As Futurama’s Professor Hubert Farnsworth usually says: “Good news everyone…“. Apple introduced today its upcoming 64-bit enhanced Tiger operating system due in the first quarter of 2005. Click in for our report from today’s WWDC opening which includes 18 pictures of the event.
The Apple WWDC is taking place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, the same place as last year, and the keynote was on the 3rd floor. On our way up up to the second floor we bumped to some old friends, Andrew Kimpton and Duncan Wilcox, both ex-Be engineers now working on Mac-related projects. Speeding fast next to us, there he was, the man himself, Dominic Giampaolo. Many will remember Dominic from his work on the 64bit filesystem for BeOS, BFS. Dominic now works at Apple… read more on that below.
Moving to the 3rd floor –where only the Media and VIPs had access at that time– we saw Steve Sakoman, also an ex-Apple, ex-Be, ex-PalmSource and now back-at-Apple’s-iPod-division exec. Steve looked pleased at how things were progressing for WWDC and he was also looking forward to the keynote. On the way to enter the large keynote room we saw Pudge from Slashdot and started chatting about various things. Later, we got to chat briefly with the editor-in-chief of the MacAddict magazine too.
Overall, the crowd this year seemed quite a bit larger than last year. There were especially a lot more media people. Last year they had all the media people only semi-filling up 1/4 of the 3rd floor, while this year they were filing up the whole floor. There were also more registered developers than last year, Steve Jobs said they had 17% more people registered this year.
The show started on time and Steve Jobs (wearing the exact same black sweater and jeans he always does on keynotes — this time he shaved though, we women notice these things) initiated the show with a roundup on iTunes, Airport Express and the BMW-iPod deal. After this, Steve explained the absense of the 3 GHz G5 that he had promised last WWDC and put the blame on the industry hitting the wall at 90nm. Then, some developers came on stage to show their new apps for OSX like Alias with Maya and a guitar pro application. The big wows came, though, from a small third party developer who had developed complex satellite orbit prediction software with Cocoa and OpenGL in under 3 months using XCode. The application is very “visual” and impressive, and Steve called it innovative. However, coming back home and trying to find some info on “Orbit” through Google, I found a bunch of other similar apps, all for Macs too.
And there was of course the introduction of the new Cinema Displays with the gorgeous looking 30″ model, coming in August. Another important point of the keynote was that Mac OS X had now about 50% of the Mac installed base and over 12,000 applications to choose from. Apple is pleased with the fact that they achieved this transition in about 4 years.
Moving on to Tiger (screenshots), there are over 150 new features in the OS, but there was only time to show about 10 of them: “VoiceOver”: Access the Mac through speech, audible cues and keyboard navigation for the visually impaired. .Mac Sync: Keep valuale data on Macs, portable devices and .Mac accounts up to date using sync. Enhanced UNIX Support: Work efficiently using Tiger’s 64-bit enhancements, new utilities and an optimized Kernel and Xcode 2.0. Macminute presented Xcode earlier today:
With Dead Code Stripping, developers can remove unused executable code from compiled applications and immediately see the effect in smaller code sizes and faster customer downloads. Applications are purportedly even easier to design, create and maintain by offering developers a clear visual representation of the application structure with Visual Modeling and Design.Xcode 2 also includes: 64-bit development tools to build data-intensive applications using 64-bit memory addressing; an integrated Apple Reference Library to offer a single search and presentation interface to all of Apple’s online and locally stored developer documentation; Apple’s enhanced version of GCC v3.5, the next generation of the compiler; graphical remote debugging to display the debugging of data for full screen applications on remote machines; Auto Vectorization to automatically generate Velocity Engine-optimized code without requiring any source code changes; Ant build system support to make cross-platform development of Java applications easier; and support for Subversion Source Code Management, in addition to supporting CVS and Perforce, to enable easy integration with a range of development infrastructure.
More information and pictures on the second page.
Among the most important new features you will find Dashboard, a Konfabulator ripoff (sorry, but I have to say it like it is. From all languages, Dashboard uses Javascript like Konfabulator does) with the added convenience of appearing/dissapearing from your screen using Expose’ (note: the Konfabulator guys announced on Friday a similar feature). I must be clear about this: When I see a QuartzExtreme-alike engine or a BFS-alike file system across different systems I see EVOLUTION, not copying. If it works, it only makes sense to move to these areas that others might be doing for years. But doing something SO close to Konfabulator in SO many ways, I can only call it a ripoff. I know that writing something like Konfabulator is a full time job of 2 engineers for a year or so, that’s about the cost of half a million dollars. Trying to buy Konfabulator would cost more than that if only for the lawyers alone going through the contracts. And so for Apple, it was a better deal to recreate it, than to buy it. However, when recreating something in general, companies add their own little touch to make it feel and look a bit different from the original, but in this case, Dashboard is a pure copycat visually and coding-wise, and that’s where the real problem is. But hey, business is business.
Then, there was Safari RSS, a very useful integration between the HTML part of the net and the RSS/Atom feeds. With nice transitions you can switch from the HTML view of a page to its RSS/Atom one. Elsewhere, Automator will put together actions and batch tasks in a visual way instead of forcing the user to learn Applescript.
Then, there was the H.264/AV codec which delivers higher quality video at lower data rates for everything from 3G cellphones to HD. QuickTime will come built-in with the codec and I can’t wait to start be watching trailers on Apple’s site using the codec. It is a truly impressive codec and even more impressive the fact that iSight owners will be able to use this codec with Tiger. The differnce in quality was immense, over the same amount of bandwidth! For some weird reason, though, sound was crappy and felt like “mono” (possibly iSight’s mic is the culprit here), while video quality kicked some serious a…
Regarding the Server version of Tiger (which will include XGrid), it will deliver over 200 new features including native support for 64-bit applications; Weblog Server that “makes hosting a weblog as simple as checking a box;” iChat Server to deploy private, encrypted communications within an organization; and migration tools to make it easy to upgrade from legacy Windows servers to Mac OS X Server. Tiger Server will be available in the first half of 2005 for $499 for a 10-client edition and $999 (US) for an unlimited-client edition, MacMinute and MacWorld reported.
