The one thing Snow Leopard does is finally break off the non-intel world.
Without commenting on what parts of the Intel world may be able, or not be able to fully exercise the 64 bit features from the article, this will be a milestone in 2009 that puts the power pc models off support. I have an older laptop that had a 40 gb drive. I upgraded it to 120 gb myself and installed Leopard and it's a great little machine. But Apple lets me know the end is with Leopard as I have it now. (still will get fixes, but the end is in sight)
I'll probably only be using it for another couple years and it'll finally die for me.
Still, it's got built in blue-tooth, and wi-fi, lots of disk speed and pretty good power. Had it three years, will have it over five years and that's a good value.
But Apple has signaled they won't carry the power pc code base any further.
This is a problem Microsoft has trouble dealing with, how to yank support for stuff that goes back a long way. It has been a nice problem to have, so much success that it's hard to change the under-pinnings in a radical way. But sooner or later, MicroSoft will need to do something bigger to their OS and it won't be easy. Apple has taken some heat, but I think most people understand they have to move on and have done so as painlessly as they could.
The MAC lives on.
The Mac lives on.
The mac lives on.
The line of computers formally known as "The Macintosh".....lives on.
Computers Apple sells live on.
PC's from Apple live on.
The computer line born of "Lisa", lives on.
If anyone feels that I am not properly referring to computers sold by Apple, or computers sold by what was formerly known as the "Apple Computer" company...... well you just be sure to let me know because I really care if my street cred is effected because I call it a MAC.....\
Looking at all the technical specs available I believe that any user using less than the Core Duo 2 (64bit) will NOT be able to run Snow Leopard. 10.5 will be the last OS X version the first Intel Chipsets will run.....Looks like Apple will make the move to 64bit completely in the next version. PPC and Core Duo users will be left behind.
The line of computers formally known as "The Macintosh".....lives on.
Computers Apple sells live on.
PC's from Apple live on.
The computer line born of "Lisa", lives on.
If anyone feels that I am not properly referring to computers sold by Apple, or computers sold by what was formerly known as the "Apple Computer" company...... well you just be sure to let me know because I really care if my street cred is effected because I call it a MAC.....\
That should be "affected," not "effected." Now you have no street cred at all.
Those sort of comments make me ashamed to be a Mac User. What incorrect and arrogant rubbish.
Pretty much true though. When asked, no one in the PC industry denies that the extra memory they are encouraging customers to buy, actually can be used in their 32 bit sytsems.
If you can show that this isn't true, then please do so.
Firstly is "desperately missing" a technical term? The lack of registers isn't as big a deal in x86 as it's made out to be.
There is no chicken and egg problem. Companies can roll out 64bit procs and OSes (as is being done) and eventually 64bit applications will arrive. You don't need 64 bit apps for 64 bit OSes, 32 bit apps run fine. Recompiling your app for 64 bits is not a big deal if it's been written properly, which of course many haven't. But the main point is that for most people and applications the memory limitation isn't one. Most apps don't have a pressing need for 64 bits.
And an important downside has been overlooked. 64 bit applications can take up a lot more memory since integers and/or pointers are twice the size. Depending on what the data structures look like it could take up to twice the memory.
This isn't entirely true.
It's well understood that 32 bit Intel processors are short in regesters, that are also not wide enough.
One of the reasons wht Opertons, an Athlons were able to beat the Pentium back three years ago was because they used the more, wider register route in the designs, the same as the PPC. Intel's 64 bit chips have fixed most of the regester problems, whichh is acknowledged as bing one of the main reasons why Windows users will see speed increases in their computing using a 64 bit system.
64 bit Windows does not run 32 bit apps directly. It runs them in a compatibility window. Most inefficient. There are other problems relating to this.
This is why Windows users with only 32 bit apps don't run Win 64 yet, where Mac users dont have those issues.
Would you rather have an OS that runs 32 and 64 bit apps together, easily, or run one or the other OS's, where the 32 bit one can't run any 64 bit apps, and the 64 bit OS runs 32 bit ones poorly?
Looking at all the technical specs available I believe that any user using less than the Core Duo 2 (64bit) will NOT be able to run Snow Leopard. 10.5 will be the last OS X version the first Intel Chipsets will run.....Looks like Apple will make the move to 64bit completely in the next version. PPC and Core Duo users will be left behind.
I may be wrong but I definitely believe the minimum requirement is an Intel processor, it doesn't matter if it's Core Duo (32-bits) I pretty much think they are supported. Look at this page:
Using a Core Duo processor means you don't get all the good 64-bits stuff from Snow Leopard, even though there are lots of more good things besides 64-bits.
