Swap this

by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/13/2004 3:45 AM EST
Comments Locked

36 Comments

Back to Article

  • Billium - Monday, February 16, 2004 - link

    More tips:

    Hold option to close all windows in an app at once, like opt-click the front Word document and they all close, prompting to save of course. Works with minimize and zoom, too. For instance, after using Exposé to look over the images, opt-click minimize to drop all Photoshop documents into the Dock at once, a useful trick with those nice little thumbnail icons.

    Hold command (Apple) to drag, scroll and resize windows in the background. Metal windows can be dragged by any exposed metal surface area as always.

    Macdesktops.com--a great collection of photographic desktops, and they put the copyright under the menubar so you don't have to look at it.

    Quicktime movies will play in the Dock with live video. Nice for news junkies who can stream news into a Dock icon listening to the audio, then pop it up into a window when the story gets good. It's mostly talking heads most of the time anyway. Plus it's fun to set magnification up and watch the live video thumbnail resize while you scrub the mouse over it.
  • Random Person - Monday, February 16, 2004 - link

    * Sorry, but if 2-4GB System Memory is required for good performance, than the Mac contingent has no legs to stand on to argue that Windows is "bloatware" *

    I'm running 10.3.2 with 384MB of RAM on a 4+ year old G4/400 w/o AGP (16MB Rage128 PCI, baby!) and I think I get great performance out of my system.
  • Meedo - Monday, February 16, 2004 - link

    http://213.158.116.18/torrents/1180/Apple_Switch_P...
    =)
  • SmurfTower - Sunday, February 15, 2004 - link

    http://www.javelin.cc/colloquy/ great IRC app.
  • SmurfTower - Sunday, February 15, 2004 - link

    You can access the finder from within Safari copy-paste into Safari file:///Applications/ file:///Desktop/
  • jeffosx - Sunday, February 15, 2004 - link

    Learn something new everyday. Did know about the path and finder in the titlebar icon but not these useful tips:

    http://latourfl.com/blog/index.php/2004/02/14/47-U...

    using it already...
  • SmurfTower - Sunday, February 15, 2004 - link

    press the ctrl + option + command + #8 keys. :D:D:D repeat to revert.
  • Anonymous - Saturday, February 14, 2004 - link

    He's using two 23" Hi-Def displays(?) with 512mb of ram!?! and 64mb video card. Like Mac Users have said before, one gig of ram is sufficient -- for typical daily tasks 512 mb is fine but for video editing, 3D modeling, music production, you'll WANT 4 gigs+ -- but the video card is underpowered even by windows standards. Its not fair to compare the Windows UI(which is so 1992 ;) to the most advance consumer operating system like Apple's Quartz Extreme based OS with beautiful 128 icons, etc.
  • japtor - Saturday, February 14, 2004 - link

    "*looks at G3/500 PowerBook with 384MB RAM...*"

    i love my 4+ year old pismo...
    that said i love my few month old dual g5 much more. itll have 2.5 gigs of ram next week.

    and 2-4gb is far from required for 'good performance.' for most people 512mb is fine, and would say 1gb is overkill. i just ordered 2gb ram today cause it was cheap... mainly for video work. pretty much everything else is fine with 512 usually (...cept that one time i opened a 300+mb tiff in photoshop, it was swapping for a while when it was loading it into ram).
  • Adam K - Saturday, February 14, 2004 - link

    "Sorry, but if 2-4GB System Memory is required for good performance, than the Mac contingent has no legs to stand on to argue that Windows is "bloatware.""

    It is not "necessary" to have 2-4 GB of memory for good performance. Anand, you must keep in mind, is running several applications simultaneoulsy with over twenty windows open.
  • Anonymous - Saturday, February 14, 2004 - link

    Sorry, but if 2-4GB System Memory is required for good performance, than the Mac contingent has no legs to stand on to argue that Windows is "bloatware"
  • Eug - Saturday, February 14, 2004 - link

    Well, IBM doesn't publish "max" numbers, just "typical". Motorola publishes both "typical" and "max" numbers, but it doesn't seem like Motorola's "typical" corresponds with IBM's.

    Anyways, Motorola's 7447 1.3 GHz is 21.3 Watts typical and 30 Watts max, which leads me to believe that a 90 nm low power 1.6 GHz G5 would likely work fine.