I left the two best new features for the end:
1. Core Image and Core Video
This is a new API that gives access to a more advanced graphics engine that can use the graphics card’s GPU to deliver faster and more precise calculations. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to sit down on the sessions and learn more about the exact technology, but it’s clear that this feature is going against Longhorn’s new 32bit floating point precision gfx engine which is a must-have for photographers and other people in the “visual” industry. If anyone knows if the precision is in the co-ordinate spectrum or the color space, please let us know too. Anyway, Apple will be shipping some ready-made filters for use in applications, however a median-cut filter is missing.
2. Spotlight
When Steve demoed Spotlight, the new search indexed facilities on Mac OS X, it was like seeing Pavel Cisler (ex-Be Tracker developer, now works on Apple Finder) and Dominic Giampaolo on stage and not Steve Jobs. Looking at these screens, it was nothing more than a beefed up BFS with additional features and a more integrated interface. This work is so clearly the handiwork of Pavel and Dominic that I can’t even describe the feeling. So, “live” queries are there, query saving for future use is there, metadata searching is there, an instant indexed just like in BFS. However, Apple additionally did what it does best: a more integrated interface to Finder and on other applications that use the new API automatically. Also, they added searching inside documents which is also as, if not more, important. (that was never true on BeOS, however there was already a third party application called Passepartout for OSX). Regarding the generic “search”, it is now also live and instant, like BartLauncher for BeOS and LaunchBar and Quicksilver for OSX. However, unlike LaunchBar & Quicksilver, BeOS’ BartLauncher and Apple’s search does search on a live always up-to-date indexed filesystem, while the first two apps have to “crawl” through your files a few times a week and index them *manually* because the filesystem thus far didn’t support that operation. Now, it does, and Apple is taking advantage of it. I am very excited about the whole Spotlight thing.
After the keynote was over we were handed a big poster with an actual size 30″ Cinema Display, while the registered developers were handed the OSX Tiger OS & SDK and a t-shirt (not sure if the Media people were handed more gifts, I only managed to get a pen with the Apple logo ;-). Too bad we had to leave for home early today and a guard wouldn’t let the Media people enter some specific areas yet, so trying to enter the convention area with the third party companies presenting their products was out of our scheduled time there. I would have loved to talk to a few people like the GriffinTech guys or Aaron Hillegass, but hey, there is always next year.
Special thanks to Jean-Baptiste Queru (JBQ) for taking all these nice pictures!
Quality:
http://osnews.com/img/7521/wwdc18s.jpg
I’m also glad to hear that Tiger will have full 64-bit support:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/64bit.html
Would it have been too much work to scale these down to a more normal size?
A couple of places said that there’d be a qt feed shortly after the keynote, but I’ve had no such luck, anyone else have any such luck?
WWDC seems to pale in comparison to last year’s, maybe it’s not even worth watching….
It would take me an additional 7-10 minutes to do so and I had to work pretty much immediately after I got home to put the article up before 5 PM and ASAP, because after 5 PM the traffic goes down and so I had to beat time. So, that was a secondary thing to do, sorry people with modems.
I like the dashboard idea but I hope that the widgets that are finally used don’t look so childlike.
– Mark
The new 30 inch cinema display sounds awesome. I’d love to do video editing on a dual 2.5 G5 with dual 30 inch displays. That would be a lot of fun
Apple has some amazing folks working for them…
macos is looking more convincing every day. but I still can’t justify buying a mac unless i’m able to run windows apps at good speeds. Solution? perhaps an add-in board with x86 cpu to run windows apps. I think the amiga used to do that to use pc apps…back in the day
For me that’s not an issue, there arent any windows-only apps that I have to have. THe problem for me is money. It’s just easier to keep upgrading my windows computer than to buy a whole new computer.
I’ve only recently come back to the world of Apple – if only with an older iMac for the purpose of “playing” with OS X. I appreciate the sneak peek into the WWDC.
I know I watched a bunch of videos online of last year’s WWDC. Is this the common practice or did I just luck out last year? Does Apple usually keep these videos tucked away on the developer’s side of the website?
Thanks.
I’m with the money comment. I absolutely love OS X, but when I can build an Intel/AMD machine (top of the line) for $600, it’s hard to even consider going to look at the $2000+ Apple options. Something between a $799 eMac and a $2000 G5 would be perfect for me. I’ll start making out the check as soon as I see something.
As far as the x86 expansion card, Apple has had those in the past as well. There was one in my Powermac 6100 when I bought it – although already too outdated to run anything but DOS with it. One of those dual core AMD processors on a PCI-X card might be pretty cool though!
well the $ deal is especially an issue when you realize that there’s so much software you have to give up. You get a nice OS and nice hardware but at a big sacrifice. All the directx games, the heavy duty business apps, viruses, etc (hehehe). That’s why I’d much rather see Haiku, Syllable or SkyOS succeed so I can always reboot to use Windows.
not to seem like i am coming down on you but i just wanted to know whether the 600 dollar system had a superdrive/dvdrw+cdrw, what type of graphics card and whether it has a monitor?
Apple should drop the price of the G4 powermacs. For the price of the dual 1.25 G4 (with superdrive) you could almost get a dual 1.8 G5. That doesn’t make much sense to me. The ipod mini is similar. the 4gb ipod mini is only $50 cheaper than the 15gb ipod. Strange.
ROFLMAO. not top of the line. a pretty good comp without a monitor yes, but not top of the line. XD. lets not forget windows comes with barely any software. apple comes with a decent amount. Besides, if you buy the g4 series you can get Virtual PC.
Generally, the prices on the G5’s are pretty good, for 64-bit dual-processor machines. You’d be hard-pressed to find a dual-Opteron for that price. However, it seems to me like Apple is struggling to keep up. It’s pretty obvious by know that the G5 and the Opteron are pretty evenly-matched, clock-for-clock, and until the 2.5GHz refresh, the G5 was falling behind in clockspeed. If Apple had been able to deliver the 3.0GHz G5 this summer, as expected, people could be really confident that the G5 had some headroom. Now, the G5 has only a slight edge (and a slower release cycle), so it becomes a “wait and see” matter on whether Apple can keep up.
I absolutely love OS X, but when I can build an Intel/AMD machine (top of the line) for $600, it’s hard to even consider going to look at the $2000+ Apple options.
