In all honesty, I think it's about time for a new keyboard / mouse thread. The mouse not so much, but definitely a KB. We have no extra buttons (cept f keys, which I already use), no zero degree tilt, and the current keyboards out for mac pretty much suck. I'll start a new thread if I want to complain more
The sad thing is, OpenGL has such great potential to be great. There are very nice libraries out there for it. If the community would quit arguing what should be included in the next release, I think we'd be further along. Unfortunately for apple a lot of this rests on the communities shoulders. Though I imagine that if apple was an active member in the community, there would be a better push for it. They are a member, but from what I've seen, not too active.
Part of the problem is an open standard by it's stated design process cannot move faster than a proprietary standard owned and furthered by a single entity. Period. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
The open standard always moves slower because there is great gnashing of teeth and specs by varying economic stakeholders when the ARB gets together to decide what becomes part of the standard and what doesn't. The proprietary standard product producer just puts out APIs.
Over the true long term though, the open standard almost always wins because the proprietary standard dies on the vine for some reason or another. The open standard survives because no one company can jettison it out the airlock and several products jointly subscribe to implementing it in a semi-competitive manner. Hey to become an ISO standard in the first place there have to be 2 competing full implementations shipping.
It is getting to a point that the slower moving open standards (OGL, OAL, OpenTNL and others) are collectively closing the gap to DX because there is only so much functionality that you can use routinely -- the rest is just bloat. There is only so much frivolity Ati and nVidea will put up with. The freakish rate of change in the DX D3D component is costing them a bundle to keep up with when they could be spending resources grabbing physics/sound markets and optimizing the graphics pipeline rather than just throwing more transistors at the problem and hoping to keep up.
I happy that Apple isn't trying to lead the way in OpenGL, that's not their gig. Let the remains of SGI work with ATi and nVidea to define the paper standard. But with Apple on the board they get all the inside scoop to be able to code into their implementation. Up until 10.4 or so Apple had too much on it's plate to do everything and mistakenly thought of OpenGL and OpenAL as game technologies. Now they have it right, look at Core Graphics, Gargeband and Shake. There are the vanguard apps that show Apple actually has figured out that OGL and OAL are not toy game technologies, but industrial strength standards to leverage against. For about $15K a year to sit on the board they get what MS has to pay a few million in DX dev costs to derive. Before it gets coded in the OS.
In all honesty, I think it's about time for a new keyboard / mouse thread. The mouse not so much, but definitely a KB. We have no extra buttons (cept f keys, which I already use), no zero degree tilt, and the current keyboards out for mac pretty much suck. I'll start a new thread if I want to complain more
Is there anything wrong with using a Windows keyboard? That's what I'm doing. The media keys and such on the Logitech Bluetooth cordless desktop that I have work fine, and I didn't install any drivers.
Probably because leopard is supposedly more intense on the card ... ie more animations (core animation), more transparencies (quick preview, spaces, time machine), etc.
I seriously doubt that, this isn't Vista. Leopard will need to support graphics cards with much less capable technology than Intel GMA.
Quote:
because the current macbook has a bad integrated video card...
This false information continues as though most people can tell the difference.
I seriously doubt that, this isn't Vista. Leopard will need to support graphics cards with much less capable technology than Intel GMA.
This false information continues as though most people can tell the difference.
Apparently you didn't attend any of the leopard talks. Apple is doing a big push for Core Animation for products shipping in 2007 and 2008 with the developers. At the portland leopard talk we were advised that Core Animation does use the card, and if the card doesn't support it, then it will be offloaded to the cpu. That is how they support the future technology of it. Which isn't efficient at all. More and more will be offloaded to the GPU in the future. NVidia recently came out with a new compiler that supports offloading math functions to the GPU.
True this isn't Vista (apple is smarter than M$ to release bloated un-optimized), but that doesn't mean that the GPU won't be used more and more every year. Leopard is a good sign of that, especially with Core Animation. In it's current state most of the demo's used 10-20% of the GPU. Keep in mind these are simple animations. The future is wide open.
Is there anything wrong with using a Windows keyboard? That's what I'm doing. The media keys and such on the Logitech Bluetooth cordless desktop that I have work fine, and I didn't install any drivers.
Actually, yah.
