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PPC 970 Powerbooks and Powermacs in Production?
Thadddius_Brinks writes "MacWispers.com
is reporting here
that apple is currently in production of a redesigned single processor PowerPC
970 Powermac system and a 15.4 inch Powerbook. They (MacWhispers.com) are also standing by
their earlier claims about the speed of the new processor."
This article consolidates many of the major rumors surrounding WWDC including
the rumor of a new case for the Powermacs, but it raises the ultimate question: 17" Powerbook, or PPC 970 Powerbook?
You heard it here first! ;)
I saw that as WWJD.. then I said to myself
"What would jobs do?"
it's only fitting, all things considered!
I am the lord of the pun. Dance Knave!
Egads this would be wonderful. 64-bit laptops. While I suspect we'll get that from the Opteron, I suspect if Apple follows through with the PPC 970, it will be available and useable much sooner.
Needless to say... drool!
PPC 970. No contest.
(Obligatory "answer to the ultimate question is 42" comment)
With the entire Mac world abuzz with (often conflicting) reports of the Apple transition to the IBM PowerPC 970 processor family, we have decided to report a summary of all that we know at this time... not from regurgitated rumors obtained from other web sites, but from our own OEM contacts in the Apple supply pipeline.
We have no software information sources; all information we receive comes from people working in various positions in and around plants in Taiwan that actually supply parts or perform hardware assembly operations on Apple products. So, we have to leave the software speculation to sites such as Think Secret and, it now seems, eWeek.
What we know at this point is as follows:
- The IBM PPC 970 chips are now actually in volume production for only two specific end uses: IBM's own servers, and for Apple Computer.
- The plant contracted for assembly of the new Power Mac is now actually manufacturing production Power Macs with single PPC 970 processors.
- The plant contracted for assembly of the new 15.4-inch Powerbook has just now begun manufacturing production Powerbooks with the PPC 970 processor.
- The new Power Mac has a sister model with a 2-processor motherboard that is not yet in actual production, but that could be put into production at any time.
- The new Power Mac has a new case design with "metallic look plastics," and a front panel "mostly made with the same anodized aluminum surface" as the newest Powerbooks.
- The new Power Mac retains "handles," though not in the same form as the current design.
We have no sources or contacts within Apple Computer, so we cannot state that company's actual release plans for these products. However, we can say that both the new PPC 970 Power Mac and Powerbook will have substantial inventory already produced by the time of the upcoming WWDC keynote.
In closing, we want to address the performance of the new PPC 970 machines, as we do have direct information on this topic, and we consider that information to be highly reliable. Despite the recent flurry of confusing claims published by eWeek and others, we stand by our report that the new Power Mac and Powerbook have overall performance approximately 1.25 to 1.5 times that of a similarly clocked G4 on non-Altivec optimized applications. On Altivec optimized tasks, these machines have as much as 2 to 2.5 times the through performance as a similarly clocked G4. Our understanding is that this performance is occurring using bone-stock OS X 10.2.6 on pre-production single processor PPC 970 machines... an OS rampant with Rob Malda's homosexuality and none of the optimization now being rumored as being needed for supporting the PPC 970's performance potential.
Do you think the new "G5"s will sport new enclosures too..?
The current design is long in the tooth to say the least and is highly associated with the G4 processor... yet I've heard nothing about new enclosures at all..
Does anyone have any clarification on this? With the rumours that the 970 chip is actually less expensive for Apple than the G4 I was hoping for dual 970 boxes at price points similar to the current crop of PowerMacs.
Lasers Controlled Games!
1. That the 970's are being produced, but so far, there's still small numbers, so either only folks at the Developer's Conference will first crack, or you'll have to wait for a bit of time before you can actually get your hands on one (kind of like when the 12" and 17" first started shipping).
2. The major OS Upgrade to 64 bits will happen in a few more months - either way, I expect that OS 10.3 will cost another $50 - $100 (depending on how they do it).
3. The G3 iBook line will be slowly phased out, and replaced with G4 based systems.
4. Dual processor systems by Christmas or so.
5. iTunes for Windows sooner than we thought.
6. Somewhere in this timeframe, new Xserves will start to appear with the 970 chip and the 64-bit server operating system (which should be interesting for folks running "big ass" database/graphical rendering farms.
So either way, I'd say we'll "see" the devices, a few "first adopters" will play with them, pass judgement, Ars Techana [SIC] will write a big ass article on them, and "everybody else" will pick them up later.
Hopefully somebody can convince Valve that Half Life 2 would really run rather nicely on these boxes so I don't have to spend money upgrading my old Wintel Game Box.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
a pretty much non portable less powerfull machine versus a semi portable power house, assuming these rumors are true which I highly doubt, PPC 970 possibly, PPC 970 in notebooks? No chance, heat and power issues not to mention other things have to be dealt with before they are put in a note book and this processor hasn't been around that long. Then again, have you heard of any 17"'s shipping yet? I haven't.
Are you secure enough in your masculinity to run 'man touch'?
If they release a 15" g5 powerbook, what would happen to sales of their 17" g4 powerbook? I don't believe apple would have a powerbook line with their midrange model having such a radically better architecture/processor then their high end model.
yes i run a goth/punk/emo porn site.
The answer is "No."
Isn't much more elegant to use hexadecimal?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
What is it with all these Apple rumour sites? Googling for Apple Rumors spews out a whole slew of them: rumortracker, crazyapplerumors, macrumors, macosrumors, apple-x.net, looprumors...how much is there to speculate about? They all post each other's news anyway.
Show me how an Intel laptop with similar specs is cheaper. I dare you.
