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!
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
But you can get it from here.
Also more on the story here.
My journal has hot
You need to get out more.
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.
The new desktops will indeed be branded 'G5'.
;)
Man, I couldn't be more shocked if the next version of Windows was called 2004 or 2005. What will they think of next?
The coolest voice ever.
The was from a graphic directly from store.apple.com on the PowerMac site; not from a little teen's weblog (heh)...the credibility is high, and all of the sites that had posted the information have since removed the graphic per request from apple. macrumors, macnn, appleinsider, mac minute, etc.
the posted specs went far beyond the expectations of...anyone.
* 1.6Ghz, 1.8Ghz, or dual 2Ghz PowerPC G5 Processors
* Up to 1 Ghz processor bus (!!)
* Up to 8 GB of DDR SDRAM
* Fast Serial ATA hard drives
* AGP 8X Pro graphics options from NVIDIA or ATI
* Three PCI or PCI-X expansion slots
* Three USB 2.0 ports
* One FireWire 800, two FireWire 400 ports
* Bluetooth & Airport Extreme ready
* Optical and analog audio in and out
Quite a leap from the current dual 1.42Ghz G4 boxes, with a 166Mhz bus...
four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
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.
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
Remember the iMac flat panel introduction? Time Canada posted the news story to their website early monday morning, according to their normal news cycle...containing the story of the iMac FP with lots of fun pictures.
I can see it now in the keynote: "As some of you MAY have already heard (insert laughter) we have....(insert product announcements)"
whooo.
adam
Expansion will be provided by three "PCI or PCI-X" slots, and - for the first time on a Mac - USB 2.0 ports, of which there are three.
To avoid any consumer confusion, Apple also stated that the USB 2.0 ports, previously called USB 1.1, were not "high speed" USB 2.0, but rather "ordinary" USB 2.0 (USB 1.1). The PCI slot will also be rebranded to PCI-X due to high customer demand for PCI-X slots. To make this clear, they also announced plans to rebrand the PCI-X slot as "PCI-X ultra high speed" and the PCI slot to "PCI high-speed". USB 2.0 ultra-mega-super-high speed expansion ports (previously called USB 2.0 high-speed) were also rumored.
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
Going back through my memory, I can think of a couple other very important leaks:
* ATI leaks news of updated PowerMac G4s (and summarily gets poor product placement in them afterwards, with Apple favoring Nvidia for years to come)
* Time Canada posts story of new flat-panel iMac before paper issue even hits the streets.
I'm sure there have been more, but those seem to be the most important.
This one will go down as probably the most significant leak in quite a while.
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.
- 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
Jobs:
You.. You are FIRED...
and YOU! You are SOOO FIRED!
and you... you too are very VERY FIRED!
Guy:
But.. I wasn't even HERE yesterday!
Jobs:
I don't care! You are FIRED!
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
check out these pictures
;)
and download some music or something while you are there!
earth2willi.com
:)
a lot of G4's shipped with just. plain. awful sound cards. this is welcome news.
It's not a G5, it's a PPC970, completely different beasts.
Newsflash, kiddo: neither Motorola nor IBM sell a CPU called the "G4". "G4" was a "marchitechture" term coined by Apple in the spirit of Motorola's internal "G3" codename for the PPC750. The chip inside any "PowerMac G4" is some flavor of a Motorola PowerPC 7400, no matter what Apple calls it.
You can pretty much bet the farm that Apple will call every varient of the PPC970 they ship a "PowerPC G5".
1GHz bus? gimme a break. Intel hasn't yet reached this. Two points impossible.
Ahem. ("1ghz" is probably apple marketing-speak, but it's always been known that the PPC970 will have a stupidly fast FSB -- Intel isn't the only company that can innovate in this field, eh?)
Almost believable, but for the moment Apple are phasing out the use of NVIDIA cards in their machines.
Simply and 100% wrong. Apple has been doing pretty much exactly the same thing for the last three years on this front: providing whichever of the two offered them the best OEM pricing as the default configuration, and offering the other as a build-to-order option. They will continue to do this.
Also, Apple have a long standing habit of using Firewire instead of USB 2.0
Here, you may be correct, but there are two issues that may force them to start shipping "USB 2.0" connectors: first, the USB consortium has recently declared that all USB ports are "USB 2.0" (yes, this is weird and stupid), and secondly it's actually getting a bit difficult to source USB controllers that only support the 1.0/1.1 specs.
