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Apple Punishes ATI For Leaking The Cube?
Ruddy writes: "According to this
story at InsideMacGames and an even juicier
one at AppleInsider, graphics card company ATi leaked sacred knowledge
about Apple's soon to be unveiled products (the new G4 Cubes) in advance of the MacWorld announcements yesterday, effectively stealing some of Steve Jobs' coveted keynote thunder.
The leaked info spread quickly over the Web during the peak
of rumor-Cube-mania. In retaliation the Fearless leader apparently
then pulled the plug on the Radeon's
rollout at MacWorld, all but publicly spanking ATi for its indiscretions
and replacing the Cube's flashy Radeon card with the more mundane and
stale Rage 128 Pro (talk about spite and noses!)." This story just keeps cracking me up.
they are continuing to use the same ATI card that shipped in the previous crop of Powermac G4 machines. The Radeons are not supposed to even ship until September, are they??
Ummm... Apple was the top computer maker in the world back in the Apple II days. Every elemetary school teacher in America had seen one.
So what Sculley accomplished was that he built a household brand into a household brand.
Also worth noting is that the bulk of the early success that Apple enjoyed with the Macintosh came before Steve Jobs was ousted.
You gotta give the suits some credit for their successes, like the PowerPC transition, but the Scully/Spindler era will be remembered for the "Perfoma" line (just like a Macintosh, but without all those pesky high-quality components), and for nearly bankrupting a multi-million dollar company that had Sony-esque brand recognition.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Apple only supplies 64mgs of RAM to help the retailer. There is a low marging on Macs. The retailer makes it up with those things not supplied with the Mac. The Mac acts like a loss leader. It brings people in the front door. It is up to the salesman to do his job, by directing the customer to the add-ons which are keystoned.
14 years of retail taught me a few things about why companies do what they do.
You ever wonder why the pro models (G4's) come with no software? See my first paragraph if you are a slow learner.
photosMy Photostream
Step back and listen to yourself. The whole notion that Apple pulled the Radeon is ludicrous:
- The Radeon JUST CAME OUT -- you can't even buy one yet; they'd at least have ramped up production by now (and have a bunch sitting around) if they were planning on putting them in the Cube. Not to mention that Apple would need at least a bit of time to make sure the drivers work with MacOS 9.
- The Cube has NO FANS. The Radeon DOES. The Cube was built to dissapate heat using convection and this requires using COOL components; a 64MB card doesn't qualify -- you may NEVER be able to put a heat monster in the thing without modifying the case.
- The Radeon would make an appearance in the most expensive Macs first. Apple always does this with the highest tech.
I think this whole story is ridiculous.The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Apple is a Cube
So it was true all the time
Steve Jobs is a square
The Rage 128 sits as a card on an AGPx2 slot in the G4 cube. It is a 7 inch card, as opposed to the 13 inches of, say the Voodoo5.
The phrase "stealing [someone's] thunder" actually comes from early 20th-century American theatre.
A stage producer was proud of the proprietary machine he had designed for creating a particularly loud thunder sound effect. Well, through the theatrical espionage that happened in those cutthroat days, his design was leaked to a rival theatre company. Soon the producer was attending a production of the rival company (to check out the competition). Eventually the storm scene began and the producer heard the unmistakable sound of his effects device. He stood and famously shouted, "He has stolen my thunder!"
-AC
I once read that the human persistence of vision is equal to 26 frames / second. In the case of a FPS that gets .1 fps with one card than another when both rates are above 60fps, there is no perceived difference. Benchmark numbers are mental masturbation. Features are what it's all about.
Besides, who needs to run Shogo at 1600x1200? I'd be damned if I've ever played a game over 800x600.. after that point, all the detail in the world wouldn't matter... and 10 frames less than the TNT2 still isn't that big a deal. It is still 14 frames over Persistence of Vision.
Lowmag.net
For what it's worth, here's a picture of the Cube's innards, with the Rage 128 card exposed:
http://www.go2mac.com/image.cfm?image=images/shows /MWNY2k/wednesday_2/cube_guts2.jpg
Can it be swapped for a Radeon? There's no point in me engaging in idle speculation--just judge for yourself. Eventually, Apple will post developer specifications and clarify exactly how the card's connected to the motherboard.
Uhh...
According to the Q3 financial results from both companies, ATi's total sales were $288.2 million. Apple's profits were $200 million.
What are you smoking? Baking powder?
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One single 2x AGP slot. It fits. Specs are here, and in the photo at the top of this page the video card is plainly visible, plugged into a brown AGP slot.
I would bet my left testicle that this chipset is hardwaired to the board.
That's OK, I don't really want it...
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The key word here is DEDICATED. That means 'used only by'.
I don't think that either of us can really argue our way into a position of being right.
I propose this: I'm gonna buy a G4 Cube machine early next week (probably Monday). When it gets here, I'll crack that bad mamijami open and see for myself.
I'll either send you an email extolling my genius, or a photo of my severed nut.
Rami James
Desperate Guy
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rJames.org - illustration
Hint: the first word refers to a male bovine. Get a grip, people! For starters, Radeon cards for Mac will not be ready until September -- two months from now. So there is NO way they were supposed to be in the Cube, which is on sale now.
It's perfectly believable that Jobs was planning to let ATI show off Radeon during his Keynote, then snubbed them for leaks. Steve is known to be a vindictive SOB. But that's just one f***ing speech, 10 minutes of PR, not a complete shift of manufacturing!
Even if he wanted to, there is no way that Apple's Board of Directors would let Steve purposefully weaken the product line out of spite. Remember, they're answerable to the shareholders, and no matter how it looks on stage, Apple is not a one man corporation.Does anyone know of a mirror that still exists with the G4 cube pics ? I never got a chance to see them, they all got taken down too quickly. If you want to email me privately if you have pictures on your HD you could attatch, mailto:gotti-@rocketmail.com. Thanks much !
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
The first Radeons shipped Monday. The retailers I've talked to earlier in the week expected their first batches in today.
ATi has the best hardware in the business, their drivers usually leave something to be desired however.
No, they didn't *stop using* the Radeon, they just didn't give ATI a chance to publicly demo the card.
It's not available until September, so it won't be in OEM Apple systems until then. This hurt ATI's ability to 'hype' the card in a public setting, that's all.
No PCI slots.
I need something to justify this monster G4 I bought just a couple of months ago.
You've been using it for two months.
I suppose they'll expect me to fork out another $120 for these revolutionary input devices.
Yes. If you're not happy about it, send your $120 to MacAlly, Logitech, Microsoft, or whatever other vendor you thinks makes a better product.
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There are two ports on the back of the new Cube and G4 macs: one standard VGA, and one of these special cables that carries power, video and USB to the new monitors. So if you want to use a cheap 3rd party monitor you can. The ATI chipset has nothing to do with this physical connection.
______________________
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it!"
Apple is as apple does....
Nobody who's followed how Steve turned Apple from the most open company in the business to tighter than the Pentagon can be surprised. Apparently somebody at ATI was not aware of this, but now they are.
Apple does do the cheap spy thriller trick of releasing partially wrong info to it's people, and check which numbers turn up on the rumor sites. "MOSR says 110MHz - fire Johnsson".
Maya is being ported to the Mac. Maxon's Cinema 4D is available on the Mac (go BeOS port!). Tonnes and tonnes of OpenGL software is available for pro 3D stuff - the new Macs have done wonders for pro 3D on that platform.
John Sculley is famous for his Newton and his days at Apple Computer. Before Amelio, before Spindler, John Sculley was steering the course at Apple. Hired by legendary founder Steve Jobs, who convinced him to leave Pepsi by asking Sculley if he wanted to "sell sugar water" for the rest of his life, Sculley became one of the leading figures in Apple mythology by heading the company from 1983 to 1993. Ironically, Sculley later ousted Jobs in a power struggle and then positioned himself as a technology visionary.
During his decade at Apple, the company's annual revenues rose from $600 million to $8 billion. True to his reputation as an unparalleled mass marketer, Sculley built Apple into a household brand.
Too lazy to link, but found at: www.msu.edu/~luckie/hallofame.htm
Rader
Profits. I believe their profits are often greater than Dell or Gateway or any of the big PC makers. Probably sell more units as well.
I suppose you didn't read the thread about the Radeon. It definitely does not blow (unless, of course, you mean 'blow away').
just my blog and pix
Once again, it seems that somebody needs to control Steve. He's just a kid, and needs somebody to stop his tempertantrums before he destroys what good he's done for Apple.
Actually, Wah has a much better attitude than Mr. Jobs.
I registered my hate for Jon Katz
I am a PC weenie too, but I think some people are really giving Apple an unfair shake in not catching up on facts. As far as untested hardware, and Apple staying in a "safe zone" I say Phooey.
As for Jobs, he is a jerk that gets things done. It is highly doubtful that he "spanked" ATi other than omitting them from the keynote. The radeons will not be ready next month. End of story.
That said, I can see where Apple is falling behind. The need to:
Even this proprietary connection can be good, save for the fact Apple will have a solution "next month" for those who just want to buy a monitor for an older G3 or G4. It is all relative. It really is apples and oranges
Lowmag.net
Radeon is a product in development. Nobody knows whether or not it will really work when we get there. Then we need to get ATI to write drivers for the thing...
If you are designing a strategic product, one of only 5 or 6 model lines your company makes, you design fallback positions.
If I were designing a computer around a yet-unreleased video chip, I would design a fallback plan.
The moment an engineer came in and said "By the time we're selling these things, ATI will have this great new video chip", the manager's first reaction would be "Great. Get some engineering samples and make our system run on them. But design a version around the Rage, too. Just in case ATI flubs". Always have a fallback plan.
Does IBM buy hard drives on the open market for their current machines? They are getting a lot of the press for their recent designs in the high-end drive manufacture.
Presumably IBM cares when a product designer decides to use a non-IBM drive in his latest design.
Wrong. Mac users appreciate the fanfare, and fanfare helps the bottom line. If you understood the law, you'd understand Apple's legal position. If you think an OEM shouldn't be able to throw its weight into its partner relationships, you don't understand how business works, either.
