“Way back when, when the first Power Macs hit the streets, I found performance with older Mac apps to be perfectly awful. It seemed as if I had gone back two generations in chip design, from the PowerPC to the 68030, and that was being generous. So when another emulation scheme was announced, Rosetta, which allows Intel-based Macs to run PowerPC software, you had reason to be concerned,” Gene Steinberg writes for Mac Night Owl. “Although they are being coy on the details, Apple’s Rosetta technology is based on QuickTransit, an emulation method from Transitive Corporation. When I taped an interview with Transitive CEO Bob Wiederhold for this week’s episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, I had to forgive him if he danced around a few key details because of the company’s deal with Apple.”
“But here are the basics: When you launch a PowerPC application on a MacIntel, Rosetta translates chunks of code into memory. The code is reused as needed when various application features are run. How much memory? Well, in general, according to Wiederhold, their technology will exact a 50% overhead. So, as an example, if a PowerPC app needs 128MB to run, another 64MB will be required for emulation. You’ll need to think about this overhead carefully when you decide how much memory you need to get the best performance for your new MacIntel,” Steinberg writes. “Now Transitive’s own presentation materials on their technology estimates that Rosetta will run at sixty to seventy percent of full processor speed. The tests published so far by Macworld and others are less optimistic, putting the speed hit at fifty percent. So why the disparity? Is Transitive fudging its numbers just a little bit?”
“Well, the magic bullet may very well be RAM, and most of the new iMacs tested so far appear to come with the default 512MB allotment. What if it was increased to, say, 1GB? Good question, and I’ll be interested in seeing the comparisons as testing of the new products continues,” Steinberg writes.
More in the full article here.
Advertisements:
• MacBook Pro. The first Mac notebook built upon Intel Core Duo with iLife ’06, Front Row and built-in iSight. Starting at $1999. Free shipping.
• iMac. Twice as amazing — Intel Core Duo, iLife ’06, Front Row media experience, Apple Remote, built-in iSight. Starting at $1299. Free shipping.
• iMac and MacBook Pro owners: Apple USB Modem. Easily connect to the Internet using dial-up service. $49.00.
• iPod Radio Remote. Listen to FM radio on your iPod and control everything with a convenient wired remote. Just $49.
• iPod. 15,000 songs. 25,000 photos. 150 hours of video. The new iPod. 30GB and 60GB models start at just $299. Free shipping.
• Connect iPod to your television set with the iPod AV Cable. Just $19.
I’m ordering my new MacBook Pro with 2gb of ram just to be sure.
More ram is always a good thing.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
like, duh!
Apple should be shipping the Macitels with 1GB. Especially the MacBook Pro.
My new Intel iMac will have 1 gig to start and I’ll upgrade it later with the max.
You can never have too much RAM or too much money.
As I read Apples site the MacBook Pro comes with 1 gig pre-installed.
I can already tell you it seems to make a difference. the iMac Intel on my desk with 2gb of RAM runs Microsoft Office quite nicely, with no apparent speed hit, i.e., seems to the user to be just as quick as before.
so no surprise there. cool to know why, though.
“…perfectly awful”?
I think if I would have drummed up this article, I’d gone the next step and actually perform some tests, or have someone else do them for me.
Remember, though, that there is one big difference between Rosetta and the old 68K/PPC emulator–namely, that the emulator could be switched on in the middle of an application. So I could have an app with both 68K and PPC code.
Not so with Rosetta. It must be entirely PPC or entirely Intel. No mix-and-match.
Why is this important, you might ask? Well, the best example is Photoshop. There will be tons of people waiting for Photoshop. But they’ll also have to wait for any third-party plug-ins that they depend upon to be converted as well. Quark, InDesign, Final Cut, etc. customers will also have this problem.
Said one ewe to another, “You can never have too much RAM!”
Baaaaa….
please stop calling it Macintel or Mactel.
what’s wrong with MacIntel. Sounds snazzy to me.
Please quit whining about the word “Mactel”. It’s not going away so you might as well learn to live with it.
I hate to say it but with Safari and the memory issues under OS X 10.4.x, buying as much RAM as possible is good. I have 1.5GB’s of RAM in my laptop, which use to be excessive under Panther, but constantly runs out under Tiger. I think the issue might be caused by just bad memory management. I’ve often added up the memory in use by all processes, and have it totalled to about 1/2 of what the system says I’m using. The only way, I found around it, is restarting my laptop at least twice a week, when I use to be able to go a month without slowdowns or sluggishness.
sounds stupid to most of us.
I don’t know why we obsess over it so much. Did we ever say MotoMac when we had 680×0 processors? Or IBMac when we had PPC (I guess the word “Power” was good enough) I just hope after the transition is over, we don’t have to resort to using that name anymore. It dosn’t sound good at all.
By the way, more RAM is always good
The whole Intel naming issue (MacIntel, MacTel, etc.) is annoying. It’s only useful now to distinguish new Macs from the old ones. As time goes by and the whole processor line is replaced, we’ll simply call them Macs again (and specify G4 or G5 only when we need to refer to the past).
I wouldn’t have minded seeing the ‘PowerMac’ and ‘Powerbook’ names survive the transition. I know it refered partly to the PPC architecture, but it is generic enough to still have marketing kick. Better than MacBook, MacBook Pro or MacPro (in my opinion anyways), which seems to be the direction we’re heading now.
My two cents, and you can keep the change.
What happens when Apple goes AMD? MacAMD? Or w/ another vendor? MacMIPS? MacUltraSparc? MacARM?
Mactel or anything that suggest Intel in the name sounds gay. How come it wasn’t called MacPC when the PowerPC was the favorite? Its a Mac and its always just a Mac. The CPU has nothing to do with the name of the product.
iAgree…. MacTel or MacIntel is 110% gay. So, it is advised that one refrains from using such terms and refer to it as what it is, a Mac.
Black Guy: “…sounds gay” … “110% gay” … I don’t get it. Sounds 110% black to me.
“Mactel”
I just don’t get it. Are you all crazy.
It could go away…if people started using:
“MacIntel” or “Macintel”
it is two (2) more letters to type…but, for god’s sake man, at least it’s kinda nice. You know it kinda rolls of the tongue like Macintosh. It’s practically the same word (the first 6 letters are the same). We use WinTel because it sounds much better that WinIntel, but it’s still descriptive. And the word Macintosh is not sacrosanct. So if you are worrying about mutilating the word Macintosh…don’t. Really, Mactel already does this anyway. But “MacIntel” just sounds better, and it tells someone not “in the know” more about the product of which we speak. “YOu know, the “Mac” with the “Intel” chip.
MacIntel, because life is too short! Resistance is futile!
MacTel
Sounds like Ebonics to me.
MacTel sounds like a Baby Bell
Black Guy: “…sounds gay” … “110% gay” … I don’t get it. Sounds 110% black to me.
MacTel
Sounds like Ebonics to me.
MacTel as in: I’m gonna pull out my MacTel and pop a cap so far up yo ass you’ll be wistling out your pee hole.
How about Macintelitosh?
The fuck? It’s not a Macintosh, it hasn’t been a Macintosh since 1998! It’s been the Mac OS running on PowerMacs (until now). STOP FUCKING CALLING IT A MACINTOSH, IT’S NOT! It’s a Mac.
Fuckin’ posers.