The Logic Off Topic list

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/cgi-
bin/getframeletter.cgi?/2002/07_jul/features/cw_macvspc2.htm

says it all

--- In logic-ot@y..., "mike_harper98" <mike_harper98@h...> wrote:
> http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/cgi-
> bin/getframeletter.cgi?/2002/07_jul/features/cw_macvspc2.htm
[ 
http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/07_jul/features/cw_macvspc2.ht
m ]
> 
> says it all

Interesting to see that adding a second processor does not seem to 
give anything like double the processing power -- whereas if the 
processing could be spread over a network, and you had two single-
processor machines you really would get twice as much power. 
And because the two-processor machines are "premium" products, they 
probably cost more than twice as much as two bog-standard single-
processor machines with the same processor.

And of course, with three cheap networked machines, or four ... 

The sticking point here would be that the software developers would 
have to allow a single user to run multiple copies of their app over 
the network without adding too much to the cost, and would have to 
implement some sort of load-sharing. So if you have a big rendering 
job with two machines, the second one runs in sync with the same 
data, renders half the frames and passies them to the main machine. 
With three machines, each one does a third of the job, and so on. 


I notice that with Native Instruments' "Reaktor" audio processing 
monster, they do talk about networking options, and apparently have 
produced some sort of multi-machine communication standard for 
distributed processing, which at the moment (apparently) just works 
with Reaktor. /Apparently/ you can have a second machine running a 
second (much cheaper) site license, and the two will talk to each 
other. Native Instruments are also talking about the possibility of 
special network licenses.

I didn't notice the article mentioning the G4' main memory speed -- 
presumably the G4's twin processors were still struggling with single-
speed 133 memory, and the two fast PCs were using the double data 
rate jobbies?
I'd be interested in seeing a benchmark of similar machines with DDR 
vs single speed memory, with single and double processors.

=Erk=

--- In logic-ot@y..., Colin Miller <snoopy@m...> wrote:
> At 10:35 PM 7/24/2002 +0000, you wrote:
> >http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/cgi-
> >bin/getframeletter.cgi?/2002/07_jul/features/cw_macvspc2.htm
> >
> >says it all
> 
> You're right, Logic Audio will never be able to render images as 
> fast as Phtotoshop.

<g>

The problem is, that if someone has a cheapy 2000+ Athlon machine 
with a DDR motherboard, and it's being suggested that they upgrade to 
a "superior" shiny new top-of-the-line just-released G4 2*1Gig 
machine, the G4's processing power with logic 5.x might not be any 
better than what they currently have, despite the fact that it might 
cost two or three times as much. And its performance with logic 
5.x /might/ actually be worse when it comes to running lots of 
sotware instruments and processing.

I guess that when logic becomes OSX-specific, they are counting on 
being able to strip out all the kludgey cross-platform code and 
replace it with super-optimised OSX code that'll run appreciably 
faster and compensate for the slower hardware. 
But at the moment that sounds a bit like jam tomorrow, and by the 
time they'd finished that piece of engineering, PC's will have gotten 
even faster, and distributed network processing might have caught on.

I think networked processing may be the Next Big Thing to hit the 
workstation market, and while someone might be happy to pay out a 
premium price for a single Mac G4 because of its pretty user 
interface and casing, they might be more reluctant to pay the same 
premium rates for a stack of slave machines to sit in a rack and 
provide background processing.

If emagic implement load-sharing, people will be able to buy /two/ 
macs and increase their power that way ... but since the Windows line 
is being cancelled before networking features are implemented, they 
won't have the option of supplementing their pretty G4 with a little 
ugly cheap PC cubelet hidden under the desk which automatically kicks 
in to take over part of the load, because because there won't be a 
version of the new logic code that can be run on the cubelet. 

Cross-platform processing is liable to end up being the domain of 
companies like Steinberg and Native Instruments, who are maintaining 
a presence (and investment) on both platforms. 

Unless apple/emagic change their minds about dropping all Windows 
audio product development, I don't see how they can hope to be a 
credible player in this new sort of market.

Erk

Colin Miller wrote:
>>The problem is, that if someone has a cheapy 2000+ Athlon machine 
>>with a DDR motherboard, and it's being suggested that they upgrade to 
>>a "superior" shiny new top-of-the-line just-released G4 2*1Gig 
>>machine, the G4's processing power with logic 5.x might not be any 
>>better than what they currently have, despite the fact that it might 
>>cost two or three times as much. And its performance with logic 
>>5.x /might/ actually be worse when it comes to running lots of 
>>sotware instruments and processing.
>
>I agree the mac processors are way behind on the speed issue. But I think
>that will change soon and there will probably be much faster stuff around
>the corner. I'm sure they are well aware they need to stay competitive.
>Remember when Macs were literally faster than intel and AMD chips (as far
>as Mhz went)? I was pretty dissapointed to hear there was no mention of new
>machines at Macworld. 

Rumour sites suggest a modest speed bump for G4 is coming next month.

While it is _possible_ that Macs could get a_big_ speed bump in the future
why would you think it likely? Sounds like wishful thinking to me. Speed
bumps from x86 manufacturers out past 3.2GHz are on the roadmaps now.

When the Power PC troika was set up in the very early 90's IBM had just
been dudded by MS over OS/2 and they had the execellent Power RISC
architecture to offer. PowerPCs were intended to run Windows NT and other
OS's as well -- it was intended to bring new generation RISC to the masses.
Well it didn't happen. PowerPC is now used in only a few percent of the
worlds desktops and in embedded applications. The R&D budget of PowerPC is
directly related to earnings and potential future earnings. It is therefore
a tiny fraction of X86 R&D. 

Niche RISC processors -- Sparc, SGI etc -- the trend is well established:
mainstream X86 processing is catching and overtaking them in performance.
Read the latest stories on how Industrial Light and Magic have switched
from SGI machines to Dell's running Linux for "20% of the price and 3x the
power."  Their rendering farm is powered by a thousand or so Athlon
processors. Macs are a little proprietory niche market. It is unlikely that
they will become competitive on price performance ratio with the mainstream
market.

IBM still has its high end Power4 architecture but this system is sold only
in very expensive servers and workstations. That's  how you make money with
small volumes -- you charge heaps for each unit. 

Regards,
Murray

At 11:26 PM 25/07/02 -0700, you wrote:
>
>>While it is _possible_ that Macs could get a_big_ speed bump in the future
>>why would you think it likely? Sounds like wishful thinking to me. Speed
>>bumps from x86 manufacturers out past 3.2GHz are on the roadmaps now.
>>
>
>Why would I not think it likely? It's happened several times in the past,
>why would I just assume it wouldn't again? Like I said though, speed of
>processing isn't an issue for me. My 400Mhz computer won't be outdated for
>a couple of years yet and with my setup I will still be able to do more DSP
>than the fastest x86 host processor available. I'm not really into the
>speed wars, it's really just a testosterone pissing match in my opinion.
>But that's just me, I wouldn't want to sway anyone's opinion one way or
>another, just saying that the x86 arguments don't affect everyone. I am
>more content making music than worrying who's got a bigger gigahurtz ;-))
>*giggle/snort*

Snort indeed. Here is what you posted originally.

>I agree the mac processors are way behind on the speed issue. But I think
>that will change soon and there will probably be much faster stuff around
>the corner. I'm sure they are well aware they need to stay competitive.
>Remember when Macs were literally faster than intel and AMD chips (as far
>as Mhz went)? I was pretty dissapointed to hear there was no mention of new
>machines at Macworld. 

