MacNN reports on some unofficial IBM comments that took place in a briefing of IBM’s high performance computing technology meeting. The asked presenter said that the Power4 derivative CPU is not for Apple. Its 160 instructions that will be introduced in the new CPU are not Altivec and that IBM pitched the desktop Power4 to Apple, but Apple was not interested. This new information, if true, again turns the posibility for the future of the Macs to x86 as the Motorola G5 is a dead horse by all accounts, OSNews heard. eWeek recently reported in the existance of an x86-based MacOSX, codenamed Marklar.
Upcoming Power4 CPU not for Macs?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Apple will never adopt x86 for Macs… it would be the dumbest business decision they would ever make!
Apple will adopt PowerPC-64 as predicted!
Yeah, no x86 for Macs, just because Dennis wants it this way…
I agree that you could assume apple might switch to X86 platform. You may notice that for some odd reason the news has been twisted to give people hope that their dreams may come true, when really it was twisted and posted so that Eugenia could start a nice discussion.
I do not see anything “twisted” in the post.
Apple may end up running their OS on x86 computers, but they will be Macs based on intel processors, not wintel-style PCs. The machines won’t run Windows, and the OS won’t run on non-apple computers. It will only be that Apple’s proprietary hardware will happen to have processors suppled by Intel.
What is this obsession with Apple performance ? I’m using the dual 1Ghz Mac (old version) and performance is absolutely no problem. Nor is it for the 500 mhz g3 imac that we’ve used for a couple of years. I’m using the machine for development and web surfing. Both are totally adequate.
I just don’t get these discussions like: try and open 50 screens ! You’ll see it starts to crawl !
So what ! Open 49 screens !
>What is this obsession with Apple performance
Because if you are an audio,3D or gfx/DTP professional, the *faster the better*. And Apple is trying to be in this market of these professionals. And if PC can do it faster, these people will move to Windows. Apple doesn’t want that, a lot of its money come from these professionals anyway.
Performance is mostly an issue for these Apple customers, not for you and me.
different parts of ibm do not know whats going on in other parts. And with the lack of dates on anything and the long time planning of power4 desktop processors things can change. I leave news like this alone, when you get to know certai companies such as IBM aswell as I might you really stop beleiving alot of the news stories you might see about them.
Thanks. I’m sure that video editing is still not performant enough. I have no personal exerience with that.
I have put together some fairly heavy duty websites and as part of my job I’ve edited 400 page + functional specs, and in neither case was performance an issue. paging up and down as reported by some hasn’t ever been an issue.
I’ve compiled and recompiled 3000+ lines of sml/nj programs, all of which run as fast as or faster as on a PC. I’ve written a bucnh of postgres programs, same deal. I guess that maybe one difference is that I do one thing at a time, I have seldom more than 5 or so windows open.
What I like personally frm the mac is that now that performance is adequate, eyecandy and a nice user interface as well as the eastatics(sp) of the computer itself are more important. I think that that’s a trend that will continue (as performance continues to increase)
>>Yeah, no x86 for Macs, just because Dennis wants it this way…
<<
No that’s what a lot of Mac users want…
Well, I don’t know what to do with a report like that either. But, Eugenia is exactly right, the areas Apple wants to go needs high performance. If this report is true and the G5 is dead, then Apple has to go somewhere. The one thing that Steve Jobs has definitively stated that I use as a landmark is when he said options are open once the transition to OS X is complete. To me, that means when there is no longer any version or form of OS 9 or Classic shipping with OS X. And Apple is trying to do that as quickly as they can, it seems to me.
> I’m using the dual 1Ghz Mac (old version) and performance is absolutely no problem.
If you had spent that money on PC instead of Mac, the PC WILL FLY!!
Now that’s the problem with Apple currently. Too bad price/performance ratio. Of course an 800Mhz iMac is okay on OSX, but if you had spent that on PC…
Very simple question. Will Doom III run on the current
shippiming Mcs….. no. Besides the memory bandwidth or
lack o, we still have the poor performaing CPU/s. The
mac os/unix pair is the best aroud but It could be running
on intel hardware right now and have the perfomance post. (Yes I mean right now, It would take 6 months to whip up an
app/lib call set to allow the mac os (binary form) to run
on the IA-32 Linux kernel. Trivial actually) Mac needs
bigger and faster pipes in and out of the cpus to keep up.
Lets face it
sdram-> DDR -> RDRAM -> Hypertransport
I use these to show how the interconnect speeds are increasing. Mac is still stuck at the front of the race. sigh. Well see what happens…
Leslie D
“If you had spent that money on PC instead of Mac, the PC WILL FLY!!”
sure, you would get a highend pc for that money. but most people who buy a mac as private user don`t care that much about performance they won`t necessarily ever need, they are happy when they can do their daily work and some multimedia stuff on a machine that doesnt heat your room up althought it has enough fans built-in to simulate jetengine-noises.
macs are quite nice, not because of the look of the box itself and the gui, as well as its usability, but also because they are a quality piece of hardware and no cheap pc shit that will fail as soon as the 1 year warrante ran out.
the problem is that x86 offer cheap power (cpu wise, the whole memory and io architecture is shit) for a cheap price that can`t be reached by other manufacturers producinga different architecture, because the x86 is a massproduct with a salesmarked allowing tremendously cheap production.
you see that everywhere, basically just by the fact that you cannot make money with just selling peecees but with servicing them.
anyways, from my point of view it is sad to see another huge manufacturer offering alternative technologies/architectures shifting over to x86.
variatio delectat.
if you ever used something else than the standard pc, like an old unix workstation, you will realize that the quality of the overall system with its provided software is far superior to any intel(clones). it is a completely different look and feel, service and last but not least RELIABILITY.
the x86 will always shit on you, just because of the different hardware, the standards, the backward compatibility, or simply the inconsequence of its hardware developers. trust me, any architecture out there is cleaner and less bloated that this one.
I will grant you the MAC has a better GUI and look and feel but it’s design on the motherboard is the same design as
a PC’s sorry. And actually most cheap PC’s last as long
as Mac’s. Macs however have a better feel and appearance to them. (lower market market share allows you to play to the niche groups.) , On the bad side for Mac there are at least two case manufactures out of Tawain how are specializing in the niche market. See the Lian cases and overclocking casses.
