elevate said:
You obviously haven't checked prices at Gateway or Dell. You also may not be aware that the folks that manufacture Apple's screens, also make them for other people.
Actually, yes I have. I configured a system at Dell.com that would be relatively equivalent to the new iMac as far as features and performance are concerned. The price for a Dell Dimension 4400 with a 1.6 GHz P4 and all the other features of the iMac came to $1,917.00. But I configured it with a 40 gig HD instead of a 60, since they don't have 60 gig as a built to order option. You can tack on a few more $$ for that, but not much. All I was saying is that the new iMac is a good value, and my research only strengthens my belief in that. But don't take it from me - go to Dell and try it yourself.
Furthermore, I've looked at the LCD's at CompUSA and the like. I also use both an IBM and an NEC flatpanel at work. Regardless of who makes the Apple display, I haven't seen one as nice - especially one bundled with a PC. That's not to say that they don't exist - they're just not shipping with any other retail PC. We could nitpick about this forever, but what's the point?
I'm no processor architecture wiz, but I think you'd be surprised how much like CISC the PPC has become. Besides, the whole RISC vs. CISC debate is largely inconsequential at this point... etc...
From TechTV: "Today the performance gap is even wider, with Intel's Pentium 4 chip running at 2 GHz, compared with the Apple G4's 876 MHz. But the disparity in chip speed doesn't necessarily translate into better performance for Wintel machines. In fact, the latest Macs are faster than the higher-megahertz PCs when it comes to such tasks as compression and running multimedia software, due to Apple's chip architecture." This article states that the 867 MHz G4 outperformed the 2 GHz P4 in many media-instensive applications. This fact leads me to believe that I wasn't wrong in stating that an 800 MHz G4 can compete with a 1.5 GHz P4 or even the old Athlon. Certainly, there will be operations that the P4 is faster, but (like I said before) I'd say it's a pretty even comparison. The new XP Athlon is a different story, they did some interesting things to its architecture to get it to perform well, and it shows in its benchmarks. Kudos to AMD.
The two processor architectures remain quite different, even though Intel and AMD have been trying to incorporate RISC design conventions to their new processor lines. Apple was smart to jump on PowerPC and abandon the 680X0 line when they did. The 680X0 line still had potential, but they saw that the PowerPC was the way to go and got the transition over with a long time ago. Microsoft would have been smart to do the same, but they were too concerned with backwards-compatibilty. Remember: all those millions of CISC instructions still need to be embedded in the new X86 processors to ensure compatibility. This means that no matter how the architecture changes, the processor is still slowed down from its theoretical potential speed. And let's not talk about pipeline lengths. Sure, the original pipeline length of the G4 was only 4 stages, and the new G4e is 7 stages. The G5 is 10 stages. But the Pentium 4 is 20 stages - twice that of the G5. And it's only up from there.
I've had training on the X86 architecture and X86 assmebly language. I've also had processor design training in PowerPC and PowerPC assembly language. The differences are staggering, and I'd actually say that I prefer X86 assembly because it's much easier (because of its bloated instruction set). But there's no doubt that the PowerPC is still a better and more efficient architecture.
You won't hear that from me.
No, but you are the one that started this whole thing by insinuating that the new iMac is not a powerful system - which it is. It was a blatant stab at anyone who chooses to use a Mac, and was just as ill-intended. Then you continued to state that the new iMac is not a good value. Which, as my example shows, is also not true in the overall scope of things.
What you need to understand is that when people say, "my new Mac is as fast as a 4Ghz P4,' it's just as bad and misguided.
Surely you jest. I admit, the "95% of PC users" thing was a little bit of an overexaggeration, but I've read a lot of pro-Mac propaganda and have never heard any exaggeration so ludicrous. Anyway, if you've actually heard that, those people are dumb.
Hey, man, I'm not anti-PC. In fact, I'm writing this message on an IBM Thinkpad - and I like it! I just can't stand the way PC users like to pick fights with Mac users by making subtle comments like "Isn't that an oxymoron?" or right out saying they suck. The new iMac is a really fast, really good machine, especially for studio applications. And for what you get, it's very reasonably priced. Period. I'm not saying that PC's suck. I'm just sticking up for people that use Macs, that's all.
Rick
