More on the PowerPC 970 386
functor writes "Ars Technica's Jon Stokes has a treatise up covering the microarchitecture of the high-performance 64-bit PowerPC 970 microprocessor, due to be released by the end of the year, that goes over in detail how this chip is put together, and how we can expect it to perform. This is the follow-up to Stokes' article detailing the PPC 970's design philosophy. 'It appears to hold quite a bit of promise in bolstering Apple's currently almost obsolescent product line, and it appears to have been designed explictly to fulfil Apple's requirements. To say the least, the second half of this year looks to be pretty interesting as Apple's product line promises to become competitive performance-wise with IA-32 and x86-64-based PCs again.''
Inaccuracy, Part 1 (Score:5, Interesting)
This implies that the decision of how much bus bandwidth to give the G4e was up to Apple - which it was not. Motorola designed the processor (for Cisco, depending on who you believe), and Apple made do with the anemic MaxBus at 133mhz that they got from Motorola.
Apple'd be putting DDR400 on the G4 right now if they could. None of this (well, except the decision to go Moto) was their fault.
Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1 (Score:2)
So my point is that Apple's offering, though somewhat expensive, is unique.
Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1 (Score:2)
Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1 (Score:5, Informative)
They can't make the FSB DDR or QDR without appropriate support from the processor, and that's exactly what they haven't been getting from Moto.
Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1 (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as the low MHz and SDR situation, I've also never been totally convinced that Apple wasn't partially to blame for this either, unless they just have zero clout with Moto SPS.
Re:Idiocy, Part 1 (Score:2)
L3 cache is limited to 4MB, so there are probably not enough address lines on that bus (unless you want to make a system with only 4MB of memory of course). The main memory interface of the 7450 (and not 7440 like the article states: that one is only used in lower-end machines like the iMac and eMa
Worst timing ever (Score:5, Funny)
Time to hide my network cable until the end of the day.
waiting for this to arrive.... (Score:3, Interesting)
The current pro line of G4 is a joke. They cant come out with 970 computers fast enough.
Re:waiting for this to arrive.... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm intrigued. What do you do that makes a 1.25GHz G4 feel slow? I'm still using a 1.33GHz Athlon and it feels quite fast. I keeps thinking about upgrading the CPU, but really can't see the point. I rarely use more than 20% of it as it is...
Re:waiting for this to arrive.... (Score:4, Interesting)
The 970 looks exciting, but I personally am anticipating the release only for the dramatic price reduction it should bring in the older Macs. At that point, I'll go get that Powerbook -- once I can pick up a decent one for less than $2,000.
Re:waiting for this to arrive.... (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing to remember about Apple's machines is that while the G4 processor, if the code is really tuned can hold it's own with processors at a much higher clock speed on OSX not very much is very tuned and the overhead associated with running OSX demands a lot mo
Re: current "pro" line of G4 a joke? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been using strictly PCs for 5 years or so now, after a brief stint with a "Performa" Mac mini-tower that didn't turn out too well.
My "high end" PC system is a Pentium 4, 1.8Ghz tower with Promise EIDE RAID and a GeForce 4 video board.
I'm pretty happy with it, but I really wanted a good system to run OS X and some of Apple's incredibly well-done video editing packages (Final Cut, iDVD, etc.). I just broke down and bought a dual-processor G4 1.42Ghz tower. I certainly don't feel it's "slow" at all! I'd say it performs at least on par with my P4 system, if not a little faster at certain tasks. It boots into OS X a lot more quickly than the P4 boots into Windows XP, for one thing.
Sure, the 970 processor will be great -- but the people complaining that the current PowerMacs are "horribly underpowered" must be "benchmark junkies", worried about having the best stats for the sake of stats (bragging rights?).
Like I say, I consider myself very much a "power user", and for a long time, I didn't think Apple really had the "price vs. performance" in the right place on the curve. But with their recent price drops, plus "speed bumps" to their G4 offerings - I think they still have a very competitive setup to tide them over until the 970 is done.
At the end of the day, you don't plunk down $2000-3400 for a "pro" Mac G4 or PowerBook because you're worried about having the "most Ghz". You do so because it offers an OS and specialized applications you can't get in the PC world. (These days, you might also do so to avoid the Microsoft licensing nightmares. A "family pack" of OS X lets you load it on any 5 systems of your choice for a price not much more than 1 single copy of Windows XP Pro, for example.)
