ZDnet has installed the x86 version of Mac OS X and did some preliminary tests. Their conclusion? “Mac OS X looks in amazingly good early form on the x86 platform. As far as power consumption and OS performance are concerned, it can already keep up with Windows XP. Application performance clearly lags behind, though, and still needs to improve.” Now, let’s wait and see if Apple dares to send angry letters to ZDnet too.
iTunes has not been ported to OS X x86 yet, so the speed test in the article is going through Rosetta, the PPC emulation layer. It would have been nice if they could have reported on application performance of a ported app.
Excellent review in general.
As far as i know iTunes is not available as a native or universal x86 application on OS X (I guess the reviewer probably didn’t know that). The only way to run iTunes is through roseta (G4 emulator).
So the comparison is actually between iTunes native on windows and iTunes emulated on OS X.
That makes OS X performance even more impressive, and is a good indication of the performance we can expect from legacy (G4/G5 applications) on OS X x86 edition.
“(…) is through roseta (G4 emulator).”
Just to clear it up… IIRC, roseta is a G3-class emulator… it can’t emulate G4 and G5 specific code/optimized code.
(I may be wrong here, correct me please if I am, but that’s what I remember about roseta when they talked about it)
I think you are right about rosetta being a G3 emulator. Still it doesn’t change the fact that the test was between iTunes x86 native on windows and emulated on OS X.
I cant think of a suitable to test to run between windows and OS X x86 until we have more intel native application. Maybe something like Firefox rendering a page or exporting from VLC if its available for OSX x86.
I don’t think the test was that useless considering that it will take A LOT of time for (real) developers to start writing native OS X x86 code. Doesn’t Apple plan to sell PPC till 2008 or something like that?
Small apps will likely be very quikcly x86 native, but don’t count on Photoshop and alike to be there in a month or so. This year has been the most succesfull for Apple – consider how many Macs they sold – do you really think developers will just start to ignore those users and start writing x86 native apps? Not likely.
They forgot to tick the x86 check box in Xcode
:B
iTunes is still the black sheep in the apps, it’s not cocca based because its roots lie in NeXT and OS9 (iTunes 1 & 2 were on OS9). Apple will likely have to do a lot of work to make a native x86 iTunes.
Actually no.
Steve Jobs said that all the software they’ve created thus far has been co-developed for OS X on PPC as well as x86.
“Steve Jobs said that all the software they’ve created thus far has been co-developed for OS X on PPC as well as x86.”
No – careful what you assume, he said all versions of _OSX_ have been dual compiled, Not all software. Current builds of OSx86 don’t have a native version of iTunes. Apparently, now the very latest builds do, so Apple have got around to making the final tweaks and building it natively.
Actually he said that for the past 5 years all their apps have been co-developed for both OS X x86 as well as PPC.
no. he didn’t.
Uhh, hate to break this to you, but iTunes is not “rooted in NeXT.” Yes, iTunes was originally an OS 9 app (NOT hard to port to OS X whatsoever), but much of its codebase comes from SoundJam, an app that Apple bought, which was also an OS 9 app — not a NeXT app. It would be just a stretch to say it’s “tied to NeXT” because OS X’s Cocoa APIs are rooted in OpenStep. And from my experience working through an x86 port, bringing iTunes native won’t be difficult at all. After all, most of its core components are based on libraries that will just require a recompile. Take its Music Store “plug in,” which is really just an adaptation of WebKit.
So, you’re wrong. Sorry.
it’s not cocca based because its roots lie in NeXT and OS9
You mean because it roots lie solely in OS 9, if it were written originally for NeXT it would be as Cocoa as Van Houten, dude.
Since this is the first release ie 10.4.1 its not to bad but im sure 10.4.3 will give us some huge speed benefits if the preliminary reports are anything to go by1
Well, if they “installed” OS X x86, then they ARE in violation… because the only people that have a an OS X x86 legally are those that have Apple’s demo hardware which has it pre-installed.
Um, there are legitimate install DVDs floating around. Where exactly do you think the ISO images came from?
bittorrent
Think hard. How would ISOs of install DVDs get on BitTorrent without legitimate DVDs existing somewhere? Most likely, the dev machines came with reinstall DVDs.
Not to be pedantic or anything, but it’s not exactly impossible to create an installer, create a filesystem, and then burn it or release it via BitTorrent, since any official media would be produced in much the same way. The filesystem image exists before the official DVD
More importantly, are there any parties with copies of an official DVD that are permitted to redistribute it or use it on a Toshiba laptop? I’m just going to go ahead and assume the answer is no.
