“Let’s play a game of word association. I’ll go first: ‘Internet cafe.’ Your turn. ‘Viruses.’ How about ‘unprotected network.’ ‘Viruses.’ And ‘hotel Internet connection?’ ‘Viruses,'” Mike Berman writes for Scripps Howard News Service. “Do you see pattern here, other than paranoia? The unfortunate truth is that, because of the proliferation of those nasty computer germs, we have become paranoid and fear venturing out into uncharted territory with our computers.”
MacDailyNews Take: We see no such pattern. We answered, “coffee,” “not too smart,” and “convenient,” to Berman’s three word associations. Of course, we use Apple Macs running Mac OS X which has zero viruses, so we must “think different” than the average Windows PC user. We use our PowerBooks everywhere without fear or paranoia. Imagine that.
Berman continues, “The folks at ZyXEL are doing their bit to ease that fear with the introduction of the ZyWall P1 ($225), which is a portable firewall that is no larger than a Palm Computer. You can pop this baby into your suitcase or laptop bag and trot off to the nearest Internet cafe, or take that business trip with confidence that you’re protected against viruses, worms and other scourges of the Internet. It’s actually a pretty simple device. One end connects to the network via a standard Ethernet cable, the other attaches to the USB port of your computer. And, since it does not depend on a specific operating system to do its thing, it can be used on Windows, Apple and Linux PCs.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We already are confident that we’re protected against viruses, as we use Apple Macs running Mac OS X. We see no need to lug around a $225 hardware brick everywhere we go in order to protect us from something our operating system does for us. So, no fear here. It’s nice, we suppose, that it can be used on “Apple PCs,” but that’s rather like hauling an umbrella to the Sahara Desert. The folks at ZyXEL must be happy the folks at Microsoft are incompetent. One question, other than “isn’t the Windows mindset ridiculous and sad,” that comes to mind is, “If we add the $225 for protection to the cost of a Windows PC, isn’t every virus-free Mac automatically $225 less expensive?”
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Motley Fool writer: ‘I’d be surprised if Symantec ever sells a single product to a Mac user again’ – March 24, 2005
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Security test: Windows XP system easily compromised while Apple’s Mac OS X stands safe and secure – November 30, 2004
Sick of spyware, adware infecting your PC? Don’t fret, just get a Mac – November 01, 2004
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Spyware plagues Windows users while Mac users surf Net with impunity – November 01, 2004
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A firewall will not protect a PC from spyware. Not even the big corporate firewalls can do that. It also won’t protect you from viruses either. So why spend $200 on a portable firewall is beyond me. Why not just use a Mac and not have to worry about it period.
IT_Guy, did YOU read the entire article or did you simply speed browsed and picked only G5 favorable points (in which case the G5 was shown to be comparable, NOT favorable)?
Since you placed much emphasis on GCC, did you somehow miss this particular section?
“It seems that the GCC compiler makes a real mess when it tries to optimise for the SSE-2 instructions. One can, of course, use the Intel compiler, which produces code that is up to TWICE as fast…”
Did you somehow not quite understand the G5 can “flex” its muscles only under ideal conditions? (50% FADD/FSUB/FMUL)?
Did you think you would get away quoting a HALF sentence? “The Opteron’s branch predictor seems to be at the level of G5’s: the branch misprediction penalty of the G5 is 30% higher, and the Opteron does about 30% better.” Do you understand what the FULL sentence implies? Did you even bother looking at the chart?
“As long as there are little or no Altivec or SSE-2 optimisations present, the Opteron is by far the fastest CPU. The G5’s FPU is still quite a bit better than the one of the Xeon. ” – As long as there are little to no Altivec. Otherwise, my ass.
Otherwise your ass? Did you for some reason assume if there WERE SSE-2 optimisations present, the Opteron would NOT use it? Quick to misunderstand and assume too much, eh IT Guy?
Cinema 4D: “Maxon has invested some time and effort to get the Cinema4D engine running well on the G5 and it shows. The G5 competes with the best x86 CPUs. “
You’ve pointed out the G5 equals the Xeon in Cinema4D, nothing more.
“OS X server use of kernel threads is a known limitation that Apple has just started to address with Tiger. Thence yes, currently OS X Server is seriously limited by this. Is OS X Server development at the end of development cycle? I doubt you could expect this to be the end of the line. Apple has practically never entered the server market seriously. They are starting now and getting lots of feedback. Things are just starting to cook.”
They are just starting to cook? Is that why the article came up the conclusion below after Apple basically told them they’d rather leave it to vendors to go find ways around their defect?
