LFS and MacOS X

[ThunderBoy]

Hi.

Just wondering if anyone tried to run LFS with VirtualPC on an MacOS X system? Or any other PC emulating software that I am aware of? I know there are Linux users doing it so it would be interesting to see how it fared on the new Intel-based Macs...

And before you start asking why when it works so well on PC (which it does), the reasons for moving (back) to MacOS are my own and noone elses thankyouverymuch :thumb:

Being a programmer, I am also a bit curious as to the hassle of porting LFS to Macs. There are lots of interesting talk about porting PC games to Intel-based Macs and based on the little knowledge I have on how LFS is architected it seems like an excellent candidate for porting. The amount of good racing sims/games on Macs are fewer than few...

[Tanuva]

Even if you get LFS to run in VPC, it wont do so well. The Virtual Machine which vpc emulates only has a onboard-style graphics chip (=software rendering) so it wont produce that nice graphics.
An Intel-Based Mac doesnt really simplify the whole thing, the program still has to be prepared for OSX, it needs to become a "Universal-Binary" (which is comin out for WoW soon afaik -.-)
What I wanna say: Even if you get LFS to run, it wont be fun. ^^

[geeman1]

MacOS X is unix based so you may be able to run WineX (or regular Wine) on it and be able to play.

[Anarchi-H]

Porting would be a massive job unless the code is abstracted. Windows specific network calls, and directx calls alone must go in to the thousands, not to mention the amount of stuctures / objects that the platform dependant stuffs rely on for i/o.

It's not really about the architecture, cos at the end of the day if the underlying libs aren't there to support an app, it isn't going to run without switching to one which exists on all target platforms, or suitably abstracting the interfaces such that you can create your own platform specifics.... unless you use an emulator / api translation lib.

[the_angry_angel]

Checkout DarWINE (http://darwine.opendarwin.org/). I also believe that codeweavers, the people behind crossover office for linux are working on supporting crossover on Mac OSX.

[Vain]

Wine is out of question here because wine doesn't support have (good) force feedback support.

Vain

[ThunderBoy]

Thanks for all the answers (and no flaming, weeee, the LFS crowd is great as usual).

I will test DarWINE on a friends "old" Mac and get back to you, thanks for the great tip!

Regarding VPC, I was curious since the next VPC will be more tightly integrated with the underlying hardware due to the new Intel-based chipset. If it at all started using VPC today, it would be an indication on how it will perform with the next release.

Regarding porting. There still are some open questions, but there really are some worried Mac coders who fear that the ease of porting PC games to MacIntel is going to make Mac-specific coding to be a thing of the past. And since I have a vague memory of reading that LFS does a lot of its own graphic and sound optimization rather than handling it to DirectX-code I was hoping that the platform-specific code would be an overcomingly task, more so than Counter-strike and World of Warcraft (the last one being available for Mac). I have worked in the software industry for over ten years so I do understand that the project would recquire both time and skill. Still, it would be an interesting challenge...

This last discussion would be interesting to put to the LFS team, if for nothing else, to satisfy my curiosity... :)

More tips or experience is much appreciated! If anyone is even remotely interested, I will post my findings here. There can be nothing wrong with spreading the LFS to an even wider audience...

[t.wak]

Please let me know if it will work... At the moment I am awaiting the arrival of my Macbook Pro, and will no longer use a Windows Based PC, yet was thinking of buying S2... Currently an avid Demo racer!!

[Brilwing]

First of all I tried the skin viewer with Virual PC and it didn't start, so this is no option.
With the new Intel based Mac is looks better. There is already a Wine version that work on the Intel Macs (http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic=8699) but I don't know if LFS will run with this version, and I have no MacBook to test this.
One other option is to install/run Linux an try WineX there. I think it is possible to get LFS work, because on a normal PC with Linux LFS works fine, except the force feedback wheels.

[ThunderBoy]

Actually, I am thinking in that direction as well. Since the DarWINE thing fel short (no DarWINE on Intel Macs yet) and WINE still doesn´t handle system calls yet, my next idea is dual-booting with Linux (Ubuntu) running Cedega. This would still get me a dual boot, but without Windows.

