Pixar Switches to Mac OS X and G5s 692
fmorgan writes "No big surprise here: when Apple introduced the G5 at 2003 WWDC, it become more a question of 'when' Pixar will move to G5s, than 'if'). At the same conference, Apple showed a new codec for Mac OS X named 'Pixlet,' developed with Pixar. In last year O'Reilly's Mac OS X conference, there was a presentation on how Pixar moved their desktop/office environment to Mac OS X. Now it seems it's the main production work: 'Apple's Don Peebeles said that Pixar has used Linux and Intel-based architecture in 2003, but that Pixar was switching to Mac OS X and G5 workstations for its production work: Peebles went on to say that this switch was "a move that no doubt made common CEO Steve Jobs very happy."'"
Could see this coming.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Could see this coming.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Could see this coming.... (Score:5, Funny)
Can you see the list of credits? "Also thanks to 24.35.100.153, 10.1.5.18,
Re:Could see this coming.... (Score:5, Interesting)
In short, it's too risky. They don't want anyone to have the slightest chance to put together enough data to reconstruct a portion of whatever they're working on.
Re:Could see this coming.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Could see this coming.... (Score:4, Funny)
Never underestimate the depths of human perversity.
Re:Could see this coming.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Could see this coming.... (Score:5, Informative)
Note: my memory isn't that good so if someone wants to shed some more detail I'd be interested in an update!
Re:Could see this coming.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Could see this coming.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm, maybe Virginia Tech [apple.com] was something of a test for them as well (yes, I know, initially G5 desktops, now switching to Xserves, probably quite different software as well)
Re:Could see this coming.... (Score:4, Interesting)
So, we have Pixar, armed with Apple, gritting its teeth so it can finish its Disney obligations and start on its own stuff. They have two movies left to finish, so by the time any uniquely Pixar material makes it to the the big screen they may have made yet another switch in content creation hardware. But I expect the render farm will probably stay pretty static once they switch to XServes.
Re:Could see this coming.... (Score:3, Informative)
The rendar farm however still uses a mixture of SUNs and SGI
Well maybe. Pixar switched to RackSaver Linux blade servers for their renderfarm about a year ago. Their website still lists them as clients though that could have changed.
Pixar switches from Sun to Intel [com.com]
RackSaver Customers [racksaver.com]
Re:Here's what I see coming... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Take a look at price/performance on the dual G5's. Many other people have, and they have been pretty unanimous that the Apple's win. See University of Virginia. The client computers are also competing against mainly SGI boxes... You will have a better time in your comparison of the linux render farm, but then you start to have to look at boxes competing against the XServe, and you will find them also very price competitive against the other server farm boxes they are competing against.
2. In terms of the price of production the hardware is one of the smaller costs. The big price is the people, this is also the place where the difference between a failure and a success will happen. If someone blames hardware for a bad pixar movie, they are simply stupid.
Any lawyer who cannot convince a jury of both of these points is incompetent.
Re:Here's what I see coming... (Score:5, Insightful)
According to a talk by "Dr. BigMac" (from VA Tech) the only other high-volume CPU approaching it was the Intel Itanium, and here (quite an irony) Intel was under-clocked! (The G5, last year, was shipping at 2Gh, the Itanium less than that).
As for price, you can't compare a Dual G5 with a $200 walmart pc; but check the prices of any dual Dell Xeon system.
Slight correction (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Here's what I see coming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Um... I assume that you are referring to the myth that Macs are more expensive.
Anybody who wants to quote the "Macs are more expensive" line of FUD has never taken a look at the price of Sun or especially SGI hardware.
Hell, SGI doesn't list the prices of things on their page, they tell you to call and ask. That's the computer equvalent of "market price."
Re:Here's what I see coming... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Here's what I see coming... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now that I'm doing more video production I'll probably be doing that too, and using my current dual G5 as a render farm for my new main machine. Based on the results I'm getting and the speeds I get, it would be well worth the money to do that.
Finally, I don't think Pixar's stockholders are in much of a mood to be cheap. Say it costs US$1 million a year to replace their equipment. Finding Nemo is a well over billion-dollar property [boxofficemojo.com]. Do stockholders care about spending $1 million to make sure the (most likely pretty high paid) people over there get the best equipment?
Somehow I doubt it.
D
not only makes steve happy, makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)
it's not just a niche - pair this with WETA and you've got real ammo.
