Why is PowerPC the most hated architecture?

Silly is right, the most hated CPU would be the m68k. Compared to those, PPC was totally awesome!

more info from Wiki: (good times, good times)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M68k

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC

Some folk find it necessary to voice rejection of one thing in order to be seen adopting another. Me, I don't need to hate pistachio ice cream in order to prefer strawberry ice cream. For that matter, I don't feel any need to justify my choices about anything to anyone.

Romko,

There is some merit to a dislike of a particular architecture. Often it relates to frustrations or having paid too much for something. Think of the backlash when Apple dropped the price of the iPhone. Some beta buyers felt betrayed and used.

Another example was the Lisa. After spending ten thousand dollars, people were not happy that the Mac was cheaper and a better quality product.

Yet another comes from the Mac IIfx. People spent ten thousand dollars on it and yet Apple never finished some of the SCSI interface software because the Quadra series was coming out and it used different software. Even though the IIfx was 'wicked fast,' it cost a lot of money and Apple abandoned the upgrade path.

Next might be the Blue and White. It was designed to give the masses onboard USB and IDE hard drives standard. People wanted to be able to put cheap PC parts into a Mac. But the B&W had issues with data corruption. Then there was the early G4s, one called the Yikes.

To learn more about the good and the bad of motherboards, visit this site:

http://www.macgurus.com/products/motherboards/mgwhichram.php

If I remember correctly, the Yikes page used to have a little more editorializing. Something about taking a G3 board design and creating a patch so it could be used with the G4 chip until the real G4 board could be finished. Many times the marketing department wants something to sell before Christmas, even if R&D is not done with design upgrades. So they cobble together a quick fix and get something inferior on the market.

Then to finish off, visit these sites:

http://lowendmac.com/musings/10mm/10-worst-apple-products.html

http://lowendmac.com/musings/10mm/10-worst-part-2.html

It does not do much good to be negative about everything but I had a client spend $17,000 on some Avid video editing software to use on an 8100 with 9 gig raided hard drives. Avid never did get the software to work properly for an extended period of time. After spending that much money and being promised a product that is never delivered, it is understandable that some people get upset.

Probably the biggest consumer protection law suit was against Iomega. Thirty five state attorneys general sued the company because of what was called the "click of death." Tens of thousands of people lost data to defective Iomega zip drives that killed data on zip disks. I have had many quality products from Iomega but I will never forget the click of death because I also lost data. The company was forced to own up to their mistake. Unfortunately, instead of recalling the defective products, all they did was offer a coupon for a small discount on a new zip drive. No Thanks.

You asked for why some people rant? There is why.

Jim~

Some people may feel betrayed by all the publicity over PowerPC, and how it (with the help of the Velocity Engine) blew Intel out of the water. And for an extended period of time, it did. But towards Apples jump to Intel, all effort into improving the G4 / G5 clock speed just stopped - not Apple's fault, maybe IBMs (Motorola had already left PowerPC by the G5) - none of the promised speed improvements materialised. This may be the reason why Apple ditched PowerPC in the end.

It's still extremely powerful kit, with Velocity Engine and software written to use it, can hold it's own against most early Intel Macs, except Mac Pros maybe.

Think of the poor PowerBook G4 owners who bought just before the switch. one day you have a great piece of kit, next day there'll be an Intel MacBook / MacBook Pro that is 3x as fast. And cheaper. I have one of those.

I just want to know how can someone hate an architecture just because of the name? Why do people continue to harp on bashing PowerPC processors? Where is the logic?

There used to be this twit of an individual running a MDD that would often post here.

That individual continually berated and bad mouthed Intel. "Long Live PPC" and "Down with Intel" and such posts were constantly and most inappropriately being posted. (This was while constantly whining about perceived shortcomings with the MDD, usually thread jacking the post of someone completely unrelated).

Funny thing, though, this same individual then bought a Mac Pro. After that, it was derogatory remarks regarding the weakness of PPC and the worthlessness of such an inferior architecture.

"Why would anyone want such a outdated architecture?" and other disparaging remarks towards people posting here with questions.

There is no counting for prejudice, it is simply ignorance.

Harping and bashing something or someone because of lineage or taste simply shows the ignorance of that individual.