Edited 2005-11-10 02:31
Dude, they said that they installed it on a regular PC.
IIRC, you can install OS X x86 from the regular install DVD to a regular PC now. So they could have done so without using a pirated copy.
I’m not negating that.
You were initially calling into question the legality of what they did. I was simply saying that installing the software on non-Apple gear violated their EULA.
Just because he is writing for zdnet he thinks he is immuned to legal ramifications? If I were Apple I would nip this one in the buttocks. This is inaccurate results based upon unsupported hardware as well as possibly leaking to competitors what is or is not available at this point of release. It seems he is actually daring Apple legal to come after him.
Again this guy is an idiot.
What makes you think Apple is against this?
This guy is a jackass.
This guy has a few interesting points.
I particularly love the way he is all over the OS X installer. It’s one of those details that normally in a Mac vs. Windows comparison no-one would bother looking at, but it’s the little details that make OS X what it is.
However, his comment on iTunes seems pretty stupid. Firstly he’s running it using Rosetta (which he at least goes as far as saying it might be the cause). But he’s got all wrong! Rosetta is not an “emulation environment, under which some x86 programs run” It’s an emulation environment, yes, but for running PowerPC programs!
What’s with the random page entitled “The Mac OS advantage?” He’s just taken 3 rather random good points about OS X and displayed them. How does this in any way relate to a look at the performance of Mac OS on x86? If he wanted to look at things like this, at least pay attention to what’s really cool – Spotlight etc!
And as someone pointed out, why does he think writing for ZDnet makes it “OK” to do this?
i can’t believe that he used itunes to do his “speed tests”, the fact that it’s running in an emulation layer makes that idiotic, of course it will run faster natively….
But performance under Rosetta is more interesting to most people than native performance. I have no doubt that native performance will be fine, but it will take a long time before all apps are ported to x86 and many people will have old apps which, for whatever reason will never be ported to x86 and thus performance under rosetta will be of utmost importance for early adoption of x86 Macs.
How many people need to say the same exact things in their posts? If it’s been said and you don’t have an argument against it, shutup.
Opera 9.0 Preview1 is already a fat binary. It could be used to compare performance on different platforms.
As per here http://digg.com/apple/Current_10.4.3_Build_Includes_Intel_iTunes iTunes is out in x86 version now.
Maybe he ought to do the test again? I’m most interested in how it works encoding on a dual core platform, see if OSX’s dual core capabilities really are all that.
its not in the leaked 10.4.3 DVD that still has a ppc version of iTunes… must be a new build floating around.
Steve jobs is a biggest idiot I have seen. He keeps on making arrogant decisions and company/product pays price for it. They should kick him out and focus on their quality like they had in past..
What kind of shit hardware is he running XP on that’s taking 23.5 seconds to boot up?
Hes using a laptop, probably not the latest model either, 20 seconds is a fast XP bootup for most people.
I’ve never seen a review of a native OSX Intel app running on an Intel box against a native OSX PPC app running on a similarly mhz G4 and G5 PPC platform.
I’m really curious as OSX Intel doesn’t have Apples Altivec engine.
How does Altivec compare against Intels and AMD’s multimedia SSE extensions.
Is Intel really more powerful on multimedia applications such as transcoding a video file?
Thanks.
They haven’t been thus far, but I imagine they will be eventually.
You fan boys are something else.
Look at the positive side, is making more exposure for OSX.
So what if he used iTunes? He mentioned that it was running on emulation.
Also, what makes you think that Apple will dislike this?
He mentioned that it will be impossible to do this with the final version of OSX.
Get your heads out of Steve Jobs’s ass.
>”You fan boys are something else.”
No more so than the Apple detractors
>”Look at the positive side, is making more exposure for OSX”
As if Apple needed it
>”So what if he used iTunes? He mentioned that it was running on emulation.”
Yet the detractors still try to make this a Mac vs Windows speed comparison.
>”Also, what makes you think that Apple will dislike this?”
because Apple mandated to the developers that the OS was to be restricted to the test hardware.
>”He mentioned that it will be impossible to do this with the final version of OSX”
Is that your justification for breaking the law?
“Tunes is still the black sheep in the apps, it’s not cocca based because its roots lie in NeXT and OS9 (iTunes 1 & 2 were on OS9). Apple will likely have to do a lot of work to make a native x86 iTunes.”
