Intel Developer Macs Outperform G5s 829
bonch writes "Developers working with the new Intel-based, developer-only Macs are impressed with the performance. The machines take as little as 10 seconds to boot from Apple logo to desktop, and apparently run Windows XP at 'blazing speeds.' Rosetta tests demonstrate the PowerPC-native build of Firefox running just as fast as it does on a high-end G5."
Good news! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good news! (Score:3, Interesting)
Comparing FFox under OSX is nothing new. G5 is slower CPU than P4, but at certain jobs, quite a lot faster (with that I mean jobs when PPC functions were actualy used). It would be better to test Photoshop or some video application that was noticeable faster than the same app on Windows, which means that it actualy uses quite a few PPC functions to the fullest.
Re:Good news! (Score:5, Informative)
G4 optimized Firefox builds (Score:5, Informative)
http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/ [mac.com]
Re:Good news! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good news! (Score:5, Funny)
Your frame of reference makes me really wonder how the hell you spend your weekends!
Slothrop (Score:3, Informative)
Boot times disk/network bound (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see how even an order of magnitude increase in CPU power could shorten boot times to the extent described here.
There must be other factors.
--
Toby
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:5, Funny)
It also runs "Windows XP at blazing speeds"? Well, hm, that doesn't sound like a plain old P4 to me.
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:5, Funny)
Wrong meaning of "Blazing" (Score:3, Funny)
Better put out that fire.
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:5, Interesting)
Take XP, load Office 2003, Norton AV, the standard CD burning and DVD viewing apps, and watch the performance (and boot times) degrade considerably.
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:3, Insightful)
At a slightly less ridiculous level, whose fault is it that just installing (but not using?!) software makes the OS performance molasses like? Not being a Windows guy I don't get it. Does this affect OS X as well? I load and open all sorts of softwa
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:4, Interesting)
Now those of is in the here see that as nonsense, since filling up the hard drive with not-currently-executing code does not have any impact on memory usage or CPU usage.
However, a lot of Windows programs have this tendency to install things that "always run in the background", and that does eat memory and impact CPU load. Back in the day when I actually used Windows a lot (and when RAM was still expensive), it was commonplace for people like us to spend the time digging through the Start Menu and the Registry to disable all those little side-processes.
As a result, people like me had machines that were MUCH faster and more responsive than most normal people with their storebought machines with specs usually much better than mine on-paper.
I suspect the same may be true today, between store pre-loaded crap and resident bits of installed software, even if cheap RAM has averted some of the issue.
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:3, Insightful)
fishy numbers (Score:5, Funny)
Well, there is a one in three chance that this study is nonsense.
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, since plugins cannot be emulated, there is no way for anyone to install kernel extensions that slow down the boot times of OS X.
In other words, the speed these people think they're seeing are actually do to a horrific lack of features.
Or the corollary (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:5, Informative)
What makes you think they support booting from USB drives?
OSX kernel extensions are very rare. Almost no program uses them except Norton products(anti-virus and disk doctor). I recommend staying away from Norton stuff for this reason and using Alsoft's Disk Warrior. Third party kernel extensions are a bad idea on any OS.
Uhm, I hope you realize that apple includes many as well that aren't exactly usable on these Dev kits. Such as Bluetooth kexts, ATI kexts (or Nvidia kexts), Airport kexts, netboot, FWTDM kexts, Audio kexts (there are 8 audio kexts loaded on my G5), CHUD kexts, fan control kexts, slew, voltage, sensor kexts, and other kinds of kexts that either lack the hardware or software support on the Intel Dev Kits.
Then for third party kexts there are Logitech Drivers, Norton Utilities kexts, Virtual PC kexts, the Ambrosia kext, DiskWarrior kexts, and many other third party drivers and kexts that shouldn't be loading at startup and shouldn't even be kexts but are.
What features are lacking?? The Intel dev Macs have Firefox, iPhoto, iDVD, and Quicktime installed. The average user may install some extra dashboard widgets and a driver or two, but I doubt that would add more than a couple seconds to boot time.
What makes you think these dev kits have either iDVD or Firefox installed on them? Did you see iDVD in use during Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote?
See above for a large list. You don't need to load a kext for hardware that doesn't exist.