$600 for a top of the line PC? You do realize that the top of the line consumer graphics cards cost almost that much alone right? Apple computers are expensive yes. But, it’s not because PC’s are cheaper, but rather it’s because Apple’s tend to come with some really high end hardware by default. If you go to say, Dell, and try to configure an equivalent PC to a given mac configuration, they are pretty close in terms of price. By equivalent I don’t mean just the basics, I mean all the extras like firewire 800(?), gigabit ethernet, etc etc.
(Actually, I’ve only tried the above comparison for laptops, maybe desktops are a different story)
Arguably the G5 is overly expensive compared to an equivalent Opteron, but on the whole, Mac’s tend to simply be high end only, rather than more expensive than PCs. I do think it would be nice to have a low end mac that doesn’t have a built in monitor. An emac minus the monitor would be great.
Intel has taken 12 months to go from 3.2 GHz to 3.4 Ghz, and a similar situation exists at AMD.
90nm is really really really really hard to scale for some reason. the G5 has head room as soon as they figure out the problem with 90nm (probably the manufacturing being done at all the forges has something in common that is causing the problem.
For $700 I could build a pc with a p4 2.8 ghz (800mhz bus, HTT), 512 megs PC3200 DDR, 128 mb GeforceFX 5200, 8x dvd burner, 80gb 7200 rpm harddrive with an 8mb cache. It doesnt have a monitor or any of Apple’s software (other than itunes). The system can compete with the G4s which start at $1300.
PCs are cheap to build. It’s a fact of life. They may not be better, but they are cheap.
“e should drop the price of the G4 powermacs. For the price of the dual 1.25 G4 (with superdrive) you could almost get a dual 1.8 G5. That doesn’t make much sense to me. The ipod mini is similar. the 4gb ipod mini is only $50 cheaper than the 15gb ipod. Strange.”
Simple. Cause they know people will pay those prices XD
That’s a good point. They do want to encourage G5 sales, not G4. On the other hand, if it brings more users to the mac world then mabye it is worth the short term drop in profits. Just a thought.
Macs and highend really don’t belong in the same sentence. Highend is a system that uses the Thunder K8QS Pro motherboard; quad Opertron capable and sixteen memory slots.
I will say it for about the third time. What Apple really needs is a $999 iMac or a $1399-2999 Powerbook line.
Now one can only wonder how long it will be before this comments offends somebody and it is deleted. My first comment made it all of about a minute…
Your first comment was moderated down because you were widly flamebaiting. This one is not, so it won’t get moderated down. Learn to discuss nicely around here and play with the rules and you won’t see your comments moderated or deleted. Get to become again the prick you became on your second comment though and you will be banned for good.
Highend is a system that uses the Thunder K8QS Pro motherboard
Wow, all this time I thought Highend was a company that made lights.
I think starting the powerbooks at $1300 would cut into the ibook line too much. The $1300 ibook is a pretty decent laptop, especially if you buy it from a reseller who offers the free 512mb memory upgrade.
reliability is very important to me. It’s funny-I bought an emachines because I was so cheap. it crapped out. Then i thought “this time I’m going with the big boys”. So I bought a HP PC. First day i got it, i plugged it in-failed to boot. had to send it back. I didn’t get a chance to mess it myself it was that bad.
I’m very impressed with this
http://www.apple.com/powermac/design.html
Yeah, I know exactly what you are talking about with the emachines. I’ve had two die on me. They were horrible computer. I don’t know if they still are. I got mine a log time ago. Can anyone say eOne? Ouch. Try upgrading it’s memory.
However, you can get a reliable pc for cheap. You just have to be care. I agree with you about the G5 design, i’m also very impressed with it. I’d love to have one.
I was wondering how Fast User Switching works in tiger b/c the user name is no longer on the finder bar. Does anybody have it installed yet to find out? Also something I would love to see in tiger is virtual desktops done in kinda the same way as iChat was shown today with the 3D sessions layout. They need some more 3D effects to stay ahead of Longhorn and Looking Glass which are both heavy on it.
Got to say it looks pretty good. Not as big reason to upgrade as it was from Jaguar to Panther, but pretty good.
iChat for 3 way video looks great, http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/ichat.html
but I’ve got to say the dashboard applications are a bit too garish for me.
Actually, the G5 comes with some surprisingly crappy hardware in it’s default configuration. It’s got a relatively low-end graphics card (Radeon 9600), onboard sound, tinny speakers, etc. Sure, it’s got GigE and Firewire 800, but lot’s of PC motherboards have the former and there aren’t any devices out that take advantage of the latter. In any case, you can’t really blame Apple for this, given that they are selling a dual 2.5GHz 64-bit machine for 3K. With the dual CPUs and all that fancy case engineering, they had to cut corners somewhere, right?
Maybe my imagination is limited, but I can’t even imagine usefully filling up one 30-inch display, let alone two. If you had two, where would you put them so that you wouldn’t have to swivel your chair to see them?
But OS X is looking pretty cool with these enhancements. I just wish they could find a better way to inform the users of which apps are running on the dock. Hope the new version attracts more people to use and develop for the mac. Macs are generally pretty cool machines, and that’s probably why they engender such a strong emotional response.
So maybe this time we’ll get SSL WebDav in Finder???? Please oh please!!!!!
I Think this should work for you..
http://www.14south.com/products/appcardfeatures.html
You could use Microsoft Remote Desktop in Windows Xp and the client in Mac Os X or alternatively a KVM switch..
Anyways.. Why pay for a pci x86 card when you can buy a shuttle/msi etc for a similar price?
In the powerbook case, it will be good, with a magma pci-to-pccard enclosure it weights about 500g…
It works in all platforms..
There are other similar solutions from other companies
coolkamio, faq-mac.com
Oh, I could fill up two 30 inch displays
Have Avid on one and Protools and mabye Photoshop on another. If you but them directly infront of you then you shouldnt have to swivle, just turn your head a little bit. But still, if I actually had the money to get a top of the line G5 system I would go with dual 23s not 30s. If you have 23s then you can still fit the video monitor on your desk.
A couple of people have asked about this because of the screen shots not showing the user name anymore.
In Panther if you go into “System Preferences > Accounts > Login Options” you’ll see a check box labeled “Enable fast user switching”. If you turn this off, the name of the current user disappears from the Menubar.
