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Rumors Of MP PowerMac G4 Flying!
Maktoo writes: "Well, this has been a favorite rumour in the Mac world for quite some time, but with the approach of WWDC (next Monday) things are starting to heat up.
MacOSRumors, AppleInsider, and Go2Mac are all predicting MP G4s soon ... with Go2Mac actually claiming that CompUSA has SKUs for the systems. The keynote on Monday should be interesting. I don't see why Apple would release MP machines before MacOS X ... but we might get a demo at least. I'm excited enough that I'll be getting a copy of MacOS X Beta when I walk in the door ... but an MP G4 would be nice too."
Since WWDC is just a week away, why not resist and wait a week?
Geez. There's a lot of anti-Mac fud and humor here. Sorta like some giant smacktalk from a legion of Ford Escort owners toward a small group of guys who drive Lexus cars. Anyways, if the hardware and OS will support SMP, then we're talking about a VERY formidable machine, and noone really should be laughing about its performance. Take,for instance, the stats coming in from Distributed.Net. G4 Macs, in all their SlashDot-assumed-patheticness, are among the fastest single-cpu crunching boxes in the entire RC5-64 contest. Compare a 500 MHz G4's performance vs. a 1 GHz Athlon or a Xeon.. The "slower" G4 is almost 30% faster (approximately 4.8 Mkeys/sec) than the fastest PC. Imagine what kind of number cruncher a double/quad Altivec would be. As for ignorant people who assume that nerds would never use a Mac.. well, you people are just perfect for a Think Ignorant(TM) ad. People find the most suitable machine for the tasks they do. I happen to enjoy working on a Mac for web development, HTML programming, and multimedia design. It works fine for me and doesn't get in the way of my creative process. I can find a generous amount of Mac software/hardware at retailers, thank you very much. You may enjoy Windoze or Linux because its "behavior" suits your own creative process. Fine. So quit flaming other people's platform preferences as long as they don't end up stepping on your toes. Do your work and refrain from bothering others.. they're getting ready for their MP Macs =)
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Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Here's a handy template you can use to start your own Mac rumor site:
At the upcoming Macworld|Seybold|WWDC, Apple will announce:
new Powerbooks (or not)
new 17" iMacs (or not)
MP PowerMacs (or not)
an Apple PDA (or not)
MacOS X is shipping (or not)
In other words, these guys predict anything that could possibly happen, so some of it is bound be true.
Apple's sold multi processor systems (dual; Daystar sold quads) before, but the Mac OS at present has very poor MP support. Mac OS 9 is somewhat improved; some Finder operations will take advantage of a second processor, as will all Quicktime operations; applications that are explicitly parallel get a big boost (Photoshop, for example). However, you don't get what you get in Linux, where a given single-threaded process runs on the lowest-loaded processor at the time.
However, I don't think Apple's going to be SELLING these machines in May or June. I think Apple's going to be demonstrating them to developers, showing what a boost Mac OS X gets with a dual or quad G4 machine - and what a boost a dual or quad machine gets under OS X. Since OS X is slated for release sometime this summer (probably Macworld Expo New York in July), that will likely tie the two together. I'm sure these machines will run Mac OS 9 as well, but don't expect too much.
That said, the G4 is still far ahead of twice-as-'fast' Pentium IIIs - several reviews have shown that, with Altivec-native programs like Photoshop, a G4 at 450MHz creams a Pentium III at 1GHz, by 30% in some instances. With Mac OS X on dual or quad G4s, and with much better G4s (dual altivec units, and deeper pipelining to allow higher clock speeds) coming this fall, the Mac platform's about to get a massive boost.
That said, I fear that Apple will price these dual or quad machines way out of reach. An additional processor doesn't add that much to the price - maybe $500 reasonably. The smart approach with MP is not to double up on the very fastest chips; they just cost too much. Rather, it's better to step down the clock speed a little bit to allow for more processors at a reasonable price point. Thus, I think dual G4s at only 400 or 450MHz would make a lot of sense, and could be reasonably priced. I say could be; I have little faith in Apple to do this, though Apple's been much better about price-performance lately than they used to be.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin