Apple to Announce the Power Mac G5 at WWDC?

a.ameri writes "Apple Insider is reporting that Apple will announce computers based on IBM's 64 bit PPC 970 processor in the upcomming WWDC and will market them as G5. The new Power Mac G5s will sport a completely new motherboard design utilizing DDR 400 RAM as well as AGP 8x graphics, FireWire 800, and USB 2.0, sources said. "In the box" connectivity among the news systems is based on Hypertransport which provides 64-bit addressing and will replace Apple's multilevel bus architecture found in current systems. Initial offerings of the Power Mac G5 are said to boast 1.4 to 1.8GHz, single core PPC 970 processors, with the possibility of a dual 1.8GHz chips shortly thereafter."

Comments

No Gigabit Ethernet ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've not seen any gigabit ethernet capabilities ?

Does anybody have information about this ?

Re:No Gigabit Ethernet ?

[pschmerg]

My dual g4 450 that I got back in the fall of 2000 had gigabit ethernet, so I don't see why they'd remove it from the machine.

Re:No Gigabit Ethernet ?

[The AtomicPunk]

Yes. Despite having moved to it in all their current models, they've decided it's overkill for the consumer and are moving back to 4mbit token ring.

Re:No Gigabit Ethernet ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, the rumor sites haven't said anything about a keyboard, either! Does anybody know whether Apple plans to ship a keyboard with the G5?

Re:No Gigabit Ethernet ?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

That's just mini8 serial devices or printers, is it not? If you need actual localtalk, you're forced to use one of those crappy ethernet-localtalk bridges.
You probably mean appletalk (network software, protocol, etc) support is still there.

Or am I mistaken?

Re:No Gigabit Ethernet ?

[pHDNgell]

so tell me, why do YOU need gigabit ethernet on a workstation?

Because my system acquires DV data far faster than I can transfer it over 100Mbps ethernet.

Re:No Gigabit Ethernet ?

[Zork the Almighty]

Actually the computer will come with one big button. Press this button and it will do everything.

Re:No Gigabit Ethernet ?

[Knife_Edge]

Well, they discontinued that particular model in January 2001. It seems they were testing the waters with that one, and had not yet fully made the transition (all models shipping at that time did not have it). Fast forward to the present - All currently shipping PowerMac G4s have built-in gigabit ethernet. I doubt it will ever go away now. Curiously, the Apple Store does not mention this as a prominent selling point, placing more emphasis on the modem and airport extreme.

Re:No Gigabit Ethernet ?

[noewun]

what the hell do you need to transfer at 1000BaseTX?

4 GB Photoshop files.

Re:No Gigabit Ethernet ?

[mjpaci]

A lot of Macs used to NOT ship with keyboards. That was a big bitch point of PC users. (Jeez, your Mac doesn't come with a keyboard? Apple is sucking you dry!) Then Apple started shipping every Mac with a keyboard and the PC users started razzing Mac users that since their machine came with a keyboard, they didn't have as much choice as a PC user building his own box from Chernobyl debris.

It just goes to show you that there are no winners in the Mac/PC debate, just whiners. (On both sides).

--Mike

Probably true but...

[iJed]

While it is probably true that Apple will launch a PowerMac G5 at WWDC the information given here is only from a rumor site. Many of the rumor sites cannot be trusted much (such as MacOSRumors) and a one or two are extremely accurate (ThinkSecret). AppleInsider is one of the oldest rumor sites and at one time was one of the best. Recently though it has been taken over and the general accuracy of its stories is now unknown. However this rumor seems to have enough other sites reporting generally the same thing to be true. Its not fact yet though!

Re:Probably true but...

[jpkunst]

However this rumor seems to have enough other sites reporting generally the same thing to be true.

I'd say that that doesn't mean much because rumor sites will probably copy from each other without attribution.

JP

Does the clock speed matter that much?

[gotr00t]

Apple themselves have made public demonstrations trying to debunk the myth that clock speed is processing power. Being known for sticking to "slower" processors, it seems that Apple is finally starting to cave into the demands of the consumers.

I have tried to use the Distributed.net client on an AMD Athlon 1600 XP running Linux 2.4.10 and a G4 864 Mhz using Mac OS X 10.2. It seems that in terms of raw processing power, the G4 was actually more powerful, at over 10,260,280 nodes/sec, while the Athlon was only at 8,160,200 nodes/sec, and that's with no backgrounds processes running (besides the OS)

Re:Does the clock speed matter that much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the dnetc is optimized for the altivec capabilities of the G4. The Athlon has no similar vector processing unit.

Re:Does the clock speed matter that much?

[phelddagrif]

I wouldn't say that they've caved into the Mhz myth, so much as the G4 processors have pretty much hit the top of their lifespan quite some time ago. This is just a natural progression, they needed a new processor, and Moto's offerings are pants, so they went with the 970, which is a darn good processor.

Furthermore, if they were really caving, they would have gone with a processor with a few more RPM.. 1.8Ghz? That's pretty weedy in the world of x86.. That's actually pathetic as far as "new" machinew would be concerned..

Re:Does the clock speed matter that much?

[TCM]

I have tried to use the Distributed.net client on an AMD Athlon 1600 XP running Linux 2.4.10 and a G4 864 Mhz using Mac OS X 10.2. It seems that in terms of raw processing power, the G4 was actually more powerful, at over 10,260,280 nodes/sec, while the Athlon was only at 8,160,200 nodes/sec, and that's with no backgrounds processes running (besides the OS)

It's kind of naive to equate OGR performance with "raw processing power". Computing OGR nodes is a very special case of computing something. There may be other cases where the Athlon is better.

Disclaimer: I'm neither an Athlon nor PowerPC fanatic.

Re:Does the clock speed matter that much?

[DougG3]

Perhaps you should ask AMD; that Athlon XP 1600+ really runs at 1.4 GHz, you know. AMD seems to be in a similar boat as Apple with the clock speed myths.

And, AMD has done a pretty good job at disguising the real clock speed. I bought an Athlon 2400+ not too long ago. I couldn't find the real clock speed anywhere on the package, until suddenly a small note in a really tiny font size near the UPC label said: Operates at 2000 MHz.

Re:Does the clock speed matter that much?

[d3faultus3r]

Remember that Apple has optimised its processors to run with their OS, while Intel and AMD have no such luxury. I think a better test would be the above both running Linux.

Re:Does the clock speed matter that much?

[Alan Partridge]

the dnetc RC5-64 and RC5-72 client for MacOSX both make extensive use of hand coded Altivec optimisations. All that your results prove is that Altivec is an extremely powerful vector unit - but we knew that already.

Look at the dnetc client comparison database and you'll find some spectacular results for the MP Macs - a 2 way 1.42 Ghz G4 scores like a 16 way 1.05 Ghz Sun Ultra SPARC III.

Re:Does the clock speed matter that much?

[default luser]

If it's a very small loop that can be kept entirely in cache, the G4 is going to own that sucker.

It has very short pipelines, perfect for a single loop. This hardly makes it "better" overall, it is simply the better choice for that particular task.

Re:Does the clock speed matter that much?

[Andy_R]

You have misunderstood what the parent post was claiming.

Linux certainly is optimised for x86, but no-one would claim that the x86 has been optimised specifically for Linux!

Re:Does the clock speed matter that much?

[akuma(x86)]

Please people.

Stop using "Distributed.net" to compare microprocessor performance. It's a highly skewed benchmark that really only tests the speed of the "Rotate" instruction (which is on the critical path of the program).

Altivec supplies a data-parallel version of the Rotate instruction so processors with altivec can do many rotates in parallel which is why a G4 will beat anything else (no other processors have this data-parallel instruction because it is completely useless with the rare exception of this app). That is to say that most other computer designers felt that adding this instruction would be a complete waste of die area and power, since no other ISA supports it (x86, SPARC, MIPS, POWER etc...)

Distributed.net ...

1) Does not test branch predictors because it's a simple loop that is very easily predictable by even the most trivial preditctors

2) Does not test the internal L1/L2 cache hierarchy because all of the data fits in the L1 of most processors

3) Does not test the memory system (DRAM/Front-side-bus/memory-controller) because, as mentioned in #2, all of the data fits in the L1 cache.

4) It does not test the instruction cache performance because all of the code fits in the L1 instruction cache.

Stop using it to compare general-purpose computer performance. It is only important if the only app you care about is distributed.net

Your Athlon 1600 will spank the G4 at most everything else.

Re:Does the clock speed matter that much?

[tgibbs]

Clock speed is not very informative when comparing processors of different design, but it is certainly relevant when comparing similar processors. PPC's are faster than Intel processors at comparable clock speeds--but clock speeds have not been comparable for some time. The speed advantage of the PPC is not enough to compensate for the much faster clock speed of current Intel chips. So Apple does need faster processors, and one part of this is a faster clock.

Re:Does the clock speed matter that much?

[lewp]

The only people who need to do those things are terrorists and thieves. Would you like to confess now, or down at the station?

Re:Does the clock speed matter that much?

[RevAaron]

It is a good thing to know, acedemically, that Altivec is the reason dnetc is so fast on a G4 and that there is no equivalent on the Athlon or a P4. However, this does not change the fact that the G4 performs so much better than the x86 processors available- and isn't that end-of-the-day, real-world performance what matters? It's not like someone can say "The Athlon doesn't have a vector processing unit- so you have to take it out of the G4!" and expect some "more fair" comparison. The G4 is the G4 and the Athlon is the Athlon.

Re:Does the clock speed matter that much?

[RevAaron]

People may blow off Altivec G4 performance, thinking that it's something very few applications take advantage of. That was true with Mac OS 9- all but a few, specifically coded apps would be any faster on a G4 than a G3, given the same bus, RAM, CPU MHz. Without Altivec, a G4 is about 15% or so faster in raw FP ops than a G3 of the same speed. Int ops are about the same.

But most folks don't run OS 9 anymore as their primary OS, for a number of good reasons. People run OS X. And OS X has Altivec optimization throughout the core of the system- in libmath and others. Anyone who has used both has noticed a signifigant speed increase in OS X when moving from, say, a G3/500 to a G4/500 that doesn't exist in OS 9.

Will they still be behind Intel ?

[ThomasFlip]

Intel has 3GHZ+ chips out these days. Thats double what the new Mac would have. I know clock speed isn't everything but at a certain point wouldn't you want clock speed over architecture ?

Re:Will they still be behind Intel ?

[boaworm]

When you buy a new car, do you look for the one with the engine featuring the highest RPM ? (thougth not)

The comparison is not as stupid as it sounds, your argument is actually a lot worse. Not trying to flame here, but seriously, do you really think the amount of Ghz is what really counts nowdays ?

Re:Will they still be behind Intel ?

[the eric conspiracy]

but at a certain point wouldn't you want clock speed over architecture ?

No. Intel has shown that you can sacrifice too much chasing clock speed in the case of the P4. Look at the Centrino - the same performance of the P4M at 2/3 the clock speed.

With the G5 we are talking about a 64 bit CPU with clock speeds in the 1.2 - 1.8 GHz range. This is in fact quite competitive just on a clock speed basis with current 64 bit designs from AMD and Intel.

Re:Will they still be behind Intel ?

[gerbache]

Not to mention that if the actual instructional capability is any indication, the 970 will still be faster than both of them per clock, which means that this should be a very competitive chip for them. Which is exactly what Apple needs right now to spurn people back into buying them. The iMac did well a few years ago, but it's slowly been dying out, so they really need something new and exciting to come along again.

Re:Will they still be behind Intel ?

[BinxBolling]

You're misunderstanding the analogy. The point isn't that engine RPM doesn't matter, because the law limits how fast you can go anyways. The point is that engine RPM is only one factor out of many that determine a car's overall performance. Similarly, clock speed of the CPU is only one factor out of many that determine a computer's overall performance.

Re:Will they still be behind Intel ?

[TheRaven64]

Intel has 3GHZ+ chips out these days. Thats double what the new Mac would have.

It gets worse. The new 3GHz P4 has a thermal output of almost 80W, around four times the thermal output of a . How will Apple cope with a computer which produces so little heat? The average consumer won't care that you can leave a Mac on longer in order to heat up their room, or that they will actually be able to hear their music over the fan noise. All they will see is that the Mac costs more and they have to buy a heater to keeps their house warm as well.

Re:Will they still be behind Intel ?

[drsmithy]

No. Intel has shown that you can sacrifice too much chasing clock speed in the case of the P4. Look at the Centrino - the same performance of the P4M at 2/3 the clock speed.

You seem to be missing the point - what good is the Centrino being just as fast at 2/3 the clockspeed if the P4 still has enough headroom to (say) quadruple it's clockspeed and the Centrino only has enough headroom to double it ?

CPU performance can be increased by (amongst other things) architectural improvements or by ramping clockspeed. Neither, in an of itself, is inherently superior to the other. A CPU that performs twice as fast per clock, but is only clocked at 1/3 the speed, is still slower.

Re:Will they still be behind Intel ?

[droleary]

In the computer world, there is no speed limit.

Yes there is: you. Everything external to the CPU limits the computer these days, and responding to human events is like idling at a stop light; your raw RPM doesn't make a big difference. According to procinfo and top, my computers are idle a good 90% of the time. Everyone chasing clock speed really needs to take a step back and instead design an architecture that meets the burst processing pattern that most people have.

The other part of the analogy is not about performance, it's about packaging. You don't buy a car on speed alone. There are styling and comfort factors, and suitability to a purpose. What's really amazing is that Apple is one of the few that understands that; you'd think PC builders would be more inclined to do that sort of thing in order to differentiate themselves from all the other clones that are on shelves.

Re:Will they still be behind Intel ?

[pajamacore]

If Apple utilises IBM's PPC 970 like everyone thinks it will, then the next obvious evolution will be the PPC 980, scheduled for release mid-2004. It's based on POWER5 architecture and should reach speeds at around 4.5-5.0GHz. Then there's the 990, based on the POWER6, blah, blah, blah. It could be a horse race in the next few years.

Re:Will they still be behind Intel ?

[darkgreen]

I don't usually buy a computer because it's comfortable.

Actually, I'd argue that a lot of our computer-related choices are based on "comfort". I choose my OS based on how easily I can get around on it. Others will be comfortable with different operating systems, that's cool, too.

when you think about it, monitor refresh/resolution/size, is all about comfort, keyboard placement and choice, the chair you sit in.. all of these things have a big thing to do with something you spend a good part of your life involved with.

if more speed comes at the cost of comfort or ease of use, then i'll probably take a bit of a trade-off.

I think that you've got to realize that 'comfort' is often a very important part of productivity, not just aesthetics.

Re:Will they still be behind Intel ?

[owlicks58]

Haha, that's pretty damn funny. I love macs, in fact I have a Rev B. iMac and a TiBook on my desk. But they seriously heat my room up to sauna standards. Even in the winter time if I have my door closed I have to open up the window in my room to let cold air in.

Re:Will they still be behind Intel ?

[RageEX]

I agree, I'm no fan of the latest-greatest upgrade-fanatic crowd and companies playing the same game.

In contrast the current major.minor relase of SGI's IRIX (6.5) will run on machines sailing by 12 years old (Indigo). Ditto for the latest quarterly release (6.5.20). To me this is pretty amazing considering that 6.5 was ready in about 1998 whilst the Indy and Indigo were new in 1993 and 1991 respectively, and both hit end of production before 1998. What's even more amazing is that new versions of IRIX run faster on old hardware than previous version. Combine this with SGIs commitment to continuously and carefully evolve their OS with a quarterly release scheme and still maintain huge backwards & platform compatibility, and you have one hell of a nice setup for hobbyists, students, and small businesses, or anyone in the market for a 2nd hand machine.

It would be great if other companies ditched their 'big bang,' redesign-everything, candy coated and bloated, useless bloody edge, never fix the bugs just get some new ones, jokey GUIs, and all that mess they call software design, and emulated SGI. I'm looking in your direction PTC.

Re:Will they still be behind Intel ?

[willtsmith]

I mean, you get a similar thing in Windows, but XP CAN run on a computer made several years ago, and runs on a ton of computers.

Yes, it will run ... POORLY.

If you have a several year old computer, it's time to buy a new one. That's the nature of consumer products. Even automobiles (to many degrees) are like that.

The Mac OS upgrade was LONG overdue. The Mac simply does not have a large enough installed base to support to parallell development tracks for most companies. Successfull transition for Mac means a QUICK transition.

Your legacy Macs still work, do they not???? The happy outcome to the story is that MacOSX is a modern OS that runs on top of Macs that now incorporate a LOT of industry standard components. The new Mac hardware should stay more compatible due to standardized components. They should also stay compatible because Apple has taken to selling an upgrade OS EVERY year. Compatible hardware means more sales.

