http://www.osnews.com/story/1694/Vote_for_the_CPU_Architecture_Apple_Should_Switch_To Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:19:45 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Why do you care what CPU Apple delivers in Macs? You're not really a Mac user (as I'm not really a PC user, though I own one and I work around them professionally)?

You must really want this x86 pipe dream to come true :-D Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >Why do you care what CPU Apple delivers in Macs?

What do you mean "what I care"?
It is my "job" over here to care about ALL these things.

As for not being a Mac user, this afternoon I used Mac exclusively (I had to do some updates and do some work with Painter 7 - my hobby is painting). Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The IBM Power4 seems like the path of least resistance. Howerver, Apple has been with Motorolla since the very beginning, so it will be a break to old ties.

Personally, I'm not familiar with any of the architectures. I'd love to see Apple use for AMD hardware, but AMD typically has heat problems and really crappy failsafes. Intel's stepping tech is very cool, but their proccessors are driven more by marketing than market. Motorolla is pretty much crap from every experience I've had with their products. Of all the choices, the IBM Power4 seems the only choice suitable for small and portable devices like iMacs and Powerbooks. The architecture is similar enough to the G4 to make the changes necessary minimal.

Howerver, IANAE. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? READ underneath the posting form before you press that darned submit button please. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Eugenia: Sorry. I have this terrible habbit of writing XHTML and named character entities, since I play with XHTML all day and everywhere I post the extra formatting is appreciated... It's a pain in the ass when I have to write plain-text with BBS-isms or (worse) UBB. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Guess what, you're not a mac user if you casually use a mac for a few hours one day, it's like claiming to be a golfer when all you really do is go to the driving range. I'll never understand why people who dont use mac's have such a stake in what processor they use or how fast or slow they get this or that done. You don't use it, it shouldnt be your concern. Go on using whatever it is that you get work done with or play games on and just leave us be. Yes there is room for improvement but why do you care? You cant seem to get any work done on "our" computers so what's the point? Apple has tons of cash and can weather some pretty heavy storms if need be. Which means my investment is protected for the foreseeable future. I use a mac, all day every day, and believe it or not I get work done. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > You don't use it, it shouldnt be your concern.

I am a special case. I run OSNews. Remember? It is my JOB to CARE, even if personally might or might not give a damn.
I am not your regular Joe User. Hello? Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You both seem *disturbed* to see this poll here. Is this the reason behind of this attack against me with the LAME excuse of "you are not a mac user, why did you put this poll there?"

Are you afraid of something? Are you afraid of the outcome of the poll? Is this the real reason behind this "mild attack"?

Please. Let's all be serious here. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Is more the Yellow box for window (ie cocoa is the name these days). Yes Apple has an Objective-C runtime environement that runs on x86, remember OpenStep ran on 68k, HP-PA, i386 and Sparc - That's really no news.
In teresting news is thats it's maintained, so One day Apple will be able to release it's runtime environment for windows. And Cocoa devs will then be able without having to port anything, to sell there software to both world, the tiny Mac world and the Great windows world. The cost for developers will be to add the -fat switch to their compile falgs and that all. Isn't that a beautifull solution in the eye of any developer ? No hasle to write the lib that runs on both platform, no hasle about different APIs, no need not to use Objective-c because it's Apple only ...


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http://islande.hirlimann.net Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It makes much more long term sense, unless there is enough sales of PPCs to make the Moore's law work.

Sorry to say. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Of all the choices, the IBM Power4 seems the only choice suitable for small and portable devices like iMacs and Powerbooks. The architecture is similar enough to the G4 to make the changes necessary minimal.

The problem: there's a general perception that Apple's price/performance ratio is too great to justify the purchase of a Mac.

Your proposed solution: Use a more powerful albeit more expensive processor.

This doesn't logically follow. Furthermore, it's not as if Motorola hasn't been improving on the G4.

If you ask me, Apple should focus more on its existing professional market, and attempt to build some nicer systems to cater to them. One of my suggestions would be to improve the Mac's feasability as a system used for 3D Modeling, by providing support for higher end 3D cards such as the Wildcat. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I hate to complain about poll options, but my prefered solution would be for Apple to merge with Sun and see PPC replaced with Sparc. (and likewise, XNU with Solaris)

Obviously, the likelyhood of this is... rather minimal Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Opteron might be expensive - but the low end x86-64/hammer with 256Kb cache - is supporsed to be called Athlon-64?

I would think this proc wouldn't cost much more than the current athlon

Satish Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I've said it before, Apple is not a computer company, it's a cult. For their own good, Mac users should be deprogrammed.

And FWIW, I like SPARC. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Why would anyone object to this poll being up there? We're supposed to be having FUN!

Wow, Power4 is in the lead! Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The Power4 runs extremely hot. It is also way too expensive. Now if you are talking about the new chip IBM recently announced that is based on the Power4 designth, then that is a different story. Although I doubt it will be as cool as the PowerPC. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 05:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I agree, it seems absurd that anyone would object to a poll and claim that you have to be a full time Mac user to do so.

Maybe this is the same logic that Mac users use when they make their decision to buy a Mac. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 06:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The objection comes from people who dont use macs and never will even if ported to their favorite zippy chip. Why do you care what chip it runs you'll never buy a mac anyhow? Eugenia's mac was given to her for free and as such it's value is probably perceived lower than someone who paid for it as a tool. I know people who've spent quite a bit on cube's and like them very much, they were never inexpensive and still hold decent value today, considering their age. But I'm sure it sits idle in the corner. I just love when people talk up a storm about things that when it comes down to it make no difference to them in their daily lives. Lets say apple goes power4 are you going to go out and get one? Hell no you arent. So what does it really matter to you? Most of you dont even want mac hardware you really just want os x and I dont blame you. But if you dont own a mac or arent planning to buy one, why are you voting? Sun, 08 Sep 2002 06:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Of all the choices, the IBM Power4 seems the only choice suitable for small and portable devices like iMacs and Powerbooks."

I seem to remember seeing the specs (quite a while ago) that showed a power consumption of something on the order of 170 watts for the Power4. This would probably make AMD's offerings look like power misers in comparison :-)

Pat Sun, 08 Sep 2002 06:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I got my first Mac back in 1986. I've also owned A NeXT. I have no plans to get screwed by Steve again. Never, ever again.
Some people seem to believe they have to leave their brains at the check out when they by a Mac....to bad too many then DO. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 06:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > So what does it really matter to you?

haha, here we go again... you really don't get it, aren't you?

How else could I explain to you that whatever happens to Apple is significant for he OS business? OS business are the OSNews business. It is on our best interest to keep up with what's happening at Apple for our OWN good. No matter if we personally care what happens to Apple or not. It is our JOB to care and report and keep you all... busy.
Which part you do not understand?? Sun, 08 Sep 2002 06:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Eugenia....sorry but you are one of the infidels. An Unbeliever. The Unenlightened.
Until (and only until) you see the Light and reject all others, you will exist in Darkness.

Apple akbar! Sun, 08 Sep 2002 06:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>Are you afraid of something? Are you afraid of the outcome of the poll? Is this the real reason behind this "mild attack"? Sun, 08 Sep 2002 06:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>I've said it before, Apple is not a computer company, it's a cult. For their own good, Mac users should be deprogrammed. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 06:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>I got my first Mac back in 1986. I've also owned A NeXT. I have no plans to get screwed by Steve again. Never, ever again.
Some people seem to believe they have to leave their brains at the check out when they by a Mac....to bad too many then DO. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 06:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? From: http://www.xenu.net/cic/definit.html

Definition of a Cult

Every cult can be defined as a group having all of the following 5 characteristics:

1. It uses psychological coercion to recruit, indoctrinate and retain its members

2. It forms an elitist totalitarian society

3. Its founder leader is self-appointed, dogmatic, messianic, not accountable and has charisma

4. It believes 'the end justifies the means' in order to solicit funds recruit people

5. Its wealth does not benefit its members or society

I like number 2, the line about being elite....and your comment about the PC being technically inferior....... Sun, 08 Sep 2002 06:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>I like number 2, the line about being elite....and your comment about the PC being technically inferior....... Sun, 08 Sep 2002 06:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? While everyone else is masturbating over faster CPUs, I took the opportunity to think a bit about this.

Which of those CPUs have low power consumption and run relatively cool? Mot seems to be the only company on that list interested in producing elegant chips, rather than hot and hungry beasts. *Maybe* Apple would be interested in Transmeta chips, but those are slower than what Mot is giving them now, so there's no much point. The day Apple switches CPU architecture to some power-gluttonous chip with a bloated instruction set is the day I dump my iBook and get an OQO [1] or homebrew a 1 GHz XScale machine.

[1] Well, I was planning on doing that anyway, as soon as their released. It would be the perfect Dynapad (http://dynapad.swiki.net/) platform. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 07:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Matt: As a computer user, everybody has a say about these issues. Just to talk about what Apple should do, you don't have to own a Mac. It means that, if you want to talk about Microsoft you have to own a product from them. You are just wasting your time and people's time here.

Your ideas and claims have absolutely no meaning at all. They are just plain stupid. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 07:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Its just a poll everyone? Geez. Eugenia gets flamed, for just posting a poll? Give her a break already. Then the PC vs. Mac war starts. This is like than Jerry Springer. LOL Everyone has their opinion, whether or not you agree with it is one thing, but they don't deserve to be flamed for voicing it. Freedom of choice is a privilege we should all take pride in.

Reguardless you forget no matter what choice we decide.... APPLE haas the final say so why get mad about it?

- The voice of reason... Sun, 08 Sep 2002 07:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Matt: Your bigoted attitude does not help. Where does it say that only MAC users have the moral right to try and determne which future choice of platform. This thread is certainly relevant to OSNews and it wil be discussed. As Sergio said, you don't need to own a product to have an opinon about it.
Take your shit someplace else.

I voted for x86.
I personally am very excited about the Opteron but as of now it's a fairly unknown quantity. If Apple can get some arrangement to work closely with AMD and develop their OS to work well with it, I think it would be an amazing and a very profitable move for either company since both are trying to fight against giants which won't go down easy.
For an immediate switch, it's x86.
If they are thinking more on the line of 4-5 years, Opteron looks good.

Mayuresh Sun, 08 Sep 2002 07:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Hmmm, 69 people says go for x86 (32-bit), and 79 people says go for x86-64. In other words, 148 people are for x86 (64-bit or 32-bit). Compare that with 94 for Power4 and 10 for G4, which means only 104 people are for something PPC.

We have a 24 majority, mwuahahaha! (I was expecting either x86 or PPC would win in a landslide).. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 07:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>We have a 24 majority, mwuahahaha! (I was expecting either x86 or PPC would win in a landslide).. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 07:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I think it would be an amazing and a very profitable move for either company since both are trying to fight against giants which won't go down easy.

AMD wouldn't be as much as Apple would get out of the deal. Apple's sales is quite insignificant compared to AMD sales to other hardware makers. Plus, it is not like AMD would get any publicity out of this (would a Average Joe guess that G4 is from Motorola from Apple's site?)

As for Opteron, it looks as good as K7 back then. Sure, we consumers won't really know until we use it, but if Apple is interested in it, they probably be having prototypes of it in their workstations. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 07:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Although Darwin/Mac OS X could be ported to x86, this is only Cocoa implementation, not Carbon an Classic, and a lot of Apple software developer have definitively refuse to port their low revenues software to Cocoa.

If some day Apple change this would be in a long term and the processor of choice is not know at this time. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 07:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>Apple's sales is quite insignificant compared to AMD sales to other hardware makers. Plus, it is not like AMD would get any publicity out of this (would a Average Joe guess that G4 is from Motorola from Apple's site?) Sun, 08 Sep 2002 07:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "I guess you're going to say PCs are technically superior (even back in the DOS era)?"