Apple developing x86 solutions? You, like so many other peecee Wintel leemurs, have such low expectations that you can't get your mind around what Apple's strategy is.
How vain is Steve Jobs that he would do such a thing?
Honestly, are Apple's closed source, closed hardware, legal brief tossing ways any better than Microsoft's? I think not. The silliness with the leaked photos would happen in no other company.
Steve is messing with the bottomline $s of the company when important new items like state of the art video cards are not shown due to 'punishment'.
Apple has great hardware engineers and many great ideas, but they treat their customers like sheep and their partners like children. If they really want to sell hardware, get their engineers to work on some x86 solutions and let have an CuMine Cube and an iPC. I'd buy those products in a heartbeat. But buying a Mac today with no memory management or multitasking is farsical.
Stunts like this help prevent Apple from creating new customers. The Faithful Apple Cabal of users grows smaller everyday.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
Now that was funny!
This is also why the iBook has one mono speaker, no microphone, and no microphone jack. The only way to get sound in (like, say, to take advantage of the voice authentication feature of Mac OS 9) is with a USB microphone, which would have high markup.
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"business sense"? what business sense? the guy could and has run one of the greatest computer companies into the ground b/c his ego writes checks his business sense can't cash.
Apple the two years before Steve Jobs took over: lost $1billion each year.
Apple the two years after Steve Jobs took over: made $1 billion each year.
If that's running a company into the ground, I say we need a whole lot more of it.
Sailing over the event horizon
*sigh* iirc, Motorola controls the patents on the specific G4 that Apple uses, meaning that the problems are Moto's, not Apple. IBM is perfectly capable of fabbing 500MHz + G4s, but can't because Motorola is peeing in the pool. Get it?
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
According to this news report on Inside Mac Games, ATI employees are claiming that's exactly what happened. ATI announced the new products and Steve got ticked and yanked them from the show floor. It's not clear that Apple actually planned on having Radeons built into the new Macs, but ATI's press release implied it, and I think that's part of what got Jobs so angry.
______________________
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it!"
You're correct I was just pointing out that apple really didn't hurt ati. As its been said many times over they just didn't show off ati's card at there show. He's was implying ati would loose its oem work for apple. Which I really doubt considering the strength of this card. I can't say for sure but it would seem this card would keep much of its power even without the expensive ddr ram it comes with on the high end. It uses different methods to get the work to/from ram that are much less dependant on the actual ram speed then nVidias are. While 5.5 ns ddr ram does help it ALOT I'd rather have a normal sdram raedon, then a geforce gts with ddr (if they were even made). And that leads to more power for less money in oem situations.
You mean, you are hoping Apple to put a chip from a company that tries to censor its affiliate site and released obfuscated opensource drivers (what a sin )? If anyone is misbehaving here, it is NVidia.
Hey moderators...Please read the article before moderating sonmething up. This is up to Score:4 with the comments are completely wrong and show a lack of any insight into what really happened.
Gee let me get a high moderation by saying something that seems highly insightful even if its dead wrong.
Remove the spam reference to email
Apple has used the term "dedicated" for their graphics slot in the past, like with the G3 tower that I own. In that case, it only meant that it is not a standard PCI slot, and will only accept AGP cards. The ATI card can be replaced.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Then why aren't the Radeon cards being offered in the regular PM G4s? That is what bums me out.
just my blog and pix
Not in the business sense, no. Gateway sells more computers than Apple. For that matter, Gateway sells more computers to schools than Apple.
The last sentence is puzzling: "ATI is currently the world leader in graphics acceleration for both the PC and Macintosh." It reads like a press release.
I think nVidea and 3dfx will certainly contest that statement, since it is not qualified by "in sales."
Oh, please. There's nothing inherent about any operating system that makes it ``superior'' for all people and all applications. There are generally-accepted things that MacOS is lacking, but if a user doesn't need them, why force them upon him?
Likewise, I use Netscape Communication because I choose to. I'm much more familiar with it, and I would rather a piece of software which largely does what I tell it to than something like IE that is convinced that it's smarter than me and tries to surprise me at every turn.
Give your proselytizing a rest, ok?
You are correct, of course, but the point of the matter is they pretty much invented USB as well. USB is an extension of the ADB connector. So they should get even more cred than they do!
Lowmag.net
I see a company intentionally not showing that that they have a video card as good as the competition (PCs). I see a company that locks their users into hardware options with little control of choice. I see a company with an outdated operating system. I see a company with good design and hardware skills but poor software skills.
All kidding aside. What is the strategy? What am I missing here?
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
I was not aware of this problem. Perhaps they should rethink the terms of the agreement to allow IBM to use the G3/G4 in RS/6000 systems just so they can trounce the supercomputer field once again. Power3 chips aren't bad though, and I doubt Apple won't use those anytime soon (note: these are not the same as g3 to those who don't know..) since the g4 is already the better chip. I can understand IBM's reluctance to produce though. The have no motivator from their own research than money.
Lowmag.net
I've always wondered this: what the value of thunder? And why do people so get pissed off then it's stolen?
I ask this seriously -- it isn't meant to be a troll.
I've always figured that the only people angry about having their thunder stolen are the egomaniacs -- people like Jobs, in other words -- people who use the information (the "thunder") more to boost their self-image than as an end in itself.
Who cares when the information gets out? The end is the information -- the new Apple box -- not the fact that Jobs needs to hear the 'oohs' and 'aaaaahs' from the press as he's making these announcements, right?
I mean, really, what is more important? The fact that Apple is introducing some interesting looking computers and can thereby flex their design and implementation muscles once more -- or the fact it's Steve Jobs up there at podium, whipping the silken cloth off these computers much in the same way a magician whisks the cloth off his beautiful assistant? (The assistant, in other words, isn't there to facilitate the trick in any real way -- she's more to make the magician look good. Although this begs the question, is it ever possible for a magician -- with the exception of Ricky Jay and his card tricks -- to actually look good? No magician is cool, although every single magician thinks they are cool. But I digress...)
I'm sure there are legal issues here -- information needs to be released at specific moments, and if it's released before -- if the thunder is stolen -- then, well, some heads will roll. (But again: why? I don't understand this.)
I'm also interested in the greco-roman mythology at work here (or Scandanavian) the fact that 'big announcements' are equated with 'thunder' -- the voice from above, the booming voice of authority -- and that this thunder -- this voice of authority -- can actually be stolen. Do those who have thunder stolen ever recover it?
Is it possible, say, for Jobs to sue the pants off MacInsider in an attempt to recover the stolen thunder? Or does thunder -- once it's stolen -- simply cease to be? (Meaning: it's thunder only once -- only at the moment when the announcement is made -- and once that moment has passed, it is no longer thunder.)
And why thunder? It's the mythology reference, I assume. But why not steal lightning instead?
I mean, hell, if I had the choice between stealing thunder or stealing lightning, I'd probably opt for lightning. There's a lot more power in a bolt of electricity from above than from a rip roaring crack from nowhere in particular.
does that make it true as well?
If I were there, I would do it.
Ah, off to New York for Mac World. We've got a nice surprise there for everyone.
The suprise turned out to be the Q3A mission pack running under OS X & radeon. This is certainly the kind of thing that would have been incorporated into Steve Job's onstage dog-and-pony show, but since ATI managed to piss Steve off, Q3A also got relegated to the sidelines.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Insert foot into mouth here ;)
lf.o
No, it's on a 2x AGP slot. Apple went from PCI to AGP shortly after they released the G4 (the original G4 systems were basically hacked-up G3 systems with PCI video; they discontinued them as soon as the Sawtooth motherboard with 2x AGP was ready). Apple was using PCI cards for video on the blue G3 systems. Currently only the iMac and laptops have on-board video (and the iMac is basically a modified laptop with a CRT, which is why the first three revisions used SO-DIMMs).
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You think a good 3d card is gonna fit inside that 8x8 cube? Think again.
Hey, lets punish ATI by not putting their new, awesome graphics card in our new computer, instead going with one of their old crappy ones, so that nobody buys our new computer because nobody wants that damn Rage 128 chip!
I don't think Apple computers are intended for the more technical users. For nearly a decade computer companies have tried to break out of the tech segment and sell to the moms, dads, grandparents and other non-computer users out there.
Apple got the artsie types, but couldn't get to the real non-computer users until the iMac.
What everyone complains as overly cute is non-threatening. Not just the all-in-one or the colors (ask Dell and Gateway about that) but the MacOS is generally easier for a newbie to use and the case of the iMac and the cube look friendly.
Look at the numbers of iMac users who have never owned a computer and you will understand Apple's resurrections. They are finally selling to the lost (and largest) market segment.
The computer industry will never truly understand the iMac (and Apple in general) because the industry is filled with technical users who could never really appreciate the appeal of a harmless, non-threatening computer.
Why is everyone so certain that Apple was going to put Radeon in the cube? AppleInsider seems to be the source of this rumor.
:)
You can't put a graphics chip that requires a fan in a silent computer, now can you? Surely the case design was done well in advance of Steve Jobs' speech, and cube case design is dependant on the fanless architecture. They were going to go with the 128 all along. Perhaps Steve did snub ATI, but I say good for him! Look on the bright side; perhaps the 128 in the cube is the last ATI chipset to be used in Macs! I'll wait for the "Cube DV" with a different (manufacturers) chipset.
I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.
I think this is all just another myth... the reason why they go with the Rage128 Pro and not the Radeon is that, the Cube being fanless and cramped, they need a chipset that doesn't requires active cooling. A Rage128 Pro manufactured on the same process as Radeon will make a lot less heat.
Jobs didn't change any hardware (at least according to the article on AppleInsider). He "ripped all mention of ATI and their products from his keynote presentation". Which is funny to me. You'd think he would want to tell people they could get a Radeon in one. The biggest reason I have stayed away from Apple all these years is that the 3D graphics (for certain things like gaming, which I do a lot of) basically sucked compared to the PC. ATI shouldn't have leaked anything if they were under NDA, and I believe that Jobs has the prerogative to do whatever he wants in his address, but I would have been a lot more excited about the new G4s if they had showcased the decent 3d graphics (Radeon).
