Friday Apple Quickies 78
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."
It's nice to see Scotty McNeilly that list. (Score:1, Funny)
74.7% behind
Watching Linux grab up your market share?
priceless.
Re:After effects (Score:5, Informative)
After Effects is actually what the name implies a program to add Effects after it's been edited (or even while). Final Cut is a linear editor, while After Effects is a visual effects program. The do wastly different things.
Shake on the other hand is not unsimilar to AE, but the price tag on it ($5,000) just prices it out of the competition. That's also why they marked it as a digital composition tool, aimed at filmproducers rather than the average joe just wanting to put some flashy-text in his average home-video.
Re:After effects (Score:3, Informative)
Great post, you're right about the difference between FCP and AE. However, FCP is a non-linear editor.
Re:After effects (Score:1)
Re:After effects (Score:2)
bzzzzztttt...wrong. After Effects has long been the industry standard post production effects applicaiton used in film and television. Sure some studios might use flint, flame or inferno but After Effects has been used in lower budget broadcast and even in some film work. It is far beyond the grasp of "the average joe just want
Re:After effects (Score:1)
Re:After effects (Score:2)
Only if you're a hobbyist. The difference in price is insignificant for a business if the product is better.
Re:After effects (Score:2)
Just speaking out of experience...
Re:After effects (Score:2)
Which business is this? I have always been stuck with substandard tools - because accountants and planners only ever look at one thing, current costs. Lifetime costs, future benefits - they never look good to shareholders. Internet time can be bad too!
Re:After effects (Score:1, Funny)
iMovie 3 (Score:4, Informative)
That being said, iMovie 3 is free and better than any other free editor I have ever seen.
I also should say that, in my limited working with it, I have not had any problems.
For those who are doing more than making home movies, Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express are reasonably priced.
Re:After effects (Score:2)
iMovie is free, and isn't all that bad. It holds its own against Microsoft's hastily made "windows movie maker" program, released to be an alternative to iMovie.
What more do you expect from a free app? It can't be too good, otherwise no one would buy FCP/E. iMovie fits its target audience pretty well - home users with camcorders who just want to do very simple edits, titles and sound tracks/effects/VO.
Re:Are you kidding? (Score:2, Interesting)
That's kind of interesting, considering that the Mac scores were (usually) only 5-20% slower than the Dell, even though the Mac CPU was running 60% slower.
I would like to see the results of the test if one were to use both CPUs (2 AE Rendering Instances) in the Mac. Perhaps the 'Puts it to shame' comparison will be pointing the other
How Does AfterEffects Run... (Score:1, Interesting)
So in other words.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:So in other words.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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:So in other words.... (Score:4, Informative)
It is simple enough to check and several of the libraries that are commonly used (as opposed to directly using the altivec commands) do exactly this.
" Adobe could have rewritten some key functions to be altivec optimized. "
The vast majority of designers who use Adobe on the Mac have at least one G4.
". Furthermore, Apple has been adding free/lowcost software that competes with Adobe and other manufacturors."
Last I checked, half of Adobe's profit came from the Macintosh--at the least on certain product lines.
Re:So in other words.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Since graphics professionals are somewhat more likely to require and afford top-of-the-line hardware, it's not an unreasonable assumption to optimize for at all.
Adobe could have rewritten some key functions to be altivec optimized. But the Macintosh market is smaller, (and therefore less potential profit).
Be careful with your math. Although the Macintosh market is comparatively small, it's not necessarily a correspondingly small part for a maker of software for graphics professionals. I would not be surprised if the Macintosh products bring 10% (double the apparent Macintosh market share) or even 20% of Adobe's sales.
Re:So in other words.... (Score:4, Informative)
It's actually 30% according overall, according to Adobe's latest report. Excluding consumer products like Acrobat and Photoshop Album, the figure may well be over 50% for their professional lines.
Re:So in other words.... (Score:1)
So you're not disagreeing that the software is at fault, you're just trying to explain why.
Frustrating (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, perhaps it's time to send a nicely worded e-mail to Mr. Charlie White. A real benchmark may be impressive, considering a 3.06Ghz Dell system was only 2 times faster than the 1.25Ghz G4 in the best case - a Mhz/Mhz comparison should put it closer to 2.4 times faster.
By doing a little analysis of their data, we get the following table:
Test Name (Mac Time in Seconds/Dell Time in Seconds) = Time Ratio
1. After Effects: Simple Animation (14/7) = 2.0
2. After Effects: Video Composite (85/54) = 1.57
3. After Effects: Data Project (227/125) = 1.82
4. After Effects: Gambler (43/29) = 1.48
5. After Effects: Source Shapes (426/254) = 1.68
6. After Effects: Virtual Set (495/264) = 1.88
1. Photoshop: Layer styles & transformation (7.1/4.5) = 1.58
2. Photoshop: Filter Effects (62/35.1) = 1.77
3. Photoshop: Manipulations and adjustments (4.5/3.4) = 1.32
Average Time Ratio: 1.68
That means that On Average The Mac, running at 1.25Ghz only took 1.68 times longer to do the same task.
The "How to Double your After Effects Performance" article averages almost exactly a 2x speed increase, taking on average 49.2% of the time on the "long tests". Taking this into account, we can look at the two longest tests, factor in the speed increase, and look at the "final" performance:
5. After Effects: Source Shapes (209.65/254) = 0.83
6. After Effects: Virtual Set (243.61/264) = 0.92
If we go through the same calculation for _all_ of the calculations, we get the Mac BEATING the Dell, taking only 83% of the time that the Dell took. If we take the Photoshop calculations out of the average, it is still at only 86% of the time the Dell took.