Funny thing, those types never perceive themselves as ignorant...

Why does anyone bash something else just because it is not what they use or like? Who knows? Ignorance mostly, I'd say.

The RISC architecture of the powerPC trademark is still doing just fine, regardless of the naysayers (now known as Power ISA). And most of those same haters have probably surfed to web sites running on IBM blade servers with powerPC/PowerISA chips in their guts and never even known thier favorite web site was running on the same RISC family as the Apple systems they now denegrate.

It also sounds like some of the people you have been reading are equating powerPC = Apple machines, when in fact, Apple was always a minority user of powerPC technology (game consoles and embedded systems were far more common uses of powerPC technology). If memory serves, PowerPC simply refers to a RISC-cpu instruction set, not the hardware per se.

Excellent point. Years ago my son emailed me a photo of the Xbox display at a trade show. Hidden under the table was a G5 box running the show. Knowing what is behind the scenes can be quite enlightening.

Wikipedia offers this insight:

Reduced instruction set computing, or RISC ( /ˈrɪsk/), is a CPU design strategy based on the insight that simplified (as opposed to complex) instructions can provide higher performance if this simplicity enables much faster execution of each instruction. A computer based on this strategy is a reduced instruction set computer (also RISC). There are many proposals for precise definitions,^[1] but the term is slowly being replaced by the more descriptive load-store architecture. Well known RISC families include DEC Alpha, AMD 29k, ARC, ARM, Atmel AVR, MIPS, PA-RISC, Power (including PowerPC), SuperH, and SPARC.

I my self don't care what type of cpu i or you use PowerPc or intel as long as they get the job done! i like intel and powerpc. Yes powerpc is older but it still works good! intel or powerpc they are still both a good cpu! i will leave it at that🙂 i do not bash either CPU type🙂

Trying to be funny ...

Have you ever tried to run OSX 10.5 on a G4 .... How can it be so slow ? All relative of course, but next to my Mac Pro it's treacle. If I want to feel good about my G4s I boot up my SE - how can it be so slow ?

ps.I own an MDD and a Mac Pro (as do many other serious users), but I don't think it's me being referred to earlier.

Simon,

How can it be so slow ?

To keep things in perspective, if I want to send a fax of a text document, it can be done in fifteen seconds from turning the power on on a IIfx. Mac World called the fx wicked fast in 1990. But that is slow compared to a Mac II with a DayStar accelerator discarded by Hanford engineers at the place that helped build the atomic bomb. The upgraded Mac II boots in four seconds, loads Word in two seconds and starts faxing in ten seconds of turning on the power switch to the computer. Show me any other computer that will do that faster and I will buy it! lol

All things are relative to the task at hand.

Jim~

PS Is romko23 ever coming back? ?

Tom, I see that we posted at the same time. (The post time changes every time I edit so the 3:05 is not accurate for the first post time.) Thanx for the article. Good reading.

Simon Teale wrote:

Trying to be funny ...

Have you ever tried to run OSX 10.5 on a G4 .... How can it be so slow ? All relative of course, but next to my Mac Pro it's treacle. If I want to feel good about my G4s I boot up my SE - how can it be so slow ?

ps.I own an MDD and a Mac Pro (as do many other serious users), but I don't think it's me being referred to earlier.

Yes i run os x 10.5 on a g4 (G4 MDD 2X1GHZ 1.25GB RAM NEW 320GB HD UPGRADED VIDEO CARD) and it is at the desktop at 1min 2 sec after i press the power button. not everyone can put out $2499 for a mac pro or even $699 for a macmini. i my self is saveing for a hi-end mac pro but that will still be 2 years away. i do use alot of intel macs and they do work good, but i do not own one yet. i am waiting for os x 10.8 to come out😉. the newest mac model i own is a dual G5 Tower🙂

Read the history of the PowerPC here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC

 Cheers, Tom 😉

Of course it's silly, it just shows that those people have a great deal of insecurity... why would it matter if PPC does the job for me... & hate me for it!? Surely they feel threatened somehow.

"An egotist will never learn anything new because he thinks he already knows it."

James Faust

Isn't this a bit of flogging the dead horse? I mean no one has use a PowerPC in a new piece of hardware in years. It is history now. Let it go.

Allan