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NVIDIA Exiting Chipset Business Pending Resolution of Licensing Dispute With Intel
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A, ALL Unix derivatives has had SMP, Even OSX.
B, GCD is easier to code for.
The Youtube/Flash thing has nothing to do with Apple. Adobe Flash is shocking on all platforms. Especially compared to silverlight.
Quad Core is over powered, even for Media encoding.
Oh and Eidorian, using Project names for CPUs only confuses people more.
OMG this Shanghai thing is Awesomezzzz!... etc.
Of course you didn't compare the Studio XPS 13. Would have killed your entire argument
The other systems are certainly not useless. The great thing about PC makers is they give you choices for every budget. Apple only has machines for certain budgets: expensive, more expensive, very expensive, extremely expensive, stupidly expensive.
I'm looking at the Dell Canada website right now. For $1299 you do get the slightly slower processor, but you get the GeForce N10M GS 512MB + GeForce 9400M, 4GB DDR3, 320GB 7200RPM HDD. $100 CAD less gets you a whole lot more overall.
The Studio XPS 13 has been available for months now. Almost as long as the unibody 13" MacBook. But, unlike the Mac, it has received continuous updates. It started out with very similar specs at a lower price then got dual GPUs, faster processors etc. as time went on. The 13.3" MacBook got what? One minor update in a year. No its not. For the same price here in the US I can buy a system with a larger 16x9 screen, dedicated graphics that beat the MacBook Pro, and a blu-ray reader.
Like I said, here in the US I can buy something with a larger screen, dedicated graphics that put the MacBook Pro at $2,000 to shame, and a blu-ray reader, along with a host of other standard features like HDMI w/audio, multi-card readers, etc.
Look at this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220566 no blu-ray reader but its $50 less than the cheapest Apple notebook and it has a GPU that puts all Macs (out of the box) to shame.
Spoken like someone who jumped on the anti-Vista bandwagon without ever using it.
Windows 7 UI changes actually help improve the overall experience. Snow Leopard's UI changes actually take OS X back a few steps.
Why the HELL is it when I double click either my Windows partition in OS X or an optical disc does it pop up in a little white window and every little click after that results in a new window being opened? I have yet to find the option to change that, because its annoying as hell. The only way around it that I can find so far is to open another Finder window and navigate to those devices that way.
And what mess was that exactly? I've used Vista since it launched, I was in the beta test, and I've built, sold, and supported multiple machines with Vista and I have yet to experience any of the supposed issues it had that Apple and the apologists love to claim it had.
Apple didn't fix it, they broke it.
What "under the hood" work? So far, Snow Leopard has been more unstable than Leopard ever was and it uses more RAM and, in typical Apple fashion, throws even more CPU cycles at software rather than optimizing.
Well, it's nice to know that Apple's priority is screwing customers over by pushing last generation hardware at double the price of current generation and making ridiculous margins to appease share holders, rather than making GOOD hardware that is priced right and ultimately making more money in the end.
I've been using a Mac for years now. I have never understood this "more efficient" or "more intuitive" argument. The way OS X works seems counter-intuitive in many ways. For example, why does command-tab take me to an application and not the specific window? That slows things down. Expose is all about show and also slows things down.
I've been using Mac OS X in my home for years now, as well as System 7 regularly back in my school days.
I started with DOS and Windows 3.0.
Like I said above, I've never gotten this argument about OS X making people more productive, or being more "fluid" when in the 3 years I've been using OS X, I've seen it come down crashing and burning from every day tasks like web browsing and emptying that trash than I ever had issues with Windows. And the issues I did have with Windows in the pre-98SE days were caused by hardware, not software. In OS X I've had software take down Finder and the system ultimately. In Windows I can't ever recall having a piece of software take down the entire OS.
If Apple is supposedly only making a 17% profit on a computer with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo, 1GB of RAM, a GeForce 9400M, and a 120GB HDD and a DVD writer, they're definitely doing something wrong.
Yeah, they can't make one at $500 that isn't junk. But they make ones at $599, $799, $999, $1,199, $1,499, $1,799, and $2,199 that are all junk. That would be the Mac mini, MacBook, and iMacs. Come on, $2,199 for a computer with a Core 2 Duo and GeForce GT 130? hah!
