Slashdot Mirror
Apple Marketing Hypes New PowerMacs
Wacky_Wookie was only one of many who wrote in with a mention of Apple's "leak" of specifications for a new line of PowerMacs to be dubbed "G5", apparently running the new PowerPC 970 CPUs. No offense, but anyone who thinks it was a mistake or leak doesn't understand marketing. :) Update by J : In case those linked sites get taken down too, try
MacNN.
I guess it seems that all the speculation was right on the money.
/college
And I still can't afford it...
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
No offense, but anyone who thinks it was a mistake or leak doesn't understand marketing. :) -- Michael
No offense, anyone who has half a clue is fully aware that Apple is particularly fascist and litigious regarding details of product launches leaking out. In particular, Steve Jobs simply loves the "wow" he gets from the audience by completely surprising them. In this case, few people actually expected DUAL 2Ghz PPC970 (G5) configurations available. Now, people are going to be less surprised on Monday.
Surely Michael is welcome to tell us how much he understands marketing and what products has he actually marketed, and we can see how much his credentials stack up against someone in charge of Apple and Pixar.
I agree.
I'm not a mac fan, and I would have had no clue whatsoever that the G5 was on the way, had it not been for this..
It seems as "leaks" theese days are becomming more and more frequent.. At least the ones that gets people excited.
And why not, it's a great way of getting peoples attention, because everyone wants to see other peoples "misstakes". And if your hear about something secret leaking out of a big company, and then beeing removed a few minutes later, your gonna read about it. And most likley hear about the product in question at the same time.
mov ax, 4c00h
int 21h
I'll bite.
G5 is a marketing name and not a chip name. They can happily call the PPC 970 anything they want and G5 kind of makes sence.
The PPC 970 requires a bus speed half that of the processor speed hence the 1Ghz bus on the 2Ghz model. That would be achievable using HyperTransport.
And saying something it not real due to their use of the words one and two instead of the numeral ? Please.
- Three USB 2.0 ports
The rest of Apples site would say "3 USB Ports" not "Three". Also, Apple have a long standing habit of using Firewire instead of USB 2.0. I take this as one point impossible
Yeah, except the current G4s have USB 2.0 hardware onboard, Apple just restricted it to USB 1.1 operation.
- One FireWire 800, two FireWire 400 ports
Once again use of the verbal "One" instead of the numeric. Only one FW800 port? Why would Apple stick with FireWire 400 anyway? I mark this impossible
Oh, yeah? That's what's shipping in the current G4: 2 FW400, and 1 FW800. Since 800 is rather new, people will be more likely to need more 400 ports for their existing devices-- plus it would be dumb to make someone have to 'waste' an 800 port on a 400 device. For now, 2 of the older standard makes sense.
- Bluetooth & AirPort Extreme ready
Likely
Again, thank you, Captain Obvious-- since this is how current G4s are shipping.
~Philly
> ...but optical audio in a graphics machine? I'm sorry
> Also, Apple have a long standing habit of using Firewire
> instead of USB 2.0. I take this as one point impossible.
>
Didn't I read that the USB port on recent Macs _is_ an USB 2.0 port, and that only the driver was missing?
>
> Bad grammar..
>
Careful where you pont that thing, son. You might shoot your own self.
>
>
> but this sounds like wishful thinking.
>
The Macs will do whatever you want: calling them a "graphics machine" only shows that _your_ vision is limited. I mean, they're not the front-end console for a drum-scanner or a Cray, fer chrissakes. Think the old "digital hub" idea, and imagine one of these Bad Larrys plugged right into your home stereo.
G3, G4, and G5 are Apple names, not Motorola names. Apple will probably call the 970 a G5.
G4/G5 is a branding thing, or at the very least a processor family classification. The G4's are PPC74**'s, such as the 7450 in my PB. Apple would go with the term "G5" if only from a branding perspective.
Don't take this as truth, but I have read that the processor:bus ratio for the 970 is 2:1, making the bus speed on the 2Ghz 1Ghz. This is in line with the graphic.