Yes I would. The 286-based IBM AT already had the right components for preemptive multitasking and memmory protection. It's not IBM's fault that MS software did not take advantage of what the hardware could offer. At the time (http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/1984/index.page), the first Macs shipped with 68K cpus that did not even have virtual memory management(http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com/papers/otherOlderPapers/anotherm...). Also, PC hardware shipped with 9-bit ram so there was always one bit for parity while the Mac shipped with 8-bit ram. 9-bit is of course better because you can tell when a bit accidentally flips. It wasn't till the Mac IIfx that any Mac got 9-bit ram. (http://www.apple-history.com/IIfx.html) [Because of cost cutting measures, most desktops today regardless of PC or Mac do not have parity.] It also had a 400KB floppy drive instead of the AT's 1.2MB drive. And 128KB ram to the AT's 256KB. About the only advantage the Mac had was a pretty GUI (which you could get third-party apps. for the AT) and the 8-bit sound. And it's been the same ever since. PC's were the first to get almost everything you see on the Mac today. Notable exceptions are FireWire and possible SCSI. (I'm not too clear about SCSI.) But SDRAM, PCI, ATI graphics accelerators, Nvidia graphics accelerators, etc. all came on the PC first.

I think the two most innovative things to come out of Apple in a long, long time are Quartz and Firewire. But we can get Firewire on the PC now, so the only thing that is missing would be Quartz.

Why would an avid PC user care about what CPU Apple will use next? Because that dictates whether or not I can potentially move over to Mac OS X. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 07:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? What about maybe Transmeta? Since the crusoe does instruction morphing on a rather basic chip....it would seem that all they'd need to do is create a chip that'll emulate PPC on the same core as they use for the Crusoe. Yes, the performance leaves a bit to be desired at the moment.....

BUT!

It's a new architecture that seems to be on the right track,

**and**

The Crusoe seems to be the only thing even close to being in-line with the Motorola chips when it comes to heat and power consumption.

Another idea would be to do something with VIA. The C3 seems to basically suck, but they've got fab capabilities, and could help Apple in the mobo arena. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 08:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>Why would an avid PC user care about what CPU Apple will use next? Because that dictates whether or not I can potentially move over to Mac OS X. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 08:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Very silly poll in that there are two PowerPC choices, I say that they will obviously stay with a PowerPC ISA, they cant afford to make another switch at this point. Which PowerPC they will use is a lot trickier to say of course. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 08:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? If I was a potential citizen of, say, Netherlands, I would like to have the right to enter a poll to show your support, or lack of support for policies.

Besides, business and politics are very different. Apple, very apparently, is very interested of getting PC users to use Macs. And if PC users say "I want x86", I think it is important for Apple to go that path. This is only if most of their potential users are PC users that wants x86. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 08:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>If I was a potential citizen of, say, Netherlands, I would like to have the right to enter a poll to show your support, or lack of support for policies. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 08:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I just pay taxes here, feed the local economy and avoid the subject of soccer!

What happens if the government introduces new tax policies that would leave you cashless? Sun, 08 Sep 2002 08:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>What happens if the government introduces new tax policies that would leave you cashless? Sun, 08 Sep 2002 09:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? [i]Why would an avid PC user care about what CPU Apple will use next? Because that dictates whether or not I can potentially move over to Mac OS X. [i]

Why? There's Nothing stoping you from moving to OS X Now, just get a PPC Mac! However if you don't want to spend $$ on a Mac then you should just forget about OS X because your Not going to Be Using it anytime soon. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 09:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? They already have changed the tax policies once since I've been here! They lowered income tax, but raised sales tax (btw)!

Not my point. My point is what happen if the government has a policy to execute all people nammed Dennis?

---

King Mac Of Apple Land: Why? There's Nothing stoping you from moving to OS X Now, just get a PPC Mac! However if you don't want to spend $$ on a Mac then you should just forget about OS X because your Not going to Be Using it anytime soon.

Some PC users don't mind the price tag of Macs, but mind the performance of Macs. Macs aren't the most speediest things arounds. Some people, $1000 extra justifies the good looks and the OS. Yet these people probably can't use PPC processors.... Sun, 08 Sep 2002 09:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Because that affects what Mac users really want!"

When you vote in your country, you vote for what you want, no? What other people want are secondary after you consider what you want. That's exactly true here. PC users that have considered switching to Macs or Mac OS X will vote what they want from the platform and consider Mac users' wants after. More than likely PC users who have never considered Mac or Mac OS X will never care to even vote.

"Almost like me voting in a foreign country that influences someone else's government! Of course I don't care if PC user vote on this poll!"

That's a bad analogy. I have nothing to do with your foreign country. On the other hand, we are all potential customers of Apple. So we should have say in what products we want created for purchase. Being a Mac user is not a special club. Anyone can join.

"As for your history piece, it only shows the limelight of PC... you're forgetting who brought color to the screen while PCs still used single colors, which gave Mac it's desktop publishing glory, and I could go on, but I won't waste my breath on the subject. "

Bah, colors big deal. There's still more firsts on the PC side even with colors.

"But if we both want to get technical, I think Amiga would have us both beat in regards of superiority in those days!"

I agree with that. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 10:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Here we go again - more crap from the rumor mill. By all means, lets have a
poll!!!! Eugenia, isn't getting a little too much all Mac x86???

I nice discussion about, what it takes to be Mac user, and why Eugenia is ;-).

If Apple did go x86 the will be using standard chaep CPU, RAM, IDE, Controller chips, HD, etc. Customers will be able to make a quick price/feature compare with the MS camp, and Apple will not be able to say "This is a Mac, that's why...". Even though it will be a different platform (OS X), why would customers want to leave a platform where they can run XP, Linux, and hopefully soon BeOS???

If customers hate the things MS does, I hope they don't think that Apple does it any better. Apple is by far more controlling of their systems, and the only difference is that Apple havent (yet) started to use activation code, logging stuff in media player, etc.. Apple is a much more closed playform!!!! Some people like it and that's fine, let them have a Mac and all the iApplications. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 11:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? [i]Bah, colors big deal. There's still more firsts on the PC side even with colors. [i]
Your wrong, The Mac had meny things before the PC did, this page (http://www.mackido.com/Innovation/) lists all the things the Mac had before the PC and some things the Pc still does not have :p Sun, 08 Sep 2002 11:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Next time, try to give people choices, eventough they seem silly to you.. Crusoe has a lot of advantages, and it has a lot of disadvantages, but you can say that of any one of those choices..
Try not to give your opinion when you set up a poll, so leave the "even tough that would mean the end" out.. Try to be open minded for once in a while.. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 11:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Gaf: Here we go again - more crap from the rumor mill. By all means, lets have a
poll!!!! Eugenia, isn't getting a little too much all Mac x86???

How does a *poll* suddenly becomes a *rumour*.

No sense in that.

Gaf: If Apple did go x86 the will be using standard chaep CPU, RAM, IDE, Controller chips, HD, etc. Customers will be able to make a quick price/feature compare with the MS camp, and Apple will not be able to say "This is a Mac, that's why...".

Apple already uses off the shelf stuff like RAM, HD, IDE etc. Big differences. Besides, as I have told to CattBeMac on email, like what Apple does now, Apple could, would and should rebrand stuff like the CPU. Like now, G4, Velocity Engine etc., are all Apple brandnames.

Gaf: Even though it will be a different platform (OS X), why would customers want to leave a platform where they can run XP, Linux, and hopefully soon BeOS???

Because on Mac x86, you could run OS X, Windows, Linux and perhaps OBOS, if the drivers ever arrive.

King Mac Of Apple Land: Your wrong, The Mac had meny things before the PC did, this page (http://www.mackido.com/Innovation/) lists all the things the Mac had before the PC and some things the Pc still does not have :p

Most of the entries here are software related. What Malachai is talking about is hardware (which is BTW the topic here, we aren't having a poll about the next OS for Apple). Take the first entry for example; "General User Interface".

He, and we are talking about hardware. From up to what I have read, which is until 1990, it was mostly software related. So your post is almost completely off topic.

Anonymous: Next time, try to give people choices, eventough they seem silly to you.. Crusoe has a lot of advantages, and it has a lot of disadvantages, but you can say that of any one of those choices..

Transmeta is after a different target market than Apple is. Transmeta is targeting sub-laptops and clusters. Plus, its performance isn't that great, they are better off just sticking with Motorola. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 12:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Your wrong, The Mac had meny things before the PC did, this page (http://www.mackido.com/ Innovation/) lists all the things the Mac had before the PC and some things the Pc still does not have"

A lot of that page is just opinion. Like they say having two data forks is good. It's not good IMHO because when you download an app. you lose the resource fork unless you use a packaging program. And other stuff like "Design and Programming [Win3 - 1989, not as versatile]." Gimme a break. Same thing with creator IDs. They're different implementations and one is not neccessarily better.

Other things on that page are simply wrong. Like saying ADB is hot swappable. And then they list Apple products too. Somehow, I'm not surprised that Quicktime was developed on the Mac first. You can't compare Quicktime on Mac to Quicktime on PC. That's just silly.

Everything I listed is quantifiable. There's no opinion in what I said. I don't say PC has this and so does Mac, but Mac does it better so it's the first to really have it. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 12:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Any reason you left out Transmeta's Crusoe? Sun, 08 Sep 2002 12:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Did you even read the damn story? She actually mentioned the reason Crusoe was not made an option. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 13:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Then why is that the Macs adopt the PC technology inside? Like AGP, PCI, USB and the like... that is all PC technology (not exclusivly of course)...

The Mac/PC technology isn't that much diferente anymore... stating that one if inferior will only result in stating the other is also inferior.

The major diferences between the Mac and the PC worlds is the OS.

And i wouldn't mind of a Mac OS X for the intel/amd x86 pc platform...

I, possibly, would even buy one... Sun, 08 Sep 2002 14:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? There were some posts about who's really a mac user or not. I think some of the point of the big Chip controversy among non-Mac users is that some of them would LIKE to be Mac users if only they could feel like they were getting a better deal for their hardware buck.

Personally, I find the performance of the current crop of Apples to be adequate, as a Mac user, but I also fear that Apple hardware will be gradually left behind. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 14:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Okay,

It has become quite obvious that few of you read the news on thisa site completely before making posts. The IBM Power4 is in no way mate-able with the Mac's future.

It is expensive, yes. It is fast, very much so. But there is a technical reason! That I will just defer to the article before this. In other words for all of you mentally challenged: Goto http://osnews.com/ and look at the article that says: "Power4 not for Mac?"

Anyay, Marklar is already up and running, and maintained on x86. Darwin was ported from x86 and is also maintained. The switch to x86 would take only hardware engineering. And third-party vendors would only need to recompile their products (which should be the case with any hardware style transition).

I agree with the thought that it will be closed x86 hardware. In fact I believe that the boot loaded will most likely be in the BIOS (aka boot ROM). This will do about 10,000 things for Apple and Apple's computers.

First, don't expect to be usign plain jane ATI boards, and normal x86 mobos. Apple is first and foremost a hardware company, meaning it will follow its own style and design. The only thing that will really change is the instructions that are passed around the inside of the Mac. Much more complex instructions, resulting in less umph / mph... but not that much less thanks to some really advanced pipelining and the like.

You will probably still need to buy special hardware for the Mac.. except most likely maybe RAM and the CPU. Of course, there is a VERY logical reason for this.. drivers AND support. Apple is too small to support such a large and complex world of hardware. SO, most likely.. the future Macs (if on x86) will be integrated boards with MAYBE one PCI slot.. However, RAM and CPUs are nothing to support.. once it works, it works.. no drivers to speak of.. no support to worry about.