Best read in good ol' Monaco 9 point.
Wow, I can't wait to see the first cluster of "Can't wait to see a Beowulf Cluster of these" comments.
Poor MacWhispers doesn't have a single ad on the linked site. Let's not destroy their servers when the article text is here.
I would have believed 970 PowerMacs in production but definitely not 970 based Powerbooks. That goes double because there's even more rumors of 15" Powerbooks based on the G4 but all aluninumized waiting to be shipped to Apple's stores and other retailers. If you've noticed there's a dearth of 15" Powerbooks in stock anywhere that sells them.
Besides June production doesn't mean a June release or even announcement date. Apple likes to build up stocks of computers before selling them. Building and shipping computers in the same month would be a ridiculous strain on their resources. As for a June announcement, see the Osborne computer company.
WWDC isn't exactly a place Steve Jobs likes to announce hardware products, it is really the wrong venue for such announcements. MacWorld Expo is a much better place to do things like that and is only two months away. It's not really a secret Panther developer previews are going to be released at WWDC which will likely be SJ's keynote subject. MacOS and related software ought to be and typically is the subject of SJ's WWDC keynotes. Not hardware announcements.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
apple is offering sweet $300 dollar rebates to students, and they have just dropped the price on many models like the powerbook. might be a good time to jump on one.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
hmm I would say buy the 970 (IF released), you could then sell it for a good price when the 17" 970's come out. The 17" G4 will be worth half of it's cost by the time of the 17" 970 release.
"Dam I think my watch is slow..." "No it's the '970 effectâ', time just seems to be faster"
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" - Albert Einstein
holy mother of god, that would be awesome. I may get a new laptop next year. The real question is if I can wait for 9 months to get my hands on one.
I have never looked forward to a chip like I'm looking forward to the PPC970 implementations. Lower battery consumption, faster processor, better processor road map, 64-bit. The 970 rumored to be cheaper than the current G4 chips too. Is there
With the rumors of apple putting decent memory and bus systems in, there's a possibility that I'll be trying to scrape up a few grand to get myself a new computer.
let's just hope the rumor sites are right.
when my education discount gets another round- I'll probably wait till after macworld though and hope that some even a little more advanced is shipping.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
i like what i hear about this chip, and i'm really pulling for them with the 970/G5/whatever they're actually going to call it in the end
but what do we know for sure? these are rumor sites, and it's apple we're talking about here
i'll believe it when i see it...
I'm no fan of Jack Campbell and honestly do not believe anything his site spouts. The only time I ever hear anything about it is when (semi-)legitimate news sources pick up "scoops" from his site.
To read more about how cool a guy he is, check out the MacTable report at Macintouch:
http://www.macintouch.com/mactable.html
I am not who I say you are.
Well, from past knowledge of how Apple has done things recently, I'd say...
PPC 970 Single 1.4 Ghz shipping July.
PPC 970 Duallies shipping within 4 weeks of the single.
OSX 10.3 Late August... and I would bet my kidneys you WILL have to pay for it (~$129), but don't moan... apparently there is a LOT of new/improved stuff, and this is only the beginning as Apple have found that they can build on the code very easily *indeed* due to the quality and clenaliness of it... exactly the problem MS seems to have with Windows ATM.
This sig has been deprecated.
I am wondering why:
a) This is posted at all
b) This is front page
It doesn't seem like a Mac rumor (from a somewhat unreliable site) should get coverage on Slashdot... and if it should, shouldn't this be apple.slashdot.org news, not main page?
AC to avoid troll moderation. I am actually wondering why this is posted. Maybe I should go to the IRC #Forum later.
Comment sees you!
I'm tired of playing Warcraft 3 and that puzzle game with the Apple logo.
saw this on macwrite
http://www.macwrite.com/yourturn/windows-guy-buys- mac.php
" The eMac is a dorky unit. It also represents what is a glaring hole in the Apple line. There is a huge market of consumers that are buying low end PCs in that $500-700 range. The only unit Apple has to compete with that is the eMac. Now someone somewhere might think that is a good option, but I haven't met that person.
What Apple needs for this market is a low-end tower. Potential switchers should have the option of buying a mid tower with the eMac specs (800Mhz G4, 128MB RAM, 40GB drive, CD) for $600. If you are trying to get people to switch, it kind of goes without saying that they already have a monitor. A low-end tower would let them get into a Mac at a more attractive price while retaining the equipment they already paid for. "
Would an $600 iTower mean more switchers or cannibalize PowerMac sales?
Or the one in June 2000 that predicted that Apple was about to drop the entire PowerMac line and just sell laptops and all-in-ones?
Or the one in August 2001 that predicted Apple and AMD had collaborated on a "secret" CPU design code-named "Twostone", a 48 bit CPU with 16384 registers, that was going to replace the G3 and run it in emulation just as the PPCs had emulated the 68000?
Or maybe the one that, in September 2002, predicted Apple was about to release a cordless phone, FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.
I hardly would describe them as a dependable source of unfounded rumours.
Well, on the plus side I should get at least another year out of my 'Book before it becomes a YDL 'Book. The only issue is: how does Apple think they're going to sell more iBooks with such an option out there? I mean, pretty soon G3s won't be supported by developers..
The 17" PowerBooks have been shipping for some time. My friend's eldest son has had one since April (ordered from the online Apple Store).
After being brutally beaten by Wintel, Apple might be ready to come back.
Its good that they're going with IBM, Motorola doesn't seem to have the capabilities of keeping up with the CPU race.
Now I just wonder if they'll make Macs affordable...
