Macintosh Sucks

[babelHuber]

This lies from Apple about clockspeed are annoying to me. Of course clockspeed isn´t everything, but it isn´t nothing, too. Simply spoken, the performance of a given CPU is IPC X CLK (Instructions per Clock Cycle X Clockspeed). So in theory, A CPU with a slower clock and more IPCs can be faster. Look at McKinley: only 1GHz and a FP-monster!

However, the Pentium 4´s Netburst architecture comes with its advantages and disadvantages. The IPC is relatively low, but it can scale very high ( and no, it has nothing to do with a P III, it is new from scratch). This is the reason, why P4 Williamette on .18 went to 2GHz, and the P III Coppermine on .18 went only to 1.13 GHz. While you will find that in most applications a P III 1.13GHz can beat a P4 1.4GHz because of his higher IPC, a 2GHz P4 will wipe the floor with him.

And with 2.53GHz, it is the fastest x86 CPU out there, easily beating the Athlon XP 2100+ (1.733GHz) in most applications (not in all!).

Now the question remains how a dual G4 box will perform. First of all one must look at SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processing). While the raw power of 2 CPUs is of course twice the power of one CPU, the performance gain depends totally on the application(s) you are running.

The two CPUs share one data path (Front Side Bus = FSB) to the rest of the system, so applications that are limited by the FSB won´t run any faster! And of course only applications that are designed for SMP will actually use the 2 CPUs.

Overall, using many applications at the same time or highly specialized applications can benefit from SMP, others, like games, won´t. The performance gain can be anything from 50% to 0%. But SMP "feels" smooth to use because of shorter response times, so many people like it.

However, for most people a faster single CPU (e.g 1 P4 2.53GHz vs. 2 Xeon 2GHz) is cheaper and fits their needs equal.

A single G4 1.0GHz was put against a single PIII 1.0GHz (which is a more than 2 years old model! ) in the German magizine c´t with the help of the SpecSuite benchmarks. These benches are written in C++ and must be compiled for every CPU. The Motorola compler that was used for this test was the newest one, while the Intel compiler was from 1999!. The reason behind this was that Intel and AMD have much better optimized compilers for the Spec Suite than Motorola, and so things were evened out.

So the G4 had all advantages at his side, and how did it perform? Similar in Spec Int (Integer), but he had only half the points in Spec FP (Floating Point). Overall it performed sigificantly slower than a PIII 1.0GHz!

However, real world applications tend to show about 20% advantage to the equally clocked G4, so it is about as fast as a PIII 1.2GHz.

in almost all real world test, a single AMD 2100+ or P4 2.53GHz is much faster than a dual G4 1.0GHz. The benchmarks that are used by Apple often use out-dated P4s (like Williamettes instead of the newer and faster Northwoods) and uses applications that can use Mototola´s Altivec but not the P4´s SSE2. So they are just what they are: marketing.

There may be other reasons than raw speed when you buy a computer, but if you´re out for performance or price/performance ratio, the Mac is a bad choice for you.

Of couse, if you don´t need the extra performance and you are willing to pay the extra $$, the decision may be another

[Durandal]

In my opinion, Apple is bad, for the same reasons as Microsoft.

No, Microsoft is bad because it uses its monopolistic market leverage to force closed source binaries on the market that they masquerade as standards (DirectX, IIS and the latest atrocity, Palladium). They are bad because they use their leverage to release mediocre products full of security holes and then force the user into a never-ending upgrade cycle which costs hundreds of dollars per iteration.

It's literally impossible for Apple to be that bad. Apple is aggressively promoting open standards like MPEG-4 and the various standards found in *nix operating systems, which means they are promoting free competition so that the winner isn't decided by who has the strongest arm in the market, but by who's product offers the most features at the best price.

The performances of Apples has never bothered me, it's the fact that when you buy a mac, everything must be made by Apple or contracted out to Apple-specific companies.

That's not true. I have an Epson scanner, Epson printer, Microsoft mouse, microConnections keyboard, Envision monitor, Altec Lansing speakers, Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge, LG Combo Drive, Maxtor hard drive...

What exactly are you talking about?

Apple and Microsoft are two monopolizing peas in a pod. I use Microsoft because I must, and, as many situations call for it, I use Apple as well.