Even though Intel Macs are booting Windows XP, the graphics drivers does not work so that would not work I guess.. Yet...

If Cedega would run on Inte Mac OS X, I would switch tomorrow...

[ORION]

Havent you noticed those latest news that it is already possible to run windows on macs? Maybe this will be made public soon (dont know all the details).

[Brilwing]

Yes it is possible to install Windows XP on the new Intel Macs. I've also seen vidoes where someone run HL2 on a Mac mini and on a Macbook. Video drivers are only available for the Mac Mini, but I think that also soon drivers will be available for the other Intel Macs (see http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Users/Drivers)
One problem that is left is if force feedback devices will work.

[Becky Rose]

Yup, but using WinXP on a Mac really does genuinely defeat the whole purpose of moving to a Mac!

I have a Mac here and I have to say I end up using the PC most of the time. The security features of OSX are great and all, but at the end of the day the hardware/OS is only there to run the applications and therein lies the problem.

More and more software is becoming multi-platform though and a lot of indi development tools are coming out now which are multi-platform (BlitzMax and PureBasic for instance).

The problem for C++ coders (and I am assuming LFS is coded in C++) working on the PC is if they use a library which has no Mac equivellent then whatever library they used has to be totally replaced with something new on the Mac.

When porting to the Mac right now all the work must be done twice for each processor platform. When developing on the Mac in the first instance everything is pretty much handled for you, but if LFS was coded on a Mac we'd already have a Mac version...

In terms of getting LFS working i'd say there's a chance that the Intel based machines might do a reasonable job, certainly an Intel based iMac running VirtualPC emulatore under the Rosetta emulator under OSX is going to be a bad move though (Rosetta is hopeless at audio/visual stuff - let alone Virtual PC).

A PPC based G5 would do a better job of running the game under VirtualPC than an Intel iMac and you're in for a low framerate there - even if you owned a Quad G5 as LFS doesn't appear to multi-thread so you're stuck at the speed of a single Mac processor and doing all of your video rendering through the CPU too, which is also having to run the emulator...

It's a recipe for unplayability !

[ThunderBoy]

Havent you noticed those latest news that it is already possible to run windows on macs? Maybe this will be made public soon (dont know all the details).

My IntelMac of choice is the MacBook Pro and since the graphic card drivers does not work (yet) so at this stage, it is not a working solution.

Becky Rose: I only want to run XP for games that are not available for Macs (LFS, rFactor). The optimal solution would be Cedega for Mac OS X, that would leave me with just one OS...

Running emulators does not really work unless they do real system calls (like Rosetta and Cedega), VirtualPC does not do that (at least not in it´s current state)

Dual-coding for Windows and Intel based Macs are not such a chore anymore if you read what is being posted in the developer forums. I think that porting games to Intel Mac OS X is going to b much easier than anytime before! It´s looking good for Mac gamers...

[Racer X NZ]

Speaking as a serious mac user my thought is - why bother ??
I keep a gaming computer for LFS et al and use the mac for real work.

If you can run it on a PC & must use your mac then try remote desktop, at least you;ll get some cool screenshots:scratchch

Your best bet is probably experimenting with a dual boot intel mac but mac's really aren't setup for gaming.



Unix for stability, OSX for productivity, Windoze for solitaire !!

[felplacerad]

Unix for stability, OSX for productivity, Windoze for solitaire !!

tee-hee ..

[spankmeyer]

Christ on a hoverbike, how come every damn discussion about operating systems becomes a battle of will who can come up with the lamest "my OS is better than yours" -punchline? Here's one: THEY ALL SUCK!

End of thread. Peace! :thumb:

[ThunderBoy]

Sorry, but I will not let this thread die (until a moderator tells me to) just because it gets a visit from a troll or two. There are at least a few persons (me included) who really wants to run LFS on Mac OS X. Our reasons are ours and noone elses thankyouverymuch.

I´ll post again when I have any news regarding hte subject, I hope that others will too!