In fact my Alpha use the basic hardware as a PC an it is not a POS computer. The Sun’s at work use the same vide cards, drives, and with a little creative work the same case….
Leslie D.
Hopefully this comment means nothing. Not having a 64 bit strategy will kill the platform. Given that Apple already has a CPU problem a change to a much faster 64 bit processor would have lots of user support and user support is the key thing they will need. The Power4 will be by far the easiest transition. The x86 I think is unlikely as has been said here a zillion times the x86 is a really bad chip that has one feature that makes it popular (legacy support for the 8086 family); and that feature is worthless to Apple.
A Mac / pSeries partnership makes a great deal of sense for both sides. I hope they can resolve whatever is stopping them from making this alliance a reality.
Celeron PPC? In a Server?
WHY would you want a “desktop” version chip in box that will not ever have the traditional single chip again?
Don’t count Motorola out, as we truly know nothing.
And WHY should they tip their hand?
Hmmmm?
Insanley Great.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
What I like personally frm the mac is that now that performance is adequate, eyecandy and a nice user interface as well as the eastatics(sp) of the computer itself are more important. I think that that’s a trend that will continue (as performance continues to increase)
That is not the problem Apple has. Apple has a supplier problem, and that is more important than today’s performance issues. The threat is Apple’s chips will lag behind Moore’s law, disqualifying them from many markets.
Well since Apple *might* have to use the Intel processors afterall, will this mean there will be reward money for making OSX run on an Xbox; afterall, there is reward money for making it work on Linux.
I should hope that Apple makes a descision on a timely basis as to which CPU will be in the next-gen system. I would hope that the best processor (cost, performance, reliability) if Intel/AMD based processors are it than so be it. The IBM Power4’s spec wise look tasy…drool.
L.D. ok, touche.
i agree but using a pci bus for example in a non-x86 machine doesnt mean that it is using “x86 parts”.
the whole IO/memoryarchitecture is mostly ENTIRELY different,
look at sgi octanes, they dont have an io system at all but offer the _industry_ standard pci bus for the usual extension; but also a proprietary bus for all the highend components, such as the gfx subsystem.
pci is another example, it is probably one of the cheapest ways to add a vast variety of extension posibilites to a system, but it is performance wise not one of the best. Even my GIO64 bus from 1994 in my sgi indigo2 beats it when it comes to datatransferrates.
but that is probably not the best example for a ppc discussion, i agree, again that ppc arch is quite narrow to the pc one.
>>The one thing that Steve Jobs has definitively stated that I use as a landmark is when he said options are open once the transition to OS X is complete. To me, that means when there is no longer any version or form of OS 9 or Classic shipping with OS X.<<
Steve Jobs also said back in April (at a shareholders meeting) after a comment was made that Apple’s best option was to go Intel, he said that was a matter of opinion! So he is throwing curve balls at the press!
100% pure unsubstantiated speculation.
AltiVec is Apple’s idea. IBM never really signed onto it. Nevertheless, the idea of extra RISC instructions custom-designed for apps that process large amounts of data with relatively consistent instructions is a good one; and it’s quite likely that IBM designed its own version of that technology, which happened to be quite similar to AltiVec, but not exactly. But it’s still good enough for most, as very little non-Apple-designed software uses AltiVec so far.
A while back, IBM came up with this idea. It was called CHRP/PReP. It was IBM’s answer to x86; it was an open platform, based around the far-superior RISC-based PowerPC processor, that used Open Firmware and was theoretically as compatible with third-party hardware as x86. This platform still exists today; unfortunately, all products for it are insanely expensive (I think a Motorola mainboard costs around $3k).
IBM, quite possible, has decided to revive the idea of CHRP. It would not be hard at all for them to find a Taiwanese motherboard maker, or find a fab and do the design themselves, for a competitively-priced CHRP board with the uATX and/or ATX form factors. Then, a prospective user with an x86 box would simply need to buy the mobo, buy one of IBM’s new processors for about the same price as a top-of-the-line Pentium 4, and throw that combination into their old case using all their old parts, clear the hard drive and install Debian PPC on it, and they’re off.
IBM knows that this would be a very profitable idea. There are many people who would buy PPC but for the price and “closed-ness”; even if the board and/or processor cost a bit more, this would still kill those arguments. And similarly, there are many people who would buy PPC but for the fact that they hate Apple and OS X, and those people would love a PPC to install Linux on. Essentially, using the new Power4 for CHRP would give IBM a chance to correct the mistakes they made when they introduced x86 – and I don’t think they could lose.
>>If you had spent that money on PC instead of Mac, the PC WILL FLY!!
…Yes, and it will crash with Windows ;-))
Ralf
>Yes, and it will crash with Windows ;-))
I have crashed OSX three times (since May 2002). I haven’t manage to crash WinXP Pro yet (since March 2002).
…and I don’t even use OSX all that much, while I use WinXP daily, all day.
yeah, here we are again, the OSNews standard discussion(s):
OS X on X86 / Apple switch to X86 / Mac vs. PC
come on guys & gals, this is normaly an intersting forum. But these discussions are getting boring.
Ralf.
P.S.Have you ever thought that maybe is going on behing the scenes at Apple were you all don’t know about? Maybe between Apple & Moto or Apple & IBM or even Apple & IBM & Moto?
I think Apple will surprise us all with their netx gen. of PowerMac’s. This won’t be the first thime the do so.
Most popular news sites get popular by posting interesting news, not by adding interesting/controversial comments to news. You yourself know that the whole OS X for X86 is a hot topic so the more news you can find that is slightly related to it, the more you can fuel the discussion, discussion is good for you because it means hits.
Doesn’t anybody else see this?
I do not understand why you don’t see it the other way.
Maybe there are so many comments because people are INTERESTED in such conversations. Therefore, it is on our best interest to post news that people are interested in.
It doesn’t work one way you know.
>>I have crashed OSX three times (since May 2002). I haven’t manage to crash WinXP Pro yet (since March 2002).<<
I crashed XP twice since it’s release last year, that was just setting up an ISP service for a friend!
>>Yes, and it will crash with Windows ;-))
Eugenia:
this was just a wordplay – it was not my serious mind.
I hobe you forgive…
Ralf.
PS: I sah every OS I have ever used crashing.