The coolest thing would be MacOS on Sparc or Power4.. but it just isn't going to happen ;-( The wisest possible choice would be for x86, where Apple will no longer have to worry about stupid companies like Motorola narrowing its focus and cutting Apple out of the picture.

Jobs is not stupid. He is very brilliant. He has probably already made this decision.. which might explain why Marklar exists. And quite possibly the choice for an ugly Unix underskirt (just replace this unix underskirt with an x86 unix underskirt, recompile after just a few changes to the kernel's interface).

But why trust me? I have only 6 years of experience in this field... call up Jobs.. I'm sure Steve will let you in on his little secret. Most likely.. it will be years in the coming. The migration to MacOS X, then a slow transition to x86. One model at a time. Of course, nothing stops them from trying various hardware forms in the market.. except possibly the time to port (months per each with something like MacOS X).

--The loon Sun, 08 Sep 2002 14:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? To those who complained about this pole saying even with X86 OSX people will not buy it, i say your right and wrong. You're right cause this is not the only thing stopping people from buying macs. There are many things I'm waiting for Apple to change. The cpu is one of them, I will not buy a Mac as long as they are PPC, paying that kind of money for a cpu that has hit a dead end street (since the G5 looks dead) is not what i want to do. The power4 and derivitives could end up in the same position in a few years. It's only ibm making them, they make cpu's for themselves. I don't see IBM having the volume capabilites nor the want to be a supplier for apple since they might ditch power4 on a whim.

As i said there other things holding me back, OSX still has features that bug me but in time it seams to be getting better, and the are slowly making it faster. Other issues are more basic like wanting better keyboards and mice, if i buy a computer i don't want to be throwing out new harware and getting differant, thats a waste. They could also work on their styling. A few years ago Macs looked good. Now they are looking like crap to me more and more, the tower needs new case design and the laptops have to stop looking like a fisherprice toy laptop.

The big issue is cost, a power4 cpu will not help this. My beef isn't just that "macs are expensive" it's just the reason that they are expensive. Now if apple went x86 it's obvious it's going to be their own mobos and only run on apple x86 hardware. So you still need to run on their hardware. Thats fine, i would never expect them to become an OS company like MS. My beef is that Macs cost more than an equivilant Wintel machine. They should cost less for the same performance. So now you gasp and call me stupid. Apple produces an integrated all in one solution. They make the computer. Companies like dell and ibm build the hardware aspect and MS the software aspect, there is two companies trying to make money there. So the cost to the consumer is higher. Plus the wintel machine has more upgradability options. This is not 5 years ago, just about any Wintel computer can be upgraded to you hearts content. Macs not very much. A cpu upgrade for a mac is not as simple/cheap as a x86. I can think of no other example of a company who makes an intergated less upgradable type prodect and sells it for more than the open product. Now things like the PPC cpu may cost more but not enough to justify the cost. An equvilent mac to a wintel machine should be in the relm of 90% the cost of the wintel. Apple may make nice computers but they are in no way superior to x86 computers. I do have interest in having a mac, but if i was to buy one as they stand now i would be an idiot. I wish apple would relize they need to spend a little less effort/money macing iMacs have lcd's and moving screens and more into making a simple straight forward mac much like the original iMac and sell it for a price that it should have 400-500 bucks. Their sales would go through the roof. bring them more money and bring in a bigger user base which will atract more apps. Now the mac people here will completely disagree with what i have said, but that's to be expected. No one wants to accept they overpaid for something. They will cling to their ideas for as long as they can. There are reasons mac has such a small market share, and untill the understand why they will stay there. Apple may act like they are fine with there market share but thats a lie, no company is content with such things. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 15:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Now they are looking like crap to me more and more, the tower needs new case design and the laptops have to stop looking like a fisherprice toy laptop.

Funny. Apple low end laptops are the same boxy design as a normal PC laptop, only it in white instead of black. The high end looks almost the same as a VAOI or IBM - metallic finish. The only laptop that looked like fisherprice was the old iToiletSeat (I mean iBook).

My only beef with PowerMacs is that they have only two places for optical drives. I'm planning to get a DVD+RW drive by the end of next year, and guess what? On my ATX case, it could coexist with my CDROM and CDRW. If I wanted a Zip drive (which sounds like a good idea right now, BTW), I still have a place for it. (Another thing is the excessive plastic would make it hard to hit in my computer table)

For the rest of your comment, I more or less agree. Except the $300-400 target. (they would have to ditch the monitor first). Sun, 08 Sep 2002 16:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The objection comes from people who dont use macs and never will even if ported to their favorite zippy chip.

Ha! What Apple does has nothing to do with your wishes. It has everything to do Apple's business needs.

The needs are:
1) good suppliers of chips
2) more non-Mac buyers

It seems the Mac faithful are the least important people in this particular equation. If they were, you'd all still be using free .mac services.

Remember, there's a reason you have a leader. A democracy isn't in the cards for Mac users. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 16:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Something the MacNN article OSNews linked to earlier--and this poll, to some degree--both miss is that a POWER4-based PPC chip is not the same as a POWER4. All the drawbacks that people have mentioned about the Power4 CPU are correct (size, heat, power consumption), but they were also true of the POWER2 CPU that the current PowerPC architecture is based on.

The MacNN piece was based on informal comments someone heart at a briefing which couldn't have been about the new PowerPC chip, despite what he seems to think: it hasn't been unveiled yet. It's evidently true that Apple has rejected IBM's attempts to sell them the POWER4 architecture itself, so it's probably a well-intentioned confusion--but IBM was trying to get Apple to produce higher-end servers around it, not desktops.

Again, trying to get Mac OS X--the full Mac OS X, including Carbon--to run on the x86 family would require software emulation of the G4 chip. Binary compatibility with existing Mac apps is essential. Despite the twists and turns Apple's taken over the years, they've always understood that. Emulating a 68040 on a PPC601 wasn't that difficult. Emulating a PPC750 on a Pentium IV will be difficult. (The relative speed of the processors isn't a problem, obviously, but the differences in the actual underlying architectures make it much easier to get good emulation of x86 on PPC than the reverse.)

As for Macs being a "cult," I'd have to say that if some Mac users do come across as that way (and they do), some PC users come across as the equivalent of the type I've dubbed the "atheist fundie"--the one whose dislike for religion has crossed the line into a not-quite-rational ranting crusade.

There are a lot of things I've disliked about the "Mac user community" over the years, but after being in it, I don't think its psychology is related to cults at all. It's what's known as a "siege mentality"--and I'm definitely starting to understand why it's set in. (As the wry joke goes, "Apple--proudly going out of business for fifteen years and counting!") Why does it bother anyone that I'm using a TiBook and that I'm pretty happy with it? I'm not blind to its faults--don't be blind to its virtues. Failing that, I'm not telling you that you're an idiot for using a PC. Stop telling me I'm an idiot for using a Mac. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 16:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Rajan said: "Funny. Apple low end laptops are the same boxy design as a normal PC laptop, only it in white instead of black. The high end looks almost the same as a VAOI or IBM - metallic finish. The only laptop that looked like fisherprice was the old iToiletSeat (I mean iBook)."

Not so funny.....they're made by exactly the same Taiwanese companies that make x86 laptops: Quanta, Acer, etc. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 16:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Which chip has best vector performance? I'm guessing Power4? I want Lisp programs to run faster.

That's what I'm voting for. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 16:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Okay if I were to buy a mac, which I never have. I would want it to be comparable in price to that of the same off the shelf PC that I see in the store. The talk of the town used to be 3 years ago "Sub $1K" PC's, now you can get a "decent" working home computer for $500 - $700. I know the whole "megahertz myth" and I say that it's all a load of hooey. I use an old iMac all the time and the thing loads slowly and doesn't run the latest wham bang software. HOWEVER that $700 computer WILL run the latest wham-bang software for x86. Upgrading a mac is also a pain in the ass, if not impossible. There are NO OEM cheap parts to compare with or buy, the OEM is the only freekin seller.

I will buy a mac when the prices are comparable, don't give me some megahertz myth BS responses and don't tell me how mac hardware is better, that's the same standard hardware that's in a PC except for the MB and Chip. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 16:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? x86 just because I could keep using this old hunk-of-junk w/Mac OS X (If that day ever comes). Sun, 08 Sep 2002 17:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Apple tests to the extreme ends all of the hw that ends up in a shipping Mac. They attempt to fix every single issue that arises from a combination of all these pieces.

Dell, Gateway, and your favorite reseller here, put 20 pieces of open market components into a box, and if it boots, it ships.

WHQL is the piece that allows this to occur for Win boxes. You end up with a reasonably operative driver for each chunk of hw. But in the end, the Mac will give the better user experience, because the Mac is tested in the shipping config doing real world tasks on real world sw for Macintosh.

None of your blow hard hot air about pieces being the same in both boxes really even matter. Its the Quality Assurance in the end that really matters.

To explain this more -- I drop a box from apple on the counter, drop in a Jaguar CD, do the custom install, and have a operative box in 18 minutes (for real! if you drop the localisation peices of Jag install). I drop my software on in 2 hours (plus patches). It all just works. No funny business.

Similarly, I take a high quality vendor box (SYS in this case), drop on 2K. I have to load 7 different drivers to get a system with sound, reliable 3d accel. Then, about an hour into the ordeal, I have to download/install Ie6. Oops, bad move, Win2K winupdate no longer works. Reinstall after another hour of futzing to get things to agree to allow the updates to occur.

This is the difference, and I never understood it until I became a Mac developer. No PC person will understand until they actually buy and live with a Mac. No amount of hot air can compensate for ownership. None whatsoever. Buy the damned box and try it, or your banter is just as usable as a used kleenex during flu season.

The people that I maintain computers for, are buying Macs next time. They are tired of the same thing, but didn't know any better. They have decided that if a system software engineer can be converted, then they are taking Windows pain for no return, when they could have the joy of a Mac.

David Sun, 08 Sep 2002 17:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I apologize for not reading the text above the poll. I wouldn't be so quick to discount Transmeta. Wouldn't you be surprised, Eugenia, if Apple and Transmeta announced a partnership sometime in the future? It may not make sense to us now, but who knows?

To TET: I must object to being called an idiot. (BTW, my IQ has tested above the genius level.) People who resort to name-calling instead of responding with a polite and well-thought out message speak volumes about their own intelligence and maturity. You know what they say about people who live in glass houses... Sun, 08 Sep 2002 17:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Please (Eugenias fav word?), there will be no X86 processors in Macs! Incredible that I keep reading this week in and week out on OSNews. And the comments are getting far worse than on Slashdot. Never thought I would say that.

And rajan r, don't you have anything better to do than reading OSNews all day and posting crap?

Gsus. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 18:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? As a user of both Mac and x86 computers (and don't tell me I'm not a real Mac user or I'm not a real x86 user), I find this debate to be extremely pointless and tiresome (yet I sit here reading all this tripe). I personally have endless complaints about both kinds of computer, no matter which brand or model (or OS for that matter). Use whatever you want and quit hyping and hitting at each other. Computers, of all kinds, each have their benefits... and they all have problems that no one brand, type or model has yet to solve in an all encompassing way. I expect things to stay this way for a long time because it makes money for the sellers and that is ALL that matters. Take an objective look at the history of personal computers (or whatever name you want to call these things) and you will see how immature and infantile this industry is compared to most other industries. Espousing about the benefits of one person's favorite piece of computer over another is really dumb when it's all pretty much just a slight variation on the original model and everything else out there.

