dfhjhkdjfdddgdrfhdf

not only is the price of new macs twice that of a pc but have you tried repairing or upgradeing them ? living in the uk i have so far found only one supplier of motherboards for a g3 - the manefacturer - yosemite technologies do not seem to sell them seperately and it is easiesr to locate them in usa, this i presume is due to a policy designed to force users back to the main dealers for spares or repairs which is impractical, monopolistic and desperately shortsighted of apple in my opinion. the last thing i want to see is an ibm total monopoly but given that you can design and build your own pc at home using any one of a myriad of online or retail stockists it is financial insanity for apple to maintain such a stranglehold on crucial spare parts and upgrades (and don't get me started on incompatibility issues!!)

Well boys its very healthy to dicuss the differences between macs and pc's - it means that you seem to care about the technology you use. But lets just say that the mhz war is the only tool that the pc platform has over the mac. When you buy a new car the last question that you ask is "what sort of rpm do you get out of the engine?". You look at its performance over the range - top speed - acceleration - mpg - style - comfort and driver experience. Using this as a guide I would say that the mac is equivalent to a modern sports car and the pc equivalent to a highly souped up ford cortina. I have both platforms on my desk and when working on similar programs side by side the mac just blows the spots off the pc - its smoother and faster! Comparisons could be made on the crazy mhz game if thats the only way peeps out there understand - the mac runs at 233mhz and the pc runs at 500 mhz! If you are a pc buff and have not tried to use a mac yet you need to try it - you will never want to go back.
Have fun :0)

Sagie?!?! Where r u hiding??

u guyz don't seem to be involved in audio.
PCs' r fine 4 games,business & the net but try running 2 computers synced via midi with a #hitload of pro audio apps 8 hours a day 7 days a week.
PCs' r great for what they are designed for & that sure as #hit ain't audio.
i agree with you,Macs r expensive,probably too much,but a tennis player doesn't rock up to Wimbledon with a netball.
C my point ???
if u r in2 sound/audio you will...........

"I do not blame the competition for selling their products or offering their services at a much lower price. They know what their product is worth." .....Anonymous

Ummm, I use an NT box and work for a software developer and even with way alpha software my NT hasn't crashed on me in over 6 months. Sure, apps have gone south, but guess what apps go south on the G3 I use as well.

Apple Market Share Data:

http://websnapshot.mycomputer.com/

Those new Macs sure are capturing the web aren't they?

Originally Posted by Anon@Bridge.pcs.k12.mi.us

Adamlongwalker,

I am posting in the hope that you at least stop by to read it, even if you do not intend to reply.

My response was not complete. I was just countering the (implied?) assumption that the corporate decisions were based solely on quality. You said that if the Mac was good, it would have a larger marketshare. I was just saying that quality is only one of many factors that may lead to a corporate decision.

I meant to add that I agreed with your assertion that it *is* a PC world. A Windows world even. I do not deny that, it is a fact of life. But it does not (necessarily) mean that Windows PC\'s are better, nor that a Mac is not a viable choice for personal or business decisions. It does, however, make it harder to buy things at retail shops.

Good luck with your articles, your investments, and your walk.

And I think we agree on more than we disagree.

resteves

Originally Posted by AdamLongWalker
I was waiting for a reply from you Resteves.

Did I say anywhere in my last posting about business making a objective choices,.... no.

Objective buying by businesses can be a oximoron at times, but they use what they need.

You have made some decent agruements defending the Mac Resteves, but I am now argueing form a corporate point of view, not a technical one. This is the same view that many of my associates do take in Silicon Valley.

You cannot deny this fact. Apple owns around 10% of the marketshare, PC\'s around 90%. I can remember when I was rooting for them back in \"86\" when they had over 17% of the market share at that time. Then Apple screwed themselves up.

Corporate society has dictated what they wanted at this moment. That is the bottom line. There is no more arguement to this line of thought. This is a PC world. You may not like it. You make a comment about the naivety of my point of view, but if 90% of the world that uses a computer is using a PC, I must be in line with that majority of that point of view.

Thank you for some intersting postings. This however will be my last time to post anything on this chain of postings.

