Mac Discuss: YRMac Users so smug?

Page 3 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

Leo

Senior member
Nov 1, 1999
279
0
0
I didn't have the endurance to make it through the entire thread... still need to eat breakfast this morning.. :)

I backup 16 gigs of data and it's always at 80-90 MB/min. Takes about 3 hours to do the full backup onto 20/40 GB DLT IV tapes. In addition to that tape drive I also have two 18 Gig ultra-wide scsi cheetah harddrives on the same channel that probably use some of that bandwidth.

Appleshare is a joke, when you've seen a real NOS like Netware... Too bad Netware doesn't back a cool OS like BeOS, like they did with Dr. Dos.

Hector: You are quite correct. I made the mistake (again!) of mixing mb/s with mb/min... Just a factor off.. hehe :)
 

UncaMilty

Member
Mar 9, 2000
39
0
0
>Don't you agree that if they got rid of x86 architecture
>we(average working class) would no longer be able to afford
>and enjoy top of the line systems?

I disagree. PC prices are due to volume and competition, not technological level. Mac prices are high due to lower volumes and no competition. Since Apple is the only Mac vendor, they can set prices entirely to their liking. Sure, they need to compete to some degree with the PC market, but because it isn't a direct comparison, they have more leeway.

The PowerPC design is certainly superior to current x86 design, especially in floating-point. But Motorola is struggling to get past the 500MHz mark, and that hurts badly. Even with all of the "3x as fast as a Pentium" PR games, you will lose because people can get 300MHz more for $500 to $1500 less, and that matters to consumers.

As for rabid Mac loyalty, I think that is due to a few factors, but mostly the 'playing the underdog' mentality. Apple has, at various times in its history, played the PR card as 'little Apple vs big IBM', 'little Apple vs big Microsoft', 'little Apple vs big Wintel', etc etc. That, plus the idea (again fostered by Apple PR) that the Mac is one of those artistic panaceas that only certain "special" people can understand, leads to an attitude that is a mixture of fierce loyalty and smug condescension.

I use Macs and PCs, and like them both. I actually prefer the general feel of the MacOS, but I am not about to turn a blind eye to all of the great things I can do with PCs just because I like Macs, and vice-versa. Ignore the lemonheads, you'll feel better. :)
 

UncaMilty

Member
Mar 9, 2000
39
0
0
A few notes:

-Keep in mind that on those B/W G3s, the PCI slot set aside for the video card was NOT 64/66, it was 32-bit/66MHz. Look it up. (http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n58206)

-It looks like the '2GB limit' thing was dealt with already. But to reiterate, Windows now supports partitions up to 2TB in size, not 2GB. The 2GB limit died four or five years ago. :)

>BTW, how do you compare performance on IBM's and Mac's?
>you don't. plain and simple. code originally written for
>PC will run better on PC. this is true for many MANY
>programs. not all though.

Two things-

One- hey, that's life. If you're going to compare what people will use, you have to accept the advantages and disadvantages. Most users don't care WHY something is slower, they care that it happens to be slower.

Two- it works both ways. Why do you think that Apple relies almost exclusively on Photoshop benchmarks? Because Photoshop is much better optimized for the Mac than it is for the PC. Heck, the PC version requires you to set the memory allocation, as if it was a Mac!!

-The stuff about multi-processing got silly pretty quick. Yeah, you can have a 32-CPU PC. Where would I buy one, and what would I pay? Kind of a moot point there.

However, dual-CPU setups on the PC are common, varied, and fairly easy and inexpensive to implement. Even assuming that Apple finally announces dual/quad Macs, remember that you'll pay through the nose, have little choice in implementation, and will have to wait for MacOS X. Pick up Windows 2000, BeOS, or Linux, and you're on your way to serious multiprocessing for le$$.

-The PowerPC FPU is clearly superior to the FPU in the Pentium III or Athlon. Real World Technologies had a RISC/CISC article that lays it all out. RISC, for several reasons, KILLS x86 in FPU performance. Therefore the FPU cannot be the G4's "weakest point", but is in fact one of its strongest. AltiVec is also a vastly superior version of SIMD, though it is almost useless right now due to a lack of software support.

-Like many Mac/PC "wars", this one is being marked by lots of anecdotes. A properly set-up PC/Mac will run for much longer than a day without rebooting. I get tired of hearing "when I used a Mac/PC, it crashed so often that I got tired of it and switched to a PC/Mac, and now it never crashes, ever".

