"Personally I wish the entry level machine ... had a better graphics card (the graphics card Apple included stinks)..."

I'm sure glad there was need to clarify that a better graphics card was needed because the included one stinks (as opposed to needed a better graphics card because it tasted bad, or was a funny color, or said bad things about the author's mother).

Just another dork thinking he knows the industry better than Apple.

Are we sure that marketshare is the important statistic? Or perhaps installed base is more important? It seems typical if you are a deathnell cryer intent on belittling the mac you are going to harp marketshare (even though absolute numbers of sales seem to be rising each year) and say the Mac is failing.

Apple is healthy, and the software written for it is head and shoulders above that written for windows.

The "marketshare" they seem so concerned about is the 300-500 range, and quite frankly that is nothing more than email, photos, music playback, letter writing, and other "basic" tasks. The included Mac software is perfect for 90% of most of that crowd of people. The argument about there being no software just doesn't wash any more. About the only thing not readily available is propriatary, specilized software that only corporate environments might have some use for. I suppose you could include the latest and greatest 3D FPS is you just have to have games, but really, how many games do you have to have!?

In the end the only point is price. You want quality, elegance and enjoyment…buy a Mac. You want cheap. Check Wal-Mart.

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spxyu02 wrote:
"Personally I wish the entry level machine ... had a better graphics card (the graphics card Apple included stinks)..."

I'm sure glad there was need to clarify that a better graphics card was needed because the included one stinks (as opposed to needed a better graphics card because it tasted bad, or was a funny color, or said bad things about the author's mother).

The 5200 is a low end card. It doesn't just stink, it completely sucks. If apple used a 5600/5700/5800, you could still get plenty of better cards, but the performance wouldn't totally be in the toilet like it is with the 5200. There are many degrees of sucking and the 5200 manages to scrape the bottom of the barrel of suckage for today's cards. So if they used a 5800, you could still have put in a better card (oh like the 5900, the 6800, the radeon 9700, 9800 etc.) but at least the card wouldn't totally blow chunks like the 5200.

Apple could have put in a decent or good card, and we all could have still wished they put in a still better card. But we don't even have that luxury because the chose a completely skanky card.

Enough already with people freaking out over the "Pyramid" Mac. I've seen a couple articles about how ugly this would've been.

If you look at the patent, it's for the arm and the display. The "pyramid" is just a "space holder," or FPO - "For Position Only" in design terms.

Chill out, dudes...

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Guest wrote:
The "marketshare" they seem so concerned about is the 300-500 range, and quite frankly that is nothing more than email, photos, music playback, letter writing, and other "basic" tasks.

Apple will never be able to compete with the $300-$500 budget PC-makers. It has said so. I don't understand why people continue to gripe about this. Dell can't even compete in this range. Why the hell would BMW want to compete with Kia?

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Guest wrote:
Apple could have put in a decent or good card, and we all could have still wished they put in a still better card. But we don't even have that luxury because the chose a completely skanky card.

Hey - guess what? The iMac is not a game-playing machine. It's a machine that'll play games, but it's not built for that. Apple has said specifically to buy a G5 Tower if you want to play games.

Just as Apple can't compete with $300 Chinese PCs, they can't compete for "Hardcore Gamers," either. They're not even trying. Get over it. If gaming is the most important thing to you, but an Alienware - or an X-Box.

Man, I swear you people just need something to complain about.

[quote="Billy K"]

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Guest wrote:

Hey - guess what? The iMac is not a game-playing machine. It's a machine that'll play games, but it's not built for that. Apple has said specifically to buy a G5 Tower if you want to play games.

Just as Apple can't compete with $300 Chinese PCs, they can't compete for "Hardcore Gamers," either. They're not even trying. Get over it. If gaming is the most important thing to you, but an Alienware - or an X-Box.

Man, I swear you people just need something to complain about.

Hey guess what, it sucks even for a non-game playing card. It doesn't even have 128MB of memory. And buying a G5 to play games is the height of idiocy. You can get a game rig that will kill a dual G5 in game performance for about 1/3 the price. The point is apple had a chance to enhance its position from "totally sucky game platform" to "mildly sucky game platform" by using a better card. But the blew it with this version of the iMac.