Linux, Solaris, AIX, BeOS, AmigaOS, Windows(all Versions), MacOS 9/X, VMS and Guardian.
Mhh, disappointed here. I had hope in the desktop power4 for Macs :-(. It looked like the shortest way for 64 bit macs with 32 bit binary compatibility.
Intel/AMD system’s performance is not good enough compared to current high end apple systems. The tiny (inexistant?) performance gains do not stand against the g4s running cooler and using less power. (Big concern for me with ever growing render farms in small rooms)..
I can already hear the Intel/Amd fans scowling at me, but face it guys, run some real life tests and you will see that despite faster ram and faster clock cycles the wintels are on par with macs. I render animation and compositing everyday on cross platform apps, and I see the numbers…
I got an email today from the Cambridge systems devellopers: “You should be comparing with Animo on windows. Rendering is often faster on Mac, and scene loading is not noticably slower than on windows”.
Just load up Black&White … play until you have built your villages to absolute perefection … of course, you’ll have the autosave off because it takes FOREVER to save … just when you are ready to move to the next map… Boom. Crash. Works every time.
The only thing I have ever used XP for was gaming, and I’ve had a LOT of crashes. Probably had more to do with the games and the nVidia drivers than anything, tho. I’m a Linux zealot, after all, but my roommate swears XP is stable for him, surfing the web, e-mail, word processing … guess it’s all in what you’re trying to do and the tools you’re tryin to do it with.
sure, you would get a highend pc for that money. but most people who buy a mac as private user don`t care that much about performance they won`t necessarily ever need, they are happy when they can do their daily work and some multimedia stuff on a machine that doesnt heat your room up althought it has enough fans built-in to simulate jetengine-noises.
>>>>>>
The monitor is a bigger source of heat than any part of the PC. And you can deck out a PC that will not only be quiet, but look nice, not heat up the room, and not make that much noise. See Dell’s Dimension systems. They use just a heatsink and one fan (besides the one in the PSU). There isn’t even a fan on the heatsink! They’re REALLY quiet.
macs are quite nice, not because of the look of the box itself and the gui, as well as its usability, but also because they are a quality piece of hardware and no cheap pc shit that will fail as soon as the 1 year warrante ran out.
>>>>>>>>>>
I’ve never had a PC fall apart on me. I’ve owned a Tandy 486sx (I learned about computers by taking that thing apart repeatedly) a Dell P2-300, an Inspiron 8200, and three machines (from P2 to Athlon XP) that I’ve built myself, and not a single one has ever had a single hardware failure. Hell, the 12″ monitor on the Tandy still serves one of the newer machines, and the computer itself just retired from FreeBSD server duty last year. I don’t think Apple’s are any less reliable, but I doubt they’re any more reliable.
the problem is that x86 offer cheap power (cpu wise, the whole memory and io architecture is shit)
>>>>>
Bullcrap. x86 is pushing the edge these days in memory and I/O architecture. Maybe its shit compared to a mainframe or $20,000 Sun server, but even compared to high-end Alphas its pretty good. Clue: the new AMD Hammer uses Hypertransport, the same technology found in the Alpha 21364. And Intel has 4.2 GB/sec of memory bandwidth, which many low end (but still really expensive) Sun machines can’t match. And all of this is a moot point, because Apple uses the same architecture, just a few generations behind. They’re still stuck at 1.3 GB/sec of bus bandwidth (just a little bit better than PC133) and a standard Northbridge/Southbridge setup. Meanwhile, AMD and Intel have moved into the 4GB/sec realm of dual channel RDRAM and DDR-SDRAM.
<additional crap omited>
Care to back up any of those statements? Sure a $20,000 machine might be higher quality, but as far as the sub-$5000 realm goes, PC’s are pretty damn high-quality. We’re not in PC-XT land anymore my friend. Its not XT-PIC and ISA and Sound Blaster Compatible. Just read the specs for ACPI 2.0, Hypertransport, PCI 2.2, the IO-APIC, and USB 2.0. Tell me how they are inferior in any way to the architectures used in machines costing 3x as much.
I’m sorry, Rob, but I’ve always been very lucky with 2000 and XP for everything. Gaming, development, whatever. Not had a crash, ever. Actually, I think I might have had one crash with 2000 when I had a bad video driver installed; but that’s my fault. All fixed now.
>>Bullcrap. x86 is pushing the edge these days in memory and I/O architecture.<<
No, that would be Sun Micrososystems! And that is why they still sell their great hardware to this day!!
macs are quite nice, not because of the look of the box itself and the gui, as well as its usability, but also because they are a quality piece of hardware and no cheap pc shit that will fail as soon as the 1 year warrante ran out.
I’ve said this a thousand times, I’ll say it again. The internal modem of my iMac G4 700 flat panel has never worked properly since the day I bought it. After 5 minutes of connecting it would disconnect for no apparent reason. I ended up having to bring back my PC to use as a software router just so I can surf the net for longer periods of time. A coworker of mine had to send her Mac back 3 times to get the modem replaced. A journalist at The Register wrote an article saying how lousy modems are in Macs.
On the flip side, WinModems, hardware modems, all work fine on my PCs. A $30 modem for a PC is cheap, but it works better than the one that comes in a $1600 iMac, and replacing that one would certainly cost more than $30.
>>I’ve said this a thousand times, I’ll say it again. The internal modem of my iMac G4 700 flat panel has never worked properly since the day I bought it. After 5 minutes of connecting it would disconnect for no apparent reason. I ended up having to bring back my PC to use as a software router just so I can surf the net for longer periods of time. A coworker of mine had to send her Mac back 3 times to get the modem replaced. A journalist at The Register wrote an article saying how lousy modems are in Macs.<<
Unfortunately other people (like me) who own iMacs have never had problems with the modems and I am not the only one where I work that has an iMac, so your problem is few and far between, your ISP could be partly to blame!
>>On the flip side, WinModems, hardware modems, all work fine on my PCs. A $30 modem for a PC is cheap, but it works better than the one that comes in a $1600 iMac, and replacing that one would certainly cost more than $30.<<
WinModems are crap, especially if you’re running an OS that is not Windows. I also own a PC and when I was living in the US my modem connection dropped all the time, though my ISP was terrible (so I blamed the ISP)!
“No, that would be Sun Micrososystems! And that is why they still sell their great hardware to this day!!”
