It’s mildly embarrassing that Den Beste turns out full articles faster than I can summarize them. Today — this morning anyway — finds him in full chiphead mode.
Stardate: 20021019.0621
Word Count: 1,994
Title: We’re Gonna Be Faster
Impetus: IBM’s announcement of the PowerPC 970 chip, which won’t actually show up in any Macintoshes until the beginning of 2004 at the earliest.
Thesis: Macs are slow. Really slow. If by some faint chance they ever do get faster, they’ll be a lot more expensive.
Science/Engineering Analogy: None.
Best Quote: “…the Mac is already faster, since the Mac is invariably faster. You see, there’s this thing called the ‘Megahertz Myth’ which says that no matter how much faster the PC gets, the performance of the Mac improves enough to stay in the lead without actually changing its hardware in any way. It’s a miracle!”
Evaluation: If you don’t understand, in detail, the difference between, say, SMP and SMT, better skip. Specialists only.
Reading this summary would have saved this Luddite ten minutes of frustration and headache.It’s time I bookmark your site.
Still, I’m glad there are people like Den Beste who try to explain modern technology.