A Gentle Request: Give the Apple Bashing a Rest Please

[kishy]

MW...sometimes it seems you argue against yourself...

Frequency has rather little to do with performance.

Try a 150MHz Intel Pentium Pro. Then try a 233MHz Intel Pentium w/MMX. Hey, even better, pair up a 266MHz Intel with a 266MHz AMD K6-2.

PPro stomps the PMMX for real world operation. K6-2 stomps...well you get the idea.

Anything...ANYTHING...to keep us away from the "he's richer so it must be better" discussion. ANYTHING.

[ch_123]

When compared to the Intel processors available at the same time periods, many of the PowerPC cores were simply pieces of garbage. 450Mhz G3 versus 1Ghz Pentium III. 866Mhz G4 versus 2.2Ghz Pentium 4. 1Ghz G4 versus  2.8Ghz Pentium 4. Get the message?

Read this.

And before you say that that's marketing talk, why did the speed of Intel's CPUs take a sudden drop during 2006?

The Intel processors had superior architecture and were much more efficient, consuming far less power and outputting much less heat. That's a reason why Apple switched. The people at Apple aren't that stupid.

Of course, whilst Apple was making G5 machines, Intel was making Pentium 4s. We all know how that ended up.

Anything...ANYTHING...to keep us away from the "he's richer so it must be better" discussion. ANYTHING.

I'll drink to that!

[microsoft windows]

What Steve Jobs did in that "megahertz myth" was he compared a G4 to one of the slow Willamette Pentium 4's. If you compared that G4 to a pentium III the same speed made a few years earlier, you'd get different results. Also, keep in mind that since at the time, Mac OS did not run on x86 CPU's, and Windows does not run on PowerPC's. The task the two machines had to complete was probably just a marketing ploy. Apple probably took the junkiest Pentium 4 system they could find and compare it to one of their systems.

And, the G5's were worse than the Pentium 4's, creating even more heat and drawing even more power. At least people could put Pentium 4's in laptops...

Having to use those old Macs for years, I have experience behind my opinions. With stupid one-button mice, mushy keyboards, and slow hardware, I've developed quite a passionate hatred for those systems.

[ch_123]

What Steve Jobs did in that "megahertz myth" was he compared a G4 to one of the slow Willamette Pentium 4's. If you compared that G4 to a pentium III the same speed made a few years earlier, you'd get different results.

In fairness, the clock-per-clock discrepancy between P3 and P4 wasn't that great. They were showing PPC chips outdoing x86 chips of almost twice the frequency, that's pretty impressive.

Also, keep in mind that since at the time, Mac OS did not run on x86 CPU's, and Windows does not run on PowerPC's. The task the two machines had to complete was probably just a marketing ploy. Apple probably took the junkiest Pentium 4 system they could find and compare it to one of their systems.

They benchmarked using Photoshop amongst other things, which is quite CPU intensive for some of it's fancier features, and it trashed much faster x86 chips.

You do raise an interesting point in that they were comparing an old NT system to a pretty swish Unix one. I wonder if there are any good Linux benchmarks out there.

Then again, it's hard to know to know just to what extent the OS couldnt be resposible for all that. And there were independent benchmarks that backed up Apple's ones. Obviously people weren't stupid enough to take Apple's word on face value.

And, the G5's were worse than the Pentium 4's, creating even more heat and drawing even more power. At least people could put Pentium 4's in laptops...

They could put them in laptops, but it made for big laptops that didn't have long battery life.

With stupid one-button mice

I once plugged a two button mouse into an iMac. It was amazing - my productivity increased by 1000%, I was able to complete fifty tasks at once, my scalability and corporate mission-critical enterprise capability also shot up. Meanwhile, world hunger was single-handedly solved, and Dita von Teese jumped out of my monitor to perform an act of fellatio upon me.

...

Either that, or nothing happened, because Mac OS X is designed primarily to make use of keyboard shorcuts in deference to having lots of mouse buttons.

Mushy keyboards? Apple, and everyone else in the market at that time. Whatever.

[microsoft windows]

I never got the reason behind Apple's one button mice. There probably wasn't one.

