Windows 7 to me is going to be expensive!

[DoFoT9]

Let's say Toyota made a really nice set of tires that only worked on Toyotas. People would say "Wow, these tires are awsome, they make the car drive really well" and they would be forced to buy the Toyota, because they can't put the tires on their Mercedes. If Toyota made a new model of the tires, it would be very reasonable for them to sell them at a very cheap price - they know that the only people who will buy them are the people who already own their car. They're making a huge profit from the car, the tires are just a small fraction of the cost and they don't really worry if they sell well, they simply use them to get people to buy their cars. If they are satisfied with the price of the tires, they will probably get another Toyota after the current one dies.

Michelin, on the other hand, has to make profits purely from selling tires. It would be unfair to compare the price of their tires to Toyota's. Their tires work on all cars and have to be sold at a real price, while the Toyota's are an inseparable part of the Toyota car package and their price is irrelevant, since the profits are gained from the whole package.

That clear enough?

thats a very nice example for what your trying to say. i understand the profits that apple make from having their own hardware "line-up" and then basically owning the only software that will run on it. that is the compromise that we as Apple users make! i will HAPPILY pay a 30%, 40%, 50% markup for products because i know that they are well equiped and well optimised.

good story and nice example, however i am not talking about it from that point of view.

hmm speaking of which, they arent even that expensive lately for consumer models. the thing that makes them really expensive are RAM/HD updates from apple, which can be done yourself making them cheap. anyway, thats another story, forget i mentioned it

How often have you used Vista? Because from my experience, the hardware needs are quite comparable to Leopard. If we compare memory, which is one of the main resources an OS can "hog" - 1GB of RAM is recommended for usual work, 2GB if you want to be comfortable.

oh yes i have used vista. i have lots of experience with it. have you used vista with 1GB or RAM? have you used it with 2GB of RAM? i have used it with both. 1GB is NOT pleasant. it is slow, and well.. just plain awful to use. give Leopard 1GB of RAM and it will happily purr along thanks to its well written coding for handling of RAM (i.e. its use of virtual memory and swap memory).

If you have an updated installation of Vista on a regular modern laptop, let's say a MacBook, it will run very nicely.

ok now this is ironic. a moden MacBook is a fairly "top notch" laptop, for its performance anyway. if you buy a cheap HP/DELL/Asus laptop, thats when you have troubles. on a more expensive (emphais on quality) laptop i.e. macbook, it will handle it fine

Oh, so Leopard is both very fast and very stable. Why is it then that Apple is addressing stability and performance with Snow Leopard? That would be very foolish from them, they should instead work on new features if what you say is true.[/QUOTE]

i think you are confusing microsofts NEED to bring out a new OS and apples WANT to bring out a new OS (when i say new i mean updated, not completely re-written).

vista is a resource hog.. we all know that, especially for Aero on laptops.. microsoft HAS to make another OS because the majority of the consumers hate it.. its as plain and simple as that.

now lets take a look at OSX Leopard. do the majority hate it? no. is it stable? yes. does it steal resources? no. are they writing SnowLeopard because they HAVE to? no!

ill explain. there are two types of updates in this technological world. hardware and software. hardware has been impoving so much lately that software developers have gotten slack with making their software top notch (take flash for example). vista runs very nicely on a top notch desktop pc. give it to a low end laptop and it doesnt perform very well...

snow leopard is OS/software that will revolutionise the market. it will be a long awaited software update in terms of FINALLY utilising the full power of the hardware. all programs will finally be able to multitask, RAM will be managed much better and hopefully be much faster.. apple is addressing stability and performance not because it has to, but because they simply want to make a far more superior product.

(excuse me if i dont use all smart scenarios and stuff haha... not that smart )

 

[edesignuk]

now lets take a look at OSX Leopard. do the majority hate it? no. is it stable? yes. does it steal resources? no. are they writing SnowLeopard because they HAVE to? no!

They do have to.

Vista SP1 onward is actually pretty good. It was the cock up that was the first release that spelled doom for Vista. Press was so bad that no one will give it a chance even when it's improved.

Windows 7 is coming. Release Candidate in a couple of weeks, retail won't be too far off now. Even the public and leaked betas up until now have had great reviews, this won't have passed Apple by. They need to stay on their toes if they hope to keep people spending more for their hardware (during difficult financial times no less) when Microsoft have a winner of an OS out there on cheaper and comparable hardware.

 

[DoFoT9]

They do have to.

Vista SP1 onward is actually pretty good. It was the cock up that was the first release that spelled doom for Vista. Press was so bad that no one will give it a chance even when it's improved.

Windows 7 is coming. Release Candidate in a couple of weeks, retail won't be too far off now. Even the public and leaked betas up until now have had great reviews, this won't have passed Apple by. They need to stay on their toes if they hope to keep people spending more for their hardware (during difficult financial times no less) when Microsoft have a winner of an OS out there on cheaper and comparable hardware.

they do have to in regards to what you were talking about - re. competition. but you miss my point. apple does not have to in regards to their audience requesting it.

oh: vista SP1> was OK. compared to the original release it was a god-send.

windows 7 is quite impressive, even the pre-pre-releases i have. i cant wait to finally have some competiton! (yea OSX will lose becaue of the smaller audience, but thats when we go back into our niche ) its a win win for all.

 

[Everlast]

Windows 7 huh? It's so sexy~!

Wait....

$199.95 for just the Windows 7 Starter? Oh, crap... I'm just not cool enough to be a M$ person.

 

[Matek]

thats a very nice example for what your trying to say. i understand the profits that apple make from having their own hardware "line-up" and then basically owning the only software that will run on it. that is the compromise that we as Apple users make! i will HAPPILY pay a 30%, 40%, 50% markup for products because i know that they are well equiped and well optimised.

good story and nice example, however i am not talking about it from that point of view.

hmm speaking of which, they arent even that expensive lately for consumer models. the thing that makes them really expensive are RAM/HD updates from apple, which can be done yourself making them cheap. anyway, thats another story, forget i mentioned it

Whether they're expensive or not is a different discussion, I wasn't trying to imply they are, I was just saying that they have a very good motive for selling OS X at a cheap price (about the cost of the latest Rock Band pack ), because it would bring in more profits in the long term.

oh yes i have used vista. i have lots of experience with it. have you used vista with 1GB or RAM? have you used it with 2GB of RAM? i have used it with both. 1GB is NOT pleasant. it is slow, and well.. just plain awful to use. give Leopard 1GB of RAM and it will happily purr along thanks to its well written coding for handling of RAM (i.e. its use of virtual memory and swap memory).