I think your pretty safe buying a new make right now.

Re:Will they still be behind Intel ?

[squiggleslash]

OS X works well on the Beige G3s and every Mac made since as long as it has enough memory. I know this because I personally bought two Beige G3s to test OS X on (Sorry Apple, if you'd sell the oft-requested "iCheap", I'd have given YOU the money), upgraded nothing more than the memory and disk space, and put in a USB card (because I prefer my keyboard), and Jaguar "just worked".

As far as I'm aware, there's only one Apple-made G3 machine that doesn't run OS X. This is the original PowerBook G3 - the original, not the many subsequent revisions. All iMacs with enough memory and disk space are capable of running an out-of-the-box copy of Jaguar, as far as I'm aware.

There are various third party tools available that will allow OS X to be installed on computers that were never produced with G3s or G4s. Apple has, in the past, when it's "opposed" to something made strenuous efforts to close down unauthorized hacks. Apple has made no such efforts in this case. Given (ironically, considering the oft-proffered explanation for Apple's reliability record with its OSes) the wide range of different platforms it's sold with very different architectures and chipsets, it's not really unfair that they've limited themselves to machines they know came with a suitable processor to begin with.

The Power Macintosh G3 I'm trying this message on was made in 1997. I find it doubtful that many PCs released in 1997, without heavy upgrading, will run Windows XP. Many of them have motherboards that can't even support the minimum memory requirements of XP.

I think Apple has been fairly reasonable with OS X. Indeed, if Panther turns out to drop Beige G3 support (unlikely, but it might happen), I'll probably be unhappy about it, but I wouldn't consider it a fault of Apple.

Re:"New!"

[pldms]

3... 2... 1...

Go!

Which wintel motherboards have fw 800 and hypertransport? I'd be interested.

Appleinsider is a rumour site, btw.

nTh Post!!!

[FosterKanig]

Anyway, what I found most interesting about the rumor/article was the inclusion of USB2.

They have long championed Firewire as superior (which it is, and is still included) but it is nice to see that they are willing to adapt and a more common USB2.
This acceptance of USB2 shows a willingness to accept standards, no matter how wrong they are.

Re:nTh Post!!!

[squiggleslash]

There's nothing particularly wrong with USB2 - it's seen as a competitor merely because the bus speeds of FW and USB2 are similar. USB2 is cheap and processor intensive. FW isn't either cheap or processor intensive. You'd want to use Firewire for most storage applications (ie the computer's permanently attached disks, etc) and processes where there'd be high processor involvement while those devices are in use, such as DV cameras.

But there's no reason for USB2 not to be used for a lot of the "rest of the stuff", such as portable storage devices, CD burning, cameras and MP3 players, etc. There's no reason to believe that while these devices are being used, the machine itself will need to do a lot of other work, and given the price difference, it seems reasonable.

You might liken it to IDE vs SCSI, except IDE was a real heap of crap so even when performance wasn't an issue, there were still good reasons to go with SCSI. USB2 on the other hand is a decent enough standard, has wide support, and shouldn't be treated with the snobbery it usually attracts.

Re:nTh Post!!!

[willtsmith]

Ummm,

While Firewire does stuff that USB2 cannot (because it's effectively dumb and requires the host CPU), they do compete in a LOT of markets.

Firewire only
Consumer digital video
Point to multi-point, hi-bandwidth networks

Firewire and USB2:
External storage connection - HD CD/DVD

Medium bandwidth imaging, scanners, printers and webcams

Point to Point networking - adhoc networking cables

Satellite peripherals - MP3 players, Handhelds(though I haven't seen a handheld to date that included firewire)

--

So they do compete in MANY markets. It's a shame because firewire was set to take over the high-bandwidth PC peripheral area. Intel announced USB2 and scared off a lot of motherboard manufacturers. USB2 came in late and buggy.

USB2 will never truly be able to compete in the digital video area. I have seen a few recent offerings that stream video over USB2.0, however I expect these to be absolute flops. Despite USB2's higher theoretical bandwidth, it's reliance on the CPU makes it subject to unpredictable dropouts and dropped frames.

Beyond that, the need for a host CPU controller makes it an unreasonable option for handheld and mobile devices. Their "hack" for this area "USB On The Go" is a two year old standard that to date is complete vapor-ware.

It's a real shame that Intel chose to intervene with USB2 and effectively sabotage large scale firewire deployment. The lack of critical mass has kept firewire prices high (with relation to USB) and kept firewire as a niche player in high-performance (low CPU utilization) scenarios.

One last comment, the Firewire folks DID screw up in a way. The 4-pin connector includes no power. That connector (due to it's smaller size) has showed up on all kinds of notebooks. The problem is that plugging a dependent peripheral into these 4-pin plugs does NOT provide power. This puts Firewire at a serious disadvantage when compared to USB. All the USB ports theoretically CAN include power. As much as Sony wanted the smaller connector, I think Apple should have insisted on a small form-factor plug that INCLUDED power capabilities. Certainly, they should have insisted on licensing policies that prevented computers and hubs from including integrated 4-pin, unpowered connectors.

Have no fear. Firewire is alive and well beyond the reach of any of Intel's machinations. The Consumer Electronics has embraced the standard as a replacement for RCA, S-Video, and component video cables. Furthermore, It's widely speculated that some derivative of firewire (firewire 800) will replace DVI (and ultimately RGB-15) as the method of interconnection between computers and digital monitors due to it's ease of fabrication, size (low pin-count) and a plethora of hardware from the TV industry which will run on firewire.

Beyond that, Firewire has some serious applications in the arena of cluster computing and storage area network. The firewire protocol itself is designed to run over CAT-5 and fiber to produce super-bandwidth networks.

So yes, Firewire does do a lot more then USB2. A lot of these things CAN be done on USB (poorly and inefficiently). But it would have been nice if USB2 hadn't butted into the desktop/laptop space and prevented a very, very QUICK introduction of firewire across EVERYTHING (including cell phones and PDAs).

Re:nTh Post!!!

[huckleup]

EXACTLY like firewire does

No, it's not *exactly* like FireWire. Actually it's not the same at all.

FireWire is a true peer-to-peer model and can work in a ring or star mode. USB uses a Host-Periphieral model where all data must go through the host and only operates in a tree mode with the host at the root. If it is both host and peripheral, it is a leaf on the peripheral end and the root of another tree on the host end.

In FireWire if you have three devices device A can send and receive data directly to/from device C. If it's in a star mode you need a hub, but that doesn't put any load on any of the other devices and is essentially just routing. In ring mode device A sends the data to device B but it just passes it through at the hardware level to device C. You can combine stars and rings, but that is just phyiscal and not logical, as the data is essentially still just passed from one device to the other with no software processing required by any of the intervening devices.

In USB you have a Host and a Peripheral. First off, the host must essentially 'poll' each peripheral to see if it has anything to say. A peripheral cannot initiate a transaction. The polling happens each frame, which is 1 msec in USB 1.x. Secondly, if you want to send from device A to device C you really have to tell the host that you want to send the data to C, then it asks C if it is OK, then the host essentially brokers all the transactions. All the data has to go into the host, get buffered and prioritized and repacketized and peeked and poked and then is turned around to device C, mostly all in software running on the host processor.

FireWire uses a collision avoidance scheme on the virtually shared wire similiar to the way ethernet works. There is no host required to poll peripherals or broker and process all the transactions.

Devices that have both a host and peripheral controller means it has to have 2 connectors since they are different physically. (There is that USB2Go thing, but that's really just a repackaging of the hardware, while all the same host-peripheral and sofware issues remain.) While it is a peripheral it is at the mercy of whatever the host is allowing on that side of the fence. You don't really get a star, you get a messy tree with a slew of idiocsyncracies, and delivery times that become very unpredictable.

If you want to be a host, then you have to essentially replicate what the major OS vendors have done as far as driver support and such. Host controller software is infintely more complicated to implement than peripheral software. It has to have drivers for all the possible peripherals that may be connected to it, and possibly support loading of drivers (at least for updates and such, if not to work with mfg. exclusive-class peripherals). It has to be able to a whole bunch of stuff, hard stuff like scheduling for all the peripherals. If this custom host is also to be a peripheral of say a computer or other host, it has to deal with bridging between the other host and the peripherals connected to it. It has to intervene on every transaction. If you want any kind of throughput you have to have a pretty heavy duty microcontroller to do all that work.