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:3, Informative)
Uhm, I hope you realize that apple includes many [kernel extensions] as well that aren't exactly usable on these Dev kits. ... Then for third party kexts there are Logitech Drivers, Norton Utilities kexts, Virtual PC kexts, the Ambrosia kext, DiskWarrior kexts, and many other third party drivers and kexts that shouldn't be loading at startup and shouldn't even be kexts but are. ... You don't need to load a kext for
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:5, Interesting)
They do, do they? Where was it confirmed? And at what point in the keynote did Jobs ever show off anything but iPhoto and iTunes? http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc05/ [apple.com] There's the keynote. Go ahead, tell me where.
and FWIW, I was at the keynote. What's in the dock during the keynote is all that comes with the dev kits.
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm guessing most hardware drivers aren't written by Apple, but the hardware developer (Apple contracts out hardware design like any other company) and some drivers like video drivers are certianly not Apple.
But, Apple can sure QA their drivers a lot more then Microsoft can, so your point does remain.
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:3, Insightful)
While disk plays *some* role in OS startup, it's usually far from being the decisive factor. In a typical setup, a much larger amount of time is consumed on CPU use; and quite a large amount on various kinds of timeouts, related to networking, but not only -- various kinds of hardware probing etc. are the main reason why OS bootup doesn't even remotely scale with CPU and disk speed improvements.
CPU *does* make a considerable difference, but not an enor
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:3, Informative)
http://overclockers.com/tips00806/ [overclockers.com]
and trippling CPU speed will NOT half boot times, but maybe reduce by 1/3, showing that boot times are more dependent on disk i/o than CPU speed.
in a typical setup, CPU time is a MAJOR bottleneck, only to be matched by device initialization, which has little to do with cpu speed.
in fact, a k6-2 500Mhz machine will boot windows xp nearly as fast as a athlon xp 2500. the athlon xp machine takes about 2/3 the time as the k6-2 500M
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:3, Interesting)
When I upgraded my old 1.7 GB disk to a 13 GB one, bootup got *lots* faster. However, now the CPU was the major stopper, and upgrading from Pentium 166 to Celeron 400 again resulted in a considerable
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not use something more like a resume from hibernation, where you just restore the contents of memory directly from the disc in one go and be done with it?
Actually using hibernation rather than booting is no good, becuase it only restores you to the state that your computer was in last time you used it, which might not be "clean". For example, if you had been running something with a memory leak, hibernation won't fix that.
But the solution is simple - instead of writing the hibernate data to disc just before you shut down, instead store it just after you've finished booting, so that you've got a "clean" system ready.
This way you get a "clean" system every time at the speed of a restore from hibernation. (And if something goes wrong, you still have the option to do a "full" boot.)
Some might say that you need to go through all the slow processing of a full boot in case anything's changed. Really? Restoring from hibernation seems to cope with that possibility.
More likely, most times, nothing will have changed. And for the times when it has, well, you do the extra configuration necessary after the restore - you're still no worse off.
So why are we still forced to sit through full boot cycles?
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:5, Insightful)
A resume form hibernation has to read ALL of your memory from disc, as only saving "used" memory frames would just invide bugs from hell. (think about memory windows from drivers, or what is "clean state" ? which autostarts/services,ect)
And with 1GB, even on a very fast HD it would need 20 seconds... Not faster
Also consider that bootup is usually the time to detect new hardware.
In fact, im quite happy with the 20-30 seconds i get with windows xp.
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:5, Informative)
As for detecting new hardware - that's such a rare event that it should be treated as an exception, rather than the norm. Most days I boot my computer, there's a marked absence of strange new hardware...
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:3, Insightful)
A PPP connection via a modem is a direct connection to the Internet.
You are _extremely_ vulnerable if your connection is directly through a modem.
I found that out myself the hard way a year or two ago - at home I'm behind NAT, and there's at least two levels of NAT and three firewalls between me and the Internet at work, and I don't use I.E.. So I never really paid much attention to patches and updates, or even anti-virus stuff.
However, one night when I was interstate for work, I
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple has really been pushing people to Sleep the machines instead of turning them off. Sleep mode uses a very tiny amount of power, and you get your instantaneous boot (with apps open and windows positioned...). I have been doing this with my Macs since OS X appeared and let me tell you it is the only way to go. Especially on laptops. In fact I am still using a CRT on my G5 and the computer 'boots' faster than the monitor (warm up).
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:4, Interesting)
Your point makes sense though about making some sort of assumed last known configuration the default. This would require the user to hit a button if they change their config so a full reboot with full PCI scan could ocurr - probably not too user friendly.
