I was present at Apple's WWDC yesterday and witnessed one of the historical moments in Apple's history, the introduction of their 64-bit platform. Am I impressed? The answer is complicated. I was happy to see Apple moving on and deliver. But I would have expected nothing less from a 4 billion tech company who had the need to catch up with the "other" platform, the 32-bit PC. You all heard by now what's new in yesterday's press releases and news coverings. But here is a wrap up of the first day of the conference and a commentary on what Apple really announced yesterday, underneath its surrounding distortion field.
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Apple might have used benchmarks in a misleading way to make their products look better/faster than they actually are?
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GCC is the WORST compiler available for Windows at this time, performance-wise that is. Also, which version of GCC did they use under Windows? MinGW, CygWin, or DJGPP? CygWin's compatibility layer introduces significant overhead, compared to MinGW
It lacks many of the optimizations that MSVC and ICC have, whereas Apple has been optimizing the hell out of the Mac version of GCC
Run your benchmarks against a compiler that commercial developers actually use and maybe I'll be more inclined to buy your benchmarks. I can't wait for objective benchmarks from an independent source.
The previous post was not a slam against GCC, it does it's job (being an excellent cross-platform, cross-language compiler suite) very very well. However, very few developers actually use it under Windows, with the exception of students and open source software developers, who can't afford/ideologically don't support/can't rely on commercial Windows compilers.
It was however, a slam against Apple...shame on them, no offense but I would never want them to be in control of the computer industry...I just can't trust them because they are constantly pulling crap like this
Well, lets be completely honest here. If you want to use the Microsoft compiler, it is available free of charge in the Windows SDK. The only downside is that you need to manuall tweak via switchs and there is no IDE.
On the otherside, GCC is crap on Windows for a reason, because the majority of the development effort doesn't go into Windows version but for the majority of people who use *NIX, also, one has to consider the fact that PE isn't the nicest thing to write for and from what I have heard, it is terribly documented vs the clean and standard ELF follows.
Anyway, back to this article, I agree with Eugenia Loli-Queru regarding the pricing of $1999 for the workstation, IMHO, if they priced their low end at around $1800 then they would really grab a market. To make it even more tempting, why not offer a monitor/PowerMac bundle. Who on earth DOESN'T buy a computer without a monitor?
I mostly agree with Eugenia. There's nothing really innovative or ground-breaking, but good steady progress.
Xcode looks really tempting, though. Compiling in the background and "zero-linking" (however that may work) promise faster development, I'm looking forward to that.
It was a relief to see Expose, as it looks like it could actually be useful. Ever since it came thought of QuartzGL as a nice piece of technology but couldn't quite figure out what it's actually good for.
The most impressive thing about the G5 is the case design. This time, someone really had airflow in mind, where most PC makers still restrict themselves to the ATX format. The CPU - so what. A new CPU is being introduced that is faster than the previous ones? Happens all the time, it's just been a while since Apple was able to do that.
Pixlet - cool for a developer's show and a few production houses. Will not be useful for the average home user for a while, though. Maybe when we have GBit ISPs.
Btw, that post was by me, and also it should be:
Who on earth buys a computer without a monitor?
I was thoroughly impressed with everything that was announced. This was without a doubt the keynote i was waiting for, and not necessarily just for the G5, (although that really stole the show) but also for innovations in iChat/iSight and the huge innovations in Panther.
It seems to me that a lot of other PC-centric people are trying to do some damage control and spin this as a catch-up expo... (and in some ways it was), but in far more ways it was a session in which Apple excelled beyond the industry.
There's an old business adage which suggests that when a monopoly is present within an industry, a competitor has to be at LEAST 30% better to gain market share. Considering that Apple is competing against an illegal monopoly, their products probably have to be 60% better to gain market share.
If you ask me, I think they've done it. Their products are genuinely better IMHO, in both operating systems AND hardware now. Additionally the software that is coming out of Apple is without a doubt some of the best I've ever seen.
I've been a Windows PC user for over 10 years and barely gave a second look at Apple. I was near an Apple store when the keynote occurred and I ended up spending 2 hours seeing what Apple was up to. I never thought I would say this but Apple has made a switcher out of me. Immediately after the keynote, I placed an order for the dual 2GHz G5, a 23" cinema display, a 17" display and an iSight.
We need to swallow our pride people... and give Apple credit where it is due. They have DEFINITELY come around full circle. For the first time in my life, I can say that I find myself more interested in the technologies occurring in the Mac camp than what I am occurring in the Windows PC market place.
I agree with Eugenia Loli-Queru regarding the pricing of $1999 for the workstation, IMHO, if they priced their low end at around $1800 then they would really grab a market.
You can get it for less than $1800 if you order the low-end G5 without the super drive.
"Pixlet - cool for a developer's show and a few production houses. Will not be useful for the average home user for a while, though. Maybe when we have GBit ISPs."
Don't forget the thousands of colleges around the world that run media courses. Also there are plenty of advanced amateur and semi-pro video and film makers.
Apple do right to target this market - these are people who spend money. The same applies to the music industry.
" There's nothing really innovative or ground-breaking, but good steady progress."
Are you kidding me, the advancements in Panther alone were incredibly innovative and ground breaking.
The more I read the comments from my fellow computer users, the more I think that they simply have a chip on their shoulder and are afraid of having their egos bruised somehow. As I mentioned in my above post, we need to give credit where credit is due.
