First published in Business in Vancouver/High Tech Office
column
Benjamin
Disraeli is famous for claiming there were three kinds of lies:
lies, damn lies, and statistics. In the High Tech Office we may
want to replace "statistics" with "benchmarks".
The idea behind computer benchmarks is noble - to have an
objective test making it possible to compare different models of
computer hardware independent from the software each is running.
The problem is that no one runs a computer without software, so
benchmark data offers at best a fun-house reflection of the real
world.
On January 10th, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced his company's
first Macintosh models built using Core Duo processors from Intel.
He boasted of benchmark tests showing the new models to be anywhere
from twice to four times as fast as their PowerPC-powered
predecessors.
While Jobs did the right thing of pointing out that real-world
performance might not be quite so fast, most of the media ignored
the fine print and highlighted the promise of super-speed.
The first Intel-powered Macs are now making it into consumers'
hands, and we're getting to see the difference between benchmarks
and reality.
I recently helped a colleague set up his new Intel iMac and was able to compare it
to last year's (PowerPC-powered) model. A few things to note:
As the name "Core Duo" suggests, the new Intel CPU has two
processor cores in a single unit. This promises twice the
performance of a single CPU, which is reflected by the benchmark
tests. But users will only see improvement on applications that
have been written for multithreading, the ability to divide tasks
between the two processors. Applications without multithreading
won't see much, if any, improvement.
A computer processor's speed and power gets all the hype, but
it's only one factor in the performance a user actually sees. Hard
drive and memory access speed and video capabilities all affect
real-world performance. The new iMacs have improvements in these
areas, but nowhere near the 2x-4x speed improvements being
touted.
For best performance, software code needs to be compiled into
programs that are optimized for the hardware. Apple has reworked
its operating system and many of its own programs to make good use
of the new Intel processors, but most third-party software,
including commonly used programs like Microsoft Office and Adobe
Photoshop, have not yet been updated for the new hardware.
Intel Macs can run these older programs using built-in
translation software called Rosetta, but the translation comes with
a speed penalty. These programs feel sluggish, seeming to run at
about half the speed they would on a recent-generation PowerPC
iMac.
The result: The new hardware runs software optimized for it
faster than the models they replace, but it runs other programs
slower than last-year's models.
What's more, PowerPC Macs running the OS X operating can also
run 1990s-era Mac software in so-called Classic mode. The new Intel
Macs can't run Classic mode software at all.
Many Mac users, needing access to the odd Windows program, run a
PC-emulator such as Microsoft Virtual PC; these emulators currently
don't run on the Intel Macs. And while the Intel-powered Macs use
the same sort of processors used in Windows PCs, it's proving to
not be easy to get them to boot to PC operating systems like
Windows or Linux.
In a few months, more software will support the new
Intel-powered Macs; at that time, users should see the promise of
blazing performance fulfilled. In the mean time, anyone buying a
new Mac in order to see the super-speed promised by the benchmark
tests is going to be sadly disappointed at the speed of their older
software. 
