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Apple Moving To G5s Next Year?
Rand Race writes: "Lowend Mac is reporting here that Apple is considering dropping the G4 on most of its line in favor of IBM's Altivec-less G5. The G5 would appear in early 2001 at speeds from 700Mhz to 1Ghz in single, dual, and quad setups. Speeds up to 2Ghz should be reached by 2002. Updated G3s (750Cx/G3e) at 533-666Mhz will be used in iMacs and iBooks (maybe a 666Mhz G5 iMac SE), Dual and Quad G4-500s in midrange machines, and G5s in high end machines (733,866, & 1Ghz), Powerbooks (733 & 850), and Cubes (866 & 1Ghz). Disclaimer; this is a rumour and we all know about Apple rumors..."
Update: 08/18 09:04 PM by CT : Several people noted that this is more then a rumor, its a blatant lie... they got very worked up about it too ;)
Have you ever seen a program does REQUIRED MMX, SSE, 3DNow? The truth is aside from Photoshop and some other special applications, no one uses Altivec that much because they want to remain compatible with G3s. Having the G5 (which is used in IBM workstations and servers) gives Apple an edge in server applications where Altivec isn't really that useful.
(Emphasis added by me)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Mac OS X is very portable code, and it wouldn't suprise me at all to learn that it was still running on SPARC, HPPA, and Intel, just like NeXTSTEP did.
Alpha (or any other GCC-supported platform) wouldn't be all that hard to do.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
have a look at http://lowendmac.com/rumormill/about.shtml:
i hate it when i see something like this, but there's already a hundred posts going on about where are the numbers? and who is the source?
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
I've heard they've got OSX running on Alphas and have heard very faint rumors of them working on Crusoes.
Pooty tweet
The G4 is both a chip AND a computer system.
Don't correct people if you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
Oh, the G4 has really given Apple plenty of marketting trouble. People just love that megahertz number despite the fact that it is only one part of a fast machine. Apple has done a good job showing how the G4 boosted Photoshop performance, but I don't know if it's helped much else. Is there a more general set of benchmarks? Is there any other application that's sped up by the Altivec? Does anyone ever use Intel's MMX instructions?
I remember when we had MIPS, a reasonably good standard. Are any on the horizon?
Having the G5 (which is used in IBM workstations and servers) gives
As far as I know there is no such thing as a 'G5' used in IBM server and workstations. There is the POWER series of processors which are power hungry 64-bit processors and have very little to do with the low power embedded style processors that motorola produces. Look at RS/6000 Model F80 if you don't believe me.
Good afternoon, Slashdot, and thanks for liking to my delightful PowerPC G5 rumor hoax. If you'd read the whole article, seen my other articles, and read the Rumor Mill about page, maybe you wouldn't have linked. OTOH, as my publisher notes, it's remarkably easy to create a plausible rumor with absolutely no basis in reality. I've loved your discussion, though, especially the 666 observations. I'll have to put in for a bonus after getting Slashdotted. ;-)
IBM demonstrated a PowerPC chip running at 1 Ghz way back in 1998
If you look a little more carefully at those press releases you will discover that chip would never have worked in any real system considering it acccually a implemented a subset of the required PPC instructions. It was a technology demo nothing else. IBM's up and comming POWER4 on the other hand is a real ghz processor but apple probably won't want to ship a processor designed for a server in the near future. If apple wanted 64-bit PPC's with fast memory subsystems they could have had them. Of course apple will have to give up that we don't need a fan attitude when their processors are designed for high power computing tasks.
Are you refering to the actual silicon or to the instruction sets? there is a difference, wish i could remember the URL. The actual chip designs have nothing to ddo with the instruction set in the x86 line, however it has everything to do with the ppc line. since ppc's don't have a "micro core" to translate instructions to something that the processor actual uses, therefore x86 based chips can under go radical redesigns more easily the the ppc, IMHO this is causing the Mhz problems.
But MMX, SSE, and 3DNow! are hard to use in the first place. All that sharing of registers and register switching crap cripples the performance of SIMD. There's a tradeoff involved, and you may end up reducing performance if you aren't careful. Altivec involves a completely independant register set, so you can only really gain in performance. Of course, this is all a theoretical point if Motorola can't produce the chips with decent yield. And they certainly aren't!
I don't understand why there is so much trouble with Altivec. The UltraSPARC, HP PA-RISC, Alpha, and MIPS processors all have SIMD units. Even the cheap embedded processors like the SH4 have integer and fp SIMD. I think Motorola was actually the last to add support. I doubt there's an inherent problem with Altivec. It's probably that Motorola's G4 design doesn't fabricate well.
Motorola has had a lot of trouble in the past with their designs. Many of their 64 bit designs (the 620 and 640) were scrapped because of manufacturing problems. I believe that the only surviving member, the 630, is what IBM calls the Power 4.
BTW, IBM doesn't use the G5 at all right now. It doesn't really exist yet. They use the Power 4. The G5 is Motorola's new 64 bit design.
Dude, I think you read it wrong, or I wrote it wrong. What I'm asking is why Apple makes such a fuss over squelching rumours, not why /. makes such a fuss over rumours.
I, for one, love reading about the rumours. They make me want to see and buy the product even more. What I'm saying is Apple should (and probably does) know this and probably works it to build the hype.
--Calum
What are you talking about?? The G4's (other than the cube) all come with PCI slots, a 2x AGP slot and firewire.... plus room to add new internal components...
and speed is their biggest problem... they've been held at 500 MHz for almost a year now.
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
seriously, though -- does anybody know if the new dual processor macs will run linux? isn't that the real question on everybody's mind?
Hasn't Jobs sued you yet?
that space above the DVD drive is not a drive bay, even though it may appear to look like one when you open the case. As there's no corresponding hole at the front, so the olny thing that can be put there is a hard drive
Correct. It was originally for a single HD. The space *below* the DVD bay is for a 3 1/2" removeable device.
