Why my next computer won't be a Mac

[psyjax]

quote:Originally posted by Billy Gates:

1) misinformed about speed (PIV's are faster at most tasks, G4's only pull ahead in some stuff in photoshop, and other advanced programs)
2) The Mac OS actually works, I think a lot of people just don't want to deal with windows. They probably figure, "go a little slower at everything and never have to stop and fix everthing"

your right on one count Billy. But I'm not missinformed about speed. I have seen Mac g4 800's and 1gig PC's running side by side. I don't care how much power you got in that thing, the sheer amount of crap in Windows will slow the sucker down to a crawl, the fact that there is an avarage 3 click to 1 click ratio between operations in windows and MacOS actually adds up.

Second of all, to compare to the dual 1gig mac's you are going to need a pretty hevly triked out PC, because tho you might be able to swing a faster PC it's clock speed is going to have to be 1.3 times faster than the Mac.

Third of all, WTF do you NEED dual 1600Mhz for?????? I mean does any normal application in the universe need that kind of power!!!!!!

It reminds me of those stupid kids who buy all these expensive hotrod parts for a 1983 Honda civic. It may be fast and powerful, but it ain't no Porch. Same thing with the Mac in my opinion.

Finaly, running Photoshop, and other graphics apps well, is not a small thing. The entire publishing industry is founded on this.

Mac's are damn good machines and well worth every penny. Speed is just a number and not an acurate messure of performance. I see kids bragging all the time how Quake 3 pulls 3billion FPS on their new AMD blah blah blah..  what's the point if the human eye is only capable of processing 60FPS?

Anyway, all I am saying is that Mac people are not missinformed their just realistic. Generaly with everything added in to the Mac experiance the machines are WAY faster than comparable PC's.

Finaly the PIV is shit, say PIII and I would have belived you. PIV is a half assed chip pushed out the door and sold on clockspeed alone tho it processed less data and had more botleknecks.

[psyjax]

quote:Originally posted by Garden GNOME:
This is unfortunate.  I'm quite sure the dual 800Mhz / 1Ghz Power Macs are horribly fast, but I'm not Mr. Moneybags.  The very most I could afford is a 933Mhz Power Mac.  It would cost me almost 2000 dollars, and that is without the SuperDrive, modem and only 256 MB RAM.  On the other hand I could build the most maxed out dual processor 1.5 gig RAM Super PC ever with that money.  How fast is a 933Mhz G4 processor in comparison to a similarly priced Athlon system?  Anyone have any references?

[ March 27, 2002: Message edited by: Garden GNOME ]

I got some tips for you if you want to buy that mac cheeply. First if you are a student Apple will take off 25% and they often have special deals with schools. Second don't buy the RAM from Apple, buy it from outpost. 3rd party RAM is dirt cheep. I filld up my G4 with over a gig of ram for about 60 dollars. Secon'd skimp on the monitor or just hook up a PC monitor to the machine. I baught a 17" mitsubishi monitor for 200 bucks. That saved me some money from the LCD monitors (tho if I had the cash id still snag one        ).

Also, check out the MacMall and MacWarehouse Catalogue, as well as Outpost. Sometimes they have excelent deals on Mac's that you won't get from Apple.

Finaly, a 933 Mac, is not a joke. You will be surprised with the way that machine handles, I guarantee it. No one ever belives me untill they use one for a while, then their like, WOW, this rocks.

http://www.barefeats.com/pentium4.html

Grrr... I have been trying to find more online speed test's but most of them are on the older G4's this is one of the few and as you can see, don't really test the CPU's on imprtant Apps (save photoshop).

hmm... here is an interesting article...

http://www.lowendmac.com/musings/g4vp3.shtml


this one is on the chip architecture between a P4 and G4

http://arstechnica.com/cpu/01q4/p4andg4e2/p4andg4e2-1.html

finaly here is Apple, but then again, they are kind of biased...

http://www.apple.com/powermac/specs.html

Oh well, I'll post more if I locate some better stuff.

Have fun!

[ March 27, 2002: Message edited by: psyjax ]

[gnomez]

Wow it looks like the AMD processors kick the PIV's ass.  What an overpriced piece of crap!

[psyjax]

quote:Originally posted by Garden GNOME:
Wow it looks like the AMD processors kick the PIV's ass.  What an overpriced piece of crap!

ya no kidding, P4 blows

Ironicaly, after the speed tests in the first article I am glad I have a g4 dual 800.

