Are we all getting obsessed with SPEED?

[Griffindor73]

I've just been looking through some of the post about the new stuff at the Expo and most of it concerns the PowerMac and the prospect of new processors etc.
I have a humble iMac DV with q 400Mhz G3 processor and 384Mb of memory. It is nearly three years old. And it whips most of my friends PC's asses, still. Ok, OS X is a bit slow, and Photoshop 7 is not what I call a powerhorse on it, but it still does it all.

When poeple are moaning about PC's doing this and that they forget that most people do not buy the top of the range PC
Yes, I know that the top end PowerMac is pricy, but we forget that with a PowerMac you are not just buying a computer or a processor with a big number attached to it.

1: You are buying a piece of equipment that has a far higher build quality than any other computer make- the only ones I can think of that come close are the Sony range- its also noticeable that Sony dont always use the fastest processors in their range.

2: The OS is far better and has obvously taken up a lot of Apple's development time lately- and it keeps on getting noticablly better- if it had stayed the same as Windows then I would have been stuck with OS9 until I could afford a new iMac, which I cant, probably for another year or two. Jaguar will hopefully mean I can do this.

3: Image: buying a Mac says something about you- I am not following a crowd- I like to stand out etc. How many times have you walked into a room and heard people say "Cool Dell, man!"

4: They are fast- Most of the processor power is not used, even in my 400Mhz G3. Photoshop (and other programms similar) use it the most, but even then it is only really when filters are being used etc- and each up-grade must only shave milliseconds of the time- What is the hurry???-"Oh, thanks to my new 1.4Ghz PowerMac i have a spare 3.2 seconds today!" You would waste more than that re-booting a PC.

5: However, they could knock the prices down a bit- and include a basic monitor in the price- thats what every PC person says when they see the powermac- oh, it's that price and is hasn't got a monitor- it would be more honest to include the price of the bottom of the range one-just to give less of a shock! It is the price, not the processor that everyone should be moaning about to Apple.

Just some thoughts!

 

[job]

[sarcasm]
Oh, but see if you don't spend thousands of your hard earned cash on the fastest, most expensive Mac tower you can get your grubby mits on, then you are not a real Power Mac user.
[/sarcasm}

I think that for the professionals out there, (i.e. audio, video, FX, etc.) they really need the speed. The towers are in need of an overhaul and I completely understand their complaints. What really p*sses me off is someone with a dual 800 tower moaning about the frame rates he gets in some game. As a general Mac user who writes emails, downloads and listens to Mps, and plays the occasional game of RtCW/SC/WC3/TO, a 450Mhz iMac with 320MB RAM is fast enough for me. Pros need the speed and I, like Griffindor, don't really max (or need to max) my computer out all that often.

hitman

 

[King Cobra]

Griffindor, well thought out.

Let me just go by replying one by one to make the peecee world feel more depressed!

(1) I agree with that. The examples I can see are the iMac G4 and the iPod. The iMac G4 revolutionized, IMO, the way people look at basic and simple desktop computers, and the iPod, well, revolutionized the world of mp3 players. The ipod, especially, has a lot of potential in it, and, as previously rumored (on end), this potential can easily be achieved in a numerous amount of ways.

(2) I will agree in certain parts of your statement. The Classic OS lasted for double digit years, and people still have problems with it. (If you are still living in Win98, you'll probably feel half as worried in just OS 9.) And only after a few years of development Apple has completely rewritten the OS, resulting in a more stable and effecient OS. Although it still has some improvements to go, arguably, it is becoming extremely close to perfect, especially with Jaguar roaming around.

(3) >How many times have you walked into a room and heard people say "Cool Dell, man!"
Twice, but that was in a Bill Gates ash-kissing contest!

(4) I have mixed feelings towards this. You only mentioned Photoshop in your paragraph. You know, you can save minutes, or even hours, using a G4 over a G3 of equal speed in other senarios, such as audio editing (iMovie) or video editing/exporting (FCP). But I agree on the fact that if you use your Mac for simple purposes, such as Photoshop or Appleworks, you don't need the power. And you would waste a couple of thousand for a few seconds of operation.

(5) As for your comment on mixed prices, I just agree more than I disagree. Apple builds their products on almost near-perfection quality. And to get the best, you have to pay more to get the rest. But I do agree with you that the prices may seem a bit too high for peecee users. I mean, if you wanted a PowerMac and a 17 inch monitor, you have to pay at least $4000. On the other hand, I have seen peecees advrtzd. on TV (pee4ork, 2.0GHz) with around $1200 of free software and an LCD monitor for less than $3000. I am well aware of the fact that you can F up a peecee more easily with $1200 of software developed for the peecee.

 

[Durandal7]

The speed issue is more about bragging rights then anything. I can't recall how many time I've heard "My 400mHz Compaq is WAY faster then your 333mHz iMac" Imagine their surprise when they actually saw my iMac. We all know that Macs perform well but PC users don't realize that there are factors that affect the processor.

 

[job]

I saw an HP/Compaq commercial that stated :

"....1.7Ghz so you can surf the web faster."

Morons.

 

[big]

[your kidding]
I saw an HP/Compaq commercial that stated :

"....1.7Ghz so you can surf the web faster."

Morons.

[/your kidding]

no way, like that's what we need, that reminds me of Blockbuster music's new logo, "BUY COOL STUFF" makes me sick.

like we need to keep perpetuating this society of junk collecting.

what about those USB "CAT" code scanners, so you can scan a bar code and buy something out of a magazine easier. you pay $50 BUCKS for this thing so you can pay more money with your credit card, only to devalue your dollar.

which is what happens when you buy stuff on credit

 

[job]

Originally posted by big
[your kidding]
I saw an HP/Compaq commercial that stated :

"....1.7Ghz so you can surf the web faster."

