OpenCL 1.0 Specification Completed and Released

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com/2008/12/09/opencl-1-0-specification-completed-and-released/)

The Khronos group (http://www.khronos.org/news/press/releases/the_khronos_group_releases_opencl_1.0_specification/) announced the ratification and public release of the OpenCL 1.0 specification described as the first open, royalty-free standard for cross-platform, parallel programming of modern processors found in personal computers, servers and handheld/embedded devices.


http://images.macrumors.com/article/2008/12/09/023502-opencl.jpg

OpenCL provides programmers tools to speed up a wide variety of applications by taking advantage of untapped GPU processors and multi-core processors found in modern computers. Apple originally proposed OpenCL as part of their upcoming Snow Leopard operating system, and their release deadline helped accelerate the adoption (http://www.macrumors.com/2008/11/19/opencl-specification-completed-in-record-time-for-snow-leopard/) of the specification. OpenCL has been developed and ratified by a number of industry companies including Apple, NVIDIA, ARM, Intel, and many others.“We are excited about the industry-wide support for OpenCL,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering. “Apple developed OpenCL so that any application in Snow Leopard, the next major version of Mac OS X, can harness an amazing amount of computing power previously available only to graphics applications.”For the end user, this should allow developers to more easily take advantage of existing hardware (GPUs, CPUs) to deliver faster software performance.

Apple's Snow Leopard operating system (Mac OS X 10.6) is due for release in 2009 with recent hints pointing to the 1st quarter (http://www.macrumors.com/2008/11/18/mac-os-x-snow-leopard-10-6-due-in-q1-2009/).



Article Link: OpenCL 1.0 Specification Completed and Released (http://www.macrumors.com/2008/12/09/opencl-1-0-specification-completed-and-released/)

[Trip.Tucker]

It's going to be a very interesting year in 2009.

[Harpo]

This is the first time it dawned on me that OpenCL's name evokes Psystar.

[talkingfuture]

To start with I was feeling meh about Snow Leopard but its slowly starting to interest me. No doubt I'll be standing in a queue by launch day.

[Omni Geno]

This is the first time it dawned on me that OpenCL's name evokes Psystar.

As well as "OpeniMac (http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/08/openimac-is-now-selling-mac-clones/)"

[fendol]

How does it evoke Psystar?

If I understood correctly this Kronos group has developed the OpenCL under Apple? Seems to be something important but I'm not quite figuring out how important this is, if it is :o:apple:http://seoagora.com/img/1261/v08t1201sxfb/cheers.gifhttp://seoagora.com/img/308/s08e1024rvou/champagne.gifhttp://seoagora.com/img/589/d08l1104oulu/smiley2.gif

[MacDaddy901]

To start with I was feeling meh about Snow Leopard but its slowly starting to interest me. No doubt I'll be standing in a queue by launch day.

See you there.

[arn]

If I understood correctly this Kronos group has developed the OpenCL under Apple? Seems to be something important but I'm not quite figuring out how important this is, if it is :o:apple:http://seoagora.com/img/1261/v08t1201sxfb/cheers.gifhttp://seoagora.com/img/308/s08e1024rvou/champagne.gifhttp://seoagora.com/img/589/d08l1104oulu/smiley2.gif

Kronos is just a standards group. So, this means it's an industry wide standard and not just something Apple is doing. But Apple proposed it, and plan on using it in Snow Leopard. It sounds very promising.

arn

[wizard]

As the title says the pieces are slowly coming together. It may take a while for user apps to catch up but SL is going to make for some very interesting realtime apps. Apple likes to soft pedal SL because from the standpoint of the common user it doesn't offer much on the surface. From the standpoint of a developer though this is a major update - no more than an update a major transition as all the features combined will enable apps that before where not possible.

What did catch my eye was the part about embedded systems. Makes me wonder if this might be an indicator with respect to future Apple products.


Dave

[DaveTheGrey]

I can't wait to see finally leopards secret features in action ;)

[MrCrowbar]

To start with I was feeling meh about Snow Leopard but its slowly starting to interest me. No doubt I'll be standing in a queue by launch day.

I pre-ordered Leopard at the time, no shipping sost and I actually had it a few hours earlier than the stores. If you wanna be "first", just pre-order.

[MacGohil]

OpenCL and Grand Central are single handedly going make Snow Leopard the best OS ever. With M$ scratching their heads, still trying to figure out how to patch the Vista and sell it as Windows-7 they are going to loose the race. Linux and OSX will emerge as two heavyweight OSs in next few years. M$ is history.

I know there will be many of the opinion that most commercial / development houses still use Windows. But from the present trend and companies trying not to rely on flawed windows have already started to migrate to Linux and OSX. I work for a leading edge technology company and half of my companies computers are already using linux and osx for core development stuff.

For Apple to win, M$ does not have to loose..... Steve Jobs ====> coz M$ will eventually fall out anyways :P

[attila]

For Apple to win, M$ does not have to loose..... Steve Jobs ====> coz M$ will eventually fall out anyways :P

steve jobs is extremely equal to, or slightely larger than "coz"?

or... Steve Jobs is racing forward very fast.... uhm... what do you mean?

[ju5tin81]

Seems like such a wasted opportunity that Apple spent so many years shipping rubbish GPUs... ;)

[Zortrium]

Seems like such a wasted opportunity that Apple spent so many years shipping rubbish GPUs... ;)

I take my Alu MB as Apple's atonement. :p

[MacGohil]

steve jobs is extremely equal to, or slightely larger than "coz"?

or... Steve Jobs is racing forward very fast.... uhm... what do you mean?

"====>" = "Implies" :rolleyes:

[Cromulent]

It may take a while for user apps to catch up but SL is going to make for some very interesting realtime apps.

Unfortunately Mac OS X is not and will never be a real time operating system. Maybe Mac OS XI will be?

[bigwig]

OpenCL and Grand Central are single handedly going make Snow Leopard the best OS ever.
I'd much rather have ZFS as the standard filesystem.

[MrCrowbar]

Unfortunately Mac OS X is not and will never be a real time operating system. Maybe Mac OS XI will be?

I think he meant things like on-the-fly calculations, effects and the like. Pretty much all consumer operating systems aren't realtime.

[Dreamer2go]

I'm not an advance tech person, so I would like to ask:

How would my Santa Rosa (June 2007) MBP benefit from this OpenCL and Snow Leopard?
(I keep thinking multiple cores = quad core+, not duo core)

[4np]

I'm not an advance tech person, so I would like to ask:

How would my Santa Rosa (June 2007) MBP benefit from this OpenCL and Snow Leopard?
(I keep thinking multiple cores = quad core+, not duo core)

I have the same MBP. If I understand correctly, it's your dual core processor and the GPU. Applications on your MBP (if developed using this functionality) can use the processing power of your GPU as well. Which is even more interesting on the unibody MBP's, as these have dual core processors and two GPU's...

[attila]

"====>" = "Implies" :rolleyes:

so... Steve Jobs implies "because MS will fall anyway" ?

Still doesn't make sense :o

Steve Jobs is, therefore Microsoft will not? :)

[MacFly123]

OpenCL and Grand Central are single handedly going make Snow Leopard the best OS ever. With M$ scratching their heads, still trying to figure out how to patch the Vista and sell it as Windows-7 they are going to loose the race. Linux and OSX will emerge as two heavyweight OSs in next few years. M$ is history.

I know there will be many of the opinion that most commercial / development houses still use Windows. But from the present trend and companies trying not to rely on flawed windows have already started to migrate to Linux and OSX. I work for a leading edge technology company and half of my companies computers are already using linux and osx for core development stuff.

For Apple to win, M$ does not have to loose..... Steve Jobs ====> coz M$ will eventually fall out anyways :P

I agree! I think we have past the tipping point and Microsoft is screwed in more ways than one.

Windows is their main source of revenue and is way behind and has a horribly tarnished reputation. So much so that now even possibly HP and Google are secretly making their own OSs. This is after people already are staying away from Vista like a plague and will be maybe even more afraid of Windows 7 because of that.

Windows Mobile sucks, and is already being dominated by OS X iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, etc. And they won't even have Windows Mobile 7 out till the end of next year...wow!

Any OS that Microsoft makes is so crappy and so behind with no successor due to be out for so long that PC vendors like HP and cell phone vendors like HTC are developing their own software wrapped around the OS to try and make it even slightly appealing.

Windows Live and the whole Yahoo thing seems very desperate and is being dominated by Google.

Zune is not even branded as Microsoft because their name would tarnish the products attempts to be cool and is still nothing with no revenue.