I have used both Vista and Leopard with both 1 and 2 GB of RAM. Perhaps Vista was a bit slower, yes, although I used it before SP1. But generally I wouldn't say it was unusable. Leopard was also problematic with only a gigabyte, if i wanted to do any real multitasking.

ok now this is ironic. a moden MacBook is a fairly "top notch" laptop, for its performance anyway. if you buy a cheap HP/DELL/Asus laptop, thats when you have troubles. on a more expensive (emphais on quality) laptop i.e. macbook, it will handle it fine

The "quality" of the laptop can differ in materials, keyboard, display, etc. But the quality of hardware that could affect how the OS works is identical in every laptop. You can't say Intel and nVidia chips in Apple machines are any better then the same ones in an Asus. And in that aspect, the MacBook is not that special. You can get a machine with Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, 3 GB of ram and a 250 GB hard drive for $500-$600.

Once again, I'm not trying to start a price argument, just saying Vista won't run any better on a $1000 MacBook compared to a $500 Asus with same basic specs, just because the MacBook is "higher quality".

vista runs very nicely on a top notch desktop pc. give it to a low end laptop and it doesnt perform very well...

snow leopard is OS/software that will revolutionise the market. it will be a long awaited software update in terms of FINALLY utilising the full power of the hardware. all programs will finally be able to multitask, RAM will be managed much better and hopefully be much faster.. apple is addressing stability and performance not because it has to, but because they simply want to make a far more superior product.

Since Windows 7 has improved performance, I hope it doesn't come out before Snow Leopard or the latter will have nothing to revolutionise . It's interesting how some of the power of hardware is being kept on hold at the moment, not only in Windows and OS X, but in Linux and BSD as well! It will also be interesting to see how programs will become multitaskable what weren't before, amazing what an OS can do .

Seriousely though - if Snow Leopard is going to be such a fast OS on low-end computers like you said, why are there rumors about dropping support for PPC models?

 

[Matek]

$199.95 for just the Windows 7 Starter? Oh, crap... I'm just not cool enough to be a M$ person.

1. Microsoft hasn't announced the prices yet, these are just rumors.
2. If you buy it with a computer, it's much cheaper, so there's still hope!

 

[DoFoT9]

god this is getting intense haha!

Whether they're expensive or not is a different discussion, I wasn't trying to imply they are, I was just saying that they have a very good motive for selling OS X at a cheap price (about the cost of the latest Rock Band pack ), because it would bring in more profits in the long term.

i think apple has found a good price for their OS, all you have to do is look at their gained market share to realise that people are willing to pay a tad extra for both a quality built computer and a quality produced OS.

I have used both Vista and Leopard with both 1 and 2 GB of RAM. Perhaps Vista was a bit slower, yes, although I used it before SP1. But generally I wouldn't say it was unusable. Leopard was also problematic with only a gigabyte, if i wanted to do any real multitasking.

i think this is where we must draw the line, introducing multitasking into the mix just produces WAY to many variables. i consider myself to be a fairly heavy multitasking user - and even basic tasks (using IE + msn + music playing + browsing folders) was a fairly slow process with 2GB of RAM.

the mac i have used leopard with 1GB of RAM on was/is my dads iBook G4 with a 1.2GHz processor. at 5 years old this computer still runs as fast as a very recent vista computer was. now call me crazy, but this computer was either a god-send or its run on good software to me that doesnt give vista a very good run

The "quality" of the laptop can differ in materials, keyboard, display, etc. But the quality of hardware that could affect how the OS works is identical in every laptop. You can't say Intel and nVidia chips in Apple machines are any better then the same ones in an Asus. And in that aspect, the MacBook is not that special. You can get a machine with Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, 3 GB of ram and a 250 GB hard drive for $500-$600.

i dont want to get into a quality/price arguement, i know i started it but i have justified why i pay the extra. let's keep it at that haha!

Once again, I'm not trying to start a price argument, just saying Vista won't run any better on a $1000 MacBook compared to a $500 Asus with same basic specs, just because the MacBook is "higher quality".

must.... refrain.... haha

Since Windows 7 has improved performance, I hope it doesn't come out before Snow Leopard or the latter will have nothing to revolutionise . Seriousely though - if Snow Leopard is going to be such a fast OS on low-end computers like you said, why are there rumors about dropping support for PPC models?

that isnt final - we dont know for sure if apple is dropping support for PPC models, if they do my guess is that they dont support something that is required for the "full" improvement.

i sure hope they support 32bit intel processors! i just happened to buy the only friggen 32-bit intel chip apple ever released 5 days before the C2D versions came out...lame

 

[o2xygen]

How often have you used Vista? Because from my experience, the hardware needs are quite comparable to Leopard. If we compare memory, which is one of the main resources an OS can "hog" - 1GB of RAM is recommended for usual work, 2GB if you want to be comfortable. If you have an updated installation of Vista on a regular modern laptop, let's say a MacBook, it will run very nicely.

Oh, so Leopard is both very fast and very stable. Why is it then that Apple is addressing stability and performance with Snow Leopard? That would be very foolish from them, they should instead work on new features if what you say is true.

I personally used Vista for 12months before giving my windows machine away. I used XP for 3 years prior, and before that 98/2000 and so on. My machine was 2gb ram, and 256mb Nvidia 8600-something. Ran like crap, slow, and never did what I needed it to do when I needed it. Crashes were common.

Nothing in this world is fast enough, kudos to apple for speeding the OS up in Snow Leopard.

 

[Matek]

god this is getting intense haha!

I wouldn't say that, it's all about presenting valid arguments.

i think apple has found a good price for their OS, all you have to do is look at their gained market share to realise that people are willing to pay a tad extra for both a quality built computer and a quality produced OS.

You're avoiding the issue. I never said Apple's hardware or software is unsuccessful. I never said their prices were too high. I only said they aren't hurt (quite the opposite!) by selling standalone copies of their OS cheap and therefore it is difficult to make valid comparisons between their and MS's prices.

i dont want to get into a quality/price arguement, i know i started it but i have justified why i pay the extra. let's keep it at that haha!

must.... refrain.... haha

Let me refresh you - my initial argument was that people need to quit bashing Vista as such an utter failure, because on an average modern machine (like a MacBook) it works OK. You said that was incorrect and that Vista only works well on a MacBook because it's a high quality machine.

I then argued that while it may be built well and have other features that are synonymous with quality, it still has very standard hardware, identical to that which can be found in cheap average modern laptops from other manufacturers. I am now waiting for you to tell me in what way MacBook's quality allows it to run Vista better than a $500 laptop with the same CPU, RAM and HDD.

that isnt final - we dont know for sure if apple is dropping support for PPC models, if they do my guess is that they dont support something that is required for the "full" improvement.

i sure hope they support 32bit intel processors! i just happened to buy the only friggen 32-bit intel chip apple ever released 5 days before the C2D versions came out...lame

Well, ok, so they do the "full improvement" and only drop PPC - the oldest hardware still able to run Snow Leopard would then be the first Intel Core Duo machines you mentioned you have. Since you already said Leopard runs beautifully, and you must be speaking from experience on your box, it's funny how they would still further optimise the OS. So what box will actually see this major improvement? A netbook hackintosh with an Atom?

