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pinlo · Jul 23, 2002, 04:08 PM

I find this blind obsession with computing speed to be somewhat silly, although I'll admit to falling into the trap myself sometimes.

Speed for what? What things do you use your computer for on a daily basis that require more speed? Email? Web browsing? Listening to MP3's? Word processing?

For me, more speed would help things like ripping CD's in iTunes and encoding QuickTime movies in iMovie, but I certainly don't do either of these things on a daily basis. I realize Photoshop is always used as a benchmark, but how many of you really use it everyday? I would guess this represents a small portion of all Mac users. I would have much more appreciation for better quality, more innovative software than I would for simply raw processing power.

When people talk about more and more speed, I think they must just be using their computers to play games (not that there's anything wrong with that). I consider a computer to be merely a tool to help me accomplish a task, and pretty boring in and of itself. Apparently I'm in the minority. Will people evolve past worshipping technology for its own sake?

Sorry for an overly philosophical post.

[ 07-23-2002, 04:17 PM: Message edited by: pinlo ]

osiris · Jul 23, 2002, 04:18 PM

ummmmm, you missed one important aspect of speed: you get things done faster.

Rendering an After Effects Composition with keying applied and composited with other elements, the render could be hours, sometimes DAYS. If I could save ANYTHING in computer time because the CPU is FASTER, then I save time and get to have more of a life away from the computer. Speed is good and you can never EVER have enough of it. That to me is certainly not silly. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

pinlo · Jul 23, 2002, 04:20 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by osiris:
ummmmm, you missed one important aspect of speed: you get things done faster.

Rendering an After Effects Composition with keying applied and composited with other elements, the render could be hours, sometimes DAYS. If I could save ANYTHING in computer time because the CPU is FASTER, then I save time and get to have more of a life away from the computer. Speed is good and you can never EVER have enough of it. That to me is certainly not silly. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> <hr /></blockquote>No, you seem to have missed the point of my post. You get *what* things done faster? How many Mac users use After Effects on a daily basis?

Of course, graphics, video and audio professionals will always benefit from more processing power, but for general computing purposes (which I would like to think represents the majority of Mac owners), what's the point?

[ 07-23-2002, 04:27 PM: Message edited by: pinlo ]

hmurchison2001 · Jul 23, 2002, 04:24 PM

This is quite simple really.

Companies that do high end work need number crunching prowess. But that Market is now where near the size of the general consumer market.

General Consumers

1. Have to feel superior.."mines faster than yours" etc.

2. Really have never bragged about Microsoft so the Hardware is their focal point.

3. HW offers more choice...is this Sound Card better than That etc.

Kristoff · Jul 23, 2002, 04:30 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by hmurchison2001:
This is quite simple really.

Companies that do high end work need number crunching prowess. But that Market is now where near the size of the general consumer market.

General Consumers

1. Have to feel superior.."mines faster than yours" etc.

2. Really have never bragged about Microsoft so the Hardware is their focal point.

3. HW offers more choice...is this Sound Card better than That etc.<hr /></blockquote>I agree...all MHz is lame.

Example. I have a dual 800. I export a DV stream to MPEG4, and the CPUs aren't even 25%.

But, I DO hear my HDDs grinding away like mad.
I am going for a RAID rig with ATA 100 drives to see if that helps.

But, you sure don't hear me bitching about MHz.

An aside:
I have this Quicktime MPEG4 file.
On my 500 MHz Pismo with 640 MB ram, it plays silky smooth.

On an HP workstation with a PIII-800 and 512 MB Ram, it plays choppy as all hell. I guess if my OS sucked so bad, I would feel the need to buy 2.4 GHz processors too.

osiris · Jul 23, 2002, 04:43 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by pinlo:
 <blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by osiris:
ummmmm, you missed one important aspect of speed: you get things done faster.

Rendering an After Effects Composition with keying applied and composited with other elements, the render could be hours, sometimes DAYS. If I could save ANYTHING in computer time because the CPU is FASTER, then I save time and get to have more of a life away from the computer. Speed is good and you can never EVER have enough of it. That to me is certainly not silly. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> <hr /></blockquote>No, you seem to have missed the point of my post. You get *what* things done faster? How many Mac users use After Effects on a daily basis?

