heh heh
Apple’s fans continue to rewrite history
So now that Apple has added audio and video chatting to iChat (AV), Business 2.0 has apparently come to the conclusion that Apple was the first company to get this technology deployed to users. I first used video chat with NetMeeting on Windows several years ago, and I’ve tested various Web cams on Windows ever since, using a Logitech add-on for Windows Messenger and the new MSN Messenger 6 most recently. But hey, now that Apple’s finally caught on to the possibilities, the ~7 million people using OS X are going to do what the ~700 million people using Windows could never do: put the phone companies out of business. Yawn. Think, people.
posted 11:03 AM
Apple benchmark lies
The Apple fanatics just can’t stand it, but those G5 benchmarks are as bogus as a three dollar bill. As always, CNET’s Michael Kanellos does get it, noting in a recent article the ways in which Apple’s supposed “fastest personal computer in the world” is anything but. First, the scores Apple posted for the Intel competition are bogus. According to the Apple-sponsored tests, Dell Computer’s Dimension 8300 with a single 3 GHz Pentium 4 scored 693 in the SPEC floating point test, below Apple’s score of 840 (for a dual processor G5). However, previous (non-Apple) tests show the Intel 3 GHz Pentium 4 scoring 1213 on the floating-point test, while the 3.2GHz version hit 1252; both of these scores are roughly 50 percent faster than Apple’s best dual processor score, and the Intel systems are both using a single processor, no less. Furthermore, floating point is supposedly the area in which PowerPC processors outdo the Intel competition. Heh. On the integer tests, the figures are even further off. Apple’s tests show the dual-processor G5 machine scoring 800, while Dell’s scored only “slightly higher” with 889; too bad Intel actually racked up scores of 1164 and 1221, respectively, for the 3 GHz and 3.2 GHz systems. Game over. Second, Apple did things to illegally tilt the test in the G5’s favor. For example, the G5 was outfitted with faster Serial ATA technology, compared to the standard ATA hard drives used on the Dell. And then there’s the infamous choice of a GCC compiler that Apple uses to develop Mac OS X; meanwhile, no one actually uses this compiler outside of Linux on PCs. Third, there is Apple’s legacy: The company has been lying to its customers ever since Jobs took the company back. A few of the more infamous examples: The (400 MHz) G4 Cube was a “supercomputer” (it wasn’t), the G4 was faster than any PC (remember the “Pentium toasting” commercials?), and virtually ever single promise about release dates ever uttered from Jobs’ mouth proved to be false (the PowerBook 17 was coming in February 2003, remember? It was available in limited quantities in March, but in volume in April, in one recent example). In fact, Apple’s bogus claims are so bald-faced, the company’s been sued several times by shareholders. The stupid part of all this is that the G5 is cool. It really is. Hell, I want one. But Apple gets more bad publicity from the BS than the good feelings from the already converted can possibly overcome. Will the company ever learn?
posted 10:33 PM
en nog!
LWN recently published an article called Five years of Mozilla, an interesting, if-overly positive look at the first half-decade of Mozilla’s life. I wish I could be equally positive, but I’ve watched Code Rush, I’ve read every book there is about Netscape, and I’ve been covering Netscape/Mozilla news at my day job for years, so I know the truth. So, the short story goes like this: Mark Andreessen did not invent Mosaic or even write most of it. When Marc joined up with Jim Clark, he was unable to come up with a compelling new business, so they eventually settled on re-doing Mosaic (this was about their 7th business plan as I recall), so they hired all the Mosaic developers and Netscape (eventually) was born (they tried to use the name Mosaic, but were sued). The code Netscape wrote was complete crap, so when they released the source code to Communicator as open source in 1998, excited developers at the recently established Mozilla.org quickly realized they’d have to restart the project from scratch, which they did in late 1998. A short four years later (ahem), they released the first version of their browser suite, Mozilla 1.0, a bloated but standards-friendly browser with an excellent rendering engine that quickly grabbed less than 0.1 percent of the market (cough). That brings us to the present. Less than a month ago, Mozilla.org realized it had to dramatically change course, decouple all the applications from the suite and, yes, start all over again. This move, while technically sound, should have come four years ago and will likely garner them another 0.1 percent of the market. Woo!
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