I've always wanted an OS rampant with Rob Malda's homosexuality.
...rampant with Rob Malda's homosexuality...
I think the moderators should actually read it before they mod it up.
I find it hard to know what to believe here. It seems a lock that Apple will introduce PPC970 based Macs at WWDC, but the question as to when they will be availble for shipment is something that is probably only known to his Steveness.
As far as a PPC970 based Powerbook goes. I doubt it. The peak energy consumption is low enough, but I don't think it has any powersave features built in. The increased complexity of a whole new chip in a laptop...seems dubious.
However, There is one thing that makes me think a Powerbook G5 might be released: Apple has not updated the 15" Powerbook since November, not even to bring it up to feature parity with the 12" and 17" models (Bluetooth, FW800, and DDR memory, Aluminum enclosure). It does make me think that maybe Apple has been waiting for the next major uprade to update the 15" models and switching to the PPC970 would certainly qualify.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
I just bought a Power Mac
"...an OS rampant with Rob Malda's homosexuality..."
Hmmm...and this was posted as an Anon Coward. Trying to tell us something Taco?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Show me how an Intel laptop with similar specs is cheaper. I dare you.
Cost of Intel laptop: $1000. Half-Life license: $25.
Cost of Mac laptop: $1000. Half-Life license: $25. Cost of Intel laptop to play Half-Life on because Half-Life doesn't work on Macs: $1000.
s/Half-Life/any other Windows game whose copyright owner refuses to authorize a port to the Mac OS/g
Will I retire or break 10K?
.."..rampant with Rob Malda's homosexuality.."
Were you just checking to see if we were paying attention? Or did the speed of the 970 seriously mess you up?
Slashdot is not a place for rumors.
;)
To top it off, the person who runs Macwhispers is completely morally bankrupt, and is most likely fabricating the entire story.
I'd like to see some real competition for high performance CPUs as much as the next guy, but let's not lose our heads to con artists like this guy...we will know for sure in about 2 weeks
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Everyone's immediate reaction to MacWhispers is always negative.
"Oh, I'll believe it when I see it."
Obviously. MacWhispers has given up on making release date predictions. You'll notice that they have *not* given a specific timeframe for the release of these machines. They have said that they are being built.
So, now, when WWDC makes no mention of the 970, everyone will say "See! MacWhispers are a bunch of damn fools." and no one will remember, two months from now, when these machines surface, that it fits perfectly with MacWhispers' information.
If you take them completely literally, they are a valuable source of information. They cannot divine the future, and they don't seem to be trying to do so, either.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Without knowing exactly how many PPC 970 chips are being produced, it's tough to guess where they would go in Apple's lineup. If there are enough, it's safe to venture a guess that:
1) PowerBook gets the yummy new PPC 970 chip (it IS the year of the laptop afterall)
2) iBook then gets the current G4 chip. The last of the lineup using G3s finally gets the upgrade.
3) iMac, eMac, PowerMac get new 970 chip because hey, we can't leave them out. Or can we? It's the year of the laptop...maybe let the masses go nuts over the laptops as they continue working on the new IBM chips and then blow the doors off when they're ready to be put in the desktop models.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Perhaps the mods should read the last sentence of the parent post before modding it...
HA-ha
Specifically:
Unlike the G4, where the AltiVec unit is integrated rather nicely into the issue unit, and can issue several types of vector instructions in parallel, the 970 can only do a permute in parallel with another instruction. Hence, for some tasks, I would expect the G4 to be almost twice as fast as a similarly clocked 970.
They make a similar claim about the non-AltiVec speed, which I tend to believe. The compiler has to be a little smarter (but Apple did add a bunch of G4 optimizations to gcc anyway), but the 970 can do more per clock the the G4 can, under many circumstances. Not only can it have more instructions in-flight, but it has a much more advanced reordering unit than the G4.
Oh yeah, and when did /. just copy over Apple rumor stories? </obligatory>
Yes, I'm still a junky. Are you still a bitch?
June 09, 2003
OEM Report: The PPC 970 Transition
With the entire Mac world abuzz with (often conflicting) reports of the Apple transition to the IBM PowerPC 970 processor family, we have decided to report a summary of all that we know at this time... not from regurgitated rumors obtained from other web sites, but from our own OEM contacts in the Apple supply pipeline.
We have no software information sources; all information we receive comes from people working in various positions in and around plants in Taiwan that actually supply parts or perform hardware assembly operations on Apple products. So, we have to leave the software speculation to sites such as Think Secret and, it now seems, eWeek.
What we know at this point is as follows:
- The IBM PPC 970 chips are now actually in volume production for only two specific end uses: IBM's own servers, and for Apple Computer.
- The plant contracted for assembly of the new Power Mac is now actually manufacturing production Power Macs with single PPC 970 processors.
- The plant contracted for assembly of the new 15.4-inch Powerbook has just now begun manufacturing production Powerbooks with the PPC 970 processor.
- The new Power Mac has a sister model with a 2-processor motherboard that is not yet in actual production, but that could be put into production at any time.
- The new Power Mac has a new case design with "metallic look plastics," and a front panel "mostly made with the same anodized aluminum surface" as the newest Powerbooks.
- The new Power Mac retains "handles," though not in the same form as the current design.
We have no sources or contacts within Apple Computer, so we cannot state that company's actual release plans for these products. However, we can say that both the new PPC 970 Power Mac and Powerbook will have substantial inventory already produced by the time of the upcoming WWDC keynote.
