[quote] can we get off blanket statements like this? <hr></blockquote>
Good idea.
[quote] sometimes the PC is faster at things and sometimes the macs are faster (oh say, 5 to 21 times or so faster on "blast" benchmarks) <hr></blockquote>
How about if we get off disingenuous statements like this one, as well? The fact is, the Mac gets it hat handed to it in most apps, and kicks the sh!t out of PCs in so few areas that it's accurate to call them anomalies.
[quote] there is plenty of _real_ work getting done on powermacs. I get more work done of my "crap" 667 dvi PB then i would on a 3 gighz pc. <hr></blockquote>
That's great. Meanwhile, the top end Mac wouldn't keep up with a PC half its price for what I do: rendering Lightwave scenes. We're not talking about a difference of minutes, either, we're talking days.
[quote] why does it seem like most the guys calling the g4 and powermacs slow and crappy are the ones that aren't even using the speed they have in their ibooks? <hr></blockquote>
Yeah, God forbid people actually wait for Apple to provide machines worth buying...
[quote] its really tuning into a broken record on these boards.... <hr></blockquote>
It certainly is. I've made at least half a dozen posts just like this one over the past year.
What used to be done on $50k workstations can now be done on $5k PCs.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Oddly enough, the price hmurchison has been throwing around for an Apple workstation is $5k.
I don't think anyone is considering $40,000 workstations. There's absolutely no point in going there. Those prices are just being offered as examples of what some people will pay for performance.
For me, the issue is whether Apple can offer a GPUL on a motherboard that can keep it busy for the PowerMac's price: $1500 out of the starting gate. I don't think so. They might be able to offer a machine running a GPUL at that price (perhaps with a single core), but it would be starved more or less like the G4 is now.
Apple's price points are already too high: throughout the line-up, they need to get set lower not higher. GPuL, if it comes, will enter at the current price points and not a penny more or Apple will just more marketshare after the 2 months or so of solid sales from all the die-hards.
[[[When Apple upgrades the processors, they'll drop them in at the current price points - maybe not across the board, but they won't bring systems out at higher prices *unless* they move to quad or 8-ways systems. ]]]
And for that they will definitely need more bandwidth.
\t
Aphelion posts:
[[[Derived from the Power4 also means that much of the R&D work has been covered.]]]
Excellent point. This is why I still think that this processor is either ready to go or very close to it. \t
[[[but that model will be a 4 or 8 chip machine (depending on # of cores per chip). ]]]
As mentioned above... They better have the bandwidth to support that cofig.\t
\t
\t
Matsu posts:
[[[Fine, except that the price points are about 5-7 years out of date. The entire industry has shifted the it's price points downward, significantly. ]]]
And they still aren't selling not to mention the fact that they are selling with abysmal profit margins.
[[[Apple competes with these prices, wintel or not.]]]
If that were completely true then Apple should have evaporated into nothingness by now. Just look at the shambles Dell has made of the commodity PeeSee market. How many more bodies will be floating down the river? As a matter of fact, I hear that a particular cow has been spotted checkin in and out of the vet recently. ;-)
[[[Now Apple is falling behind in laptops as well, both in terms of performance and price. ]]]
Marketing... Slap a sticker on it that says 10GHz. and the drones will start salivating.
[[[But now an entry level laptop comes with a very good XGA (often 14 or 15) screen, a combo drive, a fast cpu, decent battery life, a very good GPU, and 30GB HDD's STANDARD. All for the same price as the LOW-end iBook. ]]]
But you're still running windows.
[[[This pattern repeats throughout the Mac line-up. Machines simply cost too much, an the price-points are in dire need of re-alignment. ]]]
You are somewhat correct, yet Apple still manages to be the only other PC company to continue to turn a profit.
[[[Apple has most certainly NOT been making it's machines great from a price to performance/value standpoint. ]]]
That's only if you perceive value to be equal to performance (i.e. speed = value). Sometimes it reaches that threshold where most people just don't give a damn and they look for other features.
[[[They typically debut at a decent value metric, but very quickly fall behind from lack of updates. The window on any one model is about two months max before the spec starts to look very poor relative to the competition. ]]]
OK, key word: "look". As in perception.
\t
keyboardf12 Posts:
[[[there is plenty of _real_ work getting done on powermacs. I get more work done of my "crap" 667 dvi PB then i would on a 3 gighz pc. ]]]
Another excellent point. I've been listening to all the marketing hype surrounding the new Wintel/AMD machines blah blah balh and yet these machines just aren't selling and no matter what their cost. No one is upgrading because even at these increasingly higher clock rates there is no noticeable difference in what most people would perceive. It's only a matter of time before they REALLY play that tune out. \t
[[[This is why the whole industry is slumping. Does a secretary really need a 2Ghz vs 1Ghz?\t]]]
Ahhhh! This is close to what I've been saying. It's more in line with what I consider "most people". At this point in time I feel that a lot more people are looking to make a break from the puppet-master that's Micro$oft. Apple is starting to infiltrate these camps with offerings that are clearly more than enough for the tasks most of the current users are running.
[[[Apple does need to address the high end market, and there is something to be said for the perceived speed gap.]]]
Exactly. And they will give the high-end what it needs. And again, there aren't a lot of PC/XP systems being sold -- the PC market is in the dumper because people haven't been given a legitimate reason to upgrade their Windoze boxes this month (again).
\t
Gamblor:
[[[That's great. Meanwhile, the top end Mac wouldn't keep up with a PC half its price for what I do: rendering Lightwave scenes. ]]]
Yeah man... And I'd rather be watchin' the paint peel or the grass grow or hangn' out with some attractive women. Give me a break. As if there is nothing else people would want to do other than "render lightwave scenes" lol\t
\t
[[[Yeah, God forbid people actually wait for Apple to provide machines worth buying...]]]
