My first impressions (with all due respect to Applenut) regarding Panther:
This was very impressive! This was a DEVELOPER's conference remember...and it was advertised to be about PANTHER, not G5's.
The new, integrated subApps I think are incredible and much more than the "genie effect" stuff that made us "ooh and aah" when QExtreme first came out. Now the QE promises are beginning to be realized in Expose and other optimizations that we won't notice until we have it in our hands. QE is now becoming a teenager and has all the makings for a successful adulthood far into the future. Those who don't feel this, I think, are taking a very jaded and narrow view of the technology.
Expose itself I think is so very cool and guess what? All the nidgets who worried about tiny Dock images of all of their windows suddenly have an elegant way of navigating docs that Windows can't duplicate. This is BIG for the creative crowd and is something that in the past we would only expect from 3rd party hacks. So if anyone has problems with OSX navigation now, I think it is time to get over bad habits.
Xcode looks to be a winner from the POV of a non-developer....and remember this is all sitting on the CD everyone gets...not to mention X11 and Apache and their friends!
The new Finder is, in my estimation, MUCH better (again with all due respect to his Applenuttiness). The move of the "favorites" bar from the top to the left is not just a smoke and mirrors change for the sake of change.
First in regards to the Finder, many have complained about the losing vertical real estate in the era of widescreen displays. Problem addressed, though the graphite up there still takes up some pixels!
Second, when you move the drives and faves to the left you now have a whole column to add as many icons and (eventually I believe) smart folder as you may want in a more vertical and elegant way. You can't do that with those things on a horizontal bar.
Third, the slow convergent evolution of the Finder, iTunes, iPhoto, iEtc. windows is a GREAT thing. It makes it intuitive and easy to go from one iApp to another and not have to hunt around ('a la Windowsland) to figure out where everything will be. I now can predict the basic layout of every iApp that Apple will come up with far into the future. Don't think that is insignificant to DEVELOPERS as well as my grandmother!
Fourth, we now see that the inconsistent convention of stripes vs. brushed metal for apps vs. Finder vs. utilities, etc. now has been given a unified theory. That theory states that "All things you need to deal with on your digital hub will be the same (THEMEABLE??), consistent, innocuous (as in, non-disruptive throbbing blue icons to the DEVELOPERS and creative-types) windows look and functionality." That means there is no arbitrary thematic differences between iApps, Finder and other "basic" programs. THAT is what I see as being "user-centric" vs. "application-centric."
Fast User Switching, is another very cool piece. It is simple and convenient! In my mind it not only makes the OS perfect for many home and office environments in a very elegant way, but it puts me back to going to that upper right hand icon that I used to use for application switching all of the time. That nostalgia aside, I love the Keynote-like transition. I also think it takes care of one of the biggest desires for the AI "prosumer" crowd - an effective implementation of virtual desktops. I don't really know much about them, but I can see giving myself all sorts of individualised "users" for myself, complete with different backgrounds and docks full of specific apps and files!!!! Do you GET IT?!?!? This takes care of much of the anti-dock whining that has been going on!!! This might just be my favorite, most time-saving change in the whole OS!
FileVault is only ho-hum to people who haven't lost their iBook! 'Nuff said.
Mail, which I don't use, now becomes an effective tool with quick and efficient thread reviewing. That is very big to me and to DEVELOPERS....are you getting the DEVELOPERS trend here?!
Preview improvements are actually impressive as well since I hope that pdf's will become as transparent as html is now.
iChat AVI am not a big IM person and I don't know about whether I will be comfortable with this, but I do believe that it changed the way people communicated at Apple when they were testing it and I can see that basically free, automatic, no-configuring videophoning 'a la 2001: A Space Odysseymay be a killer iApp for many people!! And, BTW, if you check on the specs of the iSight, I think you'll find it a respectable price. Just like the iPod, you have to hit a certain critical mass of quality before people jump into it whole hog!
The other OS improvements as far as I can tell are serviceable upgrades.
And THAT is merely about a BETA of PANTHER. So heck yah I'm happy!!
Again, I respect Applenut-case's opinions and I know there are reasons to be disappointed and everyone has pet projects that may not have come by this time around, but all this whining about the lower-end G5 and "Oh, sob, where are the 15.4inch PB's" make me just a little annoyed. Have you not heard of Seybold? NY? Random media events??? Cripes!!