[ch_123]

Mac users would say "I never got the reason behind Microsoft's two button mice. There probably wasn't one." Unix users who traditionally had three button mice would say the same thing.

All these things are matters of opinion. Just because it's different to what you use, doesn't make it stupid.

[ch_123]

I have one of the original optical mice -



Cant use it because it's Sun-DIN only.

[ch_123]

Yeah, I actually remember the Alto after I made that post and modified it accordingly.

[kishy]

And then there's this:



But we've already made fun of it here.

[ch_123]

I'm trying to get a loan of the Mighty Mouse to play around with it. I also intend on reinstalling OS X onto a Power Mac G4 I found so that I can actually play around with this "Mac" thing that people have been talking about so much.

[kishy]

I'm trying to get a loan of the Mighty Mouse to play around with it. I also intend on reinstalling OS X onto a Power Mac G4 I found so that I can actually play around with this "Mac" thing that people have been talking about so much.

I can never keep track of which is which...is the Mighty Mouse the wired one with little scroll ball, or Bluetooth wireless one with touch scrolling?

In the case of the latter don't bother, the latency is REALLY bad...I notice this and all I'm doing is basic use stuff for the most part. You may have seen the old PS/2 wireless ball mouse I use on my 286 from time to time...it tracks better with less latency.

The one with the little ball should be similar to the slightly earlier semitransparent optical ones.

[ch_123]

The touch one is the "Magic Mouse" because it's like, magic...

>_>

The one with the little ball is the Mighty Mouse, although it was renamed "Apple Mouse" after a perhiperal company threatened to sue them (and no, it wasn't our favorite boys in Kentucky... it was some company that made regular mice...)

I have one of the Pro Mice, which I quite liked except that whatever about using one button mice under OS X, under Windows and Linux, it's very limiting.

[microsoft windows]

Apple's Mighty Mouse isn't all that good. It has two buttons, but they're both under one plastic piece so it's hard to right-click. But I guess with some getting used to, they're usable.

[EverythingIBM]

Mac users would say "I never got the reason behind Microsoft's two button mice. There probably wasn't one." Unix users who traditionally had three button mice would say the same thing.

All these things are matters of opinion. Just because it's different to what you use, doesn't make it stupid.

There is a good reason for two buttons, one for regular clicking, and the second for context menus. Don't get me started on that whole "holding control" thing.

I never got the reason behind Apple's one button mice. There probably wasn't one.

Probably simplicity, aesthetics and "uniqueness" over functionality and uniform.

And then there's this:

Show Image

But we've already made fun of it here.

I actually like the shiny light lavender/grey buttons on that.

[TexasFlood]

I guess 3 buttons were a Sun Unix thing but according to Wikipedia on mice this Xerox Parc Alto computer mouse is the real granddaddy of 3 buttons.  $400 Mouse!

Show Image

Wikipedia DOES say Apple did 4 button testing but settled on the one button design.  And back to the OP.  This proves Apple users are stupider.

Here's the granddaddy of that granddaddy.
Douglas Engelbart made the first wooden shell prototype while at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) in 1964.



He later invented a three button mouse for the NLS (computer system) which was shown in 1968 at "The Mother of All Demos".





He applied for a patent on the mouse in 1967 which he received in 1970.  Many top SRI researchers left, with many ending up at Xerox PARC, taking the mouse idea with them.  He never received any royalties for his mouse invention. During an interview, he says "SRI patented the mouse, but they really had no idea of its value. Some years later it was learned that they had licensed it to Apple for something like $40,000."

[hyperlinked]

Here's the granddaddy of that granddaddy.
Douglas Engelbart made the first wooden shell prototype while at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) in 1964.

I happened to end up at a Christmas party at Douglas Engelbart's house a few years ago through a friend who knew him. Not surprisingly, he lives in a very upscale neighborhood. The guy's an engineer to the core and still has one of the most obvious habits of an engineer. There's old electronics lying around in various states of disassembly. Right at the front door, underneath a framed letter from President Richard Nixon was an old yellowed monitor that was old enough that I couldn't identify the make or model. I laughed when I saw that after walking in the door. It made me realize "ok, this guy's a giant, but he's the real deal, but still real person."