X-Box is also not branded as Microsoft because it would tarnish it as uncool and is also still no source or revenue.

Ballmer says he wants to be the software on the phones instead of the hardware while Apple now has more market share in mobile OSs than Windows Mobile PLUS the hardware on top of that all while Microsoft copies Apple's hardware + software model with the Zune and X-Box but can't even turn a profit.

Seriously, Microsoft spends billions more to make products and is so behind and inefficient, why in the HELL has Steve Ballmer not been fired as C.E.O.??? He is nothing more than a moron that rode the coat tails of Bill Gates. Imagine what a company with those resources could do if they actually had a good visionary leader.

Apple is going to keep gaining huge market share in consumer and business, in computers and the mobile arena and their ecosystem will become even stronger than it already is.

Snow Leopard is going to be awesome and will trickle into OS X iPhone and every other product that now has OS X imbeded. I am very excited :D

[spetznatz]

OpenCL and Grand Central are single handedly going make Snow Leopard the best OS ever.

No, a new and better Finder will make SL the best OS ever...;)

But, yes, I agree, these technologies do sound extremely interesting.

But I'd still like to see a "One last thing...did we mention the new Finder?" at SL's launch. I can dream, can't I?

[MacGohil]

No, a new and better Finder will make SL the best OS ever...;)

But, yes, I agree, these technologies do sound extremely interesting.

But I'd still like to see a "One last thing...did we mention the new Finder?" at SL's launch. I can dream, can't I?

Finder is very close to perfection, some missing features like cut-n-paste need to be added pretty soon so that PC-switchers.... are not let down by missing basic features like this one....

On the same note, why is it so difficult for apple to implement copy-n-paste on iPhone and cut-n-paste in Finder. Bring it on apple. We know there are some great projects and products under the wraps at Apple labs and the RnD team is working real hard but something so trivial should be addressed asap.

[Mackan]

Perhaps this will be as revolutionary as Core Animation.

[alexbates]

But I'd still like to see a "One last thing...did we mention the new Finder?" at SL's launch. I can dream, can't I?

Yes, this is what I've been hoping for. I hope it will be redesigned as well as written in cocoa.

[Palad1]

This thing is definitively coming to the iPhone. Can't tell whether the SDK will allow openCL for us mere mortal iPhone devs though.

Let's have a look at the acknowledgements section from http://www.khronos.org/registry/cl/specs/opencl-1.0.29.pdf

Tally:
Apple 21
Intel 14
ARM 3
Broadcom 1
Freescale 1
Qualcomm 1
Texas Instruments 2

-- leftovers from the PC world --
AMD 12
Blizzard 1
Codeplay 2
NVIDIA 7
Electronic Arts 2
Ericsson 3
IBM 5

[Veri]

Gooooooooo wrapper for primitive GPU operations^W^W^W^WCUDA^Wrevolutionary Apple-divined OpenCL! Now the limited subset of embarrassingly GPU-parallel algorithms can be expressed in quasi-C!

Software engineering: because tools are better if they're all made to look like a familiar hammer. Meanwhile, real data-parallel languages are relegated to those whose control freakery doesn't marry them to imperative programming.

[wizard]

Unfortunately Mac OS X is not and will never be a real time operating system. Maybe Mac OS XI will be?

I wasn't making a reference to realtime operating systems which at this point I don't believe have a place on the desktop. What I'm talking about is apps that can respond instantly to user input while managing large data sets. If not instantly at least allow for interactive processing that isn't hobbled with extreme waits for data processing.

I suspect that you know the difference here but needed to highlight the vastly different uses of realtime. For many of the novice here the idea that a computer action may have a deadline is a bit strange.

Dave

[jackfrost123]

This are historic news, we should all be very proud of the company we love and support that they are once again in the forefront of innovation.:apple:

[JMax1]

Does this mean viruses will be cross platform too?

[Macmel]

OpenCL and Grand Central are single handedly going make Snow Leopard the best OS ever. With M$ scratching their heads, still trying to figure out how to patch the Vista and sell it as Windows-7 they are going to loose the race. Linux and OSX will emerge as two heavyweight OSs in next few years. M$ is history.

I know there will be many of the opinion that most commercial / development houses still use Windows. But from the present trend and companies trying not to rely on flawed windows have already started to migrate to Linux and OSX. I work for a leading edge technology company and half of my companies computers are already using linux and osx for core development stuff.

For Apple to win, M$ does not have to loose..... Steve Jobs ====> coz M$ will eventually fall out anyways :P

Maybe in that imaginary world of yours that's what is happening. In the real world, there's absolutely no chance that a company is gonna spend $1500 in a computer to do something that can be done with a $800 one from Dell. Imagine if they have to buy 100 computers... Only very specialized companies (Video or sound editing, graphic design, etc) will go for Mac. And even that is being jeopardized by Apple's poor hardware decisions lately.
People could not car less about OpenCL and Grand Central. They want check their email and browse the internet. That's 85% of the people buying computers. Some of them also want to play videogames, but this guys usually customize their computers a lot, something you can't do with Macs.
People don't like change. If you are used to Vista, you don't wanna use OSX (let alone Linux) because it feels weird to adapt. And again, most people don't care if it takes advantage of the GPU or manages the RAM better, because most people don't even know what RAM is.

[PeterQC]

. And even that is being jeopardized by Apple's poor hardware decisions lately.


I've been to many graphic design companies as part of my course. I've seen a lot of Macs, more then windows system, which were mainly used by the secretary and managing part of the companies. I know these companies could care less about the new Apple led display, since I've seen almost none.

[wizard]

This thing is definitively coming to the iPhone. Can't tell whether the SDK will allow openCL for us mere mortal iPhone devs though.

I'm not sure there are useful resources on the current iPhone to make use of OpenCL. Long term though it does look like they have intentions to exploit embedded devices. The question in my mind is this will OpenCL be using GPU's on future iPhones or more specialized hardware.

See the thing is OpenCL can be used to leverage other hardware like DSP's and such.


Let's have a look at the acknowledgements section from http://www.khronos.org/registry/cl/specs/opencl-1.0.29.pdf

Nice fine!

.....
-- leftovers from the PC world --
AMD 12

You shouldn't be so hard on AMD, I could see Apple using their hardware in future devices. AMD would be an especially good fit in a Mini replacement.

Blizzard 1
Codeplay 2
NVIDIA 7
Electronic Arts 2
Ericsson 3
IBM 5

One thing OpenCL demonstrates is that Apple is looking well out into the future here. They are showing sound leadership. Now my greatest wish is that they don't rush baking this cake, we have had to many burnt offerings from Apple lately. So lets hope that SL stays in the oven until done just right.

Dave

[Trip.Tucker]

Maybe in that imaginary world of yours that's what is happening. In the real world, there's absolutely no chance that a company is gonna spend $1500 in a computer to do something that can be done with a $800 one from Dell. Imagine if they have to buy 100 computers... Only very specialized companies (Video or sound editing, graphic design, etc) will go for Mac. And even that is being jeopardized by Apple's poor hardware decisions lately.
People could not car less about OpenCL and Grand Central. They want check their email and browse the internet. That's 85% of the people buying computers. Some of them also want to play videogames, but this guys usually customize their computers a lot, something you can't do with Macs.
People don't like change. If you are used to Vista, you don't wanna use OSX (let alone Linux) because it feels weird to adapt. And again, most people don't care if it takes advantage of the GPU or manages the RAM better, because most people don't even know what RAM is.

Ahh ye of little experience. I'll get you started here on your journey to understanding how a corporate works. Or any business for that matter.
1. Applying the way you as a consumer purchases a computer system or service or product should never ever be applied to a business entity. 2 very different ROI's. The initial cost is a very small part of the solution as a whole.

2. Development programs care very much about the frameworks and environments that are presented.

3. People liking or disliking change is irrelevant. Without change and a dynamic poise, a company is doomed to failure or a monotonous decline into obscurity.

[mdriftmeyer]

OpenCL and Grand Central are single handedly going make Snow Leopard the best OS ever. With M$ scratching their heads, still trying to figure out how to patch the Vista and sell it as Windows-7 they are going to loose the race. Linux and OSX will emerge as two heavyweight OSs in next few years. M$ is history.

I know there will be many of the opinion that most commercial / development houses still use Windows. But from the present trend and companies trying not to rely on flawed windows have already started to migrate to Linux and OSX. I work for a leading edge technology company and half of my companies computers are already using linux and osx for core development stuff.