Re:waiting for this to arrive.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:waiting for this to arrive.... (Score:2)
And people who refuse to believe facts because they do not like them choose to remain ignorant.
It is competitive ! (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand Apple users won't have much of a choice, and neither has Apple.
Re:It is competitive ! (Score:2, Interesting)
Each time there was a leap forward so I guess this will give the concurrence some nightmares.
But you are right, until then, Apple took huge risks.
It's just a good think someone did, otherwise the market would still offer prehistoric beeping-XT.
Re:It is competitive ! (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that it would necessarily be in their best interest. Apple, as a company, represents an ALTERNATIVE, and therefore they try to maintain alternative hardware choices: SCSI over IDE, ATI over NVIDIA, USB over PCI, the one button & metakey paradigm, Flat Panel over CRT -- and the big one, RISC over CISC. Some of these choices have panned out great. Some have flopped miserably...yet despite the doomsayers, Apple is still afloat after 30 years of "forcing" people to buy "crazy" proprietary gear. With "only" 3% of the market, but it's a huge freakin' market, and their margins are gigantic. Part of the reason for this huge margin is that they are the only hardware player, and are therefore able to name their own prices.
As for Apple users having no choices, that's also crap. We always have choices: buy Apple, or buy something else. Keep the current machine and upgrade it, or buy a new one. And Apple will still make the old chips for a long time after the 970 has started smokin' competitors...at least, that's what they did every other time they made a generation jump in processors.
Apple users vote with their dollars and so it's in Apple's interest to do whatever people are most receptive to, which is what they as a company seem to be best at anyway. After all, they got me to spend $538.72 on an mp3 player. This whole "no choice" thing is BS -- you choose the platform, not the hardware. That's the Apple way.
Re:It is competitive ! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they couldn't. Every app would need to be rewritten, right on the heels of the 9 to X transition that isn't even finished yet. Switching to x86 is a complex nightmare that may be Apple's doomsday plan, but it is far from simple.
Re: Have you ever used a Mac??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple went pretty much all IDE about five years ago.
USB over PCI
Mac's have had PCI slots since the first PowerPC based units became available. In fact, back in those days many PC's still had VLB, and only Pentiums had PCI slots. Further, since they were 100% PCI there was no bottleneck due to legacy support (ISA) Also, USB's importance was such that it replaced SCSI for external, high speed devices...
competitive, sure... (Score:5, Interesting)
The other unkown in this is the price. PPC 970 based Apple computers may be significantly more expensive. Motorola loses hundreds of millions of dollars each year on their semiconductor business, and IBM does as well. Still, IBM may want to look at Apple and the PPC 970 as a PROFIT center, rather than a LOSS center, like Motorola does with Apple and the G4.
The PPC 970 is great news for Apple, but it is still a bone thrown to them while the x86 PC is feasting on the meat of the Intel and AMD processors.
Re:competitive, sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Being competitive" does not equal to 'having more computing power". Look how small is this thingy's power consumption! I guess when 970 ships, we will have similar situation as we have right now. x86 machines will consume enormous amount of power and dissipate enormous amount of heat, what usually results in this nice "quadruple augmented turbofan" sound that accompanies most PC desktops or "not enough battery life even to watch a full DVD" laptops. Not to mention that if you actually put this laptop on the top of your lap, you might get your testicles hard boiled.
And Apple will launch yet another series of slower but cool machines - both in terms of look and heat dissipation. Which actually is pretty much what we have already.
Re:competitive, sure... (Score:2, Interesting)
When you can compile the kernel or compress a movie in 2 mins, who will really care that it can be done in 1?
The only reason for getting the 4 gig over the 2 would be to have the ability to play your games at the cinematic detail level.
Re:competitive, sure... (Score:2)
Damn, I wish I had my copy of "Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" right now with me. I remember that there was a quote almost exactly the same as yours (of course, Heinlein did not mention specifically "compressing movies" or "compiling kernels", just something about calculations and miliseconds). Who says science-fiction predictions for XXI century are not accurate? Robert A. Heinlein predicted the spirit
Re:competitive, sure... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:competitive, sure... (Score:5, Informative)
As Nethack would say, "Ugh! This meat is tainted!"
The 970 is fundamentally a 64-bit processor, and its performance must be evaluated in that context. The fact that the 970 will pull off amazing speed in the 32-bit arena only shows how well-designed this processor is.