“The server performance of the Apple platform is, however, catastrophic. When we asked Apple for a reaction, they told us that some database vendors, Sybase and Oracle, have found a way around the threading problems. We’ll try Sybase later, but frankly, we are very sceptical. The whole “multi-threaded Mach microkernel trapped inside a monolithic FreeBSD cocoon with several threading wrappers and coarse-grained threading access to the kernel”, with a “backwards compatibility” millstone around its neck sounds like a bad fusion recipe for performance. “
“Indeed, GNU and Apple has just started to look into it, gcc 4.0 makes turns already around”
Too little too late? Comeback to Anandtech after they’ve completed their Opteron 852 review.
“Server thread access is a recognized problem. So, your issue is that Apple is not absolutely perfect and that they have not reached IT Nirvana and could close their R&D laboratories and that OS X Server needs improvements?
If you truly think this was a BAD review, jeez man, your english understanding is lacking severely. Sammy boy, GIMME A BREAK!”
Who said it was a bad review? Yet quite typical, you only saw what you wanted to see….the article clearly outlined the Mac’s deficiencies, and potential. You obviously looked for any shred of information that would indicate “Wintel killer”, but your arguments fell flat as I’ve pointed them out above.
“The G5 2.7 GHz dwarves the Xeon 3.6 GHz and competes with the Opteron when no Altivec optimization is present.”
Now my friend, YOU need to take a look at that article again LOL. The Opteron blew the G5 away in almost all of the tests, the G5 equaled the Xeon, at best, for SOME situations and performed well on only one FPU test.
Hey troll, if the compiler does not work equally as well on all chips tested then the tests are invalid.
Did you understand that?
Hey Sammy, I’ve got a flux capacitor in my Laptop, how you like ‘dem apples?
Silly, troll.
Sahara Desert is repetitiously redundant?
Not at all! There are many deserts, the Sahara is one of them. And the word “desert” places it in time — it is not the Sahara Savannah of the Ice Ages.
Sammy, the upshot of the Anandtech article is that Mac OS X is not as good a *server* OS as Linux (because of its thread overhead), and that the Opteron is usually faster than the G5.
This comes as NO SURPRISE to any honest Mac-head. We know Opteron is the best low-end general purpose server chip (it gets creamed by POWER 5 et al), and we know OS X has overhead that Linux does not. Some of us *like* what we get with that overhead — it’s possible that Mac OS X is more reliable because of it, but we’re talking flavors of (Li/U)nix here where reliability and availability are several orders of magnitude greater than Windows.
If we honest Mac-heads want to use a Mac for a MySQL server, we have no problem putting a PPC Linux on it.
Likewise, we know that the G5 is a damned awesome chip, and for many workstation and PC applications, Mac OS X is unbeatable, and so for those applications Mac OS X on a G5 is simply the best.
I hope the AnandTech article gets wide circulation within Apple. It is a *very* good comparison, and Apple deserves the merits and demerits contained within.
The “upshot” of the article is that
1) Intel sucks, AMD and IBM rule!
2) Windows sucks so bad they barely tested it.
Ergo, therefore, and so —
Windows on Intel SUCKS!
SUCKS!
S – U – C – K – S !
Well, isn’t this interesting….
“Apple Computer plans to announce Monday that it’s scrapping its partnership with IBM and switching its computers to Intel’s microprocessors, CNET News.com has learned.”
http://news.com.com/Apple+to+ditch+IBM,+switch+to+Intel+chips/2100-1006_3-5731398.html?part=rss&tag=5731398&subj=news
Hey MDN:
Please stop saying ‘Apple Macs’.
It’s annoying.
If Apple made another OS than Mac then you’d need the distinction.
“I use an Apple computer.” or “I just bought a Mac”.
See? Works juuust fine.
Yes, in effect it is.
Sammy, do you pretend to be silly, or…
What I picked are the conclusions of the various tests, assuming people could read and UNDERSTAND the article. Something you still have difficult getting at.
Emphasis on GCC is so much evident also by the fact the the G5 on Xserve do not present problems with threading if running Linux.
Intel compiler high optimization is achievable only when you do not need portable code. We have applications running on more than 10 architectures and all possible compilers available for collaborating projects that span worldwide laboratories. IBM has released since more than a year its family of compilers for the G5 that simply TROUNCES gcc and the Intel compiler on x86. Give me a break.
But that is not the point: the most common case is labs and institutions where GCC is ubiquitous, this is why is it picked, silly.
[…. ideal conditions? (50% FADD/FSUB/FMUL)?] IDIOTIC comment of yours. The Opteron got its good results in a test presenting only FDIV operations. These are UNREALISTIC real code situation. The IDEAL is not meant to favor the G5, ideal is the test that best reproduce what you may get in REAL code, ie a mixture of FADD/SUB/and MUL.