For Apple to win, M$ does not have to loose..... Steve Jobs ====> coz M$ will eventually fall out anyways :P

Agreed. Even in the CAD Industry the growing consensus is for Autodesk to move their applications to Linux and OS X, while EOL on XP and wait until Microsoft proves something with Microsoft 7.

[mdriftmeyer]

This thing is definitively coming to the iPhone. Can't tell whether the SDK will allow openCL for us mere mortal iPhone devs though.

Let's have a look at the acknowledgements section from http://www.khronos.org/registry/cl/specs/opencl-1.0.29.pdf

Tally:
Apple 21
Intel 14
ARM 3
Broadcom 1
Freescale 1
Qualcomm 1
Texas Instruments 2

-- leftovers from the PC world --
AMD 12
Blizzard 1
Codeplay 2
NVIDIA 7
Electronic Arts 2
Ericsson 3
IBM 5

Leftovers? Besides APPLE, the main designers are AMD, Intel and Nvidia. Obviously EA wants their gaming systems to leverage it, along side other game players. IBM will use it for advanced research and application services. Broadcom, TI, Freescale and Qualcomm will use it for all sorts of market spaces.

Intel, of all the people are behind the curve when it comes to GPGPU work and aren't targeting the heavy end work that AMD and Nvidia will continue to dominate.

AMD has turned the corner and their cards and more are going to give Nvidia a serious run for their money.

[Kwill]

Finder is very close to perfection, some missing features like cut-n-paste need to be added pretty soon so that PC-switchers.... are not let down by missing basic features like this one....

On the same note, why is it so difficult for apple to implement copy-n-paste on iPhone and cut-n-paste in Finder. Bring it on apple... something so trivial should be addressed asap.

Copy-and-paste is, of course, a glaring omission on the iPhone. However, cut-and-paste in the Finder sounds like a potential nightmare. What if someone "cuts" an important application or file and is interrupted by a phone call or steps away from the computer, forgetting to "paste" it somewhere? Where does it go? It makes more sense to drag and drop. For the PC types, Apple has already implemented copy-and-paste for document and file icons (OS X 10.4).

On the matter of OpenCL, this sounds very promising! Cross-platform products would not have to write custom code to take advantage of whatever processing power is available (CPUs+GPUs).

[xUKHCx]

Copy-and-paste is, of course, a glaring omission on the iPhone. However, cut-and-paste in the Finder sounds like a potential nightmare. What if someone "cuts" an important application or file and is interrupted by a phone call or steps away from the computer, forgetting to "paste" it somewhere? Where does it go? It makes more sense to drag and drop. For the PC types, Apple has already implemented copy-and-paste for document and file icons (OS X 10.4).

That is a very old variant of Cut and paste. It no longer works like this in windows (and hasn't done for a long time). When you cut a file it becomes greyed out then if you decide not to paste it anywhere the file then ungreys and is perfectly normal.


I am interested in seeing how this directly relates to overall computer use. It is an interesting technology and no doubt will make advances in software quicker.

[jackfrost123]

I've been to many graphic design companies as part of my course. I've seen a lot of Macs, more then windows system, which were mainly used by the secretary and managing part of the companies. I know these companies could care less about the new Apple led display, since I've seen almost none.

Yeah why don't you ask the guys over the microsoft's multibillion ad campains where they design their pictures for the ads, because all of them where found in the metadata to be from macs!!!:D:D:D:D:apple:

[SBeardsl]

No, a new and better Finder will make SL the best OS ever...;)Then you will love 10.7 when they finally work the kinks out of the rewritten Finder from 10.6. ;)

Its a task that needs to be done and moving to Cocoa will provide a foundation to address a number of issues but expecting the version 1.0 of any rewrite to be as smooth, stable, and polished as the mature version it replaces is asking for disappointment.

If the Finder is rewritten in SL then it will take advantage of all the 'comes for free' benefits of the true Cocoa frameworks but will ship with annoying bugs, features regressions, and UI inconstancies compared to the current version. While the user base screams bloody murder Apple will keep patching away at it and by the time SL starts to reach the end of its update cycle the new Finder will be close to as stable, functional, and UI complete as the one it replaced.

Much like OpenCL, it will take until the NEXT full OS revision before the new and more powerful foundation truly begins to be taken advantage of.

[TuckBodi]

Maybe in that imaginary world of yours that's what is happening. In the real world, there's absolutely no chance that a company is gonna spend $1500 in a computer to do something that can be done with a $800 one from Dell. Imagine if they have to buy 100 computers... Only very specialized companies (Video or sound editing, graphic design, etc) will go for Mac. And even that is being jeopardized by Apple's poor hardware decisions lately.
People could not car less about OpenCL and Grand Central. They want check their email and browse the internet. That's 85% of the people buying computers. Some of them also want to play videogames, but this guys usually customize their computers a lot, something you can't do with Macs.
People don't like change. If you are used to Vista, you don't wanna use OSX (let alone Linux) because it feels weird to adapt. And again, most people don't care if it takes advantage of the GPU or manages the RAM better, because most people don't even know what RAM is.

While I agree with most of what you say I look back in history and always see people wanting/needing more speed. Where the browser is today isn't where it will be tomorrow. Web 2.0+ is gonna require beefier hardware and hopefully Apple will be there waiting.

That said, has anybody seen any remarks about how Grand central and now OpenCL is affecting the speed in the latest Snow Leopard builds? I would think we'd start seeing something soon..

[diamond.g]

Web 2.0+ is gonna require beefier hardware and hopefully Apple will be there waiting.

Bandwidth limited not hardware limited.

[chabig]

Finder is very close to perfection, some missing features like cut-n-paste need to be added pretty soon so that PC-switchers.... are not let down by missing basic features like this one.

The only reason cut and paste is useful in Windows is because the Windows style of displaying files and the entire method of window management sucks. That's not true on Mac OS.

[Rorikynn]

As a developer, Snow Leopard will be an exciting release, for sure. So many nice changes under the hood:

ZFS
Grand Central
OpenCL
More Cocoa Apps
64-bit kernel

[AidenShaw]

OpenCL and Grand Central are single handedly going make Snow Leopard the best OS ever.

Once again, the forum is full of over-hyped posts about how the "next thing" is going to be revolutionary...

...and when 10.6 ships the forum will be filled with the wailings of those disappointed by the reality.
___

Face it, most people won't get any significant benefit from OpenCL - because most systems don't have enough cores and GPU pipelines to exploit it, and because most applications won't be able to use it. (And on launch day, even those apps which could exploit it won't have been re-written yet....)

In the mid term, people using the maxi-tower with optional graphics cards for rendering will be quite happy. Eventually, when quad/octo core CPUs are common, and Larrabee embedded graphics is here, even the people with Apple consumer machines will see a boost for some apps.

So many people here are setting themselves up to be let down by 10.6.

And, by the way, if Apple is all about "innovation", why has it taken them so long to simply use the MPEG/H.264 hardware decoders that have been in the graphics cards all along?

[guzhogi]

These kinds of articles always make me wonder how efficient operating systems/software/even programming languages are these days. When many of these languages & basic operating systems (C, C++, Unix) were originally developed before multi-core, gpus, etc. were created, much less available in personal computers.

[jackfrost123]

And, by the way, if Apple is all about "innovation", why has it taken them so long to simply use the MPEG/H.264 hardware decoders that have been in the graphics cards all along?

Well they were by far the first to use h.264 endoding a standard in both mp3 players and computers, and h.264 decoding in cards is fairly recent.

[AidenShaw]

Well they were by far the first to use h.264 endoding a standard in both mp3 players and computers, and h.264 decoding in cards is fairly recent.

So, Apple using AAC in an Igadget defends their lack of innovation in OSX?

Meanwhile, all your MPEG-2 DVDs that you have now have been stuttering and skipping.... ;)

And if people think Redmond is asleep on the parallel computing front, you should check out
Harnessing a multicore future (http://blogs.zdnet.com/carroll/?p=1892)
Microsoft Parallel Computing Developer Center (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/concurrency/default.aspx)

Apple's main advantage in parallel computing may simply be their "catchy naming department", as Microsoft embeds parallel computing in .NET itself....

[amac4me]

Snow Leopard is gonna kick some Windows you know what :D

[jackfrost123]

Meanwhile, all your MPEG-2 DVDs that you have now have been stuttering and skipping.... ;)

And if people think Redmond is asleep on the parallel computing front, you should check out
Harnessing a multicore future (http://blogs.zdnet.com/carroll/?p=1892)
Microsoft Parallel Computing Developer Center (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/concurrency/default.aspx)

Apple's main advantage in parallel computing may simply be their "catchy naming department", as Microsoft embeds parallel computing in .NET itself....