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:3, Interesting)
Some things need to be re-initialised if left for any length of time (Ie, DHCP usually has a timeout)
All open Sockets would probably have to die (But not nesseserilly normal file handles)
There are probably other things as well, but these are the main
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:3, Interesting)
Even if a modern OS has dumped 200 megs of stuff into RAM by the time it's finished booting, that's easily affordable at today's flash RAM prices. You could fit a 256 meg chip to the motherboard (which I'm sure both Apple and MS could mandate if they wanted). If for whatever reason more space was required, the overflow could be put on disc.
And since a boot is a fairly rare event, you don't have to worry about the maximum number of write
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:3, Interesting)
Because flash RAM is slow. Unless I've lost touch with the latest tech, the average HDD provides about 4x the throughput of current flash memory. Next-gen flash is better, but still on the same order of magnitude. A battery-backed (volatile) RAM boot disk could be nifty...
The LinuxBIOS [linuxbios.org] project lets you boot up fast out of flash, but that's mainly because you get the skip all the useless crap that the PC BIOS wastes time on.
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:5, Informative)
Memory test.
Re:Boot times disk/network bound (Score:5, Funny)
Nope, I'm damned if I can remember what it's doing for those few seconds. Now will you tell me the damn answer?
J.
Impressed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Impressed (Score:4, Funny)
Rosetta only translates G3 code, not G4/G5 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:damned if they do, damned if they don't (Score:3, Informative)
The reason for this is that the AltiVec emulation can avoid many of the problems with the linear code. To list some...
* AltiVec has only alligned loads and stores, so you do not have to worry about emulating cross-page accesses
* AltiVec can load more information into your register map faster than your generic code (less address translation per word loaded/stored)
* AltiVec allows the emulating processor to parallel execute many of the in
Re:Impressed (Score:3, Interesting)
QEMU [qemu.org] aims to do the same:
It can run (to some degree; it's still in development) on x86, amd64, PowerPC and a host of other CPUs, and it can run binary code for x86, amd64, PowerPC, SPARC, ARM, and MIPS.
64bit and vector code (Score:3, Insightful)
How does the Mactel box do on floating point, 64bit and/or vector based code? The main reason for getting a G5 was to improve performance of 64bit/floating/vector code like is used in video production and scientific apps.
Since Intel has always been shaky in floating point and probably doesn't really know the meaning of vector I'm wondering how those kinds of apps will fare on the Mactel boxes.
Re:64bit and vector code (Score:5, Insightful)
Compare this to the G4, another weak linear performer that Apple more or less specialized in getting to fly through good use of the excellent Altivec unit. The G5 on the other hand has a somewhat weak Altivec unit but a much beefed up set of single-element FPU units, yielding so-so vector performing but good linear performance. IBM did probably not focus much energy on the Altivec unit but instead threw it in since Apple required it (after all, the single-element FPU performance of the G5 almost puts the Altivec unit to shame).
Some might now be quick to point out that Altivec is a nicer instruction set than SSE2/SSE3, this is by most standards true, but if you are hand-coding assembly you can make do with either. On the flip side Intel has quite impressive auto-vectorization support in their compiler.
So, what does this add up to? The G5 is in a good place for beating the P4 on unoptimized unvectorized code, but the P4 really screams if things are tuned up a bit. Considering Apples history with Altivec I think we can safely assume that they won't be afraid of doing some hand-tuning to get good perfomance.
This all ends up looking quite favorable for the P4, I still don't think we will see a commercial Mac with a P4 derivative in it, but anyone who thinks the P4 is a weak performer has another thing coming. For a bit more on my opinion on the state of the x86 vs. PPC today see my earlier post in the "Apple Switch to Intel Not a Big Loss for IBM" story [slashdot.org].
Intel Graphics (Score:5, Funny)
Talk about a 180... (Score:5, Funny)
I should feel vindicated, I suppose.
Re:Talk about a 180... (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean if we have objective tests we can admit the Intel chips are faster?
Sweet [anandtech.com].
What the... (Score:5, Funny)
Integer vs. Altivec (Score:5, Interesting)
I think most of us expected the P4 to perform better for Integer like code on applications that don't effectively SMP. So that's not that surprising. I am surprised at the speed of Rosetta, although that will be a mixed bag once again depending upon the application.
What I'm really interested in is speed on stuff that really leveraged Altivec, like A/V programs. I'm curious about Quicktime 7 for instance. Now some of these programs can use some similar functions on the P4. But from what the Altivec folks were telling me some code ought differ by as much as 50%. (i.e. the PPC is twice as fast) A nice simple test is to compare programs like iMovie on both platforms.
