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Next-Gen Apples To Include 1394b, USB 2.0
seletz writes: "According to this article on The Register, Apple will ship its next-generation PowerMacs with USB 2.0 and double FireWire.
USB 2.0 boosts data transfer up to 480Mbps, FireWire 1394b goes up to 3.2Gbps." It may seem a minor point, but the more and faster connections are built in, the less frequently the upgrade gremlins have to strike. 3.2Gbps!
this is old stuff... macNN (a rather silly mac site) had this a week ago. Shouldn't you be announcing flat panel iMacs ? Anyway, its pure bollocks : G5 procs aren't coming out in another 1.5 years. It's the G4 story all over again. They were announced 2 years early, came out at an insane price tag and lowerer MHz than expected, and stuck to a MHz barrier for 2 years. Apple should buy out Moto sommerset facilities and rent them to IBM. That might help a bit.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
So now the mouse will have the bandwidth to have more than one button?
Actually, it will be nice to have the speed for video editing on external harddrives without having to use a firewire one.
Probably takes someone like Apple to be the first to make boxes with USB 2.0 and 1394b. Hopefully, PCs will have them too, in a not-too-distant future.
From what I remember (from the distant 20th century), Apple where first with "regular" USB too. Some PC:s had it (I had an old pentium MB with a USB bracket (sold separately)), but noone where able to use it (no drivers or hardware).
Think it was the same with FireWire too.
Why is this? Are Apple more daring and adventureous than all PC manufacturers? Or is it because noone wants to spend money on a technology that might not be "wanted" (meaning: Windows won't support it)?
There are 010 kinds of people. Those who understand octal, those who don't, and 06 other kinds of morons.
Remember too that SuSE and some others have PowerPC versions of Linux for these boxes as well. Imagine Linux on this? Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
[sigh] This is a borderline troll, and I probably shouldn't waste my time replying to it, but on the off-chance it's legitimate, I'll make an honest answer.
The "massive Apple layoffs" thing seems to be a massive rumor, and no more. In fact, all the legitimate news indicates that Apple is weathering the storm much better than PC makers such as Dell. If someone has information to the contrary, please let me know.
And where the hell were you pricing laptops (and if so, why were you looking at iMacs anyway?) IMO the iBook offers the absolute best price-performance ratio of any laptop on the market. Yes, the standard 64 MB RAM sucks, but you can bump that up cheaply enough. In every other way, the iBook is the best low- to mid-range laptop you'll find for your money.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Yes, it's most likely that Apples next revision of hardware will include USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394b (Firewire 2.0?). However, 3.2Gbs is not the number.
The next step for Firewire is actually 800Mbs. 1.2Gbs, 2.8Gbs and 3.2Gbs speeds are possible with this new protocol though, given the use of copper and fiber for the physical connection.
What I find more interesting, though, is that the next revision of PowerMac should sport some form of DDR SDRAM... and either the new "Apollo" G4 at around 1.2GHz or the brand new 64bit capable G5! Both Bandwidth Hungry CPUs... that should give the P4 and Palomino (?) a run for their money.
RSN
The layoffs were in the sales force. With the Apple Stores and the online store, FtF sales are not as essential.
There are several reasons we pay a little extra, quality of hardware, tight integration between hardware and software, and it is not Windows. If you are into the creative arts, Apple is the first choice. The Mac has always been geared to the Artist, publisher, teacher, and scientist. These people will tend to buy from those who care about their concerns.
I don't mind paying extra for quality. I know people that are still using the original Mac II. One uses his for fonts, another for HyperCard.
One lady bought a new Compaq, but went back to her 6200, citing the difficulty of using Windows for making class projects. It didn't have HyperCard.
BTW the 6200 line is probably the worst Apples made.
photosMy Photostream
Flame will get you no where...
Despite the fact that you are comparing Apples to Oranges (no pun intended), your case is weak and flaccid.
Windows 2000 is a business OS; built on NT. Mac OS 9.x and before were more consumer operating systems. You should compare Windows 9x with Mac OS 9.x, and Win 2000/XP to Mac OS X.
On those levels, both have advantages and disadvantages. Personally, I favor the Mac OS, but I can't condemn someone for using Windows.