[StuntCarRacer]

The problem for C++ coders (and I am assuming LFS is coded in C++) working on the PC is if they use a library which has no Mac equivellent then whatever library they used has to be totally replaced with something new on the Mac.

It seems LFS does not contain any 3rd party libraries except Microsoft ones. I may be wrong of course as I don't have the source code, but if we assume that is the case, then the only thing that needs to be provided for Mac is implementation of Win32/DirectX APIs.

One such implementation is provided by the Wine project. It is LGPL licenced, so it may be linked with closed-source product just like other LGPL libraries (SDL, OpenAL etc). LFS works quite well with Wine's DX implementation. There are still some issues with shaders due to differences in color format between DX and OpenGL shader model (BGRA versus RGBA), but having the source to both LFS and Wine's DirectX these issues may be quickly solved. In such case you don't need to fix Wine's shader to make it work for all cases, you just need to fix it for LFS, or tweak LFS shader code to make it work.

Another implementation is Transgaming's Cedega. Their DirectX implementation is under AFPL, so can't be used in LFS directly. Hovewer, if the demand for LFS on Mac is high enough, it may be profitable to contact Transgaming and do a port with them. LFS will gain marked share, and Transgaming will have one more title working perfectly on Cedega :)

To sum things up, Mac port of LFS may be easier than it seems. It all depends on how well LFS is written. It there are lots of endianess problems or big hairy asm blocks, it will be harder. But it is still far from rewriting the whole game, or ripping out the rendering engine and replacing with OpenGL one, as some people suggest is similar threads.

[KiDCoDEa]

like dvorak hinted, next macOS version, will probably run windows apps directly.

[ddmak]

Here's an article from Macworld magazine, http://www.macworld.com/2006/03/firstlooks/xpmini/index.php, the author has installed WinXP onto the new Intel Mac Mini. According to the article, getting a display driver is the only problem if you want to run Windows graphics in accelerated mode. But I've heard display drivers are already can be found in Internet.

Cheers,
DDmak


Hi.

Just wondering if anyone tried to run LFS with VirtualPC on an MacOS X system? Or any other PC emulating software that I am aware of? I know there are Linux users doing it so it would be interesting to see how it fared on the new Intel-based Macs...

And before you start asking why when it works so well on PC (which it does), the reasons for moving (back) to MacOS are my own and noone elses thankyouverymuch :thumb:

Being a programmer, I am also a bit curious as to the hassle of porting LFS to Macs. There are lots of interesting talk about porting PC games to Intel-based Macs and based on the little knowledge I have on how LFS is architected it seems like an excellent candidate for porting. The amount of good racing sims/games on Macs are fewer than few...

[Becky Rose]

I've seen drivers for the Mac Mini so far, but not the iMac.

[Becky Rose]

The situation with Windows on a Mac has just totally, utterly and dramatically changed. Currently it's only Beta - but Apple are now officially producing Windows drivers for Mac hardware.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303572

Provided you install Windows XP Service Pack 2 and dont use a wireless keyboard & mouse, your laughing all the way to the race track... :)

[Becky Rose]

A better link, http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

[KiDCoDEa]

yep. bootcamp. no need for ports. lfs on mac is now (officially :) ).

[ThunderBoy]

Weeeehaaa!
Even though you are not technically running LFS on Mac OS X, it is still the best news since the early release of the Intel Macs! I´ve seen reports from people running Half-life 2 with goodies turned on and with no problems at all.

I´m getting a MacBook Pro now!

[spankmeyer]

"What does Windows do inside a Mac? A lot more than MacOS ever did." :D

Looking forward for rest of the year to see how this developes. By the way, do you anyone who might need a replacement kidney or a lung? I might have to sell mine to gather enough cash for Mac...

[dUmAsS]

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/ just run lfs on windows in your mac ;)

[Becky Rose]

I might have to sell mine to gather enough cash for Mac...
The iMac is about £200 less than the cost of my PC and comes with a screen (ok not the super duper £300 screen I just bought). I coulda saved myself a packed, but would it have played LFS quite aswell?

