Why Apple needs to move to Intel Chips NOW!

[Cappy]

Originally posted by MacBandit
The simple fact is is that something like 95% of all users simply use there computers for text, email, and web.

No offense but anyone who believes this in the big picture is very gullible to what the media publishes.

Yes, there are alot of folks who *mostly* use computers for the areas that you mention. Lets not forget though that in the consumer market games are a big part of what pushes hardware development thus accounting for more than the potential 5% you and others would have people believe.

Also in the business market sure many times the user only needs those functions but for the support crew to prep, maintain, and fix systems; faster systems cut down on labor costs. They also help maintain a more pleasant, snappy experience to the enduser if there is any sort of management or inventory software in place that runs in the background.

It's true that systems are being used for a longer period of time these days. Where I work we have P5-133's with Win2k running. To the user they run fine for what they're intended to do but for us, we had to bend over backward to make some of it work which took alot of time which translates to money. Boot times and process speed all factor in to this.

 

[xelterran]

I think apple needs to release a really fast computer for people who work in film/audio - even if it costs $10,000+ quad 2ghz power4 anyone..?

 

[jefhatfield]

Re: Back on topic.

Originally posted by Taft
I don't think that Apple NEEDS to move to x86 (or get faster processors) NOW. That implies that if they don't, there will be dire and irreversible consequences. As members of the Mac community, I'd be surprised if anyone here were willing to make that kind of bet. We've been here the "Apple is going out of business!" mantra for years and we're still going strong.

apple is going, and at times with a profit

going strong though?

stock below 20, no machine at 1.5 ghz, prices higher than competitors, slow os x development (what happened to that "clock")

the products apple makes are strong, as always, and even when apple was at its lowpoint in quality, they still ruled over the pc world

 

[jefhatfield]

Originally posted by xelterran
I think apple needs to release a really fast computer for people who work in film/audio - even if it costs $10,000+ quad 2ghz power4 anyone..?

on a bto basis, that may work

many movie houses have their machines custom built and used only for that one movie...apple could have a hollywood division and i know sun and sgi do this, so why can't apple?

blair witch project was made on off the shelf macs, but one software editing title they used cost 20 grand!!!

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by xelterran
I think apple needs to release a really fast computer for people who work in film/audio - even if it costs $10,000+ quad 2ghz power4 anyone..?

Why? What purpose would that serve? Are you aware that $120,000 Avid Media/Film Composers are being replaced by $15,000-$20,000 G4 towers running FCP?

Originally posted by jefhatfield


on a bto basis, that may work

many movie houses have their machines custom built and used only for that one movie...apple could have a hollywood division and i know sun and sgi do this, so why can't apple?

blair witch project was made on off the shelf macs, but one software editing title they used cost 20 grand!!!

There might be custom setups for the CG, 3D animation, or FX rigs, but the vast majority of machines in LaLa Land's (Hollywood) post houses are "run of the mill" Avid systems and a quickly growing number of "off the shelf" G4 towers.

Something I think people don't realize (and I didn't realize this until I got into the industry) is that these products aren't all made start-to-finish on a single computer. To keep things simple I'll use a TV commercial as an example.

After the commercial is shot the footage is transfered from film to DigiBeta (a digital videotape format) and is sent to a post house to be be edited. This post house has 6 off-line edit suites and 1 on-line suite. The off-line suite is where 99% of the editing is done. It is usually at a lower-res (to save HDD space) and rough graffics and effects are also done during the off-line edit. After the commercial is done being edited it is sent to the on-line suite. The on-line suite imports the commercial at full res, applies the final graffics and effects, and does any sort of touching up and tweaking of the music video that might be needed (color correction, etc.,). The final product is then put back on DigiBeta ready for duplication and distrobution.

The off-line suites are the Avid machines that are being replaced by FCP.

The on-line suite is usually an SGI box running Smoke, Flame etc., although some places do run Avid's Symphony on an x86 box.