First off unless there are specific drivers for it or an apple key. You may be screwed for using keys during start-up. IE no option, no option-cmd-r-p, no cmd-option-shift-delete, and most importantly no cmd-s and cmd-x. In some very few kbs, the opt and cmd keys are swapped via layout. But will be recognized. Only problem is i'm used to the cmd key being next to the space bar. Where is your cmd key jeff?
I use cmd-s on a bi-weekly basis. I'm not about to bust out my apple keyboard every time I need to do this. Fortunately for me I purchased 5 Logitech Elite keyboards from justdeals.com for $5 each before they ran out. So I'm covered on the kb department for another 7-12 months. After that I don't know.
The current KB has been out since the original eMac debut. The last good apple pro keyboard with adjustable height was Mirror door g4s?
Does anyone know if there is a utility to allow the windows key to be a cmd key in os x?
First off unless there are specific drivers for it or an apple key. You may be screwed for using keys during start-up. IE no option, no option-cmd-r-p, no cmd-option-shift-delete, and most importantly no cmd-s and cmd-x. In some very few kbs, the opt and cmd keys are swapped via layout. But will be recognized. Only problem is i'm used to the cmd key being next to the space bar. Where is your cmd key jeff?
I use cmd-s on a bi-weekly basis. I'm not about to bust out my apple keyboard every time I need to do this. Fortunately for me I purchased 5 Logitech Elite keyboards from justdeals.com for $5 each before they ran out. So I'm covered on the kb department for another 7-12 months. After that I don't know.
The current KB has been out since the original eMac debut. The last good apple pro keyboard with adjustable height was Mirror door g4s?
Does anyone know if there is a utility to allow the windows key to be a cmd key in os x?
Part of the problem is an open standard by it's stated design process cannot move faster than a proprietary standard owned and furthered by a single entity. Period. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
The open standard always moves slower because there is great gnashing of teeth and specs by varying economic stakeholders when the ARB gets together to decide what becomes part of the standard and what doesn't. The proprietary standard product producer just puts out APIs.
Over the true long term though, the open standard almost always wins because the proprietary standard dies on the vine for some reason or another. The open standard survives because no one company can jettison it out the airlock and several products jointly subscribe to implementing it in a semi-competitive manner. Hey to become an ISO standard in the first place there have to be 2 competing full implementations shipping.
It is getting to a point that the slower moving open standards (OGL, OAL, OpenTNL and others) are collectively closing the gap to DX because there is only so much functionality that you can use routinely -- the rest is just bloat. There is only so much frivolity Ati and nVidea will put up with. The freakish rate of change in the DX D3D component is costing them a bundle to keep up with when they could be spending resources grabbing physics/sound markets and optimizing the graphics pipeline rather than just throwing more transistors at the problem and hoping to keep up.
I happy that Apple isn't trying to lead the way in OpenGL, that's not their gig. Let the remains of SGI work with ATi and nVidea to define the paper standard. But with Apple on the board they get all the inside scoop to be able to code into their implementation. Up until 10.4 or so Apple had too much on it's plate to do everything and mistakenly thought of OpenGL and OpenAL as game technologies. Now they have it right, look at Core Graphics, Gargeband and Shake. There are the vanguard apps that show Apple actually has figured out that OGL and OAL are not toy game technologies, but industrial strength standards to leverage against. For about $15K a year to sit on the board they get what MS has to pay a few million in DX dev costs to derive. Before it gets coded in the OS.
This is an insightful post.
Looking at it that way. It actually reflects alot of Apple's new 'open' (as opposed to 'not invented here') philosophy regarding Os X and Safari and...
They're able to move quicker by using common standards and either incorporating them...or building on top of them...
They get to get the lastest tech' much cheaper...what isn't open or good enough they can aquire like multi-touch tech'.
It seems to make Apple a leaner, more wisened/learned and quicker operation than M$.
And Apple's outflanking M$ in OS development over the last 7 years seems to prove that it works.
ie if Direct X has a slight lead...it won't be long before the collective weight of an Open GL review board catches up. Meanwhile, Open GL is far from a disaster. Many 3D apps use this standard and I always thought the original Unreal Tourny looked better in Open GL then it did in Direct X.
What's more interesting to me...is the fact that Appleinsider(?) ran an article a while back stating that the 'home' of Open GL had move to a company for graphic mobile standards (link anyone?)
Consider: Open GL on iPhone. On the next gen iPod. ie that's Mac Os X on an iPhone. Open Gl/Core Animation. You have a robust Graphics API on an iPhone.