Then there is the issue of drivers. The host has to have native drivers for all the peripherals it is to support. When the peripheral is plugged in it has to negotiate with a driver that knows how to talk to it. The host can't ID a device that it doesn't have a driver for. So if you had a camera, a printer and some weird host in between, that host would have to support both devices with drivers just to pass data between them. Do you think the scanner and camera manufacturers are going to provide drivers for every propietary host OS? It's hard enough to get drivers for Mac/Win/Linux/Unix OSs. In FireWire only the two devices that are communicating need to support a common protocol, since any other device in the ring or star would just be passing around the raw data and doesn't have to support each device.

G5 a good name?

[freedom_leffo]

Is G5 a good marketing name though? I've understood that the whole Gx-line is thought of as slow and stagnant processors. Perhaps a name not associated with Motorola would be a better idea.

Thoughts, anyone?

Re:G5 a good name?

[rice_web]

But how does a company attempt to reverse its brand name and build a new one? Apple has a name for itself, but so do G3 and G4. G5 allows Apple to continue it's run with brand recognition.

Re:G5 a good name?

[Hawthorne01]

It will work right up until the G8 is released, which will not sell due to massive "spontaneous" protests that form around each machine with it inside.

Shadow and Substance.

[A_Non_Moose]

Panther (10.3) we know is coming, that is a given and that is the substance.

The "Shadow" is the G5 and even the most die-hard mac fan would most likely utter the phrase:

I will believe it when I see it.

IMO, apple needs to figure out if they are going to keep/dump metadata...and stick with it.
I find it quite half-assed you can generate previews of images, but not store them.
(with the exception of Internet Explorer, but only one at a time)

(won't someone think of the pr0n collections?)
.

Re:Shadow and Substance.

[Andre Breton]

"[...]and even the most die-hard mac fan would most likely utter the phrase:

I will believe it when I see it

Nah, the phrase we die-hard Mac fans use (when talking about the G5) is:

I want to believe

Re:Shadow and Substance.

[MacGarnicle]

(won't someone think of the pr0n collections?)

Speaking of pr0n, here are some on-topic boudoir photos of the PowerPC 970 (attribution: As the Apple Turns)...

1. Chip with feathers 1 [ibm.com]

2. Chip with feathers 2 [ibm.com]

3. Chip in the eye of a peacock feather 1 [ibm.com]

4. Chip in the eye of a peacock feather 2 [ibm.com]

Thanks IBM for posing this beautiful little G5 in its natural environment.

Re: Shadow and Substance.

[bursch-X]

Get Iconic.

It's free and changes the icon of an image to a preview of it.
If you have PStill (an eps/pdf converter) installed, it will even make preview icons for .eps and .ps files.

rumors

[pcp_ip]

there's been a rush of rumors in the last few weeks- and most have them have been fakes (like PAL).

Gone are the days of WorkerBee.

You can't bet on the rumormill- only steve knows what's going to happen.

I'm really not trolling, but...

[niko9]

whats stopping IBM from making these chips available
with an appropriate motherboard for folks who would like to run linux/bsd/ on them?

Re:I'm really not trolling, but...

[RalphBNumbers]

Nothing.
In point of fact IBM announced they would be selling PPC970 based systems running linux months ago. The announcement concerned blades, but I'd be willing to bet they'll build "low end" (compared to Power4 systems) workstations around them too, finally phasing out their old PPC604 low end workstations.

Of course, I wouldn't count on them matching/beating Apple's price point. Historically IBM's PPC based stuff has been *much* more expensive.

Re:I'm really not trolling, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Profit motive.

Let's say you're IBM. You send one of your marketing guys out to snoop on the market to see whether there's any hope for your brilliant plan to sell PowerPC 970 motherboards to Linux users.

Your marketing intern logs on to Slashdot, and immediately sees 500 posts about how much the PowerPC sucks next to the Whatever. He reports back.

The "let's sell PowerPC to Linux users" plan is seen for the disaster it would be. It's immediately abandoned.

This is, incidentally, generally why stuff is not available for Linux users. Some companies have bitten the bullet and gone down the Linux road. Most who have tried to do so have failed. The rest look at this and recognize that trying to sell into the Linux market is a slow-motion train wreck.

Re:I'm really not trolling, but...

[doce]

As far as I know, the technology is licensed to Motorola which is actually manufacturing the chip and reselling it to Apple.

alas, no. IBM and Moto both manufacture PPC processors. Most G3's, for instance, were manufactured by IBM (IIRC, even the current iBooks sport IBM procs), but G4's are all from Motorola* because IBM refuses** to use the Altivec unit.

Anybody knows if Apple has been able to gain any market share in the rackmounted server market with its 1U servers? A 1U server build around the PPC970 may be a killer server.

well... before the XServe, Apple had 0% of this market. Selling just one would increase their market share. A friend of mine went to a Minnesota Wild hockey game and was telling me that the stadium luxury boxes are decked out with Apple hardware which you could use to watch instant replays and call up historical video of the various players. Supposedly the stadium has an XServe data center to host it all.

Re:I'm really not trolling, but...

[Master Bait]

whats stopping IBM from making these chips available with an appropriate motherboard for folks who would like to run linux/bsd/ on them?

In 2004, IBM will produce a chipset and subsequently subcontracts a Taiwan motherboard company to produce boards for the White Box market. These boards run Linux/BSD/OSX. Price point for a single-CPU board is seeded (with a small subsidy from IBM) at about US$200.

Apple whines and whimpers, but their contract with IBM does not prohibit IBM from doing chipsets or motherboards. The cat is out of the bag.

Apple then counters with their own White-Box board (based on their $1,999 low-end G5 model and offers it to authorized dealers for resale at a list price of $499. While attractively packaged, the board does not sell well. Soon, tier two computer vendors are offering OSX-compatible computers for less than $1,000. Apple's sales begin to tank badly.

Steve Jobs is forced out of Apple, and some clever dot.com thumbhead takes over. Apple sells off their hardware division to Vector Capitol (for too much money), and subsequently releases an OSX-64 version for the Opteron. Apple throws away Mach-O in favor of the Linux kernel, touting the 'thousands of drivers' supported. OSX now retails for $299.

OSX market share slowly climbs to 5%, then 10%, then 15%. Intel releases an Opteron-compatible Pentium4-based architecture. Apple's new CEO makes a short speech at Intel's public P-64 announcement. Later that day, Microsoft pulls Office 2005 and Internet Explorer for OSX off the market, and begins making lots of phone calls to members of Congress.

VIA releases a chipset for the Power PC 970, and single-CPU boards now sell for less than $100. IBM subcontracts PPC970 production to UMC as sales continue to climb. Dell, for the first time, sells a computer bundled with OSX.

Etc., etc., etc.

Re:Eh...

[displaced80]

Read again...

It lacks the 4 curved handles found on current units, but sports a single USB and a single FireWire 800 port on the front of the casing, with additional ports in the rear.

I think the real news...current Mac supports USB2

[adzoox]

FROM: "Following reports of a USB 2.0 chipset in some newer Power Macs, MacNN reader Steve Chung writes about unofficial USB 2.0 drivers for MDD Power Macs: "According to a Korean site Create Mac, it appears that the drivers for the USB 2.0 chipset in the MDD 1.25 and 1.42 Ghz are updated and confirmed that they do work. However, it also says that extreme caution should be taken and that only the two MDD models have been tested. (No liability for damaged systems.) Installation on other models could render the system inoperable."

Also the current Macs with PCI slots or ANY Mac that can run OSX with a PCI slot has been able to support USB 2.0 for almost a year.

Shenanigans

[Anonymous Coward]

I call shenanigans on both AppleInsider and Slashdot for being lame. I'll believe it when I see it.

No news really

[selderrr]

those rumors have been floating around for a few weeks, if not months on other sites. For the wannabe-mac fanatics among yuo : here are other rumor adresses :

macrumors (reliable, good forums)
macosrumors (unreliable, bloated, no forums)
looprumors(reliable, low traffic forums)
thinksecret(reliable, low traffic content, low traffic forums)
macwhispers (reliable, mostly hardware info, no forums)
macslash(slashdot for mac, mostly blahblah)
macbidouille(french, rather new, so reliability unconfirmed)
appleturns(100% reliable news by Steve Jobs's alter ego)

Re:No news really

[selderrr]

well, most of those sites just copy from eachother, xcpt from thinksecret who seems to have an insider source.

