Sorry, but Macs DO Kick A$$!

[kgraeme]

Originally posted by: tart666
Hold up, wait a moment

I understand Quartz features will be off-loaded to the OpenGL GPU now instead of the CPU in 10.2, right?\

Does this mean that the bloated Altivec Apple has been pushing on us for 3 years has lost the ONLY application it had? So now you can have a G3 with Geforce2 MX and the dislpay will redraw as fast as on the dual 1.25?

Why pay the mega premium for G4 then? anyone, anyone? (edit: well, aside from the very few of us that do actual work)


T

Actually, Quartz benefited very little, if at all, from the G4 Altivec. If you look at the screen rendering and look for what is being accelerated, there is almost nothing that is on either the G3 or G4. The G4 may have seemed faster to some people just because of brute-force. Personally, I can't believe that Apple created a windowing OS that couldn't be accelerated on the generation of hardware it was built upon. I even talked with an Apple engineer friend that proclaimed that Quartz was so advanced that there wasn't a GPU in the world that could accelerate it. He said this rather proudly. Fortunately, we now will be getting Quartz Extreme which will help a little bit.

 

[MadRat]

The day APPLE buys out LINDOWS and mates the two technologies to x86-64 is the day Microsoft stock takes a nose dive to Enron price levels.

 

[NFS4]

Dude... have you ever used a Mac... on weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed?



































Copyright Beau6183 '02

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: kgraeme

Originally posted by: Eug
With X.1, I finally forgave them. OS 9 totally sucked.

I beg to differ. In many ways, OS 9 and below were actually superior to OS X. Some of the things, like spring-loaded folders are finding their way back in, but other things, like the ability to just copy the system folder to another drive and have a bootable copy of the system was amazing. The ease of use of OS X still has a long way to go to catch up with that of OS 9 or even, IMO, WinXP.

For instance, I was trying to set up the FTP server that is built in to OS X so that clients could drop off stuff. I wanted to have anonymous logins that were restricted to a single folder, but while OS X would let me turn FTP on and off, there was no interface to do ANY configurations. In order to set up anonymous access to a folder, I had to use the command line. To my net admin friends that's the coolest thing in the world. To me, I just want ease-of-use.

True, OS X ain't perfect, and OS 9 had some good things. However, OS 9 was about as unstable as OSes come. It is more stable than Windows 95, but that's not saying much, and at least in my hands it wasn't quite as stable as Win 98 SE. Against Win XP and OS X.2, OS 9's stability is not even in the same league.

 

[SgtZulu]

you meant to say "Macs DO Suck A$$"


the new G-4's are actually slower than the older ones
way to go fruit lovers

 

[imgod2u]

Mr. Worf, raise the flameshields.

Someone mentioned before hand about AltiVec somehow helping accelerate the GUI of OSX. I think this is just more BS from Apple PR. A GUI is not a very SIMD-friendly thing. I don't know how AltiVec would help it. If anything, the powerful ALU's on the G4 would help but Apple doesn't seem to like touting anything that wasn't given a fancy name.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: NFS4
Macs suck on a big fat 5% marketshare...

I wouldn't use a Mac if Halle Berry offered give me a hummer for 30 seconds.

i dunno about you, but 30 seconds would be frustrating.




<--- sorta almost considering an ibook

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: imgod2u
Mr. Worf, raise the flameshields.

Someone mentioned before hand about AltiVec somehow helping accelerate the GUI of OSX. I think this is just more BS from Apple PR. A GUI is not a very SIMD-friendly thing. I don't know how AltiVec would help it. If anything, the powerful ALU's on the G4 would help but Apple doesn't seem to like touting anything that wasn't given a fancy name.

I don't know how it works either, but Quartz Extreme is OpenGL 3D accelerated. Dunno about the Altivec stuff.

Anyways, I pulled this off a Mac forum:

Well, I'll tell you about the one that was briefly shown in the keynote (and explained in great detail in one the Quartz sessions).

But, before I describe the scene, I want to make it very clear what Quartz Extreme (QE) is. QE is not about graphics acceleration. It's more accurate to think of graphics acceleration as a side effect of what QE does. Quartz Extreme is literally an implementation of the Quartz Compositor in OpenGL. And, not only that, but all I/O operations are carefully coded to use DMA only (versus programmed I/O), freeing the processor from both compositing the pixels, and pushing them out to the destination device (ie: the "side effect").

And to further clarify, the term Quartz refers to two seperate elements. One is Quartz 2D. This is the 2D API that is used to draw 2D elements. The other is the Quartz Compositor. This piece is responsible for integrating and compositing the 2D, 3D, and media elements generated by Quartz 2D, OpenGL, and QuickTime. Quartz Extreme deals with the Quartz Compositor, not Quartz 2D. So, to reiterate, Quartz Extreme does not accelerate Quartz 2D.

