One of the big unknowns of the Apple Switch that not many people are talking about right now is Rosetta, the translation software that Intel-based Macs will use to run legacy PPC binaries. Prior to the release of the first Intel-based Mac it's difficult to assess just what kind of performance Rosetta will yield on the majority of legacy OS X software. Will most legacy PPC apps be usable? Mostly usable? Barely usable?
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Member since:2005-06-30
Actually Apple has maintained the fairly realistic position that the performance of the translated code will depend on the nature of the program in question. This is entirely accurate. The more sensitive to raw computation the task is, the worse the performance will be.
There is nothing in his article that paints him as a "PC fanboy," and simply questioning the performance claims of Transitive's CEO by technical means hardly constitutes some affront to Apple.
He states why he feels that Transitive's figure of 80% is an optimistic figure, points out that the translation will require more memory, and posits that it should matter little to Mac owners because the largest applications will be available natively by the time they opt to switch in the first place. In short you attack him because you perceive him as questioning your faith, and that's really silly.
You are attempting to put into question Hannibal's technical assessments on the grounds that he is biased in such a manner as to make them worthless. If there's any criticism that this article deserves, it's that for anyone familiar with the topic at hand, his article isn't at all insightful. Even people that simply make use a lot of managed code (perhaps Azureus, due to its popularity and the native SWT) should have some impression as to the increase in memory requirements they may see.
I would further suggest that outside of the memory requirements for conducting translation for the already large word processors we find ourselves using from day to day, it seems fairly unlikely that the average person would notice anything but the most astound degredation in performance in such programs, because the majority of their usage is constrained by the user, rather than the application. The most irritating aspect of the performance penalty would be in startup, I think.
Member since:2005-06-29
I've talked to a few software developers who have used Apple's Intel developer boxes and they've attested to the fact that emulation speeds are indeed 80% of full native speed as Apple said all along. Why is Hannibal so inclined to doubt them?
Erm, maybe because these Apple developers have a product to sell?
I thought this article was well thought-out, and his explanations made a lot of sense, even to someone who isn't a programmer (me). We're talking about two totally different architectures, you can't expect emulation to be at 80% or more *always*. Of course, some apps will run at this speed, but *not* all. That is simply impossible, and I'm sure future benchmarks will support this.
Running a notepad will be at 80%, but will the same go for a bigger, more complex application? No way in hell.
Member since:2005-07-06
Running a notepad will be at 80%, but will the same go for a bigger, more complex application? No way in hell.
Well, this is a little deceptive. Let's take a couple of bigger, complex applications and think about it.
The Firefox developer's mention performance on par with the currently 2nd fastest Mac's, Meanwhile the idea of running say, DreamWeaver would terrify me, based upon previous experience with this type of technology. The question is not the size of the app (though that would have an effect during startup / initial translation), but what the app is doing. FireFox, which does not really use the CPU heavily, since it is more latency / bandwidth constrained than CPU constrained, probably does get 80% of native. At the same time, DreamWeaver, which is inexplicably CPU heavy even when nominally idle, would be lucky to eek out 30-40%. Virtual PC won't even be able to run since it uses kernel modules to implement functions that Rosetta doesn't address according to Apple.
It's all in what the app is doing, not the size or complexity of the app.
In other words, PhotoShop under Rosetta is not going to be fun, but hoepfully it won't be required either.
Member since:
2005-07-27
I've talked to a few software developers who have used Apple's Intel developer boxes and they've attested to the fact that emulation speeds are indeed 80% of full native speed as Apple said all along. Why is Hannibal so inclined to doubt them?
Why is there a repeated trend in articles that Hannibal writes that he goes out of his way to undermine anything that Apple has said. I've called him a PC fanboy in the past for this behavior and was scolded by some on this board for having done so. So believe it is because I'm trying to undermine Hannibal's technical expertise. For the record, I know there isn't yet reason to believe that his technical insight should be called into question. The guy is very intelligent and typically reports things accurately.
But he seems to have a an automatic desire to instantly doubt anything Apple does or says and often times goes out of his way to cast a cloud over the company for areas that may be subjective and I find that very telling.
He may in fact be right, but I find it interesting because it seems as if you can get a pretty good gauge for what his response will be to anything Apple. So PC fanboy continues to be his label in my eyes.