Nobody is losing money on notebooks. If they were not a profitable venture then they simply wouldn't exist no matter how great the demand.
Companies complain that the profit margin isn't as high as standard notebooks and desktops. But they are still profitable.
Steve Jobs owned the company but had nothing to do with the fact that the people behind the actual Pixar films have more talent in their finger than most people have in their entire body.
Well, if you look at how Dell and HP and others sell computers, their custom built systems get upgrades immediately. Again, going back to the dv6000 series from HP. They released it with Intel integrated graphics and nvidia integrated graphics. But as soon as that dedicated GPU became available the CTO systems had that option immediately and then it started showing up in production models in stores a few weeks later.
And this is why Apple needs to be more flexible. Apple need to realize that the company will make far more profits by giving customers what they want rather than trying to please their shareholders.
Well, the good thing is that 3rd party software developers are usually flexible and will offer to transfer your license from one OS to another either for free or for a small fee. For example, Adobe will change your license either for free or for a small fee depending on the CSR you get when you call.
And I honestly don't know any "creative professionals" that rely on Macs. I know people ranging from contracted musicians to published photographers to people in charge of web development at major companies that I won't name for their privacy. Not a single one relies on a Mac.
One of the people I referred to in that post was a "dedicated" Mac user for years. But she used Windows 7 and liked the style of the hardware better. Done deal.
I would say that Apple is stalling on blu-ray not because of licensing fees or control issues, but because they want you to buy "high definition" movies from iTunes. They get a cut of those sales and they would much rather have you buy those than have to pay blu-ray licensing fees for you to watch them.
Nevermind the fact that iTunes "high definition" can't even compete with a properly upscaled DVD and is light years behind blu-ray in image and audio quality..
Having experienced HP and Apple's customer service first hand, I can definitely tell you that HP knows that pleasing customers means more customers and more profit in the end. If they have to take a loss on one customer for that one to go on and tell their friends how great they were treated to gain more customers and more money in the end, they'll do it. Apple, however, will pretty much jerk you around and do everything to get out of honoring their warranty or build quality issues (iBook motherboard issues are a perfect example, as is the current issue with Time Capsules dying after 18 months), and they will finally only honor their warranty and treat you good when you make it very clear you know the consumer protection laws where you live and you'll act upon them.
Other companies like Asus offer systems that are almost as light as Macs, still portable, with good real world battery life, and offer gaming performance well beyond anything any out of box stock Mac offers.
Yes, but Mac OS wasn't UNIX until OS X came along. The "original" Mac OS didn't get SMP support until a System 7.5 update after Windows NT got it.
If I'm a developer and I've spent the last 4 years developing my SMP code for Intel systems, why am I going to drop everything and switch?
I would boil it down to Apple's OpenGL support more than Adobe being inefficient. When I watch Flash in Safari my CPU is pegged at 70% total use. When I watch in Firefox it's usually less than half. So Flash sucking in OS X has more to do with OS X than Adobe. Especially since Flash on the same hardware in Windows 7 uses a fraction of the CPU time.
Theres no such thing as "over powered" when it comes to computing. If more power is offered then there will be something that will eat it all up and ask for more. Even suggesting that quad core is "over powered" is silly.
Ask somebody who watches video on their iPod touch or iPhone every day on their train or bus ride to work if they would like to literally half the amount of time it takes for their videos to be encoded by using a quad core system and see how many of them say "oh thats too much power!"
You're talking about options though, not standard equipment in the base models. That was my point, and there is a difference, even in laptops. Such items can be added via a small card, and not part of the main board (soldered on at the manufacturing facility).
I agree.
But Apple doesn't have the interest, and perhaps not enough sales to justify that many options either. Those parts aren't as inexpensive in small quantities, and then take the additional R&D into consideration. It may not even be financially viable at best, but more likely they're not willing to cut into the margins (as there would be some loss in % by doing this in small quantities).
Some will, some won't. Professional apps are more likely to make allowances for this. I've run into this myself. But it was an expensive software suite, and there's an annual fee involved as well in order to maintain the updates. If I let it lapse, I can still use the software, but I would no longer be eligible for updates, including parts libraries.
Not so much with low to mid-level priced applications. So YMMV.