I myself, like many others, know someone who knows someone that works at Apple (+ another one at IBM) who had this rumor confirmed quite a while a go. The guy from Apple only had access to a G5 prototype once, about 6 months ago, and confirmed the machine to be a total screamer, esp for video thanks to the wickedfast bus and a huge gub of ram.

The only remaining issues now are : what will they be called and when will they ACTUALLY be released (see the 17inch powerbook story)

Re:No news really

[jpkunst]

appleturns(100% reliable news by Steve Jobs's alter ego)

Parent was probaly tongue in cheek, but for the uninformed: As the Apple Turns, now back after a long hiatus, is nothing like an actual rumor site. It is an Apple themed 'soap opera', very funny, by a guy with a great sense of humor and writing skills to match.

JP

Re:damn

[Alan Partridge]

I wouldn't worry about it, this is PURE speculation. Apple's hardly going to release SLOWER computers in the future, are they?

More Rumors from the Article

[chia_monkey]

Aye aye aye, now don't get me wrong. I'd LOVE to see the next generation of chips being put in Apple's machines, but doesn't this just seem too easy a rumor to put out? C'mon rumor-mongers, there are much better ones to go after.

Take for instance, this snippet taken from the article: ""In the box" connectivity among the news systems is based on Hypertransport -- a universal chip-to-chip interconnect developed by AMD and partners..."...why don't we start the speculation that we're going to AMD chips? Hm...that could be fun. And to be honest, I'm surprised nobody brought it up yet.

Then again...it wouldn't really surprise me to have IBM's new chips in there (I'm still wondering what's going to happen with Motorola and their silly little antics). We've got FinalCut Pro 4 coming out, Panther (OS 10.3) coming out, a couple new updates just happened (ie, iSynch)...all setting the stage for something new.

Now if they'd just hurry up with the Windows version of the music service to ward off the Redmond fellows...

Re:"New!"

[Surlyboi]

Anyone know when all the Mac trolls showed up on Slashdot?

About the same time the virulently anti-Mac trolls
showed up. So yeah, they've been here since the start.

They're here, some of their cases are clear, get used to it.

Re:damn

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, when AMD switched to the Barton architecture for the Athlon XP, they boosted the performance rating to 3000 (and it truely was a 3Ghz equivalent) but dropped the clockspeed a bit (relative to the 2800)

Re:"New!"

[Toraz Chryx]

g{FireWire 800? Show me a hard drive that can even write your data at 400Mb/s or show me a piece of consumer hardware that NEEDS 800Mb/s today. There is no big hurry to adopt FireWire 800.}g

400Megabits/second = 50 Megabytes/second
a fair few higher end ATA disks can top that on sustained reads/writes

and you're assuming that only one device is attached to the bus.. that's not always the case.

Pet rock.

[Duncan3]

"These initial units will ship with Mac OS 10.2, and hence, will not be optimized for the 64 bit PPC 970 processor. Consumers who purchase these Power Mac G5s will receive a coupon for a free copy of Mac OS 10.3 (Panther), which will ship in September and will be optimized for the new 64 bit processor"

Translation: It's a pet rock until September, by which time production can be geared up and units will actually be available. Of course this will kill all sales until then, so announcing this early would be a very bad idea. So an announcement this early is unlikely.

But... we all know it's coming. Won't be cheap tho, but you get what you pay for in the OSX/Win/Linux world. Over 2 years and still not one crash on my Mac.

Re:"New!"

[pldms]

I didn't think PCI-E and hypertransport were in competition, eg: How HyperTransport and PCI Express complement each other. Could you explain why intel chose one over the other?

Re:Someone call Osborne

[Trurl's Machine]

He died this March. Consult your psychic before you'll call him.

USB2 not really surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of you have been commenting that you're surprised they have USB 2 ports on them. I personally am not surprised to see them - the current MDD G4s have USB 2 ports on them, it's just the drivers in OS X make them into USB 1, you can actually replace the drivers and get nice 800Mbps ports. The fact that the hardware is there does not mean that they will be supported in the OS - it just means that USB 2 ports are cheeper to get hold of than USB 1 ports.

Bob

Re:USB2 not really surprising

[KefkaFloyd]

USB 2.0 is 480mbps. The 800mbps you're saying is probably confusion with FW 800.

Re:damn

[byolinux]

they should release a 23" powerbook, with 16 G4 processors, made entirely out of lead. i wouldnt buy it, but i'm sure Steve Jobs could tell me why I should...

Re:Why doesn't Apple switches to Windows ?

[clifyt]

This is a troll but I'll respond anyways.

Most of us LIKE Mac OSes. Up until Win2000, I wasn't satisfied with Windows OSes...I am a Wind'rs programmer by trade, but I always liked my Macs just a little more. Between the time os OS9 and 2000 -- I was a little torn over what was better...I think Win2k was a lot better than OS9 in retrospect.

BUT soon after that, I picked up the public beta of OSX and haven't been back to 9 since. I was right back in the Mac camp because it meant for once I didn't need to terminal into my Unix servers to get simple things done. On Windows, yeah, I have the Cyrix (err...is that it?) GNU Tools -- but it never felt right or integrated. The interface felt once again in the background to OSX.

Honestly, I wish Apple was a software only company -- The hardware is nice, but this is the area it seems to lag. I use to buy into the The MegaHertz Myth Is Wrong -- but as a programmer, I realized folks should not have to optimize their code for a specific base EACH AND EVERYTIME A PIECE OF HARDWARE CAME OUT. Some apps work with Altivec rather nicely...they can afford to optimize their code. Most of us want to write efficient portable code that can work anywhere. Of course, I do get pissed off when I hear friends talking about code I *KNOW* they've optimized for Windows and then left unoptimized for the Mac and then compare the two...I do a lot of work in the sound design industry and a lot of friends work at companies that make DSP solutions (both massmarket for consumers and the higher end for designing items that will not be of use to many others) -- and I see this all the time. Someone knows how to optimize to the SSE sets on Intel and have no problem tweaking the hell out of it and claiming benchmarks, but throwing the ported code to some monkey that knows only enough about the Mac to be dangerous -- and its embarassing because they then make outrageous statements about the relative speeds.

As for lack of Applications -- I don't know where folks get this. Numberwise -- yeah. Professional app to professional app, we have what we need. Anything in my field has an equivelent analog in both the Mac and the PC world -- with a lot of specialized apps actually being Mac Only (or at the least Mac First) because the creative market still looks at Mac Users as being more in this camp.

Again, I realize your response was a troll, but I felt like educating ya anyways :P

Re:damn

[Alan Partridge]

if you placed it on your lap, it would at least protect your family jewels from most forms of ionising radiation.

That's gotta be worth SOMETHING...

Benchmarks

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see some gaming benchmarks!!!!

The Way Of Steve

[nwf]

Didn't Steve say some time last year that Apple will never introduce new hardware at WWDC?

Of course, the way of Steve is complex and sometimes contradictory.

Re:"New!"

[Alan Partridge]

"That's because nobody gives a shit about firewire 400. Everyone who wants to actually get things done has been using USB 2.0"

You don't get out much, do you? Never seen a digital camcorder?

Announcing early not unprecedented.

[phillymjs]

Who's to say Apple will announce it now, but not ship it until Panther debuts? Apple announced and demonstrated the original iMac (IIRC) in May 1998, but did not actually begin shipping until August of that year-- I may not have the dates exactly right, but there were certainly at least two months between announcement and availability. And that was not an instance of Jobs saying "This is available now," but product not shipping until weeks later because they couldn't ramp up production quickly enough. It was a stated two or three month delay from the start.

I think that this time, however, Apple would be doing the right thing to release the G5 ASAP-- that way the hardware will be available during back-to-school time, one of Apple's busiest sales periods. If they do the announce-and-wait thing this time, they'll miss the back-to-school sales. They'll also piss off a lot of people who just blew their wad in August on a G4 with significantly less computing power for about the same money that now buys a G5.

As long as everyone who buys a G5 gets a voucher in the box for a free upgrade to 10.3, I see no problem with shipping the hardware a few months before the OS that takes full advantage of it debuts.

~Philly

DDR Ram?

[Rubyflame]

Does that have anything to do with Dance Dance Revolution?

Re:Um, point of order...