You said that you think that Mac's being behind in speed will change soon.
This would involve a doubling or tripling of speed and soon because the
competition -- the thing that Macs are "behind" in your own words -- is
rapidly progressing. This seemed unlikely to me. Macs will undoubtedly get
faster but it seems unlikely that they will catch up unless they move to
another processor.  (I argued in my post that the historical trend is one
of X86 catching and overtaking RISC due to vastly greater R&D budgets.)

Apple has already moved to another platfrom a decade ago when it moved the
Mac to the PowerPC from the dying 680x0 platform. Their execution on this
move was flawless BTW -- the port to the new processor was miraculously
well managed. Apple could easily get cheap fast processing by going with
the Nvidia NForce2/Hammer solution that is the stuff of rumours at present.
That seems a more likely source of fast (competitive) future Macs than
PowerPC G series.

Your purchase of a TDM system suggests that you wanted a lot of processing
power and were prepared to pay for it in a proprietory package. Probably it
was a smart move at the time. People are still snapping up UAD and
Powercore cards because they want more processing power than current host
based systems can deliver on their own. Everybody wants more and more
processing power so they can take advantage of better and better software
based audio processing and virtual samplers/instruments.  Obtaining
professional results -- relatively speaking -- depends on keeping up with
the Joneses to some degree.  Remember what the first software reverbs for
host based systems sounded like?

Regards,
Murray

At 10:35 PM 7/24/2002 +0000, you wrote:
>http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/cgi-
>bin/getframeletter.cgi?/2002/07_jul/features/cw_macvspc2.htm
>
>says it all
>

You're right, Logic Audio will never be able to render images as fast as
Phtotoshop.

><g>
>
>The problem is, that if someone has a cheapy 2000+ Athlon machine 
>with a DDR motherboard, and it's being suggested that they upgrade to 
>a "superior" shiny new top-of-the-line just-released G4 2*1Gig 
>machine, the G4's processing power with logic 5.x might not be any 
>better than what they currently have, despite the fact that it might 
>cost two or three times as much. And its performance with logic 
>5.x /might/ actually be worse when it comes to running lots of 
>sotware instruments and processing.
>

I agree the mac processors are way behind on the speed issue. But I think
that will change soon and there will probably be much faster stuff around
the corner. I'm sure they are well aware they need to stay competitive.
Remember when Macs were literally faster than intel and AMD chips (as far
as Mhz went)? I was pretty dissapointed to hear there was no mention of new
machines at Macworld. However, I am able to do huge 64track sessions with
enough DSP to put EQs and compressors on every channel and lots of room
left over , all on a 400Mhz G4 (this is using PT of course, I haven't
delved much into the audio side of Logic since I have PT). So I am lucky in
that processor speed has little value for me, and mine won't be obselete
for a couple more years. But, of course I fully understand the argument for
others who are dependant on host based processing.

Colin Miller

>You said that you think that Mac's being behind in speed will change soon.
>This would involve a doubling or tripling of speed and soon because the
>competition -- the thing that Macs are "behind" in your own words -- is
>rapidly progressing. This seemed unlikely to me. Macs will undoubtedly
>get
>faster but it seems unlikely that they will catch up unless they move to
>another processor.  (I argued in my post that the historical trend is one
>of X86 catching and overtaking RISC due to vastly greater R&D budgets.)

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that PowerPCs are more 
efficient than Pentiums, and accomplish more per clock cycle. I think a 800 
mhz mac is equivalent to 1.2 gig pentium.

Also, the "R&D" argument is theory. You could say the same thing about 
Windows. Micro$loth has more money than they know what they do with - but 
Windows is still second rate. And what budget does Linux have?

>While it is _possible_ that Macs could get a_big_ speed bump in the future
>why would you think it likely? Sounds like wishful thinking to me. Speed
>bumps from x86 manufacturers out past 3.2GHz are on the roadmaps now.
>

Why would I not think it likely? It's happened several times in the past,
why would I just assume it wouldn't again? Like I said though, speed of
processing isn't an issue for me. My 400Mhz computer won't be outdated for
a couple of years yet and with my setup I will still be able to do more DSP
than the fastest x86 host processor available. I'm not really into the
speed wars, it's really just a testosterone pissing match in my opinion.
But that's just me, I wouldn't want to sway anyone's opinion one way or
another, just saying that the x86 arguments don't affect everyone. I am
more content making music than worrying who's got a bigger gigahurtz ;-))
*giggle/snort*

Colin Miller

Remember what the first software reverbs for
>host based systems sounded like?

>
>Regards,
>Murray

No but I remember editing out 2 bars of a song in Sound Designer II and
going to dinner for an hour while waiting for the numbers to crunch! Boy
were those the days.

Colin Miller

>
>The problem is, that if someone has a cheapy 2000+ Athlon machine
>with a DDR motherboard, and it's being suggested that they upgrade to
>a "superior" shiny new top-of-the-line just-released G4 2*1Gig
>machine, the G4's processing power with logic 5.x might not be any
>better than what they currently have, despite the fact that it might
>cost two or three times as much. And its performance with logic
>5.x /might/ actually be worse when it comes to running lots of
>sotware instruments and processing.

In which case no one is probably expecting them to buy anything.

>I guess that when logic becomes OSX-specific, they are counting on
>being able to strip out all the kludgey cross-platform code and
>replace it with super-optimised OSX code that'll run appreciably
>faster and compensate for the slower hardware.
>But at the moment that sounds a bit like jam tomorrow, and by the
>time they'd finished that piece of engineering, PC's will have gotten
>even faster, and distributed network processing might have caught on.

Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow.  We really can think ourselves silly but 
there is just no telling since apple is not telling.


>I think networked processing may be the Next Big Thing to hit the
>workstation market, and while someone might be happy to pay out a
>premium price for a single Mac G4 because of its pretty user
>interface and casing, they might be more reluctant to pay the same
>premium rates for a stack of slave machines to sit in a rack and
>provide background processing.

But they might be willing to pay for two machines that are designed 
to work together harmoniously which is something that it is not 
always safe to assume is going to be the case between even the 
components of a single PC.

>If emagic implement load-sharing, people will be able to buy /two/
>macs and increase their power that way ... but since the Windows line
>is being cancelled before networking features are implemented, they
>won't have the option of supplementing their pretty G4 with a little
>ugly cheap PC cubelet hidden under the desk which automatically kicks
>in to take over part of the load, because because there won't be a
>version of the new logic code that can be run on the cubelet.

  Given the troubles I've seen with my PC I would be happy to pay the 
premium so as not to have waste my precious time and creativity 
trying to figure out what was causing some nasty glitch between two 
CPUs of different types in some Rub Goldberg rig.  I would not mind 
paying for a couple of rack mount mac DP servers.  It would still 
probably come out to less Bang for buck wise than buying Digidesign 
cards.

Apple actually is working on some kind of cpu ganging scheme.  It 
will be interesting to see if they come up with something that will 
do what we need.




>Cross-platform processing is liable to end up being the domain of
>companies like Steinberg and Native Instruments, who are maintaining
>a presence (and investment) on both platforms.

Liable?  E-mapples position is pretty clear at this point don't you think.

>Unless apple/emagic change their minds about dropping all Windows
>audio product development, I don't see how they can hope to be a
>credible player in this new sort of market.

