Letter to MWNY: Do you remember when Macs were faster then Pcs?
Ok, MWNY is coming and everybody else is desperately awaiting Notoriously faster new macs.
Well, that's the one thing that hasnt changed at all, it's been everyone's wish along the years. Only that during those last ones the need of much powerful machines has very much increased because.. well, PCs are now faster than us.
as i've used macs for 13 years, i know there was a time when Macs were the most powerful and hippier personal computers around. Very nice and intuitive OS teamed with crunching cpus that made all pc users green in envy. We trashed them rendering scenes, photoshoping, playing multitrack audio files from a HD, burning our own cds..
And all that using just one finger.
Our macs were overpriced but we had the fastests coolest machines avalaible.
Well, what's happened?
Wintels have finally reduced the gap to almost zero. They've even surpassed us in computing power (very excentric altivec calculations aside). Wintels are on par in easyness and stability (if you dont believe it then you havent used current wintels) and they're notably faster too.
The only thing we still keep is overprice.
Ok, i may've exagerated a bit as we now have (or will, hopefuly soon) a very decent (and finally fast?) unix OS and still decent computing power, but now the difference in price is starting to annoy some of us, specially when you consider that you can actually have equally (or faster) computers at a third of the price (and remember, computer are just tools than must be trashed/amortized in less than 3 years).
Looks like Apple has given up the cpu battle and is focusing in making Macs/Apple as of an application specif (media) platform. The recent emagic buyout is the last example. Apple is the platform for FCPro, Photoshop, DVDPro, iPhoto, iTunes, and your everyday Officing and surfing (if only explorer and flash worked properly, i mean as a 400mhz PII)
Wouldnt it be great if, besides all that, we could have the fastest cpus too?
Why cant we partner with someone (AMD?) or steal engineers from intel or something weird like that?
Why is apple now in the following tie regarding harware (memory type, CPU speed, Bus bandwidth, cpu micron size design...etc). We see all this in current pcs mobos and just dream the next Gxx will have it all inside. But it doesn't happen.
why cant we go back to 1984?
Happy MWNY.
PS to Admins: this topic belongs to hardware. Better is what we demand.
Well, that's the one thing that hasnt changed at all, it's been everyone's wish along the years. Only that during those last ones the need of much powerful machines has very much increased because.. well, PCs are now faster than us.
as i've used macs for 13 years, i know there was a time when Macs were the most powerful and hippier personal computers around. Very nice and intuitive OS teamed with crunching cpus that made all pc users green in envy. We trashed them rendering scenes, photoshoping, playing multitrack audio files from a HD, burning our own cds..
And all that using just one finger.
Our macs were overpriced but we had the fastests coolest machines avalaible.
Well, what's happened?
Wintels have finally reduced the gap to almost zero. They've even surpassed us in computing power (very excentric altivec calculations aside). Wintels are on par in easyness and stability (if you dont believe it then you havent used current wintels) and they're notably faster too.
The only thing we still keep is overprice.
Ok, i may've exagerated a bit as we now have (or will, hopefuly soon) a very decent (and finally fast?) unix OS and still decent computing power, but now the difference in price is starting to annoy some of us, specially when you consider that you can actually have equally (or faster) computers at a third of the price (and remember, computer are just tools than must be trashed/amortized in less than 3 years).
Looks like Apple has given up the cpu battle and is focusing in making Macs/Apple as of an application specif (media) platform. The recent emagic buyout is the last example. Apple is the platform for FCPro, Photoshop, DVDPro, iPhoto, iTunes, and your everyday Officing and surfing (if only explorer and flash worked properly, i mean as a 400mhz PII)
Wouldnt it be great if, besides all that, we could have the fastest cpus too?
Why cant we partner with someone (AMD?) or steal engineers from intel or something weird like that?
Why is apple now in the following tie regarding harware (memory type, CPU speed, Bus bandwidth, cpu micron size design...etc). We see all this in current pcs mobos and just dream the next Gxx will have it all inside. But it doesn't happen.
why cant we go back to 1984?
Happy MWNY.
PS to Admins: this topic belongs to hardware. Better is what we demand.
Comments
And no, don't want to go back to 1984, when the fastest Mac had a 8MHz 68000. I use one of those as decoration - the most expensive decoration I ever bought
We used to tease a PC buddy of mine: "What's the fasted Windows Notebook you can get? ... A Powerbook G3 running Virtual PC"
Those where the days...
It's all about the friggen Mhz now <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> nothing like speeding up an extremely inefficient processor to over 2Ghz to make it 'seem' fast...
Evolution is a tricky game, sometimes a perfectly good animal like the Hyponimus just happens to be on a branch that doesn't split and lead toward the future. Bang, brick wall. Animal extinct.
It would really suck if Apple's processor choice is leading it toward extinction. Moving the platform to a new processor is a super-huge step, regardless of what some might say. If the Big Picture dictated sink or swim, the company would no doubt find a way to trade processors. None of us are privvy to the latest and greatest in processors, so we sit and stew.
