Might. I've heard that before. Heard I know some people too.
Sorry I just can't take some strangers word on teh interwebz!
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Safari 5 and Xcode 4 Coming at WWDC
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Might. I've heard that before. Heard I know some people too.
Sorry I just can't take some strangers word on teh interwebz!
Yes but I think it is more likely that the iMac appeared just as USB was taking off and Apple fans like to credit that to Apple. It's difficult for me to remember just how many USB devices there were at that time, but I don't remember any overnight explosion just because of one computer.
Intel DG41MJ to name just one recent one.
Serial and VGA outputs are still common and still have their uses, but that's exactly the point. They're still legacy ports--cheap LCD monitors until just a few years ago shipped only with VGA connectors. The reason that these connectors are included, even on products with a space premium, is that people still use them, which shows that manufacturers haven't fully embraced USB even today.
USB 1.1, which is the first version that went anywhere, was introduced in September 1998--after the iMac, which was introduced with a draft version of the standard. Windows 98, introduced in May 1998--about two months before the iMac, was the first version of Windows available at retail with close to complete support for USB 1.0.
USB ports were introduced in 1996, but nobody used them. You'd have an extremely hard time finding (a) a USB 1.0 device that was sold commercially in volume and (b) a Windows USB printer, scanner, external drive, keyboard, mouse, or game controller that was introduced before 1999.
Then you weren't paying attention. The first USB printers, scanners, Zip drives, keyboards, and mice were all introduced for Macs, because starting with the 1998 iMac and PowerBook, Macs were all-USB. It certainly wasn't overnight, but it absolutely was Mac-centric.
Manufacturers for Windows computers happily continued to focus on legacy connectors until 2000, when USB started to become the norm. The scanner I purchased in 2002 for my office PC was a parallel port model because there were only a few USB models to choose from, and they were all flaky under Windows 98 (as was usual for USB). The HP Jornada I purchased in 2003 used a serial port for syncing. The first several generations of mp3 player connected via parallel port.
On the PC side, USB did not really take off until USB 2.0 offered clear speed advantages over the old legacy ports. When it happened, it happened quickly. The rapid introduction of USB 2.0, flash drives, digital cameras, and Windows XP (all the big events of 2001) was the major breakthrough for Windows users.
It's really kind of amazing that the same people who said the iMac's use of USB (a standard "no one uses") would kill Apple, and then when it didn't, mocked Mac owners for having no real selection in peripherals because nothing ran on USB could turn around a decade later and pretend that they were all using USB before the iMac (they weren't, because there were no devices to use) and everything under the sun already existed on USB by 1998 (it didn't, because most things we use USB for today didn't even exist in 1998).
In exactly the same way, people will claim in a decade that HTML5/CSS3 was everywhere by 2009 and that Apple didn't have anything to do with it--even though WebKit is the most complete implementation, and Safari in particular offers the greatest support, Apple is strongly pushing it on its mobile platforms (and has been since 2007, when the first features were implemented for iPhone development), and much of the work in getting respectable performance out of JS (Nitro), CSS animation (WebKit acceleration), and popularizing the audio and video tags has come from Apple. Apple doesn't deserve sole credit, but they are a major force behind it, just like DisplayPort.
I don't even like Safari as a browser, but credit where credit is due.
I should have added the word 'offline', I'd like to be able to have the documentation downloaded to the iPad and access it much like you do in XCode, from the files on your Mac.
He graphics subsystem is used for a lot more than games.
As for STEAM and what Valve has said, who cares what they say? You do understand marketing BS right. The GPU improvements certainly help with games but they also help many other apps.
The latest builds of Safari have GPU acceleration from what I understand.
As for STEAM and what Valve has said, who cares what they say? You do understand marketing BS right. The GPU improvements certainly help with games but they also help many other apps.
Developer Tools?
Well well, from the looks of things I might as well not be switching to Chrome just yet! I do hope Safari 5 really brings what it's promising!!
Was about freakin' time for Apple to do something about "Smart Address field", let's hope it's going to be useful.
Was about freakin' time for Apple to do something about "Smart Address field", let's hope it's going to be useful.
I never claimed every device went USB in 1998. You clearly made that up. I just said that the iMac is not responsible for the USB take-off, and that I was already hearing about USB way before the iMac and Apple took the plunge. It was being discussed everywhere in the PC World, shipped with Windows 95, and was a major marketing point for Windows 98. In the PC world, no one cares about Apple circa 1998-2000. We got USB and devices that were USB because USB was simply the superior choice.
My 1998 PC had USB ports on it. Heck, every Intel chipset equipped board had USB ports because it was included in the late Pentium and Pentium II north/south bridge chipsets. Some had headers on the board that you could simply plug into connectors on a plate that took up one of your slots.
