even moreso than usual) to meet all the pent-up demand.
I bet once the numbers are in, we'll find out that this was Apple's best quarter in a few years, maybe even since the return of Jobs.
2) I can't afford one because I'd rather spend 3000$ of my own time fixing Windows than the extra 1000$ it costs to buy a Mac.
Time is money, and this is where people get the equation wrong.
Actually, if you build it yourself, a very decent x86 box can be had for $600. Then again, you can get one from Dell or IBM or Compaq that is not horrible for that price with a monitor. The last machine I built cost me less than $500. The one I am building this week was around $200. New hardware.
As for Windows problems, I have none. You see there is this littel OS called Linux. Prhaps you have heard of it?
It would be pretty tough to build a $3000 - $5000 x86 desktop these days, and if you did, it would probably have at minimum twice the Ghz of the G5 per proc.
And the only thing that prevents BMW from grabbing a serious share of the market are THEIR prices. While there are certainly exceptions to the norm, you TEND to get what you pay for.
No, its that consumers still don't 'value' OSes at their true value. Just because Ladas were cheaper than Hondas didn't mean Ladas outsold. Why? Cause people knew Ladas sucked shit, and Hondas didn't.
If Microsoft advertising ever stops drowning everybody out and they stop forcing computer distributors to *only* offer their OS, then people still start to gain a little more visibility. It really wasn't all that long ago that people knew Amiga, Commadore, Apple, IBM existed.. and we'll see such a day again. When the average consumer understands that the OS market does offer a few choices, and that actually choosing a better OS is a money-saving decision, Apple will do better.
I know of at least two people recently who bought a whole new computer cause they fucked up their Windows installation and figured it'd be easier to buy a new machine. This is an excellant example of how little choice consumers feel they have in the OS world. Who the hell buys something, watches it break from every day use, and goes out to buy the exact same thing? Obviously, somebody who feels that there isn't much else to buy.
Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, and nobody ever felt alone suffering through Windows problems. When more of your friends have Apple, you'll be more likely to see the value of spending more on a computer (and subsequently buying computers/OS upgrades less often).. being a consumer is about being educated to make strong decisions. Ask anybody why they bought Windows today, and 95% of the time, the person will answer along the lines of "What else is there" or "Because of work/school/friend/game/application, I didn't have any other choice". 4% will say something along the lines of "Well, its the most popular OS, so how bad can it be?".. your usual leader-worshippers.. the same folks who equate financial success with product superiority (tho engineers know better.) The last 1% actually like Windows, but they also happen to be the 1% of the population that exhibits a distinct interest in sadomasochism.
And of course I run Windows. Because my neighbours do.. although at the rate I'm being asked to fix peoples computers, its probably worth the extra 1000$ for me to *not* have Windows and be able to feign ignorance when begged for help.
And of course I run Windows. Because my neighbours do.. although at the rate I'm being asked to fix peoples computers, its probably worth the extra 1000$ for me to *not* have Windows and be able to feign ignorance when begged for help.
$1,000? How do you figure that? E-macs (not to be confused with emacs, although it is included) start at $699 last I checked.
Linux is nice, but c'mon, if my neighbours can fuck up their Windows computers, fucking up Linux/BSD would be a piece of cake unless they were all sent to 'Whats a symlink, is it like a shortcut?' school.
So, lets compare out-of-the-box GUI'd commercial OSes. I wish I could include BeOS and Warp in the list, but alas, MS slayed them.
The hardware shipped with G5s kick the stuffing out of any 600$ box, thankyouverymuch. Thats apples to oranges (shit, the gfx card in a G5 is half of you 600$ box alone.. and theres a DVD recorder in there.. )
So try again? Build me a PC box with the level of componants in an Apple rig.. which Alien Ware does. A rough check says their systems go from 1500-2500..
Its good that you can get what you need for 600 bucks, but your resulting rig would be a far cry from the capabilities of a G5. I'm not saying that you can't build a cheaper PC rig that can do the same things as a G5, but at least be fair if you're going to honestly try and crunch my glibly provided numbers in my orig post.
And I'm a FreeBSD developer.. a real *nix guy who builds his own PCs. Unless you can prove that you can appreciate what the Apple experience provides, theres no sense in pointing out that you can get what *you* like for cheaper.
OK. I own PCs and Macs and use both. I've use Macs since System 5, and PCs since DOS. The PC is mainly for working from home when I'm not building actual hardware at work. The Mac is where I do creative things and day to day stuff like email and web browsing.
The Mac is just nicer to use. That's really all there is to it, and yes that's subjective I guess, although even the hardcore Windows fanatics I know admit the GUI is a mess. As for price differences, there really isn't that much of a gap if you compare equivalently equiped machines of comparable quality.
The quality factor is important. I built my own PC, for example, and would never bother with some $500 gray box. There really is no bargain basement Mac, but I don't think I'd want one anyway.
As an aside, I find it weird that there is so much quibbling over a couple bucks in the personal computer world. I know a guy at work who bought a $60,000 car and a $5000 plasma television, and then spent three weeks online to save $100 on a PC (he paid $500 instead of $600). I consider my time to be money, and the time saved using my Mac pays for any price gap easily within a month.
It's very hard not to be biased about whatever you use. But I'll try.
I switched to Mac from Linux because it works. Add Fink [sf.net] to it, and it acts just like a Linux box. I have a PowerBook, and it's by far my favorite laptop (of many laptops I've owned).
What does "it works" mean? It almost never crashes. It almost never needs drivers. It runs MS Office. It's a Unix workstation: bash shell, X, KDE, Gnome, etc. It goes to sleep when the lid closes and comes back within 1 second when the lid opens (I rarely turn it "off"). iPhoto, iTunes, iPod, iMovie are excellent, simple, and easy (not power programs, but excellent for the basics). And most important, it's pretty (titanium or aluminum case).
I still use Debian/Dell on my servers. But for a laptop, OS X is incredibly useful.
