What's the difference..

Macs are sexy. I'd love a mac if they werent so damn expensive.

As for the thing about instruction sets, its more a problem that the MacOS API is different to Windows, which makes porting difficult. You can run windows on Alpha chips, although you need the alpha version of windows, obviously, and alpha versions of programs to be able to run them. Theres no real reason why Windows couldnt be ported to the PowerPC chips that Apple machines use.

The problem really is that coders often write their software "for a particular OS" - so if they write a windows program, they'll use the windows API. The downside to this is that it wont compile on any other OS :). A way around this is to use a portability library like Qt (for GUI stuff) or LibSDL (for DirectX-type game stuff). Instead of writing to use the Windows API or the MacOS API, you're writing for the SDL API, and the SDL guys take care of 90% of the porting for you. I managed to get PrBoom running on BeOS the other day, and it required almost no modification (PrBoom uses SDL). A very good quality and useful library.

Macs are popular among the artsy types.

MWHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!111

Not anymore.

Yeah, Trent Reznor uses a Mac and listen to the shit he turns out.

blah...

For two grand you can get a 1.4ghz Athlon with at least 512 megs of ram. You can run tons of things on it... depending on which OS you use.

For the same price you can get a 800mhz G4 with 256 megs of ram. It only has 5% of the software market unless you put Linux on it but you would be wiser to buy the other system for Linux as it would perform better.

That just does not sound like a deal to me. A whole computer just for Photoshop and Maya?

For two grand you can get a 1.4ghz Athlon with at least 512 megs of ram.

Two Grand? Jesus, welcome to last year.

. It only has 5% of the software market unless you put Linux on it ..

And then you have 6% of the software market:) Of course, some think market share is not relevant - I think in the Andromeda sector of our universe.

Chipwise, the Mac in the beginning was a lot better, Motorola 68xxx. The PowerPC base design is excellent - A clean design with no warts to worry about. It may have beat the pants off the PC stuff -IF- they had market share to justify spending the billions it takes in investment.

RISC is sort of a funny story by itself. Like many "fads" it was hyped a lot. Then RISC started getting CISCY instructions (like for swapping program states), so the purity is gone and the practicality set in.

For bang for the buck, Macs can't compete. Doesn't make them bad though. Wonder what would have happened if they had they lowered prices a long time ago rather than keeping them artificially high for the perceived "value" hype?

sephiroth:

Um, new PC's haven't come with floppy disk drives for several years now, so why the heck would Imacs?

. It only has 5% of the software market unless you put Linux on it ..

And then you have 6% of the software market:)

Well, on Linux you have WINE...

Chipwise, the Mac in the beginning was a lot better, Motorola 68xxx.

Heh. 68k beats the crap out of any other processor :P So, everyone, go and buy TI-92+, they have 68k.

Is 68k really better than 8008?

The PowerPC base design is excellent - A clean design with no warts to worry about. It may have beat the pants off the PC stuff -IF- they had market share to justify spending the billions it takes in investment.

Quite possible. i386 does suck, so PowerPC might be better. It's just that we're all so used to it ;)

RISC is sort of a funny story by itself. Like many "fads" it was hyped a lot. Then RISC started getting CISCY instructions (like for swapping program states), so the purity is gone and the practicality set in.

That's why URISC was invented -- an assembly language with one instruction. :)

For bang for the buck, Macs can't compete. Doesn't make them bad though. Wonder what would have happened if they had they lowered prices a long time ago rather than keeping them artificially high for the perceived "value" hype?

Macs are still designed for the "dumb users". That's what makes them bad IMHO. They're home computers. And I don't want a home computer. I would die of shame :)

Macintoshes SUCK and have no user-compatability whatsoever.

Archvile64: Compatibility to the user? Whats that?

PC is a personal computer, Macintosh is a soap box made of cheap plastic.

So computeres have to be grey. You hate them just because they add colour to the desktop? Oh boy. Actually, the housing of my G4 is a dream to open and it looks wonderful. The interior design is high quality - you will not see this quality in most PCs.

Macintoshes SUCK and have no user-compatability whatsoever.

Archvile64: Compatibility to the user? Whats that?

Exactly ;)

Macs exist purely so that idiotic people can post anti-PC messages in forums and message boards and then get flamed.

nightmare: If some "idiotic" people post things like "PC users are idiots" here or somewhere in the net and then get flamed by you then it is OK. Go and fight them where ever you see them.
I do not feel superior obout any PC user and have not post any PC flame.