-Microsoft does NOT want to see Apple go out of business, since sales of Mac software are a pretty big revenue source for MS, and always have been. It isn't like Apple is threatening sales of Windows, especially in the corporate market. I would bet that MS is VERY happy at where Apple stands right now, because it should lead to some pretty good profits for Microsoft.

/end of jabbering :)
 

snow patrol

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2000
8,377
0
76
My Mac-humping-buddy is still going on about that rather dire game 'marathon'. He reckons it's better than Quake 3 or UT.

Sad.

In a slight variation to a recent quote: arguing with Mac users is like poking zombies with a stick :D
 

JPT

Senior member
Jan 23, 2000
419
0
0
Just my humble $.02. We have one PC and a couple of macs in the lab. I still don't understand what is the big fuss about those things. I cannot use it - it just does not do what I want it to do. There is not one single time it does not crash, I hate to have to think about how much memory should be allocated to each application (no matter how much memory you have...). Plus the Office software simply does not work (unless you just want it to type letters... don't even try to get a table of contents...). Needless to say the pc always has a line and everybody avoids the mac...
 

arthurb1

Golden Member
Oct 23, 1999
1,168
0
0
Ok, but what was Unix first developed for? What has it bween running on for about the last 10 plus years? X86...thank you....

Umm, PC's suck, but we'll take one of their main NOS's and copy the code from it to make our tenth lame attempt at one...ya that's right...It'll be a really good OS too, we promise...
 

BenSkywalker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
9,140
67
91
UncaMilty-

"The PowerPC design is certainly superior to current x86 design, especially in floating-point."

"The PowerPC FPU is clearly superior to the FPU in the Pentium III or Athlon."

No, it isn't.

"Real World Technologies had a RISC/CISC article that lays it all out. RISC, for several reasons, KILLS x86 in FPU performance. Therefore the FPU cannot be the G4's "weakest point", but is in fact one of its strongest. AltiVec is also a vastly superior version of SIMD, though it is almost useless right now due to a lack of software support."

Any links for that article? I've seen lots of ignorant articles written by people who use the extremely tired and outdated "RISC/CISC" debate. PPC is a weak pathetic joke compared to the likes of MIPS, Alpha, or Sparc and has no business being mentioned alongside them. The cuurent "G4" is rather poorly designed from an FPU basis, they put too much effort on AltiVec and not enough onto the actual FPU.

Take a look at this link-

http://ebus.mot-sps.com/PowerPC/psp/0,1405,MPC7400~M98654,00.html#

For a basic overview of why Mot's FPU is quite poor in comparison to current x86 CPUs, particularly the Athlon. One FP unit, while they dedicate another unit to AltiVec which is used, to give it credit, 5% of the time. Wisely, the x86 parts combine tasks to avoid wasting die space. The Athlon, for a comparison-

http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon/keyfeatures.html

The G4's FPU is a bottleneck. The Spec numbers bare this out, the exact same test Motorola was touting when the G3 launched now shows them being trounced. The bench hasn't changed, Motorola has failed to advance their chip beyond "bolting on" a SIMD unit. You can also look to rendering benches, PPC used to do extremely well, now they are not competitive. You need the fastest PPC chips to compete with mid range x86 offerings. There is a big difference between the theoretical babble of some "RISC" zealots and real world you can't hide numbers. The x86 chips(PIII and Athlon) kick the he!! out of the G4 when it comes to FPU. If you bring up the high end "RISC" offerings that is very clearly a different story, 32bit consumer PPC doesn't fall into that category.

SIMD is another story, but it shouldn't be for long. Intel's SSE2 is vastly superior to AltiVec. AltiVec in itself is quite amusing, what with the ignorant FUD that came out of Apple when x86 chips adopted SIMD technology.

"Like many Mac/PC "wars", this one is being marked by lots of anecdotes. A properly set-up PC/Mac will run for much longer than a day without rebooting. I get tired of hearing "when I used a Mac/PC, it crashed so often that I got tired of it and switched to a PC/Mac, and now it never crashes, ever"."

Spent over a decade using Macs, they are not as stable as NT or Win2K, not even close, and are at best equal to Win98 for average tasks. They do crash frequently if you "handle" them the same some would a properly setup PC. Fire up ten to fifteen applications and they go down sooner rather then later. OSX should fix this, along with the horrid performance when multitasking.

Just to add, what once could fill several pages is now down to a select few points on the differences between RISC and CISC. The only part of the current x86 chips that can still be classified as CISC, even using the purists cries, is the front end of the chip and the instruction set itself which is translated by the front end into like sized ops anyway, the main characteristic that people use to define "RISC" today.

arthurb 1

"Ok, but what was Unix first developed for? What has it bween running on for about the last 10 plus years?"