I've done some benchmarking on an Intel iMac under rosetta and it scored awefully but i've not yet compiled my cross-platform benchmark tool into a universal intel mac binary.

However I can say that the architectural advantage where Mac users say, "yes but 2Ghz on a Mac is like 3Ghz on a PC" is quite genuinely true - the Intel iMac shoves stuff around in Ram like a gazelle on steroids and makes my CAS2 dual channel RAM look like a lethargic slug on cannabis with learning difficulties.

The scarey thing is the current ?Ghz speed of Mac's is actually alarmingly close to PC's now too ... Facts are, these Intel Macs are actually darn fast, and they dont cost that much money.

Sorry, but the stereotype doesn't hold anymore. We'll know more in a few months when all the frenzy has died down, but I gotta say, the current crop of Apple hardware looks to compare favourably with buying a PC.

[ajp71]

(ok not the super duper £300 screen I just bought).


What screen is better than a Mac LCD screen?

[Becky Rose]

That's a good question, of course Apple do actually make very good screens dont they. :smileypul

I've no idea how mine compares, it's weekest stat is contrast at 700:1. It's a 19" active matrix with a refresh rate of 2ms - which is hot diggidy darn fast especially for gaming. The screen is a Samsung 940BF. I've no idea how it compares to a Mac screen but it certainly doesn't have any of the dead pixels that Apple will let ship (up to 10 dead pixels on a new monitor is "accepteable" according to Applecare).

[KiDCoDEa]

"What does Windows do inside a Mac? A lot more than MacOS ever did." :D

hehehe good one. to mock apple advertising would be an endless funny task :)

[spankmeyer]

Facts are, these Intel Macs are actually darn fast, and they dont cost that much money.
Sorry, but the stereotype doesn't hold anymore. We'll know more in a few months when all the frenzy has died down, but I gotta say, the current crop of Apple hardware looks to compare favourably with buying a PC.

Wow. Do you live on planet Cash where natural resources include spontaneous eruptions of hundred euro bills? The VAT here in Finland is ruthless (national problem, not related to Apple alone) and Apple still sells their basic systems with terribly inadequate amount of memory, hard drive space and short warranties.
I'm getting my next salary soon and found out today at Apple store that it's quite impossible to get any decent Mac to replace my crap work PC with less than 2000 euros.

[SamH]

So then the Mac is dead? Long live Windows? I don't get it. What's the point in a Mac, now? Apart from being able to say that you have a Mac?

I'm not up on the Mac at all. I just know bits and pieces.. like ads they show in the UK getting banned by the ITC for false advertising etc. It just seems a lot like running Wine on a Linux OS.. it's completely pointless, but on a Mac it's expensive too.

Looking at Mac prices, I can build a hell of a PC for the price of a "fairly good" Mac. And I do mean a STEAMINGLY good PC.

[EDIT] I just found this on Bootcamp..
Word to the Wise
Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.
Amazing they still spew this crap. Plague? Silly, silly people.

[dawesdust_12]

The driver issue is moot now, seeing Apple has released BootCamp which includes drivers for ALL intel Macs, It is in beta and is rumored to kill your warranty if you F up. Personally I have to get my iMac before I run LFS on it and replace this box and turn it into a 24/7 server. the Apple ads on the bootcamp site are highly awesome and tell it how it is, and I am honestly pissing myself with the latest result that the Macbook Pro is "The Fastest Windows XP Laptop". Proof that Apple has better marketing techniques up their sleeves.

[Becky Rose]

Proof that Apple has better marketing techniques up their sleeves
Apple's marketting ... You only have to read the previous few threads to see how good it is isnt !

Wow. Do you live on planet Cash where natural resources include spontaneous eruptions of hundred euro bills?
As I already mentioned, an iMac compared favourably on cost to the cost of my PC. Does the iMac need money spending on it to do the same thing?

Yes and no, from base spec it could use an extra 512mb and ok the hard disk isn't massive but it is at least adequate.

