Did we drink the koolaid?

An associate of mine asked this question. Did we drink the koolaid? We Mac users have been a smug bunch for years watching the dog and pony show we call Keynote. Steve and Phil stand there and proclaim how much better a MAC is doing Photoshop..Audio...whatever, using the PowerPC CPU that a PC doing the same operation. We all cheer - HU- RAH!

Now the new Steve comes to a few developers and proudly proclaims "It's the OS , stupid"

Have we been duped again?

We've been subject to Steve's famous "Reality Distortion Field".
Google it!

tc

Drink the Orange Sunshine Flavor. It's super powerful and has less strychnine.



------------------------
Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.

I'm diluting mine with some spekticism but otherwise I think it's pretty forward looking and levels the playing field very nicely. I only wish Apple had bought up or allied with AMD, a 64-bit champ.

So Star Trek emerges from spacedock!

Mactel. Hm.

- Loren
Today's FCP 4.5 keytip:
Do a virtual Audio Mixdown to lighten playback load with Command-Option-R!

The FCP HD KeyGuide?: your power placemat.
Now available at KeyGuide Central
www.neotrondesign.com

Is this a slam on a Mac in a Mac board? I'm not sure I'm following this accurately.

Adam

I pity all those who build 'super computers' because they believed in the 'Apple's G5 is better'
Adobe might be happy.
I think - as always - speed is workflow and a good knowledge of what you do.

Andreas

John, I wrote a similar message on the Cow.
I find a bit hypocrite the argument of "as long as the OS works I don't care what's inside". I bought my first G4 in 1999 after reading a fantastic spread ad in Wired magazine: "Move over, speed of light". Not a single word about the OS, which didn't yet exist as OS X.

A lot of Windows users (probably out of ignorance) believed even last week that a Mac HAS to be faster, or it wouldn't cost more and come in such an arrogant package.

More than that, one thing is digesting the probability of some Windows machines being as fast or faster than a Mac, and another thing is knowing for certain that they are going to be just the same from now on. A big part of the Mac spirit is difference, and a Pentium your mother uses.... right?


Talk about reality distorstion field? Let's say the unspeakable: How do we know Steve ran Photoshop on Rosetta emulation layer, when Rosetta doesn't support Altivec and Photoshop CS 2 must be so heavily optimized? We know it because the "about this mac" sign, on a custom machine provided by Apple, said Pentium. The emboss filter that he so randomly applied, woudln't it happen to be one of the 4 or 5 non Altivec optimized filters in PS CS2? Let's not even go there

But you know what? Last night, I watched the keynote.
And I understood something - he didn't say the Penitium is more powerful or even that's going to be more powerful in the future. He talked about performance per watt, not performance itself.

The problem is this: over 50 per cent (and growing) of Apple users are laptop users. Apple laptops are using embarrasing old G4 processors. So much so, that the line between iBooks and Powerbooks is almost completely blurred. Apple knows now they won't be able to fit a G5 on a Powerbook. So we, PowerMac users, will suffer the side effects of Apple's laptop problem. The G5 went from 2.0 to 2.7 just as the Pentium went from 3.2 to 3.8 (although with dual cores now). The Dual G5s are still beating several Xeon machines in the famous After Effects' Nightlfly test.

The reaility is that in the dark side you can have a laptop as a desktop replacement. I'm not an expert, but I understand that if you look enough, there are even dual xeon laptops or at least, top of the line pentiums, right? In the Mac, the higher end Powerbook barely runs Motion. It's much slower than a two and a half years old Powermac.

Bottom line: the G5 could theoretically be better, but Apple won't have them in laptops and if you go deeper, IBM doesn't even seem interested in having Apple as a customer for desktops. They used Apple for prestige, and now they have Microsoft and Sony onboard for for mass market game machines.



Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

No. Right now, and maybe for the next year, the G5 *is* faster doing certain tasks. No reality distortion field, no Kool-Aid, it's just the truth.

The problem is, that day will end very soon. The G5 roadmap for the future is miserable, because after landing the video game accounts, IBM all but said that they don't care about computer chips anymore. The G5 has begun to fall behind, and it will only worsen over time because the R & D won't be there.

The G5 was and maybe is better for graphics stuff. But it won't be for long. This is a move for the future, not the present or past.

I won't drink this Koolaid, but I'm accepting the fact that it makes things a lot easier for Apple in the long run. For many many years Apple has had to fight tooth and nail to make sure the best CPUs are being developed for them. They're sick of it, and especially now, they have better ways to spend their time. Now they can just go, "What's the fastest ya got Intel? Great! Ship 'em over."

