OSNews

enough with the mac mini/macbook benchmarks. This is aggravating.

Then don't comment and/or read that particular story. It's really that simple. Amazing, isn't it, boys and girls?

/me agrees with Thom.

If you don't like it or are sick of it, then don't read and especially offer comments that are destructive to the nature of a mature discussion. So you're tired of hearing about all the new Apple hype. Jsut as there are many of us who are tired of hearing the endless Microsoft prattle. And I'm sure there are those of us who are tired of hearing about Linux, etc., etc. Truth is OSNews is the kinda place where your gonna keep hearing about stuff in the world of computing. And yeah, you proly will hear the same or similar stuff over and over and over again. It's called different points of view. And you know what? I for one love it. The differentness of it all. I imagine I'm not alone there.


/my 2 pounds-sterling

Jed

Just stop talking and buy one. Anyone should know that it's faster than it's G5 relatives.

Everyone outside of Apple 6 or 12 months ago that is.

http://web.archive.org/web/20050331085414/www.apple.com/powermac/

The link is to Archive.org's Way Back Machine (cache) of Apple's benchmarks last April.

If you're referring to the Photoshop benchmark you're going to obtain the following responses:

The Core Duo isn't the Pentium 4/Xeon/FX-53. Even though Core Duo's SSE implementation isn't its strong-point, that it isn't (and couldn't be) included there means nothing.

The G5 is better at SIMD operations than the Pentium 4/Xeon/FX-53. Therefore it really was faster.

Apple didn't switch for the Core Duo, they switched for Intel's future roadmap. Conroe is 10-20% faster than an overclocked FX-60 in various benchmarks while being significantly cooler than the Pentium 4!

IBM couldn't compete. Ok, now I'm tired of typing this. You've seen all of this before by now.

All you're doing is inviting a flamewar.

"All you're doing is inviting a flamewar."

Not so sure this is a fair reaction. When you read the article, you come on the statement:

It's also worth mentioning that the Intel-based Mac minis were, for the most part, faster than our baseline system (a PowerMac G5 1.6GHz). Yikes.

Then you go back and refresh your memory about the relative sizes of the two beasts, and the claims that were made for the floor standing G5s, and the heat and noise issues, it does make you think a bit. The G5s were/are real floor standing behemoths, weigh a ton, full of fans, elaborate cooling. You look at the photos of the insides that he has linked to and if you don't know something about case design and processors, you think, wow, this is really high end.

Before the move to Intel, the marketing message was about superior power and better architecture in a quality package. Then all of a sudden it turns out that in a tiny box, not particularly high end, not really designed for performance, the above quote holds.

What he is feeling and suggesting is something like, it was all lies. And well, I'm afraid it was. It really was just all lies. People may not like to hear it, the company may have had little other choice...but its what happened.

It's not a matter of whether Apple lies or misleads, it's just that there is no fruitful discussion left in the universe that would come of it. There are too many obvious "flaws" in the comment made, and the same argument manifests constantly everywhere between the Apple Faithful and the Self-Appointed Enforcers of Truth. Someone will find one of those "flaws" and then the discussion will consist of arguing minutiae with at least one party sticking to arguing the unknowable as if it were some certainty. Perhaps if we all ignore these articles and the repeat discussions that follow them they'll go away.

Apple will not directly compare the speed of a G5 to a core duo until they have moved nearly every G5 off their shelves and out of their warehouses. If they would start telling everybody how fast the core duo is compared to a G5, people might not buy the powermac G5 or at best, Apple would have to lower it's prices on them substantially.

I've talked to a few Mac guys and the really hard core ones know all the specs about the G4, G5, core solo, and core duo, but most that I know really only know Apple changed processors to intel and they only know what apple tells them (which may or may not be true)

Bottom line, if apple says the core duo is faster then the G5, the latter group of people i talked about won't buy a powermac G5 (unless it's way cheaper).

edited for spelling and punctuation

Edited 2006-03-11 14:38

Apple directly compares the speed of a single-processor G5 in the iMac to a Core Duo. They aren't going to advertise that the Core Duo is faster at most computational tasks than the Powermacs they're selling for a couple of grand a pop. The G4 was sold in desktops well beyond the point where it was performance-competitive in general computing. The G4 was sold in laptops even longer, despite that the Pentium M has been available for many years now ready and able to slap it around performance-wise at a variety of tasks. Apple doesn't offer a lot of advice to its customers about maximizing CPU performance/dollar. The Core Duo will almost assuredly never find a place in a Powermac replacement, and Conroe will usher in the Powermac replacement at x.y times faster than the previous Powermac. Anyone looking to buy a Mac should realize this, even if Apple doesn't tell them specifically that in a few months the Powermac replacement will be faster. What, do they expect them to release slower Powermacs? People shouldn't exactly be scrambling to spend a few thousand dollars on a Pentium Extreme Edition system right now, either if they want the best performance return for their dollar.

Also, on an unrelated note, does anyone know roughly when Leapord, the next verion of OS X is expected to be released?

At WWDC 2005 it was announced that Leopard was scheduled for late 2006, early 2007.