Apple ditches IBM power PC chip and will use Intel.

[jmh]

AFA build quality, it's a matter of statistics, and macs always win that one.

Real Mac experience talking?-) Were you there when the first G4 PowerBooks arrived?

They do hardware like other hardware manufacturers. And just like any other manufacturer, they somethings deliver less than stellar quality.

If I got a top of the line laptop at such a price as those first G4 PowerBooks were, only to find out that the case has serious issues... and then go through the hoop of having the machine shipped to Holland (afair) for two months, just to get back a new machine that has the same problem... some people swapped their PowerBooks several times before they got what they paid for. Some said "f**k this shit" and instead got a faster Wintendo laptop for way less.

Just a little reality check. Now you can get back to the flame war.

Regards,

JMH

[machinesworking]

Just a little reality check. Now you can get back to the flame war.

Arrrgh! OK let's get this straight personal experience, and statisitics gathered from a group of thousands of people are entirely two separate things. Just because one, or even hundreds of experiences are different from the norm, does not negate the thousands of people who have no issues with their machines.
Case in point. I have had some bad experiences with installing drivers on XP, but for most people the experience isn't so bad. Now I relate a story about it, but I certainly don't argue that others are wrong because of my experience. This is basically what you are saying, that because of a few bad experiences you've heard about, Consumer reports and other magazines are wrong when they report that customer service, and hardware reliability is higher with Apple than with Dell, Sony, Fujitsu, Gateway etc....

The only mac OS machine I ever had a hardware problem with was a Powerbase 180, a clone. The other "problem" I had was with pealing paint on a powerbook, and Apple actually repaired it under the standard warrantee. That's my real world experience. I wouldn't say yours was wrong, but statistically I'm in the majority.

[jmh]

Erm... had you really read what I wrote, you'd see the fun in reading your reply

They do hardware like other hardware manufacturers. And just like any other manufacturer, they somethings deliver less than stellar quality.

HAD YOU READ WHAT I WROTE. I didn't say Macs and their build quality of shit because of something I "heard". I didn't "hear" it, I was there.

This is basically what you are saying, that because of a few bad experiences you've heard about, Consumer reports and other magazines are wrong when they report that customer service, and hardware reliability is higher with Apple than with Dell, Sony, Fujitsu, Gateway etc....

Nope, that's what you are saying I said. There's a difference.

Exactly where did I say that statistics must be wrong because of something I "heard"?

My point - something that might have escaped you - isn't in trying to negate what you said, but instead in giving a touch of realism ("a touch" since I'm only giving out a single example) in case people read your statistics-based comment along the lines "Mac hardware is the best, there are no hw related issues or problems as they always get nominated for best build quality, best customer service" etc.

Reading more into replies than what's there... oh, I forgot where we are

Regards,

JMH

[Urs]

1) Altivec optimized stuff will a lot harder to port. Which is most audio stuff. My guess is emulation of altivec instructions won't be fast enough.

Looks like they don't even try to emulate Altivec in Rosetta - I'm guessing Rosetta presents to the OS as an CPU which does not support Altivec, so well-behaved apps that check for Altivec support and fall back to straight FPU sequences should be OK. (I think emulating PPC FPU on x87 FPU would be faster than emulating PPC Altivec on any combination of x87/SSE).

Some light on this:

As far as I can see, the most used AltiVec code for audio processing is Apple's Veclib. Veclib is a library of highly optimzed routines, such as FFT/iFFT. In addition, Apple offers super fast vector routines for matrix operations (blast), trigonometric functions (vecfpsomething) and stuff. As long as you use these, you do not have to port anything, because these libraries have already been maintained in SSE/SSE2 flavour. They are simply available (for free, btw.).

Next, a bit I gathered from CoreAudio team, just like planned for Longhorn, Mactel will not use the Intel FPUs. All floating point calculation will be done in the SSE layer, which is supposed to be a dramatic speed boost even for scalar operations. Add to that, the Apple compiler does auto vectorization, so that your scalar code will benefit from parallel processing whenever possible.

I guess the minimum requirements for a Mactel cpu is the availability of SSE2. While that's probably still a joke compared to AltiVec, there's kinda migration guide on developer.apple.com that has a conversion table. I suppose that there'll be an alternative for most vector calculations pretty soon, so that the developers can mostly just copy/paste the stuff if they have custom vector code.

One thing where AltiVec sucks is 64 bit - it simply can't do this. AFAIK SSE2 does double precision... this is something I'm really looking forward to, because a lot of my dsp code is 64 bit and I couldn't vectorize it at all... (well, I don't have to on a G5 because of its 2 FPUs)

Cheers,

Urs

[BONES]

Making a statement like that is retarded on your part.
The issues can't be summed up like that.

Yes, they can. I do a lot of training in the film/broadcast industry on both Mac and PC and it is my experience that most designers use Mac because. That's right, because. Most of those I have worked with know considerably less about OS X than I do, in terms of turning off all the annoying shit like having your application exit stage left for no real reason. When I turn that stuff off for them they are eternally grateful, despite the fact that they sit in front of OSX every day and I avoid it like the plague.
Then there are the Mac zealots here who never fail to to live up to my expectations by being completely unable to come up with a single, concrete and rational reason to choose a considerably more expensive Mac over a PC. You can prefer what you like but that is not a real, concrete reason for anyone else to be convinced.

[Trojan Badger]

Did I mention that Linux is a platform beloved of bearded conspiracy theorists?