No of course they are not that's why circa 2009 they 've yet to implement control-s functionality for save as in their ie browser or EVEN (low and behold the superhuman task that is) saving in the backgroudh in internet explorer, so you don't just sit watching that little pain in the ass dialog box saving and waiting it for it to get done with it so you can resume with your browsing....brilliant, brilliant stuff...

I mean one thing that you could say for the guys at redmond would be that they are not asleep at all...:rolleyes: ...too bad they are immense morons though...

[eyephone]

I agree! I think we have past the tipping point and Microsoft is screwed in more ways than one.

Windows is their main source of revenue and is way behind and has a horribly tarnished reputation. So much so that now even possibly HP and Google are secretly making their own OSs. This is after people already are staying away from Vista like a plague and will be maybe even more afraid of Windows 7 because of that.

:D

Microsoft Office and their Server platforms are Microsoft's main source of revenue. Windows is only a small part of their income that keeps a median income for them.

[AidenShaw]

they 've yet to implement control-s functionality for the ie browser

What do you think <ctrl>S should do in a browser?


...or EVEN (low and behold the superhuman task that is) saving in the backgroudh in internet explorer, so you don't just sit watching that little pain in the ass dialog box saving and waiting it for it to get done with it so you can resume with your browsing....

I don't know what's wrong with you or your system, but when I have a "downloading" box running I can continue to browse in the other windows and tabs. Downloads are not single threaded in IE.

For spec compliance, traffic control and netiquette, IE normally allows two concurrent download threads - if you want more it's easy to raise the download thread count (http://www.fortypoundhead.com/showcontent.asp?artid=19470).

[eyephone]

Snow Leopard is gonna kick some Windows you know what :D

How about OSX XI "shutters?"

GEt it?

[kbmb]

Face it, most people won't get any significant benefit from OpenCL - because most systems don't have enough cores and GPU pipelines to exploit it, and because most applications won't be able to use it. (And on launch day, even those apps which could exploit it won't have been re-written yet....)

In the mid term, people using the maxi-tower with optional graphics cards for rendering will be quite happy. Eventually, when quad/octo core CPUs are common, and Larrabee embedded graphics is here, even the people with Apple consumer machines will see a boost for some apps.

So many people here are setting themselves up to be let down by 10.6.

And, by the way, if Apple is all about "innovation", why has it taken them so long to simply use the MPEG/H.264 hardware decoders that have been in the graphics cards all along?

Wow...it sure sounds like Apple is innovating when it comes to OpenCL then huh? Apple is putting in place a technology that won't be used as much at launch, but as hardware and applications catch up to it, they will benefit.

Apple can't be perfect on everything....at least give them credit on OpenCL for looking forward to the future.

Now when(if) Intel gets Larrabee out to the masses, OpenCL will be there ready to be utilized. Although I'm guessing that even the new MacBooks with the NVidia chipset would benefit now.

I do think Snow Leopard will be much improved in overall performance for most machines. It's not going to be without it's bugs/quirks, but Apple is positioning themselves and their OS for the future. It's a nice step in the right direction.

Windows 7 on the other hand...well....I won't go there ;)

-Kevin

[lunarworks]

The transformation of GPUs from graphics-specific chips into a more general-purpose processor sort of reminds me of the time when CPUs were paired with a "math coprocessor".

[Duke2]

My biggest question is whether the new functionality of using multiple processors, when built into Snow Leopard, will help me with the current unibody aluminum MBP's who have two GPU's?? The one thing I'm not crazy at all about with these machines is the hurky way you need to reset the computer to use either the integrated or discrete GPU with no ability to switch 'on the fly'.

I mean that really sucks. If someone buys the new OS software and installs it in the current MBP, will they have more seamless transition between GPU's or would that require hardware changes too- ie would need to buy the next gen MBP??

[BenRoethig]

OpenCL and Grand Central are single handedly going make Snow Leopard the best OS ever. With M$ scratching their heads, still trying to figure out how to patch the Vista and sell it as Windows-7 they are going to loose the race. Linux and OSX will emerge as two heavyweight OSs in next few years. M$ is history.

Unfortunately, like most Mac OS X's better features, OpenCL and Grand Central need a Mac Pro to take full advantage.

[wesg]

This only further increases my excitement of 10.6.

Anyone else going to be waiting in line at the Eaton Centre in Toronto?

[commander.data]

Now that it's ratified and released the question is how many and which GPUs can support OpenCL and how quickly will stable drivers come out. All DX10 and up GPUs can already do some type of GPGPU work even the S3 Chrome, so they should all work with OpenCL.

I wonder if the X1600 and X1900 will though. These really were the first GPGPUs available to consumers and were the first GPUs to accelerate things like video transcode with the AVIVO video convertor and Folding clients. Hopefully, Apple and ATI were smart enough to define OpenCL in a way so they can make an OpenCL driver for them given the number of Macs with X1600 (2 MBP and 2 iMac generations) and the X1900 in the Mac Pros.

And for drivers in general they should get out sooner rather than later. Microsoft isn't standing still on GPGPU and will be incorporating it in DX11. One major advantage OpenCL has besides being cross-platform, is that it's now released a year ahead of DX11 and Windows 7. They should capitalize on this time and release as many things as possible so there is an established base before DX11 gives people another option.

[overcast]

OpenCL and Grand Central are single handedly going make Snow Leopard the best OS ever. With M$ scratching their heads, still trying to figure out how to patch the Vista and sell it as Windows-7 they are going to loose the race. Linux and OSX will emerge as two heavyweight OSs in next few years. M$ is history.

I know there will be many of the opinion that most commercial / development houses still use Windows. But from the present trend and companies trying not to rely on flawed windows have already started to migrate to Linux and OSX. I work for a leading edge technology company and half of my companies computers are already using linux and osx for core development stuff.

For Apple to win, M$ does not have to loose..... Steve Jobs ====> coz M$ will eventually fall out anyways :P
You are absolutely delusional if you think Microsoft and its Windows OS are going ANYWHERE. How many more decades are you people going to continue to say MS is failing? 90% monopoly, you're right no one uses it. Linux emerging as the heavyweight desktop OS? LOL. That is NEVER going to happen. EVER. Apple will continue to gain ground in the desktop market but please use some logic before commenting in the future.

Developer and programmer preference in an OS environment has nothing to do with the general population that makes up 99.9% of the market. Most people have been developing on Suns, SGI and every other variety of UNIX hardware since the dawn of computer.

[MacTravelerBoi]

I've been hoping something like this was in the wind. I'll be looking forward to the future when SL eventually hits the market.

[swimm3r137]

Assuming MacWorld 2009 will be dope (which it will), I'm buying two new things starting in 2009: 1) New macbook pro with nathem--ooooooooh yea and 2) snow leopard for my macbook pro

[Macmel]

Ahh ye of little experience. I'll get you started here on your journey to understanding how a corporate works. Or any business for that matter.
1. Applying the way you as a consumer purchases a computer system or service or product should never ever be applied to a business entity. 2 very different ROI's. The initial cost is a very small part of the solution as a whole.

2. Development programs care very much about the frameworks and environments that are presented.

3. People liking or disliking change is irrelevant. Without change and a dynamic poise, a company is doomed to failure or a monotonous decline into obscurity.

1.-) I didn't explain myself properly, I see. On one hand, I was talking about a company. Any company whose output is not directly related to computers (that is, they don't produce software, images, videos, etc), does not need a supercomputer: lawyers don't need a Mac, insurance companies don't need a Mac, Car makers only need Macs in the design & engineer section, etc. If all you need is Word, excel and PPT, you don't need a Mac. Actually Office for Windows works even better than for Macs. I you have to buy computers for your, I don't know, 100 accountants working with excel and you buy them iMacs instead of $600 Dells you don't know a word about business. You are wasting precious money you can use for something else. Full stop.

2.-) I didn't mix the needs of personal computer users with those of a company. My point is if OSX wants to have any significant presence in the market, you have to conquer the regular user market. Here it applies what I mentioned before.

3.-) Outside the US, Apple presence is basically insignificant and 99% ligated to companies or businesses. Regular people don't buy Macs for home.
Tell me how Apple is winning. I live in France right now and besides me, that I use the Mac for work (and another person working with me) I don't know of any single person owning a Mac. Even other people working with me own PCs to do the same job I do. The 10% market for Macs is basically located in the US.

