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New G5 Power Macs "Fastest Desktop In The World"
Beyond the many numbers, the bottom line is that the new machines have a new architecture, and that the memory speed is now the bottleneck, not the processor or bandwidth speeds. So they can have up to 8GB of 128-bit DDR RAM, as it is efficient to keep data in memory. The memory bandwidth is one of the most talked-about features of the new architecture.
USB 2.0 is now included, as are FireWire 400 and 800, Bluetooth, AirPort Extreme, and digital audio in and out. The 4x SuperDrive is now standard, and it can house up to 500GB of internal storage.
For video, the GeForce FX5200 is standard on low-end models, Radeon 9600 Pro on high-end models.
The case of the new machines is redesigned too, from the ground up, focusing on decreasing noise and heat. It is an aluminum enclosure, with ports for FireWire and USB on the front, and a door on the side to get into the box. It has four distinct "thermal zones" with computer-controlled cooling with its nine (yes, nine) independent fans. And it is much quieter than its predecessor.
The G5 is 10 percent slower than the P4 and Xeon in SPEC int scores in single-proc units, but 20 percent faster in FPU scores, and the dual-proc G5 beats the dual-proc Xeon in all SPEC scores.
The models are a single 1.6 GHz ($1999), single 1.8GHz ($2399), and dual 2GHz ($2999). They will ship in August. A 3GHz processor will be available from IBM in 12 months.
Apple notes that recompiling apps for the 64-bit architecture is easy, and in some cases can be done in minutes.
There was no word about the heavily anticipated redesign of the 15" PowerBooks.
Thanks to iPalindrome on irc.arstechnica.com for his running transcript of the keynote address.
Power Mac page
Apple store
Is this the *fast* USB 2.0 or the USB 2.0 that used to be USB 1.1 but got renamed USB 2.0 so as to not confuse consumers?
Interesting tidbit there. Doesn't that make some people want to wait for the extra year? I thought hinting at anything to come in the future was very much against Apple policy.
Random is the New Order.
-T
Sun should be very scared. Their Dual 1.2GHz 64bit offering is $14,995. Ouch!
Too bad I have to wait until August to pick one up. Oh well I guess that gives me time to think up a good excuse for why I need one and my wife should be okay with it.
For video, the GeForce FX5200 is standard on low-end models, Radeon 9600 Pro on high-end models. Canadian bias!
http://www.beosjournal.org/wwdc/
for some pictures of the new case.
user@host$ diff
â Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
â 8GB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 8x1GB
â 2x250GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
â ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
â Apple Cinema HD Display (23" flat panel)
â Apple Cinema HD Display (23" flat panel) + Apple DVI to ADC Adapter
â AirPort Extreme Card
â Bluetooth Module
â SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
â Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English
â Mac OS X - U.S. English
â Logitech Z-680 THX 5.1 Speakers & Monster 2-meter Cable
â AirPort Extreme Base Station (with modem and antenna port)
â APP for Power Mac (w/ or w/o display) - Enrollment Kit
Subtotal $12,632.95
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So this is just my imagination ?
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/
"world's first 64-bit desktop processor"
I am quite sure there are some people out there who used Alpha-based workstations back when Digital made them.
Of course, issue is still price. $3000 at the top line is about 30% rich in my opinion, but Apple likes its margins fat, what can you say.
Apparently, the G5's aren't entirely house-broken, yet.
G5-based computers previously leaked on the Apple store
As a PC user, I was used to buying a machine and having a processor with double the clockspeed a year down the line... And now Apple has pulled the same trick :(
Oh well. I'm not going to complain... The specs on those machines were unbelievable - I'm just glad Apple is no longer lagging behind in the specs anymore, and the prices on those machines are reasonable to boot.
Gimmie.
-agent oranje.
All that technical jargon...they didn't even tell us what colors they come in!
RDRAM last time I checked had higher total bandwidth than DDR, but fails to be faster where it counts - latency. Latency on non-sequential read/write is where the memory bottle neck is.
Why?
For those of you who were trying to get regularly updated info on the release of the G5, you may have noticed that most of the Mac sites are specifically requesting their users do not refresh the page continually. Likewise, most sites have taken their forums offline (even Ars Technica, who is not a "Mac-only" site).
Is this the new Slashdot effect? Mac users going ballistic over Apple's latest release and posting and reloading their favorite sites continually?
On a side note, is it just me, or is the new design very "bland," even "unoriginal."
As amazed as I would like to be by these claims I can't help but be a little aprehensive. Could Apple really have closed the over one year gap Intel has (or had) in technology? Going from Pentium 3 speeds to speeds surpassing the latest from Intel & AMD? I'm not going to swallow that claim until I see some independent benchmarks.
So, Steve, I'm going to be saving my money again to get one of your products. The last one, a 9500 bought in 1996 has lasted very well. I wish I could say the same for the Pentium PC I bought in 1997.
I look forward to making tons of recordings and music with this new rig!
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
1994: Your peecees suck so bad because they're soooo slow. Our CPU benchmarks kick your butts. We are the speed kings!
1999: So what if your peecee CPUs are faster than ours. It's not about speed, it's about quality. Speed is totally irrelevant. You're all just speed whores.
2004: Your peecees suck so bad because they're soooo slow. Our CPU benchmarks kick your butts. We are the speed kings!
The SPEC results are really interesting. Single-processor integer performance (which matters most at least for me, although CPU performance is hardly interesting for me these times) is slightly worse than Intel's flagships, but the clock rate is also significantly lower.
However, the most interesting part is that they used GCC to compile the SPEC suite, and not some special compiler to make hardware look good in benchmarks (in contrast to some vendor compilers). Given that all the software I run has been compiled by GCC (with the exception of a few Lisp programs), the numbers are a bit more relevant than the usual SPEC results for me.
On the other hand, you could claim that Apple chose GCC on the Intel platforms to make them look bad in this comparison...
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these new systems will be seeing how AltiVec performs now that the processor has a bus with sufficient bandwidth to keep the AltiVec unit supplied with instructions and data. On the older G4s the AltiVec unit could execute instructions faster than the bus could supply it with instructions and data to process.
Apparently someone got sacked over last week's "leak".
Looking for a new job as a Web Publishing Manager? Apply at Apple Today!
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
*ahem*
This geek has been waiting 'til he can buy a apple or apple clone motherboard down at the local computer shop, plus CPU. 'til then, there's very little chance I'll try out the mac platform.
My wife says her Powerbook G3 w/1GB RAM is fast enough, but the PC side of the house says faster is better. I bet I could lose in solitaire a lot faster w/a dual G5!
"It's a dog eat dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear."- Norm (from Cheers)
Aluminum cases? Yeah BABY -- no more cheesy plastic! For years now I've been impressed by Apple's being the only computer shop doing anything whatsoever with industrial design. Ever since I saw the original Mac in the mid-80s I've been impressed by the 'fit and finish', for want of a better term, of Macintoshes versus the basic generic shitbox clone PCs. However, ever since the iMac New Way I've been really, really disappointed by the cheapness of the desktop cases, especially of the high-end towers. If you want me to pay extra, give me something that looks worth the price.
