Topic

The uninformed (shall we say, even ignorant?) PC press and enthusiasts love to bad-mouth the Mac, and one of their favorite gripes is, "There is no software for the Mac.", and the subset of that, when bad-mouthing the G4 specifically, is, "There are only a handful of MP and AltiVec-aware applications."

While we freely admit that out of over eighteen-thousand products made for the Mac, there are very few consumer applications that have (or even need) multi-processor or AltiVec (Velocity Engine) support, there is a nice, long and profitable list of professional applications that support one, or both. Many more companies have announced support for both, citing considerable excitement with the G4 and Mac OS X, Apple's clear and committed support for dual (and likely quad) processors, not to mention Apple's clear stability as a company.

Discussion

This list is far from complete in terms of available software products for the Mac (see the 18,000-plus products in the Mac Products Guide), and it is also far from complete in displaying applications that are MP or AltiVec-aware. If you can add to or correct any information on this list, submissions are greatly appreciated!

Please note that many applications (such as word processors, text editors, etc.) listed here would not even benefit from MP or AltiVec support; they are listed purely as reference because of their popularity, and also because (as far as we know) the x86 versions of these applications are not MP-aware, nor do they appear to have SSE or 3DNow! accelerations (to any extent that matters). Other applications claim MP or AltiVec awareness, but show little to no benefit.

Article last revised on: 23 February 2001
Article created on:18 September 1999
Author: Staff
Editor: WebClub '01

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