Macworld Craziness
Jan 12, 2003 at 3:04 PM Post #61 of 79
Quote:

Originally posted by aeberbach
Biggest problem with the Mac platform right now - slow, with no improvement in sight. Nobody believes that a 1GHz G4 is faster than a P4 at 3GHz do they?


Well, you're not being very accurate in your description right now. The fastest Mac runs dual 1.25 GHz G4s. For some functions, it is faster than a 3GHz P4 (in particular, those optimized for the G4's vector processing unit). But for the majority of functions, you are correct - at the top end, Motorola is lagging Intel.

But it's also inaccurate to say "with no improvement in sight." Motorola is expected to release 2 GHz G4s by June, and Apple is rumored to be integrating IBM's PowerPC 970 chip into their line soon after, which by all accounts will make the G4 seem positively pokey in comparison. Quote:

I'll live with the fact that there are no embedded development tools (real ones, not GNU) and that only a small subset of games is ported to Mac.


Well, it's not like Microsoft includes "real" development tools in Windows either. There are some very nice development environments for both platforms, so take your pick.

As to gaming, a custom-built Athlon or P4 box is preferred. There are some really great games for the Mac, but not as many as for Windows.
 
Jan 12, 2003 at 3:35 PM Post #62 of 79
Where's MacDEF?
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Jan 12, 2003 at 4:29 PM Post #63 of 79
Quote:

Originally posted by Russ Arcuri
It makes no difference how long it's been since I was in college. Mathematica 4.2 (AND all previous versions) has feature parity on both systems -- the math engine is identical.
You couldn't have "compared" them and found a difference, because there is none.


Wrong. Not only have I compared them but I have used Mathematica on all four platforms it is made for. While the "feature set" is nominally the same. Their real world useability varies significantly, and if I used Mathematica a lot (which I do not because it is not optimal for statistical analysis since it is a generalized mathematical programming engine) I would use it on a Linux platform.

Quote:

And when did you give up genetics and become a statistician?


Ever heard of Sir Ronald Fisher? Sewall Wright? Much of modern stastical analysis has been forged to solve genetics questions. Why you may ask. Because genetics is inherently probabilistic and statistical in its nature. The reason I need to use the analyses I use is for solving several research problems in evolutionary/ecological genetics. Contary to popular belief scientists usually wear many hats, but that is usually not very evident in quick internet searches.

Quote:

Never mind... that's not the point. If the specific tool you prefer for statistical analysis is not available on the Mac, there is really no point in discussing it further, is there? But SPSS is a very advanced statistical package as well -- my wife used it in college and grad school for advanced statistical analysis; it's not intended for "beginners." If you don't like it, that's your business. But I find it hard to believe that NOTHING on the Mac platform can do what you want to do. By your own admission, Mathematica could be used. There must be others.


It is not preference. You may find it hard to believe, but neither SPSS nor Systat have modules for doing generalized mixed models. They also do not do correct parameterization of Linear Mixed Models. You are free to believe what you want (at least for the present) but there is no comparable set of professional statistical analysis tools available on the MAC. Again I could use Mathematica (or MatLab or S Plus [oops, not on the MAC]), but I prefer to use a hammer to drive nails, not a wrench. Some people prefer to use the correct tool, not adapt something because they have some kind of religious attachment to a computing platform.

Quote:

And still, in the end, nobody is saying that ANYBODY is required to use a Mac. Use whatever makes you happy. But the oft-repeated argument "there's no a, b, or c-type software for the Mac" is simply not true in 99% of cases.


It is rare that any one package can be used for every analysis one comes across. Again, it is not that the software does not exist (as a group), but the breadth of professional statistical software available on the MAC is severly limited. Of those cross platform STATISTICAL (i.e NOT MATHEMATICA) packages such as SAS and SPSS version releases and feature sets lag on the MAC compared to Windows platform releases. In many cases, the packages have stagnated on the MAC platform. I'll throw you a bone on this one though, that could change with the release of OS X.

You can believe whatever you choose but when I get involved in discussions of platforms for statistical analysis with statisticians or biometricians the MAC NEVER comes up. It is always Windows, Unix and Linux. Perhaps in the future OS X will help make some progress, but that does not help me now.

Oh and the reason I sought to switch to a MAC platform 10 years ago was because the genetical research I do involves image analysis of orgainsms. At that time the image capture software and hardware on the MAC was much superior to the "Windows" platform (The quotes are because this was even pre-Win95). Even today all of our sequencers and HPLC's are run by MAC's. Therefore, if a solution was available believe me I would have jumped on it to not have to switch platforms.
 
