Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!duteca!reinoud From: reinoud@duteca (Reinoud Lamberts) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: The New Macs: Greedy Compromises? Message-ID: <1142@duteca.UUCP> Date: 30 Nov 90 03:13:01 GMT Reply-To: reinoud@duteca.et.tudelft.nl () Organization: Delft University of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering Lines: 94 eric@bnrmtl.bnr.ca (Eric Brunelle) writes: I am puzzled. I have seen the new Macs, and I appreciate the price cuts. But it seems that every one of the three machines has something awkward. It seems like Apple has been making strange decisions, and I can't understand them. Can somebody shed light? Take the Classic. Why does it still have the old 8MHz 68000? Wasn't it possible to give it the same CMOS 16MHz 68000 as the Portable? Is it that more expensive? If so, was it absolutely impossible to speed up that old timer? I don't think Apple made strange decisions. These new machines show a consistent design strategy: build a machine that satisfies the needs of most potential users as cheaply as possible. Take the Classic: the speed of the Mac Plus was, and is, good enough to do many useful things. Add an ADB port, a superdrive, and more than SE speed, subtract $$$ from its price, and there is a *very* nice entry level Mac. A 16 MHz 68k may be less attractive than it seems to you. The chip is significantly more expensive than an 8 MHz one (about 4 times as expensive if I remember well). What is worse, a 16 MHz 68k has HORRIBLE timing specs, because not all signals scale up to the new clock the same way. This means that either waitstates must be added when accessing memory, what would undo the gain in clock speed, or you would have to use expensive memory, which is something you don't want on a cheap machine. And then the LC. Why in heaven does it have a 68020? Is a 68030 that much more expensive than a 68020? Will Motorola continue for long to produce that chip, or will it not streamline to fewer models, like Intel did? Will the cut in material price be worth more than the trouble of having to adapt all software to this new, incompatible architecture? How much more would it have been to support eight bit color on the 13 inch monitor, rather that only on the 12 inch one? 10$? 20$? And that would have been compatible with the IIsi and the IIci... And why does it have a 16 bit wide RAM bus? How much did that save? Is there a good reason for not having the same slot as the IIsi? The 68020 has a feature called 'dynamic bus sizing', allowing it to work with 32, 16 or 8 bit busses at any time, something a 68030 can't do. A narrower memory bus greatly reduces system cost: fewer memory chips necessary, fewer bus buffers, cheaper printed circuit board (smaller, fewer traces, maybe fewer layers). A 68020 is nearly as fast as a 68030, and if the 16 bit bus accesses are handled cleverly (doing a fast page mode access on every second 16 bit word when possible) you can tweak a very nice performance out of it. And don't forget that the 68020 is the cheapest processor capable of running Color QuickDraw at any reasonable speed. What do you mean by 'incompatible architecture'? The 68020 instruction set is actually a SUPERSET of the 68030! As for the video: I don't know (yet) how the video of the LC is implemented, I don't even know whether it is going to be 8 or 16 bit video. But video with many colors sure is expensive. Take a look at prices of 8 bit video cards for example. And a small increase in video capability may be very costly, if the increase in video data bandwith or size requires an increase in the number of (expensive!) video RAMs. Anyway, I read that the LC supports 8 bit video on the 13 inch monitor with an extra bank of VRAM. Finally, the IIsi. Why does it have a 20MHz 68030, and not a 25MHz one? Is it only so that it does not cannibalize the IIci, or is there a real difference in cost? How much? And why that strange new slot? Why not a 60 MHz 68040? Remember that this is a _cheap_ Mac II! Maybe there are good answers to these questions. I have been waiting for them ever since the new Macs were first described in MacWeek in September. It's been almost three months now, and I'm still waiting. Until I get those answers, I will fight that nasty thought crawling to my mind that Apple has been either greedy, lazy, or incompetent. You see, before I can convince myself, or anyone else, to spend big money on those computers, I need to reasonably understand why they are so awkward. Or why they're not. Of course Apple is greedy ;-), they want to make money. I don't think Apple is lazy or incompetent. They have obviously put a lot of effort in designing nice new machines with nice prices, and I think they have done well. Now I can finally recommend a lot of people to take a look at Macs instead of low quality systems. - Reinoud email: reinoud@duteca.tudelft.nl No disclaimer: sue me if you like. I'll buy you a beer if you win.