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$499 Headless iMac?
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jcroft said:
Well, I would go that far ... BUT...
some friends of mine at different research labs were very tempted
to the low price of the ibooks due its dedicated video card.
No PC user would agree more (go to some other forums...it is
now very common to see the ibook mentioned as one of the
best "bang for the buck") but the lack of response is a killer.
I have no idea why this happens. It should not be the case,
considering all the tech specs at Apple's homepage.
Anyway, the headless mac with similar ibook specs would
be welcome for the average joe, no doubt. for a regular
user...I am not sure...
Blue Velvet said:
What I'm referring to is the perceived speed at which things happen on screen. How quickly finder windows open after double clicking an icon. How quickly your new tab is created and available in your web browser. How quickly a window goes away after you click the close button. That sort of thing.
The hardware in Mac os every bit as fast, if not faster, than most PCs. The pure processing speed is usually better, too (for example, a Mac will usually complete a set of Photoshop actions faster than a similarly configured PC). But, in day-to-day use, that responsivness of the finder and basic window actions is important, and Mac OS X definitely lags behind Windows XP here.
To clarify, I'm a bag Mac fan, but one who uses both platforms every day. I'll say it again: anyone who denies this is Macstrubating. The Finder, for example is NOT particularly responsive when comapred to Windows Explorer.
iGary said:
While I cannot speak for the original author, I have used both Windows XP and Mac OS X since just a bit after each was released to the general public. Mac OS X was crap until 10.3. Being a non-zealot, I don't see much difference between the two other than Aqua is way more prettier and you have to run anti-virus and anti-spyware on Windows XP. BFD.
My daily driver is a Windows XP box and probably will be until Longhorn and the next generation of x86 hardware. Apple will look more attractive to me in 2006. Although I may get one of these $500 boxes to play with if they are announced. It looks like something I would like to set up for my parents.
Response
Take your example about that flash game, was ever try out in anithing else other than Windows, problably no that means it optimized to the way that flash work in windows.
Office, Windows XP takes quit a bit more to boot than osX that is due to Office pre running part of it using memory and recourses for nothing if that day you are not running office
not a problem of the os but a problem that you are comparing programs heavily optimized for windows with another not so much in Mac.
SeRgIo_42 said:
Take your example about that flash game, was ever try out in anithing else other than Windows, problably no that means it optimized to the way that flash work in windows.
Office, Windows XP takes quit a bit more to boot than osX that is due to Office pre running part of it using memory and recourses for nothing if that day you are not running office
not a problem of the os but a problem that you are comparing programs heavily optimized for windows with another not so much in Mac.
SeRgIo_42 said:
The 32MB graphics card or a 128 MB does not matter as long as the bandwidth does not change it is going to be slow... i had to get rid of the ibook (just waiting for the updated intel pentium M & dell 700m) for the same reason. It is slugish... I donot care much about what the spec of it are unless they change the damn archt. common 133Mhz ? with AGP 2/4X? with PC2100 RAM? i think apple's lowerend is still in the last century!
PS: YES! it might not matter to a hard core mac fan who can wait... so that he can finish his 'macstrubation' ; i kind of like the word!
How to make a headless Mac. (skill: moderate; time: 1 hour)
1. Empty contents of a 14 oz. Captain Crunch box. Cut holes in side for connectors as needed.
2. Remove battery, keyboard, and LCD from a 15" PowerBook, and discard.
3. Remove motherboard, drives, and remaining parts from notebook case, connect, and secure together in box with duct tape.
4. Plug power cord from notebook wall brick into the existing soldered power connection on motherboard.
5. Plug a Mac keyboard and mouse into an USB port already soldered on motherboard.
6. Add additional RAM to empty slots as needed.
7. Plug VGA dongle (supplied with PowerBook) into the display port soldered on the end of the motherboard (near onboard ATI 9700). Plug in crappy PC monitor. Plug in TV to S-video on motherboard. Plug in speakers, ethernet, and Firewire devices.
8. Add VRAM to onboard ATI 9700 to reach 128 megs.
9. Press start button on keyboard.
1. Empty contents of a 14 oz. Captain Crunch box. Cut holes in side for connectors as needed.
2. Remove battery, keyboard, and LCD from a 15" PowerBook, and discard.
3. Remove motherboard, drives, and remaining parts from notebook case, connect, and secure together in box with duct tape.
4. Plug power cord from notebook wall brick into the existing soldered power connection on motherboard.
5. Plug a Mac keyboard and mouse into an USB port already soldered on motherboard.
6. Add additional RAM to empty slots as needed.
7. Plug VGA dongle (supplied with PowerBook) into the display port soldered on the end of the motherboard (near onboard ATI 9700). Plug in crappy PC monitor. Plug in TV to S-video on motherboard. Plug in speakers, ethernet, and Firewire devices.
8. Add VRAM to onboard ATI 9700 to reach 128 megs.
9. Press start button on keyboard.
SeRgIo_42 said:
No I don't. I have three G4s, but no G5s. I do know that my 800MHz PIII is, in general, more responsive than my 1.25GHz PowerBook when it comes to basic actions like opening windows and such.
