LOL, so there is no Best computer for Poser 5. It's like using an 18 wheeler to tow a trailer with its butt dragging on the ground. It may go faster but it's not solving the real problem. What we need is a rewrite that makes the most of the modern chips, running the modern OS's.
Maybe Daz is right in developing Studio, maybe we do need good old fashion competition to get this trailer a new set of wheels.
At least we all have "feature" parity.

Three things endure Faith, Hope and Charity.

You can have the other two. Rowf!

"This new OS has major changes under the hood, it will require yet another replacement of your hardware and rewrites of all your favourite software." I doubt it. There's still old DOS software that runs on today's WindowsMicrosoft isn't foolish enough to think that everyone is going to rush out and buy new systems just to run a new OS version. Would they love for everyone to upgrade in mass, of course, but they realize the reality that there are still a lot people running Windows 98. Sure Longhorn is going to require more horsepower but I'm sure that OS X doesn't run well on old Macs either. Go to a freeware site and look at the requirements. Most of the programs will say something like: "Win9x/NT4/ME/Win2k/XP." These are applications created by individual developers like me. For the most part, from a developer's perspective, unless you get into specifics like NTFS or XP themes, the 32 bit Windows platform is consistent. Are their occasional incompatibilities, of course. Apple is always going to have an advantage there as long as only Apple controls the base hardware--they assured that when they killed the Mac clones decades ago. They are two different philosophies and each will have it's strengths in terms of price, software availability, development tools, peripherals, etc. Which one is "right" will always be an individual opinion and decision. Unfortunately, like all complex subjects, it's easy to take one point and assume that it sums up the whole story. We all agree that Linux sucks right :-)

Sure Longhorn is going to require more horsepower but I'm sure that OS X doesn't run well on old Macs either. Yes and no. Until Panther, anyone with a G3 (including my 1995 G4-souped-up 7500) could run OS X, which did almost everything in software with a heavy nod to supporting legacy hardware like non-USB peripherals, old integrated video chips (with no graphics accelerators or OpenGL), DIMM memory, etc. Jaguar was the proof of concept for a full implementation of NeXTstep & UNIX running smoothly on some of the same 32-bit Macs they built to run a legacy OS. It would be naive to think Apple would consider the job finished at that point. Microsoft isn't foolish enough to think that everyone is going to rush out and buy new systems just to run a new OS version. Would they love for everyone to upgrade in mass, of course, but they realize the reality that there are still a lot people running Windows 98. A lot people people running 98 on desktops, which accounts for a proportion of their market but not the total picture. If it did, NT would never have been a parallel OS with more stringent hardware requirements. I'm going out on a limb here but Longhorn may end up being the same dual path: a Pentium based version for home consumers with midline graphics cards and tolerant of current memory configurations, and a scratch-rewritten Itanium 64-bit version which runs 32-bit legacy apps in compatibility/emulation mode, requires more powerful graphics cards and strict memory configuration. To save face, of course the Pentium version will sport cheesier software-based versions of the Longhorn visual effects and the official lore will be rewritten to say that this was actually always what they meant by "Longhorn." All it takes for businesses to get on the bus is a bulletin outlining the projected end-of-life date for XP Office and how expensive future support options for it will be. If the business world didn't willingly see itself as the bitches to Steve Ballmer's pimp act, Red Hat/OpenOffice would be the corporate OS and suite of choice right now. Three years down the road, Itaniums and MegaDirectXtreme(TM) cards get cheap enough that you'd have to be an idiot to keep building 32-bit boxen. Microsoft announces to much fanfare that the 64-bit Longhorn revolution is now available to everyone -- but like XP there'll still be a home version and a business version with about as much REAL differentiation as the two flavors of XP. So, to say it won't happen is roughly analogous to saying it didn't already happen. It did, and it can again. As long as Microsoft keeps feeding Intel and vice versa, we don't have a say in the matter. BTW, the irony of your comment on Apple controlling the Mac's base hardware comes from the fact that my G5 uses PC-sized, PC-standard components. Can't think of a Mac-specific peripheral on the market available right now. Cameras, microphones, MIDI keyboards, game controllers, scanners, printers -- all are USB devices where the compatibility issue consists of someone who knows Macs writing a driver. Standard ATA hard drives, and the only reason Radeon/nVidia makes Mac-specific graphics OpenGL cards is because it costs them money to license DirectX from Microsoft, something Mac users aren't likely to willingly pay for. It's 2005, almost: the "proprietary hardware" thing died a year ago. Not to say Apple can't make crap: the eMac just rated worst computer of the year, and I have serious doubts about the life of the G5 iMac. But Apple got over their biggest platform hurdle since the introduction of the Macintosh (and the dumping of the Lisa) and it's unlikely to recur in the next two or three major revisions of the OS. I could be wrong, but I think the future of the Pentium is here.