From what I can tell of the WWDC pictures, things have finally changed. These things look sweet, even if they do look just like the last 5 years worth of towers. Plus it sounds like they kick ass performance-wise. All I have to do now is convince myself why I should go and drop 3 grand I can't afford for no other reason than to connect with the iPod I don't have.
What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?
The new G5 machines, with the IBM 970 processor, use the "world's first 64-bit desktop processor" (and the "fastest 64-bit processor ever")
Wow, I'm sure people who had Alpha workstations back in the day will be surprised. Even the n64 had a 64 bit processor, the MIPS r4300. The chip was $35 dollars in bulk in 1996. Iâ(TM)m pretty sure this chip has been used in PDAs in the past few years.
The only reason that they havenâ(TM)t been used in desktops so far is that A) There is a huge legacy base to support and B) The speed increase isn't even that great. I mean, you don't need more then 32 bit ints for the vast majority of the calculations you need to do on a PC (whereas on a 16 bit computer, you need to use several instructions to calculate 'both halves' of the number anytime you needed to do math with numbers larger then 64k.). And anyway, all of the major CPUs available today have instructions that deal with huge amounts of data for floating point and SIMD multimedia stuff.
I'm suppressed apple isn't claming that their machines do 'twice as much work' because they have twice as many bits. This subversion of technical facts for marketing purposes is something apple is constantly guilty of, and it's really annoying. Because you know you're going to have some idiot mac zealot come back at you with something like "yeah, well this is the first 64-bit desktop EVAR" Just like how they claimed the g4 was the first "Desktop supercomputer" or something like that, because it met some obsolete government export restrictions, the same restrictions that the playstation two had surpassed months before.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I'd like to see some independently-verified benchmarks before I believe that it's the "Fastest desktop in the world". I seriously doubt ol' bullshitter Stevo would tell the full truth.
Well, the problem is... Steve is telling the truth.
Go to www.spec.org and look at the SpecINT and SpecFP ratings for the Power4 (single core benchmark).
Okay, the PPC970 is based on this core and yes, at 1,6 Ghz it runs around an 3 Ghz P4.
Okay, now take a look at the SpecINT and SpecFP ratings for the alpha 21264 and 21364.
Those processors are a real match for the P4.
With a 1.5 times slower clock they are as fast as most 1.5 higher clocked P4's.
The thing is, that intel doesn't have a decent 64 bits processor.
Their itanium II is a joke with a performance which is equal to most 64 bits processors 2 or 3 years ago.
Contrary to intel ibm knows how to build fast 64 bits processors without all the tradeoff's intel had to make with the P4.
Second, if you look at the price of the PPC970 and compare it with the P4 you will see that the P4 is almost 2 times as expensive as the PPC970.
Let's face it, at the moment there is no 64 bits or 32 bits processor available which is faster than the PPC970 (i mean for desktop systems).
It will take intel at least more than a year to get the itanium near the PPC970 2 Ghz..
But then they are no match to the PPC970 3 Ghz. which will be available then.
just thought i'd point out that Apple is claiming fastest SPEC benchmarks.
normally they just brag about photoshop. but this time they're actually breaking out SPEC.
Dual 2.0 GHZ G5 is supposedly 3% faster in interger and 42% faster in FPU than a dual 3 Ghz Xeon. might be worth the premium that Apple charges.
though come to think of it, $3000 is pretty sweet. i can't imagine where you'd find a dual Xeon for $3000.
I doubt it can beat this one in the quarter mile.
For several years, Apple has lagged in the megahertz race. Motorola's G4 processors have only slowly improved in performance, while Intel and Advanced Micro Devices crank out ever-faster chips at a much swifter clip. Megahertz isn't everything when it comes to performance, but increasing the clock speed generally does boost chip and computer performance.
Yeah the writer eventually says megahertz isn't everything, but fails to grasp that megahertz isn't anything. The only scale that matters is how much work the system can do. Megahertz doesn't even have to enter into the discussion.
Btw, for the record, I'm a PC owner/user who probably won't switch, but still thinks these new Macs, along with the AMD Opteron chips, are the best news to come along in a good long while for all of us!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I hate to bust your bubble, but there is no such thing as SMP P4. Intel designed the P4 to be only single processor. Xeon is for SMP applications.
Also, with SMP you can't just double the speed of one chip to come up with a benchmark. You double it, and take 10-15% off the top. You see, there is overhead in SMP because the two processors need to communicate to make sure they are on the same page, so to speak.
- FinalCut Pro
- Logic Platinum
- Shake
When you're throwing around cinematic quality film clips, the more power the better.Is it just me, or does the new G5 look like a massive cheese grater from the front?
Unfortunately, it looks like they've abandoned the easy-access pull-down door that let you add ram and add-on cards with ease. Oh well, at least its *supposed* to be quieter...
According to Apple's website, they're specing against a dual 3.06Ghz Xeon.
See for yourself.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
They benchmarked against the 3 Ghz Xeon, not the 2 Ghz, which you'd know if you paid attention before posting.
Compare Apple's numbers against the official SPEC results from other companies.
Sun Ultrasparc I - 64 bit.
Introduced: 1995
Aquired, used, for a few hundred bucks and running on my desktop: 1998
On the corridors towards the Mac, droves march on while signs along the walls say: Could the last one out please turn off that BSOD?
Am I the only one who thought, immediately after hearing about the high quality firewire based iSight (not to mention that new video codec), that there ought to be able to connect that sucker to your iPod to record on the road? So your webcam can double as a REAL cam?
Of course it would be much easier if you could display color video on your iPod... and generate it on the fly...
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Apple lists some rather low scores for the intel xeon on their website as compared to the scores listed on www.spec.org (889 vs. 1164 in base-integer, 693 vs. 1213 in base-fp). The fine print on apple's web page says that the scores were generated with gcc on both platforms. Give me a break. Intel should be penalized because they have better compilers?
Also, the opteron, using intel's compiler, manages to beat the 970 in int and fp.
Fastest desktop processor? No.
The same fools who need more than 640K of memory.
Was that Steve Would address the attendees like a mad Principal addressing a class called in for detention:
Steve: "We WERE going to sell 10.3 for $129, but since one of you had to go and ruin it for the rest of you, it'll be $200."
Attendees: Awwww!
One guy punches another guy in the arm in the back row.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Power Mac G5 Dual 2GHz
Bluetooth Module
250GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
512MB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 2x256
Apples ram prices are just silly i will pick up 4gb elsewhere
Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Accessory kit
AirPort Extreme Card
Fibre Channel PCI Card
Mac OS X - U.S. English
Logitech Z-680 THX 5.1 Speakers & Monster 2-meter Cable
AirPort Extreme Base Station (with modem and antenna port)
iSight
total $5,273.79
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
Either I'm surfing /. at too high of a threshold, or the anti-Apple trolls seem to have run away in fear today... :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
but strangely only to a SINGLE-CPU P4 machine?
