Mac OS X Leopard -- Introducing Vista 2.0

Well, there's one! Anyone else???



Yes. You can. Supposedly some Mac users posted on the Mac Forums about OC'ing their machines to acheive better scores in 3D Mark 05. Their scores weren't too bad, but nothing to brag about. But OC'ing a Mac brings up some issues like Cooling. Unless Mac is so special it produces no heat?

Hey! Jake!! AVG Anti-Virus = Free!! Works better than Norton's.
You're right though- Upgrading a Mac is costly. Very Costly. If you watched Jobs talk about their new Apple store on 5th Avenue, the first thing that comes to my mind is "Wow! Apple sounds like it only wants the rich or very wealthy to own one?" But I'm sure every family living under less than ideal financial situations can afford it.

And gaming on a Mac is still a bad deal. Sure, maybe if all you play is Solitaire it'll work. But when you start having problems with Steam & HL2, or a couple others, when you call/email Tech Support, you may be up the creek w/o the paddle.

There are certainly offices full of Macs. Ours isn't, but the company below us is, and I think that the one below them is as well. Somebody had a huge van outside recently into which they were putting a whole load of old G4 towers. My flatmate wouldn't be able to eat if she couldn't get paid to sort out business-related Mac problems.

I recently bought a nice little small-case PC system, because there was no sufficiently powerful Apple alternative, but if there had been I would have paid a premium for it (and that premium is not huge). The reason is simple - OS X, and the effortless hardware compatibility that comes with it, is worth that money to me. Going back to XP is like going from XP to Windows 98... or maybe 3.1. And all of the third-party applications that I use apart from games are worse (apart from the cross-platform ones, and even then they are sometimes worse). Oh god, Google Desktop instead of Spotlight? Where is my Quicksilver? Where is Acquisition and Transmit? Where is Yojimbo - what, Evernote is the best it gets? Argh! Stop it!

I accept your challenge.

Mac Pro

1. Dual 3 GHz Xeon processors
   
2. 2 GB RAM
   
3. 250 GB Disk
   
4. nVidia GeForce 7300 GT 256 MB
   
5. SuperDrive

Cost: $3599


Dell

1. Dual 3 GHz Xeon Processors
   
2. 2 GB RAM
   
3. 250 GB Disk
   
4. nVidia Quadro FX 3500 256 MB
   
5. SuperDrive equivalent

Cost: $4018


The Mac Pro is $500 cheaper for equivalent systems. As anyone can see, Apple has strategically priced it's workstation-class computers (and Xserves) to be lower cost than Dell. This isn't even taking into account the value added by the industrial design, MacOS, and iLife.

Feel free to retort when Dell responds with a price reduction. Until then, I think this is more than settled.

~Ulrika~

It has been demonstrated that equivalent machines have the same relative price (although for the time being Apple is about 15% cheaper), thus the arguments above about upgrades and cost make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Finally, once again I must remind you that Apple hardware is PC compatible, meaning that gamers can run and use WinXP for the one thing it's actually good at -- playing games. I know that's the only reason I'll have it on my new machine.

~Ulrika~

Apple sucks!
</troll>

I know, I'm troll derailing

You said equivalent, you do realize that a quadro FX is a cutting edge 850.00 video card that vastly out perfroms the Ge-force 7600. which is a standard 150-200 video card, so add another 650 to that mix..again, not an equivalent machine. But more mac smoke and mirrors. Oh and don't forget, the dell includes a monitor.

Of course in any game, my little amd desktop for 2000 bucks will out perform either of those machines. And it will outperform them in photoshop and most other static graphics applications as well. The 300 bucks I spent on my physics processor will make it scream, scream past either machine on games which support independent physics processing..not that SL is a hot bed of realistic physics.

And it will have equivalent performance on spreadsheets and most ordinary business applications (yeah four processors is faster, but in excel the difference is meaningless).

So if I want a asset server for second life, by god dell is the first place I will call. If I were doing serious machima and and 3-d animation to make the next "nemo" I would be all over a dell work station, and spend the couple hundred bucks i saved on more memory. But alas I am not doin any of that.

So $2400 bucks buys me a superior gaming machine to either of the above.

Now if money were no object, you ask, what would I buy? A fully loaded version of this:

http://www.alienware.com/product_detail_pages/Aurora_ALX/aurora_overview.aspx?SysCode=PC-AURORA-ALX-R7&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT

Ok this is trolling, buit it comes from a comment in my in box, and does not strucly apply to AJA: "Gaming on a Mac is like having avi sex with a rubber on." Even if ya disagree with the premise, the expression is brilliant.

There. Got them with very close video cards.