You cannot expect me to keep my voice down if some people posting dumb shit without having any higher computer knowledge than "imacs have no floppy" or "macs have no windows"

PC is a personal computer, Macintosh is a soap box made of cheap plastic.

So computeres have to be grey. You hate them just because they add colour to the desktop? Oh boy.

No, i don't like them because the color on the desktop is THE ONLY thing they added ;)

By "soap box" I didn't mean 'colorful', but 'just as useful, complex and reliable'.

You cannot expect me to keep my voice down if some people posting dumb shit without having any higher computer knowledge than "imacs have no floppy" or "macs have no windows"

And what level of knowledge do you have? Can you explain, for example, whether RISC processors are better than CISC, and why? Because I can't, honestly, I don't know which are better.

PC computers use X86 instructions to operate. Programs are available in a number of 'languages' (programming code) and several Operating Systems are available although most people use Windows because it has the largest software base.

Mac computers are RISC based. Reduced InStruCtion set. Unlike PC, everything coded on Macintosh must use the same language. Because of this Macintosh only gets 5% of the software market and most people that use it are either zealots or simply uneducated about the system.

Not to say that it is a useless OS, but it is miles behind everything else in the market. Sure, it was great when it came out... but it hasn't grown nearly as much as everything else has and is only a shadow of it's former glory.

OK, I will try to throw in some knowledge:

CISC: Complex Instruction Set Computing
Every intel cpu and also up to the last Motorola 68040 cpus Apple built and the Motorola 68060 in the last Amiga accelerator cards. The (many) instructions are written in Microcode.


RISC: Reduced Insdtruction Set Computing
All instructions are hard wired, no microcode. IBM found ot in 1975, that 80% of all applications uses to use only 20% of the processors instructions (the 80/20 rule). In the middle eighties, Silicon graphics and Sun introduced the first RISC chips (R3000/R4000...).

Because the RISC chip does not have to handle so many instructions, he is so fast. In fact ALL instructions can be execuuted within one cycle.

That is why a RISC chip is allways up to 4 times as fast as a CISC cpu with the same clock - sorry.

Do you remember the Acron Archimedes coputers with their "Arm" cpu´s? There was an 8mhz Archimedes that was faster than an 33MHz 486.

Yeah, um, installing Linux is probably the best thing you can do on a Mac.

Installing Linux is one of the great things you can do on a Mac.

Because the RISC chip does not have to handle so many instructions, he is so fast. In fact ALL instructions can be execuuted within one cycle.

That is why a RISC chip is allways up to 4 times as fast as a CISC cpu with the same clock - sorry.

/me wonders how a chip can be faster if the clock rate is the same. Am I missing something?

Of course RISC can be faster than CISC, but it can't do the advanced stuff easily. As I already pointed out, you can make an URISC processor, with only one instruction - "negate and jump if not zero", I believe :) - and I don't think it'll work faster than a CISC processor with 1024 instructions.

Each instruction takes less time to execute on a RISC, but there will be more of them.

Installing Linux is one of the great things you can do on a Mac.

Then why didn't you do it? You bought a PC only to play ZDoom, right? And you could've just installed Linux.

honestly macs are not that great, at least in my world. Imacs are horrible pieces of crap. why dont an IMac have a floppy drive and how is in possible to add cards/ram/others to it. second not much is out for macs. they were the first with a GUI and were great years back but then quickly fell behind. Macs are very userfriendly but if u want to do many advanced things it is impossible. macs are ok for graphics but that is about it. I will prefer a good old PC over naything else

Sepiroth:
The imac is only one in Apples series. It is the entry class coming in a compact design with the monitor built in. This machines are sold very cheap and due to their design they lack when it comes to plugging cards in. Personally, I do not like them. The Apple G4 I have is a modular Mac with no screen built in (Tower Design). Its housing can take all cards you want to plug in. The floppy drive is an old fashioned thing. But you can buy those drives seperately. And you can get nice displays for it.

My old black NeXT Cube also does not have a floppy, Steve Jobs abandoned it and replaced it with a magneto-optical drive.

Again: The imac is not THE mac, but an imac is A mac.

For two grand you can get a 1.4ghz Athlon with at least 512 megs of ram. You can run tons of things on it... depending on which OS you use.

For the same price you can get a 800mhz G4 with 256 megs of ram. It only has 5% of the software market unless you put Linux on it but you would be wiser to buy the other system for Linux as it would perform better.

That just does not sound like a deal to me. A whole computer just for Photoshop and Maya?

Deadnail:

Due to the different cpu designs (RISC/CISC, scroll up), the Apple G4 733 is "a bit" faster than a 1.4GHz Athlon. You can also get tons of software for the mac, some games are missing, but the good ones are always coming out for the mac - and how do you feel about the fact, that most PC games are developed on macs? That hurts, does it?

