Real One, Altivec, and the OS Wars

matsu

Did anyone else's eyebrows perk during the Real One Media Player's Mac demo?



The Real One rep made an interesting comment that "thanks to OSX and the Velocity Engine" the Real One player was better/smoother than what is possible on any other platform.



I though that this was interesting for a number of reasons. Will altivec be fundamentally important to internet streaming content? Is someone with an iBook going to be saddled with choppy RealOne performance? Is Altivec really that good? Is QE really that good? (It may have a hand in this and may not...)



Conversely, I find it hard to believe that some of the very fast top shelf x86 hardware could NOT produce a faster/smoother 'Real' streaming media experience than a good G4? Could it be that M$ somehow makes it very difficult for competing media players to work effectively under the latest Windows environments?



Apple has QT and M$ has MediaPlayer; both have an interest in their product working better than the others. We shouldn't really be surprised that Apple is letting more people under the hood, or should we?



To me the Real One Player looked pretty good, I'm just not really sure whether that comes down to Velocity Engine and OSX or tech-industry politics?



Anybody with better technical and political insights care to comment?

jchen

It was just an exaggeration, just like other statements that have been made in the past such as "the G3 is two times faster than the Pentium 2." etc

steve

I had noticed that, too... Don't think it really means anything. Only occasionally do people catch themselves while onstage. It's hard not to over-exaggerate while you're up there. You feel like a little kid in the late eighties, going around saying, "ULTIMATE!"

thinkingdifferent

What did you expect them to say? That's typical tradeshow hype.. :cool:

eman

It could actually be much better on a G4 than on a G3. Yesterday I used Real for the first time in OS X and it was pretty choppy from time to time on my iBook.