By making something that works well.  Only time will tell.

> But they might be willing to pay for two machines that are designed 
> to work together harmoniously which is something that it is not 
> always safe to assume is going to be the case between even the 
> components of a single PC.

This is not safe to assume with Macs either i'm afraid. Dare i say 
video cards????
BTW, the G4 is probably the worst computer built and marketed as a top-line
machine IMO - a complete rip-off. 

cheers,
Adam P

>This is not safe to assume with Macs either i'm afraid. Dare i say
>video cards????
>BTW, the G4 is probably the worst computer built and marketed as a top-line
>machine IMO - a complete rip-off.

Whatever.

PLEASE-

I know it�s summer in the northern hemisphere, and this is a OT-list, but
could you children please stop that macpcpcmac bullshit?

Buy whatever you can afford or like, but stop this noise.

Thanks a lot!

Tobias

since i started this madness i should comment:  i  would buy a mac 
today if it was priced a bit more  competivly. for audio we all know 
that mac led the way for years   although windows NT was great for 
animation and video it completly sucked for audio- terrible timing 
issues. windows 98 had better timing then  NT but over all it sucked 
as a OS . now with windows 2000 you get the   stability of NT -  
(about the same as any mac) and even better timing then 98.
 the over all "problem" with windows is that many assume its easy to 
upgrade parts- so a  worksation has to be configured  by someone that 
knows what he is doing- in the video biz you only buy from ingegrators
 that specialze in this. you don't order a dell from  and put in as  
audio or video card!!  if you do your in for a world of shit . with 
macs it seems this is'nt much of a issue. integration is easier but 
yoour upgrading options are limited AND  YOU PAY FOR IT! so pick your 
poison. since  i do a lot of video editing i must have a up to speed 
PC workstaion. i do my own integration that i learned from  a pro but 
it takes forever! i also do filmscoring, so it looks like cubase SX 
is out as is sonar .  so i may be foreced to get a mac! in that case 
i  dump logic alltogether an get performer!

> poison. since  i do a lot of video editing i must have a up to speed 
> PC workstaion. i do my own integration that i learned from  a pro but 
> it takes forever! i also do filmscoring, so it looks like cubase SX 
> is out as is sonar .  so i may be foreced to get a mac! in that case 
> i  dump logic alltogether an get performer!

check out samplitude and seqouia if you get a chance

http://www.samplitude.com/index.htm

best regards,
adam p

--- In logic-ot@y..., Dennis Gunn <dennisg@a...> wrote:
> 
> But they might be willing to pay for two machines that are designed 
> to work together harmoniously which is something that it is not 
> always safe to assume is going to be the case between even the 
> components of a single PC.

Oh, sure, agreed.

But if a Mac person intends to buy a G4, and fill it up with various 
pieces of legacy PCI kit from their PC (eg high-performance audio and 
video cards), then they might start getting similar problems. 

Flashy graphics cards seem to be particularly bad offenders, I had an 
Ati Radeon PCI card in my desktop PC and Ati's installation software 
was quite awful, and the software update procedures were a mess. I no 
longer use that card unless I have to. But that's Ati's fault, and 
for all I know, a mac version of the software might be just as bad.
My laptop PC has only crashed maybe four times in six months of heavy 
use (brief, minor, auto-recovered crashes) and each time the OS has 
blamed the built-in graphics hardware ... which turns out to be 
another Ati Radeon (mobility version).

At this point, I start thinking that perhaps this Ati product line 
suceeds on the basis of performance rather than on the amount of time 
that Ati have spent making it and its support software stable, and 
you might argue that this is symptomatic of the way that the PC 
market operates. 

But ... guess what graphics hardware Apple decided to build into the 
G4 range? 
<grin>  
Yep, it's Ati again!

 

>   Given the troubles I've seen with my PC I would be happy to pay 
the 
> premium so as not to have waste my precious time and creativity 
> trying to figure out what was causing some nasty glitch between two 
> CPUs of different types in some Rub Goldberg rig.  

Yep, but I woudn't set your hopes /too/ high on being able to achieve 
stability nirvana by upgrading to a mac, if you are then going to 
load up the poor machine with all your nasty third-party PCI 
hardware, and drivers equivalent to those that were previously 
screwing up your PC.

Some PC music people do pay premium prices for custom-designed music 
PC systems, partly so that they know that the people at the company 
have debugged the configuration that they are buying and so they 
won't have to tear their hair out worrying about driver updates and 
soundcard conflicts. I've got a couple of the nicer soundcards, but 
I've ended up taking them out of my main sequencing machine and 
relying on softsynths instead, because those are less hassle and more 
portable (if my main machine suffers a major coffee spill, I can run 
the same configuration on my backup machine, or even at a pinch on my 
laptop, without touching a screwdriver)

Talking to people who use BigMacs packed with all the proper 
soundtools stuff in a professional studio situation, the bad news is: 
apparently they crash just like PC's do. 

     

> I would not mind 
> paying for a couple of rack mount mac DP servers.  It would still 
> probably come out to less Bang for buck wise than buying Digidesign 
> cards.

Yeah, I saw those servers on the apple site and had a small "want 
one!" moment before I saw the price.

Then again, if you strip down a computer this far, it probably works 
pretty well irrespective of whether its a PC or a mac. 
If its running Win2000 or XP, and its just a glorified processing box 
with fast memory and a network connection and no funny CDwriter 
drives, or soundcards or graphics cards, or PCI bus ... then you've 
removed most of the scope for hardware conflicts, because you've 
removed most of the hardware. 




==If== Yamaha's mLAN driver is rock-solid (currently an unknown 
factor), and DAW software companies then embrace the idea of moving 
processing load over the network on demand, then I think the DAW 
market may move away from big expensive centralised single machines, 
towards networks, and successful network standards tend to be cross-
platform.



The usual problem with attempting to spread tasks across a network of 
processors is is the difficulty of splitting the job into self 
contained modules that can function independently on different 
processors, without the processing needed to split the job up and 
recombine the various elements afterwards (and handle the network) 
being so processor-intensive that you lose the advantage of the extra 
CPUs. 

But a music studio application like Logic is perfect for it, you 
already have multiple parallel chains of software modules that work 
with explicitly-defined signal streams, and some of the highest-
demand parts of the job, the effects plugins and software 
instruments, are not only already designed as independent modular 
code, they also already have published interfaces that let them run 
inside other apps on the PC or Mac, that can control them and load 
and save all their settings on demand!

Trying to turn a wordprocessor into a multi-processor application is 
probably a bit depressing (do you run a spell-checker module on a 
separate processor? big deal!), but for a music DAW, you already have 
the parallel data streams and processing blocks all shown right there 
on the screen and being configured by the user, and with mLAN we'll 
have an agreed standard for making those same (MIDI, audio) 
connections between codeblocks work across the network.
That just leaves the job of getting the central machine to ask 
satellite machines to load and configure links on demand, and I think 
the simplest way to do that is to leave it to the DAW companies to 
produce satellite apps that link with their main DAW's over the 
network, so you click on an audio instrument slot or mixer channel in 
Logic's environment, select the "run remotely" option, and the 
object's display and controls then become a controller for a copy of 
that object running on "Logic Satellite" on the second machine, which 
actually does all the audio processing and sends the results back 
over mLAN.


> Apple actually is working on some kind of cpu ganging scheme.  It 
> will be interesting to see if they come up with something that will 
> do what we need.

It might take Apple and Intel and Motorola years to come up with a 
proper distributed-processing architecture, legacy languages and 
datastructures weren't designed for proper fault-tolerant plug-and-
play modular processing. 

But luckily for those of us in this particular market, we don't need 
that, we have a much simpler solution coming into view: 

  1: Apple release OSX incorporating mLAN support (due this year?)   
  
  2: Yamaha release the mLAN drivers for Windows (due any time now?) 

  3: Companies who write DAW software issue network licenses and 
write a quick set of protocols into their software so that if machine 
A is running a load of softinstruments and is getting a bit choked, 
it asks the user if they want to "autofarm"  and if they click yes, 
machine B (running either the same software or a cut-down "shell" 
version of the same DAW) loads the same softinstrument with the same 
parameters, the instrument is bypassed on A, and the slot's MIDI 
stream is piped to machine B over mLAN, and the resulting audio comes 
back into the slot over mLAN. The user doesn't need to intervene, all 
their editing and saving is done on machine A, and the only 
difference is that the effects stack or instrument or mixer channel 
gets displayed on A with some subtle signifier that it's a "ghost 
instrument" or "ghost channel" that's actually being processed 
somewhere else on the network (the user doesn't care where).

I'm guessing that the most intimidating "nuts and bolts" part of 
getting logic to be able to work like this would be the job of 
rewriting the audio mixer channel code (or writing a dummy 
instrument) so that a slot can be converted into audio and MIDI send 
and return signals that are then linked to a pair of free audio 
ports ... 
... and guess what, that new feature is supposed to be appearing 
under Logic 5.3 next month, on the final cross-platform release.



 
> >Cross-platform processing is liable to end up being the domain of
> >companies like Steinberg and Native Instruments, who are 
maintaining
> >a presence (and investment) on both platforms.
> 
> Liable?  E-mapples position is pretty clear at this point don't you 
think.

Well, before July 1st, emagic's public position on cross-platform 
support was pretty clear, too! Apple might still have the option of 
changing their mind about dropping Windows support (although each day 
that passes makes this more difficult). 

mLAN is already on some hardware, and the emagic guys have probably 
already been playing with it. It should show up under Windows as 
conventional MIDI and Audio ports, which logic can already access, so 
I guess its conceivable that emagic might have put in a bunch of mLAN-
friendly features into 5.3 as a final finishing touch to logic-as-we-
know-it, and to wind up the features that they had planned for v5.x 
before they move on and start on the next mac-only incarnations.

I don't know whether its /likely/ or not, but its conceivable!  
Yamaha aren't saying when their mLAN windows drivers are expected, so 
I suppose we are waiting for an announcement of some sort. 
/Hopefully/ an imminent announcement.

And hopfully Apple haven't struck a deal with Yamaha to get them to 
delay or drop their planned mLAN Windows support, that would REALLY 
piss me off.

 
> >Unless apple/emagic change their minds about dropping all Windows
> >audio product development, I don't see how they can hope to be a
> >credible player in this new sort of market.
> 
> By making something that works well.  Only time will tell.

Well, Betamax worked well, but Sony refused to allow their superior 
heads to be used in other manufacturers machines, and the publc 
perception of betamax as an "unpopular" format became self-
fulfilling. It lost critical mass, and VHS (which lots of 
manufacturers could "support" by buying in the core mechanism and 
putting their own box and badge around it) won out. 

Music is a "niche" computing application, and macs are a "niche" 
computer product, by becoming mac-only, emagic is now selling to a 
niche within a niche. That might not be a large enough target 
audience to sustain decent sales, especially since Steinberg are 
going to be able to leverage their new Windows dominance to move 
further into the mac market. Its not just the customers they have to 
convince, its also the music shops who now have to be persuaded to 
continue stocking a product that is now mac-only, and not to try to 
switch sales to Steinberg. 

If "network-awareness" becomes a key DAW feature, and logic's 
implementation only works with macs, and Steinberg's works cross-
platform, then the Steinberg solution will tend to be the default 
winner.

I guess a lot of this depends on when Yamaha's Windows mLAN driver 
appears, on what features 5.3 has, and on how well 5.3 utilises the 
mLAN remote configuration features (if it does).
If 5.3 implements some sort of remote control and autofarm features, 
but doesn't do them particularly well, I suppose they could get away 
with a further minor release to tidy things up a few months later,  
call it 5.3.1, and by calling it a maintenance release for features 
added on 5.3.0, they wouldn't be going against the position stated in 
the July 1st press release.


Maybe all of this will take shape in the next ~four weeks, or maybe 
none of it will.

=Erk=

--- In logic-ot@y..., "Adam Pendse" <adampendse@b...> wrote:
> BTW, the G4 is probably the worst computer built and marketed as a 
> top-line machine IMO - a complete rip-off. 

As far as the G4 hardware is concerned, I have to say that I really 
do think the G4 has excellent carry-handles. Probably the best and 
most comfy carry-handles in its class. This gives me warm and 
friendly feelings towards G4s and makes me want to own one. 


Unfortunately at that price, and with those innards, there's no way I 
can justify it.  

Anyone know where I can get a cheap empty G4 case? <g>

--- In logic-ot@y..., TazmnianDv@a... wrote:
 
> I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that PowerPCs are 
more efficient than Pentiums, and accomplish more per clock cycle. I 
think a 800 mhz mac is equivalent to 1.2 gig pentium. <

It also depends on how the system is set up. 

I think you'll find that people with fast recent PC's (or recently-
upgraded PC motherboards) are getting appreciably more speed out of 
their systems by using the new DDR system that lets you transfer data 
to main memory at 266MHz.  

AFAIK, the new macs (including the latest G4) are still stuck on 133, 
which puts them at a bit of a disadvantage, irresepective of how nice 
the processor is supposed to be.


Two-processor machines (PC or mac) don't seem to give anything like 
twice the processing power of an equivalent single-processor machine, 
and I can't help wondering how much of the gain is really due to the 
second processor, and how much is due to the second set of fast cache 
RAM that comes with it.

--- In logic-ot@y..., TazmnianDv@a... wrote:
 
> I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that PowerPCs are 
more efficient than Pentiums, and accomplish more per clock cycle. I 
think a 800 mhz mac is equivalent to 1.2 gig pentium. <

It also depends on how the system is set up. 

I think you'll find that people with fast recent PC's (or recently-
upgraded PC motherboards) are getting appreciably more speed out of 
their systems by using the new DDR system that lets you transfer data 
to main memory at 266MHz.  

AFAIK, the new macs (including the latest G4) are still stuck on 133, 
which puts them at a bit of a disadvantage, irresepective of how nice 
the processor is supposed to be.


Two-processor machines (PC or mac) don't seem to give anything like 
twice the processing power of an equivalent single-processor machine, 
and I can't help wondering how much of the gain is really due to the 
second processor, and how much is due to the second set of fast cache 
RAM that comes with it.