As for this poll... I don't expect that Apple pays much attention to polls like this, where there is a great lack of objectivity and scope of market on the part of the poll-participants. Just have a bit of fun seeing what the readers of OSNews think; don't expect it to mean anything to anyone beyond OSNews and its readership. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 18:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Lord of the Hiccup, your arguments only make sense in a vaccuum. Apple is only somewhat immune to price and performance competition.

But I agree that Macs are a better solution in theory. Apple is really a new company, as old as OS X, and so you have to be a bit understanding.

Good thing the market isn't so understanding. ;-) Sun, 08 Sep 2002 18:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ... is the "Nothing of the above possibilities. Something completely different will happen" choice.

That's why I can't vote.

Ralf.

Eugenia: Is there a way to see the current results without voting? That would be nice. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 18:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Apple just went through a major change to OS X. You can't jerk developers around and jump to another processor for some time (probably 3 to 4 years). All these switch arguments are fairly pointless in the short term. The economic impact of switching to x86 at this time would be to piss off developers and probably lose a number of them. Moreover, the high-end applications that apple wants to target are well addressed through better vectorization and not through silly marketing inspired intel speed games.

Open your eyes folks and stop chanting the words of intel's propaganda department. Really, how can anyone talk about an apple cult when the intel processor speed cult is emitting so much damn noice. Intel is running off a cliff. There is no need to follow. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 18:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Heres an idea...
Maybe Apple will dual source the processors. Motorola, AND IBM. Apple just got back into the server market. Maybe a high end processor for the rack mounts, and high end macs. Maybe the next generation G5 for typical users and laptops. Who else would use a scaled down POWER4 with Altivec ? I really doubt that Motorola has just gave up on the G5 also.

Apple might want to spark some competetion between Motorola and IBM too. Look what happened with AMD and Intel.

Lastly, Apple may realize that in todays market, you do not want to be held captive by a supplier. This would give them a backup. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 18:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? if apple switched to power4 and didn't have complete compatibilty, would a 2nd layer be created, classic(macos 9), modern(macos 10.2) and....more modern...i think a switch will be put back until the dependency on classic is put to nill so that it would be 1 less issue to deal with. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 18:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? XScale?

that was supposed to be up near 600Mhz, has a nice architecture, and is massively power-efficient. apple could make an iBook with a battery-life of 8-10 hours! i'd buy one of them...

(NB: i know XScale isnt particularly powerful in terms of benchmarks, but i'd rather have something i can write on for 10 hours than something i can do whizzy 3d animations on for 2 hours...) Sun, 08 Sep 2002 18:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? As a quick note, no, Motorola definitely hasn't given up on the G5. I'm not sure people really understand that the problem isn't one of vaporware--the G5, otherwise known as the MPC85xx series, is already shipping. (Check Motorola's semiconductor page, look at the available product list, and look at the product roadmap that equates the "Gx" designation with the series names.) The problem is increasing the clock speed past its current 1 GHz limit, which Motorola has been having problems doing reliably. And there's some political/economic concerns about whether Motorola is really interested in that whole market. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 19:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I much rather have SPARC Chips running the Mac. They are one of the fiew Proben 64 Bit Processors. If Apple is going to change to a new processor they might as well go for 64bit and Ultra SPARC is the best bet for 64 bit. And one of the best proven. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 20:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? please select the future mac processor :
a) AMD
b) AMD
c) INTEL
d) IBM
d) G4 don't pick this one, dumbass. I do not like the G4.

Eheh ya gotta love a poll with such a parti-pris in the question.
Still, whaddayanow, the G4 is selected by 3 percent of users. Strangely similar to Apple market'share. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 22:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? x86 is my vote. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 22:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? My vote: Motorola's nextgen. PPC 85xx.

Ralf. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 22:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Personally I was hoping I could run my Mac software on my Etch-a-Sketch--that thing is pretty damn fast, and it stays very cool with just a few case fans. Sun, 08 Sep 2002 23:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? MARKLAR this:
(8,000 MARKLARS or less)

WHY IS A RAVEN LIKE A WRITING DESK?


;-)

P.S. This MARKLAR (and all xMARKLAR/PPC/toaster threads has had a great MARKLAR)

May we MARKLAR this now and MARKLAR on please? Sun, 08 Sep 2002 23:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Well, based on the comments of the "true" Mac users here, "true" Mac users are really quite stupid.

Why do I care? Well, let's see, I want to see the advancement of technology on all fronts, and Apple sticking with Motorolla is not something that will produce such results.

Quite simply, I'm a computer nerd, as are many others that comment here, and I'm also working towards a degree in Electrical Engineering.... the question is, why would I NOT care about this?

You so called "true" Mac users need to get your head out of your rear and come to the real world where there are people that actually CARE about technology, rather than purely the asthetics of what that technology is incased in (ie, "true" Mac users). Mon, 09 Sep 2002 02:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Apple is known for unique and high quality hardware, stylish software, and high prices. They have a loyal customer base with that combination.

Knowning that, what would happen if they were able to buy their chips from the Co-op of x86. So many 'competitors' use the same hardware in the x86 market, prices on components are cheap and available. Qualities not often associated with Apple suppliers.

I would think that lower product costs would put Apple in a position that they would enjoy. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 03:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? a few people have mentioned apple buying sun, which is a nice fantasy, but i wish apple could buy sgi and get mips (now spun out) and transfer there. a whole chip design team, a great server design team. all they'd have to do is dump the marketing department and roll the server group up into the xserve group. they wouldn't have to continue with all the proprietary techs, but they'd get great product design people.

it'll never happen, but it would have been nice. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 03:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? WattsM: Emulating a PPC750 on a Pentium IV will be difficult. (The relative speed of the processors isn't a problem, obviously, but the differences in the actual underlying architectures make it much easier to get good emulation of x86 on PPC than the reverse.)

It is possible. In 18 months P4s (or P5s) would be 2x faster than what they have now. 36 months from now, it would be 4x faster. etc. I don't think software emulation is difficult at all. (Plus, there is a open source PPC emulator, I can't find it now).

Corey: Not so funny.....they're made by exactly the same Taiwanese companies that make x86 laptops: Quanta, Acer, etc.

Totally not my point.

Lord of the Hiccup: Dell, Gateway, and your favorite reseller here, put 20 pieces of open market components into a box, and if it boots, it ships.

Dell makes a lot of custom parts. The mobo, the PSU, modem, Ethernet etc. are custom made. just like Apple. You are barking on the wrong tree here, buddy.

Lord of the Hiccup: None of your blow hard hot air about pieces being the same in both boxes really even matter. Its the Quality Assurance in the end that really matters.

If quality assurance really bothers me, I would pick an IBM, or a Sony. heck, even a Dell might be good (though I vow never to use them because changing motherboards is impossible). My cousin has a 2 year old Dell, not a problem so far.

I think this myth that "PCs are unstable, not integrated, etc." comes from people comparing a $200-500 Walmart PC with a $1400 Mac (Yeah, I have seen it a lot of times).

Lord of the Hiccup: To explain this more -- I drop a box from apple on the counter, drop in a Jaguar CD, do the custom install, and have a operative box in 18 minutes (for real! if you drop the localisation peices of Jag install). I drop my software on in 2 hours (plus patches). It all just works. No funny business.

I did exactly just that when i installed Windows 2000 and Linux on my PC. Except I didn't drop it on the counter, I use it on my computer table :-)

Besides, from all the forum posts I have read, you must have a really fast Mac, because I have read that the average install time is around 45minutes.

Besides, Lord of the Hiccup, the whole thread is about whether x86 would be good for Apple. I don't see how your problems can happen on the Mac if they changed to x86.

Enough of this!!: And rajan r, don't you have anything better to do than reading OSNews all day and posting crap?

A lot of people don't find my post as "crap". You probably find it as "crap" because you are close minded. I come here often because, well, I don't have anything better to do. I'm having school holidays now. Besides, it seems I'm here always because of the time difference.

Besides, unlike other people, you don't tell why x86 Mac is impossible. You just call us "worse than Slashdot". Then go to Slashdot then.

ryan: Apple just went through a major change to OS X. You can't jerk developers around and jump to another processor for some time (probably 3 to 4 years).

Most developers would just need a recompile to port their software to x86. Porting to x86 isn't as hard as porting to OS X. Plus, not to mention that emulation does exist for current PPC Mac apps.

ryan: The economic impact of switching to x86 at this time would be to piss off developers and probably lose a number of them.

In the past decade, Apple wasn't exactly an angel to ISVs.

ryan: Open your eyes folks and stop chanting the words of intel's propaganda department.

Since when does Intel has a propaganda department? Since when anybody from Intel even suggested that Apple switch to Intel? Since when does Intel care about the Mac market?

mike burns: i think a switch will be put back until the dependency on classic is put to nill so that it would be 1 less issue to deal with.

Jobs said the same thing.

Well almost.

Anonymous: I much rather have SPARC Chips running the Mac.

Doubt Sun would be pleased to have Apple using their SPARC processors. Plus, SPARC has the same economic problems as PPC.

hylas: MARKLAR this:
(8,000 MARKLARS or less)

I never said Marklar exist. In fact I remember distinctly three times here I wrote Marklar is a rumour.

jason: it'll never happen, but it would have been nice.

Obviously would never happen. Apple won't have enough money to buy either one of them out. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 04:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I don't care what kind of processor apple will use in the near future. I just want to work with the software I have. The switch to Macos X have made me buy new software. If Apple switches to X86, Power4 our whatever tomorrow and I have to buy new software again. Well They lose a customer (period). I think I am not alone in this one. So dream on about processors. It is not relevant at this moment. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 04:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? jason: it'll never happen, but it would have been nice.

Obviously would never happen. Apple won't have enough money to buy either one of them out.


I'm not sure what the market capitalization of SGI is, but it can't be that huge. Plus, they have shed a lot of staff, and radically simplified their corporate structure. But, I essentially agree, as I don't really see Apple as a good merger candidate (yeah, I know about the Apple/NEXT merger).

After my last post, I was thinking what folly SGI pursued when they started building custom, complicated W2K boxes that never sold. Then I read over at pcmag.com some reviews of high-end workstations from the likes of Compaq, Dell, etc. That they couldn't see the commoditization of this is incredible.

I was also chatting with a good friend the other night about the miseries of GNOME (I used to love, love, love Linux -- I have a love/hate thing with it now). He's a huge advocate, but I pointed out that he uses GNOME and Sawfish to configure keyboard commands for window operations. He codes in VIM and reads mail in MUTT. He browses in Galeon (the best GTK app) and MP3s in XMMS. That's it. Practically no GUI apps at all. For that, it works pretty well. Unfortunately, neither GNOME nor KDE can handle a few of the "business" app requirements I have in my life, so I go back and forth, probably until the day I decide to buy into Apple... Linux will probably never have some of the accounting and complicated printing apps I need ("complicated printing" -- no, I won't learn Postscript). My wife's a photographer who produces 30"x40" digital prints -- Photoshop is a requirement for her.

I think a lot of the heat around the Apple Mac/OSX issue is that Apple is so close to being a pretty damned great computing platform, but there are strange and inconsolable issues:

X86 hardware is cheap, plentiful, goes down like Hersheys (slight waxiness). MS is, as many people see it, degenerate, evil, in the paws of anti-consumer interests.

Apple has made a devil's bargain and, in supreme strangeness, stuck with processors that someone else dictates to them and isn't, in some (but not all) metrics, keeping up. Yeah, I know, content creation speeds are high and productivity metrics are healthy. But why, oh why, can't Apple have control over this core part of their business? It does leave a chalky taste in the mouth, doesn't it?