[the eric conspiracy]

AAPL currently sits at a price it first set in 1987!

Yah, if you neglect the fact that AAPL split twice during this period of time, the price is the same. In actuality the value of a share of stock purchased in 1987 is 4 times higher today.

Re:Um, point of order...

[Lysander Luddite]

Some rumor sites claim the PPC prices will be lower than Motorola's G4. Who knows for sure? I would think IBM would offer the lowest prices possible to speed adoption of the chip. I have also read on the web that IBM's costs for G3s were lower than Motorola's because their production facilities were better. *shrug* If PPC970 truly is 25-35% lower than G4s its a no-brainer for Apple to use them.

If the prices are that low I wouldn't expect Apple to lower prices though. The pro models have been fairly consistent at their current price point for some time. I'm sure other costs have gone up with new features like Hypertransport, Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 (how much does Intel charge for that?). All o fthis si specualtion until the hardware actually comes out of course.

As for the stock comment, prices go up and down. I seem to recall a stock split a few years back. The stock has gone up recently with the iTunes sales announcements. However I think stock price is one of the least indicators about how well a company is doing - and certainly has nothing to do with the price of mac hardware.

Re:Someone call Osborne

[phillymjs]

History is repeating itself. This is what, the third year now of "the G5 is about to be released?" ... This is exactly what happened to Osborne.

Uh, no. It was Osborne himself who torpedoed sales of his current model by saying how great the forthcoming one would be. History would only be repeating itself if Steve Jobs had been saying for three years that the G5 would be coming soon and would be significantly better than the current G4s. The rumor sites can say whatever they want, but the official word comes from Apple, who do not comment on unannounced products (except maybe indirectly, by sending in the lawyers when a rumor site is a little too spot-on, or has photos/screenshots they shouldn't).

The bottom line is, buy a computer when you really need one-- there's ALWAYS a better one just around the corner, and you must learn to accept that. If you insist on including the word of the rumor sites in your purchase plans, make what they say a consideration, but not THE consideration.

~Philly

Re:Appleturn by Jobs's alter ego?

[selderrr]

What do you mean by that? Is this site done by Steve or what? Or is it a joke? I don't understand it...

No, i was joking. It's not a site done by Jobs himself, but it is a well known fact that many apple employees (supposedl including his steveness) are fan of appleturns. Especially the Polls :-)

Re:damn

[cosmo7]

hey, 1999 called and it wants its troll back.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[doce]

so you're ticked off that an iBook with a chip that's soon to be two generations old doesn't stack up to your probably latest-and-greatest PC?

Re:damn

[C0LDFusion]

If the laptop is in your car, and you get up to 88 MPH, will you be forced to go back in time to October 21, 1985?

Re:Um, point of order...

[the eric conspiracy]

You also have to take into account share dillution too.

Depends on your perspective. If you are interested in the market cap of the company, total number of shares x market price indicates the valuation of the company is 12x what it was in 1987. If you are interested in shareholder return, then the number is 4x.

Either way it shows that the original post is totally off-base.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[RedX]

I, on the other hand, purchased a 700Mhz G3 iBook several months ago as my first ever Mac, mostly to play with OS X, and thought that it was such a great machine that I also switched my desktop to a Power Mac. The G3 may be a little light on horsepower for apps such as iMovie and maybe even iPhoto, but it's a great little machine for surfing, word processor use, and yes, even iTunes rocks on it.

Re:"New!"

[Distinguished Hero]

Which wintel motherboards have fw 800 and hypertransport? I'd be interested.

I wasn't really going to comment on this, but since it got modded up 5, Insightful...
nForce, nForce2
You might be further interested in knowing that hypertransport was primarily designed by AMD and is used in all of their Opteron systems, and will also be used in all Athlon64 systems. I guess that's not wintel per se... but it's a PC motherboard nonetheless.

Furthermore, if there is a demand for fw 800 on PCs, they will have it... a small upside of not being at the whim of a single company *cough*Apple*cough*.

Re:Thanks but no thanks

[Hawthorne01]

And yett, strangely, Apple was rated "Most Reliable Computer" by Consumer Reports. Again.

If you're not smart enough to send your machine off to Apple Service, don't blame them.

Re:Plumbing

[TheRaven64]

If the internals are all connected via Hyper Transport it should be relatively easy for them to switch to Hammer if they wanted to.

No. It would make no difference. The bus protocol makes no difference. They could not simply pull out the PPC970 and drip in a Hammer and expect it to work (different package sizes for one), so a new motherboard would be required. After that 'all' that they'd need to do would be is recompile the OS (easy), optimise the OS so that it actually took advantage of the Hammer features, and didn't rely on PPC features in order to run at a usable speed (less easy) and persuade all of the Apple software houses to do the same thing for all of the software they ship (impossible). The last step is required since it is not feasible to emulate a PPC on any kind of x86 chip (even a Hammer) due to the incredible small number of registers in the x86 architecture, and there would be no point in buying a Mac if you couldn't run any software with it.

Apple could create a Hammer based Mac in under a month if they tried, but it would be a silly thing to do, since there would be no software or market for it.

Re:stock prices

[Oswald]

I'll reply to you, because you were polite, but it's intended as well for the geniuses who can't read a stock chart and want to tell me about stock splits.

First, my original post is correct: adjusted for splits, AAPL is stagnant since 1987. This chart clearly shows it. Notice that the blue line is upbroken. If it were not adjusted for splits (ALL charts are adjusted for splits, but apparently you don't know WTF you're talking about, so I'll inform you), the blue line would take have a break (down to half the preceding day's price) every time there was a split. So, nyah, nyah, nyah.

Second, in reply to this particular post, stock price is always indicative of a company's perceived prospects, relative to the other financial opportunities available. The fact that AAPL never makes any sustained headway is due to the fact that they have had NO sustained increase in earnings. Their profits rise and fall with their hardware cycles, but they never improve market share or margins for long.

I was trying to use a widely-accepted proxy for a business's past success and current prospects--its stock price--as a quick way to make my point, but apparently people just took it as a red herring. Let me be more specific: Apple Computers, Incorporated has been struggling for over a decade--poor profit picture, poor market share. I don't actually give a shit about Macs one way or the other. I was only pointing out that it's important for the company that these machines succeed (i.e. turn a profit and increase market share), and to do that they must be reasonably priced.

(To those who posted that the 970 may actually be cheaper than the Moto chips, I thank you for the information. We'll know shortly, I suspect.)

Sure, rumors abound,

[Anonymous Coward]

But as the popular MacObserver states, "A mac on your desk is worth two on the rumor sites."

Re:binary compatibility?

[psyconaut]

Not necessarily. You may have noticed (or not) that when Sun went 64-bit, you could still run Solaris 32-bit binaries. They just weren't the *best* option.

Don't assume that being 64-bit makes things incompatible...instruction set is still the same.

And look at the 68K tricks Apple did when they introduced PPC, too.

-psy

Rumors and more

[customjake]

Personally, there are a lot in the PC community who are crying "FOUL" I personally believe that the 970/980 will bring Apple back to the fastest computer title, and PC users don't like the fact that they're using a server processor to do it. I personally think it's great!

Yeah, it's a rumor, but this is a pretty substatiated rumor, that i think we can all agree is happening. One thing still in dispute, is if the new processor is gonna be called a G5 or not. I'm sure Apple wants to get away from the image that the motorola processor havee generated over the last few years.

I would expect to see the PPC 970 at WWDC, or shortly after, i.e. August. As for USB 2, it's coming. Apple has already started using USB 2 cards in its powermac lineup (just not supported by the OS). As for apple trying to catch up in the Mhz race, i don't see this. IBM is the one who's set the Mhz of the 970. I also agree with many rumor sites, stating that the 970 will not be any more expensive that the current G4 lineup. Apple is the only company getting anything based off the G4 motorola line, but IBM currently builds the 970 for it's own blade servers, thus they don't have to gear up just to make chips for apple.

Yeah, the P4 is up over 3Ghz, but looking back, crays are still uber fast, and they don't run ungodly mhz......

Also, i wouldn't count on Apple calling it a G5, as apple might go back to calling their chips by their developed name...ie-970

As for 10.3 and the 64-bit stuff, the 64 bit only comes into play when you start getting 64 bit software to run on the machine, that's why Panther is so big, it'll be a 64 bit OS. Also expect a 64-bit version of Project Builder to help move to 64-bit apps.