>But luckily for those of us in this particular market, we don't need
>that, we have a much simpler solution coming into view:
>
>   1: Apple release OSX incorporating mLAN support (due this year?)  
>
>   2: Yamaha release the mLAN drivers for Windows (due any time now?)
>
>   3: Companies who write DAW software issue network licenses and
>write a quick set of protocols into their software so that if machine
>A is running a load of softinstruments and is getting a bit choked,
>it asks the user if they want to "autofarm"  and if they click yes,
>machine B (running either the same software or a cut-down "shell"
>version of the same DAW) loads the same softinstrument with the same
>parameters, the instrument is bypassed on A, and the slot's MIDI
>stream is piped to machine B over mLAN, and the resulting audio comes
>back into the slot over mLAN. The user doesn't need to intervene, all
>their editing and saving is done on machine A, and the only
>difference is that the effects stack or instrument or mixer channel
>gets displayed on A with some subtle signifier that it's a "ghost
>instrument" or "ghost channel" that's actually being processed
>somewhere else on the network (the user doesn't care where).
>
>I'm guessing that the most intimidating "nuts and bolts" part of
>getting logic to be able to work like this would be the job of
>rewriting the audio mixer channel code (or writing a dummy
>instrument) so that a slot can be converted into audio and MIDI send
>and return signals that are then linked to a pair of free audio
>ports ...
>... and guess what, that new feature is supposed to be appearing
>under Logic 5.3 next month, on the final cross-platform release.

That is great stuff, it's and it has been discussed by the right 
people, and I have high hopes that that is the way things will go, 
but I would not get your hopes to high of seeing it happen soon.


>
>>  >Cross-platform processing is liable to end up being the domain of
>>  >companies like Steinberg and Native Instruments, who are
>maintaining
>>  >a presence (and investment) on both platforms.
>>
>>  Liable?  E-mapples position is pretty clear at this point don't you
>think.
>
>Well, before July 1st, emagic's public position on cross-platform
>support was pretty clear, too!

Events occur policies change.  Joany decides to marry Billy and tells 
Johnny he is a nice boy but has to bug off now.  That's the way the 
world goes round.

>  Apple might still have the option of
>changing their mind about dropping Windows support (although each day
>that passes makes this more difficult).

I would not be against that at all but anyone who thinks that is 
going to happen is kidding himself.  Apple certainly knew what the 
initial reaction would be to their decision.  The big question mark 
is the long term and that is going to depend on what they come up 
with.    The big obvious and puzzling mistake that they seem to have 
made IMHO is not waiting until they had some big shiny mind blowing 
alternative before they announced they would sell no more LAW.

>mLAN is already on some hardware, and the emagic guys have probably
>already been playing with it. It should show up under Windows as
>conventional MIDI and Audio ports, which logic can already access, so
>I guess its conceivable that emagic might have put in a bunch of mLAN-
>friendly features into 5.3 as a final finishing touch to logic-as-we-
>know-it, and to wind up the features that they had planned for v5.x
>before they move on and start on the next mac-only incarnations.

The next version of Logic is 5.2.  It's too early to guess what we 
will see in 5.3.  I doubt emagic even know.


>I don't know whether its /likely/ or not, but its conceivable! 
>Yamaha aren't saying when their mLAN windows drivers are expected, so
>I suppose we are waiting for an announcement of some sort.
>/Hopefully/ an imminent announcement.
>
>And hopfully Apple haven't struck a deal with Yamaha to get them to
>delay or drop their planned mLAN Windows support, that would REALLY
>piss me off.
>
>
>>  >Unless apple/emagic change their minds about dropping all Windows
>>  >audio product development, I don't see how they can hope to be a
>>  >credible player in this new sort of market.
>>
>>  By making something that works well.  Only time will tell.
>
>Well, Betamax worked well, but Sony refused to allow their superior
>heads to be used in other manufacturers machines, and the publc
>perception of betamax as an "unpopular" format became self-
>fulfilling. It lost critical mass, and VHS (which lots of
>manufacturers could "support" by buying in the core mechanism and
>putting their own box and badge around it) won out.

That's the example everyone flogs.  Digi is the example of 
successfully being stingy with compatibility etc.    There is no 
single strategy for success except to stay abreast and excel and even 
that does not always work.

>Music is a "niche" computing application, and macs are a "niche"
>computer product, by becoming mac-only, emagic is now selling to a
>niche within a niche. That might not be a large enough target
>audience to sustain decent sales, especially since Steinberg are
>going to be able to leverage their new Windows dominance to move
>further into the mac market. Its not just the customers they have to
>convince, its also the music shops who now have to be persuaded to
>continue stocking a product that is now mac-only, and not to try to
>switch sales to Steinberg.

This would be true but for the fact that apple has obviously 
recognized that while music makes up a small percentage of the PC 
market it makes up a far larger more essential fraction of the Apple 
market.   So instead of just leaving it to third parties they are 
aggressively remodelling their company to go after that market. 
Because they have the money to do it right and there is no doubt 
going to be a period of rapid development that will force companies 
on the PC to do the same.   For apple this may be life and death but 
us users this can only be a "win win" situation.


>If "network-awareness" becomes a key DAW feature, and logic's
>implementation only works with macs, and Steinberg's works cross-
>platform, then the Steinberg solution will tend to be the default
>winner.
>
>I guess a lot of this depends on when Yamaha's Windows mLAN driver
>appears, on what features 5.3 has, and on how well 5.3 utilises the
>mLAN remote configuration features (if it does).
>If 5.3 implements some sort of remote control and autofarm features,
>but doesn't do them particularly well, I suppose they could get away
>with a further minor release to tidy things up a few months later, 
>call it 5.3.1, and by calling it a maintenance release for features
>added on 5.3.0, they wouldn't be going against the position stated in
>the July 1st press release.
>
>
>Maybe all of this will take shape in the next ~four weeks, or maybe
>none of it will.

It won't.  But I will tell you I want to see network processing 
happen very much too BUT there are other tricks in the book that are 
not being exploited and there may be some nice surprises from another 
direction soon.

erkdemon wrote:
>--- In logic-ot@y..., TazmnianDv@a... wrote:
> 
>> I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that PowerPCs are 
>more efficient than Pentiums, and accomplish more per clock cycle. I 
>think a 800 mhz mac is equivalent to 1.2 gig pentium. <
>
>It also depends on how the system is set up. 
>
>I think you'll find that people with fast recent PC's (or recently-
>upgraded PC motherboards) are getting appreciably more speed out of 
>their systems by using the new DDR system that lets you transfer data 
>to main memory at 266MHz.  

This is exactly the issue. When the fastest PCs were 33 MHz, their memory
bus was 33 MHz too. The RAM itself was a little slower than today's but the
bandwidth to memory was not anything like the bottleneck it has become as
the CPU clock speed has been racheted up by a factor of 30 (Macs) or  75
(33MHz 486 -- 2.53Ghz P4) while memory speed has only tripled or quadrupled
in the case of current Macs ( SDRAM) or by a factor of 11 to 15 for the
fastest PCs (PC1066 RDRAM or 333 DDR). While caching helps keep the CPU
stoked with data and instructions up to a point,  in applications like ours
(eg- audio plugins where the output stream of a Plugin (eg Platinum Verb)
needs to be sent out to main memory) the memory bandwidth is a large factor
in determining the number of plugins which can be run on a given CPU. 

Hardware sites have reported that performance doesn't scale well with CPU
speed as Athlon's and P4s are clocked higher  and  higher unless still
faster memory architectures are employed. Look at the way the first 845
chipsets for the P4 which used PC 133 SDRAM hobbled its performance. 

If you look at the plethora of DDR chipsets for Athlon and P4 coming out of
SIS, VIA, AMD, Intel and NVidia you can't help wondering how hard it can be
to provide support up to date memory architectures.

