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Apple Businesses

Apple announces the G4 756

Posted by Hemos from the huge-speed dept.
Roger wrote to us with the news that Apple has announced the G4. Apple's website has all the news. This is /really/ fast. Anyone wanna let me test one? It's got up to a 500 mhz G4, one meg of L2 cache @ 1/2 processing speed, 100mhz system bus. And check out the 22 inch display that can be ordered along with it.
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Apple announces the G4 More

Apple announces the G4

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  • Well, I'm running a MacOS X server with mySQL and it works like a charm. And, even if its beside the point, the server setup is running a 400mhz G3 and it outperformed a setup with 2 dual P2 450 Xeon running in Wolfpack on NT with IIS4.



    "The future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed yet" - William Gibson

    "The future is already here,
    it's just not evenly distributed yet"

  • >

    But make sure you criticise the Mac the most because it's uncool to those who use a "REAL" operating system right?

    Well, I've HAD it.

    I am absofreakinglutly SICK of people telling me that Apple is dead and that people who use MAcs are a bunch of freaks. Get off you goddamn high horse and stop telling us how we're idiots. WE like the Mac, that's all, and WE ARE NOT GOING AWAY.

    I'm sorry for being a hypocrite, do you forgive me, computer god? Or should I just throw away my "piece of crap computer" and forget that I even bothered learning C and C++ and trying to be a part of some "great society" circle of gurus.

    Excuse me for actually giving a sh*t about a platform.

    You know, I am VERY happy for Linux ... it is a great OS, and I like the OperSource idea. I am getting ready to install LinuxPPC on my "piece of crap" G3. I just don't like some of the PEOPLE who use Linux.

    OSes are great for whatever you use them for ... but only if you use the "cool" operating system like us (whatever).

    i feel like Im in high school again.

    But if you want to go ahead and tell me how my IDIOTIC OPERATING SYSTEM is not memory protected, go ahead. Chances are, I've heard the line before .....
  • Try rendering. Try rc5, seti and des for the hell of it. Try 100 more things. After all that trying, then lets Talk. And the winner is...place your bets.

    Sadly 'if at first you suceed, try, try again' doesn't play well in the computer world.

    Quake3 was just a suggestion. Its gameplay is pathetic anyway (HL/TF'er here) but the graphics are perfect for stressing new hardware (and now smp)

    Anonymous Coward, get it? :)
  • 2) The rage128 is ssssssssllllllllloooooooowwwwwwww by any desktop standard.

    3) Marketing? Um no, this is equivilent to a papal mandate. This one is all opinion unless you happen to be one of the weasels, so cut the list to 3 :)

    4) Any the $64,000 question is...WHY? Guess why? Hint: first letter A, ryhmes with Snapple :) Apple sez 4 its G3 'My toy! Hands off! [Closed specs]' At least the G4 has a good chance of more specs coming from Motorola, as they did more of the design and have more rights to it this time.



    Anonymous Coward, get it? :)
  • No. It's not. You've obviously never installed Solaris.
    ...
  • You are right, "'Anonymous Coward' Number x,000,000." The Mac's lack of dynamic mem allocation is an annoying fault. One has to guess, beforehand, how much memory to allocate, then run the app and watch. I'm a Mac user, so don't get offended, anyone. But some programs ship with insufficient memory settings which cause problems for novice Mac users.

    At my old job, I loaded a math program for kids which wouldn't load because of this. Had I not known (since the OS didn't point out the problem), and been there to help, it would have been a problem since the app was needed.

    However, lack of true multitasking and good memory protection are my greatest concerns. (My machine crashes and freezes up too much.)

    They still have some OS magic to perform with OS X Final. If they can extend the BSD and Mach foundation with Finder-like magic and some of that new fairy dust they've been sprinkling around the last few months, I'll buy in. Otherwise, I'll just upgrade my LinuxPPC software. :-)

    (I'm still using OS 8.0 because 8.6 is bloated and slow. I've got LinuxPPC on a second partition.)

  • Keep dreaming. :-) So would I.

    I have BeOS, but it doesn't run on my machine. And since they've switched to PCs, I know there's no hope for us anymore. :-]

    I can't be seen in public with an orange "toilet seat," (or a blue one) however, so I'll be saving for a "normal" PowerBook, or whatever succeeds it--just something good and classy.

  • Because USparc and Alpha really have no market outside of servers. I don't know how well the G4 stacks up against the other guys mhz for mhz, but a G4 would make a kickass server but you could also play games on it.
  • Because G3 and G4 have much more marketing appeal than meaningless numbers- 601, 603e, 604 etc.
  • The graphical clients are WAAAY slower. My friend runs the client on his Gateway with a 400mhz Celeron and it takes him about 40 hours. His G3 was taking about 15 hours on the graphical client (don't know if there's a non-graphical client for Mac).
  • Huh? Did not know that... Who make this boards? Why Apple do no sell them?

    Anyway.. why does not Apple compare there new G4 to a 800Mhz Kriotech Athlon [tomshardware.com] (which cost $2200, can use much better video cards and other hardware)

    Sure G4 is a fine processor. But Apple's marketing drivel is annoying. It is so clearly exploits people without a slightest clue about computer usage, its sickening.
  • I use Macs, have managed tens of Macs in a network setting, have seen a lot of things. What I have not seen is a Mac that does not crash under stress (or stress over time).


