[gee308]

First off, I'm not a mac guy, so I probably don't know what im talking about. I'm about to switch over though because of BSD/OSX, I'm a OpenBSD guy. I don't know the validity of this, but a friend of mine who works at apple of taiwan told me that OSX only has optimization for the g4 so it won't run very well on a g3. I want to know if it is good or not for me to buy the new 500 mhz ibook, use OSX, and start writing apps on it. What is the best route for me to start programming with OSX? Where can I find technical info about how g3 and the g4 works with OSX? Thank you.

[Scrod]

OS X works quite well on a G3. If there have been any major optimizations for the G4 I haven't noticed them. Of course, OS X will run faster on a G4, but under no circumstances does that mean it's unusable on a G3. The thing that makes the biggest difference in speed is how much RAM you have.

[NeoMac]

I run OSX on a 500Mhz G3 Pismo. It runs just great.

HOWEVER, I've used OSX on a DUAL-500 G4 ... WOW ... what a beast that is.

[This message has been edited by NeoMac (edited 05-12-2001).]

[DaGuy]

I have an iMac running a G3 at 233 MHZ and 192 MB RAM. MacOS X runs well but the aqua layer is not as snappy as OS 9 on this same box is. Be as it may I'm not complaining.

My brother has a Sony VIAO desktop running a Celeron at 600 MHZ and my first generation iMac smokes it -even running MacOS X! All in all, money spent on higher MHZ and more ram will make your experience that much more enjoyable.

To start developing, I suggest:

(1) get a free online membership with Apple Developer Connection (it's in the developer tab at apple.com).

(2) start playing with Project Builder: when you buy MacOS X you also get a Developer CD that contains Project Builder which is very good IDE.

(3) Also keep checking out this forum. Many bright people contribute; it's a great learning place.



[This message has been edited by DaGuy (edited 05-13-2001).]

[juanvaldes]

Just to let you know, I have a dual 450 G4 and it feels slow at times. Apple has created a beast in X, and it is still very rough. If all you are interested in doing is developing apps and internet stuff I am guessing, I might suggest picking up an older G3, if you are interested in the new iBook, that or (if you can handle it's size) an older iBook. Then in a year(?) when apple gets some faster machines out upgrade.

unless apple pulls a miracle with 10.1, it will not get faster till they release faster hardware.

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"Imagine the disincentive to software development if after months of work another company could come along and copy your work and market it under its own name...without legal restraints to such copying, companies like Apple could not afford to advance the state of the art."
- Bill Gates, 1983 (New York Times, 25 Sep 1983, p. F2)

[lindberg]

You know, that's interesting. I currently have a 350 MHz G3 iMac with 192MB of RAM. A friend has a dual 450 G4 with 256 RAM and 15" flatscreen monitor. The video performance on my iMac is just fine -- things generally feel very snappy (outside of window resizing, but that's another matter). My friend's dual G4 feels much slower though when it comes to graphics. Granted it's much much faster at most everything else, but certain aspects of the performance seemed oddly poor on that machine. It may just be a driver issue... I'm not sure. I don't think MacOS X is inherently slow though.

[Angus_D]

I'm pretty sure OS X has quite a lot of optimization for AltiVec, the vector processing unit found only in G4s. Could be wrong, though.

OS X definitely feels a lot faster on a friend's G4 (Sawtooth 400MHz I think) than on my iMac RevD 333MHz (which of course doesn't have drivers for the onboard video card )

[This message has been edited by Angus_D (edited 05-13-2001).]

[geran]

I got a b/w g3 300mzh and 160 mb ram, Os X works fine...

[Since EBCDIC]

I believe what your friend was trying to say was that Mac OS X has support for the G4 and for multi-processing machines.

I believe that Angus_D is incorrect in asserting that much of the existing Mac OS X uses anything from the AltiVec (Velocity Engine) technologies. (Certainly when things like Adobe Photoshop are released for Mac OS X they will, but the existing OS seems to be pretty much ignore AltiVec.)

As far as Mac OS X performance on the G3, I must add another positive note to the chorus which you've heard here. I'm running 10.0.3 on a 400 MHz (Pismo) G3 PowerBook with 512 MB RAM and things are very pleasant. As with most UN*Xen, things go better with RAM :-)

You don't say if you currently own a G3. If so, spend nothing and deploy Mac OS X on it. If you own nothing, I'd recommend the G3 iBook over the G4 Titanium PowerBook simply because of the price (assuming that not having a PCMCIA card isn't a deal-breaker).