[hyperlinked]

Probably simplicity, aesthetics and "uniqueness" over functionality and uniform.

Remember the historical context though. Apple computers at that time  sported a retro rainbow logo at a time when owning a computer of any kind was not a badge of coolness. The one button thing was probably not a fashion decision.

Two button mice did not become a default option on Windows until Windows 3.0 (~1991) and a lot of people were still needing to use a hybrid of DOS/Windows on their computers. A 1-button mouse around that era isn't as ridiculous of an idea as it seems now. As to why they stuck with the 1 button mouse long after the fact... go figure. You can't say it was a Steve edict though. He wasn't there at the time when 2 button mice became commonplace.

[TexasFlood]

I happened to end up at a Christmas party at Douglas Engelbart's house a few years ago through a friend who knew him. Not surprisingly, he lives in a very upscale neighborhood. The guy's an engineer to the core and still has one of the most obvious habits of an engineer. There's old electronics lying around in various states of disassembly. Right at the front door, underneath a framed letter from President Richard Nixon was an old yellowed monitor that was old enough that I couldn't identify the make or model. I laughed when I saw that after walking in the door. It made me realize "ok, this guy's a giant, but he's the real deal, but still real person."

Send him an email telling him about Retr0bright, :smile:, although he might not care from the sound of it.

[EverythingIBM]

Remember the historical context though. Apple computers at that time  sported a retro rainbow logo at a time when owning a computer of any kind was not a badge of coolness. The one button thing was probably not a fashion decision.

Two button mice did not become a default option on Windows until Windows 3.0 (~1991) and a lot of people were still needing to use a hybrid of DOS/Windows on their computers. A 1-button mouse around that era isn't as ridiculous of an idea as it seems now. As to why they stuck with the 1 button mouse long after the fact... go figure. You can't say it was a Steve edict though. He wasn't there at the time when 2 button mice became commonplace.

Jobs DID go away from the ridiculous "one button mouse" in his NeXT computers. But those weren't the "computers for the rest of us", you needed the big bucks.

I think the Commodore 64 did a lot more than the silly old apple products. Apple never had great music, graphics, or anything of the sort (and it wasn't until IBM released the first colour CRT that they finally deviated away from monochrome).
And what about the Atari ST? It had a built in MIDI port and had the first version of cubase on it.
   First colour monitor? IBM, not apple.
First revolutionary music chip? Commodore, not apple.
First revolutionary graphical system? Amiga, not apple.
First music workstation? Atari, not apple.

In fact, I can't really draw anything revolutionary from apple once I put it all in perspective. A rainbow logo (against yellowing cheap plastic) is hardly convincing for innovation.

[kishy]

Apple made it "easy" and "accessible".

The real question is actually what "it" is.

I give props...and anti-props, in fact...to Apple for making technology freindly and more or less easy to get into. Great introduction to the world of computers. Anything beyond an introduction though...not so much.

[ricercar]

And before you say that that's marketing talk, why did the speed of Intel's CPUs take a sudden drop during 2006?!

According to a friend high at NVIDIA, Intel killed the P4 because P4 architecture hit a performance ceiling circa 2003, and found no improvement could be accomplished without infringing on NVIDIA patents. Suddenly Intel was interested in negotiating with NVIDIA for a cross-licensing agreement, which became visible here. NVIDIA was granted the Intel FSB license for nForce, and the Intel Centrino was born, featuring low power rather than MHz.

[kishy]

According to a friend high at NVIDIA, Intel killed the P4 because P4 architecture hit a performance ceiling circa 2003, and found no improvement could be accomplished without infringing on NVIDIA patents. Suddenly Intel was interested in negotiating with NVIDIA for a cross-licensing agreement, which became visible here. NVIDIA was granted the Intel FSB license for nForce, and the Intel Centrino was born, featuring low power rather than MHz.

"The Intel Centrino"

Centrino is a term which refers to the combination of particular hardware in a mobile computer, not any specific processor.