Gee why could that be?
BECAUSE you can't have anything BUT a single P4 machine. There are no dual P4's - the chip just doesn't support multiprocessing.
8 slots times 1 gig sticks. certainly it can address more than that, there's just no way to add it physically.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Summary: It not only beats up the P4 and Xeon, it takes their lunch money as well.
It did even better at DNA matching: "Testing BLAST with common searches using a word size of more than 11, the Power Mac G5 far outperformed the Pentium 4-based system and the dual Xeon-based system, and nearly five times faster at the long word length of 40."
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
1998 called. I think it wants its joke back.
Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
Sun Blade 2000
The Single 900MHz is 7,595
The Single 1.2GHz is 9,995
The DUAL 1.2GHZ is 13,995 (whoops off by 7.5%)
What about Dual 2.0GHz don't you understand? They may not have been in the same market before now. However, that will soon change (there is your clue). As far as the 106 CPU Version Cluster the XServes the same way Sun does it. I said Sun should be scared. They no longer have a lock on the 64bit market.
I guess things never change in your world. Look out someone may be moving your cheese.
A REAL Mac user refers to them as "flavors". :p
door comes right off quicktime VR here
Well, maybe the full 4294967296 GB of RAM didn't fit in the case.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
To be fari, he did add in a digital sound system and a second 23 inch apple monitor.
Mod point free since 2001
As others have pointed out, but nobody seems to get;
Sun's primary market isn't 1, 2, or even necessarily 4 processor markets. Their big market is in the E10000, Sun Fire 12000, and Sun Fire 15000 machines--the smallest of which is limited to a maximum of 52 processors. While their midrange pushes up to 12 processors, and even their entry level servers can push as many as 8 processors. Not only that, but Sun machines are known for scaling incredibly well. Quite simply, Apple does not compete in these markets, IBM does, and for this level of scaling, IBM's Power4 is the high end.
If anything, Apple's highest end box is in a similar position as Sun's highest end workstations--supporting role for massive servers acting as computational farms (render and HPC--IBM's target) and high capacity transaction processing (Sun's target). Yes you can use smaller machines for some of these tasks, but when you NEED that capacity, Apple simply does not exist in that market.
To address your comparison with the Blade 2000 workstations--what if I happen to need a 3DLabs Wildcat or Oxygen graphics board for my CAD box? Can Apple support that?
Yes, one day desktop machines will catch up, but today isn't that day yet.
So, when's lunch?
They are ? Are you sure?
Why do you suppose Apple has been pitching to the home and graphics communities for so long ? It's because neither cares for Wintel and both can tolerate less-than-spectacular performance to varying degrees. Apple has lacked the resources to attack the enterprise market, and their hardware didn't measure up to the engineering/scientific market sufficiently to compete effectively with Wintel. Neither is the case now.
While I'm not going to jump the gun and suggest that this is It, I do believe we're seeing the first hint of a long-overdue revitalization of the Macintosh product line. If IBM is indeed able to go to 3GHz in 12 months and Apple can produce compelling hardware with the PPC970 and its descendants (both of which seem reasonable at the moment), we might be looking at the beginning of a trend towards the enterprise market.
As for CATIA and Pro/E, if the customers demand it, Dassault and Parametric Technologies will eventually get on board. Both have their primary foundation in Unix hardware and neither will have a difficult time making an X-windows port. Ask Mathworks, Inc. Why do you suppose Apple put out X11? To appeal to Linux geeks?(yes, but only in part)
Sun should indeed be worried about now, especially considering that there's no reason on earth for Apple to neglect its server and laptop lines with this new chip. Add in the overwhelming presence of Microsoft-based server products and you have a hard time seeing where Sun fits in the long term.
Heck, I put down the PC laptop from 1998 to write my thesis on a Powerbook 540c from 1994.
That's the painful part about Macs. They keep putting out these machines with a high drool factor that you just have to buy, but the old one is still more than adequate. What to do, what to do. . . .
Gee, why could that be?
Perhaps because there is no such thing as a Dual-CPU Pentium 4. Just a hunch.
Double those bottom numbers from the P4 and it handily beats the Dual-G5...
And multiply the numbers from a TRS-80 Model 4 by 10,000 or so and it absolutely wipes the floor with the Dual G5. Your point being?
They may not have been in the same market before now.
They are in totally different markets!
SUN is in the "We sell really expensive hardware with pain in the ass UNIX software to anyone buying." market.
Apple is in the "We sell hardware for anyone up to any reasonable size, and it comes with friendly UNIX software. Some of it is a little expensive, but it all kicks ass." market.
A couple things:
Yours only has 1 flat panel instead of two-- add another $2205. Also, you'll be unable to hook both DVI monitors up via the Radeon 9800-- you'll need to get a slower PCI video card to hook the other up.
Yours doesn't have a 3 year support contract, does it?
Also, the Apple you could get much more cheaply if you were to use third party RAM. Vendor RAM is always expensive.
Finally, as to "2 much faster machines"-- the dual 2GHz PPC G5 is 41% faster in SPECfp_rate_base2000 than a dual 3.06GHz Xeon, which IMO is the most important SPEC benchmark. It's faster in all the others, too, except single processor integer performance.
Let me think-- I could pay $12k and get two of the nicest LCD panels available and the fastest dual processor workstation available in the world made by a vendor with great fabrication quality and customer support. Or I could spend $9k to get two good (but not as nice as the Apple) LCD panels and machines that are only 71% of the speed from a no-name vendor. I think I'd pick Apple.
Actually IBM is selling them for alot cheaper then Motorolla was selling their overpriced G4's. I personally believe they overcharged Apple because they had a monopoly on the CPU's for so long.
:-(
Anyway lets wait and see. I assume with integrated bluetooth and pci-x bus it isn't going to be cheap. But a 3.2 ghz pIV are not cheap either.
The cpu itself is what $500 ?? If you can afford Maya or your a professional artist or engineer then you could probably afford this. I wish I could
My guess is the 1.6 ghz versions will be affordable like the $1599 867 mhz ones today.
I read online about a guy who tried to build a top pIV with bluetooth, dvd, firewire, gig ethernet, etc, and it become more expensive then the equilivant mac.
I kind of agree with you on desktops but I am hoping for the best.
Laptops its a different matter. Powerpc processors use something like %20 of power then a pentiumIII-M. I hope to go to a university in 2004 while I am in community college now. Anway if my university has wireless acess my choice of a laptob is a no brainer. Apple laptops last for years and do not brake down as much as pc ones. Especially IBM's or Dell's.
http://saveie6.com/
Show us a dual-processor Opteron/Itanium system from a major computer manufacturer and we'll be happy to benchmark them for you...
