Tiger Available April 29th

[jim.]

Bull****. Do you actually think Apple didn’t know what the specs were for CI last fall? Or more accurately knew what the specs were when they decided on the mini's GPU? This is a god damn marketing game pure and simple. They intentionally crippled the mini so they can come out with another mini (Prob at WWDC.) that lo and behold supports core image.
"Oh sorry guys. I know you purchased that mini only 4 months ago. But you can upgrade to the latest and grestest mini now and get full support." What a load of crap. Someone pointed this out in a thread just prior to MW. I told them Apple would never pull this crap. Obviously I was giving Apple more credit for being a standup company that I should have been.

As for offloading. As I said in mt previous post. Anyone care to take bets on how freaking sluggish its going to be when its processed on the main CPU? I bet its going to look like crap.

I wouldn't be pissed if this product was release 8-12 months ago but for god sake it was release just under 4 months ago. This is supposedly the great integrator. This is SUPOSEDLY the company known for building their hardware around their software and they can't even do that on a product that was released 4 months prior to the release of a major OS and prob designed 7 months prior and the simple fact is it would have cost Apple next to nothing to put a better GPU in there. I'm not talking a GeForce 6800. Take the most bottom of the barrel GPU that supports ALL of Tiger’s features (Apple HAD a list on their freaking site last summer/fall.) and use it.
I'm going to be blunt about this: Apple is no better then Microsoft.

You still haven't paid attention to a single post that tells you exactly what CoreImage is, have you? Have you read the description at the Apple website other than the list of cards that have the pipeline optimization? I mean seriously, it's one thing to complain if you don't fully understand something, but to deliberately ignore people who try to help you understand and continue complaining?

Seriously man, do you have better things to do than complain about an API? Do you know what an API is? Are you even a graphics programmer? Are you going to be doing hardcore video or image editing on your mini? This is the target for CoreImage, and it is about the only time you would see it. For goodness sake, apps using it haven't even been written yet! Most of the big apps won't port over to the new API anyway because it won't be worth their programmers' time.

It's like I decided to complain that MS's new supercomputer platform addons won't work as quickly on my Toshiba laptop in my basement. Well, not quite like that, but pretty close.

It's just a basic rule of thumb, if you want professional level tools, then you need to use a professional level platform. Besides for the most part I'm willing to bet that the Radeon 9200 is going to support almost all of the CoreImage functions if you choose to use it in your programs. You just might find a couple of transforms will take a second or two longer to render. I don't know where you got the idea that CoreImage is an all or nothing thing. Well, probably from the same place that you are getting all your other misinformation from. If I were you I would do some reading, ask some intelligent questions, and then complain when you have some substance.

Jim

 

[k28]

Australia

i live in australia, so i get tiger almost 1 day before in us? how is this possible? Will be nice if they can hit store on 29th, normally apple product delay 1-2 week in australia.

 

[dont24]

Is the other desktop running 16x12 with the same refresh rate?

yes. Both are running 16x12. If I lower the resolution on both, it works.

 

[john_satc]

For All Those Complaining About Higher Price In UK

I used to do the same but now I realise...

I would rather pay an extra £10 or however much, and get free NHS and not have to worry, than pay a little less in the US and as many people in the US are, have to worry about how to pay for health costs. Simple really.

I understand Apple also take a little more, but come on, lets stop complaining please.

 

[Peace]

CoreImage

Jim stated :

You still haven't paid attention to a single post that tells you exactly what CoreImage is, have you? Have you read the description at the Apple website other than the list of cards that have the pipeline optimization? I mean seriously, it's one thing to complain if you don't fully understand something, but to deliberately ignore people who try to help you understand and continue complaining?

Brother,have you read the actual list of video cards?

Core Image-capable graphics cards include:

* ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
* ATI Radeon 9600 XT, 9800 XT, X800 XT
* nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200
* nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
* nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, 6800 GT DDL

Core Image-capable graphics cards include:
Core Image-capable graphics cards include:
Core Image-capable graphics cards include:

The keyword here is INCLUDE

The above cards are not the only cards that support coreimage.