Not entirely accurate. The reason that iTunes is not Cocoa based is because it has no NeXT roots. iTunes roots lay in SoundJam for OS 9.
“Dell would begin to manufacture Apple clones”
Dell is getting the lowest prices because they use only intel/MS. If they were to offer any other choice the price they pay per would 4x.
iTunes would be easy to port, easier than most complex Carbon apps that is. They already resolved all the endianess issues, and libraries too, when they did the Windows version. Obviously, its not completely trivial. But even Quicktime exists for Windows, and thus x86 code – so the codebase should be endian-independant.
However, iTunes DOES NOT use WebKit for its Music Store. This rumor has been around since the Music Store debuted, and it just refuses to die.
The rumor got so widespread, that even Dave Hyatt, one of the key members of the WebKit dev team at Apple, had to show that it’s false:
“Just to clear up a common misconception, iTunes does not use WebKit to render the music store. What you see when you visit the iTunes music store may look “web-like”, but it isn’t HTML, and it isn’t rendered by WebKit.”
-Dave Hyatt
(This is from his Surfin’ Safari blog, you can Google the quote if you want a link to it.)
So stop spread, misinformation.
The Fact that QuickTime and iTunes do exist for Windows are actually the problem, because those two Applications are about as un-Cocoa as it gets, so turning these two apps into properly working “pure” Cocoa apps on OS X for the ppc+x86 FAT universal Binary version is the big issue I guess.
Welcome to Reality Mac Loonies.
So you all believed Jobs when he got up on stage and lied about magically pressing a button and having apps suddenly run natively on the crappy new Intel chips…
It has been many months since IBM gave Apple the finger and Apple still doesn’t have a native version of iTunes. Gee Steve, I guess you left out a few details when you got up on stage at the WWDC.
Get use to running your software on a G3 class emulator. All that fantastic G4/G5 code, especially Altivec, is dead. Dream on if you think developers are in any mood to rewrite all their high performance code for a tiny number of suckers who rush out and buy the Intel crap. The developers who don’t just abandon the platform, and they do abandon it every time there is a processor switch, will be stuck with the pathetically weak SSE. Joy!
What a disaster. WTG Steve!
Welcome to Reality Mac Loonies.
So you all believed Jobs when he got up on stage and lied about magically pressing a button and having apps suddenly run natively on the crappy new Intel chips…
It has been many months since IBM gave Apple the finger and Apple still doesn’t have a native version of iTunes. Gee Steve, I guess you left out a few details when you got up on stage at the WWDC.
Get use to running your software on a G3 class emulator. All that fantastic G4/G5 code, especially Altivec, is dead. Dream on if you think developers are in any mood to rewrite all their high performance code for a tiny number of suckers who rush out and buy the Intel crap. The developers who don’t just abandon the platform, and they do abandon it every time there is a processor switch, will be stuck with the pathetically weak SSE. Joy!
What a disaster. WTG Steve!
You are incorrect. Apple have released an Accelerate Framework to try and resolve this problem – that way it will generate either Altivec or SSE3 vector code where necessary. Obviously this won’t be as tuned as hand coding some aspects but it is a step in the right direction. Having an OS that is highly portable is very appealing considering the diversity of processing architectures – Cell, x86, PPC (altivec)…
Although I think that Altivec is superior in design SSE3 is getting there to.
I have to wonder if apple did make itunes a Cocoa app when they came out with itunes 5, and the quick to follow 6. They could probably switch out carbon there and make it look the same and few would notice. But they did change the theme of it with 5. So they may have done that just to make life easier on them.
Also, this guy will surely get in legal trouble. Yes, there are developer copies out there, but thats all they are, and they are to only be used on those developer boxes. You are in no way allowed to install it on anything else. Heck, you devs don’t even own those boxes, rather they have more of a 1 year rent on them, along with their dvds too. Remember, they have to give those boxes back.
A quick dig around in the iTunes bundle will reveal that iTunes is definitely still Carbon. The look has nothing to do with it.
On the other hand I personally think iTunes is likely to be discontinued within the next couple of years.
Consider the case of playing a video in iTunes (anything that isn’t a music video). The whole setup is pretty hopeless, and fairly un-Apple like on the whole. Therefore, it seems likely to me that Apple will take one of 2 options:
1. Tear iTunes in 2. Create a separate app for all non-music-video videos and leave iTunes as it was at version 4. If you do this, you may as well re-write iTunes in Cocoa, plus of course, this isn’t particularly appealing (from a marketing standpoint) to consumers.