Yes, I agree that Panther isn't all that innovative, but same with 10.1 - but it was far better than 10.0 because it actually pushes OS X as far as it can go. I'm not sure about Panther, but I'm pretty optimistic about it. Meanwhile what I would suspect is that Panther was mostly being optimized for 970, as oppose to Jaguar. In other words, who knows - Panther may be a speed demon.
Besides, the highlight of the show is the G5s. Now, you complain about the speed of the RAM used in the machines, but frankly, the overall speed of the machines is very good for its price. Maybe not so in comparison with the highest end one. Surely I wouldn't recommend the cheapest, I would recommend mid-range or highest end. The lowest end has the least bang for the buck, and it is not because of the RAM.
">>>I agree with Eugenia Loli-Queru regarding the pricing of $1999 for the workstation, IMHO, if they priced their low end at around $1800 then they would really grab a market."
>>"You can get it for less than $1800 if you order the low-end G5 without the super drive."
Also, take the Super drive out of the lowest-end model and you're well whenin the appropriate price point that i think you're looking for.
>Are you kidding me, the advancements in Panther alone were incredibly innovative and ground breaking
If you actually read the article, you will see that they are not really. Last year's Jaguar was innovative, this year's Panther is just a build up upon Jaguar's technologies with no real NEW and unseen before features. Expose is a good feature though, I liked that one.
With these new machines, Apple surpassed Wintels by a mile. Intel still has no desktop Itanium in the coming months.
It's too bad my iBook is too slow for the iSight. 
>Apple surpassed Wintels by a mile
Re-read the article. Slowly.
Eugenia, I think you need to hold yourself to your own standards... if you are going to criticize the poor journalist sitting next to you because he was impressed by the Expose demo, and whine about how people are so easily impressed by things that would be obvious if only they knew how everything worked internally... then you shouldn't criticize Quartz Extreme for doing resizing less smoothly than BeOS. You know well that it's a case of comparing Apples and oranges (heh) -- BeOS is able to be so fast because it has a very simple, straightforward, low level rendering engine. No vector-based graphic transformations, no alpha blending, no composition layer, no non-rectangular windows. OS/X's screen renderer is an order of magnitude more ambitious regarding the features it supports, so of course it's going to take more CPU power than BeOS. Not that being slow is good, but that was a design tradeoff that Apple consciously decided, and IMHO it was the right one, since in another year of optimizations and hardware speedups, OS/X will be as fast as BeOS *and* have the cool features too.
" There's nothing really innovative or ground-breaking, but good steady progress."
Are you kidding me, the advancements in Panther alone were incredibly innovative and ground breaking.
The more I read the comments from my fellow computer users, the more I think that they simply have a chip on their shoulder and are afraid of having their egos bruised somehow. As I mentioned in my above post, we need to give credit where credit is due.
Name some reallly innovative features in Panther? Things Linux, *BSD, and Windows haven't already had in some form for years? I can assure you the list is short
The PPC970 is nice, but it's not gonna be alone on the desktop for long, so Apple's still got a long way to go to be undisputed king-of-the-hill
"Yes, I agree that Panther isn't all that innovative, but same with 10.1 - but it was far better than 10.0 because it actually pushes OS X as far as it can go."
Rajan, give me a break. You must not have seen the expo. Exposé all by itsely was enough of an innovative technology in Panther to consider a truly innovative OS. Thankfully, there was so many more innovations.
... when someone would say that GCC is far more optimized for RISC that the x86. I guess there is one born every day, GCC is optimized teh #$@$ out of x86, it is far from optimal when it comes to the RISC backend. It is a known fact, there are far more developers in the gcc field working on the x86 than in other platform, and the risc backend has had endemic performance issues (when compared to the cisc, mostly x86 side of things).
... but please do not let that get in the way of the Apple bashing. Of course Apple is the ONLY company that publishes benchmarks that favor their products right? Of course Intel has never played around with spec stuff either, oh no siree bob those flags for benchmarks in their compiler suite are there just for fun? Almost every other commercial compiler product has benchmark specific optimizations where it schedules hand coded optimizations for the specific benchmark, is that somehow fairer?
And statements like these " while the vast majority of the C/C++ developers in the x86 Windows land actually use the much faster and much more optimized for P4/Xeons/HT Intel ICC compiler." Are plain wrong most code for intel is developed using MS tools. Oh, and all those x86 computers running linux/BSD/et al.... what compiler do they run? Just curious do they use the actual Intel compilers? no.
Not trying to defend apple, but trying to portrait them as the only thieve in a land of thieves is ridiculous. Welcome to industry....
"this year's Panther is just a build up upon Jaguar's technologies with no real NEW and unseen before features. Expose is a good feature though, I liked that one."
But Expose IS a REAL NEW and unseen feature.
> since in another year of optimizations and hardware speedups, OS/X will be as fast as BeOS *and* have the cool features too.
Sorry, but OSX is out for 2-3 years now. If you are telling me that I had to wait FOUR years in order to get something as simple as smooth scrolling/resizing, then I find the Apple decision to go with vectors, BAD.
Eugenia is correct to point out where many of the "innovations" that are included in Panther have been included in other OS's in the past. However to be fair, no other OS contains the complete package of innovations in Panther. So while Panther might be evolutionary rather then revolutionary, it should be commended for including numerous "innovations" into such a compelling package.
I haven't been a Mac user for long(six months), but I find it interesting how people(mostly PC people) are willing to dismiss anything that Apple does so easily. Give credit where credit is due. Apple has put something together a great box.
Personally, I look forward to getting a G5 to go next to my numerous Linux boxes.