Maybe later (when I get the work done that I was supposed to do today) I'll write about why I think that the G5 is just the first step on a pretty dang cool yellow brick road ... but for now I gotta earn money for what I think will be a great November for buying a 12" PowerBook!!
All I can say is I almost sprayed my shorts when I saw the official G5 pages / details on Apple's site ... and then realized the price for the D2GHz was *gasp* reasonable.
Macgregor, great point about the Fast User Switching
------------V I R T U A L D E S K T O P S!!------------------------
user: webgraphics
user: pictures
user: audio
user: video....come on!
Exposé looks sweet! Managing multiple files will be MUCH easier.
I love Panther man, I can't wait to get my hands on that feline.
iChat/iSight could be very useful in the corporate world too. iSight, as easy as it seems to get working(the features such as autoexposure, focusing and the noise suppresing mic could be huge with families who want to video chat while saving $$ on long distance.
I think Apple hit a triple that missed going over the wall by less than a foot....with the best clutch hitter in the league on deck. The enclosure is awesome. It looks professional, clean and mean at the same time. It's a GREAT day for Apple. I think the homerun would have been lower end G5 prices...a bit unrealistic given the fact that there are PowerMac G4s in the channels and iMacs. Had the 1.6 G5 been 1499 or so, what would happen to the prices of the G4s PMs/iMacs? Let's be realistic.(of course I would LOVE for the prices to be $1499/$1899/$2499).
It's the first wave of G5s....prices will go down. If the roadmap towards 3GHz G5s WITHIN 12 months holds, these v.1 puppies will be MUCH cheaper with the first speed bump in 6 months.
1.6 to 2, 1.8 to 2.2, 2 to 2.5?? mmmmm....get excited people!
I'm not too crazy about the metal interface spreading. The new Finder menus do make sense, but I'd rather have an option allowing regular aqua windows.
If Apple isnt going to release Panther till latttteee this year, perhaps we will see some surprise features. In addition, perhaps the 100 new features, albeit small will improve the user experience more than the major features. Ah, the little things in life
The G5 -
I am impressed considering that we live in reality, not dreams. They arnt as cheap as we may want, but new technology is always more expensive. With an educational discount and sans the superdrive, it is a much more tolerable $1699.
The design is not too appealing, but it looks like Apple didnt have much choice or freedom, these are hot machines and have to be "Windtunnels" in order not to melt :P With this new cooling technique the open door system cannot be used. It is unfortunate, but it's not like I install things every five days.
I can only speak for myself on expandability. I got a G4/400 because I wanted expadability, it turns out in reality that I have only upgraded the RAM and graphics card, perhaps the hard drive later on. I have never used the PCI slots, but perhaps later on if I ever need to install USB 2.0 So if I got the new tower, expandability wouldnt be an issue.
Summing up:
Panther - looks Good, just do away with brush metal :P
G5 -
Price: Not too bad with edu. discount and no superdrive
Design: Fugly, but I dont want to be pretty and melt
Has anyone mentioned that the brushed metal in Panther seems to reflect the use of brushed metal in the hardware? I remember that by the time Puma came out, people were pointing out that the pinstripesin Aqua were out of date. Just an observation. Personally, I kind of like the metal, but I like it the "brushed" texture more subdued. It's a lot better than when it started (I wish .Mac web pages would lose the QT 4 look), but it could still be tweaked a bit.
For those of you who don't know, the "Jean Marie Hulot" during the iChat AV demo wasn't some stranger off the street or some anonymous friend of Steve Jobs. Jean Marie Hulot is essentially the father of Interface Builder. He wrote the original Interface Builder for NEXTSTEP in the 1980s. Don't know what his role in Apple is though, if any, but it was nice to see him pop up.
PowerMac G5: Nice. Nice architecture, nice CPU, nice industrial design, but ok pricing. Dual 2 GHz is a good deal. Single 1.6 GHz is ok, maybe $200 overpriced. Love the thermal and airflow design. System ASIC is cool and excellent design. AltiVec made app benchmarks 2x faster than x86 chips. It's not called Xmac.
Jaguar 10.2.7: This update supports 4+ GB of RAM? And apps only can have 4 GB of addressable memory. I wonder what Apple did here.
