response to Apple/Steve bashers

Great response to all the Steve bashing after last week's announcements: "Constructive criticism is one thing; whining about how you’re “let down” by Apple because they didn’t make the product you imagined, or don’t like Apple’s DRM scheme are exercises in arrogance and egotism that demonstrate a tin-ear, not insight." http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/index.php?p=2655

Amazing response, and I have not heard of Bonjour until just now...thats awsome! I want a mac mini now

Smesh

smeshy123 said:

Amazing response, and I have not heard of Bonjour until just now...thats awsome! I want a mac mini now

Smesh

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Costwise, the iMac is a better deal. But all in all, there have been a few problems reported in the new intel macs. You might want to hold off until the next revision.

Anyways, to the OP, there was an awful lot of hype surrounding this anouncment, but it was media generated-- people were posting speculation after speculation (and engadget had some really cool photoshoped pictures that people were making based on the speculation), then along comes SJ and announces some **-hum products. Now Apple never said that it was going to be a cool new iTablet or a touchscreen video iPod or anything else, but it has been their recent behavior to use these announcments for major new products, not leather cases, speaker systems, or whatnot. The intel mini was something new, but it was kind of overshadowed by a more impressive upgrade to the Power Books recently, don't you think? Everyone expected a "MAJOR!" anouncement since SJ was doing the anouncing personally. Apple just got caught by their own hype from the earlier announcments.

really? problems with the Intel iMac? I haven't found any yet.

Steve Jobs is an amazing presenter. Ever since the launch of first mac in 1984 he has always giving stunning A/V presentations usually dressed in black. Mac mini sounds cool with front row and bojour, and of course intel too. But I'll still wait for some time to be able to comment on whether intel was a good deal for apple or not

BlindingLights said:

really? problems with the Intel iMac? I haven't found any yet.

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Ditto, I upgraded to 10.4.5 as soon as I opened the box and my 20" Core Duo has been running flawless ever since. No system crashes, no lockups. I do have the occassional "disappearing program" tho

I'm not too up on my processor knowledge but I was always lead to believe that apple processors, although not as powerful, worked more efficiently than others and had the same capability with less power.

If this is true then why would Steve Jobs go with intel processors?

Has a completely new processor been created for these new mac minis that is as powerful as a non-mac processor but with the efficiency of an apple processor?

I'm not doubting Steve Job's judgement, I'm sure he has reasons, I'm just wondering what these reasons are, could someone explain the situation to me and enlighten me a wee bit?

Tom :ninja:

BlindingLights said:

really? problems with the Intel iMac? I haven't found any yet.

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A bit off topic, but I did a quite a bit of research on the Macbook before I ordered one. There are no major problems reported. Some shipped Macbooks have a high pitched noise (which apparently can be fixed at an Apple store, we hope), there is an issue with the trackpad that can be resolved by a setting(uncheck "ignore accidental trackpad input"), a couple of reported Airport signal issues that are unsubstantiated and not widespread, and a problem with 802.1Q packets on VLAN. I also read about a couple of DOA's, which is normal. Read more here...

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/macbookpro/index.html#mar10
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=374397&tstart=0

As a side note, Amazon is currently shipping the 2.0Ghz MBP's in 24 hours with a $150. rebate.

tom_hoyle said:

I'm not too up on my processor knowledge but I was always lead to believe that apple processors, although not as powerful, worked more efficiently than others and had the same capability with less power.

If this is true then why would Steve Jobs go with intel processors?

Has a completely new processor been created for these new mac minis that is as powerful as a non-mac processor but with the efficiency of an apple processor?

I'm not doubting Steve Job's judgement, I'm sure he has reasons, I'm just wondering what these reasons are, could someone explain the situation to me and enlighten me a wee bit?

Tom :ninja:

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Basically, there is no difference between a Mac and a PC from a hardware (I said HARDWARE) standpoint, aside from looks. Now it's basically about the OS, and the money.

As for the processors, pm me and I'll talk later; I'm about to leave for dinner.

The big issue is not quite the current range; but more the future.