Apple still uses NVIDIA as their low-end graphics card on the PM, and on one of the current PB (the 17" I think). Not impossible in the least
In regards to the "three" vs. "3" comment, look at this graphic:
Current PM Specs Graphic
It uses both the numeral and spelled out number. Some of the uses look like they were done to preserve spacing or lengthen a short sentence.
Apple has a long standing habit of using USB 1.1 as well as Firewire. Apple has always stated that both have their uses. People have been clamoring for USB 2.0 for a while now and there is no reason for Apple to not include it.
FW400 and FW800 use different connectors. FW400 is for legacy devices and those that do not need to run at the new specs speed
Remember the Mac is also used in numbers in the video and audio fields. Both of these would benefit strongly from the use of optical audio.
All this being said, these still could not be the true specs but they are not outside the realm of possibility as you claim. We'll have to wait until Monday to find out for sure.
Now, you can still think it's a fake (it's quite possible, I don't know), but your arguments sound quite unconvincing to me.
Donate free food here
But the actual name is "Power Macintosh G5," as opposed to Canon's "Powershot G5."
IIRC, that was Apple's defense when they announced Mac OS 9.0 and Microware (makers of OS-9) took issue with it.
~Philly
And anyone who thinks these specs would be deliberately leaked three days before a "Stevenote" doesn't understand Apple.
Don't be so sure. There's been rumors that the PP970 may indeed be cheaper than the current G4 line. Remember, Moto doesn't sell a lot of 1.42 GHz G4s to its primary customers, but IBM is looking forward to selling a lot of 970s. Mass production on that delicious new East Fishkill fab could make it significantly cheaper than whatever Moto manages to push out.
Have you looked at those shelves of PC Software? Most of it is crap! Everything you need to get work done is available for the Mac. I'm not a Mac zealot; I have 6 PCs at home and only 1 Mac, but most of my "serious" work is done on that one machine.
I seriously doubt this was a "strategic leak" to use the phrase from the Ginger book excerpt. When the image started hitting the web (MacRumors, Ars forums, MacMinute, iChat) Apple quickly took the entire Apple Store down in the U.S. and Canada and perhaps elsewhere. That's an expensive way to steal your own thunder - surely if they wanted to leak this information the could have found a cheaper way to do it. And this leak certainly diminishes the imact of the Monday keynote broadcast. I bet Steve Jobs popped a vein or two when he heard about it...
No offense, but anyone who thinks it was a mistake or leak doesn't understand marketing.
And whomever would write something like that about an internal Apple leak doesn't understand Steve Jobs.
I'm sure heads rolled on this one...especially if they're to be officially announced on Monday at WWDC (which is likely).
1) The Xserve has individual ATA busses for maximum throughput, which SerialATA probably wouldn't help.
2) There is no need for a non-server system to have removable drives. The new pro systems will not have "the same drives you can get in an Xserve today."
3) The Xserve already has a PCI-X slot.
4) "Someone not related to Apple['s website store]" would not have access to the location this image file was found. It was on an Akamai server. This actually showed up on the Apple Store. I saw it with my own eyes. This isn't a hoax unless it's internal to Apple.
It's not a natural law of the universe that Apple must be behind Wintel. Prior to the G4 debacle Macs were very competitive, and depending on the prices and performance of the G5 systems they may be again very soon.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
[begin snide commentary]
I always make sure that all of the software I purchase is compatible with that of a convicted monopolist!
[end snide commentary]
Vendor independence? From whom? Microsoft or Intel? Multiple distribution channels does not correspond to vendor independance.
-- Improve Windows - Buy a Mac!
"Why do they still completely forsake the low end?"
Coz there's fuck all profit in it?
Just a guess...
That was classic intercourse!
No offense, but anyone who thinks it was a mistake or leak doesn't understand marketing.
No offense, Michael, but you pretty clearly don't understand marketing. There's no way this was intentional.
Why? Let's assume you have a big event coming up, with one big piece of news everyone is waiting for (in this case, G5s) and lots of other, smaller items that you want to talk about (Panther, whatever other goodies they have hidden). Remember, that big piece of news is the lure to get everyone watching the rest of the show.
So why on Earth would you spill the beans beforehand on your big item, so that some people would have gotten the info they wanted and will now not tune in to see the rest of it?