    That's assuming the system controller for the G5 in a laptop was also low power. (They could make a laptop system controller for only 1 CPU and single channel memory and then shrink it, for power savings.)
  • GL - Saturday, February 14, 2004 - link

    Another keyboarding tip. In System Preferences, click on "Universal Access", view the "Mouse" tab and enable "Mouse Keys". I find this helpful when I'm web browsing and need to click a link but it's 50 links deep into the web page, and I don't feel like using the mouse. What this does is let you control the mouse pointer with the numeric keypad on your keyboard. It's not helpful on Apple laptops as they do not have this keypad.
  • Eug - Saturday, February 14, 2004 - link

    Well, IBM doesn't publish "max" numbers, just "typical". Motorola publishes both "typical" and "max" numbers, but it doesn't seem like Motorola's "typical" corresponds with IBM's.

    Anyways, Motorola's 7447 1.3 GHz is 21.3 Watts typical and 30 Watts max, which leads me to believe that a 90 nm low power 1.6 GHz G5 would likely work fine.

    That's assuming the system controller for the G5 in a laptop was also low power. (They could make a laptop system controller for only 1 CPU and single channel memory and then shrink it, for power savings.)
  • ViRGE - Saturday, February 14, 2004 - link

    Eug, what are the specs on G4s in the similar speed range(1.4ghz G4's, 1ghz G4's, etc)? My interest here is to see all other things equal, what could Apple get away with G5 wise in puting in a PowerBook. If they can't get too far past 1.4ghz, they may have issues, since the 1.33ghz G4 is a pretty strong chip on its own.
  • Brent S - Saturday, February 14, 2004 - link

    ahhhhhhhhh. that makes more sense. thanks for the clarification. i couldn't find that damn article.
  • Eug - Saturday, February 14, 2004 - link

    Oh and PPC 970FX 2.5 GHz is supposedly 52 Watts typical. I dunno the voltage but maybe we'll find out Monday.

    And Happy Valentines Day! :)
  • Eug - Saturday, February 14, 2004 - link

    PPC 970FX 1.4 GHz is 1.0 V and 12.3 Watts typical.
    PPC 970FX 2.0 GHz is 1.3 V and 24.5 Watts typical.

    PPC 970 2.0 GHz 130 nm is 1.3 V and 51 Watts typical.
  • Brent S - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    I am just as excited as the next guy about the prospect of a PowerBook G5, but you are misquoting specs. The voltage at 1.4GHz is something like 11.4V, not 1V. I wish I could find the damn article but I can't. Still, at 2GHz its down from 55W to 25.5W or something similar. The G5 and its successors are going to be a major force to be reckoned with in the near future.
  • Damien Sorresso - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    Yep, the 970FX is shaping up to be one hell of a chip. I thought it'd be a while before we saw a PowerBook G5, but it looks like it'll appear sooner than later. IBM certainly aren't pulling any punches with the 970. It debuted strongly, and the technology looks to be maturing rather well. It's a good bet that we'll see 3 GHz G5's when Steve said we would. If that happens, I'll snatch one up with a little student loan-age. :)
  • joe - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    Anand,
    How significant is the new IBM PowerPC 970FX. IBM is going to announce the full specs this Monday or Tuesday at the Intel Developer Conference. Are there any advantages this could give Apple in terms of small form factor for notebooks or other appliance like devices. What do you think of the performance and flexability roadmap for the IBM process vs what you know about Intel and AMD chip technology.

    What your thoughts on the following pundent's thoughts:
    That is the real exciting part of IBM's SOC technology. Since most of the power is needed for the processor core (the ALU, the FPU, VMX and the SRAM/DRAM) the other components in a SOC design do not need the same level of power. On a traditional motherboard, it is straightforward to send different levels of power to different components. Thus your processor may get up to 1.8V, whereas your USB controller gets <1V. On everyone else's SOC technologies, the power of the most significant component dictates that all parts of a SOC get the same high voltage.

    This is where IBM's SOC leapfrogs the others: IBM developed a technique generally called Voltage Islands. IBM refers to this and other power saving technologies as PowerTune (as found in the 970FX.) With Voltage Islands, an IBM based SOC can be partitioned into various islands, sections that each can have their own Voltage. Thus an SOC with a PPC Core and a communications controller on it, can give to the PPC core section 1.3V while giving the communications controller .8V. But there is more. Since the PPC core is not at full use all the time, the PPC V can be slewed down. such that the PPC core during light usage can go down below 1V.

    What does this mean? It means that a SOC design will use very very little power, produce significantly less heat, and due to the elimination of most inter-chip communications, the system be significantly faster. (And, when MRAM starts being used instead of S/D-RAM, there will be no What makes the SOC potential so great is the recent 970FX developments. You can consider the 970FX as a sort of SOC. It is composed of three core parts:

    1. The ALU (the two integer unit, boolean logic, the two load store units, the registers, etc.)
    2. The FPU (the floating point unit, basically the part that does decimal math)
    3. The VU (the vector mat unit, IBM calls VMX, Apple calls Velocity).

    The 970FX has a 64-bit ALU, a 64bit FPU known as FP2, and the VMX vector unit all wired together done in the 90NM process using IBM's PowerTune technologies to allow for voltage and frequency slewing through the processor. (the 970FX will dynamically scale between 1-1.3V and 1.4-2+ GHz to significantly reduce power and heat).

    So why is this so exciting for SOC designs. First, the 970FX specs tell us that the core processor at 1.4GHz will operate with only a 1V requirement. There is no way to know at what frequency the processor requires 1.3V. So maybe we are looking at initial designs that will allow a SOC design to operate at 1.6GHz with only 1V! That would be huge for Apple's future notebooks and even smaller form factor PCs. Don't forget that the iMac requires very stringent thermal characteristics.

    In smaller devices, Apple can choose to fore go the 64-bit ALU, since it is highly unlikely such devices will need more than 48GB of RAM in the next 10 years. They can however keep the 64-bit FP2 unit since double precision math is needed for emerging video and cinematic consumer technologies. This way Apple can highly optimize the SOC to the smaller form factor personal devices.

    This level of SOC customization and the adding of proprietary ASIC designs to the SOC, such as hardwiring key portions of the OS X core system is very exciting. The latter part could allow key OS X frameworks like core audio/video, quartz and quicktime encoding/decoding to receive boosts in performance of an additional 10 to 20 times, significantly reducing the main processors utilization keeping it at low power levels and free to do other things. On top of that IBM's PowerTune technology doesn't stop at voltage slewing.

    PowerTune also allows software developers to better manage power usage. For example, IBM demonstrated a DVD Player that more than halves the power requirements of the processor. Basically, since the processor can work faster than the 60FPS that HD playback requires, the PowerTune API allows the DVD player to decode the video file frame, nap the processor during that idle period between when the next frame is needed and then wake it up just in time to decode the next frame. Thats how fast the processor is and how quickly the processor can scale its power usage. This could allow for DVD playback on a notebook to exceed 10 hours, those East asian flights seem more attractive all of a sudden.

    The near future is pretty exciting considering Apple is past the development cycle and ready to use these chips in production.looking back.)

    What makes the SOC potential so great is the recent 970FX developments. You can consider the 970FX as a sort of SOC. It is composed of three core parts:

    1. The ALU (the two integer unit, boolean logic, the two load store units, the registers, etc.)
    2. The FPU (the floating point unit, basically the part that does decimal math)
    3. The VU (the vector mat unit, IBM calls VMX, Apple calls Velocity).

    The 970FX has a 64-bit ALU, a 64bit FPU known as FP2, and the VMX vector unit all wired together done in the 90NM process using IBM's PowerTune technologies to allow for voltage and frequency slewing through the processor. (the 970FX will dynamically scale between 1-1.3V and 1.4-2+ GHz to significantly reduce power and heat).

    So why is this so exciting for SOC designs. First, the 970FX specs tell us that the core processor at 1.4GHz will operate with only a 1V requirement. There is no way to know at what frequency the processor requires 1.3V. So maybe we are looking at initial designs that will allow a SOC design to operate at 1.6GHz with only 1V! That would be huge for Apple's future notebooks and even smaller form factor PCs. Don't forget that the iMac requires very stringent thermal characteristics.

    In smaller devices, Apple can choose to fore go the 64-bit ALU, since it is highly unlikely such devices will need more than 48GB of RAM in the next 10 years. They can however keep the 64-bit FP2 unit since double precision math is needed for emerging video and cinematic consumer technologies. This way Apple can highly optimize the SOC to the smaller form factor personal devices.

    This level of SOC customization and the adding of proprietary ASIC designs to the SOC, such as hardwiring key portions of the OS X core system is very exciting. The latter part could allow key OS X frameworks like core audio/video, quartz and quicktime encoding/decoding to receive boosts in performance of an additional 10 to 20 times, significantly reducing the main processors utilization keeping it at low power levels and free to do other things. On top of that IBM's PowerTune technology doesn't stop at voltage slewing.

    PowerTune also allows software developers to better manage power usage. For example, IBM demonstrated a DVD Player that more than halves the power requirements of the processor. Basically, since the processor can work faster than the 60FPS that HD playback requires, the PowerTune API allows the DVD player to decode the video file frame, nap the processor during that idle period between when the next frame is needed and then wake it up just in time to decode the next frame. Thats how fast the processor is and how quickly the processor can scale its power usage. This could allow for DVD playback on a notebook to exceed 10 hours, those East asian flights seem more attractive all of a sudden.

    The near future is pretty exciting considering Apple is past the development cycle and ready to use these chips in production.
  • zach - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    I dont know if someone already answered this, but here you go:
    if safari has a website stored somewhere, as a bookmark, in history, or whatever, it will fill it in for you. just type in anandtech in the url field and itll go. i just tried it out, and it was fine. when you do get around to the vid card comparison, post it, please! also: the excellent insidemacgames.com site posts links to anandtech occasionally, when its relevant to the mac gaming community. itd be very cool if you returned the favor every now and then. im not affiliated, but i do have that fanatical loyalty we mac users have. (i swear, i only have the pc for the games!)
  • John Blink - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    Your best post yet ;)
  • joe - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    Thanks for the link on David Courtsey review of Garage Band. Man, everyone seems to love this program. I can't wait to hear what Anand thinks about it. I itching to buy a Mac. I am buying one for my daughter for college graduation. She can be my test case.
  • GTaudiophile - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    Have you heard back from ATI yet? Will they be sending you a Radeon 9800 MAC Edition along with that R420 sample???

    :)
  • SmurfTower - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    Tip- in Safari go into preferences to Auto-Fill and check all

    Using info from my Address Book card (in address book you must note which card is your information so that it can auto-fill)

    Auto-fills your personal information
    ________

    User names and passwords

    It can hold multiple n/p for the same site all you have to do is begin typing the letter of the name and it will auto complete.
    ________

    Other forms

    I love this one. It Keeps information of the user when at a specific site, it saves the user time by not having to repeatedly enter info. Its exactly like the auto complete for urls in browsers but isn't as annoying. This is particularly useful for sites like Versiontracker.com, google and yours. :)

    I type S....bam!......SmurfTower
    I type in N......bam!....no@spam.com

    :D sorry couldn't resist, I love that feature.
  • Anonymous - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    If that auther is biased then so is David Coursey :). Its a good product and succeeds at what it does.

    http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/AnchorDesk/4520-7298_...
  • SmurfTower - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2...

    Incorrect. You can use almost any burner out there, all you have to do is pop it in.

    "he integration continues with iMovie and iDVD, the Mac-only software that uses Apple's proprietary SuperDrive DVD burners "

    True but you can always extract your music and use another program without hassle. Highlight all your music in iTunes window drag-n-drop to a folder on your desktop.

    "When you link to the iMusic store and download music, it is saved in Apple's proprietary iTunes software that handles playback and playlist making."
  • the best - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link


    This'll make your day then...

    Launch Safari, open Preferences, select Auto-Fill and select "user names and passwords".

    This is ENTIRELY different functionality then in Windows. It's not cookie based, it's keychain based. You can delete your cookies and it still auto-fills your name/password for web accounts.

    Even better, if you are concerned about security, you can create independent keychains. One is all for the crap sites you don't care about and one keychain for the important sites. So when you go to the important site, it will prompt you for the keychain password before it auto-fills the login form.

    Killer feature.

    Enjoy
    The Best

    I'm a Straddler. Mac for everything, PC for games.
  • joe - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    Here is a review on Apple and iLife. I know you are objective and the best. I am not sure if this author is biased. In your final review, can you please comment on the new Mac digital experience.
    http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2...

  • Steven - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    If this is true, you may want to bag the blackberry for the rumored Treo 610. A mac and a bluetooth phone adds a lot of functionality to isync/mail/ical and Keynote or PowerPoint (remote control your mac with the phone while you do presentations).

    http://www.brighthand.com/article/RumorMill_palmOn...
  • Tim West - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    I always figured somebody would get enough RAM in one of these things to figure out where the caching stops, or at least slows down.....

    Anand has more memory in his system cache than I have in my whole computer :P
  • Eug - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    I just came across this:

    http://news.com.com/2100-1006_3-5158615.html?tag=n...

    The tech giant plans to announce on Friday that it has started mass production of PowerPCs on the 90-nanometer process, which refers to the average feature size on the chips. (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.) The PowerPC 970FX, which is used inside IBM's blade servers and Apple Computer's Xserve G5 server, is the first processor to be made with this manufacturing method.

    Big Blue is expected to describe a 2.5GHz version of the chip made on the 90-nanometer process at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco next week. PowerPCs on the market today, produced on a 130-nanometer process, top out at 2GHz.
  • Mimizuku no Lew - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    *looks at G3/500 PowerBook with 384MB RAM...*

    *Weeps*


    Seriously, I hope you enjoy your Mac experience :)
  • Anonymous - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    schweet
  • Brent S - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link

    wewt.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now