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Whoops, correction: the PowerPC 630 actually became the Power 3, I believe. The Power 4 is a new thing.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
>But looking at the Wintel market, where Altivec and 128 bit register are unheard off, Speech Recognition software is much further ahead of anything available on the Mac
True, but I think that has more to do with the historical apple-version-lag than the usefulness of Altivec in speech recognition.
just my blog and pix
BTW, Bungie did get sucked up by MS, but they have announced that Halo will be a simultaneous Mac/XBox release.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
It's not a gimmick. SIMD worked pretty darn well on the Cray, and is heavily used in DSPs in the form of multiplier-accumulators. The only problem is that you need code that actually uses it. It works great for matrix multiplication. You can tell a processor to multiple a row of a matrix by a constant, and it can then perform it as a parallel operation. Without it, you'd have to hope that the processor realizes that it can perform the multiplications in parallel. And image processing and 3D graphics software do a lot of matrix multiplications.
The reason we don't see much benefit on Intel processors is because the implementation is seriously limited. MMX shares the same registers as the FPU because expanding the register set forces all operating systems to be updated to save extra registers on a context switch. Microsoft would have had to release new versions of Windows, and Intel didn't want to go that route. And the x86 FPU unit is stack based, which makes it hard to optimize in the first place. The only decent implementations were on processors with little software support to begin with, except for the G4. The only evidence we have of SIMD's advantages on the desktop is from Mac OS X. But that isn't released yet, so we don't all have first hand evidence.
And the reason that someone is backing away is because they can't manufacture their chip properly. In a situation like that, a company would rather say the feature is not that important than say their design was a failure.
The PPC chip is actually an incredibly excelent chip, it it works well. The problem is Motorola who really doesn't know where it is going and even has conflicting interests. On the one hand the produce the PPC processor and the other hand they do very little to push it and develop mother boards for the Intel and Sparc chips. Its strange that Motorola is incapable of seeing a good product when they see it.
Whether the story is for real or not, shouldn't really be the issue, what should be examined is whether such a move would make sense. While on the one hand the altivec does stuff differently from the MMX, IBM has probably got it right the KISS (Keep it simple stupid) approach as it simplifies on production and helps them concentrate on other aspects of the chip production. After all we are talking about a RISC chip, where the whole point was keeping out junk - just see where CISC has got Intel. Although the x86 line is still advancing, Intel realizes that at some point they are going to have to remove a lot of redundent instructions if they are going to reduce development times.
If Apple chucks altivec, and goes to someone whoe believes in the PPC, then I will be happy. Also since IBM is producing the PPC in large quantities, Apple may even be able to get some cheaper chips.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Your = possessive
you're = contraction of "you" and "are"
And it's "grammar."
Dumbasses. Finish "grammer" school before you post next time.
--
With that aside what ARE the alternative CPU options for Apple?
This is a completely serious question because I honestly do not know much about Crusoe. Would a Transmeta processor be plausible here, being that their architecture is supposed to emulate other processors well?
Apple is using it in it's consumer boxes, IBM in servers, & Motorola is suplying Apple while focusing on the embedded market.
BTW: IBM also has been manufacturing PowerPCS for Apple for the past several months, and is apparently doing a much better job of it than Motorola.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Steve Jobs gets to demonstrate what a big crybaby he is.
----------
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Meanwhile, PPC can trash 1.1GHz x86s in some tests... So can 600MHz Alphas. Clock speed isn't everything.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
There's also a crazy rumour that MacOS X is up and running on Alphas. {shrug}
Well, this is referring to the IBM G5 chip. IBM and Motorola actually differ on their processor numbers even though they use the same name. The G5 produced by IBM will actually be a variant based on the Power4 (IBM G4) architecture. Motorola's G5 will be a multi-core architecture based around the Motorola G4.
AltiVec is a technology developed by Motorola. It's primary usage is for accelerated processing of stream data. It performs the same operation over and over on a stream of data. The main purpose for Motorola's development of AltiVec was to be of use in the embedded market, which is their primary cash source. Since IBM focuses mostly on the high-end market such as servers, this wouldn't be as useful for them. The specialized acceleration provided by AltiVec wouldn't provide as much benefit as raw generic processing power would.
It's somewhat unlikely that Apple would move to the IBM G5 for anything other than a high-end server architecture. It might show up in several workstations, but they've invested too much in AltiVec to make that transition. It's a lot more likely that they will use Motorola's G5 chip, possibly getting IBM to manufacture them.
IBM has a lot more experience working with the copper wiring process as well as Silicon-on-insulator. They're able to produce significantly better yields than Motorola, which is the cause of this entire problem.
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
Well in my experience (your mileage may differ) the Mac OS crashes much more & harder than the Win9x OSes. Others may have different experiences, but I got damn tired of seeing that bomb on screen and having to reboot. Sure, Win stuff crashes but most of the time the app goes down first, allowing you to shutdown normally.
I'd love to use linux all the time, but unfortunately, my addiction to Ultima Online, Diablo 2 and other games keeps me with a Win98 partion on my hard drive.
I don't know of a ton of apps that exist on the Mac but not in Win9x. When I bought my 8500AV it was specfically because the Adobe suite didn't exist for Wintel. It was a good setup, but now with the full Adobe suite running on Windows it's much stabler (in my experience). Macs lack of memory management made it a dangerous proposition to switch between Illustrator & Photshop, usually ending in bomb. For whatever reason even quitting one program and restarting the other didn't always work because the memory allocations got all fubarred.
Perhaps OS X and new hardware will solve Mac's reliability issues, but by then it will be too late. People like me that started with the original Macs, bought the first powerbooks (my 165c was suh-weet), and paid good money for the top end PowerPCs when they came out have simply given up on Apple. They cost alot and don't give you much more than a cool transluscent case and hardware upgrade headaches. I'll stick with Win98 and Mandrake for now on.
The OS wars will never be won. The different sides never see each others point of view. It's kind of like me understanding why people like that candy ass, do nothing Boba Fett.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
I wish Apple and IBM well!
Which is exactly why the G4, comes with 3 Firewire ports (2 external, 1 internal), 2 USB, Gigabit ethernet, SVGA port, Audio out, enough room in the case for 7 more drives beyond the standard harddrive/DVD configuration, and still have 3 empty PCI slots.