[ March 27, 2002: Message edited by: psyjax ]

[gnomez]

One thing I like about PCs is that there is no hardware monopoly there (just a software monopoly)  There are many different companies who make motherboards (ASUS, Vis, MSI, Soyo) CPUs (AMD and Intel) etc. that are in healthy competition with each other.  Imagine if the only x86 based processor you could buy was an Intel one.

[gnomez]

I'm wondering if on that 1st test page the Power Macs would have done a lot better in the 3D graphics areas (Quake 3 in particular) if they would have had GeForce 4 Ti 4600's like the Athlon did.  The GeForce 4 MX is just a little faster than a GeForce 2, from what I hear.  For fariness it also did show the Athlon with the GeForce 4 MX, and it still spanked all the other computers!  Damn.  Does anyone know when the G5 processor is coming out?  

[ March 27, 2002: Message edited by: Garden GNOME ]

[psyjax]

quote:Originally posted by Garden GNOME:
 Damn.  Does anyone know when the G5 processor is coming out?    

[ March 27, 2002: Message edited by: Garden GNOME ]

Actually, there are articles on that same site about the G5.

[NJDevils]

<<<COLLEGE STUDENT HERE>>>

Hey bud, I was exactly in the same boat my sophomore year (about three years ago now). I am a computer scientist too, I am "supposed" to hate macs (fuck that theory).

But I took the plunge, bit the bullet, and I have been happy ever since (and this was during the times of MacOS!). It was damned expensive, I bought a used Powerbook G3 (Macs were more expensive back then). I just wanted something that works, all the time, with minimal effort(linux can be a pain sometimes), and thats what I got. My mac never crashes (okay, MacOS was a bit fussy), never complains, just a rock stable bud of mine now.

Software? Believe me, you'll find everything you need. Warez? okay..., think Limewire running Gnutella (but you didnt hear that from me). I hate pc games, but I think all the ones worth owning come over the mac anyhow.

Overall, I guess it depends on what you want. I wanted a no fuss computer for my personal use. My parents are totally into the iMac (and my dad is a staunch beigebox kind of guy), they are not computer savvy at all.

And let me just say this MacOSX will make a lot of converts out of a LOT of people.

Do it, if only for the ability to use an iPod.

[Calum]

NJDevils, why are you supposed to hate macs? what's wrong with them?
also,  

quote:Originally posted by psyjax
But I'm not missinformed about speed. I have seen Mac g4 800's and 1gig PC's running side by side. I don't care how much power you got in that thing, the sheer amount of crap in Windows will slow the sucker down to a crawl, the fact that there is an avarage 3 click to 1 click ratio between operations in windows and MacOS actually adds up.

I'm not trying to correct you because you're being incredibly helpful to people in this topic, psyjax, but this is a misleading statement about chip speed.

An intel chip combined with windows is a lot slower than a comparable G* chip with macOS but you don't need to run windows on an i386 architecture. if you don't, you'll probably run a unix copy, and some of those are open source, so you can change the way it runs a lot by tweaking the system for your personal hardware.
So the software makes a big difference in speed. This problem is minimised with a mac, because the OS is optimised for the exact architecture it's running on (which you can do with linux, but of course you would need to do it by hand, whereas macOS is already there out of the box)
Plus, the pentium4 does blow goats, yes, and i will never own one. clock tick for clock tick, it often runs slower in tests than a pentium 3. Not always, depending on what program you're running, it's all about software being optimised for the resources at its disposal.

Also, AMD make what amount to i386 clones, except that their architecture is different enough that there's a significant difference in the apparent speed of an AMD chip compared with an intel one. AMD's chips do their calculations in a different way? or a different order? from intel ones... (i'm a little hazy on the technical differences, so forgive me for waffling here) and AMD chips tend to be faster, tick for tick, than intel ones.

Plus, linux can be run on a mac. i bet some other unixes can as well. I've never seen such a hybrid but maybe some of you have. maybe a true test of chip speed would be better with a mac and a PC both running the same distribution of linux? Has anybody here experienced a linux-running-mac? what is it like?

Really what i'm saying is just that a lot of factors go into it and i bet you could get a pc to run faster than a mac, under some circumstances. It depends on the software and hardware and also the physical workings of the chip (since PCs have the choice of more than one brand of chip).
New Macs tend to come with MacOS and be more or less fully optimised, while new PCs tend to be a patched up thrown together and hope it'll work type affair, so it's fair to say macs are faster, but there's a lot of different factors involved.

Not trying to correct you as i say, psyjax, but i thought some more expansion was needed in case some readers had limited experience of one or the other of the two platforms.

