Do you agree, in relation to iMac the Death Of The Specs

[CycloneX]

Specs matter plenty. They only don't matter if you do nothing of value with your machine.

And to all the people who say "software has to be tied in with hardware!"

Windows performs better than OSX. Period. You guys have no idea what you're talking about when you talk about "software integration." Literally none. Can you please quantify this or talk about what exactly is integrated? I would bet money you can't. Do you really think software on the Windows side is not "written" to take advantage of specific hardware? What do you think a driver is? Do you honestly believe there is special programming in iPhoto to take advantage of a CPU or GPU in a way that Windows software cannot match, or that this special programming exists at all? The sheer amount of ignorance in relation to how a Mac vs. PC works is simply staggering. Apple has apparently done a brilliant job brainwashing their customer base. It's really kind of sad to see.

Really? Like, programs optimized for DirectX from Windows .. not for Open GL? Programs are optimized for hardware -- for example, games that are for use with certain classes of GPUs and DirectX --- use the same GPU and Open GL and your performance tanks. Integration and optimization of hardware and software is key to performance.

 

[leman]

Windows performs better than OSX.

Windows have better GPU drivers than OSX. That's about the only thing. Performance-wise current OS X and Windows are more or less on par AFAIK (Windows pre 7 used to have really crappy standard memory allocator).

Still, OS X used to have a richer/better APIs which have more system integration = automatic resource management/offloading of processing onto the GPU and stuff like that. Classical windows API is a total disaster, MS started addressing these problems with its .NET and managed frameworks. I have not been developing desktop software for a few years now, so I don't know the current state of MS's or Apple's APIs. But from what I see, Apple is still at least slightly ahead. For example, close OpenCL integration and programming-level effective implicit multithreading support (code blocks in C) and stuff like that. Also, Apple's APIs allow them to effectively support resolution independence at a level of actually shipping a usable HiDPI product while allowing HiDPI-aware applications fine-grained control over displayed content. Vista and 7 have the DPI scaling, which is AFAIK inferior to Apple's approach. I have no idea about 8 though, they may have included some new APIs there...