Regards,
M

Dennis Gunn wrote:

>>I guess a lot of this depends on when Yamaha's Windows mLAN driver
>>appears, on what features 5.3 has, and on how well 5.3 utilises the
>>mLAN remote configuration features (if it does).
>>If 5.3 implements some sort of remote control and autofarm features,
>>but doesn't do them particularly well, I suppose they could get away
>>with a further minor release to tidy things up a few months later, 
>>call it 5.3.1, and by calling it a maintenance release for features
>>added on 5.3.0, they wouldn't be going against the position stated in
>>the July 1st press release.
>>
>>
>>Maybe all of this will take shape in the next ~four weeks, or maybe
>>none of it will.
>
>It won't.  But I will tell you I want to see network processing 
>happen very much too BUT there are other tricks in the book that are 
>not being exploited and there may be some nice surprises from another 
>direction soon.

Yeah -- I saw a post from a guy claiming some inside knowledge on KVR -- he
was saying that another big player is poised to enter the sequencing
market. I was wondering who -- Native Instruments crossed my mind as a
possibility but with the relaunch of Opcode hardware in recent days I
thought it might even be Opcode returning from the dead. Stranger things ... 

Regards,
Murray

>But ... guess what graphics hardware Apple decided to build into the 
>G4 range? 
><grin>  
>Yep, it's ATI again!

Apple uses the ATI card only for the lowest end G4. All the rest use NVIDIA 
GeForce4 MX (I think for about two years now?).  ATI is still making boards 
for Mac (and PC), and recently introduced the 8500 high end graphics board. I 
hope that doesn't wipe the >grin< off your face.


Now, I'll be the first to be suspicious of company created propoganda, but 
Apple claims this on their website :

   Awesome Power
    We’ve taken the fastest PowerPC G4 processor ever created — and then 
doubled it — 
    to introduce the phenomenal new dual 1-GHz PowerMac G4.  Add Velocity 
Engine vector 
    processing technology, an ultraefficient system architecture, and it’s no 
wonder that 
    it outperforms even the fastest Pentium-based systems.

If you download thier detailed spec sheet (via PDF file), they claim that the 
Dual 1 Gig Powermac G4 ("the worst computer ever made" according to some 
here)... is 72% faster than a Dell Dimension 8200 running a 2 GHz Pentium 4. 
Even the lowly 800 Mhz G4 Powermac is 26% faster than the 2 Gig Dell. Of 
course Photoshop is not time sensitive as audio is, but I have had Photoshop 
load my system much more than audio - its a  non-trivial comparison. They 
further claim that Dual G4 is 300% faster than a Sony VAIO 590G running a 2 
GIG Pentium 4 (and the 733MHz G4 is 84% faster) at DVD video encoding. 
However, I think this is partly a gimmick, since Apple has worked hard to 
make DVD conversion very efficient.

Are they guilty of misleading advertising? There are laws against that. Do 
you PC-lovers think is total nonsense? If so, inform the Justice department 
of the United States so they can clamp down on these falsehoods.

>>  Apple might still have the option of
>>changing their mind about dropping Windows support (although each day
>>that passes makes this more difficult).

Has somone mentioned the Shake software yet? This is high end video software 
used in movies - Apple did the same thing - bought the company and killed the 
windows support. Apple is playing hardball and evidently has a plan to 
restore the Mac to the professional's choice for music and video. A few 
bitter Window's users moving to Steinberg is the least of their concerns. I 
have a feeling that our friends Murray, Eric, and Adam are not inclined 
toward giving the mac a fair shot anyway, so what does Apple have to lose. 
Even now, in Sound on Sound or Future Music (which seem to favor PCs), in 
response to a queestion about which platform to use, they said that in most 
pro studios, its Mac. So I think Apple is hoping the word gets around and 
people start buying more macs - just like they buy U87's, Marshalls, etc - 
they're the standard.

Hey guys,

Really, believe me, not only is mine bigger than yours -- mine is 
even The Biggest.  A true and proven fact, time and time again. 
Everyone knows...

And now let's all start pretending we're adults again, shall we?


happy summer or winter, depending on your hemisphere,
HJ, whose hemisphere really *is* bigger...

-- 
Hendrik Jan Veenstra  <h@...>
Omega Art: http://www.ision.nl/users/h/index.html

Hendrik writes:

>Really, believe me, not only is mine bigger than yours -- mine is
>even The Biggest.

You didn't even include a link.

>And now let's all start pretending we're adults again, shall we?

Again?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hendrik Jan Veenstra [mailto:h@...]
> Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 1:56 PM
> To: logic-ot@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [L-OT] nice future!
>
>
> Hey guys,
>
> Really, believe me, not only is mine bigger than yours -- mine is
> even The Biggest.  A true and proven fact, time and time again.
> Everyone knows...
>
> And now let's all start pretending we're adults again, shall we?
>
>
> happy summer or winter, depending on your hemisphere,
> HJ, whose hemisphere really *is* bigger...
>
I've the feeling, you guys love to distress each other - a funny definition
of 'pleasure'.

Have you actually noticed, that the amount of these mails swelled on
Sunday?!? Go out and have some fun, the sun is shining (at least here in
Western-Europe)! :)

Tim, much too relaxed for fighting ..aaah, now a beer in the sun ;o)

__________________________________________________________________

Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de
M\ufffdchten Sie mit einem Gru\ufffd antworten? http://grusskarten.yahoo.de

Thoughts from the mind of Dennis Gunn, 29-07-2002:

>  >Really, believe me, not only is mine bigger than yours -- mine is
>>even The Biggest.
>
>You didn't even include a link.

Sorry, but even the link is so big that it would exceed your 
mailbox's size-limit... :)

>  >And now let's all start pretending we're adults again, shall we?
>
>Again?

I know, I know, it's boring, and life sucks, but hey... since mine is 
bigger anyway, what else can you do?

-- 
Hendrik Jan Veenstra  <h@...>
Omega Art: http://www.ision.nl/users/h/index.html

Thoughts from the mind of Klangwerke, 29-07-2002:

>  > From: Hendrik Jan Veenstra [mailto:h@...]
>  > And now let's all start pretending we're adults again, shall we?
>>
>  > happy summer or winter, depending on your hemisphere,
>>  HJ, whose hemisphere really *is* bigger...
>>
>I've the feeling, you guys love to distress each other - a funny definition
>of 'pleasure'.

It's a testimony to the greatness of the human mind that we're able 
to stack response upon response, reaching ever higher levels of 
"meta-ness" in our messages, and can still feel that it's all really 
_about_ something...

>Have you actually noticed, that the amount of these mails swelled on
>Sunday?!? Go out and have some fun, the sun is shining (at least here in
>Western-Europe)! :)

Sun?  Yuck, sun and going-out is for suckers without computers...


tadiii,tadom,
HJ
-- 
Hendrik Jan Veenstra  <h@...>
Omega Art: http://www.ision.nl/users/h/index.html

Dennis !!!!! That is sooo funny, ROLLLFFFFFF

> Hendrik writes:
> 
>> Really, believe me, not only is mine bigger than yours -- mine is
>> even The Biggest.
> 
> You didn't even include a link.
> 
>> And now let's all start pretending we're adults again, shall we?
> 
> Again?

http://www.pcworld.com/features/article/0,aid,102528,00.asp

> Even now, in Sound on Sound or Future Music (which seem to favor PCs), in
> response to a queestion about which platform to use, they said
> that in most
> pro studios, its Mac. So I think Apple is hoping the word gets around and
> people start buying more macs - just like they buy U87's,
> Marshalls, etc -
> they're the standard.

think different

i wouldnt care, but you mis-quoted me..

