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Updated Power Macs at Apple.com
Gropo writes "Same old 'scary cyclops' quicksilver face. Up to 1.42 Ghz, FireWire 800, 802.11g and entry-level pricing has dropped. " With the SuperDrive and one of those massive LCD screens, you have a one highly desirable chunk of hardware.
For only $1999 ... Do you know what kind of PC I could build for that much money?? Then I just need the beowulf cluster..
Yeah, but can you get Firewire 800, Firewire 400, built in Gigabit, 54 MBps wireless networking, and a set of sweet applications like Apple bundles with their machines for only $1999?
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Maccentral has an excellent summary of the new Macs. To me, the most interesting part of the story isn't the incrementel improvements in the desktops, but the extremely steep price cuts surrounding Apple's flat panel displays. You can now get a 20" widescreen flat panel from Apple for $1299. That's just $300 more than Apple was charging yesterday for a 17" standard aspect model.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
. . . the fact that it immediately makes "last years" models much more affordable. Resellers like MacMall, Smalldog.com, & the others have great prices on these older models.
Of course, Apple may still have a problem selling these newer faster machines because they've managed to produce an OS that works fantastic on even older models like the dual 533 I'm writing this on!
People keep on forgetting that Intel chips do a whole lot less with each clock cycle than PowerPC chips. The reason that PowerPC processors have remained at lower clock speeds than Intel chips is because they can get the same amount of work done, if not more, in less clock cycles than it takes for an Intel chip. If only we could get IBM PowerPC chips in G4s... they've been making ass-fast shizz lately, but we've had to stick with Motorola. Maybe Apple doesn't like the slight irony of using IBM stuff.
It's great to see Apple leading the pack in new hardware. They are bringing 802.11g and FireWire 800 to the people just as they did with SMP (that "1.4GHz" sounds a lot more impressive next to a 3GHz P4 when you realize there are two of the suckers in there) and 1Kbase-T.
Funny, Macs used to be faster than Pentii, but crippled by their other hardware (SCSI, memory, ADB) and OS. Now they have the advantage everywhere except CPU speed, and I think they're a whole lot better off.
I see the new PowerMacs as a gift. With their power, used wisely, we might be able to save my people from the growing Shadow in the East.
Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
Why dont you be fair and report on the next model eMachines, Dell or Compaq sells at Best Buy.
Because many people like what Apple is doing, and it's generally understood that if you could buy a Power Mac for the price of a Dell, then a whole lot of people here would get one. I mean, look, you get away from all the Intel/AMD nonsense, no crazy cooling issues, dual processors, flashy UNIX out of box with commercial applications available...this is the holy grail to a lot of people.
But no one wants to pay Apple's high-end prices.
But, seriously, why did Apple even release this
True, why bother releasing new better competing products when you have new product coming out in 6 to 12 months (which we all know is nothing in computer time). People would be much more impressed with a jump from 1.25Ghz to 2Ghz vs seeing incremental steps and lowered prices along the way. Shame on them for not releasing new PowerBooks, after all it's been weeks since the previous announcment. Tying up those vast resources to bump up the processor speed and adding a few extra features, I'm sure this totally derailed any iMac or iBook efforts.
Look, I agree that they have soft spots that they have to work on, but laptops is not one of them. iMacs need to get cheaper, agreed. But they MUST continue to bump the TOTL PowerMac's to keep and hearts and minds of their high end buyers in the Mac camp. If they waited until the 970 to release ANYTHING in the PowerMac line, they'd be screwed big time.
If as some suggest that the new machines will be out in time for Summer MacWorld, then great. If not, don't be too surprised to see maybe one more bump if the new guys don't make it until the end of the year. I bet if Motorola can get them faster G4's, they'd put them out there pronto (as they did with these).
But no one wants to pay Apple's high-end prices.
...) I'll be sticking with OS X on the client side and Linux/Solaris on the server side. Blue curve is a great try at a good desktop, maybe it will take off.
Until Linux has a decent desktop (where installing an application actually integrates with the menu) and has some decent apps (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator, Premiere,
Linux has a long way to go to match the ease of use of even windows much less comparing it to OS X. I have no problems with linux b/c I've been using it since around '95 (ah slackware). However, trying to find all the workarounds to keep things playing friendly isn't fun on higher end or newer hardware.
You do realize that AMD Athlon XP 3000+ which is coming out in a few weeks only really runs at 2.16GHz right? ;)
;)
A G4 runs at around 1.5x MHz an equivalent P4. So a 1.42GHz would probably perform about the same as a P4 2.13GHz. Also P4's can't run in SMP mode, although you can buy a Xeon for that, so a Dual G4 1.42GHz is roughly equal to a single P4 4.26GHz, currently the fastest P4 is 3.06GHz.
Now do you see why Apple is using SMP?
It still is laggy on the fastest machines.