I hope they correct this in the next (hopefully fast) revision.

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Anonymous wrote:
Hey guess what, it sucks even for a non-game playing card.

Explain why.

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And buying a G5 to play games is the height of idiocy. You can get a game rig that will kill a dual G5 in game performance for about 1/3 the price.

Then I suggest you do so if you want killer game performance.

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The point is apple had a chance to enhance its position from "totally sucky game platform" to "mildly sucky game platform" by using a better card.

Is it the point? Really? I can't see why - it doesn't appear that Apple wants to make killer game machines. I don't want one, at any rate, and so am happy not to have to pay for all those unnecessary features.

Does anyone else remember the days when "game machine" was an insult?

-- Dirt Road, the greybeard

My guess is that Apple is only trying to prevent other people from using that idea to create an iMac knock-off. Some big corporations get a patent on different iterations of their Name to stop people from coming up with something similar to their names as in the case of Mike-Rowe-Soft. MS had patented different spelling, different abreviatons,etc, of their name but they didn't expect that Mike Rowe guy to come up with Mike Rowe Soft. He pulled a fast one on them on that one.

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Guest wrote:
You can get a game rig that will kill a dual G5 in game performance for about 1/3 the price..

Then by all means, do so.

BTW, Apple claims the new iMac will play Doom 3. I don't know if I buy that, but they must have some reason for saying that publicly.

iMac =/= Game Machine

(and yes, Dirt road, I remember that. We used to say that about PCs when it was really cool to be able to run MS Flight Sim.)

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Engine Joe wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:
Hey guess what, it sucks even for a non-game playing card.

Explain why.

Because with Expose and quartz extreme use up the memory. Particularly on a 20" screen, I have tons of windows open and and expose crawls because all the windows cannot fit in the 64MB of memory. And it really doesn't take that many windows on a 20" screen to fill that 64MB of memory. Bascically it takes 10-15 windows to do it.

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The point is apple had a chance to enhance its position from "totally sucky game platform" to "mildly sucky game platform" by using a better card.

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Is it the point? Really? I can't see why - it doesn't appear that Apple wants to make killer game machines. I don't want one, at any rate, and so am happy not to have to pay for all those unnecessary features.

Forget about killer machines. I'm talking about a mediocre game machines. The 5200 doesn't even get you to mediocre. The iMac should be an all around decent machine. It's actually more than decent for digital video things. The processor is really nice. Not great, but good stuff. The screens are nice. Not great, bug good stuff. The form factor is fantastic. The look, is sweet. The graphics card is the pits.

[/quote]

Hey guess what, it sucks even for a non-game playing card. It doesn't even have 128MB of memory. And buying a G5 to play games is the height of idiocy. You can get a game rig that will kill a dual G5 in game performance for about 1/3 the price. The point is apple had a chance to enhance its position from "totally sucky game platform" to "mildly sucky game platform" by using a better card. But the blew it with this version of the iMac.

I hope they correct this in the next (hopefully fast) revision.[/quote]

If you can get a game rig that will kill a Dual G5 Tower, how exactly will a better video card help an iMac compete with that rig?

>>Because with Expose and quartz extreme use up the memory. Particularly on a 20" screen, I have tons of windows open and and expose crawls because all the windows cannot fit in the 64MB of memory. And it really doesn't take that many windows on a 20" screen to fill that 64MB of memory. Bascically it takes 10-15 windows to do it.<<

I can't think of the last time I had 10 windows open at one time. At that point even on a 20" monitor the clutter would be a real PITA. If you have that many windows open you are either trying to do too much at once, should be using a pro machine (G5 tower) or are the type that leaves every light on and forgets to close the door when they leave.

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Guest wrote:

If you can get a game rig that will kill a Dual G5 Tower, how exactly will a better video card help an iMac compete with that rig?[/quote]

It doesn't have to compete with a top of the line rig. But it would be nice if it would compete with middle of the road machines! First, it should have a min of 128MB of vid ram, because quartz extreme and expose eat it up, especially on a 20" screen. Then it really should be at least a Radeon 9700/nvidia 5700/5800 level card (which are old news at this point) so it could play doom 3 marginally well. Just so it could provide a half decent experience with games. The 5200 might technically allow you to launch doom 3, but it will run horribly. It could run ok on a better grade of card, I'm not talking high end here either.