PowerMac G4: Nice reduction. Around $500 less than pre-WWDC for an equivalent machine.
iSight: Want one. Will pay $150 gladly. If only I had someone to chat with though. Everyone else in my family is computer illiterate.
Panther: Is this thing 64 bit? No mention. Otherwise excellent.
Expose: Wow! Genius UI window management tool.
Xcode: Not a developer, but sounds like developers will be happy with it.
Brush Metal: The more the better. I like brush metal a lot.
iChat AV: Cool. Wish it would support other IM protocols though.
he'll sell as many as possible right now as it is.
the mention was to give developers and customers some faith that we wouldn't be locked into the moto no-upgrade cycle for a while.
this mention will actually help sales (i.e. not being locked into a dead-end product)
You are right Jobs said that the new powermacs have a future : he give almost a roadmap. Coming from Jobs and his culture of secret, this is a major turn in his communication strategy. Like Intel or AMD, apple is starting to talk about the future.
It was easy to understand thas such a strategy was almost impossible in the time of Moto ...
So there will be both 32 bit and 64 bit versions? The 32 bit versions would be for all machines except for the PMG5. I found it strange that there has been absolutely no direct mention that Panther is 64 bit. There was mention of turning 32 bit apps into 64 bit apps, so indirectly, Panther has to have a 64 bit version...
Curious to know what the mainstream public reaction is. Or even the PC rags.
Apple has never had to preach to the converted Machead here. Even though we're a tough crowd too.
Are PC websites going to dis this G5 as just a 2Ghz machine that still fall behind their 3.2 P4? Can they honestly justify this or was Jobs' cooking up some optimistic numbers?
It was easy to understand thas such a strategy was almost impossible in the time of Moto ...
It was impossible because we, they, had know idea if and when Moto would move to the next generation process. Those 130 nm 7457 CPUs are desperately needed for Apple laptops, but Moto is so so late with them. But with IBM, all signs seem to say they will ramp up their 90 nm fab in 2H 04. Once a 970+ is fabbed at 90 nm, clock rates should increase by 50% at least.
If Moto was able to ship 7457 CPUs to Apple in June, Apple could be shipping 1 GHz to 1.6 GHz Powerbooks in September. A 17" dual 1.3 GHz is even possible. iBooks can also be upgraded to 1-1.2 GHz 7457 CPUs, without backside cache of course. If only IBM also had an 8 stages deep PPC 750 with AltiVec also in the works.
Are PC websites going to dis this G5 as just a 2Ghz machine that still fall behind their 3.2 P4? Can they honestly justify this or was Jobs' cooking up some optimistic numbers?
I would say that Jobs is being overly optimistic with his "fastest personal computer" thing. My guess is that PC sites are going to take the stance that by the time the G5 is shipped (Sept. 1 now?), that dual 3.06 Dell he was using isn't going to be the fastest anymore. On top of that they will probably harp on the fact that a single G5 (fastest) is still beat by a single P4 (fastest), at least in int operations. I also read somewhere that those int and fp specs Jobs was using aren't very accurate, because there's a much better compiler on the windows platform, that gives them much higher int and fp numbers? I don't really know what any of that actually means, so if I got some of it wrong, feel free to correct me!
I think Jobs had a little voodoo worked on the spec numbers. But SPEC, to me, is neither here nor there. Timed tests are the only thing that matters. It's the package that counts, not the SPEC.
I think that if you put a G5 head to head with a PC of the same price, in the same app for each respective platform, the G5 does some serious ass kicking.
This is still workstation and not desktop level performance we're talkin' now. Apple needs a headless machine for the rest of us, soon.
Either sell that single G4 1.25 for 999, drop in a superdrive for the 1299 price, or drop the dual 1.25 down to 1299.
It looks like the higher levels of the VM object management haven't been touched so everything is identical as far as an application is concerned--access to a 32-bit 4GB address space. It's possible they only needed to make the kernel and the default pager (which handles most of the VM swapping work for the VM object) aware of the total available physical memory. The vnode pager (which pulls in file-mapped memory) could also be left alone as it is really only concerned with a page request at a time.
