PowerBook G5 - 'Some Time'

[~Shard~]

Simply put, not even the PowerBook G5s will be fast enough for some people, and they'lll find something to complain about the moment that specs are released, again when the actual machines are in their hands, and again when some PC laptop that's eight times the weight and as loud as a leaf blower manages to beat it in a rigged benchmark. I'm against a mindset, not reality. Yes, there are circumstances where faster machines would be better for applications (nearly all circumstances, actually), but the reality of it is that the G5 was never intended as a laptop chip. It's a modified server processor that was shoehorned into a desktop, and is not trying to be shoved even further down so that it fits in a portable.

I agree with this. People are always going to want more - and this is not a bad thing, don't get me wrong - striving for constant improvement, not willing to except the way things are, etc., are all important beliefs which push companies like Apple to strive for continuous improvement. However the extreme of this is the people who are never happy, as thatwendigo is addressing. These are the types of people who simply want a G5 in a PowerBook because the chip exists. "Well, it's in the PowerMacs, so I want one now in my PowerBook!" Well, it isn't that simple, as many people here are pointing out due to various issues.

Another excellent point is that the G5 wasn't designed as a laptop chip. It took enough Apple engineering to get that beast in the PowerMacs and the xServes, so it is simply going to take time before it appears in the PowerBooks. I think some people are being unreasonable saying they absolutely NEED a G5 in a portable. Do you hear PC users complaining and whining their heads off that the latest laptops don't have high-end Itanium chips in them?

Don't get me wrong - I can't wait until G5s flood the entire prodcut line, and G5 PowerBooks will be great, but it will all take time, and for now, what we have is still pretty darn good. Some people will never be satisfied though...

 

[aswitcher]

Yes, more than worth the price mainly due to the fact that the PC will not be so fast in a month. Out of the box it is lightning quick. After being used for a whole month, no matter how much maintenance you do, it slows down considerably. Just time the boot times and operations over the course of a month and you'll be startled to find out that speed goes down by 50% - and tendency to crash goes up.

A very interesting point...

 

[Mr. MacPhisto]

Good point about the security patches on Windows. In addition, each security patch also slows down the system.

Here's the thing - over time a PC user may not even recognize that the machine is slowing down. It can be very gradual. Kind of like a car. You lose horsepower over time, but you may not notice it because it's gradual. Most users don't realize how much slower their machines boot because often they walk away and do something else while it boots. Same goes for renders.

I have timed these machines over the course of two months - and they slow down greatly. Even more telling, even after a fresh load the PC is not quite as fast as it orignally was. They've gotten back some speed, but are still not quite the same. The problem - I patch up the machine after the reload, so it slows down.

The PowerMacs and PowerBooks? Doing the same renders as when they were purchased they've gained speed after OS X updates - a few seconds here and there.

Like I've said before - PCs are fast out of the box, but time makes the Mac a more valuable machine. Reliability and lack of clogging actually bring the Mac right into line.

Even now, the PowerBooks are a great deal. They don't have the problems of PC laptops and they are able of maintaining and increasing their speed. Would G5s be welcome? Yes. That would give the Powerbook an even greater advantage because it could match the PCs in speed - and not have to deal with the loss of speed from Windows.

I'm very sure the G5s will come in the Fall and are only delayed because of the 90nm delays.

 

[~Shard~]

By that, you mean that you haven't applied any of MS's security patches released over the last 2 1/2 months?

MM

Heh heh - nice one! Hmm, how many patches would that be, anyway? 2.5 months, hmm, that's got to be quite a lot...

 

[Spazmodius]

Here's the thing - over time a PC user may not even recognize that the machine is slowing down. It can be very gradual. Kind of like a car. You lose horsepower over time, but you may not notice it because it's gradual. Most users don't realize how much slower their machines boot because often they walk away and do something else while it boots. Same goes for renders.

I'm not denying the existence of this phenomenon, but...how many people actually see this? I have a 1GHz Celeron tower running XP/Home, for stuff I can't do on a Mac (usually no compatible app. on the Mac side), and a few old games. Also, it's good for troubleshooting little bits of HTML I attempt to write. Occasionally, pretty much for sh*ts-and-giggles, I'll run SiSoft Sandra's bench suite, and I must say, I've never seen any slowdown whatsoever, even though the thing is two years old now and has tons of crap on it. I've downloadad all the patches I could be bothered to, etc. I've not exactly been a vigilant caretaker of what's on my hard drive. I see no degradation in performance. At all. I can store the benchmarks from my last run, and compare to the newest one, that 's how I know this. So, are you b.s.-ing, or do you folks have any cites, you know, independant pages showing benchmarks indicating this progressive slowdown over time, or somehow otherwise describing it? Hey, maybe I can make some money advising people, because I must be doing something right that most folks don't know about.