Lethal

 

[rundevilrun]

Originally posted by Cappy


Amazingly enough you manage to slant your points.

1. You're talking strictly Mac here. What's the point? OSX on x86 is the discussion.

My point is that until Adobe gets premiere optimized for os x a 3GHz P4 running an os x version of premiere will probably still be slower than the windows version.

2. Yes, while not huge those can be meaningful for someone in the business doing tedious, repetitive tasks.

That was more of a poke at the tester himself. He could have used photoshops' actions to create a tedious, repetitive benchmark test.

Frankly you sound like you're in denial. I am exposed to both hardware platforms and can safely say that Apple and PPC has alot of catching up to do if they do not switch in the next year. IBM or Moto might be able to do it but should Apple wait and will their customers?

I'm not in denial, I acknowledge that the P4 has a performance lead. I just don't think it's big enough to switch to x86. I'm all in favor of faster & better computers but after years of screwing around with windows and crappy x86 hardware have really made me appreciate the better part of that.

 

[Kid Red]

Re: Why Apple needs to move to Intel Chips NOW!

Originally posted by puffmarvin
before everyone starts flaming me let me say i am 100% a mac fan and 100% against windows. but... after reading this article and checking out the benchmarks of the new Intel 3.06 GHz chip i realized apple is in some deep water...

http://digitalvideoediting.com/2002/11_nov/reviews/cw_macvspciii.htm

If you were 100% mac fan you wouln't have started this thread. They are comparing a 3.0ghz to a 1.25 and you don't think the article is a little biased?

The article is flame bait, I already flamed the author in an email.

 

[vniow]

Originally posted by Kid Red

They are comparing a 3.0ghz to a 1.25 and you don't think the article is a little biased?

They're being compared cuz they're both the top of the line.

A couple of dual 1.25 Ghz G4s is the very best and fastest Apple can deliver for the consumer line while one Intel PIV @ 3.06 Ghz is the best and fastest the Wintel world can deliver for the consumer line.

Apple's biggest fans are the ones that critizise them while supporting them at the same time.

 

[scem0]

Re: Re: Why Apple needs to move to Intel Chips NOW!

Originally posted by Kid Red


If you were 100% mac fan you wouln't have started this thread. They are comparing a 3.0ghz to a 1.25 and you don't think the article is a little biased?

The article is flame bait, I already flamed the author in an email.

Edvniow is completely correct. And I don't think the article is very
biased. All the points he makes are correct, and everything he
says is true. He makes the mac seem worse then it actually is,
but he still has his facts straight. When it comes to speed, macs
shouldn't even try to compete. Hopefully this won't be the case
a year from now.

 

[sharvari]

The guy is an antimac bigot, look around, this FUD is being shredded everywhere, he's picked the program that was worse and structured the tests to make the mac look worse as well as irregularities in the testing proceedure. its a joke.

 

[markiv810]

The MHZ myth

The pc users always brag about the pentiums being faster. If anyone in the pc world had/has heard about the 128 bit altivec?? I have a link http://www.absoft.com/hunter.html check out the perfromance of an Altivec optimized application called Pro Fortran v8.0. Most of the softwares on the mac are ported and not re-written (optimized for the altivec) why blame Apple or Motorola for the screw up of developers. How many gigaflops does the new pentium 4 3.06 deliver? Intel sucks and everyone knows that. I read and article on Cnet stating that, 4 Itanium 2 (the second revision of Itanium) could deliver 13 Gigaflops. Now Itanium is a 64- bit processor, which I guess is known to everyone. Before complaining about how the mac sucks delivering fps on a ceratin game and how slow it is using graphics apps , or how slow Microsoft Word is on the mac, one should know the difference between a ported application and a native application.