AMD is not the founder of hypertransport...They are part of a group who's developing it, and one of the last members to join if i recall...... And I don't think that the transition of an AMD chip is much more complicated than you make it out to be....

Personally, if the idea of a 970 makes your blood boil, wait until WWDC and make an informed choice...if you can't wait to buy a mac, but it now.....

How cany anyone say that the 970 is behind AMD/Intel? Last time i looked, IBMs own 970 is FASTER than the new opterons, aren't those supposed to be fast?

Sorry for the sarcasm, but i find that PC users bash what they don't understand. Apple is heavily imitated by the PC world, so the must be doing something right. Let's just all watch and see what happens at WWDC, and talk about it later. Gossiping about new Mac Hardware......$Free Writing Cocoa apps that screa.........$Free Showing your PC friends how must faster your PPC 970 is over their WINTEL box......$Priceless

Reminders of ALPHA hype

[JDizzy]

Back in 96' or 97' I can recall a bunch of hype in the public markets for the infamous DEC ALpha. I can recall banner adds here on slashdot for "64bit power" and other advertisments basically to the effect of "my processor is bigger than yours" type stuff. The difference now is that the market seems slightly more ready for 64 bit computing as more than 2 vendors are selling 64 bit systems. Intel (ia 64), IBM (ppc 970), Transmeta (128bit/2 core), MIPS, AMD, and I think you can still buy a new Alpha from HP still. I suspect the market still isnt' ready for 64 bit computing, but the saturation of vendors trying to be the one wwho actually makes penetration, like sperm on the egg of the consumer market. Apple is probably the most end-user'ish vendor on the market with very little server penetration, and this is promising news. Most of the other 64 platforms go the way of awsome servers. Apple has the chance to sell systems to mac-heads who would do anything to recapture their former elitness geek glory of years gone by. The onyl way 64 bit system will work ijs if they are compatible with the 32 bit software, and yes I mean the OS + user apps. This is why Apple, and AMD have an advantage. Intell seems to have the notion that since it is the market leader that it can simply force a new architecture down our necks, and the market has decided otherwise, and Intel hasn't lived up to its own expectations either. Time will tell is the IBM incarnation of the PPC is going to make it, and Apple has a history of over pricing their gear. If they could get their systems down to the average price of $1200 usd, then they would have a chance.

Re:Reminders of ALPHA hype

[multiplexo]

Back in 96' or 97' I can recall a bunch of hype in the public markets for the infamous DEC ALpha.

What was so infamous about the DEC Alpha? I worked for a large e-commerce company that used AlphaServers from the AS1000 up to the big 8400s and they were fast, solid boxes with great storage options. Having 64 bits available for databases was nice and the megahertz of these systems wasn't that bad either. Plus the fact that you got Tru64UNIX which despite some annoyances (most notably problems with AdvFS) had some nice features and was far more pleasant to work with than any variant of Slowlaris that I ever touched. The university where I worked also used a bunch of DEC hardware for number crunching, they were quite happy with them. As far as I can see the Alpha wasn't hyped, the 8400 with a bunch of Storageworks BA-370 arrays smoked everything on the market at the time. It's a pity that DEC's marketing department was run by the people who weren't smart enough to be in their engineering department, otherwise the Alpha architecture might still be alive instead of being discarded by HP.

what is the processor price point?

[The Lynxpro]

I've read several rumor sites myself, and I've read that the PPC970's manufacturing price point is actually cheaper than the existing chips Apple uses. So if this is true, it raises serious issues with Apple. 1. Apple needs higher clock speeds to remain competitive in the minds of Joe Consumer and Joe IT Worker (see #2). 2. If the PPC970 is cheaper to manufacture and consumes less power than the existing G3 and G4 chips Apple computers feature, then the PPC970 needs to be implemented immediately throughout the Mac line. 3. Abruptly phasing out all G3/G4 machines (#2) would kill sales of existing units on the shelves. 4. Apple would want to offer the PPC970 at the top end to enjoy large profit margins from early adopters before implementing the 970 throughout the entire Mac line. The greater good requires Apple to incur short-term losses (think existing G3's and G4's in the stores) in order to leapfrog the entire PC market by offering 64 bit solutions top-to-bottom in their product line. It is crucial Apple comes out ahead of AMD's consumer 64bit offerings. But because of #3 and #4, Apple will probably choose otherwise... If Apple were smart, they'd start off with a single 1.4 ghz PPC970 in the eMacs and iMacs, and then work their way up the PowerMac ladder with dual (or even quad) processors up to 1.8 ghz. Afterall, it would be easier for $7/hr. sales employee at Worst Buy explaining why Joe Consumer should pick a 1.4 ghz 64-bit PPC970 powered eMac over a 2.5 or 3.0 ghz P4 equipped PC than it would continuing to argue the merits of the G4 line...

Re:what is the processor price point?

[willtsmith]

Apple needs higher clock speeds to remain competitive in the minds of Joe Consumer and Joe IT Worker (see #2).

Apple doesn't have a prayer of competing in the Joe IT Worker space. Wintel rules business operations, Unix still has a mindshare in web services, Linux is making a LARGE dent in web services, Mac is a non-player.

The first job of any Mac today is to PRESERVE market share in it's core demographics, Elementary Ed, Higher Ed, Graphics Artists, Publication, Videography. BTW, did you know that many hollywood and HBO/Showtime movies are edited with Final Cut Pro????

A PPC970 machine would obviously be a higher end offering for high-end customers that need serious CPU horsepower. Most of the market doesn't NEED 64-bit and probably won't take advantage of it for quite some time.

In the higher ed space, I see that a 64-bit processor could become a great tool for researchers who want to do simulation work on their desktops (and notebooks).

This is especially relevant as IBM starts putting PPC970 CPUs into super-computer rigs running linux variants. It becomes feasible to run the same large scale programs (at a dialed down resolution) on a G5 OSX Mac.

Re:what is the processor price point?

[Toraz Chryx]

Just a short FYI, the 1.2Ghz PowerPC 970 goes through about 19 watts, a 1Ghz PowerPC 750FX (current G3) goes through about 6 watts, so the 750FX can be used in enclosures where the 970 or a 7455 would be too hot.

okay, so the 970 will absolutely BURY the G4 performance wise, and outstrip it on heat output as well (22w @ 1Ghz I think), so the G4 is pretty much a dead end at this point.

Re:what is the processor price point?

[Mike Hicks]

A processor is just one part of a computer. You need to have a variety of buses and other attachments surrounding it, and they cost money too. Presumably, this new system will carry an updated surrounding architecture -- if it doesn't, a lot of people will be very pissed off.

As I understand it, Apple has not been giving it's newer desktop machines very good underlying architectures as of late. There's a lot of speculation that this is because most of their hardware development effort was going into the new G5 line.

Re:"New!"

[EulerX07]

Where is the apple one? Is it available? No.

I'm an AMD proponent anyways, 8X AGP has been here for a big while, 64 bit cpus coming later this year (who knows, maybe even before apple's), I don't care about FW800, much like everybody else so that's a moot point. I'll just stick a card in there if I ever need it, at least I have the option of not paying for it.

simple

[chocolatetrumpet]

It's very easy.

The processors will continue from G5 to G9, and eventually to G9.2. The next processor after that will be GX 10.0.

Got it?

Re:No Gigabit Ethernet ? Yes

[Brett Johnson]

Not quite. Hypertransport is a high speed bus used to connect the CPU to the peripheral chips. There will still be an ethernet chip, and a firewire chip, but they will live on a Hypertransport bus rather than a PCI or PCI-X bus.

HyperTransport technology transfers data at 12.8 Gigabytes per second. It is designed to be approximately 48 times faster than PCI, 12 times faster than PCI X and 10 times faster than 4-channel Infiniband.

The current G4 suffers from a severe bus bandwidth bottleneck. This is an on-chip problem, so no fancy peripheral chips can rectify it. This is why the current DDR PowerMacs don't see the significant benefit that DDR technology should provide. In most current P4/Athlon/G4 performance comparisons, the G4's lagard performace can be much more attributed to its poor memory bandwidth than it's core clock speed.

Although initial 970 core clock speeds don't seem to be significantly greater than the current G4, its peripheral interface bandwidth is lightyears ahead. Hypertransport would help the 970 sing, significantly improving its throughput. Hypertransport would be wasted on a G4. It would be like having a superhighway run by your city, but your on/off ramps are potholed dirt tracks with metering lights.