Of course, graphics, video and audio professionals will always benefit from more processing power, but for general computing purposes (which I would like to think represents the majority of Mac owners), what's the point?<hr /></blockquote>I do this all the time - but there is more, Premiere, Media Cleaner Pro compressions, Photoshop, web browsing would be faster( as the pages could be rendered quicker with a faster CPU), Java would be faster... Games would be faster... what or who wouldn't benefit?

I'm sorry if I missed the point of your post, but I would hate to think that as a graphics/video pro that my needs don't count anymore, which is the general feeling lately so I'm used to it.

pinlo · Jul 23, 2002, 04:51 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by osiris:
 I'm sorry if I missed the point of your post, but I would hate to think that as a graphics/video pro that my needs don't count anymore, which is the general feeling lately so I'm used to it.<hr /></blockquote>

Sorry, of course your needs count. I just think many people (perhaps more general consumers) need to take a serious look at what specific tasks they use their computers for, and ask themselves which of those tasks really require more processing speed (as opposed to, say, more efficiently written applications and less crappy programming languages than Java).

I think hmurchison2001 had it right when he said that lust for more processor speed was mainly due to the "need to feel superior", which is a pretty sad reason for anything.

osiris · Jul 23, 2002, 04:59 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by pinlo:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by osiris:
[qb]

I think hmurchison2001 had it right when he said that lust for more processor speed was mainly due to the "need to feel superior", which is a pretty sad reason for anything.<hr /></blockquote>You got that right - but we all know that Mac users are already superior, right?
<img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

pinlo · Jul 23, 2002, 05:02 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by osiris:
You got that right - but we all know that Mac users are already superior, right?
<img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

<hr /></blockquote>Damn straight!

Ph.D. · Jul 23, 2002, 10:27 PM

I have simple reasons for wanting more speed, and they are very basic: rendering web pages more quickly, scrolling documents more quickly, etc. These are mundane tasks where the cost is only a few seconds each time, but those seconds add up to many hours, eventually. It's time that I just sit there, unproductive, staring at a blank or incomplete page. The cumulative frustration of minor delays was the number one reason I added an accelerator card to my previous machine (a 7500 that lasted over 5 years and still runs strong), a main reason I moved to a recently new machine (a cube), and it will probably be the reason I'll eventually add an accelerator to the cube.

-Cheers!

qyn · Jul 23, 2002, 10:52 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Ph.D.:
I have simple reasons for wanting more speed, and they are very basic: rendering web pages more quickly, scrolling documents more quickly, etc. These are mundane tasks where the cost is only a few seconds each time, but those seconds add up to many hours, eventually. It's time that I just sit there, unproductive, staring at a blank or incomplete page. The cumulative frustration of minor delays was the number one reason I added an accelerator card to my previous machine (a 7500 that lasted over 5 years and still runs strong), a main reason I moved to a recently new machine (a cube), and it will probably be the reason I'll eventually add an accelerator to the cube.

-Cheers!<hr /></blockquote>Actually, I would argue that the fact you stayed on a 7500 for 5 years shows that speed is really not much of an issue (since in 5 years I went through three machines).

I tend to agree with pinlo on this one. On my old G3 400, was the render speed of html slower than my cable modem? Probably not. Was the scrolling speed slower than the speed of my hand moving the mouse? Probably not. Nonetheless, I upgraded to a dual 800. The only time it even comes close to being taxed is when gaming (which is secretly why I got it anyway).

Ph.D. · Jul 24, 2002, 01:49 PM

[/qb][/QUOTE]Actually, I would argue that the fact you stayed on a 7500 for 5 years shows that speed is really not much of an issue (since in 5 years I went through three machines).
[/QB][/QUOTE]

The 7500 (100 MHz 601) was a very fast machine when it first came out - I bought it the first day they were available. But just before adding a G3 accelerator card to it, my local newspapers web page took 30 seconds to render (not to download, just to display - and that was with images turned off!). Everytime I hit the back button to get to the index of stories, I had to wait 30 seconds for their horrible html to display from cache. Many other pages took almost as long. Such had the web fallen in those few years. They eventually cleaned up their page some, and the card helped amazingly. It was a new machine, as far as I was concerned. Same difference seen when moving to my cube. In any event, my opinion stands. Sadly, we may be entering an era when it's web site bloat rather than application bloat that drives the purchase of new hardware and upgraded net access.