If American business were anything other than clod-blodded regarding the bottom linethey wouldn't be shipping IT jobs overseas as fast as possible. Maybe Red Hat hasn't taken over the world because when they look at those supposedly minimal migration costs, it doesn't add up. But who knows? If you see Itaniau as the key to the future your crystal ball m ay be slightly clouded. That chip has proven to be a sore disappointment for Intel. Arguably, their emphasis on Itanium has given AMD and Opteron a great window of opportunity. Intel was finally forced to create the EMT64 Xeon in response. I'd look for Itanium to be used mostly for high end server boxes competing with proprietary Unix systems, rather than a workstation stalwart. As a general purpose 64 bit CPU, IBM/Apple's Power 5 is probably a better bet. Now the question is, are they smart enough to woo Microsoft into putting Windows on it?

I would love to see Microsoft port Windows to the G5. For a public release this time, that is. The Xbox division is developing their 2nd-gen OS and games on a pair of dual G5 Macs already running NT compiled to run on G5s. Something about existing Pentium computers being unable to emulate Xboxes in realtime. No, I'm not pulling this one out of my ass.

Attached Link: http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/12/10/50FEpower5_1.html?s=feature

In other news, now the hackers are using Google to find victims:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/12/21/HNsantyworm_1.html

Message edited on: 12/22/2004 02:09

"I would love to see Microsoft port Windows to the G5." Windows NT 4.0 used to have a PPC version, back when MSFT was eager to get a piece of IBM's PowerPC servers (which used the same Motorola 601e chip that early Power Macs used.) "The Xbox division is developing their 2nd-gen OS and games on a pair of dual G5 Macs already running NT compiled to run on G5s. Something about existing Pentium computers being unable to emulate Xboxes in realtime." Yes and no. The core chips on the Xbox will be the IBM dual-core Power CPU's (the G5's are single-core.) Otherwise yes, it's funny watching MSFT using Apples to code on >:) (IIRC, I think a former MSFT contract employee was fired because he got caught taking photos of Microsoft purchasing G5 Power Macs... oh, found it: right here...) /P

"Hi, I'm Steve Ballmer, and I'm here to explain to you the developer, and you the server customer why we're putting topline IBM RISC server/mainframe CPUs in game units, but our faith in Intel/pseudo-CISC for the server market future is absolute. Questions? You, out there with your hand up." "Sir, this morning xbox-linux.org reported a successful Power5 port of Xebian and published a comparison table between a Dell IIS server and ---acccckkk--" (man dragged away by blackshirts)

Remember that along with the PPC version of NT, there was also a version for a little chip called Alpha, something about the fastest MPU in the world and an incredible technology that converted foreign code to native Alpha code on the fly, optimizing it more with each run? Somewhere along the way, DEC stumbled, Compaq came along, Alpha wase strangled in it's crib, the Good Old Boys from Texas got hitched with Ms. Carly and HP/Compaq drank the Intel KoolAid and began having visions of Itanium triumphant. Meanwhile, Microsoft, supposedly joined at the hip with Intel helps Intel's chief competitor kick them when they're down by doing 64 bit Windows for Opteron for the moment at least). Look closely at the black shirts. They may have 'Intel Inside' logos on them. If Atari rose from the grave tomorrow with a chip that could get enough hardware on desktops and in server racks, you'ld probably be reading about the new Wintari wave. Of course if Microsoft started making their own chips, the hue and cry about evil monopolists would darken the sun. At any rate, semi-Poser related, I see UVMapper.com got hat by the Sanity worm. Google and open source--I guess the Grinch decided to spread the coal around a little this year.

Yeah, I hear the Alpha team is busy at work on CherryOS. BWAH HAH HAHAHHAHAH HARGLEFURF Man, I miss DEC. And Atari. Yeah, I used to program for both. But Atari more or less stopped being Atari when they hired the Commodore CEO. Remember Atari engineer Shiraz Shivji insisting he was developing an add-on box for the 8-bit Ataris to get PC compatibility? At least the computer industry isn't as painfully obviously fueled by cocaine as it was then. I think.

"I would love to see Microsoft port Windows to the G5" I'd rather see Apple port the OSX (or better yet, OS 9) interface to the Intel Chips!

Hadn't heard of CherryOS--looking at it now. I still have my ST. Tramiel did some good stuff, he and Shiraz, but they never had the marketing to sell it. They were up to a 68030 and even supposedly had Unix running on it. Then, they went schizo and tried to bring out a PC clone along about the time they disappeared. I think the games division may still be around. DEC made great hardware, a great OS in VMS... Again, somehow marketing and a stumble in the emerging PC business seemed to do them in. Don't know about the cocaine. In those days, pretty much all the high flyers in any industry seemed to be on coke. OS 9 on Intel, Jobs would rather have a heart attack.

OS 9 on Intel, Jobs would rather have a heart attack.