Yeah, and those other PC's are just FLYING off the shelf. LMAO. \t
Laptop sales grew. Apple's laptop sales fell. In all key areas PC's are still selling better than macs.
The current state of the major PC players has more to do with their previous investments than the price war. Please dispel that myth, I realize it is very wide spread, but it simply isn't true. There are a lot of execs out there who made VERY bad decisions and investments throughout the 90's, they're not going to publicly admit to that, so they blame the price war. It's not true, look into it a bit, you'll see what I mean -- people get rich, just not shareholders.
It isn't just speed, it's critical features too. Support? Warantee? Applecare might be good, but it's just about reached the point where it should be standard. The products are too slow for what they cost. People don't mind paying more for more performance, but they won't pay more for less, which is what Apple has been asking for the last year and a half. Only doom awaits on this road, and Apple had best recognize the realities of selling computers in this market and adjust accordingly. Computers will only get cheaper, Apple can charge a small premium for the experience, but they won't be able to tax at will forever.
>How about if we get off disingenuous statements like this one, as well? The
>fact is, the Mac gets it hat handed to it in most apps, and kicks the sh!t out
>of PCs in so few areas that it's accurate to call them anomalies.
You mean that anomalictic (<-is this even a word) market called bioinformatics? You know, one of the only ones that is _growing_ and buying machines. And thanks to the crappy g4's altivec is romping, stomping and tromping pcs and increasing apple's market share in that field?
(We won't even mention that fact that scientists _love_ the fact they can Blast DNA _and_ use word,powerpoint,photoshop and a friendly to use Unix called OSX. and that has nothing to do with megahertz)
Yep. Lightwave does render faster on PCs. Of course if you are pro, why not buy a clone pc for $600 bucks and render those scenes at night on it (unless i am wrong 7.5 lightwave lets you take the usb dongle off and install it on a pc and a mac. move that dongle onto the pc at night(yah yah when you are developing its might be a little slower. which is what i stated in my first post.)) if time is money then 3d people should be able to afford that.
>That's great. Meanwhile, the top end Mac wouldn't keep up with a PC half its
>price for what I do: rendering Lightwave scenes. We're not talking about a
>difference of minutes, either, we're talking days.
replace "lightwave" with "blast" and switch mac and PC in the paragraph above and you can an idea of what some PC guys are going thru now
BTW, how fast can a 3 ghz PC render Final Cut scenes?
>Yeah, God forbid people actually wait for Apple to provide machines worth buying...
For some that may be true. But my point was that there are plenty of people that if the GP-UL was shipping tommorrow, would still stick with their ibooks.
>It certainly is. I've made at least half a dozen posts just like this one over the past year.
Hopefuilly this time next year we will be argueing over better things like the dumb name of the "GigaMac"
You mean that anomalictic (<-is this even a word) market called bioinformatics? You know, one of the only ones that is _growing_ and buying machines. And thanks to the crappy g4's altivec is romping, stomping and tromping pcs and increasing apple's market share in that field?
[/QB]<hr></blockquote>
And I'll eat this very keyboard if Apple is able to sell more than 200K Powermac units this Q. And I suspect Apple will sell less than 210K Powermac/xServer units combined.
Anyone who's actually used one will tell you these machines are FAST. I got the brief chance to try out a dual 1.25GHz yesterday, and I must say I was impressed.
Every program launched in a single bounce, web pages were rendered instantly, OS X felt like OS 9, and Photoshop was just insane.
It may loose to Intel in some benchmarks, and it may be expensive, but this machine runs incredibly well. How can you call it crap?
It's the BEST Macintosh you can buy. If this machine is crap, so is every other Macintosh. If this machine is too slow, 98% of PCs are too slow.
I will admit PowerMacs are expensive, but when you pay more you get more. Despite being slower than some PCs, Macs are always more usable. When you buy a Mac, you're paying for a better experience.
For this reason, Macs are well worth their premium. Whether GPUL is faster or slower than Intel's latest chip is irrelevant. It won't change the above. Macs are not pieces of crap. They are not PCs.
Damn! I read a matsu post by mistake and now my karma is all 'negativised'
a) Macs are more expensive than PC's. Always have been, always will be. We all know the reasons why.
b) Apple are not stupid. In fact they are very very clever people. As Steve says, they play the cards they have at any particular point in time.
c) Apple like to make money. This is because they are a business with shareholders like me. They like to do it ethically and with style but they are a business
d) It's my prediction that the best config 'xMac' will on release blow anything else in the market completely away in compute and graphics benchmarks. It will be called a 'workstation' and will cost $5000. It will sell like freakin' iPods.
[quote] Yeah man... And I'd rather be watchin' the paint peel or the grass grow or hangn' out with some attractive women. Give me a break. As if there is nothing else people would want to do other than "render lightwave scenes" lol <hr></blockquote>
What the hell kind of response was that, ed?
---
keyboardf12 sez:
[quote] You mean that anomalictic (<-is this even a word) market called bioinformatics? You know, one of the only ones that is _growing_ and buying machines. And thanks to the crappy g4's altivec is romping, stomping and tromping pcs and increasing apple's market share in that field?
(We won't even mention that fact that scientists _love_ the fact they can Blast DNA _and_ use word,powerpoint,photoshop and a friendly to use Unix called OSX. and that has nothing to do with megahertz) <hr></blockquote>
Perhaps Apple can make a living selling G4s to the bioinformatics industry. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> Somehow, I don't think they'd be around much longer if that was the only market buying their machines... Of course, we can't leave out the BILLIONS of people who get paid to watch their machines churn away at RC5, too...
[quote] Yep. Lightwave does render faster on PCs. Of course if you are pro, why not buy a clone pc for $600 bucks and render those scenes at night on it (unless i am wrong 7.5 lightwave lets you take the usb dongle off and install it on a pc and a mac. move that dongle onto the pc at night(yah yah when you are developing its might be a little slower. which is what i stated in my first post.)) if time is money then 3d people should be able to afford that. <hr></blockquote>
Why shouldn't the Mac be able to handle all of it as quickly as a PC? Why should I HAVE to buy a PC just to get the grunt work done? That's kind of pathetic, don't you think?
