The Slakinski Log

We work with Apple, ATI, and Nvidia to make everything run as well as possible. Doom 3 had AltiVec code in it, and there were driver changes to make things work better. The bottom line is that the compiler / cpu / system / graphics card combinations available for macs has just never been as fast as the equivalent x86/windows systems. The performance gap is not a myth or the result of malicious developers trying to make your platform of choice look bad. — John Carmack

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Scoble, our favorite Microsoft blogger is asking Uncle Bill for an MS iPod killer, and wants it before August 1st.

We have five months to come out with a great new set of music players and get a great marketing campaign going. Why is that? It’s called back to school. If we don’t get something going by June then we lose another generation to the iPod. Do you want to let that happen?

Last I checked it takes longer than 5 months to QA hardware products, let alone design one from scratch and get it to market! I think Microsoft is smarter than that, and they are going to play the same game they did with Palm a few years ago; refine the Portable Media Center over and over until people really love it and find it more useful than the Palm stuff, also while working with the hardware manufactures to get the design down pat. Patience is Microsoft’s best played game not the rushed plan Scoble as set forth.

Dave Winer thinks the iPods interface is too hard:

It’s impossible to use while driving, in fact it’s impossible to use while walking. If I want to play something else it’s a multi-step error-prone process. There has to be a better way.

I’ve not had this issue, but I’m also almost half his age… but on the other hand, my mom has no issues either. So I wonder if this is an actual issue with the interface or someone that wants to create a Podcast listening device creating some FUD about his competition?

Bear Feats has done a benchmark comparison of the Dual G5, P4, Dual Xeon, and Dual Athlon systems, and in all but one test the G5 came out on top. The one test that the G5 didn’t come out on top was a comparison between the G5 2.5 and Xeon 3.06, where the Xeon beat out the G5 by 6 points. So I’d say the G5 actually won out on that test as well, since its not clocked at 3Ghz just yet.

Even though Apple said when they released the “iLamp” iMac that things run better when they are horizontal, I have to say who cares when it looks this good. Its close to the same spec of the G5 1.6 I’m using right now, so I can safely say to anyone that is looking at buying one of these that it is well worth it. G5’s are a really slick processor, and nothing beats OSX!

On a side note, if they can get the 90nm G5 processor in a case that small and not worry about heat too much (the 120nm is smoking hot) then one would have to speculate that Powerbooks are not that far off, however perhaps heavier and larger than we currently enjoy.

Update: The new iMac has a FSB (Front Side Bus) speed of 533MHz for the 1.6Ghz model, where as my 1.6G5 uses a 800Mhz FSB. I feel less jealous now But its still a really nice machine.