My point: The problem with Apple is that, no matter how small the processor speed bumps are, they will always sell products at pre-defined price points to *look* competitive and generate the cashflow they need to stay healthy. It's obvious for them, it can look strange under scrutiny, and it just feels inexplicable. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 05:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Almost like me voting in a foreign country that influences someone else's government! Of course I don't care if PC user vote on this poll!"

That's a bad analogy. I have nothing to do with your foreign country. On the other hand, we are all potential customers of Apple. So we should have say in what products we want created for purchase. Being a Mac user is not a special club. Anyone can join.

You are a potential immigrant aren't you? In essence, you are a potential buyer of the product "Dutch society". That still doesn't make you eligable to vote on our policies. One reason might be that you don't want to migrate, but want to have us do something you like. The same is probably true here. How many people voted for x86 because they want to use MacOS X on a cheap PC? Of course, the poll itself is already wrong since Eugenia doesn't understand the difference between a Power4 and a PowerPC based on Power4 technology. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 11:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? If Apple Bought out the chip division of Moto then they could be able to get the clock speeds up since apple is much more commited to apple then moto is. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 13:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? While it would be a great advantage if Macs had the fastest processors around, does it really matter if the G4 isn't the fastest in the block? Considering Apple is one of two computer companies that are actually making money, one glaring truth becomes evident: the G4 processor is fast enough for 95% of the cpmputing masses.
Another case in point: Given that Intel's chips are the fastest ever released for the platform, if everybody wanted the fastest, sales should be soaring. Yet, Intel keeps revising their sales forecasts lower.
Therefore, while a small minority are salivating over the possiblity of new chips for the Apple, Steve Jobs and crew realize that everyone else just simply do not care what's inside. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 13:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I think Apple should stick with the G4s for quite some time, but upgrade all their desktops to quad processor configurations. Four 1 Ghz G4s working together in Mac OS X would blow any Pentium PC at even 6 Ghz or more, specially since 4 Ghz distributed in four processors are way better than a single 4 Ghz one. The G4 is a great chip and if Apple choosed another type of CPU it would be a mess, because they would have to change OS X to work with another chip architectures, be it x86, Power 4 or whatever they choose, so they'd have to sell different versions of the OS, one for the new machines, and one for the PowerPC ones millions of users already have. Maybe third party developers would have to do that too, since it seems that software written for PowerPC is not easily ported to x86 and other CPU types, so it would be a hell of a mess, and mess is against the Mac philosophy. If Apple starts selling PowerMacs with four G4s in them at the current price, they would no longer be overpriced, in fact I bet Apple's share of the market would go to above 20% in no time, because they would be the best personal computers in the market. Now, if they manufacture four-CPU machines, they'd better come up with a better cooling method than just plain fans, cause if right now they sound as loud as they do, with four processors it would be like living inside a vacuum cleaner.

Sebastian Mon, 09 Sep 2002 14:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I've said it over and over again. There is no reason to go through the pain of a CPU change without going 64 bit. PCs are already having address problems; and these will only get worse with time. 64 bit systems give much better performance per mhz in the same way that 16 bit systems lost out to 32 bit systems.

Power4 is obviously the least trauma if IBM and Apple can figure out a way to make this work at around $1K for the CPU (they can continue using GX series for the iMac, iBook, eMac, etc... for another year at least.

Itanium2 is a very fast chip and is also reasonable.

x86 is bad, and particularly Pentium4 is a bad chip that just runs really really fast. There is no reason what-so-every for a company that doesn't need x86 compatability to pick this chip.

Finally to the people who want $700 full featured Macs --
Stop comparing joe's computer company selling stuff on pricewatch or ebay to Mac. The comparison is with Dell. Apple has never had any interest in the cut throat, commodity, bottom of the market buyer. You aren't there target customer and they don't care what you buy because nobody makes any money off you anyway. You don't expect Sun to want your business, why would you expect Apple to? Microsoft / cheap OEMs wants to be the Kmart of computers; Apple wants mor of a Nordstom or Saxs feel, they make a healthy margin and the experience is pleasant. Yes you can get a pair of pants at kMart and yes it only costs $10 and not $75+; and if you can't tell the difference between Nordstrom and kMart pants then you probably shouldn't buy a Mac. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 14:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? jason: I'm not sure what the market capitalization of SGI is, but it can't be that huge. Plus, they have shed a lot of staff, and radically simplified their corporate structure.

SGI is worth much more than Apple. Loosing money doesn't mean they are worthless already. With a HUGE patent portfolio, a large amount of assets etc., I doubt Apple's 4 billion bucks can buy them off.

jason: Apple has made a devil's bargain and, in supreme strangeness, stuck with processors that someone else dictates to them and isn't, in some (but not all) metrics, keeping up.

Who forced Apple to use PPC from Motorola? No one I could think off. In fact, Apple chased off practically all major PPC workstation makers (that didn't produce their own PPC processors).

Microsoft is not stoping Apple from using x86, especially since it would be the same as current macs (except again that Apple has lower cost and performance is higher).

oman: If Apple Bought out the chip division of Moto then they could be able to get the clock speeds up since apple is much more commited to apple then moto is.

But then again, Intel and AMD spend billions of dollars in R&D, green paper Apple don't have (they have 4 billions dollars, big deal).

Plus, doing so would cost Apple more money in the long term. Because x86 is a commodity, the only way for Intel and AMD to sell more is to cut cost, price it lower and increase the speed. Apple doesn't have that incentive.

Steve: Considering Apple is one of two computer companies that are actually making money, one glaring truth becomes evident: the G4 processor is fast enough for 95% of the cpmputing masses.

Apple is making money because they are not selling a commodity, and they are supplying to their niches. But Apple is attacking new niches, in which performance is everything.

Using x86 processors won't, BTW, make Apple an commodity. Slapping Windows on it would.

Steve: Given that Intel's chips are the fastest ever released for the platform, if everybody wanted the fastest, sales should be soaring. Yet, Intel keeps revising their sales forecasts lower.

1) Even Apple cites lack of demand. Yeah, people don't want to buy a PC *now*. A lot of people might be next to be downsized, or have their pays cut, which is the reason why nobody is making huge investments like these.
2) Intel has other lost making divisions. Same with AMD (In fact, if AMD relied on Athlon sales, it would be profitable).

Sebastian Alvarez: Four 1 Ghz G4s working together in Mac OS X would blow any Pentium PC at even 6 Ghz or more[...]

Such a machine would probably cost more or the same price as quad Athlon MPs or Xeons.

Sebastian Alvarez: Maybe third party developers would have to do that too, since it seems that software written for PowerPC is not easily ported to x86 and other CPU types

Developers using ASM in their code (rare) and those using PPC-only compilers would need time to port. Others, it would be a day's work.

Sebastian Alvarez: If Apple starts selling PowerMacs with four G4s in them at the current price, they would no longer be overpriced

But it is economically impossible (otherwise they would have already done this).

Sebastian Alvarez: in fact I bet Apple's share of the market would go to above 20% in no time

20% in today's market is approx 2 hundred million machines. In 2004, it would be 4 hundred million machines. Can Apple sell a fraction of that amount of machines in "no time"?

jbolden1517: Itanium2 is a very fast chip and is also reasonable.

Besides lacking a good compiler, it also have major heat problems and consumes a lot of power. Why? Because it was made for high end servers and workstations (high end workstations are like those above $10k).

jbolden1517: x86 is bad, and particularly Pentium4 is a bad chip that just runs really really fast. There is no reason what-so-every for a company that doesn't need x86 compatability to pick this chip.

Except being the fastest processor for low end workstations and for desktops. Plus, if Apple manages to properly optimize its codebase for P4, it could churn out a lot of power. Plus, with Prescott, there would be HyperThreading.

jbolden1517: Apple has never had any interest in the cut throat, commodity, bottom of the market buyer.

Though they should be. $900 is the average selling price for PCs in the US today.

jbolden1517: Yes you can get a pair of pants at kMart and yes it only costs $10 and not $75+; and if you can't tell the difference between Nordstrom and kMart pants then you probably shouldn't buy a Mac

A terrible comparison. Nordstrom pants uses high quality durable fabric, and in manufactured with very high standards of quality. Macs use the same parts as PCs, whose custom parts are made by the exact same people that makes PC parts, and assembled by the exact same companies that assemble PCs. Wow. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 15:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? SPARC for server, Crusoe for consumer Mon, 09 Sep 2002 15:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? SPARC for server, Crusoe for consumer

Right..... Sun would have the closest direct competition it could have. Not only does Apple has a system based on BSD, it would use the same processors. Wow. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 15:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? jbolden1517:

Reading your whole comment, I can say that you know a lot less than you think you do about processors.

There really isn't much of a need for 64bit processing on the desktop at this point, wheather you like to believe it or not.

What is it that makes the P4 a "bad" processor, because it doesn't do as many operations per clock cylce as the Athlon, or even the P3?
I hate to tell you this, but that's not what makes a chip "good" or "bad", in fact, it was a VERY concious decision that Intel made when they were designing the P4.
At the time, people that that the higher the clock the faster the prcoessor (as truely, it was mostly the case back with the original Athlons and the P3, as they did just about the same operations/clock), so Intel decided to milk that, so rather than giving the ability to do more operations/clock cylce, they chose to give it the ability to scale to tremendous clock speeds (which cancels out the operations/clock problem), this allows them to pump up the clock speed much higher and much faster than AMD can with it's processors (which is why Intel currently has the fastest chip), and also gives them a marketing edge of AMD. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 15:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? SGI is worth much more than Apple. Loosing money doesn't mean they are worthless already. With a HUGE patent portfolio, a large amount of assets etc., I doubt Apple's 4 billion bucks can buy them off.

Current market cap of SGI is $250m. Generally a buyoff is around 50% premium so $375m would be considered quite fair. SGI stock is depressed but I would guess a $500m offer would probably get board support easily.


[on Itanium2] Besides lacking a good compiler, it also have major heat problems and consumes a lot of power. Why? Because it was made for high end servers and workstations (high end workstations are like those above $10k).

The system compiler for OSX is gcc which has fine support for the Itanium line. I know people have issues with gcc but since Apple has already gone that route the compiler shouldn't be an issue. As for power... Itanium is Intel's future; getting it into Powermacs in the very near term would be something Intel would love. In addition to giving them some extra leverage with Microsoft, it would push PC vendors / Microsoft into making the 64 bit shift earlier than they otherwise would. Intel is very experienced in bring down power requirements for a chip so if they knew they had the powerbook sales locked once they brought down the power you'd have a low power version for the powerbook. With the Powermac/Xserve/Powerbook all on Itanium2 the iBook, iMac, eMac could wait another 6 months to a year for cost cutting.

Also I think people tend to overestimate CPU costs. Just short of top of line Xeons run about $100 over average desktop PC CPU. Yes the motherboard costs more.... But lets not forget these systems are starting at the $2k price point (and if in the first generation they limited it to top of the line powermacs and Xserves $4k+ price point). A few hundred extra for the CPU is not really a big deal.

jbolden1517: Apple has never had any interest in the cut throat, commodity, bottom of the market buyer.

Though they should be. $900 is the average selling price for PCs in the US today.