All you folks worried about coreimage and the mini have nothing to worry about

 

[aranhamo]

macosrumors

I love it when macosrumors is wrong, which is a lot. Up until Monday they had a post saying that despite what other sites were saying, they were positive that Tiger was not only not going to ship in April, but that it would miss its target of first half 2005.

Shockingly, yesterday that post disappeared from their site. They can't even come out and say they were wrong; they just pretend they never said it in the first place.

 

[kaltsasa]

I know this might be hard for people to believe, but some people prefer Windows. They prefer it, they've used both, they've considered both, they picked Windows. Wow, a difference of opinion would've thought?

I know if I had the choice for what new computers we were putting into the high schools I support, I'd choose Windows. Why? Because between Ghost and Deep Freeze, it's much easier to support a large network of WinXP machines than it is OSX machines. Yep. Easier.

I support Mac and Windows labs in a high school, you know what, easier to support the OS X machines. CCC and Deep Freeze make imaging easy, and OS X makes it much easier to set up, modify, and package the images than Windows, with a lesser cost than all the licenses needed for ghost. Add more Macs, I don't have to pay more to image them. Add more Window's boxes, it's off to Symantec for some more Ghost licences. I'm going to have to go with it's easier and cheaper to support large numbers of Mac's than Large numbers of Windows boxes on the whole(something like an exchange server might throw a wrench in that, though I don't see many schools with those).

 

[OnaMacSince1989]

Yes, I did antipicate that VAT would figure in the higher mark-up price for Tiger in the UK. But, Apple (amongst other foreign companies) are fleecing the UK. Hence, UK iTunes downloads cost 20% more than in France or Germany. And that is why Apple are under investigation by the European Commission, and personally, hope that they get their arses kicked. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4309633.stm for more.

Now I like Apple, as much as the next guy on here, and recommend their products highly (could I do anything else ). But I will not defend them slavishly when they are pilfering from users because "they can".

The BBC article refers to consumer complaints in the UK about higher prices. I checked several other sites as well, and there's no proof that Apple is price gouging. In addition to the 17.5% VAT that is included in the product price in the UK, there are higher licensing fees in the UK that Apple has to pay to be allowed to sell copyrighted songs via iTunes. Licensing costs and rules/laws vary among the different EU countries, which is another reason why the song prices vary from UK to France to Germany. In addition, it appears that the prices Apple charges are less than competing services like Napster - and also less than bricks&mortar stores. Add all that to the varying exchange rates between the US$, the British Pound, and the EU Euro, and you can see the prices vary between countries. Give Apple a break. If you want to blame someone for the varied prices, blame government regulations and taxes and blame the music labels for charging different licensing fees based on geography.

With regard to software pricing on Tiger in the UK, in addition to the VAT included in the price, there could also be additional corporate taxes or tariffs involved. It's basically impossible for companies to charge the same price for their products in every country. There's just so many varying rules, regulations, taxes, tariffs, as well as varying wages and benefits due to differing standards of living from country to country, to ever have parity accross the board.

 

[kaltsasa]

Jim stated :

You still haven't paid attention to a single post that tells you exactly what CoreImage is, have you? Have you read the description at the Apple website other than the list of cards that have the pipeline optimization? I mean seriously, it's one thing to complain if you don't fully understand something, but to deliberately ignore people who try to help you understand and continue complaining?

Brother,have you read the actual list of video cards?

Core Image-capable graphics cards include:

* ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
* ATI Radeon 9600 XT, 9800 XT, X800 XT
* nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200
* nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
* nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, 6800 GT DDL

Core Image-capable graphics cards include:
Core Image-capable graphics cards include:
Core Image-capable graphics cards include:

The keyword here is INCLUDE

The above cards are not the only cards that support coreimage.