No, it's not. I really don't know where people get this idea. I have a Mac that is, as of this morning, no longer state-of-the-art. It's got two 1 GHz G4's and a Radeon 9000 card. Is it "laggy?" No. It's faster than I am; the only time I wait on it is when I'm compiling.
I also have a 400 MHz G3 iMac, not a fast machine by anybody's reckoning. OS X is entirely useable on that machine for things like surfing and email, iCal, iChat, iTunes, iPhoto, and so on.
I think the people who still propagate the "OS X is slow" meme haven't used it in about a year.
I write in my journal
You can't compare clock speeds for a RISC processor to an Intel CISC processor. The clock speed only tells you how fast each instruction is executed, not how fast the CPU runs an application compared to a different architecture. A 1.42 GHz RISC processor may well be faster than a 3 GHz CISC processor in actual performance.
Naa Apple have been using IBM made PowerPC chips for ages, G3s used in iMacs and iBooks nowadays are IBM ones i believe
OK, I'm tired of all this stupidity about how nobody knows exactly what MHz means, and how its not really a measure of speed. Here let me simplify your life:
Every processor has instructions that it understands. When executed, each instruction executes a sequence of microinstructions. Now these microinstructions execute at a rate directly proportional to the overall frequency of the machine (i.e. 133MHz ~ 133 million microinstuctions per second) with the following exceptions:
1) memory accesses in general are the largest bottleneck for any processor so it can decrease the speed of a processor tremendously without a sufficiently large cache and without a caching algorithm sufficient for the task
2) there can be, and usually are, parrallel microrocessing units inside of each processor, so this can increase the operational speed
Myth: Intel chips do a whole lot less per clock cycle than PowerPC chips
Fact: Intel chips have been extended to include all the same vector processing functionality included in most PowerPC chips. Furthermore, the CISC architecture is designed in a way where more work is theoretically done per instruction.
Myth: RISC is better than CISC
Fact: It all depends on the optimization and utilization of the available instruction set. CISC can theoretically do more per clock cycle than RISC.
Now, I'm not really advocating CISC over RISC. I personally hate CISC instructions sets as they are very hard to optimize for. But just because apple says something is faster and you want to believe it, doesn't mean you have too believe it.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
It wouldn't be hard to explain at all if the numbers were genuinely invalid. Apple could pull out the specmark, the MFLPs, topmark, or any of fifty other benchmarks (or all of them) and show people the numbers were invalid. For the Pentium I and the pre 3ghz Pentium IV apple had the advantage that the chips had problems with non optomized code, so you could use some alternate benchmarks. But even using non optomized code you get the following:
The G4 was equal to a Pentium 3 that is 20% faster so
800mhz g4 ~ 1ghz PIII
The first edition of the Penium IVs were very fast but terrible chips so
1.4 ghz G4 ~ 1.75 ghz PIII (if it existed) ~ 2.6 ghz PIV.
The problem was really that the 1.4 ghz G4 wasn't out to this year while the 2.6 was out last year and at a lower price. Now however at the 3+ghz range the PIV have instruction reordering of the PIII + hyperthreadng. That means it is at least as fast as the PIII and probably faster. That is a 3.0 ghz PIV would test somewhere between 2.4 ghz G4 and a 3.0 ghz G4.
So you really can compare ghz with a high degree of accuracy relative to Intel's consummer x86 line. Now if you want to play the cache game Intel can play that too since the Xeons are available for a few hundred dollars more.
Apple has a serious CPU problem. Motorolla has done horrible damage to Apple, lets stop trying to deny the problem exists. It is by far the single biggest flaw in the line.
Explain to me again how a school buying more expensive hardware that isn't generally used in the real world is going to help my kid get a better education?
The whole "generally used in the real world" argument is utter nonsense. You should teach kids computing concepts, not specific applications or systems, because by the time they graduate, the specific applications and systems they used will be obsolete anyway, but the concepts still apply. It doesn't matter if a kid learns about computers on Mac OS X, Windows XP, KDE, Gnome, Mac OS 8, or Windows 95. They'll have to adjust later anyway.
However, there are two distinct advantages of not using Windows in school: first, since the student is likely to be using Windows at home, teaching them something else at school gives them a broader base of experience than what they might otherwise have exposure to, which will make it easier to adjust to other systems in the future. Second, it shows them that there are viable alternatives to Microsoft, so if they later choose to run Windows, it will at least be a real choice.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
This turbocharged Power Mac rips through digital video and 3D projects faster than Pentiums can say "uncle."
I'm not a big fan of Apple in many ways, but this is what just burns me. I will never, ever deal with a company that is this dishonest. Benchmark after benchmark shows that a top of the line Intel KILLS the Macintosh, and is half the price to boot. How can Apple get away with bald-faced lying to the public like this?
Can't they just sell on the merits of their hardware and software, and just stick to the truth?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.