As a long-time PowerBook owner, I can attest that computing in silence is bliss
I have two computers set up at home. One linux system as a server, and one windows system as a client. (e.g. run UT server, and UT client on the operating systems they work best with) They are both home-built Intel-type machines. They each have a power supply, and hard drive, and CPU fans, and one has a fan for the video card. What I ended up doing to solve the noise problem is to put my computers in the next room, and run the video/keyboard/mouse(and optionally, power) cables through the wall (where the Cable TV goes, actually) so I won't have to deal with the noise. I won't have to worry about the noise anymore. (Now, to solve the high pitch whine from the TV, the noisy fridge, and the fan-based heater (in the winter)... guess we can't have everything.)
This isn't the first time Apple's tried a new, "advanced" monitor cable. There'll be an adapter, just like there was with the 7100 (I think it was?)...
As for connectors, there're several different connectors, the old ATi Rage Pro that I, heh, think you're thinking about (I have a couple of em at work), have aqn older style Digital Flat Panel connector, and the Apple monitors with digital connectors have all come with a newer type (I believe it's the same connector on the Hercules Geforce DDR-DVI) .
(Are there only two different digital connectors? DFP and DVI seem to stick in my head... Digital Flat Panel and Digital Video Interface...)
-tsunake
Luckily you won't have to sever your nut quite so soon. The cubes aren't shipping for a while (unless you're going to buy one off of the MWNY show floor or something). Enjoy your nut for at least a few weeks.
just my blog and pix
We're referring to how Jobs ran the company into the ground in the 80's, not today. Today he seems to be doing a fairly good job--at least, he's brought the company back from the brink. Or so we've been led to believe.
Then perhaps you should make this clear? "the guy could and has run one of the greatest computer companies into the ground" is in the present tense, not the past tense. And trust me, Apple has completely turned around from the miserable days of Gil Amelio...
I find it pretty amazing, though, that the CEO of one of the largest computer companies in the world is basically acting like a child.
But it doesn't seem like there's much evidence to support this allegation. ATi claim that he did this. I haven't seen Jobs/Apple's side of the story. There are at least as many reasons to not believe this as to believe it.
I've worked with Steve on a number of projects. He isn't the person portrayed in the biographies of him from the early 80s. I didn't know him back then, so I can't tell you if he has changed or if those claims were bogus in the first place. Steve cares a great deal about the success of Apple. I doubt very much that he removed the ATi cards from the new Macs at two days notice, even if he was (rightly) mad at ATi for screwing over the surprise factor for the new Cube machine.
Sailing over the event horizon
.... than it must be TRUE!
I'm putting in an order for my 17" G4 iMac as we speak.
Well, if Microsoft are going to do it ;-)
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
The title of this article was so disgusting that I didn't even want to read it. Besides, I thought that we had finished beating that coffee-proofing horse back when the Cube (or is it CUBE...) was still just a rumor.
My biggest worry (on Apple's behalf): I just don't see that this "prosumer" market actually exists.... All of my experience seems to divide people neatly into two camps: the power-lovin' gadget-buyin' geeky types, and the fuzzies (that's a term we used to use for non-Science majors back in college), who just want the cheapest, last intrusive way to check their email possible.
Perhaps Apple is right, and there is an undiscovered market segment out there that just has to be targeted. But I don't see it. The geeky types like the technology itself; the fuzzies see it as a neccessary tool (or evil) to accomplish the task at hand. Are there people who fall somewhere in between? If so, by all means, speak up and tell us how you relate to the CUBE 9or is it C.U.B.E....).
-- Watch the REAL Jon Katz.
Maybe ATI leaked the story after the found out their chip was being replaced. Jobs is actually angry at the Apple people who leaked the news to ATI.
Hmm maybe I will get a 2 for this one?!?
Uh, no. USB is from Intel.
Steve M
Well, not all ATI stuff blows... Specifically, the new Raedon card kicks a lot of ass. ATI has had some problems in the past, but they seem to be getting their shit together pretty well now.
Let's look at the facts, shall we:
* Oooh yes, asterisk. We're in a Catch-22 as it seems there are many /.'ers who seem intent on not liking Apple regardless of the real world facts. It's somewhat amusing that most people on /. claim that choice in everything is always the best solution, allowing the best widget to sort itself out from the competition. If one truly belives this, isn't it a bit contradictory to keep pressing Apple's face into the mud, especially when they actually haven't done anything? Christ... yeah, it would be a different situation entirely if the Radeon's had been out for two months and Steve Steved their inclusion. But that's a different situation, not the reality which is at hand.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
>Also, the article indicates that this is a temporary thing
According to the articles, ATI only leaked that Apple was announcing a new iMac and two new PowerMacs. No explicit mention of "cubes", colors, dual-processors, etc.
Further, they only say that Jobs prevented ATI from showing their hardware at the show, removed all mention of the cards from his keynote, and didn't allow ATI CEO from demo-ing. There is no indication that he replacing the new cards with older Rage 128's, or ceasing to do business with ATI.
From the article, it sounds only like ATI said a little more than Jobs wanted said, and he retaliated by publicly humiliating them. But the basic business between them is unchanged.
ShoutingMan.com
Half a year actually. They were post-poned due to some problems with the chip and delayed for many months. An enhanced G4 (G4e) is due out this fall. That'll get things up 750 - 800Mhz. pretty quick.
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InstantCool
No you can't. Slader is a civil tort, not a criminal act.
HTH.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
The NeXT cube failed because it was $9000+, was a lot more proprietary than current Macs, and was set for the busines market. They didn't bite. The maybe sold a total of 1,000 in their entire existence. Current Macs have USB/Firewire for pretty much everything, making them very compatible with modern "non-legacy" PCs that Intel, by the way, is pushing.
Lowmag.net
Those "old, aging board members" did not know how to make money. Product quality was abysmal and the vision of what an Apple computer nearly died.
Steve may not be right on everything but at least Apple's soul is back.
The Mac platform is not to flakey, you're running on old news there. It's far more solid than windows.
The platform is not to restrictive for power users either. You can open up the G4 box and add pretty much anything. The whole box outside of the CPU is made of PC standard parts.
I have not had a crash in a long time. Browsers are generally solid, or core dump without taking the system down when something goes wrong. Only Microsofts special brand of java will lock everything up.
Single-tasking paradigm I can't defend it except to mention the vaporus osX and to mention that to 95% of the computing world it doesn't matter.
10 year old models as examples? Really dug down deep to back up that frequently crippling the hardware statement didn't you. I'll let the comment stand purely because the G3 to G4 thing was so ugly.
Processor design has next to no R&D? What are you talking about? MOtorola and IBM are putting lots of R&D into the processor design. They just don't spend a dime to market the processor.
Check your facts, your rant is the tired old beleagured Apple computer rant from 4 years ago. There is a lot to complain about Apple (osX being very late for example) but your facts are outdated so your argument died before you typed it.
Is a lecture on what Mhz mean as it relates to processing power really required? *sigh....*
Let's put it this way. x86 flushes its CPU cycles down the toilet.
I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.
So that's why Apple's website was so slow yesterday... they had to delete all the new ATI chips references from the new computers spec listings...
Well, you're already paying for the midrange 3D features of the integrated Rage 128-based video...
Apple can always upgrade the graphic cards before the cube ships and have a jazzy press release. ATI missed a great chance to have their new flag ship product demoed during a prime time event that many of their customers are paying attention to. Also they risk losing one of their biggest OEM vendors to nVidia. Let's face it ATI now has competition in a market that was 100% ATI. Do you actually think having the ATI 128 is affecting the amount of positive press the Cube is getting? Once the hype wears off and the mainstream starts to think about it then Apple can start hyping the Cube again by annoucing the new ATI card or the new nVidia card. Either way Apple wins ATI loses.
OK, I didn't notice they were under "32 bit microprocessors" at Motorola's site. They mention the 64 bit data path, but that is not the measure of a chip. Even the Power3 chip is 32 bit which makes me think that perhaps it's fine if the Motorola 7400 is only 32 bit. So is everything else on that end, so it's all good. At least it is still RISC, even though the intel clones have been high in numbers. Now a 2.4 ghz Alpha is looking tastier and tastier.
Then again, perhaps we can put a 64 bit sticker on it to make it faster.
Lowmag.net
4 years of nothing but pain working around ATI driver bugs. I wish there was another alternative, unfortunately because of the limited choice of Mac video cards, ATI is the only one that supports all of the features we require.
We would change cards in a heartbeat if there was *any* other alternative.
Yes, the Rage is an old card, and not up to snuff with today's standards. However, to dismiss all of ATIs offerings is just plain ignorant. Benchmarks of the from many PC gaming sites show the Radeon giving a GeForce 2 a serious run for its money. For the Mac community, going from the Rage/Voodoo3 level of performance to a Radeon (essentially skipping a generation) is absolutely incredible. Oh, and in response to another post about a voodoo5 in the cube... the physical length of a Voodoo5 is 13 inches. 13 > 8.
There is no retaliatory muster here. Apple did not announce a RADEON system BECAUSE RADEON's AREN'T SHIPPING IN QUANITY. Apple decided to avoid last years criticism of announcing product not yet ready to ship (the 500 MHz G4). Also, the revised motherboard with a 4X AGP isn't quite ready -- so why rush, when you won't be able to meet demand?
Any normal 2x AGP card WILL fit inside the CUBE, such as a 3Dfx VOODOO 5. The ATI Pro plays Quake III & Unreal Tournament quite well, thank you.
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He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
Funny thing is I went and priced a Dual Proc PowerMac and a Dell PC with the same features. Same amount of ram, HD space, Firewire, etc... and the prices came out only about $20 different.
So I don't know about having to be a multi-million or billion dollar company.
I'm constantly amazed at the levels of anti-apple bigotry that slashdot members show (in this case, CmdrTaco for forwarding this impossibly absurd story.) I'm not even going to address the content of it because anyone with half a clue knows it cannot be true. The real issue is the constant need to satisfy your insecurities by bashing apple... this need is exhibited constantly on these message boards and it really perplexes me. Linux runs quite well on Macintoshes and twice as fast as you're going to get on intel based hardware, so why not get over the jealousy, admit that all your snide apple bashing years are over and go buy a Mac? Linuxppc rocks. Otherwise, decide that for whatever reason you prefer intel or alpha hardware and let apple be. Fabricating garbage like this just shows you unable to deal with the fact that apple is putting out pretty killer machines. A server faster than anything intel is shipping in 8 cubic inches? It runs Linux? Rejoice! BitGeek
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
check out the news page at ridiculopathy.com there's also a bit in there regarding the twee coverage of the rumored apple/pixar/disney merger.