[ricosuave]

For those doubters of Redmond's R&D projects out there, feast your eyes on this...:eek:

http://www.macworld.com/article/137391/2008/12/microsoft_softwear.html

[commander.data]

For those doubters of Redmond's R&D projects out there, feast your eyes on this...:eek:

http://www.macworld.com/article/137391/2008/12/microsoft_softwear.html
It must be one of their jokes. Microsoft employees really do have quite a good sense of humor about themselves and produces good videos even if Microsoft as a company doesn't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WazA77xcf0A

I still find the oPhone pretty funny, and MS employees did a pretty good video for Vista SP1 too. Keep in mind these are MS employees making fun of themselves.

[daveporter]

In the real world, there's absolutely no chance that a company is gonna spend $1500 in a computer to do something that can be done with a $800 one from Dell.

Actually, this is happening quite frequently at this time. I own a consulting firm and a recording studio. In both businesses we started moving away from the Windows Platform in 2006 when the Intel Mac Pros were introduced. Since that time we have completely moved to the Mac platform and now have no Windows machines in either company.

There reasons we made this move is multifaceted, however, the bottom line is that the Mac is much more cost effective as far as total cost of ownership and operation is concerned. First cost, which you quote in your post, is only a small part of the equation.

Dave

[poundsmack]

I hope SUN uses this to in solaris. i dream one day of having a power mac with an all ZFS drives (even the boot sector's for OSX and Solaris) and dual booting the both of them.. mmmmm give me warm fuzzies inside just thinking of it.

[commander.data]

Actually, this is happening quite frequently at this time. I own a consulting firm and a recording studio. In both businesses we started moving away from the Windows Platform in 2006 when the Intel Mac Pros were introduced. Since that time we have completely moved to the Mac platform and now have no Windows machines in either company.

There reasons we made this move is multifaceted, however, the bottom line is that the Mac is much more cost effective as far as total cost of ownership and operation is concerned. First cost, which you quote in your post, is only a small part of the equation.

Dave
If I'm not mistaken the Mac Pros actually have the most value in their class. I don't think even Dell or HP offers a workstation with dual Xeons at the Mac Pro's price that uses 1600MHz FSB processors with DDR2-800 FB-DIMMs instead of cheaper 1333MHz FSB parts and DDR2 667 FB-DIMMs that are more common. Admittedly though, Apple skimps on the GPU.

[markie]

Y'all are crazy if you think Windows Vista is a failure because people are scared of it. They were scared to death of XP too and stayed with Windows 98 and 2000 for YEARS despite how vastly superiour to 98 and clearly improved from 2000 Vista was.

EVERY Windows release gets the same thing - even Windows 95 way back. How short your memories are. Microsoft cannot release an OS people want to upgrade to. It never has.

In 2009 or 2010, Windows Vista should be much better accepted - the tipping point will be when Windows 7 is released and people want downgrades to Vista...

That's the Microsoft product cycle and always has been. Kinda a sad reflection on their inability to deliver a compelling feature set, eh?

[acquinn]

This'll be interesting to see if my general tasks speed up or is this mostly applied to cpu-intensive stuff?

[twoodcc]

one step closer to snow leopard! great news. can't wait for macworld, hopefully we'll hear a lot about snow leopard, and maybe a release date

[jackfrost123]

It must be one of their jokes. Microsoft employees really do have quite a good sense of humor about themselves and produces good videos even if Microsoft as a company doesn't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WazA77xcf0A

I still find the oPhone pretty funny, and MS employees did a pretty good video for Vista SP1 too. Keep in mind these are MS employees making fun of themselves.

I find it rather macabre that their humour is to the expense of every poor soul who's never dealth with computers and is forced via military coup and non standards some decades ago to suffer through their atrocious software. It's really not funny at, it's really the definition of unfunny. :eek::mad::rolleyes:

Man, 99% of humanity would love to go up to Redmond and woop their collective ass for the pain they have put us through all these years...

[lowbatteries]

Actually, this is happening quite frequently at this time. I own a consulting firm and a recording studio. In both businesses we started moving away from the Windows Platform in 2006 when the Intel Mac Pros were introduced. Since that time we have completely moved to the Mac platform and now have no Windows machines in either company.

There reasons we made this move is multifaceted, however, the bottom line is that the Mac is much more cost effective as far as total cost of ownership and operation is concerned. First cost, which you quote in your post, is only a small part of the equation.

Dave

Total cost of ownership is definitely one thing companies always look at, while consumers won't. That's why the "half the price" iPhone numbers skyrocketed. It was actually just "half the initial price", but consumers don't always think that way.

You can buy a $600 Dell. You own it for 2 years, paying for antivirus/spyware solutions and tech support the whole time. You buy a Mac for $1200, own it for 4 years, with no antivirus and little tech support needed. Right there your cost per year is already better with a Mac. Not to mention you probably have more hair left after owning the Mac.

Want a backup solution for all the computers in your small business? Configure all the Macs in the office to back up their home folders with Time Machine to central storage. SO easy to set up, the boss could do it. With Windows ... call in a tech firm.

1.-)
3.-) Outside the US, Apple presence is basically insignificant and 99% ligated to companies or businesses. Regular people don't buy Macs for home.
Tell me how Apple is winning. I live in France right now and besides me, that I use the Mac for work (and another person working with me) I don't know of any single person owning a Mac. Even other people working with me own PCs to do the same job I do. The 10% market for Macs is basically located in the US.

Yes, but we're talking about the future here, not the present. I believe that Apple will have less than 50% market share and Windows will have greater than 50% for a long time, but those numbers are steadily going in Apple's favor.

Walk into any coffee shop in my small Idaho college town and you see a sea of glowing Apple logos, iPhones, and white earbuds. Its amazing how Apple's products still stand out even when they are everywhere. College campuses are teeming with Macs, and when they go off to start businesses or work in their fields, Macs are what they are going to prefer.

[jackfrost123]

Y'all are crazy if you think Windows Vista is a failure because people are scared of it. They were scared to death of XP too and stayed with Windows 98 and 2000 for YEARS despite how vastly superiour to 98 and clearly improved from 2000 Vista was.

EVERY Windows release gets the same thing - even Windows 95 way back. How short your memories are. Microsoft cannot release an OS people want to upgrade to. It never has.

In 2009 or 2010, Windows Vista should be much better accepted - the tipping point will be when Windows 7 is released and people want downgrades to Vista...

That's the Microsoft product cycle and always has been. Kinda a sad reflection on their inability to deliver a compelling feature set, eh?

No you are wrong, people where not asking for downgrades to 2000 when xp were released, but they asking now because vista is such an overbloated mega flop, and their asking en masse. Maybe they were not so quick to adopt xp, but then again it didn't come for free right did it, so it's not much saying that they didn't adopt fast enough a product that came at an extra cost and with little real improvements. And rest assured they will correct their atrocities with 7 and now one will ever look back on this vista thing, because ms migh be a bunch of incapable types but the're is a whole lot of them, and even they at some point GET IT, some of it at least....:cool::apple:

[lowbatteries]

Y'all are crazy if you think Windows Vista is a failure because people are scared of it. They were scared to death of XP too and stayed with Windows 98 and 2000 for YEARS despite how vastly superiour to 98 and clearly improved from 2000 Vista was.

EVERY Windows release gets the same thing - even Windows 95 way back. How short your memories are. Microsoft cannot release an OS people want to upgrade to. It never has.

In 2009 or 2010, Windows Vista should be much better accepted - the tipping point will be when Windows 7 is released and people want downgrades to Vista...

That's the Microsoft product cycle and always has been. Kinda a sad reflection on their inability to deliver a compelling feature set, eh?

I thinks its because upgrading Windows has as much impact on your comfort bubble as a complete OS switch. Software you are used to doesn't work any more, you have to get new peripherals ... might as well just switch to OS X or Ubuntu.

No you are wrong, people where not asking for downgrades to 2000 when xp were released, but they asking now because vista is such an overbloated mega flop, and their asking en masse. Maybe they were not so quick to adopt xp, but then again it didn't come for free right did it, so it's not much saying that they didn't adopt fast enough a product that came at an extra cost and with little real improvements. And rest assured they will correct their atrocities with 7 and now one will ever look back on this vista thing, because ms migh be a bunch of incapable types but the're is a whole lot of them, and even they at some point GET IT, some of it at least....:cool::apple:

People WERE very reluctant to upgrade to XP because of instability and driver conflicts, etc. The same stuff you are hearing about Vista today. Even thought at the heart XP is much better than Windows 98. I'm sure eventually Vista's kinks will be worked out to the point that people prefer it to XP.