Remember, the card is not upgradable, and the machine will likely be around for 3 years or more. In 2 years, all the games coming out will have a doom 3 grade graphics engine, and the 5200 on the iMac will just be totally useless.

I agree, this shouldn't be a tweaked out gaming rig. But it should be at least somewhere in the middle of the road in ability, and it's just not.

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Guest wrote:
>>

I can't think of the last time I had 10 windows open at one time. At that point even on a 20" monitor the clutter would be a real PITA. If you have that many windows open you are either trying to do too much at once, should be using a pro machine (G5 tower) or are the type that leaves every light on and forgets to close the door when they leave.

That is EXACTLY the point of Expose. They didn't make it so you could look at 2 windows side by side on a 20". You can do that without expose. A mac can easily have hundreds of windows open. The average designer will easily have 10-20 windows open working on a project. Photoshop, Final Cut Pro/iMovie/iDVD/Motion/Web Browser/Email/iCal. It all adds up, that's why Apple invented expose!

Let's see, it has a 1.8Ghz G5 (more than the original PowerMac G5 low-end machine), it has a 20" screen, and all the sudden it can't handle 20 windows open at the same time.

There is no reason to use pro machine just because you want to have 20 windows open doing some projects. That's just crazy if you think a person must upgrade to a new machine because 20 windows are open.

Thanks to Moto Apple's sales also took a dive, which is why Apple started working with IBM three years ago to bring out the G5. Add the joys of moving to 90nm fabrication and you have a long, dry spell before any excitement could be brought back to the Mac line.

They did it with the G5 PM and now they are doing it with the G5 iMac, which is $400 to $500 CHEAPER than their G4 predecessors.

At this time the demand for limited G5 chips is going to far exceed supply and Apple delivered a damn good rev a product. I would have liked to seen an option to upgrade the graphics card, like on the 15" PB, and can only guess that there was an engineering or production reason for not including it. When it's possible it will be added simply because it adds more gross margin dollars to the sale.

Apple might bring out a headless iMac (or PM mini) when chip supplies are abundant. Don't look for it to be super cheap though. Even Dell announced that it is going to stop competing with the super cheap PCs offered in China as they cannot compete. You might even see the US flooded with cheap computers that are around $100 less than the cheapest Dell can sell one for.

Look instead for a PM mini with sufficient gross margins to continue to support hardware AND software development. It won't be significantly cheaper that the base iMac, but will have expansion potential and a chance to spend a LOT of money on a graphics card.

Personally I think that they G5 iMac is going to blow out the door - especially for PC/iPod users that discover it is as hard to get as an iPod mini. Order one within a week if you want it for Christmas!

Apple has gone from a 2 segment grid (Low/Consumer & High/Pro) to a 3 segment line. The iMac is now Apple's middle product. It is just like the Accord, the iMac has gotten better and better, and gone up in bracket. The same with Honda's Civic. Apple could use a nicer Civic than the eMac.

Or even if you like BMW, Apple could use a something like the mini cooper. The eMac doesn't have the draw or coolness of a mini.

the Patent could also have been filed merely to prevent a competitor from designing a g4 Imac clone in that shape... if I was a computer manufacturer with a really radical design that is what I would do

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Guest wrote:

That is EXACTLY the point of Expose. They didn't make it so you could look at 2 windows side by side on a 20". You can do that without expose. A mac can easily have hundreds of windows open. The average designer will easily have 10-20 windows open working on a project. Photoshop, Final Cut Pro/iMovie/iDVD/Motion/Web Browser/Email/iCal. It all adds up, that's why Apple invented expose!

If an 'average designer' is using a iMac, then they should be happy with it's performance and work around any limitations (like closing some windows when not needed).

I really doubt that Apple had the 'average designer' in mind when they were designing their "consumer" machine.

[quote="Guest"]

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Guest wrote:
If an 'average designer' is using a iMac, then they should be happy with it's performance and work around any limitations (like closing some windows when not needed).