You are correct. The cube does indeed currently sport Rage 128 and not Radeon. I was not disputing that fact.
I was questioning the rationale of making condemnations based on a RUMORED product launch that did not occur.
Guy, I have some sad, sad news for you. I was at Macworld today and saw one of these bad boys with the cover off. The Rage boad IS attached using an AGP slot. It's just that simple. That board is specially designed to be only 7 inches long (to fit in the case), and has additional connectors for power and USB (Apple's digital monitor cable moves these, too), but it is a Bona Fide AGP slot.
Sorry, but I believe you owe the Slashdot community a testicle.
If you're proven wrong are you REALLY gonna cut it off, or just back down? Like the guy who said he'd eat his mouse if the G4 cube was real?
If you're making a statement, you'd better stick to it, or I lose ALL respect for you.
He didn't say he'd do it if the chipset wasn't hardwired, he said he's willing to make that bet, with his left nut as his stake. If you want him to stand by it, you have to offer something on the other side of the bet.
Everything from ATI blows? Not performance-wise...
See the review of the Radeon on Tom's Hardware.
But caveat: While the specs of the final models seem to have been decided on, the Radeon isn't exactly a shipping product yet.
This thing looks like a flippin' Kleenex box... I wonder how long before someone parodies the ad showing a couple of sheets of tissue stuffed in the top... you know, for "nose bleed" game speed..
cute. I would have preferred a super flat box. Something I could velcro to the underside of a desk right up to the edge so the DVD would be accessable... Someday, someone will rediscover the Sony designed sphere TV. I wish I still had mine...
3C
That's strange, I'm not a multi-million dollar company, but I could easily afford one of the dual-processor Macs. In fact, I'd be surprised if I don't get one by the end of the year (or when MacOS X is made available).
Anyone know when Adobe software (Photoshop/Illustrator) will be made available for the new platform?
D
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They all but abandoned game developers, use last year's crappy video card, and still have the balls to say how great Halo will be on the Mac. Yeah. Right. Why don't they just give up the whole gaming issue already?
Bye bye left testical. The video card is a standard ATI AGP Rage Pro. Anything seven inches long or less should fit assuming the power and heat constraints are met.
-Jon
The truth will set you free.
This kind of leadership I see why apple lost it's foot hold on the industry
luckman
luckman
I don't involve myself with flames, much less know how to bait one.
I realise you may be speaking about the AMD or Intel chips. Please pardon my structure. Otherwise:
From the Motorola spec sheet:
So the data bus is 64 bit, does this not make the chip 64 bit? If not, please correct me.
Lowmag.net
But the new Apple monitors only have the new connection. You can't plug them into old cards.
However, the old ATi Rage Pro does have the new connector on it, so the issue is moot.
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Mediocre my ass.
My Pentium 700 does SETI units in 12-13 hours. My G4 450 does 'em in 5-6 hours. With numbers like that I don't need to talk about Photoshop performance... and I do quite well at Quake3 with 40-50 fps, so don't tell us the Rage 128 is crap. It's not a GeForce but it's not crap.
I don't buy this. Why? Because it doesn't make sense really. I don't think ATI is in a position where they are seriously hurt if Apple doesn't ship their card. It seems to me that Apple is shooting its own foot (in terms of performance) for going with a lesser card. So why would they do that? It seems to me, they would use the other card because its cheaper. Besides, did Jobs really lose that much thunder? I mean, if anything people were waiting to see if the stuff was real or not.... you know, maybe even made people want to hear his keynote to see what was going on.
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...making bad business decisions to get vengeance... that's why apple is where they are today.
wanna know why microsoft is where they are today? they make good business decisions to get vengeance. (think of Gates and IBM).
wish
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Macs have been stuck with sub-standard ATI cards for years, but ATI seem to have pulled their collective finger out with the Radeon - some people think it'll be better than the GeForce 2GTS for example.
I hope Apple's choice of graphics card will be made on practical, not political grounds.
NT Swerver
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Moderator's essentials
Well, he was pretty pleased when he hit upon a great way to simulate thunder by shaking sheets of metal up and down in a waving motion (try it yourself if you like). But he was *not* pleased when the next day a competing theater was using his new technique in their productions!
And so he famously complained that they had "stolen his thunder". The phrase survives to this day.
ASA- ----------------------
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All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
ATI 'claims' the thing runs cool enough that the fan is basically for show, or use in Florida.
This is just complete bullshit (much like the last "leaked Cube" story was - I'm really starting to lose my faith in these rumor sites) and here's why:
When Apple, or Dell, or Compaq, or any one of 100 other big PC manufacturers, picks a component for their system, it's not the same process as Joe Blow going over to Tom's Hardware, reading about the fastest thing on the market, and then ordering one of them. No. Graphics cards and the like are rigorously tested for hundreds and hundreds of hours to ensure a.) compatibility and b.) stability. Often times the overall design of the computer is influenced by the chip itself; if it kicks out too much heat it will be oriented a certain way, or the airflow in the case will be rearranged to accomodate it, etcetera. In addition, a lot of possible scenarios are thrown at the completed machine to make sure it's not going to crash. Building a mass produced PC (or Mac) is a lot more of a science than most of us who consider it erector set engineering give it credit for. A very obvious case would be the iMac, but even for G4's and G3's, a lot more thought goes into them besides slamming together a bunch of components and praying for the best.
With that in mind, I hope you see how utterly impossible this story is. Jobs cannot simply switch out the graphics chip without seriously delaying the product and causing massive engineering and supply headaches.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
The cube is supposed to be silent. It has no internal fan. The Redeon requires a fan to keep it cool. Thus, there never were plans to put the Raedon in the Cube. Most likely the announcement was for a Raedon option for the high end Imacs. Someone misquoted the origional stoies for dramatic effect. Stating to be more and more common here at /. read yesterdays nVidia game cheater story. Another misquote. ASUS modified the drivers for cheating---NOT nVidia.
I think they're planning on doing this but saving it or the new motherboard architecture due out later this year.
Light a fire under IBM and Motorola. (Think G4e @ 600mhz)
IBM is working on it. Motorola wishes they could be as cool as IBM. However, they won't be able to catch up to Intel and AMD in clock speed unless they cheat somehow (like, say, doubling the clock rate while halving efficiency). I'm reminded of Patrick Volkerding jumping from Slackware 4.0 to Slackware 7.0 for similar reasons.
Get OSX out the door to take advantage of the MP
It's not ready yet. If they ship it before it's ready, there will be disaster. Remember, this is Mac OS on BSD - not an easy thing to pull off seamlessly, and it must be seamless.
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With all the new ideas coming from Apple, it's a shame that they end up wrecking all they've built. I am very impressed w/ the look and feel of Mac OS X, and have actually considered buying an Apple. I was also impressed w/ their cube. However, the moment I read these headlines, I thought: "What the hell are they smoking? Is there some 'mary jane' growing in the apple orchard?".
When ATI release the news about the cube and their Radeon, I am almost sure everyone was like 'wow, gotta get one of those machines'. Yet instead of thanking ATI for the free PR, Apple gets pissed and reduces to the Rage? Jee, I wonder who is really going to suffer -- I doubt many will consider their new cubes now, since the new machine will be equipped w/ dated graphics cards. If anything, they won't buy the cube, yet will still buy the Radeon to put in their other machines. Apple has always had the "they're good for multimedia, esp. graphics" title, so this move is like selling a brand new BMW, with a Pinto engine inside.
It's a shame that Apple will be ruining themselves... and without the help of MS and its Windows.
Actually, I asked this question a year or so ago when I worked at IBM. The answer? The G4 is basically a 604e core (much the the PIII is just a PPro) which is
32-bit (all of the new rs6k's are 64-bit), doesn't scale in MP systems very well, and IBM didn't think the SIMD instructions Motorola was adding were very useful
for general purpose computing. So basically it was like asking why Intel doesn't make a 500mhz version of the MMX Pentium for low end workstations.
If apple is smart they would be all over IBM to make POWER4's for them. That way they could announce that they have the first 64-bit 'PC' and actually be able
to complete in marketecture (that's Market - Architecture Ie clock speed).
Personally, I suspect that the G' series of processors has bottomed out architecturally. Any future speed improvements are going to come from process shrinks and
additional specific purpose instructions. Hmm sounds familiar doesn't it? It actually seems the design bottomed out somewhere around 400mhz. The pipeline is just
to short for very high clock rates.
You do have another choice, the RS6000's which use the POWER/PPC arch use a couple diffrent 64-bit (could this be why IBM doesn't use the G4 in their box's? maybe? ) implementations of the arch. I understand there is some work to get linux running on them too..
That said, I just found it interesting that what you criticize IE for--doing things for you instead of letting you choose for yourself--is the same thing Windows biased people criticize about the Mac OS.
You make a very good point about no operating system being the be all end all. The success of the Palm OS is the best example. Make an informed choice on the best tool for the job. You wouldn't eat soup with a fork, why run Windows on a PDA. If I want to webserver scripts and set up mail servers, I use Linux. If I want to do graphics or more general stuff I use MacOS. If I want to scream and yell and be frustrated, I use Windows.
Vote Quimby.
Several posters mentioned that the radeon wouldn't be placed in the cube because of the heat that it generates. A review on sharkyextreme mentions that the Radeon runs no hotter than 116.6F (including fan?) where as a Voodoo5 runs at 160.0F. That is still fairly hot, but it might not be an issue for a case that is specifically designed to convect heat. I am convinced that such a case can convect heat just as well or better than your typical PC case.
C'mon people, you really think Jobs would cripple his machines for spite? Please. He may have a massive ego, but it's not going to get in the way of his business sense.