IIRC - Intel Mobile Chipset, Intel Wireless, Intel CPU

Ex. One of the two Inspiron 630m laptops in this house is Centrino, one is not.

Centrino:
Intel Pentium M 740, 1.7GHz
Intel 915 chipset
Intel 2915ABG wireless

Non-Centrino:
Intel Pentium M 740, 1.7GHz
Intel 915 chipset
Dell/Broadcom wireless

But ultimately the point you made still stands strong and tall. Just bugs me when people identify the Pentium M as a "Centrino".

[ch_123]

According to a friend high at NVIDIA, Intel killed the P4 because P4 architecture hit a performance ceiling circa 2003, and found no improvement could be accomplished without infringing on NVIDIA patents. Suddenly Intel was interested in negotiating with NVIDIA for a cross-licensing agreement, which became visible here. NVIDIA was granted the Intel FSB license for nForce, and the Intel Centrino was born, featuring low power rather than MHz.

Well, the main problem was that no one really knew how much of a problem heat and electricity would become, it was thought that it would scale hapily to 10GHz by 2005. What they got instead was an expensive, hot chip that no one really wanted.

[Rajagra]

Well, the main problem was that no one really knew how much of a problem heat and electricity would become, it was thought that it would scale hapily to 10GHz by 2005. What they got instead was an expensive, hot chip that no one really wanted.

We'll never keep up with Moore's law unless chip designers learn there is a 3rd dimension.

"Their pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking."


Stop messing about guys, and build something like this:

[hyperlinked]

"Their pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking."

LOL! One of my favorite movies! I run an outdoor movie series in the summer and that was one of our picks last year. Ah memories!

Though I gotta say that one scene you referenced is a bit of a plot hole. The super-intelligent super-human who mastered starship operations by cramming down the manual couldn't figure out how to put his car in reverse or something like that.

[Rajagra]

I gotta say that one scene you referenced is a bit of a plot hole. The super-intelligent super-human who mastered starship operations by cramming down the manual couldn't figure out how to put his car in reverse or something like that.

Doesn't quite match the original meeting with Khan, where Kirk defeats superhuman, megabrain Khan by pulling a blunt object from a console and using it to smack him upside the head.

Khan: "I have five times your strength, you are no match for me!"
Kirk:  "Eat lead pipe, Khan!"

Spock: "Hah! He wasn't expecting lead pipes to be laying around on a starship. He has no experience of how illogical humans are."

[TexasFlood]

Ehm, Apple HHKB, Apple 3 button mouse?

http://stores.ebay.com/Early-Apple_Other_W0QQ_fsubZ1QQ_sidZ998235743QQ_trksidZp4634Q2ec0Q2em322

Interesting.  That mouse has a lot of similarities to the Douglas Engelbart mice from my earlier post.

[timw4mail]

Apple is always detracted for having one button mice, but they recently put zero-button trackpads on all laptops, and have button-free looks, at any rate.

[elservo]

I can safely say the zero button glass trackpad on the Macbook is the finest way to work with an OS that I've ever experienced.  I don't know how I lived without it.

And no, I wouldn't drink Steve Jobs' bath water.

[D-EJ915]

oooh megahertz myth!! so exciting, let's see some numbers shall we
SPEC95 int/fp
1995

Code: [Select]


AlphaServer 8400 5/350 21164 (EV5) 350 10.1 14.2
Intel Alder System (200MHz, 256KB L2) Pentium Pro 200 8.9 6.75
HP 9000 C160 PA 8000 160 10.4 16.3
SGI Origin 200 MIPS R10k 180 8.59 15.6

2000

Code: [Select]


AlphaServer ES40 6/833 21264 (EV6) 833 50.0 100.0
Intel VC820 motherboard Pentium III 1000 46.8 31.9
HP 9000 C3600 PA-8600 552 42.1 64.0


[ch_123]

This of course teaches us what we already know - x86 blows.

[Mercen_505]

Aloooominum keyboard.

Once upon a time Apple was the ****. Now they're just a name brand like any other.

[ch_123]

I think the lack of travel and tactility in the aluminum keyboard is intentional - it's to get the fanbois prepped for when they switch over to button-less keyboards.