My guess is that in the screen shots we are seeing, Fast User Switching isn’t enabled…
“I’m also glad to hear that Tiger will have full 64-bit support:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/64bit.html ”
that is completely wrong as apples clearly states on the link you posted
you used the word “full” for 64-bit support
apples page for that link has a headline that says
“64-bit features”
“mind-boggling memory”
they go on to say:
“Tiger’s new 64-bit features enable developers to address massive amount of virtual memory for command-line applications, server applications and computation engines while continuing to fully support 32-bit applications”
“features” does not equate with “full”
it appears to be a bit of an enhancement of what panther now does as well.
Xcode 2.0 looks very exciting…Java Code Sense!
Also gcc 3.5 with auto-vectorization…mmm
“well the $ deal is especially an issue when you realize that there’s so much software you have to give up. You get a nice OS and nice hardware but at a big sacrifice. All the directx games, the heavy duty business apps, viruses, etc (hehehe). That’s why I’d much rather see Haiku, Syllable or SkyOS succeed so I can always reboot to use Windows.”
Your local CompUSA has a whole aisle dedicated to Mac games, I think even CoD will play on a Mac; seriously the games argument is getting old guys.
And for those who need Windows and money does not hold them back, buy a virtual machine. There are some very popular ones that will allow you to run Windows inside of OS X. I think there is also the ability to run Windows apps without the whole OS up.
If I could afford a Mac I’d buy one, but I can barely afford a $600 PC. Once I’m out of college…. And to who says he could build a top of the line AMD/Intel for $600, you might look at the price on Intel and AMD’s top chips:
P4EE
Xeon
Opteron
Athlon FX
I believe all of them run $600 and up, that’s just the chip.
Mac games do lag, and it is not “old” its still an issue.
Its getting better, but there is a seriously terrible lack of game editing / mod tools for Mac games.
$3299(USD) for their new 30′ monitors.
Too rich for me. Ill stick with my 19′ LCD.
first, they took a concept which THEY HAD INVENTED and implemented it on OS X
second, they did not take code
third, it will work a lot better than konfabulator because it is integrated
fourth, you have to be kidding if you think an OS maker cannot integrate utilities because some company has created one already. talk about holding back development.
It’s got a relatively low-end graphics card (Radeon 9600)
??? When did the ATi 9600 become low end? That’s still FAR better than 99% of what PC users are using. I guess you feel an nVidia 6800 Ultra is “adequate”, huh?
🙂
I do like macs. I am using a G4 iMac right now, but macs are definately expensive. I recently built a pc that is pretty decent, and outperforms any 1.25 ghz G4 I have ever seen.
It has a top of the line mobo, Radeon 9200 (not great, but does the job), 512mb RAM, 200 gig hd, 2 gigabit ethernet ports, 1.8 ghz Athlon XP CPU, “superdrive”, secondary CD burner, non generical PSU, USB 2.0, Firewire, some more stuff that I dont remeber, for about $650 US dollars (tax included). You may be saying that that CPU does not beat a 1.25 ghz G4, but in this system it does.
I wish apple had some sort of decent system for that price.
they start at $57 so yes that can be construed as fairly low end.
the 9600 xt with 128mb ram that ships standard in the $3000 dual g5 starts at just $141 and that is a middle of the road quality card these days.
the 6800 ultra costs a fortune and is $200 more expensive than 256mb models made for pcs. plus they are not available now. they were just announced. they will not ship for at least another 2 months per apple’s site.
*eyes fall out* I would die for that card! What kind of games are you playing that need so much??
I would call the video built onto the mobo of a $400 Dell system (brand new) “low end.” Compared to that, the ATi 9600 is serious hardware. Price has little to do with being low-end or high end. I can point out video cards meant for graphics workstations that are slower than an nVidia 5200, but cost thousands of dollars. Then we have all the “high end” ATi video cards which are actually all fairly low cost. Low cost doesn’t necessarily mean low end. It’s the progression of computer technology, and I just love it. I remember when I paid $400 for a Virge VX with 4M of DRAM. Now people think a 64M 9600 is “low end.”
Damn where have you been? Ive got a FX 5600 256MB and im only getting 35 fps @ 1024×768 on UT2K4.
I need to upgrade for Doom3 !!! =]
I got it to play Horizons. Now I use it for battlefield 1942 and Vietnam. It also came with a copy of Will Rock (which I like a lot). The machine I described I built for a friend. My 9200 is in a old 1ghz amd thunderbird machine. Still no games that I cant play that I want to (although not on highest settings).
Although, I dont know if my system will play Ut2k4. I will try the demo and post back.
All you people talking about 2ghz pcs, 128mb vid cards etc and im sitting here using a 1ghz cel system with 512mb pc133, a voodoo3 3000 16mb agp card, a 4.5gb scsi running beos and thinking its all ill ever need
well, cept for the hdd.. im upgrading it soon.
I’m with you…
300Mhz G3
384MB Ram
6GB ATA HD
9HB SCSI HD
Mac OS X 10.3.4
ATI Rage128 16MB RAM
400Mb FireWire
Apple V.90 56K Modem
10/100Mb Ethernet
Works grate. When I had my 1.7GHz AMD box, I actually used this one more. Mostly because Mac OS is so much nicer then Windows and I have to use Windows at work (my main OS is actually OS/400 but I access it through a Windows box).
I’m thinking upgrading to the 2GHz G5. This computer works greate on my small home programming projects but things like bootstrapping GCC take about 10 hours. The nice thing about Mac OS X is that this comuter is still usable during the GCC bootstrap. (I want to help more with some FOSS projects but most of them are too big for me to compile in a reasonable amount of time.
PS: It’s a B&W tower. I’ve had it for close to 7 years and it’s still running strong.
that is completely wrong as apples clearly states on the link you posted
you used the word “full” for 64-bit support
And he would be right.
“Tiger’s new 64-bit features enable developers to address massive amount of virtual memory for command-line applications, server applications and computation engines while continuing to fully support 32-bit applications”
“features” does not equate with “full”
it appears to be a bit of an enhancement of what panther now does as well.
Tiger is fully 64-bit.
IF you had only bothered to read further.