Look at ATI's schedule: the Mac Radon won't even be available until September. Who wants to bet that they'll become BTO options at that time.
I'm going to cross my fingers and HOPE that ATI misbehaves again. That way maybe they'll put a GeForce2 MX in there. Anybody want to help me set up ATI for a fall?
... not in here, pal, this is a mercedes...
The ATI drivers keep crashing. It's obvious that a crash on my Mac was caused by the ATI drivers because the video sucks until a restart.
I'd buy a 3dfx card in a heartbeat if there were good drivers. Wait, isn't 3dfx making a Mac version of their latest Voodo card?
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this is my sig
: MPC7400 microprocessors support the MPX bus architecture with a 64-bit data bus and a 32-bit address bus.
:-))
:So the data bus is 64 bit, does this not make the chip 64 bit? If not, please correct me.
Very well then, I will correct you
the 7400/G4 has a 32 ALU, which means that it is a 32 bit processor. Just like the Pentium onwards are 32 even though the external databus is 64 bit. The only thing worth looking at when determining that is the ALU, the "only" thing changing the external bus width does is improving I/O and memory speed (and making it more expensive
Speaking of 64 bit, there was a 64 bit PPC called the 620 but that quickly vanished from Motorolas price lists. Otherwise, nearly all the CPU manufacturers have 64 bit CPUs, including Alpha, Mips, Sparc, IBM Power. The only major one that doesn't is Intel...
I can see how a 10 frame difference may be noticable, but .1? That is more along the lines of wasting you time. Don't get me wrong -- I've not been impressed with an ATi chipset yet.. Then again, they aren't that bad if all you do is Photoshop work. Apple picked the Rage 128 Pro for its color correction ability, and not it's Quake framerate. Life, and design firms and small businesses run on the 2D specs, not the 3D. The card may suck, but it fits the bill at the right price.
Lowmag.net
Radeon should fit. Might need a bigger heatsink to get rid of the fan but other then that it'll be the same size as the Rage128.
to replace the generally crappiness of ATI cards with something nice like GeForce.
:)
Now that would punish ATI since i'm guessing that apple do account for the bulk of their sales these days... would you use an ATI??!
If steve wants to keep his creations that secret he should build them in his garage... hand craft and nuture them... speak to them and make them translucent... and keep their carefully textured curves away from the public eye
Yeah! Cause you don't wanna lose brunes69's respect. You got your choice, either walk around with one nut for the rest of your life, or (horror of horrors) lose brunes69's respect.
Score adjusted accordingly.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Right-on!
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Max V.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
There are/were certainly not any plans to put a Radeon in an iMac; the R128s are soldered to various parts of the iMac. The Radeon will most likely be a BTO option on the G4 (non-cube) line.
2. They were early complete adopters of both firewire and USB.
Not to pick a nit, but I think you meant "inventors of firewire".
So wait, let me see if I get this right.
ATI leaks a rumor of the G4 Cube, and Apple spanks them by not releasing their chip which they have obviously taken great amounts of time an money to integrate into their new product.
They replaced an entire Video system in one week.
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Obviously the writed of this completely rediculous article has not worked anywhere near electronics design and manufacture.
One week to change an entire chipset? You have got to be yanking my noodle!
Rami James
Guy with more clue than that.
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rJames.org - illustration
Rage 128 is a bad card. Poor decision of Apple to get rid of the good Radeon(though overpriced) with a crummy card. It's wasted on a G4. You get a G4 for good stuff like graphics, and then you find you get horrible FPS because Apple had a bone to pick with ATI. of course, They should just put a Geforce 2 in, but i'm guessing Apple isn't gonna like that idea.
One of the reasons IBM/Motorola aren't all that excited about producing faster and faster G4 chips are licensing agreements with Apple that don't allow IBM to use those chips in their own machines. The G4 is definitely one of IBM's best processors, yet they don't make any of their Power line of RS/6000 workstations with it. Why make it faster, when all it's for is Mac's?
If you show the radeon in the demo, you're effectively announcing the card and your intentions with it, and demoing it, and all that.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
The 6100 had it too, and presumably the 8100. No idea whose idea that was. It plugged instead of screwed; whoopie. I thought it was particularly impressive that the monitor it shipped with needed one of those adapters.
As for connectors, there're several different connectors, the old ATi Rage Pro that I, heh, think you're thinking about (I have a couple of em at work), have aqn older style Digital Flat Panel connector, and the Apple monitors with digital connectors have all come with a newer type (I believe it's the same connector on the Hercules Geforce DDR-DVI)
What I'm thinking of is the digital connector on the G4s that Apple was shipping prior to this week, that the $4000 Cinema Display plugged into. I don't know, but I was told that this is the same connector that the new monitors use.
Any light you can shed?
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That's as may be, and it's understood the Rage128 is not a 'super accelerator' chip like a Ge or maybe a Radeon. But there are some important issues including one that _nobody_ seems to be picking up on:
- If you were going to get a Radeon and go for total peak performance, you would get a full size dual G4, not an 8" cube. Why would you _get_ The Cube if you wanted performance over all else? It's another consumer/prosumer form factor, not a horsepower monster design. Get the full size dual G4- lots of extra space for goodies in that, plenty of fans and cooling etc.
- Nobody ever mentions this. Do GeForces have quickdraw and Quicktime acceleration? Rage128s do. I picked up one recently, after the prices came well down, and the QT acceleration is real and very effective. Quickdraw acceleration is part of what makes those Photoshop scores perform so well- the Mac screen redraw gets accelerated by the 128 card while the PC relies on the poor 'ol CPU for everything. If you are working with prepress graphics at huge resolutions this becomes a constant, in-your-face issue, and the Rage128 addresses it. I think very few PC cards accelerate Color Quickdraw
;)
Add that up plus the relatively humble cooling requirements of a Rage128 and it doesn't suck. Its _game_ performance sucks compared with the latest and greatest, but here's a secret from a mac geek who dabbles in programming- all Mac cards _but_ ATI suck for OpenGL! You just cannot get OpenGL to work properly on a Mac 3dfx card even though they can get better framerate- and Glide is kind of fading away. The Voodoo3 uses some very ugly hacks to come up with a render-in-a-window mode: not a problem with the 'suckier' ATI. I run X-Plane (killer flightsim- now only $79!) and changing from voodoo2 to ATI128 was huge- not only did all of Austin Meyer's OpenGL tricks (from 'city lights' overlays to the airplanes' landing light) suddenly work perfectly and look great, but the sim immediately got better framerate IN 32 BIT than it ever got from the Voodoo in 16. This is not entirely because of the Voodoo- it's because X-Plane uses OpenGL and the ATI supports it directly, the Voodoo2 (which has a comparable max framerate with the 128) had to go through Mesa...The only thing I wonder is whether they while mind drive case manufacturers
I don't know what a "mind drive case" is, but I think I want one!
Do you think she'd spank me too? I'd rather have the MP G4 than the cube. That monster will kick serious butt. Let's see OSX with the Tenon X Windows, Max out the RAM, Get the Studio Display, and I may never leave my house.
Of course I would have to have YellowDog Linux on my external drive.
fuck windoze, fuck Compaq for being their lapdogs. Compaq and Windoze are a perfect match, pure shit. I hope they both go out of business. I have to use both at work. DOS is the best thing to come out of Redmond.
photosMy Photostream
Listen, sorry to be posting this here, because it's quite blatantly off-topic, and I'll happily take the karma hit that moderators will assess on me. It's just that this is about the only forum I can think of where I'll get intelligent "yup, I know what you mean" kinds of answers.
I support a number of Winblows 9x systems with ATI graphics cards of varying descriptions. Some of them at ATI 3D Chargers, some of them are Xpert@Play, Xpert@Play98, All-in-Wonder Pro, and All-in-Wonder 128, etc. Most of them are based on either the Rage Pro or the Rage 128 chipset.
And I can't get over how many driver problems I have with these things! I'm not an idiot, I know how to install drivers, and, in fact, I've gone so far as reading ATI's docs. (When in doubt, read the docs.)
One particular case, 16 identical machines running Win 95B (OSR2) and equipped with Xpert@Play98 (Rage Pro) PCI, *every last one of them* after I installed the drivers kept on starting up with "New Hardware Found - PCI VGA Adapter". Again, you'll note, this was after ATI's drivers were installed.
Those machines around the office with the All-In-Wonder cards have frequent crashes, showing invalid page faults in the video drivers.
Since ATI is a hometown company and seems to offer products that suit our needs, we've always used them, but I'm really convinced that their software people couldn't find their own rectal cavities with both hands and a flashlight.
Anyone else have similar experiences with their Windows drivers? How are the Linux and Mac drivers?
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
This whole story is absurd. I wish I could use my moderator points on the original story (FLAMEBAIT), so no one would waste their time on it.
Neither of the original articles mentions that ATI's press release said *anything* about the Cubes, but that features prominently in CmdrTaco's blurb. Most of the resulting threads talk about the video possibilities of the Cubes, or about purported downgrading of Apple's video cards, which wasn't in the original stories either.
We ought to have a system where CmdrTaco should lose "editor-karma" for posting rumor-quality stories with inaccurate summaries. That way, I can set my front-page threshold to avoid rumor trash.
Or, just give Slashdot the slogan "Rumors for Nerds. Stuff that pointlessly excites furious discussion."
Ah that's how it works! Thanks for the info.
Wow, I couldn't have made the point better myself. This is because PC CPUs are all still CISC, and have tons of extra circuitry to maintain backward compatibility all the way to 8086. So they need fans because they are bigger, hotter, and less efficient. This is also why Apple's performance advantage in laptops has been large and steady ever since the PowerPC was unveiled; Batteries and pentiums do not get along.
Yes, it sucks that Apple was forced to go dual-processor before OS X is out. When they have a multiprocessor OS, increasing processor number is a cheaper way to improve performance, but it's a bit premature today. They are forced to because, essentially, Motorola can't get its head out of it's ass and clean up its fabs. IBM has faster PowerPCs, and Apple can't use them because of moto's intellectual property controls.
Additionally, I have 5 fans in my computer in it's not noisy.