No offense, but that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. "Apple has a monopoly on the Macintosh market." That's like saying Ford is a monopoly because they're the only ones who sell Ford. Well, no shit. That's not what makes a monopoly. Microsoft is a monopoly because it has a 90%+ presence in the desktop computer market, and it consistently uses that fact to engage in anticompetitive policies that muscle all competition out of the market, NOT because it has a monopoly on the Windows market.

[AltoidMaster]

Did I forget to mention Epic's backboard compatibility? Its a hybrid of the two previous and MOST Common architectures, and is compatible with both. BC is always a primary point of architecture projects, and trust me, HP did it pretty well back then (I leave out Intel because they royally screwed up a bunch of it)

[Robert Treder]

Points taken, Durandal; you are correct.

But, as the latter portion of my initial post remains valid, I'll continue to not purchase Apple products.

[Durandal]

I still don't see why not. Lots of third party hardware companies make Mac drivers without being specially paid off by Apple, and lots of third party stuff simply works with Macs (like monitors).

Could you be more specific as to what you need that you think you can only get from Apple if you have a Mac?

[Robert Treder]

No, no, you misunderstand, I conceded.

I just said that I would continue to not buy macs because games continue to not be made for them (nobody play dumb; you all know what I'm talking about) and because it has been, in my experience, more difficult to perform and participate in software and other electronic piracy on macs compared to on PCs.

[Mr Bean]

And the lack of a scroll-whell and second mouse button

Exuse me it just makes sense Mr ONE CLICK AND DAMN PROUD!

Acutal the second mouse button reduces your chances of Carpel Tunnel by roughly 48%(Unversity of Yale Cica-1997)

And for the idiots why not have a fifty button mouse? Simple cause there are not enough things to go to the 50 buttons, You need selection, oking, Menus now also scrolling + an extra button for anything you need

[Robert Treder]

You can use multi-button mouses with macs, they just don't give them to you with the comp, which I'll admit is pretty weak.

[Mr Bean]

Acutal thats a work around Robert (I can use a 1 button with a PC but why bother?)
Jobs has said time and time agian you don't need another button, Its ok to have to press three buttons to do what could be done with one(Sure this is true of anything but there are some things you do ALOT with on computers and thats menus)

[Robert Treder]

I agree, I was just making sure nobody jumped down your throat for attacking the one-button.

[Durandal]

No, no, you misunderstand, I conceded.

Oh, OK! :)

I just said that I would continue to not buy macs because games continue to not be made for them (nobody play dumb; you all know what I'm talking about) and because it has been, in my experience, more difficult to perform and participate in software and other electronic piracy on macs compared to on PCs.

Aye, the gaming situation on Mac is slim, but improving. Still, most of the really good and popular titles come to Mac, but a lot of the normal garbage doesn't (like the Blair Witch series).

I won't comment on the piracy capabilities of the Mac platform, but rest assured, they do exist, and they are easily accessible.

[Robert Treder]

Sure, but not as easily accessible...especially if what you're trying to pirate is a game that doesn't work on a mac

[SPOOFE]

Microsoft is a monopoly because it has a 90%+ presence in the desktop computer market

Then, technically, it's not a monopoly

[Mr Bean]

There are only two monopolys on the market right now for computers

Number one is Apple, Apple has a Monopoly of Mactonish computers, All Mac computers are built by Apple for Apple for Apple...
To sell

That and Sound Cards untill a little while ago you had 8 months of where it was

Creative somthing
Or ....
Creative somthing
Lucky a bunch came out so now its just Apple with the Monopoly

Either way Computers are higlhy resistant to Computer Monoploys

[His Divine Shadow]

And perhaps you assume I am unable to perform simple mathematics such as a simple price-performance ratio? I never said nor implied anything to that effect. Your strawman operation, it seems, is a resounding success.

I believe the fallacy was originally on your side for bringing up irrelevant facts and logic in the first place that would only fool a total idiot, so either you took me for an idiot, or you believed those things you said yourself, take your pick.

[Durandal]

Um, Microsoft has almost total control over desktop computing market, so I think they qualify as a monopoly.

Apple does not have total control over the desktop computing market. They are not a monopoly. Saying that they have a monopoly on the Apple market is, as I said before, stupid. It's like saying that Ford is a monopoly because they are the only ones that make Fords.