It's processor speed is a moot point because the architecture is different, you can argue until the cows come home about which is faster and the bottom line is it depends on what you're doing, copying blocks of RAM about the Intel iMac whilst running rosetta emulation (an emulator to make it work like an old pre-intel Mac) did it at it over twice the speed of my PC running natively. What I can say is the speed of the machine is 'perfectly adequate' and yes, apparently the Mac Book Pro is the fastest laptop around whilst running XP - although that's probably application speed and lord knows how it fares whilst running 3D.

Edit: I'd steer clear of the G5 at the moment though - it's still running the old processor and is hopelessly overpriced given that it is out-dated. Obviously Apple are already pledged to replace it soon but until they do their flagship machine will be a heap of overpriced junk.

[spankmeyer]

Does the iMac need money spending on it to do the same thing?
Absolutely. The cheapest baseline iMac (that alone sets me back for 1400 euros) will not cut it in my profession. No way around it. End of story. Cash out your chips at the exit.
Triple the RAM and extend the warranty but then you'd be near two grands, at which point one might ask how much am I actually getting and will it run my business for 3 years?

Of course if your monthly salary is more than 500-1000 euros, then the price might not be impossible to overcome. :)


"I'm rich, bitch!"
- Dave Chappelle

[Becky Rose]

I dont know what industry you are in, or how competetive Apple are on price in your country. I have only given my point of view in comparison of the iMac to my high end gaming PC. I dont know if the iMac's 3D performance would compare, I can say that it's desktop/application performance is very good indeed.

Fogetting that the default install of OSX uses a bucket load of it and that 512mb isn't really enough, if you reinstall OSX or you are putting Windows on it that becomes neither here nor there. I would personally choose to upgrade the Intel iMac's RAM to 1gb, possibly 2gb, but unless your buying so charged RAM it is so cheap that this is a moot point.

In the UK an iMac with 1gb costs just over £1k including taxes that a business would get back, running in a Windows environment it will perform much higher than it's advertised clock speed because the iMac architecture is genuinely much quicker than a conventional PC - I did a benchmark test on one yesterday that astounded me when I compared it to my PC, the iMac was much faster.

What this means is there's some tasks the iMac will do quicker than my PC which cost £100 more before I bought the screen for it. However the iMac would loose out heavily doing 3D rendering and be a bit slower doing video work ... so it's all down to what you need the computer for as to whether it will perform well enough.

With regards warranty the iMac comes with a 1yr warranty which is comparable to most of the bits inside my custom built PC - my RAID array is warrantied for longer. Apple's are a very reliable brand, so it's 6 of one and half a dozen of the other.

You're talking about the Mac in relation to business, in which case if it's mission critical a warranty doesn't cut it anyway - and neither does skimping on price. If it's not mission critical then you still either want contracted support or an office backup machine so you aren't left hanging if something does go wrong - which historically with Apple there's very little chance of - wouldn't the cheap base spec iMac serve as an excellent backup machine if the worst happens?

If it's mission critical then forget moaning about price, if you skimp on a mission critical machine and dont invest in redundancy then you deserve bankruptcy.


I'm not saying the iMac is better, I think they look far too ugly (designed by a 7 year old) to be put anywhere near my home office. I'm just saying it is a serious contender on spec and price when I compare it to my PC. The performance of the thing really does fly, and even with their lowly RAM small Hard Disk base specification they punch a heck of a weight for the price.

[ajp71]

I find the 512mb RAM in my iBook enough and despite being a 1.4 ghz processor it's much faster than an equivilant Windows laptop.

The main use for Macs are in photographic work where they are the industry standard due to their OS level colour profiling setup with the display you are using in mind. The same level of colour profiling cannot be acheived on a Windows, not that this is usually a problem but when doing proffessional photography you have to be able to see the exactly same colours on the screen as they will be in print.

[SamH]

The main use for Macs are in photographic work where they are the industry standard due to their OS level colour profiling setup with the display you are using in mind. The same level of colour profiling cannot be acheived on a Windows, not that this is usually a problem but when doing proffessional photography you have to be able to see the exactly same colours on the screen as they will be in print.
I don't wish to be argumentative on this topic, but.. tosh!