There is a HUGE difference between buying more computer than you need (which happens all the time, not just with computers) and paying extra for something you cannot use at all. I can't imagine too many people would be happy to learn that most of the extra 2 GIGs of ram they just paid $250 for at DELL's recommendation is almost completely unusable by the OS. Or to learn that the OS hides the fact that it's unusable.
They can use it, just not in a single process. This is commonly mistaken, I dunno why. Windows NT kernel permits to and can use a shit load of memory (32Gb maxed from Intel CPU's MMU, but could probably handle more) in the system, and use it all. Just not in a single process. There are database centers using Windows Server (I'd personally prefer *X) with 16-32Gb of memory all around.
Also, please note that adding a flag in the boot.ini line (which, admitedly, most people don't and shouldn't know about) switch that to 3Gb for the process and 1Gb for the kernel. Dunno why Microsoft doesn't put that as a default, maybe they did with Vista...
I guess we'll see notebooks taking 8Gb's of RAM in 2009.
On what I understand *nix/OSX approach for handling 64bit and 32bit apps running on the same box is much more elegant than Microsoft's 64bit OS versions.
As a photography with larger mega pixel sensors on the horizon, even the 50MP Canon sensor in development, the RAW files will be huge to work with. At the moment Aperture is such a resource hog, I reckon 64bit address space will be welcomed.
I too have a Core Duo based Mac, and I can't help interpret much of what is being said as Snow Leopard will be 64-bit only. If this is the case, then a Core 2 Duo will be the new minimum requirement. If I am interpreting this wrong, please correct me.
As I understand it, the Core Duo did not actually emulate two cores, or processors. From that standpoint is was more hype than help.
The Core 2 Duo, does actually perform as if you had two complete processors (cores) instead of one.
And yes, Core Duo users will be left behind in the 64 bit era.
I enjoyed the first and the second article on 64bit. But this one really confuses me!
1. How can Windows apps get several 4GB (-2GB for Kernel) virtual adress spaces? I thought without PAE, only one 4B adress space is possible.
2. Why is it not possible to deactivate TLB Flush under OS X?
Let's say i use only a very small application with no need for a hugh amount of RAM: As far as i understood, it gets its own 4GB adress space (altough it doesn't need it) and the CPU has to flush the TLB all the time.This would be serious waste of performance.
Pretty much true though. When asked, no one in the PC industry denies that the extra memory they are encouraging customers to buy, actually can be used in their 32 bit sytsems.
If you can sow that this isn't true, then please do so.
Depends 3GB came with my PC laptop. Ditched that and got 2x2GB for like $70 (total delivered cost), moved over to 64-bit Vista.
Now If I'd have stayed with 32-bit Vista, single app see's 2GB maximum, OS see's all 3GB but loses some RAM due either to integrated graphics (mine is dedicated) or 32-bit Window's addressing issues. The best case 32-bit Windows is ~3.2GB usable application RAM.
So the way I see it, at best you've overspent by $35 for 2GB or $17.50 for 1GB. In other words pocket change for a $1000 computer/laptop.
Also this is another AI POS article, a current Mac memory penalty resolved in 10.6 brings both OS'es to the same level of parity. In other words all Mac's currently have the problem that 64-bit/32-bit Vista currently doesn't have.
As to the ignorance of Mac versus PC end users, both are on average the same, but the community of knowledgeable PC users undoubtedly outnumbers the entire Mac OS X user community. That's a given. Heck the PC gaming community vastly outnumbers the entire Mac OS X community for that matter, and they're all gearhead's to boot.
I would even argue that Mac users are on average more clueless, since that's the main selling point of OS X, the seemless end user experience.
Signed,
A former three time Mac owner
PS - I might buy a Mac mini if an upgrade is in the pipeline, but it depends on if it has HDMI, eSATA, nos-soldered CPU/RAM. Not very likely. Because that's all that I could afford right now on my current fixed income.
I would even argue that Mac users are on average more clueless, since that's the main selling point of OS X, the seemless end user experience.
That may have been more true at one point but there seems to be a general trend of IT moving to Macs for their personal use. The reasons I've heard is that they had to deal with Windows all day that they just a machine that works when they get home, not one that needs constant tinkering to because it's Unix underneath they can get much more power from their system than from Windows.
It's well understood that 32 bit Intel processors are short in regesters, that are also not wide enough.