I really doubt that Apple had the 'average designer' in mind when they were designing their "consumer" machine.

How about an average user. Most people have a few web browsers open, email, a couple of word documents, a few finder windows, ical. The odd calculator or post it. Sherlock. A PDF. Maybe the address book. You're nuts if you think having 10-15 windows open is unusual even for consumers.

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Anonymous wrote:


How about an average user. Most people have a few web browsers open, email, a couple of word documents, a few finder windows, ical. The odd calculator or post it. Sherlock. A PDF. Maybe the address book. You're nuts if you think having 10-15 windows open is unusual even for consumers.

Erm. I think if you did a poll. you'd find that this simply is not the case. And even so, I just tested Expose on my old iMac G4 - I had well over 20 windows open, in various applications, before I started having problems. Sure they weren't all FCP and the like - a mix of Safari windows, Mail, several QT movies, an iChat discussion, etc - and no problems.

I'm not sure this is as big an issue as you're afraid it will be.

Well, I guess either I'm weird and so are most of the people I know OR I'm very old-fashioned. I've been using a 19" CRT and still don't have that many windows open. I will often have iCal, Address Book, Mail, Safari, iTunes, Preview, Appleworks and Photoshop running at the same time but I either hide the ones I'm not active in or minimize them to the dock. And the average consumer that Apple is aiming at is NOT the sort that will have 10 to 20 windows open at the same time. And my current 32MB card does just fine unless I'm running adjustments to high-res scans in PS and trying to do streaming video, or something similar, at the same time.

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Engine Joe wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:


How about an average user. Most people have a few web browsers open, email, a couple of word documents, a few finder windows, ical. The odd calculator or post it. Sherlock. A PDF. Maybe the address book. You're nuts if you think having 10-15 windows open is unusual even for consumers.

Erm. I think if you did a poll. you'd find that this simply is not the case. And even so, I just tested Expose on my old iMac G4 - I had well over 20 windows open, in various applications, before I started having problems. Sure they weren't all FCP and the like - a mix of Safari windows, Mail, several QT movies, an iChat discussion, etc - and no problems.

I'm not sure this is as bi an issue as you're afraid it will be.

I'm talking on a 20" screen. You can have 50 really tiny tiny windows open and not exceed the capacity of a 64MB vid card. If you're dealing with bigger windows, they take up more memory. On a 20" monitor, you regularly break over the expose limit where it goes from moving windows smoothly to that chunky movement.

Now expose is still quite useuable, just not as pretty or smooth. Which was the original question of why the 5200 with only 64Mbs not even good as a non gaming card on a 20" machine. Heck, if you don't mind the chunky behavior, you can slap an 8MB card in there and it's still usable. But at 1900bux, it should be a little better than "usable", it should be nice to use. And this graphics card is below par relative to the rest of the machine. It's out of balance with the rest of the machine. As is the 256MB of main memory, but at least the user can fix that through and upgrade. You're stuck with the lame video card though.

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Anonymous wrote:


I'm talking on a 20" screen. You can have 50 really tiny tiny windows open and not exceed the capacity of a 64MB vid card. If you're dealing with bigger windows, they take up more memory. On a 20" monitor, you regularly break over the expose limit where it goes from moving windows smoothly to that chunky movement.

Well, that I can't speak to, as my G4 iMac is 17". But would it really be that different? And I will say that aside from the QT movie windows, they were not "tiny" by any stretch.

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Now expose is still quite useuable, just not as pretty or smooth.

I will say that on my 17", it was still quite smooth. Again, I won't pretend to know beyond that!

[quote="Engine Joe"]

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Anonymous wrote:

Well, that I can't speak to, as my G4 iMac is 17". But would it really be that different? And I will say that aside from the QT movie windows, they were not "tiny" by any stretch.

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Now expose is still quite useuable, just not as pretty or smooth.

I will say that on my 17", it was still quite smooth. Again, I won't pretend to know beyond that!