>But Expose IS a REAL NEW and unseen feature.
Yes, and I gave credit to it, didn't I? It is just a new way of dealing with windows clutter. Others are using virtual desktops, but Apple, because it has QE at hand, they use this way.
"The PPC970 is nice, but it's not gonna be alone on the desktop for long, so Apple's still got a long way to go to be undisputed king-of-the-hill"
They are the king of the hill now. And because IBM has said the 970 has a LOT of room to ramp up, I would certinly expect them to retain that lead.
>And because IBM has said the 970 has a LOT of room to ramp up
And so has Pentium4 and the new chip. Intel also has a lot of Mhz margins.
Are you kidding me, the advancements in Panther alone were incredibly innovative and ground breaking.
Sorry, my jaw did not drop on a single of Panther's feaure. I have seen all of them in one or the other form before, and a lot of the features are ones that users begged for since 10.0 (e.g. labels, fast searches, fax support, proper file dialogs). Other features like fast user switching, file system level encryption or video conferencting are standard in Windows XP. The most interesting thing is Expose, but as Eugenia wrote, that is almost trivially after QuartzGL which was introduced in 10.2. In this case, the credit goes to 10.2.
The most impressive thing about Apple's product presentations is Steve Jobs' ability to catch the audience's' attention.
I'd guess it's two catagories. First there are the Mac advocates who will buy whatever the top of the line is (even on thin credit), and then there are the commercial users who need $3000 systems.
The first catagory are already committed to the Mac.
How many of the second group will "Switch" based on these systems? I don't think many. Apple has had a performace edge in the past (with 604 chips at around 120MHz, old days) and it didn't make a big difference then. My judgement based on that (and other history like the failure of DEC's Alpha) is that fractional speed differences are not sufficient to change history. I think people will keep buying x86 (and its progeny) until something can beat them by _multiples_ ("twice as fast", "three times as fast") at the same price point.
So I think the bottom line is that even if this performance advantage is real, it is not at the right part of the market (the consumer desktop), and it isn't quite large enough anyway.
"Sorry, but OSX is out for 2-3 years now. If you are telling me that I had to wait FOUR years in order to get something as simple as smooth scrolling/resizing, then I find the Apple decision to go with vectors, BAD."
OS X has been out for 2 years and you could have had smooth scrolling for quite some time now.
I would say that Apple did innovate with Panther. They pretty much always innovate, but on the cultural level. I mean really, who the hell uses that 3Ddesk manager thingie today? I know beos is big on osnews, but that's pretty much the only place where it is/was big. Apple merrit is that is does cultural innovation. An online music store isn't new. But Apple music store is the only one that actually makes an impact. Apple is a gateway from the technological interesting tidbits to something that is actually used by people.
I have no idea why you think rendez-vous is a big technological innovation. It's a cultural one. There are other, older network setups that allowed service discovery and so on. They just didn't have the impact like rendez-vous has. Sherlock 3? Forgotten Watson already? The point of sherlock 3 is that people are actually using it. I'm pretty sure that somewhere some obscure system used hardware accelerated graphics constantly.
Apples innovation lies in the fact that they are able to make obscure barely used technological features into mainstream functionality. Functionality that people are able to use (not way too complex), and actually use.
Btw, why are people constantly saying that GCC produces better code for ppc than for intel? It's not. In fact, the reverse is true. There are alot more and bigger companies that have invested time and money to optimise gcc for intel, than for ppc.
I think it's pretty fair to use the same compiler, and a similar system (unix) to do spec tests. Yeah, they could have used commercial compilers on intel, they also could have used commercial compilers for the G5.
Actual usefull and objective tests lie in the real application benchmarks (photoshop, mathematica, quake3,..). They will show you the importance of the entire system design (memory buses)
first you say:
"We were also not told if these Mac apps were specifically optimized for the G5, e.g. if they were versions that will never see the light of day on a retail box"
and later
" Apple did the SPEC benchmarks using GCC 3.3 on both x86 and PPC, while the vast majority of the C/C++ developers in the x86 Windows land actually use the much faster and much more optimized for P4/Xeons/HT Intel ICC compiler. Then, you will probably find out that Apple's numbers are not really that fair"
So, what is fair ? If Apple uses an optimised version of Photoshop and Mathematica for the G5 it isnt a fair comparison because the windows applications arent the same? But if Apple doesnt use the optimised Intel compilers, then the benchmarks arent fair because intel processors can score higher?
you can twist any benchmark in any way you want, because they are arbitrary. Using optimised compilers or applications is as ARBITRARY as using non-optimised applications or compilers. It is just marketing and hype to release a product. IBM, Sun, Intel, AMD, etc do this benchmark bending all the time but, for some weird reason, Apple is singled out more.
I gotta say, I was impressed, just like that journalist, with the eye-candy of Exposé.
And. big fat DUH, of course it uses QE.
I was even more impressed, though, with the USEFULLNESS of this feature. It is not simply flash, but a nice visual feature to aid in PRODUCTIVITY, just like how the genie/scale minimize effect is more than just fancy-cause-I-can, but a visual confirmation to what is happening.
Get over the underlying tech and look at what your can DO with the tech, how it helps.
Your article did not talk about panther being a factor in speed. There can be an arguement made that the G5 and Panter optimization still needs to be worked out.
The benchmarks are as usual a pony show for the masses. And to be Honest I think Steve Jobs actually believs his hype at this point. While I am a MAC person, I do not like the phony benchmarks Steve uses.