Sounds pretty darn upgradeable to me.
Burn Hollywood Burn
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
No, Mac OS X Server is actually a dead piece of software. Mac OS X will be server and consumer in one, depending on what you install. And no, they didn't drop Multiproc. support from OS X. Why else would they have released new dual G4 PowerMacs that supplant their single proc line.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
I am a huge mac fan, but Slashdot keeps on posting news about macs from non-reputable sites. These sites include this post, and MacOS Rumors. The Altivec chipset is great, and I find that when supported it gives great performance. I have a G4 450MP and when encoding cd's into 192Kbit stereo mp3, it chugs at about 12x completing a cd in 6mins. Apple, Motorolla and IBM need to sit down and work out the whole processor mess. They created the PowerPC processor together, keep it going!
I'll keep this succinct.
.35 micron process, and I think the newest ones are still .25. However, I don't think they have 1GHz Alphas in production. What's the holdup?
.18 micron process. Given what Digital did with the .35process, would it surpise anyone if they hit 1.5GHz with a .18? However, what I want to see is an Alpha on IBM .01 micron process. Drool...
A) Why can't the RISC chips keep up? I thought RISC was supposed to help INCREASE clock speeds. Is it really that Intel and AMD have that much better manufacturing technology? Or is it some other part of the architecture that's holding it back. I mean the Alpha used to be the king of clock-speed, they hit 500MHz at the
B) Why the hell would Apple ditch Altivec? It's a GOOD idea. It's not just x86 that dabbles in these instruction extensions, the Alpha has something similar to Altivec and SSE. Given the fact that 3D is going to be so big, why ditch Altivec. It's perfect for multiplying matricies, which is basically what bottles 3D at the CPU end. Not to mention all the physics stuff that uses this. Seeing as SSE boosts performance by 70% in some cases, I don't think it is a good idea to dump SSE in favor of more clock speed. Also, Altivec shouldn't really affect clock-speed, should it? I mean the Alpha got to 700+MHz with it's vector instruction set, so why not the PPC.
C) Wouldn't an Alpha using IBM process technology be cool? Imagine a 1.5+GHz Alpha running on a
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Interesting thing about the POWER series. Apple will never be able to ship one. As I remember, the POWER2s were the size of Polaroid prints. 4096mm^2. It wouldn't fit in that cute little cube.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The chip IBM demoed was VERY limited. It only implemented a subset of the PPC instructions, didn't do FP, and instructions had to be "injected" into the chip via a special probe that manipulated leads on the chip. There was a joke about that. It went, "MS may make you go through hell to install software, be even THEY wouldn't go that far!"
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Yeah. Expect some people to get sued.
Building Rumors, Fooling Slashdot
http://lowendmac.com/rumormill/2k0818.html
You know things are wierd, when then the fake rumors start sounding
good, if not hilarious.
Ah yes, the iMac SEvil @ 666MHz available in Black with Red Flames
or the Bill Gates model with limbo blue clouds motif.
Can't /. come up with any *real* material about Macs and Apple
technologies to discuss? How about this
piece for starters?
Motorola's G5 is supposed to be a multi-core chip. However, the design of the chip and the time that it will be available means that it *should* not be any more expensive. However, given Motorola's track record with the G4 any details of the roadmap may not be highly accurate.
The G4e, G4+ and 7400+ are all the same thing known by different names. This is not a multi-core chip, but a processor that adds several enhancements to the G4. For example, it deepens the pipelines allowing for higher clock speeds, it adds extra AltiVec units to further increase AltiVec speed enhancements and adds an extra integer unit. The G4+ is supposed to be in test production right now, but there is no telling when it will actually be available. I think Motorola has turn to the G4+ in the hopes that it will save them from their follies with the G4. The original design had several flaws that have restricted the clock speed and even with all of Motorola's work to correct the problems, they are still having trouble.
Perhaps you've missed the point of what I was saying.
"Many a true word spoken in jest".
M.
chuck wasn't completely wrong. The processor is
the PPC 7400 (more popularly known as the G4, granted)
and the apple box bearing its name is known as the
G4 only by virtue of the 7400's codename (which
stuck...)
You Have Been Trolled
:)
You Have Lost
Have A Nice Day
BTW: you probably don't want to click the other poster's link
fortunately AMD shares tech with Alpha, IBM and Motorola so next year you'll see 2 Ghz processors, multiple cpus on one die and copper fabs 9that one is done). Plus SSE 2 for all you simd lovers
---
Expandability can be found in the high-end tower line if by expandability you meant PCI and AGP slots. Otherwise, all other Macs have USB and Firewire. Removable storage can be had in the high-end tower line. The point about having an ugly stack of peripherals laying around is conceded.
But it's really not.
Mac OS X, which will be Apple's next gen operating system, with all the goodies like Quartz, Aqua, and the Darwin open-source foundation layer, and is probably going to go into beta within the next month or so (with a promised final version delivery by Jan 01), WILL support multiple processors. Heck, check out the Darwin web site to see the kernel source itself. Heck, Apple's high end machines are now all multiprocessor G4's, and even the classic Mac OS (8 and 9 at least) support a bastardized version of multiprocessor support - so surely the Mach microkerneled, BSD based Mac OS X can handle more than 1 processor.
- Slashdot will get sued for posting it
- Rand Race will get sued for submitting it
- I'll get sued for posting a reply to it
- everyone else will get sued for reading it.
Of course, this did come from the Mac-rumor equivalent of segfault, so anyone who didn't post may be off the hook.Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel/Facing down the future coming fast - Rush
This sig intentionally left blank.
So what ever happened to the two Firewire ports and the three PCI slots???
There's tons of room for more 3 1/2" media devices. All single-drive machines have at least 2 more bays open at the bottom of the machine. There's also a blank 51/4" bay at the top of the machine (if you don't have Zip)
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
I have secretly always wanted an Apple.
:)
I might have to put my dreams for a dual athlon on the back burner for a quad G5.
But as the people at work asked me when I announced this... what would you compute on this?