Keep in mind, the Hammer is only shipping at 1.4, 1.6, and 1.8 GHz - the same speeds the 970 is targeted at. And the 970 has the advantage of an ISA that was designed from the beginning to do 32 and 64 bit addressing, versus one that's a 64-bit extension of a 32-bit extension of a 16-bit micro with full compatibility to an 8-bit redesign of a 4-bit processor.
Re:competitive, sure... (Score:5, Funny)
(for completeness)
Dual FPUs! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, yeah, they are hog-tied because you can't easily re-compile the entire windows platform to use new instruction sets. Linux users, of course, don't have this problem (muhahahah).
Did anyone else catch the bit on the twin FPU's? I'm just imagining what this thing is going to do with vector operations and frequency transforms.
For most of you non-engineers:
Most 3d vector operations are affine tranformations. Using a 4x4 array of floating point numbers you can translate, rotate, and scale. Works beautifully, but it's a lot of calculations.
The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is used a lot in signal processing. It's a floating point monster.
Re:Dual FPUs! (Score:2)
Most 2-dimensional transformations can be done this way too. Apple's Quartz subsystem uses matrix transformations just about everywhere it can get away with.
Re:Dual FPUs! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Dual FPUs! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dual FPUs! (Score:2, Informative)
That is very bandwidth intensive work, moving alot of floating point numbers from memory, and this is where the 970 will be superior to the G4e. But this is also the strong point of the Intel P4 running at super high frequencies. The AMD Athlon 64 will clock for clock be c
Hehe (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hehe (Score:3, Informative)
"Why did Intel rename the 586 to Pentium?"
"Because they added 100 to 486 and got 585.999999878787775555"
May be sooner than we think (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not buying into it 100% myself, but as I don't plan on buying a new Powermac until next year (and turning my current one into either a Yellow Dog or OS X Server), I'm in no big rush.
My expectations is that the Powerbook/iBook line won't be updated until next year, when IBM can get the power requirements down for the 970 or its successor.
Obsolete my a$$ (Score:5, Interesting)
Ha! I have a 867 G4 at home and it still rocks. Apple's line is certainly nowhere near obsolete, they're very different boxes than PCs.
You multi-gigahertz fruitcakes crack me up. 3 GHz is a waste of processor power and energy for at 80% of the people that use computers.
Re:Obsolete my a$$ (Score:2)
Besides, I take that to mean that you'll never buy another computer unless your current one breaks? Because, an upgrade would be a waste, wouldn't it?
Perhaps I might feel sympathetic if Jobs hadn't strutted around with a "ho hum, another day, another supercomputer" attitude.
Re:Obsolete my a$$ (Score:2)
I never buy PCs, I put them together myself - the next full computer I buy will be a PowerBook - I'm sick of lugging my PC around to do multi-track recording.
I just disagree with the line that Macs are obsolete. They're great boxes. Even an 867 MHz Mac is 10x the pro
Re:Obsolete my a$$ (Score:2)
Lose the insecurity.
Re:Obsolete my a$$ (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, I take that to mean that you'll never buy another computer unless your current one breaks? Because, an upgrade would be a waste, wouldn't it?
Systems I use for games (consoles and PC) are likely to get upgraded every couple of years, but that's because games are still pushing them to their limits. Systems I use for work are likely to not be replaced for a lot longer, unless there's a very good reason (I am planning to move to Mac, so that's a replacement). Nothing I do with my work systems, that
Re:Obsolete my a$$ (Score:5, Insightful)
I use the Dell for Linux development work and to run a couple of Windows-only programs (Netware Administrator), but for everything else I use my Mac (email, word processing, web browsing, spreadsheets, etc.).
Far from obsolete, this old G4 with OS X still provides a much better work environment than my Optiplex. So what if the processor is slow by today's standards? I'm still MORE PRODUCTIVE on my Mac. Isn't productivity the best benchmark for how good a computer REALLY is?
Re:Obsolete my a$$ (Score:3, Funny)
No it is the games, silly.
Re:Obsolete my a$$ (Score:5, Insightful)
Macs are often used in publishing...
We use Macs (Dual G4), Sparcs, and PCs (running Linux) to do massive batch processing of EPS files, converting them to PDFs and GIFs or JPEGs. (using Acrobat Server and/or Ghostscript)
The PCs are able to run these conversions several times faster.
We are currently about to exceed the capacity of the current systems.
Question: do we get an expensive 4-CPU Sparc, make a cluster of Macs, or do we get one moderately-priced dual-CPU PC server?