2. From scratch, creating an “iMedia” application. Code it in Cocoa from the start. This app will actually be designed to handle both videos and music from the start. Just make sure it doesn’t end up like the mess that is Windows Media Player
Personally, I prefer the first option, but we’ll have to wait and see!
Ugh. More missinformation. Your app doesn’t need to be Cocoa for it to run on OS X x86. Apple is not deprecating Carbon! Otherwise, pretty much every major big app for OS X would be gone (read all of Adobe’s apps, Microsoft Office, Macromedia Apps, etc. etc. etc.)
So, no, Apple would not have to make iTunes Cocoa for any reason.
Also, iTunes is still very much Carbon. It is actually important that iTunes be kept Carbon for Apple. The fact is, as long as other platforms don’t have ObjC as a viable solution, all cross-platform software (ie Photoshop) would have to be Carbon apps. They’re not about be rewritten as Cocoa apps.
The reason Apple needs to keep iTunes as a Carbon app, is to be able to eat its own dogfood. They supply the Carbon environment, by keeping its own team actively working with Carbon, it ensures the Carbon environment will be kept up-to-date and well-maintained with all the new OS X features, as well getting just as much priority as Cocoa, since Apple themselves are depending on it with iTunes. This means that other developers will get a high quality Carbon environment to work with, and thus other applications will be able to take advantage of it.
If Apple made no Carbon apps, then it would most likely not give the Carbon environment as much attention as it deserves, and it would become inferiour, and as a result so will every third party app that uses Carbon. No one wants this.
Therefore, Apple has teams that develop in Carbon and other teams that develop in Cocoa to make sure that both environments get the quality they deserve; they’re also moving more towards putting more things into CoreFoundation, which both environments can access, so that the behaviour is more consistent between the two. (There’s still a difference here even with Tiger, for example the Unix Control-A and Control-E key-combinations to move to start and end of a line work in Cocoa text fields, but not Carbon ones – so there’s still more work to do for consistency on their part, but they’re working on it.)
The remarks about installing Windows were a bit puzzling. I’ve never installed XP, but the 2K install is perfectly fine, and as graphical as any installer needs to be. It probably doesn’t matter much in the marketplace, as Windows is almost always bought pre-installed.
The power consumption numbers should be about the same, that really is hardly surprising.
Performance is however very interesting, not so much for what it shows, but as an omen for the future. It’s not so important if it was slower now on iTunes, and one shouldn’t take performance of developer versions of anything too seriously.
Its what the January reviews will be like that matters. We will see two sorts of comparisons. The first sort will show X and XP running Photoshop and server applications side by side on identical hardware. There will be no way to avoid this.
The second comparison will be, side by side comparison of machines with identical prices, or identical components and different prices. So we will see, for instance, whether Apple hardware really is priced at or below competitors for the same collection of bits and pieces.
Apple enthusiasts are right to be just a bit uneasy about this. Because its going to be a first. There always used to be some place to hide in the past. Now there will not be. Most of the debates that take place in forums like this will simply stop. Either a given configuration with a given main board, memory, drive, processor is cheaper or it is not. Either rendering is faster or it is not.
Looking forward to it. Light is always better than heat.
I don’t give a * about performance comparisons, never have either. Performance only counts for high-end users that are busy all day rendering graphics, audio, video.
To me, Mac OS X is all about robustness, safety en usability, not 3 seconds of extra waiting when applying a filter to a Photoshop document that’s 8GB in size.
Apart from that, hardware/benchmark nerds will ALWAYS continue to blab on about performance, even when comparing two exactly teh same machines with exactly teh same software.
I don’t give a * about performance comparisons, never have either. Performance only counts for high-end users that are busy all day rendering graphics, audio, video.
This will be the line used by all Apple fans as soon as the switch to x86 is complete.
Here’s the timeline :
x86 is so slow! And it’s a thegmented architecture! Eeeww!
Altivec rocks! It makes everything faster!
The G5 rocks! It’s so much more efficient than x86!
(Apple’s x86 machines are released. Side by side benchmarks show that they’re slower than Windows)
We were never worried about speed anyway! Look how pretty the window shadows are!
“The Fact that QuickTime and iTunes do exist for Windows are actually the problem, because those two Applications are about as un-Cocoa as it gets”
I guess you haven’t looked at QT7 on Mac OS X lately 😉
“It has been many months since IBM gave Apple the finger and Apple still doesn’t have a native version of iTunes.”