One of the reasons wht Opertons, an Athlons were able to beat the Pentium back three years ago was because they used the more, wider register route in the designs, the same as the PPC. Intel's 64 bit chips have fixed most of the regester problems, whichh is acknowledged as bing one of the main reasons why Windows users will see speed increases in their computing using a 64 bit system.
64 bit Windows does not run 32 bit apps directly. It runs them in a compatibility window. Most inefficient. There are other problems relating to this.
This is why Windows users with only 32 bit apps don't run Win 64 yet, where Mac users dont have those issues.
Would you rather have an OS that runs 32 and 64 bit apps together, easily, or run one or the other OS's, where the 32 bit one can't run any 64 bit apps, and the 64 bit OS runs 32 bit ones poorly?
Having more registers is nice but not a huge win. You have to recompile software and the compiler has to be smart enough to allocate the registers efficiently. The number of registers is just of of many of x86's flaws, all of which contribute to the lack of performance.
Also there is a difference between architectural registers and physical registers. The processor aliases registers and there are many more physical registers than 8. This is a better solution which is why Intel implemented it. If registers were so critical Intel would have added them long ago, it's not like they are short of transistors. I don't know why having wider registers is going to make much difference except in a few cases (multiply?).
As I said, it's hype. You're "well understood" claim isn't very convincing.
Depends 3GB came with my PC laptop. Ditched that and got 2x2GB for like $70 (total delivered cost), moved over to 64-bit Vista.
Now If I'd have stayed with 32-bit Vista, single app see's 2GB maximum, OS see's all 3GB but loses some RAM due either to integrated graphics (mine is dedicated) or 32-bit Window's addressing issues. The best case 32-bit Windows is ~3.2GB usable application RAM.
So the way I see it, at best you've overspent by $35 for 2GB or $17.50 for 1GB. In other words pocket change for a $1000 computer/laptop.
Also this is another AI POS article, a current Mac memory penalty resolved in 10.6 brings both OS'es to the same level of parity. In other words all Mac's currently have the problem that 64-bit/32-bit Vista currently doesn't have.
As to the ignorance of Mac versus PC end users, both are on average the same, but the community of knowledgeable PC users undoubtedly outnumbers the entire Mac OS X user community. That's a given. Heck the PC gaming community vastly outnumbers the entire Mac OS X community for that matter, and they're all gearhead's to boot.
I would even argue that Mac users are on average more clueless, since that's the main selling point of OS X, the seemless end user experience.
Signed,
A former three time Mac owner
PS - I might buy a Mac mini if an upgrade is in the pipeline, but it depends on if it has HDMI, eSATA, nos-soldered CPU/RAM. Not very likely. Because that's all that I could afford right now on my current fixed income.
Couple of things. First, I'm not a fan of downplaying the cost of being mislead.
If you have 3 GB in your machine and are talked into buying the 4th gig..... I don't really care how much you can say it didn't cost much. Even if it was free, when they have you put in 33% more memory and and you can use less than a quarter of what you're adding your application then I don't think that's good. That's usually the fault of the guy at the counter you're talking to and his lack of knowledge more than any one computer maker.
Second, if the AI article was talking about the current Leopard on the market then I might agree about your complaints. But the way I read this article, it's talking about Snow Leo and how it's DIFFERENT from the current Leo. Comparisons on how it works today aside, how it will work in Snow Leo are interesting.
Third, I'd be curious what actual 64 bit application you're running on your laptop that compelled you to run out and double your memory and completely change the OS to full 64bit. And I'd also be curious if you wrote off anything you had but can't really use in the "full 64 bit version of Vista".
4th: <As to the ignorance of Mac versus PC end users, both are on average the same>
Agreed, but I think pointing out that the windows world requires people to be knowledgeable and Apple has a lot of success with people that don't need to go there, well I'm not sure that's bad. In fact, earlier I was pointing out the need for people to become too well educated on the internal configurations of a pc just to avoid missing what they need or buying too much. This is a situation where Apple is getting a lot of their growth from solving the problem of understanding the hardware and software utilties, just to be able to run the application software you want. Apple is trying to limit users to only needing to run the software they want, and not all the icons in the control panel. You're right, but not sure that's a good thing for the pc world.