Morons.

[/your kidding]

I kid you not. It was a TV ad where they had a guy walking around his house showing off all his Wintel products. He started listing the specs of his tower and said exactly what I quoted. Morons. Again.

 

[big]

the audacity, you can only surf as fast as your connection allows...your 5ghz machine downloads at the same speed as a 300 mhz machine on any internet connection

 

[big]

>need for speed

Oh, just forgot, I will allways want my machine to be faster than yours or the next guys, so yes, I'm obssessed.

 

[Choppaface]

Re: Are we all getting obsessed with SPEED?

Originally posted by Griffindor73
3: Image: buying a Mac says something about you- I am not following a crowd- I like to stand out etc. How many times have you walked into a room and heard people say "Cool Dell, man!"

but toting an ibook or powerbook around at a cocktail party would look so childish! standing out of the crowd would totally ruin one's social life! the butler would be absolutely in tears!!!!

 

[SilvorX]

PC users are heck more obsessed bout speed than mac users
pc users need to upgrade their darn pcs every like 2 months when a new athlon xp/p4 comes out so they can have top of the line, and they HAVE to have the maximum amount of ram n best processor n stuff, n fastest isp n stuff..

while mac users care bout quality of products..not speed, in some cases, mac users may get a lil obsessed bout speed (like speed of jaguar or speed of finder n such), i know mac users from here who have 3 y/o puters and they love them, and they dont care bout speed.
i know one guy who was like "hahahaha i 0wn j00!" just cuz he has a better pc than mine (p4 1.something ghz) n i have a 466 mhz celeron, but then again he recently bought a new hexpee laptop ($3000 laptop) and all its been doing is crashing/bsoding alot!
while a mac user may only need a new puter every 2-5 years, the average pc user may want it every other month (including hardware upgrades)

 

[iGav]

Until computers can work in realtime... (on any task) they'll never be fast enough...... simple as that......

 

[barkmonster]

the audacity, you can only surf as fast as your connection allows...your 5ghz machine downloads at the same speed as a 300 mhz machine on any internet connection

have you actually seen how fast internet explorer on the PC renders pages compared with the mac version or any other browser on the mac ?

it could be the CPU speed, it could be that the PC version isn't a bug ridden POS but it shouldn't be so apparent as it is.

2 of my friends are using the same 512K cable modem as me, with the same provider, rendering pages is faster on the PC than any browser on the mac can handle running a page from the cache.

Downloading isn't any faster obviously and it might just be the fact a beige G3 vs Athlon and Pentium 4 systems is a pointless test but it's so fast, all I think is a mac 4 times faster than mine will render a page 4 times faster which will still be slower than the "instant" speed they get. You can't even see it load a single image, you click on a link, it's there!

The only exception to the rule are pages that use flash, it's all down to rendering all the tables and images that make the mac such a dog for browsing compared with the PC.

 

[big]

>have you actually seen how fast internet explorer on the PC renders pages compared with the mac version or any other browser on the mac ?

yeah, my neighbor is running a 600mhz (whom I've spent countless hours getting her PC up & running) has a PC. it's slower then my G3 450 mhz

I attributete that to it being a POC E-machine though. (note: we share a network line on cable modem)

and for the record, I've never seen any machine automatically load any pages without having to download for at least 1 second, there is no such thing as instantaneous web browsing

 

[mymemory]

Re: Are we all getting obsessed with SPEED?

Originally posted by Griffindor73
I've just been looking through some of the post about the new stuff at the Expo and most of it concerns the PowerMac and the prospect of new processors etc.
I have a humble iMac DV with q 400Mhz G3 processor and 384Mb of memory. It is nearly three years old. And it whips most of my friends PC's asses, still. Ok, OS X is a bit slow, and Photoshop 7 is not what I call a powerhorse on it, but it still does it all....

If you work with Photoshop your computer is ok, last week I was playing around with a 9600/300 and I was impressed with the spped of that machine too (I had a 9600/200 once).

The speed factor becomes real when you have to use a software like After Effects... Apple still slow there.

In my case, I'm a VJ (video jockey) and I spend a lot of time experimenting with effects and compositions son render time IS the issue for me. I could use Photoshop in any computer if I'm doing web desing at list.

He you ever use Photoshop for big graphic design? I mean, creating a 10 x 7 meters poster? there is when you are gonna need a lot of ram at list.

Most of the time the actual spped is more than enough, but for video and 3d is not enough yet, still, I'm glad in having a dual 500Mhz, but it could be faster, next I'm gonna get a memory upgrade.

 

[iGav]

mymemory you need an ICE card or something similar.......... shockingly fast render times in AE........

I've only tried VJ'ng once before with a friend....... doing live visuals on the fly for a Jazz band..... basically whilst one is cutting and compositing...... the other is preview rendering....... then when that sequence is finished the next person preview renders.......... and the other begins recutting and compositing....... we found that by doing this... we were putting ourselves under super pressure.... but also reflecting the spontaneity of jazz music....... we decided to do jazz music after going to see a Ninja tunes night in London... and been totally shocked at how crap the majority of club visuals are.... the usual fast cuts, sampled cartoon images, and psychedelic visuals were just totally mediocre....... and to make matters worse all they were doing was playing back pre-rendered footage......