As for the optimization of the softeare during the tests, it will all pan out after some people get there hands on the new G5's
The article had a negative tone toward the whole thing, and I think the objective look at where is was announced needs to be factored in. They are showing it to the developers to get them motivated. And with that you do not want to go on stage and say " we finally caight up"
And Apple has surpassed the x86 mnachines in some respects. Other than the CPU's it looks like Apple is heading down the right path. And it seems that is what the article was missing. The look at utilizations of new technology (hypertransport, ect) And if you consider the speed roadmaps of INTEL and IBM both increasing a GHz then that speed increases will infact favor IBM proportionally.
>So, what is fair ?
You don't read carefully. I am talking about special versions of apps in the demo that won't see themselves in RETAIL for people to duplicate these performances. The ICC is available for all.
OS X has been out for 2 years and you could have had smooth scrolling for quite some time now.
What? I'm writing this on a Mac I bought this year, and scrolling in Safari is not nearly as fast as Net+ used to be on my 300MHz BeOS box. After all, if scrolling had never been an issue for OS X, why did Jobs make such a great deal out of the fast scrolling in Preview?
As I get from your comments, you have only seen the demo but never owned a MacOS X computer, is that assumption correct? If so, I'd recommend you to first spend a week with a current Mac (or better, one that's two years old) before praising the smooth scrolling of OS X. Things look a lot faster in demos because you don't notice how long it takes after a click until something happens.
Anonymous: Anyway, back to this article, I agree with Eugenia Loli-Queru regarding the pricing of $1999 for the workstation, IMHO, if they priced their low end at around $1800 then they would really grab a market. To make it even more tempting, why not offer a monitor/PowerMac bundle. Who on earth DOESN'T buy a computer without a monitor?
Most OEMs do that for workstations. Sony, Dell, HP, IBM, AlienWare, Gateway, etc. does that for higher end machines. And personally, I prefer it that way. For professionals, monitor preferences would differ from person to person. For example, I prefer CRTs in general. Most of my family prefer LCD, of varrying types - and they aren't even professionals! (neither am i either :-P).
Brian F.: Considering that Apple is competing against an illegal monopoly, their products probably have to be 60% better to gain market share.
The courts proved that Microsoft illegally maintained their OS monopoly by extending it to other markets, not optain their monopoly. In other words, Windows is a completely legal monopoly, IE isn't. And... oh wait, I promised not to enter the antitrust is evil debate again. Frankly, Microsoft is a rather easy target for the really low end market, and there is so little people actually realizing that.
Besides, you misunderstand marketing altogether. It is not how much better your are in real terms against your competitors, it is how much better consumers think you are better against your competitors. In other words, engineering plays little part in it.
Brian F.: Are you kidding me, the advancements in Panther alone were incredibly innovative and ground breaking.
Like fast user switching? Oh wait, dozens of OS's done that. Or live queries in Finder? Oh wait, BeOS. Like video conferencing? Oh wait, been there done that. Using UFS... wait, wasn't that lifted from another OS? Heck, probably the only think truly innovative is the desktop-wide "wallet" system - but that's not even a new idea, KDE have been working on it for months without any cue from Apple.
As I mentioned in my above post, we need to give credit where credit is due.
And credit is not due. Innovation doesn't determine the success of the product. So what if the product isn't innovative? As if that matters through out capitalism's history. Innovation is only useful if you have present it via marketing to your target audience. Otherwise, it is just plain useless. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with Apple being not innovative in this release.
Roland: With these new machines, Apple surpassed Wintels by a mile.
You mean prior to the machines, Wintels had been thousands of miles ahead of Apple? Man. :-P Even Apple's benchmarks don't show much of a performance gain Intel can't beat within months.
Jeremy Friesner: OS/X's screen renderer is an order of magnitude more ambitious regarding the features it supports, so of course it's going to take more CPU power than BeOS.
Consumers, if they are searching for those kind of responsiveness, couldn't care less how Apple's system is far more complex with that of BeOS and it's close relative Windows XP. But then again, how many consumers you know go into a Apple store and complain about it having slow scrolling speeds? Heck, if I was using a Mac, that would be the least of my problems :-P.
Re-read the article. Slowly
The article isn't that good..
Not to sound like a troll, but Rendezvous isn't really innovative. Its just a renamed "ZeroConf" that has been on linux/bsd platforms for years.
Just saying......
<<<Re-read the article. Slowly.>>>
I have read your article and Apple has surpassed Wintel by a mile. The Mac software not optimized for the PPC970, running on a GHz speed up and the Windows versions are.
Quote: "Apparently, the PC they tested with, it's not the fastest P4 money can buy."
The 3.06GHz Xeon is the fastest processor from Intel. Intel's website doesn't show any 3.2GHz Xeon processors.
In terms of compilers and benchmarks, I think "fair" misses the point. What I want is information. Show me results with both the fastest and the most commonly used compilers on both platforms. I can balance them myself, against my wants and needs.
(Is GCC the most commonly used compiler on either platform right now, or the fastest? If it is neither, that makes it a somewhat arbitrary choice.)
I'm with stew and rajan - an excellent article, Eugenia! Very balanced and fair. This gives a much more realistic look at the G5 and Panther than most of what I've seen.
As a side note, as Eugenia said, the high end model is the one worth getting. It's getting into workstation territory. Right now, there's something that may not come again for who knows when. Because the iMac's and eMac's are the consumer models, that leaves the current Power Macs in sort of a limbo. They're offering a dual 1.25 GHz model starting at $1500.00. Not a bad opportunnity!