5th:The gaming world users do dominate or outnumber the Apple user base. That's true. But if you remove all the xBox users, and put those in the Apple camp because they actually are using old Apple hardware it does kind of take away from the pc numbers. (ouch)
6th: Again, saying OS X users are more clueless is not really a bad thing for Apple, or a good point for windows users. The one thing almost all windows users are in fact smart enough to know, is that you need to go out of your way and throw Vista away and get XP back on your new computer. And to the extent YOU may believe that is not true, you're going to have to explain to me if all those pc users are in fact so up to speed and knowledgeable then why does MicroSoft have such a hard time getting people to realize they don't need to do that? I mean really, if all those pc people are so smart and they are replacing Vista with XP, either they aren't as smart as you say they are or Vista is not very good!
I really care if my street cred is effected because I call it a MAC.....\
Historically, the only people writing "MAC" on this forum were ignorant PC trolls. As such, I (and possibly others) began assuming posts containing "MAC" were written by ignorant trolls and started ignoring them. I figured I'd let you know so you could write it properly instead of looking like an ignorant troll.
The only thing thing worse than an ignorant troll is an informed troll who intentionally acts ignorant. You've been informed, you can call it what you want.
Quote:
5th:The gaming world users do dominate or outnumber the Apple user base. That's true. But if you remove all the xBox users, and put those in the Apple camp because they actually are using old Apple hardware it does kind of take away from the pc numbers.
Unfortunately, the reality is that PC users should be added to X-Box 360 users because the development environments are similar, regardless of hardware differences. This also helps to lock developers into MS APIs instead of cross-platform technologies.
It's well understood that 32 bit Intel processors are short in regesters, that are also not wide enough.
One of the reasons wht Opertons, an Athlons were able to beat the Pentium back three years ago was because they used the more, wider register route in the designs, the same as the PPC. Intel's 64 bit chips have fixed most of the regester problems, whichh is acknowledged as bing one of the main reasons why Windows users will see speed increases in their computing using a 64 bit system.
64 bit Windows does not run 32 bit apps directly. It runs them in a compatibility window. Most inefficient. There are other problems relating to this.
This is why Windows users with only 32 bit apps don't run Win 64 yet, where Mac users dont have those issues.
Would you rather have an OS that runs 32 and 64 bit apps together, easily, or run one or the other OS's, where the 32 bit one can't run any 64 bit apps, and the 64 bit OS runs 32 bit ones poorly?
I have to say real world results Vista x64 is alot better then XP x64. Mostly because drivers have advanced. I would disagree that 32 bit apps run poorly in Vista, now I will admit that I run some pretty heavy hardware so I have had no issues at all.
I run CS3, Office, Encoding all that the same time and they are all very fast with no issues at all. Even iTunes runs flawless in Vista x64.
Most people that rag on Vista have never really used it, I actually have far more issues with Leopard then I do with Vista.
The issue I have with Apple these days is they can't seem to put anything out lately without a ton of updates or firmware fixes. Leopard sounded great on paper and so far has been a disappointment at least IMO compared to Tiger. MS resolved almost all there Vista problems with one service pack, we can't say that when it comes to Leopard there are still issues.
Snow Leopard is still a time will tell situation. Look good on paper but lets see how it actually performs.
Not to mention people tend not to mention that Apple keeps there arena pretty small and only plays by there rules with a very hardware config. I would say MS does a fairly good job considering they make software that has to work on far more hardware configurations.
As far as which end user group is smarter I would say both have their fair share of each. Lets face it gamers can often overclock, and I have yet to find a iMac user who has figured out how to voltage mod and has as watercooling system...
5th:The gaming world users do dominate or outnumber the Apple user base. That's true. But if you remove all the xBox users, and put those in the Apple camp because they actually are using old Apple hardware it does kind of take away from the pc numbers. (ouch)
What are you talking about??? XBox don't use any pieces manufactured by Apple.
Historically, the only people writing "MAC" on this forum were ignorant PC trolls. As such, I (and possibly others) began assuming posts containing "MAC" were written by ignorant trolls and started ignoring them. I figured I'd let you know so you could write it properly instead of looking like an ignorant troll.
The only thing thing worse than an ignorant troll is an informed troll who intentionally acts ignorant. You've been informed, you can call it what you want.
Unfortunately, the reality is that PC users should be added to X-Box 360 users because the development environments are similar, regardless of hardware differences. This also helps to lock developers into MS APIs instead of cross-platform technologies.
Actually this forum just seems to to be over sensitive. I never experience this kind of stuff on other Apple related forums.
I find there are many die hard fans that just can't accept that even Apple has made some fairly flawed products over the years and as of late can't seem to put anything out that work fairly well without tons of patches or firmware updates. My opinion of course.
Comments
The one thing Snow Leopard does is finally break off the non-intel world.
