For years, Macs and PCs have been competing for home users. Apple has
recently released the new iMac, and the notebook version of the iMac – the
iBook. Even though several years ago, Macs were better than PCs, now, PCs are
better than Macs for home users in terms of performance and expansion options.
To some consumers, performance is often the most important factor in buying a
computer. Performance doesn’t necessarily mean how well the computer performs
potentially, but only on specific tasks. Both iBook and iMac are designed for
home users, most of whom neither care about number of floating-point operations
per second, nor know what it means. Very few home users will pay $500 for
Photoshop 5.0 to edit photos on their PC. The more likely uses for home
computers are: word processing, browsing the Internet, and 3-D gaming. Since the
most popular word processor is developed by Microsoft and allegedly optimized
for Windows, it would be unfair to compare the Mac version of MS Word with the
Windows version. However, comparing the performance in 3-D games and the
Internet is fair. Even though PC Magazine specializes in PCs, it reviewed the
iBook as soon as it came out. The article focused on performance of the iBook
and compared it to a similar IBM-compatible notebook. Since there are no new
IBM-compatible notebooks that match iBook’s specifications, PC Magazine decided
to use the notebook they believed to be closest to iBook – the IBM ThinkPad
iSeries 1480. They have very few similarities: the both notebooks are available
in different colors, and neither notebook has the fastest processor from its
platform. Apple claims that its notebooks are “up to twice as fast as comparable
Microsoft Windows-based portables” (qtd. in Hill 53). This statement is very
vague – it doesn’t say how they compared the portables, and what Apple meant by
“comparable”. Since similar statements have been made about iMac, speed will be
discussed in the next section; for now, let’s make sure that PC Magazine
selected an appropriate notebook.
The G3 processor from the iBook is one generation behind Mac desktops,
whereas the ThinkPad’s Celeron is two generations behind other IBM-compatible
notebooks. Even though Celeron is somewhat obsolete, it runs at 466 MHz versus
G3’s 300 MHz. Since neither processor is top-of-the-line, and both notebooks are
in the same price range, it is safe to conclude that the two notebooks are
comparable. Apple declares that “fast, easy access to the Internet” is among the
“features [that] made the world fall in love with the iMac” (Apple).
As
mentioned earlier, the Internet performance is one of the uses for home
computers and should be thoroughly tested. In their review, PC Magazine uses
i_Bench to test the Internet performance. According to i_Bench tests, ThinkPad
outperforms the iBook on almost every test (Hill 53). The only exception is the
test of QuickTime Transition Effects – the iBook is faster than the ThinkPad
(Hill 53). Apple’s QuickTime is one of many formats for viewing compressed video
on the Internet and is rarely used because of poor compression quality.
QuickTime should not be used to test the computer’s performance for several
reasons: it is rarely used, and is most likely optimized for Macs. On the other
hand, The Java Virtual Machine test should be looked at more carefully. Java is
a platform-independent programming language originally designed by Sun
Corporation for another operating system, and is currently used for writing
programs for the Internet. This test runs several Java programs within a
browser, which simulates ordinary Internet browsing better than QuickTime. The
ThinkPad impressively outperformed the iBook with the a score of 43,766 versus
just 23,872 (Hill 53). Comparing the iMacs with IBM-compatible desktops creates
the same problem – finding the PC that is comparable to the iMac. Dave Glue, a
programming student, sums up this problem in one sentence: “If you're going to
downgrade the PC to exactly match the iMac's MHz rating and hard disk, you'll
have a significantly cheaper PC than the iMac.” Even when comparing computers of
equal price, another problem appears – they run two completely different
operating systems. Apple uses BYTEmark (Apple), which tests the processor’s
integer and floating point capabilities (Byte) to compare Macs with PCs on both
operating systems. Byte claims that BYTEmark simulates real applications (Byte),
but it does not explain why Macs perform so poorly in real applications even
though iBooks receive the score two times higher than PCs. Let’s take a look at
the performance in 3D games, which is another possible application for home
computers. Apple claims that a 400-MHz iMac with RAGE 128 VR AGP 2X shows almost
eight frames per second (fps) more than a 500-MHz Celeron-based PC with RAGE
Turbo Pro AGP 2X. (Apple) The frame rate is reported by Quake III, a game that
is so far from finished, that the test-demo is allowed to be distributed only
electronically – it’s not even a beta version, the manufacturer is only testing
how the test-demo runs. At the first glance, 27.9 fps on a 400 MHz Mac is a
noticeable improvement over 22.0 fps on a higher-clocked 500-MHz Celeron.