Cheers!

iKevin · Jul 24, 2002, 10:16 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by pinlo:
 <blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by osiris:
 I'm sorry if I missed the point of your post, but I would hate to think that as a graphics/video pro that my needs don't count anymore, which is the general feeling lately so I'm used to it.<hr /></blockquote>

Sorry, of course your needs count. I just think many people (perhaps more general consumers) need to take a serious look at what specific tasks they use their computers for, and ask themselves which of those tasks really require more processing speed (as opposed to, say, more efficiently written applications and less crappy programming languages than Java).

I think hmurchison2001 had it right when he said that lust for more processor speed was mainly due to the "need to feel superior", which is a pretty sad reason for anything.<hr /></blockquote>While you may be right....Apple needs to up the mhz considerably to compete. The better product doesn't always win. Mass adoption keeps computer companies in business and if the market wants speed (which it clearly does) a company needs to jack up the mhz to feed that desire and thereby stay in business longer.

and on a side note....I use Photoshop, Fireworks and Excel on a daily basis and my Dell P4 will get me out of the office by 5 everyday. I tried doing all the stuff on my G4 733 but it was just too slow to get it done efficiently.....so in my case (and i'm not saying this is everyone) mhz would help....because trust me, I would rather use the Mac if it could get the job done faster. (10.2 may even the scales somewhat though)

pinlo · Jul 25, 2002, 12:36 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by iKevin:
While you may be right....Apple needs to up the mhz considerably to compete. The better product doesn't always win. Mass adoption keeps computer companies in business and if the market wants speed (which it clearly does) a company needs to jack up the mhz to feed that desire and thereby stay in business longer.<hr /></blockquote>No real argument from me on this point. So, consumers need to buy new, more powerful machines simply to support Apple as a company, even if most of them have no real use for more speed? (It's kind of a rhetorical question. Of course, I know it's true. It just sounds kind of funny.)

A related point to all of this is that, in my opinion, software bloat (OS and applications) has increased over the years at a rate equal to or greater than the speed increases we've seen on the hardware side. So, in many cases, we're not really coming out ahead.

I think it's time for developers to learn to code more efficiently, as we will soon be at the point where Moore's Law begins to break down (miniaturization cannot continue forever).

(I also think that as soon as broadband becomes adopted by the majority, we'll start seeing huge, streaming video pop-up ads all over the place, and our connections won't feel much faster than when we were on dial-up.)

Sorry if this sounds like an overly pessimistic outlook. I guess it's the same as with money: the more you make, the more you tend to spend. It's hard to really save more and come out ahead.

macaddled · Jul 26, 2002, 11:37 AM

Bah, as far as I know most Apple machines still reside with designers, musicians and videographers and we all need more speed. I've been at work late too many times because of long render times.

If Apple really loses these markets then consumers won't have the choice down the road.

That being said I'm hopeful that the rumors are true this time. We've got the pix man!

awcopus · Jul 26, 2002, 12:49 PM

What is the deal with these military guys, always wanting the best weapons? What is up with construction guys always insisting on bigger and better machinery? What is the problem with those professionals who use Macs always wanting their PowerMacs to be faster?

Give me a break! Or, better yet, give me a PowerMac than is as fast at After Effects as Wintel machines are. Or, better still, give me a PowerMac with a mobo completely optimized so that the G4s aren't underutilized.

I'm a Mac fanatic, love the OS, been on the platform for long enough to remember when our processor parity with the Intel world made it possible to stress the advantages of the OS. Now, the processor speeds undermine the OS in practice and perception. Professionals are leaving the Mac...Apple knows this, and hopefully the upcoming revisions will be radical improvements to overall performance. Boy do we need it!

Loyal, but not to the point of slitting my throat.

P.S. Apple's recent bait and switch with .Mac and its FULL PRICE OSX point release are creating a lot of ill will among the faithful. Apple really should have continued to offer email for free and then charged for the other services. BIG marketing mistake. Everyone who was using only the email will abandon their @mac.com address, reducing Apple's brand presence in communications. Think Stupid!