I'm sad to see PowerPC on the desktop go. I hate to eventually lose Altivec. But it's not the worst news in the world. G5s will still be THE Macs to have for a few years. And then, we'll have some pretty darn fast, 64-bit multicore x86 options.

I really feel sorry for the FCS developers though. With all the hand-tuned Altivec and G5 enhancements, this will be a big pain in the azz for the. I really think their time could be better spent elsewhere (like fixing bugs and making cool new stuff.) For the majority of apps though, it shouldn't be too a big deal.



- Justin Barham -

Oh, and here a cool article from John Siracusa: [arstechnica.com]

He really nails the feelings of nerds like me who tend to romanticize the PowerPC and its potential, as silly as that may seem to some (understandably.) Anyway, it's a good read.



- Justin Barham -

I don't even LIKE koolaid.

I am not a follower. Nobody ever sold me on Apple. I have never listened to a keynote...don't even know what Stevie's voice sounds like. I bought into the "Mac thing" because they were powerful and easy to use (first Mac was a PowerMac 9500/150) - even for Creative types like myself. My G5 doesn't crash at all while the PC guys in my room go down once a week...THAT'S what I love about my Mac - STABILITY / POWER / EASE OF USE.

It just works.

...and Apple spends their time & money improving their hardware & software while innovating in other areas.

I made it through the OS9 to OSX transition... I'll make it through the next. You can keep the koolaid...I'm not going anywhere.

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I've used Macs and PCs my whole time in the video field. I see positive and negatives in both really. Some say that Macs are more stable and crash less than PCs. That's not true. Both are just computers that crash equally. If somebody says that their computer NEVER crashes . . then they are either extremely lucky . . or they are hiding the facts to defend their own prefered platform.

I've had freeze ups in Macs like crazy, and I've had my Desktops on my PC disapear and reapear on me.

So far the best system I have ever edited on was a Discreet Edit, and that was on a PC. BUT Discreet can be ridiculously expensive. Macs are expensive, but you also get a ton of productivity out of them, and FCPHD is friggin awesome. I've had lots of problems, but it's not because of the program. It's because of external issues messing with the program.

The only thing that I DO NOT like about Macs, is SAFARI. My Safari just decides to stop working and shuts down for no reason several times. So now I use FireFox . . but as I said in one of my posts. . I hate not being able to use a part of SOMETHING when it's supposed to work. If a Light switch to turn on a light does not work, why the heck have it at all?

I'll be sticking with Mac for a while, but there's nothing wrong with PCs either. PCs crash for the same reason that Macs crash . . user error, or external stuff messing with the programs.

Well I think there is no question that before the G5, the G4 was lacking big time behind the PC. Sure Apple helped programmers optimize the heck out of certain funtcions to help them run as fast as possible. I.e. the PhotoShop demos.

The G5 though, was always arguably better then the pentium group. Thus it was such a big deal, because compared to the G4 it was like Apple Leap frogged from a G4 to a G6, but just called it a G5. So yah, there was a lot of well deserved hype the G5's were competative again, and in many ways better. Along with the OS that was unix based, it was great for so many things, like big clusters, thus all the hype there.

But looking to the future now, it's not what we thought it would be. Motorola/Freescale isn't really producing results any more, and IBM, we'll they're having problems of their own, and looking to move a different direction perhaps. So the Move to Intel is safe if nothing else. Right now both the chip makers that make PPC chips, well they aren't producing well. If Apple moves to Intel, or X86, then they have to great options, that are producing well, always have been, and always will be producing good chips made for computers. Not games, nor routers, but made for computers. So it's a win win for apple.

As for the Reality Distortion field. I always felt watching Steve Jobs as CEO of Pixar rather then Apple was the best sign of the state of the Mac Platform. Pixar, up until the G5, used Intel machines for all of their work and rendering. It wasn't until the G5 came out that they began to migrate to the Mac platform. As well, Steve did a guest appearance at a Keynote with the Intel CEO. His appearance was as the CEO of pixar where he spoke about how great the Intel chips were for rendering the huge features Pixar was putting out. So to me that was a huge testament as to how behind the G4 was. Yah, the G5 caught up, but it's future looks bleak, why go down that same road again. Intel and AMD will be there and be producing. So their futures, look much more appealing.

Greg

"...Some say that Macs are more stable and crash less than PCs. That's not true. Both are just computers that crash equally. If somebody says that their computer NEVER crashes . . then they are either extremely lucky . . or they are hiding the facts to defend their own prefered platform."