I smiled and said "Netscape."
And after some thought... I added "ripping mp3s".
See... a machine like this will not be wasted.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
MacOS X (whenever it ships!) will have full kernel-level SMP built in so I guess Apple's customers want it, especially seeing as all Apple's high-end machines (except the Cube) are dual-processor. Dunno about MacOS X Server ....
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
IBM has announced nothing about making any PowerPC beyond its current 750's and (licenced from Motorola) 7400's. It has said nothing about a PowerPC G5. Everything else is just rumours.
6 967,00.html for some details of Motorola's plans for G5.
Have a look at http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,233
I believe he meant -25 C, think about the amount of heat 500MHz silicon generates when OC'd to 1000 (grab a Celeron that you don't care about sometime and try it. But have plenty of liquid nitrogen around :-)
If violence isn't solving your problems, you're not using enough of it. - MAJ Misato Katsuragi
dumbass, finish sarcasm school before you post next time
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
and speed is their biggest problem... they've been held at 500 MHz for almost a year now
Well price might be considered a problem as well. It's pretty tough to think about buying a Mac when you can get a screaming PIII emachine for next to nothing. Unless you fit the niche market that Macs live for there is very little incentive to entertain the notion to purchase one.
> I'm surprised lowendmac.com didn't call put
> 667MHz instead (like Intel does); after all, the
> number 666 is quite evil.
It's an inside joke based on the fact that the Apple I sold for $666.
Those doohickey Macs really suck. I am unbiased, but I hate anything that comes out of Apple's ass!
I'll bite. Just to rehash some of the latest Mac games to come out in the "dead gaming market." Unreal Tournament. Quake3. The Sims. Diablo2. Deus Ex. Heavy Metal is being ported. Rune as well. And maybe you missed the news releases from Bungie about Halo and how it's being developed for the PC and Mac, in addition to the X-box. Which brings me to the gaming graphics cards being released. 3dfx's Voodoo5, ATI's Radeon. Nvidia will also be releasing a card. Just because we don't get a lot of PC games that are crap doesn't mean the market is dead.
In my opinion, there should be different processors for different tasks. Or, even better, some chameleon processor, that is re-programmable. The only really RISC/CISC emulation capable is VLWIS processor (Crusoe, Elbrus, etc.).
And yes, Intel is going to collapce in its complexity one day. RISC is going to reach its maximum frequency and heat level. The only option left would be VLWIS and reprogrammable processors. Back to basics...
>the chip ran at 1 GHz when cooled to 25 degrees >Celcius, at room temperature it ran just at just >under 500 MHz)..
:)
Ahem..
25 degrees C is just *above* room temperature.
-henrik
Yea, they try to throw you off by downgrading their products. at least they queshed those aweful rumours.
-Foxxz
For info on the G3/G4/G5 roadmap look here:
m ap.pdf
:) )
http://www.maccentral.com/news/9909/24.g5.shtml
http://www.mot.com/SPS/PowerPC/overview/newroad
As you'll notice, NOWHERE does it say that Motorola is removing Altivec in future chips.
The lag in processor speed is due to several factors. First, the G4 chip is not very scalable mhz-wise due to its shallow pipeline. IBM seems to have overcome this, however legal agreements are preventing IBM from producing the chip without Motorola's blessing. Future PPC designs include deeper pipelines to make scaling to higher mhz easier.
At first, IBM was refusing to add altivec, wanting to focus on mhz instead with the ppc line. What has resulted is that IBM is simply more prepared to produce faster chips that Motorola right now.
In all, its really a shame that this fiasco has occured. The PPC has a much cleaner design than the x86 based chips. Its a marketing miracle that Apple hasn't been held back by this. (What looks faster? Bodini blue or beige?
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Heh, More points to add to your comment.
No marketing department in the Christian(and maybe elsewhere) world would *EVER* market a processor as 666 Mhz.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
But the home game users are still PC people too. Maybe this will be resolved as well. Maybe Apple will try to reclaim some of that market by somehow jumping into the 3D gaming world and making an entry into serious competition. Let's see them try and win a benchmark test using Quake 3 (granted, Linux would probably have to be the testing ground due to Quake's current standings in Mac OS)
Now IANAMU, but I am pretty sure that the gaming market for the Mac is just about dead. The only really good Mac gaming company (Bungie) sold to Microsoft to develop for the X-box instead. I would not get a Mac unless I had a specific purpose and a PC cannot do it.
They break the news that Apple is being sued by the Borg over the G4 cube.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
Doubtful. Apple seems to have a differnt market focus for many things. Being in big time corporate America doesn't seem to be it. Do you know of many corporations that like having translucent colored objects?
Apple's success in the 3D gaming market will rest largely on how ATI's 3D cards perform. That's been the bottleneck in the past. The Radeon looks good but obviously ATI and Apple are on thin ice right now.
I've never had a problem with them in terms of hardware or compatibility. I never had to do much tinkering with the networking and worked just fine as a workstation in a heterogenous environment (Win/Mac/*ix). I never had to make them work in en environment larger than 20 computers however. I do despise their OS though. OS X looks promissing if they can speed it up a ton.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
that space above the DVD drive is not a drive bay, even though it may appear to look like one when you open the case. As there's no corresponding hole at the front, so the olny thing that can be put there is a hard drive. IMHO unless a case has at least four 5.25" drive bays (like the Enlight 7237) its just not a case. Afterall a high end system cannot justify that claim unless there's room for a DVD drive, a CD burner & 2 of those removable 'pullout' Hard drive caddies (one for the system drive & another one for the data drive). Plus it should have two 3.5 " bays too - one for the LS120MB superfloppy drive & one for a rainy day(Hopefully a 2.2GB Orb drive....one day:) ) Now if a G4 can't do that how can it claim to be high end.
Duh! He said it was in America, were "your" is a correct form of "you are". Why don't you correct *you're* grammer?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Also, if you just scroll down the page, you can see that the headlines for "Recently on The Rumor Mill" are absurd. Take, for example "Borg Sue Apple Over Cube", an article about how The Borg from Start Trek say that the G4 cube idea was taken from their spaceship design. Also, there's "Professional Baseball sues Apple over sphere", which talks about how spherical speakers look like baseballs.