Noisy is a subjective measure. I have three in mine and it drives me crazy. I even wish they could get cheap, big flash-ram drives because I'm tired of listening to drives spin. Some people like quiet machinery; I'm one of them.
If you drive a Harley and like a computer with lots of fans, more power to you. I'll stick with a super-quiet EV1 and no fans in my box. (except the high-end computers still have a fan)
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
In retaliation the Fearless leader apparently then pulled the plug on the Radeon's rollout at MacWorld, all but publicly spanking ATi for its indiscretions and replacing the display demo Cube's flashy Radeon card with the more mundane and stale Rage 128 Pro
The radeon runs at ~115 F... more than cool enough to do away with the fan.
The fan is put on the consumer Radeon because it's hard for some people to take a card without a fan seriously. ATI could easily remove it for an OEM application.
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Get back to me when my brain starts working.
Apple was not cutting off its nose to spite its
face. The Mac Radeons weren't going to be available
until September anyway. What was cut off was ATI's
participation in the PR event, not ATI's participation in the Mac market, and that is at
least an arguably reasonable sanction for "spilling
the beans" about the PR event in the first place.
I'll make a few generalizations as to this "Apple coverage on Slashdot" phenomenon.
Mainly speaking, Slashdot's audience is people who consider themselves geeks. People who are generally technophiles. The audience has been diverse, but has gotten more and more homogenized throught the purifying flamewars.
Technophiles like technology. They tend to like technology for technology's sake. They swallow the industrialization viewpoint that technology will save mankind. That as mankind progresses through time, their intellect creates things that improves life, in general, and advances the race as a whole - towards some utopian future. Many fear that in the process, we've been diverted from utopia to distopia, by narrow-minded greedy corporate profit-seekers. This may or may not be true - but conspiracy theories abound on Slashdot. Somewhere along the way, the people with the money, the people that run corporations, figured out that if you don't put the brakes on technological advancement, you don't maximize the profits you gain along the way. The only way to put the brakes on technological advancement is to eliminate the competition that fosters, no, *demands* it. So when you get a couple of huge monopolies like Intel and Microsoft in charge of the main forefront of the technical advancement (at least how it's perceived, the Personal Computer *is* that), there's the perception that technological progress has been slowed, or halted, due to corporations seeking to maximize profit gain by the process. Market power does this.
So it's no wonder that Slashdot people root for the underdog. Miguel says Unix sucks. Maybe he's right, but Unix is the underdog, and the last-best-hope for the technolgical revolution. Whether or not Open Source and Linux are the best thing, technically, they represent a return to competition, resistance to the hegemony. I think most technophiles recognize that competition is good, spurs technology, steers us closer towards the utopian goal. Most technophiles seem to recognize Apple, ultimately as a threat to competition, if it were to gain too much marketshare. But right now, they're an attack dog on a leash. I know I'd like to see Apple flourish, for the only reason, that I'd like to see the PPC platform proliferate, and I'd like to see CHIRP become a major player in the PC market. I root for Apple, because they're the only foothold CHIRP has left. If Apple dies, the PPC dies, the thought that any alternative hardware platform is viable (Alpha, Transmeta, SPARC, hell, ANYTHING) dies with it. Intel continues to dominate (forget AMD, will ya?) and maybe Linux becomes the OS of the future, replacing Windows, maybe it doesn't. Just keep in mind, that in the long run, closed source equals controlled Intellectual Property, equals maximized profit. Open Source is not in a software vendor's best interest, if the consumer is not educated. If all other hardare platforms fail, and are overrun by Intel, and if Linux becomes the primary OS, and all competing OSes are shut out eventually, Linux will slowly become proprietary, by hook or crook. Because that is the way this game is played.
Rooting for the underdog keeps competition alive. Competition is the way to a technological utopia. Monopolies (or oligopolies) are the way to a utopia, for the rich and powerful only. A hellhole for the rest of us.
Just beware, that the underdog can sometimes become the Alphadog, and bite the hand that feeds it. Technophiles are a perceptive bunch, so I doubt the tide will not turn when or if that began to happen. I remember back in the DOS 1.x days, Microsoft was everyman's hero, because they freed people from the proprietary hell that was dumb-terminals and mainframes. There was hope for the future. We just didn't know who we handed the keys over to yet.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
First there was the "Caldera and SCO merge, don't you think they suck anyways?" type of article, and now this.
..
This makes slashdot look no better that your average cheap rumors site (like macosrumorros).
If Apple was planning on using Radeons on cube and then decided not to, they are punishing their customers, not ATI. I don't think Apple is -that- stupid. Also, ATI is too big to feel the effect of this decission as a "punishment". They sell their graphics cards and chips to a large number of OEMs of which Apple is just a small fraction
We disagree on what qualifies as an objective source.
Personally I think this article is one sided and comes from a news outlet that has a particularly hard-love outlook toward Apple. I am not disputing that these are indeed the claims of the ATI employees or even that it is gospel truth. I am however skeptical that the RADEON did not launch for soley based on Jobs reaction. Here is why I am skeptical:
* The claim that ALL radeons had to be pulled from the show floor is a bit far fetched. Apple is not the "Supreme Authority" at Macworld. Macworld magazine is. My guess is that Macworld magazine would have sided with ATI and allowed a radeon launch at another part of the show. Simply because the press gets a kick out of that sort of thing.
* There may have been other reasons that Apple may have requested that ATI delay a product launch indeference to nVidia.
* Employees tend to be defensive of their company and may have become angry at such a request by Apple. ATI senior management would have had to go along with Steve's demands in order for the product launch NOT to occur and I doubt they would have done that. Generally news of this nature is covered in press-releases, not in whispers to IMG reporters.
* Steve has not displayed his legendary temper for some time. While it is perhaps his most famous quality, he has in recent history shown more level headed business sense.
* In recent Macworld Expo histroy (Tokyo) when a Jobs keynote has been changed at the last minute, Mr. Jobs has not dealt with it so eloquently. There were numerous inconsistencies with his tokyo keynot due to a last minute delayed product launch. My suspicion is that similar inconsistencies would have arisen.
Please note that I am primarily trying to play devil's advocate here and present situations that have not been mentioned. I am a skeptic and I always try to look at all the angles of a news story. I think the points I described are valid, but they are in no way incontrovertible proof that the IMG article is false. I simply wish to present an alternate viewpoint.
Basically I have a harsh distaste for general scathing emotional criticisms of anyone because I wouldn't like it if it happened to me.
The product has been announced and will begin to ship in September. That it was excluded from the keynot hardly seems newsworthy now.
Fuck. I didn't say crap. Where the fuck do you read the word 'crap' in that comment?
I said mediocre, as in big fucking deal. So Apple has yet another pretty little case to stick a computer in. Is this really big and important news?
So, yeah: Mediocre your ass.
why do you even waste the keystrokes?
If you've read anything on Apple in the last few years, Steve Jobs brought the company back from the brink of disaster when he came back as CEO. It was the leadership without Steve that made Apple lose it's foothold; they've done nothing but regain it since he came back.
In fact, the whole above article is really propagating misinformation about Apple, and Steve. He may be an egomaniac, and have the occasional temper problems, but he is not stupid when it comes to business. As people have mentioned, and the Radeon Mac FAQ verifies, the card is not available until September. All he did was cut ATI's demo of the card from the convention, which is justifiable considering they leaked the centrepiece of Jobs' show. The card in the cube was never changed. (The article should probably be updated to reflect that).
Regardless on how x86 and G4s compare, 500mhz G4 is still last year's tech! 500mhz G4s were out last year, weren't they?
I should think most people don't need a lecture to figure out that a 500mhz G4 last year is the same processing power as a G4 500mhz this year...
Personally, I find it hard to beleive that even Steve Jobs would be foolish enough to so compromise the quality of his demo by replacing a Radeon with a Rage 128. Apple is hardly in a prominent position in the industry and IMO their achilles heel right now is their graphics capability.
The Apple Insider report says: "Mr. Jobs ripped all MENTION of ATI and their products from his keynote presentation this morning." Fine, he didn't go on about the cool ATI card they were going to use, but I find no mention of him pulling out a Radeon and slapping in a Rage 128 Pro. If Mr. Jobs DID do this then I must assume one of the following is true:
1. The demo did not include a live demo of the cube's graphics capability
2. Jobs is an idiot
For Jobs to replace a Radeon with a Rage 128 for a live demo, he would be stealing his OWN thunder. It's like ripping out a GeForce and swapping in an original TNT right before your cool demo of Quake 3 Arena. "Just pretend this game is running at 100 fps, 1024x768x32 with volumetric shadows and multiple movable lightsources instead of the 2fps at 640x480x16 like you're seeing now. That's what it would be like if I hadn't ripped the video card we plan to ship this machine with out of a sense of ill-inspired spite. Amazing? That's why we're #1!" Ummm.... no.
If the card was pulled it was most likely because of last-minute technical issues. More likely is that the card was never intented to be demoed in the first place.
Apple has a huge impact across the computer industry in terms of exposure and recognition. You dont have to like Apple to know alot about that company. Little could be said of it's competitors7.
One proof to this is Slashdot. Macs aren't a Linux machine per say (though it does run it quite well), and yet, Apple gets more press on Slashdot than any single Intel-based hardware company, including strictly-Linux vendors like VA Research (or do they sell non-Linux setups?).
So, when ATI was originally invited onto the Big Stage at one of the most coveted Mac events (and thus before the entire industry), it was granted a huge favor. Apple doesn't have top care about ATI. No more than it should about IBM that supplies hard drives into most of their machines.
But instead of taking this humbly, ATI's invlated heads went off to blow away some of the punch lines Apple (aka, Steve) need to keep the crowd alive, by pre-anouncing products that were up until this point just rumors.
Keeping the faithful crowd happy is what saved Apple.
For sure, Radeon will ship in the Cubes within 2 months from now. You can bet that, since the machine is already up for order, there are actually quite a few already in the pipeline that have the Radeon cards inside.
Thought for the launch, ATI got what it deserved: no chance for the spotlight, for having shadowed Steve's spotlight.
It's a standard AGP card. You can see the Rage 128 PRO in the QuickTime VR of the Cube coming out of its shell. It looks like Apple was set to announce that the Rage 128 PRO would be standard, but that you could have a build-to-order option of a RADEON. This is also what they're supposed to be doing with nVidia ... offering their cards as options.