And I imagine that $15 is probably the average selling price of a pair of pants. That doesn't bother Nordstrom any; they know that Kmart will always have higher volumes. Kmart / Walmart customers get much better value for their money and most people are more concerned with getting value then getting quality. Apple sees itself as a quality vendor, the PC guys do a great job in the value department why would Apple want to compete there any more than they would want to compete in the $100K market? There is no question that the commodity market has pushed down system prices and I'm glad to see PCs starting to hit the under $500 price point which opens the market up to whole new audiences.

jbolden1517: Yes you can get a pair of pants at kMart and yes it only costs $10 and not $75+; and if you can't tell the difference between Nordstrom and kMart pants then you probably shouldn't buy a Mac

A terrible comparison. Nordstrom pants uses high quality durable fabric, and in manufactured with very high standards of quality. Macs use the same parts as PCs, whose custom parts are made by the exact same people that makes PC parts, and assembled by the exact same companies that assemble PCs. Wow.

Not really, for example several times I've pointed out that the 17" iMac isn't over priced for the components. Most of the people who complain about Mac prices would never buy a high end 17" LCD with a flexabile arm so they don't consider it worth $700 even though that's what it costs to get that sort of monitor in the PC world too. The G4 is IMHO a much much better processor in terms of quality than the Pentium4; the Pentium4 just runs really fast. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 17:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Everyone is acting like the CPU choice is all that important for speed...

The G4 has pretty good IPC and all that's missing from the Mac design is a decent chipset with no bottlenecks like IBM, Sun and HP do when designing large servers.

Minor improvements to the G4/G5 design are all that's needed.

Switching chipset architectures, multiple RAM banks, wide datapaths, large caches is what you want to have if you want to support >2 CPUS efficiently, which is what Apple should be trying to do.

Nobody would argue with a properly implemented quad-G4 design, believe me...

Efficient and powerful software is also important and Apple needs to work a bit there, too.

On the other hand, decent chipsets for x86 CPUs already exist, maybe Nvidia should be enlisted... not that it's easy modifying an x86 chipset for PPC use...

In any case, I don't foresee any move to x86 soon. I love the POWER4, though that will not happen anytime soon, either (I mean with the low-cost one, forget the "proper" one).

I just expect better versions of the G4 and maybe the G5 soon, that's all.

D Mon, 09 Sep 2002 18:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Reading your whole comment, I can say that you know a lot less than you think you do about processors.

I don't think I know that much; but every expert in the field agrees with my assesment I'm not saying anything controversial.

There really isn't much of a need for 64bit processing on the desktop at this point, wheather you like to believe it or not.

I've been hearing that sort of stuff for 20 years. 32 bits = 4gigs of addressable memory at most using a simple pointer scheme (and usually more like 512 megs). Systems today use over 512 megs; and very soon will have over 4 gigs. Its going to take years to make the transition to 64 bit memory pointers and the sooner start the better. Its not a good idea to wait until there is a crippling need.

What is it that makes the P4 a "bad" processor, because it doesn't do as many operations per clock cylce as the Athlon, or even the P3?

1) Fewer operations per clock cycle definitely
2) Not doing the instruction reording which is a problem for platforms where source isn't being compiled on the target machine
3) Not much cache
4) A very long pipeline

Those 4 pretty much do it. Worse yet they each compound each other. Not doing instruction reording increases the number of times the pipeline needs to be refilled. The long pipeline makes refilling expensive. The low cache increases the cost dramatically. The result is the Pentium 4 under real conditions is about 30% slower than the pentium 3 at the same MHZ.



I hate to tell you this, but that's not what makes a chip "good" or "bad", in fact, it was a VERY concious decision that Intel made when they were designing the P4.
At the time, people that that the higher the clock the faster the prcoessor (as truely, it was mostly the case back with the original Athlons and the P3, as they did just about the same operations/clock), so Intel decided to milk that, so rather than giving the ability to do more operations/clock cylce, they chose to give it the ability to scale to tremendous clock speeds (which cancels out the operations/clock problem), this allows them to pump up the clock speed much higher and much faster than AMD can with it's processors (which is why Intel currently has the fastest chip), and also gives them a marketing edge of AMD.

I never claimed that Intel decided to make a very fast but low effenciency CPU by accident. Of course it was conscious and marketing driven. But the fact that the pentium 4's design flaws were a result of trying to win a marketing battle does not mean they aren't flaws. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 18:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Everyone is acting like the CPU choice is all that important for speed...

The G4 has pretty good IPC and all that's missing from the Mac design is a decent chipset with no bottlenecks like IBM, Sun and HP do when designing large servers.

Minor improvements to the G4/G5 design are all that's needed.

Switching chipset architectures, multiple RAM banks, wide datapaths, large caches is what you want to have if you want to support >2 CPUS efficiently, which is what Apple should be trying to do.

Nobody would argue with a properly implemented quad-G4 design, believe me...

Efficient and powerful software is also important and Apple needs to work a bit there, too.

On the other hand, decent chipsets for x86 CPUs already exist, maybe Nvidia should be enlisted... not that it's easy modifying an x86 chipset for PPC use...

In any case, I don't foresee any move to x86 soon. I love the POWER4, though that will not happen anytime soon, either (I mean with the low-cost one, forget the "proper" one).

I just expect better versions of the G4 and maybe the G5 soon, that's all.

D Mon, 09 Sep 2002 18:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? jbolden1517:

On very rare occasion do you see a desktop PC with 512mb of RAM, and even more rare is one with over 512mb, and truely, at this point, people don't really even need 512.

The P4 has more cache than Athlons, so I guess an Athlon doesn't have much cace iether, hmm?

The fact is, Intel MADE the prcoessor scaleable in terms of operations/clock, and they did that on purpose, the P4 is able to scale much much more than the Athlon can, and thus, can be a much faster processor.

The only reason you call them flaws is because of your obvious bias against Intel. Trollers such as yourself need to either leave, or learn to embrace technology for what it is, not hate it because company X made it, or love it because company Y produced it. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 18:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Who said anything about Athlon relative to Intel? I've been comparing Pentium III to the Pentium IV. And how could I hate products because Intel made them when I'm singing the praises of the Itanium2. You can feel free to get the last word in. Mon, 09 Sep 2002 19:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Does anyone else find it interesting that apple is allowing a
distributor to install linux on apple machines. Mr Jobs certaintly did what he could to avoid BeOS from coexisting on the mac platform.

I believe that Apple's reaction to this will reveal its future processor roadmap. If apple lets this go on then i think that we can infer a greater role for linux on the power pc and perhaps a greater role for IBM in the world of apple.

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-957138.html?tag=fd_top Mon, 09 Sep 2002 19:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ALL I want is Apple with a Power4 desendant. GO Big Blue by btyMoto!!!!!!! not too much to ask, Keep those x86 for my games :-) Mon, 09 Sep 2002 19:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "You are a potential immigrant aren't you? In essence, you are a potential buyer of the product "Dutch society". That still doesn't make you eligable to vote on our policies."

Once again, that is a bad analogy. The Netherland government is not actively recruiting me and I'm not interested in being their citizen. Plus you're comparing computer cpus to real laws? That's ludicrous. Would you compare the destruction of old computers to euthanasia for the old? It's not the same.

"One reason might be that you don't want to migrate, but want to have us do something you like. The same is probably true here."

No it's not. I'm a proud American. There's nothing you can do to make me immigrate. To immigrate is to lose myself and my identity. Immigration is a life-altering decision. Choosing computer cpus is just economics and convenience. The truth is you can do everything you want and ever need on either the PC or the Mac. They're equally capable. The only difference is the experience. (i.e. how the OS feels, how long it takes to get something done, how intuitive the interfaces are, etc.)

"How many people voted for x86 because they want to use MacOS X on a cheap PC?"

Probably all PC users. We all know Mac hardware is more expensive and inferior. I want the software that's all.

"Of course, the poll itself is already wrong since Eugenia doesn't understand the difference between a Power4 and a PowerPC based on Power4 technology."

Power4 and PowerPC can be lumped together because they are similar. It's not wrong. It's a generalization. Just like lumping XScale and StrongArm together. Tue, 10 Sep 2002 02:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "I've been hearing that sort of stuff for 20 years. 32 bits = 4gigs of addressable memory at most using a simple pointer scheme (and usually more like 512 megs). Systems today use over 512 megs; and very soon will have over 4 gigs. Its going to take years to make the transition to 64 bit memory pointers and the sooner start the better. Its not a good idea to wait until there is a crippling need."

The 32-bit refers to the data bus width, not the address bus width. For example, the 80286 was a 16-bit cpu but it could address 16MB of ram. How is that possible? According to your calculations, there's a 64KB limit.

The 80286 had a 24-bit address bus width. 2^24=16MB. The same with modern 32-bit Intel cpus. They have a 36-bit address bus width. 2^36 is more memory than you can shake a stick at. The 512MB limit you're talking about is not a limitation of the CPU. It's a limitation of the chipset. Some desktop chipsets that I know of can address 768MB now. I bet there are those out there that can address more that I don't know of.

One thing you didn't think of is that 64-bit CPUs can mean less efficiency. There's going to be more loss of usable memory because of padding and alignment. And a greater penalty when accessing single bytes, etc. Tue, 10 Sep 2002 02:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? jbolden: I've been hearing that sort of stuff for 20 years. 32 bits = 4gigs of addressable memory at most using a simple pointer scheme (and usually more like 512 megs). Systems today use over 512 megs; and very soon will have over 4 gigs. Its going to take years to make the transition to 64 bit memory pointers and the sooner start the better. Its not a good idea to wait until there is a crippling need."

The 32-bit refers to the data bus width, not the address bus width. For example, the 80286 was a 16-bit cpu but it could address 16MB of ram. How is that possible? According to your calculations, there's a 64KB limit.

Actually the 80286 is a great example of the difference between a simple and complex memory scheme. To get 16megs of addressable memory all pointers were two two registers in size. Memory was broken up into descreate 64KB pages and there were 8 bits identifying page number (the 16 bits were used for physical page number, logical page number -- the which even allowed for something very much like virtual ram for systems like OS/2). 64K pages were not a real problem for executables but for data things were very tricky. Once an application needed even a single data byte it needed to grab a full 64K (and yes this was a big deal when computers had 2 or less megs). Rolling over generally meant grabbing another page. Effecient allocation of memory became impossible.

The transition to the 80386 which on Windows allowed for 4K pages made memory management much easier and paging became "natural again".

The 80286 had a 24-bit address bus width. 2^24=16MB. The same with modern 32-bit Intel cpus. They have a 36-bit address bus width. 2^36 is more memory than you can shake a stick at. The 512MB limit you're talking about is not a limitation of the CPU. It's a limitation of the chipset. Some desktop chipsets that I know of can address 768MB now. I bet there are those out there that can address more that I don't know of.

There are; but the Intel / Windows setup with 4k pages was really only designed to use 512 megs. They attacked this problem a long time ago and added hackish features so everyone hit this limit "softly". But if you think back 6+ years you'll remember weird limits like: Linux 128 meg swap files, 512 meg of ram limits, maximum virtual memory limits in windows of 512 megs... These were coming from limitiations in the original implementation. BTW 2^36 bytes = 64 gigs which is still not enough very long term. There are already many machines (not PCs) with more ram than this. There are databases much larger than this.

One thing you didn't think of is that 64-bit CPUs can mean less efficiency. There's going to be more loss of usable memory because of padding and alignment. And a greater penalty when accessing single bytes, etc.

Of course. But applicions given the speed of modern CPUs relative to the speed of base memory the penalty for accessing single bytes in a non sequential manner is already huge (you pull a ton of no-ops). 64 bits isn't going to make that worse; while the more cache on 64 bit chips will do a great deal to reduce cache misses. Tue, 10 Sep 2002 03:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "To get 16megs of addressable memory all pointers were two two registers in size. Memory was broken up into descreate 64KB pages and there were 8 bits identifying page number (the 16 bits were used for physical page number, logical page number -- the which even allowed for something very much like virtual ram for systems like OS/2)."