If memory serves Unix development started up in the late 50s and was fully functional in the mid 60s. It was created by some people at AT&T, though they couldn't do anything with it due to government regulations on them, monopoly status and all. Unix was around before x86, as hard as that may be to believe.
 

Hector13

Golden Member
Apr 4, 2000
1,694
0
0


<<
I didn't have the endurance to make it through the entire thread... still need to eat breakfast this morning.. But in regards to the ultra-wide scsi comment about not being able to utilize the full 80 mb/s. My DLT tape drive does. Every night. I backup 16 gigs of data and it's always at 80-90 MB/sec. Takes about 3 hours to do the full backup onto 20/40 GB DLT IV tapes. In addition to that tape drive I also have two 18 Gig ultra-wide scsi cheetah harddrives on the same channel that probably use some of that bandwidth
>>



I think your numbers might be a bit off.
I aint no math major (or English major), but at 80 MB/Sec you should do about 80 Mb/Sec * 60 Sec/Min = 4800 Mb/Min ~ 4.5 Gigs/Min
So 16 Gigs should take 16 Gigs / 4.5 Gigs/Min ~ 3.5 Minutes

Thats gotta be one fast tape drive!
If it takes you 3 hours to back up the drive, it sounds more like you are getting 1-2 Mb/Sec.


 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
24,158
1,806
126
My 2 cents:

I like Macs, even though I have a chichi overclocked PC. They have their uses, but there are a lot of misconceptions about them, both from PC and Mac users. I don't have a lot of experience with them, but have used them for graphics purposes.

1) &quot;G4 will wipe the floor with a PC.&quot; Well, in Photoshop (which is what the Macheads use most it seems) the G4 does very well. But so do PCs for most of Photoshop. The important part is the Macheads who use both tell me it's easier to set the colours on the Mac equipment accurately. I can't comment on this because I've never been involved in the setup.

2) &quot;PCs are ugly beige boxes.&quot; I agree. I'd pay an extra $100 for better LOOKING equipment. Seriously. I'm moving into a new house in a few months and will be getting brand new furniture. I shudder at the thought of my beige PC monitor sitting on that new desk. Yeeech. At least the main box will be hidden under my desk. By the way, while I don't like the G4 look all that much, I like their case design. Easy to work with although not perfect.

3) &quot;All graphics are better on a Mac.&quot; False. The world of Mac is 2D only in truth. This may change with OSX, Maya, and the Geforce 2 MX (even though the MX isn't a pro card).

4) &quot;Gaming is sooooo much better on a PC.&quot; True, 3D games run like crap on a Mac in general. On the other hand, I find it interesting to note that I don't know of any Machead who could give a damn. I was once at a graphics/web mag party and it was mainly Mac people with some PC people as well. It was a pseudo &quot;rave&quot; but with computer companies like Apple there hawking their equipment (at midnight). There was also a PC LAN with 3D games in the corner, and most of the Mac people I knew thought it was the stupidest (and geekiest) thing they'd ever seen. There is definitely a difference in Mac culture...

5) &quot;Windows is just so damn unstable. The Macs are so much better.&quot; I remember when the Mac classic came out it seemed a bit more stable, but then again it ran just about nothing. Nowadays, the Macs I've used are MUCH less stable than even Windows 98, much less NT.

6) &quot;That Airport thingy is just a gimmick. It's just a standard Lucent wireless hub in disguise.&quot; Perhaps, but I'd love to have a gimmick that's less than half the cost of the PC competition. 802.11 hardware for the PC is terribly expensive.

7) &quot;Music is much better on a Mac.&quot; Hmmm... It seems that in the past most of the software was Mac only. However, as an amateur it would seem to me that PC has the edge in terms of both hardware and software.



While Mac zealotry is irritating, PC zealotry can be just as irritating. I still hear, &quot;yeah, well, my PC does 700 MHz.&quot; As if that means anything. So yes, I still like the Mac for some uses, even though I think PCs overall are more versatile, and probably more appropriate for some uses. I was given the job of spec'ing out a 2D graphics workstation at work recently and I was going to go Mac until our IT guys said they wouldn't support it.
 

arthurb1

Golden Member
Oct 23, 1999
1,168
0
0
Hoo...that was before I was around...anyway, my point was that it has been around on the x86 platform for a long time, and Apple is seeing that it is superior to their own code...I just wanted to make a point about how far behind they are for good NOS software.
 

hankster

Member
Oct 9, 1999
160
0
0
found it! i knew i had the answer to this question in an old email somewhere! :)

The Mac Zealot Creed

If it was written down, this is what it would look like.

