Okay, because I'm dumb, I didn't really delete this thread from my inbox, but instead started reading it.
On Tuesday 24 May 2005 03:44 pm, John H. Robinson, IV wrote: > > It keeps their developers from losing their sanity, one presumes. > > This is easy to work around: Keep the supported hardware list small. > Apple already does this. So you're both arguing a moot issue. Hooray! > You can sell cheaper hardware (Apple is a hardware comany, right?) with > higher profit margins. Higher profit margins = higher profits if you can > keep the same number of units sold. You'll find that Apple doesn't seem all that interested in milking their customers, as opposed to giving their customers the best perceived value for dollar spent. It's a rare thing with computer companies. The more and more we buy at work in x86-land (Dell, etc.), the crappier and crappier it gets, as Dell tries harder and harder to squeeze more cash per unit. > If the OS is a vehicle for the hardware: Stop advertising the OS. Use > your user group buzz to drive excitement. How much advertising does > Linus do for the linux kernel? Give the OS away, or make it really dirt > cheap (like 25$ or so). Every so often, make the OS incompatible with > older systems, say every 7 years or so. With Apple, though, neither is the OS the vehicle for the hardware, or the hardware the vehicle for the OS. It's a symbiotic system. The hardware provides the best possible environment for the OS, and the OS the best possible utilization of the hardware. > This way you force the users to a hardware upgrade path. You don't want > to be too greedy, otherwise people will flock to other OS's that wun on > that platform (Linux, *BSD) that will support older systems. Each successive release of Mac OS X, from 10.0 to 10.3 (the latest I've tried) has been incrementally _faster_ on my oldest machine, a 350MHz "Blue & White" PowerMac G3. How that forces me into an upgrade cycle is beyond me. > Unless you want to back up the word ``inferior'' with hard, fast numbers > then please leave the derisive language out. And yet you seem to imply that PPC hardware is itself inferior. > http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3997 > However, there are no price/performace comparisons. Only performance. And yet all the latest supercomputers seem to be built around Apple Xserves. Interesting. > If anyone has any reference to a benchmark between similarly priced and > equipped PPC and x86 systems, that would be great. If someone provides me with a Dell laptop... :) > I would feel a lot > better knowing that PPC's price/performance was on par with x86, however > looking at prices between Apple PowerBooks and Dells, I see that Dell > has Apple beat: > > Apple: 15" LCD, 1.5GHz G4, 80GB drive for 1,999$. > Dell: 15" LCD, 1.5 GHz Intel Pentium M 715, 8o GB Drive for $1,187 See, I got a slightly different price. I purposefully sought out the Inspiron line, which has always been Dell's slimmer notebook, and found that the Inspiron 6000 was the closest match to what a PowerBook has. With that in mind, I configured one to be as close as possible in stature as the 15" PowerBook, as offered in its default configuration by Apple. Apple 15" PowerBook: $1,999 1.5GHz, 512MB, 80GB HD @5400RPM, DVD-ROM/CD-RW, Mac OS X 10.4, 802.11b/g, BlueTooth, etc. http://unnerving.org/~gkade/misc/apple15inpb.pdf Dell Inspiron 6000 (15" display): $1,670 2GHz Pentium-M, 512MB, 80GB HD @4200RPM, DVD-ROM/CD-RW, XP Pro, 802.11b/g, no BlueTooth AFAIK http://unnerving.org/~gkade/misc/dellinspiron6000.pdf Overall, remarkably similar systems, though I suspect the performance of the Dell might suffer a bit with a slightly slower hard drive, and there's a few goodies that aren't on the Dell that you just get gratis on the PowerBook. > This was with similar RAM, similar wireless and similar video card. I > do not know if the Dell had the DVI & S-Video out, Analog audio in/out, > FireWire 400 & 800 or Gigabit Ethernet. Still haven't really sussed out the details on those goodies. Overall, I ended up spending about $3k on my powerbook once I optioned it up the way I wanted. I also priced out a Dell notebook and ended up around $3k as well for what would make me happy. > Since the Intel is a CISC, it can do more per clock cycle than the RISC > PPC can. This makes the Dell a raw faster system by the numbers. A real > benchmark would provide better data. CISC v. RISC is outdated as an argument. Modern PPC hardware can arguably do more per clock cycle than x86 CPUs in real-world tests. In terms of generic usability, my 1.5GHz Powerbook is often more responsive than my 2.4GHz P4 Linux machine at work. > > People _like_ Apple because most of the time, It Just Works. > > This is because of control of the OS and the hardware. Solaris SPARC > Just Works, but is not aimed at the consumer, unlike WIntel and Apple. And your point is...? > > Why upset that apple (ha!) cart? > > Why stagnate? Demonstrate, to me, stagnation. I look at my spiffy PowerBook with OS X on it, and fail to see stagnation. And I've been a hardcore unix/linux geek, both as a hobby and a professional, for nearly the past 13 years, give or take. I have a machine from Apple that provides me with all the latest technologies that I could need. I have an operating system from Apple that lets me run all the "expected" office and productivity apps, while at the same time letting me get as geeky as I want under the hood in the BSD layer. Gregory -- Gregory K. Ruiz-Ade <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> OpenPGP Key ID: EAF4844B keyserver: pgpkeys.mit.edu
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