That's a very big potential gaming/graphics market right there. Bigger than the PC and Console market put together...! If Apple only(!) sell 10 million in their 1st...year...along with all the next gen iPods...
Im worried for AMD, I've been a fanboi for a while, rooting for the underdog, but this is another setback for them in 2007, I hope by the end of summer, the Barcelona and X2800 put them back on top, because they must be really hurting about now.
At the portland leopard talk we were advised that Core Animation does use the card, and if the card doesn't support it, then it will be offloaded to the cpu. That is how they support the future technology of it.
That's all well and fine but you can't only point the dirty end of the stick at Intel GMA simply because its integrated, when it supports technology that older dedicated GPU's don't. At least MacBooks have Duo Core CPU. Leopard will still need to work on older computers that have less capable GPU's and older single CPU's.
That's all well and fine but you can't only point the dirty end of the stick at Intel GMA simply because its integrated, when it supports technology that older dedicated GPU's don't. At least MacBooks have Duo Core CPU. Leopard will still need to work on older computers that have less capable GPU's and older single CPU's.
The current impression I get is that G3 machines won't be supported by Leopard. At least I read that the development builds prevent installation. Core animation doesn't look to be necessarily as demanding as Core Image/Video. Those features required programmable shaders, which is what the GMA950 had that many of the older chips did not have. Core Animation appears to be based more on the more basic Open GL features, so the older video chips should be able to cut it for the typical uses of Core Animation.
Apparently you didn't attend any of the leopard talks. Apple is doing a big push for Core Animation for products shipping in 2007 and 2008 with the developers. At the portland leopard talk we were advised that Core Animation does use the card, and if the card doesn't support it, then it will be offloaded to the cpu. That is how they support the future technology of it. Which isn't efficient at all.
Actually, for most uses, Core Animation uses practically nil resources. 99% of the time, it just moves views around and fades them out.
This isn't any more intensive than, say, scrolling through iPhoto. In fact, by offloading it to the GPU it's likely to use far less power and work faster. Remember, LayerKit is separate from Core Image?any GPU that can run Quartz Extreme (ie, any GPU on a computer supported by Leopard) can handle it (well, 95% of it?if you bring in Core Image, it'll have to fall back). Your computer already handles all this flawlessly. It's just making it easier for developers.
Furthermore, Core Animation runs on a separate thread (something that should have been done ages ago), so the user interface will be really, really responsive.
By using available resources more efficiently, Core Animation will both speed up your computer and use less power for laptop users. It's really a win-win situation.
yah it's almost like development on OpenGL has come to a screeching hault. Is Unreal Tourn 2007 using it?
The obvious answer is YES since Unreal Tournament 3 (2007 has been renamed to 3) uses the Unreal Engine 3 which has been ported to the Mac. Since the only 3D APIs on the Mac are OpenGL then the Unreal Engine 3 must use OpenGL.
While features of OpenGL have not been updated lately, maybe... OpenGL has had optimizations such as Apple multi-threading OpenGL.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich-Myster
because the current macbook has a bad integrated video card...
Why is this an issue. Low-end PC notebooks have bad integrated video cards too. That's what Apple's MacBook is competing with. You want a dedicated graphics card, get a MacBook Pro. I was looking at low-end PC just the other day in a Futureshop and BestBuy sale flier. I couldn't find anything under $1000 CDN that had a dedicated graphics card. I had to go above $1000 to find one, in a sale flier.
Why is this an issue. Low-end PC notebooks have bad integrated video cards too. That's what Apple's MacBook is competing with. You want a dedicated graphics card, get a MacBook Pro. I was looking at low-end PC just the other day in a Futureshop and BestBuy sale flier. I couldn't find anything under $1000 CDN that had a dedicated graphics card. I had to go above $1000 to find one, in a sale flier.
But those low ends are in the $500 to $1000 rage. There are laptops starting at $1100 and up with better video cards. With apple when you go to $1500 you are still stuck with it.
Just a tidbit of info: ATI X1000 series cards already can handle video encoding much faster than the CPU. Check out AMD's (ATI) website on this. If Apple furthers the usage of the raw horsepower of the graphics engines, especially ATI cards, video encoding and other similar processings may provide an order of magnitude boost in performance. And with the R600 series, perhaps much more.
2.1 will be in Leopard and since Tiger has 1.4 and some primitive support for 1.5 you can expect a much better set of options for Professional Developers and Game Developers.