> If you download thier detailed spec sheet (via PDF file), they 
> claim that the 
> Dual 1 Gig Powermac G4 ("the worst computer ever made" according to some 
> here)... is 72% faster than a Dell Dimension 8200 running a 2 GHz 
> Pentium 4. 

Packard Bell makes fairly shite computers, i reckon their cheap ones are worse ;-)
BTW, where's that cheque book? I hadnt realised just how fast those dualies are - 72% faster? Amazing - i must be turning on the macs i use incorrectly. Is there a secret turbo button hidden somewhere?

cheers,
adam p

The Turbo button is Mac OS X. It is only with OS X that the full capacity
for multithreading and dual processor support is achieved and apparently it
is near 100% improved.

So I hear

Paul

> From: Adam Pendse <adampendse@...>
> Reply-To: logic-ot@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 04:52:41 +0200
> To: logic-ot@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: RE: [L-OT] nice future!
> 
> i wouldnt care, but you mis-quoted me..
> 
>> If you download thier detailed spec sheet (via PDF file), they
>> claim that the 
>> Dual 1 Gig Powermac G4 ("the worst computer ever made" according to some
>> here)... is 72% faster than a Dell Dimension 8200 running a 2 GHz
>> Pentium 4. 
> 
> Packard Bell makes fairly shite computers, i reckon their cheap ones are worse
> ;-)
> BTW, where's that cheque book? I hadnt realised just how fast those dualies
> are - 72% faster? Amazing - i must be turning on the macs i use incorrectly.
> Is there a secret turbo button hidden somewhere?
> 
> cheers,
> adam p
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> 
>

--- In logic-ot@y..., BasharAR <basharar@m...> wrote:
> 
> http://www.pcworld.com/features/article/0,aid,102528,00.asp

You haven't seen mine! Mine is bigger! :-). And I'm not including any
link.
Yoonchi.

--- In logic-ot@y..., Dennis Gunn <dennisg@a...> wrote:
> >>  >Unless apple/emagic change their minds about dropping all Windows
> >>  >audio product development, I don't see how they can hope to be a
> >>  >credible player in this new sort of market.
> >>
> >>  By making something that works well.  Only time will tell.
> >
> >Well, Betamax worked well, but Sony refused to allow their superior
> >heads to be used in other manufacturers machines, and the publc
> >perception of betamax as an "unpopular" format became self-
> >fulfilling. It lost critical mass, and VHS (which lots of
> >manufacturers could "support" by buying in the core mechanism and
> >putting their own box and badge around it) won out.
> 
> That's the example everyone flogs.  Digi is the example of 
> successfully being stingy with compatibility etc.    There is no 
> single strategy for success except to stay abreast and excel and even 
> that does not always work.

Hmm, I learn something new everyday on this forum. I was always told
that the Betamax system and the V2000(Philips) system went under
simply because there were more porn videos available in the VHS
formats than the other formats, :-). Seems like I've been told wrongly
by people in the video business; I always knew those boys at Philips
made up these stories to cover up their lack of marketing skills, :-).
Now I'm wondering, are there more porn movies being... nevermind, ;-).
Digi is a respectable company with no seedy alliances, I think, :-).
Cheers,
Yoonchi.

--- In logic-ot@y..., Dennis Gunn <dennisg@a...> wrote:

> >under Logic 5.3 next month, on the final cross-platform release.
... 
> >I guess its conceivable that emagic might have put in a bunch 
> >of mLAN- friendly features into 5.3 as a final finishing touch 
> >to logic-as-we-know-it, and to wind up the features that they 
> >had planned for v5.x before they move on and start on the next 
> >mac-only incarnations.
> 
> The next version of Logic is 5.2.  It's too early to guess what we 
> will see in 5.3.  I doubt emagic even know.

Yes, you are quite right, my mistake, I've gotten confused by all the 
5.1 releases and got my numbers out of sync. For "5.3" read "5.2".
Oops.



> The big obvious and puzzling mistake that they seem to have 
> made IMHO is not waiting until they had some big shiny mind blowing 
> alternative before they announced they would sell no more LAW.

Yep, announcing the takeover and the Windows shutdown together was a 
bit puzzling.
Even if they were completely determined to shut down the Windows 
line, I think it would have been more sensible to stress the 
forthcoming 5.2 release as a significant update, say that this was 
fully expected to be the final release of logic 5, and then to say 
that any future Logic 6 product would be redesigned to make use of 
the wonderful new OSX architecture and would therefore have to me Mac-
OS-specific.

If they'd presented it that way, it would have sounded a lot more 
reasonable.


[re: betamax] 
> That's the example everyone flogs.  Digi is the example of 
> successfully being stingy with compatibility etc.    There is no 
> single strategy for success except to stay abreast and excel and 
even 
> that does not always work.

True
 

> ... 
> ...  apple has obviously 
> recognized that while music makes up a small percentage of the PC 
> market it makes up a far larger more essential fraction of the 
Apple 
> market.   So instead of just leaving it to third parties they are 
> aggressively remodelling their company to go after that market. 
> Because they have the money to do it right and there is no doubt 
> going to be a period of rapid development that will force companies 
> on the PC to do the same.   For apple this may be life and death 
but 
> us users this can only be a "win win" situation.

Well, as long as Apple realise that they might lose support from 
third-party multimedia developers who are wary of building new Mac 
products that might turn out to be in direct competition with 
something that Apple then subsidise of give away with new machines.

I used to write niche Atari ST MIDI applications about [ten?] years 
ago, and when the time came to wind up the ST stuff and look at more 
lucrative markets, the single reason that I didn't then go into Mac 
software design was that Apple had recently announced their 
supposedly earth-shattering multimedia division, and I wasn't going 
to try to compete with Apple to sell music software for Apple 
machines. If your competition also own the hardware and the OS that 
you write for, you are at too much of a disadvantage.

Perhaps Apple genuinely don't need third-party developers, but there 
is then a danger of ending up with a great product that nobody uses 
because it isn't seen as being popular, amd is therefore not seen as 
having a safe future. I just hope that they appreciate that risk.


> >Maybe all of this will take shape in the next ~four weeks, or maybe
> >none of it will.
> 
> It won't.  

OK.

=Erk=

--- In logic-ot@y..., "yoonchinet" <yoonchinet@y...> wrote:
> 
> Hmm, I learn something new everyday on this forum. I was always told
> that the Betamax system and the V2000(Philips) system went under
> simply because there were more porn videos available in the VHS
> formats than the other formats, :-). Seems like I've been told 
> wrongly by people in the video business; 

Well, I was working in a consumer electronics chain in London when 
those first affordable VHS and Betamax machines came out, and people 
were looking at the wide range of different manufacturer badges for 
VHS and the single (Sony) badge on the Betamax machines, and right 
away were making the decision that buying Betamax didn't seem to be a 
good idea.

This was /before/ the UK video market had kicked in.
Now, it's true that a while later, people saw the superior range of 
videos available for VHS, and that emphasised their initial 
misgivings about how widely Betamax was being supported, but AFAI'm 
concerned, that was just a further layer of positive feedback on top 
of what had already been going on with the "badge" issue. I think 
deep down people recognised that the two formats were too similar and 
one was probably going to have to die out, and that one was likely to 
be the one with fewer alliances. 