Apple has a strong share in the audio and graphics side, and has been reinforced by their exposure in the education system as I understand it (used Macs in the creative depts. during college). They've also marketed their systems in the medical field, but not sure as to how much ground they gained. Not much else that I'm aware of for professional users.
That's one person though. Far too small a sample to base anything on. It wouldn't even qualify as anecdotal.
This could also have a large factor on the surface, but it seems Apple's looking into it still, as there was a recent change made to the licensing.
Personally, downloads aren't the way of the future just yet, as the bandwidth is just too slow (has to buffer for what seems like forever before you can even watch it, and the file is compressed), and with more ISP's considering caps, will get too expensive with all the penalty fees.
I agree. They and Dell do much better, and you don't have to haul the damn thing to the store to get it looked at either. They'll send someone out, and ship the parts to the location. At least that's what I've dealt with on the enterprise side. Not sure with HP's consumer side as of late, but Dell's consumer products side does leave a little to be desired.
Which begs the Question, Who the hell had Dual Cores/CPUs back then apart from Mainframes etc? Its nice having something first but why the hell bother if you cant even use the tech.
Why the hell should I have dropped Win32/VB6 and gone for .Net/VB2005? Or Objective-C to Objective-C2? HTML to XHTML/CSS? You tell me.
This is an extremely flawed argument sorry. It would be more credible if the Linux implementation of Flash was picture perfect. Adobe cant code cleanly for crap okay. CS4 is just another example. Apple's implementation of OpenGL is fine. If Silverlight can do better on the same platform then whose fault is it? Hell, even VLC does better than Flash... at playing flash videos. I wish Silverlight would prevail just to give Adobe the rear end it needs. Flash sucks on all platforms, it just sucks a little less on Windows.
Maybe I should be clearer, Quadcore is over priced for the average consumer. If they buy things like Net Books how are they going to notice the performance of 8 Threads and 8GB ram?
Personally, Screw Binary. I really dont give a load anymore about semiconductors. I got to see a Quantum Computer first hand and all my Research at University if I do any is going to be on Commercialization of Quantum Computing.
There I admit it, Im a performance freak. We are a rare breed. Can we stop the pointless power arguement now? Any argument over consumer computing is irrelevant to our views. We knit pick over ever second gained or 5 points in 3dMark.
That is Steve's talent finding nerds to bring mainstream.
If your a developer you don't give up any work you've in that regards. If your cross platform your going to want to do it anyway to get the most out of all your systems. Still from what I've heard developers are getting noticeable speed gains just building against GCD. Plus big wins in areas they haven't made any gains in with minimal work.
But hey that would be steve's talent again.
Not really, that would be more the engineers, Steve hasnt done anything significant in the actual development since his G3 days.
Has he every really done anything other than bring the right engineers together and make lots of money out of what happens when they are together?
There is no need to worry. OX S is so much better than M$ Windows that a Core 2 system will easily outperform an i7 based windows sytem. Too many people are focused on the raw numbers without considering the fact that OS X is so much more optimised than Winblows.
Is your comment aimed at people (like yourself?) that have no idea what they're talking about, don't really care/understand, and already buy macs anyway?
The sort of people that know what they're talking about and/or have grown up past 'I love corporation brand X' probably didn't read past your first sentence.
I like watching adverts too.
Not when it's US$550 - 650 for a Q8200 tower and sometimes even the monitor.
If you want something cheaper then it's a dual core but today in 2009 the line for a quad core processor is very low. Even in the Q6600 days it was low.
Of course you didn't compare the Studio XPS 13. Would have killed your entire argument
But I did, making you look like a tool
And there you go adding a lot of options to the thing, and probably forgetting others, just to make your argument. I built comparable systems with the same features. It's 1219$ vs 1399$.
And your price is totally wrong. You're forgetting the LED screen, you're forgetting Bluetooth.
With the 9500m, still slower CPU (2.13), 4 g RAM and a 320 GB drive I'm now at 1369$. I still haven't got your mystical nVidia N10M GS... And I still can't get a decent battery (decent is really subjective too, Dell 6 cell batteries are atrocious, their 9 cells are barely passable). And yes, I did own Inspirons for many years just because they had options for decent graphics vs Macbooks, so I would know on the batteries. Barely had 3 hours from the 9 cell.