It's not about speed anymore. About the PIII, I quit caring about speed. Everything after that is *fast*. My Powerbook 800 is probably about as fast as a PIII 800. For programming, documents, etc., speed isn't the issue anymore. The issue is usability. Personally, I really like KDE. I still use it on my Mac once in a while. I also like OS X. It just works.
...DVD Studio Pro 2 also starts shipping today. Requirements include a 733 MHz or faster PowerPC processor (G4 minimum) and AGP graphics card, just shy of Shake 3's minumum 800 MHz G4.
Question is, if you're editing video, do you want a G4 or a G5, when the former has twice as many internal drive bays than the latter? Or is someone putting out Firewire enclosures that can fully utilize >128 GiB drives?
"hey paid for an PC that he could build for 500 bucks?"
have you ever looked at an alienware PC? The video card alone might run you $500.
Alienware PCs are gameing systems pure and simple. MACs, no matter how cool, fast, 64 bit, sexy, are not gameing systems. I am not talking theory here (they should be able to play games well) I am talking reality. And reality is that a lot, probably most, games are not released for the mac, and if they are it is a half-assed port sometimes years after the PC original came out. If this guy bought an alienware PC it means 3 things. 1.He wants to play games 2.He has more money than I do -and- 3.he is too lazy to build the same thing on his own with individual parts.
Now with his Alienware pC, when inspiration hits him he will be able to make that awesome Neverwinter Nights module he'd been thinking about for days. No matter how cool his Mac is he won't be able to do that...
Because for many kinds of programs that doesn't work for finding buts. i.e. you have to get your program into the same state as it was earlier. For things like tracking down decompression errors, encryption errors, btree errors, and so forth, what you describe is next to useless. I admit that fix and continue is extremely usefull. I've been using it in Visual Studio for years. It's about time it came to Project Builder. But it really isn't helpful for many kinds of debugging.
The issue isn't fixing the bug it is finding the bug. Sometimes subtle logic bugs can take many days of iterating through the code to find.
My point is that Windows 95 made grandiose claims about being 32-bit when it wasn't at all. It was 32-bit icing on a 16-bit DOS layer. Apple is doing much the same. While the hardware might be 64-bit the software most certainly isn't so touting it as such is either stretching the truth or deliberately misleading depending on how charitable you're feeling.
Now I agree that Ghz is nice and I suspect the 32-bit / 64-bit modes are handled much more nicely that in x86 land, but if what you're buying here is not 64-bit. It's a Ferrari with a speed limiter since the issue of 64 vs 32 is not just about memory, since this chip contains a number of advanced modes e.g. better pipelining operations, branch prediction etc. such that software would greatly benefit from recompilation.
I don't know about you, but I feel rather uneasy about the whole prospect. Macs are hardly known for their long shelf life (i.e. builtin obscelesence) so it seems that the best strategy is to wait for a machine which actually delivers on its promises (and throws in some extra Ghz in the meantime) and not some half baked go-between.
Now perhaps I'll succumb eventually, but I've been down this road before and I find it's best to hang off a little until the fact seperates from the FUD and people can see what's what.
95% of the users out there don't think about what OS versions are coming up or how soon the next CPU will be released. The only technical thing they look at is the clockspeed and the size of the hard drive because those are the numbers that get larger over time. Why do you think they still produce 3.5" 5400 RPM drives? Why do you think software driven modems became a success? Why do you think people assume LCDs have a better display?
Remember, we're talking about people that buy a computer because it's cute, inexpensive, and named after fruit that matches the color.
The current state of the economy and the marketing of a product are the biggest hurdles that the latest shiny product faces.
Funny... People have been saying that since the beginning of the nineties... Yet Apple revolutionize again and again, and show better prosper than ever. This year we got the Music Store, the Power Mac G5, the 17" Powerbook, the new iPods... Apple and Dell are the only companies in the same industry that show profits right now.
G5 Tower inexpensive? God, if only...
I think that a lot of the generalizations you make here refer to the common PC user. I use both PCs and Macs, and I can tell you that most mac users I have talked to are actually a bit more educated regarding their computer choices than your typical PC fan.
Must -- not -- respond -- to -- trolling -- anonymous -- coward -- must -- not -- respond....
Can someone explain to me why I should buy A Mac when I can get a faster PC for less?
Why would anyone pay $2000+ for a Paul Reed Smith guitar when they could get a Fender Squire for $200? Why do people pay millions for Stradivarius violins?
A Mac is like a fine musical instrument. It usually isn't "just a tool." Attention to detail, fit and finish figure into the value.
Why do you think they still produce 3.5" 5400 RPM drives? Why do you think software driven modems became a success?
Because hardware companies are cheap.
Why do you think people assume LCDs have a better display?
I didn't know people assumed LCDs have a better display. The reason most people I know buy LCDs is to get a larger physical screen size without having to sacrifice desk surface area for a hulking CRT.
Remember, we're talking about people that buy a computer because it's cute, inexpensive, and named after fruit that matches the color.
Erm, no. We're talking about the professional market here. They knew the G5 was coming for the last year, just not exactly when. And I can tell you that every one of my clients, professionals one and all, were waiting for exactly what I said: the next generation of Macs beyond the G4, and OS X-native QuarkXPress. If you had read the articles in the Mac press since 10.2 was released, you'ld know that that was by far the predominant stance.
I was waiting to replace my primary home machine as well, nursing along a 6 year-old Power Mac-- finally last year I couldn't wait any longer and picked up a used G4 that had the horsepower to run OS X, because I needed to get familiar with it so I could effectively support it when the time comes. In January, the G4 goes bye-bye and I get a dual G5, which is what I was waiting for all along. I just hope Apple manages to catch up with demand by then.