    It's true that a machine acting as a file server rarely crashes, and OS 8.x is a lot better than previous OSes, but you must not be doing very much if your machines never crash.


    Write software, use Communicator, open apps: Bugs happen; Communicator happens; memory problems happen.

  • Re:seti (Score:1)

    by supz ( 77173 )
    i'm averaging about 12 hours with version 1.06 (compared to about 36 hours with 1.0 or whatever) of the seti GUI client, on a pII-450, not overclocked, running in winblows 98. that's not too horrible, is it?
  • yes. totally. If I remember correctly, Sun helped them do it back when their processors were so slow they had to resort to multi-processor machines to try to keep up with HP, IBM, and DEC. I remember the result being some photoshop results that showed pretty close to 1 to 1 scaling (i.e., on a 4 proc sparc it was virtually 4 times as fast).

    It was many moons ago, and the dust in my brain may be clouding the facts a little, but rest assured that photoshop is well tuned for multiple processors.
  • A really good friend of mine is also an Apple fanatic. I'm pretty sure that Apple packs some type of neuro-toxin into their boxes, that gives them 100% mind control over their users, because this kid is insanely sick with convincing me that Macintrashes are SOOO much better than "PC's" that I sometimes just hang up on him, or walk away during a conversation. Now I want to know, are ALL mac users like that?
  • My P3 500Mhz Intellistation does it at 8-9hours a unit. Nyah.

    I would hope so, since his CPU is at least two years old and you have 200 mhz on him. It also depends on what OS you're using; Unix is a lot faster than the Mac OS or NT.
  • I haven't seen the cinema display, but I assume they're using the same kind of LCD tech that's in their existing flat-panel displays, and boy are they ever sweet. Anyone who lives near a computer store, get down there and look at Apple's new flat-panel screens. They just totally blow away any ideas you may have had about LCD's being blurry and dark. This thing looked better than my sony CRT. And then go wander over to the wintel section and look at (for example) Viewsonics flat-screen. Doesn't look so cool anymore, all of a sudden. If only Apple would stop crippling all their great hardware with MacOS... if only... sigh.
  • Don't get me wrong - I'm not shitting on Linux. Linux is a wonderful operating system, one that I've used in the past. If somebody asked me about setting up a server, I would certainly recommend one of the Unices (Linux, *BSD, or one of the commerical Unices), the specific one being dependent on their needs. If anybody told me they were running BeOS as a server for more than a handful of home users, I'd probably laugh at them.

    I've simply found that *I*, personally, can get things done faster and with less hassle using BeOS as opposed to Linux, contradicting the original poster who claimed (paraphrasing) that no one could ever find BeOS more productive than Linux.

  • PPC chips were never the problem, the problem is getting new G3 chips to work. And what did IBM do??? They released specs to PPC so people can build new PPC computers? Is there a major manufacturer that just suddenly sprang up out of nowhere and mass produced and sold these new PPC computers? No, there wasn't, and we have yet to see if there ever will be. So don't say that Be's claims are invalid because IBM did something that has so far caused no effect on the PPC market. That's just kind of silly. I like the BeOS, and I hope that there is a place for it in the current market. I understand that it doesn't have the userbase or strength of linux yet, but as long as Be Inc. continues to work on it, I will support it. Although I would really love to use BeOS on one of those pretty new G4's. =(
  • Must have hurt when they sewed your mind shut. The G4 is SMP capable. Did you see dual-PIII's on the market before the first PIII shipped? I think not.
  • Meanwhile, you can call me "Rip" if you like. At least my user name doesn't profess to perform fellatio on theater-range ballistic missiles. ;)

    :) Actually, it comes from my early Quake days when I played with the keyboard becuase my mouse wouldn't work. So I got beat up. A lot. :)
  • and another undisclosed sum to settle a lawsuit. However, Apple had over a billion in cash sitting around at the time, plus assets that could have been liquified.

    The 150 mill didn't do squat. It didn't change anything one way or the other.
  • ...buy a shaker of salt. Maybe even a 5lb bag.

    Now, if the specs can get out so Linux and Be can make their oses *fully support* the g4, great. But of course, Apple won't share its toys. They have a burning bridge mentality. Sad.

    As for "8X faster!" or whatever ridiculous claim they're making (I don't even have to check, its up there for sure a la G3) you don't think that'll show up in any app that means shit? One filter for photoshop or a looped benchmark all in risc microcode doth not count. Try something like...o...quake3 when its finished? Among other things


    Anonymous Coward, get it? :)
  • ...g400.

    You didn't compre it to that. It would make all your points, and more. Plus, it has higher image quality in 2D and 3D.

    The rage is the oldest 'newest' card from any 3D OEM. All the other guys have come out with new stuff, and then some. (nv10 and v4 on horizon)


    Anonymous Coward, get it? :)
  • Don't be so sure... Mac OS X (yet to be released) and Mac OS X Server [apple.com] (already shipping), as well as Darwin OS [apple.com] (the open source basis of OS X) are based on BSD Unix, which would most likely make it very easy to port it. I have read that some Unix programs could even be run under OS X with a simple recompile. So if they did it under Mac OS X Server or Darwin OS, it would have been possible for them to use those tests.
  • Why on earth would you waste silicon translating CISC instructions to RISC instructions? Use that space for somethign valuable like cache.

  • I personally dislike MacOS, so this would instantly become a Linux box. As such, does anyone know if they're good for that? Any glaring software deficiencies?

  • This is a link to the cinema display... [apple.com]...

