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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
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 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
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"
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.
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.
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.
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
Umm, the eMac is $799 and the iBook is $999. Both qualify as a sub-$1000 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...
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?
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
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
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