In closing, we want to address the performance of the new PPC 970 machines, as we do have direct information on this topic, and we consider that information to be highly reliable. Despite the recent flurry of confusing claims published by eWeek and others, we stand by our report that the new Power Mac and Powerbook have overall performance approximately 1.25 to 1.5 times that of a similarly clocked G4 on non-Altivec optimized applications. On Altivec optimized tasks, these machines have as much as 2 to 2.5 times the through performance as a similarly clocked G4. Our understanding is that this performance is occurring using bone-stock OS X 10.2.6 on pre-production single processor PPC 970 machines... an OS with none of the optimization now being rumored as being needed for supporting the PPC 970's performance potential.
-- My hovercraft is full of eels.
I normally hate trolls, but I have to hand it to you, you did a good job with this one.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
I guess that makes my 700mhz G3 iBook a big fat white paperweight. If anyone wants it, ill gladly trade for a g5 powerbook or better...
TallGreen CMS hosting
Come on now... these are rumors. Stop drooling -- your getting your keyboard all wet for no reason. Wait until the REAL hardware shows up... Then drool : )
It's actually called the PPC980, and is due next year.
Yes, the PPC980 is in the IBM roadmap, it's to the Power5 as the 970 is to the Power4.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
There is no way Apple would release a new notebook with a smaller screen than their brand new 17" Powerbook G4 that was just introdcued in January, and just started shipping in volume here in the last month or too.
There is no way they'd release it. I'd be willing to believe a G4 Powerbook 15.4" and a Power PC 970 based Power Mac Tower. but no way they'd do that with the Powerbook at this time.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Mdog! The community misses you.
IBM will use the PowerPC 970, into a blade server, only a the end of the year. Not before. IBM don't have started the production for itself.
In addition, the PowerPC 970 are currently produced at a frequency higher than 2 Ghz. If these rumors sites had true information, they should know that.
867MHz PowerPC G4 w/ 1MB L3 â 512MB SDRAM - 2 SO DIMMs â 60GB Ultra ATA drive â Combo Drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) â AirPort Card â Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English â 15.2-inch TFT Display Subtotal $2,228.00 Dell Inspiron 600m 1.6GHz Pentium M w/ 1MB L2 512MB DDR 2100 60GB UATA Drive DVD/CD-RW combo drive Intel ProWireless 802.11b card 14.1" XGA Screen 64MB Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics $1991 Wow...much faster and still $300 less...
I think that makes you my bitch.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I think that at this point it's quite obvious _something_ is in production, but that doesn't mean the time frame you can by an updated Mac is close at hand though.
Major changes that effect developers will be announced at WWDC. It's likely that whatever new directions in CPUs, APIs, or Market segments will be announced there because developers will have to react to the news. That doesn't mean anything will be available for sale or even that we'll get the whole picture of what cases, prices, user interface changes, or iApps will be released. Not only don't developers need to know this stuff, but traditionally they've been a very conservative, non-spontaneous, purchasing crowd where such surprises would be wasted.
People keep talking about having the whole Mac product line refreshed at WWDC and nonsense like that. My guess is far more conservative. We may get a timetable to expect new PowerMacs, but we probably aren't even going to see the new machines in final plastics.
During the transition from 68000 to PowerPC, Apple bent over backwards to give developers access to emulators, test labs, and even loaned machines to big developers. But they didn't start commercially selling anything until eight or nine months after the WWDC announcements.
I don't think Apple will wait quite that long to introduce new chips if such plans are really on the horizon, but I think there will be some non-trivial lag from WWDC to new consumer-marketed debut of new hardware.
This just in, brand new mac rumor sites....
a pp le-thenamazinglygetslaid.com
www.maczealotgetsaclue-quitsworryingsomuchabout
.test loves you
Just to clarify.
512MB SDRAM - 2 SO DIMMs
60GB Ultra ATA drive
Combo Drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) AirPort Card
Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
15.2-inch TFT Display
Subtotal $2,228.00
Dell Inspiron 600m
1.6GHz Pentium M w/ 1MB L2
512MB DDR 2100
60GB UATA Drive
DVD/CD-RW combo drive
Intel ProWireless 802.11b card
14.1" XGA Screen
64MB Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics
$1991
Wow...much faster and still $300 less... I need to remember to use HTML and hte preview button..
OK, my predictions:
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
He was asking if it ran LUNIX, not Linux, you dyslexic hippy!
Ah, the new Apple trademark for their tower. Didn't think I'd see this thrown around is such a light-hearted forum...
Mac had better come up with a dual processor Notebook. We are in the process of moving to all AVID editors here and AVID has abandoned Mac as a platform because of their unwillingness to produce high end-high torque systems. Right now I am demoing a shoebox AVID field editor that has 2 P-4 processors , 3 gig of ram and 3 SCSI U-320 drives in it. along with DV and digi-betacam video inputs.
Cripes the guys can completely edit a spot in the field before they even return to the office! something that is currently impossible with any MAC based NLE system.
MAC's used to be the thing for Video.... it looks like they are starting to lose with the big companies moving away from them...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
don't forget Debian
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
MacWhispers is not a reliable source of rumors. They have been flat-out-wrong a number of times.
Posted before the new iPods came out:
First, with no data coming from OEM sources recently to indicate a radical change in iPod enclosure construction, and with the stainless steel back cover production quantities recently ramped back up to mid-2002 levels, we are confident that the soon to appear 'Pod will look the same, and have the same control interface, and the same rear cover configuration as the present iPod. At the risk of contradicting other rumor sites, we don't believe there are "buttons" coming on the iPod.
Nice one.... and clearly, flat out, wrong.