To be clear: I love my Macs, and this doesn't necessarily bother me that much, nor does it really slow me down. But, if you're used to Windows, and the first thing you do on a Mac is open a Fider window, you're going to be surprised that it doesn't come up as quickly. The difference is small, but it is noticable, and many Windows users interpert this as "this is a slow computer." This is not accurate, but it's an understandable interpertation.
jcroft said:
I have no idea what workstation class machines you're running XP on, but my powerbook feels just as responsive as my 2.8GHz P4 2GB box at work. I'll allow the window painting for XP is pretty quick, but of course, its easy to render straight lines... Until Longhorn comes around, you can't compare the relative speeds of the UI: OS X is doing a hell of a lot more rendering per window than XP.
jcroft said:
I'm not denying this, but I will make a prediction: Longhorn will feel far less responsive than XP / whatever. I think the problem is that as OSX is a newer OS, it is built more for what it will be running on, not what it is running on now. XP, on the otherhand, is still an older OS, that was made for older processors, and that doesn't do near the amount of effects / system level events / etc. that OSX does. Longhorn, from what I know and understand, is the first real OS that will push Windows to another level, instead of being just a series of upgrades.
It's like comparing OSX to OS9. OS9 was made for an older generation of computers, and it does less. So, when you compare the two, OS9 kills OSX in terms of responsiveness. (Well, until you start multi-tasking.) That isn't a fair comparison, though, because the two are very different operating systems.
The hard working mac!
One can pretty much see here that this argument will never going to end! So what we have now is:
'oh look at the cute mac how hard he/she is working! donot complain that he/she is lagging behind a bit.... it is the good intent that is important... on the other hand look at that sneaky bastard XP he is getting all help from intel and just getting the job done the easy way... Donot worry oh good mac, the evil XP is not going to get far by going through the short cuts and you shall prevail in the end!'
reorx said:
One can pretty much see here that this argument will never going to end! So what we have now is:
'oh look at the cute mac how hard he/she is working! donot complain that he/she is lagging behind a bit.... it is the good intent that is important... on the other hand look at that sneaky bastard XP he is getting all help from intel and just getting the job done the easy way... Donot worry oh good mac, the evil XP is not going to get far by going through the short cuts and you shall prevail in the end!'
reorx said:
Great, but it doesn't matter. When someone shops, they compare these things. They don't stop to think about WHY it's that way. They just know that it is, and they don't like it.
For example: if I go TV shopping and I'm comparing plasmas and LCDs. Say I think I like plasmas better becuase they are brighter. They look better to my eyes (I don't think this, but say I did). A sales rep tries to explain to me that the reason LCDs are not as bright is this or that. Should my response be to say, "Oh -- well in that case, I forgive them. I'll take the LCD!"
Of course not. That's ridiculous.
it's a matter of perspective
Some of what you're talking about has to do with delay timers. some is just caching. for instance, click on a particularly large "bookmarks" menu item in safari the first time, and it takes a second. click it again, and it pops right down.
What you're not noticing is that windows has delay times also. Those long, thirty second waits of disk thrashing, etc. you've just become accustomed to the rhythm of it so you know when to expect a delay and when not to. Some things in windows seem faster. some things in macs seem faster. when I sit down at a pentium 3.4 ghz i don't see, "dang that's gee whiz fast, slow down!", instead I notice when it's slow when I expect it to be fast.
jcroft said:
Some of what you're talking about has to do with delay timers. some is just caching. for instance, click on a particularly large "bookmarks" menu item in safari the first time, and it takes a second. click it again, and it pops right down.
What you're not noticing is that windows has delay times also. Those long, thirty second waits of disk thrashing, etc. you've just become accustomed to the rhythm of it so you know when to expect a delay and when not to. Some things in windows seem faster. some things in macs seem faster. when I sit down at a pentium 3.4 ghz i don't see, "dang that's gee whiz fast, slow down!", instead I notice when it's slow when I expect it to be fast.
SeRgIo_42 said:
This DOES NOT happen on my machine. Finder is Instant. Everything is Instant - PERIOD. I wait for nothing.
unsigned said:
There is probably some truth to this. But, I still think that in general, a long-time Windows user's first impression of Mac OS X, and especially the Finder, is that it's a bit less responsive.
In the end, all the reasons WHY don't matter. They're interesting for geeks to talk about, but people aren't going to make purchasing decisions based on them. They don't care WHY. They only care that this one SEEMS faster than that one, and therefore I'll that THIS one.
If Windows user's first impressions of Mac OS X is that it's unresponsive in comparisson to Windows, that's a problem. It might not be the end of the world, but it's a problem, and one Apple ought to try to address.
reorx said:
Yep. To compare WindowsXP's graphical architecture against MacOSX's is plain silly. You really have to compare Microsoft's upcoming Avalon rendering framework to Apple's Quartz/Quicktime technology. MacOSX is already 5 years ahead, and it's running on TODAY's technology.
The projected specs Microsoft recommends for running Longhorn with Avalon is a dual-core 4-6 GHz CPU, a minimum of 2GB RAM, 1 TB harddrive, and a graphics chip 3x faster than today's GEforce 6800.
Well folks, you can run MacOSX Quartz-interface today on a 400Mhz G4, with 256MB RAM acceptably.
In WinXP, you can't even do expose-like windowing without a horrible lag time, or have multiple video clips playing at the same overlapped and resized. With Tiger's release, you see a maturing of the Quartz framework, and innovations like Dashboard will run circles around WinXP.
unsigned said:
That's an interesting perpective.
Well, I am not a mac user...but I would love to have a slower
machine that does not stay on my way to have the task done.
I would not care how many Ghz, Thz this machine would be using.
Someone compared why iPod/iTunes is so successful. It just works.
I can not say the same when I observe this "responsiveness" but
I will keep your perspective in mind when I visit the Apple Fashion Store
again.