Quick question. Whay do you talk about Sun machines? Who cares about Sun machines other than a very small percentage of buyers? Few “home” or even “pro” users have ever used a Sun let alone own one. We are talking about Mac’s and PC’s here. The kinds of machines you typically use in the home or even for pro use. SGI’s don’t exactly sell like hotcakes anymore either. Even the cg houses are dumping their SGI’s.
So, in the context of Mac vs. PC, multimedia, gaming, 3d graphics and what most people are buying these days, Suns means absolutely nothing. Nobody buys the damn things for the most part. Ok, some lab somewhere is running some molecular modelling application on a Sun. Wow. Tell me why I care? You can’t even buy Lightwave for Sun anymore. Where is Photoshop for Sun? Ok, that’s graphics only. What in God’s name else would I buy a Sun for at home? Web browsing? Have you seen the prices? I can buy several PC’s (or even Mac’s probably) for the same price. I’ll pass on the Sun thanks.
But, I think you know that the original poster was really defending the PC against the Mac in this regard (you “were” following the thread weren’t you?) rather than trying to suggest that PC’s offer the ultimate in I/O performance when compared to a Sun, SGI or other similar platforms that cater to a very narrow, specific segment of the market and not typical desktop users.
You want to be picky and say that PC’s are not so hot in that department? No problem, just remember that Mac’s suck in that department as well compared to those same machines.
Satori.
>>Quick question. Whay do you talk about Sun machines? Who cares about Sun machines other than a very small percentage of buyers? Few “home” or even “pro” users have ever used a Sun let alone own one. We are talking about Mac’s and PC’s here.<<
Because 1, I work around Sun hardware and know its strengths, which the PC nor the Mac can acheive from the above topic on I/O and memory!
>>But, I think you know that the original poster was really defending the PC against the Mac in this regard (you “were” following the thread weren’t you?) rather than trying to suggest that PC’s offer the ultimate in I/O performance when compared to a Sun, SGI or other similar platforms that cater to a very narrow, specific segment of the market and not typical desktop users.<<
Because he challenged what was the best on the market and I called his bluff! I would own a Sun if I didn’t own a Mac because I know it’s superiority in performance and we use both PC and Sun workstations where I work!
>>You want to be picky and say that PC’s are not so hot in that department? No problem, just remember that Mac’s suck in that department as well compared to those same machines.<<
In terms of reliability… I would take a Mac (or even a Sun for that matter) than a PC anyday, the hardware is just built better!
enuff said!!!
Why must it always come down to fighting about X86 vs. G4’s? I though Robert Hanlin spoke well:
“That is not the problem Apple has. Apple has a supplier problem, and that is more important than today’s performance issues. The threat is Apple’s chips will lag behind Moore’s law, disqualifying them from many markets.”
This is what concerns me. That article – it may be totally false, who knows? But, it’s fun to speculate! On the surface, the Power4 sounds great for Apple, but we don’t know what all of them are up to – Apple, Motorola, IBM.
Mac Internal Modems: There does seem to be an issue with the internal 56k modems in the more recent Macs. I can’t recall if Apple acknowledged it or not, but it has aften come up on sites like MacInTouch and MacFixit.
CHRP/PReP: Wow, I didn’t know that was still around! Apple was involved with that with IBM a long time ago. It was one of those projects Apple bailed out on when they were running around in circles. It was to be an open standard hardware set-up, if I recall correctly (and I may not recall correctly <g>).
I don’t know if Apple hardware objectively lasts any longer than good PC hardware, but there is the cultural aspect of Mac owners that makes it *seem* that way. I’ve been buying Apples since the Apple IIe – and I still have it and it still works perfectly. It’s 17 years old. And we have an original Mac 128k we use to leave messages to each on here at home. It’s 16 years old. Anyway, what I meant to say was that I really do believe Mac owners keep their Macs longer than PC owners keep their PC, generally speaking, and that’s why it *seems* like Apple has longer lasting hardware. I think this has changed over the past two or three years – but I think PC’s were often viewed as a disposable commodity. But, I think that view has changed as PC company’s are making their computers “cooler” looking, etc. You cannot underestimate this when talking about ordinary home users. All these years, Mac people have kept their Macs longer because there is a personal attachment to them. Jobs understands this very well. To an ordinary home Joe User, something that looks really cool can play a great part in their computer buying decision making. Companies like Dell and Gateway understand that now too.
Well I do see that some people are interested in this, but most of the time all I see are people flaming away or trolling (yes i’m not helping). But it seems that the topics that are always being posted are the one’s that attract trolls and sometimes the news isn’t even worth going through.
Although I have to say that is what usually brings me back here several times a day.
“In terms of reliability… I would take a Mac (or even a Sun for that matter) than a PC anyday, the hardware is just built better! ”
Well, I don’t have any reliability problems to speak of myself. I do everything from the basics like web browsing, wordprocessing and gaming to 2d and 3d graphics (including rendering very large images – and hitting my swapfile real hard) and don’t experience any crashes. So, I wouldn’t be buying a Mac or Sun for that reason myself. And a Sun would be useless for me (and most other people I know who use computers) with the lack of the type of software that many home users would want and also those apps that people into graphics would want. But, if Sun’s float your boat and you enjoy parting with your cash, who am I to say anything but “enjoy”.
As to Mac hardware being built better, I find that a strange comment. Why? Well, the Mac fanatics have talked about how Mac’s use off the shelf PC components for the most part, how they are no longer “proprietary” like they used to be. So, I am wondering, did they come off the “better built” shelf reserved exclusively for Mac’s?
Which shelf do the Mac Geforce 4 MX’s come off of that makes them better than my Elsa Gloria? And which shelf do the burners come off of that make them better than my Plextor? My Asus motherboard (and the three previous ones I have owned) have given me nothing but great service. I have never had a single hardware failure aside from one IBM 75GXP hard drive that just happended to be doomed from the start (I assume you, the all knowing, know all about these particular drives. But there is nothing inherantly better about Mac hardware. Ok, they have nicely built cases and are “pretty”. But, anyone who cares to could take some of the big handfull of cash they save by not buying a Mac and buy a very good looking and very well built case like a Lian Li or any other number of cases. And noicse in not an issue either. Most people have cheap noisy cases. If you buy a good case and quality fans (Panaflo for example) and don’t overclock everything so you need a million fans, noise is not an issue. In fact, even if you DO overclock, you could take some of that saved cash and buy a water cooling setup instead of using fan based cooling and have a damn quiet machine, and one that would make a Mac look even worse performance-wise 
.