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
FW400 and FW800 use different connectors, and there are not yet many FW800 products on the market. This is called "covering your bets" and "not pissing off your customers". BTW, 1x FW800 and 2x FW400 is also the configuration on the 17" AlBook, so they've already shipped one machine in exactly this "impossible" configuration.
optical audio in a graphics machine? I'm sorry but this sounds like wishful thinking.
No, it sounds like you have no idea what you're talking about. Do you have any idea how many macs are used in audio production? Are you aware that Apple sells their own high-end audio composition program? The only surprise about a PowerMac with optical TOSlink is that they didn't do it years ago.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
A relevant picture can still be found on an Akamai Mirror (taken from an write-up 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
Er, I've heard some dumb excuses from MIS managers for not allowing Macs on the corporate LAN before, but...viruses? VIRUSES?
I can only imagine what they meant was "That machine doesn't have enough viruses on it."
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
I bet Jobs shit his pants.
Kevin Fox
Apple are using the new kit internally, in the web site department. And it's just too damn fast!
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
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
Bzzt. Wrong.
G3 and G4 are both Apple marketing terms, not CPU specifications from IBM or Moto.
IBM was expecting low yields of the 2ghz chip but it was always on the roadmap for this year... or have you not been paying attention?
I'm writing this on a Powerbook G4, not a Powerbook 7450 (PPC 7450 is Motos term for the cpu running this beastie).
1GHz bus? gimme a break. Intel hasn't yet reached this. Two points impossible
Bzzt. Wrong. One word for you:
Hypertransport.org
The FSB runs at half the clockspeed of the CPU. A dual 2ghz 970 would have FSB of 1ghz.
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 G4s ship with USB 2.0 chipsets. Firewire and USB2 are NOT in competition. THey have different applications. If you don't belive me, then I ask you to point to a USB2 uncompressed SDI interface? Oh. YOu can't? Shit.
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
My dual 1.4ghz G4 has a FW800 port and two FW400s. FW800 is a different physical interface than FW400. I'm sure the chipset is also slightlly more expensive.
Bad grammar, but optical audio in a graphics machine? I'm sorry but this sounds like wishful thinking. One more point impossible.
Marketing has always made a habit of playing with grammar.
Macs are not just graphics machine. In fact, the dual 1.4ghz mentioned above is primarily an audio workstation. It has digital audio out already on board.
Optical in/out is a surprise, but not unlikely - it has its advantages.
This is accurate. Like it or not. Apple is back in town where it belongs - on the top.
Be the guy in the audience to get a camera trown at you by wearing the G5-specs T-shirts !
"I tend to think of OS X as Linux with QA and Taste", James Gosling, creator of Java
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).
Well, ok, maybe in the bigger consumer arean but I've done some pro studio audio and up until the past few years, if you wanted high end quality audio, you did it on a Mac. ProTools et.al, all debuted on the Mac. In fact, my friends studio - of which over the years we tried converting to Windoze multitrack - went back to a Mac and churned out better sounding projects.
There are many uses in non-consumer audio for optical i/o. I mean, shit, my cheap little Shuttle Spacewalker has a coinnector card for optical audio. For them to include it now is obviously smart since we know they're also targeting more musicians (specifically dj's) now as well as graphics people.
Frankly, this guys 'impossible' post is a lot of bullshit for many reasons listed above and throughout.
I now must find a way to ditch my PB G4 1ghz. G5, here I come! *drools*
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?
The G5 name has been taken by Canon's sweet new 5 megapixel camera. They had the G1, G2, G3 and now the G5.
Oh, come on. This is like a fanboy writing in to tell a science fiction author that another book had a character named Abraxas.
Apple machines have held a performance lead over MS PCs at various times in the past. The new dual 2Ghz machine seems to have a reasonable chance of being one of the fastest desktop machines available - although Apple probably won't be able to hold that lead when the Athlon 64 vs Intel battle hots up again.
I can't wait to grab one of these new Apples - good work Apple & IBM, I say!
That was classic intercourse!
At least - not yet. I just don't have a reason too.