Re:not only makes steve happy, makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)
How many render nodes has WETA? 500? 1000? So a 1 or 2 million oneshot, and there are only a few comparable companys around. Rendernodes are no cash-cows. They dont need really high reliability (worst thing happening would be that the frame is commited to another node), they dont have much io-load, they just need to render. There is no way to make with machines like that money like IBM does with its Power4 servers or Sun with its Exxxx.
If it makes sense for pixer? I dont know. With the g5,
Re:not only makes steve happy, makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't seem to understand the modern rendering workload. Its all I/O. A typical frame of geometry (>10GB) won't even fit into most memories, much less the textures which are often orders of magnitude larger. This is not your typical game or raytracer which loads everything in a couple seconds at the beginning and spends half an hour crunching numbers. Tremendous effort is spent paging stuff in and out and keeping memory from overflowing. Also keep in mind that it needs to probably be sucked over the network in the first place.
Having the additional address space of the 64-bit system will help a lot, as will the high throughput of the G5.
The Opteron may make sense here as well, but the software isn't mature enough yet for them to be able to run all the systems on it. Windows doesn't support the 64-bit yet, of course, and Linux stuff varies. For example, they presumably will want good 3D acceleration for the modeling if they really want to be able to use a certain system uniformly in their operation, and the performance of Linux 64-bit 3D drivers isn't up to the traditional x86 yet (and often won't even work if you have >4GB RAM).
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Bring them on (Score:3, Insightful)
Pixar switching to Macs? Apple commercials before movies showing everyone a *real* operating system as opposed to their XP boxes at home? Hell, yeah.
Also no doubt... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Also no doubt... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There is no technical or financial merit to thi (Score:4, Funny)
Here's my dime...need my shipping address?
Re:There is no technical or financial merit to thi (Score:5, Insightful)
Because for the applications Pixar has in mind, G5 Macs are neither slower nor more expensive. It's really that simple. G5s deliver the best bang for the buck in the video editing world, period.
I would really, really like to see the "Macs are more expensive" meme disappear from these arguments. They're not more expensive than PCs of comparable power and quality, and haven't been for years.
Re:There is no technical or financial merit to thi (Score:5, Insightful)
G5's with optimized software being slower for production work is debatable. You haven't seen the next generation of hardware yet, they already have a 1GHz bus, and these production machines have enormous internal bandwidth requirements. Use one for video or 3D work sometimes, then come back here and complain about their speed.
more expensive platform
Since these are production machines, they need to be very reliable and plug-it-in and go. Make me a machine with the same level of reliability, quiet, power requirements, speed, connectivity, and production capabilities with equivalent warranty then let's compare pricing. Never mind, I just finished a committee-based 3-week shopping grind for similar production requirements and I already know the answer: apple hardware wins by about 5% on price alone, and still spec's out better for multimedia production. Oh, and ROI in terms of productivity, support, and longevity.
and take on the cost of porting one's in-house software to yet another platform, when multi-processor AMD-64 chips running GNU/Linux are a dime a dozen?
RTFA. They aren't porting anything new since these are production machines, not render nodes. Maya, photoshop, shake, pixlet, backed by a top-notch interface and bsd, mmm... hey, you're not an artist, are you?
Anyway, for the ROI alone, this is good for shareholders, especially if creativity flows better.
Re:There is no technical or financial merit to thi (Score:5, Insightful)
Not knowing the details of what they're running, I'm guessing when I say the answer is AltiVec. The cheapest way to run Apache or Samba isn't necessarily the cheapest way to do heavy computation.
MODS: Parent is -1 Flamebait (Score:3, Flamebait)
This has been discussed quite enough. Apple wins when the cost/performance ratio is considered; that's why Virgina Tech bought all those G5's last summer! It's not a CEO mandate. It's a valid technical decision. And this isn't SCO we're talking about, so you can keep your "fudiciary" issues to yo
Re:There is no technical or financial merit to thi (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd point out that there are a couple of very good strategic reasons to go with Apple. First off they are in a niche that Apple is intent on dominating and is on the way to succeeding in this desire. Apple produces (or has bought) a lot of technology that is important to the broad category of film/video production that Pixar is part of. Beyond just Apple the other software vendors in this niche support the platform, a few don't support the *other* platforms.