So essentially, you don't even know how to compare shop.
Hey look, another hater with nothing insightful to say.
Ion 2 by the end of the year
Well looks like Ion 2 is still coming by the end of the year.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/01/nvidia-said-to-be-prepping-ion-2-for-late-2009/
Well looks like Ion 2 is still coming by the end of the year.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/01/nvidia-said-to-be-prepping-ion-2-for-late-2009/
Not when it's US$550 - 650 for a Q8200 tower and sometimes even the monitor.
If you want something cheaper then it's a dual core but today in 2009 the line for a quad core processor is very low. Even in the Q6600 days it was low.
Neargh, Lucky bastards. Anything close to that price in US dollars here will get you a dual-core 2GB of Ram Home Basic... from dell. Or a shiny netbook. You might be able to squeeze a quad core for that price if you built it yourself and used an Athlon II X4.
GPUs are always soldered on to the motherboard. Only on an incredibly small number of notebooks is the GPU an actual add-in card.
Of course Apple isn't interested. Why take a 49% profit margin when you could have 50?
Well, like I said, I've never known anyone to rely on a Mac. When it comes to graphics these days, Photoshop is 64-bit on Windows and not on OS X. Plus Photoshop is written from the ground up for Windows these days and not ported. Plus Windows has a wide range of GPUs available that OS X does not. Especially "professional level" GPUs like high end Quadro GPUs as well as high end consumer GPUs that can double as a "pro level" for significantly lower cost.
Same thing with audio. Theres a much wider range of software and hardware available for Windows, and the industry standards are also on Windows and written for Windows, not ported.
It shows a trend. Go into any big box retailer and you'll see more and more people like her.
You'll especially see people who look at Macs and say "wow that looks nice" then they see the lack of features compared to PCs that cost half as much and its pretty much a done deal.
I agree. To get blu-ray quality you're going to need a fiber connection like those offered in Japan. 100Mbps down. Then theres the issue of caps on some services, as well as just the overall quality. iTunes 720p downloads don't even really compare to upscaled DVDs and use lower quality Dolby Digital audio than DVDs. Blu-ray is 1080p with a bitrate sometimes 10x that of iTunes downloads as well as lossless and sometimes even uncompressed audio.
Dell has on-site service for consumer products as well.
HP will also send the parts out. I had a DVD writer go bad in an HP. I called them up and not even 2 days later I had a new drive on my porch waiting for me. My first MacBook, one of the many things to go wrong on it was the DVD writer. I had to send it in for that and the typical plastic casing failure. It took multiple trips out and they were never able to get the DVD writer repaired, they only made it worse. With my HP I got the drive, took the battery out (release switch), loosened a screw, pulled the old drive out, slid the new one in, tightened the screen, reinserted the battery, and that was it. Thanks to Apple I had to be without my Mac for almost a month.
Well, Windows had pre-emptive multi-tasking back in those days. Mac OS did not. So Windows was able to benefit greatly from multiple processors. Mac OS had co-operative multi-tasking up until Mac OS X. So basically, anything that wasn't the "in focus" app had its resources sucked out of it. No letting video render in the background or anything like that.
Thats why OpenGL native games run significantly slower on OS X compared to Windows on the same hardware?
Not really. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103706
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115215
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115055
Those are all priced extremely well. Quad core is great for multi-tasking. There are a lot of average users out there who do want video on their portable device and for them a cheap quad core processor is going to give them a significant speed boost over dual core.
Netbooks are more of a passing fad. They are extremely popular, yes. But they seem to be only popular amongst the "Geeks" who must have a computer with them at all times. I've never met an average person who is satisfied with their netbooks. I've had a lot of people ask me about them and when they see how poor youtube performs and that they'd need an external DVD drive they become immediately uninterested.
heh, first post in this thread to make me laugh out loud.
OS X more optimized than Windows? Yeah, thats why every day tasks in OS X eat up far more CPU time than they do in Windows.
Thats why OpenGL native games run significantly faster in Windows.
Hell, thats why Windows has ALL of the games that put current console hardware to shame when it comes to graphics.