Without commenting on what parts of the Intel world may be able, or not be able to fully exercise the 64 bit features from the article, this will be a milestone in 2009 that puts the power pc models off support. I have an older laptop that had a 40 gb drive. I upgraded it to 120 gb myself and installed Leopard and it's a great little machine. But Apple lets me know the end is with Leopard as I have it now. (still will get fixes, but the end is in sight)
I'll probably only be using it for another couple years and it'll finally die for me.
Still, it's got built in blue-tooth, and wi-fi, lots of disk speed and pretty good power. Had it three years, will have it over five years and that's a good value.
But Apple has signaled they won't carry the power pc code base any further.
This is a problem Microsoft has trouble dealing with, how to yank support for stuff that goes back a long way. It has been a nice problem to have, so much success that it's hard to change the under-pinnings in a radical way. But sooner or later, MicroSoft will need to do something bigger to their OS and it won't be easy. Apple has taken some heat, but I think most people understand they have to move on and have done so as painlessly as they could.
The MAC lives on.
The Mac lives on.
The mac lives on.
The line of computers formally known as "The Macintosh".....lives on.
Computers Apple sells live on.
PC's from Apple live on.
The computer line born of "Lisa", lives on.
If anyone feels that I am not properly referring to computers sold by Apple, or computers sold by what was formerly known as the "Apple Computer" company...... well you just be sure to let me know because I really care if my street cred is effected because I call it a MAC.....
PC = Personal Computer
MAC = Media Access Control, as in MAC Address
Mac = short for Macintosh
Note the difference between acronyms and abbreviations. Its a touchy point for some
I'll just refer to the MAC as the newer version of LISA.
Then people can understand.
Of course, anyone that really thinks you walk into Best Buy to buy a Media Access Control from their computer reps is a bit too snarky anyway.....
The MAC lives on.
The Mac lives on.
The mac lives on.
The line of computers formally known as "The Macintosh".....lives on.
Computers Apple sells live on.
PC's from Apple live on.
The computer line born of "Lisa", lives on.
If anyone feels that I am not properly referring to computers sold by Apple, or computers sold by what was formerly known as the "Apple Computer" company...... well you just be sure to let me know because I really care if my street cred is effected because I call it a MAC.....
That should be "affected," not "effected." Now you have no street cred at all.
Those sort of comments make me ashamed to be a Mac User. What incorrect and arrogant rubbish.
Pretty much true though. When asked, no one in the PC industry denies that the extra memory they are encouraging customers to buy, actually can be used in their 32 bit sytsems.
If you can show that this isn't true, then please do so.
God, more meaningless hype.
Firstly is "desperately missing" a technical term? The lack of registers isn't as big a deal in x86 as it's made out to be.
There is no chicken and egg problem. Companies can roll out 64bit procs and OSes (as is being done) and eventually 64bit applications will arrive. You don't need 64 bit apps for 64 bit OSes, 32 bit apps run fine. Recompiling your app for 64 bits is not a big deal if it's been written properly, which of course many haven't. But the main point is that for most people and applications the memory limitation isn't one. Most apps don't have a pressing need for 64 bits.
And an important downside has been overlooked. 64 bit applications can take up a lot more memory since integers and/or pointers are twice the size. Depending on what the data structures look like it could take up to twice the memory.
This isn't entirely true.
It's well understood that 32 bit Intel processors are short in regesters, that are also not wide enough.
One of the reasons wht Opertons, an Athlons were able to beat the Pentium back three years ago was because they used the more, wider register route in the designs, the same as the PPC. Intel's 64 bit chips have fixed most of the regester problems, whichh is acknowledged as bing one of the main reasons why Windows users will see speed increases in their computing using a 64 bit system.
64 bit Windows does not run 32 bit apps directly. It runs them in a compatibility window. Most inefficient. There are other problems relating to this.
This is why Windows users with only 32 bit apps don't run Win 64 yet, where Mac users dont have those issues.
Would you rather have an OS that runs 32 and 64 bit apps together, easily, or run one or the other OS's, where the 32 bit one can't run any 64 bit apps, and the 64 bit OS runs 32 bit ones poorly?
Looking at all the technical specs available I believe that any user using less than the Core Duo 2 (64bit) will NOT be able to run Snow Leopard. 10.5 will be the last OS X version the first Intel Chipsets will run.....Looks like Apple will make the move to 64bit completely in the next version. PPC and Core Duo users will be left behind.
