Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: MarkTime on July 18, 2003, 07:31:58 PM
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Finally we have current products from both companies to make a direct comparison.
I will use the Apple Store, and American Dealer Softhut to make direct comparison of price and features.
I know from past experience, that a lot of people just jump up and down questioning details, but please, if you have a better AmigaONE dealer, please post that dealers prices and specs.
Thanks:
SoftHut pre-configured AmigaONE specs:
G4-XE at 800Mhz
256MB SDRAM
80GB IDE Drive
52x CDRW drive
ATI Radeon 7000 64mb
Sound Blaster live card
10/100 Ethernet
Mouse/keyboard/ports...Debian Linux
Price $1395
The Apple Store
G4 running at 1.25Ghz
256MB DDR333 SDRAM
80GB IDE Drive
DVD/CDRW Drive
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro
Sound, yes, brand not listed
Gigabit ethernet
mouse/keyboard/ports, inc. firewire...Mac OS X
$1299
Conclusion:
apple machine is much faster and is 100 dollars cheaper.
Apple does have one 800Mhz G4 left in the lineup, but the $799 G4 eMac with built in monitor is not as a direct comparison in my opinion.
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oh I did leave out a couple points,
apple's machine is 4x AGP, Eyetech's is 2xAGP.
the DDR ram in the Mac is probably not that big of an advantage, considering the G4 memory access mechanism.
Support should definately favor the mac, but thats a big issue to discuss.
Finally, the Mac won't ever legally run OS 4, and the AmigaONE *DOES NOT LEGALLY* run Mac OS X.
But since people feel free to steal Mac OS X, I imagine the converse will be true as well.
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makes little sense to buy that aone from softhut then...
No matter how you love the amiga, this mac is for sure a better piece of hardware...
WAY overpriced i must say
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try www.soft3.net
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Tomas tossed in:
...WAY overpriced i must say
:roll: Well, sure. Mass production drives the cost down. First adopters of new things always pay more. You knew that.
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Marktime: Well. it just shows how market evolves in time. Year ago (or two) this current AmigaOne would have been nicely priced system and compared favorably to Macs ... But in couple years a lot happen and now, as you see it's changed.
Biggest adwantage of DDR memory is that it's a lot cheaper than same capasity SDR+reg+ecc that is sold with Aones. So with same investment one gets a lot more.
And OS:es.. well.. I'll leave real comparision later, but it's quite obvious MaxOSX has had a lot more time to mature and has a lot bigger software base.
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> but it's quite obvious MaxOSX has had a lot more time to mature and has a lot bigger software base.
Than debian?
I doubt it.
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@kolla
I used Mac OS X since the public beta.
And I've used linux...
for some things linux was way ahead, but on powerpc, well, you can get Oracle for Mac OS X, but not linux on PPC....linux on x86 is another story.
You begin to see Mac OS X pulling ahead in that, like Microsoft office, Adobe, Corel....supporting Mac OS X but not Linux PPC....and then you find that with the inclusion of X server in the OS with OS X 10.3 ....its is so easy to port linux software, you get all of os x only, and really most linux software too.....
I wouldn't be surprised if the next step is a binary compatibility layer...but even without speculation on the future, Mac OS X is very mature with big players behind it...on PPC platform its ahead of linux by far.
Well 7 million users, compared to a few thousand should make that obvious....
but LInux is a powerful solution...no doubts, I won't knock linux.
Besides, it doesn't matter...Debian Linux will run on the Mac hardware too.
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Quixote:
mass production drives costs to the manufacturer down, it doesn't drive the price down. And its the price, that the end user is concerned with...not the costs to the person selling the product...there is a difference between the companies concern and the purchasers concern.
It's true, people pay a price for being an early adopter. But then again, companies pay a price for gouging people too. Which is why you don't see the G5's coming in at $10,000 dollars, but you paid that to buy an Apple Lisa.
You also paid thousands upon thousands to be the first to own a 386, but not so much to get in early on the first Pentiums...in other words, that premium is less and less as time goes on, because the window to overcharge early adopters is very slim in an ultra competitive environment.
IBM paid dearly in terms of marketshare for making some big bucks off early adopters...and eventually found they were barely relevant in a market they once owned.
So...while I think the early adopter idea is an idea with merit, it should also be put in context of the idea, that the onus of responsibility for success does not lay entirely square on the shoulders of the consumer, but is also a responsibility born by the company who intends to be a success.