If I want to play one of the games that are missing on the mac due to software publisher´s ingnorance or stupidity, I fire up my PC emulation and can run (nearly) everything (i love such old abandonware games).

But I have to confess that Apple used to treat their loyal customers in a very shitty way in the past. It was like: "Pay your money and get kicked in the face by Apple."

But that does not mean that the machines and the OS is worse.

Peter, what's your take on OSX?

Installing Linux is one of the great things you can do on a Mac.

Then why didn't you do it? You bought a PC only to play ZDoom, right? And you could've just installed Linux.

I told you (I think it was you) before that I tried to run ZDoom on several linux distributions on my Mac, but: ZDoom for linux is made for i386 linux distributions. Linux for Mac is always for PPC Linux. I tried to use the pre-compiled binaries without success and I also tried to compile the source without success and then I lost interest :P

I also tried to compile lxdoom (mbf based) - no success. The only Doom I could install in the several linux was idomm (internet c++ machine).

Also ZDoom does not work in PC emulation, for what reason ever.

Peter, what's your take on OSX?

Uuum, well I have not installed it so far. It is a bid costly and the change would keep me busy for some time. There are many changes. I know that I will have to upgrade (Did I say "upgrade"? Hell, I have to buy the whole OS again).
Compatibility with older apps is not a problem since OSX also has the 9.1 compatibility mode. OSX, as far as I could see it by now, can be modified by users like any other MacOS earlier.
The fact that it is linux based makes it
1. more stable 2. more difficult to keep alive

When people (not you) use to complain that Apple has ripped linux´ technologies to make an OS from it, the use to forget that Apple bought Steve Jobs firm "NeXT" with the idea in mind to integrate the technology of NeXT Step/OpenStep in the MacOS. There is nothing wrong when a company dares to add good things to their own product. Also Microsoft has added Apple developed things like Quicktime into their OS (but I admit that what Apple did is a bit more). Also Apple has had their own Unix OS for their server machines, but I am not sure if it was developed by Apple.

Because the RISC chip does not have to handle so many instructions, he is so fast. In fact ALL instructions can be execuuted within one cycle.

That is why a RISC chip is allways up to 4 times as fast as a CISC cpu with the same clock - sorry.

/me wonders how a chip can be faster if the clock rate is the same. Am I missing something?

Of course RISC can be faster than CISC, but it can't do the advanced stuff easily. As I already pointed out, you can make an URISC processor, with only one instruction - "negate and jump if not zero", I believe :) - and I don't think it'll work faster than a CISC processor with 1024 instructions.

Each instruction takes less time to execute on a RISC, but there will be more of them.

Lament: I did not pointed towards you when I wrote abou people with no or low knowledge :).

Most applications does not use all the instructions a cpu has. The risc cpu can execute the most needed instructions within one cycle. The many instructions in a CISC are, lets say mostly wasted and take power from the processor since it has to work with them despite the application does not need them.

Update: Hey, made a big typo:

I wrote
"The many instructions in a >RISC> are, lets say mostly wasted..."

and meant:
"The many instructions in a >CISC< are, lets say mostly wasted..."

This is something I would like to say about the opinion that "Macs are for the dump computer user":

Why do most people enjoy suffering by Microsofts faults and lacks? If a PC user has to download lots of .dll´s before he can make an app (no matter which) running and finally has to reinstall the OS - than it is great and cool and speaks of the skills that user has. And he feels like a tough guy who is able to rule over his system and finally is successfull dispite all problems and difficulties. Just like a man who has ridden a wild horse. Muuuuuhaha :P

But that makes that user not a coder. No way. And there is no reason for feeling sane for that guy. He has wasted time. His time and energy was robbed by the evil Microsoft (do not take that too serious :). If you want to become a coder, you have to learn languages like C or C++.

Look, even fraggle loves macs - and he is a coder.

Macintosh is a soap box made of cheap plastic.

HEY! I happen to own a Mac!

Due to the different cpu designs (RISC/CISC, scroll up), the Apple G4 733 is "a bit" faster than a 1.4GHz Athlon.

But costs a hell of a lot more and you can utilize about 5% as much software as you could with an Athlon. An Athlon is a RISC processor you know, that's why the A 1.4g totally stomps the P4 1.7g.

You can also get tons of software for the mac, some games are missing, but the good ones are always coming out for the mac - and how do you feel about the fact, that most PC games are developed on macs? That hurts, does it?