[quote] replace "lightwave" with "blast" and switch mac and PC in the paragraph above and you can an idea of what some PC guys are going thru now <hr></blockquote>
I think you mean switch "Lightwave, After Effects, ProEngineer, EarthVision, Vulcan, IDL, SPICE, ArcINFO, and a slew of other apps" for "blast"...
[quote] For some that may be true. But my point was that there are plenty of people that if the GP-UL was shipping tommorrow, would still stick with their ibooks. <hr></blockquote>
Are you sure it wasn't a stab at LBB?
[quote] Hopefuilly this time next year we will be argueing over better things like the dumb name of the "GigaMac" <hr></blockquote>
I certainly hope so.
---
Kecksy sez:
[quote] Anyone who's actually used one will tell you these machines are FAST. I got the brief chance to try out a dual 1.25GHz yesterday, and I must say I was impressed. <hr></blockquote>
Tell you what, on that dual 1.25, in a web browser, try loading a long page (like one of the pages in this thread), and then move the thumb of the scrollbar from top to bottom as fast as you can. There's a noticable lag (a fraction of a second), at least there was on the dual gig mirror-door Powermac I tried it on at the Apple store at the Biltmore a couple of days ago. On a dual 867, it's larger, on a 17" iMac it's quite noticable. On my QS733, it's more than a second. On the HP Kayak (800MHz PIII) I use at work, there is no lag. Nor is there one on my Duron 1.1GHz at home. What does this mean? Well, OS X still needs a bit of work, for one thing, but more importantly, Apple's hardware needs a BIG boost.
[quote] It may loose to Intel in some benchmarks, and it may be expensive, but this machine runs incredibly well. How can you call it crap? <hr></blockquote>
Does it run as well as a $3300 PC, though? Hell, for that matter, does it run as well as a $2000 PC, or a $1650 PC?
[quote] I will admit PowerMacs are expensive, but when you pay more you get more. Despite being slower than some PCs, Macs are always more usable. When you buy a Mac, you're paying for a better experience. <hr></blockquote>
The problem is, fewer and fewer people are willing to pay that premium. In the past, Macs at least had comparable performance with top end PCs, even if they did have a price premium. If Apple charges a premium, so be it-- but twice as much for half the performance just doesn't fly with anyone but the hardcore Mac-faithful.
[quote] For me, the issue is whether Apple can offer a GPUL on a motherboard that can keep it busy for the PowerMac's price: $1500 out of the starting gate. I don't think so. They might be able to offer a machine running a GPUL at that price (perhaps with a single core), but it would be starved more or less like the G4 is now.
<hr></blockquote>
Why don't you think that's possible? They might not be able to produce a machine at that price point that would provide the full bandwidth a GPUL requires, but they might be able to provide half of it... Look at the nForce chipsets. 3.2GB of bandwidth, and the motherboards cost ~$150. I think it's possible to provide quite a bit more bandwidth than the current G4s have, and still have a low cost machine.
One of the purposes of both HT and RapidIO is to provide massive bandwidth at a low cost... Which ever way Apple goes, it shouldn't be too difficult to provide bandwidth improved over what we've got with the G4.
you know, I'm sure its tiring hearing people say Apple's powermacs are crap and everything but what is just so pathetic and really tiring is the responses to that fact.
I mean reading the responses here and you guys are just pathetic. I used to take the effort to respond to criticism but you aren't even worth it anymore.
perhaps that's why AppleInsider is such a sad place anymore with little traffic. Just so many dumb and blind people.
Blast great. enjoy your ****ing blast and sell the couple thousand machines to that market. that'll help.
1) Apple's price points are cutting-edge. Who the f*** wants a cheap Mac which can't do s***? No-one, that's who!
2) The Power Mac line sells on, guess what, Power! Apple isn't going to build $1000 Power Macs (in their current form), because "Power" requires $$$. Being faster in somethings isn't good enough. To be worthy of an badge, it needs to beat PCs in what it sells on. In this case, POWER!
3) The ENTIRE Power Mac line sells on power. Therefore the ENTIRE Power Mac line will move to GPUL. The G4 is nice chip for 30m transistors, but it's no 2.8GHz Xeon.
Ed M., I guess I don't understand the point that I think you were making about Apple not being bad-off because the whole PC business is in such a bad state. If PC's really aren't selling as you suggested, then this is an even bigger indictment for Apple since market share continues to decline (I think).
This is the very time that Apple *should* be increasing market share. The competition is pretty dull and hasn't innovated anything lately other than more Ghz's. If people are unimpressed by that, then what is holding Apple back from making inroads?
The problem is, fewer and fewer people are willing to pay that premium. In the past, Macs at least had comparable performance with top end PCs, even if they did have a price premium. If Apple charges a premium, so be it-- but twice as much for half the performance just doesn't fly with anyone but the hardcore Mac-faithful.</strong><hr></blockquote>
What's your point? PowerMacs don't cost twice as much as other high-end PCs and they're not 50% slower. You make it sound worse than it actually is.
Scrolling is slow in OS X because the graphics card isn't being utilized. Do you expect all the nice features of Quartz to come without a performance hit? It's not fair to compare the speed of a second generation GUI like the one found in Windows to a third generation GUI like the one OS X uses. Put Aqua on a PC and scrolling will be just as bad. It isn't as bad as you say either.
Macs aren't significantly slower than PCs. They don't cost twice as much, and they're much nicer to use. Need I compare OS X to Windows XP or even Linux? Both operating systems will be pounded far worse than a PC pounds a Mac performance-wise.
It's not the hardware that makes a good computer. It's the software. You can have the fastest CPU on the planet, but without good software that power is wasted.