When they launch the Cube next month, they'll probably hype up the nVidea card only.
The only ones who truely get spanked are the consumers. Now they have to shell out an additional $260 for a Raedon card. MMM imagine, G4 500 MP, Raedon, MacOS X bundle.
--
J, Internetist
I can believe ATi might getkicked out of the show for that, but the rest is a real stretch of the imagination.
Apple is selling a "Supercomputer" here with 64 megs of ram. Their inclusion of last year's most so-so 3d graphics contender hurts Apple more than anyone else. I mean, come on, even S3 had better 3d performance.
Furthermore, I've not seen the inside guts of this cube, but I would be very surprised if the video is on a PCI card. In keeping with Apple tradition it's probably soldered right to the mainboard.
And, re-design the mainboard of your flagship product mere weeks before the launch just so that you can use the crappier version of an offending vendors product? It just doesn't make sense. Not even if you're insane.
The programming interface used by the Mach64 through the Rage128 is so similar that I'm pretty certian the only reason they put the Rage128 in there is simplicity of driver support. ie, they were too lazy to switch to 3dfx or nVidia.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
That feature can be turned off. I can't think of a way to implement it that wouldn't involve sending the info to somebody.
IE is more standards compliant than Netscape.
As Netscape 6 draws nearer to completion, Microsoft will begin fighting against standards again. IE 5.5 is the first step in this direction.
IE isn't Word, it doesn't have a paper clip nor does it interfere with your browsing of the Internet.
Most of IE's annoyances are harder to turn off than the "What's Related" feature in Netscape.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
i didn't say "high-end users" i just said "end-users."
Why are PC bigots so foulmouthed?
So Apple has yet another pretty little case to stick a computer in. Is this really big and important news?
For those of us who value beauty, elegance, design and quality, yeah, it's a big deal. We believe quality is worth something and we gladly pay premiums for it, because in this Microsoft/TacoBell/Britney Spears world, quality is sorely lacking. The ability to discern quality is called taste, and those who can't see the value of it seem to spend an awful lot of time trying to bring down those who can. It's why I drink Guinness not Bud, drive a VW not a Chevy, carry a Nikon not a disposable, and prefer Macs over PC's. Call me an elitist if you like; I am. I want my tools to work, and I make enough money as a "pixelpushing Photoshop whiz" that I can pay Jobs et al their money and get a computer that I don't have to think about. I like that. I can think instead about the job I'm getting paid to do, I get it done sooner and I have more time to spend with my family. Sorry if that offends your desire to have me spend my afternoons coaxing another 6 mhz from my cpu. lol.
Note to those of more even temper: Macs suck at some things. I know this. They're just not the things I need them to do, so I don't much care. They're just tools.
I don't really think that's an issue for me. I have 2 DVD players right now. (one in PC, one "real" apex player)
but my hidden menu doesn't work. Sux. BUt I can override the macrovision on my PC.
later
Dan
And throw some more cash here, and there, and there also...
In the early way of Linus Torvalds, I'll stick with the hardware that I can afford.
Here's a MacCentral story updating the situation: http://www.maccentral.com/news/0007/21.trouble.sht ml
This is so typical of Mr. Jobs, whenever something doesn't go his way, he has to destroy something/someone else. He has publicly humilated many people, including our good friend Woz, who for some reason, still believes Jobs is a good friend of his. Here's a quote from http://www.woz.com/letters/general/04.ht ml: "But he eventually fell into disfavor with the LISA group. Naturally, the Macintosh became a bit of striking back for him." He hurt a lot of people at Apple. (sigh)
hlag
If they really wanted to punish ATI they would have went with a different card entirely, 3DFX and NVIDIA would have bent over backwards to score a deal like that.
It's more likely that ATI wasn't sure they could get the Radeon out before the release or the final design stages so instead offered technology that they know works.
If Apple did make a concious decision in the short amount of time, putting a lower performing video card into their new product would only make them look the fools.
Although when I did see that the Rage 128 pro card was going to be used I wondered why they didn't go with others. The only reason I can come up with is that they don't want to put something that might fail and make them look bad. Whatever their reason I bet they'll offer new systems with a Radeon, 3DFX or NVIDIA card installed within the next few months, definiatly before christmas.
Well, the IMG article claims that they met with ATI staff about this (I can't read the other slashdotted article). Do they mean the people that demo stuff in the ATI booth or did they meet with anybody who actually knows anything? Maybe ATI is just covering their ass for some technical problem that hasn't been resolved.
Also, the article indicates that this is a temporary thing. Maybe Jobs wanted to prevent ATI from making a big splash, but I doubt he would bar all Radeon cards from all current Macs! As was mentioned by another poster, if he really wanted to punish ATI he would scrap them altogether and go with another vendor. Apple's recent marketing strategy has been based on these surprise announcements at huge events, and if ATI really did leak the info, Apple would be right to be a little annoyed.
Just like the rumored/denied/confirmed cube, we have to wait a bit to find out what's really going on.
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"It was people! People soiled our green!"
Let's face it, both Apple and ATi are going to lose some money over this situation.
Neither one is going out of business over it, but in the long run, cube buyers stuck with aging Rage 128 hardware are going to have to shell out the cash for a quality vido card. They won't all buy Radeons, but those who do shell out the cash for it will give ATi a bigger profit margin than they would get from the built-in card. And I doubt the change will seriously impact on the sales of the ubercool cube.
So the consumers are the losers.
And Jobs is just a big loser.
Sort of, if you dig down into the tech specs, the cube (at least) has an apple ADC, and a standard VGA connector. So if you want a digital display, you're locked into Apple's variety. But if you still have a crappy tube, you're good to go.
-o
Why are Mac bigots such name droppers? Why do you assume I'm a PC bigot? Because Windows runs on a PC, and you assume I'm a Windows user?
Microsoft/TacoBell/Britney Spears world, quality is sorely lacking
Well, I won't say much for Microsoft/TacoBell, but Britney Spears has talent. I mean, dance and sing.
For those of us who value beauty, elegance, design and quality... blah blah blah
So, apparently, you know all about quality, taste, and what works; All without thinking about it.
Note to those of more even temper: Macs suck at some things. I know this. They're just not the things I need them to do, so I don't much care. They're just tools.
And now you try to be fair. Well that's nice...
...in all fairness, I don't really believe that Apple products fit the bill of being tasteful, or are of a quality that is valuable to me.
Oh yeah, and if you don't want people being so 'foul mouthed', maybe you should stop speaking for them, neither directly, or through insinuation
Yes, but ADB was the product that inspired the creation of USB. It should also be noted, that while it was Intel who created USB, it was Apple who helped jump start the market by offering USB as the only external connector on the original iMacs - things don't stay unexpandable long in this market.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
No - it doesn't. The data bus is the width of one processor cache line, not the width of a word. The idea is that you fetch one entire cache line over the bus at a time because if you reference word 1 you are likely to want word 2 sometime in the near future as well. Then, if you walk through an array of 1000 elements, you'll only need 500 memory references, and memory references are *very* expensive operations. A 64 bit rocessor would have a 128bit or 256 bit data bus. The Origin 2000 uses a 128 *byte* data bus between the L2 cache and memory. I don't remember the cache line size of the L1 cache. The PowerPC is, AFAIK, a 32 bit processor at its core. Altivec extensions, however, allow the G4 to do operations on more than one word in the processor at once.
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
If they can't produce enough of these babies, lay the blame on an early press release.
If there's a glitch with it, blame it on an early press release...
Do not, however, turn around, and say "Well, since you gave us up, and Apple enthusiasts know now, we're going to punish BOTH of you by both not allowing you to put your cards in our machines, and not allowing our customers to ENJOY having a quality card in the PC."
Someone was so obsessed with pee pee smacking ATI, that they forgot exactly who it is that's going to suffer for this.
That damn near sounds like something all the anti microsoft folks around here tout...
What a lot of these people fail to realize is that BUSINESS, and REVENGE are like oil and water. Make money first.... Throw tantrum later, when at home sleeping on gold threaded sheets.
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
That's just ridiculous. I somehow doubt Apple's going to cripple most of their product line cause ATi's got a big mouth.
The only thing it may have done is made the rumoured talks with NVIDIA a little more friendly.
More likely we'll be seeing Radeon cards standard in Mac's as soon as ATi has some solid drivers. The first Rage 128 cards in Macs had lousy drivers and Apple got tons of flak about it. They probably don't want to go through that again.
I think some conspiracy-minded people read the specs on the cube (Rage 128 card), heard that ATI was announcing Radeon for the Mac at Macworld and that Apple was announcing this cool new "cube" at Macworld and somehow made a hopeful connection between the two and assumed that the only reason these new cubes didn't have the radeon card was because of the tiff between Jobs and ATI.
From what I can tell, these cubes were supposed to have Rage128 chipsets from the get-go, and that Radeon is only for the new G4s.
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"It was people! People soiled our green!"
In the press release they announced some new Apple Displays that had a special Apple feature connector. Going back to the old Rage cards, they don't support this. this has to be a joke. More free PR i guess
Good troll. High on BS. You got lots of replies... gratz.
Your address is invalid.
High performance creates heat
You are wrong. You know how a motorcycle really does ride better when you give it an extra-loud aftermarket exhaust system? It's the noise that makes high performance, not the heat.
T he Benchmark Results of the Radeon compare well with a Geforce2.
The Rage Pro Fury just sucks; not even beating a TNT2. Aple is Dum.
From Apple's Website:
The 450MHz Power Mac G4 Cube comes ready for action with Mac OS 9, 64MB of high-performance RAM, 1MB of backside level 2 cache, a capacious 20GB Ultra ATA/66 hard disk drive, DVD-ROM drive with DVD-Video playback, and the ATI RAGE 128 Pro graphics card with 16MB of graphics memory.
Wow. Sounds mediocre to me. All that mediocrity for $1,800! What a frickin' bargain!
Personally, I think it's more impressive to have a computer that looks like a freaking beast from a block buster monster movie that a pansy looking flower from never never land.