1. Know that by choosing the Mac you have shown that you are an incredibly intelligent and discerning individual. Any attack on the Mac is an attack on you personally. Those people who attack the Mac didn't choose the Mac, hence they are not intelligent or discerning, therefore any personal attacks on them are entirely justified.

2. Know that the Mac is the best. It is the best for everything. It is the best for everything, always was, and always will be. If the Mac were not the best computer then you would not have been intelligent and discerning to pick it. Some things about the Mac and Apple may seem bad, but be sure they can all be explained eventually. Blind faith will sustain you when all else is gone.

3. Information is dangerous. It can put doubt in your mind. Only get your information from Apple and sources friendly to Apple. In this way you can refuse to believe anything said by people who attack the Mac; because they didn't choose the Mac, they are gullible and will believe anything.

4. All competitors to Apple (no matter how big) see Apple as their number one threat. Because of this they are actively trying to crush Apple by illegal means. Your actions (no matter what) are entirely justified, because you are just fighting back. This is war and you are a soldier.

5. Because the competition is trying to unfairly crush Apple, you are justified in speaking out for Apple whenever and wherever. In fact, it is your duty. Speaking out for Apple is far more important than having friends or a job.

6. You have no bad points (you chose a Mac so that must be true), therefore people who attack the Mac cannot be a mirror image of you. They worship Bill Gates and are in love with their Windows machines. They will accept any old crap that Microsoft offers. You know this simply because you're intelligent and perceptive; no Mac users display similar feelings toward Apple.

7. Never voice your feelings in any forum where others can oppose you. They will attempt to shake your beliefs by introducing &quot;facts&quot; which are not mentioned at Apple or any pro-Mac sites, therefore they are probably false. If there is any supporting evidence, these &quot;facts&quot; are certainly FUD, and you should say so.

8. There are over 40 Mac advocacy sites where information about Apple can be given free of all risk of contradiction. Visit these sites often and supply articles, information, and encouragement. New writers are always needed; if you can't think of anything to say, make up something that you'd like to see happen.

9. People on Mac sites have gone to great pains to make sure that their information is accurate and balanced. You can therefore spread this around without worrying about checking anything.

10. At any given time Apple has either just released or is soon to release some new technology that will bring the Wintel world to its knees. At all times whatever technology Apple adopts is superior to that of Wintel, unless it's the same as Wintel, in which case Apple does it better. Most people who criticize Apple don't know this, so it's your duty to tell them.

11. Apple, unlike any other company, is run for the betterment of humankind, not to make money. All employees of Apple are the best of their kind. Apple advertising is 100 percent factual and is not - nor ever has been - misleading. Counter false Wintel propaganda by making this known whenever possible.

12. Using a Mac is such a wonderful experience that only Wintel bigotry and misinformation prevents Wintel users deserting in droves. Encourage Wintel users to try (or better still, buy) a Mac. Assure them they'll instantly find it worthwhile. However, keep yourself pure by declaring that you'll never use a PC. This actually helps Wintel users realize how much difference there is.

13. Information about Macs is most reliable and meaningful if it is the most favorable to Apple. Less favorable information is less reliable even if it comes from independent sources, is independently corroborated, or is more recent. However, certain things are a given. Macs are cheaper and faster than Wintel and cost less to support. As these things are obviously true, you should point out to Wintel users who deny this that they're misinformed.

14. Information about Apple is best if it's in a vacuum. Any figures about the success of the company should be absolute and not comparitive. Thus increased sales and record revenues are far more important than market share or growth against competitors. Within an overall market share there are always areas where sales are better, so always quote these.

15. Steve Jobs is the Savior of Apple. Everything the Steve says (especially keynote speeches) must be carefully preserved in QuickTime and stored for daily devotional use. As an Apple devotee it is your duty to invite your friends to listen to Jobs' keynote speeches, as only the beautiful resonance of the Steve's voice can truly convert the wayward Wintel wanderer to the One True Platform.

16. As a Mac user, you must at all times refer to PCs as &quot;Wintel&quot; machines. Disregard any attempts that a Wintel user may make as to demonstrate that his Wintel box doesn't have Windows on it, or Intel inside. You have never seen a PC without Windows on it, or the little &quot;Intel inside&quot; sticker, so you know that they don't exist. Besides, the Wintel user is trying to bring up &quot;facts&quot; again. Don't listen to him. See rule #6.