That may be not be true for you... but it is in our Gfx Department (6 - G5's, 3 - PC's) - your statement is incorrect. Both computers do not crash equally - unless they are not configured & maintained correctly (90% cause: user error).

I am not "hiding" anything and I have NEVER been "lucky". I take care of my gear and it works...period. When I say my G5 never crashes and the PC guys in my room crash once a week, how can you possibly claim it is not true? You have never been in my room and seen it, right? Speak for yourself, please...opinions are not facts.

BTW: Safari is the fastest browser I have ever used on my machines. I guess I must be "lucky" with that too...



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I subscribe to the argument that these are all just tools.

I prefer doing video work on a mac simply because they're more stable for this work than the PCs on which I've worked. I attribute this to Apple's manufacturing and tight integration of all the hardware. With Wintel machines, nothing about the config can be guaranteed. Has anyone ever configured an Avid box and had to wade through the "qualified" parts list? This is pretty much a non-issue on the Mac side.

My graphics work, on the other hand, is done on my Athlon/XP. It's a single proc about a year and a half older than my dual proc G4, but the AMD renders much faster than the G4.

And here's my point: I wish Apple had included the AMD chips in these plans. In the long run I think they're faster, overall just better, and cheaper to boot.

I really don't care about the guts of the machine, as long as it's high-quality, reliable, fast, cheap, easy to upgrade, and - especially - runs FCP.

hd

Oh I believe AMD are in the plans.... just not really mentioned. Kind of like Apple move to IBM, they never left Motorola behind, but rather kept them as an option. Apple announced Intel support, but my understanding is that means a Mac could be built around an AMD chip. And the software that's optimized for the Intel chip would work on the AMD.

So if Apple ever had a need for an AMD chip, the option is there, and I'm sure Apple is very aware of this, and will be watching both the AMD and Intel roadmaps closely.

Greg

Whatever makes your boat float my brother from another mother, it's no skin off my sack. Just saying what I've noticed. Computers are computers, one's not better than the other. I do not hold one over the other. Both platforms have made me want to bury my shoes in the side of them, and both have made me want to praise them. . . For the future, a little decaf might allow you relax a little more ; )

And Joe, Your office environment is about as worrisome as a cloudy day to me . . . I was not talking about your office.

Try Being a little less self centered . . it might help you stress less. I was not directing that post directly at you, I was responding about all the biased PC and Mac users who all say pretty much the same talking points about their prefered platform. True your post did make me think about all the past STUFFESES I've heard . . but it was not directed ONLY at you. You spent more time thinking about yourself and thinking that I was directing my post at you, you did not see how much I complimented Macs and FCP.

They're just computers man . . . . inanimate objects : ) An opinion on them is not an opinion on you my friend : )

PEACE !
Adam
BTW , Safari shut down on me 3 times yesterday while on Yahoo Mail. ; )


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Author: grafixjoe (---.com)
Date: 06-08-05 12:36

"...Some say that Macs are more stable and crash less than PCs. That's not true. Both are just computers that crash equally. If somebody says that their computer NEVER crashes . . then they are either extremely lucky . . or they are hiding the facts to defend their own prefered platform."

That may be not be true for you... but it is in our Gfx Department (6 - G5's, 3 - PC's) - your statement is incorrect. Both computers do not crash equally - unless they are not configured & maintained correctly (90% cause: user error).

I am not "hiding" anything and I have NEVER been "lucky". I take care of my gear and it works...period. When I say my G5 never crashes and the PC guys in my room crash once a week, how can you possibly claim it is not true? You have never been in my room and seen it, right? Speak for yourself, please...opinions are not facts.

BTW: Safari is the fastest browser I have ever used on my machines. I guess I must be "lucky" with that too...

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new."
- Albert Einstein

Adam,

Thanks for the expert Decaf suggestion...don't know how I made it this far in the business without your input on that subject. I should have contacted you sooner so as to save myself 9 years of working late nights & weekends and just sleep...OOOooooOOOoooooooommmmmmmmm

Ahhhhh, that's much better.

And thanx for clearing up the "computers are inanimate objects" thing...I had no idea. I thought they were simply the means to provide sustinance for my family & myself & without them we would have to resort to manual labor (yuck - ouch). I guess I was too self-centered to see the truth - sorry, there, adam.

"BTW , Safari shut down on me 3 times yesterday while on Yahoo Mail. ; ) "

Maintenance is your friend, my brotha from anotha mutha Good Luck



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.