Power Mac G4 Essays - Mac OS, OS X, Steve Jobs, Graphics Software

Power Mac G4 With its Pentium-crushing speed and new design, the Power Mac G4 picks up where the old Macintosh (G3) left off. Its enclosure is now highly polished silver and graphite, yet it still offers easy access to every internal component through its swing-open side door. With PowerPC G4 with Velocity Engine, the computer speeds up to 450MHz, one megabyte of backside level-2 cache running at half the processor speed, and a 100MHz system bus supporting up to 800-megabytes-per-second data throughput, the Power Mac G4 delivers high performance. And when you've completed your projects, shooting those big files across the network is a snap, because every new Power Mac G4 comes with 10/100BASE-T Ethernet built in.This means that when you buy it, it is ready to go to get set up to your local cable internet provider. The secret of the G4's revolutionary performance is its aptly named Velocity Engine. It's the heart of a supercomputer miniaturized onto a sliver of silicon. The Velocity Engine can process data in 128-bit chunks, instead of the smaller 32-bit or 64-bit chunks used in traditional processors (it's the 128-bit vector processing technology used in scientific supercomputers?except that they have added 162 new instructions to speed up computations). In addition, it can perform four (in some cases eight) 32-bit floating-point calculations in a single cycle, which is two to four times faster than traditional processors. The new G4's are proven to be faster that pentium 3's. Using six of Intel's tests, the 450MHz G4 was, on average, more than two and a half times as fast as the 600MHz Pentium III (2.65 times, to be exact). These benchmark advantages translate directly into real-world advantages. For example, typical Photoshop tasks run 187% faster on the Power Mac G4 as they do on the fastest PentiumIII-based PCs, with specific Photoshop filters running up to four times faster. Compressing QuickTime files is also much faster. Other Hardwear Monitor This is the ultimate companion to the Power Mac G4: the Apple Cinema Display. Its 22-inch diagonal screen makes this the largest LCD display ever brought to market, with a viewing area identical to that of a 24-inch flat CRT display. This is state-of-the-art technology, and supplies will naturally be limited.It's sold exclusively through the Apple Store, bundled with a 450MHz or faster Power Mac G4. But if you're fortunate enough to use one, your office view will never be the same again. Its viewing quality, is a world apart: twice as bright and twice as sharp as a CRT, with triple the contrast ratio and absolutely zero flicker. And its colors remain true from almost any viewing angle. Like a movie theatre, the Apple Cinema Display has a letterbox format (1600x1024 pixels), with room enough to display an entire 11x17 image. And unlike most other displays, it receives its data digitally from the computer, preserving the highest quality image. Operating System Mac OS 9 Mac OS 9 is the ultimate sytem for anyone on the Internet or anyone who wants to be. It is also very good for businesses. With more than 50 powerful new features, Mac OS 9 offers a full range of capabilities for new and advanced users. At work, there's no better way to get the most of your Macintosh computer and the Internet. What is comes with: Sherlock 2. In addition to its smart disk and file searching, Sherlock 2 is your Internet search detective and personal shopper. Look the Web for people, references, Apple info and current news in a flash. Sherlock 2 also lets you shop and compare prices. ColorSync 3. Included in Mac OS 9, ColorSync 3 manages color across input, display and output. It features improved AppleScript support, saveable workflow settings, powerful Calibration Assistant and enhanced control for profiles. At www.apple.com, there is also acompreensive manual and tutorial to teach you and your colleagues about all the uses and features of Mac OS 9 Softwear QuickTime 4 With a customer base of more than fifteen million Mac and Windows users who downloaded the preview release, and a growing list of online publishers?including, most recently, Fox News Online, Fox Sports Online and The Weather Channel?QuickTime 4 is the hottest streaming technology on the Internet. Some examples of how QuickTime is used in live programming and on-demand programming on the webare are the BBC, Bloomberg, HBO, NPR and WGBH Boston, and industry giants like Broderbund, Voyager, Cyan, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Macromedia, Microsoft, Disney and CNN. All for one simple reason: QuickTime is the standard for digital video and streaming media. Quicktime can be used