On Wednesday, January 11, 2006, at 11:22 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
At 10:14 PM -0500 01/10/2006, Len Gerstel wrote:
If the changing of the processor means that you should sound the
death knell for the Mac, it should have been sounded when Apple
dropped the REAL Mac processor, the 68000 to 68040 in favor of the
Power PC series. So, by your logic, starting with the 6100, 7100 and
8100, they were no longer Macs.
Len, IMO, you're off base here.
The PowerPC was developed jointly by IBM, Motorola, and Apple. It
was, for all intents and purposes, +/- some politics, the follow-on to
the 68K processor family. THAT's why it was greeted with open arms.
Yes, but the other half of the equation was not ready. There was legacy
code in the OS up until 9.2.2 that was not powerpc native. With the
release of the intel Macs and 10.4.4, the entire OS is native on the
intel chip.
The Pentium, OTOH, is just a buggy stale architecture that's been
wedged and rewedged into new chip technologies just so the clock could
be cranked up. Clock-speed aside, it's a POS no matter how you view
it.
In the past few years, intel has finally given up on the MHz race, and
is looking at dual core chips and also the performance per watt specs.
If you take a look at the list at top500.org, I see that the Apple
xServe clusters on a per processor basis are slightly faster than the
intels. So throw 2 intels into a well written multiprocessor OS (OS X)
and the overall result should be better compared to a single G5.
So what makes a Mac a Mac? It is the whole package of hardware and
software.
Exactly.
The first generation of intel Macs are a "quick" throw together in
today's boxes, with a few upgrades.
Ah. So you admit that these x86 based machines are padda dodo?
They're pricey too! Now, how many generations of releases will it
take to get back to the PowerMac standard of quality?
No, I don't, any more than the previous G5 iMacs or the G4 powerbooks
were padda dodo. They were put into todays iMac case which was designed
around the need to dissipate the heat generated by the G5. They are at
the same level of quality of todays iMac and Powerbook. With some more
time, we may see the same form factor with, say, room for a PCI slot or
additional internal storage (probably not) or some innovative case
design, since the cooling needs of the dual core pent chip are
significantly less.
Pricey??? They are the same price as the previous generation that they
are replacing. Compare the price on these with an Alienware or similar
high end windows box, not with the lowest price point dell, which is
what the replacement for the mini will be competing against.
But since the heat output of the intel chips that Apple is using is
SIGNIFICANTLY less for better performance than a G5,
So Jobs / Apple's PR machine says. A seeded MacBook locally here gets
a whole 70 minutes on a battery charge, with no wireless enabled.
We'll see what the shipping units actually do.
Yes, we'll have to wait and see on that for battery life, and we will
have to wait for Ars Technica or Barefeats for some semi unbiased test
results.
Well, if we're going to fall of the cliff, let's at least have a
parachute. Gimme a shipping x86 OS X that's bootable on a standard PC
box.
So you are contradicting your above agreement that it is the hardware
and software package that Makes a Mac a Mac.
Well, at that point you are talking about licensing the OS. At that
point there are 2 problems:
1) Apples support costs go WAY up worrying about all the different
hardware out there
2) You don't have an Apple computer, with all the thought and design
that goes into the hardware.
And I am sure that you remember what happened to licensing when Steve
came back
But OS X and the apps will be just a bullet proof as they are now.
A point brought up by a friend last night... As demonstrated by the
infamous Pentium math bug, many applications need to be (and are
legally required to be now) run on differing (processor) platforms so
their results may be compared -- to ensure the correct results.
Agencies that have been using PCs and Macs may now have to rethink
their use of Macs.
All they need to do is run it on a windows box with an AMD chip
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