Haha you keep telling yourself that, buddy
Would you like a screen shot? Its there for me. You're simply not going to the site or ignoring it completely.
I already explained Bluetooth and LED. Bluetooth is useless. I've tried to use the built-in (in my MacBook) Bluetooth for my MX5500 keyboard and MX Revolution mouse. The connection dropped all the time. Multiple times daily. I used the USB Bluetooth dongle and guess what? Not a problem since. Not even the iPhone uses Bluetooth the way Apple used to demonstrate Bluetooth capabilities, again proving that built-in Bluetooth is useless.
LED? Apple uses edge-lit LEDs, as does the Dell Studio XPS 13. So you do not gain ANY benefit from it other than instant-on and supposedly better battery life. There is *NO* image quality gain.
Actually, I do. And I've already killed your argument. You're just grasping at every little thing you can to try to make a come back
Barely 3 hours isn't too bad, when you consider the REAL WORLD battery life of a Mac is around 3.5 hours.
The Athlon II X4 620 at ~US$100 is actually very competitive against the Q8200 in terms of performance. The chipsets also sport very good IGPs. 785G boards are cheap but not on the features.
You also have the option of going with DDR2 even well into next year under AMD. DDR2 is dirt cheap and I have tons laying around.
Next year's 6-core Thuban is compatible with AM2+/AM3 as well.
The Athlon II X4 620 at ~US$100 is actually very competitive against the Q8200 in terms of performance. The chipsets also sport very good IGPs. 785G boards are cheap but not on the features.
You also have the option of going with DDR2 even well into next year under AMD. DDR2 is dirt cheap and I have tons laying around.
Next year's 6-core Thuban is compatible with AM2+/AM3 as well.
Interesting chip. I wonder if I can get Xenserver 5.5 running on a 785G board. I'd love another cheap virtualization box.
AMD doesn't skip on the virtualization support on its budget hardware. I noticed the responsiveness gains on my X2 550 over my Q6600 from nested paging alone. Another 2 GB of RAM didn't hurt either.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)
Xenserver and ESX are generally more picky with the controllers than the procs themselves. I just have to see which AMD board is compatible.
Eidorian said:
Xenserver and ESX are generally more picky with the controllers than the procs themselves. I just have to see which AMD board is compatible.
To me, an option is something that can be added to an existing board that's already been assembled (soldered at least). Not necessarily been through a final assembly. HDD's and memory are a perfect example. So units that do allow a separate GPU to be placed in via a small daughter board, are true options.
If the GPU chip, even if listed as an option, has to be soldered down, then to my way of thinking (and those I've worked with), it's either a different model or sub model (classification depends on whether or not the pin-outs are different between the GPU's). If the same board can be used, it's a sub model. Otherwise, a new board is needed, and is really a different machine, no matter how it's marketed.
I do find it odd that the video/graphics community seem to prefer a system maker that offers so few choices, especially in the MP line. But now that they've increased the pricing on those models, it seems they're interested in looking at other alternatives.
It seems there's enough USB or FW based devices available for Macs, that it at least has a better outlook than the graphics side.
I don't use computers for either though. I use Electronic Design Automation software, as well as some other stuff, and the only OS I can run all of it under, is Windows (very little of what I use is even offered for other OS's).
We seem to be seeing similar things, but from what I've seen, price seems to be the deciding factor more than looks or features. Features just cinch the deal.
People are still seem worried about their finances to me, despite the news articles to the contrary starting to float around. So I'd expect the price to be the primary decision factor for some time to come. Even when the economy really does improve, as they'll still have the memories of "tighter" times.
I understand. And I'm jealous of the ISP speeds in Japan. The US needs a lot of work to build the infrastructure here. They've let it slide for too long, and now the networks running at capacity in some areas (different priority classifications for each area).
I know they do. I was thinking mainly in terms of the MP, which when you compare it to Dell's offerings, are aimed at the business/enterprise side of the market.
HP's willing to send out parts, as well as offer on site warranties as well (consumer and enterprise systems). Apple really doesn't do this, as they only seem to be willing to send someone out in cases of 50+ miles from a store (and may have other conditions as well, or at least try to make it difficult on the user, as if they're doing them "a BIG favor"). If the user is closer, they tell them to bring it in. Turn-around time seems long to me as well.