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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?
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.
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.
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.
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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.
I don't think the ArsTechnica report said that the implementation was supposed to be worse - just that it was more of a hack. Just because something is a hack doesn't necessarily mean it can't perform well. In fact, most hacks are done for none other than performance reasons.
Gotta get me one of these!
I think that the increase in the bus could really help here. If you can keep feeding data through a slow altivec unit you will might get better performance than with a fast one that is starved for data.
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so what if they need cash? like that makes a powerbook a piece of crap? maybe car dealerships are hard up for cash at the end of the year when they move out last year's models? oh yeah, dell is offering a $150 online rebate. wow, looks like dell is screwed.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
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.
You left out the part about how it would put Apple out of business in short order. And that'd end your trip real quick.
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.
cache performance, bus performance increases.
the real reason G4's don't perform is that they are usually waiting on data... the G4's may be fast and have great AltiVec, the whole issue of still running (essentially) PC133 memory is the bottleneck.. no matter how fast your CPU is, if you can't get it lots of data - not just the data in the L2 cache - its just gonna sit there.
the 970 systems should, by any means, at least keep the CPU(s) busy. that alone will greatly enhance the performance of the new machines when doing things like 3D rendering, video transcoding, etc.
Its like why my Powerbook rips mp3's from CD's at only 10x, while my slower desktop rips them at 14x... the desktop has a 52x CD-ROM drive and my Powerbook has a slow-as-ass Superdrive. I can't keep the machine busy because I can't get it the data. The bottleneck in that case is the CD read.
In the G4's vs. the 970's discussion, the bottleneck is the pathetic (compared to Intel mobos) G4 motherboard because the mobo's running the 970's are all around faster.
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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
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.
By far the biggest advantage of the 970 is simply that it's a much faster processor than the G4. If it were only 32 bits there would still be a good deal of anticipation. I doubt we'll see Powerbooks with 32 gigs of RAM anytime soon, but a PB 970 would still be a kickass machine.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
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.
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Many of my predictions are indeed based on a number of different rumor sites, but not copied directly. Some of the rumors I've read I disagree with, and some I agree with.
For example, I think it was Mac OS Rumors that said the G5 will not be called the G5, and I disagree with them. This issue was also mentioned by As the Apple Turns, who said that according to AppleInsider, it would be called the PowerMac G5. I agree with them. That doesn't mean my prediction is based on theirs, merely that we both made the same prediction.
The nature of the PPC970 chip, and that Apple will use it at all, is based largely on a couple of articles at ArsTechnica, but they didn't say anything about when it would ship.
The 1.4, dual 1.6 and dual 1.8GHz clock speeds are consistent with Mac OS Rumors, although I'm sure I've seen other speeds suggested elsewhere. I believe I've heard 2GHz suggested, and I don't agree with that (not for WWDC). I forgot to mention pricing, but I predict the low-end and mid-range models will be $1499 and $1999 respectively; this is based on Apple's current pricing, not on any rumor site.
USB2 support I heard somewhere, but don't remember where (it had to do with motherboard specs). Bluetooth, FireWire 800 and Airport Extreme are currently shipping features.
I've heard about the 15" Aluminum PowerBook from a few sources I think. The PowerBook G5 has also been mentioned in multiple places including this Slashdot article, but I don't expect to see it until next year, possibly announced at MacWorld San Francisco but probably not.
The G5 shipping with 10.2 was a possibility I had been considering, but was confirmed by ThinkSecret and eWEEK. Same source for gcc 3.3. Pricing is based on Apple's history.
The multiple simultaneous users feature I heard from a few places quite some time ago; I don't remember where. Apple's WWDC material says Panther and WebCore will be demonstrated at WWDC; that's no secret. As for PAC and WPAD, I haven't seen that suggested anywhere.
In any case, a rumor is "A piece of unverified information of uncertain origin usually spread by word of mouth." Many of my predictions are based on rumors. The sites I got the rumors from are mostly just passing on rumors they've heard. I don't feel that not citing sources was inappropriate, since these are MY predictions, BASED ON what many others have said, not simply a copy of someone else's predictions. I would expect others to be able to make similar predictions, based on overlapping sources.