 

[rEd Eye]

Originally posted by Stelliform
I think that in the gaming world, the hardware is quickly outpacing the software's needs

But all the same,the faster the hardware gets,the better the games can be made.It's fairly likely that some games of the future will look and and play as realistic as if you were watching a DVD at undiscernable FPS.
Anyone played Morrowind on the worlds fastest computer and GPU?It's still as slow as ****!But it looks great
And as far as the general need for speed is concerned,you can never have enough for multimedia activities.The better the hardware,the better the software!!!
I now own a dual gig quicksilver G4 which can run almost four Altiverb VST instances set to 0 latency at once!WOW!When I had my G4 400,I was lucky to run one and several audio tracks.Pre G4 400,the Altiverb is impossible.
I'm ALWAYS bumping my head on my dual gig!How many instances of a soft synth I can run at once means a lot to me.
Even for the email and such user,speed is nice.It's just less time waiting for things to happen,the ability to use your machine while tasks are being done and less chance your machine is going to choke to a grinding halt(Which I manage to make my G4 do all the time,BTW)
I use a 56k internet connection.Gawd its slow!I could spend half as much time on the web if pages would just load 10 times faster!It seems like all those seconds waiting for things on a computer just add up.BRING ON THE SPEED!I'm tired of "surfing" mediocre Apple hardware.I'll use every last % increase you can give me!
I'm buying my first laptop this year,and Apple did not win the bid!I'm buying one of these puppies FULLY loaded for much less than a fully loaded Powerbook would cost me.
http://pctorque.com/5620.php
(yes I like large heavy,2 hour battery life FULL featured notebooks)
This should tide me over untill Apple finaly figures out that speed IS an issue!

 

[LethalWolfe]

Re: The MHZ myth

Originally posted by markiv810
The pc users always brag about the pentiums being faster. If anyone in the pc world had/has heard about the 128 bit altivec?? I have a link http://www.absoft.com/hunter.html check out the perfromance of an Altivec optimized application called Pro Fortran v8.0. Most of the softwares on the mac are ported and not re-written (optimized for the altivec) why blame Apple or Motorola for the screw up of developers. How many gigaflops does the new pentium 4 3.06 deliver? Intel sucks and everyone knows that. I read and article on Cnet stating that, 4 Itanium 2 (the second revision of Itanium) could deliver 13 Gigaflops. Now Itanium is a 64- bit processor, which I guess is known to everyone. Before complaining about how the mac sucks delivering fps on a ceratin game and how slow it is using graphics apps , or how slow Microsoft Word is on the mac, one should know the difference between a ported application and a native application.

Yay!, more excuses for the Mac... No one cares why Macs are slower, they just care that they are slower. But I'm glad you found an obscure, hand-optimized piece of software that runs faster on a Mac than on a PC (much more convincing than all the real-world apps I see in other tests). Of course, the link didn't say that the software was optimized for Pentium machine, so aren't you being hypacritical? You complain that tested software isn't altivec optimized, and then you show a comparison where the Mac wins on software not optimized for Intel? Of course when both machines run the same software version the 2ghz P4 thumps the dual gig Mac.

Just because Macs aren't the fastest rigs doesn't mean they aren't the best rigs for the job. So why don't we focus on what Macs can do better than PCs, concede that the x86 world is faster(because it is) and stop the whinning and excuses that makes Mac users look like they are in denial.


Lethal

EDIT: fixed some spelling

 

[jefhatfield]

Re: Re: The MHZ myth

Originally posted by LethalWolfe



Just because Macs are the fastest rigs doesn't mean they aren't the best rigs for the job. So why don't we focus on what Macs can do better than PCs, concede that the x86 world is faster(because it is) and stop the whinning and excuses that makes Mac users look like they are in denial.


Lethal

denial is the mac zealot's staple

that and fuzzy math

 

[markiv810]

Re: Re: The MHZ myth

Originally posted by LethalWolfe



Yay!, more excuses for the Mac... No one cares why Macs are slower, they just care that they are slower. But I'm glad you found an obscure, hand-optimized piece of software that runs faster on a Mac than on a PC (much more convincing than all the real-world apps I see in other tests). Of course, the link didn't say that the software was optimized for Pentium machine, so aren't you being hypacritical? You complain that tested software isn't altivec optimized, and then you show a comparison where the Mac wins on software not optimized for Intel? Of course when both machines run the same software version the 2ghz P4 thumps the dual gig Mac.

