Slashdot Mirror
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.
I would wait on the IBM 970 (G5 whatever) that is coming out this next fall/winter. 64bit, 900MHz Bus, Altivec(or whatever it'll be called), approx 2ghz...
Unless you want a laptop then a Powerbook is a good buy (except 15", there are new bodies for 15.4" powerbook and iBooks on the way).
Just my 2cents being an Apple/Linux/Windows/Solaris user.
$1,499.00
Image
1GHz PowerPC G4
1MB L3 cache
256MB DDR266 SDRAM
60GB Ultra ATA/100
Combo drive
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX
64MB DDR video memory
FireWire 800
56K internal modem
Bluetooth Ready
Sell this to me for $899. Please.
For $500 more you get 1.25GHz, dual processors, and a 80GB HD.
They just cost too much to justify buying, since I wouldn't be using it for DTP/other Mac stuff.
I think the reason why Apple stuff is tolerated a lot more (other than the fact that it is not WinTel), is that Apple is the #1 producer of *nix based machines in the world. Not only that, but the ship more OSS "based" machines in the world (not to mention OSS based OS). So in that regard, they are much more meaningful than someone like Dell simply bumping the speed of their boxes. Remember that /. actually has a separate Apple section, so why is it news to YOU that Apple stuff would get mentioned more frequently?
I have an older PowerMac by my left knee and at ear level it generates 44 dB of soft white noise. The new-style mirror-face PowerMacs also generate about 44 dB of noise. But it's whining, tonal noise. It's a note you can hum. It's a hum that cannot be ignored.
Also, apparently, when the mirror-face PowerMacs' auxiliary fan kicks on, it's described as a "leaf blower." It's a lot louder. (I haven't heard that -- the main fans are bad enough -- and it's possible that the recent firmware upgrade helped keep the leaf-blower fan mostly off.)
The hum is so annoying that there's a website devoted to complaining about it and trying to get rid of it: g4noise.com.
A friend of mine has a music lab with 20 old-style PowerMacs that he'd like to upgrade to newer models. He got one mirror-face PowerMac just to see what it was like. The noise is totally unacceptable for a music lab station -- there's not even any question -- I sat down in front of the keyboard and it took me three seconds to realize there's no way I would use this computer for music.
The best solutions seem to be building a plywood case, lining it with foam, and putting the whole PowerMac inside!
So I hope the new models have quieter fans...
*time travel back to 2000*
Ran over to Best Buy, bought 3 eMachines.
2 machines Celeron 366
1 machines AMD K6 400
One machine is the DNS server (RH 6.2)
One machine is the mail/web server (running Windows 2000, even)
One machine is the firewall (RH 6.2)
These machines still run to this day (we did replace the power supply in one of them though). Not bad machines at all, and they were like $189 each, floor models, no software, box, etc.
ISP that has about 700 users. Sure, not a big one, but the boss loved it. Cheap.
How often do you upgrade your computers? One of the big selling points of a Mac is it's stability. Yet, they release new products all the time.
I come from a PC world where the next gen of OS and Games usually means I have to upgrade my PC or I can't run these applications. I'd like to switch(tm), but I don't want to spend $3500 for a Powerbook just to find out that it breaks down in a year and parts cost a bundle. I'd rather spend $1200 on an iBook. See if the wife and I like it.
Do these new machines mean that much to Apple users, or can they happily chug away on their old iBook or Powerbook?
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
CISC-based, no. But still they have plenty of CISC instructions (lots of the apps, the OS, etc), which it has to break down into RISC instructions, which takes processing time before they can be processed. The P4 has all sorts of requirements of the instructions to obtain performance anywhere near it's theoretical maximum.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Uh.. if Apple is a software company that makes their money selling hardware, then Apple is a hardware company. Not a software company.
slashdot!=valid HTML
Well, how about me then?
I'm an indian student and it's been three years since I even saw an Apple anything. (and that was through a shop window.) Guess we third world geeks will just have to make do with assembled stuff.
*Sighs, and rides his elephant off into the sunset *
I have found a truly wonderful proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, but unfortunately this sig is too small to contain it.
Indeed, when I studied processor design, the mantra was that CISC did more per cycle than RISC (as the instructions are more complex), but due to increased simplicity in design RISC chips run at a higher clock rate. Having a slow RISC chip seems to be the worst of both worlds!
Now, of course nothing is that simple, but the truth is that you need to devise a benchmark which represents your usage, and use that to decide - not some made up marketing numbers.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
The new systems, while considerably faster, don't appear to be much different from the previous models that you point to. From their tech specs:
Hhmmm... 1.3 GBps vs. 2.7 GBps... sounds like the front-side bus on the new processors is running at single data rate, just like the previous iterations.
This is the same issue that the previous models had: the memory bus runs at double data rate, while the processors' FSBs run at single data rate, effectively half the speed of the memory bus. While this allows the remaining components (AGP, PCI, Ethernet, IDE, Firewire, etc.) to use DMA without stepping in the way of the processors, it also holds back the processors, specially when running Altivec-optimised code.
Don't blame Apple for this, BTW; this is Motorola's problem.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
People keep on forgetting that Intel chips do a whole lot less with each clock cycle than PowerPC chips.
Doesn't Linux run on both PowerPC and Intel hardware? Then why doesn't some enterprising individual go put together some various benchmarks comparing the two on this type of level playing field? I want to believe that the PowerPC is faster clock-for-clock, but I can't until I see some good benchmarks.
I just google'ed for some and all that I could find were some ancient BYTEMARKS.
It sure looks like it would be faster...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
>> the mantra was that CISC did more per cycle than RISC.
The opposite is true: most of the RISC instructions execute in a single cycle, while many CISC instructions take much more, which is why raw clock speed is only perhaps meaningful for RISC chips and means very little for CISC, but totally meaningless across platforms.
People keep forgetting that the G4 has a much higher raw clock speed than most of other very expensive high end RISC systems like Sun UltraSparc or SGI Mips or HP PA. How come other RISC vendors don't get blamed for their clock speed, while everyone screams at Apple everytime a faster system is introduced? Could this means that people just love to talk about Apple because it's cool and we all want a better Mac?
(Try taking a 5 year old PC & installing XP on it & see how it performs. Fun & games)
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Indeed, we have a Meida 100 system as our primary edit suite and aside from the very expensive (approx £10,000) specialist editing card it's a stnadard single processor 867 G4.
We just bought a an old Mystic (Dual G4 450) and a copy of Final Cut Pro 3. We were dubious about it being able to work with full frame DVCAM but it's a little gem of a machine - so far we've had it playing back timelines with 4 video streams on along with 3 audio tracks.
It renders transitions in seconds.
I don't know how Apple expects to sell these new machines when we can produce broadcast quality edits using a three year old Dual G4.
Final Cut Pro 3 is too good on those old systems!
For one, PowerPC chips can outperform Intel chips at the same clock rate, but they only do so reliably (as far as I'm aware) if you start using stuff like AltiVec. Most stuff can't be optimized in this way, but a few things can. So, if the Intel chips did outperform the PowerPC chips in a particular benchmark, then some people would just jump up and down and claim it's not fair because AltiVec wasn't used, or something. I've seen this before.
Secondly, testing clock-for-clock is interesting in an academic sense only. The subjective speed of a system can be affected by so many things, slight performance differences at the same clock rate make very little difference.
Anyway, I'm sure you're aware of all of this, but there are so many confounding factors it'd be very hard to get undisputable results.