    This thing looks SOOOO awesome... I might die of envy right now...
  • Was Apple just /.ed? I think so. Perfect timing.
  • Is it just me or is Apple's site about the slowest site on the net? I think it's only been up about half the times I've tried to go there...

  • The G4s aren't the only thing apple announced at Seybold SanFran. The also unvailed their Cinema Display [22 inch LCD] as well as OS9 shipping in October.

    Cool stuff: New Colours! The G4s are "silver and graphite"

    Also bundled in Airport functionality [actually a card]

    It's like christmas in August!!!

  • Did anyone else notice the 22 inch widescreen LCD display [apple.com] you can get with the thing?

    I've sold my soul to intel, but I want one of those displays!

  • Quit your whinin'. Since when is "there's a new processor available for the Mac, and it's fast" equitable to "Gee whiz, the case sure looks neat!"

    Negative knee-jerk reactions to everything with the word "Apple" in it doesn't make you look too smart.
  • TheRegister has an article [theregister.co.uk] comparing the specs of the different boxes. The 400 Mhz machine will not support some of the key features of the 450 or 500. That is why it is available now and price competive with Pentiums and G3s.
    They are still getting the bugs out of the SawTooth Mobo, maybe when they have produces enough of them they will come out with a SawTooth based G4/400.

  • I was suprised; my friend didn't even know that the G4 had been announced! We did go through that thing about the G3 being twice as fast as a P2, but we got past than in about 2 minutes. Maybe there is hope for Mac users after all. :-)

    All in all, they're a happier group at the moment than most Amiga users. :-(

    TedC

  • Agree. Intel has even worse drivel..

    But as for SMP support, my original comment was that with PC architecture we have it HERE and NOW. It there is also some pretty good competition in this area. So Apple's bragging about "supercomputer on a slice of silicon" is what it is - irresponsible bragging.

  • You saved me alot of typing =)
  • Not significantly.

    $1507 vs $1599 is the difference in price of a USB mouse and keyboard vs non USB, or name brand over cheap, or the difference in price due to hard disk manufacturers.

    A $200 difference is cheaper; $1307.
    A $92 difference is not big enough for me to put up with making a system from scratch when Apple has already done it for me.


    -AS
  • Quick corrections:
    DVD-RAM is standard on the faster models.
    The standard Ultra2SCSI on those faster machines is much faster than Firewire. Firewire is capable of 400Mbs, but that doesnt mean the drives are. =)
  • Actually, I don't have a desk chair at home right now, so I'm using an old tower case instead. Works pretty well.
  • This machine isn't for you! It's for me! They aren't marketing it with you in mind, as well they shouldn't!

    If they claim to be twice as fast as the fastest PIII and if they hide the fact that this is restricted to Photoshop, they are doing marketing with all PC users in mind. It's as simple as that - period. Nobody (including the original poster) denies they have a fast machine, it's their extremely wrong-leading type of advertising one can criticize.
  • Umm....the voodoo3 does support 32 bit color.....if it only supported 16 bit color that would be kind of extreme.....it doesn't support 32 bit TEXTURES!!!! much less important....its still rendered in 32 bit color....
  • Actually, my Mac mouse has four buttons. *grin*

    -The Cheese
  • That's one more reason Linux is great, if Linux becomes the dominant OS for the average user it would most likely be one of the bigger distrobutions, like RedHat or Caldera, in which case the die hard underdogs will simply side with smaller distros or *BSD or build their own thereby keeping them in an elite group.
  • Hey, it runs MacOS better and faster!
    Stop complaining about what it doesn't do because it was never meant to do it.
  • Its people like you that make my day just a little better than it was before.
  • well... an easy reply is that if you get oem pricing for nt while buying all that hardware you can get it for around $100... plus, ars technica lists [arstechnica.com] a dual processor Tyan S1832 Tiger 100 for $157. throw those two options together and you've saved about $300, which goes a long way (256Mbytes of memory is one option...)
  • Well, then there is the top performer Alpha processor as well. Today you can get an Alphaserver DS10 from Compaq for around US$2500.

    (AXP 21264 @466MHz)
    SpecInt 24.6
    SpecFP 47.9

    Once again, Alpha just doesn't play in the same ballpark. And it runs Linux quite well too (not like those PowerMac which are hard to support). Alpha Processors Inc. and Compaq even seem to have a support service for running Linux on those beasts.

    If you don't want to shell out the cash, you can still find AXP 21164 from 533MHz to 667MHz:

    533HMz: 16.1 SPECint95, 22.5 SPECfp95
    600MHz: 18.0 SPECint95, 27.0 SPECfp95
    667MHz: 20.8 SPECint95, 32.4 SPECfp95

    OK, integer is a lot less sexy, but it's the same price as a Pentium II (at least for the 533MHz version) and noone can touch the floating-point performance, yet.

    Moreover, if you insist on having the fastest double-processors micro-computer ever on earth, you can still buy the all-new UP2000 from Alpha Processor Inc (a fully configured system costs around US $6000).