I would venture to say that the 'classicist' thinker who trotted out the numbers mentioned above is, at some level, a Quality oriented thinker, albeit a rather twisted one. Case in point: Does scoring higher on Seti have any measurable real-world value? Does being able to compile a Linux kernel faster have any meaning compared to the fact that the kernel *needs* to be compiled in the first place? A Linux Zealot perceives Quality using different esthetic values then the rest of us. To most people, Apple's packaging is beautiful. To a Linux zealot, the specs are beautiful. Both the box and the specs are meaningless in the classicist sense. Had the original poster asked "Does 'packaging' feed my children? Does it make me more money?" etc. then he would have been a classicist thinker. But he's as hopelessly romantic as those of us who 'ooh' and 'aah' at Apple's packaging.
Excellent Pirsig mental diarrhea. For those of you who don't think reading is strictly for masochists, here's an attempt at simplifying this post:
True Quality is not about simply delivering a nice product. It is a process which does not stop throughout the products' design and manufacture. As soon as you begin to cut corners, you begin to whittle away at this.
"We don't need the nice box," you say. That's cool, and probably true. You don't really need rounded edges or a shiny back, either. And you don't need the Chicago font, or a glowbing blue backlight, or a hold button. Fact is, 99% of the unit is in the short run inconsequential to the production of a digital music player.
But in the long run, it's these inconsequential elements that make the difference between a truly great machine and a half assed one. Really fine details smooth over the parts that may not work so great. There is a lot more leeway given, hence the Apple fanatic's uncanny ability to look over some of the stupid shit Apple does. After all, quality is a combination of all the factors of a product...here's something that looks well made, sounds well made, feels well made and comes with well made accessories in a well made box. At what point does the box start mattering? Well, it's the first thing you see at the check-out when you're about to shell out a bunch of cash for the thing, or it's the first thing you see when it comes in the mail. It's very reassuring.
Besides, the box is at most 5% of the cost of the final product. If you don't include it, you either reduce the price of the product by 5% or increase your margin by a similar amount. If additional sales as a result of the cool box are more than that 5%, and don't come at the expense of people willing to buy the thing if it were ONLY 5% cheaper, it's worthwhile to keep it. And I guarantee you that's not the case with the iPod.
The initial versions of the G4 were very nice and very compititive. What happened though was the Motorola, for whatever reason, couldn't get the chip to scale well and couldn't deal with bandwidth. Realistically had Motorola been able to fix the bandwidth limitations of the G4 and get it to scale to 2 GHz it would be very competitive with the 970.
Had Motorola not fallen behind so badly then I think that we'd not be complaining so much (nor needing the horrible wait the last year for the 970).
The problem with the 970 / G5 is that it doesn't really have as many integer processing units. So it really isn't that much faster per clock cycle than the G4. (The benchmarks show this) However the bandwidth and vector units are very impressive. Perhaps the G6 will improve integer performance.
Listen, 64-bit is not a hardware issue as much as it is a software issue. Yes, the hardware support needs to be there first, but really it about wether or not the software will actually use the 64-bit modes.
It's not like 64-bit is always a win-win situation. Some programs will always run faster when compiled in a 32-bit addressing mode simply because 32-bit can be more efficient when not addressing large amounts of ram. Just like there are programs that can be written entirely withing the 16-bit addressing modes of the x86 that will outperform the 32-bit version. Though I would guess that today that number is rather small.
I hope that the Mac continues to be a hybrid of 32 and 64 bit programs for awhile. It won't be expensive to maintain compatability from the OS perspective, and it will ensure that all of us that don't want to upgrade will be able to run all the software for awhile.
Apple already has the infistructure in place so that people with G5s will be able to run G5 versions and people with G4s will be able to run a G4 version. Their executable format allows for multiple versions of the same program so that the developers can simple recompile for the G5 ahead of time and package it with the G4 version in the same file. (like the old 'fat' binaries of yore with 68k and ppc code in them)
Besides, you can't 'just recompile' and get benefits of 64 computing. It's not that simple. If you don't program with the intent of being x-platform then you can't recompile and have it work. Also, as you hinted, the G5 has a radically different idea about what kind of code it optimal compared to the G4, thus any code targeted for the G4 will perform sub-standard. We'll just have to wait a month or two until all the software catches up to the hardware. The G5 will only seem to get faster and faster as more software is retargeted for it.
The G5 is more then a step up in clock speed, it's a whole new generation of processor, a bigger step from the G3 to G4. But no matter how you look at it, it's a step up. Maybe not as big as you want it to be and this is something that I think a few people are (still) sore about.
and you'll know what it's like for a mac user to try to explain the 'difference' between mac and pc (or maybe a better metaphor might be 'try explaining sex to a virgin??)
here's a clue, it ain't in the processor speed, it's in the software, stupid...sure pcs have the same kinds of programs, but they don't run nearly as well...the latest examples being the iPod, iTunes and the Apple Music Store--each one was being done on the pc, yet Apple came in and changed the game with its products, with an experience that's totally superior in every way (my girlfriend gave me her old iPod when she got a new one--it sat on my shelf for a couple of weeks, until i finally started to use it, and no shit, it changed my life! i can now carry my entire cd collection in my pocket, and the thing works like a champ)...here's a tip, to any flamers that say 'so what' about any of these examples, i would bet the farm that they've never actually USED any of them!;>
And where's your operating system? Unless you have a brother who works for Microsoft you can plan on dropping anywhere from $160 to $300 for a version of Windows XP. Or, if you're running Linux/BSD you can plan on spending more time configuring the box than you would if you purchased a Macintosh with OS X. Also your machine is going to be one noisy son of a bitch with that Opteron in it. I run a 2Ghz Athlon XP and the damned thing sounds like a vacuum cleaner, even with a Thermaltake fan set on the low speed. And the case and power supply you selected, one word: pieceashit. If you bought a decent case and power supply (Lian Li and a PC Power and Cooling Silencer power supply) you'd be out another $200 or so, thus narrowing your price differential even further. This whole "I can build an x86 box for less money than you can buy a Macintosh" game is for idiots. It's like saying "I can turbo charge a Honda Civic so it will go faster than a Porsche Boxster and save lots of bux". Yes, Sparky, you can, but it's still not as good as a Porsche Boxster. It might be as fast on a straight track, but it still sux compared to the real thing.