Comments
The sad thing is, OpenGL has such great potential to be great. There are very nice libraries out there for it. If the community would quit arguing what should be included in the next release, I think we'd be further along. Unfortunately for apple a lot of this rests on the communities shoulders. Though I imagine that if apple was an active member in the community, there would be a better push for it. They are a member, but from what I've seen, not too active.
Part of the problem is an open standard by it's stated design process cannot move faster than a proprietary standard owned and furthered by a single entity. Period. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
The open standard always moves slower because there is great gnashing of teeth and specs by varying economic stakeholders when the ARB gets together to decide what becomes part of the standard and what doesn't. The proprietary standard product producer just puts out APIs.
Over the true long term though, the open standard almost always wins because the proprietary standard dies on the vine for some reason or another. The open standard survives because no one company can jettison it out the airlock and several products jointly subscribe to implementing it in a semi-competitive manner. Hey to become an ISO standard in the first place there have to be 2 competing full implementations shipping.
It is getting to a point that the slower moving open standards (OGL, OAL, OpenTNL and others) are collectively closing the gap to DX because there is only so much functionality that you can use routinely -- the rest is just bloat. There is only so much frivolity Ati and nVidea will put up with. The freakish rate of change in the DX D3D component is costing them a bundle to keep up with when they could be spending resources grabbing physics/sound markets and optimizing the graphics pipeline rather than just throwing more transistors at the problem and hoping to keep up.
I happy that Apple isn't trying to lead the way in OpenGL, that's not their gig. Let the remains of SGI work with ATi and nVidea to define the paper standard. But with Apple on the board they get all the inside scoop to be able to code into their implementation. Up until 10.4 or so Apple had too much on it's plate to do everything and mistakenly thought of OpenGL and OpenAL as game technologies. Now they have it right, look at Core Graphics, Gargeband and Shake. There are the vanguard apps that show Apple actually has figured out that OGL and OAL are not toy game technologies, but industrial strength standards to leverage against. For about $15K a year to sit on the board they get what MS has to pay a few million in DX dev costs to derive. Before it gets coded in the OS.
In all honesty, I think it's about time for a new keyboard / mouse thread. The mouse not so much, but definitely a KB. We have no extra buttons (cept f keys, which I already use), no zero degree tilt, and the current keyboards out for mac pretty much suck. I'll start a new thread if I want to complain more
Is there anything wrong with using a Windows keyboard? That's what I'm doing. The media keys and such on the Logitech Bluetooth cordless desktop that I have work fine, and I didn't install any drivers.
Probably because leopard is supposedly more intense on the card ... ie more animations (core animation), more transparencies (quick preview, spaces, time machine), etc.
I seriously doubt that, this isn't Vista. Leopard will need to support graphics cards with much less capable technology than Intel GMA.
because the current macbook has a bad integrated video card...
This false information continues as though most people can tell the difference.
I seriously doubt that, this isn't Vista. Leopard will need to support graphics cards with much less capable technology than Intel GMA.
This false information continues as though most people can tell the difference.
Apparently you didn't attend any of the leopard talks. Apple is doing a big push for Core Animation for products shipping in 2007 and 2008 with the developers. At the portland leopard talk we were advised that Core Animation does use the card, and if the card doesn't support it, then it will be offloaded to the cpu. That is how they support the future technology of it. Which isn't efficient at all. More and more will be offloaded to the GPU in the future. NVidia recently came out with a new compiler that supports offloading math functions to the GPU.
True this isn't Vista (apple is smarter than M$ to release bloated un-optimized), but that doesn't mean that the GPU won't be used more and more every year. Leopard is a good sign of that, especially with Core Animation. In it's current state most of the demo's used 10-20% of the GPU. Keep in mind these are simple animations. The future is wide open.
Is there anything wrong with using a Windows keyboard? That's what I'm doing. The media keys and such on the Logitech Bluetooth cordless desktop that I have work fine, and I didn't install any drivers.
Actually, yah.
First off unless there are specific drivers for it or an apple key. You may be screwed for using keys during start-up. IE no option, no option-cmd-r-p, no cmd-option-shift-delete, and most importantly no cmd-s and cmd-x. In some very few kbs, the opt and cmd keys are swapped via layout. But will be recognized. Only problem is i'm used to the cmd key being next to the space bar. Where is your cmd key jeff?