Contrast this with Leopard - it was not a free upgrade either and there was a huge rush to get it. I installed it within the first couple weeks it was out and have never looked back to Tiger - its like Tiger is Leopard Lite.

[PeterQVenkman]

Total cost of ownership is definitely one thing companies always look at, while consumers won't. That's why the "half the price" iPhone numbers skyrocketed. It was actually just "half the initial price", but consumers don't always think that way.

You can buy a $600 Dell. You own it for 2 years, paying for antivirus/spyware solutions and tech support the whole time. You buy a Mac
for $1200, own it for 4 years, with no antivirus and little tech support needed. Right there your cost per year is already better with a Mac.

Want a backup solution for all the computers in your small business? Configure all the Macs in the office to back up their home folders with Time Machine to central storage. SO easy to set up, the boss could do it. With Windows ... call in a tech firm.



Yes, but we're talking about the future here, not the present. I believe that Apple will have less than 50% market share and Windows will have greater than 50% for a long time, but those numbers are steadily going in Apple's favor.

Walk into any coffee shop in my small Idaho college town and you see a sea of glowing Apple logos, iPhones, and white earbuds. Its amazing how Apple's products still stand out even when they are everywhere. College campuses are teeming with Macs, and when they go off to start businesses or work in their fields, Macs are what they are going to prefer.

Those are all well thought out, rational arguments.

I unfortunately use 64-bit applications across the board on my PC. I had wanted to use my Apple G5 for that, but that didn't quite happen before it became a $2300 paperweight.

I use my new MacBook Pro for flash work and some realtime 3d work in Unity. For anything else, it's PC for stability, exclusive apps, memory access, and extensibility of plugins and features.

[min_t]

I'm sure Win 7 will have this feature already implemented when it releases the public beta next month. :rolleyes:

[lowbatteries]

Those are all well thought out, rational arguments.

I unfortunately use 64-bit applications across the board on my PC. I had wanted to use my Apple G5 for that, but that didn't quite happen before it became a $2300 paperweight.

I use my new MacBook Pro for flash work and some realtime 3d work in Unity. For anything else, it's PC for stability, exclusive apps, memory access, and extensibility of plugins and features.

I have a G5 running my time machine backups, hosting my iTunes, (and curing cancer (http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/)). Got it for free from someone who was using it as a paperweight. :)

What did you buy the G5 for at the time? It's potential? No, you bought it for what it could do then. It can still do all that now.

Mac for Flash? Oh the humanity! The thing I love the most creating the thing I hate the most. :eek: ;)

PC for stability and memory access? Huh?

PC for exclusive apps and extensibility? These are symptoms of market share, and will hopefully change in the future - hoping that there is a "halo effect" from iPhone programmers.

[Palad1]

You're a complete fool.
...

Hello internet.
As you can tell English isn't my main language, so the 'leftovers' actually meant 'irrelevant to the point I would like to make'

Thank you internet.

[Sweetfeld28]

This only further increases my excitement of 10.6.


I see your point, and raise you .1


Imagine once all the developers get the hang of Grand Central, or OpenCL, what they will be capable of doing/creating with it. Just imagine 10.7. Can't wait.

[Winni]

Yes, Leopard already is a nice platform for home users, and Snow Leopard will probably be a bit faster and maybe even a bit nicer. But still, it's a home user platform and it won't grow out of that market niche.

Unless, maybe, the most unlikely event of all will happen: That Apple will open their software platform to non-Apple hardware.

As long as that does not happen, hell has to freeze over before the corporate world switches to the Apple platform. Most of you are probably too young to remember the time when the corporate world was dominated by IBM and IBM alone, and how they welcomed Microsoft - one industry standard software platform, but complete independence from the hardware vendor.

Now some companies welcome the Linux platforms as their liberator from the Microsoft "monopoly" - which they helped create in the first place.

But nobody wants to go back to the times when ONE vendor "ruled them all". Apple uses the same fifty year old business model IBM had used back in the day. This might work for cell phones and mp3 players, but it no longer works in large IT environments. As a matter of fact, it had ceased working in the early 1980s already, when Compaq sold their first "IBM compatible PC" and Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to them and later to all other clone vendors.

Nevertheless, Microsoft and IBM are still the biggest player in the world of corporate IT software and services, and that won't change anytime soon. The investments have been way too high, and there simply is no compelling reason to go away from the existing solutions. The TCO of Open Source software in real life is NOT below the TCO of Microsoft solutions, and OSS solutions are also not more reliable. And in most cases, they're not even really corporate-friendly or corporate-compatible. The best example is Sharepoint Portal and its Open Source "competition". (In case you haven't gotten the cynical joke: There. Is. No. Competition.) Microsoft understands the requirements of their enterprise customers. The Open Source community does not.

I have a long enough background in quite big global organizations and their IT requirements and demands. And when I was a freshly brainwashed new-born Apple user, I tried to convince the IT management of the blessings of Apple. They wiped it quicker from the table than I could look, and some of the - very valid - reasons I've mentioned above, about some some others I've blogged. Non-existent product roadmaps is another killer argument against Apple in the corporate world. And the software incompatibility of OS X to legacy applications doesn't help either. It's also a bit "pricy" to integrate them into a large network domain, if it's possible at all. Remote administration is another issue, as is centralized push installation of software or the rollout of thousands of machines with a pre-installed software image. It's probably all solvable one way or the other, but still the question remains whether it's worth it. In most cases, it's not, because there simply is not sufficient business-oriented software available for OS X. And not everything is going to the web, and many things never ever should.

Microsoft has received disastrous press resonance for Vista, probably mostly based upon glimpses at the 32-Bit edition of the system. Most companies are not excited about it either. Well, companies never were excited about a new software release, and they never will be. All a new software release ever is is new costs, usually at too little return of investment. And most companies never upgrade to every new versions. Most of the time, they skip one or even two update cycles. Many entities are currently upgrading to Windows Server 2003 or 2008... from Windows NT 4.0.

The bottom line here is that Microsoft is supporting its platforms over very long periods of time, and although Vista was a major architectural overhaul - especially in its 64-Bit incarnation - it still is highly compatible to legacy software. As a company, you can rely on a Microsoft solution for an extraordinarily long time axis, Microsoft's business products have something called longevity.

Contrary to that, the Linux developers change their APIs with every release, breaking existing code, and Apple traditionally only supports their last two platform releases, and they release major platform updates in average every 18 months. Sure, there are (commercial) Linux distributions that come with long term support, but they come at the price that you are locked-in to that specific distribution vendor, because the software for one does not necessarily run on another distribution without any changes. That kind of fragmentation is the worst enemy of Linux.

Linux has become very popular as the L in the LAMP stack, or as the foundation for database servers and as the software kernel in hardware appliances. It still is a disaster on the desktop for too many reasons to list here.

Linux might be eating some market share of Solaris, but SUN still is a big player in the data center. And SUN owns many of the technologies that power today's web server farms. The M in the LAMP stack being only one of them.

OS X Server has almost no significance and only very few customers world-wide. OS X is a desktop OS targeted at consumers and, to a certain extent, prosumers (in the traditional niche of the graphics design and audio/music and video editing business). That's a large enough niche for Apple to be successful enough as a corporation. But assuming that they will grow out of that niche with the current direction in which Apple's management is going is day-dreaming and wishful thinking.

If Apple wants to occupy a larger market niche - and I strongly doubt that they even WANT to do that - they have to open their platform to third party hardware vendors. It probably would also make perfect sense if they joined forces with SUN. Apple has the client platform, SUN the data center-ready server technology.

But we all know that none of this will ever happen. Besides certain reality distortion fields, there are also some megalomaniac management egos in that equation that don't play well with others.

And as long as even web browsers need an operating system to run on, Microsoft's position isn't endangered at all.

[morespce54]

The only reason cut and paste is useful in Windows is because the Windows style of displaying files and the entire method of window management sucks. That's not true on Mac OS.

Well, I guess it's a question of personal preferences. One of the only thing I like in Windows it's cut and paste ;)

(And maybe the fact that you can create/rename/delete any folder in almost any dialog window...)

[z-hayden]

What are the advantages of 64-bit and 32-bit

And what are the main differences? :)

[BenRoethig]

Yes, Leopard already is a nice platform for home users, and Snow Leopard will probably be a bit faster and maybe even a bit nicer. But still, it's a home user platform and it won't grow out of that market niche.

Trust me, the capabilities of Mac OS X far exceed the hardware that Apple chooses to use with it. It was not too long ago the OS for the user above the home user. The hardware changed to an almost entirely lower end consumer orientation, the OS hasn't. In fact, its gotten stronger.