Do your homework; Jobs ordered secret parallel Intel development of MacOS since System 7 (ceasing with OS X Jaguar). It wouldn't run Mac apps compiled for Motorola/PPC, but he needed a continuing proof of concept so that the future of Macintosh wasn't slaved to a particular microprocessor.

Part of this came out of his days in the wilderness developing NeXTstep for as many CPUs as he could get it to run on. When the prodigal son returned to Apple, he reintegrated NeXTstep as "Rhapsody/Yellow Box" into the future of mainstream MacOS. It's called Cocoa now and an open-source version of it for other platforms is available under the name OpenStep.

If memory serves, Yellow Box was a fully working x86 OS when Linus Torvalds was still writing that USENET post asking for help with his mostly-theoretical MINIX clone project.

Atari spiritually died when Jack Tramiel came in and tried to make it "Commodore II: Electric Boogaloo." Building PC clones was the final nail in their coffin; 386s as I recall. Atari stopped being a company sometime in the 90s and is now merely a trademark owned by Infogrames -- I don't think Infogrames even owns all the Atari games (these things get messy: 80s developers often asked for right of first refusal or automatic reversion in their contracts with game makers). Message edited on: 12/26/2004 12:28

Message edited on: 12/26/2004 12:30

I do good to keep up with the major announcements from Apple, much less the secret projects :-) I don't know when it was conceived but the ST IMO was Atari's chance to shine. Tramiel AFAIK was the one who was associated with it, hence the nickname Jackintosh. I don't know much (anything) about the game systems or the 8 bits. The company may well have been better run but tech-wise, I don't see how the 800 type machines were much of a future in the PC world. The ST on the other hand with a laser printer and a quality DTP program in Calmus, etc. at a fration the price of a Mac when the PC was still emerging from 80 column character mode had great promise. In reality, it may have never had a real chance against Apple/Wintel but they never really got enough market awareness to give it a shot. I'm thinking that the PC clone was a 286. The 386 was SOTA for the PC at the time IIRC and they didn't get that fancy. I'm sure someone has it on the web somewhere. They're a couple of good ST emulators floating around and some TOS images. If you want to talk lost opportunities, go no further than Digital Research and GEM ha ha. One thing I miss is SunDog, a truly great game. The creator or someone was working on a new PC version a while back but I don't know what happened with it. Of course, I spent many wrist numbing hours playing the utterly silly MudPies as well.

DEC's demise was a combination of factors. They had successfully infiltrated research and education markets, but UNIX was a growing phenomenon and while it was short-term shrewd for DEC to allow VAXen to run UNIX instead of VMS, it invited price comparisons with other vendor's boxen. Business markets were too entrenched with IBM to change. Breaking into the PC market was another problem. Hardware standards hadn't hardened yet and DEC thought it there was some room for improvement. 1982's Rainbow sported both an 8088 for booting DOS and a Z80 for booting CP/M (and a third choice, an obscure 16-bit CP/M variant named CP/M-86), but unfortunately it also featured a proprietary floppy disk format, and many video incompatibilities. I remember seeing one of these when they came out at my high school and being distinctly unimpressed. Like many others, DEC realized compatibility was nonoptional, and they managed to survive almost another 2 decades making clones before they got priced out of the market.

I don't know when it was conceived but the ST IMO was Atari's chance to shine. Tramiel AFAIK was the one who was associated with it, hence the nickname Jackintosh. I don't know much (anything) about the game systems or the 8 bits. The difference between an 800XL and a 7200 game unit is almost identical to a PC and an XBox. The 8-bit unit OS/architecture is from 1980 and never intended to run DTP or Internet. Apps have been written by hobbyists to prove the concepts but they're painful to watch. The company may well have been better run but tech-wise, I don't see how the 800 type machines were much of a future in the PC world. The ST on the other hand with a laser printer and a quality DTP program in Calmus, etc. at a fration the price of a Mac when the PC was still emerging from 80 column character mode had great promise. In reality, it may have never had a real chance against Apple/Wintel but they never really got enough market awareness to give it a shot.

When the ST came out I was an 8-bit Atari loyalist with great skepticism about the difference between the ST and the Mac. After all, they had GUIs, mice, and the same microprocessor. It took actually using a Mac in our lab for a few weeks to get the difference, and an OS-level graphics library was a large part of it.

Hard to remember, but MacOS had three important things ST/Amiga didn't:

Graphics library which meant styled text or any graphic (even vector) could be pasted into any office suite application, not just between two applications written by the same vendor.

An OS designed with computer-nonrastered output in mind.

System level printer drivers.

ST and Amiga in their equivalent incarnations were not nearly as carefully structured OSes, and software support suffered for it. Message edited on: 12/26/2004 14:37

BTW, there's a brainfart up there in my history of DEC. Fact is, UNIX was first implemented on a PDP, so their association with UNIX was clearly not an afterthought. My bad.