I have made my viewpoint as clear as possible.

I have things to do, a article to write, money to invest, and time to take a walk on the beach.

Let us agree, that we don\'t agree.

Originally Posted by Anon@Bridge.pcs.k12.mi.us

Adamlongwalker

Corporate society has dicated that they will only pay for what is needed at the lowest price as
possible.\"

If the Mac platform is that good, then they would have a much, much, larger Marketshare of PC usage.
They do not. Capitalism has dictated that arguement against Apple for many, many, years.

This is a common argument. It is, in my opinion quite flawed. It is based on the presumption that price is the only consideration. (Or even price/performance.)

There are multiple reasons a business picks one item/system over another. For instance, when Apple was not doing well, a company may have feared it was going out of business.
What is a much higher probablity is the familiarity many companies had with IBM in the beginning. And then that many others were using it. I could list more reasons that a PC would be chosen over a Mac, even if the Mac were the \'better\' choice. (And yes, the arguments work in both directions.) But to assume it definitely means that business objectively chose that PC\'s are the better system is a bit niave

resteves

Originally Posted by AdamLongWalker
Reply to Anon@mactheripper.dorm.duke.edu

Decent argument except for 2 flaws.

Flaw #1. As I have stated in posting #98

\"Corporate society has dicated that they will only pay for what is needed at the lowest price as possible.\"

If the Mac platform is that good, then they would have a much, much, larger Marketshare of PC usage. They do not. Capitalism has dictated that arguement against Apple for many, many, years.

Flaw #2

In my opinion, Mac\'s are excellent designer tools in publishing/multimedia field. I have seen some beautful things done in video with a Mac, however not everyone uses that platform in that field.

I have been playing around in that field for over 12 years. It is just one of my many hobbies and yes I have used a Mac on occassion, but I prefer my PC.

And if I have a problem with my PC, I can go the many hundreds of thousands of venders the world over and customize it to suit my needs.

Sounds like you are still in college, back east, according to your Anon tag. And yes I have heard that line of arguement of long term depreciation of a Mac over a PC before.

But corporate society dictates its usages and it needs, and right now it is a PC world. Get used to it.

I only wished that Apple would have been a hell of alot smarter in the late 80\'s, when the Macintosh was the \"premier\" machine.

We would not be having these types of postings.

Originally Posted by Anon@mactheripper.dorm.duke.edu
The situation calls for a little history. It is true that the current market situation has Apple charging big bucks for these machines, and when compared dollar for dollar, it seems foolish to choose the Mac.

But when you consider Apple\'s history of cyclic release, the price on this machine, which is extremely fast no matter how you argue it, esp. with optimized algorithms, you can see that many Mac models are worth more in the long run. Sure, the G4 is overpriced and overly sexy now, but it\'s a great machine with a lot of potential, and I\'ll probably get one if the prices go down next year.

Why? b/c Macs are upgradeable to the extreme, and Mac hardware manufacturers stay in the biz. I run a Power Mac 9500, which has not been made in a factory since 1995. How many of you PC guys are running boxes from \'95 that are as fast as anything out there? None. The only thing you can do with a PC that old is run a Linux server on it, which I do as well.

I have installed a G3 400 MHz card, and I could put in a ZIF G4 500 if I wanted. It can take up to 1 gig RAM. It has 6 PCI slots, so I put in USB, faster SCSI, and two graphics cards, and I still have two left. Basically, except for the mobo bus speed, it\'s as fast or faster than anything Apple sells.

The point is, comparing specific Macs is not really a reasonable way to do a comparison. The best Macs still kick the shizzat out of the best PCs, as measured by longevity and utility. In addition, IT long-term support costs are still lower for Macs, since they don\'t break as often and cost less to train people on. And all real designers still use them.

Originally Posted by Anon@pm659-19.dialip.mich.net

Okay, I am bored and have some time to waste on this...

You most recently stated that you have not backpedaled and have consistantly stated correct information. Well lets see;

Oh, and I think that the rants about Mac\'s not being upgradeable, really have been
transformed from Mac\'s not being easily and cheaply upgradeable. Sure, things have
gotten quite a bit better, ever since Mac motherboards started using CPU riser cards
with socketed CPU\'s, but the price is still extreme.