Well I'm sure that people will have varying experiences. But this is clear. 10-20 windows on a 20" screen will put it over the top on expose (things will only get worse with Tiger by the way when you have a total entire virtual screen layer that will come in off that memory). If Apple put a 128MB card, you just wouldn't hit that issue. You'd have to go up to around 50+ windows to get things chunky. I dont know about you, but this would be a 3+ year investment for me. And with Tiger coming out and no ability to upgrade that card, it makes me hold off. This would be my only machine and I'd like it to be balanced and do everything well. Not super great, just well. And looking at the demands of what will be middle of the road games, tiger's use of expose layers, and expose, the card really just breaks the decision for me. Maybe rev b will fix this.

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Anonymous wrote:
If Apple put a 128MB card, you just wouldn't hit that issue. You'd have to go up to around 50+ windows to get things chunky. I dont know about you, but this would be a 3+ year investment for me. And with Tiger coming out and no ability to upgrade that card, it makes me hold off. This would be my only machine and I'd like it to be balanced and do everything well. Not super great, just well. And looking at the demands of what will be middle of the road games, tiger's use of expose layers, and expose, the card really just breaks the decision for me. Maybe rev b will fix this.

Hey, I'm certainly not "anti" better graphics memory. Frankly, I hope Rev.B covers this issue, too. There's been a lot of speculation that Apple's just trying to use up their store of 5200s, so there will be something new once they've depleted their inventory. Here's hoping.

<grammar Nazi>
Do's and Don'ts.

It's just "Dos".

Just add and "s" - no apostrophe for the plural.

DVDs, CDs, Macs, Pros, Cons - no apostrophe for the plural...
</grammar Nazi>

I'm sorry, but if you've got 5-10 apps and 15 windows open, you're an idiot and you deserve the slow performance. I know a lot of "average users" don't get this, but that's just ignorant.

But I'm just an old-timer. I remember loading DOS on a floppy and you could only run one app at a time. Hence, I rarely have more than 3 apps running at once, and never more than 6 or 7 windows.

Just use the thin g right and everything will be fine, folks. Why constantly test your processor/Vcard? Just close some windows!

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Guest wrote:
I'm sorry, but if you've got 5-10 apps and 15 windows open, you're an idiot and you deserve the slow performance. I know a lot of "average users" don't get this, but that's just ignorant.

But I'm just an old-timer. I remember loading DOS on a floppy and you could only run one app at a time. Hence, I rarely have more than 3 apps running at once, and never more than 6 or 7 windows.

Just use the thin g right and everything will be fine, folks. Why constantly test your processor/Vcard? Just close some windows!

Yea, you're a regular genius by using a multiuser, mult-tasking unix system with great virtual memory to limit it to running only 3 applications because you remember dos. Brilliant.

I don't get the problem with the graphics card.

My G4 1 GHz has a 64 MB ATI card, and it's quite happy running iPhoto with a bunch of other windows in the background.

My 17" G4 Powerbook also has a 64 MB ATI card, and it quite happily drives a *very busy* built-in display plus an external display (ie 32 MB each), or alternatively a 1600x1024 cinema display. Sure, Expose is only "smooth", rather than "so silky smooth you could use it for TV", and Warcraft 3 and Neverwinter Nights only run "well", rather than "E3 gee-whiz demo quality". When the card in a new "entry-level" (for Mac) machine almost matches the card in a 6 month old "professional" machine, I don't really get what you're up in arms about.

"Hey - guess what? The iMac is not a game-playing machine. It's a machine that'll play games, but it's not built for that. "

i totally agree, the iMac has NEVER had anything but a bare minimum graphics card. i remember my RevA Bondi came with a 2 MB Rage card. That was only so it could display 1024x768 res too. most everything else at the time was shipping with 4 or 6 meg cards, 8 on some. to argue that the iMacs GPU is not good enough is just silly, it's never had a really powerful one. it's not meant to be a big FPS pusher, it's there only to drive the monitor (and Quartz Extreme just recently).

to ship with an iMac with a low quality graphics card. Nor will you find an obsolete graphics card on a Kia Mama Mia.

Obsolete graphics cards and the ultra modern iMac G5 cannot co-exist. It is not a symbiotic relationship. Apple will never allow this to happen.

Games and graphic have always been what the iMac is all about.

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Guest wrote:
" i remember my RevA Bondi came with a 2 MB Rage card.