> Now I'm wondering, are there more porn movies being... nevermind, ;-
).
> Digi is a respectable company with no seedy alliances, I think, :-).

Hmm. You may have a point. I wonder who's really using all this cheap 
video-editing software and hardware (grin). 

Erk

--- In logic-ot@y..., TazmnianDv@a... wrote:
> >But ... guess what graphics hardware Apple decided to build into 
the 
> >G4 range? 
> ><grin>  
> >Yep, it's ATI again!
> 
> Apple uses the ATI card only for the lowest end G4. All the rest 
use NVIDIA GeForce4 MX (I think for about two years now?).  

Well, when I was wandering around London's Tottenham Court Roard in 
early July and scrutinising the point-of-sale stuff, _all_ the G4's I 
saw were supposed to have Ati hardware onboard. I see that the 
website info for the very newest G4 (which wasn't in the shops then) 
says that initially the new 2*1Gigs will only be shipping with 
nVidia. The laptops apparently still have Mobility Radeons. The 
previous G4s apparently shipped with a mix of nVidias and Ati's. The 
wording for the latest G4 suggests that it /might/ ship later with 
other graphics boards, so perhaps the Radeon might show up again on 
the new G4s. 

> ATI is still making boards 
> for Mac (and PC), and recently introduced the 8500 high end 
> graphics board. I 
> hope that doesn't wipe the >grin< off your face.

Oh, I'm not disputing that the Ati Radeons are powerful, I was pretty 
damned impressed by what the cheapy Radeon All-in-One could do on the 
video capture front when I plugged one into my PC last year and 
realised that I was encoding at higher bandwidth than some broadcast 
places do <!> ... I was just saying that if one was (justifiably) 
criticising PC hardware for being built on third-party components 
that couldn't be guaranteed to work nicely with each other, then 
graphics hardware is notorious for this, and the one graphics 
hardware component that I have personal experience of being a bit 
flaky is the Ati Radeon series ... which also turns up on Macs. OK, 
so for all I know the fault might well be more with Ati's drivers or 
installation routines than with the actual hardware, but these are 
all things that count towards the instability or "delicateness" of a 
system.

With graphics hardware there's often a tradeoff, you might put up 
with a bit of instability to get more power.
Then again, if you intend to use the machine primarily for audio, you 
might prefer to forgo having the latest screaming graphics card in 
favour of something quieter and more stable. 
Personally I'd rather have a machine either optimised for video or 
optimised for audio, if you are mainly running logic, then you 
probably don't need MPEG2 video encoding or decoding hardware on your 
system.




> Now, I'll be the first to be suspicious of company created 
propoganda, but 
> Apple claims this on their website :
> 
> "We've taken the fastest PowerPC G4 processor ever created 
> and then doubled it"
... technically, one could argue that taking a single processor 
and "doubling it" is perhaps not quite the same thing as including 
two of them, but we'll pass over that ...

> "it's no wonder that it outperforms even the fastest Pentium-based 
systems."

The benchmarks I've seen have been rather different, there was one 
with the new G4 2*1Gig that had it running jobs at about two thirds 
the speed of a couple of selected pentium machines (one of which was 
a single processor jobbie that cost nearly as much as it did).
 
http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/07_jul/features/cw_macvspc2.ht
m

A few things jump out at me from the Apple "datasheet"
1 - they don't give enough information for us to know what the tests 
actually involved
2 - the Dell PC model that they quoted as a reference seems to come 
in various configurations for memory speed, etc. For all I know it 
might have come in different configurations in the past. Did Apple 
test their box against an older 133 machine?
3 - While Apple say that they were checking against the fastest PC's 
available, they seem to have been using a model that Dell 
currently list as costing US$1069. By contrast, the Dell machine that 
allegedly ran the software about 1.5 times faster than the latest G4 
in the benchmark is supposed to cost about US$2875, which suggests 
that Dell probably recognise that its a better unit.
So at what point did Apple actually do these tests? Were they testing 
the G4 prototype against the fastest mainstream production PC that 
was available a year or two ago? 

PS, elsewhere, Apple's promotional material talks about their 
processor working "faster than light", which if they'd really managed 
it, _would_ be a major technical breakthrough! 
But somehow I'm inclined not to take that one too literally either 
Methnks the Apple site is somewhat prone to exaggeration.


 
> They further claim that Dual G4 is 300% faster than a Sony 
> VAIO 590G running a 2 GIG Pentium 4 (and the 733MHz G4 is 
> 84% faster) at DVD video encoding. 
> However, I think this is partly a gimmick, since Apple has 
> worked hard to make DVD conversion very efficient.

Yep, quite possibly. I think if someone really wanted to do DVD 
(MPEG2) encoding at silly speeds(ie faster than realtime), they'd 
tend to get themselves a graphics board that did it in hardware 
rather than have a top-range computer being tied up to do the same 
job in software. Or spend out on a faster third-party codec.

I expect that Apple had a lot of incentive to optimise their OS's 
MPEG2 handling because they presumably would have needed people to be 
able to watch DVDs on an iMac without any additional hardware. So if 
you are suggesting that perhaps macs are noticeably more efficient at 
MPEG2 handling in software than an equivalently-specified PC, then 
yes, I'd be inclined to believe it. 

Microsoft probably don't have as much incentive to buy in an 
optimised codec 
(in fact, Windows doesn't currently seem to ship with an MPEG2 
decoder at all. It does include a dedicated DVD player shell, but 
that (and Media Player) will only play DVDs after a third-party 
player like PowerDVD has been installed onto the system, and has 
provided the "missing" decoder code. )

> Are they guilty of misleading advertising? There are laws 
> against that. 

Depends on what their definition is of a "spec sheet". They might 
argue that they are using the phrase to signify a technical document 
that might be issued in advance of the actual product becoming 
available, that the details in it are therefore allowed to be out of 
date when the machine finally appears, and that a spec sheet 
isn't "advertising materials" but a technical document aimed at 
professionals who would know this and bear it in mind. 
I think that using the document like that on the website is 
misleading as hell, but there you go.


> Do you PC-lovers think is total nonsense? 
> If so, inform the Justice department of the United States 
> so they can clamp down on these falsehoods.

I'm not a "PC-lover", to me a computer is just an annoying box that 
you have to buy in order to be able to run nice software, like logic.
Until July 1 I was supremely uninterested in "Mac vs PC" issues, a 
Mac was a faster much prettier box that I couldn't afford and didn't 
actually need, and that's where the thought-processes stopped.
July 1st has changed all that for me and a lot of other WinLogic 
people, we now need to think seriously about whether we are likely to 
be thinking of migrating to Mac in a year's time in order to be able 
to use future versions of logic, because if we are, then our software 
and equipment purchases between now and then need to take that into 
account.
If we are still buying soft-instruments, then we'd need to check 
whether cross-platform upgrades are available, for hardware we'd need 
to check out the likelihood of OSX driver availability, and so on.

Hence our newfound interest in /exactly/ how many bangs you get for a 
buck with a Mac, and exactly how a PowerMac G4 compares with what we 
already have. It's not just about sticking two fingers up at the 
neighbours, a lot of us (post July 1) now have a genuine need to know 
exactly how these two platforms compare.

(and its probably driving the other forum users nuts <frown>)

Erk
PS:  someone's logic benchmarks:
  http://www.digitalnaturalsound.com/logic_dsp/perform_lap5.shtml