This is inaccurate. It has been many years since they started using ZIF sockets and/or daughter cards. And you say the *curren*t prices are extreme, you state this as a known fact.

After you are corrected you come back with

Again, I didn\'t say that motherboard replacements were required on all newer macs. I said that it
used to be the case (I meant for actual OEM upgrades, rather than some of the interesting hacked
ones, with clock crystals/PLL\'s).

Again, you were inaccurate. I can go back many years, to a Centris 610, and upgrade it with a G3, for a fairly cheap price. Your statements are insiunating that the changes are very recent, and indicate nothing to show that you are talking about many years ago.

I will stop quoting, but then you say that \'some\' may have been upgradable, but that doesn\'t matter. You even gave an example of one that \"couldn\'t\" be upgraded.
The onlyproblem was that you were incorrect again. ALL centris quadras can be upgraded, cheaply. ALL performa/powermac 52,54,62,64 hundreds can be upgraded.
yes, there are a very few models that have problems with it, but it is the opposite of what you imply.

Yes, for even Mhz, the PC\'s are cheaper. And you started mentioning that after you were corrected once, your first post only mentioned \"top of the line\". It wasn\'t until the second post that you decided equal Mhz was the important part. Though that is a meaningless way to compare chips, and does not indicate any sort of real comparison. It appears to be a cheap and easy thing to hide behind, that means nothing. It would be almost as bad as me saying that a G*4* was better than a P*3* because it had a higher number.

I am not trying to \"nit-pick\". You have made a series of incorrect statements and insinuations. I was trying to correct them, and trying politely at first. You continued to change your approach, and finally resorted to name-calling and saying that you were right and I was just playing semantics. Sorry, that is not the case. You may want to at least try and check your \'facts\' before listing them as such. Or at least be prepared for others to correct you.

resteves
(and if you would have read all of my posts, you could have figured out my name.)

Originally Posted by Anon@cnxwww1.bankamerica.com
All of you guys need to get a life!

Originally Posted by Anon@ns.moorpark.cpumart.com
And again, I stated from the start that MHZ for the dollar was what I was referring TO NOT
anything else. It was OTHER people who stated \"better/worse\". I REPEATEDLY referred
to the dollar for mhz, NOT \"effiency\". Look at ALL of my posts. They ALL state that.

I stated my reasons for doing such, because I was avoiding the religious argument that you\'re
trying to get me into. Please. I\'m not a microprocessor engineer and clearly you aren\'t either.

To try to state which CPU is more \"efficient\" at running nebulous benchmarks is worthless,
because I was purely looking at the economics, which you are trying to avoid by namecalling
because you don\'t like the results.

I never stated once that PC\'s were \"better\" than mac\'s, or even bothered with that issue.
The price per megahertz was the ONLY thing that I was concerning myself with, from the start.

I already stated that I wasn\'t going to spend all night looking up old Mac designs just to please
you.

It seems as you spend most of your time harping on me for allegedly not saying,
things that I already clearly said.

Get a clue.

Originally Posted by Anon@ns.moorpark.cpumart.com
It\'s pretty clear that you Anon@Bridge.pcs.k12.mi.us are the one posting repeats of what I said.
I didn\'t backpedal. I clarified because you didn\'t like the way I stated things. It\'s too bad that Macs
are given a bad name by zealots such as yourself who nitpick over every word.

It\'s clear that you don\'t know as much as you think you do. I stated where I was wrong and owned
up to that. It\'s clear that the truth, that PC\'s DO COST LESS at a given clock speed than a Mac
is something you wish to avoid. I\'m not talking about which is intrinsicly better or the like but which
costs less.

It\'s clear that arrogant jerks like yourself are the reason why people stop having discussions on
web boards.

I\'m done. You win. Too bad you don\'t actually read what people write before posting harping responses.

Originally Posted by Anon@Bridge.pcs.k12.mi.us

Adamlongwalker

You have most of the story correct, but are just missing some parts.

