For those who want to keep PowerPC...

im a mac addcit, and im loyal but im not going to buycott apple. Never happen. I do not what to see apple have more money problams. Im standing behind apple!!!!!!!!!!! Come on. How long did u wait for a PM update and u got a +200mhz becuz of IBM. How long long have u been waiting for those PB G5 to long!!! IBM is not doing as good, we gave IBM a chance and overtime they failed( but were good in past years). Intel gets a chance, and if tehy fail, we go to AMD
 
My guess is that Apple got very annoyed with IBM apparent lack of interest and resources in developing the Power PC chip.

Apple had to watch with envy as Intel rolled out the Centrino chip offering high performance and low power consumption. As Apple's powerbooks had nothing new to offer and still relied on G4 processors.

I still believe the PowerPC design is superior to Intels current chipset design, its just speed, intel have cracked the manufacturing problems associated with manufacturing high speed microprocessors. IBM have not, I'll bet Intel could make a 4 GHz G5 chip if given all the design info.

i used to write machine code for far simpler processors, the code is fine tuned for the processor, an operating system that runs on both must be compromising something (i.e. performance).

So where to now ?
Ideally let Intel make G5 chips , but that won't happen. We will be stuck with intel current set.

And to really make the whole thing seem crazy the new new Xbox 2 and playstation 3 seem to be using PowerPC chips (playstation cell chip I believe is closely related to PowerPC chip).
As Xbox & playstation sales rise and IBM is making a lot of cash maybe they will start to invest in R&D and really develop speedy G5 poss G6 chips.

Won't Apple look embarrassed then if the next generation of PowerPC chips start to outspeed Intels offerings

:confused:
 
Unfortunately, the elegant solution isn't always the popular solution. No matter how sexy that Powerbook G4 is, it still underperforms a well clocked Intel chip miserably. As for being loyal to Apple, you may as well be loyal to your political party - you're just as much the butt of Apple's jokes too. Apple has some nice innovations but lets face it - they're in this to make money. For those of us who have been screwed repeatedly by the company, it doesn't give me warm fuzzies thinking people are fans of an incorporated entity. Their primary function as a company is to make money, and yes, much of this is done at the consumer's expense by keeping us in the dark, provoking upgrades by releasing less buggy hardware (instead of fixing the problems), etc.
 
True, remember 'fan' is short for fanatic. To be fanatical about a corporation is disturbing to me. They exist for profit, not doing what's right or even pursuing the best technology, just what sells best in the market they are in...
 
I understand the need for speed, especially in the marketing world. In light of Apple's decision, I purchased a new PowerBook. After using a ThinkPad for a few months, the speed of the PB is comparable. Even though I am not a power user on computers, I found the IBM to be fast in many areas, and struggled in others. Overall, I found the speed of the system inconsistent, and certainly not smooth throughout. Whether or not it was XP or the hardware, I can't determine.
Using this new PB with Tiger, so far, I have found the system to be responsive, consistent and smooth throughout different tasks.
Although the IBM was not a bad computer, the PB wins hands down in many categories, including features, I/O ports, and comfort to name a few.
Whether or not my PB is as fast as a comparable XP box or not, to me, average consumer, I will take the PB over anything else, what it may lack in speed, Tiger and the hardware make up for it. :)
 
All I can add is that my old Thinkpad @ 2 Ghz encoded movies a HECK of a lot faster than this thing @ 1.67. I mean in almost half the time.
 
jzdziarski said:
All I can add is that my old Thinkpad @ 2 Ghz encoded movies a HECK of a lot faster than this thing @ 1.67. I mean in almost half the time.
Click to expand...

Do you know why? This has been beaten to death on many times, but here it goes again.

The current crop of G4s are severely hampered by the 167 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB). Loosely speaking, the FSB is the connection between the CPU and the Memory (i.e. RAM). The faster it is, the faster data gets shoved between the CPU and the RAM. Intel Laptops like the Centrino have a minimum of 400 MHz as the FSB clock speed and most have 533 MHz. This is more than double that of the G4. Some Pentium 4s have an FSB of 800 MHz. Can you see why the G4 performs poorly?

In theory, the G4 should perform exceptionally well in media encoding tasks thanks to Altivec that can perform 8 operations per clock vs 2 operations per clock that SSE(1,2,3) can manage. However, 8 operations per clock means you'll need _a lot_ of bandwidth to cope with all that data, especially between the CPU and RAM. In reality, when using Altivec the G4 is actually starved for data to crunch, and it usually kept waiting for more data to be fetched from memory before it is able to proceed. As such it is rarely able to perform the "8 operations per clock".

The solution? A faster FSB. This has been addressed by Freescale (ex Motorola) with their new SoC devices that even support dual-core processors. And an integrated memory controller that should speed up memory access even more. I would be very keen to see the performance of this dual-core G4 chip because it is expected to fly.
 
And this is the problem with Apple - they are the Microsoft of hardware. Instead of releasing something stable and useful (as thinkpads are), they release hardware with severe deficiencies and then rather than /motivate/ their users to upgrade by providing something cooler, they /provoke/ their users to upgrade by providing something with fewer problems.
 
And if you are skeptical of my previous post, here is just a partial list of deficiencies in the "latest" Powerbooks that drive my point home. The front side bus is slower than any comparable PC laptop. The DVD burner doesn't support dual layer (in spite of the fact that most PC laptops do, and nearly all ApplePowerMacs do). The new and improved trackpad is buggy (causing weird mouse behavior) as is the sudden motion sensor technology, which frequently locks my hard drive up for a half second at a time throughout the day and makes a "dropping ping pong ball" sound. To add insult to injury, I can't tell what the system temperature is because Apple somehow broke that feature on the new Powerbooks. The processor is nowhere near as fast as advertised (probably as a result of the FSB) and the amazing Radeon 9700 graphics card is underwhelming for something that cost nearly $3k. Yet I would have to pay another $3k to get these problems fixed (and be faced with a handful of other problems) assuming they're addressed in the next Powerbooks, which naturally benefits Apple (or they wouldn't be selling handicapped laptops).
 
jzdziarski said:
All I can add is that my old Thinkpad @ 2 Ghz encoded movies a HECK of a lot faster than this thing @ 1.67. I mean in almost half the time.
Click to expand...

WOW!
Video encoding became quite an interest for me on Linux on my old AMD 2800, I have to say, my Mac mini at 1.25GHz tears strips of it. I can encode mp3, DivX and VCD MPEG-1 much quicker than before. There are some things I haven't found tools for yet, but speed is a non-issue.
 
jzdziarski said:
AMD 2800 = Celeron. I was running a Pentium 4M
Click to expand...
You're obviously not happy, why not sell it or get a refund and get a ThinkPad or whatever, not being rude, just practical. You have to go for what works for you best, if Apple aren't delivering what you want - and I've a friend who feels the same about Mac hardware (and doesn't like the OS much either) - then get something which works better. :)
 
Hate to say it, but you're not making sense, first you think PowerPC Macs are the greatest, boycott Intel. Now you hate it and want an Intel. Make your mind up.
 
Yeah. And I'll get the dust off my Atari 1040STf, then. Although there might be a TT/030 lying around somewhere I could use. Ah, no, doesn't work for me. I'm going forward... ;)

Btw.: There aren't many PC notebooks where you can upgrade CPU, graphics card etc., so that's more or less the same with PC hardware. Notebooks in general are a "problem" there... (I still prefer them to desktops, mainly because I like to work in the park, on trains etc.)
 
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