This is totally wrong. Memory was broken into segments associated with a handle called a selector. Each selector pointed to a data structure (LDT or GDT entry) that described the beginning and the end of a segement. Segments could overlap. From within a segment you could use a NEAR pointer(2-byte, one register size) to address just the 16 bit offset. You only needed FAR pointers(4-byte, two register size) when addressing between segments.

"64K pages were not a real problem for executables but for data things were very tricky. Once an application needed even a single data byte it needed to grab a full 64K (and yes this was a big deal when computers had 2 or less megs). Rolling over generally meant grabbing another page. Effecient allocation of memory became impossible."

Totally wrong again. What you're describing is sort of like virtual memory with a 64KB page. The 286 did not have paging capabilities. The MOV reg, mem opcode took 5 cycles to complete. Explain to me how an 8Mhz cpu could "grab" 64KB in 5 cycles. And where the heck would it put it since it neither had a TLB nor cache memory. That's ridiculous. The only performance penalty you get from accessing a new segment is that the LDT or GDT entry for the selector had to be loaded into the hidden registers. Each entry was only 8 bytes long.

"There are; but the Intel / Windows setup with 4k pages was really only designed to use 512 megs. They attacked this problem a long time ago and added hackish features so everyone hit this limit "softly"."

You can't count Windows memory limitations as a problem of the CPU. Windows has different limits because of the way it divides the 4GB virtual address space up. It has nothing to do with the CPU.

Even the 386 CPU can have 1K entries in the base table and 1K entries for each leaf node. 1K*1K*4KB per entry=4GB. This is not even counting the newer 36-bit address space. Read this page to reduce your confusion. -> http://people.freebsd.org/~jhb/386htm/s05_02.htm

"But if you think back 6+ years you'll remember weird limits like: Linux 128 meg swap files, 512 meg of ram limits, maximum virtual memory limits in windows of 512 megs... These were coming from limitiations in the original implementation."

It's not a cpu limitation. My old Pentium can mount a little under 2GB (file size limit on Linux, nothing to do with the CPU) of swap space on my 30GB hdd with a recent version of the Linux kernel. Once again, you can't count software limitations as a problem of the CPU.

"BTW 2^36 bytes = 64 gigs which is still not enough very long term."

You got to be kidding. Name me a desktop with 64GB of ram. It will be a long time before anyone Mac or PC needs 1GB of ram not to mention 64GB of ram. Besides that, it's trivial to increase the address bus size. You can have 32-bit data bus and a 64-bit address bus if you want.

"There are already many machines (not PCs) with more ram than this. There are databases much larger than this."

All servers, clusters, enterprise boxes, or specialty boxes. Does not apply here. We're talking about whether or not 32-bit is good enough for Macs. It is.

"Of course. But applicions given the speed of modern CPUs relative to the speed of base memory the penalty for accessing single bytes in a non sequential manner is already huge (you pull a ton of no-ops). 64 bits isn't going to make that worse; while the more cache on 64 bit chips will do a great deal to reduce cache misses."

You're assuming 64-bit CPUs will have more cache entries. There's the important distinction here. 64-bit CPUs will need caches that are twice as wide. Having more cache memory in terms of bytes won't guarantee better performance. You need more cache entries. Plus it's harder to have higher orders of associativity when you have a wider data bus. (Not impossible, just harder which is the same as saying more expensive in terms of dollars.)

Plus, there's no reason you can't put more cache into a 32-bit CPU. Cache is not limited to 64-bit CPUs. On the other hand, you're guaranteed larger wasted memory becuase of alignment and padding on 64-bit cpus. Tue, 10 Sep 2002 04:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? This is totally wrong. Memory was broken into segments associated with a handle called a selector. Each selector pointed to a data structure (LDT or GDT entry) that described the beginning and the end of a segement. Segments could overlap. From within a segment you could use a NEAR pointer(2-byte, one register size) to address just the 16 bit offset. You only needed FAR pointers(4-byte, two register size) when addressing between segments.

You seem to be describing the 8088 memory model with 64K "pages" overlapping every 16 bytes not the 80286 model, i.e. the 20 bit model not the 24 bit model.

Explain to me how an 8Mhz cpu could "grab" 64KB in 5 cycles.

It had nothing to do with grabbing it was the ability to use cycle through quickly in assembly language loops.

It's not a cpu limitation. My old Pentium can mount a little under 2GB (file size limit on Linux, nothing to do with the CPU) of swap space on my 30GB hdd with a recent version of the Linux kernel. Once again, you can't count software limitations as a problem of the CPU.

Sure I can; that's exactly my point. The limitations of the CPU lead to limitations of OSes. The limitations of the 80386 model are starting to effect PCs and will effect them much more drastically as this decade continues. For windows systems this might be tolerable; but I see no reason for Mac if they are going to do a CPU switch anyway to pick up these problems.

Jeff: BTW 2^36 bytes = 64 gigs which is still not enough very long term." "There are already many machines (not PCs) with more ram than this. There are databases much larger than this."



Malachai: You got to be kidding. Name me a desktop with 64GB of ram. It will be a long time before anyone Mac or PC needs 1GB of ram not to mention 64GB of ram. Besides that, it's trivial to increase the address bus size. You can have 32-bit data bus and a 64-bit address bus if you want.

All servers, clusters, enterprise boxes, or specialty boxes. Does not apply here. We're talking about whether or not 32-bit is good enough for Macs. It is.

I bought a laptop 20 months ago with a 1/2 gig of ram. I'm upgrading my wife's powerMac to 1.5 gigs and she isn't a power user by any means. If I were going to buy a desktop today there is no way I'd have under 2 gigs of ram in it. Nothing speeds up a computer more than not having enough ram to not need to swap out applications and data while multitasking. The whole point of a switch the pentium 4 would be to gain a slight CPU boost. Its completely unreasonable to assume Apple would go through that kind of pain and sell computers short on ram.

Just pulling my process list:
i.e. 70 megs
outlook 22 megs
acrobat 17.5 megs
word (no documents loaded) 17.1 megs
3 terminals 7 megs each
about 15 services 4-6 megs each
I"m at 200 megs of ram and I'm not even doing anything with my system its virtually idle.

And yes I play with multi-gig databases all the time on this laptop, in access!

And this is today's technology. Mac is moving towards a full 3D environment; odds our their memory needs will be much greater than window's needs. I have trouble seeing what most people are going to do with CPU speeds in excess of a dual 1.25gig G4 much more than I have trouble seeing what a desktop user is going to do with 8 gigs of ram. Further I'd expect memory to go up quite rapidly. When I bought my 386-40 12 years ago 1-2 megs was average (and the price per system was much higher than today); today consummer systems ship with 256 times that much on average and if you compare the same price points more like 512 times as much. 128k was average in the 85; and 16k was average around 80. That is memory need is following moore's law and growing at 40% annually compouunded. The jump from 1 gig to 64 gigs is 6 doubles or about 9 years. For high end desktops (about 2 gigs today) you only have 5 doubles or about 7 years.

I don't know how old you are; but the people who thought the 640k limit was no big deal made almost exactly the same argument. When 64k was very comfortable and 128k excessive the idea of going over a 1meg seemed insane. But the people who noticed that home PCs had gone from 4k to 128k very quickly were worried.

Plus it's harder to have higher orders of associativity when you have a wider data bus

This line I didn't understand. What does it mean? Tue, 10 Sep 2002 05:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "You seem to be describing the 8088 memory model with 64K "pages" overlapping every 16 bytes not the 80286 model, i.e. the 20 bit model not the 24 bit model."

I'm not. The 20-bit memory model is called "real mode" addressing and had a limit of 1MB. What I'm talking about is the "protected mode" access. Segments can overlap. Heck. If you set the same base and limit values in the LDT/GDT for two different selectors, two segements can map to the same physical memory location.

"It had nothing to do with grabbing it was the ability to use cycle through quickly in assembly language loops."

You said:

"64K pages were not a real problem for executables but for data things were very tricky. Once an application needed even a single data byte it needed to grab a full 64K (and yes this was a big deal when computers had 2 or less megs)."

First off, 64KB pages is wrong. The 286 allowed division of memory into variable-sized segments and not fixed sized pages. Second the statement about the need to "grab" 64KB for each byte access is wrong. I proved that by using the instruction timings from the Intel programmer's reference book. A memory access to copy from memory to a register took 5 cycles. If it had to "grab" 64KB for each access, then it would have to be a magical CPU because a 16-bit CPU running at 8Mhz cannot move 64KB of memory in 5 cycles. Furthermore, this has nothing to do with loops. This is moving one small word of memory.

"Sure I can; that's exactly my point. The limitations of the CPU lead to limitations of OSes. The limitations of the 80386 model are starting to effect PCs and will effect them much more drastically as this decade continues. For windows systems this might be tolerable; but I see no reason for Mac if they are going to do a CPU switch anyway to pick up these problems."

Once again. all the limits you've mentioned are not CPU limitations. CPUs from the 386 and up could fully support the entire 4GB address space. The limitations that you've mentioned are SOFTWARE and CHIPSET limitations. (Not the other way around.) Problems with their respective OSes and chipsets. There's nothing stopping a good OS, say Mac OS X, from using the entire memory space. Up to 64GB on 36-bit capable iterations of the x86 provided the chipset supports it.

"I bought a laptop 20 months ago with a 1/2 gig of ram. I'm upgrading my wife's powerMac to 1.5 gigs and she isn't a power user by any means. If I were going to buy a desktop today there is no way I'd have under 2 gigs of ram in it."

The average today is only 256MB. If what you say is true, then you're not the average user and cannot be counted into the most category. I do Java/C/C++ development and I don't have any problems in 256MB of ram. (I mean even with the bloated Forte running as my primary IDE.) I've built Linux kernels, gcc 3.2, etc. No problems. It's not expensive to bump my machine to 512MB or even higher, but I don't need it. Most people don't either.

"Its completely unreasonable to assume Apple would go through that kind of pain and sell computers short on ram."

You wouldn't be short at all. P4s and their motherboards can use just as much or more ram than your current PPC iterations. Plus, you get faster ram like DDR and RDRAM. And a quad-pumped bus. If you want so much ram, buy the P4 server boards. Here is a dual Xeon 1U with 16GB of ram. http://www.siliconmechanics.com/sm-1270.php Mac OS X would scream on that. Obviously not a fair comparison to Apple desktops, but it serves to point out that the CPU can handle the gobs of memory. Plus compare dual 2.5Ghz to dual 1.25Ghz. The Apple box will get beat down with the much slower SDRAM and half the Ghz rating.

"Just pulling my process list:
i.e. 70 megs
outlook 22 megs
acrobat 17.5 megs
word (no documents loaded) 17.1 megs
3 terminals 7 megs each
about 15 services 4-6 megs each
I"m at 200 megs of ram and I'm not even doing anything with my system its virtually idle."

Still a long way from 1GB not to mention 64GB. Can you even afford 64GB of ram? A stick of 1GB is $200. 36GB is $7200. LOL. It will be a while before the average Joe could even afford 1GB with RAM prices going up and all.

"And this is today's technology. Mac is moving towards a full 3D environment; odds our their memory needs will be much greater than window's needs."

That mostly effects how much ram you need on your display card. Look at games. You can already run full 3D games in 256MB main ram with a 128MB Geforce display card. A 3D UI will probably not be more memory intensive than 3D games.

"The jump from 1 gig to 64 gigs is 6 doubles or about 9 years. For high end desktops (about 2 gigs today) you only have 5 doubles or about 7 years."