Guess what ? To this day, it still boots and I can use a USB keyboard for the BIOS. This machine was bought before the iMac shipped.
Devices that weren't better off as USB didn't go USB until it became the superior choice (which took USB 2.0 for many type of high bandwidth devices).
Correct on the first iMac. Having been there the day my fellow Apple employees test ran the little bugger, Intel has publicly stated that Apple was the first to implement USB correctly, even before their own labs and they created it.
It's most likely due to Apple's extensive knowledge of serial bus technologies that helped.
Wow, you think you need hardware acceleration just to use HTML5? What an utter joke that you are trying to argue this. The only GPU's Apple even supports for hardware acceleration are three of them. The graphic drivers that are being improved are OpenGL drivers that have absolutely NOTHING to do with HTML5. There was no word on whether Apple would be increasing their hardware acceleration support in 10.6.4 and it doesn't matter because HTML5 works fine on machines that don't have hardware acceleration.
What marketing BS by the way? Valve simply stated there would be OpenGL improvements in 10.6.4 and that's marketing BS?
Irrelevant with it being so far away from release.
Poor phrasing: "move to AMD".
AMD should be seen as an alternative supplier, I highly doubt that Apple would completely abandon Intel but they may see value in keeping Intel on it's toes. Plus some of the coming AMD chips could be very compelling for Apples lineup.
What bothers me is the implication that going to AMD means a new architecture. Except for the GPU part it is the same ISA used by Intel. Infact the whole i86_64 idea is AMDs and was later adopted by Intel. It is not like going from G5 to i86.
Dave
AMD should be seen as an alternative supplier, I highly doubt that Apple would completely abandon Intel but they may see value in keeping Intel on it's toes. Plus some of the coming AMD chips could be very compelling for Apples lineup.
What bothers me is the implication that going to AMD means a new architecture. Except for the GPU part it is the same ISA used by Intel. Infact the whole i86_64 idea is AMDs and was later adopted by Intel. It is not like going from G5 to i86.
Dave
To paraphrase Steveo - you need to educate yourself.
OK
Do realize that you lost all credibility in this forum. Apple has been steadily increasing performance via acceleration on the GPU for a couple of years now.
Dave
Before you go to far I'd like to suggest that you get familiar with Apples webkit site and the nightly builds. Spend some time reading there then come back and deny that Safari is using hardware acceleration.
Believe what you want but there is more to graphics drivers than OpenGL. Further Apple has been steadily improving acceleration in core animation and other frameworks. It is about time too because iPhone OS has been making better use of the GPU than Mac OS has.
You can't get the frame rates for some features in HTML 5 without hardware acceleration. This is true across all browser. If you spent a little time following browser development you would know this.
The BS comes from implying that the improvements to OpenGL was for STEAM. Apple has many things they want to improve in Mac OS to support many different user needs.
OK
Do realize that you lost all credibility in this forum. Apple has been steadily increasing performance via acceleration on the GPU for a couple of years now.
Dave
That would be an excellent move on Apples part.
The latest LLVM release had a fortran in the GCC support package. Of course that doesn't mean Apple will support it. I need to go back and look but I think there is a GCC free fortran compiler being ported to the LLVM environment.
What is interesting is that I couldn't get to the LLVM site earlier today. Could be bad timing on the LLVMs team part.
Dave
The latest LLVM release had a fortran in the GCC support package. Of course that doesn't mean Apple will support it. I need to go back and look but I think there is a GCC free fortran compiler being ported to the LLVM environment.
What is interesting is that I couldn't get to the LLVM site earlier today. Could be bad timing on the LLVMs team part.
Dave
You mean the same nightly builds that currently work perfectly fine on PowerPC and 32-bit Intel machines?
Further, as long as Apple still supports 10.5 there will still be PowerPC update to this. You seem to not be able to grasp your head around that. Apple still issues Safari 4 updates for Tiger.
Right, If I spent a little time following browser development? Apple's hardware acceleration support is a joke. HTML5 works perfectly fine on PowerPC machines now so you are trying to state that these new graphic improvements will make Safari 5 only be for Intel? Give me a break. The fact that you can load up the latest WebKit on the PowerPC version with fullscreen support says it all.
Err, they are for games in general. Are ATI and NVIDIA drivers going to help HTML5? Didn't think so.
Right, I've lost all credibility because someone brought up 10.7 being 64-bit only with that having zero relevance right now because 32 bit only machines still work on Snow Leopard therefore there will be a 32 bit version of Safari 5. Is this too difficult for you to understand?
There is only so much performance to be squeezed out of that Cell Phone processor.
Of course the current performance issues could be due to a number of things. However Flash by definition would be much worst.
