Digital Media Online’s Charlie White’s article regarding reviewing the Apple Power Mac G5 Dual 2.7GHz contains an aside about Mac OS X, “Although this is not a full-scale review of Tiger, I must comment on the speed and grace of its new Spotlight feature (see graphic below). Sitting at the top right of the screen is a little magnifying glass. Click on that and a box drops down that offers a field in which to enter a search term. Immediately after you type one character, Spotlight starts finding folders, documents and applications that match the term you’re typing. It’s the fastest, most convenient search feature I’ve ever seen, and I wish every computer in the world had it. Wow. The rest of the operating system is just about as good as an OS can be. The icons are all beautifully drawn, and the whole thing just oozes quality.”
“For the first time ever, here at the Midwest Test Facility, could this new Mac beat the fastest PC? Well, yes and no. It came close, and beat our eight-month-old Dell dual Xeon 3.6GHz test machine in some of the benchmarks, but overall, it still isn’t as fast as our fastest, albeit elderly PC. It’s certainly telling that Intel’s Xeon chips from last year are still faster than the nearly speed-stuck IBM PowerPC chips inhabiting Macintoshes. We can only hope that somehow Apple will decide to start using Intel or even AMD chips in its computers and at the same time find a way to quickly and efficiently adapt all its magnificent software to a processor that has proven to be a more dependable source of continuous speed and efficiency upgrades. It’s frustrating to see all this groundbreaking software innovation, such as the magnificent Final Cut Pro Studio (which I will soon be reviewing here on Digital Media Net), all brought to bear on a processor whose manufacturer for some reason can’t seem to upgrade it as fast as was once hoped. Irony of ironies, it’s IBM , that evil empire alluded to in Apple’s 1984 commercial so many years ago, that’s supplying these chips that can’t keep up and are holding Apple back from its true potential,” White writes.
White writes, “If you look at the prices, you get much more for your money with the dual-processor Mac these days than you do with a dual-processor Xeon PC… With a comparable 2GB of RAM and without any extras, this machine would cost $1300 less than the current price of our Dell dual Xeon 3.6GHz PC that we used for comparison. As configured, for forty bucks less you get speed that’s statistically just about the same as a PC, Bluetooth connectivity, FireWire 800 on the motherboard , and then there’s that striking industrial design and cachet that only goes with owning a Mac… I’d say that even though the Mac is still slower than the fastest PC in our benchmarks, for professional content creation it would be hard for me to pass it up. Highly recommended. 9.5 of 10 stars.”
Check out the tests, test results and read the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So, Apple’s Power Mac G5 Dual 2.7GHz, even with the IBM PowerPC issues, is still statistically just about as fast as a Dell dual Xeon 3.6GHz PC, has a superior operating system, and costs less to boot (pun intended). In the full article, White mentions Apple’s standard one-button mouse, hence the related articles below.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple’s mythical two-button mouse – March 19, 2005
RUMOR: Apple may soon debut two-button mouse – March 15, 2005
Why Apple ships a one-button mouse even though Mac OS X supports multi-button mice – January 29, 2005
Macworld Poll: 34 percent say Apple Mac one-button mouse a mistake – April 07, 2004
Why no Apple two-button mouse? – September 17, 2003
The time has come for Apple to ship a two-button scroll mouse standard – June 09, 2003
Should Apple reconsider the one-button mouse? – October 23, 2002
Bring IT!!!!!
If it’s so cheap, when are you gonna buy me a new one?
MDN Magic Word: “near” as in IBM is near the 3Ghz barrier, but only near it.
nice review
Hmmm… a new Ford Mustang is probably faster jumping from light to light than a brand new BMW 3 Series sedan, as well. Yup, BMW should dump that beautiful smooth quiet 6 cylinder they’ve built to perfection and start using Ford engines.
While I’d make no excuses for IBM’s inability to increase their processor speeds, I believe that Intel is having the same issues – just not to the extent that IBM is. Would be nice to see IBM have some sort of breakthrough on this, but I believe that the newer designs are in part helping to deal with a lack of Mhz/Ghz speed increases.
MW: Fact “Fact: Microsoft Sucks.”
One of these days I’ll see a comparison between processors of equal hertz. Say, a 3.8 Ghz Mac against a 3.8 Ghz Dell. I’m tired of seeing the, “The 2.7 Ghz Mac is almost as fast as our 3.6 Ghz PC, faster in some tests, but not in others.” GAA!
wow.. looks like we already got to 3Ghz..
tee hee…
From the article:
“The only tone-deaf feature that has stubbornly stayed with Macs for many years is that idiotic button-less mouse. Is there anyone on this planet who’s still using this dopey thing? If so, please let me know why. I am positively baffled. I’ve also noticed that even when I plug in a typical two-button mouse with a mouse wheel, the mouse driver included with OS X just can’t get the cursor moving fast enough for my taste, nor does it have the ability to accelerate the cursor. Further, hasn’t anyone at Apple figured out that right-click functionality makes a computer much easier to use? Sure, you can use the right mouse button on a lot of Mac applications if you buy a third-party mouse, but even then, the right-click functionality on the Macintosh is still vastly inferior to that of Windows XP applications. When, oh when, will Apple finally give up on this misguided single-button fetish? “
When will the morons using the Right Click button figure out that you can do the same thing on a Mac by holding down a single key and clicking a single button on the mouse?
Why don’t you complain about something worthwhile?
With regards to multi button mice, whilst I do like right click it is interesting how you do actually begin to take more advantage of all the other keyboard shortcuts when you do start using a single button mouse/trackpad. More than one button can make you lazy and stop you getting the full benefit. That said I use a trackball from my old pc days and I do love it so do use the other buttons cos they’re there. If it broke I would seriously consider doing away with the buttons.