The Mac isn't industry-standard. It may be MAC-industry-standard, but it's just not true any more to say it's INDUSTRY-industry-standard. There really isn't such a thing. Unless you're referring to an historical pointer, it's a myth.

Also, I am sure you didn't mean to imply that it's not possible to do accurate colour profiling on a PC. Of course it's just as possible to do as it is on a Mac.

[Becky Rose]

I deal with a lot of publishers and some now don't even know what a pantone is, colour matching is not the critical issue it used to be. Although coloursync is still a feature of MacOS it's mostly redundant and little used.

[spankmeyer]

You know, I'm going to head out of this before the trash talking hits Richter scale 6...

Macs suck just as much Windows PCs suck. They all crash, they all break, they all complain to me about something and in the end they all ask me "Are you sure?".
But if I had the income to invest in work-suited Macs, I would gladly do so and be happy, dance with the fairies, post at the forums about the joy of dancing with Steve Job's magic dust fairies while my productivity goes through the roof.

But unfortunatly it doesn't work that way.

You seem to imply that doing work without a Mac instantly makes one's business second-class and worth only of bankcrupty. And for someone who is unwilling to buy overpriced (because of market shares, I know) hardware you say they are skimping on price, when they can do the same work with hardware costs of 2/3? You must be joking. I'm not going to even write an example how nutty that argument is. :)

[dawesdust_12]

The main use for Macs are in photographic work where they are the industry standard due to their OS level colour profiling setup with the display you are using in mind. The same level of colour profiling cannot be acheived on a Windows, not that this is usually a problem but when doing proffessional photography you have to be able to see the exactly same colours on the screen as they will be in print.

Thats no longer true, Windows has gotten CYMK Support in Photoshop, so saying that macs are image machines are a load, they are very good, but windows PC's can be just as good.

[ajp71]

In normal publishing it's less important but in glossy magazines and jewlery/fashion brochures colour matching is very important and Macs are what most studio photographers use. Windows can do what Macs do but they've never come setup to do the job and colour syncing them with post script printers is supposed to be alot of work. None of us really know what we are talking about but my uncle (who is a professional photographer) says there is no alternative to Macs for this work and are what all use.

[SamH]

Umm.. I'm a professional photographer, and I don't use Macs any more. And actually when I think about it, none of the other pro photographers I know still use a Mac either.

Sure, I used one at art college, and I bought one for my biz when I started editing my own images, but at some point common sense took over and I realised that while I had been admiring my Mac and its capabilities, the rest of the world had continued moving forward around me. I had to stop listening to Steve Jobs' completely unrealistic spiel, and the Mac User relay service/self-perpetuating, unpaid media department.

And, unless things have become REALLY smart on Macs, they weren't ever before ready for absolutely perfect colour matching out of the box any more than PCs. You still have to go through the motions on both to get perfect colours.

[tristancliffe]

Octane magazine (which came to my house to do a photoshoot the other day) use Windows based PC's to produce most, if not all of the magazine. Doesn't prove anything, but I thought I'd add it anyway.

[ajp71]

Umm.. I'm a professional photographer, and I don't use Macs any more. And actually when I think about it, none of the other pro photographers I know still use a Mac either.

Intresting to know which field of photography your in, my uncle says he knows no London based studio photographers who use Windows and about 50% of the publishers use Macs (a lot more than the 2% globally). Despite being intrested in Bootcamp he says he can't see windows becoming substancially used in his field in the near future.

TBH Octane magazine's photography isn't the same industry as this jewlery type photography work (my uncle is currently finishing an 18 month project) where the images have to look perfect for millionare customers in a glossy A3 brochure :shrug:

[SamH]

I'm not London-based, I'm freelance and currently based in Yorkshire. I now primarily photograph the Dales and have postcards printed. I do less photography now than ever before, and work primarily in web development and business process redevelopment/web enablement (where the money is).