Assuming you aren't memory bound. You've only got 166 Mbps TOTAL between the two processors, which well tuned AltiVec codec can saturate with a single processor, let alone two.
My video compression blog
... and post the numbers, please. 'Cuz I'm supposed to be working right now and can't surf Dell myself. ("Hmmm... yet he seems to be on Slashdot..." Shhhh!)
Whyfor none of the "establishment media" has asked, "1. If Saddamn really had WMD, 2. You can't find them now, 3. Who has them"?
I'm scaird!
To determine what features will be on the leading edge PCs of the coming years, all you have to do is go to www.apple.com.
Egads, I've turned into a troll!
Yup, more portable furnices on the way.
The Cycle of Violence is to be seen as the invisible hand that maintains the balance of Man and Nature on earth.--M
bluetooth is dying
"I hardly would describe them as a dependable source of unfounded rumours."
What are you trying to say, they are a great source of unfounded rumours! Not to mention dependable!
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
This is getting stupid. Both sides can keep nit picking minor points all day. No one is going to win. I have used both extensively, and they are both nice. I prefer the Dell 600m, but that is only MY preference.
I don't get why its believed that Mac OS X has to be 64-bit to run on the 970. We've been told in numerous places (Ars, IBM's frickin website) that the 970 runs in 32-bit just fine.
SO... that being said... my WWDC announcment predictions along with what Apple has already stated
- New Macs with PPC 970
- New PowerBook 15 with PPC 970 (the 15" PowerBook is the workhorse of the line, always will be, sorry)
- Preview of Panther
- Macintosh Roadmap Roadmap showing the future... and this is the big-ass news that everyone's been talking about.
Roadmap steps will look something like this...
July 2003:
10.2.7 running on new 970-based Macs practically unmodified because the 970 handles 32-bit operation just totally fine. x.x.+1 updates between WWDC and October 2003. Developer-only release of 64-bit SDK which will not be ready for prime time, but will allow developers to make the swtich, if necessary (similar to Mac OS 9 -> Carbon transition)
October 2003:
10.3 release - all those cool updates in iApps, updates in performance and operation of Mac OS X UI that were shown at WWDC. Panther Will NOT BE a 64-Bit OS!! - why not? Does not need to be because there are no 64-bit apps! Where are the apps? They are still being worked on with the 64-bit SDK, see you at Mac World San Fran with first 64-bit apps.
Jan 2004 (MWSF):
10.3.5 release. Mac OS X will run 64-bit applications. Only apps that NEED to be recomplied 64-bit clean will be recompiled 64-bit clean (iChat, for example, does NOT need to be 64-bit). Finder will be first app to be 64-bit clean because it needs to be.
beyond that, its non-speculateable.
But i think that the real news at this WWDC is going to be the first major Macintosh Roadmap since we saw the Rhapsody one in 1997(8?). You will see where the Mac is going hardware-wise and software wise.
Apple is going to push into the small-medium server market in a hard way.... 64-bit XServes which can run horkin Oracle databases, huge fileservers, and be the backbone of big-ass renderfarms... all with Mac OS X moron-simple UI and none of the pain of cost with Windows servers or admin headache of Linus servers? Puhlease... Apple is going to kick ass and move in where Intel and AMD are just simply lagging behind.
(yes, half the guys in my wedding party have apple.com email addresses.. no, none of this information was gleaned from them.)
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
It seems to me that one of the bigger draws of 64-bit computing is the ability to address much more memory than a 32-bit processor can. Why would Apple put a 64-bit chip in a laptop when even the highest end laptops have a 2 gig physical limit? Even that requires 1 GB laptop sized dimms which are rare and cost many $$$. So, is the 64-bit laptop thing crazy or is Apple going to magically chock it full of memory?
A: "Becuase 30 HEX == 15 DEC!"
The PowerMac G5 will be announced at WWDC, based on the IBM PowerPC 970. The name of the machine will be "PowerMac G5" or "Power Macintosh G5", but Apple will also advertise the processor as the "IBM PowerPC 970 processor with Velocity Engine". It's 64-bit, and they'll hype that up as much as they can.
The low-end (1.4GHz?) model will be available immediately, or within two weeks and Apple will be taking pre-orders. The mid-range and high-end (dual 1.6 and dual 1.8?) models will be shipping within a month after that. Photoshop comparisons with the latest Compaq PC will be mind-blowing, for the types of people who get excited about Photoshop performance. USB2, Bluetooth, FireWire 800 and 400 and Gigabit Ethernet will be standard features, with a slot for an Airport Extreme card.
The Aluminum 15" PowerBook will be released. We will not see a PowerBook G5 before January '04 and maybe not until March '04.
The PowerMac G5 will ship with a hacked version of Mac OS X 10.2, which will not be fully optimized to take advantage of the new processor. However, the PPC970 is designed to run 32-bit code just as well as 64-bit code, so it will still be amazingly fast. Anyone who buys a G5 will be entitled to a "free" ($29 S&H) upgrade to Mac OS X 10.3, which will ship in September for $129.
The new OS will be 64-bit native, optimized for the PPC970, and compiled with gcc 3.3. Large chunks of the Finder will be rewritten for performance and better UI, and there will be a ton of little system-wide UI improvements (adding up to a significantly better experience). One convenient new feature will be support for multiple users being logged in locally at the same time, like Windows XP (go to a login screen without quitting all your apps, second person logs in, first person's apps stay running hidden in the background, can switch back and forth between users).