I use cmd-s on a bi-weekly basis. I'm not about to bust out my apple keyboard every time I need to do this. Fortunately for me I purchased 5 Logitech Elite keyboards from justdeals.com for $5 each before they ran out. So I'm covered on the kb department for another 7-12 months. After that I don't know.
The current KB has been out since the original eMac debut. The last good apple pro keyboard with adjustable height was Mirror door g4s?
Does anyone know if there is a utility to allow the windows key to be a cmd key in os x?
Actually, yah.
First off unless there are specific drivers for it or an apple key. You may be screwed for using keys during start-up. IE no option, no option-cmd-r-p, no cmd-option-shift-delete, and most importantly no cmd-s and cmd-x. In some very few kbs, the opt and cmd keys are swapped via layout. But will be recognized. Only problem is i'm used to the cmd key being next to the space bar. Where is your cmd key jeff?
I use cmd-s on a bi-weekly basis. I'm not about to bust out my apple keyboard every time I need to do this. Fortunately for me I purchased 5 Logitech Elite keyboards from justdeals.com for $5 each before they ran out. So I'm covered on the kb department for another 7-12 months. After that I don't know.
The current KB has been out since the original eMac debut. The last good apple pro keyboard with adjustable height was Mirror door g4s?
Does anyone know if there is a utility to allow the windows key to be a cmd key in os x?
That's the way it is by default.
That's the way it is by default.
They keyboards I've used, it doesn't even do anything.
Part of the problem is an open standard by it's stated design process cannot move faster than a proprietary standard owned and furthered by a single entity. Period. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
The open standard always moves slower because there is great gnashing of teeth and specs by varying economic stakeholders when the ARB gets together to decide what becomes part of the standard and what doesn't. The proprietary standard product producer just puts out APIs.
Over the true long term though, the open standard almost always wins because the proprietary standard dies on the vine for some reason or another. The open standard survives because no one company can jettison it out the airlock and several products jointly subscribe to implementing it in a semi-competitive manner. Hey to become an ISO standard in the first place there have to be 2 competing full implementations shipping.
It is getting to a point that the slower moving open standards (OGL, OAL, OpenTNL and others) are collectively closing the gap to DX because there is only so much functionality that you can use routinely -- the rest is just bloat. There is only so much frivolity Ati and nVidea will put up with. The freakish rate of change in the DX D3D component is costing them a bundle to keep up with when they could be spending resources grabbing physics/sound markets and optimizing the graphics pipeline rather than just throwing more transistors at the problem and hoping to keep up.
I happy that Apple isn't trying to lead the way in OpenGL, that's not their gig. Let the remains of SGI work with ATi and nVidea to define the paper standard. But with Apple on the board they get all the inside scoop to be able to code into their implementation. Up until 10.4 or so Apple had too much on it's plate to do everything and mistakenly thought of OpenGL and OpenAL as game technologies. Now they have it right, look at Core Graphics, Gargeband and Shake. There are the vanguard apps that show Apple actually has figured out that OGL and OAL are not toy game technologies, but industrial strength standards to leverage against. For about $15K a year to sit on the board they get what MS has to pay a few million in DX dev costs to derive. Before it gets coded in the OS.
This is an insightful post.
Looking at it that way. It actually reflects alot of Apple's new 'open' (as opposed to 'not invented here') philosophy regarding Os X and Safari and...
They're able to move quicker by using common standards and either incorporating them...or building on top of them...
They get to get the lastest tech' much cheaper...what isn't open or good enough they can aquire like multi-touch tech'.
It seems to make Apple a leaner, more wisened/learned and quicker operation than M$.
And Apple's outflanking M$ in OS development over the last 7 years seems to prove that it works.
ie if Direct X has a slight lead...it won't be long before the collective weight of an Open GL review board catches up. Meanwhile, Open GL is far from a disaster. Many 3D apps use this standard and I always thought the original Unreal Tourny looked better in Open GL then it did in Direct X.
What's more interesting to me...is the fact that Appleinsider(?) ran an article a while back stating that the 'home' of Open GL had move to a company for graphic mobile standards (link anyone?)
Consider: Open GL on iPhone. On the next gen iPod. ie that's Mac Os X on an iPhone. Open Gl/Core Animation. You have a robust Graphics API on an iPhone.
That's a very big potential gaming/graphics market right there. Bigger than the PC and Console market put together...! If Apple only(!) sell 10 million in their 1st...year...along with all the next gen iPods...