Secondly, of course, is that Steve Jobs - the CEO and majority shareholder of Pixar is also the CEO of Apple. For obvious reasons Pixar is in a good position to get great service and consideration from this particular vendor. The "CEO mandate" dynamic you worry about on behalf of Pixar's shareholders (who are for the most part Mr. Jobs himself) works both ways. Apple which is already focussed on dominating the film/video market can act almost as a HUGE auxiliary R&D department for Pixar. They've already developed a new codec at Pixar's specific request. Apple has a huge amount of relevant technology it has already developed and/or bought. One might also notice that the XServe from the very beginning was configured as much for the video production market as it was for the server market - how many other servers have a FireWire port on the *front*?
but costly to Pixar's shareholders. One wonders what sorts of fudiciary issues such a maneuver might raise.
Since Jobs is himself the majority shareholder at Pixar with 55.4% of the shares not many. I would worry a great deal more about Jobs abusing his position at Apple to benefit Pixar's shareholders (i.e. himself) than vice versa.
Re:Also no doubt... (Score:3, Insightful)
It can't. SCO owns the sucessors to the SYSV licenses originating from AT&T. BSD's ancestry (& ownership line) is much more clearly established as independent of what SCO currently "owns".
And if Bill Gates (Score:5, Funny)
Oh wait...
Re:And if Bill Gates (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And if Bill Gates (Score:5, Insightful)
It works perfectly now, but it was a disaster at the time.
Actually they have, in a way... (Score:3, Informative)
The gossip is that Eisner was considering quicktime, but went with Windows after Jobs decided to take Pixar away from Disney.
And this surprises whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, with Jobs as CEO of both companies, why wouldn't Apple be used for Pixar's needs, especially if they're capable? An american kiritsu?
I don't see this as big news. It would be big news, if, say, they moved to a linux distribution (considering that Jobs is CEO of both Pixar and Apple, and linux could be seen as a competitor to Apple). This is nothing more than free publicity for apple, and probably an "at-cost" transaction for Pixar for new hardware and software.
Re:And this surprises whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason this is news is that it shows Macs finally are capable of doing this kind of high-end video production. Coupling this with the VA Tech 'Big Mac' shows that Apple is serious about reaching into the high end -- and is ready to be taken more seriously in that role.
So it's not so much a surprise that Pixar would consider this option, but that Pixar hadn't made the move yet said something about the Mac's capabilities.
Re:And this surprises whom? (Score:3, Interesting)
I could agree with this statement. However, let's keep in mind that Pixar was in the middle of several productions, and everyone knows you don't rip your underpinnings out and replace them wholesale during the middle of a project. Additionally, they moved from SGI boxes to Linux boxes, and now to G5s. Each move about 18 months apart. This would be about
Took them long enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
Will the rendering farm also be switching to the G5 in the future, ala Virginia Tech?
Will we now see Photorealistic Renderman come out for OSX and the G5? Hopefully?
Re:Took them long enough. (Score:3, Insightful)
In all actuality, he probably didn't even request that his company do this - its not the kind of thing a CEO tends to think about. His CTO probably did the evaluations an
Re:Took them long enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
Steve probably didn't force it down their throats but he probably made a suggestion or two in the positive direction of Apple. In the end no one really knows but him and the people he spoke with. Considerin his past actions I wouldn't be at all surprised if he had a major hand in the switch
Re:Took them long enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
Steve probably didn't force it down their throats but he probably made a suggestion or two in the positive direction of Apple.
Another scenario is that Steve made it a challenge for Apple to get into Pixar. "Apple team, Pixar has requirements x, y, and z to switch to Macs. Go get 'em." It raises the bar for Apple and gives them a credible shot at other studios (except DreamWorks, which seems to view Apple as the enemy).
Steve's surely had a hand in this one... (Score:5, Interesting)
If this wasn't run past Steve and fully approved by him at a minimum, I would be surprised. That he was likely asking hard questions and pushing his team to do it, wouldn't surprise me at all.
One of Apple's major customer segments is video prodution for television and movies. Apple for years has had an extremely strong niche in the Entertainment industry (why do you think you see Macs in almost every TV show and movie as the "computer of choice"?). Over the last 18 months they have spent a lot acquiring products to fill out their digital video, video effects, and audio editing and production product line. What we have hear is showing, by eating their own dog food, that they are serious and that you can do it all on the Mac.
Steve is the master salesman and technical visionary. His finger-prints are all over this move!