 

[thatwendigo]

Heh heh - nice one! Hmm, how many patches would that be, anyway? 2.5 months, hmm, that's got to be quite a lot...

Well, let's see:
Three criticals and an important are set up for April.
Only one Moderate for March.
Three more criticals and an imortant for February.

Nine security patches in three months? Ouch.

 

[hulugu]

What a load of high yield crap.
Have you even USED Windows 2000 or XP?!?! Do you have even an ounce of data to backup your zealot comment?!! My Tosh laptop has been running XP for, crap I'm closing in on 1 year, FLAWLESSLY. NO viruses, NO adware, NO problems. If you are going to make such comments back them up with facts.
I have no problem with someone hacking on a platform. But don't spout out junk that was true 2 Window versions ago.

PS- My Windows 2003 home server has been up for 76 days now with zero downtime. Yep MS is a steaming POS.

Yes, but analogies do not equal data, or just because you don't have any problems doesn't mean other don't either. Windows can work, it can work for months without a problem, but I don't know any Windows users have had attained this holy grail. Furthermore, the people who have smooth-running Windows PCs often spend quite a bit of time keeping it that way. Before you spout off some venom about how great Windows is, sit down and figure out how much time you spend protecting that lovely box. I have a feeling it's more time than you think.
I think Windows still sucks—and I'm running Win2k after banishing WinXP for life after SP1 and a host of problems, on a new 2.4Ghz Dell—it's still a great target for hackers, viruses, and spyware and it's still a perfect example of careless HUI.
However, the hardware has gotten pretty good and I wish the Apple/IBM/Motorola triumvirate could actually produce a chip that was on par with Intel's Pentium IV and M.

 

[hulugu]

I'm not denying the existence of this phenomenon, but...how many people actually see this?...I've downloadad all the patches I could be bothered to, etc. I've not exactly been a vigilant caretaker of what's on my hard drive. I see no degradation in performance. At all. I can store the benchmarks from my last run, and compare to the newest one, that 's how I know this. So, are you b.s.-ing, or do you folks have any cites, you know, independant pages showing benchmarks indicating this progressive slowdown over time, or somehow otherwise describing it? Hey, maybe I can make some money advising people, because I must be doing something right that most folks don't know about.

You know I looked I didn't find stastical data describing slowdowns, however in doing a Google search I did find something interesting, about a zillion services offering PC tune-ups. Furthermore, I have noticed numerous articles in PCMag, etc. telling people how to speed up their machines, remove spyware, adware, viruses, and defrag the drives. These things cause performance hits and you know it.
Furthemore, in my own personal experience—not data, I know but since we're sharing personal anecdotes—at work, several machines have slowed over time, and in two particular cases we saw performance hits after Windows updates. In another case, a Windows update hosed our primary app and we had to go back to our backup. I also know people who have told me they were buying new machines because their old one was too slow, I went over and cleaned out their machine, removing numerous dead programs, bad links, the flotsam and jetsam that comes from installing and then removing programs in Windows, and suddenly their machine was as quick as they day they bought it.
So, in lieu of actual statistics and links, I would say that this is an observable phenomona at least in that an entire cottage industry has popped up around it.

 

[Spazmodius]

You know I looked I didn't find stastical data describing slowdowns, however in doing a Google search I did find something interesting, about a zillion services offering PC tune-ups. Furthermore, I have noticed numerous articles in PCMag, etc. telling people how to speed up their machines, remove spyware, adware, viruses, and defrag the drives. These things cause performance hits and you know it.
Furthemore, in my own personal experience—not data, I know but since we're sharing personal anecdotes—at work, several machines have slowed over time, and in two particular cases we saw performance hits after Windows updates. In another case, a Windows update hosed our primary app and we had to go back to our backup. I also know people who have told me they were buying new machines because their old one was too slow, I went over and cleaned out their machine, removing numerous dead programs, bad links, the flotsam and jetsam that comes from installing and then removing programs in Windows, and suddenly their machine was as quick as they day they bought it.
So, in lieu of actual statistics and links, I would say that this is an observable phenomona at least in that an entire cottage industry has popped up around it.

Weird. I should figure out what I'm doing. I appear to have that rare WinTel system that just works without me fooling with it constantly. Maybe it's cos I built it myself, I dunno. I gotta can whatever magic potion I'm using and sell it to people.

 

[h'biki]

er. Question. Would anyone actually turn down a PowerBook G5?

