WWDC 2003: G5, Panther, iChat AV,...

[Ace]

I'm stealing this line from somebody else, but it is just too classic.

In the computer marketing industry there are only 3 things: lies, damned lies, and benchmarks.

I don't really give a crap about the SPEC numbers for the G5. All that matters is once I get one in my hands and can do some real world tests in it. Then I'll find a buddy with an Athlon64 or Opteron to compare it against in the real world.

Also, does it really matter that much about the speed? We have been lagging far behind for a while now, but the G5 has put us right back on the map. We may be slightly ahead, dead even, or slightly behind based on who you believe, but there is no denying that we are in the ballpark. If we have a processor that can crunch raw numbers about as fast as an x86, we still come out on top cuz it goes in a beautiful Apple-designed system running the greatest OS on the planet.

[*DAMN Elandrion]

quite true, Ace. I'd like to see some benchmarks comparing the new G5 to the old G4 800MHz - 1.4 GHz. I like to see the new machines as a big step forward inside the Mac product line. It doesn't really matter if we/Apple's machines are little faster or little slower than actual PC's; what matters is that they are way faster than the old machines.

[Mr. Lothario]

     Something that occurred to me an hour or two after watching the keynote replay is that there was no mention of the "piles" interface in Panther. I wonder if that was scrapped, or if they just didn't bother to play it up?

[Cobra]

Piles, you say???

[Cow]

maybe 10.4? its a pretty big deal i could see them taking another year or so on that project, changing the entire file system.

[Mr. Lothario]

     It doesn't have anything to do with changing the file system. It's just putting a visual metaphor around a number of documents, so that they appear to the user to be a coherent collection.

     From the rumor-type "demos" that I saw, a pile has an icon representing a stack of paper or documents, and when you click on it, it "expands" into a listing of all files in the pile. I believe you can also open everything in the pile at once, although I may be imagining that.

[BFG]

Ive kinda missed out on the 'piles' project... could you enlighten me on its existance? Somthing like wtf is piles?  

[|MP|Buccaneer]

quite true, Ace. I'd like to see some benchmarks comparing the new G5 to the old G4 800MHz - 1.4 GHz. I like to see the new machines as a big step forward inside the Mac product line.

Elandrion, I saw some benchmarks comparing the new G5's to the 1GHz G4.  I'll find the link for you, but roughly 2 - 3 times faster on the tests.

But even then, the benchmarks don't really test the overall system, just the CPU (and even then, not always well).  The faster bus, pci bus, hard drives and video card.  The only tests that mean anything are the real world apps.  

BFG - Piles is a User Interface idea that was highly touted by the UI experts of the world.  It was going to be part of the Copeland release (the OS that never was).  It's been rumored that Piles, or at least some elements from it will be in OSX.  These rumors have been going on since 10.1, but keep getting louder and louder with each release.

I saw something conceptual about it a year or so ago, and I wasn't a big fan (it shifted the focus from files and folders to stacks of objects based on time of creation / modification).  This could be way off, since it was a UI presentation I was at, not anything by Apple.  I'm sure there's more out there on the web about it though, at least a better description then the one I just gave.

[BFG]

Ahh ty bucc. Missed out on that one... And gave up waiting for Copland  
If it is working on the principle of what you were saying, Piles sounds like a very interesting GUI. Yeah ive been reading a lot about trying to move new GUI's into somthing (heh like Jobs said..) more user orientated and less system orientated). The concepts of UI based on time creation sounds pretty wild... and i must say im not leaping of my chair at it.. But then again Apple does have a history of coming up with revolutionary GUI's ;0)

Oh and i think the biggest thing guys should be looking at apart from the 64bit processing is the Sheer scale of the System Bus. Its freaking huge, and i think this will have a very much more significant effect on speed and future inprovments than perhaps people freaking about the processors being ramped up a 100Mhz or somthing. The pure ability to store massive amounts of information in RAM without having to write to Disk must have absolutly Huge significance for RAM hungry programs such as Adobe Photoshop

[|MP|Buccaneer]

The pure ability to store massive amounts of information in RAM without having to write to Disk must have absolutly Huge significance for RAM hungry programs such as Adobe Photoshop

I just hope that Apple can tweak the OS to actually use the RAM.  I am one of those guys that adds every bit of RAM possible to the system, and it pisses me off to find that the system is still running virtual memory when there are 1.5 freaking gigs of real RAM there.  

Right now, real memory used ~128MB, virtual memory used ~720MB  and available RAM is 1.5GB.  Now explain to me how the system is faster using all the VM when real RAM is available?  Actually, I think I'll ask that on the Apple forums =D.

As for the Piles, according to this article from the Register ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/30360.html ) it sounds like it's meta data based, not time based, but also sounds like the presentation I saw in other ways.