So, on to the demo in the keynote.

During the keynote, the primary demo used to show off the power of the Quartz Compositor involved the compositing of several layers of raw motion pictures from a movie, to create a scene (sorry, can't remember which movie it's from). Now, this doesn't sound too terribly complex, does it? You're probably thinking, "Final Cut Pro can do that now with its real-time effects!" Well, here's what made this hard (read: impossible) to do before, in real-time, without additional add-on cards.

The scene consisted of 5 layers:

-one background plate with the "sky" and background scenery
-one back ground plate of a train station, with green screen where the sky and environment should show through
-two layers of actors, on stages, in front of a green screen
-one layer of a model train, on a stage, in front of a green screen

During the keynote, these five layers were composited, with garbage mattes, chroma keys and colour correction, all in real time! It doesn't sound as impressive with me describing it here, but try this in After Effects and it would take hours to render! Remember: real-time!

However, during one of the Quartz session I attended, this demo was went over in greater detail, with even more complexity added to the scene. So, what was added?

-the angle on the two plates of actors, and the train station were off. The actors were skewed, rotated, and scaled to match, in real time.
-three floating, rotating, transparent 3D objects were added
-realtime scrolling credits were added to the scene

You had to have seen it, to fully understand how incredible this was.

As for the DVD demo movie that was posted earlier today, a similar demo was shown at WWDC. However, it involved a DVD movie, 20 transparent terminal windows (which is actually 40 transparent layers in the Quartz Compositor), and the same 3 floating, rotating, transparent 3D objects floating above all that. For comparison, it's not even possible to composite the volume indicator in front of a DVD in 10.1.4!

But, the point is: do not think of Quartz Extreme as graphics acceleration, think of Quartz Extreme as a graphics compositor on steroids^(squared). As I said, the "graphics acceleration" is more of a side effect, despite the exponential increase in complexity that Quartz Extreme allows. Another note: all the new OpenGL extensions required to make the QE version of the Quartz Compositor are also available to developers. So, it's really up to the developers to come up with interesting (eg: 40 terminals over a DVD) and useful (eg: the film compositing demo) ways to use this new power.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: CubicZirconia

But even the ugliest MAC is visually a hell of a lot more appealing then any PC/Windows

Two words. Lian-Li.

I've never seen a Lian-Li case that was so beautiful that it justified the cost.

 

[ViRGE]

miniMUNCH, OS X don't use XFree(or any other derivitive of X); it uses a custom system called Quartz. XFree is availible for installation though for anyone that wants it.

 

[Eug]

By the way, to my surprise, writing to FAT32 formatted DVD-RAM discs works fine in Mac OS X.2 now. (For those who didn't already know, the only DVD format in existence that has full OS-level read/write integration in Windows XP is DVD-RAM.)

So, I can format a DVD-RAM disc on my Windows XP box to FAT32, then use it for sneakernet between both my Mac OS X.2 laptop and PC, without need for extra packet-writing drivers or software. (And of course, with DVD-RAM there is no need for finalizing, etc. either.)

 

[dpopiz]

Two words. Lian-Li.

Two words. Nik....Ao

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: SgtZulu
you meant to say "Macs DO Suck A$$"


the new G-4's are actually slower than the older ones
way to go fruit lovers

The new dually 1GHz Mac's are also $800 cheaper then the older ones.
They have DDR SDRAM rather then SDR SDRAM, and a 33MHz faster FSB speed. They unfortunately only have 1MB L3 cache compared to the 2MB L3 of the older 1GHz Mac's.

So a little faster in some tests, a little slower in other tests.... and a savings of $800.
Personally, I consider that a GOOD thing.... definitely not bad,

The replacement for the old dual 1GHz Mac's is a dual 1.25GHz that has DDR SDRAM, the faster FSB, and the 2MB L3 cache of the older Mac's. That one most definitely is a decent margin faster then the old Dually 1GHz Mac's.

All in all, it sounds pretty positive to me.
Similar performance for $800 cheaper. Or quite a bit faster performance for the same price as the older 1GHz Mac.
A very nice trade-off IMHO.

 

[MadRat]

Do all current MAC models come with L3 cache?

 

[gsaldivar]

The new dually 1GHz Mac's are also $800 cheaper then the older ones.
...a savings of $800.
Personally, I consider that a GOOD thing.... definitely not bad
All in all, it sounds pretty positive to me.
A very nice trade-off IMHO.

Hmmm... year-old technology being repackaged as "new" - nothing to write home about, and certainly no "gift" from Apple.

