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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.
Think Differe-- BIGGER FASTER BETTER, Must...Catch...Up...
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"pain is weakness leaving the body."Prices start at $ 1500, not 2000.
Do you know what kind of PC I could build for that much money??
One that won't run OS X, that's for sure.
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?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
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!
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.
Update:
Yes, Macs still more expensive than PC's... But they are worth it.
Highlights at 11.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
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.
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
They save money by bundling them with a boatload of adware, spyware, trialware, demoware, advertisements, ISP offers, etc. About 7 gigs on a 15 gig HDD was full of ad-ware bloat. A quick format and reinstall and you're all set.
,HP, or Dells') 200 watt PSU to replace the 145 watts they ship with. 20 bucks apiece.
As for the PSU, get a replacement (it's flex atx 5" wide, 4" deep - usually sold as 'for eMachines
The PSUs in there arent really 'cheap' per se, but if you want to add HDDs and whatnot, it's worth 20 bucks. At least that's what I did with the P3-era machines I bought.
My only hassles with eMachines was trying to retrofit a real drive cage into one of 'em so I could mount more HDDs. But thats generally par for the course with boxed brands. I also had trouble getting the goofy HSP modem in the little riser slot to work since they only provided ME drivers. I didnt need or use it anyways, I like my external USRobotics, so no biggie.
The mobo is micro-atx form factor, with a fairly low profile CPU cooler, I just finished moving all of an eMachine into a slick looking little VCR-style case with a cheap TV out card. Makes a nifty media player.
You get a lot of bang for your buck in those cheap boxes. Usually cheaper than the components would cost seperately. And like I said, the cheapness is because of kickbacks from all the spyware bloat thats preinstalled, so install your own OS of choice over it.
I dont think it's fair that only the editors get to slashvertise stuff. Buy an eMachine.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Could somebody please add a posting FAQ to slashdot including (at least - additions anyone?) the following points:
1)"Apple Macs are more expensive than a decent x86 box. "
We know that, you're paying for the engineering that goes into their design and their quality.
2)"Kde3? I use blackbox/ratpoison etc. Kde is slow! "
No, KDE3 runs very fast on a reasonable machine. If you don't want to use it, that's ok.
3)"In every discussion about either MySQL or Postgres, I must mention how much better Postgres/MySQL is at $FEATURE."
No, you don't. Anyone who needs to know the differences can go to the relevant websites and look them up.
4)"A new graphics card is out. When will it end!/I only just upgraded/they're too expensive"
This has been said many times, and is generally said about 100 times in every relevant story. I'm guilty of this one too. Please stop.
My only worry is that nothing at all would be posted to slashdot, and I'd have to start doing some work occasionally.
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;
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.
"My 4 THz Intel Pentium IIIVIXXX is father then your 16 KHz G101"
For those of you who have not read ALL of the CPU articles at ArsTechnica. Go there now and do so. Before posting any of your inane babble about clock speed and processor power.
It IS true that Motorola has fallen behind Intel - sort of.
There are other advantages to hardware other then Intel based systems.
Since this is an Apple thread I'll focus there - One of the most note worthy (My opinion) Is apple's System controller.
Go READ the articles at ArsTechnica!
Rather than re-writing I'll simply cut & paste.
Fast system controller: The system controller, first introduced in Apple?s highly-regarded Xserve line, coordinates and transfers data and instructions among the processor(s), PCI bus, memory, graphics and I/O buses of the Power Mac G4. Controller speeds in the new Power Mac G4 configurations run as high as 167MHz.The PCI bus is what really impressed me.
Direct PCI bus: In another example of superior architecture, the Power Mac G4 optimizes PCI performance by connecting the PCI bus directly to the system controller. In a typical PC architecture, PCI devices connect to the I/O controller through a bridge, a bottleneck in the data path where all connected PCI devices are slowed down to avoid overloading the system controller. Going through this bridge constrains PCI throughput to 133Mbps (the bus speed on Pentium 4 systems), even with otherwise fast PCI devices. This slowdown of data to and from PCI devices results in greater overall system latency. The Power Mac G4, on the other hand, features a direct 266-MBps bus to the PCI slots to guarantee high throughput and low congestion ? in effect, lowering latency. The Power Mac G4 also supports write combining, which allows write instructions to be grouped into one large instruction, further increasing data throughput.
Then Apple oficially slams PC architecture.
On the Power Mac G4, FireWire, Gigabit Ethernet and even the ATA/100 bus are built into the system and integrated directly into the system controller. (The ATA/66 bus has its own controller.) This dedicated connection reduces PCI congestion and guarantees low latency, resulting in optimal FireWire, Ethernet and hard drive performance. And as a side benefit, it also keeps the computer?s PCI slots free for your specialized audio and video cards instead of using them to provide basic technologies.
I got this info here.
Go READ the articles at ArsTechnica!
Apple is not the end all - be all of systems. Two of the greated systems are made by DEC & H/P. The UltraSparc kicks the crap out of anything Motorola & Intel have to offer.
And let's not forget the Alpha. The Pentium - Pentium III architectures were based on technology stolen from DEC. Technology that Intel is still paying for today.
It basically falls down to system preference. Mac users DO NOT CARE if you can build a PC for $400. Mac users DO NOT CARE if only a few of the best selling game titles are ported to the system.
Having more game titles available is a Good Thing - naturally -but I find myself being... PRODUCTIVE instead of having my time eaten away by games - Linux users also what I'm talking about - unless they've downloaded BZFlag or Crack Attack.
Go READ the articles at ArsTechnica!
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I'm not a geek, but I play one on TV.