You mean like HP or Dell? Yeah, I can see why it would be hard to find those, eh?
What's your damage, Heather?
That's what Sun used to think about Intel. I'm not saying that Apple is going after Sun's market right now, but Sun's smug attitude hasn't hindered Intel's quest to bury them in the server market.
If you're on top of the market and you assume that nobody has plans to unseat you, sooner or later you'll get a rude wake up call to reality.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Safari 1.0 is now available through Apple's software update.
The new version seems noticibly faster and has no bug button, but there is still a "Report Bugs To Apple" option under the Safari menu.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
If you don't care about your time or the quality of the software you use, you should stick with windows.
It's as easy as that.
First off, your English unfortunately is working against your making a point. I think you meant to say that Macs cost 30% more than PCs, which is simply ignorant to state. Second, you are dead wrong on price/performace. I work in a lab doing bioinformatic analysis of the bovine genome. The OLD G4 Xserves gets twice the performance per dollar as any linux-based workstations, built in-house or otherwise. In many ways they are faster to use for our jobs than shared-memory supercomputers to which we have access. Third, I also compose music, do some game development (including some 3D graphics work), and have done so on Macs and PCs. Even on an older Mac, I am far more productive, but back to the point: Configure a somewhat equivalent Dell and compare the price to a G5. Not only is the price competitive, the performance is superior with the Mac. Your attempted point on bang-for-buck is outright false. In any case, no one has suggested you buy a Mac in the first place, so why are you so defensive?
congratulations! you've just discovered one of the reasons why tabs suck arse!
That was classic intercourse!
Because the Mac is cheaper... go to dell.com and configure a dual Xeon 3.06 with a DVD burner and the same vidcard/RAM...
Guess what, the Mac is over 1k cheaper! That's why... better performance, and a cheaper price...
_CMK
Bad spellers of the world untie!
Um, 8GB of RAM?
PCI-X expansion?
Quiet?
I mean, name a PC where you can get more quiet for less money?
Or more PCI-X for less money?
Or more RAM expansion for less money?
Are those not all 'bang for the buck' metrics?
Or do you only count watts of heat generated as 'bang'?
You can re-arrange your original question this way:
Is the 30% price difference worth the lack of RAM capacity, PCI-X, extra noise, extra heat, dual 900MHz FSB, Firewire 800, BlueTooth, etc. You talk about value; value is not *only* raw HP, or you'd be buying and driving big rig trucks (500HP engines), and if you only valued HP/$, you'd be driving some really *ugly* and low *quality* cars.
Try it, all the really high HP/$ cars cheap, low quality vehicles. Producers know that if you add quality, people will buy more. It's nearly the definition of quality, in a way.
GPL Deconstructed
You cannot just take an enterprise machine and replace it with a desktop, because eventually the desktop will fail, usually unexpectedly and usually at the worst possible time.
Desktop PC's are meant to go on DESKTOPS, where if they fail, the most you've lost is a few man-hours of work. Enterprise machines go in server rooms where if they fail you might have just lost a few million in sales, and pissed off your customer base.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
I'm kinda surprised you didn't mention how much cheaper PC's are, and how OS X is based on BSD, which is dying. Other reasons to own a mac, which I never really see refuted by the PC crowd, is the Total Cost of Ownership, longevity and the cheaper support costs. As I see it, you get what you pay for, and if I could get osX running on an off the shelf PC, then I would. As it is, mac os(es) are the best for me. So I need to buy the hardware to run it. It also helps that it looks good and performs well.
I want a reliable system, which more complexity always works against.
You're apparantly not familiar with the concept of "redundancy."
Of course, I'd be concerned about the replacement plan for these fans. When the warrant goes up in X years, how much will it be to replace a suddenly dead fan?
Happy the Apple people are fairly cutting edge. Nice to see ATI and nVidia options.
Why only 8-gig of RAM? 64-bit CPUs supports terabytes. I guess it's not a server, but 8 gig isn't that much any more.
Some comparisons with the Opteron (or, to be more fair, Athalon64) would be nice. Of course, since you can (or will be able to) select from a slew of motherboards, it will be tough to get a decent comparison.
One other thought just struck me (I can feel a bruise developing) - Apple never releases their stuff to independant hardware vendors. Never seen an Apple product (other than an iPod) reviewed at Anandtech, Toms Hardware, TechExtreme, Ars Technica, etc. Would be interesting to hear what a site like that had to say.
Steve Jobs also noted in his speech that the new G5 outperforms a comparable Xeon system on the all imporant "Duke Nukem Forever" time demo. Attaining the impressive score of 233fps compared to just 147fps on the Intel system. As verified by the idependent test lab Pixar Studios.
However SCO has sued to challenge these results.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
steve jobs' keynote address is now available as a quicktime stream here: http://stream.apple.akadns.net/
The ATI 9800 Pro is a $300 add-on option.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Power users are supposed to use an xserve. Consumers are supposed to use an external firewire drive. That is all.
The SPEC benchmark programs that Apple ran were all compiled by GCC 3.3 -- the benchmarks on the SPEC website are different because they use different compilers. Chill out. :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
You know, I think that's one of the most ignorant comments I've heard on Slashdot-- and that's saying something!
I certainly don't consider myself braindead and I love using my Mac. I think the user interface of OS X is leaps and bounds beyond that of Windows or any of the latest Linux desktops.
I also know of plenty of very intelligent people who use Macs simply because they are easier to use and it allows them to focus on the task at hand. Not everyone takes the slop they're fed and feels that it's "good enough" (which is basically what you are saying). Some of us actually don't mind paying a little bit extra-- if even there is any extra to be paid. $3,000 for a dual 2GHz 64-bit machine is pretty damn low IMHO.
Of course, my guess is your needs are different than mine. My needs dictate that I have a fast and easy to use UNIX system. The cheapest computer meeting those needs is a PowerMac.
Perhaps instead you are interested in playing the latest whiz-bang gaming title-- in that case you want a Pee Cee.
Well, Photoshop, for one thing...yes, Macs are still used for graphics, dontchaknow.
Try editing CMYK graphics at 600 or 1200 dpi for high-end print work sometime. With layers. And masks (which are essentially added layers). Running filters. The whole she-bang.
Such a file can easily get into hundreds of megabytes in size, and Photoshop generally needs 2x to 3x as much RAM as the actual file size to efficiently work; even then it starts to bog down at those file sizes.
My dual G4/450 with 1.5 GB RAM and Radeon 9000 already gags on that enough so that it's a hassle when I have to design and edit that kind of stuff. Believe me, I'm going to be first in line as soon as I scrape together the $2500 or so for a new G5 system with added RAM (the more RAM, the merrier -- Photoshop is VERY hungry for RAM).
Not to mention video editing and 3D, both of which are markets that the Mac has generally been strong (if not dominant) in for some time.