When the G4 first came out, it was in 400/450/500 ocnfigurations. (or supposed to be :) The 450/500 were to use the new \'sawtooth\' motherboard with faster memory throughput, AGP, etc.

The 400 was purposely, and publicly, place on the same motherboard the G3 had been using. (It was slightly modified, but not much.) It still was a better chip than the G3, and was faster than the G3, and still utilized the altivec enhancements. But did not, obviously, have the improvements that the new motherboard gave.

When the chip fiasco happened, Apple scaled back to 350/400/450 chips. The 400/450 were put on the new sawtooth boards, and the 350 was put on the old G3 board (Yosemite/Yikes) The old board did not make the G4 a \'dog\' anymore than the G3\'s were a \'dog\'. They were still an improvement, and aimed at people that wanted the G4 advantage but did not need the sawtooth advantage.

There was not embarrassment, it was planned and publicly discussed.

resteves

Originally Posted by Anon@Bridge.pcs.k12.mi.us

In reply to Anon@adsl-63-197-46-229.dsl.lsan03.pacbell.net

So basically, you gave a bunch of information that was way inaccurate, I corrected you.
You then said it must have been old information, and it used to be that way. I corrected you.
So now you are saying that it may have been that way, a long time ago, for certain machines.

That is quite a backpedal you are doing. And I am not refering to a \'couple\' of 040 designs, any Centris and Quadra can upgrade to a PowerPC/G3. You decide to mention those cruddy consumer machines, the performa 6400, well guess what. I can put a G3 300 in them for only $300. So your information is dated and inacurate. You keep changing what you are saying, and it is still in error.

You now decide that Mhz will be something to hide behind. Well even the PC sites say that the G3 400 is a tad faster than a P3 500. SO I got a G3 450 for $300, and you got a P3 600 for $300. Sounds pretty even to me. Even if the prices end up slightly favoring the PC, it is no where near the misleading numbers you have been quoting.

I don\'t mind people being wrong, I am just tired of people trying to change the story to hide the errors.

resteves

Originally Posted by AdamLongWalker
Here is something that has been posted on The Register about Motorola and IBM and the G4 problem.

\"Motorola slammed with PPC G4 supply limitation allegations\"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/index.html

Originally Posted by Anon@adsl-63-197-46-229.dsl.lsan03.pacbell.net
Okay, I said the words \"used to be the case\". That means that I was referring to the past. I also stated that it was not necessary on most G3\'s and G4\'s (now that there\'s effective iMac upgrades), but referred to the old days. And yes, there were some 040\'s that could be upgraded with CPU cards, but that wasn\'t the majority of the models that Apple shipped. There\'s also the PowerMac/Performa 6400/6200 series that has the CPU mounted on the motherboard. There\'s other cases as well. Let\'s not get into a pissing match over which exact models did or didn\'t have this particular feature. I\'m sure you don\'t care for something as mundane as which Slot 1 motherboards were available in AT format, but I can list those as well. That\'s the reason why I generalized it with \"it used to be the case\" and then referred to the current CPU upgrades available via ZIF socket and upgrade card.

Again, doing CPU upgrades on most newer macs, (anything in the last 4 years) doesn\'t get you newer motherboard technology. This is also true of the PC side, which is what I also stated, BUT, the COST of the upgrade to newer motherboard technology is cheaper on the PC side, which is what I stated as well.

That price on CPU upgrades, you ignored the fact that for the same clock speed, the PC side is HALF the price. I\'m talking $800 or so for the 800mhz PC CPU\'s, and $700 or so for the 500mhz G4, but $300 or so for 600mhz on the PC side. So, the PC side is STILL cheaper at the same clock speed, but the high end on the PC side gets you higher clock speed (let\'s not get into a muckety muck about processor efficiency, since that\'s about as fruitful as religious people arguing about which is the one true faith) at nearly the same price as the Mac upgrade. Again, I was only referring to the pure clock speed/dollar, rather than anything else.

And again, I\'d say I\'m waiting to see what IBM\'s fabs can do for the G4.

Incidentally, does anyone know if the PowerPC chips that IBM uses in their systems has the same pinouts as the ones used on the Mac side? I ask this, because I remember reading way back when, that IBM was required to have the PowerPC chip match the pinout of the Motorola i88000 chip, in case the PowerPC chip failed.