I personally used Vista for 12months before giving my windows machine away. I used XP for 3 years prior, and before that 98/2000 and so on. My machine was 2gb ram, and 256mb Nvidia 8600-something. Ran like crap, slow, and never did what I needed it to do when I needed it. Crashes were common.

I used it on my roomates HP with C2D 1.66 and 1 GB of RAM, it wasn't too snappy, but it worked. He still has the original install since about a month after the release BTW (upgraded to SP1 of course, that helped quite a bit).

Nothing in this world is fast enough, kudos to apple for speeding the OS up in Snow Leopard.

Although I would poetically agree, practically this isn't true. A game at 100 FPS is fast enough. A fresh install of Windows XP on a new, dual core laptop with at least 2 GB of ram is fast enough.

 

[DoFoT9]

I wouldn't say that, it's all about presenting valid arguments.

well i guess ill have to try my hardest then.

You're avoiding the issue. I never said Apple's hardware or software is unsuccessful. I never said their prices were too high. I only said they aren't hurt (quite the opposite!) by selling standalone copies of their OS cheap and therefore it is difficult to make valid comparisons between their and MS's prices.

well if you put it that way everything changes. it is very difficult to compare these two companies because however similar they look from the outside - the inside shows a completely different story (i.e apple being a hardware company and M$ being a software company). for that reason i must agree with you, its pretty much impossible to compare the two.

Let me refresh you - my initial argument was that people need to quit bashing Vista as such an utter failure,

if i remember correctly your main initial argument was "choice vs simplicity"

the bashing of vista wont stop quite frankly, thus why M$ has been 'forced' pretty much to update so vigourously their OS. i can only hope that Windows 7 hasnt been rushed too much, we dont want another Vista.

because on an average modern machine (like a MacBook) it works OK. With that I meant a C2D 2.0 GHz box with 2 GB of ram that one can get for a good $500. You said that was incorrect and that Vista only works well on a MacBook because it's a high quality machine.

on an averagely configured machine - processing power wise - vista runs average. you wont see any marks over 4 in that test thing. i dont recall saying vista ran awsome on a macbook, i said it would run average (on any laptop vista is poor). i was referring to build-quality for the MB, a quite unnecessary thing to say i know - but youve gotta slip something in right

I then argued that while it may be built well and have other features that are synonymous with quality, it still has very standard hardware, identical to that which can be found in average modern laptops from other manufacturers. I am now waiting for you to tell me in what way MacBook's quality allows it to run Vista better than a $500 laptop with the same CPU, RAM and HDD.

the hardware is quite standard yes. there are a few factors that come to mind though when ultimately comparing a cheap PC laptop that is similarly spec'd to say a mac laptop.

1) you must consider build quality and longevity of the machine.
2) the software that the computer is running will massively effect 1).

in this case i think its fairly safe to say that OSX Leopard is the winner..

i also remember saying that a 5 year old iBook would compare quite well to a new cheap PC laptop in terms of GUI responsiveness

again, a macbook is an "average" spec'd laptop, it will run vista with "average" results. just as you would expect from any other similarly spec'd pc. if you re-read what i said i was referring to a "cheap" PC laptop - i.e. something that a lot of consumers buy and within a month it is bogged down because there arent enough resources to keep it working efficiently (both hardware and user related problems come into mind here)

Well, ok, so they do the "full improvement" and only drop PPC - the oldest hardware still able to run Snow Leopard would then be the first Intel Core Duo machines you mentioned you have. Since you already said Leopard runs beautifully, and you must be speaking from experience on your box, it's funny how they would still further optimise the OS.

leopard does run beautifully. it runs great.. there are no issues OS wise (for me there are MASSIVE hardware limitations because i am a heavy user and the machine is too old/weak for me). for my computer (and as a novice programmer + a heavy user) i am not sure what improvements could be made to improve my experience apart from visually.

So what box will actually see this major improvement?

improvements for older computers arent that important for this new OS (IMO) - the updates will be on the new computers that can actually utilise it! i am referring of course to the main feature "Grand Central", one of the main features of SL. it allows pretty much everything to become a multi-task program
other important features are GP-GPUs, which will massively increase the performance of video encoding, playback and overall interface responsiveness. my laptop is not compatible with this feature of course because of the GPU, it needs to be a certain specification. thats why it is basically only relevant for the newer computers

A netbook hackintosh with an Atom chip?

NO. most definitely not! those things (judging by the benchmarks/results i have been reading) are pathetic at best.

few.. that took a while!

Although I would poetically agree, practically this isn't true. A game at 100 FPS is fast enough. A fresh install of Windows XP on a new, dual core laptop with at least 2 GB of ram is fast enough.

run a benchmark when you install a new OS on a mac + a pc, come back 6 months later and re-run a benchmark and compare it to the beginning.... try multitasking... its not the same.

 

[Matek]

if i remember correctly your main initial argument was "choice vs simplicity"

At that point I was explaining to someone else why offering more different OS editions against offering a single one isn't always a bad thing.

the bashing of vista wont stop quite frankly, thus why M$ has been 'forced' pretty much to update so vigourously their OS. i can only hope that Windows 7 hasnt been rushed too much, we dont want another Vista.

Of course, while Apple is in the lead by far and is only developing Snow Leopard because they are so awsome, Microsoft is simply forced to release another version of their OS because they don't have a good product. There is no chance of a regular competition going on, obviousely.

on an averagely configured machine - processing power wise - vista runs average. you wont see any marks over 4 in that test thing. i dont recall saying vista ran awsome on a macbook, i said it would run average (on any laptop vista is poor). i was referring to build-quality for the MB, a quite unnecessary thing to say i know - but youve gotta slip something in right

I can remind you in case you forgot:

ok now this is ironic. a moden MacBook is a fairly "top notch" laptop, for its performance anyway. if you buy a cheap HP/DELL/Asus laptop, thats when you have troubles. on a more expensive (emphais on quality) laptop i.e. macbook, it will handle it fine

So on a cheap laptop you will have trouble while the more expensive macbook will handle it just fine. How come, when the cheap $500 laptop has the same basic hardware?

i also remember saying that a 5 year old iBook would compare quite well to a new cheap PC laptop in terms of GUI responsiveness

That's very vague, there are 5 year old machines from other manufacturers that are very responsive with a fresh install of Windows, especially XP.

again, a macbook is an "average" spec'd laptop, it will run vista with "average" results. just as you would expect from any other similarly spec'd pc. if you re-read what i said i was referring to a "cheap" PC laptop - i.e. something that a lot of consumers buy and within a month it is bogged down because there arent enough resources to keep it working efficiently (both hardware and user related problems come into mind here)

Once again, not what you said in the previous post I quoted above. I know you were referring to a cheap PC laptop - is the $500-$600 dollars machine I keep mentioning not cheap?

leopard does run beautifully. it runs great.. there are no issues OS wise (for me there are MASSIVE hardware limitations because i am a heavy user and the machine is too old/weak for me). for my computer (and as a novice programmer + a heavy user) i am not sure what improvements could be made to improve my experience apart from visually.