>The article isn't that good..
It is good if you happen to agree with it. It isn't good if you don't, possibly because the distortion field around you is too high.
This is the thing that makes me chuckle the most when it comes to Mac users...when something new comes to a MAC they think it's amazing and innovative and they say...HA HA...we're the best we've got feature X now...
The problem is that Apple really has never come up with anything that is an incredibly dramatic departure from that which came before it...
Exhibit A... the Apple I and II computers...there were several computers of arguably superior capabilities available at their price point
Exhibit B... the MacOS interface...stolen from Xerox PARC...that's right, outright STOLEN
Exhibit C... MacOS X...BOUGHT from NeXT, yes NeXT was truly innovative, but 90% of MacOS X's innovation comes from NeXT technology
Exhibit D... the iPod...i have nothing else to say about that, MP3 players have been around since Napster!!!
There are only two reasons why Apple even APPEARS innovative, the amazing Steve Jobs reality distortion field and the fact that Apple's implementations are usually among the best of their kind, sometimes by a very wide margin. The second of these reasons is an excellent testament to Apple design and a reason to buy Apple products, however to call anything to come out of Apple particularly innovative is quite a stretch I would say.
I was even more impressed, though, with the USEFULLNESS of this feature
We'll see wether or not it's usable when we have used it. But until then, we can only speculate, nothing more. I remember the comments after Aqua was introduced for the first time and people were honestly convienced that Dock magnification (which is now turned off by default OS X) was a useful feature.
"I'd guess it's two catagories. First there are the Mac advocates who will buy whatever the top of the line is (even on thin credit), and then there are the commercial users who need $3000 systems.
The first catagory are already committed to the Mac.
How many of the second group will "Switch" based on these systems? I don't think many."
Apple said that their low-end system (which comes with a Super drive mind you) is $2,000. Take out the Super drive, and the price goes down a few more hundred. If thats not inexpensive-enough for you, its important to remember that they're still selling the G4s... now at a STEEP discount.
"Apple has had a performace edge in the past (with 604 chips at around 120MHz, old days) and it didn't make a big difference then."
They also had an edge with the G3s and and G4s (at the beginning of their lifetime. Unfortunately, there was still a mis-perceptions about speed because the public wasn't informed about the MHz myth. Now, with a more informed public, and a fantastic processor being released alongside Panther, I'd say Apple has a winner on their hands.
"My judgement based on that (and other history like the failure of DEC's Alpha) is that fractional speed differences are not sufficient to change history. I think people will keep buying x86 (and its progeny) until something can beat them by _multiples_ ("twice as fast", "three times as fast") at the same price point."
Yes, people WILL continue to buy PCs, but Apple is simply gunning for a few market share points at this time. I think their current offering will allow them to do this without a doubt.
"So I think the bottom line is that even if this performance advantage is real, it is not at the right part of the market (the consumer desktop), and it isn't quite large enough anyway."
As long as they grow and or remain profitable... thats all that matters most.
So Brian, you named one. Anything else? Maybe folder encryption? Oh wait, my mistake, done that. Or how about, *gasp*, built in faxing? Oh, oh, oh, Font Book! Face it, Panther isn't as nearly as innovative as Jaguar.
It is good if you happen to agree with it. It isn't good if you don't, possibly because the distortion field around you is too high.
Sure, it's "my" distortion field. Fact is that you based that article on very flakey arguments and not confirmed facts. "They used special versions of photoshop, and you won't be able to buy it" is an obvious implication you are trying to make.
But hey, pageviews are more important than good information right?
Sorry, but OSX is out for 2-3 years now. If you are telling me that I had to wait FOUR years in order to get something as simple as smooth scrolling/resizing, then I find the Apple decision to go with vectors, BAD.
Microsoft waited till Win2K to bring stability to Windows. Although most people forget that Microsoft had two operating systems that were top notch in stability in the 80ies(MS Xenix and MS OS/2).
The resizing bit is important but it's not that serious of a problem. I don't resize my apps often I guess.
"I'm writing this on a Mac I bought this year, and scrolling in Safari is not nearly as fast as Net+ used to be on my 300MHz BeOS box."
you may need to get a newer machine.
"After all, if scrolling had never been an issue for OS X, why did Jobs make such a great deal out of the fast scrolling in Preview?"
Because it was an issue in earlier versions of OS X... especially so on earlier hardware.
"As I get from your comments, you have only seen the demo but never owned a MacOS X computer, is that assumption correct?"
I've never owned... but used them all the time.
"Not to sound like a troll, but Rendezvous isn't really innovative. Its just a renamed "ZeroConf" that has been on linux/bsd platforms for years."
Ummmm... No.
Exhibit B... the MacOS interface...stolen from Xerox PARC...that's right, outright STOLEN
I don't know many thieves who pay for their stolen goods... Get your facts straight.
Apple said that their low-end system (which comes with a Super drive mind you) is $2,000. Take out the Super drive, and the price goes down a few more hundred. If thats not inexpensive-enough for you, its important to remember that they're still selling the G4s... now at a STEEP discount
But that's not the system that can beat Intel on price/peformance, is it?
Yes, people WILL continue to buy PCs, but Apple is simply gunning for a few market share points at this time. I think their current offering will allow them to do this without a doubt.
I figure (gut feel) that the $3000 system market is about 5% of less of the whole market. Will taking some small slice of that 5% be effective in actuall numbers.