All you folks worried about coreimage and the mini have nothing to worry about

Mabye Apple will post a tech note clearing up exactly what features of Core Image can/will be used on a Radeon 9200 and/or other cards in Tiger compatable Macs.

 

[chaos86]

2 questions

how do you figure out what kind of video cardis in your mac?

do yall think theres a way to not show that big ugly dashboard icon on the dock and just have it set to f12 or something like exposé?

 

[MillieWales]

That is the stupidest thing I have read.

One: Apple rep said "if Tiger is released in two weeks" it's free. Guess he was playing word games. He should have said shipped in two weeks. He also told me it wasn't out and that he didn't think it would be out for some time. Dangerously close to a lie there.

Two: 6 freaking days after I buy something it's outdated. Thanks Apple, great way to encourage switchers.

Three: The BBB (an independent third party) thought it was a rip-off and accpeted my complaint against Apple and the local Mac store. Nothing will come of it, but it's the thought that counts.

Did I get ripped? Damn right I did and only an Apple fanboy would deny it.

Can't be bothered to read every single post, but why don't you just go to the up to date section of the Apple site, enter your serial number, yesterday as the day you got the machine and pay just $9.99 or whatever it costs where you live? As for lies, no-one excpet Apple themselves knew hen it would ship. You can moan about it, or you can play the game and get it at a reduced price.

 

[ManchesterTrix]

I support Mac and Windows labs in a high school, you know what, easier to support the OS X machines. CCC and Deep Freeze make imaging easy, and OS X makes it much easier to set up, modify, and package the images than Windows, with a lesser cost than all the licenses needed for ghost. Add more Macs, I don't have to pay more to image them. Add more Window's boxes, it's off to Symantec for some more Ghost licences. I'm going to have to go with it's easier and cheaper to support large numbers of Mac's than Large numbers of Windows boxes on the whole(something like an exchange server might throw a wrench in that, though I don't see many schools with those).

I'll probably give you the cheaper until you start talking incredibly large number of machines, but it certainly isn't easier. Deep Freeze for OS X lacks a console, which is a pain, managing Deep Freeze on WinXP is way ahead. On the OS X side, Faronics is where they were on the PC side, 5 years ago. And Ghost Server is a much better way of handling imaging than ANYTHING OS X has, I'm hoping Tiger Server has a way to multicast, but I'm not counting on it.

With Ghost Server I can upload an image to the server and then multicast an entire lab in half an hour, easy. There is no way to Create and deploy an image that quickly on the OS X side. And the larger you scale, the bigger the gap gets. Especially when using OS X Server/Netboot/Remote Desktop.

 

[Punani]

2 questions

how do you figure out what kind of video cardis in your mac?

do yall think theres a way to not show that big ugly dashboard icon on the dock and just have it set to f12 or something like exposé?

To figure out what kind of video card is in your system:

Apple Menu > About This Mac > More Info Button > Hardware Category in System Profile > PCI/AGP Cards

And the Dashboard button has been confirmed to be removable from the Dock.

 

[Peace]

More on Core Image and Mac Mini

If the folks worried about the Radeon 9200 ( the video card in the mini ) would simply visit ATI's website :
http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9200/radeon9200me/features.html


Advanced Visual Quality

* SMARTSHADER™ enables cinematic quality lighting and shadow effects
* SMOOTHVISION™ delivers the sharpest, clearest textures without sacrificing frame rates

* High-precision programmable pixel and vertex shaders provide ultra-realistic effects

Please notice the last highlight..

This is what Core Image takes advantage of.Programmable pixelation.

The Mini has that..



From Apple's website about Core Image
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/coreimage/

The Power of the GPU


Until now, harnessing the power of the GPU required in-depth knowledge of

pixel-level programming

. Core Image allows developers to easily leverage these programmable GPUs for blistering-fast image processing that can eliminate rendering time delays. Effects and transitions can be expressed with a few lines of code. Core Image handles the rest, optimizing the path to the GPU. The result is real-time, interactive responsiveness as you select and apply filters.