I look at it this way iPad is really impressive considering it's size. However that doesn't mean the rev two processor doesn't need significant improvements. I do hope this is where Apple is concentrating the collective brain power of PA Semi and Intrinsity. At the very least iPad needs dual core and and a few more GPU execution units. This should be all tied together with GCD and OpenCL.
In any event it looks like you will have to wait for iPhone OS 4.0 on iPad.
Dave
Bing on Safari? Did hell just freeze over again?
Let's hope they make some improvements to mobile Safari too. Javascript performance on the iPad is terrible, which is unacceptable given Apple's stance on Flash.
Of course the current performance issues could be due to a number of things. However Flash by definition would be much worst.
I look at it this way iPad is really impressive considering it's size. However that doesn't mean the rev two processor doesn't need significant improvements. I do hope this is where Apple is concentrating the collective brain power of PA Semi and Intrinsity. At the very least iPad needs dual core and and a few more GPU execution units. This should be all tied together with GCD and OpenCL.
In any event it looks like you will have to wait for iPhone OS 4.0 on iPad.
Dave
OOoooo That would be handy.
- Alphabetize bookmarks
- Support extensions
- Full HTML5
- Tabs on top (as was in Safari 4.0 Beta)
- ummmmm... snappier?
What is to get? You want that, I want more.
Obviously you are happy with those boring options, while I like having my google voice, maps, webpage screenshot, weather, google url shortner, xmarks, lastpass and many more plug-ins in my browser.
And by the way they have not slowed down my browser one second. It is still faster then safari. Who cares about ram, that is why I have a mac and 8 GB of it
Fair enough.
Here's Reader:
Blue loading bar is back:
Bing option:
And yes... it is snappier.
Presumably if iTunes music streaming is coming, there'll be a new version of iTunes coming, probably iTunes X. Hopefully, they'll move it over to Cocoa and bring 64-bit versions. Maybe a 64-bit rewrite would also bring performance improvements to the Windows versions.
It would be nice if Safari 5 brings 64-bit versions for Windows along with the ability to use the 32-bit Flash plugin as in Snow Leopard. Certainly a 64-bit Safari 5 for Windows with hardware acceleration and support for existing 32-bit plugins would be very attractive compared to IE, Firefox or Chrome and may help grow marketshare on Windows.
In terms of Safari hardware acceleration in OS X, I believe it's implemented using Quartz Extreme, Core Image, and Core Animation for the vector and animation stuff and the Video Acceleration Decode framework for HTML5 video. Only the video decode acceleration is limited to the 9400M, 320M, and GT330M. Safari vector and animation acceleration should be compatible with any GPU that supports Core Image and Core Animation which is basically any DX9 class GPU and up and I believe is already supported in both Leopard and Snow Leopard in Safari 4 although probably not as extensively as Safari 5 will. Tiger support will probably be dropped for Safari 5 since Core Animation isn't available there.
Safari hardware acceleration in Windows for vector and animation is probably done with Direct2D as IE9 does. Video acceleration will likely be done through DXVA 2.0. These are both Vista and Windows 7 only so it'll be interesting to see whether Windows XP support will be dropped especially given that Windows XP is still the most popular OS in the world.
They didn't implement tabs on top again did they? I didn't like that.
It would be nice if Safari 5 brings 64-bit versions for Windows along with the ability to use the 32-bit Flash plugin as in Snow Leopard. Certainly a 64-bit Safari 5 for Windows with hardware acceleration and support for existing 32-bit plugins would be very attractive compared to IE, Firefox or Chrome and may help grow marketshare on Windows.
In terms of Safari hardware acceleration in OS X, I believe it's implemented using Quartz Extreme, Core Image, and Core Animation for the vector and animation stuff and the Video Acceleration Decode framework for HTML5 video. Only the video decode acceleration is limited to the 9400M, 320M, and GT330M. Safari vector and animation acceleration should be compatible with any GPU that supports Core Image and Core Animation which is basically any DX9 class GPU and up and I believe is already supported in both Leopard and Snow Leopard in Safari 4 although probably not as extensively as Safari 5 will. Tiger support will probably be dropped for Safari 5 since Core Animation isn't available there.
Safari hardware acceleration in Windows for vector and animation is probably done with Direct2D as IE9 does. Video acceleration will likely be done through DXVA 2.0. These are both Vista and Windows 7 only so it'll be interesting to see whether Windows XP support will be dropped especially given that Windows XP is still the most popular OS in the world.
Yay blue loading bar.Blue loading bar is back:
They didn't implement tabs on top again did they? I didn't like that.
Until QuickTime X gains all of the features of 7 I don't think we will see a re-write for apps like iTunes that heavily rely on the QuickTime 7 framework. Same goes for iMovie, Final Cut and the like.
Apple does UI elements like the flavor of the month. It was surprising how many differing ones you could stack onto Tiger buy just keeping your applications updated.