OS X at least trys to use all your computer's resources in order to provide a better user experience. Can the argument be made that dock icons don't provide useful feedback or that line resizing is better than live resizing? No. Isn't eye-candy which makes using your computer more pleasant a good thing? Of course it is.
It's not what your computer can do, it's what you can do with your computer. Macs allow you to do much more with far less effort. Today's "overpriced" PowerMacs actually give you more bang for your buck. You'll get more done, and you'll have a fun time doing it. That's why you should pay a premium. Macs are better than PCs.
[[[What the hell kind of response was that, ed? ]]]
What I'm trying to say is that people do other things with their Macs that they find useful AND that they find preferable to do on the Mac -- for WHATEVER reason. For you, the fastest PC (this week) is undoubtedly the best thing for your particular field. However, there are fields where the Mac is considered to be more valuable. That's what I was getting at. Don't take it too personally. And you never once brought up the fact that it could very well be something to do with NewTek's code. I NEVER see anyone from NewTek on any of the dev. boards and that's a shame. I'm not a developer, but I lurk quite a bit. And for the record, it's the FSB that's really been holding back the G4. the FSB they are currently using doesn't seem to be up to snuff for the types of things being done in LW. I still think it has a lot to do with LW's common code base though. They wouldn't admit it and Chris Cox hasn't been able to sit down with any NT engineers yet to figure out the problems. They were in fact supposed to collaborate on the optimizations.
[[[Somehow, I don't think they'd be around much longer if that was the only market buying their machines...]]]
You see, it's the same old story... Still predicting Apple's demise. It's played out man. Apple has never been stronger than it is now. It's soooooo amusing to see people *still* saying that they will be out of business -- annnnnnnnny daaaaay nowwwwww. Nearly 30 years later...
[[[Apple's hardware needs a BIG boost. ]]]
For web pages?? I guess it doesn't matter much to me since I can only get 28.8 connects where I'm at. Not everyone is on broadband, and last I heard that market is lagging as well. So, if actual speed is so important, why isn't everyone jumping on broadband? Perhaps because what they have now (dialup?) is good enough and fast enough? Clearly there is a definite reason to go with broadband *if* speed is your concern - and you think it that cas it would be, but broadband has been a big disappointment so far. People just don't believe in spending the $$ even when there is a noticeable difference in browsing speed. Go figure.
[[[If Apple charges a premium, so be it-- but twice as much for half the performance just doesn't fly with anyone but the hardcore Mac-faithful. ]]]
My point is that there must be a hell of a lot of Mac-faithful out there. Again, no one is buying any of the ultra-fast PCs (this week). There is nothing to stimulate any of the sales. Yet Apple is still profitable.
[[[Ed M., I guess I don't understand the point that I think you were making about Apple not being bad-off because the whole PC business is in such a bad state. If PC's really aren't selling as you suggested, then this is an even bigger indictment for Apple since market share continues to decline (I think).\t]]]
This is wrong. Market share numbers are VERY misleading. As long as apple is selling machines, their USER base is growing and that's what's important. You sound like yet another person calling for Apple's demise. Hasn't that fantasy been dispelled yet? How many more PC mergers is it going to take before people realize that it's more likely that a major PC company will go belly up (read Compaq) before Apple will. Shesh! Apple doesn't compete directly with the major "Windoze Repackagers" like Dell and Gateway (on their last leg). There is NOTHING to differentiate the PC OEMs other than a sticker on the side of the case.
\t
[[[This is the very time that Apple *should* be increasing market share. The competition is pretty dull and hasn't innovated anything lately other than more Ghz's. If people are unimpressed by that, then what is holding Apple back from making inroads? ]]]
Nothing. they are selling machines and their user base continues to climb. And let's not forget all the potential sales that are out there. There are a LOT of people just waiting, holding their money back for a reason to upgrade to a new Mac. It's just a matter of time.
[quote]<strong>Tell you what, on that dual 1.25, in a web browser, try loading a long page (like one of the pages in this thread), and then move the thumb of the scrollbar from top to bottom as fast as you can. There's a noticable lag (a fraction of a second), at least there was on the dual gig mirror-door Powermac I tried it on at the Apple store at the Biltmore a couple of days ago. On a dual 867, it's larger, on a 17" iMac it's quite noticable. On my QS733, it's more than a second. On the HP Kayak (800MHz PIII) I use at work, there is no lag. Nor is there one on my Duron 1.1GHz at home. What does this mean? Well, OS X still needs a bit of work, for one thing, but more importantly, Apple's hardware needs a BIG boost.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That wasn't IE for Mac vs. IE for Windows, was it?
IE for Mac is a crap Carbon port that leaks memory like a sieve. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if it's been sabotaged to run poorly.
Apple would have to offer hardware ten times faster than PCs before MS applications ran as quickly as they do on Windows. That's not Apple's fault, it's Microsoft's.
Anyway, all scrolling speed establishes is whether or not the display layer uses the video chipset's 2D acceleration. Windows does. OS 9 does. OS X doesn't. Scrolling speed is not in any way, shape or form an indication of the computational power of the machine. Nor, for that matter, is a Microsoft app.
None of this has anything to do with the topic of the thread, of course, except that GPUL won't help Explorer scroll through web pages any faster, either. But when Apple finds a way to get the other half of Quartz accelerated on video hardware, look out.
[quote]<strong>Why don't you think that's possible? They might not be able to produce a machine at that price point that would provide the full bandwidth a GPUL requires, but they might be able to provide half of it... Look at the nForce chipsets. 3.2GB of bandwidth, and the motherboards cost ~$150. I think it's possible to provide quite a bit more bandwidth than the current G4s have, and still have a low cost machine.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's almost exactly what I said in the post you quoted: I doubt that Apple can produce a workstation-class (not price!) machine for $1500. But I'm guessing they could put a GPUL in a PC-class motherboard for that. PC-class motherboards will be moving to RIO and HT in the near future. But they've always been starved for bandwidth because bandwidth isn't cheap; RIO and HT will ameliorate that considerably, and bring things like fabrics down into sane price ranges for the first time; but a CPU as powerful as the one this thread is discussing will probably spend a lot of its time twiddling its thumbs. The G4 already does.