Re:Took them long enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. A year or two into his iCEO role, he was asked in an interview what computer he uses day to day. He said it was an Intel machine (Thinkpad, I think) running OpenStep.
Most evidence is that he's a very bottom line kind of guy. If Apple's hardware sucks, he's not using it. And I think that's how a lot of Apple's decisions get made (for good or bad): Steve won't release a product that he won't use himself. He doesn't see the utility in the Newton, so the Newton goes. He sees the utility in the iPod, so it gets the go-ahead.
It might sound stupid to run a company like this, but then he's not the only guy that does things this way. Warren Buffett makes a lot of decisions on the same rules. He considered buying Sees candy, Bombardier, and Dairy Queen because he liked the products. When the financials and management team checks out, he buys. But his personal preference is a big part of the decision.
Re:Took them long enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
No doubt Pixar will use the best tool for the job. If they start using G5s in their renderfarm, I wouldn't be all that surprised if they used Linux or Darwin on them, to avoid unnecessary GUI overhead.
If Pixar was not using the best tool for the job, I'd have heard grumbling on the grapevine. So far, this hasn't been the case.
Looking at G5's for my data center too (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm running Gentoo, so I don't care if I have to specially compile. I just want a machine that's going to actually USE the MHz it comes with. (Without resorting to massive cache.)
Re:Looking at G5's for my data center too (Score:5, Informative)
However, your point is well taken that the G5 architecture seems to impliment a better memory architecture.
Re:Looking at G5's for my data center too (Score:5, Informative)
Opterons on the other hand have an integrated memory controller on die, and each cpu in a multi-cpu system has its path to core memory.
I suppose you could just get all single cpu machines, but that would be even more expensive than multi-cpu Xeons, and far more expensive than the Opterons... Erik
Renderman! (Score:5, Interesting)
G5 + OS X + Maya + Photoshop + Pixlet = one kickass production environment.
Really though do they need to change the Linux farm? I'd be surprised if they did, there's no real need...
Re:Renderman! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Renderman! (Score:5, Insightful)
With the level of success Pixar has had, money isn't the issue- quality is. They can easily afford a couple million in equipment and software. What they can't afford to do is to produce inferior work.
Re:Renderman! (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows Box + Windows 2000 + Photoshop =
one kickass really expensive production environment.
Compared to what they used before, the G5's dirt cheap.
D
Re:Steve Jobs as CEO can redefine "necessary" (Score:5, Informative)
What about this? [apple.com]
Re:Steve Jobs as CEO can redefine "necessary" (Score:4, Informative)
They contribute back to GCC, BSD, etc. They don't however give their GUI Cocoa/Carbon away for free to OSS. If you don't like it, don't use it. If you don't want people using free software to enhance their products, don't release it as OSS.
I hate when people bitch about someone following the license software is released under. BTW, did you build BSD? Didn't think so.
Re:Steve Jobs as CEO can redefine "necessary" (Score:3, Insightful)
Looking for this? [apple.com]
Apple takes a lot from OSS without giving a lot in return.
As does anyone who runs Linux and doesn't con
Re:Steve Jobs as CEO can redefine "necessary" (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that Apple makes quite a lot of hardware. Microsoft doesn't make much hardware (keyboards, mice, joysticks, etc), while SCOG was a software company (as Caldera) but is now a litigation company.
Re:Steve Jobs as CEO can redefine "necessary" (Score:3, Insightful)
The Apple model is the sale of hardware. The proof of this was when Jobs killed the clones. Software freedom has meant: more apps for the Mac. I don't think Jobs is against that.
Eat that dog food (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sure this, in fact, does make Steve Jobs the happiest man in the world right now. Almost as happy as Bill Gates when Hotmail switched to WinServer and died for a few days.
Didn't this happen a while ago? (Score:5, Informative)
How does this affect me? (Score:3, Informative)
Will this affect Linux development in any significant way?
I use a G5 at work but I don't use it for anything that might be affected by this. It's mostly a number cruncher/web browser.
Linux on Macs? Why not Darwin on x86? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuckin' Irony (Score:5, Funny)
Jobs buys 500 G5's for Pixar
The next week, Apple comes out and lowers all the prices $300 and doubles the RAM and HD space, and includes iPods with every purchase.
Made on a Mac (Score:5, Funny)
You be wrong! (Score:5, Funny)
Debian (Score:5, Funny)
I mean really.
c'mon.
Yeah...