LOL- and that only displayed in "thousands" of colors. You needed to buck up and extra $75CND to get 4MB vram and "millions" of colors. My bondi blue babe is still running OS8.6 as an email/web/wordprocessor for my Ex and runs Photoshop 4 very well to this day. The RageII card did suck though. I stuck the iMac Voodoo II gamewizard GPU in the "mezzanine slot" and then it cranked out fps very well for UT/QuakeIII!

Ah... bondi were are you now. Hope the B.tch is treating you well...

Having a graphics card that Apple knows works (A crapshoot in many PCs) has innumerable advantages in that they can tweak OSX to run better on that chip's design. Apple doesn't use a 64MB card out of Masochism. They do it for a very good reason. Gordon Bethune (25 Points to anyone who knows who that is), says the first rule of business is to not do things that dont make money. Apple sells the iMac with the 64MB card beacuse they can keep the costs down and still make a hefty profit, which gives them more cash to pump into R&D. And anyone who calls the Mac a gaming machine is kidding themselves. Noone has ever bought a Mac to play games on. You buy a Mac for whatever reason (For me, it was multimedia editing) and the fact that you can play games is a nice bonus. Noone who calls themselves a gamer is going to buy a Mac so they can get half the games their PC brethren have, six months after they're released on the PC. I bought HALO. I bought UT2004. I didn't get a Mac to play them though. Any serious gamer is going to get an AlienWare or build their own. Bottom line.

I'm running a dual-head PC here with 32MB of video memory (which i make about half my income from), and a G4 with 16MB of video memory (which makes the other half of my income). What are you doing to complain that you *need* 128MB?

Not criticizing, just interested.

from AFCdtLoeb...

"Any serious gamer is going to get an AlienWare or build their own. Bottom line."


"Serious gamer", a true oxymoron. I remember when the argument for choosing a PC was so you could get "real work" done. I still work on a 1st gen G4 450 at home running OS 10.3 with 512MB ram and a "sucky" video card. True, I added a 120 GB to the mix, an external CD burner and I don't use the Zip drive anymore and I love my machine. The damn thing is 5 years old and it just keeps on truckin'.

So...how bad can the new G5 iMac really be?

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Guest wrote:

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Guest wrote:
" i remember my RevA Bondi came with a 2 MB Rage card.

LOL- and that only displayed in "thousands" of colors. You needed to buck up and extra $75CND to get 4MB vram and "millions" of colors. My bondi blue babe is still running OS8.6 as an email/web/wordprocessor for my Ex and runs Photoshop 4 very well to this day.

We should start a club - the Bondi Rev. A club. I love the original iMac, but Rev. A had its problems. I still have mine. I used it for (like you said) Photoshop 4 for a long time. Now it's basically a vinyl ripping station. It's hard to say goodbye - even with all the idiosyncracies.

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Guest wrote:

Yea, you're a regular genius by using a multiuser, mult-tasking unix system with great virtual memory to limit it to running only 3 applications because you remember dos. Brilliant.

You know what - they run better that way. why have a bunch of crap running that just sucks up RAM. OSX will take whatever RAM you give it. If I have Photoshop open but idle, taking up 25% of my RAM, that's RAM not going to the app I'm actually using. Makes perfect sense to me.

Just out of curiosity, Guest, do you know what a pageout is? Just curious.

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Guest wrote:
I'm running a dual-head PC here with 32MB of video memory (which i make about half my income from), and a G4 with 16MB of video memory (which makes the other half of my income). What are you doing to complain that you *need* 128MB?

Not criticizing, just interested.

Well need is a tricky thing. I have 3 head powerbook. 1 17" screen (using the vtbook pcmcia card), 1 20" screen, and the built in screen of the powerbook. It has a 64mb graphics card and the vtbook has a 32MB card. When I pile on the windows, Expose gets choppy. Is it unsusable? No, it's very usable. But it is choppy because the video card cannot store all the windows in its memory and has to out across the bus. So would it be nice to have more video memory, yes.

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Billy K wrote:

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Guest wrote:

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Guest wrote:
" i remember my RevA Bondi came with a 2 MB Rage card.