    SpecInt 31.8
    SpecFP 49.0

    ...and wait for the coming upgrade to 750MHz, which should have top perfs at around 45 SpecInt and 60 SpecFP :-)
  • just great, I buy a really fast Intel based platform then Apple and AMD decide to release their new uber-chips. Thats ok, maybe I can play with one of these at school. I really do enjoy the PPC chipset and can't wait until IBM releases to someone besides Apple. But even so, the G4 450 is 1,599$ (US) which is about the same price as a 400mhz G3 was going for about a month ago. I really like what Apple has done this time with giving you alot of options for the box, something that Gateway and Dell learned to do a long time ago. An optional DVD-RAM is great for anyone doing multimedia anything. Lots of extra space for your rendered movies and source video. Then if you want a really fast drive you pick up a FireWire hard drive to plug into it. I really don't think 1,599 is too much to pay for one of these considering the kind of power you're getting, the equivilent P3 system hasn't even been released yet. I am hoping maybe they will up the main bus to 133mhz for a higher memory throughput, 100mhz is fine but it wouldn't be terribly difficult to go a little faster. Apple is really doing things right this time, Steve Jobs had his work cut out for him and I think has performed well, about a year ago I expected Apple to be ready to go out of business by now but they're recording massive revenue.
  • Oh yeah, you're right I was smoking something.
    Shouldn't mix SlashDot and HashPot...
    Yeah, I'm a Mac programmer. You got a problem with that?
  • I think $1000 and $1999 are within the same
    order of magnitude as well... but I'd rather pay
    $1000. What's your point?

    The choice of OS is not the point. It's the
    cost of hardware. If anything, I wouldn't bring
    up the OS issue here... it just shows how many
    more flavors run on x86 than on PPC, and goes
    further to show the value of a cheaper system.

    Doink.

    -WW

    --
    Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
    When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring
  • it can't be exported to certain countries.
  • >>(who whether they were good or not, sapped apple's money, especially since how is apple supposed to compete with companies that apple is paying for the R&D budget of, leaving the other companies with little to spend money on besides advertising and tweaking?)

    Increase the licensing fee to the cloners. Problem solved. The ones who can pay it will, the ones who can't pay it won't. I'm not concerned with what's good for "Apple" I'm conscerned with what's good for the platform. Steve Jobs is definately not that.

    Getting rid of the floppy doesn't bother me, it's obsolete anyway, but eliminating ADB and SCSI are the two things that have caused me to decide not to buy a new mac system. I'll buy my old mac from work and put a G3/4 card into it before I buy one of the new Blue and White or Charcoal and Graphite macs.

    LK
  • If stock perfomance is all your concerned with, think about buying into Micro$oft. If ethics don't matter to you Apple isn't the only company that does well.

    While I'm at it, Hitler did a wonderful job of building the German economy, many people loved him too. As long as you don't mind sacrificing a few Jews along the way, I suppose that you can side with anyone to make a buck.

    LK
  • There is a pretty good reason why there a no AGP drivers yet for Macintosh AGP cards... There aren't any currently shipping Macs with AGP.

    Don't you think a couple companies will write drivers when Macs have AGP?

    G4(450, 500+)= AGP
    8Ball iMac= AGP
    iBook= AGP
    Next Rev of Powerbook= AGP
    Next Rev of Servers(the multiprocessor ones)= AGP
  • 1507 isn't less than 1599? Where'd you learn to count?

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • Hey it worked for SUN
  • I'll ignore the obvious troll-like qualities to your response and attempt to engage in some sort of meaningful dialoge.

    LinuxPPC is not in the same boat as Be. LinuxPPC has the excuse in the event of a lawsuit that they are simply repackaging an existing operating system, that they are only contributing to a community-designed operating system. Be doesn't have that excuse. If they reverse-engineer the specs, they could conceivably be held legally accountable. Further, unofficial specs also leave them at the whim of Apple (as is the case with LinuxPPC as well) - if Apple decides to change something that the MacOS understands, but screws all alternative OSes... oops.

    The common complaint is, why doesn't BeOS just use the Linux base? Because most likely that would contaminate the BeOS source base with GPL code. Be doesn't want to open-source their operating system yet, so they can't incorporate GPL source into the underlying operating system.

    As for BeOS has on Linux, ease of use, ease of installation, ease of configuration, GUI speed (after trying both GNOME and KDE, BeOS is by far the more responsive performer - although non-DEs, like the "basic" window managers, are on par with it), the SMP tricks (some of which you simply can't do on the Linux kernel, because of the differences in kernel architecture), pervasive multithreading, a clean, intelligent, and simple C++ API, built-in GUI scripting, built-in standard , powerful messenging system, the MIME-based file system (of which GNOME has, been virtually no applications use), and lastly, a 64-bit journalled file system with attributes that can handle very significantly larger file and volume sizes than even XFS.

    Yes, however, hardware support is lacking. On the other hand, my machine (as listed below) works perfectly with absolutely no problems. The situation is analogous to how Linux used to be a few years ago - you'd have to buy Linux-compatible hardware, instead of buying hardware and pretty much knowing it would work.

    Dual Pentium-II/400
    384M PC100 Memory
    Matrox G200 8Mb AGP
    Creative Labs Voodoo2
    SB Live! Value
    3Com 3C905B-TX Fast Ethernet adapter
    Intel PRO/100+ Fast Ethernet adapter
    10.2G Maxtor UDMA HDD
    8.4G Western Digital UDMA HDD
    Iomega Internal Zip Drive (100M)
    40x UDMA CD-ROM Drive (generic)

  • According to the local press here in Israel we are one of the countries to which the G4 cannot be shipped to. This stems from the fact that we are not signed on the Nuclear Antiproliferation Treaty (whatever its official name is) What I don't understand is that they are saying that in a few months this restriction should be lifted. AFAIK Israel isn't signing the treaty so does this mean they'll have to tone down the chip?
  • "While the rest of the world Slumbers"... are you referring to the fact that all Apple boxes since 1984 have been Y2K compliant? Or the fact that eventually Apple won't need the "monotonous wheezing" that is Micro$oft and move on?