Which brings to mind, why doesn\'t Apple get IBM to design a good SMP system board for them? Then they could turn it around and have it produced by a lower cost Taiwanese fab and be done with.

Originally Posted by AdamLongWalker
Reply to Resteves.

When the Apple corporation began its intial launch of the G4-400.
They was some interseting claims floating around tech community about how much of a increase in performance the new system would produce over the G3\'s.

Unfortinatly, the initial G4- 400\'s, because of the improper motherboard setup, was a disappointment. They did made thier corrections with the G4-450 and which I have said is a pretty good machine.

Where I get the term \"the dog\" for the G4-400,s is from many of my friends that uses a Mac for a living, and instead purchasing a G4-400 they optied to wait for the G4-450. Yes you are right about the both G4, chipsets being familiar, but it is in thier implentation of that chipset that made the Apple corporation alittle embarressed.

But also the flip side, remember long ago, when Intel announced their MMX instruction set on the new Pentium 200mz\'s? That too was a disappointment, at that time of it\'s inital launch.

Last Comment. Regardless, on which computer that people do use,
the value of information and communication is ever present with these postings. There have been a lot of interesting information from various sorts of individuals expressing thier viewpoints, and thier knowledge of thier platforms that they use.

Communication of information is the basis of learning, and in the end, learning is what life is all about.

Originally Posted by Anon@Bridge.pcs.k12.mi.us

IIRC, you would have to go back several years to find macs that would need a mobo switch for a proc upgrade. Even some of the \'040\'s can be made into G3\'s with the same mobo. Your info is way out of date.

You said a top of the line P3 would be about 800-1000, and the G4-500 was 700, how is that so pricey??

resteves

Originally Posted by Anon@adsl-63-197-46-229.dsl.lsan03.pacbell.net
Okay,

and before I get \"corrected\" on this, I presumed knowledge of the fact that BX chipset motherboards made in the last year or so, just require a swap of the CPU \"chip\" (actually in board or socket form or socket on slocket adapter form) and sometimes a bios upgrade. New motherboards aren\'t always required. Older slot 1 motherboards could probably support newer CPU\'s, presuming it was using a slocket with appropriate voltage/multipler support (think of the Evergreen upgrades) without replacing the motherboard, but it would be more cost effective to do a motherboard & CPU swap.

And, as far as the Rage 128PRO is concerned, it\'s more like the TNT2 (125mhz version), rather than the TNT2U (150 to 175mhz). Again, it\'s STILL one and a half to two years out of date compared to the competition. The 2D is marginally faster, but I already stated it\'s superior (and wide acknowledged) hardware DVD decoding capabilities. The 2D of the ATI card isn\'t as fast as the newer cards with the 300mhz + ramdacs (Voodoo3, Matrox G400, GeForce 256), but there\'s no visible difference anymore, unless you\'re at extreme bit depths/resolutions (beyond the capabilities of most monitors). The new S3 Savage 2000 and even the S3 Savage 4 was really good at DVD, but still not as good as the ATI hardware decoding assist built into the ATI chip itself. The cost is another factor. Rage 128PRO cards, priced at Fry\'s go for $180 or so. The TNT2U cards were going for as little as $120 a week ago, but usually go for $140. I\'m talking about cards with 32mb of RAM and tv out. The GeForce 256 cards were shown at $230 (and dropping).

It\'s really a sad state of affairs, considering that Mac\'s used to be the next step up for graphics, before reaching uber expensive workstations, back in the day.

Originally Posted by Anon@adsl-63-197-46-229.dsl.lsan03.pacbell.net
Okay,

the prices for the upgrades are for comparable (mhz wise)
upgrades and not just lowest price \"upgrades\". I\'m sure that I can find a Pentium II 233mhz CPU and motherboard for $100 if necessary. (TomatoBoard, etc) The prices came straight out of MacWorld ads for the accelerator cards and CPU\'s. That $400 price for the 466mhz G4 upgrade card is apparently what it is NOW, and not what MacWorld listed it at. The price for the top end upgrade is $700 for the 500mhz card on the NewerStore page. I was wrong on that because I relied on MacWorld\'s prices, rather than going with the cheapest upgrade available. I do recall that the other upgrade companies (other than Newer Tech) were priced higher, but shown to have better performance/better design (better heatsink). The difference in price between a high quality Slot 1 motherboard and a lower quality one, is about $70, as in $80 for the low end and $140 for the high end (minus SCSI obviously, add another $70 for onboard SCSI).