[phongn]

That and Sound Cards untill a little while ago you had 8 months of where it was

Creative somthing
Or ....
Creative somthing
Lucky a bunch came out so now its just Apple with the Monopoly

This is plainly wrong. There are a large number of sound card manufactuers today - Creative has never held a monopoly on the market. A commanding marketshare, perhaps, but hardly a monopoly.

[phongn]

I was talking with my dad who's an engineer about the Macitosh vs. PC thing, and I know how Mike Wong loathes when people call on their daddy, but to be quite frank its not like he LIES to me so that i am happy, the worst i do is misrepresent his opinion, which I am not doing right now.

No offense, but just because he's an engineer in a related field doesn't mean he's qualified for that. My dad worked on software for the Space Shuttle, my uncle for the TLAM, and neither are exactly qualified to speak about the entire system as a whole.

The big thing about modern day processing is a lot about job handling. As said before in the comparison of the Motorola vs. Apple ][e chip, they way the processor handles it is probably the more important question when assessing the chip.

You are aware that the Applie IIe ran on the Motorola 6502, right?

But its difficult to assign a numerical value because its a lot about algorithms. Macintosh computers in modern day technology use a very old architecture,

Old != bad. PowerPC's architecture isn't that old, simply the usual hybrid CISC/RISC design that most modern ones use.

This new architecture washes the floor with the Macintosh processor.

With the current PowerPC generation, you mean. Not unexpected, but we'll see how it does.

But until then, one has to understand that the P4 is just a slightly larger P3 built for "graphics".

WRONG. Pentium 4 is a completely different architecture than the P3 core. Willamette/Northwood are quite different from Katmai/Coppermine/Tulatin.

And the P3 though decent, was never that impressive anyways. So watch for the next generation and compare those.

Not that impressive? It was a quite good processor and remains so.

[phongn]

Now the question remains how a dual G4 box will perform. First of all one must look at SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processing). While the raw power of 2 CPUs is of course twice the power of one CPU, the performance gain depends totally on the application(s) you are running.

Of course.

The two CPUs share one data path (Front Side Bus = FSB) to the rest of the system, so applications that are limited by the FSB won´t run any faster! And of course only applications that are designed for SMP will actually use the 2 CPUs.

True, though the OS can schedule applications on different CPUs if they aren't, speeding up overall system (if not application) performance. Not all applications are bandwidth-limited (a more accurate term than FSB), just many. PowerPC especially suffers for this, as it can only handle ~1GB/sec - though good coding alleviates this problem.

In addition, both AMD and Motorola are abandoning the old scheme that you noted and moving to a different one. Each processor has it's own dedicated RAM (no more shared memory) and uses a HyperTransport or RapidIO interface.

A single G4 1.0GHz was put against a single PIII 1.0GHz (which is a more than 2 years old model! ) in the German magizine c´t with the help of the SpecSuite benchmarks. These benches are written in C++ and must be compiled for every CPU. The Motorola compler that was used for this test was the newest one, while the Intel compiler was from 1999!. The reason behind this was that Intel and AMD have much better optimized compilers for the Spec Suite than Motorola, and so things were evened out.

So the G4 had all advantages at his side, and how did it perform? Similar in Spec Int (Integer), but he had only half the points in Spec FP (Floating Point). Overall it performed sigificantly slower than a PIII 1.0GHz!

I'd disagree - the PPC compilers are rather horrid and furthermore, code for the G4 almost needs to be vectorized where applicable - something that most C++ compilers simply don't do. Integer and FPU performance isn't so hot on the PPC (though something's wrong there - integer shouldn't be that slow) but AltiVec is where it shines.

in almost all real world test, a single AMD 2100+ or P4 2.53GHz is much faster than a dual G4 1.0GHz. The benchmarks that are used by Apple often use out-dated P4s (like Williamettes instead of the newer and faster Northwoods) and uses applications that can use Mototola´s Altivec but not the P4´s SSE2. So they are just what they are: marketing.

AltiVec and SSE2 are not exactly analogous to each other, IIRC. In addition, some applications simply do benefit greatly from AltiVec, such as BLAST. I'd argue that a real-world test, abliet one of limited use to the average person.

