Intel has actually recently stated the P4 Netburst architecture doesn’t have legs and its future development will be focused on the Pentium M architecture, starting the the dual core Yonahs in 2006, the desktop oriented Merom shortly after, and dedicated multi-core desktop CPUs including 64 bit functionality in 2007.
If Steve Jobs were to use the Pentium 4 in a shipping consumer machine, he’d look like an ass since it is one of the worst performance/watt situations currently in the industry.
What’s interesting about the announced switch to Intel is what’s not being said. Steve said the Intel roadmap (future chips) was better than IBM (for a variety of plausible reasons). Pentium’s are in the developer/lease systems, as expected, including basic BIOS, so they’ll dual boot. I’d expect the first Intel-based Macs to be “M” and “D,” though we might get surprised with the iMac, Laptops, and PowerMacs.
If Intel has its druthers, Apple will use some variation on their EFI replacement for the basic BIOS. This won’t prevent dual booting, but will likely provide more functionality for Virtualization technology in Intel CPUs. It is quite amazing that Apple has maintained the mystique around their product releases even though we know so much more about the suppliers now, however.
I know they had chip architectures named Willamette, Tualatin, Multnomah, Tillamook and other apparently meaningless names unless you come from Oregon/Southern Washington and recognize the landmarks (River, Town, County, County+Town).
They’re all Northwest Native American names.
Isn’t the G5 just a Power4 PowerPC chip with Altivec bolted on?
I just pray thet they use something (EFI?) to provide some of the same functionality the Open Firmware provided - booting from external sources and target firewire mode, primarily. Old-timey BIOS would really be the blues.
I just pray thet they use something (EFI?) to provide some of the same functionality the Open Firmware provided - booting from external sources and target firewire mode, primarily. Old-timey BIOS would really be the blues.
I second that. It is so handy to boot from your Firewire backup volume. The ability to use a computer as a disk has been very useful to me. I suspect that some of Intel’s sites will have movies in QuickTime as well as WMV format in the future.
Either that or Apple will have to learn to use WMV
Unlikely. WMV is a Microsoft propiatary format and Apple would have to license it. WMV is a direct, propiatary competidor to the open QuickTime formats. Apple wants to kill, not support WMV.
If Intel has its druthers, Apple will use some variation on their EFI replacement for the basic BIOS. This won’t prevent dual booting, but will likely provide more functionality for Virtualization technology in Intel CPUs. It is quite amazing that Apple has maintained the mystique around their product releases even though we know so much more about the suppliers now, however.
The bastards.
Whatever Apple uses, having the option to dual boot is a MUST. Frankly, between you and me, that makes Macs like trojan horses. Users would then get a computer that runs OS X for security, stability, and productivity. All browsing, email, and other apps would be done on the Mac. Then, when necessary, boot over to Windows to run a special application.
Eventually, there’d be less need (and fewer users) booting into Windows.
Windows uses QuickTime to make windows users’ lives easier. I’m sure that cuts into market share too. If you give more options, you get more people.
And there are times when I, too, want to kill WMV. It has some… problems sometimes. Things in the guide are really screwy. Other than that, eh, I don’t really care either way. I like RealONE. Dual booting would be nice. But I think security of dual booting would be a major issue. Break into windows, get a good lock on spyware, then move into the apple programs. The more apple users there are, the more viruses will be written for it. Same goes for stability. If your apple OS runs stabily on a machine, your Windows OS should too. And the products that are still considered most productive ARE MS works, and MS office. They work with everything. They EVEN run mac fonts and documents now. (I have Office 2000) And you can upgrade it to run macintoch fonts. Office 2003 works even better for that. Apples don’t usually run most Windows programs, do they?
Either that or Apple will have to learn to use WMV
Unlikely. WMV is a Microsoft propiatary format and Apple would have to license it. WMV is a direct, propiatary competidor to the open QuickTime formats. Apple wants to kill, not support WMV.
Plus WMV sucks ass compared to H.264 as far as quality is concerned…
Here is my guess at what “it” is. How about a set top box that is connected with a video iPod? The box would be used as the “store” point and to view movies on your TV, kind of a giant dock with a Large hard drive built in. Then it could connect to the video iPod to take your movies on the road via a dock connector or a wireless. Does anyone remember that rumor about wireless firewire a while back? Along those lines, does anyone think that Apple may have a lawsuit on its hands with this> http://http://www.sonos.com/us/products/controller/index.htm?tref=prod2
Isn’t the G5 just a Power4 PowerPC chip with Altivec bolted on?
I just pray thet they use something (EFI?) to provide some of the same functionality the Open Firmware provided - booting from external sources and target firewire mode, primarily. Old-timey BIOS would really be the blues.
EFI promises a bit more functionality than Open Firmware, I suspect we’ll be very happy if this comes to pass.
The Power4 is a two core, 130nm, huge-cache having bohemoth with large transistors that promise much higher reliability. The G5 is based on a single core, cache pared “light” variant with Altivec bolted on. I believe a fair amount of the front end logic is unique as well.
My WMV quality is as good as any quality I’ve ever seen. Professional movies and pictures, museum shots, paintings drawings, whatever. What version were you using?
[Plus WMV sucks ass compared to H.264 as far as quality is concerned…
Here is my guess at what “it” is. How about a set top box that is connected with a video iPod? The box would be used as the “store” point and to view movies on your TV, kind of a giant dock with a Large hard drive built in. Then it could connect to the video iPod to take your movies on the road via a dock connector or a wireless. Does anyone remember that rumor about wireless firewire a while back? Along those lines, does anyone think that Apple may have a lawsuit on its hands with this> http://http://www.sonos.com/us/products/controller/index.htm?tref=prod2
I’ve seen some videos in WMV that were very good, and compared favorably to anything in QuickTime…
Except…
QuickTime and H.264. My gawd, what a difference. It literally blows away anything Apple’s used before, and much better than anything you’re likely to see on Windows.
Check the Apple QuickTime site for the update to QT 7 and view the H.264 movies.
Actually there’s been quite a bit of comparison on this already, and it has been shown fairly conclusively that H.264 retains fine detail quite a bit better, at the same bitrate, as WMV’s MPEG 4 implementation. 3ivx and other solutions match or beat H.264’s resolution of fine detail. Also, in true MS form, the first MS encoders generated sloppy, non-standards complaint video that would perform poorly on players other than their own.
All this adds up to WMV being the red-headed stepchild of MPEG 4 encoding methods.
I was using what ever crappy version they have for the Macintosh and BTW, I was comparing it to the quality of H.264.
[quote author=“Bambi”]Check the Apple QuickTime site for the update to QT 7 and view the H.264 movies.
I forget, is a QT v.7 available for Wintel yet? Because we all know that Kyle is just a windows troll looking for an ego fix.
[quote author=“Chevalier” date=“1122983104”>Actually there’s been quite a bit of comparison on this already, and it has been shown fairly conclusively that H.264 retains fine detail quite a bit better, at the same bitrate, as WMV’s MPEG 4 implementation. 3ivx and other solutions match or beat H.264’s resolution of fine detail. Also, in true MS form, the first MS encoders generated sloppy, non-standards complaint video that would perform poorly on players other than their own.
All this adds up to WMV being the red-headed stepchild of MPEG 4 encoding methods.
Isn’t this similar to the AAC vs. MP3 argument? AAC and MP3 can encode and sound similar at the same bit rate, but the AAC files are always smaller. I’m pretty sure that while 3ivx can encode at the same bit rate and look as good as H.264, the file size of H.264 is much smaller.