Just because Macs aren't the fastest rigs doesn't mean they aren't the best rigs for the job. So why don't we focus on what Macs can do better than PCs, concede that the x86 world is faster(because it is) and stop the whinning and excuses that makes Mac users look like they are in denial.


Lethal

EDIT: fixed some spelling

Now that we know that you don't know sh*t about computers, there is no use explaining what a RISC or CISC stands for. As far as performance is concerenced. Do you know what Altivec is? The power PC has a velocity Engine (128 bit) which allows many operations to be executed in one cycle. Up to 16 differents operations. While f<cking pentiums have a 32 bit engine. This technology was previously used in supercomputer chips. When the G4 came out, The US government put a restriction on exports to terrorist countries.
What about sun chips running at 500 Mhz (not even 1GHz), are you going to tell me that they are slowers than P4. Study and read, do not make stupid assumptions bases on MHz/Ghz figures. The computer is not slow the applications suck. I have 2 laptops PB G4 550mhz and HP 1Ghz both having the same amount of ram and same kinda hard disk. The HP sucks with respect to the PB G4 550 in terms of speed. There is no cure for Pseudo-Geeks. Know before you talk. Is it apples fault if the developers are porting the apps in a sh*tty way?? By the way you guys suck. This is my last message to this forum. If you don't like the mac go buy yourself a f<cking pc use windows.

 

[MacCoaster]

Re: Re: Re: The MHZ myth

Originally posted by markiv810
Now that we know that you don't know sh*t about computers, there is no use explaining what a RISC or CISC stands for. As far as performance is concerenced. Do you know what Altivec is? The power PC has a velocity Engine (128 bit) which allows many operations to be executed in one cycle. Up to 16 differents operations. While f<cking pentiums have a 32 bit engine. This technology was previously used in supercomputer chips. When the G4 came out, The US government put a restriction on exports to terrorist countries.

RISC, CISC are meaningless these days.

Really? The technology had previously been in supercomputers? That must mean that the Pentium-MMX powered supercomputers. Intel and AMD had SIMD before Motorola, that's exactly what Altivec is. Actually, SSE/SSE2/3DNow! are 64bit and runs at much faster rate than Altivec that doing this amount of operations doesn't matter anymore. 128bit is nice. Altivec is a nice SIMD, but it's lacking in features. Take, for example, double precision floating point. Here, even a Celeron 333 MHz running at 375 MHz beats a 933 MHz PowerPC G4. [link: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12506&perpage=25&FPMathTest&pagenumber=5] And the Pentium 4 2.8 GHz? Blows the Dualies way out. Now they have 3.06 GHz with HyperThreading. Watch out!

What about sun chips running at 500 Mhz (not even 1GHz), are you going to tell me that they are slowers than P4. Study and read, do not make stupid assumptions bases on MHz/Ghz figures. The computer is not slow the applications suck. I have 2 laptops PB G4 550mhz and HP 1Ghz both having the same amount of ram and same kinda hard disk. The HP sucks with respect to the PB G4 550 in terms of speed. There is no cure for Pseudo-Geeks. Know before you talk. Is it apples fault if the developers are porting the apps in a sh*tty way?? By the way you guys suck. This is my last message to this forum. If you don't like the mac go buy yourself a f<cking pc use windows.

Those Sun chips are different than the PowerPC and x86. Look at the prices for them. Way higher than Macs and x86. UltraSPARCs rock, but they're not in the same league as PowerPC and x86.

Let me guess, the 1GHz HP is a Pentium III. The G4 was designed to compete with the Pentium III. Now that they've had P4 since 2000 and just released the 3.06 GHz with HyperThreading technology. PowerPC G4 cannot compete. Period.