They certainly do. iTunes 6.0.2 is a Universal Binary and is included with 10.4.3 Build 8F1111.
“Dream on if you think developers are in any mood to rewrite all their high performance code for a tiny number of suckers who rush out and buy the Intel crap.”
1. Sane developers are using the Accelerate framework and doesn’t have to care about AltiVec or SSE3.
2. Many developers already have optimised x86 code since they are also making Windows versions.
“1. Sane developers are using the Accelerate framework and doesn’t have to care about AltiVec or SSE3.
2. Many developers already have optimized x86 code since they are also making Windows versions.”
Wow. Did, like, Steve Jobs tell you that?
Chip transition->drop market-share and developers by half – every time in the past. And the previous two were to BETTER chips.
Come on everyone! Sing the Mac Loonie On Intel Trainwreck Themesong – it goes a lot like the Smurfs Theme!
La-la-lu-lala-la!
La-la-lu-lala-la!
La-la-lu-lala-la!
“Wow. Did, like, Steve Jobs tell you that? ”
*Sigh*
“Chip transition->drop market-share and developers by half – every time in the past. And the previous two were to BETTER chips.”
Care to back that up? I especially want to see the documentation on Apple’s TWO chip transitions.
But why even talk to you – you act like a kid and probably is.
I didn’t read the whole article, but isn’t it possible that Apple provided ZDnet a copy of Mac OSX for x86 and permitted them to do this install and review?
I doubt it, otherwise I’m sure ZDNet would be more than happy to note that they are the first and only news organization granted permission by Apple to do so.
Now, it’ll be interesting to see what Apple does in response to this article…
people are getting hung up in the iTunes test, why we all know that emulation no matter how clever is going to be slower than native.
The interesting thing are the resource management of the system itself, that is what an operating system is there for is as good or better than XP. And this is in a developer beta version, which will almost certainly still have all the debugging symbols still in.
Yet it starts up and shuts down marginally faster, is almost as good at power management, and takes less RAM. Mac OS X is well known to love RAM, and debugging symbols will make this worse, yet it still takes 30Mb less. For Beta software that apple has given themselves till haft way through next year to release (the rumours say that they will be early but still) this is very good.
Yet it starts up and shuts down marginally faster, is almost as good at power management, and takes less RAM. Mac OS X is well known to love RAM, and debugging symbols will make this worse, yet it still takes 30Mb less. For Beta software that apple has given themselves till haft way through next year to release (the rumours say that they will be early but still) this is very good.
Yep, and according to the reviews Ive read so far (PC Magazine, et al) Windows Vista is a memory hog and a slow performer in its current beta form, and especially buggy. So, from the two beta OSes expected next year, Tiger appears to be in a better shape (when the x86 quirks are ironed out for Tiger, Leopard will be too, I guess. Already, 10.4.3 came out simultanously for power and intel, while 10.4.2 for intel lagged one month iirc).
“Chip transition->drop market-share and developers by half – every time in the past. And the previous two were to BETTER chips.”
Who said this transition isnt to better chips? G5 might be a decent chip, but G4 are yesterdays tech. Also better chip != better core (and the new Intel cores, and multicores are nothing to sneer at).
We need to do a cost/benefic analysis here (apple already did theirs). Intel buys Apple better chipsets too, with WiFi and better audio included. Intel buys a sustainable roadmap for future cores (even if it is screwed up sometime in the future, the rest of the PC industry will have to wait for Intel too, so they wont be pointing and laughing at Apple as they do now with the ancient G4 laptops). It buys dual boot with Windows (=easy transition). It buys easier porting of games (via independent x86 game libs, or Wine libs). Apple could even give the finger to intel and use AMD whenever it wants to. It buys them economy of scale to CPU manufacture, that IBM simply cant do, as will as many CPUs to choose from (mobile, server, handheld)
Windows Vista is delayed, Linux is not as “ready”. If they release OS X on any x86, people would jump on this train very fast.
iPod was something made for the masses. I hope they will make OS X for the masses, too.
“iPod was something made for the masses. I hope they will make OS X for the masses, too.”
OSX is too, I’ve not seen an OS as consumer friendly as OSX. The difference is that Windows is “standard” and that PC superstores sell PCs because they are profitable. If everybody bought a Mac, nobody would be in the next day needing to buy AV Software and get the machine fixed by the technicians (where the profit is)