LOL . So at the same time leopard runs beautifully yet your computer is too old and weak for you. You admit to yourself that you need a faster machine, but refuse to blame it on the OS, which is so perfect that it uses the hardware 100%, your only problem is the lack of better hardware.

Isn't this something you could say for every box that is too weak for Vista? It's not Vista's fault, Vista is running beautifully, this box is simply too old and weak for my needs.

improvements for older computers arent that important for this new OS (IMO) - the updates will be on the new computers that can actually utilise it! i am referring of course to the main feature "Grand Central", one of the main features of SL. it allows pretty much everything to become a multi-task program
other important features are GP-GPUs, which will massively increase the performance of video encoding, playback and overall interface responsiveness. my laptop is not compatible with this feature of course because of the GPU, it needs to be a certain specification. thats why it is basically only relevant for the newer computers

First of all, you keep referring to multitasking - this usually does not mean running an application on multiple cores at the same time. Multitasking is using many applications at the same time, regardless of the number of CPUs/cores. What you're referring to is called parallel computing / multithreading.

As for Grand Central - this is a quote from apple.com:

Grand Central takes full advantage by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. Grand Central also makes it much easier for developers to create programs that squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems.

OK, two things. The first is making all of OS X multicore aware a.k.a. they will improve certain parts of their OS where by using multiple threads tasks could be performed much better. I'm sure they already did a lot of this in Leopard, I'm sure Microsoft did it for parts of Vista, it's a very old concept that all programmers have known about, it's just a matter of optimisations to squeeze a couple of extra percent out of our CPUs.

The second thing is letting developers make better use of multicore CPUs. Developers who have heard of threads and develop applications that have critical areas where processing can be spread to more cores already did this manually, they don't need Apple's approval. This thing is going to bring compiler optimisations that will help code developed without parallel programing in mind to run faster. Microsoft is already doing that to an extent with their developer tools.

To sum up - ever since multicore processors started gaining popularity, people are attempting to use threads more smartly and more often to gain performance, although this can only be done for certain types of processes and doesn't offer as obvious of a speedup as it seems.

I'm sure Apple is already doing this to OS X and will do it even more in Snow Leopard, but that's all. They are presenting it as if it's some revolutionary new feature -- it's not. They can write marketing BS about quantum leaps, they can give it a pompous name, but that doesn't change anything.

Next on our list is GPGPU. A nifty feature indeed - you mention it will massively increase the performance of video encoding, playback and overall interface responsiveness. I don't know where that list bit came from - why would GPGPU massively increase overall interface responsiveness? Graphics cards are already being used to draw GUI elements in both Vista and OS X and this doesn't have much to do with GPGPU. Is there something else I'm missing? Playback with the assistance of the graphics card is also already present in both OS X and Windows, this has been around since before the rise of GPGPU.

But once again, this isn't new! CUDA is an architecture that lets you use GPUs for general processing already. You can get APIs for Windows, Linux and even OS X for over a year now. ATi has his own thing going as well.

One of the first end-user applications to be released were ones used to convert video to different formats, I know they are already out for Windows (for ATi and nVidia cards) and they are FAST. People already built very cheap "supercomputers" using GPGPU, this one even uses Windows . Just because Apple hasn't decided what iName to give it doesn't mean it's new.



Anyway, I don't want to appear too aggressive and I don't want this to be another generic "Windows vs. OS X" debate (although i think it's too late). I agree that Vista has faults and is generally more performance consuming than Leopard. I own a MacBook and use OS X. I just generally dislike how everyone is going "vista is sh*t, win7 is only coming to hide all the mistakes, its xpensive and it could be sh*t too, OS X already rox and will pwn everyone with next generation quantum revolution snow lepperd". The reality, IMHO, is much more reasonable. Windows is a feature-packed OS with the version 7 bringing in much needed performance improvements. OS X is also a very respectable product that will definitely compete well against what MS has to offer, although they could refrain from calling everything revolutionary, because people who heard about these technologies before know they've been around for a while.

SL vs. Win7 will be a fair fight.

 

[DoFoT9]

At that point I was explaining to someone else why offering more different OS editions against offering a single one isn't always a bad thing.

fair enough, i was just being a smarty pants

Of course, while Apple is in the lead by far and is only developing Snow Leopard because they are so awsome, Microsoft is simply forced to release another version of their OS because they don't have a good product. There is no chance of a regular competition going on, obviousely.

im not sure if you're being serious here or if you're being sarcastic but leopard does seem to be bringing across a lot of "struggelers" from vista's poor name. i daresay a lot of those people will go back to windows 7 once it gets a good name happening. its only the true users that stay

*i have moved around a few of your quotes so that i dont repeat myself*

I can remind you in case you forgot:So on a cheap laptop you will have trouble while the more expensive macbook will handle it just fine. How come, when the cheap $500 laptop has the same basic hardware?

Once again, not what you said in the previous post I quoted above. I know you were referring to a cheap PC laptop - is the $500-$600 dollars machine I keep mentioning not cheap?

ok so i was starting to believe you on your "$500-$600 laptop will compare" - then i did some research.. and, well.. im afraid to say that the results go in my direction.

i searched laptopmag.com with $600 being the limit and came across the Toshiba L300 ($520US) and the Toshiba Satellite L355D ($582).
here are the specs of the L300.
CPU 2.16-GHz Intel Pentium Dual T3400 CPU
RAM Included 2GB
RAM Upgradable 4GB
RAM Speed 667MHz
Hard Drive Size 160GB
Hard Drive Speed 5,400rpm
Display Size 15.4
Native Resolution 1280x800
Graphics Card Intel GMA 4500M
Video Memory 128MB
Operating System MS Windows Vista Home Premium

here are the specs of the L355D
CPU 2-GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60
RAM Included 2GB
RAM Upgradable 4GB
RAM Speed 667MHz
Hard Drive Size 200GB
Hard Drive Speed 4,200rpm
Native Resolution 1440x900
Graphics Card ATI Radeon X1250
Video Memory 831MB
Operating System MS Windows Vista Home Premium

and here are specs of the base MacBook
CPU 2-GHz Intel Core2Duo
RAM Included 2GB
RAM Upgradable 4GB
RAM Speed 1066MHz
Hard Drive Size 160GB
Hard Drive Speed 5,400RPM
Native Resolution 1280x800
Graphics Card NVIDIA 9400M
Video Memory 256MB
Operating System Macintosh OS Leopard

now compare the benchmarks using PCMark Vantage - a windows benchmark base type thing.
L300: 2,518
L355D: 2,401
MacBook: 3,038

the graphics cards are also a massive difference, compared to the 9400M those things do stand a chance.

now please dont try to tell me that a $600 laptop is comparable, in anything.. performance, price justification, quality of build etc.