My answer is no, on the other hand, it will keep advocates like you arguing ... which may be all the benefit Steve is after with his $3000 showpiece.
Exhibit B... the MacOS interface...stolen from Xerox PARC...that's right, outright STOLEN
I don't know many thieves who pay for their stolen goods... Get your facts straight.
They paid because they were caught in the act. 'Nuff said.
And it's very telling that this was the only place in my argument that you found a (rather insignificant IMHO) weakness.
That's right, Xerox got Apple stock in exchange for being able to take a peek at their innovations.
"But that's not the system that can beat Intel on price/peformance, is it?"
Steve showed a demo which detailed how the mid-range tower beat the P4 also. Simply take out the Super drive and you have a very cost-concious tower
Hate to break it to you, but if it wasn't for OSNews we wouldn't be running an XServe and I wouldn't be considering getting an Apple to play around with at home.
They're not biased - I found Eugenia's recap to be very well-balanced.
"Not to sound like a troll, but Rendezvous isn't really innovative. Its just a renamed "ZeroConf" that has been on linux/bsd platforms for years."
Ummmm... No.
Ummm... Yes.
Apple said that their low-end system (which comes with a Super drive mind you) is $2,000. Take out the Super drive, and the price goes down a few more hundred. If thats not inexpensive-enough for you, its important to remember that they're still selling the G4s... now at a STEEP discount.
Personally, at their "steep" discount (which is really a couple of hundred dollars) is not worth the price. Take the $1,600 Dual 1.25GHz G4. I would get far more with a AlienWare Hive-Mind with Pentium 4 @ 2.66GHz, 512MB DDR PC3200, NVIDIA GeForce™ FX 5600 256MB and Samsung combo drive for $59 less.
@ raGan r
Roland: With these new machines, Apple surpassed Wintels by a mile.
You mean prior to the machines, Wintels had been thousands of miles ahead of Apple? Man. :-P Even Apple's benchmarks don't show much of a performance gain Intel can't beat within months.
Ahem. Well, Intel processors were faster before the arrival of these speed demons(G5). Apple benchmarks don't reflect the PPC970 processors entirely(os and apps aren't native 64-bits). It's like an i8086 DOS app running on a i80386 processor. It's gaining speed because of the increased MHz count. But the sofware running on the Xeon's where optimized.
"Exhibit B... the MacOS interface...stolen from Xerox PARC...that's right, outright STOLEN"
Thats funny, considering the fact that Xerox was compensated for the intallectual property which Apple got... and radically changed.
Well, they don't earn anything from that. Why should they sell the machines cheaper? There is no reason for that, because there is no other stuff Apple could sell to the normal user. Everything else (software like Final Cut Pro, Emagic, etc.) is for the power user, and they will buy anyway (hardware and software). So, it is all about profit. And yes, the Panther release is not so innovative, but it shows nice progress of technology introduced with Jaguar. Well, and scrolling is fast enough! Who cares? I mean, if I scroll too fast, I can't read it anymore...where is the point to this discussion?
Interesting to see is the move from Steve to his former arch-enemy IBM (the new one seems to be Microsoft 
.
Greetings...
Vax (nice article by the way Eugenia....)
from what i've read on the net the version of GCC used by apple in their benchmarks doesn't support SSE this no doubt would have some affect on the benchmarks, also the fact that GCC is nowhere near as efficent a compiler as ICC.
When will the first of these G5's be in consumer's hands? it be interesting for someone then to run a series of benchmarking tests.
As for the future of the P4 well the 3.2GhZ model is the last of the Northwood CPU's. Prescot will be out on the market later on in the year and there is talk that Intel will remarket it as P5. From what i've read it can scale up to 5Ghz. Has 1meg L2 cache onboard as well as a new instruction set extension (PNI). As well as that supposely Intel have being doing some serious work on it to improve the Hyperthreading performance. Throw in the arrival of PCI-Express and SATA2 then next year to 18months is going to be an interesting time.
>>>>"Ummmm... No."
>>>"Ummm... Yes."
Ummmm... No.
I think the key to understanding Apple is to understand that they are further diverging from the market as a whole. Their showpiece systems lead them away from the center of the market, again.
If you look at Clayton Christensen's "Innovator's Dilemma" you'll see some graphs that put it in sharp perspective. When faced with a too-competetive technology, existing suppliers may retreat "up market". They expand their functionality in the ways important to existing users, and raise their prices.
That strategy does give them longer life, and help the short term bottom line, but it doesn't fix the basic problem. They cannot touch the price performance of the newer (and more mass-market) competition.
Ummm... Yes.
Ummm, really, no. Apple was first to come out with a zeroconf implementation. Mandrake only since 9, other linux and bsd systems still don't have zeroconf support.
"I'm writing this on a Mac I bought this year, and scrolling in Safari is not nearly as fast as Net+ used to be on my 300MHz BeOS box."
Brian: you may need to get a newer machine.
So much for Macs lasting longer than PCs, I guess.
Brian: Because it was an issue in earlier versions of OS X... especially so on earlier hardware.
And the proof that Panther also doesn't have this problem is at....? And Eugenia reported that (IIRC) Jaguar on the G5 had slow scrolling and resizing.
apple is offer a lot more performance. That is big news.
Apple now has a 64 bit processor with monster bandwidth. Also a big deal.
Apple now offers a desktop mini-tower for $1299 ($1270 sans analog modem). That is huge. that opens up the enterprise market
You can get the G5 for $1770 already, just lose the writable DVD and the analog modem.