Jan 12, 2003 at 4:54 PM Post #64 of 79
morphsci, we're going to have to agree to disagree on the Mathematica thing. As I already explained, the math engines are identical, and unless there's been some major change that I wasn't aware of, you can even point a Windows notebook at a Mac engine or vice-versa. When I was in college we used to use the Mac v.1 notebooks pointed at a much faster VAX engine to speed things; of course, this was at a time when the fastest Mac around had a 16 MHz 68030 chip. This wouldn't be possible if they weren't identical, and unless Wolfram Research is lying, the same thing works with the newest version.

morphsci, what platform do you use to do BLAST searches? By all accounts, an Apple XServe running Apple/Genentech BLAST on Mac OS X is the platform du-jour for this function, as it blows away all others for search times. (The BLAST engine is well-suited to Altivec optimizations.)

Edit: that last sentence was a grammatical mess. I fixed it.
 
Jan 12, 2003 at 9:12 PM Post #65 of 79
Wow. What I've learned from this thread is (surprise!) some headfiers know a lot more about phones/amps/sound than about Macs.

The talk about Mathematica being different on Mac/PC is nonsense. They are the same, and the same on Linux, and all other platforms. Mathematica is based on a computational kernel that is platform-independent. The front-end, ie, user interface is different, but that's all. In fact, any front-end, on any platform, can remotely connect to the kernel, running on any platform. They are designed to be interoperable; that's how we know they are identical.

As for relative speeds of Macs vs. PCs that's a complicated question. I certainly agree that for many tasks Windows PC's are faster than Macs, but for any task that utilizes Altivec, the race is at least even and the Macs often win. Altivec optimization takes significant work, and can't always be applied (Altivec doesn't include double precision floating point, for example), but when Altivec can be used it can easily give the effect of DOUBLING the cpu clockrate.

This thread can go on and on, but I sure wish it was done with the same objectivity that characterizes the amplifier discussions! I guess PC/Mac discussions are doomed to be very partisan.
 
Jan 12, 2003 at 9:20 PM Post #66 of 79
Quote:

Originally posted by morphsci
You can believe whatever you choose but when I get involved in discussions of platforms for statistical analysis with statisticians or biometricians the MAC NEVER comes up. It is always Windows, Unix and Linux. Perhaps in the future OS X will help make some progress, but that does not help me now.


Well, since the Mac now -is- running unix, perhaps some of your packages will be, or are already available. If you use open source software running under X windows, you should check out the week-old Apple release of X11 for OSX. It is very nice and fast. Matlab, for example, runs very well under X on X.

I think X11 on X is going to cause a lot of unification between linux/unix/OSX. It's Windows that will be the odd man out.
 
Jan 13, 2003 at 12:58 AM Post #68 of 79
Quote:

Originally posted by Russ Arcuri
morphsci, we're going to have to agree to disagree on the Mathematica thing. As I already explained, the math engines are identical, and unless there's been some major change that I wasn't aware of, you can even point a Windows notebook at a Mac engine or vice-versa. When I was in college we used to use the Mac v.1 notebooks pointed at a much faster VAX engine to speed things; of course, this was at a time when the fastest Mac around had a 16 MHz 68030 chip. This wouldn't be possible if they weren't identical, and unless Wolfram Research is lying, the same thing works with the newest version.

morphsci, what platform do you use to do BLAST searches? By all accounts, an Apple XServe running Apple/Genentech BLAST on Mac OS X is the platform du-jour for this function, as it blows away all others for search times. (The BLAST engine is well-suited to Altivec optimizations.)

Edit: that last sentence was a grammatical mess. I fixed it.


no you are correct the engines are the same. However the interface of the engine with the operating system causes many little discrepancies between OS's. Unless you use it for a while these do not become evident. From my limited experience, if using Mathematica were very important to me I would choose a linux platform. To me it works better than the even the Unix interface (using SUN workstations).

Ah BLAST. Actually I do not do as many BLAST searches as you may think. Most of our work is based upon internal comparisons of sequences among populations subject to varying toxicant levels or other ecological conditions. BLAST is more informative for Phylogenetic work. For the BLAST searches I do I have a secondary computer (PII running Win2K) that I put on the search and just let it churn away. Based on the speed (or lack thereof) of the searches, which are really pretty simple, I find it very easy to beleive that this is definitely not the optimum platform to use if speed is of the essence.

Quote:

The talk about Mathematica being different on Mac/PC is nonsense. They are the same, and the same on Linux, and all other platforms. Mathematica is based on a computational kernel that is platform-independent. The front-end, ie, user interface is different, but that's all. In fact, any front-end, on any platform, can remotely connect to the kernel, running on any platform. They are designed to be interoperable; that's how we know they are identical.


