Moved: 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.
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
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.
[ 07-10-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
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?
<strong>
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.