Well, it's very easy. A lot of the slashdot readers put a lot of time, money and knowledge into inferior, yet popular platforms. These are people who stayed up late nights trying to get a kernel to compile or getting a system to run stable after hacking some nuance of the bios which resulted in a 3% speed increase to memory operations.
And now Apple comes around a makes a machine that's fast, nice looking, and doesn't require all of this extra knowledge and work to use.
Of course they're annoyed. Of course they're threatened. If Apple's stuff is any good, then they've been wasting their time.
So they spread FUD about broken applications, inconsequential complaints about how a $600 bargain PC is cheaper than a $3000 high end work station, or slander about how Apples are effeminate. It's all bullshit meant to make them feel better about a perceived waste. People do it all the time...just listen to the arguments people make about the benefits of sinking $10,000 into a $15,000 honda, rather than buy a $25,000 BMW.
It's childish in a way. Isn't there more to computing than JUST running an OS as fast as possible? If you do your computer stuff in Linux and like it, fine. I use Windows 2000, Gentoo and OSX 10.2 and none of them is better than any of the others for EVERYTHING. Granted, I spend more time tweaking the Gentoo box than either of the other two, but once I'm done I can just ignore it, and let it chug away serving web pages, databases, etc to its hearts content. Admining the 2k box is generally to keep it from falling apart in DLL hell...and admining the Apple machine is usually accepting that "you can't do that" on an apple;).
That 17% number could be right, if every shop is run like the one I'm in.
The majority of the machines are IBM clones. The ones in the art department are Mac. They all need to talk to each other. It took the Wintel-head IT guys forever to figure it out, and it still doesn't work right all the time.
The IT guys are afriad to upgrade the Macs because they think they'll break what little works of the network now. It doesn't matter how much you tell them that OSX simplifies networking, they are afraid of anything outside their comfort zone, which at this time only includes Windows 2000.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday August 18, 2003 @03:48PM (#6725497)
I have a Rev B bondi iMac that I use as my router. I just installed Debian, plugged in a USB ethernet adapter, set up some iptables rules, and I've hardly touched it since.
And why not? iMacs are every bit as much "real" computers as any ugly beige PC is. Their PowerPC CPUs are just us powerful as any other PowerPC CPU of the same speed (in fact, I believe that Cicso uses PowerPCs in some of their routers); their IDE hard drives are the same as any PC IDE hard drive; their ethernet and USB controllers are just as fast as any comparable PC part.
The appearance of a computer has nothing to do with it's usefulness or its capabilities, so I don't see why someone would not want to buy an attractive computer. Why would you want to have some ugly beige box sitting on your desk when you can have one that is just as useful and not offensive to the eye?
Well, it's like this: the mod system is here to pull interesting posts up and uninteresting ones down. If I go to the BSD section and post stuff like "Can't be bothered", "really don't care" "Interesting, but not for me", I get modded down.
Why? Nobody gives a shit.
If you go to the mac section to just say "bloody hell, that's expensive", then I say "I don't give a shit".
Not that I'm rich, but the times we've been over the high pricetag versus low maintenance issues...
Incidentally this also goes for "You're a faggot", "I hate mac", "Die Jobs, DIE DIE DIE" and the obligatory "verisign is lying", "macs are still slow", "windows/linux rules",
Everybody is entitled to his opinion, but you'll have a hard time making me care for statements like that.
Thus if I have the opportunity, I'll mod that sh*t down, regardless of how nice the guy/grrl is and will mod something enlightning up (even if it incidentally bashes the Mac. If it's interesting, it's interesting).
Because the platform is not popular or high in market share does not mean it is dead. That seems like some faulty logic to me. And, BTW I tried to get value out of an Intel machine it failed miserably. In fact my Compaq machine only operated slightly better than a dead computer. My Macs have done fantastic.
People throw around Apple's market share number of 3%. Why? Becuase three is a small number. But 3% of what? If we talk world population that would be about 145 million people. I will admit that 3% of the world population does not have an Apple. In reality Apple's world market share in people is around 26 million. That is not chump change.
Anyhow, thanks for opening my eyes. I never realized it, but all this time I wasn't taking my Mac seriously as a computing platform.
Probably when Apple/IBM can cool the G5 down enough for the PowerBooks. It took them a while with the G4. I would rather them do it right than have a PowerBook that melts within two months.
I work for S&S, number 4 or 5 in the world. We still use OS 9.x.
I'd say you underestimate the inertia big companies have. You need to retool a lot of machines, you need a lot of people to reorient themselves, and you need to justify the expense of doing it- especially in a large corporation, where the publishing arm of the multimedia companies are treated like the ugly stepchildren. I work on a G4 because I'm in the production dept.- but none of us have a dual processor.
From my experience in a smaller firm, you're lucky to get a new computer every couple of years. So they'll be a powerpc sitting next to an imac siting next to a G4.
And lastly, publishing is even more inert than other industries. Even the move to desktop publishing is relatively new, we're not a bunch who move quick, even with an imaginary budget that would allow it.
as a professional developer, even $2499 is recovered in a few days when you're tracking an extremely nasty bug.
Then write better code:)
Seriously, though, I am also both a C++ Win32 and Apple developer. I agree that PB is not as good as Visual Studio, but that's not the point. It's like saying that iMovie is not good enough because Final Cut Pro is better. Well, you pay $1000 for Final Cut Pro, so it should be better. Similarly, you pay an arm and a leg for Visual Studio, which gives Microsoft the resources to invest in adding more features and making it a richer development environment. You get what you pay for. That's life. And while there are some things about PB that drive me nuts, for free development tools I think PB and IB are pretty good (IMHO, IB spanks VC++ for UI design -- can't speak for VB or "C#" though), and I'm looking forward to XCode.