[alexbates]

What are the advantages of 64-bit and 32-bit

And what are the main differences? :)

These both relate to the speeds of the processor in you computer. 64-bit is twice as fast as 32-bit.

If these speeds are included in the netbooks processor (hopefully it will continue to be x86) that might be coming out, it would be much faster than ever before.

[commander.data]

These both relate to the speeds of the processor in you computer. 64-bit is twice as fast as 32-bit.

If these speeds are included in the netbooks processor (hopefully it will continue to be x86) that might be coming out, it would be much faster than ever before.
I'm trusting that you are joking that the main difference is 64-bit being twice as fast as 32-bit.

And Atom which is the only x86 processor really designed for netbooks already supports 64-bit.

[ThunderBull4]

OpenCL and Grand Central are single handedly going make Snow Leopard the best OS ever. With M$ scratching their heads, still trying to figure out how to patch the Vista and sell it as Windows-7 they are going to loose the race. Linux and OSX will emerge as two heavyweight OSs in next few years. M$ is history.

I know there will be many of the opinion that most commercial / development houses still use Windows. But from the present trend and companies trying not to rely on flawed windows have already started to migrate to Linux and OSX. I work for a leading edge technology company and half of my companies computers are already using linux and osx for core development stuff.

For Apple to win, M$ does not have to loose..... Steve Jobs ====> coz M$ will eventually fall out anyways :P

Linus and OSx enerage as 2 heavyweights? That's a big assumption lol. Btw what leading edge technology company do you work for?

[dagger01]

MPI and OpenMP were the first, open-standard, cross-platform parallel programming APIs. This one was the "first" to integrate GPGPU, Cell, and other processors other than the main CPU(s). It's a great achievement, but a little false advertising in the post at least.

[MyDesktopBroke]

Copy-and-paste is, of course, a glaring omission on the iPhone. However, cut-and-paste in the Finder sounds like a potential nightmare. What if someone "cuts" an important application or file and is interrupted by a phone call or steps away from the computer, forgetting to "paste" it somewhere? Where does it go? It makes more sense to drag and drop. For the PC types, Apple has already implemented copy-and-paste for document and file icons (OS X 10.4).


What feature is this? I'm using 10.3.9, and I can select, say, an image file, hit cmd+c, open a new folder, hit cmd+v, and I get a copy of the image in that folder as well as where it was originally, not a shortcut/alias. What I am missing out on?

[firewood]

These both relate to the speeds of the processor in you computer. 64-bit is twice as fast as 32-bit.

Nowhere near.

If you benchmark 64-bit programs under a 64-bit OS on a modern CPU, you will find that they are nowhere near 2X as fast as 32-bit programs, especially for apps that use less than 2 to 4 GB of total RAM memory.

Nintendo used the 64-bit mode of the MIPS4200 CPU in the N64 because they found it to be around 5% to 10% faster for some operations.

.

[randyhudson]

Apple can't be perfect on everything....at least give them credit on OpenCL for looking forward to the future.

Looking into the future?! Why do you think they bundle Garage Band with every Mac? (hint: iTunes sells music)

[MattInOz]

And as long as even web browsers need an operating system to run on, Microsoft's position isn't endangered at all.

But that's the thing, web browsers don't need an OS well not at least what your average guy thinks is in OS.
People only need an OS for the stuff they do outside the Browser which isn't that much.
The browser only needs an OS because it's Hardware Extracted.

It wouldn't be that hard to build a minimal OS to support a browser like Firefox or Googles Chrome that has no User Interface outside of the browser.

I think Apple are clearly hoping someone does. The real motivation of having WebKit open source. Break the deadlock of Microsoft's position and ensure their niche is the one that stays valuable.



EDIT; Google doing their best to make OS unseen (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081209-safer-than-activex-a-look-at-googles-native-client-plugin.html)

[grue]

Finder is very close to perfection, some missing features like cut-n-paste need to be added pretty soon so that PC-switchers.... are not let down by missing basic features like this one....

Um, no. It's buggy, slow, and generally suckful.

[Sevenfeet]

I hope SUN uses this to in solaris. i dream one day of having a power mac with an all ZFS drives (even the boot sector's for OSX and Solaris) and dual booting the both of them.. mmmmm give me warm fuzzies inside just thinking of it.

You can boot Sun Sparc and x64 machines on ZFS with the latest Solaris 10 10/08 release. My ancient Sparc-based Ultra 60 was just rebuilt with bootable ZFS. If Sun can do it with 10 year old hardware and Open Firmware, I think Apple can do it with Intel hardware and EFI BIOS.

[MacGohil]

Unfortunately, like most Mac OS X's better features, OpenCL and Grand Central need a Mac Pro to take full advantage.

Apple is not trying to make an new OS that is going to give a speed bump to the existing machines or just pretty UI, thats what M$ does (Vista). It is laying the foundation for the current and next generation hardware lineup that will gain a lot of advantage from OpenCL and Grandcentral. The specs that are now standard on MacPro will be standard on lower end Macs sooner that we are anticipating.

This technological changes in OSX core might not appeal to normal users instantly. Give it some time and you will realize that as consumer hardware has exponentially increasing core numbers and GPUs this enhancements would improve the OS performance by leaps and bounds.



People don't like change. If you are used to Vista, you don't wanna use OSX (let alone Linux) because it feels weird to adapt. And again, most people don't care if it takes advantage of the GPU or manages the RAM better, because most people don't even know what RAM is.

People working in development / commercial houses are used to change more than you are. Technology cannot remain standstill. I agree that Linux does have a steep learning curve but companies are encouraging their employees to invest that time in the learning cause in long run they save on OS licensing and also for huge licensing $$$$ they need to pay for development crap they have to buy from M$. Equivalent Open source stuff comes for free.

At the same time people should not expect Snow Leopard to boost your existing needs by leaps and bounds on the day it comes out. This will better as developers start taking advantage of these and as more and more cores and GPUs are available on systems.

[mdriftmeyer]

Apple is not trying to make an new OS that is going to give a speed bump to the existing machines or just pretty UI, thats what M$ does (Vista). It is laying the foundation for the current and next generation hardware lineup that will gain a lot of advantage from OpenCL and Grandcentral. The specs that are now standard on MacPro will be standard on lower end Macs sooner that we are anticipating.

This technological changes in OSX core might not appeal to normal users instantly. Give it some time and you will realize that as consumer hardware has exponentially increasing core numbers and GPUs this enhancements would improve the OS performance by leaps and bounds.




People working in development / commercial houses are used to change more than you are. Technology cannot remain standstill. I agree that Linux does have a steep learning curve but companies are encouraging their employees to invest that time in the learning cause in long run they save on OS licensing and also for huge licensing $$$$ they need to pay for development crap they have to buy from M$. Equivalent Open source stuff comes for free.

At the same time people should not expect Snow Leopard to boost your existing needs by leaps and bounds on the day it comes out. This will better as developers start taking advantage of these and as more and more cores and GPUs are available on systems.

Current hardware will appear to get a shot in the rear as soon as 3rd party developers augment their applications to leverage GrandCentral and OpenCL APIs.

[AidenShaw]

Current hardware will appear to get a shot in the rear as soon as 3rd party developers augment their applications to leverage GrandCentral and OpenCL APIs.

Again, I hear the hype machine in overdrive.

If "current hardware" means the latest Nvidia laptops, Mac Pros and most Imacs, that's reasonable. "Core 2 Duo" won't necessarily be "current".

Second, OpenCL/GrandCentral don't really do much for multi-core CPUs that can't be done already. They make multi-threaded coding a bit easier - but other than that they don't have anything that can't be done with current code frameworks.

The important multi-threaded apps won't get faster - they're already using all the cores.

OpenCL does add GPU processing to the table, but GPUs are not CPUs. They are screaming floating point pipeline engines - but floating point pipelines aren't going to do a lot for your browser, email and word processor. The GPUs also have some specialty features like hardware video decoding - but at least if you run dual-boot you've been able to get that from Windows for a long time.

As someone a couple of posts back said, these new frameworks will be great foundations for the quad/hex/octo core chips and more advanced graphics coming down the pipeline - but for last year's machines they'll be mostly a yawn.

[mdriftmeyer]

Again, I hear the hype machine in overdrive.

If "current hardware" means the latest Nvidia laptops, Mac Pros and most Imacs, that's reasonable. "Core 2 Duo" won't necessarily be "current".

Second, OpenCL/GrandCentral don't really do much for multi-core CPUs that can't be done already. They make multi-threaded coding a bit easier - but other than that they don't have anything that can't be done with current code frameworks.