    BTW: It wasn't Bill Gates that made Apple arise from its ashes... it was the buyout of Power Computing's kickass 604e & the return of der führer, Herr Jobs.
  • No, the ATI's are infact lowend gamming & consumer OEM cards. They are not the sort of thing Apple should be subjecting it's high end graphics customers to. It's simply not that sort of product.
  • http://www.mackido.com/Hardware/AltiVecVsKNI.html

    'nuff said.
  • Not true. *() implies a method call since it implies paramaters; so this is definetly the form object.method(), and the original poster is right, this is obviously fake code written by someone who wasn't thinking about how real code is written.
  • You are dumb, aren't you? Sure I have seen
    dual PIII boards BEFORE PIII shipped. It uses the same MB that PII.
    Any ETA for dual G4 from Apple, wise ass? And what about OS support for it? It will take a while. PC will have i64 and SMP 1Ghz Athlons long before that.
  • sheesh, ye mac freaks are such... freaks! i said i liked the hardware, is that not enough for you?! i have a friend who is a TOTAL mac fanatic and works in testing at Apple so i probably know more about COOL MAC STUFF than the average Linux punter and have put up with his ranting for years because i like the guy. i was seriously thinking about buying an imacII and making it dual boot yellow dog linux but with snide remarks like the one from your fawning sub-poster compatriot I may not bother. believe it or not i would not use it for "color correction, proofing, pre-production, graphics arts, and desktop publishing" i would use it for coding and surfing. cheers mac fans, its been swell
  • The discussion that follows this thread is nice....people stopped flaming (mostly)...

    I'm lucky enough that I had to wait to get the loan for My new computer. I was going to get a 350MHz G3, but I managed to get everything I wanted AND a 400MHz G4.

    There is another "real-world" bench toted on the site...or maybe an article. At the unveiling of the system, Jobs ran SETI-at-home on both the 600 PIII and the 500 G4...the G4 was makeing 3 to 4 graphs per every one of the PIII...Not bad I'd say.

  • Hmmmm. Didn't realize I was "falling for the pro-Linux hype," just bemoaning the state of software bloat in general -- I detest having to buy faster, bigger processing and disk hardware to support the latest applications. Meanwhile, I'm never getting the kind of display technology I need at an affordable price.

    By the time I'm ready to take a deep breath and plunge into Linux for a productivity platform, I figure OpenLinux et al. will be mature & robust enough that I won't be beating my brains out as long as my hardware's nothing too exotic.

  • I stand corrected, *if* they've begun consolidating all those damned add-ons into the System and Finder executables themselves. Trying to keep track of all them pieces-parts is major distraction, too.

  • I stand corrected, *if* they've begun consolidating all those damned add-ons into the System and Finder executables themselves. Trying to keep track of all them pieces-parts is major distraction, too.

    Meanwhile, you can call me "Rip" if you like. At least my user name doesn't profess to perform fellatio on theater-range ballistic missiles. ;)

  • As of right now, AAPL is at 68.125. I was watching the keynote yesterday with a colleague. He jumped into AAPL at 63.5. I currently think AAPL is making a run for 75...

    As for OS X, that's going to be BSD Unix (free), gcc for G4 (free) with a Mac GUI ($) and an updated version of the NextStep API. I suspect the full development tools will not appear in the OS X Client release, I hope they'll be free (in the best possible sense), but I'll settle for cheap with source code available (if not Open Source in some form).

    Mac OS 8.6 (the current shipping version) is very stable. I just finished a support contract with a Fortune 100 company, and I had our 8.6 machines running perfectly (with the exception of the occaisonal packet storm on the network and of course well all know Lotus Notes isn't (very) stable on the Mac (although 4.57b cuts the random crashes to a minimum, and those probably reflect insufficient error checking given the unstable TCP/IP environment at that site).

    A few notes on the 'benchmarks' shown during the keynote. Photoshop is a valid single-app benchmark, since tens of thousands of people spend all day using it. I expect the G4 acceleration to be similar in scope to the MMX or PIII acceleration. Watch the canned video of the tests, they show marked superiority in Photoshop, QT video compression (admittedly an Apple technology and almost certainly more optimized for a G4 than a PII), SETI@HOME and some scientific analysis (3D rendering of Mars Observer data).

    I'm looking forward to Intel's rebuttal of these tests, and I'd also like to see someone run some of Intel's tests in the PIII performance area (PIII benchmarks [intel.com]). Speaking of whom, Apple does have the specs of Intels' tests online here [apple.com]. Note that without the Convolve test, their average is 2.24 times faster than a PIII (adjusted for MHz) instead of 2.94. Still...

    Intel's explanation of the tests Apple ran are available here [intel.com].

    Interestingly (and some will find suspiciously), these tests aren't in the PIII benchmark area. Of course, most of those that are use Microsoft software and so aren't really suitable for testing Apple systems. If anyone optimized the test suite for the G4, it would have been Motorolla, since AltiVec is their baby.

  • "So, if you compare Apple to their closest commercial OS competitors (Microsoft and Be), they've made further steps than them. The problem with open source is for a company to not end up losing sales with movement to it, especially if they begin releasing the product for free."