So what if the Opteron is good with only FDIV: in real world application you will never get that. The IDEAL test condition is what you mostly will encounter in real code.
Prediction branch: again, chips are better in some areas and not in others. Are you playing stupid again? The result of the test is what matters in terms of user perception and the penalty is not such to make the G5 not comparable to the others.
Altivec OR SSE-2 optimizations: you reading into too much. It says what it says. They BOTH are equivalent SIMD optimizations. Altivec is the name given by Motorola, SSE-2 by Intel to SIMD optimization techniques. I’ll rephrase for you, maybe you’ll get it this time: “When no SIMD optimization is there, Opteron performs better. With SIMD optimization is there the G5 performs better”. So, yes, my ass. You always try to run with optimized code in REAL working situation and the G5 then performs better than the Opteron.
GCC 4.0 “too little too late”: too late for what? So gcc has stopped development and 4.0 is the very last incarnation?
Developers have so far not spent time in optimizing for a G5 platform as they did for Intel architecture in general. You could only squeeze so much from an orange. x86 is practically fully squeezed. G5 has yet to deliver as the author of the test conclude ” the G5 has a lot of unused potential and the increasing market share of the Power Mac should tempt developers to put a little more effort in Mac optimisation. “
The rest of the comment are irrelevant really as if I was trying to prove that the G5 was the best of the best. You are playing a different game.
Your original post was that this was a bad review for G5 “Who said it was a bad review? “, you said it. I quote:
“Oh, and I noticed MDN completely ignored a major article from Anandtech today titled “No more mysteries: Apple’s G5 versus x86, Mac OS X versus Linux”.
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436
I guess they assumed (correctly) Mac zealots would not handle the outcome, who need to be feed a constant diet of sheer blind bias and false truths.”
So what we should not be able to handle? Not handle the outcome of a good review? Why are you backpedaling now? You pointed the link to something YOU only believed was bad news for “Mac zealots”?!
And you reveal yourself again with your closing remarks “The Opteron blew the G5 away in almost all of the tests, the G5 equaled the Xeon, at best, for SOME situations and performed well on only one FPU test.”
It looks to me you desperately want to see this as a bad review and still locked in the silly game of “My cock is bigger than yours”.
The CNet article is not even there anymore. Old news from PC anal-ysts.
Was covered in full here in OLD news. Read the archives Sammy boy.
In any case, Intel has been flirting Apple since more than a year. They may well have something NEW (not the old x86) to entice Apple with.
There are rumors of a Tablet PC from Apple (that could have a new Intel processor inside) or the iPod have it.
If someone believes the Mac line of computers could switch suddenly to x86 (iBooks, Powerbooks, and Desktops) from one day to another s/he must have a simplistic view of what makes a computer a computer.
[Offtopic] I half-remembered a quote I thought would apply to the “Microsoft holds ‘Thought Thieves’ short film competition focusing on intellectual property theft” story from May 12, and finally I found it!
“Imagine the disincentive to software development if after months of work another company could come along and copy your work and market it under its own name…without legal restraints to such copying, companies like Apple could not afford to advance the state of the art.”
– Bill Gates, 1983 (New York Times, 25 Sep 1983, p. F2)
“”but that’s rather like hauling an umbrella to the Sahara Desert.”
Yeah, MDN, an umbrella would be a “bad” idea” in the Sahara? Guess you’ve never talked to a dermotologist about the effects of sun exposure – not surprising. Igonorance is bliss I guess until the doctor tells you you’ve got skin cancer, and you’re like, “That can’t be, I’m a Mac User, I’m not affected by viruses, the sun, pr anything else.”
As a Win and Mac user, I would like to report that i have never had an issue AT ALL with connecting to wireless networks, getting viruses from wireless networks with my Windows machine, nor have my friends with their Powerbooks. A NON ISSUE, NON NEWS story. Who they are creating these boxes for I’ll never know.
don’t you guys ever get tired of making the same point over and over again?
IT_Guy,
Looks like all your hopes and dreams concerning GCC optimizations for the G5 have come crumbling down.
…Intel plans to provide industry leading development tools support for Apple later this year, including the Intel C/C++ Compiler for Apple, Intel Fortran Compiler for Apple, Intel Math Kernel Libraries for Apple and Intel Integrated Performance Primitives for Apple…..
Try running Intel compiled code instead of GCC where SIMD SSE2 optimizations DECREASE efficiency and speed, the “advantage” of the G5 due to better altivec optimizations is practically wiped out. Yes, your ass is wrong, yet again…
GCC 4.0? Just as a I said, too little too late. Steve Jobs himself said developers have to do one thing to make the transition a smooth one, and that’s to “start making universal binaries now”.
PPC on the G5 is dead. Welcome to the new era.
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