Look at this page, which says
It's amazingly easy to create a rumor with no basis in reality that sounds as good as anything the rumor sites publish.
Well, I guess they were right about that, eh? =)
What magic koolaid did Steve Jobs give you that gives you so much arrogance?
Do I really need to post photos of the OS upgrades I've bought? Is is so hard to believe that a person that uses Macs actually finds a reason to dislike them?
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
...Steve Jobs has filed cease&desist orders for the entire world's population for even thinking they know something about Apple Computer's future plans.
I bet that is one EULA agreement you would have a devil of a time getting out of. I think one has and he has a gold fiddle to show for it.
What color do you expect the box to come in?
Charred black?
Red-hot?
Melted-skin pink?
And the tag line for the machine...
Where would you like to go... for eterinity?
Next thing ya know, they will have that little FreeBSD imp as a mascot.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Most of the time, they're steaming, heaping loads. Personally, I don't trust a company press release unless it comes from the lips of someone high in the company. Even I know that sometimes what CmdrTaco reports is just a glitzy rumor motivated by the tech tabloids and 300 cc's of caffeine right to the heart.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Here's what I did to the 'poor ole 8500':
:)
Start with 7.something that shipped with computer.
Upgrade to something like 7.5.3 as Mac Tech Support suggested.
Many clean installs and repatching of 7.5.3 (or something like that to no avail as Mac Tech Support suggested.
Buy Apple brand 233Mhz processor board to replace original 120Mhz CPU. Install.
Go buy 8.0 and install. Works better than any 7.x version ever did by still has problems w/ Adobe.
D/l 8.1 and install. Problems continue.
Buy 8.5 and install. Rejoice at USB support. Adobe problems continue.
D/l 8.6 and install. Less problems, but wife still curses at computer during nightly crashes under Netscape and Photoshop.
*Pirate* copy of 9.0 (not giving more money until it works) Install. 8500 VERY unhappy. Revert to 8.6.
Toss in a dash of Norton Utilies along the way for taste.
This is what the Mac Tech Support suggested I do. At some point they started charging to call and I stopped calling. Probably just around the time OS 8 came out.
Does it still make you shudder?
Perhaps I should have formatted the hard drive each time and reinstalled cleanly. But this is a huge pain in the ass and shouldn't be needed for OS upgrades. Perhaps I'm spoiled by RPMs.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
Really? I think I'll have to consult with a first grader before trusting you on that.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Will the new 666 Apple Special Edition be available in black with flames? will the cost show up on the invoice as:
(1) soul + 4.95 shipping?
And everyone gives Microsoft/Intel crap for being evil?
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Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
Your list left out HP -- they were the original company to introduce "multimedia extension", SIMD-type instructions to their architecture.
I forget which PA-RISC they first did this with, but they redesigned parts of the integer unit so that it could do packed arithmetic (a la MMX) at a 0% increase in die size. They literally squeezed the extra logic into the corners of the existing die frame. Pretty impressive. Sure, it only sped up a few functions (MPEG decompression was the biggie), but they essentially got it for free. Conservative, but a definite win.
On the opposite extreme lies Alti-Vec. Alti-Vec is basically an entire vector processor sitting next to the original PowerPC core. It added 50% to the die size of the G4. 50%! It's certainly more capable than what HP or the others implemented, but Motorola paid the price. It's quite possible that they have decided the multimedia unit wasn't worth that much silicon, and have gone a different route with their next generation.
For the curious, Intel's original MMX unit increased the die size of the classic Pentium by about 5%. They're more recent extensions no doubt add more, but I think you can see that HP and Intel took a more conservative approach to "accelerating" multimedia with specialized SIMD units.
--Lenny
I just recently bought a used Daystar Digital Genesis MP (quad SMP PPC604 CPUs at 150MHz :). Debian installed with no trouble, and the default kernel detected both SCSI controllers, the ATI Mach64, the built-in 10baseT ethernet, and both serial ports.
I hate the PC architecture because it is so limited by its 16 IRQs (unless you have a fancy mobo, like my friend's SMP system which has 32), and by the need for the CPU to translate the x86 instructions into an internal RISC form. That translation adds delay, so the CPU needs deeper pipelines, which makes mispredicted branches much worse, etc. PPC is fast and simple in comparison.
The old 604 CPUs in my PMAC can do 490k RC5 keys/second each, which is pretty good for a CPU from around 1996.
(Note that Daystar made my computer, not Apple, so that might have something to do with it being good.)
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
That said, I have no inside dope on anything here, I'm just speculating.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
I can't understand why people still like Apple and defend it to the end. The gear looks pretty and I dig the 802.11 wireless stuff, but what's behind the fluff?
Even the Mac 9 OS is unstable. Why do people put up with it? I've got a mac in the house, but it's unreliability got it replaced as a daily use machine by a Wintel box.
If you have a good reason why sane people stick by the Mac I'd love to hear it. Post here or email at the above link.
What I'd really love it to turn the Apple hardware guys loose in the x86 world. If you think a Vaio is neat looking, can you imagine what the Apple boys could turn out? Them guys building boxes at 1 Infinte Loop are smart. Too bad the software guys are allowed to be as good. Make an Apple PC that I can run Windows & Linux on and I'd put down the cash.
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I must not fear moderation.
Fear of moderation is the mind-killer.
Fear of moderation is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my karma.
I will permit moderation to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the karma has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
A: See if Apple sues.
Mr. Ska
My impression always was that the speed problem with the G4 was due to Motorola, not any inherent problems with AltiVec.
I use a G4 at work, and AltiVec is *very* nice for certain tasks. SoundJam MP takes advantage of it, and can encode MP3s at up t 10x (haven't verified that myself). AltiVec is also used for some of the cool effects in Aqua (like maybe the "Genie" effect).