    Very true, but it is always important to remember that Apple makes its money selling hardware, not software. The first 6 system releases were free. It was only 8 years ago that Apple started charging for new versions of the OS, and the latest version is always included with a new Mac.

    The software market could 'die' an open-source death tomorrow, and Apple would probably just sell even more boxes as a result. Microsoft, on the other hand...
  • Here's a Motorola link with spec scores, MIPS, and lots of other G4 info:

    http://www.mot.com/SPS/PowerPC/products/semicond uctor/cpu/7400.html
  • A PIII will start in the mid-two-grand range, and top off well above four thousand dollars.

    Not really. The machine I have my eye on is a dual P-III 450 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 20 GB HD, G400 AGP, etc etc.

    Price? about $1300 from here [deeonesystems.com]. Of course, this place doesn't give you snazy colored boxes.

  • OS X server is already out, and OS X client will be out within 6 months. Preemptive multitasking, fast modern memory management, SMP... with all the advantages of the current Mac OS GUI and API's. By early 2000, we can expect multi-processor boxen running 600 MHz+ G4's, running OS X. They're gonna be the fastest desktops on the planet. If I had some money to invest, I'd buy Apple stock.
  • will it run linuxppc? because, no matter how fast os8 or 9 are, the real processing power won't be accessible until osX or linux are pumping it for all it's got.

    It almost certainly will. The LinuxPPC folks typically get new machines running in a matter of weeks. It might take a little longer to get decent AltiVec support, but even without that, these machines can hold their own against x86 boxen. And OS X server is out NOW, and I'd guess that Apple's already got it running on these machines. Again, altiVec support might not be ready quite yet, but it will come.

    2: will the /. apple icon have to change? now that the systems are 'graphite' instead of blueberry...

    They use a variety of colors. The iMac is five different flavors, the iBook have two of the same flavors, and the Powerbooks have white Apple logos. I say stick with blue.
  • The prevailing thought is that Macs suck. However, the G4 is being dragged into unfairly. The G4 is not married to the mac architecture. In any other case you guys would be drooling over the specs. AltiVec kicks SSE's ass all over the place. The PIII can issue 4 but only process 2 FPs per sucond using SSE. But it looks as if the G4 should be able to process the 4 floats granted by its 128 bit vector unit, in one cycle. (128/32=4) Add to this a RISC architecture, that is good at spliting ops between multiple pipes (great for matrix math AKA 3D) and a good FPU (descendant of the 604e instead of the 603 that the G3 was based on.) The 604e was and still is an FP powerhouse. The 603 was a cheap consumer chip while the 604 was used in the high end. In any case, these chips look to kick ass, and remember MacOS X is just around the corner. Besides, this time they actuall used real programs. Go to Motorola's website, G4 with AltiVec blows x86 away. My last comment is that I am not a mac users, in fact I can't stand apple. But if I had the jingle, I would buy a G4 right away. (And load what? this great chip has a choice of LinuxPPC (no media support), MacOS (buggy as hell and half emulated), and MacOS X beta (a server OS and still in beta).
  • I think I saw something like $3999 when it ships later. look here [maccentral.com] as I think it was on MacCentral that I saw that.

  • Integer performance is likely about the same, as that was the big strength of the G3's. The FP, performance, however has been substantially improved. I saw a description of this on Apple's web page, which I can't find now, but this is interesting...

    The secret of the G4's revolutionary performance is its aptly named Velocity Engine. It's the heart of a supercomputer miniaturized onto a sliver of silicon. The Velocity Engine can process data in 128-bit chunks, instead of the smaller 32-bit or 64-bit chunks used in traditional processors (it's the 128-bit vector processing technology used in scientific supercomputers--except that we've added 162 new instructions to speed up computations). In addition, it can perform four (in some cases eight) 32-bit floating-point calculations in a single cycle--two to four times faster than traditional processors.

    Aside from the stupid name change (the "Velocity Engine" is Altivec) That sounds very impressive.

    Keep in mind that Apple is re-writing OpenGL, Quickdraw, Quicktime, and other OS components to take advantage of Altivec. So once that code gets out (probably with OS X if not sooner) it will provide dramatic speed-ups of all apps that do intensive graphics operations.

    And the non-Alitvec FP unit has also been improved, although I don't remember offhand what was changed.

    Give me a RISC processor any day...

    Um... The G4 is RISC.
  • while (os.worksfor(user)) { user.use(os) }

  • G4 is NOT fast as hell (Score:3)

    by patSPLAT ( 14441 ) on Tuesday August 31, 1999 @09:27AM (#1714006) Homepage

    Apple claims [apple.com] that the a 500 Mhz G4 is 2.94 times as fast as a 600Mhz PIII.

    What you have to realize is you should compare performance for price, not raw cpu performance. I'm sure a sun workstation could run circles around everybody, but it is obviously in another price range.

    The 400Mhz G4 with 64mbytes of RAM costs $1499. Let's assume that it will run Photoshop 3 times as fast as a PentiumIII 500Mhz. For competition, let us look at the Ars Technica Hot Rod [arstechnica.com], picking the dual overclocked celerons. This system costs $1287, and includes much better peripherals (20gb harddrive, 128mb ram, tnt2 video).

    According to Ars's benchmarks, dual processor systems are significantly [arstechnica.com] faster than single processor systems at performing Photoshop tasks. You could make a dual processer PIII 450 for the same price as the 400Mhz G4 (PIII 450 = 2x cost of Celeron 366). That's a bench mark I'd like to see, and one which might reflect the true cost/performance comparisons between a high end mac and a high end x86.

