[Ti] Re: Powerbook MacIntel...

[Chris Olson]

On Nov 28, 2005, at 9:00 PM, Mikael Byström wrote:

> Currently he uses a dual 2.5 G5 with 4GB RAM.  Findings and  
> speculations that the OS X kernel could perform a lot better  
> doesn't make him much happier.

On PowerPC it's made up for with AltiVec on the desktop and will be  
transparent to your music/video editing friend.  The reference you  
refer to on anandtech uses MySQL as a threading performance benchmark  
on servers.  Spawning threads quickly on servers like MySQL and  
Apache is very important for performance.  OS X flat isn't an  
enterprise server platform - it gets blown right out of the water by  
both linux and Windows Server.

However, virtually all modern high-end OS X desktop apps are  
vectorized applications and you won't notice any kernel threading  
issues if they're written correctly.

If you're a developer it wouldn't hurt to consult ADC Technical Note  
2028:
http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn2028.html

> Would VMWares current featureset let you run OS X and Windows side  
> by side?

It'll let you run Mac OS X for x86 in a virtual machine on a Windows  
or linux desktop.  However, Apple's EULA is somewhat restrictive, so  
this is illegal if it's not on Apple-branded hardware.  Despite that,  
you can download a VMWare x86 OS X image and run it now if you want -  
it's been hacked, TPM code removed, and leaked on to BitTorrent.

> If they ever will support OS X that is. Anyone know if there have  
> been any announced support plans for OS X?

There's no plans announced.  But you can rest assured VMWare will be  
available for OS X on x86, as will Codeweavers' Crossover Office.  As  
far as that goes, WINE (the free community supported version of X- 
over) will be available for MacTel eventually too, which is a better  
solution because it removes the need to run a Windows operating  
system to run Windows-based software.

The DarWINE project is located here:
http://darwine.opendarwin.org
-- 
Chris

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