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Sorry if i missed it, but at what speeds do these run? Don't they know just because they keep bumping and bumping the chip speed don't really mean they have a faster system. Seem just like yesterday when a better design was more important than a super fast chip. Oh well, everyone is buying into the Mhz myth now. Funny that just a year or so ago, Apple was trying to shoot down the Mhz myth, now they have people cheering for it. I guess power consumption is good though.


This is a positively thoughtless remark. No one's cheering the MHz myth on, in fact, Intel itself has abandoned the concept. Until the 3Ghz woodies get dropped in a MacPro, the 2.7 GHZ G5 will still be the fastest chip ever put in a Macintosh. I have a dual core Pentium D in a bastard Mac at the house, it runs at 3.8 GHz. I'm pretty sure that even it is slower in a lot of areas than these Core 2's. So no, you're absolutely wrong, the MHz myth is all but dead.

Do you have a reference showing that this translates to better performance in real-world application tests in a head to head competition?

Not handy, since a lot of this happened on mailing lists.

The short version is that the memory performance scales in a very sub-linear fashion as a function of the number of cores being used, whereas Opteron scalability is almost linear up to a large number of cores. The good news is that for single dual-core processors the memory performance is on par with dual-core Opterons and their in-cache performance can be better. The bad news is that this performance does not hold as you scale cores in a system. So for some applications (e.g. those that live mostly in cache) the Woodcrest processors will be mildly faster than Opterons, but for most the performance is about even in real app benchmarks.

I've seen fairly comprehensive benchmarks for both databases and scientific computing applications, both of which thoroughly exercise the memory subsystem. Even though a single Intel core theoretically has more bandwidth, the high latency means that the real bandwidth is about the same as the slower Opterons (which have real bandwidth that approaches theoretical) and the cross-sectional bandwidth of Opterons when you get up to 4 cores and higher is much higher since the scaling is almost linear with the number of cores. For Intel, I think it was the case that a bigger cache was a cheaper design choice than a truly scalable memory subsystem. As a result, they will have different competencies. Some types of floating point codes should run very well on Intel.

It clearly is an issue if they have a federal lawsuit on it. The fact that Apple are rolling out an update that changes the way it works alone shows that there is clearly a problem. Apple vary rarely roll out updates that change things, even if consumers are screaming for it (mouse acceleration in OS X for example).

You refuse to accept there is a problem. You refuse to see the breech of privacy. Why? The government and Apple have clearly accepted it.
You should probably learn what "lawsuit", "federal", and "government" actually mean before saying such things.

Personally, I just hope the tire sounds get a much needed upgrade in GT5.

All in all, it looks good. Time machine, if it works how I hope it will, is going to be a killer. I like the iChat features-- interesting mix of useful business like features with toys for the teenagers...

CoreAnimation has be a little wary. I have a bad feeling we're going to get a run of really cheesy applications before this gets taken under control...

Ron Paul believes in term limits, but keeps running and running and running...

Oh, and Rand didn't fall far from the tree. From wiki for anyone who is curious:

Controversial claims made in Ron Paul's newsletters, written in the first person narrative, included statements such as "Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for that pro-communist philanderer Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day." Along with "even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming." Another notable statement that garnered controversy was "opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, if you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be". An issue from 1992 refers to carjacking as the "hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos." In an article titled "The Pink House" the newsletter wrote that "Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities." These publications would later create political problems for Paul and he considered retiring his seat. Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul)

He won't ever be president, and he should have resigned his seat years ago.

It's one thing to vote against pay raises; it's another to actually do something about them. It's one thing to vote against many things that you know are going to pass, and another to stand up to your party when it counts.

That, right there, is one of the reasons why the Apple community is widely mocked. You should be ashamed of yourself. A complete lack of understanding on the most basic principles of technology.

And Google fanboys still can't tell the difference between "Open", "Standard", "Free", "Open source" and "Proprietary". So I'd say those who do the mocking are not exactly all the bright either.

Thank you for your constructive reply but I have a feeling it will all fall on deaf ears given that most have never actually gone on Google and researched what has been added/changed/enhanced to Mac OS X Lion. For example SAMBA has been removed and completely replaced with a ground up clean room implementation of SMB2 which will translate into better support for Windows Vista and 7 clients as well as the latest versions of Windows. Why hasn't that been mentioned by the nay sayers here?

OpenGL 3.2 has been added and funny enough not a single thing has been said about the fact that it lays the foundation for future updates that will be more prompt.

Then there is Webkit2 based web browser whose knock on effects go well beyond Safari and into applications wishing to utilise web based technologies with framework that provides said functionality but handles all the mundane security/process isolation/etc behind the scenes.

The merging of AV Foundation that serves as the foundation for future development for media products that will span iOS and Mac OS X; that you can have the same media core on iOS and Mac OS X then build upon it to differentiate between the desktop and tablet version by having a different interface, more features on the desktop version etc.

Sandboxing is being enhanced further and more system components are being put into it as to reduce the security exposure when a bug is found.

I'm sure others can note even more enhancements but it is frustrating when I hear the same nauseating ignorance over and over again from the cheap seats screaming there are no new features and yet they've done zero in the way of researching and reading on the matter.

You can't hear me .. but i'm cheering for you.

So how many people in the world do you think have cell phones? Everyone?!?! Just doing a quick Google search, there were about 1.1billion cell users in the world in 2004. So, maybe it's up to 1.5 - 1.75bil now?