If it comes down to it, and I only have a choice of windows or Mac OS, I'd still pick windows; at least that way I could play some games. ..
If you're a hardcore gamer, obviously a Mac isn't for you. If you're a user who sometimes plays games, I don't see why not. There are far more Mac games available that I'd like to play than I have time to play them.
Because no one buys Macs, they don't make enough of the chips to produce them at reasonable cost and thus for the price of a 2 ghz Apple, you can get a MUCH higher clock speed PC which is guarenteed to outperform it
No you can't. All available evidence shows that at worst the top-end has parity with the fastest available Xeons. And it's not at all true that Macs must always be slower than PCs. (If it were, Apple would have switched to x86 years ago). A superior architecture can compensate for lesser economies of scale. The first PowerPC Macs were faster than Pentiums of the time. The G3 was much faster than then-current P2s. Motorola screwed up big time with the G4, and Intel did a good job of scaling the P4, which accounts for the performance disparities we saw over the last few years. But that is the exception, not the rule.
I just got a 2.4 Ghz Emachine with 256MB of RAM, CDRW, and an 80GB hard drive for $450.
You can pick up a super-charged V8, with auto, air-con, elec windows etc, for under $20,000 these days. But you don't see Merc, BMW, or Porche getting worried and lowering their prices do you?
Specs aren't everything, quality still counts for a lot of people.
The same is not true at all in PC land because even if you have a machine which is genuinely so obsolete that it couldn't run XP for example, you could still swap parts out of it until it could. A case in point would be a Gateway 450 that I own - I replaced the motherboard, stuck in a faster Athlon and more memory and it's as good as new
Of course it's good as new. It is new.
New motherboard, new CPU, which presumably meant new RAM. You might be reusing your old video
card (wonder if you can find XP drivers?), hard
disk (even more disproportionately slow compared
to your new CPU), and LAN card. Note, however,
that an 80 GB hard disk costs under $100, and
along with the cards you might have saved $150
or $200.
I agree that a Mac cannot be upgraded as a PC
can be. However, thanks to a vibrant used
Mac market, you can sell it to offset the costs
of a new one. Check on eBay, and you'll find an
Indigo iMac (350 MHz G3, 64 MB RAM, 7 GB hard
disk, running OS 9) going for $300+ with dozens
of bids.
So the question is, can you really save much
more than $300 worth of parts from a 2 year
old PC?
Re:I want one! (Score:4, Insightful)
In What Quantity? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, but they're dangerous! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not the fastest anymore (Score:2, Insightful)
A quick look where? These OS topics quickly desolve into unsubstantiated ramblings, so please post links not opinions...
Re:hurray for apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people have been in a holding pattern, using old machines running OS 9 for two reasons:
1) They would need a new machine to really make the most of OS X, and they wanted to wait until the successor to the G4 was available.
2) They didn't want to make the move to OS X until a native QuarkXPress was available for it.
Both of those conditions have now been fulfilled. Apple will not be able to crank out these things fast enough (even moreso than usual) to meet all the pent-up demand.
I bet once the numbers are in, we'll find out that this was Apple's best quarter in a few years, maybe even since the return of Jobs.
~Philly
Re:That box! (Score:3, Insightful)
"Steal me now!"
Re:ObWhines (Score:4, Insightful)
you mean
2) I can't afford one because I'd rather spend 3000$ of my own time fixing Windows than the extra 1000$ it costs to buy a Mac.
Time is money, and this is where people get the equation wrong.
Actually, if you build it yourself, a very decent x86 box can be had for $600. Then again, you can get one from Dell or IBM or Compaq that is not horrible for that price with a monitor. The last machine I built cost me less than $500. The one I am building this week was around $200. New hardware.
As for Windows problems, I have none. You see there is this littel OS called Linux. Prhaps you have heard of it?
It would be pretty tough to build a $3000 - $5000 x86 desktop these days, and if you did, it would probably have at minimum twice the Ghz of the G5 per proc.
Re:Apple's Market Share (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apple's Market Share (Score:5, Insightful)
If Microsoft advertising ever stops drowning everybody out and they stop forcing computer distributors to *only* offer their OS, then people still start to gain a little more visibility. It really wasn't all that long ago that people knew Amiga, Commadore, Apple, IBM existed
I know of at least two people recently who bought a whole new computer cause they fucked up their Windows installation and figured it'd be easier to buy a new machine. This is an excellant example of how little choice consumers feel they have in the OS world. Who the hell buys something, watches it break from every day use, and goes out to buy the exact same thing? Obviously, somebody who feels that there isn't much else to buy.
Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, and nobody ever felt alone suffering through Windows problems. When more of your friends have Apple, you'll be more likely to see the value of spending more on a computer (and subsequently buying computers/OS upgrades less often)
And of course I run Windows. Because my neighbours do
Re:That box! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not the fastest anymore (Score:2, Insightful)
you use a super optimized compiler on X86 and compare that to a free compiler with some optimizations for the PPC-970.
yeah...that is fair.
"hey look folks, I can run this code through ICC faster on an intel chip than GCC can run code on a PPC chip"
how about some logic courses for ya.
Re:Apple's Market Share (Score:3, Insightful)
$1,000? How do you figure that? E-macs (not to be confused with emacs, although it is included) start at $699 last I checked.
Re:ObWhines (Score:5, Insightful)
So, lets compare out-of-the-box GUI'd commercial OSes. I wish I could include BeOS and Warp in the list, but alas, MS slayed them.
The hardware shipped with G5s kick the stuffing out of any 600$ box, thankyouverymuch. Thats apples to oranges (shit, the gfx card in a G5 is half of you 600$ box alone
So try again? Build me a PC box with the level of componants in an Apple rig
Its good that you can get what you need for 600 bucks, but your resulting rig would be a far cry from the capabilities of a G5. I'm not saying that you can't build a cheaper PC rig that can do the same things as a G5, but at least be fair if you're going to honestly try and crunch my glibly provided numbers in my orig post.