See ?
Relax folks..
Tiger is HERE!

 

[MacPhreak]

NO iLIFE '05 built into Tiger??? I love Apple but right now they are really pissing me off. I've been waiting months to buy iLife '05 to save myself $79 bucks. Freak. Now all of the sudden my needs will cost more than double. Oh, I'll still buy Tiger and iLife '05, but I will be VERY upset when I do. Stupid Apple.

I wonder if in a couple months Steve will bundle the two together like they are supposed to be??

Probably already been answered, but:

OS X & iLife have never, ever been bundled together. I don't know where you got that idea. The (much) older iPhoto & iMovie used to come with it, but that was before they were bundled into the "iLife" package. I believe they were both version 2, or two generation behind where we are now.

So, unless you buy a new computer, OS X & iLife will not be bundled, sorry. One's an OS, the other's a software package. You don't buy Office & Windows bundled, or Windows and AutoCAD, do you?

 

[ManchesterTrix]

This is what Core Image takes advantage of.Programmable pixelation.

The Mini has that..

I could obviously be wrong because this isn't my area of knowledge, but I was under the understanding that for full advantage of Core Image, you'd need what amounts to on the PC side as a DX9 compatible Video Card, the 9200 is not DX9 but DX8.

 

[eric_n_dfw]

yes. Both are running 16x12. If I lower the resolution on both, it works.

What about the scan rate though? (60hz, 75Hz, etc...) If that's the same too (as well as the number of colors) then maybe you've hit the memory capacity limit of the video card. 16x12 is pretty high res (what size monitor do you have?).

I run 1280x1024 on my machine and the Radeon 8500 has 64MB but it's split between my two monitors so, (according to Apple System Profiler), I really only have 32MB available to each screen which should match the mini.

I'm out of the office today, but will try upping my machine to that res tomorrow and see if I get the cube or not.

 

[bpd115]

I could obviously be wrong because this isn't my area of knowledge, but I was under the understanding that for full advantage of Core Image, you'd need what amounts to on the PC side as a DX9 compatible Video Card, the 9200 is not DX9 but DX8.

I'm not sure about that however, DX is a Microsoft 'technology' and is not found in OS X.

Another question....when running dual monitors, your video memory is halved between the monitors if I understand correctly. How does that effect apps like Motion and Games? ( I'm running a 23" Alu Display and a 17" NEC)

 

[Peace]

I could obviously be wrong because this isn't my area of knowledge, but I was under the understanding that for full advantage of Core Image, you'd need what amounts to on the PC side as a DX9 compatible Video Card, the 9200 is not DX9 but DX8.

The 9200 you are refering to is a PC card NOT the 9200 Mac Edition
They are different cards for obvious reasons
The PC version refers to DX 8.1 because it utilizes MS DirectX.Macs don't use DirectX.

 

[skinsfan00atg]

CORE IMAGE AND MINI

Just wanted to say thank you to all those out there who are knowledgeable from those of us who aren't. I am glad the forum has gotten back on track and stopped bickering about upgrade costs and what not. What's really important is talking about what tiger will bring to the table. Thanks for all the info on the Core Image stuff, I went ahead and ordered my mini yesterday!!!! (1.42GHz, 80GB, 512 RAM, Superdrive, Bluetooth and Airport) and just to let you know, in multiple conversations with Apple people yesterday, they said sorry that the mini will not be able to do the ripple effect when adding a widget. Its the example I seem to get from everyone, so the mini cant do everything even if it is putting it on the CPU, it still cant do it all. But hey, if i'm only losing the ripple effect, fine by me! Keep the good info coming! Happy to be a new member of the apple family!

 

[salmon]

You've missed the point totally.

1. If I want to serve to 11 Macs I have to buy the full Unlimited Client product. If I have Final Cut Pro 4.5 and upgrade to 5 then I pay an upgrade price and don't have to buy the whole product again. Why no upgrade path for the server?