Re:I didn't like it

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Well, by "intuitive", you probably mean "like Windows". Mac OS is far more intuitive to people who have never used computers before.

Similarly, you're used to having the Windows right-click. Apple thought about adding that and decided that it would make more sense to have a single mouse button and give it modifier key support. Think about the mouse as having a key instead of a button. I know, it doesn't seem to make much sense, but I find that the Windows way makes much less sense to new users.

Also, remember that the Mac OS has built-in support for something like twelve mouse buttons. You just have to get a mouse with more than one.

As for hosting a web site, surely you don't use IIS for that, do you? OSX has all sorts of great server software like Apache. You just have to install them and turn them on.

For surfing, OSX has easily the coolest browser that I've ever seen. Safari beats Mozilla hands down in speed and it's more standards compliant than IE. Essentially, it's everything that Mozilla Firebird is, but it's built by the people who made the OS.

Macs are widely acknowledged to be the best computers for all sorts of multimedia stuff. If you want to edit video, there's iMovie, CinePaint, Final Cut, After Effects, and loads of other tools. For stills that could be used on a website, you have all of the standard tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Page Maker, Painter, and CorelDRAW, and the myriad Macromedia applications and quite a few that I've never seen for Windows such as Combustion. For audio creation and editing, you can use Logic, Deck, Cubase, Peak, Reason, and Spark, just to name a few. For 3D modeling, Maya is the only one that I know about, but I don't exactly research that.

If you just meant playing multimedia, I have found that QuickTime and iTunes do a far better job of that than Windows Media Player.

I really wish that I had a Mac, but I'm WAY to cheap to actually buy one new.

Re:Altivec

[Brett Johnson]

Of couse most of the graphics and video software leverages Altivec, but Seti@home, Folding@home, and BLAST all get a significant boost from the vector processor. There is a significant Mac presence in the physics, genomics, and protienomics sectors. It is the platform of choice for Internet2 connectivity (because of the built-in GigE). Macs aren't just for graphic arts and publishing.

Don't forget CARS...

[alispguru]

If you're going to mention As The Apple Turns, you must also mention its evil twin site Crazy Apple Rumors.

I visit them both daily.

Re:I didn't like it

[scrod]

if I could get one that ran Windows or RedHat (or Mandrake) I'd think about it

Damn, yeah, it's too bad you can't run mandrake on them.

Or SuSe.

Or Debian..

Fuck, they don't run anything, do they?

Re:32 bit performance

[TheNetAvenger]

The PPC 970 treats PPC32 code much in the same way that an Athlon 64 or Opteron handles x86-32 code: it's basically seamless, like you were running the code on a pure 32-bit machine.

OS X is supposed to need a few small tweaks to use PPC 970s, but I hear that they're mainly to tell the 970 "hey, this is 32-bit code!" rather than anything dramatic. I wouldn't be surprised if, as AppleInsider said, they just need a small update to 10.2 to make this work.

One thing to remember about PowerPC chips, by the way: PPC64 has always been part and parcel of the PowerPC architecture, it's just that it has taken a long time to get to the point where it's realistic to use it. PPC64 is also just a superset of PPC32 and has more to do with the size of data than any radical new features.


One thing that often gets missed in the Intel world is the architectural beauty of the PPC design. IBM and Apple, did create an outstanding base CPU architecture.

The sad part is that with IBM's lack of progression of the chip, the PPC has not maintained the competitive advances it SHOULD have been implemented years ago that it is capable of doing.

The DEC Alpha Chip was another amazing design of CPU architecture that has been lost due to Compaqâ(TM)s killing of its advancement.

The Intel CPUs are fast, with branch prediction, hyper-threading, and other advances to make them good chips, but somewhere along the way Intel was more willing to repackage and re-label rather than innovate the core of the CPU. Even the Itanium Processors are a sad evolution from Intel.

AMD has done a better job with the Intel designs than Intel itself has - hence the 64bit Hammer designs.

And I don't believe that Intel is incapable of doing better, I think they buy into their own marketing and are reluctant to push new technologies into their CPUs when they can sell what they already have.

As an OS junkie, it was a sad day when WindowsNT for the PowerPC was discontinued; it was also a sad time when Compaq stopped Windows2000 development for the Alpha chip. (And this was especially shocking, considering that when the DEC Alpha premiered at Comdex in 1992, it was WindowsNT that DEC used to demonstrate the power of the processor.)

Re:Why doesn't Apple switches to Windows ?

[scrod]

Yeah, and insects outnumber humans 200 million to one.

Re:I didn't like it

[jo_ham]

Apache is installed by default in both the regular and (of course) server versions of OS X.

All you have to do is check the "web sharing" box in the sharing panel.

If you uncomment the appropriate lines in your httpd.conf file you can get php going too.

For those who care...

[haxor.dk]

I've done a brief analysis of the 970 on my website: http://haxor.dk

Ohh so nice, but ohh the price

[node159]

Sounds very nice, now if only I did not have to sell a kidney to buy one. If I could dual boot, OS X and Win32 (for my main use of the comuter, GAMES!) I'd probably be one kidney short ;).

i'll buy one.

[option8]

i'll buy one. hell, i'll order ten of them for my office...

the day quark xpress 6 comes out.

seriously. the only reason i and a good many other mac IT folks with purchasing power have still got previous generation macs on our desks is that f*ing quark xpress isn't X native yet. the new G4s don't boot in 9, so it's not an option to dual-boot or run 9 and wait to upgrade to X. everybody i've talked to pretty much agrees, apple needs to light a fire under quark. or maybe buy them, since apple seems to have eaten up all the companies that make video editing software to create final cut and dvd studio. maybe an apple iQuark...

anyhoo, the day xpress 6 is available, apple will immediately see a spike in sales of new systems and OS X boxes. i'd be willing to put money on it.

Quark has had 2+ years now to carbonize xpress. i thought adobe was lagging with photoshop being so late to the game, but quark makes them look like early adopters by comparison. and with every day they don't have a carbonized xpress, their market share in the heavy mac-using print graphics world is eroding away, given over in droves to adobe indesign.

probably off-topic, but i felt a rant coming on and this was a target of opportunity.

Mac niche markets

[theolein]

This is somewhat OT, but it is relevant in that many percieve the Mac as being relegated to non business applications.

The introduction of the PPC970 will no doubt improve Apple's fortunes in a very cut throat computer market led mostly by FUD, price sensitivity and monopoly practices. Allow me to explain.

As many here know, Linux is eating into Windows server marketshare in all areas, as it is becoming acceptable in business to actually think about what one spends the IT dollars on before one spends them. This is a market that Linux will almost certainly dominate in the next 4 to 5 years, as I cannot imagine that Redmond will be able to introduce technology spectacular enough for corporations to not consider using Linux in that space instead, as has been shown in numerous articles here on slashdot.

On the desktop there is also movement, particularly in civillian infrastructure IT such as local government offices, health departments etc, worldwide as the departments are increasingly having to cope with IT spending cuts and definitely get more bang for their IT buck with Linux than they do with Windows.

Where does the Mac fit in here? Recently, here in Switzerland, I had to buy a new car after trashing my old one, and in my tour of various used car lots, came across a wierd phenomenon: The majority of the offices of said used car lots were using Filemaker database applications on Macs for their bookkeeping, inventory tracking etc. This would be similar to the windows world of Access applications, except the people claimed that the Macs "just work" when asked why they weren't using newer PC's with Access.

The Mac, with it's simplicity and robustness, makes friends even today where Windows can often be a royal pain in the butt to administer (my job) . Not only this, but Mac OSX is very compatible to Linux and the execs and management in a company would be more amenable to running a Mac with a hyped to the extreme PPC970 (the marketing is important in these areas) than a beige box if they thought that it could be used to bolster their egos ("the PPC970 is much faster than any Intel", "My Powerbook goes so well with my metallic Audi TT"). It is kind of elitist, but I've never known Management types not to fall for status symbols, and this status symbol would actually be worth something of true value as opposed to the chrome cufflinks and platinum Rolex.

Liklihood of G5 name?

[dsb3]

Canon recently (as in the last couple of weeks) announced their G5 digital camera ... this is the followup to the G1, G2 and G3.

Why no G4? Because, apparantly, Apple had discussions and pursuaded them to skip "G4".

So ... I find it doubtful that after that, Apple will now come out with the G5 themselves.