I might add that you could ask the same question about P4-based PCs. Who needs that kind of firepower? Not many (mainstream) people, really -- aside from perhaps gamers. The vast majority of users just do e-mail, web surfing and word processing, maybe a little photo editing. A P2 or P3 running Linux or an older version of Windows would be more than enough in those cases. Hell, even an old Pentium with a smallish Linux installation would be enough in many cases.
OTOH if you give users and developers the added power of new processors and mainboards (strange that HyperTransport hasn't gotten much mention here), people will find a way of using it. One example: Apple's predicted that video editing will be the next mainstream computing revolution, like desktop publishing was twenty years ago. If you think about it, they're probably right.
Most newer computers can easily handle basic video editing now; the question is just how to make it easier for Joe Sixpack to edit his family videos (and maybe make Junior a budding David Lynch).
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Does anyone else find the slightest hint of irony in the emphasis on the partnership between Apple and IBM?
Maybe upon consideration of the ad that signaled the launch of the first Macintosh?
Anybody?
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
The machine is fast and the OS is advanced. But what irks me to no end is that Apple seems hell-bent on keeping the Mac in its little niche market. It doesn't make much sense but Apple refused to capitalize on people's migration from traditional Unix to the more "user friendly" NT. As an example I'll use the situation I am most familiar with but keep in mind this sort of thing is probably similar across dozens of industries. Computer hardware and electronics design. The most popular tools today are probably those from Cadence and Synopsys. Both have powerful software suits available for 32-bit and 64-bit versions Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, and NT(32)/XP. For some reason people started migrating from Unix to NT. So now I'm stuck using design and verification tools on 2000. When I use Mentor Graphics ModelSim and Cadence's Layout and PSpice I have to install all this extra stuff like Cygwin, and Perl just to try to imitate the functionality avaialable in Unix. I'm sure many other people do this. Plus, these third party tools are so poorly integrated into the rest of the OS.
With Mac OS X, it's all there. The complete Unix toolset and environment comes standard, the Macs are good for graphics as it is (which is what all these new design tools focus on anyway), and the UI is a dream to use. It's simply a better platform in a lot of different ways. Check out Sun and SGI's third party applications pages, then look at Apples. There are whole industries missing.
Here's where Apple needs to come in and sell these people on their product. Users want better software, software companies want a larger use base and better product and Apple wants to ship more units. Why is this not being done?
The funny thing is that in-house ASIC design at Apple is probably done on Solairs, HP, or NT. I'm sending e-mail Cadence and gang. Everyone who doesn't want to see this whole industry to be swallowed by NT and wants to move to OS X should do the same.
I just went to Dell's site and configured a dual-processor 3.02GHz Xenon with 240 Gigs of 7200RMP IDE, disk, DVD-RW, and a Gig of RAM. Cost: $4,351
I went to Apple's site and configured dual-processor 2GHz G5 with 250 Gigs of 7200RMP IDE disk, DVD-RW, anda Gig of RAM. Cost: $3,374
So, let's see, the Mac is 10-25% faster, and costs 30% less.
If you care about bang for the buck, you should buy a Mac. (Of course, after replacing all your software, you'd be behind. See if they'll let you switch platforms on the next upgrade cycle.)
My list isn't going to be exhaustive but should provide some pointers:
Software:
1- Nicer Interface. Admit that Aqua looks much better than Luna.
2- Unix-based. You can run pretty much any Unix software on OS X with X11.
3- Stability. I have to say WinXP and OS X are pretty much similar there, but better than other Windows versions.
4- The Apple iApps. Nothing beats iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, and iDVD.
5- Ease of install and software update/upgrade. Much easier to install OS X than Windows, software updates are much more reliable (and rarer) than MS. Updating to a new OS version or reinstalling if necessary is painless, whereas XP almost forces you to reformat.
6- Security. Most security-conscious tools and applications in OS X are open-source and/or Unix-based, and as we all know security failures are rarer for those, and patching is faster and more reliable.
7- You don't support Microsoft unless...
8- You can still run a recent version of Office if you need to, OpenOffice or Appleworks work well otherwise.
Hardware:
1- Although Apple sometimes is late to adopt certain standards (USB and USB 2 are examples), they are still the only manufacturer to implement firewire across their entire product line, and have firewire 800 on all high-end machines, as well as (now) serial ATA.
2- They're nicer to look at, and STILL easier to work inside than most PCs I've seen (exception for the iBooks, they're an horror to work in).
3- They're very robust, mostly apply to the laptops but still an important factor for some.
4- You just KNOW it's all gonna work together.
Note that I like PCs too, not just Macs, but you mostly asked for the Mac's strong points, so I'm not gonna be PC's advocates now.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
The Power4+ uses 128MB of L3 cache so it is not a fair or direct comparison, the G5 needs about 33% faster clockrate to equal the performance of the Power4+. Currently the highest Specfp_base2000 other than the Power4+ 1.5Ghz is the 1Ghz Itanium 2, amazing that Intel's workstation/big server processor manages to perform about as well as Power4+ with a 50% higher clockrate, guess they can design a decent core when they aren't going after the consumer crowd with the Ghz matters.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
oooooohhhhh
64-bit... wow!
Like, you can... ummm... support more than 2gb without swapping?
hrmmn...
like... you can support signed ints greater than 2.1 billion without some trickery?
ummmmm... that's about it.
64-bit != faster (necessarily). In fact, it could concievably be slower because of all the extra data that you are passing back and forth...
Step away from the pulpit... Whether the 970 ends up being faster in practice is yet to be seen. Whether OSX can take advantage of horsepower is a different question. We're talking about too many unknowns just yet.
The new Apple PC is far more than just a PC. It is a workstation in its own right and outperforms the workstations built by Sun. The new Apple PC is both (much) faster and (much) cheaper than a Sun workstation.
Just look at the specs of the new Apple PC. 1.6 GHz and only $1999. It also does UNIX and Linux. Steve Jobs lucked out -- again. There will a surge of demand for this machine from engineers, moving beyond the traditional Apple core users (i. e. educational institutions, graphic artists, etc.). Apple will supplant both Sun and HP as the new workstation company of Silicon Valley.
By the way, the bell tolls. It tolls ominously for Sun.
Apple is still selling the OS 9 bootable G4s. Look under the "Apple Products" sidebar on the store's front page.
Single 1.25GHz for $1299, dualies for $1599.
~Philly
Why should I pay for something that is 10%-25% faster when it costs 30% as much as a PC? I care about value over absolute top performance.
:)
:) When I sit down at the computer, there's something I want to do, be it analytical or creative, and the last thing I want to think about is why some stupid driver won't load or why a program I need to run won't start because I installed something new.
I see lots of posts around here in the form of "Feature X of my PC is Y% {better,faster,shinier} than on the Mac, so why should I pay the Z% premium?", and rarely do I see good answers. It is a very hard thing to explain. But I will give it a shot. What follows is my (totally subjective) rant about why I prefer Macs:
I've used both Mac and PC (meaning Wintel) systems regularly and equally for almost twenty years now. I used to build PCs and sell them for extra cash years ago, and I've used every Mac from the 512K to the latest G4.