Mac OS X 10.3 will include WebCore, Apple's Aquafied version of KHTML, available for any application to use. Safari will be the default browser. I suspect Internet Explorer will not be included, although of course you can download it from Microsoft. Help Viewer will be replaced (thank god) with a version that uses WebCore. Now that WebCore is available, it'll be possible for Apple to support PAC and WPAD for automatic proxy server discovery, although I don't know whether these features will make it into 10.3.
Did I miss anything? We'll see how accurate my predictions are next month...
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Dude, are you really the SG.com guy?
Just curious.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Ways of knowing Apple is going to release something.
1. Supply chain starts drying up.
2. Apple allows upgrade makers to catch up.
On the supply chain i've heard conflicting rumors, but on the upgrade side both OWC and Powerlogix have now released 1.42Ghz upgrades, this matches the top of the line G4 desktops.
So there is definitely SOMETHING coming, whether it is a new 970 based machine or simply speed bumped G4's only time will tell.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Windows fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which has crashed 8 times in the past 4 hours. My Mac has crashed like 1 time in the past 6 months. If that.
In addition to the OS failure, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Windows machines, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Windows machine that has run faster than its Macintosh counterpart, probably because of the Macs' faster chip architecture. My PPC with 16 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Windows is a superior OS (or arhitecture).
Windows addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Windows over other faster, cheaper, more stable OS's.
There! My own counter-troll!
a great number of PC users ignore them altogether.
World War 600?? Man I hope thats a long ways off.
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
SCO annouced today that they have been the patent holders of the number 970 since purchasing it from DEC in 1984 and intend to sue Apple for $1 trillion in damages to their brand image.
since apple has recently dropped the price on both the 12" and the 15" powerbooks, i would speculate that a 12" ppc970 'book is in the works as well.
using bone-stock OS X 10.2.6 on pre-production single processor PPC 970 machines...
This statement casts doubt on the other claims of the article because it is simply not possible. A 970 Mac could not run stock 10.2.6 as it exists now because it doesn't include drivers for the 970, the new Hypertransport bus, or the new motherboard chipset. IBM stated that only minor changes would be necessary to operating system code for 970 support though, so my analysis is that there are two possibilities.
Either a. the OS they are running isn't stock 10.2.6 but a modded version that is being called the same thing
or b. there are no running 970 Macs as of yet so they aren't running any OS.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
You're correct - my typo.
Anyway, my point was that even with today's processors, the clock speed isn't the problem nearly as often as memory bandwidth. So even if the 970 has a less optimal AltiVec implementation, the combination of somewhat higher clock speed and vastly higher memory bandwidth should translate into real-world performance advantages a lot better than the clock speed increase would suggest.
My video compression blog
...as long as the mobo was designed with an easy upgradeable CPU slot, it had the *potential* to hold at least 4 gigs of ram, and had a ton of pci and agp slots and usb and firewire. The deal with towers is they MUST be easily upgradeable, and they MUST ship with enough ram to not be stoopid, nowadays that's probably half a gig. Nothing worse than a brand new machine that comes crippled and is hard to upgrade, especially with weirdo ram that is rare or oerly expensive. I've found more ram is a more cost effective performance boost than a newer cpu (within some reason of course), for most stuff I do anyway, and the dealers are in a position to do that the cheapest, they buy in bigtime bulk and can get deals.
"Banging your head against the shiny new Dell Inspiron 600m keyboard...priceless. There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Microsoft."
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Does this portend the end of the 32-bit OS-X? Unlike Windows systems, Apple can force the migration to the PPC 970 simply by not selling anything else. They can continue a G4 PowerBook but not offer OS updates except for bugfixes. As long as there are both PPC 970 based desktops and notebooks, why spend double the money maintaining two parallel operating systems?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
FUCK OFF you make me so MAD I pop a VEIN in my MAC loving forehead!! FURNACE CHIPS are AMD and INTEL. This is IBM PPC. GODDAMMIT!!!
I do belive that Apple will have some sort of 970 based machine for the developers to look at, as well as some benchmarks for us all to drool over.
So what can we expect? Previewing Panther on a 970 based system, probably an update to the developer software (64 bit Project Builder), benchmarks of the 970, overview of 970 based hardware. Probably annouce a PPC 970 based Powerbook in the near future...END OF YEAR? Possibly a Naming change to hardware lineup, and Adjustable Displays
What is less likely? Windows verison of iTunes, PPC 970s shipping, PPC 970 Powerbooks shipping, iCam,
What is NOT going to happen? Apple PDA, Apple Cell phone,
As for the whole product line being revamped, i don't think we'll see a whole new product line at WWDC, but i think that Apple is going to be moving all it's lines away from the G4/G3 based systems. I don't even see the iBooks being converted to G4 systems, as IBM's chip lineup is known to be 20-30% cheaper than Motorola's line...
Instead of seeing G4s as the low end chips, i'd probably wager that IBMs will develop a PPC off of the 750 chip and this will probably replace the G3 systems. But i wouldn't expect to see a PPC 750 until you see a 980 in a powermac.... I think if Apple is going to IBM processors, it would be prudent that they went to an all IBM chip lineup.
*baffled*
For this jump, I say we use 100 octal -- a lot better than the old 040 machine I'm using now.
My anonymous friend, please provide some proof behind your claims. I'm a pretty avid reader of Nick dePlume's Think Secret and can't remember these predictions ever appearing on the site.
Nick actually keeps a running archive of all the articles, here are the one's that are pertinent to your post:
June 2001
August 2001
September 2002
Course he could be secretly deleting any false claims in the archives, but I really doubt it.
I think the ThinkSecret's track record speaks for itself!
"I wish I had a Kryptonite cross, because then you could keep both Dracula AND Superman away." --Jack Handy
You are not fucking Knuth.