Not at all. And I'm sure Apple knows this. They're hardly going to be selling speed bumped G4 Powerbooks if they had a choice of offering a G5 Powerbook. Yeah, it'd be really killer if they brought it out now.

But for those of us that are in a market -now- for a laptop, these models are a decent improvement over previous ones, particularly in price.

I can replace my 18 month old 1ghz TiBook with a machine that has double the ram, double the vram, a 4x superdrive, and 50% faster clock... for a price that is $1500 (AU) cheaper than what I paid for my TiBook originally.

 

[pigwin32]

It all adds up, let alone the R&D costs...

Generally you will find that the R&D costs bear little or no relation to the price you will pay for the product. The price will be set not on how much the product cost to make but on how much the marketing weenies at Apple think they can sell it for. Keep in mind Apple's objective here, it isn't to make a wonderful product and sell it as cheaply as possible to benefit mankind, Apple's objective is to make money and to do that they will be trying to evaluate the best price to maximise profit. I imagine the G5 PB will debut at a premium to the current range due to expected demand, a good reason to grab one of the refresh machines which are as affordable as they are ever likely to be.

 

[AidenShaw]

well maybe

I imagine the G5 PB will debut at a premium to the current range due to expected demand, a good reason to grab one of the refresh machines which are as affordable as they are ever likely to be.

The best price for the PBG4 will probably be right *after* the PBG5 is announced....

Good post, though. It's not too likely that there will be another PBG4 refresh, so today it's a mature, well-tested product and if you buy one you'll have the "latest and greatest" for quite some time.

It won't be until 64-bit Mac OS X ("the un-mentioned mystery") is out and the PBG5 supports 6 GiB (or more) of RAM that you'll feel like you're a second class citizen. For a PB with 2 GiB of memory - you won't really have any added value from 64-bit OS X when it eventually appears....

 

[blissed]

Powerbook G5 Displays

I can believe they need to sell off the last of their stuff before an upgrade to G5 Powerbooks (or whatever excuse they have), but what gives with the crap displays on these new G4 powerbooks? Why couldn't they have atleast given us better displays... You can get any PC laptop for $1500 with a nice sharp display. It's past the time for Apple to give these powerbooks some better displays... I want to buy one ASAP, but won't because fuzzy type sucks. What's wrong with Apple?

sigh.

 

[adamjay]

I can believe they need to sell off the last of their stuff before an upgrade to G5 Powerbooks (or whatever excuse they have), but what gives with the crap displays on these new G4 powerbooks? Why couldn't they have atleast given us better displays... You can get any PC laptop for $1500 with a nice sharp display. It's past the time for Apple to give these powerbooks some better displays... I want to buy one ASAP, but won't because fuzzy type sucks. What's wrong with Apple?

sigh.

my 12" RevA display looks as sharp as sharp gets.

fuzzy text? that might be your font smoothing (appearance preferences) setting. no fuzzy text here.

 

[oingoboingo]

my 12" RevA display looks as sharp as sharp gets.

fuzzy text? that might be your font smoothing (appearance preferences) setting. no fuzzy text here.

The display on my Rev B 12" PowerBook is also quite sharp. I'd like it to be a little brighter though...under full office lighting, even running on AC power it sometimes seems slightly dim to me.

 

[pigwin32]

The best price for the PBG4 will probably be right *after* the PBG5 is announced....

Good post, though. It's not too likely that there will be another PBG4 refresh, so today it's a mature, well-tested product and if you buy one you'll have the "latest and greatest" for quite some time.

It won't be until 64-bit Mac OS X ("the un-mentioned mystery") is out and the PBG5 supports 6 GiB (or more) of RAM that you'll feel like you're a second class citizen. For a PB with 2 GiB of memory - you won't really have any added value from 64-bit OS X when it eventually appears....

Yeah, I think the new PB's are ok, for my purposes they have everything I want except for the G5 and a current screen and I'm guessing the G5 PB's aren't too far off so I'm willing to wait.

Regarding a 64-bit Mac OSX, I think it will be a good long while before we see a *fully* 64-bit os, but we will see Apple tuning the os and apps to take advantage of the G5 processor. I know someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think an app has to be fully 64-bit in order to run faster on the G5 v. the G4 (GHz being equal).

More RAM is generally considered useful regardless but there's no reason a 2GB G5 PB couldn't take advantage of a 64-bit os. That's kind of like saying you can't take advantage of a 32-bit os if you've only got 500MB.