It's also media suicide! If the mainstream press reports today "Apple is announcing G5s," then they won't have the same level of "big news" to report on Monday, and reports of all the other stuff Apple desperately wants people to know about (like the goodies of Panther and their carefully-worded spin on the advantages of 64-bit-ness) won't get the same headline "punch" because the big cat's out of the bag. And Apple is a past master at manipulating the press, so they would never consciously make that kind of mistake.
Lastly, if they were going to deliberately leak it, why would they leak only specs (which geeks care about) and not something like a spec-free marketing piece written about the G5 which would get people quoting their words on its goodness, but still keep prospective buyers tuned in for the details? Again, not a smart move.
In sum, this was pretty clearly an actual goof by a (newly unemployed) Apple web tech. I trust the Slashdot staff to know their s**t about a variety of things ... but oh dear God is marketing NOT one of them.
"95% of all Slashdot
I was initially skeptical at first also, but it occurred to me that if I had been able to hack Apple, I would have put it in a much more prominent place.
I tend to agree with the idea that it was an intentional "leak", since nothing posted was totally unexpected. Apple *had* to know that everyone was wanting 970s. If they have them, leaking some specs increases the fervor without giving too much away.
Boom Shanka
And Ill wait to buy a Ferrari when they have one thats less than $20,000. Apple doesnt go for the low end because it doesnt have to, and it couldnt gaurentee the quality its got if it did. You get what you pay for.
Not at all. That is, in fact, my point. I think the RDF gets modded down pretty fast. Slashdot is a tough crowd. Facts are paramount. You don't have any "points" you just put forth an opinion.
You can't seem to help taking a swipe. It's tiresome.... And yet I keep getting modded up for it! You know what is really tiresome?
That you keep getting modded up for it? +5 'I agree'. Look, I'm not trying to start a war here. But there are other opinions. I do respect yours but you need to back it up every so often.
Why is this news? There has been plenty of competition in the high end workstation space for years. Oh right, I forgot. This is Apple. Their cases glow in the dark. Of course it's news.
THAT is what I am talking about. You know when AMD comes out with a new Opteron I don't go all frothy, I think, "That's cool." Apple comes out with a new chip and its "ooh, Apple, they glow, they blow." You just illustrated my point beautifully.
Think about it - almost everyone on here drools over Mac OS X...I hate to burst your bubble, but no they don't.
No worries. They do. I see it every day. People love love love OS X. Maybe you don't. Thats' fine. But its evident all over Slashdot.
Classic Mac apologism at work.
Fuck off. "Classic Mac troll at work." See how that goes?
I was merely intimating that many PC - and Mac - people yell about speed they don't need, but merely want. Nothing wrong with that per se but I get sick of people saying computers aren't 'fast enough'. Practically all of them are fast enough by practically anyone's standards. It was just an observation, it's not a platform 'apology'. If anything you are dodging the issue.
This does of course lead to the question of why you look forward to it. You look forward to it, because you have made a large (almost certainly personal) investment in the platform.
It's true that I have a Mac at home, not at work. It's true that I want them to hang around because they seem to be the only ones innovating at times. But, again, stop telling me what I think. You've dodged the issue once again and are dancing on the periphery of an ad hominem.
Clearly, this is the type of thinking that keeps Microsoft in the top spot, keeps IE dominating the web in the face of superior free alternatives etc. You want people to use Macs, despite the fact that this ultimately profits only Apple...
Clearly not. I just want people to stop pissing on Apple - strike that, any companuy, for stupid political reasons. That's it.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Everyone seems to be focused on the specs, but for me the most important piece of text in the misbegotten graphic from the Apple Store kimono opening was the headline that preceded them:
"The world's fastest personal computer." Now, as David Letterman likes to say, that's something.
Apple hasn't been able to claim anything like that, with anything like a straight face, in a long, long time. The implication is that there will be a convincing display of this CPU prowess, and not just Jon Rubenstein talking about the length of his pipe, either. And I would bet it will involve something other than just Photoshop.
