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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.
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.
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 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.
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.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
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
Don't forget: Jobs intro'd the original bondi blue iMac at WWDC five years ago. He will do hardware at WWDC if he thinks it is cool enough to show off.
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
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.