Mac Pro

1. Dual 3 GHz Xeon processors
   
2. 2 GB RAM
   
3. 250 GB Disk
   
4. nVidia GeForce 7300 GT 256 MB
   
5. SuperDrive
   
6. No monitor

Cost: $3599


Dell

1. Dual 3 GHz Xeon Processors
   
2. 2 GB RAM
   
3. 250 GB Disk
   
4. ATI FireGL V7200 256 MB
   
5. SuperDrive equivalent
   
6. No monitor

Cost: $3918


The Mac Pro is $320 (10 %) cheaper for equivalent systems. As anyone can see, Apple has strategically priced it's workstation-class computers (and Xserves) to be lower cost than Dell. This isn't even taking into account the value added by the industrial design, MacOS, and iLife. Note that the Dell does not include a monitor.

So the myth of the comparatively expensive Apple system has been busted. That's one of the most important things one should take away from this new round of machines. They're competitive now.

As I understand it, Xeons are 64-bit processors that perform on par with (if not faster than) 64-bit AMD processors. AMD processors are less expensive though.

~Ulrika~

Then to top it off, the 20" monitor that Apple offers only has a 16ms response time (ghastly horrible for gaming in contrast to monitors you can get for 2/3 the price that have a 2ms response time) and they want to charge $700 for it. It's pretty much the highest price monitor out there for having such a poor response time.

They're not very good at lowering the price of their hardware when it is no longer top of the line. A year from now they'll probably only drop $150-$200 off the price of their current mac Pro's and brag on their site about how great the deal is.... "Look at these great savings!"

Yes but my little amd desk top has a thousand dollars worth of upgrades that neither of those machines have. I don't haver a second processor, whihc is why I think the movie files and huge calcs (like compressing dvd files, etc.) would warrant a workstation...but a work station is huge overkill itself.

I don't know enough about the ati-fire to compare it with the geforce..but recall, that the price difference here is eaten up by the video card, if we strip those out and assume and upgrade, i think dell has the edge.

Lets reduce the argument to analogy, because it is a good one, and I am impressed with my own cleverness of course. (guys try not to look too lost-and forgive me ulrika, for using your name-its fictional and any resemblance is purley coincincidental).

Ulrika says: "I need black heels to go to the ball. The jimmy Choos are wonderful and the best shoe for me to wear, besides they are only $380 which is cheaper than the black manolo blahniks that are $420."

Jake says: "The Stuart Weitzmans are better looking, and they are only $240. And the BCBGS are even better, and on sale and you can get them for $130."

Most of america says: "wow I can't beleive I just paid $80 dollars for a pair of nine west black heels-they are so expensive, but i needed something better than I can get at payless."

It's nice that they're being competitive on prices for high-end towers now. That's a step in the right direction.

Now they just need to do the same for low-end towers, which they currently don't offer at all. I'm talking towers, not computers that are built into lcd monitors with poor response time that can't be upgraded.

After thinking about this for a day or two, I am now inclined to agree with you. Their Pro line is now upgradable and competitive but they lack an upgradable low-end option. I'm officially adding that to my wish list.

Perhaps if demand is high enough, this is something that they'll do. After all there is so much waste in reselling a new LCD display with every single iMac.

~Ulrika~

Ulrika, thanks for considering what I was saying.

What can I say? I'm a slave to the incontrovertible logical argument.

~Ulrika~

damn and I was trying to disctract her with foot wear.

get independently informed...

Esp. look at configuration recommendations at the last pages. Mac Pros are cheap, and very expensive.

To put in my 2 cents, when using a Mac Pro as a platform to run SL on:

1. 4 cores are useless when just running a single threaded app. like SL, as 3 of them are idle. If you use SL in a multiasking environment (together with productivity/gfx apps.) then the 4 core configuration can be more useful.

2. Until 3rd party ISV's (esp. Adobe) do not deliver universal binaries, you'll still experience the performance hit of running these apps emulated using Rosetta. With hardware like the Mac Pro, the resulting performance will probably be better than a G5 though, but not that much. And the emulated software still doesn't run bug free.
An option is to go Bootcamp, and run the windows versions. But I doubt running your main productivity environment unders windows, is why people bought a mac in the first place.

OMG! My new Power Mac arrives on Friday!

I ... can't ... wait ... argh.

~Ulrika~

great --get your ass back in world and get some work done

I'm almost to that phase in my forum-coding-SL cycle. After that it's time to redo my website -- ulrikasheim needs a makeover.

~Ulrika~

let me know if ya want my graphics help.

I think she needs help with her Wacom tablet. She keeps pushing the pictures up against it but they don't go into the computer.

tell her to take two tablets and call me in the morning.

That was a groaner, but it got me laughing for a while.

Ha ha! I killed her.