The speed perception issue has been holding Apple and OS X back - if the developers and then the tech are convinced this hobble has been removed from the camel's back legs, it will be a huge deal.
Love - the delusion that one woman differs from another. [H.L. Mencken]
What is a"site" ? No, "sites" don't do that. However, overworked, stressed frazzled code monkeys who are trying to build and test a site in advance of a major product announcement in 3 days can easily put an image in the wrong folder.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Hate to break it to you, but for real engineers, those don't count...
n igraphics
Try finding any of the following that will run on the Mac:
ProE
Solidworks
SolidEdge
Ideas
Inventor
U
Catia
Mechanical Desktop
Alibre
Gentlemen, you guys are gonna love Linux PPC. Warm up those checkbooks for new PowerMacs. The day of x86 liberation has arrived. ;-)
Yellow Dog will probably be the first of the PPC distros to support the new 64-bit processors. You can run 32-bit until then. Mandrake 9.1 PPC is also very good, and there are others.
8Gb of RAM. What fun.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
I wish people would stop comparing the price of a Mac with the cost of putting a computer together themselves -- this happens all the time on Slashdot. What you say about Apple is true, to varying degrees, of any computer company.
They're not competing with people like you who make their own damned machines. They can't -- not on price. No one can. (Some poor fucker somewhere has to be paid for putting it together.) So why bother? Besides, it's not like there are all that many of you for them to lose too much sleep over it.
Those specs didn't say anything about the noise level. Will they have upgraded fans?
My MDD is so freaking load! Even after the fan replacement kit, it is way louder than my dual celeron with all the groovy heat sink and blow hole fans.
Come on Apple! For $5,000 the thing should be silent. Hell, it should absorb sound from the surrounding area.
If the new towers start at 1.6 Ghz, what has Apple been doing with the 1.2 and 1.4 Ghz parts everyone assumed they've been getting?
You beat me to it.
There may be some hope though with WWDC next week. I heard rumblings that science and engineering (CAD/CAE) developers may be targeted because of their UNIX heritage. I know that last year I was told that Apple was targeting biotech first, and that they would evaluate where to go next. I made noise with a few managers at Apple, that in the companies that I had worked, engineering charted the course for the rest of the IT policies to follow. Most of this was because of the intensive hardware and software demands of running high-end CAD software.
One of those listed (Pro/E) has released a Linux version in cooperation with HP. With Apple's new machines and the fact that they have the largest installed base of UNIX (don't care what the Open Group says), there may be a few ISV's which may be persuaded to port to OS X.
I know that in the shops that I've worked in and or managed, the high-end stuff (Pro/E, I-deas, etc.) just doesn't work well enough on Windows to be valuable. The midrange stuff (Solidworks, SolidEdge, Mechanical Desktop) only exists on Windows, and can't touch the high-end stuff for utility. Apple could woo the high-end over, and open a can of whoop ass on Microsoft on the CAD front.
We'll have to just wait and see.
-- Len
If we wanted a reality distortion field, we'd go to GU4DEC. If you want see a bunch of people practicing BS that keeps microsoft's dominance afloat, you couldn't find a better place than GU4DEC.
The whole "we're getting there" crap gets really tiresome after seeing the same usability problems creep up again and again for year after year after year. But what should we expect from a bunch of command-line nerds who think that they can do desktop stuff.
Clearly, this is the type of thinking that keeps Microsoft in the top spot, keeps IE dominating the web in the face of superior free alternatives
Or perhaps the free alternatives are crap, and the desktop linux developers have way too many apologists running around artificially inflating the quality of those alternatives. And when the true quality of those apps is brought into question by a non-geek who has trouble doing something, those linux developers start screaming "quit whining about what you're getting for free". If I had to pick the number one thing that was really keeping microsoft dominant on the desktop, I would have to say it would have to be Free Software's obvious non-commitment to usability.
The freedom to get your work done easily and with a minimum of fuss is the most valuable and sacred freedom an end-user can have, and currently the "Free" software developer community does not recognize the existence of this freedom. The GPL is a programmer's idea of freedom, not an end user's. "Join us all and share the software. You'll be free -- once you read the fine manual".