Comments
Good idea.
[quote] sometimes the PC is faster at things and sometimes the macs are faster (oh say, 5 to 21 times or so faster on "blast" benchmarks) <hr></blockquote>
How about if we get off disingenuous statements like this one, as well? The fact is, the Mac gets it hat handed to it in most apps, and kicks the sh!t out of PCs in so few areas that it's accurate to call them anomalies.
[quote] there is plenty of _real_ work getting done on powermacs. I get more work done of my "crap" 667 dvi PB then i would on a 3 gighz pc. <hr></blockquote>
That's great. Meanwhile, the top end Mac wouldn't keep up with a PC half its price for what I do: rendering Lightwave scenes. We're not talking about a difference of minutes, either, we're talking days.
[quote] why does it seem like most the guys calling the g4 and powermacs slow and crappy are the ones that aren't even using the speed they have in their ibooks? <hr></blockquote>
Yeah, God forbid people actually wait for Apple to provide machines worth buying...
[quote] its really tuning into a broken record on these boards.... <hr></blockquote>
It certainly is. I've made at least half a dozen posts just like this one over the past year.
<strong>wormboy: another voice of sanity.
What used to be done on $50k workstations can now be done on $5k PCs.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Oddly enough, the price hmurchison has been throwing around for an Apple workstation is $5k.
I don't think anyone is considering $40,000 workstations. There's absolutely no point in going there. Those prices are just being offered as examples of what some people will pay for performance.
For me, the issue is whether Apple can offer a GPUL on a motherboard that can keep it busy for the PowerMac's price: $1500 out of the starting gate. I don't think so. They might be able to offer a machine running a GPUL at that price (perhaps with a single core), but it would be starved more or less like the G4 is now.
And for that they will definitely need more bandwidth.
\t
Aphelion posts:
[[[Derived from the Power4 also means that much of the R&D work has been covered.]]]
Excellent point. This is why I still think that this processor is either ready to go or very close to it. \t
[[[but that model will be a 4 or 8 chip machine (depending on # of cores per chip). ]]]
As mentioned above... They better have the bandwidth to support that cofig.\t
\t
\t
Matsu posts:
[[[Fine, except that the price points are about 5-7 years out of date. The entire industry has shifted the it's price points downward, significantly. ]]]
And they still aren't selling not to mention the fact that they are selling with abysmal profit margins.
[[[Apple competes with these prices, wintel or not.]]]
If that were completely true then Apple should have evaporated into nothingness by now. Just look at the shambles Dell has made of the commodity PeeSee market. How many more bodies will be floating down the river? As a matter of fact, I hear that a particular cow has been spotted checkin in and out of the vet recently. ;-)
[[[Now Apple is falling behind in laptops as well, both in terms of performance and price. ]]]
Marketing... Slap a sticker on it that says 10GHz. and the drones will start salivating.
[[[But now an entry level laptop comes with a very good XGA (often 14 or 15) screen, a combo drive, a fast cpu, decent battery life, a very good GPU, and 30GB HDD's STANDARD. All for the same price as the LOW-end iBook. ]]]
But you're still running windows.
[[[This pattern repeats throughout the Mac line-up. Machines simply cost too much, an the price-points are in dire need of re-alignment. ]]]
You are somewhat correct, yet Apple still manages to be the only other PC company to continue to turn a profit.
[[[Apple has most certainly NOT been making it's machines great from a price to performance/value standpoint. ]]]
That's only if you perceive value to be equal to performance (i.e. speed = value). Sometimes it reaches that threshold where most people just don't give a damn and they look for other features.
[[[They typically debut at a decent value metric, but very quickly fall behind from lack of updates. The window on any one model is about two months max before the spec starts to look very poor relative to the competition. ]]]
OK, key word: "look". As in perception.
\t
keyboardf12 Posts:
[[[there is plenty of _real_ work getting done on powermacs. I get more work done of my "crap" 667 dvi PB then i would on a 3 gighz pc. ]]]
Another excellent point. I've been listening to all the marketing hype surrounding the new Wintel/AMD machines blah blah balh and yet these machines just aren't selling and no matter what their cost. No one is upgrading because even at these increasingly higher clock rates there is no noticeable difference in what most people would perceive. It's only a matter of time before they REALLY play that tune out. \t
[[[This is why the whole industry is slumping. Does a secretary really need a 2Ghz vs 1Ghz?\t]]]
Ahhhh! This is close to what I've been saying. It's more in line with what I consider "most people". At this point in time I feel that a lot more people are looking to make a break from the puppet-master that's Micro$oft. Apple is starting to infiltrate these camps with offerings that are clearly more than enough for the tasks most of the current users are running.
[[[Apple does need to address the high end market, and there is something to be said for the perceived speed gap.]]]
Exactly. And they will give the high-end what it needs. And again, there aren't a lot of PC/XP systems being sold -- the PC market is in the dumper because people haven't been given a legitimate reason to upgrade their Windoze boxes this month (again).
\t
Gamblor:
[[[That's great. Meanwhile, the top end Mac wouldn't keep up with a PC half its price for what I do: rendering Lightwave scenes. ]]]
Yeah man... And I'd rather be watchin' the paint peel or the grass grow or hangn' out with some attractive women. Give me a break. As if there is nothing else people would want to do other than "render lightwave scenes" lol\t
\t
[[[Yeah, God forbid people actually wait for Apple to provide machines worth buying...]]]
Yeah, and those other PC's are just FLYING off the shelf. LMAO. \t
\t
--
Ed M.
