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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (33980)	7/15/2002 5:13:52 PM
From: Dave	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 213177

There is no such thing as "raw horsepower" in computing. Such a concept begs the question of "horsepower to do what?" An Altivec-accelerated has more horsepower for doing JPEG compression or Fourier transforms than a P4 that runs at 4x the clock speed. But in my opinion, this is not why graphics and video professionals prefer Macintoshes. I think that these aesthetically oriented artistic types simply find the Windows experience less appealing than the Mac experience, at a very visceral level. And I have to agree with them. Dave

To: Cogito who wrote (33980)	7/15/2002 5:25:40 PM
From: tcmay	Respond to of 213177

"A valid point. It is true that in terms of raw horsepower, the fastest PCs are (at least currently) faster than the fastest Macs. It's also true that this performance comes at a lower cost. "I agree that Apple really needs to address that performance gap if they want to widen their market significantly. "Interesting that most graphics people still prefer the Mac." Therein lies the danger for Apple. If Apple does not close this price-performance gap, it doesn't really matter what "most graphics people still prefer," as their bosses will decide that buying 40 Pentium 4 systems gives faster rendering times and higher overall productivity (for the specific tasks, e.g., Photoshop) than only being able to buy 20 dual-CPU Macs. I worked for Intel for 12 years, until retiring in 1986. I have used Macs since 1985. Not because of the CPU, Intel vs. Motorola, but because of the OS (I was an early user of Windows 1.0 as well, and saw how bad it was). I still use Macs: a 550 MHz TiBook, a 400 MHz G4, and some older Macs. I do mostly Web stuff, plus some Mathematica, plus the usual iMovie/iTunes/etc. stuff. Most of my work is not CPU-intensive (which is true for a lot of folks, a major reason many aren't rushing to buy the latest and greatest PC or Mac). But if I were doing "CPU screamer" tasks, the things the dual-CPU Mac at $3000 is intended to do, I'd be looking carefully at the Pentium 4 machines. Or even at dual- or quad-Intel CPU machines. If Apple loses the high end, the professional artists and suchlike, it loses a lot of its cachet. --Tim May