What's the reason for such staunch pro-apple/pro-mac beliefs?
Apple put a GUI on their machines while the PC's forced people to use confusing command-line crap like DOS.
Apple was the first company to put trackballs in their laptops while other laptop makers forced users to clip a trackball onto the side of laptop every damn time they turned the thing on. Apple also created the first laptop that actually had a generous portion of real-estate behind the keyboard where a user could rest their hands. It was only later that the other vendors starting aping this feature.
Apple was the first computer maker to truly embrace the more usable usb and firewire back when other computer makers stayed in their happy, crappy comfort zones of serial and parallel connectors. If Apple didn't force the USB/Firewire migration issue with the perhipheral harware companies in 1997 with the iMac, it would have taken several more years for the "alternative vendors" to even begin that migration themselves.
Apple was the first company to truly make an easy, usable, and integrated alternative to illegally swapping mp3's on Kazaa. It will probably hit some snag and will be replaced by something better, but the point is that Apple had the wherewithall to do it.
The poing is that Apple has the balls to make the computing experience better for everyone while other vendors like Gateway, Dell, and Compaq choose to sit on their ass and do nothing. I agree that liking a company just because they make pretty cases is ridiculous; it is the attention and care paid to the user experience which truly builds loyaltly.
Yes, the code for Cocoa and Quartz is closed. It would be nice if it were open, but given the shennanigans that are GNOME, KDE, and the X-Windows system, the current batch of Free Software developers have shown that they could never be trusted with it. Leave them with the code for Cocoa for five minutes, and they'd immediately start to make things inconsistent and unusable.
Ideally, I'd like to see those mac values transplated into efforts to make open and viable alternatives to microsoft. If we could just find a way to remove the current batch of linux developers and replace them with competant mac developers, then an open desktop would truly be in business.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
For all the snarling and growling and derision about Apple, the sheer amount of posts on the topic of new Apple hardware says perhaps more about the interest in Apple's hard- and software than any poll ever could.
Which Radeon card, which case and power supply? Did you include gigabit ethernet, firewire, usb2, and wifi? Does the case open easily allowing convenient access like my G4 tower or the shitty designed case I have for my Athlon 2400? Does bluetooth integrate easily with the resulting box? Oh, and as Harrison Ford's character in Bladerunner says in the bar scene, "Your papers all in order for that installation of XP Pro?" (OK, I altered the wording slightly). Yeah, $600 my ass.
And apparently that person on macfreak.org is trying to get attention, since that's not how Akamai's setup is supposed to work. You publish the content to your own servers, and Akamai merely caches that content. So in other words, it was someone with access to Apple's own servers (such as an Apple website developer) who put that up.
And you can observe that what Apple was likely trying to do was to update the interface to the store slightly. First: instead of something such as "Step 1: choose your iMac," you now just get "Choose your iMac." Once you do choose your particular system, the buttons are also noticeably different: they're all flat, solid-colour buttons.
Knowing that these changes have been made, we can easily use Occam's Razor: the simplest answer is that Apple unintentionally posted the specs image while they were in the middle of testing and updating other content. There's no sinister conspiracy involving disgruntled employees or clever hackers.
Yes, but you fail to see that buying shoddy component hardware for $600 doesn't give you nearly as nice a system as the Mac. When you buy a Mac, you're not just buying hardware, you're also paying for the OS (which is the only true next-generation desktop OS with the possible exception of the now-defunct BeOS,) the iApps, the sweet looking case, etc. All of these are part of the "Mac experience." Sure, Linux works, you can browse the web, print, write papers, etc. but it doesn't have the experience that a true Mac gives you.
The reason people like Macs so much is that it makes computing fun and easy. The reason OS X is so incredibly awesome is that it's very user-friendly without sacrificing the power of Unix for those who want it. But if you're not a power-user, you'll never see a command line and still have a great computer that you'll enjoy immensely. Linux can't possibly give you a comparable experience, and that's what you pay the extra $1000 for. They're both computers, they're both about as powerful as eachother (for all intents and purposes,) but the Mac lets you do everything in style. THAT is why you buy a Mac, those who own them know this, those who don't just haven't figured it out yet.