See above. Sorry but software useability is more than just interplatform compatibility of the kernal routines. Unless you are using the software in isolation much depends on how easy it is to move the data back and forth between different packages. This is platform dependent.
 
Jan 13, 2003 at 1:53 AM Post #69 of 79
Quote:

Well, you're not being very accurate in your description right now. The fastest Mac runs dual 1.25 GHz G4s. For some functions, it is faster than a 3GHz P4 (in particular, those optimized for the G4's vector processing unit). But for the majority of functions, you are correct - at the top end, Motorola is lagging Intel.


Yeah yeah, some functions. You can show anything you like with certain optimized tasks but the thing is we don't do those optimized tasks all the time, do we?

I'm being absolutely accurate since a dual 1GHz machine is what I had under my desk until a month ago - I didn't claim that was the fastest Mac available, although it was when I bought my system. I sold it to buy a P4 running at "only" 2.4GHz. Runs rings around the old Mac, the fans are quieter, 5.1 sound, burns DVDs twice as fast, better video (on my Cinema Display still) and I bought it new for about 2/3 of what I got for the used Mac! If we really wanted to compare best to best then I could put together a dual P4 Xeon system but comparing a dual 1.25GHz Mac to _that_ won't make it look any better.

I doubt anyone except the purest optimists believes Motorola can produce a 2GHz chip in time to make a difference given their past performance (wishing is NOT believing), and it is increasingly doubtful that Apple even want that - they must be kind of angry at the lack of progress from the big M. Even if they produced it tomorrow the memory bus would still be a limiting factor. If Apple goes with one of the newer IBM PowerPC solutions, great, but they had better do it fast. If it happens I'll head on down to the Apple Store and probably buy one on the first day they're available. But it doesn't sound likely - this is "the year of the laptop" said Steve, meaning don't expect any desktops you'll want to buy until next year.

Nor did I say that windows includes any embedded developer tools (neither does Jaguar). You need to go and buy them - useful stuff from Rational like purify and quantify (or equivalents), or even the old standard lint are not available from anyone at any price for a Mac. I know there are work-alike attempts published under GPL but if they were good enough I'd already be using them on my PC.

All zealotry aside, Apple is obviously falling behind. They may not be about to go under (an inferior OS pre-OS X never deterred the true believers, why should slow hardware?) but they need to make things better before people start seeing that a P4 could handle their video rendering faster and cheaper.
 
Jan 13, 2003 at 7:22 PM Post #70 of 79
Quote:

Originally posted by aeberbach
Yeah yeah, some functions. You can show anything you like with certain optimized tasks but the thing is we don't do those optimized tasks all the time, do we?


Aeberbach, what the heck are you arguing about? I already said, "at the top end, Motorola is lagging Intel." What more do you want? How about a joke, that supports your point of view:

"I used a Mac because it was the fastest tool available to do my job. Then I got transferred out of the Gaussian Blur department." Quote:

Nor did I say that windows includes any embedded developer tools (neither does Jaguar).


Yes, it does. It's called "the developer tools disc," and it's the third CD that comes with Mac OS X installations. Again, it's not a full-featured development environment, but it does allow you to make simple programs. Windows doesn't provide any developer tools at all. Quote:

All zealotry aside, Apple is obviously falling behind. They may not be about to go under (an inferior OS pre-OS X never deterred the true believers, why should slow hardware?) but they need to make things better before people start seeing that a P4 could handle their video rendering faster and cheaper.


I have a few comments about this. First, you object that just because a few specific, altivec-optimized tasks are faster on the Mac doesn't mean the platform is faster in general, and I agree with you. But you keep focusing on a very narrow set of tasks as well -- video rendering. I'm willing to bet that 99 out of every 100 people reading this thread couldn't care less about video rendering, and never do it.

Second, I'll point out that for most typical computer users, it makes absolutely no difference that a 1 GHz G4 can't keep up with a 3 GHz P4 for high-end tasks like video rendering. They're checking e-mail, browsing the web, using a word processor. Some of them are using a spreadsheet or Quicken. Many of them are going to use their computer to do tax preparation. None of these tasks are going to show any kind of noticeable difference on the G4 than it will on the P4. All of them are going to work, as nearly as the user can tell, instantly on either platform. Need to change a font in your document? Instantly done, even on a 300 MHz Pentium II or a 233 MHz 1st generation iMac. Balance your checkbook? Data entry is the bottleneck, not processing power. People could recalculate a typical checkbook-tracking spreadsheet in less than a second on an 8 MHz Mac Plus or a 16 MHz 286 box back in 1986.

