Re: The Children of Woz (Re: Apple, Jobs, and the irony of it)

[Sheldon Simms <sheldonsimms@yahoo.com>]

On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 06:35:39 +0000, Supertimer wrote:

> Richard Kilpatrick <richard@dmc12.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>>The G5 is 'insanely great' - it is the most 
>>powerful computer /anyone/ should be able to buy over the shelf, use 
>>right away - no assembly required, no shopping for cases, motherboards 
>>and such

I agree that the G5 is the best computer Apple has built in
years, You probably have to go back to the Mac II to find
a Macintosh that is as technologically advanced as the
G5. Apple has spent years, almost decades, one generation
behind PC technology. The G5 isn't ahead of current PCs,
but at least it's approximately level. And, amazingly for
Apple, the price isn't extortionate. Sure it's expensive,
but the Apple of the 1990s would have charged $1999/$2999/
$4999 for the three models instead of $1999/$2399/$2999.

The best thing Apple has done recently, however, is to
bring out Mac OS X. With OS X I finally feel like I control
the Mac instead of the Mac controlling me. A Mac Centris
650 was my main computer for several years and it always
bugged the hell out of me when a program hung the computer,
or, even worse, the OS started seemingly ignoring menu
selections. With OS X I can "force quit" or, even better,
pull up a terminal and "kill -9 -1" bwahahaha!

> And every time I build a PC, assembling my
> AMD processor, Crucial memory, motherboard
> with chipset and design of my choice, getting
> into the guts of the hardware and bringing a
> new computer system to life, I reach connect
> with my experience of owning an Apple II
> computer.

Some people wonder why I built my computer instead of
buying a prefab ("they're so inexpensive!"). Sure you can
buy a good computer with a 2.5 Ghz Pentium / 256 Mb RAM /
60 Gb Hdd for $700, but they're usually junk inside.
(So were Macs before the G5)

My computer is an Athlon XP 1800+ that I built two years
ago. I recently acquired a prefab Athlon XP 1600+ incidently
at an auction. It has a no-name motherboard, inadequate cooling,
PC-133 SDRAM, etc. The nominal difference in processor speed
between my computer and the prefab is 133Mhz, so mine is
nominially 9.5% faster. However my computer is actually
approximately twice as fast as the prefab at performing
actual tasks, such as finishing a "folding at home" work unit.

The difference is that I did some research and made sure that
I bought a good mainboard with a fast chipset, lots of low-
latency DDR memory, and set my BIOS settings appropriately.
Although it doesn't affect performance, I also got a good CPU
heat sink and lots of quiet fans. The result is that my CPU
usually runs at less than 45C under a full load and won't die
of heat anytime soon.