Why wait and why pay money if you can install Linux/PPC on it?
Less is more !
MacWhispers tends to be the most unreliable source of rumors of new Apple products, and they seem to have found out for themselves here (MacWhisper.com)
More comments on the ongoing rumors of new G5 15" Powerbooks can be found at Macrumors:
PowerBook 970s at WWDC? and PowerMacs NOT at WWDC?.
Both indicate that it is too early to expect new G5 Powerbooks (or G5 based desktops) by WWDC this summer.
Doesn't it run on IBM 64-bit PPC (RS6K) workstations for years?
Less is more !
so you think the 1Ghz G4 notebooks aren't cock-meltingly hot?
they fucking well are, mate!
That was classic intercourse!
Steve will officially announce 970 Macs. Availability in 3-6 months. The conservative way to go would be putting them in XServe first, then desktop, then laptop like 6 months later. They might push it faster this time, but ISTR it took about 6 months each for g3 and g4 to get into laptops.
XServe-970 hardware could actually be ready to go right now, and low enough volume to release during the production ramp up. Hmm.
As for the OS, I'm sure Apple got the second test chip off the line and every alpha and beta chip since then. With that, and maybe simulators, they've had many months to port to the new chip. The OS will be ready when the hardware is.
If they do have 970 laptops out next month, they better keep on with the dual processor desktops or they won't sell many. (unless they really do want it to be the year of the laptop)
Start Running Better Polls
...at least at our house. The old Performa is very happy with Debian, and the Umax dualie is good with NetBSD. And the iBook SE we used to have was mucho smooth under OpenBSD.
:-) until later this year, so we'll see what ends up being out there!
Which flavor is best for your aged box that's not up to snuff for OS X depends on it's architecture and your needs/experience.
Somebody posting about moving their older mac to YDL made me grin.
We'll prolly wait on the 970 before buying another Mac. In the meantime our new cheap Intel mobo tower runs XP and Knoppix on the HD (reiser FS) just fine, on the metal or under VMware.
But we won't be in the market for a new box (prolly laptop for Her Highness
Dear retarded moderators: STOP MODDING THIS SHIT UP!
Dear Taco: When the hell are we going to get a "-1, Karmawhore" mod? Don't you think it's about time?
They'd had a fast, stable operating system for quite some time now. Oh wait, it's cause Jobs is an arrogant cocksucker.
You are the master of the fucking obvious.
What I did say, and I stand by, is that ThinkSecret is not a dependable source of unfounded rumours. I dare you to try to prove me wrong on that if you dare.
Err... So you're saying that there's no way that the Wintel architecture could have improved in the last 6 years? Because the Pentium Pro came out in 1997. That's probably about how old NT 4 is also.
Your statement makes as much sense as me claiming that Macs suck because I had a horrible experience with Mac OS 8.0 and Mac OS 7.x crashing all the time (which I did).
I was just trying to counter the troll dumbshit.
Moderators, please do your due diligence and check before modding, this post is completely inaccurate/untrue representation of www.thinksecret.com Please see my previous post on this subject.
There is no way this deserves to be a +5 post.
"I wish I had a Kryptonite cross, because then you could keep both Dracula AND Superman away." --Jack Handy
Here's mine:
You're going to die. I give you no time frame, but I'm always right.
already cook...
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I do find it bizarre how any old crap will get modded up to the roof as long as it's written in a handful of boilerplate "styles". It's always worth dropping a blatent piece of nonsense in from time to time, just to ensure Slashdotters never lose their ability to question what they read.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
I have a troll +6 modifier.
Holy crap - this whole discussion is en re a MacWhispers column written by a guy who's time and again (macTable; envestco, etc.) been proven to be so full of shit his eyes are brown.
...
...
It wouldda been good to see evil carrot's post further up the thread
If it is for real, great - considering the source, though, doesn't fill me with hope. The article was convincing with all the "inside scoop" from the part OEMs -
Oh, well - I just bought a dual 867 anyway
Wow! Next year there's gonna be an even faster chip! So what you're really saying is that I should wait for the new model?
Blue skies, Barthy Burgers, girls...
I don't know.
NT
Yes indeed. Worked real well for Adam Osborne
Help fight continental drift.
I dunno, as long as I don't block the fan vents, my powerbook doesn't get -that- hot. Sure, it's a bit on the warm side, but I've had it sitting on bare skin many times without being uncomfortable. The 1 GHz 15" didn't feel nearly as hot to me as an 867MHz 12", actually.
Firstly, that machine is probably six or seven years old and probably hasn't been maintained at all over that time period.
Secondly, such behaviour is not normal. I had a Pentium 100 with 40MB of RAM running NT4 from the beginning of 1996 until late 1997 and then another machine running NT4 from that time until the relese of Win2k. Over that time period I experienced a grand total of five system crashes, three of which were directly attributable to hardware failure.
In addition to the OS failure, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
More signs of a poorly maintained system. Either that or it's running with something ridiculous like 16MB of RAM.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Windows machines, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Windows machine that has run faster than its Macintosh counterpart, probably because of the Macs' faster chip architecture.
Macs haven't had faster hardware than PCs for _years_. I've *never* used a Mac that is as responsive as my Dual P3/733 - and I've used just about every Mac up to a dual 1Ghz Xserve.
My PPC with 16 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times.
Your PPC with 16MB of RAM wouldn't even boot OS X. And the PC is 200Mhz, not 300.
Windows addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Windows over other faster, cheaper, more stable OS's.
Because Apple hardware is not cheaper, OS X is not more stable and certainly not faster. The old PPro box you're sitting in front of is not indicative of a normal PC.