So, what’s this “better built” garbage are you trying to feed us?
Satori.
Flintstone,
This is not a flamebait, as a scientist I’ actually quite interested in OS X, but this far Apple hardware is really disappointing.
Would you mind sharing the details of the code and SQL setup that runs just as fast on a Mac as on an x86 CPU (I assume you’re comparing e.g. 1GHz G4 to a 2.5 GHz P4).
For the stuff we’re doing (computational physics), the G4 is less than half the speed of an Athlon (which costs much less). When we use Altivec, the G4 performance can almost match the Athlon, but when you also code SSE for x86 CPUs they are again about 50% faster than the G4.
Combining this with the fact that we can get dual Athlon 2000 MP for $1200 means the G4 isn’t even in the game…
CattBeMac: Apple will never adopt x86 for Macs… it would be the dumbest business decision they would ever make!
You know what, CattBeMac? You never explained why.
flintstone: What is this obsession with Apple performance ?
Because Apple is so obsesed with eye candy and the digital hub, they need all the power they can get.
flintstone: I have put together some fairly heavy duty websites and as part of my job I’ve edited 400 page + functional specs, and in neither case was performance an issue. paging up and down as reported by some hasn’t ever been an issue.
I once editied a PHP website with around close to 200 pages on a 133MHz Pentium MX. Stuff like these doesn’t requires a lot of power, unless you are faster than the computer. Stuff like AfterEffects rendering which requires HOURS of rendering time needs all the power it could get.
I’ve compiled and recompiled 3000+ lines of sml/nj programs, all of which run as fast as or faster as on a PC.
What kind of PC are you comparing with? The PC from Walmart that cost $200? The PC that cost $30,000? Was it 100mhz or 1ghz?
CattBeMac: No that’s what a lot of Mac users want…
A lot of Mac users doesn’t want Macs to be another PC clone, and it won’t be though matter what processor goes in.
wy: Of course an 800Mhz iMac is okay on OSX, but if you had spent that on PC…
It is not that good comparing iMacs to a similarly priced PC. After all, ALL the iMac G4 users I KNOW didn’t buy the iMac for anything else but the ergonomics.
lynx: [..]they are happy when they can do their daily work and some multimedia stuff on a machine that doesnt heat your room up althought it has enough fans built-in to simulate jetengine-noises.
a) Most of PowerMac potential users want performance.
b) G4s emmits the same amount of heat as current top end x86 processors. The difference is that people buying x86 buy cheap heatsinks and cheap fans and complain. Apple just quality heatsinks and fans.
c) In the average new PC, most of the noise don’t come from the processor.
lynx: if you ever used something else than the standard pc, like an old unix workstation, you will realize that the quality of the overall system with its provided software is far superior to any intel(clones).
If you use a Dell or a Walmart PC, I agree with you. But you assert that PCs must be low quality, which is a blatant lie. Ever used an IBM? My aunt has a old one, around 7-8 years old. Still working. I have a 6 year old Acer machine, just died.
L.D.: I will grant you the MAC has a better GUI and look and feel but it’s design on the motherboard is the same design as a PC’s sorry.
Wrong. Just because they use off the shelf PC components like its HDDs, its optical drives etc., the design of the motherboard is very different. It is a) made for PPCs, b) uses OpenFirmware instead of BIOS.
The chipset is very different.
jbolden1517: The x86 I think is unlikely as has been said here a zillion times the x86 is a really bad chip that has one feature that makes it popular (legacy support for the 8086 family)
The legacy thingy isn’t important to Apple. Things like SSE2 and low cost is a bigger deal. Low cost as in mass marketed commodity, the prices always goes down, unlike PPC which goes down every 12-18 months.
Plus the war between Intel and AMD keeps the market alive.
hylas: WHY would you want a “desktop” version chip in box that will not ever have the traditional single chip again?
Apple started using dual processors for its high end because of the lack of performance. It probably won’t need it later on, but they could always use things like Opteron and Xeon for dual processor needs.
For its low end and its laptops, having DPs isn’t such a good idea.
Ralf.: …Yes, and it will crash with Windows ;-))
Trully a lame one.
Eugenia: I haven’t manage to crash WinXP Pro yet (since March 2002).
For me, I saw XP crashed once. It was because of WMP 9.0.
jbett: Most popular news sites get popular by posting interesting news, not by adding interesting/controversial comments to news.
Slashdot is popular, it adds its own comments to the story most of the time.
CattBeMac: I crashed XP twice since it’s release last year, that was just setting up an ISP service for a friend!
Most XP crashes are caused by the drivers. Ask him to check his drivers. I even read once on another site not to use NT4 drivers.
Satchel Buddah: Intel/AMD system’s performance is not good enough compared to current high end apple systems. […]
At times like this I really wish I had my Linux system to get all my bookmarks to prove this wrong.
The benchmarks that shows Macs winning ALWAYS use a cheaper, older PC to the Mac.
Rob: The only thing I have ever used XP for was gaming, and I’ve had a LOT of crashes.
I could player B&W perfectly on XP. I don’t have it installed right now (got bored of it).
CattBeMac: WinModems are crap, especially if you’re running an OS that is not Windows.
they are crap back then because they suck resources from the PCs. Now PCs are good enough to handle them. Besides, IIRC, Mac modems aren’t hardware modems.
Satori: Even the cg houses are dumping their SGI’s.
Actually, a lot of them are buying SGI Linux x86 machines, and dumping IRIX.
So, what’s this “better built” garbage are you trying to feed us?
Apple normally buy more expensive parts. But nontheless, the people putting these machines together are the same people that put PCs together. Go and buy a quality PC for goodness sack!
Would you mind sharing the details of the code and SQL setup that runs just as fast on a Mac as on an x86 CPU (I assume you’re comparing e.g. 1GHz G4 to a 2.5 GHz P4).
I think a comparison of a 1.2GHz G4 and 2.2k+ Athlon MP or an 2.4GHz Xeon would be better.
This whole article has no substantial proof whatsoever. I always had a thing against believeing in rumours, though matter what they are about. Take it with a pinch of salt, don’t rejoice too much or kick yourself in the butt too hard.