[psyjax]

Ya I agree with you. I mean the AMD is a sweet processor. But like the guy in the article said computer speed is a bit imaterial. In the end it really depend's what software you are using, how optimized for your computer it is, and even temperature when you get right down to it   .

Garden GNOME is obviously interested in gameing and the like and surely the Athalon would be the way to go. But general computing I still propose the Mac. Earlier I suggested keeping his older PC for games and getting the Mac for other purposes.

None the less, I still wish I could find some better (up to date) Benchmarks than the ones I posted, seeing that while iteresting, they are not totaly scientific. (Bryce 5??)

[gnomez]

Actually as long as I could play Blizzard's games on a Mac it wouldn't bother me very much.  I'm not nearly as big a game player as I used to be.  Like some of you said anyway most of the good games eventually get ported.  However, what does matter is commercial desktop support; that is what is keeping me from using Linux.  What is keeping me from Apple are their high prices and proprietary hardware.  Just as I don't like seeing Microsoft control PC operating systems with an iron fist, I don't admire the way Apple restricts competition in their market niche.  You can't buy from a 3rd party source a computer with a G4 motherboard and load OS X on it; instead you have to pay outrageous prices to Apple since they are a Mac hardware monopoly.  There is no competition in the Mac world.  To put it in perspective, I bet you wouldn't like it if you had to have a "Microsoft PC" to run Windows that you could only buy from Microsoft at inflated prices.  I guarantee you Mac hardware would be cheaper if Apple didn't have some "agreement" with motorola or whatever they do to keep 3rd party Mac-compatible computers from existing.

[psyjax]

Actually this has always been a long standing debate. When the mac Clones came out, everyone was thrilled and they sold like hotcakes. Mac market share went thrugh the roof (comparatively speaking I mean    ), but in those days Apple was hurting real bad and the Clones, with their cheeper hardware, were sapping their income.

What to do?

When Job's came back he killd the clones and braught Apple back up to snuff. Which was a good move for the time and place. But today, I think since Apple is finaly profitable again, if they wan't to maintain their profitability, they are either going to have to find a way to make their comps. cheeper (without sacrificing quality) or start the Clone project again.

If Apple allowd clones under the strict quality control they kept the previus Clones the Hardware Software integration would not be compramised and the manufaturers would be able to suply alternet hardware.

Or... something much simpler... which is in the works and "unofficialy" supported by Apple. Is a port of OSX to x86 Darwin.

If OS X directly compeated with Windoze on PC's I think we all know who would soon win. This is not a dream concidering that all three of OS X's roots, NEXT Step, UNIX, and Darwin, all run on x86.

Why Apple dosn't do this is beyond me, but they are not stoping the third party open source comunity from going forward with the porting project. If it happens it will be quite interesting.

Something else of note, Moterola may not be making chips for Apple any more. It is belived Apple is looking at AMD as an alternative.


Hmmm.... this fellow has an interesting viewpoint:

http://www.lowendmac.com/myturn/02/0118.html

Tho, I think that MacOS would beat windwos by a long-shot.

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: psyjax ]

[gnomez]

I think the smartest move Apple could make right now would be to go head to head with Microsoft. People are sick of Microsoft's crap, especially the ridiculous and restrictive new licensing on their software. We know who would win in the end.  Or are they scared of Microsoft?  Maybe they have some agreement with them, in return for M$ not squashing Mac, Macs won't try to eat up PC territory.  Or whatever.  Seriously, though, using restrictive proprietary hardware like the Mac does is not needed to be successful.  They have a great OS, and there are many good reasons to ditch Windows in favor of OS X.  There are many companies in the x86 PC world who make hardware and they are doing just fine.  Why can't Mac be like Alienware and still sell Macs, but with top-of-the-line components put together by experts and optimized for the operating system?  And they can still look cool and be well-engineered like Macs, but have different hardware inside.  

PS If Mac is looking at AMD for their new processor, what kind of architecture would that be??  Would all the software currently written for Mac OS X have to be recompiled?

[psyjax]

As far as I know... and most of this stuff is from rumer sites etc... Apple will likely be looking for another manufacturer when Moterola's contract comes up. They are sick of Motorolas crap.

So I am assuming they are looking for AMD to manufacture their chips. Namely the G5. Apple is looking at IBM for the G5 right now, but rumer has it AMD is not out of the question.

In any case specks for the G5 look real good. Up to snuff if not faster than a triked out AMD.

Here is some tech specs on at least the Motorola edition of the chip:

http://geek.com/procspec/apple/g5.htm