“Tiger ships with 64-bit ready Xcode development tools, so you can take full advantage of the Tiger’s enhanced 64-bit capabilities right out of the box. Tiger’s new 64-bit pointers enable individual processes to access massive amounts of virtual memory. The enhanced kernel, plus a 64-bit version of libSystem, let command-line programs, background daemons and network services directly manipulate up to 16 exabytes of virtual memory. That’s enough to address all the physical memory on an Xserve G5… or a cluster of millions of them.
Tiger’s LP64 model for 64-bit pointers means that developers can easily port code written for other 64-bit UNIX systems. LP64 support in Tiger provides for 64-bit long, long long and void* as well as 32-bit int data types.”
If that is not full 64-bit support. What is according to you?
So actually on topic……
Does spotlight imply that HFS+ is getting replaced by a new filesystem more akin to BFS, or is it a bolted on database more in lines with the iTunes/iPhoto method?
“Tiger’s enhanced 64-bit capabilities” again apples own words discussing “features” and “capabilities”. nowhere does apple say it is a “fully” 64 bit os.
if it is “fully”, where is the discussion about the full migration for 32 bit apps? where is apple talking about the 32 bit os x emulator that will run in the new “fully” 64 bit tiger?
its partially 64 bit. just read apples own words and press.
meanwhile windows xp has been fully 64 bit native running on the itanium cpu for over a year. by the end of 2004 they plan on having another version of xp that runs both 32 and 64 bit simultaneously.
If you want to access your AS/400 with your Mac, try this. Works like a champ.
f it is “fully”, where is the discussion about the full migration for 32 bit apps?
“As in Panther, both 64-bit and 32-bit applications in Tiger can use hardware-accelerated math functions when running on a Power Mac G5.
……
Source Code Compatibility
Look to Tiger for strong support for application source code compatibility. Write source code once and then recompile as needed for systems using the PowerPC G3, G4 and G5 processors. This enables you to maintain just one version of your source code, simplifying both development and maintenance.
…….
Tiger simplifies software distribution with support for Fat Binaries, an application that contains both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries within a single file.
”
Migration for 32-bit apps.
where is apple talking about the 32 bit os x emulator that will run in the new “fully” 64 bit tiger?
Hunh???? What the hell do you need an emulator for? Do you know what 64-bit means?
by the end of 2004 they plan on having another version of xp that runs both 32 and 64 bit simultaneously.
Tiger can run 64-bit and 32-bit apps simultaneously.
I think you are confused or are obviously trolling. “Fully 64-bit” doesn’t mean only 64-bit.
Your emulator comment is laughable at best.
Are you “TheSeeker” by any chance?
From what I understand it’s using the newfangled metadata system that was introduced in the last update… There’s a technote on the apple site somewhere explaining it…
first, they took a concept which THEY HAD INVENTED and implemented it on OS X
The concept is more similar to what Kofabulator did than what NeXT did with OpenStep. Of course, nothing wrong with this – Kofabulator took OpenStep’s concept and ran with it. Apple probably saw the potential and implemented it.
second, they did not take code
How often does Microsoft steals (as oppose taking legally code distributed under a license that premits Microsoft’s actions) code?
third, it will work a lot better than konfabulator because it is integrated
That remains to be seen – have you tried both Konfabulator and Dashboard?
fourth, you have to be kidding if you think an OS maker cannot integrate utilities because some company has created one already. talk about holding back development.
Kinda makes the whole Netscape v. Microsoft debacle somewhat of a moot point, ehh?
Two? Nah, three, and FreeSpace (or other flight sim)….
Mmmmmm….
The concept is more similar to what Kofabulator did than what NeXT did with OpenStep. Of course, nothing wrong with this – Kofabulator took OpenStep’s concept and ran with it. Apple probably saw the potential and implemented it.
No the concept was introduced by Apple with Desk Accessories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desk_Accessory
Looks like they are choosing `THE` “Plan Be” now =]
where in NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP are these Konfabulator-style widgets supposed to have come from? I actually use OPENSTEP, and the only thing that comes to mind was perhaps NeXT’s CD player app.
For a $3000 Dual G5 Apple fitting an Ati 9600 is a bit of joke. For a high end system Apple should fit the Ati 9800 Pro 256MB or 128MB as standard. Better still get Nvidia or ati to make Mac versions of the Quadro or FireGL Pro cards.
For $2,412.00 I can get the following Alienware Aurora:
AMD 64 3500 (socket 939)
ATI X800 Pro 256MB
1GB DDR400 RAM
160 SATA Seagate Baracudda 7200rpm.
Audigy 2 ZS sound card.
Win XP Pro.
or $2,963.00 Gets you the same machine but with an Athlon FX53.
I could also make a system for a lot less too. Don’t get me wrong I really like OS-X and the new G5/PBook/ibook’s but ppl get real about some of Apple’s “high end specs”.
I have to agree. The G5’s are awesome, but they really aren’t very “high-end” except for the CPU.
On another note I bought a iBook G4 1,07 GHz / 512 MB Ram / 60 GB to my girlfriend in graduation present. She got it last week. First impression was that it is totally awesome. Nice design, OS etc. But then hell broke loose… We’ve had nothing but trouble with MacOSX and after several re-installs the OS still fails to boot occasionally due to kernel panics, the Apple Software Upgrade fails and crashes, various apps lock up the whole system (mostly Safari) etc.
I have to say that it all looked very promising in the first few hours of being a mac user, but after that we’ve been very dissapointed. If the store we bought it at can’t fix this soon now we’re up for a re-fund and she’ll get a Linspire laptop instead as I have myself.
That, and the kernel tweaks, are what I’m looking foward to most in Tiger. Concerning the 64-bit emulator comment, I have to agree – do you have know what 64-bit /means/? Its the same platform, there is no need to “emulate” anything you dork – Sun’s been shipping 64-bit hardware for a great number of years now, and Solaris will gladly run 32-bit apps just dandy – arguably much of the OS and services, for sheer speed reasons, are still 32-bit. Unless I’m mistaken.
A little correction to the article: the latest beta version of launchbar (3.0b.something) doesn’t need to update its data once in a while, but works in realtime, so a few seconds after you add a file to a folder you can use launchbar to retrieve it.
Sometimes I have the impression that the famous CPU “Megahertz Myth” has morphed into a GPU “FPS & MB Myth”!