And I'm a FreeBSD developer
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Mac is just nicer to use. That's really all there is to it, and yes that's subjective I guess, although even the hardcore Windows fanatics I know admit the GUI is a mess. As for price differences, there really isn't that much of a gap if you compare equivalently equiped machines of comparable quality.
The quality factor is important. I built my own PC, for example, and would never bother with some $500 gray box. There really is no bargain basement Mac, but I don't think I'd want one anyway.
As an aside, I find it weird that there is so much quibbling over a couple bucks in the personal computer world. I know a guy at work who bought a $60,000 car and a $5000 plasma television, and then spent three weeks online to save $100 on a PC (he paid $500 instead of $600). I consider my time to be money, and the time saved using my Mac pays for any price gap easily within a month.
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I switched to Mac from Linux because it works. Add Fink [sf.net] to it, and it acts just like a Linux box. I have a PowerBook, and it's by far my favorite laptop (of many laptops I've owned).
What does "it works" mean? It almost never crashes. It almost never needs drivers. It runs MS Office. It's a Unix workstation: bash shell, X, KDE, Gnome, etc. It goes to sleep when the lid closes and comes back within 1 second when the lid opens (I rarely turn it "off"). iPhoto, iTunes, iPod, iMovie are excellent, simple, and easy (not power programs, but excellent for the basics). And most important, it's pretty (titanium or aluminum case).
I still use Debian/Dell on my servers. But for a laptop, OS X is incredibly useful.
It's not about speed anymore. About the PIII, I quit caring about speed. Everything after that is *fast*. My Powerbook 800 is probably about as fast as a PIII 800. For programming, documents, etc., speed isn't the issue anymore. The issue is usability. Personally, I really like KDE. I still use it on my Mac once in a while. I also like OS X. It just works.
Re:Not the fastest anymore (Score:1, Insightful)
The real world consists of compiled software.
So it's the speed of compiled output that matters.
If the compiler isn't optimized fully for the G5, whine at Apple, not us.
Re:2 things keeping market share down (Score:5, Insightful)
In other Apple shipping news... (Score:2, Insightful)
Question is, if you're editing video, do you want a G4 or a G5, when the former has twice as many internal drive bays than the latter? Or is someone putting out Firewire enclosures that can fully utilize >128 GiB drives?
Re:What is up with slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
have you ever looked at an alienware PC? The video card alone might run you $500.
Alienware PCs are gameing systems pure and simple. MACs, no matter how cool, fast, 64 bit, sexy, are not gameing systems. I am not talking theory here (they should be able to play games well) I am talking reality. And reality is that a lot, probably most, games are not released for the mac, and if they are it is a half-assed port sometimes years after the PC original came out. If this guy bought an alienware PC it means 3 things. 1.He wants to play games 2.He has more money than I do -and- 3.he is too lazy to build the same thing on his own with individual parts.
Now with his Alienware pC, when inspiration hits him he will be able to make that awesome Neverwinter Nights module he'd been thinking about for days. No matter how cool his Mac is he won't be able to do that...
Re:hurray for apple (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue isn't fixing the bug it is finding the bug. Sometimes subtle logic bugs can take many days of iterating through the code to find.
Re:hurray for apple (Score:0, Insightful)
Now I agree that Ghz is nice and I suspect the 32-bit / 64-bit modes are handled much more nicely that in x86 land, but if what you're buying here is not 64-bit. It's a Ferrari with a speed limiter since the issue of 64 vs 32 is not just about memory, since this chip contains a number of advanced modes e.g. better pipelining operations, branch prediction etc. such that software would greatly benefit from recompilation.
I don't know about you, but I feel rather uneasy about the whole prospect. Macs are hardly known for their long shelf life (i.e. builtin obscelesence) so it seems that the best strategy is to wait for a machine which actually delivers on its promises (and throws in some extra Ghz in the meantime) and not some half baked go-between.
Now perhaps I'll succumb eventually, but I've been down this road before and I find it's best to hang off a little until the fact seperates from the FUD and people can see what's what.
It's Not That Complicated (Score:0, Insightful)
Remember, we're talking about people that buy a computer because it's cute, inexpensive, and named after fruit that matches the color.
The current state of the economy and the marketing of a product are the biggest hurdles that the latest shiny product faces.
-Lucas
Re:Wild (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny... People have been saying that since the beginning of the nineties... Yet Apple revolutionize again and again, and show better prosper than ever. This year we got the Music Store, the Power Mac G5, the 17" Powerbook, the new iPods... Apple and Dell are the only companies in the same industry that show profits right now.
Is Apple dead?
Not by a long shot...
Re:It's Not That Complicated (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sorry (Score:3, Insightful)
Can someone explain to me why I should buy A Mac when I can get a faster PC for less?
Why would anyone pay $2000+ for a Paul Reed Smith guitar when they could get a Fender Squire for $200? Why do people pay millions for Stradivarius violins?
A Mac is like a fine musical instrument. It usually isn't "just a tool." Attention to detail, fit and finish figure into the value.
A Mac is like a fine musical instrument.
Re:It's Not That Complicated (Score:5, Insightful)
Because hardware companies are cheap.
Why do you think people assume LCDs have a better display?
I didn't know people assumed LCDs have a better display. The reason most people I know buy LCDs is to get a larger physical screen size without having to sacrifice desk surface area for a hulking CRT.
Remember, we're talking about people that buy a computer because it's cute, inexpensive, and named after fruit that matches the color.
Erm, no. We're talking about the professional market here. They knew the G5 was coming for the last year, just not exactly when. And I can tell you that every one of my clients, professionals one and all, were waiting for exactly what I said: the next generation of Macs beyond the G4, and OS X-native QuarkXPress. If you had read the articles in the Mac press since 10.2 was released, you'ld know that that was by far the predominant stance.