LOL- and that only displayed in "thousands" of colors. You needed to buck up and extra $75CND to get 4MB vram and "millions" of colors. My bondi blue babe is still running OS8.6 as an email/web/wordprocessor for my Ex and runs Photoshop 4 very well to this day.

We should start a club - the Bondi Rev. A club. I love the original iMac, but Rev. A had its problems. I still have mine. I used it for (like you said) Photoshop 4 for a long time. Now it's basically a vinyl ripping station. It's hard to say goodbye - even with all the idiosyncracies.

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Guest wrote:

Yea, you're a regular genius by using a multiuser, mult-tasking unix system with great virtual memory to limit it to running only 3 applications because you remember dos. Brilliant.

You know what - they run better that way. why have a bunch of crap running that just sucks up RAM. OSX will take whatever RAM you give it. If I have Photoshop open but idle, taking up 25% of my RAM, that's RAM not going to the app I'm actually using. Makes perfect sense to me.

Just out of curiosity, Guest, do you know what a pageout is? Just curious.

Sure, and if you run no programs things will run even more. Do you know why they made virtual memory and pageouts? And did you notice that memory is cheap so having a Gig of ram is no big deal and you can have lots of apps running at once with minimal pageouts. I've seen people going to great lengths to justify weaknesses in apple products before, but this is impressive.

The video card seems to be a pretty hot debate.

I think the person who said Apple is just getting rid of old inventory is probably right.

The person who said Apple is just working with a product they know works is probably wrong. Because there are options above the 5200 that use the same chipset, and they have significant performance over the 5200. The likelyhood that the faster cards would have serious stablity issues is comical. Especially since you can buy faster cards for the power macs.

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Guest wrote:

Sure, and if you run no programs things will run even more. Do you know why they made virtual memory and pageouts? And did you notice that memory is cheap so having a Gig of ram is no big deal and you can have lots of apps running at once with minimal pageouts. I've seen people going to great lengths to justify weaknesses in apple products before, but this is impressive.

Dear Mysterious, Quarrellous Guest,

I have plenty of RAM. That's not the issue. the issue was, somebody (you?) said that the new iMac video card wasn't enough to handle having 12 apps and 15 windows open. And I said that was a stupid way to run your computer.

It still is. There's no point to it. Nobody needs to switch between 10 apps at any given time. If someone felt that need, they probably have ADD and need to get some help.

I, personally, have plenty of RAM in my 1Ghz eMac. I also have plenty in my G4 tower at work. But the structure of OSX is such that it will use up almost every little bit of spare RAM; so you can have a reasonable 5 apps open and be getting a bunch of needless pageouts that slow you down.* This is true if you've got 512k RAM in an eMac or 2Gb in your 2Mhz G5 tower. That's the way the system works. Best way to fix it? Use a little common sense.

And as for your comment about "justifying Apples' weaknesses," that's just dumb. Justifying what? That their mid-level consumer computer doesn't do EVERYTHING at once? That it won't run Doom 3 at 8million FPS?

You're just trolling now, and I suggest you sign up for an account so you can be labeled as such.


*Newsflash! RAM is always faster than virtual memory!

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Guest wrote:

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Guest wrote:

Sure, and if you run no programs things will run even more. Do you know why they made virtual memory and pageouts? And did you notice that memory is cheap so having a Gig of ram is no big deal and you can have lots of apps running at once with minimal pageouts. I've seen people going to great lengths to justify weaknesses in apple products before, but this is impressive.

Dear Mysterious, Quarrellous Guest,

I have plenty of RAM. That's not the issue. the issue was, somebody (you?) said that the new iMac video card wasn't enough to handle having 12 apps and 15 windows open. And I said that was a stupid way to run your computer.

It still is. There's no point to it. Nobody needs to switch between 10 apps at any given time. If someone felt that need, they probably have ADD and need to get some help.

I, personally, have plenty of RAM in my 1Ghz eMac. I also have plenty in my G4 tower at work. But the structure of OSX is such that it will use up almost every little bit of spare RAM; so you can have a reasonable 5 apps open and be getting a bunch of needless pageouts that slow you down.* This is true if you've got 512k RAM in an eMac or 2Gb in your 2Mhz G5 tower. That's the way the system works. Best way to fix it? Use a little common sense.