ATI failed in their duty to keep certain proprietary information confidential. This is not a leak by a rogue employee, it's a major fuck-up by their marketing department, and their management.
The penalty was very mild.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
No offense, but everyone knows the Rage series just plain blows.. Heck, ANYTHING from ATI blows. If Apple wants to get ahead of the game with video and realtime 3d and multimedia, they should get into talks with NVidea or 3DFX.
I eat the flesh off the living, and I vote!
The IMG article also has brief mention of the limitations of the cube as far as add-on cards go. I don't know much about the cube, but does anyone know if a Radeon card would even fit? Or does it have the video chipset on the motherboard? If that's the case, as the above poster noted, I doubt they would be able to change this on a whim anyway. It seems more likely that the Radeon is to be used in the normal G4s.
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"It was people! People soiled our green!"
I'm a PC whore. I've touched Macs twice in my life, and it gave me goosebumps. Nevertheless I can acknowledge that Macs are top quality systems designed for reliability and ease of use, and that's a big plus for all these "Hi I'm Bob and this is my first web page" idiots that have somehow learned to reproduce like rats. Apple is dedicated to selling only tried and tested hardware, and their reputation of quality is strong enough to warrant the higher purchase prices comparatively with PC's.
Now with this nice little Stevey Jobsey plot twist, everybody's quick to jump on the trigger and label him as an obsessive compulsive transexual nutcase. Well some of that is probably true, but think about it just a minute : ATI's Radeon is brand spanking new, hasn't even hit the shelves here in Canada yet. It is my personal guess that maybe Apple isn't so sure about shipping with Radeon boards yet, simply because the product is not yet mature enough to live up to Apple's reputation. I'm guessing they were still unsure about shipping Radeon so early, and alleging that ATI played an important suit-licking card too quickly is what tipped the scales in favor of reliability, hence the older, proven ATI Rage 128. ATI isn't losing a market-threatening wad of cash here, let's face it : it's Apple. They make less cash selling whole systems than ATI makes selling only video cards in the same fiscal quarter.
The real motor behind this brisk decision is probably just good old fashioned Apple P.R. Anyone who's worked on phone support would understand the difference between an ignorant on a PC, and an ignorant on a Mac. The PC guy will yell at you in frustration, whereas the Mac guy will be more calm and listening. They listen to phone techs, they listen to their Mac dealer, they listen to Steve Jobs as if he were a god, because he gives out the image that his company "Cares" for their customers more than the others. That illusion is what keeps Apple safe from the rabid competition that's hemorraging everyone else.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Before you even start in, I'm making a philosophical point here. I understand the difficulty of working with partners without disclosing information. Apple has to accept some of the blame here. Presumably ATI did not devine this information. The original source of the information is Apple. If Apple had not let the information out, it could not have been leaked.
It seems that in this brave new world of instantaneous and sensationalist "news" that we pay too much attention to those stories that seem most exciting. This story might be true, it might not be true. We should not pass judgement on those involved until we know all the facts. Lest we become judgemental.
It seems to me that this story only has weight because of Steve's infamous temper. But to his credit, there has been very little evidence of that temper since he left apple, tail tucked, many years ago.
From what I've read on www.macintouch.com if you replace the stock card you loose DVD play back. So you have to choose, kick ass games or dvd.
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
Please. This whole article is flamebait.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Protect the dumb computer users
Because the original poster was an Anonymous Coward. All anonymous comments default to score zero, while logged in users' comments default to 1. You'll note though, it has now been moderated up to 1 (and yeah, I got a chuckle out of it too :)
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
They could at least send me a free keyboard and mouse to make up for these iMac toys they tried to pawn off on me. I suppose they'll expect me to fork out another $120 for these revolutionary input devices. It doesn't even have a scroll wheel! Bahhhhhh!
it's not ATI that'll bear the brunt of this, assuming that it's true...
it's the end-users who will be stuck with an ATI Rage Pro.
one of the main reasons i haven't been a fan of the recent macs is their insistence on including sub-standard 3d cards from ATI. especially when apple's marketing always lists them as the most amazing, "ultra-realistic" 3d you can get...
Second of all, all the press materials (PDF spec sheets etc) all refer to the ATi RAGE 128, this is a lot of work for a large company to do in about a week which is the length of time this contraversy has existed.
Third of all why would Apple weaken their product line to spite ATi? If anything Jobs would be more likely to say "Bend over so I can stick your card where it belongs, we're giving the contract to 3DFx". Weakening their product line would have impact on their profits.
Basically on a rumors site anybody can say anything and it will get posted just in case it happens to be true. Being correct 1% of the time seems to make up for the 99% of the time they're incorrect or partially correct.
That'll be 2 cents please.
Okay, the real reason that G4s are not sporting Radeons yet is that there are no mac Radeons yet. ATI will not shp Mac AGP Radeons until September with the PCI Radeons quickly to follow. Ths isn't Jobs spanking ATI or anything, it is just ATI delivering a product after MWNY. I doubt that the Radeon was meant to ever be released with the Dual G4.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Well it looks like I win your left nut. Because, the cube's video card IS removeable.
I just got an email from a friend who studied the cube closely yesterday at the expo. And he noticed that the card was NOT hard wired to the mobo.
However, I don't know and doubt that it is a stadard AGP card.
If you're proven wrong are you REALLY gonna cut it off, or just back down? Like the guy who said he'd eat his mouse if the G4 cube was real?
If you're making a statement, you'd better stick to it, or I lose ALL respect for you.
I don't believe that Steve Jobs would do this. One of the places that Apple's hardware has lagged behind the PC world for the past year or so is in graphics acceleration. Using a slower card would just hurt Apple's sales. Additionally, all of the carefully prepared advertising copy and press releases that Apple released yesterday would have to have been revised almost instantaneously, and the new systems would have to have been requalified with Rage 128 based cards instead of Radeons. Don't believe the story. It probably didn't happen.
"I don't care what the engineers say, the power supply distributor must be punished for listing us (Apple) on their internal bookkeeping. How can we (Apple) remain competitive if the IRS knows our every move?" Jobs then snorted a phattyboombatty line of cocaine and recited what seemed to be both an essay on the human condition and his personal fears that the X-files was actually reality but we are all blanking it out.
The power supply distributor was quoted as saying, "That f***ing crazy psycho Jobs better not come near my house after dark again, or he'll get a taste of my boomstick."
[PS - this may be that last column by this author, as Jobs' lawyers have removed his hands and vocal cords, and threatened suit. ~Ed]
s/nerd/boss/
As much as I would hate to see apple make such a stupid move. There may be some truth to it. According to apple's webpage on the PowerCube's graphics they will be using the rage 128. Really bad move on apple's part me thinks.
Trying to be different, just like everyone else.
Wait a minute...the one of the cube's design goals was to be fanless, yet every picture I've seen of the Radeon card shows that it requires its own cooling fan. What gives?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Read the article... the card was pulled from the spotlight at the show and ATI was pulled from the keynote. When the Radeon is ready to go (09/2000) it will ship with the computers. They wouldn't damage their product to spite ATI but still put another ATI board in there. It's simple: Steve thought ATI stole some of his thunder with their leak, so he declined to give any to them at the Expo.
.sig: file not found
Who needs competition when companies that are working together will just destroy each other. Gee, capitalism is great . . .
Their website doesn't offer any insight as to whether you can swap out the card; it doesn't say yea or nay. It definately DOES say you can on the G4 desktops, and that you can swap out the RAM on the Cube, so by ommission it seems that you cannot change the video card in the Cube by design.
This thing just looks cool. I want one. If I have to cut a bit of casing to change the video card, then oh well. :)
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Something tells me that this story is mostly misinformation. Go look at the original press release - it doesn't really reveal anything, in fact, it doesn't even make much sense. It says the machines will ship with Rage 128 and RADEON -- what the heck does that mean?
Judging by ATI's past record on the Mac, the drivers probably aren't ready anyway, not to mention the hardware itself. Don't get me wrong, the 128 is old news, and nothing to really cheer about, but Apple doesn't want to go through another buggy video driver fiasco like they did with the blue & white G3's. I wouldn't be surprised if this story was thought up and leaked by Apple to cover up the fact that their only OEM video card vendor can't produce proper drivers on time.
Apple is NOT making the Radion card less avaliable!
Apple had planned to demo the Radion cards during the keynote speech and in other significant places. However, at no point was Apple going to make the Radion card a standard install. Apple is going to offer it as an OEM item that can be added to the G4 Powermacs (the big ones, not the cubes).
But the Radion cards aren't even avaliable yet! They will be avaliable in a the next couple of months. Apple is clearly going out of their way to make the Radions a part of the current upgrade of the G4's even if it means they can't include them initially - or can't afford to ship them standard.
Personally, I'm glad they are an OEM option. I wouldn't want to pay $200 for 3D features I never use - they are of little help for print and web design.
Was Apple shootign themselves in the foot? Yes and no. From a shipping product standpoint, no. There is no change in actual shipping products. From a hype standpoint? Perhaps - but it seems that Apple has had plenty of hype going into this expo. (How many G4 cube related stories made it on to slashdot?)
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Since when has apple made anything upgradeable, anyway?
luckman
luckman
I don't involve myself with flames, much less know how to bait one.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Makes perfect sense to me. You can't make any money off ram and having a large portion of it around is riskier than owning stock in nothing but internet companies.
F /...
Now that APPLE actually endorses using 3rd party standard ram its obvious (to me) that they realize this and are expecting the end consumer to buy cheap ram from somewhere else.
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Solaris/FreeBSD/Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
My take on the whole thing? Jobs is hopping mad, and in an infantile (but effective) move, spanked ATI for being naughty (or more precisely, for employing one naughty, gabby employee who hasn't been found yet). So ATI loses out on the keynote spotlight.
That doesn't mean that you won't find ATI hardware in the G4 Cube or any other Mac. It just means that ATI is going to have to hang its head, say "sorry" a lot, and life will go on. The new graphics card will be an OEM option - it would punish the consumer more than ATI not to include it. ATI and Jobs will kiss and make up.
Don't blow things out of proportion. All will be OK - profit will prevail over ego.
Mr. Ska