Yes, it is Apple's fault. They're not pushing enough. Plus, their compilers suck. Auto-optimization is good to have in compilers. Good thing Apple has been working on that, but it isn't making much difference. I'm as happy as ever with my Athlon machine that I chose to buy over a DP800. I run various OSes on my PC, even the Mac OS. In fact, I'm in the process of upgrading my processor from Athlon 1.4 GHz Thunderbird to 1.733 GHz Athlon XP, upgrading to 1 GB Corsair DDR RAM, all for less than the price of a G4 upgrade card.

I'm still waiting for the Mac that is worth buying. The OS is wonderful and all that, give me awesome hardware with it! The PowerPC 970 might as well be that Mac. We'll see.

Reality check:
Fact: PCs are way faster, like it or not. PowerPC G4 from Motorola is . They've had their time back in 1999/2000.

Fact: Ignorance is bliss for many.

 

[orangedv]

Oh really, HE doesn't know sh*t about computers eh? Well, Mr smartypants, I have a word for you, (I am a pro mac user) BOTTLENECK. Know what that means? Let me explain; It doesn't matter dick if you have the world's best CPU if you stick it on a motherboard that is a slug, attach it to memory that belongs in a frigging museum, and feed it data off a hard drive that was cool when disco inferno was in the charts. I am sick to death of seeing zealots publish obscure test results involving programs that have no real world commercial use, that play around with idioticly small amounts of data to 'prove' how fast a CPU can run. Real world; I use files in Illustrator running to 80 megs (National newspaper ads) and photoshop files running to 600 megs and the powermac is a SLUG. Why? because the afformentioned crappy motherboard, hard disk and memory RUN the show, NOT the all singing dancing altiwhatever CPU. The Mac has a dangerously small market share, and if you keep this denial up, and Apple buys this nonsense rather than getting off their asses it will go out of business. The rest of the world is NOT impressed.

 

[rjrufo]

Just an idea, since this thread seems to be getting people a little bit POed. I was just on http://www.macosrumors.com, and they said what I was thinking, only better: "So, if this is important to you, it is in your interests to bend Apple's ear -- visit your local Apple Store, send an e-mail, make a phone call. As with most advancements to the platform, user demand is what drives it all."
Stop complaining to a forum that Apple may or may not read, and voice your concern to Apple directly.

I read this forum because I like the rumors of what may come in the future, not to read about everyones complaints about the company/hardware/software/whatever. Sure, everyone has their opinion, and everyone is intitled to express it. But don't think that your's is right and someone else's is wrong, it's just different.

 

[MacBandit]

Just to bring this to everyones attention.

Intel will be eating there own marketing tripe in a year or so. I know that a few of you know this but they will be replacing the Pentium 4s with the iTanium or another 64bit chip in a year and at that time they will be running at a max of 1.6GHz.

Where does this leave them. When all along they have been selling and marketing each new processor as the fastest things there is because it has a faster clock rate. Now they're going to have to eat there own marketing and spin a new one about how clock rate isn't the end all measurement of speed.

I know this was mentioned as a side note in a previous post but it was completely ignored so I decided repost it as the key topic.

 

[markiv810]

Re: Re: Re: Re: The MHZ myth

Originally posted by MacCoaster

RISC, CISC are meaningless these days.


Reality check:
Fact: PCs are way faster, like it or not. PowerPC G4 from Motorola is . They've had their time back in 1999/2000.

Fact: Ignorance is bliss for many.

Please sir check the facts. If macs were slow when in comes to calculations and floating point operations, why they are used badly in genetics labs or physics. Talking about double floating point operations that is bullsh*t.