People can develop on whatever the fuck they want. If the games were developed on Macs there would be more Mac versions wouldn't there? Win2k, Linux and Mac are all good development platforms. However, people make games with the intent to sell them to get profit and most developers simply do not make Mac versions because it would be a waste of money, they could never turn a profit.

The games you do get, like Sin and Quake 2, are months if not years behind the PC equivalents... even the best sellers like Diablo. Some games are cross platform engineered like Q3A and Doom 3... but hey? Where's the Mac version of FAKK2? Undying? Half-Life?

They would develop on a Mac only for the established software, the aforementioned Photoshop and Maya. Maya costs fifteen grand though. Since OSX Adobe has also lost a lot of faith in Apple and is doing simultaneous releases.

If I want to play one of the games that are missing on the mac due to software publisher´s ingnorance or stupidity,

Or the fact that they don't want to spend another $400,000 in payroll and development to port the damn game that will never return the money.

That's why there are no big games released for BeOS. It would be fringe gaming. Mac and Linux aren't totally ignored though.

I fire up my PC emulation and can run (nearly) everything (i love such old abandonware games).

Well hey, you'll need all that make believe power in your CPU to run that too pretty OS, then an emulator, then the game.

But I have to confess that Apple used to treat their loyal customers in a very shitty way in the past. It was like: "Pay your money and get kicked in the face by Apple."

Nothing special here. Most companies treat their customers like shit.

But that does not mean that the machines and the OS is worse.

I think that OS is just coded sloppy. I was playing with a brand new G4 this weekend and the damn thing was taking forever to go from window to window compared to a new PC that would cost half as much, there's just something rotten about that.

One button mice? What if your character has to do more than 'action', such as use, dodge, inventory... or even wants to do things in the OS without waiting for a secondary option or doing stupid tricks with that single button? And why are most of the new Mac mice shaped like hockey pucks? Where's the useability there?

And as for installing DLL's... that's reliant on the game developer. They have the choice of which API they want to use, how they want sound to interface and the whole deal. Sure they cause problems but these problems are easily repaired if you know what you're doing. Adding new libraries does not slow down the system because only programs that use them know they are there. Its not like my whole damn system directory is being loaded into the ram on boot.

You can defend Macs all you want. But as a gaming platform... maybe only for me to set my PC on top of.

I don't mean to sound like a smart ass here, but seriously, thanks...I personally didn't know the difference between a PC or a mac, aside from the fact that macs supposedly process graphics a hell of a lot better. And deadnail, i think peter meant that the graphics and such for games were developed on a mac. Hell, all computer animation for movies, or at least 90% of it is done on macs. That's something I've known for a long time. ILM and Lightstorm use the damn things, no pc's for CGI scenes.

The many instructions in a CISC are, lets say mostly wasted and take power from the processor since it has to work with them despite the application does not need them.

I'm not sure, but maybe are mixing up the architecture with the term instructions? A fixed length instruction is much easier to pipeline. Instructions not used are no big deal - no penalty at all for either design. The ease with with pure RISC designs can decode and execute is the speed advantage - not the number of instructions. All that stuff runs in parallel, not serially.

CISC is basically also "hardwired". Microcode (if we are talking about the same thing) is used for those instructions that are seldom used and/or to make different versions of the same processor and/or to save money (die size) - for example in mainframes (which is where most of my knowledge in this area is from). The microcoded equivalents were always slower than the hardwired ones. IOW, it's not cut & dried which instructions are "microcoded" and which are not.

I haven't read for a few years (and won't feel bad if corrected), so here's a "reason" for the speed: If you know the length of each instruction without having to decode each one, it make the circuitry simpler, hence faster. So that's how you can get most stuff done in 1-tick

In time, there's a see-saw over which one works the "fastest". So CISC can now do MORE than 1 instruction per cycle. QUAKE exploited the FP overlap potential heavily. IOW, it gives an FP instruction and while that's ticking away some fixed point stuff keeps going.

RISC got into a "slowdown" mode for a multi-tasking OS since swapping tasks requires a LOT of RISC instructions. So what happened is IBM made a more complicated instruction to simplify task switching to speed matters up. This is also true for interrupt handling. IOW, the RISC actually started taking on CISC attributes - but for obvious reasons they won't say that flat out.

There are many many other technical issues and if you read about the P4 you'll see why it has problems on programs not compiled specifically for that processor.

In fact, the 64bit processors (last I read) are letting the compiler do all the hard work of assembling the instructions in the right order - keeping the circuits simpler, hence faster.

(But feel free to update me with any new stuff)