Specs look great. The only thing that might change my mind is a port of these 4 very, very important productivity applications:
Half-Life 2 - used to train new employees in how to survive a natural accident.
Doom III - used to train marines how to survive an unnatural accident.
Deus Ex II - used to inform people on the use of nanotechnology.
Thief III - a history lesson on how Victorian England might have evolved if magic was real and steam-driven robots worked.
Obviously, these very important production apps would require the power that the P970 can bring. (Oh, I'm sure they'd run on my current G4 867/Geforce 4 MX, but who wants to take a chance?)
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
My speculation: The 'optical audio' that this ad touts is an implementation of Yamaha's mLAN, a joint project between Apple and Yamaha begun in 1999.
mLAN essentially allows the transfer of all audio-related signals - be they MIDI, audio, whatever - over 1 firewire cable.
yamaha press release, mlan, 2000 [opens in new window]
Now, why would Apple release a G5-based PPC with a dedicated mLAN port? I think Apple's hiring of Doug Wyatt - the guy who invented MIDI Timecode at Opcode - as well as Apple's aquisition of eMagic - in addition to their collaboration with Yamaha on the mLAN spec - would give Apple every incentive to put an 'mLAN' port on the back of their computer, even if it is only another firewire port.
Keep in mind that OSX has MIDI capability built-in - unlike any other OS. ALso, with the addition of a simple mLAN port, Apple can now state that their PPC is music-production ready right out of the box.
Doug Wyatt hired by apple
eMagic Corporate info
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
One more example of how real life follows early 80s Satuday morning Sid and Marty Kroft shows.
None to be found anywhere.
Certainly no links to be found about Mac CAD.
What a shame.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
The show will be broadcasted at:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc03/
>> Had I been going to bed earlier every night? Have I been sleeping later? Has Tyler been in charge longer and l
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.
Umm, have you seen the specs on a PPC970 kiddo?
The PPC970 wit its Power4 core, clocked at 1.6GHz completely trashes a 3GHz P4. Faster bus, faster integer, and completely outclasses the P4 for FPU and SIMD.
And it looks like Apple's going to ship a dual 2.0 GHz. This ain't your grandma's G4 (In fact, at the same clock, it looks like the PPC970 has a 1.5x or more advantage for integer and 2-2.5x advantage for FPU/SIMD over the G4, and the G4 is, clock-for-clock, the fastest CPU currently in the desktop and laptop market, it's only real disadvantages are low clock speed and the slow system bus, both of which are problems the PPC970 doesn't have).
Remember that Athlon is only clocked a couple of hundred MHz faster than the 970, and isn't nearly as fast, clock-for-clock.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
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."
Just to get the jump on the Mac-bashers, here's the new list of allowed Mac complaints:
1. Stupid slow screens are a bottleneck. They don't refresh fast enough to keep up with the system. What were those morons at Apple thinking?
2. STILL no liquid helium cooling system?? Come on Apple, this isn't 1997!
3. Big deal. By 2008 you'll be able to get a comparable Dell box for half the price.
4. No floppy, no sale.
5. Still doesn't support my Chinese Xiondiangdong BKPDX-145 scanner.
6. Apple is dying.
7. I actually liked the Spinning Beach Ball of Death. I miss it.
8. It's so fast that I now have time to do other things. Then I discovered I don't have anything else to do.
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
>6. Apple is dying
That should be:
6. Beleaguered Apple is Dying.
No Apple Criticism is complete without it!
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Um, Itanium systems have a maximum clock rate that's slower than what this 'leak' puts as the PPC speed. Itanium systems are quite a bit more expensive than the PPC 970 systems likely to come out of Apple.
Oh, you want to compare 32bit P4s to 64bit 970s? Why, because you're really in the market for a 32 bit processor and need to distort everything into a P4=center of the universe worldview. Grow up. Something new is coming. It will likely run rings around Itanium. It *may* run rings around the P4s for stock 32bit applications and will very likely beat it when comparing code that's similarly optimized for the two chips.
Let's see it unveiled and let's see the benchmarks then let the chip wars begin again!
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
You think they're passionate now?
Pfft. Kids today. Why when I was young, the Amiganauts would strap explosives to their bodies and blow themselves up in front of Bill Gates! Now *that* was a flame war!
Clear, Dark Skies