You may well be able to buy your pc for under $600 or whatever (top of the line), but can you sell your parts after a month or even 6 months and retain even 80% of that value?
That’s what apple has done, they’ve created value for their customers, my dual g4 is still going to retain 80% of its value after 6 months of ownership. Expand this logic out a year or two and you’ll still get more value out of your mac in terms of resale, maybe not fps.
Why don’t you people that can’t afford top of the line Apple’s go buy second hand ones off ebay or go for lower end models like the $800 emac. I have several computers in my possession that have been collected over the years (windows,linux,mac), it’s not like you have to only use a single architecture. Apple’s use the same commodity parts for hard drives, memory* (actually it’s rather picky about memory), pci cards, monitors, speakers, etc. The main difference is the powerpc processor, graphics card, and motherboard that houses those things. Software can be obtained in a similar fashion to how you do it on windows
or even linux. There are a lot of open source software packages that have ports to mac os x.
Fine, you say performance is an issue and that you have to get 40+ fps for your gaming experience or the cost is not justified… well then you’re probably better off in terms of price and performance buying an x86, no doubts. But for those of you that don’t really use your computer for playing games, like me (except the occaisional game of starcraft which can be played quite nicely on mac), then you’re going to be surprised by how great the apple platform really is. Since buying my dual 1.25ghz g4 powermac in december of last year, I’ve really not had any inclination to touch my faster athlon xp 2000 (KT400 with Radeon 9700 Pro 128mb card) or my dual P3 linux boxen. I’m still productive as ever programming or watching dvds, listening to music, browsing the web, typing documents, modifying pictures, etc. It’s actually a great mix between the brashness of linux/nix and modern gui intoxication of windows.
I like the idea of core video where software makes use directly of the GPU instead of the CPU for video. Maybe this would be a help for game developers, I know that OpenGL is already available though probably not as widely accepted as windows libraries like directx 9.x in terms of game developers.
Mac is a great platform, yet I agree taht it does cost a pretty penny to adopt.
Sometimes I have the impression that the famous CPU “Megahertz Myth” has morphed into a GPU “FPS & MB Myth”!
It’s not a myth. That Megahertz effect performance is not a myth, either.
Given two identical systems, the one with most Mhz is faster.
Given two NON identical systems, other parameters come to play too, but even in this case, more Mhz means more performance.
(Take this as in: given two NON identical systems, A and B. If we have two versions of B, B+ and B- with only difference being bigger Mhz speed on B+, B+ fairs better than B- compared to A).
Did you buy 3rd party ram? I bought some third party ram for my dual powermac g4 and i have to say that the macs are really timing sensitive towards memory. Go with crucial, or swap the ram out and see if the kernel panics still occur. I did so and my uptimes are enormous, the only time my computer goes down is if i have to reboot for a security update or the power goes out, this is with a heavy load of mysql database + 30 other applications running at the same time.
$ uptime 9:23 up 16 days, 3:30, 3 users, load averages: 1.10 0.72 0.64
this is using 10.3.5 and the latest patches.
For a $3000 Dual G5 Apple fitting an Ati 9600 is a bit of joke. For a high end system Apple should fit the Ati 9800 Pro 256MB or 128MB as standard. Better still get Nvidia or ati to make Mac versions of the Quadro or FireGL Pro cards.
Stop with the meaningless price comparisons. You are comparing a single cpu box with high-end graphics for about $3000 to a dual cpu box.
You can’t just convieniently ignore one cpu for price comparisons. Prive a dual opteron with 250 series cpus and compare.
I don’t get people, now that they can’t complain about how slow and overpriced Apples are, they are not. Or how the fastest PC will blow the G5 out of the water, It won’t. They pick on the default graphics config.
For $3000 grand you are getting 2 2.5 GHz 64-bit cpus, that should handily beat any system in the market today, performance wise.
It’s not a myth. That Megahertz effect performance is not a myth, either.
Given two NON identical systems, other parameters come to play too, but even in this case, more Mhz means more performance.
You have no idea what the “megahertz myth” is do you?
Megahertz Myth doesn’t apply to the same cpu. A 2.0ghz g5 will be faster than a 1.8 Ghz G5. However, a 3.06 Ghz p4 might not be faster than a 2.0Ghz g5. Claiming that a 3.06 ghz p4 is faster than the 2.0ghz chip, regardless of architecture, purely based on megahertz is called the “megahertz myth”. Many people believe that clock speed is the only metric for evaluating performance.
i concur with “meaningless price comparison”. Harjtt, i am just wondering, how many firewire ports do you have on your setup, how many firewire 800 ports do you have, do you have dual processors? after you factor in all of this you will begin to see that the price difference is either insignificant or not there at all.
coz i bet if i take your system and take say a dual 2.0 G5, grab the best gene-processing software out there the dual will outdo you by several hundreds if not over a thousand pecent (note that they outdo dual xeons by anywhere from 30 – 100% so i not think a single processor P4 would fair much better against the dual xeon).
on the memory, the reason why its optional is because, believe it or not, there is a decent share of purchasers ****cough–trophy wife in hollywood–cough*** who do not mind thedefault config coz their doing the same thing as the wife next door which is internet, wp and email. only, they have to do it in style so they can distinguish themselves from that wife next door.
so when you look at these machines, jsut beacuse they are the sort of machine sthat professionals would buy it does not rule the regular user who may not have high graphics needs.
You have no idea what the “megahertz myth” is do you?
Of course I do. What YOU don’t have any idea of, is that myths don’t come in one form. Just because you heard one version of the Mhz myth, doesn’t mean there are not others. Some people DO believe that Mhz don’t affect performance when talking about different architectures. They do, as I indicated with the B+,B- example.
Megahertz Myth doesn’t apply to the same cpu. A 2.0ghz g5 will be faster than a 1.8 Ghz G5.
NOT NECESSARILY. The 1.8Ghz G5 could have more cache for example or a speedier system bus. I gave a far better example in my posting.
What is true, is that the 0.2 Ghz difference will increase the performance of the 2.0Ghz G5. But since other parameters can also increase or decrease its performance, all will have to be taken into account, to determine which is faster.
