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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.
The reasons to have your next PC upgrade be a Mac keep increasing, and the only thing that might make the PC platform attractive are the rumors that HP will be releasing an Opteron soon. Personally I can't wait till I can have a 64-bit desktop machine with built in Gigabit.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
I'm sure these would be set at the "You Have To Be KIDDING me!" price point, but I'm sure these would be delicious machines to get a hold of.
Would these be CHRP (common hardware ref. platform) compliant? Or has apple abandoned that? Cuz then you could run MacOS, or Linux, or AIX all native on the same box.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
OK I can't believe the mac world is going gaga over these specs. The screenshot font, color and layout do NOT match that of anywhere else on the Apple site. Taking a look through the specs is also quite revealing
Revealing indeed, but not of what you think.
- 1.6GHz, 1.8GHz or Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 Processors
It's not a G5, it's a PPC970, completely different beasts. Not to mention neither Motorola or IBM have 2GHz chips in their roadmap until 2005. Bzzzt One point impossible
G5 = branding. And IBM have 2.5 GHz chips in their roadmap for 2004 (in the new blades) so 2 GHz in 2003 isn't that odd.
- Up to 1GHz processor bus
1GHz bus? gimme a break. Intel hasn't yet reached this. Two points impossible
Read the specs of the PPC 970, freely available all over the internet. The bus runs at 1/2 the processor speed, hence 2 GHz is 1GHz bus. Even the 1.8 GHz chips, which are definitely announced by IBM for other products, have 900 MHz buses.
- Up to 8GB of DDR SDRAM
This one is acceptable
- Fast Serial ATA hard drives
This is also possible
- AGP 8X Pro graphics options from NVIDIA or ATI
Almost believable, but for the moment Apple are phasing out the use of NVIDIA cards in their machines. I highly doubt they'll be used. Half a point impossible
They're not "phasing out" anything; at the time they introduced the latest powermacs, ATI simply had better cards available.
- 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
The current MDD powermacs already have USB 2.0. That the next models should also have it is not surprising in the least.
- 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
Because FW800 is not backwards compatible. The connector is physically different. They have to stick with 400 for now.
- Bluetooth & AirPort Extreme ready
Likely
- Optical and analog audio in and out
Bad grammar, but optical audio in a graphics machine? I'm sorry but this sounds like wishful thinking. One more point impossible.
This one does puzzle me slightly, but Apple don't consider their machines "graphics machines". Macs are all-purpose. It's no fault of Apple if they are pigeonholed by others as "only for graphics". Also, even if they were "graphics machines," video editing kind of requires sound...
In total, that's 4 and a half impossible features out of ten. If you're waiting on this machine, you'll be waiting a LONG time
I make that 0 impossible features, and one odd one. Come Monday, you will be feeling very silly.
Apple....CHEAPER? I really, really doubt it. Macophiles have always been willing to pay a premium for the "newest" thing from the Big A. I'd think you'd be lucky to get out of the door for less than $5000 for a fully-loaded G5. I think my old iMac's and newer Microtels will run this school just fine, thank you.
:)
After all the whining out there about wether this is a hoax, marketing hype or a simple mistake let's not forget that if this is true it truly is insanely great news.
Two 970's at 2 GHz with bus bandwith! Earlier (leaked) numbers of tests put the 970 at between 1.5 and 2.5 times as fast as a pentium 4. That makes these machines the equivalent of a 6-10 GHz machine. Now of course, we'll have to wait and see and two procs are not doubly as efficient as one but great news this would be nonetheless.
Oh yeah.
Some of your analysis is negated by looking at Apple's marjeting house style a bit more closely.
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
Apple uses words for numbers less then 10 all over the place. This is generally considered good style in old-fashioned publishing circles (that is, those who believe they exist to create something that people will read, rather than something that fills the space between the ads).
For example, from the first Apple page I bothered to examine (http://www.apple.com/powermac/specs.html)
"Four 3.5-inch hard drive expansion bays"
"Four DIMM slots"
"One AGP 4X slot with graphics card installed"
and so on.
Off the style subject, as Apple now ships USB 2.0-capable iPods, it's not hard to believe USB 2.0 PowerMacs.
optical audio in a graphics machine?
Macs are widely used in professional audio circles. Go hang out in any Mac IRC channel - wall-to-wall musos.
While I'd love to believe that Apple is soon coming out with 970 based machines, these two items in particular are the Joe Slashdot wet-dream wishlist items. Apple will go with the same drives you can get in an Xserve today, and I'd be pretty surprised if the jumped on board PCI-X. The fact is, someone not related to Apple just sat at their keyboard, and tried to make a spec which seemed believable yet got all the Joe Slashdot Apple fanboys hot-and-bothered.
Furthermore, as I'm sure has been mentioned before, this is absolutely not how Apple's marketing engine works. They keep the upcoming hardware stricktly under wraps to discourage the wait-until-the-next-machine-comes-out mentality. They are a profitable company, and they'd like to keep it that way. The way for them to do this is to entice you to buy a machine today.
Yes, I'm still a junky. Are you still a bitch?
That is true...all this talk of PowerMacs has my mind in the professional arena. The eMac and iBook just go to show that Apple is trying to lower costs to grab a larger share of the market. The majority of users use price as the single, most important factor in their purchasing decisions.
Could someone please explain why this could not have been the work of a hacker? I have heard the argument that Apple's website is "too complicated" and "too secure" but I haven't seen any details to back that up. My question may be a bit naive but how hard could it really be for someone to change a few lines of text?
Actually, it could work to their advantage, here is how!
They "leak" these specs out and it generates a huge buzz, especially when they send out cease and desists to the major rumors sites. I think Apple has actually learned how to use the rumor sites to help them generate buzz. They play these leak then cease and desist games knowing it will make people even more curious about what else was NOT leaked out, or will be more likely to watch the show just to see the new machines in action.
This will ensure a very large number of people watch their broadcast of the show. This means developers as well, ones who may not have watched this otherwise (i.e. PC software developers) but are now intrigued by this new machine buzz. It means they will see, along with the new machines being confirmed, Apple's demo of OS X 10.3, which is what Apple really wants them to see. After all, OS X is Apple's future as much as new hardware is and if they can get these guys to sit through a presentation on OS X and how easy it is to develop while watiting to see what new iron Apple has out, they might get the hint of "Wow, OS X is really cool! Along with this new hardware these guys will be going places! I think I'll get one of these and see how easy it will be to port my software over to this amazing platform".
It will also draw PC user eyeballs as well, and they will also see how cool OS X is compared to Windows. So in a way, this could well be a ploy to glue more eyeballs on the screen and fill people with marketing about OS X along with the new machines they are now so curious about.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
The PPC970 wit its Power4 core, clocked at 1.6GHz completely trashes a 3GHz P4.
I just realized that the new Power Macs would be the RS-6000 wannabe workstation for people who couldn't afford the real deal.
Both the Apple and IBM machines now have 64-bit Power 4-derived CPUs, gigabytes of RAM, decent graphics, etc. The IBM machine will certainly stand out as the workstation that overdosed on steroids, and the new Power Mac will be better suited to those who value moderation in all things.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
http://www.macfreak.org/cgi/forums/topic.cgi?forum =16&topic=2285
"The specs are fake. It's an employee from another company that Apple works with that uploaded the pic as a joke. He uploaded the pic trought the Akamai Network... Sources at cupertino confirmed this...
This is all translated from a dutch mac site I read often.. "
This was taken from Macnn
I just hope the Specs are real.