The current state of the major PC players has more to do with their previous investments than the price war. Please dispel that myth, I realize it is very wide spread, but it simply isn't true. There are a lot of execs out there who made VERY bad decisions and investments throughout the 90's, they're not going to publicly admit to that, so they blame the price war. It's not true, look into it a bit, you'll see what I mean -- people get rich, just not shareholders.
It isn't just speed, it's critical features too. Support? Warantee? Applecare might be good, but it's just about reached the point where it should be standard. The products are too slow for what they cost. People don't mind paying more for more performance, but they won't pay more for less, which is what Apple has been asking for the last year and a half. Only doom awaits on this road, and Apple had best recognize the realities of selling computers in this market and adjust accordingly. Computers will only get cheaper, Apple can charge a small premium for the experience, but they won't be able to tax at will forever.
>fact is, the Mac gets it hat handed to it in most apps, and kicks the sh!t out
>of PCs in so few areas that it's accurate to call them anomalies.
You mean that anomalictic (<-is this even a word) market called bioinformatics? You know, one of the only ones that is _growing_ and buying machines. And thanks to the crappy g4's altivec is romping, stomping and tromping pcs and increasing apple's market share in that field?
(We won't even mention that fact that scientists _love_ the fact they can Blast DNA _and_ use word,powerpoint,photoshop and a friendly to use Unix called OSX. and that has nothing to do with megahertz)
Yep. Lightwave does render faster on PCs. Of course if you are pro, why not buy a clone pc for $600 bucks and render those scenes at night on it (unless i am wrong 7.5 lightwave lets you take the usb dongle off and install it on a pc and a mac. move that dongle onto the pc at night(yah yah when you are developing its might be a little slower. which is what i stated in my first post.)) if time is money then 3d people should be able to afford that.
>That's great. Meanwhile, the top end Mac wouldn't keep up with a PC half its
>price for what I do: rendering Lightwave scenes. We're not talking about a
>difference of minutes, either, we're talking days.
replace "lightwave" with "blast" and switch mac and PC in the paragraph above and you can an idea of what some PC guys are going thru now
BTW, how fast can a 3 ghz PC render Final Cut scenes?
>Yeah, God forbid people actually wait for Apple to provide machines worth buying...
For some that may be true. But my point was that there are plenty of people that if the GP-UL was shipping tommorrow, would still stick with their ibooks.
>It certainly is. I've made at least half a dozen posts just like this one over the past year.
Hopefuilly this time next year we will be argueing over better things like the dumb name of the "GigaMac"
[QB
You mean that anomalictic (<-is this even a word) market called bioinformatics? You know, one of the only ones that is _growing_ and buying machines. And thanks to the crappy g4's altivec is romping, stomping and tromping pcs and increasing apple's market share in that field?
[/QB]<hr></blockquote>
And I'll eat this very keyboard if Apple is able to sell more than 200K Powermac units this Q. And I suspect Apple will sell less than 210K Powermac/xServer units combined.
Anyone who's actually used one will tell you these machines are FAST. I got the brief chance to try out a dual 1.25GHz yesterday, and I must say I was impressed.
Every program launched in a single bounce, web pages were rendered instantly, OS X felt like OS 9, and Photoshop was just insane.
It may loose to Intel in some benchmarks, and it may be expensive, but this machine runs incredibly well. How can you call it crap?
It's the BEST Macintosh you can buy. If this machine is crap, so is every other Macintosh. If this machine is too slow, 98% of PCs are too slow.
I will admit PowerMacs are expensive, but when you pay more you get more. Despite being slower than some PCs, Macs are always more usable. When you buy a Mac, you're paying for a better experience.
For this reason, Macs are well worth their premium. Whether GPUL is faster or slower than Intel's latest chip is irrelevant. It won't change the above. Macs are not pieces of crap. They are not PCs.
[ 09-22-2002: Message edited by: Kecksy ]</p>
a) Macs are more expensive than PC's. Always have been, always will be. We all know the reasons why.
b) Apple are not stupid. In fact they are very very clever people. As Steve says, they play the cards they have at any particular point in time.
c) Apple like to make money. This is because they are a business with shareholders like me. They like to do it ethically and with style but they are a business
d) It's my prediction that the best config 'xMac' will on release blow anything else in the market completely away in compute and graphics benchmarks. It will be called a 'workstation' and will cost $5000. It will sell like freakin' iPods.
[quote] Yeah man... And I'd rather be watchin' the paint peel or the grass grow or hangn' out with some attractive women. Give me a break. As if there is nothing else people would want to do other than "render lightwave scenes" lol <hr></blockquote>
What the hell kind of response was that, ed?
---
keyboardf12 sez:
[quote] You mean that anomalictic (<-is this even a word) market called bioinformatics? You know, one of the only ones that is _growing_ and buying machines. And thanks to the crappy g4's altivec is romping, stomping and tromping pcs and increasing apple's market share in that field?
(We won't even mention that fact that scientists _love_ the fact they can Blast DNA _and_ use word,powerpoint,photoshop and a friendly to use Unix called OSX. and that has nothing to do with megahertz) <hr></blockquote>
Perhaps Apple can make a living selling G4s to the bioinformatics industry. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> Somehow, I don't think they'd be around much longer if that was the only market buying their machines... Of course, we can't leave out the BILLIONS of people who get paid to watch their machines churn away at RC5, too...
[quote] Yep. Lightwave does render faster on PCs. Of course if you are pro, why not buy a clone pc for $600 bucks and render those scenes at night on it (unless i am wrong 7.5 lightwave lets you take the usb dongle off and install it on a pc and a mac. move that dongle onto the pc at night(yah yah when you are developing its might be a little slower. which is what i stated in my first post.)) if time is money then 3d people should be able to afford that. <hr></blockquote>
Why shouldn't the Mac be able to handle all of it as quickly as a PC? Why should I HAVE to buy a PC just to get the grunt work done? That's kind of pathetic, don't you think?