IANAHE (I Am Not A Hardware Engineer), but I don't see why a few vector processing units would prevent a chip from reaching speeds > 500 MHz. If only IBM and Motorola would pool their technology, we might see 1GHz G5s with AltiVec soon... Maybe Jobs will kick their respective asses a bit, and it will happen...
In other news, Taco353 writes: "Computer maker Trinity57 announced 2day that the new P505 will be marketed as the Q505 and feature P7 chips running at 111/222/333/444/555MHz, as well as 112/223/334/445MHz but up 2 3GHz. From 9:00 a.m. 2 3:00 p.m. you can get Q505 with P7's at 333MHz but at 3:01 p.m. Q505/P7's at 445MHz will come out. Then at 4:05 p.m. Q505/P7's at 3GHz will provide a high end (733, 1033, 10:45) machine for SE users. This will be a 24/7 sale with 300 employees, 300 computers, 300 mice, etc. Lasting until 20/20/2000 at 11:59 a.m. UDT (NIST--IP: 192.43.244.18) the sale will also have C3PO chips at 0.52KHz with 92 bytes RAM for $52.92. Special versions at 1.1/2.2/3.3KHz will also be available. Sounds good to me. What do you all think?
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
The G4 is also made by IBM. IBM makes the chip, motorolla slaps on packaging and Altivec. Presumably it would go the same way with the G5 only wihtout the ALtivec addition.
Mark Duell
You're right, but the article mentions it as 666. Just another thing piece of info that a legitimate source would not have said.
*sigh* I don't know what constitutes as trolling anymore. bummer. (in response to my previous post's moderation).
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
From what I've read on the issue, the G5, or the MPC7400+, I might be confusing the two, are supposed to feature multiple cores. Meaning, the next generation of chips is rumored/surmised to contain 4 G4 cores on 1 chip. Thus, a dual or quad G5 would not make much sense in a consumer machine, seeing that you'd have 8 or 16 G4 cores in total 1 machine. A prohibitive cost for one, and a prohibitive waste of chips with the current level of multi-thread-ability (or lack thereof) of most applications. This point is moot if I've indeed confused the 7400+ and the G5. I can't seem to find any up-to-date articles on the subject. The archives on Mackido concerning the G5 are from September 1999.
This is interesting, if true. I've seen many Mac pundits claim that Altivec was the next best thing since sliced bread. I've only had a bit of hand's on time with G4's, being an x86 or SPARC type of guy, so I'm definitely not an expert on the G4. Does anyone have any first hand experience with whether or not Altivec was a bad move?
uh.. it really doesn't matter since a 500mhz PIII is not exactly top of the line in fact is way cheap compared to a 500mhz mac which is top. Y'all keep kidding yourselves about Intel and AMD, processor speed may not be everything but it is not the only thing getting better about their chips. I think that if Apple/Motorola/IBM had direct competition like Intel Vs. AMD there would be no doubt that their's was the supreme chip because they would have been forced to innovate instead of decorate.
Please suck away more karma, while we're at it.
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Stupid sexy Flanders.
Borg Sue Apple Over Cube
Updated G3s (750Cx/G3e) at 533-666Mhz will be used in iMacs and iBooks (maybe a 666Mhz G5 iMac SE)
macs powered by satan are really impressive, they've been testing them for about a year now.
apple needs to realize that speed isn't their main problem, but rather compatibility and expansion.... The g4 is a great processor, but i'd never consider buying a computer with *no* expansion beyond usb, and no removable storage without spending more money... plus no way to add components in the case... a cool looking case means nothing if you've got to have an ugly stack of usb peripherals sitting next to it....
Walter H. Trent "Muad'Dib"
Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe, IMHO
Someone told me recently that MacOS X Server wasn't going to support multiple processors after all. (He couldn't remember where he had read it, although it was probably one of the Apple rumor sites.) Can this possibly be true? Anyone out there who can tell us how likely it is that this is true? And if so, what is Apple thinking? Could they just not make it work, or did they decide that their customers don't want it?
Cheers,
I don't know which way is the truth...
GCC seems to have poor optimization capabilities for RISC systems, as RISC systems rely on good compiler scheduling for performance and that itself requires more back end information on the code than gcc provides, an issue the DEC Alpha team have been trying to resolve. I do find that coding for RISC in mind improves the performance of x86 too.
The only problem with comparing PPC anything with x86 anything is that all the comparisons use Photoshop. Photoshop is said to be one of the few Mac apps that is better optimized for Mac than for Windows, it is usually the other way around, or that's the way it seems. The comparison putting a 500 MHz G4 as faster than a 1Ghz P!!! was said to be using only three photoshop filters, I read that using a broader range of 20 filter tests put the G4 in a very bad light.
Claims made on the G4 itself are said to be biased as well, Apple using its favorite 6 Altivec instructions in a theoretical use and claiming that puts it in the Gigaflop range.
I'm not saying that the G4 is a slouch in the power per clock, just the fact that twice the clock rate is available in a PC costing just as much doesn't put it in the best possible light.
Everyone in the world wanted to add SIMD instructions to their instruction set. Intel, Dec, Sun, IBM etc...
The marketroids sell this feature as a must-have.
And now someone is backing away and releasing processors without it.
Is someone saying that SIMD wasn't the be all and end all of computing after all?
Yours Curiously,
FatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
With that aside what ARE the alternative CPU options for Apple?
PowerPC is doing OK as an architecture. Apple is using it in it's consumer boxes, IBM in servers, & Motorola is suplying Apple while focusing on the embedded market.
Unfortunately there are strains on the relationship. Apple honked-off Motorola by shelving the 3rd party Mac licensing program abruptly and stiffing Motorola with a many-million dollar inventory of unusable motherboards(Apple had good reason to shelve the program ASAP but it still screwed Motorola.) On the other hand they committed to Motorola as their supplier when Motorola developed the AltiVec material. IBM politely said no-thank-you to licensing the AltiVec as it really doesn't apply to their products and would likely just get in the way of their own evolution plans for PowerPC. They've all committed to continuing the collaboration and at that level it seems to be doing well though the PowerPC "vision" seems to have succumbed to more pragmatic goals.