The important multi-threaded apps won't get faster - they're already using all the cores.

OpenCL does add GPU processing to the table, but GPUs are not CPUs. They are screaming floating point pipeline engines - but floating point pipelines aren't going to do a lot for your browser, email and word processor. The GPUs also have some specialty features like hardware video decoding - but at least if you run dual-boot you've been able to get that from Windows for a long time.

As someone a couple of posts back said, these new frameworks will be great foundations for the quad/hex/octo core chips and more advanced graphics coming down the pipeline - but for last year's machines they'll be mostly a yawn.

Nice way of confusing threading with Symmetrical multi-processing models. They aren't remotely the same beast.

By the way, if you have 2 or more cores you'll notice that without the exception of some low level messaging via the kernel most of the CPU cycles aren't even being tapped in to cores (2n + 2: n>=0) from user space land.

Apple's GrandCentral is about providing a clean Cocoa API for OpenMPI (http://www.open-mpi.org/), plus more.

Apple is being judicious in exposing Cocoa to provide a set of APIs for which 99.9% of the current market doesn't even bother to leverage. How come? It's a ton of work.

OpenMPI for OS X and Linux are currently running quietly on my boxes, but they don't really get much use at the desktop because OS X, KDE, GNOME and more are still working on their platform specific high-level APIs to incorporate them into the daily lives of us all.

Not to mention, there are no ObjC libraries for OpenMPI, outside of Apple, so whether you see a much more responsive UI experience on a Mac Mini or Core2Duo Macbook/Macbook Pro of 2007 will vary with the applications, but even those books running OS X Snow Leopard will definitely be able to leverage portions of the heavy lifting Apple has been doing with OpenCL and GrandCentral.

Mac Pros will see the most, along-side Xservers. Nehalem based systems and onward by default will see a big shot in the arm because Intel has worked hard to make sure it's architecture is flexible and accessible to such tools.

AMD have done the same sort of work for their CPUs and GPUs.

But as you noted, the more Cores, the merrier, especially in cluster based, distributed grid environments.

[AidenShaw]

Nice way of confusing threading with Symmetrical multi-processing models. They aren't remotely the same beast.

What?

That's one of the silliest responses that I've seen on these fora - "threading" isn't related to "multi-processing"? Are you kidding?

While, of course, you can use threaded programming models on a uni-core machine - it's on a multi-core system that threading is what fundamentally exposes parallelism within a single process context.

And, by the way, none of your arguments address my position that OpenCL/GrandCentral don't bring anything new to the multi-core table - they simplify things, not bring new capabilities.
_____

Please, also note that my last few posts here have not meant to knock OpenCL/GrandCentral per se -- I've been trying to point out that for most people, on most applications, on most systems already sold - ICL/GC won't make a noticeable improvement in the speed of their systems.

[baslotto]

To Winni:

WOW! What a post!
It's the first time that I actually see this from a "corporate" prospective and I have to agree with everything you pointed out.
Reading your post was like watching the aftermath of Pirates of Silicon Valley!
I agree with everything you said and I hope Apple stays the way it is now which is good for a few but not for all of them (for all the reasons we know, plus I'm in the music business).
My greatest happiness is that I can use my 5 year old Powerbook G4 (still fast and ready) and my new iMac, for work and for typing this post on the internet, without being too careful of what I'm doing.

One question about this "OpenCL":

Is this a help to programmers so that ANY applications would find a benefit or only graphics oriented apps are going to be faster?
Is the hardware available now going to get any benefits or only the new MacBook Pros with 2 GPUs are gonna see an improvement?
For instance: my iMac is a 1 year old Core 2 Duo. Are my music-production programs going to be any "faster" in the future with this machine or I'm pretty much stuck with whatever my hardware allows me to do now?

Thank you for any answers,
I'm just trying to bring back the topic to the mac rumors.


Bas.

[knightlie]

Y'all are crazy if you think Windows Vista is a failure because people are scared of it. They were scared to death of XP too and stayed with Windows 98 and 2000 for YEARS despite how vastly superiour to 98 and clearly improved from 2000 Vista was.

EVERY Windows release gets the same thing - even Windows 95 way back. How short your memories are. Microsoft cannot release an OS people want to upgrade to. It never has.

In 2009 or 2010, Windows Vista should be much better accepted - the tipping point will be when Windows 7 is released and people want downgrades to Vista...

That's the Microsoft product cycle and always has been. Kinda a sad reflection on their inability to deliver a compelling feature set, eh?

Very true, I was still using Windows 2000 at work until my machine was forcibly removed. Microsoft's biggest problems in this regard are that a) they cannot deliver a seamless, even vaguely hassle-free upgrade, and b) they keep changing the whole OS*, thereby restarting a big chunk of the learning curve for users. Who want's to learn the arrangement of a new operating system every time MS's bank balance needs propping up?

*And some amusing thoughts on Vista's lack of UI consistency here (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001126.html).

[mdriftmeyer]

What?

That's one of the silliest responses that I've seen on these fora - "threading" isn't related to "multi-processing"? Are you kidding?

While, of course, you can use threaded programming models on a uni-core machine - it's on a multi-core system that threading is what fundamentally exposes parallelism within a single process context.

And, by the way, none of your arguments address my position that OpenCL/GrandCentral don't bring anything new to the multi-core table - they simplify things, not bring new capabilities.
_____

Please, also note that my last few posts here have not meant to knock OpenCL/GrandCentral per se -- I've been trying to point out that for most people, on most applications, on most systems already sold - ICL/GC won't make a noticeable improvement in the speed of their systems.

Parallel Programming isn't multiple thread programming. I'll let this gentleman explain:

http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/2008/11/threadingconcurrency-vs-parallelism.html

How GrandCentral and OpenCL Parallel Programming isn't the multithreading model of single core systems of old depends on the model employed:

https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/parallel_comp/

With Multiple Processors compounded with Multiple cores, per processor, task segments will have to be methodically broken up to offload linearity of program execution far differently than parallel threading out tasks without much concern for actual performance gains and more for perceived UI responsive behavior, on a traditional single core, ala pthreads and more.

It's all there at the Government site and his blog does a great overview of hands-on work.

This is a nice textbook on the subject matter:

http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~karypis/parbook/

This one is solid for C++ backgrounds:

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Multiprocessor-Programming-Maurice-Herlihy/dp/0123705916/ref=pd_sim_b_3

[AidenShaw]

Parallel Programming isn't multiple thread programming. I'll let this gentleman explain:

http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/2008/11/threadingconcurrency-vs-parallelism.html

I'm not sure what you're reading, but when I open that first link the first line is:

To take advantage of multiple cores from our software, ultimately threads have to be used.

I do understand parallelism - in fact I was literally working on SMP operating systems and multi-threaded applications when you were in grade school.


Please understand that I'm not talking about whether Apple's new parallel frameworks are good or bad - I'm addressing the perception that suddenly 10.6 will make older systems much faster.

My comment about threading is that many of the important CPU-intensive applications (video/audio/image) already use multiple threads to exploit multiple cores. GrandCentral isn't going to speed those up by much on current machines -- even when they're re-written to use GrandCentral.

GPGPU programming may make some big improvements when they appear, but the value will be relatively limited. (Picture some GPGPU-enabled Photoshop filters being 10x faster, for example.) The GPGPU suffers from both the issues of parallelism (Amdahl's law and friends) plus the special purpose nature of the GPGPU. Larrabee will be interesting, since it will have dozens of x64 CPUs.

(These two paragraphs assume that major applications will drop support for Leopard and older systems in order to use the new frameworks - that's unlikely for some time.)

In two or three years, the new frameworks will be a great boost - but not for your Core Duo or GMA900 system.

[Eidorian]

I'm not sure what you're reading, but when I open that first link the first line is:

To take advantage of multiple cores from our software, ultimately threads have to be used.

Please understand that I'm not talking about whether Apple's new parallel frameworks are good or bad - I'm addressing the perception that suddenly 10.6 will make older systems much faster.

My comment about threading is that many of the important CPU-intensive applications (video/audio/image) already use multiple threads to exploit multiple cores. GrandCentral isn't going to speed those up by much on current machines -- even when they're re-written to use GrandCentral. (This is assuming that major applications will drop support for Leopard and older systems in order to use the new frameworks - that's unlikely for some time.)

In two or three years, the new frameworks will be a great boost - but not for your Core Duo or GMA900 system.Thank you. It gets old when people go on how Snow Leopard is going to suddenly make their older hardware faster.