I just want to throw out this idea. The Marklar project could be focused on testing the cross-platform compatiblity of the code that is modified by Apple. This would be the responsible thing to do, before submitting code changes to the main public branch.
>>A lot of Mac users doesn’t want Macs to be another PC clone, and it won’t be though matter what processor goes in.<<
And that is exactly what you’ll get once you slam x86 into a Mac, a PC clone!
James: I just want to throw out this idea. The Marklar project could be focused on testing the cross-platform compatiblity of the code that is modified by Apple. This would be the responsible thing to do, before submitting code changes to the main public branch.
Marklar, though it sounds nice, is just a rumour, some thing reported by eWeek, no proof behind it.
CattBeMac: And that is exactly what you’ll get once you slam x86 into a Mac, a PC clone!
No, it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be a beige/black ATX box with extreemely cheap noisy fans and cheap skate hardware componets. The Macs you see now would be exactly the same, except it would use a different chipset and different processor, and possibly an hardware PPC emulation thing.
That’s right. Your Mac would look exactly the same. In the beginning probably all your applications would run slow (PPC emulation) but after awhile everything would be faster. Yeah, your Lightwave rendering probably would go down by 50%…
Slapping a x86 on a Mac doesn’t make it a PC clone.
>>Slapping a x86 on a Mac doesn’t make it a PC clone.<<
Does too!
🙂
In my opinion it’s not only utterly stupid for Apple to switch to x86, it’s also virtually impossible. Anyone still remember the switch from m68k to PPC? For a couple of years, Apple had to support double hardware platforms, and developers had the choice to either develop for PPC and shut out a large part of the target audience or develop for m68k and run in emulation mode on the new macs so that their application would actually be _slower_ on faster macs.
Switching to x86 brings in exactly the same kind of trouble, even though this time, apple may have it’s port of the OS readily at hand. Furthermore, i can’t really imagine how either apple or any of the big developers (for example Microsoft) would welcome yet another big period of instability just after the switch to OSX. Apple could have made the switch to another CPU architecture at the time they switched to OSX, but now it’s really too late. I guess they’re really hoping for better CPU and bus speeds for the new generation of PowerPCs because switching to _any_ other architecture simply isn’t an option anymore.
“A MacNN reader forwarded…”, what kind of news does osnews published?
Here is another reader news “Microsoft will leave .net and will adopt Java due to it superiority”
In my opinion it’s not only utterly stupid for Apple to switch to x86, it’s also virtually impossible. […]
It is easier than you think it is. In fact easier than back then. PPC wasn’t that much faster to 68k, but in this case, x86 processor would double in speed in 18 months, so it is entirely possible for emulation.
Also, unlike the OS back then, OS X is much more portable. Porting would be very easy, and probably exist if Marklar isn’t just a rumour.
Apple had to switch platforms back then because Motorola discontinued 68k. Right now, it is as good as being discontinued. Sure, choosing IBM’s would be a easier option, but a more stupid option, looking in the long term. Could IBM compete with AMD and Intel is price and perfomance for a long period of time? Doubt it, there isn’t much incentives for that.
Furthermore, i can’t really imagine how either apple or any of the big developers (for example Microsoft) would welcome yet another big period of instability just after the switch to OSX.
They probably would keep most of their software PPC. Because, making and educated guess, most of these ISVs don’t have portable software. Besides, if Apple were to move to x86, or any other processor, by the end of 2003 as rumours always say, I’m quite sure ISVs already know this.
Apple could have made the switch to another CPU architecture at the time they switched to OSX, but now it’s really too late.
That would be rather impossible, with Classic around. Classic would be 68k code running on emulation for PPC, running on x86 via PPC emulation. Wow.
>>Slapping a x86 on a Mac doesn’t make it a PC clone.<<
Does too!
Nice rebutt. Really proves me wrong. NOT!
>>Nice rebutt. Really proves me wrong. NOT!<<
does too!
🙂
P.S.
Thank you for the compliment, you’re too kind!
I really hope Eugenia moderate these post down – wasting screen real estate.
/me wanna join the debate.
CattBeMac: does too!
rajan r: does not!
CattBeMac: does too!
rajan r: does not!
CattBeMac: does too!
rajan r: does not!
….
>>CattBeMac: does too!
rajan r: does not!<<
Now just like the Bugs Bunny episode where Bugs Bunny tricks Yo Sammity Sam and reverses the the debate with the tongue twister:
CattBeMac: does not!
rajan r: does too!
Okay I win 🙂
Oh, this is getting lame :-P. I just replied to your email.
If Apple is going to port OS X to x86 platform, how will Microsoft think about this action of Apple? It will be a threaten to MS Windows strategy! Do you think MS would see it happen? NO!
Remember the tradegy results of OS/2, Corel Linux and BeOS on x86 platform. AND REMEMBER…the failure of NextStep on x86 platform. Do you think OS X can be succeed on x86? No!
Why did Apple kill the CHRP in 1997 if it has technology to lock up its system alone in its Mac system and for others to clone the PPC system? If Apple cannot prevent anyone to write a programme or produce hardware to unlock the Mac’s x86 system, how will Apple face to this risky?
It’s no interesting for Apple to jump in x86 platform!
/me tosses rajan r and CattBeMac a copy of Basilisk II to play with…
is this a mac or a pc?
(sorry i know im gonna burn for that one but i just couldnt resist)
:oD
Mike: If Apple is going to port OS X to x86 platform, how will Microsoft think about this action of Apple? It will be a threaten to MS Windows strategy! Do you think MS would see it happen? NO!
I wonder, how would this threaten Microsoft? In fact, it would probably help them. How? They would no longer be legally a monopoly, and can go scott free.
And plus, Apple won’t be changing its business model. Their hardware would still be expensive. You can’t run OS X on a Dell. Nadda. If MS retaliates just because Apple slaps a x86 processor on a Mac, they are just plain stupid.
Mike: Remember the tradegy results of OS/2, Corel Linux and BeOS on x86 platform. AND REMEMBER…the failure of NextStep on x86 platform. Do you think OS X can be succeed on x86? No!
OS/2 died on of x86 because of IBM. Some classic mistakes they made
– Never placed much marketing behind it. Plus, some divisions of IBM said it was crap, other divisions said it was manna from heaven.