And as for your comment about "justifying Apples' weaknesses," that's just dumb. Justifying what? That their mid-level consumer computer doesn't do EVERYTHING at once? That it won't run Doom 3 at 8million FPS?

You're just trolling now, and I suggest you sign up for an account so you can be labeled as such.


*Newsflash! RAM is always faster than virtual memory!

Oh your 5 applications is reasonable. I see. First, the statment was for 10-20 windows, not applications. Each program can and will have a few windows open. So even with 5 programs open, you have a pretty good shot at getting to 10 windows. The other dos genius had 6 or 7 windows open but found it "idiot"ic to have 10-20.

As for common sense, I suggest you study up on unix and NeXTstep a bit. The point of having a unix based operating system is exactly so you can have a multitude of programs running. That means windows. That means windows hell. Apple invented Expose not because people couldnt tame hdealing with only 5 windows. They did it because people have tons of windows open. You are avoiding reality just to justify your marginal position.

*newsflash, youre stating the obvious that everyone knows, my guess to was to look piffy or condescending.

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Guest wrote:
*newsflash, youre stating the obvious that everyone knows, my guess to was to look piffy or condescending.

Do you mean "pithy?"

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Billy K wrote:

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Guest wrote:
*newsflash, youre stating the obvious that everyone knows, my guess to was to look piffy or condescending.

Do you mean "pithy?"

Yep.

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Guest wrote:
...the issue was, somebody (you?) said that the new iMac video card wasn't enough to handle having 12 apps and 15 windows open. And I said that was a stupid way to run your computer.

It still is. There's no point to it. Nobody needs to switch between 10 apps at any given time. If someone felt that need, they probably have ADD and need to get some help.

I must disagree with that. On my work computer (a B/W G3), I have open at any given moment: Finder, Lotus Freeking Notes, FrameMaker (therefore Classic as well), Firefox, iTunes, Fire, Terminal, X11, Acrobat Reader, iCal, Stickies, and NetNewsWire Lite. That's 12, or lucky 13 if you count Classic as a separate application. Most of them just sit in the background most of the day, but if I want to use one I don't want to wait for it to open. (I've found that if I quit an app, I'll usually want to restart it in a few minutes.)

My personal machine, an iBook, only has 11 apps open at the moment: Finder, Mail, iTunes, Safari, Fire, iCal, a card game, X11, Terminal, Preview, and Vim. Again, I don't use all of them at once, but I don't want to wait on them when I want them.

Isn't that the whole purpose of a multitasking OS?

My machine rebooted this morning (have to unplug my second monitor for playing World of Warcraft beta), and I've not been at my desk almost all day, so my machine has had almost no use. I have 9 Apps running right now. That's VERY few for me. Probably about half of normal.

Yes, 2.1 gigs out of my 2.5 gigs of RAM are used, but so what. That's why I have 2.5 Gigs of ram.

On the video card issue, I HATE the 5200 ultra that is in this G5 I am using right now. I have to unplug my second monitor to play games because the card sucks too much. I'll probably upgrade to a 9800 pro (256 meg) card soon. BUT....

For exposй, I really don't think this is an issue. This crappy 5200 is running two 17" monitors, and exposй is JUST FINE. I can have 10-15 windows and its smooth as silk. It does not need more. And that's with two monitors, so i'm running on half card power.

But I also must reiterate, if the iMac G5 had a 9600xt (128 meg) card or better in it, my order would already be placed. With the 5200 Ultra, I will NOT buy one. I am a gamer, and I won't do that. For this G5 I'm on, it's a work machine, so it's hard to REQUIRE something that is geared for gaming, but for home it must have it for me.

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Hey guess what, it sucks even for a non-game playing card. It doesn't even have 128MB of memory.

And yet I get by just fine with my Radeon Monility 7500 with 32 MB VRAM.

We would all like a better graphics card in it, sure. But if you're not a gamer, why? Bragging rights?

On another forum I mentioned the ThinkSecret rumored specs a couple weeks ago (which were almost 100% accurate) and recieved the following response (from a PC user, no less, I paraphrase): that's not a bad machine for $1300.