I was waiting to replace my primary home machine as well, nursing along a 6 year-old Power Mac-- finally last year I couldn't wait any longer and picked up a used G4 that had the horsepower to run OS X, because I needed to get familiar with it so I could effectively support it when the time comes. In January, the G4 goes bye-bye and I get a dual G5, which is what I was waiting for all along. I just hope Apple manages to catch up with demand by then.
~Philly
Re:That box! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's my story and I'm sticking with it.
Re:AMD responses (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That box! (Score:5, Insightful)
True Quality is not about simply delivering a nice product. It is a process which does not stop throughout the products' design and manufacture. As soon as you begin to cut corners, you begin to whittle away at this.
"We don't need the nice box," you say. That's cool, and probably true. You don't really need rounded edges or a shiny back, either. And you don't need the Chicago font, or a glowbing blue backlight, or a hold button. Fact is, 99% of the unit is in the short run inconsequential to the production of a digital music player.
But in the long run, it's these inconsequential elements that make the difference between a truly great machine and a half assed one. Really fine details smooth over the parts that may not work so great. There is a lot more leeway given, hence the Apple fanatic's uncanny ability to look over some of the stupid shit Apple does. After all, quality is a combination of all the factors of a product...here's something that looks well made, sounds well made, feels well made and comes with well made accessories in a well made box. At what point does the box start mattering? Well, it's the first thing you see at the check-out when you're about to shell out a bunch of cash for the thing, or it's the first thing you see when it comes in the mail. It's very reassuring.
Besides, the box is at most 5% of the cost of the final product. If you don't include it, you either reduce the price of the product by 5% or increase your margin by a similar amount. If additional sales as a result of the cool box are more than that 5%, and don't come at the expense of people willing to buy the thing if it were ONLY 5% cheaper, it's worthwhile to keep it. And I guarantee you that's not the case with the iPod.
Re:hurray for apple (Score:4, Insightful)
Had Motorola not fallen behind so badly then I think that we'd not be complaining so much (nor needing the horrible wait the last year for the 970).
The problem with the 970 / G5 is that it doesn't really have as many integer processing units. So it really isn't that much faster per clock cycle than the G4. (The benchmarks show this) However the bandwidth and vector units are very impressive. Perhaps the G6 will improve integer performance.
Re:hurray for apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Listen, 64-bit is not a hardware issue as much as it is a software issue. Yes, the hardware support needs to be there first, but really it about wether or not the software will actually use the 64-bit modes.
It's not like 64-bit is always a win-win situation. Some programs will always run faster when compiled in a 32-bit addressing mode simply because 32-bit can be more efficient when not addressing large amounts of ram. Just like there are programs that can be written entirely withing the 16-bit addressing modes of the x86 that will outperform the 32-bit version. Though I would guess that today that number is rather small.
I hope that the Mac continues to be a hybrid of 32 and 64 bit programs for awhile. It won't be expensive to maintain compatability from the OS perspective, and it will ensure that all of us that don't want to upgrade will be able to run all the software for awhile.
Apple already has the infistructure in place so that people with G5s will be able to run G5 versions and people with G4s will be able to run a G4 version. Their executable format allows for multiple versions of the same program so that the developers can simple recompile for the G5 ahead of time and package it with the G4 version in the same file. (like the old 'fat' binaries of yore with 68k and ppc code in them)
Besides, you can't 'just recompile' and get benefits of 64 computing. It's not that simple. If you don't program with the intent of being x-platform then you can't recompile and have it work. Also, as you hinted, the G5 has a radically different idea about what kind of code it optimal compared to the G4, thus any code targeted for the G4 will perform sub-standard. We'll just have to wait a month or two until all the software catches up to the hardware. The G5 will only seem to get faster and faster as more software is retargeted for it.
The G5 is more then a step up in clock speed, it's a whole new generation of processor, a bigger step from the G3 to G4. But no matter how you look at it, it's a step up. Maybe not as big as you want it to be and this is something that I think a few people are (still) sore about.
try describing a sunset to a blind person... (Score:3, Insightful)
here's a clue, it ain't in the processor speed, it's in the software, stupid...sure pcs have the same kinds of programs, but they don't run nearly as well...the latest examples being the iPod, iTunes and the Apple Music Store--each one was being done on the pc, yet Apple came in and changed the game with its products, with an experience that's totally superior in every way (my girlfriend gave me her old iPod when she got a new one--it sat on my shelf for a couple of weeks, until i finally started to use it, and no shit, it changed my life! i can now carry my entire cd collection in my pocket, and the thing works like a champ) ...here's a tip, to any flamers that say 'so what' about any of these examples, i would bet the farm that they've never actually USED any of them!;>
-mojo
Re:ObWhines (Score:3, Insightful)
Also your machine is going to be one noisy son of a bitch with that Opteron in it. I run a 2Ghz Athlon XP and the damned thing sounds like a vacuum cleaner, even with a Thermaltake fan set on the low speed. And the case and power supply you selected, one word: pieceashit. If you bought a decent case and power supply (Lian Li and a PC Power and Cooling Silencer power supply) you'd be out another $200 or so, thus narrowing your price differential even further.
This whole "I can build an x86 box for less money than you can buy a Macintosh" game is for idiots. It's like saying "I can turbo charge a Honda Civic so it will go faster than a Porsche Boxster and save lots of bux". Yes, Sparky, you can, but it's still not as good as a Porsche Boxster. It might be as fast on a straight track, but it still sux compared to the real thing.
Re:hurray for apple (Score:2, Insightful)
it's not emulation, actually, it's just 32bit mode. the ppc spec specifies 32bit and 64bit versions. the 64bit ppc's are 100% user mode binary compat.
sorry for the pedantics. 8)
Re:What is up with slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)
And now Apple comes around a makes a machine that's fast, nice looking, and doesn't require all of this extra knowledge and work to use.