[kishy]

This of course teaches us what we already know - x86 blows.

Blows? Sure.

I'd argue it's the most useful architecture though, based on how the industry adopted it in such a widespread manner. Powerful, perhaps not, but just about anything you want to do can be done in some capacity on x86, with spotty chances for success on other arc's.

[D-EJ915]

Depends on what you are going to be using it for, you can make pretty much any of them do what you want, just depends on how you are going to go about doing it.



HP parisc/9000/visualize machines sure are nice though

[ch_123]

I'd argue it's the most useful architecture though, based on how the industry adopted it in such a widespread manner.

And also, if Apple is so much better than PCs and Microsoft Windows, how come Bill Gates is so much richer?

Discuss.

[kishy]

Discuss.

Oh come on, you must have missed where I specifically said I had no desire to see that topic open up...

Bill Gates is rich because his software company was able to produce - whether by licensing or creating, there is no difference to the end user - products that are easy to use, perceived to be the best, and powerful enough to satisfy the needs of professionals. Although security is not an inherent feature of most of the products, they are capable of being secured enough to satisfy the needs of even governments.

The products do not excel particularly well in any area except popularity, and through agreements with OEMs much money is made off of software not worth its price tag.

There, done.

[ch_123]

The reason I quoted that is because your statement on x86, whilst not offensively retarded like the Bill Gates thing, suffers the same problem - you have to ask yourself - why is x86 popular? The answer is that x86 is popular because it's the 'tel in Wintel. What if IBM decided to use the 68k, or if they used the IBM 801 and sold it to anyone who wanted? x86 would be a quaint afterthought that only the nerdiest would know about. Maybe you'd find it in network controllers, or some USAF radar designed in the 80s, but it wouldn't be adopted like it has been today on it's own merits.

The problem with non-x86 architectures? Marketing. They were all designed by old behemoths who thought the PC industry was a passing fad, and they they could survive on selling to high end and niche markets. Not even Intel's attempts at doing that worked... most of the other companies that did it don't even exist any more. It's simple economics - people like mass produced things because they're cheap, and everyone uses them. Especially now that the tech world is moving towards parallelism. Sure the PA-RISC or Alpha is twice as fast as the equivalent x86, but I can buy 3-4 x86 for the same price.

Shame it works like that really. Computers will just become another generic mass produced appliance, all the fun has gone out of them.

[itlnstln]

Looking at that pic, it looks like at least one of the tips might not be all that great.  For him, at least.

[kishy]

The reason I quoted that is because your statement on x86, whilst not offensively retarded like the Bill Gates thing, suffers the same problem - you have to ask yourself - why is x86 popular? The answer is that x86 is popular because it's the 'tel in Wintel. What if IBM decided to use the 68k, or if they used the IBM 801 and sold it to anyone who wanted? x86 would be a quaint afterthought that only the nerdiest would know about. Maybe you'd find it in network controllers, or some USAF radar designed in the 80s, but it wouldn't be adopted like it has been today on it's own merits.

The problem with non-x86 architectures? Marketing. They were all designed by old behemoths who thought the PC industry was a passing fad, and they they could survive on selling to high end and niche markets. Not even Intel's attempts at doing that worked... most of the other companies that did it don't even exist any more. It's simple economics - people like mass produced things because they're cheap, and everyone uses them. Especially now that the tech world is moving towards parallelism. Sure the PA-RISC or Alpha is twice as fast as the equivalent x86, but I can buy 3-4 x86 for the same price.

Shame it works like that really. Computers will just become another generic mass produced appliance, all the fun has gone out of them.

That's actually what I had been trying to say. It became popular for 'whatever reason' but certainly wasn't the best. As a consequence of becoming popular - again without regard for why - more stuff was developed for it, making it the only viable choice if you want the level of flexibility many people do want.

I'd have been interested in seeing where 68k could have gone, what it could have evolved into, if only because it was an interesting bit of weirdness.

[InSanCen]

As we have now moved onto uArch, I'll second the notion that, ignoring commercial factors, 680x0 series chips were awesome, and ahead of their time.

