Apple Computer has come back on the scene. The arrival of the G4 brings
supercomputing to the masses. It makes me think, do the masses really
need supercomputing power? What actual applications need that much
processing power? If you consider the Internet, most processing of
information takes place elsewhere, on big servers, supposedly, somewhere
else, but not on your client machine. So what sort of complex calculations
do you need GigaFlops for? Animation. User Interface, not UI, but
fancy graphics, making things look nice. Wait, I just figured out where
some of that processing power might go, to voice recognition software.
You need raw power to do that, at least now a days. So what else? Games.
Actual functional use? Or maybe it's just me that doesn't need this much
power in a computer I use on a daily basis. I use my laptop as a glorified
journal. It's a record keeper for me right now. A means of communication,
to give information, to get information. I could probably do what I do
on a 486, or even less. I could get away with using a palm pilot. Maybe
with that old Mac SE my brother was nice enough to save from a dumpster.
Or maybe I'll join the ranks and get my hands on a nice, pretty, G4
monster from Apple. |