Apple hardware (was: From a NY Times Bestseller)

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Tue Jul 11 14:41:00 EDT 2006


On 7/11/06, Michael Costolo <michael.costolo at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, not at all.  My point was more that the hardware was (or at least
> seems to be) engineered to function (optimally?) as a system, rather
> than just to plop whatever processor currently had the fastest clock
> speed into the cheapest motherboard one can find and rush it out the
> door.

  Ehh, I'm not sure that's a valid comparison.  True, Apple does have
a minimum quality level which is much higher than the worst of the
crap you find in the PC world.  Some PCs barely function as designed.
You'll never encounter that with Apple.  But you said you had a Dual
Xeon.  I don't think there is such a thing as a "cheap Dual Xeon", so
I would expect it to have good core logic and fast RAM.

  Someone reminded me (off-list) of the brand name of the Apple (well,
Motorola, really) SMID thing: Altivec.  A Google for Altivec+matlab
found this:

http://www.caspur.it/risorse/softappl/doc/matlab_help/base/install/mac/knownpr2.html

  That says that Matlab doesn't use Altivec, so that theory is out.
But that same document also states that Matlab is "tuned to the G4
processor".  So I guess it's no surprise that it runs so much better!
Apparently, MathWorks is just optimizing for that platform.  So, as
usual, one's choice of software often determines what one's best
choice of hardware is.

> Though approach #2 does seem to sell more computers...

  For sure.  "People want economy, and will pay any price to get it."

-- Ben



More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list