That's very vague, there are 5 year old machines from other manufacturers that are very responsive with a fresh install of Windows, especially XP.

yes but we arent talking Xp are we? we are talking the latest OS's from both companies. i.e. Leopard vs Vista. the fact is that my dads 5 year old ibook runs leopard perfectly, which vista would struggle to run on those machines above that i posted.

LOL . So at the same time leopard runs beautifully yet your computer is too old and weak for you. You admit to yourself that you need a faster machine, but refuse to blame it on the OS, which is so perfect that it uses the hardware 100%, your only problem is the lack of better hardware.

yes it does run beautifully. i think you fail to see the point that i am making here. this machine for any average to even a heavy user would run GREAT for them. being a very heavy user (i.e. using multiple parallel windows, using FCP/FCE/motion etc, using 20+tabs in Safari, playing BluRay rips, etcetc.) i constantly am waiting for something to encode, or the spinning ball to go away. this isnt because the computer is slow but because of my heavy requirements! 2GB RAM isnt fast enough FOR ME nor is the 2.16GHz CPU.

i am a uni student, and i would LOVE to upgrade, but i cant afford it - im stuck eheh.

Isn't this something you could say for every box that is too weak for Vista? It's not Vista's fault, Vista is running beautifully, this box is simply too old and weak for my needs.

no, not really. if we use leopard as an example - and say that it runs great on a 5 year old base model laptop.. and compare vista running to a base model 5 year old laptop - what are the results going to be??

First of all, you keep referring to multitasking - this usually does not mean running an application on multiple cores at the same time. Multitasking is using many applications at the same time, regardless of the number of CPUs/cores. What you're referring to is called parallel computing / multithreading.

my mistake, i used the wrong word. should of thought about it more.

As for Grand Central - this is a quote from apple.com:

Grand Central takes full advantage by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. Grand Central also makes it much easier for developers to create programs that squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems.

OK, two things. The first is making all of OS X multicore aware a.k.a. they will improve certain parts of their OS where by using multiple threads tasks could be performed much better. I'm sure they already did a lot of this in Leopard, I'm sure Microsoft did it for parts of Vista, it's a very old concept that all programmers have known about, it's just a matter of optimisations to squeeze a couple of extra percent out of our CPUs.

it seems that it goes deeper then this. from what i have read and looked at it will not only let programs (that are multi-thread compatible) utilise the hardware more efficiently but it will also enable software that AREN'T multi-thread compatible be spread amongst different CPUs/threads etc making the computer more efficient as a whole.

The second thing is letting developers make better use of multicore CPUs. Developers who have heard of threads and develop applications that have critical areas where processing can be spread to more cores already did this manually, they don't need Apple's approval. This thing is going to bring compiler optimisations that will help code developed without parallel programing in mind to run faster. Microsoft is already doing that to an extent with their developer tools.

i think it will be very good, its going to help 'novice' programs utilise all cores and threads, making them quite quick in comparision to just using one core/thread.

To sum up - ever since multicore processors started gaining popularity, people are attempting to use threads more smartly and more often to gain performance, although this can only be done for certain types of processes and doesn't offer as obvious of a speedup as it seems.

i think you are missing out a point. "people" as in programmers as a whole arent doing this multicore processing/coding. i think the majoriy of them have been ignoring it because the speed of hardware has been increasing at quite high rates. this means that they have not put AS MUCH time into coding efficiently and what not (hell, just look at vista! its a great example).

I'm sure Apple is already doing this to OS X and will do it even more in Snow Leopard, but that's all. They are presenting it as if it's some revolutionary new feature -- it's not. They can write marketing BS about quantum leaps, they can give it a pompous name, but that doesn't change anything.

maybe not revolutionary, but its probably the first time that it will be effectively used and advertised - for consumers anyway.

Next on our list is GPGPU. A nifty feature indeed - you mention it will massively increase the performance of video encoding, playback and overall interface responsiveness. I don't know where that list bit came from - why would GPGPU massively increase overall interface responsiveness? Graphics cards are already being used to draw GUI elements in both Vista and OS X and this doesn't have much to do with GPGPU. Is there something else I'm missing? Playback with the assistance of the graphics card is also already present in both OS X and Windows, this has been around since before the rise of GPGPU.

its very nifty, and again i say it will be a very nice improvement for the OS. there is little if none implementation for the current version of OSX, in quicktime your CPU readings may be halved..so what. thats not really an improvement, with the proper implementation of GPGPU entire processes can be offloaded (processes that you stated) with big increases that will become available to many many more people. they will not have to download CUDA (mentioned below) and go through installing extra software, because everything will be managed largely by Grand Central and other core services on the OS. i am not sure about how W7 handles all of this, but im sure they would have their own implementation for it.

But once again, this isn't new! CUDA is an architecture that lets you use GPUs for general processing already. You can get APIs for Windows, Linux and even OS X for over a year now. ATi has his own thing going as well.

no its not new at all, i tried (and failed, GPU didnt support it) to install it about a year ago. its relatively new in the scheme of things and at this time there is basically only a few select ways to utilise the technology (i.e. CUDE, or ATi's implementation - forget what its called).

One of the first end-user applications to be released were ones used to convert video to different formats, I know they are already out for Windows (for ATi and nVidia cards) and they are FAST. People already built very cheap "supercomputers" using GPGPU, this one even uses Windows . Just because Apple hasn't decided what iName to give it doesn't mean it's new.

"and they are fast". see. i said they were quite impressive improvements. even you said it yourself haha.

its a very good technology that HASNT been implemented universally. something Snow Leopard will do nicely.

and lol @ you stereotyping

Anyway, I don't want to appear too aggressive and I don't want this to be another generic "Windows vs. OS X" debate (although i think it's too late). I agree that Vista has faults and is generally more performance consuming than Leopard. I own a MacBook and use OS X. I just generally dislike how everyone is going "vista is sh*t, win7 is only coming to hide all the mistakes, its xpensive and it could be sh*t too, OS X already rox and will pwn everyone with next generation quantum revolution snow lepperd". The reality, IMHO, is much more reasonable. Windows is a feature-packed OS with the version 7 bringing in much needed performance improvements. OS X is also a very respectable product that will definitely compete well against what MS has to offer, although they could refrain from calling everything revolutionary, because people who heard about these technologies before know they've been around for a while.

im sorry if ive appeared aggressive too, sometimes its the only way to go. i hope i havent offended you in any way :s.

Windoes is an ok operating system, call me biased because i have grown up using Finder 4, OS6/7/8/9. windows is very nice because of its business orientation. i just am not very fond of them currently because of their flop with vista - i sure hope that W7 pulls its weight (but not too much haha, we dont wanna die here!).

SL vs. Win7 will be a fair fight.[/QUOTE]

 

[Matek]

now please dont try to tell me that a $600 laptop is comparable, in anything.. performance, price justification, quality of build etc.

I guess you picked a model you liked. I was looking at these two. Their graphics cards aren't as good as the MacBook's, that's true, but we were talking about performance of Vista. Since GMA 950 was already strong enough to run Aero and the GMA 4500 in these machines is much newer, it can definitely handle it. Other specs are a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo (check), 4 GB of DDR2 (it's not DDR3, but it's twice as much) and a 320 GB hard drive (but I will admit that doesn't affect the performance).