From what you say, it sounds like Windows already is established in this field, except for niche markets like photography for the consumption of millionaires. Certainly where I am, Windows is thoroughly established. Not even my printer uses Macs any more (and they really did fight to keep them). Perhaps here in the north, we're more value-for-money oriented. Yorkshiremen are notoriously tight-fisted, after all.

[wheeler]

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/ just run lfs on windows in your mac ;)

did anyone tested this already? I get my macbook pro soon but very curious :)

[colcob]

Sam, if you can point me somewhere that explains how to set up a windows system of computers/monitors/printers to have even halfway decent colour matching, I'd be eternally grateful.
I'm an architect and we have a devils job getting our repro printed stuff to look anything whatsoever like we see on our screens.
The whole ICC profile thing in windows is just bewildering.

[colcob]

Back on topic, the really interesting bit is when/if apple release BootCampWindows that lets you load OSX onto a PC. Thats when the shit really hits the fan. :)

[ajp71]

Back on topic, the really interesting bit is when/if apple release BootCampWindows that lets you load OSX onto a PC. Thats when the shit really hits the fan. :)

I really can't see that happening as Apple have so far had the advantage of being able to optimise the OS to each model. Having said that they were adamant they'd never let Windows onto a Mac :shrug:

[SamH]

Sam, if you can point me somewhere that explains how to set up a windows system of computers/monitors/printers to have even halfway decent colour matching, I'd be eternally grateful.
I'm an architect and we have a devils job getting our repro printed stuff to look anything whatsoever like we see on our screens.
The whole ICC profile thing in windows is just bewildering.

I don't have a definitive resource, no :( Have you approached the equipment manufacturers for ICC profiles? Most setup drivers these days come with them. Not all, though, I know. They should be available for download somewhere, though.

[EDIT] I just remembered a monitor profiling tool (hardware/USB!) a friend mentioned to me. I can't remember the details now but apparently it's brilliant (3rd hand). I'll give him a shout and ask the details.

[ajp71]

I think graphics cards have some colour profiling options.

[Hollywood]

I'm not saying the iMac is better, I think they look far too ugly (designed by a 7 year old) to be put anywhere near my home office. I'm just saying it is a serious contender on spec and price when I compare it to my PC.

That's because Apple is no more than a PC anymore. About the only truly nice thing about the new Aptel machines are the fact they boot with EFI. Otherwise, Apple is just a fancier Dell with a different OS.

But as to the topic of this discussion, now that Bootcamp is out (or will be fairly shortly) all you have to do is fork out the cash for a version Windows XP and you can run any PC game on your Mac hardware and use MacOSX for whatever it the user does with the computer.

[Becky Rose]

That's because Apple is no more than a PC anymore. About the only truly nice thing about the new Aptel machines are the fact they boot with EFI. Otherwise, Apple is just a fancier Dell with a different OS.

That's a misconception. The Apple architecture still leaves the antiquated PC to shame. I wrote a benchmark program to test out the new Intel iMac. I have tested it under Windows XP on an iMac, and I ran an indental mac version on OSX under Rosetta (old style pre-Intel Mac emulator). I also compared it to some other Mac's and my PC.

My PC uses a top of the range Acer motherboard A8N-SLi Premium Deluxe, the fancy copper heat pipped one. I have 2gb of CAS 2 RAM, twin 7800GT graphics cards, a SATA-2 striped RAID array for hard disk use, a high performance ultra quiet power supply and a fancy 2ms gaming optimised active matrix flatpanel screen. The process is the week link being only an AMD 3800 dual core with 1mb L2 cache, it's entry level by dual core chip standards (although perfectly adequate for gaming).

The Intel iMac I tested was a BASE specification 17" model, which cost £100 less before I bought my £280 screen...

These where the results of the 5 areas I tested.

Figures are test cycles completed in a given timeframe.

Integer Operations
6th Intel iMac Rosetta 2,868,239
5th G3 Dalmation 3,342,920
4th G4 Quicksilver 4,559,123
3rd G5 Workstation 12,090,515
2nd Becky’s PC 83,705,522
1st Intel iMac BootCamp 153,043,702

Float Operations
6th Intel iMac Rosetta 2,474,183
5th G3 Dalmation 2,848,109
4th G4 Quicksilver 3,932,425
3rd G5 Workstation 10,309,080
2nd Becky’s PC 73,502,251
1st Intel iMac BootCamp 130,491,015

The iMac, £380 cheaper than my PC - leaves my computer for dead at processor intensive tasks such as 3D rendering & LFS.