Pixlet is lossy (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not really sure what the point of Pixlet is, since JPEG is "good enough" for most previewing needs. Perhaps somebody is using it for >8 bits per component?
Re:Pixlet is lossy (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite lossy? Are you setting the quality slider all the way to Best? Yes, Pixlet is lossy, but it's also a keyframe-less CODEC that brings data rates well over 3MB/second at DV resolution. That's almost as high as native DV and right around the same data rate as MJPEG. Yes, it's not uncompressed video, but that's not what Pixlet was designed for.
AMD vs G5 (Score:3, Interesting)
Electrically Logical (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesn't make a difference if you're running 1 or 5 machines in your house, but it does make a signifigant difference if you're running 500 or machines.
Not quite (Score:3, Insightful)
G5 v intel (Score:3, Informative)
For rendering, floating point operations are probably the most important thing for a rendering farm.
(disclaimer: i did say IIRC)
You know what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Talk about a great testbed (Score:3, Interesting)
Pixar and Jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
The teams at Pixar are at the pinnacle of their industry. They do not take software and hardware choice lightly. They have not and would not till this day switch to using Apple solutions unless they proved superior. They have no use for hardware and software politics.
The evolution has been going on for some time at Apple.
Jobs has remade Apple software and hardware Pro Lines specifically for Hollywood, the CGI industries and this.
XServe, Xserve Raids, OpenGL direct rendering, xCode Tools for Rapid Development and distributive computing, XServe licensing and OS X licensing all are extremely cost effective. linux and Unix software has been ported OS X. G5 optimized Render-man, Shake, and the necessary tools are there.
This is the future and Apple is very much a part of it, deservedly so. A lot of extremely talented people have been working their asses of pursuing this dream for years and years now. This is just the first picking of an abundant and fruitful harvest for these folks.
More power to them!!!!!
.
Re:About time (Score:5, Funny)
Re:About time (Score:3, Funny)
SGI's (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't Jurassic Park.
Plus, they only had a 117 Sun workstations in the original Toy Story render farm.
Disney's "Toy Story" Uses More Than 100 Sun Workstations to Render Images for First All-Computer-Based Movi [sun.com]
Re:why not SGI? (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as your being unable to justify the price, please join me in a nice glass of kool aid, here under the pleasant shade of the RFD.
G5 not Consumer (Score:5, Informative)
Re:why not SGI? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't know why, (Score:4, Interesting)
Google for the default install size of WindowsXP versus OS X.
THEN tell me which one's bloatware.
You got it right with Linux...but blew it otherwise.
Re:I don't know why, (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't know why, (Score:3, Informative)
Bloatware is when a product has so many _useless_ features that cause it to be large. (IE. Microsoft Office, Open Office)
Is linux bloated because you can install a good 4 CDs worth of stuff on your system install? No. You have options. And you have a wide variety of applications and tools at your disposal.
Re:Why do they need OS X? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why do they need OS X? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is about the third time I've read this remark, in +5 comments no less. Why on earth would anyone assume this to be true? If you own a grocery store would you just walk in and take anything you wanted without paying for it? Maybe. But more likely you would pay just like everyone else, and the profits would flow back to you. For the same reason, I would not assume Pixar was getting any special deals just because Jobs is CEO
Re:Why do they need OS X? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why do they need OS X? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm so confused. Which side am i supposed to root for?
I wonder if I could get a 17" Powerbook with linux and drivers for everything? With the translucent apple on the cover replaced with a translucent Tux? It'd be fun to compare them side by side. And tell the parti
Re:For the price (Score:4, Informative)
Virginia Tech's "Big Mac" has proved the G5 to be very powerful in a cluster.
Re:For the price (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as likely not, he may want to keep clean hands on this one for credibility. Remember that the high-profile VirginiaTech project had tons more marketroid benefits for Apple but the whole deal was basically retail. They wouldn't have to get discounts for this decision fo fly anyway, the price/performance&quality ratio is favourable.
Re:*Shrug* (Score:5, Informative)
Oh puhleez, that's so 1999! Have you priced out performance / price ratios for tier 1 manufacturers? G5's do smackingly well, especially against Dells and the like, often coming out much cheaper before considering things like support costs and reliability and resale. Pixar isn't going to build their own bargain bin beige boxes. Look at VirginiaTech's shopping research, they paid full price to Apple and it was still cheaper/faster than Dell.
Re:Why switch? (Score:3, Insightful)
Look! [yellowdoglinux.com]. And here! [gentoo.org].