And really, honestly, this is a whinging thread that really DOESN'T belong in FH, although the biggest audience for it is here. I don't think a lot of folks stray over to the General Discussion forum...but they should. There are some great threads over there as well.
D
i recall when the G3 first appeared, the Uk Macuser Mag devoted the entire cover to this simple letters:
G3
Pentium 0
how true that was.
Anyway, the question is are we definetely condemned to be behind powerwise or will there be a time (G5 shipping?) when we'll get back the king's seat of most powerful personal computer again?
Is it Moto to the task, or are they more interested in the embedded market?
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PS to Admins: this topic belongs to hardware. Better is what we demand.</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is not speculation about future Apple hardware. Rants - even rants about hardware - belong in General Discussion.
BTW I work on a brand new PC running Win 2K Professional, and although it's friendly by Windows standards, it still ain't a Mac. I still haven't seen anything that made me think about switching.
I guess it just goes to show that all that matters is the end user experience. It's not about have the highest MHz or DDR RAM, or having 10 different lines of desktops. It's about how quickly and efficiently you can get your work done.
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: Fran441 ]</p>
I looked in the Guiness Book of World Records from 1998 and that was a fun little trip into the computing past. The fastest chip was 300 MHz, the most powerful supercomputer was 16 Gigaflops, the largest hard drive was 23.4 GB by Seagate, and the largest PC manufacturer was Compaq. Things sure change quickly.
I don't think end-user experience is the key factor in their corporate success. Back in the Spindler/Amelio days, Apple was wasting way too much money on projects that were unrelated to what it was doing (or were simply talked about but unused for some reason, like kick-ass industrial design, V-Twin and FireWire). Plus, acting as an R&D shop for lean competitors like Power Computing didn't help a whole lot either. Or cloning as a whole. And neither did their tons of motherboard and case designs, and crappy advertising, and trillions of other idiotic things.
Anyway the speed thing it's not Jobs' fault. Someone over here in AI reported having talked to someone who talked to other.. who saw Jobs furiously throwing away the phone thru the room when talking to moto engineers back when the G4 was stuck at 500mhz. It was like somthing of an ultimatum.
We've passed th 500 mark but the evolution hasnt been as groundbraking as expected.
The main problem IMHO is that macs still are 2-3 times the price of similar Wintels, only they're not faster anymore. That to the corporate market is a concern. There's the user friendlyness of macs and this and that, but the accountant will not pay $3000 for a machine when another $1000 box does the same (or it's even faster).
Specially considering the fact that if you keep your mac for 3 years you can buy a new pc box EVERY year. And the one you'd buy the 3rd would be a whole lot faster than your 3 years old mac.
Apple: bring us back the IIfx
Remember the commercial that showed a PII on the back of a snail?
Whenever I bought Macs in the past they were as fast or faster then PCs (and I'm not talking about MHz, I mean raw processing power). It is only in the past few years that they have fallen behind.
I've been in the market for a new tower for over a year, but the price/performance of the towers when compared to PC's is just too bad. I'd really hate to switch over to the PC side, but if Apple can't get a powermac tower out that is in the same ballpark as the competition I feel I'll have no other rational choice.
Of course, switching over to the dark-side would mean giving up my new 800MHz Titanium Powerbook, and I don't know if I could ever force myself to do that.
The G3 absolutely killed Pentium IIs when it came out, and I remember there being 350 MHz 604es before then that took the speed crown. The clones were awesome and the fastest Macs out there. Remember the Daystar?
It's just all gone wrong after the G4 was introduced. Granted Macs had given up the MHz title, when the G4s came out they were at top speeds of 500 Mhz. The competition from Intel and AMD: 700 MHz. There was a time when tech enthusiasts were speculating that RISC would be the first to 1 GHz, not CISC.
I haven't been pulled into Jobs' RDF, and I look at the whole picture when looking at computers and technology. I know that Macs are behind now, you just can't argue that. Mac OS X made me buy this new Mac, not the hardware. Before the hardware could do it alone. Granted Macs were more expensive, they weren't by as much as they are today. PCs have gotten so much cheaper while Macs have just stayed the same.
I stand by my views here. When somebody tells me I'm whining or to "STFU and buy a PC", I just have to laugh. It's the furthest thing from what I want to do. Have I bought a PC EVER? Nope. Do I plan on it? Nope.
TW99 out.
If numbers don't prove it, then I simply remember it because it was basically the Apple renaissance after years of extremely shitty marketing and management. If anyone has ever read Apple (forgot who wrote it, it's simply called Apple, I borrowed it from the library), the company wasn't really..much of a company in a sense, it was more like a college. There were hundreds of ongoing projects by employees who were simply learning in the process, not really with the intention of having an economically sufficient product. It was all about experimenting, thus, it was college.
Nuff said, then everything went downhill and I have my PC now with occasionally usage on my Powerbook.
there you have it. Current G4 towers not only arent the fastest 'puters anymore but they have one of the worst and noisiest cooling systems around.
Why cant apple invest $60 to improve that in a $3000plus machine is out of my understanding.
Tigerwoods99 is right in his assesment. Now it's software what sells macs, not hardware. How long is this sustainable?