However, a 3.06 Ghz p4 might not be faster than a 2.0Ghz g5. Claiming that a 3.06 ghz p4 is faster than the 2.0ghz chip, regardless of architecture, purely based on megahertz is called the “megahertz myth”. Many people believe that clock speed is the only metric for evaluating performance.
This is one version of the confusion regarding clock speed, which I attached in my posting too.
Another version, one you don’t seem to aknowledge, is that some people also believe that since Mac and PCs are different architectures, the clock speed is not usefull in their comparison. The truth is: IT IS USEFULL, it is just not the only factor.
A third version of the clock speed confusion Megahertz myth is to downplay the importance of clock speed. Clock speed is one among many factors. But IT STILL IS an important one.
I’d don’t like getting into this Mac is better than Pc or vice a versa stuff. Mac’s and PC’s are simply tools for a job and both do them well.
My original post was simply about the graphics card fitted in the G5 towers. The Dual G5 shouldn’t be specified with a Ati9600XT card, it should get a high end Nvidia Geforce of ATi Raedon 9800XT or Pro. The G5’s have finally given Apple hardware that is as good as that of the latest PC.
I think the single CPU Athlon FX53 can give the Dual G’s a good run for their money. The PC’s from Alienware ( a company that in my opnion make some of the best built PC’s around) are nearly as good in terms of build quality as Apples. Personally I like shuttle’s XPC range and the old Apple Cube, small is beautiful.
If you want a true comparison of the G5 v’s x86 check out the test carried out by Macworld.
http://www.alienware.com/review_pages/review_template.aspx?FileName…
HarjTT
PS.
My shuttle XPC just has 3 firewire 400 ports, no 800’s at the moment but then again my G4 ibook only has firewire 400 too. Is having firewire 800 a problem for me – nope.
I laugh and cringe at the same time whenever I read these to-and-fro’s between differing hardware camps…
It doesn’t matter which system is *faster* when it comes to hardware, what matters is how well the software written for that system can harness the power of the hardware.
I’m stuck with Windows… in a box that I built. I’ve never used a Mac, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Apple are going to have much better *integration* of hardware / software than the system that I (and many others) have cobbled together.
I think I’ll have to wait for the lottery to buy a Mac (like having a car loan – it’s easier for me to justify the $3000 if I spend it over a period of time), but if it happens I’d be chomping at the bit to use Tiger. Apple seem to have developed (in an evolutionary sense) some of the best traits of some great OS’s / Apps and are seemlessly integrating them into Tiger.
I also have hope for the new development environment in Tiger because it’s about time developers were able to *reduce* the size of apps, rather than them just growing and growing… Heck one of my favourite OS’s was the NewtonOS (if you put the HWR aside, it really did just work) and that fit in less memory than my USB flash-drive!
Did you buy 3rd party ram? I bought some third party ram for my dual powermac g4 and i have to say that the macs are really timing sensitive towards memory. Go with crucial, or swap the ram out and see if the kernel panics still occur. I did so and my uptimes are enormous, the only time my computer goes down is if i have to reboot for a security update or the power goes out, this is with a heavy load of mysql database + 30 other applications running at the same time.
Actually I ordered the computer with extra ram, so it is installed by Apple. No additional hardware or software except what Apple shipped it with.
And I thought quality was part of the reason why you pay more for an Apple than a PC… how mistaken I was! ;(
Btw Apple is gonna take it back now and have a look at it. Unfortunately this will probably take another month or two and they are not willing to compensate! When Dell didn’t ship my lap in time I got extra ram for free! and dell is considered a low-cost PC brand.
Seems to me Apple as a brand is pretty close to Bang Olufsen – more about image than substance. But I have to admit their computers and OS are nice when they work… very nice.
If you want a true comparison of the G5 v’s x86 check out the test carried out by Macworld.
http://www.alienware.com/review_pages/review_template.aspx?FileName…..
This is the same BS PCworld benchmark, with non comparable cross platform benchmarks in a glorified new form.
I particularly love how Alienware started the article with ” A few months ago”. A few months ago was 8 months ago. This is nowhere latest.
That particular PCworld benchmark has been beaten to death and the conclusion was that it wasn’t a very fair benchmark. However Anti-Mac zealots would claim otherwise.
There is no way on earth a Alien ware PC with a 2.4GHz Athlon FX-53 will beat a DUAL 2.5GHZ machine comparably equipped. The opteron and ppc970 are very close in peformance clock for clock.
NOT NECESSARILY. The 1.8Ghz G5 could have more cache for example or a speedier system bus. I gave a far better example in my posting.
It will. Could have, should have…. is a moot point, it doesn’t. The 1.8Ghz G5 is identical to the 2.0Ghz G5 except for the clock speed, they both have 512k of L2 cache. I can always craft a benchmark that will fit in cache, where the cache size difference won’t matter, hotshot.
Another version, one you don’t seem to aknowledge, is that some people also believe that since Mac and PCs are different architectures, the clock speed is not usefull in their comparison. The truth is: IT IS USEFULL, it is just not the only factor.
Duh!!! That is exactly what the megahertz myth is genius.
A third version of the clock speed confusion Megahertz myth is to downplay the importance of clock speed. Clock speed is one among many factors. But IT STILL IS an important one.
How so?? if a 2.0ghz cpu out performs a 3.0 Ghz cpu, What is the importance of the higher clock speed, except for higher heat (which is a downside btw)?
I always love the PC vs. Mac discussions… which is more expensive, faster, stronger, better, nicer, etc.
I did 68.000 – 68.040 (Mac-ST-Amiga) before 95 and went to Intel with Win95, because internet/ISDN support was supposed to be beter. Well, yes… ahum. win95 and ISDN, hahahaha.
The point is that you learn to live with what you have. After nearly 10 years of Windows (95 – W2k) I thought it to be quite normal that I had to hand in my notebook to IT guys once every 8 months to reinstall it. Bluescreens, freezes, resets… al normal: part of modern day’s computing. So was the half day maintance I performed myself every two-three weeks.
Last year June (2003), I switched to a powerbook and it was like coming home. It hasn’t crashed for a year now. I think it is fast en very good with energy (4+ hours on a battery …. 6 if I go really budget on energy). Updates are easy and automatically (other maintanance is rare!) and the userfriendlyness is beyond expectations.
I simply like my Mac … and that’s what matters, because it makes me use ‘m.