[OT] Re:SLASHDOT'S 100,000th Story!!! (Score:5, Funny)
They are probably waiting until they get to 100,000 UNIQUE stories
You know what bothers me... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been doing work on UNIX computers and other platforms for years and years. I bought a Mac because it has a great front end to make simple things simple, and the UNIX backend stuff to make hard things possible. I still use GnuEmacs and it works just fine on OS X.
Also, the licence you apparently are seeking is GPL - the whole POINT of the BSD licence is that companies can make use of the code in the way they are doing. The developers working on BSD chose to work on BSD over Linux or some other GPL system knowing exactly this. As a coder I would think you would be proud to have something you wrote in such widespread use, instead of being a greedy whiner who is upset someone else is making money by using your code. Write your own amazing thing to make money from the code you wrote. Heck, by Apple stock when they adopt your code if you believe in it strongly!! That would have turned out really well for anyone who bought Apple stock around the time when they released OS X at large. They took the risks and also reaped the rewards, which anyone could have shared in.
Re:Apple would like to thank... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I give you a beer, you didn't steal it from me.
You know, it's rather bizarre... the Linux/GPL fanatics will scream endlessly in the war against SCO about how licensing lets the copyright-holder do whatever they please with their code, and if the copyright-holder wishes to give it out for free with a license like the GPL which says it has to always remain open-source then that's their god-given right by law. Isn't that the counter to SCO's claim that the GPL is illegal?
So listen: you can't have it both ways. If licensing lets the copyright-holder come up with whatever terms s/he wishes, then that includes the BSD license which the copyright-holder VOLUNTARILY used. The people who wrote FreeBSD gave it to the community under the terms of the BSD licenses so that things like what Apple did could SPECIFICALLY happen. In essence, FreeBSD freely gave itself to Apple.
How is that stealing? FreeBSD said "Feel free to use our code to make money however you want". Apple did just that. Give it a rest.
Re:What benefit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Conflict of interest? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The future of Linux is suddently darker (Score:4, Interesting)
LINUX? Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
People who take the holeyer than though view of Open Source are definitely walking the high road. It's a narrow-mindedness that I can't believe I'm hearing when coming from someone that I would normally consider to be highly intelligent. To me an example of the true spirit of Open Source is Apple. They took BSD and created Darwin and then release regularly the modifications to that operating system. That is truly honorable considering that with the freedom of BSD they do not HAVE to do so.
Plus, I don't think Steve Jobs would care if his xservers were running Linux or better yet BSD (pref Darwin) without OSX. Apple makes their money selling hardware. I really don't consider Microsoft to be a competitor of Apple. I think the real competitors are Dell, HP, etc..
Anyways, please step down from your Open Source soapbox and take a breath of air with the rest of us down here in the real world.
I realize that this comment might catch me some heat but Jesus I can't listen to this self centered propaganda any more.
Nick Powers
Re:Argh - well (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Mac OS X 10.3 is not entirely 64bit. It does support 64 bit addressing so it can access more than 4GB of RAM. It also has 64bit optmisted math libraries. Since 32 bit code runs on the G5 with no performance penalty this will do for a while. People with G5 machines will get the main benefits of the 64bit-ness and the programs will still run on older 32bit systems.
3. 64bit Windows is still in beta. Linux is available on Apple hardware too.
4. I suppect not. It's more likely that Pixar paid the going rate for those machines. Apple has spent the past few years persuing the movie content creation market. The advantage Pixar had was an existing link with Apple to communicate their needs. Apple choose to fulfill those and so obviously they become the preferred platform.
Pixar will use the best tools for the job available at the time. Remember Steve Jobs take stage at an Intel conference when Pixar bought a shed load of Xeons for their render farm in 2003?
5. Don't go out and spec "okay" systems and then compare price. Spec comparable systems and compare price. That means keeping the differences between the two systems to a minimum.
Hell my old iMac was much cheaper than that Dual processor Xeon, I used that iMac for years and it was an okay system...
Fact is that the fastest available PC is slower in many respects than the fastest Mac available and the PC costs more. Blame the PC chip manufacturers for putting such a high premium on their newest chips for the price difference.
If you are willing to sacrifice a few MHz on your box the dual proc PC price will drop below that of the Mac. But it will also be slower still.
And remember if you are inclined to run a non-free OS on the PC especially as a server then the Mac costs much less.