I may be wrong but I definitely believe the minimum requirement is an Intel processor, it doesn't matter if it's Core Duo (32-bits) I pretty much think they are supported. Look at this page:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...erpc_macs.html
Using a Core Duo processor means you don't get all the good 64-bits stuff from Snow Leopard, even though there are lots of more good things besides 64-bits.
There is a HUGE difference between buying more computer than you need (which happens all the time, not just with computers) and paying extra for something you cannot use at all. I can't imagine too many people would be happy to learn that most of the extra 2 GIGs of ram they just paid $250 for at DELL's recommendation is almost completely unusable by the OS. Or to learn that the OS hides the fact that it's unusable.
They can use it, just not in a single process. This is commonly mistaken, I dunno why. Windows NT kernel permits to and can use a shit load of memory (32Gb maxed from Intel CPU's MMU, but could probably handle more) in the system, and use it all. Just not in a single process. There are database centers using Windows Server (I'd personally prefer *X) with 16-32Gb of memory all around.
Also, please note that adding a flag in the boot.ini line (which, admitedly, most people don't and shouldn't know about) switch that to 3Gb for the process and 1Gb for the kernel. Dunno why Microsoft doesn't put that as a default, maybe they did with Vista...
On what I understand *nix/OSX approach for handling 64bit and 32bit apps running on the same box is much more elegant than Microsoft's 64bit OS versions.
As a photography with larger mega pixel sensors on the horizon, even the 50MP Canon sensor in development, the RAW files will be huge to work with. At the moment Aperture is such a resource hog, I reckon 64bit address space will be welcomed.
I too have a Core Duo based Mac, and I can't help interpret much of what is being said as Snow Leopard will be 64-bit only. If this is the case, then a Core 2 Duo will be the new minimum requirement. If I am interpreting this wrong, please correct me.
As I understand it, the Core Duo did not actually emulate two cores, or processors. From that standpoint is was more hype than help.
The Core 2 Duo, does actually perform as if you had two complete processors (cores) instead of one.
And yes, Core Duo users will be left behind in the 64 bit era.
I guess we'll see notebooks taking 8Gb's of RAM in 2009.
You can now get notebook RAM in 4GB sticks so that will be possible.
1. How can Windows apps get several 4GB (-2GB for Kernel) virtual adress spaces? I thought without PAE, only one 4B adress space is possible.
2. Why is it not possible to deactivate TLB Flush under OS X?
Let's say i use only a very small application with no need for a hugh amount of RAM: As far as i understood, it gets its own 4GB adress space (altough it doesn't need it) and the CPU has to flush the TLB all the time.This would be serious waste of performance.
Pretty much true though. When asked, no one in the PC industry denies that the extra memory they are encouraging customers to buy, actually can be used in their 32 bit sytsems.
If you can sow that this isn't true, then please do so.
Depends 3GB came with my PC laptop. Ditched that and got 2x2GB for like $70 (total delivered cost), moved over to 64-bit Vista.
Now If I'd have stayed with 32-bit Vista, single app see's 2GB maximum, OS see's all 3GB but loses some RAM due either to integrated graphics (mine is dedicated) or 32-bit Window's addressing issues. The best case 32-bit Windows is ~3.2GB usable application RAM.
So the way I see it, at best you've overspent by $35 for 2GB or $17.50 for 1GB. In other words pocket change for a $1000 computer/laptop.
Also this is another AI POS article, a current Mac memory penalty resolved in 10.6 brings both OS'es to the same level of parity. In other words all Mac's currently have the problem that 64-bit/32-bit Vista currently doesn't have.
As to the ignorance of Mac versus PC end users, both are on average the same, but the community of knowledgeable PC users undoubtedly outnumbers the entire Mac OS X user community. That's a given. Heck the PC gaming community vastly outnumbers the entire Mac OS X community for that matter, and they're all gearhead's to boot.
I would even argue that Mac users are on average more clueless, since that's the main selling point of OS X, the seemless end user experience.
Signed,
A former three time Mac owner
PS - I might buy a Mac mini if an upgrade is in the pipeline, but it depends on if it has HDMI, eSATA, nos-soldered CPU/RAM. Not very likely.
I would even argue that Mac users are on average more clueless, since that's the main selling point of OS X, the seemless end user experience.
That may have been more true at one point but there seems to be a general trend of IT moving to Macs for their personal use. The reasons I've heard is that they had to deal with Windows all day that they just a machine that works when they get home, not one that needs constant tinkering to because it's Unix underneath they can get much more power from their system than from Windows.