    What does this mean? Apple claims that the G4 Velocity engine complete 2-4 times the computation of standard CPUs. But single processor x86 boxes are not the competition for the g4 (except maybe the Athlon, but Apple didn't benchmark that, did they?), since you can easily afford smp systems for the prices that they are charging.

    Furthermore, this is hardware optimized for graphics production work only. Apple servers are a long way away. LinuxPPC is probably your best option, but since apple has been stingy about releasing the details of their architecture in the past, you probably wouldn't get a Linux box as optimized for the G4 as the Apple OS is. If you could get similar (and more flexible) performance on another box, why else would you want to deal with the only OS more fubared than MS?

  • Oh yes, indeed. Looks like some quality goodies can be had here. (disclaimer: I'm not a hardcore Mac fan) I've had an itch for quite a while now to delve into the PPC. I'll admit I was a little dissapointed at the G3 vs PentiumII claims so I'm a little skeptical about the 200% faster than a P!!! claims, but I'm willing to be convinced!

  • Here at WAM! [wamdesign.com] we just ordered one. We called the moment it was announced.

    Max, my business partner is on the phone with Apple ordering a G4. The sales rep was like "Huh? We haven't released that ye- ... could you hold on?" He came back 10 seconds later and said "Um...we just released that. Just now. You're the first person to order one."

    God, that feels good. :)
  • Here is some more info from Maccentral [maccentral.com]

    the G4 processor, which has a sustained speed of 1 gigaflops and a peak speed of 4 gigaflops.
    Apple's new systems are available in 400 Mhz, 450 Mhz, 500 Mhz speeds. The 500 Mhz version will include a DVD-RAM drive, which can record several gigs of data to a CD-sized disk.
    The 400 Mhz system will be priced at $1599, the 450 Mhz system at $2499, the 500 Mhz at $3,499.
    Apple will be immediately shipping the 400 Mhz system, with the other two systems shipping in a "few weeks."
    Jobs said that the new systems will ship with a Photoshop plug-in that will recognize the G4 processor.
    In a head-to-head race against a Pentium III system, the PowerMac G4 handily blew away the Pentium III system, rendering a scene with Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story more than twice as fast as the Pentium machine, which was running at 600 Mhz.
    The next demo tested memory bandwidth. Again facing the fastest Pentium III currently available, the PowerMac G4 crushed the Pentium system.
    Next came a QuickTime encoding demo, where the trailer for the James Bond movie was compressed in real time on the PowerMac G4, but took about twice as long on the Pentium system. In fact, the PowerMac G4 could actually compress the James Bond movie and play it back before the Pentium system could encode the clip.
    A college professor then took the reins to demonstrate the supercomputer capabilities of the G4.He demonstrated the popular SETI@Home project, where a G4 was able to process in 6 hours the same amount of information that a Pentium III could process in 25 hours.
    To demonstrate encryption speed, a 1000 bit encryption key was decoded on both a G4 and G3, where the G4 was almost seven times faster. Standard cryptography applications run at 3 to 8 times the speed of Pentium III systems, according to the professor.
    The last demo showed actual data from the Mars Pathfinder mission. A G4 and a Pentium II system set up head-to-head showed the rendering of data from a probe flying through a valley on Mars. The G4 played like a movie, while the Pentium III played more like a slide-show.
    --------------------------------------

  • You sound _scared_ that people will be able to get one of these and run Linux on it.
    P'raps you _should_ be. >;)

  • You're missing something... (Score:3)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Tuesday August 31, 1999 @11:58AM (#1714096)
    It's Rage 128, not Rage Pro or Rage II or any of the others.

    Rage 128 is actually pretty decent. Depending on what you're looking for in a card, it can be the best one out there. Here's the thing: Voodoo3 has the fastest renderer, but there's a reason for that: it can't do any more than 16-bit color (and yes, I've read that little excuse^H^H^H^H^H^Harticle from that 3Dfx guy; I've seen the cards back to back and I don't buy it in the least). In other words, each frame won't look as good as one from a Rage 128. Then there are NVidia's offerings; reasonably good framerate, but the renderer is still of pretty low quality. Rage 128 has a relatively slow renderer (key word "relatively"; it beats Voodoo2 handily and I've never seen it more than five FPS slower than a Voodoo3) but its frames look better than the others do.

    Personally, I'll sacrifice a few FPS for better-looking graphics. Then again, that's just me; some people can't tell the differences between the three renderers, just as some people (myself included)_can't tell the difference between an MP3 and the original CD recording.

    Besides which, 3Dfx and Matrox are still flaky with MacOS support. The cards do work, but I don't think either is OF-compliant at this point. ATI, on the other hand, is (and has been since Apple started including their chips, which is probably why Apple did it).

  • Ten million years or so...

    -
    /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.

  • Sad (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    People actually buy computers base on the color of their favorite Life Savers candy. Just plain sad! It's a computer people not funiture!
  • This machine is being positioned as the ulitmate boot legger. Apple's page is talking about dvd-ram and digital camera's and the ultimate cimematic experience.

    I can just see it now, an army of people in theatres with their digital camera's going home and uploading it directly to their computer and burning it on vcd or better yet(for Apple that is)onto a dvd-ram in Quick Time format.
  • Great, that's very encouraging. With the amount of flak they got the last time around, I would have to imagine they'd have to have their story together this time around. Can't wait.