[IDMR]

I believe the fallacy was originally on your side for bringing up irrelevant facts and logic in the first place that would only fool a total idiot, so either you took me for an idiot, or you believed those things you said yourself, take your pick.

Quite aside from the fact that due to the good admiral's phrasing, the facts I brought up was not irrelevant...

Well, let me put it this way, the information as presented by Grand Admiral Prawn in his opening post, and I quote:

Wow, a whole 800? I'm impressed.

would suggest that he is under the impression that clock speed is the only thing which matters. I then brought up the blatantly obvious point that it is not, as quote below:

Processing power is not measured by clock speed alone. You betray your ignorance by attaching sole importance to them.

Which is a valid response in the circumstances. You then went on and flamed me:

Ignorance is believing apple when they pentium crushing, cause it's not thats a bald faced lie, it's about as untrue as you can get.

<Snip>

Under the circumstance therefore I believe that I *am* justified to take the view that you have misunderstood the situation, and thus, not to put too fine a point at it, I took you for an idiot.

[IDMR]

<Edited. Double post.>

[John Clark]

Okay, I'll start this right now by admitting I'm guilty of not reading the whole thread yet. And I fully expect to be spanked if this HAS already been mentioned. I'll take 'em like a man.

Here's my bitch about the Mac. Any Mac. If it crashes... YOU can't fix it. It's "Pack it up and drag it to the store" time. Why? Because unlike (earlier versions of) Microsnot products, there's no non-graphical OS to root around in for the fix. Now, notice the caveat. Microsnot has unfortunately followed in the footsteps of Macintosh by eliminating a true DOS, which means now MS systems have the same problem.

I'm either going to shoot myself or transition to Linux. Probably both.

Great. Now the applause has deafened me.

[Durandal]

Okay, I'll start this right now by admitting I'm guilty of not reading the whole thread yet. And I fully expect to be spanked if this HAS already been mentioned. I'll take 'em like a man.

Oh good.

Here's my bitch about the Mac. Any Mac. If it crashes... YOU can't fix it. It's "Pack it up and drag it to the store" time. Why? Because unlike (earlier versions of) Microsnot products, there's no non-graphical OS to root around in for the fix. Now, notice the caveat. Microsnot has unfortunately followed in the footsteps of Macintosh by eliminating a true DOS, which means now MS systems have the same problem.

Untrue. Mac OS X is a FreeBSD-based OS, so it has a command line with a stellar GUI. Apple and Microsoft have actually gone completely opposite. Microsoft started from a really shitty command line (MS-DOS) and then killed it. Apple started with no command line and then, recognizing the value of *nix, made a new OS based on FreeBSD.

As to the original Mac OS, I never once had to send in my computer to be fixed. It was always some extension conflict that was easily resolved. With Winblows, you have to mess around with that god-awful Registry, endless DLL files and 8-character system files with ~'s at the end. At least with a Mac you can usually recover your data. Anything bad happens to Winblows, it's reformatting time. Hell, I know people who reinstall Winblows regularly on a fresh drive because it's healthy for the OS!

I'm either going to shoot myself or transition to Linux. Probably both.

Great. Now the applause has deafened me.

Nah, go with OS X. You'll like it a lot more, unless you have enough free time on your hands to fuck around with Linux or just don't have the money for a Mac.

[SPOOFE]

Microsoft has almost total control over desktop computing market, so I think they qualify as a monopoly.

Well, you're just plain wrong. There's not "almost" in monopolies... either they have complete control, or they don't. You've already admitted that Microsoft does not have complete control. Ergo, it is not a monopoly. Powerful? Yes. Monopoly? No.

[Durandal]

Well, you're just plain wrong. There's not "almost" in monopolies... either they have complete control, or they don't. You've already admitted that Microsoft does not have complete control. Ergo, it is not a monopoly. Powerful? Yes. Monopoly? No.

Don't be ridiculous. 90% desktop domination means that you can control where the desktop computing world can go and when. They've demonstrated that with Winblows licensing schemes, Palladium, the "standards" that they force on the market, et cetera. Do you really think that the Microsoft lawyers could argue that a breakup of the company and a forking of Winblows code would mean disaster if they didn't have a domineering, controlling presence? They are a monopoly.