Re:Integer vs. Altivec (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Integer vs. Altivec (Score:3, Funny)
And a transvestite is just like a real woman. Sorry, but SSE2 is still register-starved and has those stupid destructive two-operands ops.
Re:Integer vs. Altivec (Score:3, Informative)
It's been a few years since I programmed for the Altivec unit, but it didn't support any doubles then, only single-precision floats.
Apart from that (and it is a big thing), I've never heard a serious comparison of Altivec with SSE that resulted in SSE coming out equal or even close. Altivec is pretty damned amazing.
Shame we won't be able to play with it any longer.
(By the way, Apple's transition documentation sho
DVD leak when? (Score:3, Interesting)
Bad news for Mac software (Score:5, Funny)
Not good.
So the lesson is (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be really fascinating to see what the sales figures will be like for the next year or two.
In other words, go ahead and buy the Mac (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead just buy whatever Mac you like now and enjoy it - after all you'll have to spend some time learning a new OS anyway. If the newer Intel macs are really a lot more powerful - then sell the current Mac, which is easy to do since used Macs hold value well. And yes PPC macs will hold value just as well as new softwrae will still be comiled for them for several years anyway.
If you want to maximize resale value consider an Apple laptop of
Crap article. Period. (Score:3, Insightful)
If I were AppleInsider, I'd be ashamed to print this. Of course, it's not likely that AppleInsider could be ashamed of anything, so there you go ;-)
Really, wake me up when there's an article where someone publishes comparative numbers of PostgeSQL inserts or NSImage composites or timed renders of Safari web pages.
And no, I'm not really interested in Rosetta performance as much as I'm interested in native app performance. I'm interested, don't get me wrong. Just not as interested.
Developer Transition System photos (Score:3, Informative)
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http://img86.imageshack.us/my.php?image=avvio21sl
http://img86.imageshack.us/my.php?image=avvio31gz
http://img256.imageshack.us/my.php?image=barracud
http://img256.imageshack.us/my.php?image=centrale
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http://img256.imageshack.us/my.php?image=devtrans
http://img24.imageshack.us/my.php?image=internofr
http://img24.imageshack.us/my.php?image=macityint
http://img24.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pentium42
http://img24.imageshack.us/my.php?image=quicktime
http://img24.imageshack.us/my.php?image=retro7dz.
http://img109.imageshack.us/my.php?image=retropor
http://img17.imageshack.us/my.php?image=schedaalt
http://img17.imageshack.us/my.php?image=schedadvi
http://img17.imageshack.us/my.php?image=softdevki
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http://img33.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tigerinte
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http://img274.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ventolep
Bye!
What to do with those slug stickers...? (Score:3, Funny)
Damn. I've still got a stack of Intel Inside slug [theapplecollection.com] stickers
I guess I can't continue to stick them overtop all the Intel Inside plates I run across, so I need some creative ideas as to what I should do with them. Any ideas?
Re:What to do with those slug stickers...? (Score:3, Insightful)
I suggest walking into an Apple store with them, and sticking them on all the new Intel-based Macs.
That should make them a good reminder as to how much Apple has been lying to everyone over the years. Everyone should remember the PPC ads when their next generation of advertising comes out.
I call shenanigans (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course it is... (Score:3, Funny)
"New Intel-based Macs not as fast as the G5"
Re:So the G5 were dog slow after all (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So the G5 were dog slow after all (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So the G5 were dog slow after all (Score:3, Insightful)
We can start by how long it takes to crunch a lot of floating point operations and integer math operations.
no (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe G5s are not so fast. But:
"It's fast," said one developer source of Mac OS X running on Intel's Pentium processors. "Faster than [Mac OS X] on my Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5."
So, uh, a 3.6 Ghz P4 is faster than two 2 Ghz G5 - 4 Ghz? - SMP, but 4 Ghz.
Sorry, I don't buy that. Even more if you take into account that Intel isn't exactly the performance/Hz leader - in fact it's the worst performer these days, Opteron and PM beats the sh*t out of that P4 at much lower speeds from what I've read.