Its not jobs that should be accused of using the reality distortion field this time, its the people that just can't accept that apple has executed. Moreover, i have no idea how you can really judge, that apple is still behind in performance when you have not even used the thing in real applications.
you may need to get a newer machine.
You mean I need to replace my 4 month old Mac with a newer one just to match the UI performance of my old 300MHz Celeron?
And you still call that innovation?
was an issue in earlier versions of OS X... especially so on earlier hardware.
No, it's an issue on present versions, even with QuartzGL. Quartz' font rendering appears to be the bottleneck.
Eugenia, get your priorities straight. Is silky smooth scrolling / resizing so important to you? You can't do your work if you don't have these features, right?
I mean, at least Expose will mean a productivity boost. Better VPN support should ease the life of many. Font management seems to be a big thing for designers. Now, smooth resizing...............please! focus on something that is worth it.
I agree that Apple doctored the benchmarks, but so does Intel. It is no justfication, though....
Still, the Dual G5 should be one Kick-ass machine, and as Steve said, the architecture is there now to go to better computers, faster...
from what i've read on the net the version of GCC used by apple in their benchmarks doesn't support SSE this no doubt would have some affect on the benchmarks, also the fact that GCC is nowhere near as efficent a compiler as ICC.
Question is if GCC is as efficient as Codewarrior or another compiler on the ppc platform. As far as I have seen on the mailinglist apple engineers primarly optimised compile times of gcc. Not actual performace. (kind of sad really, gcc for ppc is even worse than gcc for x86)
According to the white paper published on the G5 vs Xeon vs P4 tests, they didn't use Windows at all. They used Red Hat Linux 9.0, and used GCC 3.3 as the compiler for both platforms. A seperate organization did the tests and I have a feeling nobody got hacked or facked numbers (think nVidia and ATI to consider how much benchmark numbers really matter). So the comparisson is quite accurate, and in fact probably favors the P4 and Xeon more than the G5 (since SPEC doesn't take into account technology in the G5 like AltiVec, and tends to favor x86 and its CISC design over a RISC PPC anyway). Real world tests will probably show an even greater advantage to the G5. The other thing to note for the G5 is its roadmap... it has a roadmap that as IBM had said, "will knock your socks off." It is expected to hit 3GHz in under 12 months, and shortly after that the PowerPC 980 will be coming out, which is based on the Power5 instead of the Power4 (which has huge advantages).
Eugenia: You made a comment about Exposé saying it's just Quartz Extreme, who cares? Well, no! It's not just Quartz Extreme. Apple may be building Quartz Extreme into most of its UI, but it's how it is used that matters. I'm sure Apple could make a bunch of useless but cool effects with QE that do nothing for the user. Exposé on the other hand is an impressive UI advancement that can be expected to improve efficiency for almost everyone that uses it. It's the innovation as a UI tool, not the use of QE, that made most developers gasp in astonishment. I think the fact that it used QE was obvious to anyone remotely knowledgable about Apple technology (a category I don't put journalists in).
This is an unbelievably impressive machine, and in classic Apple fashion not simply for the major announcements that were made, but for all the subtleties that you don't really notice as well. You did notice the searches and that was good... it wasn't even highlighted but it is an extremely impressive advance for Apple (albeit expected as you noted). These machines are being built like workstations, yet are being called personal computers. In one of the demos of a real world test it even showed it crunching out DNA Sequencing (up to 6 times faster than the dual Xeon 3.06GHz btw). Apple made a point of stressing all the RAM it could have too (8GB) and that it was 40 times faster than virtual RAM for exactly the same reason... this is a major workhorse. I've already heard several people comment that they're looking to replace $20,000-$30,000 Sun and HP workstations with $3000-$4000 Dual 2GHz G5's from Apple.
Now look ryan, compare this now with Apple's competitors and not with Apple's old products. Catch up or innovation?
Eugenia, get your priorities straight. Is silky smooth scrolling / resizing so important to you? You can't do your work if you don't have these features, right?
Sure it important. To me, that is as disturbing as a screen flickering at 60Hz or a PSU with 70dB noise level. The basics must be done properly, as they will affect everything you do on that computer.
It is good if you happen to agree with it. It isn't good if you don't, possibly because the distortion field around you is too high.
Not to be confused with the height of YOUR distortion field..... sheesh!
1. Open two windows of the same folder
2. Press F3 in one window to show the search pane
3. Type your search keyword/s, then press Search
4. In the other window, create a file/folder that meets the same search configuration
Result: The search results in the first window automatically update to show the creation of the new file (or folder)
Isn't that what it's all about?
>>>>>"Ummmm... No."
>>>>"Ummm... Yes."
>>>"Ummmm... No."
>>"Ummm... Yes."
>"Ummm, really, no."
I get a feeling that this converstion is going no where ;-)
"OS News = AntiMac"
lol.
apple is offer a lot more performance. That is big news.
This does seem like good news, but how much more performance are we really getting? Apple's benchmarks usualy can't be trusted.
I'd like to see a third party conduct tests using the shrinkwraped versions of cross platform applications. Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, Avid XpressDV and Lightwave. Then we would have a clearer picture of how the G5s stack up to their windows competition.
Don't flame me - I'm not saying that the G5 is slower than a P4 or Xeon system, i'm saying I don't know and i'd like to be able to find out from reliable tests.
A bit of a different question from your article, Eugenia: Can you explain why the DDR 333 RAM on the low-end model really slows down the machine compared to the DDR 400? I guess I don't understand why the CPU would be waiting for the RAM. Thanks!