Surprise! Your cost savings are due more to depreciation than anything else.

 

[grumm3t]

Originally posted by: Trevelyan
ROFLPIPBMFOTGLOL = Rolls On Floor Laughing Pissing In Pants Mashing Fists On The Ground Laughing Out Loud

oh..... my...... god.....

Originally posted by: MadRat
The day APPLE buys out LINDOWS and mates the two technologies to x86-64 is the day Microsoft stock takes a nose dive to Enron price levels.

Do you remember the result of the Walmart PC's with Lindows installed?

Sorry, but I had to

I'm a fan of the Mac. I like the fact that it's run by one company, but I dislike the extreme prices.

 

[drag]

MAC's ease of use?
Unix substructure?
Not Microsoft?
Inherently Sercure? (I bet that you are willing to depend on Microsoft's so called 'firewall' feature that is built into XP) haha
Superiour CPU?

How can you wrong!?!

Even though I am a Linux user I am seriously considuring buying a Mac for my next computer (laptop). X86 land is just a bit to screwed up for me to put the effort into making a laptop work the way I want it to.

I like the x86 platform for it's flexabilty. And I enjoy tweaking hardware and using the power of a modern PC, but for the average user I can't see ANY superiority that x86/microsoft combo offers over a Mac. (Unless you are a hard-core gamer and enjoy spending the money/time/effort that is required for living on the bleeding edge of technology). Plus anybody can use one with very little instruction. I know that most people I know would honestly pick a Mac over micosoft/x86 if they were allowed to use the two side by side with no bias. (like pepsi/coke blind test taste idea)

If you haven't been using using Windows products for several years now would you realy feel comfortable using XP? I stopped using Windows on my home computer at Win98. And now when I have to go and fix my freind's and family's computers (from 98, 2000, ME, XP etc) when they screw up their software I find that XP is the most time consuming and irritating to use out of the whole bunch. It took me 2 hours to figure out that one computer (ME) couldn't share files/printers with the second (XP) because someone had accidently clicked the wrong button (on the XP, I was able to confirm the ME box was working correctly within 5 minutes). The solution was.

"left-click network places icon on desktop, right click on stupid icon thingy representing the network connnection, left click on tcp/ip settings, left click on prefrences, left click on advance menu, left click on the stupid and unusable "WINS" page (not the page just wins servers), now all the way at the bottom were one little circle says enable netbios over tcp/ip and another says: disable nebios over tcp/ip... pick enable netbios over tcp/ip"

NOW THATS USER-FREINDLY! whoopy

wow netbeui what a great idea! a network protocol that is completely un-routable (unless using TWO buggy and unreliable wins servers)) then in order to fix that lets create our own barely-compatable version of TCP/IP and inflicing netbios on it! yaaaayyyy!

I know that XP and other microsoft products would not be so damn popular if they were not so friggin' easy to steal! Think about it.. How many people posting here actually PAID for their copy of Windows? probably only 65-75 percent.

How can you trust a company that is so stupid to create a copyright system that can be defeated by copying a product code off the back any other piece of software offered by said company (win9x). The same vendor thought it was a good idea that all file names should only have up to 8 letters followed by a dot a then 3 more letters. Nobody will ever need more than that! (dos upto win95 and have horrible side effects following upto XP! remember at dos-prompt having to type a path in like c:\Progra~1\mygame~1\quake2\quake2.exe)!!! All Mac users laugh in you face for that stuff!
How can you have pride in a company's software that it's NEW and BESTEST OS EVER, that will offer a secure and safe enviroment for all users, and have several horrid security holes exposed with in days of it's release. How can you use a GUI that No amount of hardware acceleration will actually make it pleasent to use. And Bill made it so that every time you wish to upgrade the hardware on your computer you have to call and ASK PERMISSION to use the OS that you've been using for several months on the same exact computer! (unless of course you stole it then you don't have to worry about stuff like that)

How can you trust a company that it's best way of dealing with software bugs is to:
1. deny existence of bug.
2. blame users for bug.
3. blame hackers for bug.
4. offer a patch 4 months later.
5. offer a patch for patch 16 months later.
6. come out with the NEW and BESTEST OS EVER a year later, that will offer a secure and safe enviroment for all users. (and with respectable limits regarding your invasion of privacy too!)
7. repeat......

(almost as bad as dodge trucks)

ROFLPIPBMFOTGLOLAWMHUMASHFTGOMSGTM(GFGGBJ)

I don't have nothing against Microsoft or anyone that enjoys using it. So please forgive my sarcasm. It's just that I know a better thing when I see it.

