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

To: Hippieslayer who wrote (5640)	10/22/1997 11:47:00 PM
From: soup	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 213173

Preview of 8.1. via MacOSRumors >Mac OS 8.1 in mid-alpha, showing promise as useful update With Mac OS 8.1 (code-named Bride of Buster) midway through the alpha stage of development, enough detail has become clear about the final product to make it clear: 8.1 will indeed be a must-install upgrade for most, if not all, Mac users. A short list of reasons why: The newly-revamped (Since a2) version of HFS Plus, Apple's new advanced file storage format, is faster and stabler than before, and shows great promise in saving Mac users with large drives very significant amounts of disk space as well as providing for more reliable storage than with the older HFS format. The included system MathLib is much faster, making graphics and other FPU-dependent operations significantly quicker. OpenTransport 1.3 is looking like a top-notch upgrade for those with access to the Internet; speed and system resource efficiency appear improved, and those running Mac servers will rejoice at the newfound ability to host multiple IP addresses from a single Internet connection without using tricky third-party tools. The Mac OS Runtime for Java (MRJ) 2.0 is much faster than 1.5, finally making the Mac a very viable platform for the use of cross-platform Java applications. ...and that's the short list. Of course, 8.1 will be required for those using the new G3 lines of PowerMacs and PowerBooks, as this will be the first version of the OS to fully and properly support the Gossamer motherboard.< 209.100.58.71

To: Hippieslayer who wrote (5640)	10/23/1997 6:21:00 PM
From: Eric Yang	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 213173

In order for PPC to run programs compiled to run on Intel x86, the PowerPC chip must support the X86 instruction set. To achieve this needs to have the extra circuitry to carry out those instructions or translate the instructions into PowerPC's RISC equivalents. Either approach will make the PPC chip much larger and more expensive to produce. It's been rumored that IBM onced worked on a version of PowerPC chip (PPC 614?) that did exactly that but the project was later abandoned. With .25 micron process the Mach 5 604e chips have shrunk to 1/3 the size of previous 604e, perhaps with further shrinking and cost reduction via copper based technology it might be economical to produce a x86/PPC chip. With the current state of the Mac it's unlikely that such a project will get funded. Let's just hope that Rhapsody kicks butt and in 10 years allow the Mac to regain huge market share. If that were to happen then a x86/ppc chip would be desirable for consumers to run their obsolete Windows/x86 applications. Okay...so I'm dreaming. As for PowerPC running WindowsNT it is a different issue. Operating systems like WindowsNT, Windows95, MacOS, Unix and even Rhapsody (with sufficient effort) can be compiled to run on different platforms. As far as I know version 4.0 of WindowsNT has been ported to run on PowerPC. Microsoft later asked for a few million dollars to keep future version of NT (5.0) portable to PPC. IBM (& I think MOT) refused to pay so further development of WindowsNT on PPC was terminated. It's important to note that just because WindowsNT 4.0 runs on PowerPC doesn't means that all WindowsNT applications can run one PowerPC. Applications still needs to be written and compiled to run on the NT/PPC platform. Eric