General information and developer information is available at the Apple Developer Connection. You don't mention your experience, but in general you'll have to choose a language (generally C or Java (I prefer the latter)) and a framework (the free Project Builder doesn't hold a candle to Metrowerks' IDE, but it is free :-). Remember, baby steps. You can always start over in three or six months; what you've learned will easily be moved to another language and framework.

Best of luck. Oh, and remember to have freeware versions of whatever you write. Please.

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Since EBCDIC
Make every post count!

[gee308]

Originally posted by Since EBCDIC:
I believe what your friend was trying to say was that Mac OS X has support for the G4 and for multi-processing machines.

I believe that Angus_D is incorrect in asserting that much of the existing Mac OS X uses anything from the AltiVec (Velocity Engine) technologies. (Certainly when things like Adobe Photoshop are released for Mac OS X they will, but the existing OS seems to be pretty much ignore AltiVec.)

As far as Mac OS X performance on the G3, I must add another positive note to the chorus which you've heard here. I'm running 10.0.3 on a 400 MHz (Pismo) G3 PowerBook with 512 MB RAM and things are very pleasant. As with most UN*Xen, things go better with RAM :-)

You don't say if you currently own a G3. If so, spend nothing and deploy Mac OS X on it. If you own nothing, I'd recommend the G3 iBook over the G4 Titanium PowerBook simply because of the price (assuming that not having a PCMCIA card isn't a deal-breaker).

Thanks for the info. I just bought my first mac ever(and my first "new" computer, I usually get older machines). I got 2 new ibooks. I also bought OSX. I've heard that OSX runs horrible with low memory, and for the 1 day I've had so far with OSX 10.0.3 and 128 MB of RAM, I can't stand it. On my ibook, in the dock when I click a program, it takes about 5 or more seconds to load, when I am at the top choosing a menu, it lags, and most of everything lags. I'm coming from a pentium 150 laptop. I already miss the command line too much(the text on the terminal in X is too small) I will buy 256 for $80 today and that will probably fix the lag. I'm opptimistic about OSX and I realize it isn't done. I will tweak all my setting today. Where is a good and fast read page to quickly optimize X?

General information and developer information is available at the Apple Developer Connection. You don't mention your experience, but in general you'll have to choose a language (generally C or Java (I prefer the latter)) and a framework (the free Project Builder doesn't hold a candle to Metrowerks' IDE, but it is free :-). Remember, baby steps. You can always start over in three or six months; what you've learned will easily be moved to another language and framework.

From the unix world, I have learned C, python, shell scripting(use sh, not bash), PHP, postgreSQL, but no java. I'm still in college, so I'm probably a rookie programmer.

Best of luck. Oh, and remember to have freeware versions of whatever you write. Please.

Thanks.
I will put everything I write under the BSD license or maybe GPL(highly doubt it).

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by Since EBCDIC:
I believe that Angus_D is incorrect in asserting that much of the existing Mac OS X uses anything from the AltiVec (Velocity Engine) technologies. (Certainly when things like Adobe Photoshop are released for Mac OS X they will, but the existing OS seems to be pretty much ignore AltiVec.)

I didn't say that much of OS X uses AltiVec, just that I would be surprised if it wasn't used at all...

The June issue of MacWorld has benchmark tests showing G4 systems are noticeably faster than G3's. I have a G3 iMac 266 with 192MB of RAM and it's slow. I don't mind it most of the time.

But, as mentioned above, folks with G4's are also complaining about speed. There's another thread here which has been the most educational I've seen so far on the speed issue:
http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/Foru...ML/002448.html

I gleaned from this (and others may disagree) that Apple has simply chosen to do all of Quartz's graphics compositing on the CPU (i.e., off the graphics card), and that this is a temporary situation. I am assuming Apple is working with ATI and/or NVidia to build hooks into the graphics card for most of this stuff. If they aren't, they should expect ordinary Mac users to be quite disappointed. I assume they read their feedback pages and that something is being done about this as we speak.

[gorgonzola]

If you're really power-hungry and need a lot of bang for your buck, then I would suggest waiting until MWNY, as Apple is going to introduce PowerMac upgrades there. The current top of the line is a G4/733, and at the very least, the top of the line config after MWNY will be a dual 733. While OS X doesn't take that much advantage of AltiVec, dual processors will serve you very well. That second 733 G4 chip will really give you huge boosts in speed.

Also, OS X is a little rough right now, and you might do well to put off your switching until the big upgrade comes in July.

Waiting can of course go on forever, but there are very specific things planned for Mac OS X this July, and since it's only two months away that may be something you want to think about. I know you'd come here kicking yourself if you paid $5000 for a stocked G4/733 and found that you could have gotten dual 850 MHz processors for the same price.

good luck

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