In 2002 we were already musing over 'Motorola's braindead G4' (now Freescale, as Motorola spun of its Semiconductor division) which while a good processor was showing some signs of age, and didn't have what it took to take on the Intel offerings. For example, the G4 cannot take full advantage of DDR memory...

...and then came the G5 from IBM and Apple, somewhat better situation but hot running, not ideal for smaller Macs and thus parts of the Apple market were left in a dead end, and the promised 3GHz mark has yet to be met, despite being promised in 2003.

The Intel chips however do have a good future and good roadmap, and one set in concrete. IBM has rambled on about the POWER-6 architecture being fab, but nothing concrete (a speculative stage if anything), and still no cool running component. The G4 is a dead end presently and Freescale is more concerned with smaller devices than computers.

Finally supply. The supply of PPC chips has been a drip feed compared to Intel, Apple has been plagued with supply issues on both G4 and G5 processors; and this stalled production countless times.

Many a time when I worked at the Apple Centre did we go without stock of not just high end Macs (e.g.: at the time Dual 2.5 and 2.7 PowerMac G5s) but also iBooks and so forth; it was a slow supply.

And in the end all these factors proved too much for Apple.

Plus they can make a bigger profit margin for charging the same price for Macs if not more by using a chip they can purchase cheaper than PPC parts.

As noted though; hardware wise apart from PPC; Macs and PCs shared many common features and now they are more or less identical, bar a few differences such as EFI instead of BIOS etc.

Vicky

In terms of (yes just adding to my post) - the processors from Intel now in Intel macs are the same as you will find in PCs, no Apple optimisations.

The big difference between PPC and Intel processors used to the pipeline stage; with the Pentium 4 -- Intel created a processor that could have its speed ramped up by great levels to start with (as they hit the buffers with the Pentium III Tualatin core...), but it had a long pipeline.

The G4 (which is composed of many different types of PPC chip) had a shorter pipeline initially; meaning instructions got to it quicker, and thus despite the MHz rating being slower, it made up for it with its short pipeline.

The Pentium M (Banias, Dothan, Sonoma and now Yonah/Intel Core) design is an extension of the Pentium III design which was a faster chip per clock cycle than the Pentium 4. A PIII-Tualatin at 1.2GHz would match a 1.8GHz Pentium 4. Essentially the technology evolved enough to really take the PIII design beyond the roadblock.

As noted though, the G4 processor vary quite a bit, within the 'G4' family are the PPC 7400, 7410, 7450, 7445, 7550, 7447, 7448 (and probably others I forget) processors that whilst more or less the same, some have quite substantial differences, such as between the 7400 and 7410. Wikipedia explains this, and you will find that to ramp the G4s speed up, Motorola (Freescale) made the pipeline stage longer amongst other sacrifices...

Vicky

Supply would be a huge part of the deal, aparently that was why there was an intel chip in the xbox rather than an AMD. Intel can meet the biggest of demands. If Apple suddenly needs 3 million core duos (hypothetically) intel can have the first load shipping within a week or two, IBM could never do that.

lil said:

In 2002 we were already musing over 'Motorola's braindead G4' (now Freescale, as Motorola spun of its Semiconductor division) which while a good processor was showing some signs of age, and didn't have what it took to take on the Intel offerings. For example, the G4 cannot take full advantage of DDR memory...

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The dual core PPC from Freescale not only uses 667Mhz DDR2 RAM, is available in >2Ghz versions, has built in memory controllers (like the AMD 64), PCI-E, USB-2 & SATA controllers (& possibly Firewire, not so sure on that front) but also use less power than the Intel chips and they've improved the Altivec as well.

Incidentally IBM have announced their first machines based on the Cell processor used in the PS-3, they will be dual processor (each a 65nm 970 with 8 "cell" co-processors) as minimum with 4, 8 and 16 processor versions to follow. The new machines are aimed at the server market (i.e they will be "Blades") and are due out in late Summer.

Amen-Moses

If people buy into the hype and the rumors thats thier own fault for doing so. They arent owed an apology they should just get a swift kick in the *** instead.