The problem for Apple is that the PowerPC + AltiVec from Motorola is having trouble ramping up in speed. Apple has tried to fight the percieved speed discrepancy by pointing out that a PowerPC at some speed actually equals an x86 running at a some greater speed. All agree this is more or less true but the same as the Millenium doesn't start 'till next year no-one cares: they want comparable CPU speeds.
Apple finally replied by shipping multiple CPU's. These work fine under MacOS 9 and will do great under MacOS X when it ships but while saying 2x500 = 1000 it still isn't really the same when it comes to bragging.
What makes the whole thing even more ironic for all of the psuedo-knowledgable's pointing out that two CPUs aren't really twice as fast they're all ignoring there are far more fundamental issues like bus bandwidth & memory architecture that hobble Apple, at least until it's next-gen UMA2 motherboard series finally ship in a presumed few months.
So, what are the other choices?
Well, there have been rumors forever of Apple's MacOS-v7/8-on-x86 inhouse projects (claimed name "StarTrek".) With the move to MacOS X these now are realistic as NextStep has run on several platforms already including x86. Indeed the aborted Rhapsody strategy was actually released on x86 and the MacOS-core Darwin project is freely downloadable for x86. It wouldn't be terribly difficult for Apple to move all of MacOS X over to x86 though it would likely require abandoning all of the backwards MacOS compatability (unless something could be salvaged from the rumored "StarTrek" project.)
Of course at that point Apple would only be selling a custom version of Unix on custom x86 boxes to the consumer market and it's doubtefull Apple could make much of a go of that in today's market.
Next choice? Well, go to a third horse. Compaq now has the Alpha processor and it's still a speed demon and shows no signs of slowing down. There are rumors of Apple having an internal team tracking MacOS X but on Alpha. NextStep ran on Alpha so this sounds reasonable and certainly gives Apple some leverage with Motorola. The advantage of Alpha would be a screaming processor but not x86 as so to differentiate themselves.
This would put Apple in the position of selling a custom version of Unix on custom Alpha boxes to the consumer market and this might be doable, particularly if Apple pursues a strategy of selling PowerPC or Alpha CPU's in their boxes.
Now, there is an interesting rumor to discuss.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Taking AltiVec out of the processor... hmmm...
Since AltiVec was needed to put the G4 into the Supercomputer "class" does this mean it is no longer a supercomputer? Heh...
IBM's G5 processor is not a PowerPC microprocessor. It is the silicon used to drive the S/390 mainframes: a serious hunk of electronics to complex for a single chip. It's more along the lines of a super-CISC design, optimized for speed and throughput above portability.
IBM -does- have some sexy successors to the 750 processor (the "G3" in Apple marketing speak) and these will probably make it into future iMacs and Powerbooks. I'm more interested in their upcoming "7500+" line, which is a G4 that can be produced with a clock of 750mhz and 1ghz...we'll still have to wait until MacWorld San Francisco to see them tho.
SoupIsGood Food
No marketing department in the Christian(and maybe elsewhere) world would *EVER* market a processor as 666 Mhz.
True, but since technically it is 666.66666 MHz, they would market such a processor (if they made it) as 667 MHz instead.
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I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
http://www.apple.com/g4/ This describes the altivec.
Well a Pentium Pro (P6) is faster (even at the same MHZ) than a Pentium MMX (P5), even though it has no MMX while the later Pentiums did. People seem to forget the G5 is a generation ahead of the G4 (I assume that's what the 'G' means). Just like hypothetically a Athlon without 3D-Now would still be faster than a K6 with 3D-Now, even at the same clock speed.
Not to nit-pick or anything. But isn't IBM's G5 an S/390 processor or code-name. I would not be surprised if these rumor sites heard "IBM" and "G5" and assumed "Apple". Seems like it would be easier just to have Motorola collect royalities off all G4 processors manufactured by IBM. Even if the royalities were outrageous (100% of the manufacuture cost), i think Apple would buy them if the performance were there. I think everyone agrees that IBM's processes are more refined that Motorola's. Tom
Check out IBM's chips page. These things don't suck.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
He's talking about MP3 ripping and encoding, which is accelerated by Altivec. Altivec is basically vector math processing, which allows you to perform a number of (certain types of) math operations simultaneously. Granted the main use for this is graphics operations which are CPU intensive, but there are other things (like MP3 encoding) which Altivec can also help.
Where Altivec doesn't help is in straightforward integer operations or logic operations, such as the code behind a device driver. And of course it doesn't help with programs that haven't been compiled for Altivec...
I wonder which Apple employee will now be fired and sued for damages for releasing these trade secrets! Moral at Apple must suck...
"Hold on, before we release this PR, get all shareholders to sign it first!"
This
Hey, maybe the Slashdot team is actually Canadian after all. We use all those extra U's up here too.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Apple are buying IBM licensed built G4's with Motorola's Alti-vec instructions
It is a vector pipeline. Vector as in vector math. Not vector as in "line creating a 3d object."
Lowmag.net
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
Dan Knight (the operator of Low End Mac) makes no claims of truth about his "rumors". I fact he freely admits that his rumors are made up. Please if you are going to post about Mac related stuff, hire a Maccie who can filter this crap out.
Burn Hollywood Burn
The reason the chip would be Altivec-less is because it's from IBM. Motorolla makes the G4's with Altivec and I believe owns the rights to the technology. According to rumor however, IBM has had much better luck getting higher clock rates than Motorolla.
Apple's in a sticky situation... they want Altivec because it speeds things up, but they need higher clock rates to compete with AMD and Intel. Motorolla hasn't been able to get high clock rates and the G4 has been stuck at 500 MHz for a year.
It's too bad because the G4 looked so promising, but Moto has been able to deliver to all the hype.
This rumor was posted on LEM by "Anne Onymus". If you bothered to check the other "rumors" from the same writer, you would have noticed that Low End Mac's "Rumor Mill" is a PARODY SITE!!!
Dan Knight, publisher of LEM, does not take Apple rumors seriously, and under the name Anne Onymous he pokes fun at the rumor sites on a fairly regular basis.
In other words, YHBT YHL HAND.