 

[Mr. MacPhisto]

I'm not denying the existence of this phenomenon, but...how many people actually see this? I have a 1GHz Celeron tower running XP/Home, for stuff I can't do on a Mac (usually no compatible app. on the Mac side), and a few old games. Also, it's good for troubleshooting little bits of HTML I attempt to write. Occasionally, pretty much for sh*ts-and-giggles, I'll run SiSoft Sandra's bench suite, and I must say, I've never seen any slowdown whatsoever, even though the thing is two years old now and has tons of crap on it. I've downloadad all the patches I could be bothered to, etc. I've not exactly been a vigilant caretaker of what's on my hard drive. I see no degradation in performance. At all. I can store the benchmarks from my last run, and compare to the newest one, that 's how I know this. So, are you b.s.-ing, or do you folks have any cites, you know, independant pages showing benchmarks indicating this progressive slowdown over time, or somehow otherwise describing it? Hey, maybe I can make some money advising people, because I must be doing something right that most folks don't know about.

What I do is a set up a couple of projects and run them when the machines arrive and time them. I then seed the systems to the users. Every two weeks I run the same projects on the same machines after doing a bit of clean up. Over a two month period the Windows machines declined in render speed (in AfterEffects, Photoshop, Avid, and several other apps) by an average of 43%. The Mac pretty much stayed flat, gaining a few seconds here or there.

There really hasn't been any independent work done much on this because most benchmarks are done on fresh systems with established benchmarks - even if those benchmarks are not optimized properly for the Mac (AfterEffects and some CineBench stuff). I don't compare apps on Windows and the Mac. I compare the Windows machine to itself and the Macs to the themselves. I monitored this because my clients wanted me to do a study on Macintosh reliability. Most of the companies have switched because of decreased downtime and the continuous speed of the system. This saves them money and allows them to get more work done.

I'm happy for you that you've gotten no degradation. I take good care of my own system - and built it specifically for performance, and have not seen it happen. If you can do it, more power to you. The average Windows user does not have this experience - and neither do most companies. Besides, if you have Windows specific stuff then you have no choice.

My point is this - processor speed is not the only factor. If the PC had a better built OS then ti would be cut and dry, but the minority of users find XP or 2000 good OSes. Most have enough problems that the processor speed is nullified by downtime. Each client I work with has experienced this. They lose over five hours every week with their PCs. Fortunately, my installed PCs should go from 11% of my business to almost 0% by the end of the year - down from 70% two years ago.

 

[pigwin32]

I can believe they need to sell off the last of their stuff before an upgrade to G5 Powerbooks (or whatever excuse they have), but what gives with the crap displays on these new G4 powerbooks? Why couldn't they have atleast given us better displays... You can get any PC laptop for $1500 with a nice sharp display. It's past the time for Apple to give these powerbooks some better displays... I want to buy one ASAP, but won't because fuzzy type sucks. What's wrong with Apple?

There's nothing wrong with Apple. They're just focusing their engineers on the G5 PB, this refresh was basically a replacement of pin-compatible components requiring little engineering effort. Replacing the screen would have required a change to the enclosure which doesn't make sense when a new enclosure is being developed for the G5. I agree the display is getting dated, my 2yr old TiBook has the same screen as the latest AlBooks.

 

[thatwendigo]

Regarding a 64-bit Mac OSX, I think it will be a good long while before we see a *fully* 64-bit os, but we will see Apple tuning the os and apps to take advantage of the G5 processor. I know someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think an app has to be fully 64-bit in order to run faster on the G5 v. the G4 (GHz being equal).

As I understand it, the biggest increase will be in certain kinds of applications that are either RAM hogs (because of a difference in address space in the 64-bit hardware) and those that use certain kind of mathematical calculations. General usage probably won't benefit from being 64-bit for some time, unless Microsoft updates Office to be as much of a resource hog as it can be once more.

More RAM is generally considered useful regardless but there's no reason a 2GB G5 PB couldn't take advantage of a 64-bit os. That's kind of like saying you can't take advantage of a 32-bit os if you've only got 500MB.

This is true, but the differences between 64 and 32 bit are largely in addressing RAM and doing math, like I just said. For the scientific, engineering, and technical community, consumer-grade options in 64-bit computing are wonderful. You're just not going to see a big spike in performance when it doesn't involve tasks that specifically benefit from the new hardware. Adressing 2GB of RAM is perfectly easy in the existing systems.

Now, with the G5, you will see a huge increase in the PowerBooks if they can cram the full bus into the design. The increase in memory access speeds alone should really improve the performance, but is has nothing to do with the bit-ness.