On cheap WINTEL or AMD solutions: those machines are never cheap when you calculate the time spent on keeping them buzzing.
There is no need to emphasize your ignorance by capitalizing things. Try to have a civilized discussion here please.
I didn’t want to be condecending in the post above but you began a presonal attack by capitalizing “you”. Just a side note.
Seems to me Apple as a brand is pretty close to Bang Olufsen – more about image than substance. But I have to admit their computers and OS are nice when they work… very nice.
You just seemed to have recieved a bad unit. It happens to the best of them. Anything that goes through a production line is bound to have bad units ship.
You can’t garauntee quality unless you hand craft an item in limited quanities.
I think you can claim the ibook was DOA and get a replacement.
Had I not read so many stories of bad quality and hardware failures with previous Apple hardware, I would actually believe you. Now after experiencing this myself I am pretty sceptical. But I will give Apple a second chance. If they fix it I will keep the laptop and buy an iPod mini once it’s out in Europe…
Is it even possible to use two of the 30″ displays? Just one 30″ display takes two of the DVI ports.
At apple.com it says it will work with this new Nvidia card…
ealm, sorry about your bad luck with Apple, it’s nice to know that you’re still open minded.
For the record, I bought a second hand powerbook g4 500mhz (yes 500!!) in December of last year off ebay and I have to admit, the quality of the build in terms of components, design, craftsmanship is still better than most of the laptops on the market today. I’ve owned several compaq and hp laptops from work, although not bad quality, they don’t hold a match up to the powerbook in terms of quality. Performance is another issue, my centrino is just damn fast.
For the rest of the group, how about I break down the price
of apple like this because basically i see the high cost of apple hardware as being mac os x tax:
powermac dual g5 2.5ghz $2000 ($1000 off)
and then $1000 for:
mac os x tiger, xcode, interface builder, ical,
itunes, imovie, idvd, safari, mail, isync, ibackup,
address book, applescript, stickies, x11, quartz extreme, terminal, and all the open source apps pre-installed and configured for mac
and yes itunes, safari are free, but can you use safari on windows or linux?
what do you think of this separation? is the hardware still too expensive? I don’t think you can build a dual opteron for this price and you definitely don’t get the applications.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that you pay $2000 for the computer and $1000 for the software – you pay $3000 for the computer AND software, wheter you want it or not. I do not have a problem with that though, that’s part of the apple concept – one computer one OS.
Otoh you can get Linux for free on the PC, or – as I do – pay $49/year for Linspire and recieve thousands of apps and every new OS upgrade. And all those software titles you mention have their equivalents in Linspire. I don’t say that Macs are pricey though. If my gf’s laptop gets to work properly I think it’s worth it’s pennies. It’s not as fast as it’s equally priced PC counter-parts, but it’s much more elegant, “integrated” and generally cool. Not to forget the nice OS that comes with it…
It will. Could have, should have…. is a moot point, it doesn’t. The 1.8Ghz G5 is identical to the 2.0Ghz G5 except for the clock speed, they both have 512k of L2 cache.
The only moot point is yours above. Who talked about two specific G5 ‘puters out there? What I said was a G5 1.8Ghz is not necessary slower than a G5 2.0Ghz system. Meaning that based only on that information (G5 1.8 or G5 2.0) we cannot make a prediction. I never mentioned some particular G5 model that Apple puts out (in which case we would know all other details too).
Duh!
Another version, one you don’t seem to aknowledge, is that some people also believe that since Mac and PCs are different architectures, the clock speed is not usefull in their comparison. The truth is: IT IS USEFULL, it is just not the only factor.
Duh!!! That is exactly what the megahertz myth is genius.
No, “genious”. The myth is that Mhz are the only think that counts. That Mhz are *among* the things that matter is not a myth, it is a fact. Do you know what “clock speed” means?
And, by the way, to dispense with another silly myth going around for ages, Intel CPUs are RISC underneath too, with instructions translated to a RISC subset, etc. In fact, PowerPC has more insturctions than older CISC Pentiums did.
Cool. Too bad I don’t have $6,300 lying around to spend on a monitor or I would in a heartbeat.
I agree that Macs don’t have much of a midrange. But comparing a home-built system just doesn’t fly. Your $650 home-built system is probably closer to $900 retail. Yes, for a tiny number of people the fact that Macs can’t be home-built is a factor, but it’s not an issue for most people. That extra retail cost comes with benefits that people want.
For once I think I am more excited about what 3rd parties are going to do with the OS features than the actual features themselves. Maybe that’s by design, though, given the nature of the conference. They only covered a handful of the features, but a few tidbits about other apps were in there. Mail seems to be getting another upgrade. I don’t use search much in Mail but maybe I will? It also looks like I’ll be able to assign birthdays in Address Book. I hope they’ll put automatic reminders into iCal for those. It’ll be interesting to see what the other 140 or so “features” are…
I will admit that dual G5s are very very fast. But to me it almost seems like a marketing trick, because most people will add up the CPU speeds and say knowingly 4 ghz of G5 is definatly better than 3ghz of pentium. But that is plain wrong. Many applications that demand performance are not designed to run on 2 CPUs well. For me it would work great, because I can setup my compiler to use both processors. But many games will run better on the 3ghz CPU. Of course, that is a mostly pointless statement, as a dual G5 will certainly run any mac game out there faster than your monitor can refresh anyway. Basically my point is the average userwill not have a use for a dual setup.
My other complaint with apple is os x. It just is not very responsive compared to windows. It also cannot be visually customized without third party tools that can really screw up your system (I have experienced this on several occasions).
But, those downsides do not outway the up. Longlive apple!
if os x isn’t responsive compared to windows xp then what am i doing looking at macs…:( XP is just so slow (and I guess linux+kde isn’t the answer either)
It just is not very responsive compared to windows. It also cannot be visually customized
That’s just NOT true the thing that I really LOVE about Max OS X is it’s ability to be customized to my liking. Where as when I use Windows it’s the new look or classic view. You are able to change the screen savers and background of both about equally. On some application I will give you that OS X is slightly less responsive from click to open. But all and all, while using both Windows 2000 every day, Windows XP occasionally and Mac OS X on my PowerBook daily I will gladly take Mac OS X every time.