In fact, it is by far, more so their responsibility, and I lied, its not really the responsibility of the consumer in any way shape or form, I was just being patronizing, sorry.
It goes without saying, if Amiga/Eyetech cannot drop the price, and do it soon, they don't have a chance.
They can't expand the market, the number of people willing to be early adopters is going to dry up....and finally, they have a competent competitor in Genesi willing to take the market share they are volunteering to give away.
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Kolla: Gee- Ar you the clever one.. But I think you know that I pointed to REAL OS in question. I don't belive most A1 purchasers want to use some Linux-variant forever. And yes, that same Debian is also available to Macs, so not much to bragg about.
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Apple's machine is probably a lot faster in real life than the tech specs suggest.
Plus you can buy non-DDR models for a lot less money and are nearly as fast.
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Although the more popular Mac has had more time and money to develop over the Amiga, I still choice the Amiga as the Amiga will always be an Amiga and the Mac just an apple ;-)
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The biggest disadvantage of an Apple is that you have to run MacOS on it. MacOS is one of the few operating systems in existence that can make any processor feel like the OS is still running on an 040/25 CPU (although XP comes damn close).
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Whatever my G4 Mac is great, I'm off to bed... night everyone!
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@MarkTime
Finally, the Mac won't ever legally run OS 4, and the AmigaONE *DOES NOT LEGALLY* run Mac OS X.
You are confusing the EULA with the law. EULA doesn't equal the law in any way. There are so many End User License Agreements and some of them are quite silly. I tried to explain this to you once already. Since you don't actually sign anything, it won't hold in a court of law (atleast not here, that's been tried many, many times with various similar cases now). I'm talking about OSX here, btw.
If you still want to call it illegal, then atleast say what country you're referring to at the very least.
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And I had Linux running on PPC before Apple even bought NeXT (or rather the other way around, in terms of intelect), before Rhapsody, and before all those funny names that ended up being MacOS 8...
Fact is that Debian has had a much longer time to mature than OSX - I did not say that it actually is more mature, but it certainly had the time.
Also, dont forget that OSX derives from NeXTStep, which at the time was originally running on m68k, and then ported to other architectures, mainly iX86. The underlying system, Darwin, is very much a close relative to FreeBSD - at the time a X86 story, so OSX certainly has its "alian" legacy too.
Oh, and last time I checked, the man pages that comes with OSX are most useless as they dont cover OSX, but are merely general BSD4.4 manuals - has this changed yet?
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And just for the heck of it.. a replay from slashdot..
MacOSX vs. Linux (http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/pipermail/yellowdog-announce/2002-November/000008.html)
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Price $1395
I assume this is a net price (without tax) and we put a R7500/64 in, 40GB and no Soundboard I have 1.185,24 (eur!) here. (ah, yes, DVD instead CDRW, but should be on par).
;) So, might be Europe is a bit cheaper here.
(Prices with tax here (compared to Apple store): Apple: 1.438,80 <-> A1: 1.422,30)
So, pretty similar, while I guess A1 prices will drop over the time. Well, with a R9, 80GB, Superdrive (?) should be more, eventually.
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Lets not forget that the AmigaONE Lite, if produced, won't have an equivalent Mac. Mini-ITX boards rock :-D
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Lets also not forget that this whole discussion is pointless. The AmigaOne doesn't run MacOS X natively, the Mac doesn't run AmigaOS natively. I have _zero_ interest in MacOS, a LOT of interest in AmigaOS and even more in Debian. So the AmigaOne scores two points, while the Mac only scores one. For me. However, if you are more interested in a Mac than an Amiga, why are you on amiga.org? I would think there's better websites for advocating Apple hardware than this around? ;-)
I just decided to buy a boat instead of another computer this year. I bought an AmigaOne last year, and an A1200 and the Access this year. Guess that's enough for 2003, eh? 2004 should bring another machine, I hope :-)
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Sorry.. the AOne also only scores one point, since it doesn't run OS4
EITHER.
Ok, for you this may not matter much, since you're convinced that it
will, and (perhaps more importantly) because you actually want to run
Debian. But for people who are not very interested in Debian, this
whole discussion is _totally_ pointless until OS4 actually exists and
runs on the AOne. Certainly prices will have changed then - if it
happens.