In yer face, Slashdot editors! (Hehehe)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
With the new push to MP implementations I wonder if it's possible to put a G5 AND an AltiVec G4 in a machine and have nice fast Photoshop AND nice fast everything else too.
No crap about how un-fast Apple's HW "actually" is, k? I'm just curious about 'non-symmetrical' MP.
With all these Mac OS Rumors posted on Slashdot should have a Mac OS Rumors Catagory.
You've struck on Apple's biggest, saddest problem.
It's not that they make bad computers. PC weenies can go on about this for hours until their throats go dry. They'll still be wrong. The Macintosh has always been an excellent machine with fine, fast, and dependable hardware. Their OS has usually left something to be desired (until the coming of OS/X anyway), but you could run Linux on them anyway and smoke your PC friends, usually.
No, the problem has been (believe it or not) a lack of innovation. If I wanted to sit down and make a clone of a Mac, I couldn't do it. There are specifications that I'd need that simply have not been released to the public.
"But," you cry, "innovation has been Job One (pun intended) for Apple the whole damn time! Look at the iMac! The G4 Tower! W3 4r3 133t!!!"
Yes, they have done a pretty damn good job coming up with totally new ideas for the world of computing. Think, however, what would happen if every company that felt like it could develop new machines for the Macintosh platform. An EXPLOSION of new products with new features would result.
"But Apple will lose money and die!" No they won't. Especially not since they can port OS/X (based on BSD which is eminently portable) to any system they choose. And their hardware will still be top-notch. But what they STILL need, despite the success of the iMac and iBook and G4 Towers, is _market_ _penetration_. Period.
My 2c.
Email me.
Don't trust anyone over 90000.
+++ATH0
read also this rumour from the same author about the cube
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
For those of you that have fogotten, IBM demonstrated a PowerPC chip running at 1 Ghz way back in 1998 (the chip ran at 1 GHz when cooled to 25 degrees Celcius, at room temperature it ran just at just under 500 MHz). Check out CNET's take on the event: IBM joins the 1,000-MHz club.
The 1 Ghz PowerPC IBM demonstrated way back in 1998 was partially hand tooled. This chip broke many of the processes IBM uses to automate production of the PowerPC. Check outwhat the EE Times said about the chip at the time: IBM's 1-GHz processor taxes current EDA tools.
More recently, TechWeb states some of IBM's plans for the PowerPC: IBM Preps SOI-Based PowerPCs.
To see what is available today, and what is coming in the short term future, look at IBM's product page for the PowerPC at: http://www.chips.ibm.com/products/powerp c/.
IBM intends to have out 700MHz PowerPCs for its RS/6000 line by early next year for its RS/6000 line. It would make very little sense for Apple to not start shoving these into new Macs when they become available.
IBM has had very little trouble scaling the PPC up as it needs to for its line of servers. I really wonder why Motorola seems to be having so much trouble in the MHz race.
OTOH, I remember 3rd party benchmarks that showed a Motorola PPC at 350 MHz smoking an Intel x86 at 500 MHz at Photoshop. And this was back in the day when x86 had MMX and PPC had no Alti-vec. FYI, the MMX instructions allowed the Intel box (running NT) to perform one or two tests slightly faster than the Apple box running Mac OS. Given this type of history, I can see Motorola being arrogant enough to think it doesn't need to keep up the MHz. But its time for Motorola to wake up and smell the coffee.
On a related note, there is a rumor that Palm is going to drop the 68k Motorola series in favor of the StrongARM series mostly because of the MHz.
Motorola better get some MHz action in a hurry. Despite an overall faster chip, eventually a double/triple clock speed advantage will catch up. I doubt a 1GHz T-Bird does much slower than a .5 GHz PPC, especially given Apple's slower bus.
Not a rumor, a consideration!!!
There is a difference.
about as stable as Win 9x in my experience
*snicker*
=================================
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
www.ridiuculopathy.com
The only people who love reading these rumours are Mac fanatics who hang on any word. Hang out in any Mac newsgroup, listserv, and they'll be debating this tidbit over that tidbit.
This is Apple's core market: it's the only reason why they can maintain such a share against Microsoft and i386 arch machines. Why would you cut off hype built up by your biggest customers?
My guess is that Apple obviously knows this and just makes the play legally to make rumours seem even more rogue and juicy.
--Calum
So if they want to put 2 G4's into a box, then you have two motherboards, two set of RAM, and so forth. If you want two PPC CPU's in a box, that's a different story.
Disclaimer; this is a rumour and we all know about Apple rumors..."
What's this? Is Slashdot pandering to Kings English as well as American English?
Hey, your in America, it's rumor. When Slashdot moves to England, it's rumour!
Linux O Muerte!
Well, putting into consideration Apple's recent rash of lawsuits...
;)
I say if Slashdot receives a cease and desist order from Apple with threats to file suit, then we all know the G5 rumor is true.
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Whilst we know that Apple rumour sites are usually pretty lame, this does have a string of credibility to it.
Apple have been unable to keep up in the MHz race. Whilst those of us in the know can preach that it's not a real comparison to go on about MHz, the lay-person sees these numbers and really does equate these with speed - meaning that Apple starts to lose out in the consumer market because Joe Consumer thinks that a 500Mhz G4 is slower than say, a 600Mhz Pentium (which isn't the case).
Sales of iMacs (apparently) have started to flag, and Apple has received criticism that it isn't updating the processors in the range quick enough, which is indeed true. Some haven't been updated for about nine months. The production problems behind Motorolas G4, and the fact they can't seem to increase the speed that quickly have really been problematic - no doubt spurring on the decision by Apple to plump for IBM, who seem to have much better processor fabrication techniques.
So - what we'll probably see is a bit of spin from an Apple show about how they've put a funky newer processor in the iMacs and that they've nearly doubled the clock speed. Those in the know again will realise that this doesn't mean the machine is running twice as quick, but the consumer will be bought over... and iMac sales will probably pick up again. Apple has to do it to stop it's flagship machine (i.e. the machine that picked it up out of the gutter) from falling off it's mast.
M.