Note that these are all calculated values, and as such may vary significantly from actual values, also that I used the improvement on the "long" test for everything, and did not use the improvement on the short test at all - I imagine that the two systems would end up nearly even in a real test.
Apparently all of my tables were lame when I had them formatted, thanks lameness filter!
Re:Frustrating (Score:2)
Nope. Read the article closer next time, because your entire reply is just wrong. It was a dual 1.25 GHz G4. And 3.06 / 2*1.25 = 1.224. So your elaborately compiled list of result ratios just reinforces White's claims -- they're all greater than 1.224, making the Mac, indeed, more poorly performing than the P4.
Re:Frustrating (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Frustrating (Score:5, Informative)
1) If the mac was only using one processor, then while a dual system is still faster (OS tasks can be sent to the other processor, other apps have more of a pipeline to be scheduled in, &c) it is nowhere near the point of using all of its processors.
2) Two single processors have advantages and disadvantages when compared to one faster processor. Some of the advantages include that it will feel more responsive and will actually be faster when performing lots of smaller or a mixed group of CPU based tasks. When performing a single large tasks (such as what AE tends to do without this hack), each one independently, the dual processor system suffers greatly.
Dual processor machines are just completely different beasts--adding their MHz and comparing them that way is a very poor way of scaling them per MHz against a single processor system, since it is completely and totally nonrepresentative of how the systems work.
Re:Frustrating (Score:1)
don't you mean: "So your elaborately compiled list of result ratios just reinforces my claims"
nice try at saving face, Mr. White, but you need a refresher course in the math subject area. I must admit I am amused to think of all the PC apologists who inisted that After Effects, and therefore your article's testing, was using both processors on that dual G4.
My simplification of Charlie White's article:
A single 1.25 GHz
Re:Frustrating (Score:1)
Re:Frustrating (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:2)
please... It's not a "HACK" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Frustrating (Score:3, Insightful)
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 ag
Charlie White is biased (Score:2)
Re:Frustrating (Score:1)
Naturally you mean other people should read more closely, rather than you, who obviously can't be bothered.
Re:Frustrating (Score:2)
If we could, how about a fair comparison: Mac G4 dual 1.42 GHz versus dual P4 3.06 GHz. Dual versus dual, or dumb down the Mac, single versus single.
News at 11.
Re:Frustrating (Score:3, Interesting)
Better still, let's compare a cluster of G4's versus a cluster of Pentium 4's... Taking in to account OS X's native Multilink Multihoming capabilities and freedom from the shackles of the PCI bus.
Or, we could just compare prices, in that two 1.25 Ghz G4's from Apple cost roughly the same as a single 3.06 Ghz P4 from Dell... Any idea what two 3Ghz Xeons w
Re:Frustrating (Score:2)
I spec'ed out a dual Xeon based on the "Ultimate" PowerMac, and it came to just under $5,000 without Bluetooth. Re-spec'ing it to a CD-RW drive (from a DVD+RW), 1.5 GB (from 2 GB) RAM, 80 GB (from 120 GB) hard disk, and a cheaper 32 MB video card (from 128 MB) would bring it to the neighborhood of Apple's $3,800 "Ultimate" package. Apple certainly has reason to be concerned at the top end.
Re:Frustrating (Score:2)
Re:Frustrating (Score:2)
Yes, but now you don't have the option to spend the $1000 you saved in raw CPU speed, if that's what you really need. Lack of options at the high end is the "worry" I'm talking about.
Re:Frustrating (Score:2)
Because the PC is proving to be more flexible. That is, for the same price, you can get what are probably more powerful CPUs by sacrificing items you don't need. If you don't need that much CPU power, you can spend the same money on the peripherals.
Basically, you don't want to be in a position where you don't have anything more expensive to sell a buyer, and that's where Apple is at the high
Re:Frustrating (Score:2)
Xserve Dual 1.33 base model - $2699 USD
Xserve Dual 1.33 base model - $2699 USD
Total: $5398 USD
Accumulative peak theoretical FLOPS: 38 GigaFLOPS
And against this, a Dual Xeon 3.06Ghz workstation, within the $5000 price range would give you an estimated:
Accumulative peak theoretical FLOPS: 12.24 GigaFLOPS
My figure regarding the Xeon's peak performance is based on the only data I could readily find [216.239.57.100] - from a
Re:Frustrating (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Frustrating (Score:1)
Time for some new benchmarks.
Re:Frustrating (Score:1)
but it's still a pair of overclocked G4s on a fairly creaky motherboard - those massive L3 caches are there to try give the poor old G4 some fast access to memory - those Altivec units have been starved for years.
Re:Frustrating (Score:1)
Re:Frustrating (Score:1)
Re:Frustrating (Score:1)
Sorry Charlie, Dave, my fault (Score:4, Informative)
Oh yeah, (Score:2, Funny)
is speed important to everybody? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:is speed important to everybody? (Score:1)
Market lingo stumps me (Score:1)
For that matter, what are diluted shares (the ones mentioned in Apple's quarterly results)?
Re:Market lingo stumps me (Score:1)
Underwater options - An option is the right (option) to buy stock at a future date for a particular price (the strike price), which is unrelated to the open market (stock exchange) price. The executive has the incentive to make sure the stock price rises, because the difference between the stock price and the strike price is pure prof
Re:Fortune's figures on Jobs are bogus (Score:1)