Again, I didn\'t say that motherboard replacements were required on all newer macs. I said that it used to be the case (I meant for actual OEM upgrades, rather than some of the interesting hacked ones, with clock crystals/PLL\'s). I also stated that upgrades had been eased by the adoption of CPU riser cards and ZIF sockets. I still wish you could do some decent cooling without having to cut holes in a Mac case and hope the power supply doesn\'t blow out.

I pointed out that PC\'s often required motherboard upgrades [to leap generations in CPU technology] (rather than the short hops accomodated by bios upgrades and voltage/ slocket adapters where necessary). It could be argued that most of the Mac upgrades were rather like the Evergreen upgrades due to reusing outdated motherboard technology (lower FSB, lack of AGP, EDO/FPM DIMMS instead of SDRAM, etc) rather than getting new technology.

That said, you can still source Athlon/PIII/Celeron upgrades at the same clock speed, for approximately HALF the cost of an equivalent (let\'s stick with G4\'s, since that\'s supposed to be the big gun on the Mac side) G4. And this WOULD include a new motherboard that supported newer technology (higher FSB, improved memory bandwidth, etc) whereas most Mac upgrades, UNLESS you dropped the cash for a motherboard as well (extremely rare, due to the cost and availability), you\'d be stuck with the old stuff. Obviously, this won\'t apply if you buy a PowerMac G4-400 and drop in that 466mhz or 500mhz cpu upgrade, but that doesn\'t make much sense financially.

Still, I wonder what a G4 could be properly upgraded to, if one attached one of those Kryotech refrigeration devices to it.

BTW, I\'m a guy who used to think of the old 950 Mac with multiple Radius Rocket Cards as my dream machine.

Oh, and anyone else read about that guy at the Japanese Mac convention that molded his own transparent laptop case? I\'ve never heard of PC guys doing that, but I have seen the clear case/lego case/wood case/cardboard case/refrigerator case mods.

Originally Posted by Anon@Bridge.pcs.k12.mi.us

A couple of corrections.

There is no problem upgrading the G3 machines to G4. There has never been a problem upgrading the beige G3\'s, and Apple did make it difficult to upgrade the B&W ones. This was meant to be a short term stumbling block so the upgrade would not come out before the G4 boxes. It took a whole 4-6 weeks to overcome that, and Apple has done nothing to stop the upgrades otherwise. In fact, by using a ZIF socket, they have made upgrades even easier.

As far as upgrade price. I can upgrade to a G3 250 for about $150, and I can get a G3 450 upgrade for only $300, and a G4 350 for only $540. I don\'t know where he was getting this $1200 stuff from. (*AND* I don\'t have to replace the motherboard to use it.) (I went and found the 466 he mentioned, it was a whopping $400.)

According to Sharkeys and Tomshardware, The 128 PRO is just a bit behind the TNTUltra for 3D games, and still ahead of it for video playback/DVD. It even has better 2D. There is a belief going around that there is not Hardware support for MPEG-2, this is not true, and QT also supports it. It is a common misunderstanding, but still erroneous.

resteves

Originally Posted by Anon@Bridge.pcs.k12.mi.us
NOTE: I meant to put this in earlier, and it did not post, so it may sound a little strange, as it was written to be right after the post by adamlongwalker.

I think I understand your position better now. It was not so much the anonymous part, as the immature swearing *and* not having the guts to do it without the protective cover.
I can agree with that.
(I sign my posts)

As far as the 400vs450. The chips are almost exactly the same, and always have been. One is clocked slightly higher, but that is all. In the very beginning, the first few 400\'s sold were on the same motherboard as the G3\'s had been. When Apple did the \"incredible shrinking Mhz\" trick, the 400\'s were put on the newest motherboards, and the 350 was put on the older one.