That is what people mean when they talk about systems becoming obsolete; they can no longer keep up with what else is available or needed.
That is also why Apple must keep up with the competition or die... even if MOST people don't need the power, SOME do.
If they aren't going to compete on performance, then they must compete on features and/or PRICE.
Features: It used to be that most good publishing or graphics software was only available on Macs; that is no longer the case. Now the only difference between a Mac and a PC running Windows is the GUI looks different.
Re:Obsolete my a$$ (Score:2)
Also, in the spirit of the original article, the 970 will really help Apple out in clustered/workhorse situations like yours. We use some of the 970's ancestors for clustered sim on AIX (has to be AIX/PPC) here at
Re:Obsolete a long time ago (Score:2)
Let me tell ya, my Mom really gives a s**t whether she gets that extra 3 FPS in UT2003...
Re:Obsolete a long time ago (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple hasn't been that far behind for long enough to make a big difference there.
The marketshare has more to do with marketing and the fact that most people don't even know what a Macintosh is (Slashdot aside). Only since it
Re:Obsolete my a$$ (Score:2)
I do music recording, gaming and development on my Mac (C and perl mostly) - it's a great box. Can't wait til the Mac NWN client comes out!
AMD is the odd man out (Score:5, Informative)
Presumably the P4 can reach higher clock speeds than the Athlon because there is less work to do at each pipeline stage. On the other hand a longer pipeline increases the probability of a stall, so the work done per clock cycle goes down.
I'd speculate that the PowerPC ought, therefore, to be able to achieve clock rates approaching but not equalling the P4, since they are both comparatively "over-pipelined". At the same time, the PowerPC ought to deliver slightly more throughput per clock cycle because the pipeline is slightly shorter.
Meanwhile, the Athlon will be running at a significantly lower clock rate, but delivering comparable throughput.
Re:AMD is the odd man out (Score:2)
Perhaps you should look at Hammer if you want to make a comparison.
AMD is the odd man out & the megahertz myth. (Score:2)
Re:AMD is the odd man out & the megahertz myth (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, Apple FUD'd, claiming that shorter pipelines were inherently faster.
Re:AMD is the odd man out & the megahertz myth (Score:2)
Re:AMD is the odd man out (Score:5, Informative)
Combine this with the more intelligent branch prediction, out-of-order execution etc in the 970, and you're probably looking at a chip which is slightly less efficient clock-for-clock than the G4+, but more efficient than the Pentium 4.
Integer performance wise, it looks like the 970 will be about equal to a Pentium 4 of 25-50% higher clockspeed; FPU-wise, and of course Altivec-wise, it looks like a monster. So; it probably won't outperform the current Pentium 4s at a lot of tasks, but will kick it about on other more specialised tasks, which is a big step over the G4+. We're not looking at a Pentium-crusher, but we are looking at something that will be vaguely competitive.
Just gotta see how well it scales, after that, and whether 64-bit will mean anything for average tasks... and when it actually happens, of course.
64-bit Adobe apps (Score:2, Interesting)
I've heard conflicting answers, one is that 64-bit will really shine with 3D apps but do little to help the performance of 2D number-crunching.
Does this mean we'll see only nominal gains with Adobe's apps? Someone enlighten me.
Re:64-bit Adobe apps (Score:4, Interesting)
The 970 will be faster for most applications not because it is 64 bit, but mainly because it runs at a higher clock speed and has a much wider/faster memory interface. Some other architectural decisions (deep pipeline with aggressive optimization logic) will help somewhat as well, probably.
Re:64-bit Adobe apps (Score:3, Informative)
Re:64-bit Adobe apps (Score:2)
Re:64-bit Adobe apps (Score:3, Insightful)
No. And I still don't think that's the reason. How can you make a word processor better using 64 bit code instead of 32 bit code? A spreadsheet? A web browser? An email client? A terminal emulator? A shell? A pdf viewer? I stand by my original point that most consumer apps don't need 64 bit operations.
Some video/image editing applications may be able t
Re:64-bit Adobe apps (Score:5, Interesting)
I anticipated your short sighted response as soon as I hit the submit button. I should have realized that you would think I was talking about optimizing existing applications rather than designing new ones for new problems and I should have said all the rest of this stuff the first time... I even had a horrific vision of the word processor analogy. It was scary. Anyway:
I'm not talking about optimizing existing applications, I'm talking about new applications; programs that do things that we don't use our PCs for now. When we had 8-bit PCs nobody did photo editing or full color page layout on a PC. When we had 16-bit machines nobody used a PC for CAD. Now we have 32-bit machines and are moving to 64-bit. There will be some major tasks that will become possible with 64-bit PCs, but the software isn't there yet because the customers don't have the processors.