I have to use PCs at my job every day (I am a software engineer). But whenever I buy a system for myself, I always, ALWAYS, buy a Mac.
Why?
It's really hard to convey to someone else, because it's not based on anything specific or concrete but on years of experience using the two systems. There aren't a lot of specific details that I can give you that explain why I always go with the Mac. But after twenty years of using PCs and Macs, I can tell you this: Macs feel good to use in a way that PCs do not. I know this sounds silly, but it really is true. It's not that the operating system or the hardware have specific features that contribute to that effect. Instead, it's almost the opposite: when I'm doing something on my Mac, the operating system and the hardware never enter my mind. They are transparent and I can focus on the work, instead of the tool. There's something about the incredibly tight integration of the hardware with the OS that make it a joy to use, primarily because it never gets in my way.
Well, there's also the fact that everything I want to do with a computer I can do on my Mac. If that weren't true, it would be moot, of course.
Believe me, I understand how cheap and easy it is to build a PC from scratch, or how cheap it seems to just upgrade the one part of a PC that is lacking. But I also understand how frustrating it is to try and get everything to work together flawlessly. Personally, I have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with problems with the system itself. I get to do that all day at work.
The cost issue is irrelevant. As others have pointed out elsewhere, it evens out over time. I bought my current Mac almost 4 years ago, and it will last another year until I get a new one. I have friends who have sunk thousands of dollars into upgrades to their PC in the same amount of time. Certainly as much as I've spent on my system, including the minimal upgrades I've had to make (RAM and video card - total of $200). And I've been saving my pennies and next year I'll buy a new Mac with them, I'm sure.
For me, it just works, and that's all I need to know. The value of that is priceless. If what you have at the moment works for you, then by all means, stick with it. But if you're less interested in the machine than what you can do with it - and I mean creatively, not customizing the UI and such - try out a Mac. You may find it useful. Give it a few months, and if it works out, great. If not, sell it on eBay - they hold their value rather well.
Finally, yes, I've used XP (really, I should say I use XP) and it is indeed an improvement over previous versions of Windows, but I still don't like using it. And again, there's nothing terribly specific to complain about. Instead it is a death of a thousand cuts, and after extended bouts with XP, I tend to get rather irritable. It seems, for lack of a better term, condescending. It seems to treat me as if I am not of sufficient intelligence to be using a compuer, but out of some noblesse oblige it will allow me to do a
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
According to Apple's web site, they tested their machine against two Dell Intel boxes (Dell Dimension 8300 (P4) and Dell Precision 650 (Dual Xeon)) running Red Hat Linux 9.0 Professional (at Apple's request).
.PDF format) including all hardware and software used is available from Veritest's web site.
Intel states that Red Hat Linux 9.0 Professional is one of the Linux OS's currently available that "include optimizations for HT Technology and are currently eligible to carry the Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor with HT Technology logo".
Apple commissioned the benchmark from a company called Veritest. The full report (in
This could make Intel take notice! Of course, this benchmark comes on the same day that Intel announces the 3.2GHz Pentium IV (and Xeon) processors. Go figure!
Of the published data on both (in SPEC processor benchmarks), Apple's Power Mac G5 generated a SPECfp_base2000 score of 840 and SPECint_base2000 score of 800, while Intel claims that their new 3.2 GHz processors get a SPECfp_base2000 score of 1252 and a SPECint_base2000 score of 1221.
And the SPIN goes on!
-Joe
If we're all god's children, what's so special about Jesus? - Jimmy Carr
For students and/or educators (personal purchases), the Powermac G5 line goes like so in prices:
1.6GHz - $1,899
1.8GHz - $2,299
Dual 2GHz - $2,849
The discounts are consistent with previous Apple academic discounts. These are the same configurations as the corresponding non-educational priced retail systems:
1.6GHz - $1,999
1.8GHz - $2,399
Dual 2GHz - $2,999
-Joe
If we're all god's children, what's so special about Jesus? - Jimmy Carr
Fortunately, as soon as I recieved the call, I alerted the appropriate government authorities, and I'm sure that our boys in Los Alamos have their spatiotemporal specialists on the job right now.
If not, we may have to...consider...activating Task Force Crimson Bravo, although I'm sure I'm as loathe to do that as you are.
Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
My completly self-serving question is: How does it stack up to a machine I can buy myself for gaming in terms of price performance? Here's the system I'm about to build myself -
:), and I'd be interested to know.
$85 - AMD XP 2600+
$140 - 1 Gig (2x512) Kingston 2700 DDR ram
$150 - Chaintech Nforce2 board (raid 0, surruond sound, ethernet)
$160 - 160 GB (2x80) Western Digital Special Edition drives, 7200rpm, striped raid 0 for speed
$360 - Radeon 9800 pro 128
$230 - Sony DRU-500A mutliformat DVD burner
$120 - some descent computer case
$180 - Win XP
$50 - Descent keyboard and mouse
Total - $1475
A comparable (except obvious diff of OS and processor) 1.6 Ghz Apple system comes to $2820, and that's without the raid harddrive setup. How much better is the apple system going to do at games? I realize that's not the entire (or even a big part) of the computer market, but it is MY market
First off, GCC is probably better optimized for x86 then it is for the PPC 970 by virtue of the fact that it's been running on x86 for so much longer. So, even using the same compiler, the field is still tilted in the direction of x86.
Second, the test is of the speed of the processors, not the quality of the optimizing compilers for them.
Third, the "fastest" comment was made with respect to the dual-processor configurations. The numbers you site are for the single-processor version.
Yes, in single-processor land Apple lost in intspec by about 10%, but won in floating-point land by about 30%. This is using a compiler that is better optimized for the competitor. And they still came out ahead.
In dual-processor land they came out ~10% ahead in integer land and over 40% ahead in floating-point land. A tremendous difference.
The real-world tests they performed seemed to back up these results with Photoshop, Mathematica and a few other programs running an average of 2x faster on the PPC 970.
This may sound incredible, but it is just a matter of bandwidth, and the G5 has plenty of it.
The dual-processors have completely independant busses, a 1Ghz FSB, 400Mhz 128-bit DDR memory, two independant floating-point units and two independant integer units. The PPC970 is capable handling over 120 in-flight instructions, that is, instructions which can be worked on and processed in parallel. In P4-land only a few dozen instructions are can potentially be run in parallel.
Do you really think that Apple would hire a company like VeriTest to verify their results and then lie about them? If they didn't actually have better spec scores they just wouldn't have used those tests...
Justin Dubs
Combo Drive (CD-RW/DVD-ROM) [Subtract $200]
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
The new AMD Opteron PC is far more than just a PC. It is a workstation in its own right and outperforms the workstations built by Sun. The new AMD Opteron PC is both (much) faster and (much) cheaper than a Sun workstation.
