Sun axes Millennium CPU, plus barrel loads of Apples

How ironic. Ballmer says this about their settlement with SUN:

"This agreement recognises that cutting edge R&D and intellectual property protection are the foundation for the growth and success of our industry."

and SUN cuts its Millennium CPU project just after tapeout. True, the Fujitsu (HAL's) Sparc64 chip is better, but this action is pretty drastic cut of hardcore R&D. SUN also has no love for LINUX. Never has, and as long as Solaris is around, never will. Linux scales up to multi cpu machines easily (especially with 2.6 kernel) as well as down to the embedded space. IBM will ride the tide of Linux success while SUN and Microsoft are silly for not wanting to compete.

Microsoft does make good products, and with such vast armies of talented programmers, is it really that hard to port Word over to Linux, or have open standards for Calendar and Address book programs. Microsoft knows that these applications tie buisness processes and Management (ie. the guys with the $$$) to their products. Now with a real alternative ... OpenOffice/Mozilla/Ximian combo... there is a real alternative desktop platform and guess who owns StarOffice.. SUN. I hope Sun can stay true to the idea of choice and honest competition... but just thinking about how Sun has acted in the past, this seems like such an easy out.

My $.02
Name, email address supplied

More Sun

Why is it that peon programmers like myself could see back in 1998 that SUN should be forming 'ties' with Microsoft as opposed to trying to shut Microsoft down. The biggest deterrent to the true proliferation of Java has not been Microsoft it has been McNealy. McNealy has failed at two of the basic rules that successful businesses are governed by; 1: pay attention to the customer; and 2: Don't disparage your competitor.

Sincerely
Crocket

Nforce 3 250-G tested

This is such a tainted speed report I am surprised it passed the high standard of the inquirer.

As you will note the speed in the ProE (high-end mechanical engineering tool) test is based cpu AND graphics cards, the reason for The speed difference is not because the cpu's but because the video cards, a q4-980 video card Is 3-year technology and is like comparing P4 against a P3.

ProE is very, very graphics intensive and the true bench mark that shows these quality results is here.

From the above link is shown that a FX3000 which is a $2,000 video card is twice as fast as a $300 Nvidia 980 card as one may expect.

Cheers
james

WE'VE HAD an unprecedented number of emails about this Ryan Hunter article: Why I've dropped MS Windows for the Apple Mac. Many thanks. Due to the volume of emails, this correspondence is now closed.

Apple Gravity
Nicely done. I made the flip in 2002 and have no real regrets. I've found that upgrade-itis seems to wear off once you switch to a map. My wife has a 2 year old iMac and I have a year old Powerbook and I don't feel the need to run out and buy something new like I used to every time my Intel box got a year old.

Tom B

Core Values
Dear Mr. Hunter,

I enjoyed your personal article on your decision to take up the Mac again. As OS X in it's present form is still young I hope some of the typical glitches will be ironed out soon. As to cost and hardware power, I am excited with IBM's roadmap for their Power development. This year will see the power of their P5 design translated to the 975 for Apple's G5's by late summer. By the next summer we'll be getting the 976 with two cores on a smaller die size running past 4ghz in speed.

Did you know that the 970 design has a more powerful emulation section? It has it's own cache and two data paths for simultaneous IO. The rumors of Windows emulation built into OSX in future releases may happen when the 760 appears. Many are the arguments against this, among them the citing the dropping of OSX development by independent firms, including MS. This would be due to their capacity to sell their Windows applications for Mac users without further costs to them. This would be a bad thing; but, as you'll see at the Developer's conference, Apple is making progress on making the Mac a strong development platform, especially for Java. Should they make enough progress, the use of it for MS platform programming might be in the future as well. Longhorn might provide an opportunity for Apple to provide competitive hardware capable of running legacy Windows applications.

While their might still be a slight cost difference for desktop models you can see the difference in similarly equipped portables has been virtually eliminated. Some say that Dells cost more for the upper range model equivalents. I would expect that IBM's push for PowerPC chip partners will result in a significant price advantage for Apple's chips. Their OS and programming costs will still be higher resulting in hardware that is not cheaper, especially at the low end. While this may be an factor in the purchase phase, initial costs are not the most significant as you are well aware. Getting work done, as you stated, is the goal of technology use. Getting more work done with more pleasure results in a more significant cost factor.

I look forward to reading of your further explorations of the new Macs. I hope you've found many of the small efficiency programs to customize your keystrokes and other efficiencies. At least the utilization of multi-button mice are no longer penalized.

Sincerely
Robert Boylin

Apple coverage gives me the pip
Mike,

I've never seen a single article, review, column, or opinion that passes up the opportunity to say, "Apple hardware and software is simply too expensive" or "Apple charges way too much for everything". People at the INQ, ExtremeTech, Toms Hardware, and PC Magazine complain (bitch) constantly about Apple's prices. WHY?!?