Also, I can think of two applications that every single computer user runs that can benefit dramatically from 64-bits, and Microsoft is waiting with the code already written for widespread 64-bit processor deployment to release them: Operating systems and filesystems. Having a 64-bit virtual address space can make your OS much more elegant and efficient since every possible I/O operation can be memory-mapped at once. Similarly, it has already been demonstrated that large relational databases benefit from 64-bit addressing even without taking advantage of the additional memory capacity, and many next generation filesystems will be relational databases.
Sure current consumer apps don't really need 64-bits. If they did we wouldn't have them. It's the PC apps of tomorrow that will benefit. If you don't care to do more with your PC then essentially what you can do today, just more quickly then keep buying 32-bit CPUs. They'll continue to be available for decades...
Re:64-bit Adobe apps (Score:2)
Guess what? Today's multimedia applications can use 64-bit addressing because they have become VERY intensive in the use of computer system resources in general. Why do you think computers that are used to render computer animation usually have several gigabytes of system RAM and very fast hard drive access?
Going to 64-bit computing will make system resource-intensive programs like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe
Power 4/PPC970 vs Intel Architecture 64 (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just AMD clocking lower either. The Itanium 2 isn't clocked that fast. Given that 32 POWER 4 1.7GHz processors smoked the 64 Itanium2 1.3GHz processors configuration in the latest TPCC non-clustered benchmark, the POWER and PPC architecture is capable of putting a lot more work through in the same number of clock cycles. There are a lot of nay-sayers trotting out the GHz-is-god line and it is particularly misleading for 64 bit architectures.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
P.S. Disclaimer - I work in SOFTWARE for IBM, not hardware.
Re:Power 4/PPC970 vs Intel Architecture 64 (Score:2, Interesting)
Obsolescent product line? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but I don't see anything even approaching obsolete in Apple's product line.
PPC970 and Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
I ran "my first linux" on a DEC Alpha 512mhz 64 bit box that I got fed up running NT 4.0 on. I instantly became addicted, and eventually forced my company to switch to Linux on every computer (causing mass protest in the beginning, then mass praise over the years as we have grown and have no MS Tax on the books).
I now have a Powerbook G4 and love it, except it is a little lagging in punch speed sometimes. And, although I love OS X, now that my company is used to zero license and upgrade costs thanks to GNU/GPL/BSD software, there is no hope of mass migration to OS X and Apple hardware in the company. It just does not make sense after seeing the dollar savings of running Linux on all the desktops.
There is, however, always a need for powerful workstations that run Linux, and IBM might be pulling a rabbit out of its hat with this one. Will be very interesting.
At minimum, I would buy one for that "64 bit memorabilia" value, to bring me sweet memories of my first Linux love, the Alpha that rid me of winbloze forever.........
Kitchen Sink (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet here we have the last man standing in the "RISC turned hopelessly complex" generation, the Power970. When you look at this things design they threw everything and the kitchen sink in there! Most interesting is that batch parallelism where an instruction for every type of execution unit is queued up and when they're all ready to go they're executed in parallel. It will be interesting to see if that can scale given the latency it introduces, and the likelyhood that you won't always be able to fill every unit.
Re:Kitchen Sink (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of these tricks (high decode bandwidth, multiple instruction queues [really buffers meant for reordering the instruction stream], branch prediction, etc.) are meant to reduce hazards such as pipeline bubbles as far as possible, and the PPC 970 does these hazard-reducing operations rather well, too.
And, yes, we're now in the post-RISC world where instruction complexity (particularly in the realm of SIMD and streaming/explicit cache manipulation instructions) is growing because simple instructions clearly aren't enough to allow for great throughput increments.
(Read some of Stokes' older articles in the Ars Technopaedia; I'm sure you'll find them interesting.)
Performance is out of line? (Score:4, Interesting)
What is this every non-mac user keeps saying that their performace is out of line with PC's? I have on my desk a hepped up dual P4 and a hepped up dual G4. XP on the dual P4 does not "feel," in day-to-day operations with standard apps like Office or Photoshop, much different from the dual G4. Comparing the MHz does not tell me anything. Using both side-by-side tells me a more "real" story about things. Now, perhaps XP is significantly slowing things down?