Fight...fight...fight...fight...

[mauseoleum]

Then there are the Mac zealots here who never fail to to live up to my expectations by being completely unable to come up with a single, concrete and rational reason to choose a considerably more expensive Mac over a PC.

mind you, there's at least 2 categories of PC's - a standard desktop / gamers desktop and a workstation class, which, according to ongoing investigations on http://digitalmedianet.com/ are more expensive platform compared to a G5 (speaking of dualop. workstations). Their speed champ is supposed to be a dual-xeon dell.

home-grown computers - that's another story.

but you've nailed the *because* argument on the spot.

another dimension to the *because* thing:
mac form factor is supposedly more beneficial to a freelancer's survival - it has more *impact* on a customer. plus the *second-hand* value ...

... if someone's *bussiness* goes down ...

[Jeremy_NSL]

Thats a bit confusing... Xeon's are P4's with huge onboard cache, as well as multiprocessor-capabilities, mostly built for server and database applications. They are very expensive because server cpus are a smaller, upscale market. Comparing their price to a G5 isn't really fair.

[egbert]

Thats a bit confusing... Xeon's are P4's with huge onboard cache, as well as multiprocessor-capabilities, mostly built for server and database applications. They are very expensive because server cpus are a smaller, upscale market. Comparing their price to a G5 isn't really fair.

Actually that is not the case. While there are hugely expensive Xeons with very large caches that cost several thousand US$, Xeons start at a fraction of that cost with 1MB and 2 MB of cache.

An Asus ncch-dl dual Xeon board and two Xeon processors can be had for a quite reasonable price. Check the prices out online.

The arrival of the dual core Pentiums will deliver similar bang for less bucks though. Dual core Xeons will really kick the performance along however. At present it looks like Sonar can use four cores but Cubase/Nuendo can't.

Check this thread for more on the dual dual situation:

http://forum.nuendo.com/phpbb2/viewtopi ... 633eeb8557

[UltraJv]

Thats a bit confusing... Xeon's are P4's with huge onboard cache, as well as multiprocessor-capabilities, mostly built for server and database applications. They are very expensive because server cpus are a smaller, upscale market. Comparing their price to a G5 isn't really fair.

Actually that is not the case. While there are hugely expensive Xeons with very large caches that cost several thousand US$, Xeons start at a fraction of that cost with 1MB and 2 MB of cache.

An Asus ncch-dl dual Xeon board and two Xeon processors can be had for a quite reasonable price. Check the prices out online.

The arrival of the dual core Pentiums will deliver similar bang for less bucks though. Dual core Xeons will really kick the performance along however. At present it looks like Sonar can use four cores but Cubase/Nuendo can't.

Check this thread for more on the dual dual situation:

http://forum.nuendo.com/phpbb2/viewtopi ... 633eeb8557

I dont see much of a problem with Cubase SX and Nuendo not running on 4 cores yet. When they are affordable, Steinberg will make it work - no worries there. I cant see many Sonar owners having 4 cores at the moment

[egbert]

I dont see much of a problem with Cubase SX and Nuendo not running on 4 cores yet. When they are affordable, Steinberg will make it work - no worries there

While I'm sure this will come in time I wouldn't hold my breath. I mean it's not like Steiny was ever tardy about delivering a feature that would help their customers is it?

BTW - the Dual Dual thing has affected Xeons for some time - Dual Xeons won't run with HT on due to this same issue. It has been around for quite a while.

[Skaven83]

I'm using Logic 5 on a PC, I've tried other sequencers but Logic is my baby I'm going to buy a mac as I want to use Logic 7. How powerful G5 do I have to get? I tried Logic 7 in a shop on those new integrated iMacs, it was a 1.25 G5 I think. It didn't turn out to function very well, as even switchin screen sets caused a half a second lag, which was quite amusing. Is it that Logic 7 needs a dual G5 to run properly?

Btw. can someone tell me why macs are considered to be more suitable for "professional" work? I just started my own company so I'd like to know. I've used Windows XP for several years and it has never crashed. I understand if macs were considered superior because it was more stable, but that's not an issue anymore. The way I see it, macs are nice for surfing, writing documents, checking email, and it looks beautiful so even our wifes will enjoy it But if someone wants to be serious, a PC would be very stable and far more powerful than even a double G5.

My intentions are not to flame macs, I just want to know reasons for buying it, since I may have to if I want to continue using Logic. In my opinnion macs still have the "professional" status, even though reasons for it died years ago when WinXP came around.

[cold c]

Btw. can someone tell me why macs are considered to be more suitable for "professional" work?

Becuase many people who claim to be "professional" don't know what they're talking about.

[Symbiant]

All together now....

"Now, the world don't move to the beat of just one drum,
What might be right for you, may not be right for some.
A man is born, he's a man of means.
Then along come two, they got nothing but their jeans.
But they got, Diff'rent Strokes.
It takes, Diff'rent Strokes.
It takes, Diff'rent Strokes to move the world.
Everybody's got a special kind of story
Everybody finds a way to shine,
It don't matter that you got not alot
So what,
They'll have theirs, and you'll have yours, and I'll have mine.
And together we'll be fine....
Because it takes, Diff'rent Strokes to move the world.
Yes it does.
It takes, Diff'rent Strokes to move the world."


OK children... hope that helps clear up any confusion

[bio]

[cold c]

OK children... hope that helps clear up any confusion

AFAICT, many of the comments in this thread are not anti-mac but anti-ignorance.