[quote] replace "lightwave" with "blast" and switch mac and PC in the paragraph above and you can an idea of what some PC guys are going thru now
I think you mean switch "Lightwave, After Effects, ProEngineer, EarthVision, Vulcan, IDL, SPICE, ArcINFO, and a slew of other apps" for "blast"...
[quote] For some that may be true. But my point was that there are plenty of people that if the GP-UL was shipping tommorrow, would still stick with their ibooks. <hr></blockquote>
Are you sure it wasn't a stab at LBB?
[quote] Hopefuilly this time next year we will be argueing over better things like the dumb name of the "GigaMac" <hr></blockquote>
I certainly hope so.
---
Kecksy sez:
[quote] Anyone who's actually used one will tell you these machines are FAST. I got the brief chance to try out a dual 1.25GHz yesterday, and I must say I was impressed. <hr></blockquote>
Tell you what, on that dual 1.25, in a web browser, try loading a long page (like one of the pages in this thread), and then move the thumb of the scrollbar from top to bottom as fast as you can. There's a noticable lag (a fraction of a second), at least there was on the dual gig mirror-door Powermac I tried it on at the Apple store at the Biltmore a couple of days ago. On a dual 867, it's larger, on a 17" iMac it's quite noticable. On my QS733, it's more than a second. On the HP Kayak (800MHz PIII) I use at work, there is no lag. Nor is there one on my Duron 1.1GHz at home. What does this mean? Well, OS X still needs a bit of work, for one thing, but more importantly, Apple's hardware needs a BIG boost.
[quote] It may loose to Intel in some benchmarks, and it may be expensive, but this machine runs incredibly well. How can you call it crap? <hr></blockquote>
Does it run as well as a $3300 PC, though? Hell, for that matter, does it run as well as a $2000 PC, or a $1650 PC?
[quote] I will admit PowerMacs are expensive, but when you pay more you get more. Despite being slower than some PCs, Macs are always more usable. When you buy a Mac, you're paying for a better experience. <hr></blockquote>
The problem is, fewer and fewer people are willing to pay that premium. In the past, Macs at least had comparable performance with top end PCs, even if they did have a price premium. If Apple charges a premium, so be it-- but twice as much for half the performance just doesn't fly with anyone but the hardcore Mac-faithful.
<hr></blockquote>
Why don't you think that's possible? They might not be able to produce a machine at that price point that would provide the full bandwidth a GPUL requires, but they might be able to provide half of it... Look at the nForce chipsets. 3.2GB of bandwidth, and the motherboards cost ~$150. I think it's possible to provide quite a bit more bandwidth than the current G4s have, and still have a low cost machine.
One of the purposes of both HT and RapidIO is to provide massive bandwidth at a low cost... Which ever way Apple goes, it shouldn't be too difficult to provide bandwidth improved over what we've got with the G4.
I mean reading the responses here and you guys are just pathetic. I used to take the effort to respond to criticism but you aren't even worth it anymore.
perhaps that's why AppleInsider is such a sad place anymore with little traffic. Just so many dumb and blind people.
Blast great. enjoy your ****ing blast and sell the couple thousand machines to that market. that'll help.
I just can't get over some of these responses.
2) The Power Mac line sells on, guess what, Power! Apple isn't going to build $1000 Power Macs (in their current form), because "Power" requires $$$. Being faster in somethings isn't good enough. To be worthy of an badge, it needs to beat PCs in what it sells on. In this case, POWER!
3) The ENTIRE Power Mac line sells on power. Therefore the ENTIRE Power Mac line will move to GPUL. The G4 is nice chip for 30m transistors, but it's no 2.8GHz Xeon.
Barto
[ 09-22-2002: Message edited by: Barto ]</p>
This is the very time that Apple *should* be increasing market share. The competition is pretty dull and hasn't innovated anything lately other than more Ghz's. If people are unimpressed by that, then what is holding Apple back from making inroads?
Gigawire connecting a cube with other (CD/DVD, RAID Array, 6xPCI) components that you can stack.
That way Apple doesn't have to spend money on PCI busses, extra ATA buses etc where they don't have to.
Barto
Barto
<strong>Ed M sez:
The problem is, fewer and fewer people are willing to pay that premium. In the past, Macs at least had comparable performance with top end PCs, even if they did have a price premium. If Apple charges a premium, so be it-- but twice as much for half the performance just doesn't fly with anyone but the hardcore Mac-faithful.</strong><hr></blockquote>
What's your point? PowerMacs don't cost twice as much as other high-end PCs and they're not 50% slower. You make it sound worse than it actually is.
Scrolling is slow in OS X because the graphics card isn't being utilized. Do you expect all the nice features of Quartz to come without a performance hit? It's not fair to compare the speed of a second generation GUI like the one found in Windows to a third generation GUI like the one OS X uses. Put Aqua on a PC and scrolling will be just as bad. It isn't as bad as you say either.
Macs aren't significantly slower than PCs. They don't cost twice as much, and they're much nicer to use. Need I compare OS X to Windows XP or even Linux? Both operating systems will be pounded far worse than a PC pounds a Mac performance-wise.
It's not the hardware that makes a good computer. It's the software. You can have the fastest CPU on the planet, but without good software that power is wasted.
OS X at least trys to use all your computer's resources in order to provide a better user experience. Can the argument be made that dock icons don't provide useful feedback or that line resizing is better than live resizing? No. Isn't eye-candy which makes using your computer more pleasant a good thing? Of course it is.
It's not what your computer can do, it's what you can do with your computer. Macs allow you to do much more with far less effort. Today's "overpriced" PowerMacs actually give you more bang for your buck. You'll get more done, and you'll have a fun time doing it. That's why you should pay a premium. Macs are better than PCs.