Because, really, what's the difference in "upgrade" and "full-retail" wrt Apple's OS? Generally, companies have different pricing for people that have used a product in the past - but with Mac OS, they sell the hardware, so it doesn't make much sense to have their OS price labeled "upgrade". Why? If you think about it, that's all it can be - an upgrade.

Apple discounts their software when you buy a machine - just like Microsoft's OEM version but they charge $400cdn for a new retail version of XP Professional.

2. It may cheaper than windows but 10.3 was still full of issues and unfortunately did not fulfill it's promise. To move totally from a windows environment to xserve is not yet viable for everyone, especially in an Active Directory environment using Exchange.

Boy, doesn't it feel great to be locked into Microsoft? So you can't make other technology choices easily, or even at all in some cases. When choosing technology, we have to start demanding that propietary formats and technologies are not acceptable. Otherwise, it will never change.

I don't doubt that you are correct in that it's not economically feasible to switch from AD at this point. But, once bitten, twice shy...

3. It doesn't cost me tens of thousands of dollars to run a windows network.

And it doesn't cost you anything to run a Linux network.

4. Software RAID on the XServe is unacceptable in a high availability environment (Hardware RAID on XRAID is).

 

[Applespider]

Mabye Apple will post a tech note clearing up exactly what features of Core Image can/will be used on a Radeon 9200 and/or other cards in Tiger compatable Macs.

Now that would be good - while I appreciate that I'm unlikely to notice not having Core Image in day to day tasks, I would like to know what eye-candy I'm missing - Diet Tiger? If my weather forecast is for miserable rain, I'd at least like to cheer myself up watching it puddle in Dashboard.

Does the list only contain cards that are in currently shipping Macs? Until early Jan, the 9600 Mobility was on the Core Image list and now it's not. Is that because the requirements have changed or because it's not available in a current Mac?

 

[salmon]

Companies, I get, it's about cheap.

Nah, it's not about cheap... if it was, many, many more would be using Linux. Or Apple, considering the TCO has consistently been shown to be considerably lower.

It's about inertia, ignorance and a sheep mindset.

 

[dont24]

What about the scan rate though? (60hz, 75Hz, etc...) If that's the same too (as well as the number of colors) then maybe you've hit the memory capacity limit of the video card. 16x12 is pretty high res (what size monitor do you have?).

I run 1280x1024 on my machine and the Radeon 8500 has 64MB but it's split between my two monitors so, (according to Apple System Profiler), I really only have 32MB available to each screen which should match the mini.

I'm out of the office today, but will try upping my machine to that res tomorrow and see if I get the cube or not.

Here's a thread I started, asking about the spinning cube.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/115519/

 

[Hemingray]

Brother,have you read the actual list of video cards?

Core Image-capable graphics cards include:

* ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
* ATI Radeon 9600 XT, 9800 XT, X800 XT
* nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200
* nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
* nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, 6800 GT DDL

Core Image-capable graphics cards include:
Core Image-capable graphics cards include:
Core Image-capable graphics cards include:

The keyword here is INCLUDE

The above cards are not the only cards that support coreimage.

All you folks worried about coreimage and the mini have nothing to worry about

Sorry, I'm not buying that. Do you honestly think Apple would only display a partial list of supported cards? There's no way that "include" here means "here's just a FEW of the supported cards! Really, there's lots more, but we just don't feel like listing them all." Nope. Include means, "Here's the cards that'll work with CoreImage." Cards that are NOT included, then, means they do NOT support CoreImage. Seems pretty straightforward to me. Apple doesn't do incomplete compatibility lists.

To all the CoreImage whiners out there: I, for one, don't really give a rip that my new iBook won't support it. This isn't another Quartz Extreme situation. It doesn't sound like your computer's going to take a performance hit. Just chill, and enjoy everything ELSE Tiger has to offer.