As far as your comment about Macs crashing all the time - that is due to Mac OS 9.x not having protective memory, something corrected in OS X. I have had OS X since its initial release. Since that time, it has not crashed. My Win 2K box has crashed three times - in a year. Does that mean that the Mac is more stable? Probably not, but it does further diminish your argument.
I am Slad.
If I could get a computer with the form factor of a Sun Classic and stackable HDs using the same form factor, using a simple bus extender, then I would go for it.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I'm sure most Mac fans would love to have gigahertz G5s with DDR and FireWire 2. But there really is not a clamor of interest in USB 2, and I don't see a reason to include it.
USB 2's entire purpose is to compete with Apple's own 1394 standard. USB2 is slower, uses more CPU resources, and has done surpisingly poorly in the marketplace. FireWire devices outnumber USB2 by huge proportions.
Apple knows that iMac (which had no legacy ports) is the event that got USB 1.x rolling. That was a good move, since Apple needed to get with standards. But in FireWire, Apple has set the standard. Adding USB2 would have little benefit and a lot of risk for Apple.
I tend to go to a lot of Apple seminars and follow the Mac world pretty well and I would be exceptionally surprised if Apple was laying off employees at this stage. They are really working hard to get OS 10.1 out the door on time and make sure it's really polished. I have certainly seen no indication that they are slowing down at all. I would say if there are any lay offs they'd be in marketing/management positions rather than the research and development areas.
I can't understand is how Apple can stay in business when their computers cost a hell of a lot more than the Intel based PCs?
There have been a large number of studies which suggest that the total cost of ownership of owning a Mac is significantly less than owning a Windows based PC. Admitedly, people and business' don't tend to notice these things, and go for the immediate lower price. Apple stay in business by actually making a profit on their systems rather than trying to continuously undercut the competition - note how many PC manufacturers are going out of business.
The number of units you ship is far less important than whether or not you make enough profit to cover your development, production, management and other costs. Apple's pricing does this, Gateway Australia's pricing didn't (hence they've gone out of business). Apple has made a profit for something like 11 out of the last 12 quarters which is better than most PC manufacturers.
Apple also has a very dedicated (fanatic) installed user base which helps a lot. Mostly though they have innovation. They put firewire and USB in their computers, they popularise wireless networking and "Apple ignited the desktop publishing revolution" (to take their marketing speel).
was pricing laptops a couple weeks ago, and for the money it would have cost me to buy a moderately loaded iMac, I could have gotten a Thinkpad for roughly half the cost, comparably equipped.
This surprises me, though it obviously depends largely on what you want from your laptop. I went out pricing laptops about 6 months ago (long time in IT I know) and found that Apple's laptops were far and away better value than the PCs. Not that they were cheaper, but they were clearly sturdier, more feature packed and most significantly had better screens and battery life. The cheap PC laptop world makes a lot of sacrifices in functionality. Either they have ridiculously small screens or poor quality screens and two or three hour battery life was normal. Then you tended to give up a CDROM to make the laptop smaller and many PC laptops (nowhere near as many these days though) don't have ethernet as standard. Then there's the lact of dual head ability (most do video mirroring) or a lack of video output options (note that the iBook does not do dual head either, which is why I type this on a Titanium PowerBook). Now, for some people these trade offs are worth the cost savings - for some people they aren't even trade offs, but just remove unwanted features. For many people (including me) these features are invaluable.
The final big advantage that I find with Apple is the OS. Mac OS X is a joy to use (I look forward to the reported responsiveness improvements of 10.1 naturally), there are rough edges and it is not perfect but the combination of UNIX and a solid, simple, clean, user friendly GUI is an absolute God send. I can happily use vim to hack away my perl scripts, test them with apache and postgresql and follow the design document which was written in Word. The lack of responsiveness that is currently in OS X is more than made up for by the fact that I don't have to reboot between Linux and MacOS anymore (for the record I don't remember the last time I booted into OS 9).
The morale: sometimes paying more in the short term is worthwhile in the long run, but it all depends on what you want to do.
"It may seem a minor point, but the more and faster connections are built in, the less frequently the upgrade gremlins have to strike."