You're concerned about performance at the high end, when processors and busses are stressed. When you get into specific tasks like that, it does make sense to figure out what stuff is optimized for the G4, and what isn't. If you're somebody who has a need to do lots of video rendering, then it absolutely makes sense to use a 3 GHz P4 box. If you're somebody for whom brute-force encryption cracking, ala dnetc, or BLAST searches, as many in the biotechnology industry do, is important, it makes sense to use a fast G4 Mac. From the distributed.net press release, when they had finally cracked the 64-bit key:

"Our peak rate of 270,147,024 kkeys/sec is equivalent to 32,504 800MHz Apple PowerBook G4 laptops or 45,998 2GHz AMD Athlon XP machines..."

Yes, this meant that an 800 MHz G4 laptop was considerably faster at that task than a 2 GHz Athlon XP.

To summarize: For the vast majority of "typical" users, the choice of Mac or PC should not ride on which platform is faster for high-end tasks they'll never do, like video rendering or BLAST genome searches. And for the top end, a blanket recommendation for one platform over the other is ill-advised.

None of this discussion has touched on ease of use, either. I can edit my home movies on an iMac using iMovie very easily. The program is so easy to use that it doesn't even come with a manual -- just a short tutorial that will teach you everything you need to know for simple video editing in a half hour. Then they make it easy to export the edited video and burn DVDs. Yes, the DVD burner is only a 2X burner, but it will get done with a minimum of fuss (and I'm sure the next-generation of Macs will have a 4X burner, now that Pioneer is producing them in quantity). That's all most users want or need. And all the software necessary to do this stuff is included free with the computer.
 
Jan 13, 2003 at 7:49 PM Post #71 of 79
Sorry, I assumed you knew what "embedded" meant in relation to software - it doesn't mean included or bundled. Embedded development means writing software for platforms typically dedicated to a special purpose like the software inside a printer or a Gamecube. Often they are smaller and less powerful than the machine you use to write them, sometimes these platforms have no user interface or a primitive one at best. One thing I've been working on for a while is software that runs on cell phones but I used to do modems. Jaguar does not include any embedded development tools nor are most popular commercial tools available. (If Circuit Cellar Ink and Dr. Dobbs are anything to go by, none are available.

To get away from video editing, here's a comparison (link from Slashdot this morning) written by a guy who sat down to show just how fast his nifty new G4 was for digital photo tasks - and got an unpleasant surprise.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/diginews..._07_macpc.html

Is it OK that loading images from a flash card, viewing those images or even (horror!) manipulating them in Photoshop is _slower_ on the more expensive machine?

Kudos to Rob, he didn't turn into an Apple apologist or bury the results for fear of being labelled Mac-traitor. He calls a spade a spade and demands better hardware - as we all should. Ease of use only goes so far and when one of Apple's favorite use cases is taking sometimes twice as long as on a cheaper PC, that's not far at all. Video editing is another favorite pitch, as is "Rip, Mix, Burn." - but they're all computationally intensive and they're all taking way too long on a Mac these days.
 
Jan 13, 2003 at 8:04 PM Post #72 of 79
i dabble in dvd burning as a hobby and i have to say that a dual proc intel machine is my best friend when doing that. i haven't tried out any macintosh products for that, but i don't see how they can be better than a cce 4-pass vbr encode.

interesting idea anyway. mpeg2 compression is *not* a quick little two clicks and your done. it takes a damn long time to make high-quality dvd's, no matter what platform or hardware/software you're using.
 
Jan 13, 2003 at 9:28 PM Post #73 of 79
Quote:

Originally posted by aeberbach
Sorry, I assumed you knew what "embedded" meant in relation to software


I do know what "embedded" means, but for some reason I read the word twice and heard "included" in my head. Sorry about that. Quote:

To get away from video editing, here's a comparison...


Aeberbach, how much do you want to beat this dead horse? You keep pointing out that there are things a 1.25 GHz Mac is slower at than a 3 GHz P4. I keep conceding the point, and then you come back with yet another task that the P4 is faster at. I get it, and as I've already said twice before, I agree. I'm sorry, I don't know any more jokes about Mac performance. What are you trying for? Quote:

Is it OK that loading images from a flash card, viewing those images or even (horror!) manipulating them in Photoshop is _slower_ on the more expensive machine?