  • A sniveling groveler says: I have a black G3 [webslacker.com] for anyone who wants to buy one... please buy it... I wanna buy one of these new things...

    *sigh* Expect to see mine on eBay or uBid sometime in the next couple of weeks... considering how badass these new machines are gonna be, I'm not sure how much demand there'll be for used G3's...
  • >why is it that so many people are anti-appleist'?

    Why do you need to find a website that explains
    why? It should be pretty obvious.

    There are always people that will hate anything.
    For example, I hate lots of things; probably even
    some things that you like.

    The next part is whether I'm bored enough to
    vent about those things in front of you. This guy
    was, apparantly.

    If you want a specific answer on why people might
    specifically hate Apple, here are a few ideas with
    which I may or may not agree:

    1. Apple makes closed hardware and software. This pisses off Linux folks.

    2. They won't share their G3/G4 specs with other OS companies. This pisses off BeOS folks.

    3. They bend the truth with numbers (i.e. claiming
    their G3 was twice as fast as the current intel
    chip, even though this was for integer performance
    only). This pisses off x86 folks.

    4. They complain about Microsoft, and then turn
    around and do Microsoft-ish things (as well as
    except money from MS). This pisses off lots of folks.

    5. They rely/relied on their zealots to carry them
    through the past 5-8 years where they were no longer
    innovating. Merely claiming Win95 == MacOS '89 (or
    whatever) is not the same thing as innovating.

    I'm sure there's more.

    Honestly though, if you can't answer your own
    question, then perhaps you are not very objective
    about software companies? I love BeOS, I use
    Windows, I don't like Linux or Mac, but I can
    understand why people love and hate all of those
    products.

    -WW

    P.S. They're all just tools ... let's move on and
    work.

    --
    Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
    When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring
  • NT is thrown in for the desktop publishing/graphics arts/proofing software, which doesn't exist for Linux yet.

    Darn but I wished formatting was kept.

    But subtract the $309 for NT and you do get a cheaper SMP system, Be or Linux.

    Be *might* be able to function in a similar manner to a G4 in terms of graphics and multimedia.


    -AS
  • But how much will it cost for the Linux machine to do color correction, proofing, pre-production, graphics arts, and desktop publishing?

    For those fields(under which the G4 was released, at Seybold) there is no comparable machine in the market. DIYers can cobble together the above/previously mentioned SMP PIII, but not at a significantly lower price point.


    -AS
  • $1509 vs $1599 is within the same order of magnitude; it depends on the mouse and keyboard you buy, for example(USB or otherwise, name brand or not, etc).

    Why NT? Because NT can do the same things, mostly, that Mac can do; desktop publishing, prepress, color correction, etc. If we are targetting different markets, then sure, throw in Linux or BeOS. For Seybold, I think NT would be appropriate.


    -AS
  • They used Intels OWN TESTS to benchmark the G4. They grabed all the tests Intel used on the PIII to make it look good, ported 'em to G4, ran them and beat the shit outta Intel...

    Now thats funny.

    Another thing about the G4... when typing it, if you give it a little SHIFT, you get G$

    does Apple know something we dont ;-)
  • So building a dual PIII 450 is cheaper or comparable? I don't believe it. Last I saw, a PIII 450 is $219; Here's a rough breakdown G4 + 64MB + ATI Rage 128 + 10GB 5400 ATA/33 + 32x CDROM + 2 Firewire ports + 10/100baseT + 56.6k = $1599 2xPIII 450 = $438 64MB memory = $65 ATI Rage 128 16mb = $79 10GB HD Western Digital = $135 Dual Motherboard(Microstar) = $239 40x CDROM = $35 Firewire card(Siiig) = $107 Ethernet = $45 Modem = $50 Case+PS = $85 WindowsNT = $309 That's $1507 That's not cheaper...(I won't argue power since I can't actually benchmark either setup!)

    -AS

  • *sigh*, once again, Apple misleads. (Score:3)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Tuesday August 31, 1999 @08:07AM (#1714267) Homepage Journal
    "100 to 200% faster than the fastest Pentium-III based PCs", the webpage crows. A little asterisk leads to the bottom of the page where, in the tiniest possible font and in off-white (so it's easy to miss), we learn that it's another one of those "it's faster in Photoshop and CPU tests" things. Wow, I'm drooling, really.

    If the damned thing is fast, show me *useful data saying so*, not some bullshit Specmark and one-singular-application tests. That'll never happen, though, because then they wouldn't be able to make such ridiculous "200% faster!!" claims.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad


  • Right on. So poor little Be supposedly couldn't reverse engineer Apple's G3 motherboard. But they do manage to figure out how to reverse engineer around the various bugs and defects for the gazillion PC motherboards and BIOSes out there.

    I would love to see IBM sink some money into Be to keep BeOS/PPC alive, but would imply that IBM would actually have to support the PPC platform beyond the point of just re-releasing some old motherboard specs.
    --
  • First, I'm confused what math scale you're using.
    I do believe $1507 is cheaper than $1599? Or
    perhaps I'm reading your heap o' numbers wrong.

    But most importantly, you through NT in to the
    mix. Who says I want that? You added $309 for NT. Subtract $309, and add $0 for Linux if you want
    a server system, or $69 for BeOS if you want an
    end-user system.

    doink.

    -WW

    --
    Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
    When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring

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