I only notice a difference with some high-end 3D apps like Maya or Lightwave, *maybe* also with some high-ed vid apps like Avid's.
I am looking forward to the 970 though. Actually, I am very curious about any 64bit CPU. Hopefully the "growing pains" for anyone to move to 64bit is negligible.
Re:No matter how many times I read it... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No matter how many times I read it... (Score:2)
There's also absolutely no porting required, as the PPC970 is a (duh) PowerPC! Everything will work fine, nothing needs to get recompiled and everybody is happy.
I'm sure Photoshop, etc., will recompile (Score:2)
Re:No matter how many times I read it... (Score:3, Informative)
Some applications, e.g. l
Re:No matter how many times I read it... (Score:2)
No it doesn't Apple created the first PC, IBM created the AT or was it the XT later on. Any computer you personaly own wether it be a mac or a computer running windows or linux
Re:No matter how many times I read it... (Score:3, Informative)
It's not that weird right now - their cooperation on PowerPC started almost 20 years ago. But it was weird ineed back then. I heard that on their first date, pardon, meeting, engineers of both companies wore the other company's dress code. The IBM guys came in jeans and t-shirts, the Apple guys came in suits and ties. How desperate both sides were to show each other that they have no hard feelings about past!
IBM = Alpha & Omega for Apple (Score:2)
Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future (Score:5, Insightful)
Most users of Macs are in the graphics industry. Having BEEN there, I can tell you the 68k to PPC transition was a non-issue. The PPC ran the 68k code as fast as the old machines. The real transition was in restructuring applications, since they no longer needed to work around the brain-deadedness of the 68k series. Again, old apps were not affected.
The other point I would like to make is that they HAVE taken a page out of the GNU/Linux BSD page. MacOSX is an alternative window manager sitting on top of BSD!
Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future (Score:2)
So why won't iTunes run on FreeBSD then? I tried it, it didn't work.
I think you get the point. Gross exaggurations are one thing. This is something else.
Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future (Score:2)
Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future (Score:5, Insightful)
Y'know, I don't know why this keeps coming up. Apple's bottom line has always depended on keeping tight control over the hardware to allow maximum integration with their own software. And it works.
Keep in mind that Linux and BSD aren't targetted towards consumers who want to just "rip, mix, burn" or have plug-and-play that's actually exactly that. Even Windows can't deliver consistently on its promise of universal ease-of-use because so many vendors have so much hardware that may or may not work with the system and its existing drivers.
Whatever else you think about Apple's computers, they are without a doubt the easiest PCs on the planet if you're a neophyte. Take it from me, I've got two young women in my home who are all but completely computer-illiterate, and if I didn't have Mac OS X running they'd be constantly lost at sea. I'd love to try hooking up a Linux box for either or both of them, but there's no way I could expect them to use it. Macs are easy, and their users like them that way.
Yeah, I know it's a profit issue for Apple as well, because without business software sales like Microsoft relies on they'd be bankrupt without hardware profits. But I like to think it's more than just money. Apple cares about making a good and easy-to-use product, or else they'd just be chasing Windows like (sorry, not trolling here, but it's true) GNOME and KDE are instead of constantly innovating their own hardware and interface designs.
Targetting multiple architectures means that Apple's got to deal with unpredictable hardware configurations, cards, motherboards, drivers, all sorts of things that could cause inconvenient kernel panics, drive failures, or worse. Users are used to that with Windows, and they pretty much expect it with Linux. With Macs, they expect things to just work. Controlling the hardware is the best way for Apple to do that.
Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future (Score:3, Interesting)
Y'know, I have no idea why this keeps coming up. Assuming you buy from a reputable vendor, the only time you have hardware problems with a PC is if you do upgrades manually, or if something breaks (rare). The fact that Macs have a reputation for good integration is mostly marketing - if you go down to your local P
or not (Score:3, Interesting)
While I agree with you if we're talking about established brands (Dell et. al), there is a signifcant chunk of sales that goes to the smaller shops who cobble the things together themselves, and problems are very common in this regard still. As usual, of course the experts need no help. People buy Dells - and Apples - partially becau
Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future (Score:2)
"Flamebait" is right. Where did I say that most/all women are computer-illiterate, or that most/all computer illiterates are women? It just happens that these two individuals are both.
Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future (Score:2, Funny)
Or let's not... (Score:5, Insightful)
The music industry for iMS, AMD for the chips in the airport base station (and the iPod(?) don't know), Motorola for the non-pro lineup (iMacG4, iBook and the portables until they get 970), etc. etc.
I think Apple will go a long way to make sure they don't get stuck with one provider.
Also I think they are trying to be more competitive pricewise. By having a steady stream of income from selling iPods and songs via iMS, they get more money to develop hardware and software, and we just might get Powermacs970 below the $3k mark.
Re:Gentoo translator-o-matic (Score:2)
I mentioned gentoo because, short of Linux from scratch, what other distro can you completely recompile for a new platform? Hmm? (Tumbleweed)
Figures, I actually find a real application for Gentoo, and what happens...
Re:Gentoo translator-o-matic (Score:2)
What makes them "clueless"? Maybe they advocate it because it really is as good as it sounds?
Well, if I do long compil
Re:Assembly: Why It Will Replace C++/Java (Score:4, Funny)
All in all, not a bad effort for a beginner. 7/10.
Re:Assembly: Why It Will Replace C++/Java (Score:2)
the idea behind perl6 sitting on top of parrot, is to allow such elegant code as the following (remembering that perl6 will be a step back to perl's hardcore roots):
Re:Power, PC's, and PowerPC's (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Power, PC's, and PowerPC's (Score:3, Informative)
How is Apple like Christianity? (Score:4, Funny)
You've got Job(s) in both.
History of being a persecuted minority.
Use of an Apple to gain more knowledge in both.
Christianity? Isaac. Apple? Imac.
Christianity? Prophets. Apple? Profits.
Obligatory Joke (Score:3, Funny)
How long until the others have to worry about the Inquisition? Or are we skipping that since we've already seen the Second Coming of Steve?
(How many thought I was going to go with that math that showed B.G. = The Beast from Revelations?)
Sure, you can buy it... (Score:2, Insightful)
You seem pissed that Apple doesn't throw down with the other hardware manufacturers. Why? Other platforms offer nearly everything Apple does, except that patented "Apple Flavor" and maybe FCP. I wish they'd commoditize the hardwa
Re:commodity hardware (Score:2)
Then buy a PowerMac [apple.com].
Re:commodity hardware (Score:2)
Then you are not Apple's target audience. Apple aims at people who want an entire system designed to work together, from hardware to OS. If you want a freak machine made of bits dug up from graves then x86 would be a far better bet. If you want a machine that 'just works' buy a Mac and pay the premium. No one is forcing you to buy Apple.
Re:commodity hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OS X not "more productive" for me (Score:3, Insightful)
So.. what are you looking for in terms of productivity?
Speed would be an issue for long compiles, multimedia operations or games, but that's as far as I would go.
Re:OS X not "more productive" for me (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not posting this to beat up on the parent but it's something that tends to come up often.
Re:Sensible argument for MAC going x86 (Score:4, Insightful)
And Apple/Mac has got exactly how far by being sane? They take chances. Big ones. Sometimes they fail. (Lisa, Newton) Sometimes they don't. (The orginial Mac, iPod, iMac, (actually, most of the i* stuff...)) The one sure thing is that if Apple stopped taking chances Apple would fail.
Re:Who says Apple will use it? (Score:4, Insightful)
As Hannibal (Jon Stokes) notes in the article in question [arstechnica.com]:
"The fact that the Altivec unit was slapped onto the design, leaving some room for improvement in future iterations, leaves no doubt that the 970 achieved its present form under pressure from Apple and that Apple will be rolling out systems based on the new processor. This is the most plausible and reasonable explanation for the way the vector unit looks. If the 970 were solely intended as a Linux desktop platform for IBM, they would've preferred to reduce the 970's die size, power consumption, time-to-market, etc. by just leaving out the Altivec unit altogether, instead of shoehorning it into the design the way they did."
Most Linux variants and apps aren't Altivec-optimized, so there wouldn't be very much incentive for IBM to include the functionality in a Linux-only box given the engineering work involved in doing so. It makes much more sense to do it when you know that you could easily sell hundreds of thousands of these CPUs to another company whose customers are desperately eager for that level of performance, i.e. Apple.
Will Linux apps become AltiVec enabled? (Score:4, Interesting)
And this would be a good thing for Apple, since there would be a lot more *NIX codec that could compile and run a LOT faster on their boxes, and there would be a larger pool of AltiVec and PPC coding talent for them and their ISVs to draw from.