So, the kernel and the pager are 64 bit? What is it you mean by "aware"? The kernel and parts of VM system have to be able to "holisticaly" address 8 GB of memory, yes. If they don't have at least a 33 bit integer, there won't be enough ints to address all the bits of memory.
Comments
This was very impressive! This was a DEVELOPER's conference remember...and it was advertised to be about PANTHER, not G5's.
The new, integrated subApps I think are incredible and much more than the "genie effect" stuff that made us "ooh and aah" when QExtreme first came out. Now the QE promises are beginning to be realized in Expose and other optimizations that we won't notice until we have it in our hands. QE is now becoming a teenager and has all the makings for a successful adulthood far into the future. Those who don't feel this, I think, are taking a very jaded and narrow view of the technology.
Expose itself I think is so very cool and guess what? All the nidgets who worried about tiny Dock images of all of their windows suddenly have an elegant way of navigating docs that Windows can't duplicate. This is BIG for the creative crowd and is something that in the past we would only expect from 3rd party hacks. So if anyone has problems with OSX navigation now, I think it is time to get over bad habits.
Xcode looks to be a winner from the POV of a non-developer....and remember this is all sitting on the CD everyone gets...not to mention X11 and Apache and their friends!
The new Finder is, in my estimation, MUCH better (again with all due respect to his Applenuttiness). The move of the "favorites" bar from the top to the left is not just a smoke and mirrors change for the sake of change.
First in regards to the Finder, many have complained about the losing vertical real estate in the era of widescreen displays. Problem addressed, though the graphite up there still takes up some pixels!
Second, when you move the drives and faves to the left you now have a whole column to add as many icons and (eventually I believe) smart folder as you may want in a more vertical and elegant way. You can't do that with those things on a horizontal bar.
Third, the slow convergent evolution of the Finder, iTunes, iPhoto, iEtc. windows is a GREAT thing. It makes it intuitive and easy to go from one iApp to another and not have to hunt around ('a la Windowsland) to figure out where everything will be. I now can predict the basic layout of every iApp that Apple will come up with far into the future. Don't think that is insignificant to DEVELOPERS as well as my grandmother!
Fourth, we now see that the inconsistent convention of stripes vs. brushed metal for apps vs. Finder vs. utilities, etc. now has been given a unified theory. That theory states that "All things you need to deal with on your digital hub will be the same (THEMEABLE??), consistent, innocuous (as in, non-disruptive throbbing blue icons to the DEVELOPERS and creative-types) windows look and functionality." That means there is no arbitrary thematic differences between iApps, Finder and other "basic" programs. THAT is what I see as being "user-centric" vs. "application-centric."
Fast User Switching, is another very cool piece. It is simple and convenient! In my mind it not only makes the OS perfect for many home and office environments in a very elegant way, but it puts me back to going to that upper right hand icon that I used to use for application switching all of the time. That nostalgia aside, I love the Keynote-like transition. I also think it takes care of one of the biggest desires for the AI "prosumer" crowd - an effective implementation of virtual desktops. I don't really know much about them, but I can see giving myself all sorts of individualised "users" for myself, complete with different backgrounds and docks full of specific apps and files!!!! Do you GET IT?!?!? This takes care of much of the anti-dock whining that has been going on!!! This might just be my favorite, most time-saving change in the whole OS!
FileVault is only ho-hum to people who haven't lost their iBook! 'Nuff said.
Mail, which I don't use, now becomes an effective tool with quick and efficient thread reviewing. That is very big to me and to DEVELOPERS....are you getting the DEVELOPERS trend here?!
Preview improvements are actually impressive as well since I hope that pdf's will become as transparent as html is now.
iChat AVI am not a big IM person and I don't know about whether I will be comfortable with this, but I do believe that it changed the way people communicated at Apple when they were testing it and I can see that basically free, automatic, no-configuring videophoning 'a la 2001: A Space Odysseymay be a killer iApp for many people!! And, BTW, if you check on the specs of the iSight, I think you'll find it a respectable price. Just like the iPod, you have to hit a certain critical mass of quality before people jump into it whole hog!
The other OS improvements as far as I can tell are serviceable upgrades.
And THAT is merely about a BETA of PANTHER. So heck yah I'm happy!!