– Only available on expensive IBMs, and not to clone makers. No prob right? Wrong
– The only thing OS/2 could do is run Win16 apps. This cause Win16 developers not to port their apps to OS/2. So why buy an expensive IBM to run the same apps?
Corel Linux is another classic example. It was created for its current CEO could get a big bank account (read the SEC news). Not to mention CL1.0 sucked so badly, all reviews I have read about it says it was bad – as first impressions last a long time. Another thing is the “ease of use” is actually copying Windows’ worse UI designs, and completely leaving out the good ones. CL was also not very OEM friendly.
Ahh Be OS. This one had a lot of potential. But the people behind it were willing to take stupid risks so they could take shortcuts. Even if Microsoft was all nice and good, Be would probably never survive. It failed to identify niches and attack them with full force. They had plenty of chances with Apple numerous flops in their “next generation OS”, from Pink to Copland, they could easily got ISV support. but they never tried.
OpenStep has a similar story to Be OS. But unlike Gassee, Jobs learnt from some of his mistakes, and is early a fortune from Apple now.
Besides, notice, unlike Apple, Be and OpenStep depended on OEM support. Unlike Apple, IBM and Corel didn’t have a profitable niche.
Mike: Why did Apple kill the CHRP in 1997 if it has technology to lock up its system alone in its Mac system and for others to clone the PPC system?
It later supported CHRP, but IBM and Microsoft already left the scene. They didn’t killed CHRP because they were afraid of clones (heck, for quite some time later on, Apple had clone makers with Apple’s blessing), they did it because they want to be the sole player in the Utopia of desktop architectures. It manage to do that, and in the process, killed desktop PPC’s potential.
Mike: If Apple cannot prevent anyone to write a programme or produce hardware to unlock the Mac’s x86 system, how will Apple face to this risky?
Sure, there would be hacks to OS X so it could run on your cheap $200 Walmart PCs, but there are hinderences that could block this from ever happening
– Drivers. Only geeks can write them.
– Besides writing drivers, modding their system or changing code, or inserting some crptic commands isn’t a piece of cake for Apple’s target audience.
the Mac news site http://www.macosrumors.com/ is running a story on this with a different take completely, which is interesting.
apple is about the experience not just speed. Creative professionals appreciate that most of all. Most of those audio and video pros (as opposed to hobbyists) use pro tools or other dsp ladden hardware acceleration to run the heavy loads. They could care less about processor speed.
That said, apple really is falling behind though in bragging rights and that is not good. They need to do more. Still, apple users in general don’t seem to be calling for the switch to x86. Rather, Pc users in this group seem to be calling for apple to switch to x86.
Most things happened are not just one or two reasons!
I exactly played OS/2 seven years ago on a 486 clone PC smoothly which didn’t contain any IBM’s brand hardware.
Microsoft theatened IBM not to preload OS/2 on their any PC hardware if IBM wanted to get the license of Windows 95 from Microsoft. It was proven by a OS/2 marketing manager (sorry I forget his name) in US that in the case of justice about Microsoft’s monopoly. Do you remember Novell fire a justice to Microsoft DOS monopoly strategy in Europe around 1994? All the justice results could not help the software corporations and…consumers! Microsoft will kick out their competitors in the PC OS market although the competitors just get a little market share. Because the PC OS preloaded market is Microsoft guarantee interest. This interest can let Bill Gates expands to other technology markets.
Apple want the consumers change to use OS X. We can see the result is not well in the past year. Microsoft and Corel are not having any patient to the slowly expanding of OS X. How many years can Apple tell the consumers give up their old platform and use the new x86 platform? That’s why I don’t believe that!
Apple want to port OS X to x86 platform…who knows this is not a mistake (or a big mistake) eventually.
I find it hard to believe that this chip is not for Apple. Given the slow progress of the G4 and the fact that this chip is a desktop version with a simd unit similar to altivec, I don’t see how it could be for anyone but Apple. Maybe it’ll show up in the xserve first…
– Mark
Mike: I exactly played OS/2 seven years ago on a 486 clone PC smoothly which didn’t contain any IBM’s brand hardware.
You could. With buying a retail pack. My point was that OEMs couldn’t get it at a price in which they could compete with IBM on price ground with OS/2.
Mike: Microsoft theatened IBM not to preload OS/2 on their any PC hardware if IBM wanted to get the license of Windows 95 from Microsoft.
Wrong. IBM at first was very sure of OS/2’s success. Windows 95 succeed. Microsoft still had the same OEM policy it had from DOS 1.0: Our OS only on a machine, or no OS.
IBM could be successful if it wasn’t so short sighted.
Mike: It was proven by a OS/2 marketing manager (sorry I forget his name) in US that in the case of justice about Microsoft’s monopoly.
No, he testified, It wasn’t proven. See the court transcripts.
Mike: Do you remember Novell fire a justice to Microsoft DOS monopoly strategy in Europe around 1994?
Novell killed DR-DOS the same way it practically killed NetWare.
Novell is as practically as naive as Be in believing that Microsoft would give some help in a competitor that could kill it’s second largest cash cow. I’m opening a business in the future, after my studies, some business experiences, blah blah blah, and microsoft would be my largest competitor. Even with the DOJ around, it is stupid for me to be naive.
Mike: Because the PC OS preloaded market is Microsoft guarantee interest.
No other company ever got the interest of major clone makers (read: Compaq). So because of that, blame Microsoft?
Mike: Apple want the consumers change to use OS X. We can see the result is not well in the past year.
It isn’t good. Most new Mac users use OS 9 instead of OS X. Should Microsoft be blamed?
Mike: Microsoft and Corel are not having any patient to the slowly expanding of OS X.
Microsoft and Corel aren’t the only companies. Instead of trying to appeal to Mac users, Apple is trying to appeal to the PC users.
Mike: How many years can Apple tell the consumers give up their old platform and use the new x86 platform?
It is much easier than software migration, for users. Why? If everything goes as plans, when I need to buy a new Mac, whether it is x86 or PPC, it would work great. In fact probably Mac users would buy the x86 ones because they know future software upgrades in 2-3 years time would be for that platform.