This isn't entirely true.
It's well understood that 32 bit Intel processors are short in regesters, that are also not wide enough.
One of the reasons wht Opertons, an Athlons were able to beat the Pentium back three years ago was because they used the more, wider register route in the designs, the same as the PPC. Intel's 64 bit chips have fixed most of the regester problems, whichh is acknowledged as bing one of the main reasons why Windows users will see speed increases in their computing using a 64 bit system.
64 bit Windows does not run 32 bit apps directly. It runs them in a compatibility window. Most inefficient. There are other problems relating to this.
This is why Windows users with only 32 bit apps don't run Win 64 yet, where Mac users dont have those issues.
Would you rather have an OS that runs 32 and 64 bit apps together, easily, or run one or the other OS's, where the 32 bit one can't run any 64 bit apps, and the 64 bit OS runs 32 bit ones poorly?
Having more registers is nice but not a huge win. You have to recompile software and the compiler has to be smart enough to allocate the registers efficiently. The number of registers is just of of many of x86's flaws, all of which contribute to the lack of performance.
Also there is a difference between architectural registers and physical registers. The processor aliases registers and there are many more physical registers than 8. This is a better solution which is why Intel implemented it. If registers were so critical Intel would have added them long ago, it's not like they are short of transistors. I don't know why having wider registers is going to make much difference except in a few cases (multiply?).
As I said, it's hype. You're "well understood" claim isn't very convincing.
Depends 3GB came with my PC laptop. Ditched that and got 2x2GB for like $70 (total delivered cost), moved over to 64-bit Vista.
Now If I'd have stayed with 32-bit Vista, single app see's 2GB maximum, OS see's all 3GB but loses some RAM due either to integrated graphics (mine is dedicated) or 32-bit Window's addressing issues. The best case 32-bit Windows is ~3.2GB usable application RAM.
So the way I see it, at best you've overspent by $35 for 2GB or $17.50 for 1GB. In other words pocket change for a $1000 computer/laptop.
Also this is another AI POS article, a current Mac memory penalty resolved in 10.6 brings both OS'es to the same level of parity. In other words all Mac's currently have the problem that 64-bit/32-bit Vista currently doesn't have.
As to the ignorance of Mac versus PC end users, both are on average the same, but the community of knowledgeable PC users undoubtedly outnumbers the entire Mac OS X user community. That's a given. Heck the PC gaming community vastly outnumbers the entire Mac OS X community for that matter, and they're all gearhead's to boot.
I would even argue that Mac users are on average more clueless, since that's the main selling point of OS X, the seemless end user experience.
Signed,
A former three time Mac owner
PS - I might buy a Mac mini if an upgrade is in the pipeline, but it depends on if it has HDMI, eSATA, nos-soldered CPU/RAM. Not very likely.
Couple of things. First, I'm not a fan of downplaying the cost of being mislead.
If you have 3 GB in your machine and are talked into buying the 4th gig..... I don't really care how much you can say it didn't cost much. Even if it was free, when they have you put in 33% more memory and and you can use less than a quarter of what you're adding your application then I don't think that's good. That's usually the fault of the guy at the counter you're talking to and his lack of knowledge more than any one computer maker.
Second, if the AI article was talking about the current Leopard on the market then I might agree about your complaints. But the way I read this article, it's talking about Snow Leo and how it's DIFFERENT from the current Leo. Comparisons on how it works today aside, how it will work in Snow Leo are interesting.
Third, I'd be curious what actual 64 bit application you're running on your laptop that compelled you to run out and double your memory and completely change the OS to full 64bit. And I'd also be curious if you wrote off anything you had but can't really use in the "full 64 bit version of Vista".
4th: <As to the ignorance of Mac versus PC end users, both are on average the same>
Agreed, but I think pointing out that the windows world requires people to be knowledgeable and Apple has a lot of success with people that don't need to go there, well I'm not sure that's bad. In fact, earlier I was pointing out the need for people to become too well educated on the internal configurations of a pc just to avoid missing what they need or buying too much. This is a situation where Apple is getting a lot of their growth from solving the problem of understanding the hardware and software utilties, just to be able to run the application software you want. Apple is trying to limit users to only needing to run the software they want, and not all the icons in the control panel. You're right, but not sure that's a good thing for the pc world.