Yet another reason the industry hates Apple. They build their computers to last, even moreso than other manufacturers.
http://www.zayante.com/p1394b/
As I read it, the new spec provides for speeds up to 1.6 Gbps (with room to grow to 3.2 Gbps), 100 Mbps on UTP out to 100m, 200 Mbps on Plastic Optical Fibre (POF) to 50m, 1.6 Gbps on MultiMode Fibre (MMF) out to 100 m.
So I don't know where they got this "room to drive data at up to 3.2Gbps over copper cabling" thing.
Geez, get it right if you're going to bait Macolytes.
--Nik
I know a lot of Apple users, and I know a lot of Windows/Linux users, and each of them love their own systems, but the other thing that I can't understand is how Apple can stay in business when their computers cost a hell of a lot more than the Intel based PCs?
<disclaimer> I hardly use Macs any more because I have to work with and support Windows users </disclaimer>
If you actually worked for a while on a Macintosh you would probably be willing to pay a premium.
Neal Stephenson once compared OS vendors to car dealerships. He was concerned with the marketing of OSs rather than the user experience. Imagine instead a business where you go to have an experience -- say a dance hall which provided guests with professional dance partners.
The Apple-land dance hall had beautiful hostesses who danced so gracefully they made an ordinary jerk feel like Fred Astaire. The Microsoft-land dance hall had ugly hostesses who stepped on your feet unless you shouted directions to them for where to put their feet. The owners of the Microsoft-land had managed to prosper in business by convincing its customers that real men had loud voices, but they knew this couldn't last forever. So they replaced the ugly hostesses with prettier ones that also stepped on your feet. And it didn't matter, because in time people got so accustomed to this that they think it's normal to buy throat lozenges when you go dancing.
The Unix-land dance hall? It is chock full of ugly but muscular hostesses that will have sex with you if you know the right way to ask. The ones in the Linux and the BSD rooms will even do it for free (in the Solaris room, you have to pay if you want more than eight girls at once). The fact is that Unix started out as bordello and added dancing as a gimmick. As a result the dancing is a bit awkward, but you can get any kind of sex you can imagine, provided you can master the technique. As you might imagine, this has attracted a loyal customer base.
But the management's been trying bring in new business by dolling up the girls and teaching them a few new steps.
The Apple-land customers who wander in to the "new" Unix-land are dance snobs who look around, decide the dancing isn't up to snuff, and go back to Apple-land to cut a rug. This mystifies the regulars, who say, "Some of our hostesses look just as good as the Apple ones, maybe better! They'll even let you dress them up any way you like!" (This last point is a common fetish with the Unix crowd). Of course the Unix-land regulars really only come for the sex. These days most Unix-land customers spend a little time dancing, but they aren't very demanding about that and don't let it distract them from their real interests for long. For that reason they don't understand that for the Apple market segment, the core experience isn't about sex. The Apple experience is about gliding over an expanse of mirror polished bakelite floor with a responsive partner who can almost read your thoughts. It's a wonderful thing -- almost as good as sex (OK I'm a Unix guy). For the Apple-lander, it's nice that the girls are pretty, maybe even essential, but it is not enough.
Having good looking hostesses is not core to the Unix-land experience either -- it's more of a competitive bullet-mark. The Unix-land crowd's a pretty relaxed judge of pulchritude. For years the standard management trick was to stick a polka dot dress and yellow bow on a one-eyed bull dog. Many of the customers judged the results to be "real purty.."
Of course, those days are over (except for a few incorigble retrograde types who cannot be persuaded to give up their dogs). Now when the Microsoft customer wanders in,he looks around and is maybe impressed by how much better the hostesses look than he expected. But he also sees that by in large his usual crowd isn't there, and usually heads out. The Unix-land regulars are puzzled by this. Why would anyone walk out on sex, especially when you can get fairly sophisticated sex for free? Again, it is because the core experience for the Windows-land market segment is not about sex; nor is it about dancing. It is akin to the schooling instincts of fish. There is safety in numbers -- the sharks won't be able to eat all of us at once etc. Everyone has a little bit of this instinct in them. This is why the Microsoft-land dominated press likes to spread rumors about the imminent closing of Apple-land. But by now the remaining Apple-land regulars have heard this story so much they're pretty much immune. In fact the clever ones probably start buying Apple stock when the rumors reach fever pitch.
So, there you have it. Why the typical Apple customer is willing to pay some premium for Apple hardware.
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