Slow OS X adoption is the lack of applications. If I had to use Classic all the time, why not just use OS 9? (Yes I know, the major stuff is out). Jobs said any architecture migrations would happen only after OS X’s migration. And if such a migration to x86, you bet my ass that their major ISVs already knows about it.
Mike: Apple want to port OS X to x86 platform…who knows this is not a mistake (or a big mistake) eventually.
It won’t be a mistake. Unless by some fluke shot, AmigaOnes sell so well that IBM and Motorola has incentives to follow the Moore’s law.
It makes little short term sense, it makes a lot of long term sense.
Mark: Given the slow progress of the G4 and the fact that this chip is a desktop version with a simd unit similar to altivec, I don’t see how it could be for anyone but Apple.
the simd isn’t the same as AltiVec, at least that’s what the article told. Don’t hit yourself too hard on this, it is just a rumour until there is substantial proof to back it or to make it void and null.
I haven’t compared it against the precise configuration that you mentioned. I think it will be hard to do a becnhamark like that since it will boil down to specificsm all of which will be hotly debated 🙂
My statement was that for a application that uses multiple queries to process an event happening, I can get still process upwards of 50 events/sec which is about 10x of what’s needed for my specific app. On the PC (1.8Ghz I believe) I get very similar numbers.
Wrt price, I’m fortunate that that doesn’t matter too much to me. I don’t want to be raped, but I think that apple presents good value for money. What value means is personal for anyone. No doubt that PC’s have an edge over Apple in the price/performance edge.
If you’re into assembler, I would take PPC code over x86 assembly any day, every day. I’m not sure anyone could disagree with that, although I’m sure I’m about to find out 🙂
No, that would be Sun Micrososystems! And that is why they still sell their great hardware to this day!!
>>>>>>>>
Hmm, let my clarify my comment a little. PC’s have better architectures than any other sub $20,000 machine (I made this same statement in the original post, btw). If you take a look at the actual details of of the entry-level Sun machines (which go up to the $20,000) ceiling, they mostly use SDRAM (except the x86 ones!) and even the ones with the Fireplane interconnect boast about 4.8 GB/sec of total bandwidth. The memory bandwidth alone on a P4 is 4.2 GB/sec!
Going beyond that, fine. You’re Porche is faster than my Toyota.
<response to another poster>
As for PPC being different, its really not. It might use OpenFirmware, but that’s not used again beyond the boot stages. Besides, if you bring boot firmware into this, you have to say that PCs don’t really use the PC BIOS anymore. They use the APIC BIOS, something completely different and much more modern. The only other real difference in the Apple chipset is that it uses a different protocol to communicate with the chip (MPX vs EV6 or AGTL+). Otherwise, its pretty much dead standard.
First I think that http://macosrumors.com had a decent commentary on this.
I want to be mad at Eugenia for continually bringing up this topic, it is like beating a dead horse. However, I am still taking the bait and it seems I am not alone in my interest. I think the reason is that Apple’s decision can change the desktop landscape totally. Really if OSX ran on x86 most of us would choose it over winXP. Or if macintosh’s on PPC were faster/cheaper we would buy PPC instead of x86. Most consumers are of the same mindset. Apple obviously makes “better” products, just maybe more expensive and/or slower.
Now what I am curious about is the future of CHRP. IBM has a long memory, and they want revenge for the PC. They are tired of Microsoft building an empire on their shoulders. They are tired of Intel building an empire on their shoulders. Ditto for most of the other companies.
Awhile back IBM saw PPC as the way out. They figured they could leverage Apple on the desktop and AIX on the server and create a new open platform where they would again be a major player. The problem was Apple started to bleed money and bailed. Motorolla has only faired slightly better. IBM however is stubborn. They still produce RS/6000 (pSeries) boxes with AIX. They have expanded into the embedded market, and they make the gamecube guts. They have invested lots of time and money into chip fabs, fab technology, research in all areas, chip design, and Linux. That’s right Linux. IBM has been pusing Linux against Windows in the server market on x86. At the same time it has been making sure Linux runs on all PPC boxes it ships. x86 Linux is a gateway drug for PPC Linux and ultimatly PPC AIX. Mostly just for PPC in general.
So I am not suprised that IBM is trying another play into the PPC desktop space. Now the OS comes from Redhat instead of Apple. And this time around IBM can just form IBM Linux if Redhat bails, or go to SuSe et al. IBM is all about world domination through Open standards with the best technology and service available. They invite competition on a level playing field, because they know they are the best player.
IBM would love to have Apple on board, and I think eventually Apple will come around. Until then IBM is not going to sit on its butt, it is going to attack.
“IBM would love to have Apple on board, and I think eventually Apple will come around. Until then IBM is not going to sit on its butt, it is going to attack.”
-yours is probably the best post i’ve read on this topic. Thank god some one is able think.
The problem was Apple started to bleed money and bailed.
The problem was that Apple wanted to dominate the platform, so it waited for other interested parties, namely Microsoft, to get fed up.
Besides, IBM lost the PC platform because PC was an open standard (well, not really a standard, but nontheless open). Plus it made a few historic stupid decission (like not using 286 when it came out).
Also, Red Hat doesn’t have a PPC version of their software. And almost all other PPC companies making PPC Linux like SuSE and Mandrake had practically bailed out.
Besides, joel, the same group people that buy PPC Macs would still buy Macs using x86.
I find it unlikely that Apple will jump to an x86 process anytime soon (if ever) for two very simple reasons.
1. Apple is still in the middle of pushing both its users, and developers to OS X on the PowerPC platform. It would upset a lot of people if they suddenly said OK everyone change to this new x86 architecture.
2. The industry may soon start transitioning to 64 bit desktop computers. Apple could find itself half way through a transition to a 32 bit x86 architecture, only to find they need to migrate, again to one of the 64 bit architectures. Apple would be better off waiting for the transition to start and then (if they need to) transition to the winning Intel, or AMD 64 bit chip.
While they are waiting on the transition the Power4 chip might be a good bet.
Don
Posted this also on another discussion but it applies here too…
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 while keeping the price down by not including any redundancy, multipathing etc.
Minor improvements to the G4/G5 design AND the cost-effectiveness of Macs 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… (as long as it doesn’t cost lots more than multi-CPU AMD or Intel boxes from name manufacturers, nobody can beat the price of decent home-built boxes anyway).
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
Excellent points. Great Post. Thanks