 

[hacksaw]

What I do is a set up a couple of projects and run them when the machines arrive and time them. I then seed the systems to the users. Every two weeks I run the same projects on the same machines after doing a bit of clean up. Over a two month period the Windows machines declined in render speed (in AfterEffects, Photoshop, Avid, and several other apps) by an average of 43%. The Mac pretty much stayed flat, gaining a few seconds here or there.

There really hasn't been any independent work done much on this because most benchmarks are done on fresh systems with established benchmarks - even if those benchmarks are not optimized properly for the Mac (AfterEffects and some CineBench stuff). I don't compare apps on Windows and the Mac. I compare the Windows machine to itself and the Macs to the themselves. I monitored this because my clients wanted me to do a study on Macintosh reliability. Most of the companies have switched because of decreased downtime and the continuous speed of the system. This saves them money and allows them to get more work done.

I'm happy for you that you've gotten no degradation. I take good care of my own system - and built it specifically for performance, and have not seen it happen. If you can do it, more power to you. The average Windows user does not have this experience - and neither do most companies. Besides, if you have Windows specific stuff then you have no choice.

My point is this - processor speed is not the only factor. If the PC had a better built OS then ti would be cut and dry, but the minority of users find XP or 2000 good OSes. Most have enough problems that the processor speed is nullified by downtime. Each client I work with has experienced this. They lose over five hours every week with their PCs. Fortunately, my installed PCs should go from 11% of my business to almost 0% by the end of the year - down from 70% two years ago.

From 70% to 11%??
Those number say something, but who am I to say!!!!

 

[thatwendigo]

From 70% to 11%??
Those number say something, but who am I to say!!!!

Yes, and if you read carefuly, what they say is that macs went from 30% to 89% of his business.

 

[hacksaw]

Yes, and if you read carefuly, what they say is that macs went from 30% to 89% of his business.

Does seem odd though, his machine with Windows does not get the slow down
while his clients machine with Windows does. I would be just a bit more curious why this is happening, wouldn't you.
Just a thought on basic trouble shooting.

 

[thatwendigo]

Does seem odd though, his machine with Windows does not get the slow down
while his clients machine with Windows does. I would be just a bit more curious why this is happening, wouldn't you.
Just a thought on basic trouble shooting.

It doesn't seem that odd to me at all. For one, he's probably using different hardware, and for another, he's almosst certainly not doing the idiotic things that the average users do to their machines.

Also, how is that at all related to the increase of mac sales for him?

 

[pigwin32]

As I understand it, the biggest increase will be in certain kinds of applications that are either RAM hogs (because of a difference in address space in the 64-bit hardware) and those that use certain kind of mathematical calculations. General usage probably won't benefit from being 64-bit for some time, unless Microsoft updates Office to be as much of a resource hog as it can be once more.

Apple has an interesting tech note on G5 performance tuning for applications. Looks like a lot of opportunities and a few pitfalls. Overall it appears any app can benefit from G5 features. Gluttons for punishment can also check out this article. This should give developers plenty to smile about and continue the recent Apple tradition of new software releases improving the performance of my current/next PB.

 

[Mr. MacPhisto]

From 70% to 11%??
Those number say something, but who am I to say!!!!

It required a lot of work to get everybody to begin to move over. I had to demonstrate that it would be more beneficial to my clients - which I was able to do. That is why I put the work and did research on it. All my clients are very happy to be switching over now. It was difficult at first, but they are now seeing the benefit financially. They are more productive running on the Macs.

I was amazed by how much easier everything was when I got my first Mac two years ago. The reason? My PC running Windows 2000 would inadvertantly crash - you could never tell when it was going to just hang. The problem was that I'd lose pages upon pages of information I was putting together in Word. I had saved the documents, but after the crash Windows acted like that session had never happened. My save files were gone and no temp files existed that had anything to do with what I was doing. I needed something that was reliable. Jaguar had just come out. I had hated Macs my entire life and been a big time PC afficionado - but I bought my iBook and haven't looked back. My use of it convinced me that running these machines was much more efficient - and much less stressful.

I have never pulled my hair out or gotten really stressed out supporting the Macs. Every day I looks forward to lifting the lid on my laptop and working on it. It is still a joy to use because it does everything I ask it to do and doesn't hang and complain. I'm not sure, but I think the reduction in stress could maybe have added a few years onto my life too.

All I know is that each of my clients has recorded that they are getting more done in less time. The artists, editors, and animators are less stressed out because they don't lose projects. The owners of each are happier because they spend less money having to have work done on their systems. Of course, that would be the problem if too many people moved over - the IT industry would take a serious hit. It it to their benefit not to have computers work well.