 

[McCarthy]

Hey now, I like Dodge trucks.

 

[drag]

sorry.
it was a unfair insult to compare Dodge to Microsoft

I am sorry.

 

[Eug]

How can you trust a company that is so stupid to create a copyright system that can be defeated by copying a product code off the back any other piece of software offered by said company (win9x).

Ironically, I think this is one of the smartest moves that Microsoft has ever made. Why?

1) Problems with disc incompatibilities are removed. Lots of the older style copy protections would cause problems in certain computers.
2) EVERYONE had a copy. Part of the reason that MS software has become the de facto standard is because anyone could pirate a copy and thus everyone could install it home (illegally). Then these same people started purchasing legit copies of the software for work. Or else think of it another way. Somebody could buy a copy for work and then make a copy for home for their two computers at home. Not legal but common.

And I don't understand why you brought this up anyway, since Apple software works the same way.

 

[kgraeme]

Originally posted by: drag
MAC's ease of use?
Unix substructure?
Not Microsoft?
Inherently Sercure? (I bet that you are willing to depend on Microsoft's so called 'firewall' feature that is built into XP) haha
Superiour CPU?

Since the release of OS X, the Mac ease of use is significantly overrated. Clicking a "+" window widget to make the window smaller? Editing config files instead of using a UI with switches? Abandoning proper metadata for weak filename extensions? The list of HI grievances is long.

The Unix substructure is great buzzword, but only directly useful for a few people. For most users it just adds significantly to the complexity of using the system.

"Not Microsoft" is only a reaction to MS. It doesn't take into account that Apple is just as ready, and often more likely, to screw their customers. $30 for the OS X pre-release, $130 for the release (with features removed), $30 for the "free" .1 update that finally had useable APIs, $130 for the .2 update that finally starts incorporating features again that were included in OS 9.

The touted security of the MacOS was only possible under the pre-OS X systems. With OS X you'll notice that there have been far more security-related issues with the Mac, like the recent Apache vulnerability. Funny, make a system like the "big boys" and suddenly you have the same problems too. The problem is that Apple doesn't have a good track record for fast response to these kind of issues. Historically, they like to wait until the next OS release to fix any problems and that can be months. They're getting better, but nowhere near as good as the major *nix vendors or even MS.

Edit: I like the Mac as a tool to get tasks done, but just don't make it out to be more than what it is. It's not magically better than MS just because it's Apple.

 

[Eug]

Since the release of OS X, the Mac ease of use is significantly overrated. Clicking a "+" window widget to make the window smaller? Editing config files instead of using a UI with switches? Abandoning proper metadata for weak filename extensions? The list of HI grievances is long.

I beg to differ. OS X is certainly different from say OS 9, but it's much easier to use. I don't edit config files but then again, maybe my needs are different than yours. Perhaps it's my Windoze training, but I find the metadata more of a hindrance than a benefit in some situations, at least when dealing with a cross-platform world. Indeed, stuff like iMovie still doesn't work properly with files from non-Mac sources because of the metadata issue. Mind you, it's a software programming issue mainly, but personally, I wouldn't be sad if they scrapped the metadata support altogether.

 

[MadRat]

< Do all current MAC models come with L3 cache? >

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: tart666
Hold up, wait a moment

I understand Quartz features will be off-loaded to the OpenGL GPU now instead of the CPU in 10.2, right?\

Does this mean that the bloated Altivec Apple has been pushing on us for 3 years has lost the ONLY application it had? So now you can have a G3 with Geforce2 MX and the dislpay will redraw as fast as on the dual 1.25?

Why pay the mega premium for G4 then? anyone, anyone? (edit: well, aside from the very few of us that do actual work)


T

Much of the rest of the system is optimized for alti-vec. Plenty of people seem to be happy with the newer Sahara g3s though. Ill be buying a g4, and maybe the next iBook too (depends on when it comes out and what my finances look like). Of course, Im planning on buying an x86 portable too, just for "fun."

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: NOX

Originally posted by: Czar
I bet that browsing the internet is as slow as ever with the macs

It was on my sons imac G4 (800MHz) OSX 10.1. Slow like a mother! My wife, son and eventually I started to hate it, and sold it on ebay. The only thing I can say that was a plus was the stability and the space it took up on our desk. Other then that It doesn't hold a candle to a PC in terms of speed. Like one person on the MacWorld forum said, ?when will Mac dumb Motorola for AMD or Intel?, or ?do you think Motorola is holding Mac back??

If OSX came to the PC platform, I would be first in line to buy it. It would be fast as hell on my current system.

Im the opposite, if Apple moves to an x86 based platform, they lose me as a customer. There are more useful OSes for x86 (*BSD).