No doubting windows 7 doesn't suck. But the upgrade paths and prices are absurd.
Why on earth can't I just upgrade from Windows Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Professional???
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Apple Seeds Rumored Golden Master Mac OS X 10.6 (10A432) to Developers
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No doubting windows 7 doesn't suck. But the upgrade paths and prices are absurd.
Why on earth can't I just upgrade from Windows Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Professional???
- Ya, so high quality that Microsoft still hasn't figured out how to create a filesystem that has very low fragmentation that doesn't require any external application to fix.
- So high quality that Microsoft still doesn't fully follow web standards in its default browser.
- Still can't create an OS that doesn't require multiple reboots for installation.
- If by high quality interfaces you really mean cluttered to crap interfaces, then I totally agree.
- Still haven't created a decent, secure shell scripting language preinstalled with every OS.
- So high quality they a have to sell 8 different versions all crippled in their own fantastic ways!
- You really want to compare the registry vs defaults ?! Can't believe MS hasn't just ripped Apple off on this one. Same thing with Linux, defaults is just bad ass hands down.
- How much do they still charge for development tools ?
- Performance of SMB is still down right awful.
Seriously, the list goes on and on. Its one thing to use the tool that fits you best and its worse to ignore downright flaws in a product and use the tool anyway.
I couldn't imagine a world where I actually needed something from Microsoft. I used Linux for 5 years straight, and I always needed Microsoft for something. With Apple, that is not the case. Sure, I don't get the games but I got a PS3.
Would I ever buy a 360 ? Well, they finally solved a majority of the rod issues so I might. You heard it here first, I think the 360 is a quality product.
Anyway, Microsoft is on the right road. But they got a hell of a long ride to go.
The funny thing is with my macbook, Win 7 RC actually runs faster on my machine than my native leopard does. Just as an example, I can actually run hd video in win 7 without chopping which i get in osx.
I actually enjoy a performance bump by going into bootcamp, heh. There are plenty of things that make osx not such the outright leader that you make it out to be.Well then even if having a full 64 bit OS isn't all that important, just to satisfy my own curiosity, how do I know if I can? I was already sad to find out that I won't be able to use OpenCL (since my Macbook has GMA 950), it'll just make it worse (on principle, I understand there won't be much effective difference) if the OS isn't 64 bit for me too.
So I have a MacPro 2,1 on which the 64-bit kernel is not supported even with 432.
But of course I am able to use my 12GB of RAM and my 64-bit XCode and Eclipse and other apps. No issues there. Is it as fast as the latest greatest MP? Of course not, it's a 3 year old computer. K64 is not going to make it as fast a new MP anyway. But I can still use my 64-bit dev tools and all the new 64-bit apps.
On the other hand, on my MBP I am able to reboot with K64. Ok, great, the difference is hardly noticeable. Same 64-bit apps. The only real difference to me right now is I can't use a couple kexts that are not yet 64 clean. The default is 32 even on the MBP, and I don't see any reason to even change that.
On what planet is this "basic system functionality" anyway? SL is still a significant upgrade in speed even on an "old" MP like mine. The real world difference between Leopard and SL (32bit kernel) is much more than the diff between SL (32bit kernel) and SL K64.
Just to put this issue in perspective.
From what I understand is this:
64 bit Kernel and 32 bit Kernel are basically the same. From what I gathered from other posts is this:
With a 64 bit Kernel, you can use up to 64GB of RAM
With a 32 bit Kernel, you can only use up to 32GB of RAM
64 bit Kernel is less compatible
32 bit Kernel is more compatible
Am I way off?
64 bit Kernel and 32 bit Kernel are basically the same. From what I gathered from other posts is this:
With a 64 bit Kernel, you can use up to 64GB of RAM
With a 32 bit Kernel, you can only use up to 32GB of RAM
64 bit Kernel is less compatible
32 bit Kernel is more compatible
Am I way off?
Umm, way off.
64 bit Kernel you can use up 16 exabytes of RAM (million terabytes).
32 bit Kernel is 3.2GB but with PAE increasing to 64GB. It's a hack basically.
Compatibility with what? It isn't less or more compatible. it's a question of time and money spent on developing 64bit drivers.
What 64 bit kernel provides is the ability to use more than 4gb for the OS and applications which allows the ASLR to expand and randomized the address space much more efficient, something that Apple couldn't do for Leopard. But it isn't a foolproof security technology, all it does is prevent one type of a security hole.
With the current SL seeds, you don't need to do a upgrade install. Fresh install in a fresh partition is just fine. But for final release, it may be different.