That's a long time in computer years. 7 years is forever. By that time, 64-bit CPUs will be available in vast quantities and then we can talk about a 64-bit Mac. Going 64-bit right now is too abrupt. Not to mention expensive. The Itanium 2 CPU alone is what $2K? $3K? A 32-bit x86 is the perfect transition CPU since the PowerPC is pretty much end of line. It's the most sensible direction.

"I don't know how old you are; but the people who thought the 640k limit was no big deal made almost exactly the same argument. When 64k was very comfortable and 128k excessive the idea of going over a 1meg seemed insane. But the people who noticed that home PCs had gone from 4k to 128k very quickly were worried."

The 640KB limit was no big deal. I was there. I wasn't worried then and I'm not worried now. It worked out just fine. No reason to think it won't again.

"This line I didn't understand. What does it mean?"

Read this -> http://burks.brighton.ac.uk/burks/foldoc/92/104.htm . It's not an in depth article, but hopefully it's enough for you to understand. But the idea is the greater the N, the more expensive (more comparators) and the more efficient the cache. Tue, 10 Sep 2002 07:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Once again, that is a bad analogy. The Netherland government is not actively recruiting me and I'm not interested in being their citizen. Plus you're comparing computer cpus to real laws? That's ludicrous. Would you compare the destruction of old computers to euthanasia for the old? It's not the same.

That is of course not true. Both issues are about policies. There could be a poll about Apple's environmental policies and there could be a vote on environmental regulations by the government. And regardless of whether you are being recruited and whether you think the 'offer' is feasible for you, you are still a potential immigrant. It's only a matter of how realistic it is. That is clearly a sliding scale, you cannot point out the moment where a proposition turns from realistic into unrealistic (what if you lived just over the border in the dutch-speaking part of Belgium?).

There are arguments against this comparison that make sense, but I haven't heard them from you. Things like:
- The goverment is different from an organisation (one is controlled through elections, the other through capitalism and government regulations).
- This is not comparable to an election. A survey is a better comparison. Of course, surveys are usually confined to one country or the results are seperated by country.
- Intelligent people pay attention to elections and serious surveys. A self-selecting, abused and flawed OSNews poll, on the other hand, is just a way to attract flame-baiters. I like this argument best.

"One reason might be that you don't want to migrate, but want to have us do something you like. The same is probably true here."

No it's not. I'm a proud American. There's nothing you can do to make me immigrate. To immigrate is to lose myself and my identity. Immigration is a life-altering decision. Choosing computer cpus is just economics and convenience.

You didn't respond to my argument. I said that although you don't want to migrate, you might want to stop us from doing something. For example, the US might want to tariff foreign products (like steel) in an attempt to rape the world economy. The proper EU response would be to return the favor, but you might be interested in preventing that. That would be a good reason not to let you vote in the EU, isn't it?

The truth is you can do everything you want and ever need on either the PC or the Mac. They're equally capable. The only difference is the experience. (i.e. how the OS feels, how long it takes to get something done, how intuitive the interfaces are, etc.)

Does Final Cut Pro exists on the PC? Does Halflife exist on the Mac? Different tools have different strengths. You pick the right tool for the job.

Probably all PC users. We all know Mac hardware is more expensive and inferior. I want the software that's all.

So you agree that the poll is useless because many voters actually want something else then what is asked, but try to use the poll to further their agenda (move to x86 != move to commodity x86)? Does it not follow logically that the poll would be far more accurate if those fools wouldn't be allowed to vote?

Power4 and PowerPC can be lumped together because they are similar. It's not wrong. It's a generalization. Just like lumping XScale and StrongArm together.

The Power4 is a server-class, super-expensive, ultra-hot CPU without vector processing. The Power4-based PowerPC is a desktop/workstation-class, cheap, fairly efficient CPU with (probably) a altivec-compatible vector unit. How are these CPU's ever in the same league? Tue, 10 Sep 2002 07:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "That is of course not true. Both issues are about policies."

Well, there is that similarity, but doesn't mean it's a good analogy. Like euthanasia compared to destroyed computers. Still a matter of policy. But it's not the same.

"And regardless of whether you are being recruited and whether you think the 'offer' is feasible for you, you are still a potential immigrant."

No I'm not. What does the word potential mean? So regardless if Cindy Crawford is married or that she is even remotely interested in me, she is a potential wife for me? More lunacy.


"It's only a matter of how realistic it is. That is clearly a sliding scale, you cannot point out the moment where a proposition turns from realistic into unrealistic (what if you lived just over the border in the dutch-speaking part of Belgium?)."

It still wouldn't matter. It's like asking if the decision to kill an ant is analogous to abortions. Sure there are similarities, but the levels of difference are astounding.

"- The goverment is different from an organisation (one is controlled through elections, the other through capitalism and government regulations)."

If I wanted to play devil's advocate... You vote with your money.

"- This is not comparable to an election. A survey is a better comparison. Of course, surveys are usually confined to one country or the results are seperated by country."

That says nothing. That only says a survey is a good analogy. The most of important part of the statement, "This is not comparable to an elections." is not substantiated.

"- Intelligent people pay attention to elections and serious surveys. A self-selecting, abused and flawed OSNews poll, on the other hand, is just a way to attract flame-baiters. I like this argument best."

That is not an argument. It's an opinion.

"You didn't respond to my argument. I said that although you don't want to migrate, you might want to stop us from doing something. For example, the US might want to tariff foreign products (like steel) in an attempt to rape the world economy. The proper EU response would be to return the favor, but you might be interested in preventing that. That would be a good reason not to let you vote in the EU, isn't it?"

I didn't understand your argument. Thanks for clarifying. But this argument makes no sense here. You and I live in different countries so our economic interests might be different as you say, etc. But we're both customers of Apple so we belong in the same body. It doesn't matter that I only use Mac once in a while. If I pay for the right to use it, I have the right to decide what the future should hold. So I like PCs more right now, so what.

"Does Final Cut Pro exists on the PC? Does Halflife exist on the Mac? Different tools have different strengths. You pick the right tool for the job."

There are clone alike programs that do the same thing. You can do what you do with Final Cut Pro on the PC...just with another program. The same for vice versa.

"So you agree that the poll is useless because many voters actually want something else then what is asked, but try to use the poll to further their agenda (move to x86 != move to commodity x86)? Does it not follow logically that the poll would be far more accurate if those fools wouldn't be allowed to vote?"

No. It's exactly what is asked. The poll asks what cpu should Apple switch to. It doesn't ask what cpu should Apple switch to given that Apple only supports the current user without care of future PC converts.

"The Power4 is a server-class, super-expensive, ultra-hot CPU without vector processing. The Power4-based PowerPC is a desktop/workstation-class, cheap, fairly efficient CPU with (probably) a altivec-compatible vector unit. How are these CPU's ever in the same league?"

How are Hammer, Xeon, and P4s in the same league? How come they're lumped togather in the x86 category? They share a common architecture of course. You wouldn't lump an Arm with a MIPs, but it's perfectly correct to generalize Power4 and PowerPC together. Tue, 10 Sep 2002 08:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'm going to conceed the 80286 point. I have vague memories of the issue and your counter argument does seem to make sense. However since you are old enough you watched the 8 bit CP/M systems fall to the 16 bit systems fall to the 32 bit systems; I really have trouble understanding why you don't think the 32s are soon going to fall to the 64s.


Jeff:"I bought a laptop 20 months ago with a 1/2 gig of ram. I'm upgrading my wife's powerMac to 1.5 gigs and she isn't a power user by any means. If I were going to buy a desktop today there is no way I'd have under 2 gigs of ram in it."

The average today is only 256MB. If what you say is true, then you're not the average user and cannot be counted into the most category. I do Java/C/C++ development and I don't have any problems in 256MB of ram. (I mean even with the bloated Forte running as my primary IDE.) I've built Linux kernels, gcc 3.2, etc. No problems. It's not expensive to bump my machine to 512MB or even higher, but I don't need it. Most people don't either.

Compilers tend to be fairly effecient. Heck I did a linux kernel on a 166mmx with 64 megs of ram (laptop so a slow drive additionally) and it wasn't that terrible. It would be boated IDE's for example that would be the killer. As for not being the average user; I'm not sure. I think I tend to multi task more heavily than average; OTOH I don't run anything really intensive like real time video editing or 3D modeling.

Jeff: "Just pulling my process list:
i.e. 70 megs
outlook 22 megs
acrobat 17.5 megs
word (no documents loaded) 17.1 megs
3 terminals 7 megs each
about 15 services 4-6 megs each
I"m at 200 megs of ram and I'm not even doing anything with my system its virtually idle."

Still a long way from 1GB not to mention 64GB. Can you even afford 64GB of ram? A stick of 1GB is $200. 36GB is $7200. LOL. It will be a while before the average Joe could even afford 1GB with RAM prices going up and all.

First off my point was that were I at say 64 megs even relatively idle my setup would have been having problems which would overwhelmed any CPU differences. At 128 it might have been a tossup; but with 256 the CPU really becomes the issue.

As for buying 64 gigs now; yes I can afford it but PCs really can't take advantage of it. If I need that kind of memory I'm much more likely to be on a Sun than a PC. On the other hand I have every expectation that I'll be buying 64+ gig system before the decade is out.

As for the average joe and $200 for ram; remember that Apple target customer is wealthier than what the gray box PC makers are going for. The difference between spending $200 and $75 for ram is really nothing.

"And this is today's technology. Mac is moving towards a full 3D environment; odds our their memory needs will be much greater than window's needs."

That mostly effects how much ram you need on your display card. Look at games. You can already run full 3D games in 256MB main ram with a 128MB Geforce display card. A 3D UI will probably not be more memory intensive than 3D games.

Here I think you are dead wrong. 3D games don't run on 4 megs systems as long as they have 128 megs of video ram. You need huge quantities of ram for paging stuff to and from the video card. 3D modeling software requires a great deal of ram; there is no reason to believe a 3D desktop won't as well.

"The jump from 1 gig to 64 gigs is 6 doubles or about 9 years. For high end desktops (about 2 gigs today) you only have 5 doubles or about 7 years."

That's a long time in computer years. 7 years is forever. By that time, 64-bit CPUs will be available in vast quantities and then we can talk about a 64-bit Mac. Going 64-bit right now is too abrupt. Not to mention expensive. The Itanium 2 CPU alone is what $2K? $3K? A 32-bit x86 is the perfect transition CPU since the PowerPC is pretty much end of line. It's the most sensible direction.

OK so the main issue is price. Anyway on the price issue the Itanium... I'll use Intel's price list as my source (http://www.intel.com/intel/finance/pricelist/). Intel charges about $3k for a 2M cache even on the Xeon. For the same chip with 256k cache the price drops to $400. The Itanium 2 with 1.5m is $2200 and with 3m is $4200. The cache is what is driving up the price of the chip; bring the cache down to say 256k and you can could have the Itanium2 today at the under $500 level. A year or two from now we'd be looking at a 2ghz Itanium 2 with 512k cache for under $500 which would be an excellent chip for the powermac and even a possibility for the high end iMac. Further I could even see Intel being willing to lose money to get the Apple/Mac contract and selling the chips below cost. The pressure on Dell/HP/Microsoft... would be intensive as soon as Apple announced the move to 64 bit systems. Further, having the Itanium be the chip on Apple knocks Motorolla out of the game. Intel has already shown it is willing to lose money to kill off compitition. While I can't bank on that it could make the change even easier and the price difference between the x86 and the Itanium2 (with the same amount of cache) under $100.

So the money argument fails; it doesn't make sense. Apple has an inexpensive chip for low end systems (the G3/G4); where they are lacking is a single high end chip. BTW quads don't work because Apple is a major player in the laptop market and the powerbook is getting much too slow. Tue, 10 Sep 2002 17:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments