While I'm working on the new HDD reviews for AT I'm also preparing for the new Mac section on AT, which brings me to this Macdate - what comparisons/reviews would you all like to see done in the new Mac section at AT?
I've got a couple of ideas already, including the new 2.5GHz G5 and a 64MB vs 128MB vs 256MB Exposé graphics card comparison but I'm looking for more requests. So just drop your requests in the comments section of this blog or drop me an email if you don't want the rest of the world seeing your request and I'll get cracking on it.
I'm a little behind on the Mac section seeing as how I have yet to develop a full benchmark suite for our Mac tests here at AT, but I'm planning on devoting some time to that later this week after I get these HDDs out of the way. I'm also open to any suggestions as far as benchmarks go; I'm thinking about trying to script together something to test office/general usage performance but given that I've been a Mac user for only a handful of months my talents are still quite lacking. I'm going to be doing more research over the next week or so, but always open to any pointers, suggestions, etc...
Back to work...
I've got a couple of ideas already, including the new 2.5GHz G5 and a 64MB vs 128MB vs 256MB Exposé graphics card comparison but I'm looking for more requests. So just drop your requests in the comments section of this blog or drop me an email if you don't want the rest of the world seeing your request and I'll get cracking on it.
I'm a little behind on the Mac section seeing as how I have yet to develop a full benchmark suite for our Mac tests here at AT, but I'm planning on devoting some time to that later this week after I get these HDDs out of the way. I'm also open to any suggestions as far as benchmarks go; I'm thinking about trying to script together something to test office/general usage performance but given that I've been a Mac user for only a handful of months my talents are still quite lacking. I'm going to be doing more research over the next week or so, but always open to any pointers, suggestions, etc...
Back to work...
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Adam K. - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
Hey Anand,Sorry to bug you...but my brother is just about to buy a new G5 (dual 1.8 GHz)...I am telling him to wait until he can read your upcoming articles (especially regarding the expose performance under different graphics cards, your recommended ram requirements, etc) Can you give an approximate date that they will be up?
Thanks,
Adam
Anonymous - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
[quote]I'd be interested to know the why's and wheretofore's of this - what causes driver developement on a Mac to be more difficult?[/quote]Perhaps they found out that Apple was going to introduce it in OS X 10.4 anyway ;) But it's a nice feature, most FireWire drives have 2 ports.
maxplanar - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
I was very VERY interested in a product called Fireshare by Unibrain which would allow multiple Mac's to share Firewire drives - perfect for a DV-rez studio. Unibrain have delivered the product for the PC, but when I spoke with an engineer about why the Mac version had disappeared from their site, he said development of their own Firewire stack for the Mac (needed for the software) had proved too difficult, whereas it was easy on the PC. As a result they had dropped developement for Mac, while delivering on PC. I'd be interested to know the why's and wheretofore's of this - what causes driver developement on a Mac to be more difficult? Is firmware dev. on the Mac harder, or is the community just not so familiar with it? Are the programmer tools good?PS I needed this product. XSan is probably my saviour, but it's pricey for what I need.
NeutronMonk - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
A comprehensive comparison of Pro video cards under Final Cut Pro and After Effects would be great- cards like BlackMagic, Pinnacle CineWave, Kona 2 HD, etc.David Smith - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
39 - Well, for starters (and to keep any of the people who get really pissed off about this from jumping on you), MAC is an acronym for Media Access Controller (iirc), and Mac is an abbreviation of Macintosh. Some people get kinda worked up about this, so it's useful to knowBZ - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
There is a lot of talk of how much RAM is needed in the new G5s. Is 2GB enough? 4GB? 8GB?It would be great to see a series of tests on a G5 going up through the RAM and seeing where the sweet spot is. Not just running some video compression, but things like start up times, normal usage, etc.
BZ
sid - Monday, June 21, 2004 - link
Dear Anand,AT Mac section is something which we all AT lovers definitley want as there is virtually no HW difference between the other two dominant OSes that windows / Linux. This and the fact that MAC hardware sometimes is difrrent/ahead of X86 Platform definitely warrants the AT MAC. but definitely some kind of detailed introductory articles about the entire MAC experience would be welcome as it would help us non MAC users get started on the MAc bandwagon and use one of the alternative available to us enthusiasts.
sid
p.s this and most of the demands mentioned above. i know it wold make this tough and time consuming but once it gets started it would be line no other.And i think you guys can do it
japtor - Saturday, June 19, 2004 - link
comparisons between the nvidia/ati hardware, specifically some info on cpu usage in basic use, not just games and stuff that every other site does. like i often hear that macs w/nv hw use more cpu when playing dvds. id just like to see some confirmation and thorough tests on random crap like that.Judge_Fire - Friday, June 18, 2004 - link
As an introduction, a "What, how and where things are tweaked in comparison to Windows" software primer could be nice.Compare things like BIOS, Open Firmware, Registry, Disk Utility, Network Utility and even command line options ("man pmset" comes to mind) to give an insight of what the typical and more obscure tools are. Those, and perhaps vendor spesific driver controls for GPUs, which tend to suck on the mac.
As for tests, I'd love to see (hear) a test of the CoreAudio beast, which for me has been quite impressive, with sub-1 ms latencies for audio i/o. With or without external hardware, compared to Windows solutions.
http://developer.apple.com/audio/macosxaudio.html
J
Dan - Friday, June 18, 2004 - link
I like the idea on tweaking mac's, you caould call it 'hack your mac' with different tips on configuring both the hardware and system settings for optimal preformance.