Next I did an architecture test which was designed to test the claim that Macophiles make that a 2Ghz Mac runs like a 3Ghz PC. Is it really true? Well natively yes, although the difference isn't quite so high when running XP on the iMac - nonetheless it's still better and demonstrates that the CPU rating you see on the box of a Mac is under-rated when doing a comparison.

Figure is the time (in milliseconds) to complete a set task
Architecture Test
6th G3 Dalmation 88,687ms
5th G4 Quicksilver 22,781ms
4th Becky’s PC 7,353ms
3rd Intel iMac BootCamp 5,985ms
2nd G5 Workstation 4,928ms
1st Intel iMac Rosetta 3,931ms

I then did a hard disk write/read test on a large file. Under XP the iMac was a little slower, although natively it's fine - and when you consider it's up against a striped RAID stack.

Hard Disk Test
6th G3 Dalmation 94,606ms
5th G4 Quicksilver 44,562ms
4th Intel iMac BootCamp 13,639ms
3rd G5 Workstation 11,014ms
2nd Intel iMac Rosetta 10,079ms
1st Becky’s PC 10,046ms

Finally I tested OpenGL draw speed. This wasn't testing any 3D techniques or anything. I simply sent a text based billboard to the graphics card and saw how many times it would do so in the given timeframe. It should be noted that the PC is using nVidia cards which are optimised for DirectX (which I didn't put in the benchmark program as the Mac's dont have it) - all the same the Mac is up against an SLi system here.

Operations completed in a set timeframe.
OpenGL Write Test
6th Intel iMac Rosetta 1,004
5th G3 Dalmation 2,554
4th G4 Quicksilver 5,118
3rd G5 Workstation 20,905
2nd Becky’s PC 21,920
1st Intel iMac BootCamp 57,599

In short the Intel iMac running WindowsXP is faster than a high end gaming system for applications and OpenGL based games. If I had the same money and built a PC for applications rather than games, or built an ATI Crossfire system for OpenGL support the results might be slightly different - but I can only benchmark what i've got.

But to the guy who wrote off Mac's as expensive and underspecced. I feel entitled to laugh right now except i've just finished work and i'm not in the mood...

[Becky Rose]

I should add I tried running a 3D DirectX game I wrote on the Intel iMac and it ran and displayed fine, although didn't get the same framerate I get on my PC. It achieved a stable 27fps which I know is slower than my PC - but i'd need to install it to be sure of the fps my PC actually gets.

Worryingly the Intel iMac did not display a VP31 encoded video correctly despite installing the codec software.

[SamH]

OMG!! A geeky chick who's into racing!!:heartbeat

Seriously though, I will have to look at the Mac again when I next build a machine. It's a significant step forward for Apple, to leave behind the Motorola chips. I know they've been frustrated for a good few years at Motorola's inability to keep up. Now Macs are unleashed, in a way.

I still have concerns about the Mac regarding TCO (upgradeability, steep depreciation etc). Perhaps these concerns can be shelved now, although I doubt it. To some extent, it's the nature of the beast with such a tightly integrated infrastructure.

Another issue at this point which I think is likely to get worse is the DirectX matter. Most of the gaming I do (gaming is where performance matters for me, rather than business) is DirectX optimized. If I had a choice, I'd personally opt for OpenGL, but I'm not writing the games.

I suspect Microsoft is fuel-injecting impetus for software houses and hardware manufacturers to kiss the DirectX. Correct or incorrect, right or wrong, I need good DirectX support.

If the Mac turns out to have more bang for the buck (including the above considerations), I'll buy it. I'm not proud.

That doesn't mean I'd start condoning Apple's propaganda against Microsoft. I find that offensive not for its anti-MS content but because it's propaganda.