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Apple can waffle on about the Mhz myth all they want, but I don't see them REDUCING clock rates generation after generation.
Pentium 4: 3 GHz
Xeon: 2.6 GHz
Pentium M: 1.6 GHz
Itanium 2: 1 GHz
So, you're claiming that the 32- and 64-bit versions of Solaris, AIX and FreeBSD are entirely *different* operating systems? Because you're currently claiming that a 64-bit version of MacOS X is a seperate operating system.
Adding a kernel profile for a PPC970 is *not* creating a new operating system. Adding 64-bit support in the OS is *not* creating a new operating system.
And your claims that the underlying hardware is "different" are as valid as saying that a 486 and a Pentium are "different hardware". Granted, they're different chips, but they share fundamentally the same roots. Just like the current G4 and the PPC970. Remember that the PPC970 is 100% binary compatible from an instruction point of view and will run *any* G4 code without modification.
-psy
I think PCs do get equal attention, but since all the parts in Dell's, HP's, etc. machines are all industry standard parts manufactured by other companies, the speculation isn't about their offerings but the offerings of their suppliers.
There's a lot of speculation about AMD's chips, or new motherboard chipsets, or nVidia or ATI's new graphics cards -- probably just as much or more in total as that which surrounds Apple's products. Apple just has a lot of relative speculation surrounding it since it's the only provider for a particular platform.
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.
...
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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
Also, Quark has just announced that it is shipping for OS X any day now. Lack of a native version of Quark, along with a sluggish market in publishing, has kept a lot of the tower buyers (ie print shops, etc) from upgrading. Quark is ready to ship, and publishing seems to be on its way to recovery. Those are two big pushes on the demand side.
Also, it would seem silly to have the 970 in the towers and not in the XServe, so expect them there as well; that would further reduce the supply side even further. In fact, I suspect that the 970 in the XServe might drive XServe sales higher, thus reducing the pool of 970s available for laptops.
A 970 Powerbook will be here, just don't expect it within the next couple-three months.
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Good points.
Eventually, they should upgrade the iBook (or more likely replace it with another model), but Final Cut Express is a $300 app. Not too many home users are willing to drop that kind of cash on a single program AND aren't willing to spend it on a better computer. Plus, I don't know too many people who do FCE level video editing at home in the first place. iMovie is powerful enough for the average home user editing video of the kids.
Photoshop runs just fine on an iBook. Sure, the effects are faster on a better processor, but they're pretty snappy, even on the low-end iBooks. And that's the full version, not just Elements. I've tried Elements on my Windows computer, and it doesn't seem very different from the whole thing. A few filters and such aren't there, but the basic stuff certainly is. The average home user doesn't need most of the filters at all. When I was retouching digital photos for my mom, I just used the airbrush, dodge, burn, and the average sampling eyedropper. I was able to digitally shave people, remove red-eye, and even remove objects (for instance a mechanical pencil from my step-dad's pocket). I can't imagine a home user needing to do much more than that.
Of course, some of the filters look cool, so they would want to use those. However, saying that those need to be fast is like saying that it is necessary that I be able to render 720*480 scenes in real-time. Sure, I do rendering as a hobby, but I know that it isn't supposed to be very fast without a huge render farm.
I personally think that they aren't going to do anything with the iBook other than move it to Gobi, but later they will introduce a far more powerful laptop for home users. Possibly G4 based, but then again, possibly not. They could conceivably tack an Altivec unit onto the 750 and have quite a processor.
There are really three classes of users here. There's the consumer, who indeed will probably be happy with a G3 and iMovie. There's the professional, who will demand the 970 be on the high end PowerBook, at least. There's also the pro-sumer (the folks who buy $1,000 video cameras that are too good for baby videos, but useless for professionals), who would want a G4 with Final Cut Express. So, ideally, Apple can ship three laptops, but they can also combine two of these classes into one laptop. Where we differ is which way Apple will classify this group in the middle.
They could conceivably tack an Altivec unit onto the 750 and have quite a processor.
Yes, that would satisfy the need that I identified in the meantime. The reason I guessed G4 iBook is mainly the fact that Apple already has it in the current crop of PowerBooks.