Just look at the specs of the new AMD Opteron PC. 1.4,1.6,and 1.8 GHz and only $649 for a complete system [pricewatch.com]. It also does UNIX and Linux. AMD lucked out -- again. There will a surge of demand for this machine from engineers, moving beyond the traditional x86 core users (i. e. educational institutions, graphic artists, etc.). AMD will supplant both Sun and HP as the new workstation CPU company of Silicon Valley.
By the way, the bell tolls. It tolls ominously for Sun.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Quote: Except that the Octane's bus is theoretically much, much faster. It has an end-to-end point speed of only about 3 and half GB/sec, but it can connect any of the individual systems to each other simultaneously at full speed Uh, for those of you on the short bus, Apple's new memory chip is also point-to-point. From the G5 (system, not chip) white paper: Advanced System Controller A new system controller is central to the overall performance of the Power Mac G5. This revolutionary application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)â"one of the industryâ(TM)s fastestâ"is built using the same state-of-the-art IBM 130-nanometer process technology as the PowerPC G5 processor. A superefficient point-to-point architecture rovides each primary subsystem with dedicated throughput to main memory, so massive amounts of data can traverse the system without contention for bandwidth. In contrast, subsystems that share a bus, as on other PCs, must deal with time-consuming arbitration while they negotiate for access and bandwidth across a common data path.
Stand back. I've got a brain and I'm not afraid to use it.
Am I going crazy, or are all three systems using the same CPU?
Given that BusSpeed * ClockMultiplier = Processor Speed
Apple's three configurations:
1.6 Ghz - 800 Mhz bus
1.8 Ghz - 900 Mhz bus
2.0 Ghz - 1000 Mhz bus
Means that all three systems have the same multiplier on the chip. Which strongly implies to me that they're all the exact same chip. We'll have to wait and see how easy they are to overclock, but if you could just change the 800Mhz bus system to 1Ghz bus, you'd save yourself $1000 in the process.
I can configure that -- by maxing out every option in ways that are ridiculous. Unless you want a desktop, a gaming machine and a rackmount server all in one box.
That $13,730.90 pricetag would include an iPod (not part of the system, merely offered for sale along with it), *two* 23-inch flat panel displays, 802.11g WAP (also not part of the system proper), the Raden 9800 Pro upgrade, maxed out disk and memory, 802.11g and Bluetooth, Fibre Channel, 5.1 speakers and cables, and other non-hardware extras like extended warrantee and .Mac.
Oh, and a deletable 56k modem. But that might actually be useful for faxing, I suppose... although anyone who needs or can affod such a box almost certainly already has a fax machine if they need one.
Get real. The sole purpose in configuring a machine such as this is to jack up the price to create/exagerate what you perceive is a lack of value-for-money in the Apple line.
Perhaps there is something to the criticism; perhaps not. But by making your point this way, you shoot yourself in the foot. So you work for SCO, perchance?
Congratulations to Apple. They are finally moving ahead. But is it enough to conter AMD and Intel juggenauts?
- 840------800- --2000---764------756
/ res2002q3/ cpu2000-20020827-01593.htmlr es2002q3/ cpu2000-20020827-01594.html
Let's see MHz per MHz (you'll see below why it's too early to stop believing in MHz myth, at least with regards to Apple):
--------MHz----SPECfp---SPECint
G5------2000--
Opteron-1800---1095-----1122
P4A--
P4 SPECint:
http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results
P4 SPECfp:
http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/
Opteron (SPEC.ORG)
(P4A is an old modification, the 3.2 GHz P4C has some modifications that should make it faster on the per MHz basis)
We see that while G5 is looking quite good compared to P4 at THE SAME MHZ, it looses out completely to Opteron. No wonder because G% is a cut-down (1/2 exactly) version of POWER4 chip. An excellent chip when it came out in 2001, but now IBM is readying POWER5 with much improved performance.
Anyway it's a great day for Apple. Compared to G4, the new processor is almost twice as fast (of course, for the applications that can use its power). But we'll be waiting for G6 to see if they can beat Intel/AMD on MHz per MHz basis.
This document from Apple is very interesting indeed. Lots of technical data on the G5 as well as some handy tips for optimizing code.
The Dual 2Ghz Apple is a "workstation" par excellence at a high end desktop price.
Everything about the Mac shines, except software tittles available, but give it time, something Apple (NOW) has!
I can't wait for the 3Ghz versions to come out, so I can snap up one the 2Ghz at heavily reduced price.
No other company can pull off so many cool things so quickly like Apple, not MS, not Sun, not HP, not even IBM, and certainly not Dell the box maker.
You have to watch Steve in QuickTime to fully appreciate how many amazing things Apple has done. Panther Developer Preview has already left Longhorn (Windows 2005) firmly in the dust bin: the new user-centric Finder, search-as-you-type, Expose, fast user switch, iChat AV, FileVault, Xcode, FontBook, and so on.
The PowerMac G5 is just amazing, 2 GHz 64-bit CPU with 2 independent FPUs and Velocity Engine, 1 GHz FSB, PCI-X, Serial ATA Drive, FireWire 800 & 400, USB2, Bluetooth, 802.11g, etc.
In terms of SPEC2000 floating point performance, the 2 GHz G4 is 21% faster than the 3.06 GHz P4, and the dual 2 GHz G5 PowerMac is 41% faster than a dual 3 GHz Xeon Dell which cost $1000 more. In real world tests (PhotoShop, Mathematica, 3D rendering, music), the PowerMac is more than 200% faster than the Dell.
It's clear that Apple has all the vital pieces nailed - harware, OS, applications, developers, Apple Retail Stores, iTune Music Store, iPod. It's time to buy some more Apple shares.
Small details in light of the mighty new G5... but I haven't seen any new accompanying mouse or keyboard with the new G5. Anyone else??
Dude, ain't no such thing as a dual processor P4. They. Don't. Exist.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
After looking at these machines, the prices, and available configurations, it seems to me that the middle configuration is the winner.
The low end one does not have PCI-X, and at $2000, it's pretty pricey, though you could remove the superdrive, modem, and load it up with cheap 3rd party RAM (only up to 4 gig tho). Does not seem to be competitively priced with Wintel.
The dual 2 GHz seems nice for the price, but you can't get less than 512 megs of RAM, or 160 gig HD, to save yourself a few bucks that you don't need to spend. So if you're frugal, Apple gets that little "dig" into you for at least a few hundred anyway. WHY do they do this. Are they just anal control freaks? Some people like to do all they can to minimize PORK items from a purchase, so why won't Apple throw us a friggin bone here?
