I've been gone 2 months without the benefits of a fast connections so I've been reading PC Mag's Anyways I saw some benchamarks with the fastest Athlon 2100+ agains the new 800mhz iLamp's. The ILamp got it's base handed to it on every single one.

So how do you think the G4 1.0 GIG would stack up?

At one time, a MAC with a little less horsepwer could overcome the speed difference, because the memory subsystem was way more effecient..But now they are so far behind, just raw horsepower from the athlon and the p4, they cannot compete on speed. Although speed isnt everything, and thier style sometimes give people what they want, a unique home computing experience.
 
Becuase of cost tho, the masses won't be flocking to apple anytime soon, especially with the PC market like it is. You can buy 2 high end systems, for 1 good mac.

I am a tried and true PC user, and always have been. I have used several Macs, including those old "all-in-one" iMac type computers they put out back in the early 90's.
 
I personally have no use for Macs, but I know several people that wouldn't trade them for anything. For example my brother is in the publishing and sign making industry, which is altogether run using nothing but Macs. It would simply be foolish of him to attempt to run his business on anything but his Mac. This is not a value judgement on whether or not Macs are superior to PCs or PCs are superior to Macs, simply of industry standards.
 
Apple holds a niche market, despite their supposed attempts to break out of it with iMac or iBook, that's not likely to change.
 
Yes it's true that their memory bus is beginning to show it's age (it's been old for years), but I think the real question is, will Apple be able to continue their reliance on Motorola for the G4 processor? The G4 is definitely greying around the temples, and the G5 is nowhere to be seen. Should Apple maybe look to somebody else for a new technology? The Register, I believe, had an article about this a week or two ago.
 
I personally like Macs, but not enough to spend the huge premium needed to own one, but people like my brother in the publishing industry will continue to buy them, at least in the near future, no matter how far behind Apple technology lags.

I agree, Apple has it's own little niche market. I'd personally love to have a Mac (dual G4's), and I think Apple has had a major role in the appearence of the PC market, but they don't have the umph behind them to cater to a larger market. I think that Apple has figured out they can't win the MHz race, and have stuck to keeping their smaller user base. I think that OS X could have an impact on the Linux community, as X is similar to Free BSD and is much easier to use. Mac's aren't for everyone. I think the new iMac is in really bad taste. Innovative sure, but ugly as hell. I still want an Apple Cube--too bad they don't make 'em anymore. The new eMacs look like what the iMac should've been, and the new macs get an optical mouse standard. Apple in it's current state is going to continue to come out with great ideas but seem to fail at a mass market.

You think if you could go buy Mac parts separate they'd be cheaper and more popular?

It couldn't hurt if you could build a Mac piece by piece. I'd imagine that'd save some of the cost for the normal cased Macs. The iMacs and eMacs I don't think would be very nice to deal with.

If they weren't so damn expensive I'd have a Mac in a shot.

Yeah but from previous data, MACs are almost PCs short of the OS and CPU/MB.

I would out of curiosity, nothing less.

The problem with Macs is that they do not network very well. Sure they can run TCP/IP but they do things in their own way and it causes problem with everything around them. I work at a hospital and we have users that have MACs and are very determined to keep them. Because of their networking problems we have to keep them in their own network. I personally do not "drink the apple juice" and if I were in charge of the network they would be gone.
 
I will say though that MACs are great for users who deal with graphics and photo editing. I have seen their computers display X-rays and other images and they really do a good job. I still do not think that the cost of supporting these computers are worth the benefits gained in this area though.

Macs network good with other Macs, not with windows