I think with CPU and RAM being the ones that affect OS performance the most, that's very comparable.

yes but we arent talking Xp are we? we are talking the latest OS's from both companies. i.e. Leopard vs Vista. the fact is that my dads 5 year old ibook runs leopard perfectly, which vista would struggle to run on those machines above that i posted.

no, not really. if we use leopard as an example - and say that it runs great on a 5 year old base model laptop.. and compare vista running to a base model 5 year old laptop - what are the results going to be??

While I could argue about Leopard (I only know one person with an iBook and he went back to Tiger to gain some snappines), that won't count as objective. And yes, you're right, Vista isn't for old boxes.

yes it does run beautifully. i think you fail to see the point that i am making here. this machine for any average to even a heavy user would run GREAT for them. being a very heavy user (i.e. using multiple parallel windows, using FCP/FCE/motion etc, using 20+tabs in Safari, playing BluRay rips, etcetc.) i constantly am waiting for something to encode, or the spinning ball to go away. this isnt because the computer is slow but because of my heavy requirements! 2GB RAM isnt fast enough FOR ME nor is the 2.16GHz CPU.

Again - on newer boxes (2 GB and a 2.16 C2D is new enough) the same is true for Vista. It doesn't get slow when you play solitare or browse the web. It gets slow when you do heavy lifting like the tasks you mentioned.

it seems that it goes deeper then this. from what i have read and looked at it will not only let programs (that are multi-thread compatible) utilise the hardware more efficiently but it will also enable software that AREN'T multi-thread compatible be spread amongst different CPUs/threads etc making the computer more efficient as a whole.

A number of tasks cannot be performed in parallel - if you have a taxi service and 20 people to drive, each 5 miles away, you can speed up your task by having more taxis driving people at the same time, but if you need to drive only 1 person 100 miles away, more taxis don't help. So Apple cannot possibly make applications that cannot be threaded run on multiple cores, that would be a complete revolution that would defeat the increasingly problematic Amdahl's law.

The only thing they can help is software that could be threaded, but isn't because the programmer didn't do it. Again, they can't do some kind of magic and write the code for him, but they can include optimisations in their compilers.

i think it will be very good, its going to help 'novice' programs utilise all cores and threads, making them quite quick in comparision to just using one core/thread.

You're right, but only to a certain level, like I said before. And it will mostly affect software that does some heavier parallel work. Everyday small utilities won't just get magically faster, I'm afraid.

i think you are missing out a point. "people" as in programmers as a whole arent doing this multicore processing/coding. i think the majoriy of them have been ignoring it because the speed of hardware has been increasing at quite high rates. this means that they have not put AS MUCH time into coding efficiently and what not (hell, just look at vista! its a great example).

You're right that many people don't bother smartly writing multithreaded apps and you're also right that the main reason is hardware. But the thing is - they're quite right. I'm afraid it's not about laziness, but about the fact they can't increase performance noticeably. It works great for encoding, video playing, rendering, music/graphics effects and similar specific tasks. It doesn't work for other apps or it doesn't matter. If an application is taking up 2% of CPU time, why would you waste time making it multithreaded? Even if you run more than 50, the OS is smart enough to run some on the other core.

maybe not revolutionary, but its probably the first time that it will be effectively used and advertised - for consumers anyway.

Advertised - most definitely. Used - I don't think so. I'm not saying it won't be a certain improvement, I'm just saying it's been done before in the same manner and it generally doesn't do that much.

its very nifty, and again i say it will be a very nice improvement for the OS. there is little if none implementation for the current version of OSX, in quicktime your CPU readings may be halved..so what. thats not really an improvement, with the proper implementation of GPGPU entire processes can be offloaded (processes that you stated) with big increases that will become available to many many more people. they will not have to download CUDA (mentioned below) and go through installing extra software, because everything will be managed largely by Grand Central and other core services on the OS. i am not sure about how W7 handles all of this, but im sure they would have their own implementation for it.

You don't need to install CUDA to have support for it. The support has been present in nVidia's drivers for a long time and that's the only thing you need so basically everyone with a compatible card is already prepared, they can simply install software and start using it.

Grand Central doesn't have anything to do with GPGPU, it's about multicore performance, you probably meant OpenCL. What OpenCL does is it simply allows programmers to use the GPU in their software with certain calls. The same thing they were already able to do with CUDA, the only difference being OpenCL works on all graphics cards, while CUDA is faster, but only for nVidia cards.

I'm not saying it's useless, quite the opposite, but it's just a framework. It's a tool for programmers to use to make their applications work with the help of GPUs. Again - this is only viable for certain types of heavy tasks and will only be utilised there. Programmers will have to start using it, it's not some magic that will suddenly make everything fast because it uses GPUs. It's even more specific because not only it's useful just for parallel tasks, but it also performs types of calculations GPUs are specialised in.

"and they are fast". see. i said they were quite impressive improvements. even you said it yourself haha.

its a very good technology that HASNT been implemented universally. something Snow Leopard will do nicely.

and lol @ you stereotyping

I never denied it was fast, I am simply upset because I can already run applications that take advantage of GPGPU on a completely standard Windows installation while Apple is presenting it as something completely new that they will be the first ones to implement.

What do you mean universal? The only universal thing is that it will run on all kinds of GPUs and that it's not OS-specific and that's very welcome. But I still cannot stress enough that it is just a framework, a programming tool that needs to be used by programmers before any performance is really gained. This isn't a Snow Leopard feature that will suddenly make your whole experience faster because everything will run on the GPU.

 

[McKnight]

Since Microsoft only makes software it makes sense that their software will cost more, they have put much more into it.

 

[DoFoT9]

I guess you picked a model you liked. I was looking at these two. Their graphics cards aren't as good as the MacBook's, that's true, but we were talking about performance of Vista. Since GMA 950 was already strong enough to run Aero and the GMA 4500 in these machines is much newer, it can definitely handle it. Other specs are a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo (check), 4 GB of DDR2 (it's not DDR3, but it's twice as much) and a 320 GB hard drive (but I will admit that doesn't affect the performance).

I think with CPU and RAM being the ones that affect OS performance the most, that's very comparable.

i picked the first models that i was presented with in the search function. i thought that would be better then picking a certain model that i favour or dont favour.

those machines are impressive. the dv6 yields a PCMark Vantage score of 3324, a full 300 points higher then the base MacBook. my guess is that the GPU/RAM capacity helps the benchmark a lot

[/quote]While I could argue about Leopard (I only know one person with an iBook and he went back to Tiger to gain some snappines), that won't count as objective. And yes, you're right, Vista isn't for old boxes.[/quote]

if you dont have any personal experience with it then it doesnt count

Again - on newer boxes (2 GB and a 2.16 C2D is new enough) the same is true for Vista. It doesn't get slow when you play solitare or browse the web. It gets slow when you do heavy lifting like the tasks you mentioned.

my machines is a CoreDuo, not a Core2Duo. there are significant differences between the two.

