Personally, I'm out here at the WWDC and have been having an awesome time! I'm one of the lucky ones that Apple gave a scholarship to and I'm really taking advantage of every seminar, every info session, every everything I can get into!
From what I've read back as a reply from Apple, the adjustments were made to improve fairness and that the competition actually scored lower with HT and the likes enabled. I can see where the outrage comes from, it would seem that the reverse is correct, but after doing some research, it appears that they actually did this in the hopes of fairness.
I think credability comes into play. It was stated that there's no way Mathematica comes out and states that this machine is so drastically faster when it isn't. They have too much PC money to lose and reputation, but speaker after speaker came out and showed off how their software, or the most popular PC couterpart on the PC, was faster on the Mac rather than the PC. Again, for everyone that says apple has a zero marketshare, consider that lying would alienate them from their 100% PC share of the market, and these were some pretty big vendors. In fact, wasn't it Adobe that stated that their software was faster on the PC a few months back?
As for the machine, I got to use one! This was cool. I wandered off into the testing lab and, though it was specifically for having Apple reps help you with your code, since there was an open seat, they let me sit down and try out the G5 for a bit. I didn't get to go crazy on it because, well, I didn't wanna look like some dumb kid that's just playing with the machine, but then I noticed the guy next to me writing Email, so I didn't feel so bad!
It's true. The machine flies. I used the new Apple industry standard "bounce" test to judge start times and the like. When I got to the machine, it was open physically so I could be shown the insides. The cooling system is a thing of beauty and the machine was very quiet, especially compared to G4. The rep closed it up, plugged it in, and it took about 13 seconds or so, give or take, for the entire machine and OS to be up and ready to go. Oh, this was the dual 2.0GHz machine. Now, there wasn't a whole ton in the way of software on this machine, of course, it being set up for coding, but all of Apple's software was, including iMovie, which is a beefy app. I launched every single app on this machine and none of them took more than 1 bounce. In fact, they all took less than 1. The machine just felt so incredibly slick and powerful, it was really something to see.
I'm not here to cause a whole war on this thread, just report my experiences from the conference. It's been a great time out here and Apple deserves a great deal of credit for having a program that will pay for students to come and learn out here in this environment.
The most contraversial thing that I will say in this post is that every computer user should hope that Apple survives and continues innovating. A lof of the things that we love about our Macs and our PCs were brought to us by Apple. From colored cases, to standard USB keyboards/mice, to FireWire and now FireWire2, Apple has continued to take chances. Now that Apple has a 1GHz bus and a chip that really rivals the PC world, maybe we will all experience a new age in computing. The more competition out there means better products for us all and more alternatives.
I'm off to my next class, so I'll see y'all later!
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