You don't think that the kind of technology were used in supercomputing, check it out

http://e-www.motorola.com/brdata/PDFDB/docs/ALTIVECFACT.pdf

Also what about the pipe lines stages ??? How many 20 versus 7 ???? How about using the same old architecture for so many year, a well job done by intel.
If they are so slow, why the scientific department at NASA had embraced OS X and Macs, why the Biology department at Stanford have welcomed Macs in their labs, why the CIA
has adopted macs. These are people doing real work with computers where performance matters a lot. Also Why the game called Giants iis 300 MB on PC while being 900 MB on the Mac. Wasn't it ported ?? Your P4 consumes 68 W while the G4 consumes 30 W, and this is simply Intel did not do a good job by trying to maintain the same basically architecture and adding elements so much just to have the speed increase.
I have not being ignorant here, but I have talked to professors and developpers, it's simply true that apps are written for the PC market and then ported on the macs, and macs are faster than pc when it comes to calculations, you can really check it out for yourself, from real people doing real work, not from some geeks who do not know **** and thinking that they know better

 

[xelterran]

Just to bring this to everyones attention.

Intel will be eating there own marketing tripe in a year or so. I know that a few of you know this but they will be replacing the Pentium 4s with the iTanium or another 64bit chip in a year and at that time they will be running at a max of 1.6GHz.

Where does this leave them. When all along they have been selling and marketing each new processor as the fastest things there is because it has a faster clock rate. Now they're going to have to eat there own marketing and spin a new one about how clock rate isn't the end all measurement of speed.

Is the iTanium the Pentium5?? I thought the iTanium was only to be used in servers - high end workstations etc...

 

[jefhatfield]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The MHZ myth

Originally posted by markiv810



Please sir check the facts. If macs were slow when in comes to calculations and floating point operations, why they are used badly in genetics labs or physics. Talking about double floating point operations that is bullsh*t.

You don't think that the kind of technology were used in supercomputing, check it out

http://e-www.motorola.com/brdata/PDFDB/docs/ALTIVECFACT.pdf

Also what about the pipe lines stages ??? How many 20 versus 7 ???? How about using the same old architecture for so many year, a well job done by intel.
If they are so slow, why the scientific department at NASA had embraced OS X and Macs, why the Biology department at Stanford have welcomed Macs in their labs, why the CIA
has adopted macs. These are people doing real work with computers where performance matters a lot. Also Why the game called Giants iis 300 MB on PC while being 900 MB on the Mac. Wasn't it ported ?? Your P4 consumes 68 W while the G4 consumes 30 W, and this is simply Intel did not do a good job by trying to maintain the same basically architecture and adding elements so much just to have the speed increase.
I have not being ignorant here, but I have talked to professors and developpers, it's simply true that apps are written for the PC market and then ported on the macs, and macs are faster than pc when it comes to calculations, you can really check it out for yourself, from real people doing real work, not from some geeks who do not know **** and thinking that they know better

macs are good enough for most things, but intel based computers are simply faster but not always in a way where it makes everyone take notice

 

[vniow]

Originally posted by xelterran


Is the iTanium the Pentium5?? I thought the iTanium was only to be used in servers - high end workstations etc...

Then again, IBM's Power4 was origionally only supposed to be a server ship, them they developed a derivative of it that which is to be destined for desktops.

Like the Itanium, the Power4 is too expensive, among other things, to be used in a desktop but an Itanium-lite could be adapted for the task.

 

[markiv810]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The MHZ myth

Originally posted by jefhatfield


macs are good enough for most things, but intel based computers are simply faster but not always in a way where it makes everyone take notice

They are faster because they have more MHZ ????? IS that the reason ????

 

[mrpepsi]

If Apple switched to Intel or AMD chips it would change the way they designed thier cases. My near silent iMac's that I use in the labs at the school that I work would change to the low drone of our PC labs.

One of the main reasons I love my Mac is because it is effecient. It doesn't make a lot of heat and thus it is silent.

Plus, if they switched to Intel CPU's Apple laptops would nolonger have the advantage of having longer battery time than any pc laptop.

There are tons of reasons why they should stay powerpc. The 970 promises a leap ahead. With IBM there should be many years of new cpu's to look foreward to.

I don't mind that my Mac is a little slower than my PC. I have my PC mainly to play games on. I use my Mac to work. I wish I could do both on my Mac but...maybe one day.

I'd rather use a computer that doesn't have to be restarted, and have it go a wee bit slower.