Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 24th Sep 2007 20:01 UTC
Just weeks ahead of its public launch, Apple has updated the minimum system requirements for its next-generation Leopard operating system to exclude 800MHz PowerPC-based Macs, AppleInsider has learned. Apple has yet to officially announce the hardware requirements to run Leopard, due out in October, but had long stated in developer documentation that the software would require "an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 (800MHz or faster) or G5 processor." According to people familiar with the matter, engineers for the company recently determined that Leopard installs on 800MHz PowerPC G4 systems ran "too slow". Support for those systems was subsequently pulled from the most recent pre-release copies of Leopard, which inform testers that the software "cannot be installed" on those computers. My take: Assuming this turns out to be true, there are going to be a lot of unhappy G4 owners - including yours truly.
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RE: not Flash per se, but H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is the issue
by Eugenia on Tue 25th Sep 2007 17:25
in reply to "not Flash per se, but H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is the issue"
Member since:2005-06-28
This is not correct. 320x240 h.264 videos work on cellphones with 250 Mhz ARM CPU, and so they should work on a Cube or my 867 Mhz Powerbook.
Besides, I get the spin of death just for loading normal flash stuff too, not just videos. Flash for the PPC in particular is extremely unoptimized. Nobody is paid to maintain it at Adobe, obviously.
RE[2]: not Flash per se, but H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is the issue
by frik85 on Tue 25th Sep 2007 18:56
in reply to "RE: not Flash per se, but H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is the issue"
Member since:2006-01-26
Cellphones usually have either a special chip for video processing or a special ARM CPU (e.g. iPhone uses one from Samsung) that is optimized for such tasks.
Processing MEPG4 movie is a very complex and CPU hungry task, a 400 MHz general purpose CPU may have troubles even with smaller resolutions.
Additionally, the powerpc port is probably buggy and unmaintained.
RE[2]: not Flash per se, but H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is the issue
by asr4096 on Tue 25th Sep 2007 20:17
in reply to "RE: not Flash per se, but H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is the issue"
Member since:2007-09-18
I also very often getting beachballs when using flash-content on sites, mostly on youtube or other video-sites.
As far as i remember flash performance on Macs was awful, approx 50% the speed of a comparable PC. (Also in the OS9 Days)
I dunno too much about the technical background, but i think OS X so called "advanced" architecture also causes more load and bloat. On the other hand even many animated GIFs causes Safari to use too much CPU. What's that? The "most advanced OS" ever? The most inefficient OS ever?
I also don't know how much overhead is generated by viewing video using flash, i guess a lot. Viewing PAL-sized MPG4 Videos using Mplayer is no problem on my old Mac.
Anyway, I am still using Macs. But i'm no fanboy.
RE: not Flash per se, but H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is the issue
by puenktchen on Tue 25th Sep 2007 18:13
in reply to "not Flash per se, but H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is the issue"
Member since:2007-07-27
RE[2]: not Flash per se, but H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is the issue
by n4cer on Tue 25th Sep 2007 18:45
in reply to "RE: not Flash per se, but H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is the issue"
Member since:2005-07-06
you're wrong, osx always had an 3d-gui (nextstep & openstep didn't).
OS X will not have a GUI pipeline approaching parity with Vista until Leopard is released. It may look like they're doing similar work on the surface, but OS X started with software composition and rendering. They accelerated composition by moving it to the GPU with Quartz Extreme. In Leopard, they will accelerate rendering as well by moving it to the GPU with Quartz 2D Extreme (available, but disabled by default in Tiger). Vista currently accelerates both operations.
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10-4.ars/13
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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Member since:
2006-01-26
Video processing, especially MPEG-4 is very CPU time heavy; you need a 1+ GHz CPU for proper performance.
You won't be able to watch recent Quicktime movies (MPEG4) with Apple Quicktime player either.
MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger) had a 2D UI, 10.5 cames (afaik) with 3D UI like Vista.