Again, I respect Applenut-case's opinions and I know there are reasons to be disappointed and everyone has pet projects that may not have come by this time around, but all this whining about the lower-end G5 and "Oh, sob, where are the 15.4inch PB's" make me just a little annoyed. Have you not heard of Seybold? NY? Random media events??? Cripes!!
Maybe later (when I get the work done that I was supposed to do today) I'll write about why I think that the G5 is just the first step on a pretty dang cool yellow brick road ... but for now I gotta earn money for what I think will be a great November for buying a 12" PowerBook!!
I am gonna OWNZ ona DEEZ.
Bill, all your Xeonz are belong to dumpster!
------------V I R T U A L D E S K T O P S!!------------------------
user: webgraphics
user: pictures
user: audio
user: video....come on!
Exposé looks sweet! Managing multiple files will be MUCH easier.
I love Panther man, I can't wait to get my hands on that feline.
iChat/iSight could be very useful in the corporate world too. iSight, as easy as it seems to get working(the features such as autoexposure, focusing and the noise suppresing mic could be huge with families who want to video chat while saving $$ on long distance.
I think Apple hit a triple that missed going over the wall by less than a foot....with the best clutch hitter in the league on deck. The enclosure is awesome. It looks professional, clean and mean at the same time. It's a GREAT day for Apple. I think the homerun would have been lower end G5 prices...a bit unrealistic given the fact that there are PowerMac G4s in the channels and iMacs. Had the 1.6 G5 been 1499 or so, what would happen to the prices of the G4s PMs/iMacs? Let's be realistic.(of course I would LOVE for the prices to be $1499/$1899/$2499).
It's the first wave of G5s....prices will go down. If the roadmap towards 3GHz G5s WITHIN 12 months holds, these v.1 puppies will be MUCH cheaper with the first speed bump in 6 months.
1.6 to 2, 1.8 to 2.2, 2 to 2.5?? mmmmm....get excited people!
Panther -
I'm not too crazy about the metal interface spreading. The new Finder menus do make sense, but I'd rather have an option allowing regular aqua windows.
I suggest instead of complaining to ourselves, we give feedback to Apple: http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback
If Apple isnt going to release Panther till latttteee this year, perhaps we will see some surprise features. In addition, perhaps the 100 new features, albeit small will improve the user experience more than the major features. Ah, the little things in life
The G5 -
I am impressed considering that we live in reality, not dreams. They arnt as cheap as we may want, but new technology is always more expensive. With an educational discount and sans the superdrive, it is a much more tolerable $1699.
The design is not too appealing, but it looks like Apple didnt have much choice or freedom, these are hot machines and have to be "Windtunnels" in order not to melt :P With this new cooling technique the open door system cannot be used. It is unfortunate, but it's not like I install things every five days.
I can only speak for myself on expandability. I got a G4/400 because I wanted expadability, it turns out in reality that I have only upgraded the RAM and graphics card, perhaps the hard drive later on. I have never used the PCI slots, but perhaps later on if I ever need to install USB 2.0 So if I got the new tower, expandability wouldnt be an issue.
Summing up:
Panther - looks Good, just do away with brush metal :P
G5 -
Price: Not too bad with edu. discount and no superdrive
Design: Fugly, but I dont want to be pretty and melt
Expandability: Expands to what I need it to do
Performance: No comment needed
Matt
PowerMac G5: Nice. Nice architecture, nice CPU, nice industrial design, but ok pricing. Dual 2 GHz is a good deal. Single 1.6 GHz is ok, maybe $200 overpriced. Love the thermal and airflow design. System ASIC is cool and excellent design. AltiVec made app benchmarks 2x faster than x86 chips. It's not called Xmac.
Jaguar 10.2.7: This update supports 4+ GB of RAM? And apps only can have 4 GB of addressable memory. I wonder what Apple did here.
PowerMac G4: Nice reduction. Around $500 less than pre-WWDC for an equivalent machine.
iSight: Want one. Will pay $150 gladly. If only I had someone to chat with though. Everyone else in my family is computer illiterate.
Panther: Is this thing 64 bit? No mention. Otherwise excellent.
Expose: Wow! Genius UI window management tool.
Xcode: Not a developer, but sounds like developers will be happy with it.
Brush Metal: The more the better. I like brush metal a lot.
iChat AV: Cool. Wish it would support other IM protocols though.
posted by THT
My reactions.