That's a pointless question. Is ease of use worth anything? This guy is using his Mac in exactly the same way he would a PC. Why not let iPhoto import all his crap automatically? Because there's no iPhoto on the PC -- he can't compare them. Is stability worth anything? Does interface mean anything? If performance is the only thing that matters, why bother buying anything other than the fastest computer available for a given task? Why does anybody bother buying Dell's 1.6 GHz machines, when 3 GHz machines are available? Why would somebody buy an 800 MHz eMac, when a dual-processor 1.25 GHz G4 tower is available? Because performance is only a small part of the equation. Quote:

Video editing is another favorite pitch, as is "Rip, Mix, Burn." - but they're all computationally intensive and they're all taking way too long on a Mac these days.


No, "Rip, Mix, Burn" refers to ripping CDs to mp3s, mixing your favorite songs into a playlist, and burning them to a new "mix" CD. It has nothing to do with video editing.

And video editing is not "taking way too long" on a Mac. More video that you watch on television (commercials, documentaries, etc) are edited on Macs with Final Cut Pro than you can shake a stick at. Macs running FCP are taking over Hollywood, eroding Avid's lock on the industry. The fact that a cross dissolve might take 12 seconds to render on a G4 Mac and only 7 seconds on a Windows box is irrelevant, when the vast majority of time is spent deciding where to make the cut and how many seconds to spend dissolving in the first place.

It takes an hour to import an hour of DV from a home user's camcorder to the computer, whether it's a Mac or Windows box. The vast majority of the footage does not have to be rendered anyway. With iMovie, I can insert a cross dissolve somewhere and then continue doing other tasks while that cross dissolve renders in the background. It could take five minutes for all I care -- I'm not sitting there with a stopwatch, waiting for it to finish. I'm getting other stuff done -- inserting other transitions, playing with the soundtrack, etc. All those effects render in the background while I work, and are done by the time I want to export the completed project.

Besides, whether you're talking about music or video, Apple's innovation is that they include all the tools necessary to do either of those things in the box. Mom and Pop can buy one of these cool-looking iMacs, plug them in, and immediately import their DV video from the camcorder, edit it in iMovie, and burn it to a DVD. No firewire cards or software to buy or install. No thick manuals to study. Same with the music stuff. Insert the CD, iTunes pops up and with one button, the CD is ripped to mp3. etc...

There's value in that, whether Motorola is providing Apple with the fastest chips available or not.
 
Jan 13, 2003 at 10:16 PM Post #74 of 79
When I first signed up on this board, I used to have a hard time discerning Russ' posts from MacDef's. I could never really figure out why, I just did. Now I know...
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Russ, on one point, I don't think that aeberbach ever said nor implied that "Rip, Mix, Burn" was associated with video editing - just another task that is typically cited by Mac evangelists as preferable to do on a Mac, yet actually takes longer on that platform (forgive me aeberbach, if I incorrectly spoke for you).

As far as more videos being edited on Macs, that may be true in part, not in total. More than before, but not more than other platforms necessarily. A Mac w/FCP is still cheaper than a full-blown Avid system, and doesn't take a dedicated tech to setup and run. This has always been the beauty and attractiveness of the Mac platform. It allows the everyman, especially non-technically inclined artists, to do their own work rather than farm it out to more expensive, dedicated pro shops. This doesn't necessarily make it a better platform, or improve the quality of the end result in comparison. It just makes the labor cheaper. But no one in the printing industry was ever really threatened by 300dpi laser printers, and I don't think this is necessarily happening in the video arena yet either.

Me, I'm totally a platform agnostic. The best tool for the specific task is my motto. You just have to identify what that specific task (and all of the associated parameters) is.

Gotta go listen to some tunes...

smily_headphones1.gif
 
Jan 13, 2003 at 10:53 PM Post #75 of 79
Quote:

Russ, on one point, I don't think that aeberbach ever said nor implied that "Rip, Mix, Burn" was associated with video editing


I must be losing it. You're absolutely right -- that's the second thing I've misread today. Apologies. Quote:

As far as more videos being edited on Macs, that may be true in part, not in total. More than before, but not more than other platforms necessarily.


No, that IS true. More than any other platform other than Avid, and it's slowly eating away at Avid's share too. This was a big deal and was documented in an industry (Hollywood, not computer) rag about a year ago. FCP on a G4 Mac is a full-blown fully-professional editing tool, ala Avid. Quote:

...It allows the everyman, especially non-technically inclined artists, to do their own work rather than farm it out to more expensive, dedicated pro shops.


No, what the article I read documented was that the pro shops themselves were spooling up with G4s and FCP. Half the classified job postings for editors in one of the industry rags at the time specified "Final Cut Pro" experience as required.
 

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