PC Magazine, which is usually abstract in its prejudice against certain companies, says, "The iPod is simply too expensive" or "Why pay $249 for the iPod mini when you can spend $50 more and get the 15gb iPod?". Excuse me, but before I bought my iPod, I tried several other things first - this thing called the "Neo Jukebox", which had a 30gb notebook hard drive in it. I think I spent a total of $600 on it. But what I got was 40 minutes of battery life, a slow and weird interface, and a USB 1.1 connection that took an entire DAY to transfer my collection. Plus, the bass output was terrible, and it distorted at anything above half volume. I bought it because I didn't want to go with Apple. I had been brainwashed into thinking that Apple was the devil.

I seem to remember a case when my parents bought a new Gateway 2000 back in 1996. It was an P1 75mhz, with 16mb RAM, 2 750mb hard drives, a glorious 4x CD-ROM drive, a breathtaking 15" monitor, and had the brand new Windows 95 on it. Total cost? Somewhere around $6,000.

Dell gives PCs away for what they charge. An entire PC for $499? Ooh! I want that! Now, if I get that machine, I realize that it has 2 PCI slots, a crippled processor, and comes overloaded with useless machine slowing software, none of which includes anything I really need to get anything done.

Does Dell really make a profit off those $499 PC's? Of course not. They're selling them at cost. Does Apple make a profit off the machines they sell? Um...yeah. God forbid, Apple wants to make money off the products they sell. And for that, people at the INQ, ExtremeTech, Toms Hardware, and PC Magazine will bitch to no end about how Apple's stuff is overpriced.

Jon

Apple Turnover
Hi Mike,

The article that Ryan wrote "Why I've dropped MS Windows for the Apple Mac" was one of the most balanced and well written articles of its type that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Ryan really put his finger on the reason that I personally use Mac OS X... it's not about speed, it's about the power to get things done.

Thanks for offering content that bridges the "gap" between the platforms.

smiles
Jamie

Apple Crapple
hi mr hunter:

regarding your switch to apple, i have 3 questions:

1. does it have the same range of software the PC has? are you adjusting to the difference.

2. is it more expensive?

3. are you concerned it will go the way of the amiga at some point in the future?

thanks
Rich

Apple Peal
Hi Ryan,

cool wee article.

I dropped DozeNT, with I forget which service pack it was up to then, in June 1998, for Linux SuSE 5.3.

Apple or OS2 were options, but Apple hardware was/is over priced (bang for buck) & OS2 seemed to be/is dead.

I use Xandros 2.0 now & that is stable as.

It is nice to have a choice & for that we don't have William Gates to thank....

Keep on keeping the bastards honest :-)

H :-)

Apple Rappel
Ryan Hunter,

"Windows is badly designed. It's bloated and put together by committee. It's highly vulnerable to a myriad of problems. So can Linux, xBSD, Mac OS/X, but somehow they have an odd karmic immunity from the tenacity of evil people. Some of these architectural problems and anarchy are being dealt with by a gottdamerung of fixes in XP SP2. When XP SP2 comes, Microsoft will have taken one of the most major steps in ten years to address the inherent Windows architectural deficiencies."

Windows is designed very well. I would change a few visual designs, but other than that, nothing else. Mac is Eye Candy, but its not as functional as Windows. Windows is much more compatible to the world than Mac is.

Of course Mac isn't as vulnerable to viruses as Windows is, Mac isn't used by most hackers or virus creators. Windows is the most used, so of course if a virus was to be made to spread across a larger expanse they would make the virus for Windows. Often people make viruses to spread. If they made the virus for a Mac system, then the virus wouldn't get very far.

With any operating system there is security flaws. That's something that everyone throws up when people compare Mac Vs. Windows. Well its a bit stupid to continually bring that sort of thing up don't you think. Im sure if people attempted to hack or virus a Mac system, they would succeed. But what a wasn't of time, it wouldn't get very far anyways.

I currently live in a large city with booming businesses. I have only once seen one business so far that was using a Mac as the business computer. Every other business that I have seen is using PC, Windows based systems. Mac isn't popular and isn't as compatible as Windows Systems if you value that.

Also doesn't Mac have to supply you with the Program sets? As in you must use what they supply you with and nothing else to choose from. Meaning you are limited. Windows XP is much more customizable when it comes to programs.

Personally if you switched to a mac, I think you will in the future limit yourself depending on the direction you want to move in.

Regards
Jeremy

Apple Windfall
" But my personal rat race with bugs, fixes, exceptions, gotchas, driver madness, synchronization bipolar disease, and the sheer Prozac of it all, is over."

Same experience. I work as a photographer, Windows device driver hell made me switch to Mac. It is the the best thing I ever done in computing. It may be that there are more hardware products out there for Windows, but can you make them work? Things for Mac works right out of the box, it saves me time and money.

Thank's for a great article!

Best Regards
Marco Iaconelli

And now for something completely different

Dear Farse ,

We went as far as we could go. I am personally proud of every team who spent long hours and there own money to enter the Darpa Grand Challenge. Each team is very special ! We are here to jump start autonomous vehicle technology . That my friend will save lives! So get off your box and smell the coffee..

This technology just might save your loved ones some day !

Paul Gunthner
Team Leader