In my personal tests Ive found Win7 to be pretty much on par wiht Leopard. Some things were faster in either or. It was a crap shoot. In Snow Leopard though. Sweet 8lb 11oz baby Jesus, we are talking about seriously fast. As Ive stated in several other posts on this subject....Identical Hanbrake transcodes have been literally cut in half from 2hrs to 1hr with Snow Leopard vs Leopard or Win 7. It all comes down to Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. And I think it will only get better as devs recompile to take advantage of the new SL tech.
Adobe Creative Suite to abandon PowerPC Macs
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10308621-1.html?tag=mncol
Adobe Creative Suite to abandon PowerPC Macs
by Dong Ngo
It's probably time you said goodbye to your PowerPC-based Mac.
Adobe confirmed Tuesday that future versions of its Creative Suite will run only on Intel-based Mac computers. There will be no support offered for PowerPC based systems.
The company's decision follows Apple's announcement in June that it was discontinuing support for the PowerPC in its new operating systems, starting beginning with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). With Apple's future development focused on Intel Macs, Adobe is aligning its resources accordingly.
...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10308621-1.html?tag=mncol
Adobe Creative Suite to abandon PowerPC Macs
by Dong Ngo
It's probably time you said goodbye to your PowerPC-based Mac.
Adobe confirmed Tuesday that future versions of its Creative Suite will run only on Intel-based Mac computers. There will be no support offered for PowerPC based systems.
The company's decision follows Apple's announcement in June that it was discontinuing support for the PowerPC in its new operating systems, starting beginning with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). With Apple's future development focused on Intel Macs, Adobe is aligning its resources accordingly.
...
In the arstechnica article they talk about making a move from Carbon to Cocoa, and CS5 being Intel only. I wonder whether this means that the move will result in CS5 completely 64bit.
W7 has Direct Compute in DX11 which is like OpenCL. The applications can start taking advantage of GPUs using DX11 and it'll be just as fast as SL's OpenCL, they are basically the same thing. It'll be even faster on Windows since Windows support the latest and greatest of GPUs with greater numbers of processors.
GCD is probably something that W7 doesn't really have as efficient and as easy as Apple's implementation.
We won't see a lot of applications being optimized for GCD/OpenCL for a while, it takes time. We'll probably start seeing a new generation of applications using GCD or OpenCL a year from now.
They did say that they want to support 64bit in CS5 when they mentioned that they couldn't do a 64bit CS4 on Macs. If they decide to do 64bit only, it will exclude another small group of Intel Machines that don't have a 64bit CPU (the Intel Core Duos).
The compatibility comes down to the system level programming, and if theyve compiled it in 64-bit.
It also increases processing power due to longer memory strings.
I am not on the seed list because I will not sign a NDA (I like disclosing and commenting on what I learn from insiders), but this is a good policy of Apple to release the GM to developers just in case there is a need for a rev prior to launch because they were so busy testing complicated and esoteric stuff instead of the basics and simple stuff. Apple has been bitten on that before.
I skipped buggy 10.5. I am looking forward to fast and stable 10.6.
Rocketman
I skipped buggy 10.5. I am looking forward to fast and stable 10.6.
Rocketman
IIRC Microsoft's implementation is called Concrt which application vendors can bundle with their applications so it isn't bound to just Windows 7.
With that being said though, the reason for GCD goes beyond just application developers; I'm sure Apple were looking at ways of improving scalability of Mac OS X without needing to do massive and disruptive changes like what FreeBSD did with the 5.x and 6.x series.
Better HD video playback in Windows 7 than Leopard is because Windows supports hardware video acceleration while Leopard doesn't. Hardware H.264 acceleration is finally coming with Snow Leopard.The funny thing is with my macbook, Win 7 RC actually runs faster on my machine than my native leopard does. Just as an example, I can actually run hd video in win 7 without chopping which i get in osx.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html
Sadly the tech specs still only list the 9400M as supporting H.264 acceleration whereas for OpenCL they have a decent list. Hopefully Apple will see fit to give H.264 acceleration to all nVidia 8000, 9000, GT100, and GT200 series GPUs since they all basically have the same PureVideo decoder inside. ATI GPUs since the HD2000 series have also supported full hardware H.264 decode and even the ATI X1000 series and nVidia 7000 series have partial H.264 acceleration, if Apple would choose to write the drivers for it.
I wonder if Apple will provide an API for third-party developers to enable hardware accelerated plugins for things like MPEG4 and VC-1 for Divx and WMV. They aren't as critical since they aren't as CPU intensive, but it'd still be nice to have.
OpenCL apps will start appearing quickly. Its C-Like and integrates like OpenGL in coding. Not too hard from example code aswell.
OpenCL will most likely become the standard, like OpenGL. Microsoft will just do what they do with Direct X, push it in games.