Heck, I've got an old dual 200Mhz *Pentium 1* machine I put XP onto a few weeks ago just for laughs, and it was only marginally slower than my Rev B G4/667 Powerbook. Of course the Rev B PB667s are a bit of a dog, but still....
Yes, yes, I know, IHBT.
Try keeping your trousers on. Problem solved.
I thought Apple's iBooks topped out below 1 GB. I doubt their powerbooks hold much more. Who needs this now, and will Apple even make them able to hold more than 4 GB?
The PPC970 might be called the G5 for Apple products...And if that sounds obvious...well, it wasn't to me!
:-)
The "G5" notebook will probably be white with metallic accents, to fit in with Apple's new aesthetic...looks too sterile, if you ask me.
Oh, and from the article:
"the ultimate question: 17" Powerbook, or PPC 970 Powerbook?"
Neither. I'd take the 12" Powerbook with Superdrive, especcially now that it's *only* $1800.
After reading this, I wouldn't take this guy's advice on the weather.
I think this a good time to talk about boundries. Look, it's okay to love your Mac. Just don't... "LOVE"... your Mac.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
" Attention moderators! "Alan Partridge" is a known troll"
Known to whom, exactly?
Mod me down by all means, but it's easier to do so if the post is shit, rather than because some tosser AC told you to do so.
My posting on Slashdot is trivial enough, but to actually concern yourself with what I post is just fucking sad.
That was classic intercourse!
One this I have -never- seen is confirmation that the PPC970 is in production. I've seen some pics on IBM's site of a chip that they claim is the 970 (kind of funny, the chip is posed with feathers), but no official press releases about mass production, or of others recieving even samples of the 970. Someone out there must know whether or not such an annoucement has been made by IBM.
Nah, it's probably not going to show up in Mac's before Jan 2005.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
Linux model of making money is corporate oriented consulting.
So I get the OS for free, and then I have to pay someone on a regular basis to figure out how to make it run? No thanks, I'll take Mac OS X.
No wonder all these computer types are busy trying to promote Linux. It's the new form of job security for the IT industry.
"Everyone who bothers to observe you"
have you thought about trading up to a life?
That was classic intercourse!
I've always had trouble keeping my trousers on.
That was classic intercourse!
I just hope they don't cripple it with a sub-par solution from a graphics has been.
Nvidia needs to stick to logic chipsets.
Funniest comment in ages. Thanks.
Interesting that lost in this all, without comment, is the irony that IBM, which once represented all that was opposite to Apple and was its big nemesis, will now be the heart of the latest, greatest, user-friendly Apple computers, and that's viewed by the Apple community not just with anticipation and excitement, but with a sense of impeding vengeance, even, against ... what? Still, the IBM-compatible PC!
I worked at CompUSA around that time, and based on the Macs we got shipped, they *had* pretty much dropped the entire PowerMac line to just sell laptops and iMacs. The iMacs were up to almost the same speed as the then top-of-the-line (at least so far as what *we* had recieved) PowerMac, which was priced over $2,000 *more* than that iMac.
Worst troll ever! At most, it should get +1, funny for being so goddamned awful =-P
I've an old 500MHz G3 iBook and just bought Final Cut Express for home video stuff and it works just fine. In fact it works better than iMovie which was much too unstable on the iBook.
Sure you don't get real time previews with the G3 - but it is not too much of a handicap - and certainly better than iMovie.
My buying intentions? - Within the next year get a new (G5?) Desktop and keep using the G3 iBook as my laptop for another year or so.
Even after two years my white iBook turns heads - I hope that the metal look powerbooks get the IceBook look.... much cooler than those tin can pizza boxes....
I just read an article by Wen-Yu Lang at Digitimes*, about the new producer of the 15.4-inch PowerBooks in Taiwan. Which seems to give the answer: "Compal will start shipping 15.4-inch wide-screen PowerBooks for Apple in the second half of this year, with initial monthly shipments estimated at 30,000-40,000 units."
As we know Compal is allready producing the 12 and 17 inch model. Steve will surely introduce a new 15.4 inch PowerBook at WWDC (which is the best developer tool anyway). It's going to be all aluminium and 802.11g, but will there be a PPC 970?
*DigiTimes is Taiwanâ(TM)s only daily newspaper focusing on the IT industry
>> Had I been going to bed earlier every night? Have I been sleeping later? Has Tyler been in charge longer and l
Well, then. APPLE leaked G5 news on its website tonight which i personally witnessed and saved a PDF print file of dated and time stamped. The details are G5 up to 2 gigahertz, serial ata, 8 x agp, 8gb ram, 1 GHz bus. there was a spelling error in the gif filename and that is why i believe it did not get pulled from staging or testing as it should have been by the software or staff. rumor sites have been told to take the info off line, the change was made between near midnight and 1 am friday morning.
I am not sure if this has been widly distributed, but I found this while poking around http://store.apple.com Today.
Here is the image
Pretty Pictures!
Check the 970's specs on page two of this article at IBM [pdf]. Looks like the 970 sucks juice like you wouldn't believe. (Compare to the G3. No wonder iBooks and their 5-6 hour battery life (and I can attest to that) are the last Macs to use 'em)
Power consumption's not an issue with towers. BIG issue with laptops. PowerPC 970 laptops are not going to happen this week. This is a server chip, folk. Xserve, perfect fit. PowerMac, why not? Laptops, a dual G4 would be neat, but I don't think we'll see that or a G5 "to go". I'd like to eat crow on this one, but I don't *think* I will.
Last post!
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.