A number of tasks cannot be performed in parallel - if you have a taxi service and 20 people to drive, each 5 miles away, you can speed up your task by having more taxis driving people at the same time, but if you need to drive only 1 person 100 miles away, more taxis don't help. So Apple cannot possibly make applications that cannot be threaded run on multiple cores, that would be a complete revolution that would defeat the increasingly problematic Amdahl's law.

yea nah of course it isnt going to work for all processes, but for the ones that are supported by it the improvements will be very nice indeed

The only thing they can help is software that could be threaded, but isn't because the programmer didn't do it. Again, they can't do some kind of magic and write the code for him, but they can include optimisations in their compilers.

i guess thats what i was trying it say, code optimisation is the key here. W7 and SL are both trying to do this as are many software developers

You're right, but only to a certain level, like I said before. And it will mostly affect software that does some heavier parallel work. Everyday small utilities won't just get magically faster, I'm afraid.

You're right that many people don't bother smartly writing multithreaded apps and you're also right that the main reason is hardware. But the thing is - they're quite right. I'm afraid it's not about laziness, but about the fact they can't increase performance noticeably. It works great for encoding, video playing, rendering, music/graphics effects and similar specific tasks. It doesn't work for other apps or it doesn't matter. If an application is taking up 2% of CPU time, why would you waste time making it multithreaded? Even if you run more than 50, the OS is smart enough to run some on the other core.

hmm i am by no means a computer programmer so i guess i cant really comment on the possible improvements that could occur.

Advertised - most definitely. Used - I don't think so. I'm not saying it won't be a certain improvement, I'm just saying it's been done before in the same manner and it generally doesn't do that much.

hhmm yea i guess so, i just think that SL will be the first major release of this technology to the public. they wont have to install anything extra - its all included in the OS..

You don't need to install CUDA to have support for it. The support has been present in nVidia's drivers for a long time and that's the only thing you need so basically everyone with a compatible card is already prepared, they can simply install software and start using it.

ok right so everything firmware wise is already installed, all that is needed is software. that makes it easier i guess but by no means mainstream.

Grand Central doesn't have anything to do with GPGPU, it's about multicore performance, you probably meant OpenCL. What OpenCL does is it simply allows programmers to use the GPU in their software with certain calls. The same thing they were already able to do with CUDA, the only difference being OpenCL works on all graphics cards, while CUDA is faster, but only for nVidia cards.

hmm GC doesnt do GPGPU? but that will be implemented with SL no doubt (more efficiently). OpenCL seems like a very nice advancement, i have read the 5x improvement on video/audio converting/coding. CUDA is faster?? apple mainly has NVIDIA cards, i wonder why they arent implementing this..

I'm not saying it's useless, quite the opposite, but it's just a framework. It's a tool for programmers to use to make their applications work with the help of GPUs. Again - this is only viable for certain types of heavy tasks and will only be utilised there. Programmers will have to start using it, it's not some magic that will suddenly make everything fast because it uses GPUs. It's even more specific because not only it's useful just for parallel tasks, but it also performs types of calculations GPUs are specialised in.

yes i understand that, you cant just offload all the functions/commands etc off to the GPU, it doesnt work like that. CPUs are optimised for certain tasks and GPUs are optimised for other certain tasks, for those tasks that the GPU is good at the improvements are quite impressive (already been discussed).

I never denied it was fast, I am simply upset because I can already run applications that take advantage of GPGPU on a completely standard Windows installation while Apple is presenting it as something completely new that they will be the first ones to implement.

well thats advertising for ya i guess, its not new, we know that..

What do you mean universal? The only universal thing is that it will run on all kinds of GPUs and that it's not OS-specific and that's very welcome. But I still cannot stress enough that it is just a framework, a programming tool that needs to be used by programmers before any performance is really gained. This isn't a Snow Leopard feature that will suddenly make your whole experience faster because everything will run on the GPU.

by universal i mean 'mainstream', if its implemented on a popular OS then the popularity and knowledge of this technology will be GREATLY increased. just because it is available on a website to install easily doesnt mean that everybody goes to that website - i guess is what im saying

 

[BMWFan]

I've never understood why Microsoft has to sell Windows in so many different versions. Either give the people the full version right out of the box, or add a feature that will allow more advanced users to unlock/enable advanced features. There's no need to sell crippled versions of an OS.

Microsoft sells crippled versions in the same way Apple sells a crippled version of OS X server.

 

[chewietobbacca]

by universal i mean 'mainstream', if its implemented on a popular OS then the popularity and knowledge of this technology will be GREATLY increased. just because it is available on a website to install easily doesnt mean that everybody goes to that website - i guess is what im saying

You're only proving his point - Apple is just using this to advertise about some nice feature that's already around for people to use elsewhere. How much it actually improves performance remains to be seen, because outside of some heavy intensive programs, you still have to go back and recompile everything to take advantage of multithreading, much less multithreading for hundreds of "cores" (shaders)

These things already exist across the board across different OS's - Apple just has one of the best marketing teams in the world and will make anyone believe it's a new revolution

As far as the PC Mark Vantage thing - it's really hard to compare using SYNTHETIC benchmarks across different hardware, let alone OS's

If you put the same program on the same hardware (exactly the same) and ran it, and saw differences, your scores would matter - otherwise, it's pointless to compare

 

[DoFoT9]

You're only proving his point - Apple is just using this to advertise about some nice feature that's already around for people to use elsewhere. How much it actually improves performance remains to be seen, because outside of some heavy intensive programs, you still have to go back and recompile everything to take advantage of multithreading, much less multithreading for hundreds of "cores" (shaders)

These things already exist across the board across different OS's - Apple just has one of the best marketing teams in the world and will make anyone believe it's a new revolution

As far as the PC Mark Vantage thing - it's really hard to compare using SYNTHETIC benchmarks across different hardware, let alone OS's

If you put the same program on the same hardware (exactly the same) and ran it, and saw differences, your scores would matter - otherwise, it's pointless to compare

id like to know how much percentage of users are using these technologies (CUDA and OpenCL). i think it would be somewhere within the 1-2% of all users. to me that isnt mainstream. with the introduction of this technology in SnowLeopard &or W7 the number will pretty much instantly go up to 50%, 60% and beyond.

as for benchmarking its very hard to perform testing. sure a computer may be higher configured or whatnot but its the overall experience and OS that gives you the real experience - thus why i found it quite appropriate to compare my dads 5 year old iBook to that of a cheaper configured PC notebook running vista. the response time of the interfaces are similar but of course if you benchmark them the differences would be monstrous.