Lemon Bon Bon.
Im worried for AMD, I've been a fanboi for a while, rooting for the underdog, but this is another setback for them in 2007, I hope by the end of summer, the Barcelona and X2800 put them back on top, because they must be really hurting about now.
At the portland leopard talk we were advised that Core Animation does use the card, and if the card doesn't support it, then it will be offloaded to the cpu. That is how they support the future technology of it.
That's all well and fine but you can't only point the dirty end of the stick at Intel GMA simply because its integrated, when it supports technology that older dedicated GPU's don't. At least MacBooks have Duo Core CPU. Leopard will still need to work on older computers that have less capable GPU's and older single CPU's.
That's all well and fine but you can't only point the dirty end of the stick at Intel GMA simply because its integrated, when it supports technology that older dedicated GPU's don't. At least MacBooks have Duo Core CPU. Leopard will still need to work on older computers that have less capable GPU's and older single CPU's.
The current impression I get is that G3 machines won't be supported by Leopard. At least I read that the development builds prevent installation. Core animation doesn't look to be necessarily as demanding as Core Image/Video. Those features required programmable shaders, which is what the GMA950 had that many of the older chips did not have. Core Animation appears to be based more on the more basic Open GL features, so the older video chips should be able to cut it for the typical uses of Core Animation.
Apparently you didn't attend any of the leopard talks. Apple is doing a big push for Core Animation for products shipping in 2007 and 2008 with the developers. At the portland leopard talk we were advised that Core Animation does use the card, and if the card doesn't support it, then it will be offloaded to the cpu. That is how they support the future technology of it. Which isn't efficient at all.
Actually, for most uses, Core Animation uses practically nil resources. 99% of the time, it just moves views around and fades them out.
This isn't any more intensive than, say, scrolling through iPhoto. In fact, by offloading it to the GPU it's likely to use far less power and work faster. Remember, LayerKit is separate from Core Image?any GPU that can run Quartz Extreme (ie, any GPU on a computer supported by Leopard) can handle it (well, 95% of it?if you bring in Core Image, it'll have to fall back). Your computer already handles all this flawlessly. It's just making it easier for developers.
Furthermore, Core Animation runs on a separate thread (something that should have been done ages ago), so the user interface will be really, really responsive.
By using available resources more efficiently, Core Animation will both speed up your computer and use less power for laptop users. It's really a win-win situation.
yah it's almost like development on OpenGL has come to a screeching hault. Is Unreal Tourn 2007 using it?
The obvious answer is YES since Unreal Tournament 3 (2007 has been renamed to 3) uses the Unreal Engine 3 which has been ported to the Mac. Since the only 3D APIs on the Mac are OpenGL then the Unreal Engine 3 must use OpenGL.
While features of OpenGL have not been updated lately, maybe... OpenGL has had optimizations such as Apple multi-threading OpenGL.
because the current macbook has a bad integrated video card...
Why is this an issue. Low-end PC notebooks have bad integrated video cards too. That's what Apple's MacBook is competing with. You want a dedicated graphics card, get a MacBook Pro. I was looking at low-end PC just the other day in a Futureshop and BestBuy sale flier. I couldn't find anything under $1000 CDN that had a dedicated graphics card. I had to go above $1000 to find one, in a sale flier.
This isn't any more intensive than, say, scrolling through iPhoto.
Of all the examples to use, you have to pick the one that has had people bitching for years!
Newest Final Cut v.
+the best computer about to happen ever
=Mac Pro v2
I can't contain my excitement. i just hope that the base price isn't higher than $3000.
Of all the examples to use, you have to pick the one that has had people bitching for years!
Scrolling through iPhoto 6, not iPhoto 2.
Why is this an issue. Low-end PC notebooks have bad integrated video cards too. That's what Apple's MacBook is competing with. You want a dedicated graphics card, get a MacBook Pro. I was looking at low-end PC just the other day in a Futureshop and BestBuy sale flier. I couldn't find anything under $1000 CDN that had a dedicated graphics card. I had to go above $1000 to find one, in a sale flier.
But those low ends are in the $500 to $1000 rage. There are laptops starting at $1100 and up with better video cards. With apple when you go to $1500 you are still stuck with it.
http://www.opengl.org
2.1 will be in Leopard and since Tiger has 1.4 and some primitive support for 1.5 you can expect a much better set of options for Professional Developers and Game Developers.