Moronic is buying into the idea that ctrl-click is somehow just as efficient as right-click. One-handed operation of a mouse is far more convenient for lots of circumstances. <cough>
I’m not a moron, and I use right-clicking with OS X all the time. It is far easier to do than hold down a key with one hand while clicking a button than the other.
For those who use multiple operating systems, Apple’s commitment to single-button mice has no productivity gains or ease-of-use gains.
I find the comment about single-button mice in the article to be very common (and valid) complaint by the other 95% of the computer-using polulation – particularly for laptops.
This is the 1st article on powermac performace that I have read from Charlie White that is positive. I’m stunned (and I’m not saying he’s a mac basher).
Makes me almost want to go out a buy a dual G5 powermac…
– Mark
Also, for those with only one hand, right-clicking is easier to do than hold down another key on the keyboard with the missing limb…
As a european professor, I don’t know very much about PCs. I know about cars. Questions like: how many HP has this car?, What about maxim speed?, and so on are tipicaly american… and, this time, wrong. Numbers don’t tell you very much about cars. And, perhaps, not about computers. A Mac is a Mac (and a Dell a Dell).
buy a mini and use whatever mouse you want to!!
to each his own.
Apple probably should give the option of a two button, but they don’t
Too bad Digital Media Online’s benchmark are skewed toward Windows, since applications he uses are probably optimized for Windows, not for MacOS. One thing bother’s me most is his hard disk test. Apple should address that problem. May be it is as simple as turning off the Journaling on MacOS (but I don’t know if that explains the read speed).
I think the issue with the mouse is not only about the contextual menu, but also, and most importantly to me, its about scrolling. When i sit down at any of my colleagues Macs and want to scroll down to the bottom of the page, and there is not scrollwheel, is is really annoying. i use a multibutton mouse on my mac at the office. (2 buttons and scroll Wheel) and at home I have a intellimouse explorer 2 with 6 buttons, but although i have assigned them all, I don’t use the functionality of all 6 buttons.
professor:
Take your “typically american” comment and shove it.
Take a look at BMW and Mercedes quality these days and tell me how they stack up to the American brands. 10 years ago they were comparible to the Japanese brands. Not anymore. BMW iDrive using Windows. Very sad. BMW used to make some beautiful, reliable cars. I don’t think you know very much about cars. Mercedes still makes beautiful cars, but can’t keep them out of the shop.
Numerical values are important to some people, not just Americans. Like this number: how many times did BMW 7-series customers RETURN their crappy, ugly cars back to BMW because they could not figure out how to start the engine?
How about your wonderful European Airbus A380? It carries more people than the 787, but it is technologically inferior, burning more fuel/passenger, utilizing current design trends, offering nothing really new or innovative. You Europeans have gone for quantity versus quality, and it shows.
There is more to an automobile than numbers, and if you say it that way, you might sound more intelligent, especially being a “European professor” and all. Quality and value are important too.
I saw an example of one reason why Apple sticks to a single-button mouse earlier this week. The user was an elderly iMac user whose Mac I had just upgraded to OS X. I had it connected to a 2-button scroll wheel mouse and nothing I could tell him would allow him to use the mouse correctly. He only knew about clicking a mouse button when necessary and not that he had to click the left button and not the right or scroll wheel (which itself is a button). Young children and in fact new computer users of all ages have the same problem.
If you want a multi-button mouse, go out and buy one. Apple’s mouse works for everyone.
This is nothing more than a comparison of how fast each machine runs After Effects. One application. And the CineBench 2003 benchmark is based on CINEMA 4D. So that’s two apps. Hardly a comprehensive test if you ask me, and who knows how much each of these apps favor one processor architecture over the other.
What I would like to see is a speed comparison done using a video editing project done on the 2 machines, where each machine is free to use whatever software is available to get the job done.
Isn’t that a real life test?
The debate over a one- or two-button is ridiculous. Apple should just let consumers make a choice when ordering a computer. At least when ordering on-line, it would be the easiest thing in the world for Apple to do. It really is just SJ’s obstinacy. (Typically, a good thing, but clearly not always…).
This is cool and all but. They should do a comp with the right soft. If avid is good on a wintell pc, then go with avid vs FCP. stuff like this comparing too of the same programs on the two different platforms is dumb. They should compare using the best apps on each system. That would actualy tell me something other than who optomizes for windows and who optomizes for Mac OS X.
So Gordon, what you are saying is that Apple produces the most powerful OS on the planet. Its users are more technically competent than the typical Windows user. But Steve Jobs wants to put a 1 button mouse in his systems because he doesn’t want to confuse us? Come on. The guys a brilliant man but an ass too. He’s letting his pride get the best of him. You’d be amazed at how many people are turned off from a Mac from something as simple as the mouse. If Steve would swallow his pride and put a two button scroll mouse on every system, it would help alot. First impressions go a long way to a purchase. 512MB of ram standard and a two button scroll mouse would help sell a lot more. I sound ridiculous but most of the buying public thinks this way.
This is such a useless speed test suite. Cinebench is ported poorly for Mac, but not as poorly as Adobe AfterEffects. I would say to toss out the Cinebench test, and use Final Cut Pro for to do the video tasks on the Mac. Adobe AfterEffects has been shown to run only about 10% faster on a dual CPU Mac than on a single CPU Mac – obviously Adobe programmers don’t know jack about multithreaded programming. Final Cut Pro runs at least 70% faster with a second CPU.