Now if there's ~700mil people in the EU with a workforce just under 400mil strong and internet usage is about 300mil. Ya, it would seem reasonable that roughly the same number of people use cell phones. Do you have a better estimate? I'm sure there's a lot of elderly, children, and poor in the 700mil that use cell phones, eh?

What about India, Japan, China? First of all, India and China have median incomes that are FAR less than the US or EU... so I doubt they have a relatively large cellular user base.

And oh, let me check with my cubemate.... yep, CDMA is used in parts of China.
Well, I dont know where to begin... I work in science and you have to trust me when I say that you can't deduct anything from the "facts" you have. You are guessing.
The fact is that GSM has 81% of the world market... and that makes cdma a small market.

Not a chance in the near future. Blu Ray and Sony are in utter shambles right now.

really? off what fact is this based upon or personal opinion? :rolleyes:

Widescreen is great for movie watching, and the spec-lover in me is all over that... but it�s not very flexible for portrait use. (Which is how you hold a tablet one-handed, and is how you see the most content on a web page or scrolling document.)



I hear that the PlayBook is really easy to hold one-handed. If you know what I mean.

This is interesting, BUT, from what I know, Intel announced the desktop (Conroe) Core 2 Duo proccessor on July 27, and as far as I know, no Conroe systems are shipping right now, almost a month later.

Dell has announced some Conroe systems that you can order, but as far as I know they aren't readily shipping yet.

that's because conroe wouldn't have been an upgrade compared to what apple already had out (maybe the imac, but merom waiting for merom would keep it cooler inside). The only thing left to change at that point was the PowerMac and they put Woodcrest in it and that one IS shipping.

If they're going to make us wait an extra four months for the iPhone with a 4" screen and 4G, I'm hoping that atleast the iOS overhaul will be worthwhile.

iOS desperately needs a file system that you can use to drag and drop media into. Not like on a Mac where you see system files and other stuff, but just a users home folder. A place that all apps can access and load and save files from/to. That way if I have a document it doesn't have to exist inside of each app in order to access it. (1 copy in DropBox, 1 in Pages, 1 in DocsToGo, etc.) Also it means that Apples apps would be able to share files with DropBox or any other file syncing service. Then get rid of the file sharing in iTunes and instead just have the disk show up as an external drive. And please let us drag and drop videos and photos from any PC directly into the iPhone's video/photos folder without having to go through iTunes and syncing everything. It sucks that we can't just simply drag and drop a photo from a friend's computer into the Phone. When plugged in, allow W7/OSX to recognize and use the iPhone as a 32GB/64GB Mass/USB Storage Device with access to the file system.

Adding a file system would let us Add (via Bluetooth, iTunes apps, Dropbox and other Apps), Delete and Rename Music, Videos from our iPhones directly. It would let us download files from Safari(or other apps) and store them on the phone in a centralized location, then be able to access them without Safari on my Mac/PC for easy file sharing/swapping. And it would let us organize the 100+ photos and videos on our iPhones into separate folders/albums. It would even let us delete individual text messages and phone calls. And most importantly it would let us organize videos, music, photos (into albums), and documents (PDF, DOC, PAGES), and other files and easily add them as email attachments directly on the phone itself.

iOS also desperately needs an overhaul of notifications...


Regarding notifications, how about something like this:
http://vimeo.com/21208357

http://iosnotifications.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/ios-notifications-concept/

iOS notifications concept
by Andreas
March 18, 2011

There are a lot of really great concepts for iPhone notifications, but they all seem to stray away from what is the look and feel of iOS. So my idea is pretty simple, I have created a concept using only the existing graphical resources of iOS, short of a few few exceptions. But I still feel that they are in bounds of the visual philosophy.
Notifications

Let’s get the obvious out of the bag first, the notification system in place today is kind of intrusive. The popups are so in my face that I have pretty much opted out of every notification I can. There is however another way to inform the user of an event such as an incoming message. The app switcher popup isn’t quite as intrusive as the current popup. It would be great to use for notifications.

Note that this popup is smaller then the app switcher and it doesn't grey out the rest of the interface
http://iosnotifications.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/notifications-popup1.jpg
Today apple use it to display active applications and if you scroll left they show controls for the iPod app. I think there is room for the last notification you received also.

The app icon is basically a mash up of the settings icon and the current notifications symbol in settings. The reason for this that I feel that notifications is system service.

When I started thinking about how to improve the notification system I felt almost immediately that Apple is all about apps, so why not make an app that handles this task.

Take Settings for example, one would think that the entrance to this would be more integrated into the system, but in Apples case they view it as just any other app. Therefore you as a user can choose whether this is important to you or not, i.e. noteworthy of a first page placement or even quick launch bar.

Having one app that handles all notifications also reduce the time you have to spend hunting them all in various apps.

iPhone with notifications
http://iosnotifications.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/iphone12.jpg?w=490&h=800
Notice that it summarize all the notifications and then present them in the red indicator badge. The great thing about having notifications in an app is that you can move it around just as you can with all other standard apps.
http://iosnotifications.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/notifications-app3.jpg?w=640&h=439
The app itself is very straight forward. Your notifications is structured in three simple views. The first is a list view in order to get an overview. The second is an extended view where you can read the full messages just like in an RSS news feed. And the third is notifications grouped by app, this way if you get 10 mails and 15 Facebook wall posts you can still find your 2 SMS messages quickly.

In all views you can also clear all notifications. Note that this only clears the notification, the actual messages is still there. You can also choose edit and delete specific notifications or groups.

When you press (or touch) any of the specific notifications you will automatically activate the appropriate action. For example:

half afro, half mohawk.