I have a friend with a very souped up Atari. IIRC, it's running an 030 at ~100Mhz (I'll ask again, he's probably added more since). What it can do (And the efficiency of the programming) is simply stunning for what is essentially rather old kit. He was saying (Again IIRC) that people are knocking out 060 "clones" of the Atari. Plenty of RAM (~1GB), decent Graphics (Radeon 7000 series), and the storage tacked onto these systems (They sure as hell don't need it due to the aforementioned great programming) is immense, SCSI is preferred, though I do seem to remember someone had hacked IDE onto something somewhere. Full Multitasking OS too, but bollocks if I can remember the name of it, and I'm too damn lazy to google it at the moment.

I was tempted to do an MS Windows, and denounce anything other than my Beloved Zilog Z80. x86, or 64bit? Who needs all those fancy features, my Spectrum +3 has a Floppy drive, and can play games as well as doing my home accounts, it even says all of this, right there on the box!

[kishy]

Can't wait to get a high-density floppy card for my XT rebuild. Then I'll have a fully operational 8088 system (x86, sure, but whatever).

[ch_123]

Some day I'll fit the one true computer into my bedroom -

[Rajagra]

I'll second the notion that, ignoring commercial factors, 680x0 series chips were awesome, and ahead of their time.

Damn straight. Back then x86 chips took an obscene number of clock cycles per instruction (yes, cycles per instruction, not the other way around) and needed clumsy workarounds to extend address space. The 68000s were remarkably sophisticated and powerful in comparison. Not sure why Kishy describes them as an interesting bit of weirdness.

At the risk of ignoring the thread title, I think Apple is partly responsible for the demise of the 68000 line. If they had charged more reasonable prices for their systems (as Atari did) who knows what we'd all be using today?

The ST ran TOS. "The Operating System" or "Tramiel Operating System" depending who you believe.

[ch_123]

The Cray-2 looks better.

Supposedly the Crays were built in that 'pacman' shape in order to cut down on the distance between components, and thus decreasing propagation delays caused by long wires.

[hyperlinked]

At the risk of ignoring the thread title, I think Apple is partly responsible for the demise of the 68000 line. If they had charged more reasonable prices for their systems (as Atari did) who knows what we'd all be using today?

You have an ST Raj? There seriously are 060 modded versions of the Falcon floating around out there? I'd love to see that!

I hear what you're saying about efficient programming. My dad bought one of the first 1040STs that came out and it served me well for... damn... I'm just now realizing how long I had that thing. I used that thing daily for almost 8 years and it never broke down on me and I never felt like I needed to upgrade in order to be able to run the latest software packages effectively. @*$#! 8 Years through all of high school and a few years of college on that funky mushy grey keyboard. No wonder I have such a soft spot for that thing. Except for a replacement disk drive, I retired that thing as it was the day I opened the box. The mouse even survived the entire 8 years.

Anyway, there's one thing the Cray-1 had over it's #2... lounge space! Mix a cocktail, dim the lights, and turn the stereo on... the Cray-1 is ready to entertain with style!



Any of you who live in the Silicon Valley area, make a visit to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View if you haven't been there yet... some pretty cool computing artifacts are in there waiting for you.

[didjamatic]

An awesome thing about those big Cray systems is you walk up to them and they are dead silent.  No loud datacenter sound of screaming fans. But they would definitely make great decor.

[kishy]

The 68000s were remarkably sophisticated and powerful in comparison. Not sure why Kishy describes them as an interesting bit of weirdness.

Retrospectively, and from the perspective of someone who wasn't really able to see them in their peak.

And late 68k Macs (my only hands-on 68k experience) couldn't have possibly been their peak...-040 Macs are suckers.

[hyperlinked]

An awesome thing about those big Cray systems is you walk up to them and they are dead silent.  No loud datacenter sound of screaming fans. But they would definitely make great decor.

Unless you count the $20,000 in electricity it took to operate it as noise.

Had it been fan cooled, I'm sure it would have sounded like a jet turbine.

[kode]

They still make very stylish couches for the break room (like at my new workplace).