There're lots of factors that can change things - freebsd algorithms, are, for one, optimized for i386 variants. Also, Mac OS X is compiled with -Os - optimized for size, no for speed. (Paranoic mode on=Hey, maybe this switch was planned and it's not a coincidence)
And then there's the Placebo effect [wikipedia.org]. IOW: Show me numbers, don't tell me "it's fast", I don't trust you. In Linus' words: "If we can't measure it, it doesn't exists". Unless someone writes a decent comparative, I'll take this article as Apple Marketing - Apple has been very critized for this change, I wouldn't be suprised that Apple is interested in articles like that, showing how good move has been the switch to intel
Re:So the G5 were dog slow after all (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus with details from the article as technical as "it's fast," and "blazing speeds," you just know that's some newsworthy stuff there.
Also the opposite is also going to be true. An intel compiled binary is going to stomp all over a PPC binary run with Rosetta.
Why even bother making such a comparison, and even more so, why bother making such a claim?
If you absolutely have to run PPC code on Intel you will, and you're no
Re:Dual Boot (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dual Boot (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod down, bs (Score:3, Interesting)
These Apple boxes will use generic harware found in your standard hp or dell box. Home made pcs will run MacOS just fine. Apple is using a DRM to raise the barrier of entry to nearly infinity for competi
Re:Mod down, bs (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dual Boot (Score:4, Informative)
I won't get into the debate about the quality (or lack therof) of Creative's products, except to say that there is a thriving market for aftermarket audio products for the Mac platform (M-Audio being one such vendor).
My point of contention with your post is your assertation that Apple employs the aid of Bang and Olufsen for its built-in audio. While searching on Google reveals others using superlatives that compare Apple's design to the afformentioned company's products, there is no evidence of collaboration. There are aftermarket products made for lines such as the iPod, but that's as close as it gets.
A few more little known facts: Apple uses all Bose speakers even down to the smallest speakers in their systems. And Bose designs the case section where the speaker will be housed in order to provide high quality, room filling sound no matter what system you have.
Furthermore, Bose has only had a limited relationship with Apple, starting and ending with the PowerMac 6400 family. And for the record, the logevity of this particular piece of design has been lacking. Apple has collaborated with other companies on their speaker design, such as utilizing Harman Kardon enclosures/speakers starting with the iMac DV [apple.com].
Your references to startup tones are tangential, more a matter of taste and style than metrics. Apple succeeds in the the fields of arts primarily because of their decent first-party applications, and additionally because of their ISVs and aftermarket hardware. Many creative types still call the Mac home, and I don't think it's because of trendy start-up tones or hardware companies.
As to Apple's success and appeal, I wholly agree it is due in large part to the bottom-to-top control they have of the platform. I may have made mistakes in calling you out on some of these facts you are presenting. I have spent nearly 10 years working in and around Apple's various offerings, and have admired their industrial design (with a number of exceptions). That said, I would like to think that whatever zeal that I may have for them is grounded in reality. If you can find reference to any of your above claims, I would appreciate that they be presented for sake of perusal.
Re:Dual Boot (Score:4, Interesting)
You would if it was important enough to you. I bought mine so that I could support Apple users. i.e. I saw a very real use for the machine. (Best purchase I ever made, BTW.) With Linux, there's just too much noise and not enough signal to make anyone want to purchase a Linux-built Desktop machine.
Re:Dual Boot (Score:4, Informative)
No. The version of OS X on the developer Macs may be compatible with other PCs, but the final product will be tied to an special Intel DRM chip that will prevent it from running on other machines.
The developer machines are loaners and will go back to Apple in two years, and will not continue to be supported.
Re:Dual Boot (Score:5, Insightful)
So stop saying it like it's a fact, please.
Re:It *has* been stated in an official capacity (Score:4, Informative)
Rather than using DRM, if they use specific altered BIOS and/or a specific chipset then that is all that is necessary. The OS will not have the drivers/ability to work on other hardware.
Apple will most likely still be designing their own MB's, even if they do include Intel chips, so this is a very easy way for them to maintain sales on their own, still technically proprietary, machines. DRM may be used, but if it does then it will probably be a second line of attack, not the primary.
Re:Dual Boot (Score:3, Funny)
I must be new here, maybe that has always been the case.
Re:Dual Boot (Score:5, Interesting)
But seriously, I hate the "Apple makes money selling machines, not software" myth. Apple also makes a killing on software, and there's higher margins than hardware. Steve Jobs said Tiger had already sold a million boxed copies of Tiger at the WWDC. Multiply by $129? That's a lot of cash coming from just the OS. And don't forget about their stance in the professional media market. How much is Final Cut Pro selling for these days? What does Motion cost?