Depending on what you are doing, the G4 still isn\'t much better than a G3. But the main difference then was the motherboard. Of course, it was not such a difference as to make the G4 into a \'dog\'. But it was not quite as cool as the new motherboard.

resteves

Originally Posted by Anon@adsl-63-197-46-229.dsl.lsan03.pacbell.net
Sorry for the flood.

In regards to the Mac and the ATI Rage 128 video card, the major problem that I\'ve read their
is driver/Quicktime related, rather than anything to do with a defiency in the video card. That
said, the video card ranks well with PC video cards from a year and a half to two years ago.

It used to be that Apple was the machine to have, to do prepress, etc, and it still is apparently
if you need the fonts! (according to one poster below). Sure, they even picked up on the
multimedia content editing/creation that they inherited from the death of Amiga (as a company).

But, Apple missed out in a huge way on the 3D graphics revolution. It\'s not just games that
we\'re talking about. There are $200 video cards available on the PC that according to tests from
respected tech websites (obviously, I don\'t have the time/money to repeat all the tests to post
results that wouldn\'t be believed anyways) give $1200 professional video cards a run for the
money performancewise, if not driver quality wise.

It used to be that Apple\'s marketing machine stated that no more than 33mhz front side bus
speed was necessary and that 66mhz front side bus and above were absolutely not necessary
(this was including the memory bus as well at the time). They reversed themselves on that,
because they were wrong. They picked up on a lot of PC technology because of economies
of scale. That\'s what businesses do. They also did it because it was the right thing to do,
technically. Sure, if they hadn\'t dropped Nubus 90, maybe things would\'ve been better, but
expansion cards would still have cost too much.

Apple made the right choice when going with the ATI chips, for multimedia (video acceleration,
2D, DVD hardware decoding) purposes, but then shot themselves in the foot by not supporting
MPEG2 decoding in Quicktime, to allow the ATI card to work as it was designed to. (I got that
from reading someone\'s plan file on Quakefinger, but I\'ve seen it first hand on my friend\'s G3 200
which could never play AVI\'s as good as my old Am5x86-133mhz cpu). I\'m not even going to
get into the headaches she\'s gone through in order to get Premiere and Director working
properly, even though it crashes half the time she uses it.

So, if Apple can get it\'s act together as far as driver/multimedia support goes, then maybe we
can start to get happy. Of course, actually having the fastest video cards readily and easily
available on their machines would be nice.

Oh, and as far as PowerMac G3 reliability goes, here\'s a story for ya. My friend\'s power supply
dies one month after the end of the one year warranty. Apple knows of a problem with their
power supplies. Apple refuses to cover the power supply under the now expired warranty,
after having felt relieved for having the power supply die one month out from the warranty
rather than with one month left. It cost my friend $175 with exchange for the power supply.
For that much, I could\'ve gotten a Power & PC Cooling power supply for my system and
gotten better reliability/higher power output, etc and a longer warranty.

Oh, and that tall skinny ugly actor who does the Mac commercials, just annoys the heck out of me.
They should\'ve gotten Shatner to stump for them, or Scotty, for kitsch value. Heck, even Adam West
would\'ve been funny (think of the AOL ad, with him and his nurse with a straight jacket/meds for him).

Originally Posted by AdamLongWalker
I am terribly sorry for the spelling and grammer errors on my earlier postings. I should have my technical writer proof read what I write before posting anything up. Again my Apoligies.

Originally Posted by Anon@adsl-63-197-46-229.dsl.lsan03.pacbell.net
I should\'ve written that IBM is licensing and doing OEM deals for other companies, not just
licensing. IBM fabbed the Cyrix chips, as well as AMD K5, K6 chips (I think they did the
AM486 as well).

Think about it the same way that Intel pops out their motherboards, mostly for OEM
consumption. Nearly all the motherboards in Packard Bells/NEC\'s were Intel motherboards,
just like how most Sony PCV motherboards are Intel as well.

With Packard Bell/NEC\'s spotty reputation, it rather makes you wonder at the quality of
Intel motherboards.