[ 09-23-2002: Message edited by: Kecksy ]</p>
What I'm trying to say is that people do other things with their Macs that they find useful AND that they find preferable to do on the Mac -- for WHATEVER reason. For you, the fastest PC (this week) is undoubtedly the best thing for your particular field. However, there are fields where the Mac is considered to be more valuable. That's what I was getting at. Don't take it too personally. And you never once brought up the fact that it could very well be something to do with NewTek's code. I NEVER see anyone from NewTek on any of the dev. boards and that's a shame. I'm not a developer, but I lurk quite a bit. And for the record, it's the FSB that's really been holding back the G4. the FSB they are currently using doesn't seem to be up to snuff for the types of things being done in LW. I still think it has a lot to do with LW's common code base though. They wouldn't admit it and Chris Cox hasn't been able to sit down with any NT engineers yet to figure out the problems. They were in fact supposed to collaborate on the optimizations.
[[[Somehow, I don't think they'd be around much longer if that was the only market buying their machines...]]]
You see, it's the same old story... Still predicting Apple's demise. It's played out man. Apple has never been stronger than it is now. It's soooooo amusing to see people *still* saying that they will be out of business -- annnnnnnnny daaaaay nowwwwww. Nearly 30 years later...
[[[Apple's hardware needs a BIG boost. ]]]
For web pages?? I guess it doesn't matter much to me since I can only get 28.8 connects where I'm at. Not everyone is on broadband, and last I heard that market is lagging as well. So, if actual speed is so important, why isn't everyone jumping on broadband? Perhaps because what they have now (dialup?) is good enough and fast enough? Clearly there is a definite reason to go with broadband *if* speed is your concern - and you think it that cas it would be, but broadband has been a big disappointment so far. People just don't believe in spending the $$ even when there is a noticeable difference in browsing speed. Go figure.
[[[If Apple charges a premium, so be it-- but twice as much for half the performance just doesn't fly with anyone but the hardcore Mac-faithful. ]]]
My point is that there must be a hell of a lot of Mac-faithful out there. Again, no one is buying any of the ultra-fast PCs (this week). There is nothing to stimulate any of the sales. Yet Apple is still profitable.
[[[Ed M., I guess I don't understand the point that I think you were making about Apple not being bad-off because the whole PC business is in such a bad state. If PC's really aren't selling as you suggested, then this is an even bigger indictment for Apple since market share continues to decline (I think).\t]]]
This is wrong. Market share numbers are VERY misleading. As long as apple is selling machines, their USER base is growing and that's what's important. You sound like yet another person calling for Apple's demise. Hasn't that fantasy been dispelled yet? How many more PC mergers is it going to take before people realize that it's more likely that a major PC company will go belly up (read Compaq) before Apple will. Shesh! Apple doesn't compete directly with the major "Windoze Repackagers" like Dell and Gateway (on their last leg). There is NOTHING to differentiate the PC OEMs other than a sticker on the side of the case.
\t
[[[This is the very time that Apple *should* be increasing market share. The competition is pretty dull and hasn't innovated anything lately other than more Ghz's. If people are unimpressed by that, then what is holding Apple back from making inroads? ]]]
Nothing. they are selling machines and their user base continues to climb. And let's not forget all the potential sales that are out there. There are a LOT of people just waiting, holding their money back for a reason to upgrade to a new Mac. It's just a matter of time.
--
Ed
[quote]<strong>Tell you what, on that dual 1.25, in a web browser, try loading a long page (like one of the pages in this thread), and then move the thumb of the scrollbar from top to bottom as fast as you can. There's a noticable lag (a fraction of a second), at least there was on the dual gig mirror-door Powermac I tried it on at the Apple store at the Biltmore a couple of days ago. On a dual 867, it's larger, on a 17" iMac it's quite noticable. On my QS733, it's more than a second. On the HP Kayak (800MHz PIII) I use at work, there is no lag. Nor is there one on my Duron 1.1GHz at home. What does this mean? Well, OS X still needs a bit of work, for one thing, but more importantly, Apple's hardware needs a BIG boost.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That wasn't IE for Mac vs. IE for Windows, was it?
IE for Mac is a crap Carbon port that leaks memory like a sieve. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if it's been sabotaged to run poorly.
Apple would have to offer hardware ten times faster than PCs before MS applications ran as quickly as they do on Windows. That's not Apple's fault, it's Microsoft's.
Anyway, all scrolling speed establishes is whether or not the display layer uses the video chipset's 2D acceleration. Windows does. OS 9 does. OS X doesn't. Scrolling speed is not in any way, shape or form an indication of the computational power of the machine. Nor, for that matter, is a Microsoft app.
The PowerMacs aren't the fastest things on the market, but they're <a href="http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=001531"; target="_blank">competitive speedwise</a>, and they offer a lot of advantages besides raw power.
None of this has anything to do with the topic of the thread, of course, except that GPUL won't help Explorer scroll through web pages any faster, either. But when Apple finds a way to get the other half of Quartz accelerated on video hardware, look out.
[quote]<strong>Why don't you think that's possible? They might not be able to produce a machine at that price point that would provide the full bandwidth a GPUL requires, but they might be able to provide half of it... Look at the nForce chipsets. 3.2GB of bandwidth, and the motherboards cost ~$150. I think it's possible to provide quite a bit more bandwidth than the current G4s have, and still have a low cost machine.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's almost exactly what I said in the post you quoted: I doubt that Apple can produce a workstation-class (not price!) machine for $1500. But I'm guessing they could put a GPUL in a PC-class motherboard for that. PC-class motherboards will be moving to RIO and HT in the near future. But they've always been starved for bandwidth because bandwidth isn't cheap; RIO and HT will ameliorate that considerably, and bring things like fabrics down into sane price ranges for the first time; but a CPU as powerful as the one this thread is discussing will probably spend a lot of its time twiddling its thumbs. The G4 already does.
[ 09-23-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]
[ 09-23-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>