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My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac

tenfourfox.blogspot.com

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Re: My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac

#41

Post by classichasclass »

scarface74 wrote: post #40
classichasclass wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to regret this, but as the author of the blog post, let me be explicit about what I'm complaining about. Apple used to care that their stuff kept working. The 68K example was that you could buy a computer, in 2005, that would still run software from 1990 or so. Now I'm worried about a computer I bought in 2014 being still able to run software which may have been updated last only a couple years before that.…

I'm not disagreeing with your right to your opinion - just that I think you have rose colored glasses on about Apple and their quest to maintain backwards compatibility. The Mac came out in 1984 and was incompatible with the Apple //e. System 7 back in 1992 broke a number of old apps. The 040 line came out and broke a number of apps. Sure you could run 68K Mac apps on the first PPC Macs but they were dreadfully slow…

But in all of those cases there was a mitigation. Apps that weren't 32-bit clean could be run in 24-bit mode, at least for those machines that supported it. The '040 had a cache switch. Heck, there was an IIe card for certain models (though I think the Mac vs Apple II example is a little unfair; the systems really have almost nothing in common architecturally, far less than even Intel and Power Macs have in common).

For that matter, the 68K performance problem was mostly an issue for the 603. It wasn't an issue on the 601, which had sufficient cache, nor for the 603e which quickly displaced it. And when the PCI Power Macs came out, Apple had a much better dynamic compilation translator available.

In none of these cases was the answer "too bad."

To flip your question around, would you argue that Apple's backwards compatibility right now about the same as it was previously? Objectively I don't think the evidence supports that.

Re: My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac

#42

Post by scarface74 »

classichasclass wrote: post #41
scarface74 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disagreeing with your right to your opinion - just that I think you have rose colored glasses on about Apple and their quest to maintain backwards compatibility. The Mac came out in 1984 and was incompatible with the Apple //e. System 7 back in 1992 broke a number of old apps. The 040 line came out and broke a number of apps. Sure you could run 68K Mac apps on the first PPC Macs but they were dreadfully slow…

But in all of those cases there was a mitigation. Apps that weren't 32-bit clean could be run in 24-bit mode, at least for those machines that supported it. The '040 had a cache switch. Heck, there was an IIe card for certain models (though I think the Mac vs Apple II example is a little unfair; the systems really have almost nothing in common architecturally, far less than even Intel and Power Macs have in common).…

Yes. My first Mac in 1992 was a Mac LCII with a //e card. Before that, I had an Apple //e. But the card only worked on a few Macs, was discontinued a few years later, and never supported the //gs.

Just like Apple made a software emulator for the 68K. They could have done the same for the Apple //e. There was a third party software Apple emulator that worked fine on my 16Mhz LCII called Stop The Madness.

I had a 6100/60 - that was my 2nd Mac. It ran 68K software at about the speed of a 25Mhz 68030 Mac and slightly slower than my by then LCII with a 68030/40Mhz accelerator.

All that being said, I left the Mac around 1998 and didn't come back until the G4 Mac Mini in 2004 and the Intel Core Duo Mac Mini in 2006 and left again around 2008.

The Mac outside of the iMacs are in sad shape now. I probably will get another Mac this year just because I want a real Unix environment with more polish and It's the only computer that I can do iOS development. I think the 5K iMac is a decent buy.

Re: My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac

#43

Post by classichasclass »

scarface74 wrote: post #42
classichasclass wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in all of those cases there was a mitigation. Apps that weren't 32-bit clean could be run in 24-bit mode, at least for those machines that supported it. The '040 had a cache switch. Heck, there was an IIe card for certain models (though I think the Mac vs Apple II example is a little unfair; the systems really have almost nothing in common architecturally, far less than even Intel and Power Macs have in common).…

Yes. My first Mac in 1992 was a Mac LCII with a //e card. Before that, I had an Apple //e. But the card only worked on a few Macs, was discontinued a few years later, and never supported the //gs. Just like Apple made a software emulator for the 68K. They could have done the same for the Apple //e. There was a third party software Apple emulator that worked fine on my 16Mhz LCII called Stop The Madness. I had a 6100/…

> They could have done the same for the Apple //e.

Well, actually, they did, there was Gus (for the IIgs, but that would run IIe stuff, of course). In fairness this didn't have wide distribution and is best described as unofficial, but it existed. http://macgui.com/downloads/?file_id=14109&keywords=gus

Anyway, I actually do agree the 5K iMac is a nice computer for the right person. I don't like high-end AIOs because I rarely upgrade all the components simultaneously, but I can't deny it's slick.

Re: My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac

#44

Post by _nalply »

pdappollonio wrote: post #38
_nalply wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good idea! Will try this out.

Please share your results.

This will take some time, a few months to up to a year. Sorry.

However there's already one insight: Yesterday I tried out the track pad of the Surface 1 and just tactically it does not feel the same as the MBA. Perhaps Surface 2 is better, we will see in March 2018.

Re: My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac

#45

Post by _lbaq »

lj3 wrote: post #30
_lbaq wrote: post #7

My next laptop became a Threadripper desktop and the old laptop is only used for travel now. Here is a PC-Partpicker recipe for my Threadripper machine. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/6JRNJV 1x Corsair 600Q (Can really recommend this case) 1x ASUS Prime X399-A Socket TR4 E-ATX 1x AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X s-TR4 1x Corsair Hydro Series H100i v2 CPU Cooler 1x Samsung 960 Pro 512GB M.2 PCI Express 3.0 x4 (NVMe) 1x Sea…

Any opinions on going Threadripper over dual xeon?

I'm a fan of a market with competition, the CPU market has not had a lot of that the past years, so I support AMD right.

Also, Threadripper is the best choice for price/performance, also easier to build a quiet single "cpu" machine, than a dual setup.

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