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Posted By: bridgman Best comment yet on Intel-based Macintoshes - 01/14/06 04:51 PM
The first person I met upon entering was Kelly Vaughn, a slim blonde in skin-tight workout duds (who graced The Chronicle's front page this week as part of our and other papers' glowing coverage of Macworld Expo).

Vaughn was helping demonstrate accessories for the iPod that you can use at the gym.

I put it to her directly: Why should anyone get worked up about the prospect of Macs containing Intel chips?

"Oh, it's a really big deal!" Vaughn exclaimed. "I mean, PCs have Intel chips. So this is important, right? It's like the future of computing!"

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/14/BUG70GN6MS1.DTL
That's funny, John.

Hopefully the biggest impact will be in the reduction of prices on Macs.
Posted By: bray Re: Best comment yet on Intel-based Macintoshes - 01/14/06 05:07 PM
Thanks for that article.
It made me feel a little better about having a new iMac (2 months old) that is already obsolete.
Ain't gonna happen--not with the amount of engineering they put into those things, not to mention the need for R&D money. It would be nice, but...
Posted By: bray Re: Best comment yet on Intel-based Macintoshes - 01/14/06 06:10 PM
In a sence the price did drop.
You get a machine that is twice as fast for the same money.
Well, if you drink the Kool Aid. It's interesting that in the iMac they're saying its 2x as fast. Well, it's kind of got 2x as many cores, no? It's a dual processor (for most intents and purposes) while the iMac G5 is a single core, single processor. So the G5 is still kind of holding its own. Add that to the fact that the Core Duo is on a faster bus than the G5... (and yes, I know that dual core does not necessarily = 2x as fast in the real world, but boy howdy it does in marketing materials.)

Love to see some comparos between a Core Duo and a dual core G5 (thanks for such clear marketing names, Intel!) on similar hardware. But man, that ain't gonna happen.
Yeah, right now the comparisons are gonna be tough. Right now, not all of the s/w has been converted to run native on the Intel CPUs, so Rosetta has to be used. I was at the keynote address, pretty cool, man some people treat it like a rock concert... The new OSX provided a "properties" switch that can deactivate the Rosetta option to allow programs to bypass Rosetta. Rosetta does run a little slow, as was shown by Jobs running Adobe Photoshop.

It would be interesting to run apps on both G5 and Macintels to compare. The main reason for going to Intel was power. There was no way then could improve laptop performance because the G5 was TOO hot to run on laptop. Ask all the people w/ burn marks from their current powerbooks. IBM dropped the ball big time w/ their false promises of high perf/low power on the the 970 line. What a waste of a good architecture.

I agree w/ Bray's frustration on the quick release of the iMacs. I would've bought one a few months ago but I knew the MacIntels were coming. I bought a Mac Mini and now I'm bummed that the Intel version will come out. I'll be even more PO'ed if the Mac Mini DVR comes out...
Posted By: bray Re: Best comment yet on Intel-based Macintoshes - 01/15/06 04:50 AM
Yea.......but I still would have waited at least 6 months until they had all the bugs worked out, so i'm really not all that bothered about it. I HAD to have one now.... not 8 months from now.
I'm still lovin my new iMac.
Posted By: Newf Re: Best comment yet on Intel-based Macintoshes - 01/15/06 10:06 PM
The Apple/Mac is just about dead. If it wasn't for the iPod they'd been a whole different situation right now and not for the good either.

Next is OSX on PC's, and MAC Clones. How is OSX going to compete with Windows on clones? MAC's have always been made by and built by apple. They only needed softare drivers for the hardware they put into their own machines. Doesn't get much easier then that. Then only OS stability advantage they have had has been due to the fact that they can focus on supporting the limited hardware they have.

Look at Windows, totally opposite, and they'be been making OS's with larger hardware support for ions. Apple is already 20-30 years behind in hardware support, they just can't compete. Apple sells around 6 million total desktops/laptops per year. MS selling over 150 million OEM Licenses for XP alone per year. The Proof is in the puddin. Let the mac die.