Rendezvous = Zeroconf = not-innovation for Apple
Don't believe me...
http://www.zeroconf.org/
Maybe I'm ignorant, but was Rendezvous even thought of in 1999?
Where are the folder tabs and the keyboard app launch like I had in OS9? damnit ---- I wont hold euginia's comments against her cause she's a cool greek like the rest of us greeks, but I did find some of her article biased. There is nothing wrong with incorporating things into your OS that other OSes have, makes the user experience better. Also, take into consideration that even if you have a kickass system, without the proper OS it wont run optimally. jaguar is NOT optimized for 64bit operations therefore it will take its sweet time with things.
When 10.3 comes out, along with a top of the line G5, that machine will scream....now if only we had a few more additions like the ones I mentioned before 
IIRC it's the work of an Apple engineer. There was an interesting video on Rendez-Vous on the Apple Developer Connection member site in the 'View ADC TV' section.
I'm getting tired of all you bloggers with nothing interesting to say. The web is thy enemy.
And I'm getting sick of spelling trolls like you. If you don't like how we spell...see the article above this one about becoming an OSNews member and pay to have them add a spelling checker.
Just because things aren't spelled correctly doesn't invalidate the entire point of a statement, even you, a great spelling god I'm sure, makes typos once in awhile, correct?
Get a life, or go become an English teacher if you hate how we spell.
Sorry, I'm not willing to wade through all the comments, but the first page has people under the impression that gcc was used on Windows. It was not. In fact, the PC was running Linux and the compiler used was gcc.
That was an excellent review, it is simply the truth minus all of the recent trolling and the Steve Jobs Patented "Reality Distortion Field." I think they certainly did go overboard on calling the dual 2Ghz G5 the "Fastest PC in the World." But for me, it's about more than speed... it's about the overall quality and for that reason, I probably will be buying a G5 when my finaces allow.
I would buy one!
I bought my Blue and White G3 when it first came out, chose a middle-line model, added some RAM, and I still run perfectly well, and I have not made ANY upgrades to it since I bought it! These machines are made to last, not like the no name (or brand for that matter) x86 machines that you need to replace, or update, every 2 years. I expect my mac to last me another 2-3 years.
Rendezvous = Zeroconf = not-innovation for Apple
Don't believe me...
http://www.zeroconf.org/
Maybe I'm ignorant, but was Rendezvous even thought of in 1999?
Yeah, but Apple was the first one to actually use it in their system.. By the way, it was an Apple engineer that started the zeroconf comittee.
You mean prior to the machines, Wintels had been thousands of miles ahead of Apple? Man. :-P Even Apple's benchmarks don't show much of a performance gain Intel can't beat within months.
rajan r, you continually proport that IBM will not be able to remain competative in terms of clock speeds with Intel. What advantage does Intel have over the world's largest manufacturer of integrated circuits which makes this so? Please tell me, as from my perspective IBM has a radically superior core design than the P4 and a moderate advantage in terms of manufacturing processes.
Your assumption seems to be that Intel will roll out with a new processor in a few months while IBM sits on their hands and does nothing to increase the speed of the PPC970. Yet IBM has announced a 3GHz PPC970 before the end of the year... can they deliver? Well they sure as hell delivered on PPC970 to begin with... I remember naysayers like you claiming (without any evidence) that PPC970 would not be available in 2003. Well, it's June, and it's available. Don't expect IBM to stand idly by while Intel ramps up the P4's clock speed.
they know everything about computer performance and OS inovation...
Stop reading the site you have nothing to learn. There are some people who are really interrested in hearing what other people think and contributing to the discussion.
There are people who know a lot more about these computers then you do. And you might learn from them if you stop spewing emotional stuff about your favorite computer all over the screen.
I have a tibook, I2(800,1GHz,1.5Ghz), Xeon, P4, sledgehammer, Alpha Marvel, SGI altix and a power 4 all with in about 20 feet of me. They are all good for different things. If you quite down you might learn something from the other people on this site.
I guess I will just have to stop reading the comments.
Thanks for a reasonable article. Apple has entered the workstation market. Can they replace SGI and Sun? Can they get the real $$ apps ported? Can they keep compatiblity with M$ while they do so?
What do people think of the architecture slides on the web site? They are similar to 7505 and I2 chipsets.
The sledgehammer desktop chips sets and server chips are less exciting the apples and intels. Do people agree?
Will IBM really ship a Linux desktop based on a 970? Will they use the same chipset as Apple?
When are these boxes going to ship in quanitity?
Can apple compete with the Linux desktop market?
I don't know but it is more interresting then people flaming people because they have a different opinion.
I would buy one!
I bought my Blue and White G3 when it first came out, chose a middle-line model, added some RAM, and I still run perfectly well, and I have not made ANY upgrades to it since I bought it! These machines are made to last, not like the no name (or brand for that matter) x86 machines that you need to replace, or update, every 2 years. I expect my mac to last me another 2-3 years.
You've got it bad, man. ;-).
I say that as a long-time (since the 70's) computer user, and long-time Mac user (1984-1995).
Macs have strengths, but you should recognize that Apple is geared to selling to people just like you. People who will pop a thousand or two extra to have a Mac. The up-market migration works as long as there are enough of you. But if enough people are like me (we stay with the Mac until the price of PCs become just _too_ good), they'll hit trouble.
<shrug>
We'll see how the market breaks out.
I think it's "fat city" with tons of capable PCs for less than a grand ... YMMV.