Re:Dual Boot (Score:5, Insightful)
But by the time they did that, the $500 market had become the $250 market...
Re:WinXP on Mac a fluke, Mac OS X Apple H.W only (Score:3, Interesting)
I rememember what happened to OS/2, with their vow to make "a better Windows than Windows". They did a good job of making sure that Windows apps ran well under OS/2... so good, in fact, that many app vendors stopped developing the OS/2 versions of their software. (After all, why spend money to develop both a Windows and an OS/2 port of your software, when OS/2 customers can just ru
Re:The real question (Score:5, Informative)
so I'm thinking they may see an increase.
-nB
Re:The real question (Score:5, Funny)
Will you explain that to my girlfriend please? Please?
Re:The real question (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The real question (Score:5, Funny)
No, the real point is in relationships you want to avoid the 'boot' process.
Re:Intel Mac's poor hd performance (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Big-endian vs. little-endian (Score:5, Informative)
It's likely that Rosetta is pulling a lot of tricks, I/O level and otherwise, and when you're reading data from a hard disk or the network, using a few spare CPU cycles to swap some bytes around isn't going to be noticed *at all*, because if you're doing that sort of I/O bound processing, you'll likely have plenty of CPU cycles laying around to swap bytes in memory.
If you're not talking about Rosetta, but about multi-platform applications more generally, the long answer is in the Universal Binary Programming Guidelines [apple.com] PDF. The short answer is that you abstract away from your own code byte-order issues where possible, and where not possible, you otherwise have separate code paths that do the right thing depending on the targeted platform.
Seasoned developers who coded applications under NeXTStep have been through this once before, remember. This is not a new problem. We've been here before... I avoid binary data formats where it's reasonable to do so.
Re:Big-endian vs. little-endian (Score:3, Informative)
The IO libs just take care of it.
Also, it's worth noting that binary storage in a "native" format is always a Bad Idea and most serious projects would be expected to avoid it.
Re:apache http server? (Score:3, Informative)
The reported threading problems were not, in fact, threading problems at all. Instead, they are the result of F_FULLFSYNC fcntl. You will probably find this thread [tenon.com] interesting.
Transparency (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Just like ASOT told us! (Score:3, Funny)
Seven chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea.
Re:The Perfect Slashdot Comment (Score:3, Informative)
Ethical concerns aside, for many companies Intel is such a desirable choice because they do the testing with components and certify a complete package for you. That's expensive work, but Intel does it because they know that people will pay for it.
Sure, I'd love to see AMD in macs. I have fond memories of my last AMD machine. But, only if AMD can give us a
Re:reports like this will impact sales (Score:5, Funny)
What overall effect will this have on Mac sales?
It will reduce total sales by one.
Not more than they are already (Score:4, Informative)
I bought a 15" Powerbook in September 2003 - this system is a G4 at 1.25 GHz. I love it but I would really like something faster (and with a better graphics chip) so it could be a real desktop replacement. But, this simply doesn't exist. Today's fastest powerbooks are still G4s at 1.67 GHz - an increase of just 34% in nearly 2 years. This isn't enough to make me buy a new machine. The way it was looking, I was waiting for Powerbook G5s - but it wasn't happening (and now, of course, it won't happen).
I am guessing that the significantly faster machines (both desktops and notebooks) with significantly help Apple sales, but will not hurt them more than the lack of speed was already. Increases in performance will correlate to sales, and if IBM was unable to deliver but Intel can, than I think it will help Apple immensely. If people need an Apple box they'll buy one, but right now they're just too slow or too expensive for people to consider (i.e., the fast machines are too expensive).
I look forward to finally replacing my Powerbook with a nice speedy Intel-powered machine in a year or two, and I bet many Apple users will be with me. The new speed will then make it a lot easier to get new switchers on board.
Re:What about a real computer? (Score:3, Insightful)
It won't. Apple will never allow OSX X86 to run on a non-Apple system. Expect to see on-chip Intel DRM enforcing this.
Re:PowerPC 25-30% faster than Intel x86 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I repair and support Macs for a living (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh yeah. Steve Jobs said that, I forgot.
The switch from 680x0 to PPC was about increased performance. The switch from Mac OS to Mac OS X was about increased performance. The switch from PPC to X86 is not, it's just a business decision. It's not necessarily a bad business decision, but it's not something Apple's engineers dreamed up as a great way of moving their platform into the future. It's not something the custo