Microsoft sells crippled versions in the same way Apple sells a crippled version of OS X server.

lol i dont think apple really REALLY cares about OSX server that much, its just marketing to sell their hardware (e.g. macpro's, xserves)

 

[chewietobbacca]

id like to know how much percentage of users are using these technologies (CUDA and OpenCL). i think it would be somewhere within the 1-2% of all users. to me that isnt mainstream. with the introduction of this technology in SnowLeopard &or W7 the number will pretty much instantly go up to 50%, 60% and beyond.

as for benchmarking its very hard to perform testing. sure a computer may be higher configured or whatnot but its the overall experience and OS that gives you the real experience - thus why i found it quite appropriate to compare my dads 5 year old iBook to that of a cheaper configured PC notebook running vista. the response time of the interfaces are similar but of course if you benchmark them the differences would be monstrous.

Again, whether it goes mainstream or not doesn't matter - it still depends on if the software can actually use it. Like Matek wrote with the taxi analogy - if the program only goes on one path for 100 minutes, then all the parallelism in the world isn't going to make a difference, and most programs won't benefit from this at all.

In fact, it's not even a Windows or SL thing. Take for instance Adobe - maybe CS5 or 6 or whatever takes full advantage of GPGPUs. Well they call OpenCL or any of the other API's that can call the GPGPU shaders to do the calculations. That has more to do with the fact that the particular OS now supports the API, the program (written by someone other than Apple or MS in all likelihood) has been written to support this, and the drivers from the hardware are there.

Windows and OS X can run CUDA. This isn't 'new' - it's just Apple finally integrating multithreading capabilities into the OS. The original point being made was that Apple's done some clever advertising and hyping up of SL's features which is creating this idea that everything is going to be run off GPGPU's and everything will be blazing fast, when it simply won't and/or is impossible.

 

[DoFoT9]

Again, whether it goes mainstream or not doesn't matter - it still depends on if the software can actually use it. Like Matek wrote with the taxi analogy - if the program only goes on one path for 100 minutes, then all the parallelism in the world isn't going to make a difference, and most programs won't benefit from this at all.

no of course parallel computing isnt going to work for everything, even i can see that and i am a novice programmer.

In fact, it's not even a Windows or SL thing. Take for instance Adobe - maybe CS5 or 6 or whatever takes full advantage of GPGPUs. Well they call OpenCL or any of the other API's that can call the GPGPU shaders to do the calculations. That has more to do with the fact that the particular OS now supports the API, the program (written by someone other than Apple or MS in all likelihood) has been written to support this, and the drivers from the hardware are there.

ok so the support for OpenCL/GPGPU support for applications wont be handled by the OS itself, all the OS will do is add API's that allow the software to utilise the other hardware (GPUs in this case). makes sense.

Windows and OS X can run CUDA. This isn't 'new' - it's just Apple finally integrating multithreading capabilities into the OS. The original point being made was that Apple's done some clever advertising and hyping up of SL's features which is creating this idea that everything is going to be run off GPGPU's and everything will be blazing fast, when it simply won't and/or is impossible.

never said it was new, but to many many people it will look like a new technology/advancement - i guess that is what apple is trying to advertise, its what they do best and i daresay people will buy it (as you say).

as i said in my provious post not all commands can simply be handed to the GPU, only specific ones. it is these specific commands that will have noticable differences (e.g. audio conversion and video conversion). im sure you have seen the "5x improvements" that are going around on the main page or MR. seems great to me, this may be quite an old technology but this is starting to be implemented universally (or mainstream to all consumers).. meh

 

[nhaque]

wow, I tried to follow but I gave up.
Anyway, from my experiences, Vista is not so bad. As for the 'hardware hog' issue, I'm currently running Vista on a 'dinosaur' Vaio, Core Duo 1.8Ghz. When I had 1gb, Vista was barely usable, as in it does not respond fast enough. I however did not have any other problems such as drivers etc..

Now, after upgrading the RAM to 2GB (RAM is dirt cheap now) I've noticed a much faster responding time, and again, still no drivers or any other issues/problems. All this before Vista Sp1. I did not notice any better performance from Vista after Sp1, but by all means, it is quite usable.

Back to the pricing topic, while 7 seems to be more expensive that OS X, I wouldn't even compare the two. If you need Windows, then you'll have to buy it no matter what, why bother complaining? If not, enjoy OS X.

 

[Matek]

id like to know how much percentage of users are using these technologies (CUDA and OpenCL). i think it would be somewhere within the 1-2% of all users. to me that isnt mainstream. with the introduction of this technology in SnowLeopard &or W7 the number will pretty much instantly go up to 50%, 60% and beyond.

Why on earth would 50% of programmers suddenly say I'm going to use GPGPU, just because Windows 7 and/or Snow Leopard has support for it, while XP/Vista, Linux and Leopard already support CUDA, which is practically the same thing and a very small number of developers use it?

OK, the fact that it's an open solution that works on all graphics cards and will soon have multiplatform support will provide some motivation, but there's no chance on earth that it would instantly go from 1% to 50%.

 

[DoFoT9]

Why on earth would 50% of programmers suddenly say I'm going to use GPGPU, just because Windows 7 and/or Snow Leopard has support for it, while XP/Vista, Linux and Leopard already support CUDA, which is practically the same thing and a very small number of developers use it?

OK, the fact that it's an open solution that works on all graphics cards and will soon have multiplatform support will provide some motivation, but there's no chance on earth that it would instantly go from 1% to 50%.

no no silly, i didnt say programmers haha. i said it would be available for users to utilise. for programs such as handbrake etc (if/when they coded for it) - the users wouldnt have to download (for example) the badaboom whatever it is software, the APIs would already supported and implemented by the OS so it would be a seamless transformationg

 

[Matek]

no no silly, i didnt say programmers haha. i said it would be available for users to utilise. for programs such as handbrake etc (if/when they coded for it) - the users wouldnt have to download (for example) the badaboom whatever it is software, the APIs would already supported and implemented by the OS so it would be a seamless transformationg

You don't get what I'm trying to tell you. CUDA is supported in OS X since 10.5.2 (and in Windows for quite some time), which means you can already download an application (such as Handbrake) with GPGPU support and it will work. But the problem is that the author of Handbrake must code his application in such a way that it will utilise GPGPU, CUDA support itself doesn't do anything.

It's the same with OpenCL - It will simply be an alternative for developers to use instead of CUDA when it comes out, but GPGPU won't be anymore widely available for end-users than it is now.

 

[DoFoT9]

You don't get what I'm trying to tell you. CUDA is supported in OS X since 10.5.2 (and in Windows for quite some time), which means you can already download an application (such as Handbrake) with GPGPU support and it will work. But the problem is that the author of Handbrake must code his application in such a way that it will utilise GPGPU, CUDA support itself doesn't do anything.

It's the same with OpenCL - It will simply be an alternative for developers to use instead of CUDA when it comes out, but GPGPU won't be anymore widely available for end-users than it is now.

ahh that makes sense. does it require a whole recode of the application, or just of the parts that need to be 'transferred' to GPGPU/CUDA/OpenCL 'coding' ??