Of course they're annoyed. Of course they're threatened. If Apple's stuff is any good, then they've been wasting their time.
So they spread FUD about broken applications, inconsequential complaints about how a $600 bargain PC is cheaper than a $3000 high end work station, or slander about how Apples are effeminate. It's all bullshit meant to make them feel better about a perceived waste. People do it all the time...just listen to the arguments people make about the benefits of sinking $10,000 into a $15,000 honda, rather than buy a $25,000 BMW.
It's childish in a way. Isn't there more to computing than JUST running an OS as fast as possible? If you do your computer stuff in Linux and like it, fine. I use Windows 2000, Gentoo and OSX 10.2 and none of them is better than any of the others for EVERYTHING. Granted, I spend more time tweaking the Gentoo box than either of the other two, but once I'm done I can just ignore it, and let it chug away serving web pages, databases, etc to its hearts content. Admining the 2k box is generally to keep it from falling apart in DLL hell...and admining the Apple machine is usually accepting that "you can't do that" on an apple
Re:hurray for apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's Not That Complicated (Score:3, Insightful)
And why not? iMacs are every bit as much "real" computers as any ugly beige PC is. Their PowerPC CPUs are just us powerful as any other PowerPC CPU of the same speed (in fact, I believe that Cicso uses PowerPCs in some of their routers); their IDE hard drives are the same as any PC IDE hard drive; their ethernet and USB controllers are just as fast as any comparable PC part.
The appearance of a computer has nothing to do with it's usefulness or its capabilities, so I don't see why someone would not want to buy an attractive computer. Why would you want to have some ugly beige box sitting on your desk when you can have one that is just as useful and not offensive to the eye?
Re:Mac Zealots and their mod points (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? Nobody gives a shit.
If you go to the mac section to just say "bloody hell, that's expensive", then I say "I don't give a shit".
Not that I'm rich, but the times we've been over the high pricetag versus low maintenance issues
Incidentally this also goes for "You're a faggot", "I hate mac", "Die Jobs, DIE DIE DIE" and the obligatory "verisign is lying", "macs are still slow", "windows/linux rules",
Everybody is entitled to his opinion, but you'll have a hard time making me care for statements like that.
Thus if I have the opportunity, I'll mod that sh*t down, regardless of how nice the guy/grrl is and will mod something enlightning up (even if it incidentally bashes the Mac. If it's interesting, it's interesting).
Re:Apple IS dying (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:When will the powerooks get G5s (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:hurray for apple (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd say you underestimate the inertia big companies have. You need to retool a lot of machines, you need a lot of people to reorient themselves, and you need to justify the expense of doing it- especially in a large corporation, where the publishing arm of the multimedia companies are treated like the ugly stepchildren. I work on a G4 because I'm in the production dept.- but none of us have a dual processor.
From my experience in a smaller firm, you're lucky to get a new computer every couple of years. So they'll be a powerpc sitting next to an imac siting next to a G4.
And lastly, publishing is even more inert than other industries. Even the move to desktop publishing is relatively new, we're not a bunch who move quick, even with an imaginary budget that would allow it.
Re:hurray for apple (Score:4, Insightful)
as a professional developer, even $2499 is recovered in a few days when you're tracking an extremely nasty bug.
Then write better code :)
Seriously, though, I am also both a C++ Win32 and Apple developer. I agree that PB is not as good as Visual Studio, but that's not the point. It's like saying that iMovie is not good enough because Final Cut Pro is better. Well, you pay $1000 for Final Cut Pro, so it should be better. Similarly, you pay an arm and a leg for Visual Studio, which gives Microsoft the resources to invest in adding more features and making it a richer development environment. You get what you pay for. That's life. And while there are some things about PB that drive me nuts, for free development tools I think PB and IB are pretty good (IMHO, IB spanks VC++ for UI design -- can't speak for VB or "C#" though), and I'm looking forward to XCode.
Re:Just the facts, man (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're a hardcore gamer, obviously a Mac isn't for you. If you're a user who sometimes plays games, I don't see why not. There are far more Mac games available that I'd like to play than I have time to play them.
Because no one buys Macs, they don't make enough of the chips to produce them at reasonable cost and thus for the price of a 2 ghz Apple, you can get a MUCH higher clock speed PC which is guarenteed to outperform it
No you can't. All available evidence shows that at worst the top-end has parity with the fastest available Xeons. And it's not at all true that Macs must always be slower than PCs. (If it were, Apple would have switched to x86 years ago). A superior architecture can compensate for lesser economies of scale. The first PowerPC Macs were faster than Pentiums of the time. The G3 was much faster than then-current P2s. Motorola screwed up big time with the G4, and Intel did a good job of scaling the P4, which accounts for the performance disparities we saw over the last few years. But that is the exception, not the rule.
Re:Emachines (Score:3, Insightful)
You can pick up a super-charged V8, with auto, air-con, elec windows etc, for under $20,000 these days. But you don't see Merc, BMW, or Porche getting worried and lowering their prices do you?
Specs aren't everything, quality still counts for a lot of people.
Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
I understood the parent post. I didn't feel like sloughing through your overly verbose one.
Sorry. He won.
Re:Wow, this is totally wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it's good as new. It is new.
New motherboard, new CPU, which presumably meant new RAM. You might be reusing your old video card (wonder if you can find XP drivers?), hard disk (even more disproportionately slow compared to your new CPU), and LAN card. Note, however, that an 80 GB hard disk costs under $100, and along with the cards you might have saved $150 or $200.
I agree that a Mac cannot be upgraded as a PC can be. However, thanks to a vibrant used Mac market, you can sell it to offset the costs of a new one. Check on eBay, and you'll find an Indigo iMac (350 MHz G3, 64 MB RAM, 7 GB hard disk, running OS 9) going for $300+ with dozens of bids.
So the question is, can you really save much more than $300 worth of parts from a 2 year old PC?
Re:That box! (Score:1, Insightful)
-Michaelangelo