FYI, I work in a large university, and we have MAC's and PC's. I'm in the computer dept and we support both. I don't hate OSX, I actually think it's a neat little OS, but it's so limited I have no purpose for it. Computers are never going to be straight forward until we are all using the same thing. Boring yes. But there needs to be a standard.

Look at your telephone. You don't know how it works right? But your neighbors phone works when you call them right? the joy of a communications standard

What about TV? You turn it on, it works right? We all can get the same channels because there is a broadcasting standing right.

We need a universal standard for a personal computer. To be honest I don't care which one it is, but with the market being so dominated by MS, it only makes sense to go with it.


I can rant about this all day. btw, MACS do indeed crash. I see it all the time.

Just...
just...
get the name right, at least.
It's an Apple Mac or Apple Macintosh.

It's not a MAC.

I'll see your rant and ignore it, 'cause lord knows I've been hearing it for over 20 years now.
Posted By: Newf Re: Best comment yet on Intel-based Macintoshes - 01/16/06 03:23 AM
dood, I've been into the computer field for about 25 years, it's a mac, get over it

on a side note, I would just like to say that I have a new Keyboard and I can't type for @#$@$# on it yet.....after reading my last post over again it's painfully obvious I need more practice on this thing

Logitech G15 if anyone is wondering.




Dood, it still ain't going away. Get over that.

Also, do you expect to see *nix go away in favor of Windows? I just don't see it. There's plenty of room for multiple OSes in the marketplace. A couple of % of the marketplace is still a lot of machines...
In reply to:

dood, I've been into the computer field for about 25 years


Then you should know that competition is good and not everybody like to use what you use. Apple has plenty of customers. They don't need a huge market share to be successful. I actually think they don't want a huge market share.
In reply to:

I actually think they don't want a huge market share.


They're a niche market... the "cool kids", videographers, hipsters and newbies. Bro's a Mac guy, I'm not... it will be interesting to see how MacOSX runs on the avalanche of 3rd party hardware, out of the gate it fell on its face and lay there jibbering for a while, but to insist that Windows hasn't had the same issues (NT 3.51 and WinME) is ludicrous.

While you've been a computer d00d for 25 years, I'm really not that far behind... owned my share of 6502 Motorola-based systems... and now, they're just tools... a carpenter swings a hammer, I boot a computer... the last time something truly excited me about them was the announcement of sprites on the new C64.

Bren R.
Posted By: Newf Re: Best comment yet on Intel-based Macintoshes - 01/16/06 05:18 PM
it's soooo easy to get you "MAC" guys going....hee...heee

I'm finished play'n now...carry on.




Why is this significant?

Macs are finally on the x86 architecture. What does this mean? We can hack the Mac OS X and get it on PC's.
In reply to:

Macs are finally on the x86 architecture. What does this mean? We can hack the Mac OS X and get it on PC's.


To what end? Hacking an OS onto different hardware won't make it any MORE stable. I'm not a huge fan of the OS itself, "why are there traffic lights in the title bar?" Maybe for the apps? Photosh... no, wait, that's been on Win for a while. After Eff... no, that, too. Final Cut? Maybe, since most people will warez it (and ProTools) because they think they need it (and will create a webcam collage of fart sounds set to them dancing)

Wait, Marathon... that was Mac only, wasn't it? Yes... eat your heart out, id Software circa 1991!

Bren R.
newf, the primary complaint about using MAC when you mean Mac is that it is confusing to real computer geeks who know that MAC is an abbreviation for Machine Access Code, more commonly referred to as the ethernet hardware address.
It's easy to tell from the context of the sentence which Mac is being referred to.
There's no room for logic in this discussion.
Sorry....what was I thinking
In reply to:

There's no room for logic in this discussion.




This pretty much applies to all message boards across the internet. Funny and sad.
This made me think of you, Ken.

Bren R.
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