Panther: Is this thing 64 bit? No mention. Otherwise excellent.
------------------------------------------
Yes Panther is 64 Bit.
Originally posted by Anders
Why did Jobs mention the 3 ghz 970? Doesn´t he want to sell all the 1st gen he can?
he'll sell as many as possible right now as it is.
the mention was to give developers and customers some faith that we wouldn't be locked into the moto no-upgrade cycle for a while.
this mention will actually help sales (i.e. not being locked into a dead-end product)
Originally posted by pesi
he'll sell as many as possible right now as it is.
the mention was to give developers and customers some faith that we wouldn't be locked into the moto no-upgrade cycle for a while.
this mention will actually help sales (i.e. not being locked into a dead-end product)
You are right Jobs said that the new powermacs have a future : he give almost a roadmap. Coming from Jobs and his culture of secret, this is a major turn in his communication strategy. Like Intel or AMD, apple is starting to talk about the future.
It was easy to understand thas such a strategy was almost impossible in the time of Moto ...
Originally posted by kcgil
Yes Panther is 64 Bit.
So there will be both 32 bit and 64 bit versions? The 32 bit versions would be for all machines except for the PMG5. I found it strange that there has been absolutely no direct mention that Panther is 64 bit. There was mention of turning 32 bit apps into 64 bit apps, so indirectly, Panther has to have a 64 bit version...
Apple has never had to preach to the converted Machead here. Even though we're a tough crowd too.
Are PC websites going to dis this G5 as just a 2Ghz machine that still fall behind their 3.2 P4? Can they honestly justify this or was Jobs' cooking up some optimistic numbers?
Originally posted by Powerdoc
It was easy to understand thas such a strategy was almost impossible in the time of Moto ...
It was impossible because we, they, had know idea if and when Moto would move to the next generation process. Those 130 nm 7457 CPUs are desperately needed for Apple laptops, but Moto is so so late with them. But with IBM, all signs seem to say they will ramp up their 90 nm fab in 2H 04. Once a 970+ is fabbed at 90 nm, clock rates should increase by 50% at least.
If Moto was able to ship 7457 CPUs to Apple in June, Apple could be shipping 1 GHz to 1.6 GHz Powerbooks in September. A 17" dual 1.3 GHz is even possible. iBooks can also be upgraded to 1-1.2 GHz 7457 CPUs, without backside cache of course. If only IBM also had an 8 stages deep PPC 750 with AltiVec also in the works.
Are PC websites going to dis this G5 as just a 2Ghz machine that still fall behind their 3.2 P4? Can they honestly justify this or was Jobs' cooking up some optimistic numbers?
I would say that Jobs is being overly optimistic with his "fastest personal computer" thing. My guess is that PC sites are going to take the stance that by the time the G5 is shipped (Sept. 1 now?), that dual 3.06 Dell he was using isn't going to be the fastest anymore. On top of that they will probably harp on the fact that a single G5 (fastest) is still beat by a single P4 (fastest), at least in int operations. I also read somewhere that those int and fp specs Jobs was using aren't very accurate, because there's a much better compiler on the windows platform, that gives them much higher int and fp numbers? I don't really know what any of that actually means, so if I got some of it wrong, feel free to correct me!
I think that if you put a G5 head to head with a PC of the same price, in the same app for each respective platform, the G5 does some serious ass kicking.
This is still workstation and not desktop level performance we're talkin' now. Apple needs a headless machine for the rest of us, soon.
Either sell that single G4 1.25 for 999, drop in a superdrive for the 1299 price, or drop the dual 1.25 down to 1299.
Originally posted by AirSluf
It looks like the higher levels of the VM object management haven't been touched so everything is identical as far as an application is concerned--access to a 32-bit 4GB address space. It's possible they only needed to make the kernel and the default pager (which handles most of the VM swapping work for the VM object) aware of the total available physical memory. The vnode pager (which pulls in file-mapped memory) could also be left alone as it is really only concerned with a page request at a time.
So, the kernel and the pager are 64 bit? What is it you mean by "aware"? The kernel and parts of VM system have to be able to "holisticaly" address 8 GB of memory, yes. If they don't have at least a 33 bit integer, there won't be enough ints to address all the bits of memory.