5th:The gaming world users do dominate or outnumber the Apple user base. That's true. But if you remove all the xBox users, and put those in the Apple camp because they actually are using old Apple hardware it does kind of take away from the pc numbers. (ouch)
6th: Again, saying OS X users are more clueless is not really a bad thing for Apple, or a good point for windows users. The one thing almost all windows users are in fact smart enough to know, is that you need to go out of your way and throw Vista away and get XP back on your new computer. And to the extent YOU may believe that is not true, you're going to have to explain to me if all those pc users are in fact so up to speed and knowledgeable then why does MicroSoft have such a hard time getting people to realize they don't need to do that? I mean really, if all those pc people are so smart and they are replacing Vista with XP, either they aren't as smart as you say they are or Vista is not very good!
I really care if my street cred is effected because I call it a MAC.....
Historically, the only people writing "MAC" on this forum were ignorant PC trolls. As such, I (and possibly others) began assuming posts containing "MAC" were written by ignorant trolls and started ignoring them. I figured I'd let you know so you could write it properly instead of looking like an ignorant troll.
The only thing thing worse than an ignorant troll is an informed troll who intentionally acts ignorant. You've been informed, you can call it what you want.
5th:The gaming world users do dominate or outnumber the Apple user base. That's true. But if you remove all the xBox users, and put those in the Apple camp because they actually are using old Apple hardware it does kind of take away from the pc numbers.
Unfortunately, the reality is that PC users should be added to X-Box 360 users because the development environments are similar, regardless of hardware differences. This also helps to lock developers into MS APIs instead of cross-platform technologies.
This isn't entirely true.
It's well understood that 32 bit Intel processors are short in regesters, that are also not wide enough.
One of the reasons wht Opertons, an Athlons were able to beat the Pentium back three years ago was because they used the more, wider register route in the designs, the same as the PPC. Intel's 64 bit chips have fixed most of the regester problems, whichh is acknowledged as bing one of the main reasons why Windows users will see speed increases in their computing using a 64 bit system.
64 bit Windows does not run 32 bit apps directly. It runs them in a compatibility window. Most inefficient. There are other problems relating to this.
This is why Windows users with only 32 bit apps don't run Win 64 yet, where Mac users dont have those issues.
Would you rather have an OS that runs 32 and 64 bit apps together, easily, or run one or the other OS's, where the 32 bit one can't run any 64 bit apps, and the 64 bit OS runs 32 bit ones poorly?
I have to say real world results Vista x64 is alot better then XP x64. Mostly because drivers have advanced. I would disagree that 32 bit apps run poorly in Vista, now I will admit that I run some pretty heavy hardware so I have had no issues at all.
I run CS3, Office, Encoding all that the same time and they are all very fast with no issues at all. Even iTunes runs flawless in Vista x64.
Most people that rag on Vista have never really used it, I actually have far more issues with Leopard then I do with Vista.
The issue I have with Apple these days is they can't seem to put anything out lately without a ton of updates or firmware fixes. Leopard sounded great on paper and so far has been a disappointment at least IMO compared to Tiger. MS resolved almost all there Vista problems with one service pack, we can't say that when it comes to Leopard there are still issues.
Snow Leopard is still a time will tell situation. Look good on paper but lets see how it actually performs.
Not to mention people tend not to mention that Apple keeps there arena pretty small and only plays by there rules with a very hardware config. I would say MS does a fairly good job considering they make software that has to work on far more hardware configurations.
As far as which end user group is smarter I would say both have their fair share of each. Lets face it gamers can often overclock, and I have yet to find a iMac user who has figured out how to voltage mod and has as watercooling system...
5th:The gaming world users do dominate or outnumber the Apple user base. That's true. But if you remove all the xBox users, and put those in the Apple camp because they actually are using old Apple hardware it does kind of take away from the pc numbers. (ouch)
What are you talking about???
Historically, the only people writing "MAC" on this forum were ignorant PC trolls. As such, I (and possibly others) began assuming posts containing "MAC" were written by ignorant trolls and started ignoring them. I figured I'd let you know so you could write it properly instead of looking like an ignorant troll.
The only thing thing worse than an ignorant troll is an informed troll who intentionally acts ignorant. You've been informed, you can call it what you want.
Unfortunately, the reality is that PC users should be added to X-Box 360 users because the development environments are similar, regardless of hardware differences. This also helps to lock developers into MS APIs instead of cross-platform technologies.
Actually this forum just seems to to be over sensitive. I never experience this kind of stuff on other Apple related forums.
I find there are many die hard fans that just can't accept that even Apple has made some fairly flawed products over the years and as of late can't seem to put anything out that work fairly well without tons of patches or firmware updates. My opinion of course.