But the middle-system is ok, because you can unload some of that way-overpriced Apple RAM, the combo drive, the modem, and get it down to around $2200, which is only slightly more expensive than the overpriced bottom model, + PCI-X and no RAM limit (and a trivially faster CPU, which you're going to upgrade in 3 years anyway).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The Pentium 4 is SPECIFICALLY designed to not be able to be put in a multi processor solution. If you can find me a P4 system with more than one processor that isn't a garage hack, I'll eat my hat.
The longer Apple waits to update the 15" PB, the more likely it will be a G5 for lots of reasons.
:-) ).
1. The 12" (or perhaps the 17") motherboard could fit in the 15" case, so from a tech standpoint, I can't see the motherboard design being 6+ months behind that of the 12" (or 17"), it would be nearly impossible to be that far behind.
2. Steve wants to be the first to ship a 64 bit portable. (No one is closer than Apple now).
3. Bluetooth, AirPort Extreme. Plenty of people want those in a portable, but don't want a 12" screen or a 17" screen. (me for one
All this points to the fact that something significant is going on. It is something like the G5 or, perhaps, a higher-density screen. I doubt it would be the higher-density screen because that should NOT be that huge a tech issue, and I can't believe they'd delay the product 6+ months for that when they could've shipped it with a regular screen and then updated it now.
My scenario about the 15" delays is this:
They intentionally held back on the 15" in Jan/Feb 2003 and kept it as it was so that if there were huge problems with the 12" and 17" (e.g. long(er) delays, engineering/manuf issues etc) they'd have a proven machine that was shipping. They were planning that the PB 15 was supposed to be updated in May at WWDC with a G5 (or very shortly thereafter) and so didn't waste any design and engineering resources on updating it to the specs of the current 12" and 15" because (back then it would have been May 2003 for WWDC, so only about 3 months wait for it). They intended to make it the 1st 15" G5 and have it ready with the PM G5s.
However, they are a little behind for some reason, just like they were with the PM G5s - that's why they pushed back WWDC a month.
Until they know when they can ship them in volume they're not announcing it for at least two reasons: avoid killing 12", 15" and 17" sales; and so they'll get even more bang for the buck when the announce "the world's first 64-bit portable," just like they got with the "world's 1st 17 inch portable". It will be on its own and won't get overshadowed by the PM G5s.
Face it, Apple loses sales because of some of the factors above and they don't want to lose sales. Therefore there is some BIG reason for the delay. The only logical one is a 15" PB G5, followed as quickly thereafter as possible with a 17" ("The world's 1st 64-bit 17 inch portable) and a 12" ("The world's smallest 64-bit portable). Followed thereafter by G4 iBooks.
I can see a 15" PB G5 announcement within 1-3 months (e.g. by the end of the summer). Apple *has* to do something to update the 15" PB to current specs (speed, AEX, Bluetooth) and if they've invested engineering in the PB G5 they don't have time to go back and do the engineering to make it a G4 - which is why I think it will be soon. If it was going to be > 3 months then they'd have time to do a 15" G4 to match the 17", BUT then they would've done it well before now.
I don't think it is wishful thinking because Apple is not dumb. They wouldn't hold up 15" PB sales for more than 6 months without a great reason. (Plus I read somewhere that 15" PB supplies were low.)
Apple.com/games
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
17,179,869,184 DIMM sockets to max out the 64 bit address space with 1 GB DIMMs!
I *know* I'm going to complain to Apple on this one.
I find it kinda strange how the SPEC results varied quite markedly between what Intel had listed and what was on display on the Apple website. So, I decided to look into it. First thing I did was goto Veritest's site and look at how they did the benchmark.
I noticed something odd... Veritest decided to run TWO different tests in the P4, one with and without Hyper-Threading enabled. Hyper-Threading is enabled by default on the P4 processor. Odd.
Then I decided to goto www.Spec.org and do a benchmark search for Intel P4:
SPEC.org results:
SPECint2000 : 1200
SPECfp2000 : 1229
SPECint_rate2000 : 14.1
SPECfp_rate2000 : 13.7
Apple.com results:
SPECint2000 : 889
SPECfp2000 : 693
SPECint_rate2000 : 10.3
SPECfp_rate2000 : 8.07
And yes, I did choose the latest results for the Intel P4.
It is very clear that the results obtained by Veritest and put forth in their report is of a P4 3.06 GHz with Hyper Threading DISABLED. The last I checked, HT is a feature which is enabled by default. WHY would someone purposely disable HT? Purposely make their CPU run SLOWER? Hmmm...
Come on Apple, do a serious system comparison, the best versus the best. Not the best versus a crippled system.
> these new machines have the potential to do it.
... Two, we'll have to replace all of our
Not entirely. They have the power, and surely they may be adopted
in some instances, but in many cases Sun workstations are installed
as part of a package deal ("enterprise solution") with the Sun
servers and business-field-specific application suites. These
suites of business software in some cases are specifically written
for Solaris (not Unix in general, but Solaris specifically). The
G5 isn't going to be compatible for that, so it would be not just
an upgrade-type replacement but a full switch.
So there will be Sun workstations for years to come. A similar
argument applies to AlphaStations (though there are fewer of
those than SparcStations, and VMS may be passing away faster
than Solaris, what with the nested buyout and resulting FUD).
> It will take an excellent sales and marketing team
That part Apple could handle, but to break into the workstations
market they'd have to sell their platform to solutions vendors,
who would then in turn target it with their next major product
line, which would be 2-4 years out from release in most cases,
and after it's released most of the customer sites drag their
feet for 2-4 years before doing the migration.
For example, in the field of library automation software: some
time in the mid 90s Microsoft managed to sell Gaylord Information
Systems (makers of the Galaxy library catalog/circulation suite)
on the merits of going from VMS to NT. Circa 2000 GIS announced
the release of Polaris, their replacement for Galaxy. There are
still *way* more Galaxy installations than Polaris at this time.
The library where I work is not planning to move from Galaxy for
two more years at least. Ad interim, we're still buying DEC
hardware, maintaining a maintenance contract with HP (who own
Compaq and thus DEC).
[I'm about to seem to wander off-topic, but it relates back...]
Oh, and I would prefer to change jobs before we migrate to
Polaris, for three reasons. One, all the staff have to be
retrained, and Polaris will require mouse and GUI use, and
some of our staff are sufficiently technophobic that this is
an excruciating prospect. Galaxy tells 'em what buttons to
push (literally: the word printed on the key on the keyboard
appears in inverse video after "Press "), but Polaris requires
knowledge of how standard widgets work -- scrollbars, drop-down
lists ([shudder]),
catalog terminals (VT510s) with Windows PCs -- a bunch of
extra Windows PCs out in parts of the library where patrons
have unobserved physical access to them, whee. Three, the
web catalog will run on IIS. Oh, and four, VMS is solid (in
terms of never needing any maintenance, other than changing
out the backup tape, and never stopping running unless the
hardware breaks -- every VMS problem I've seen was hardware
failure); I'm less confident about NT, even recent versions
of NT. ObTopic...
As you can imagine, IT folks (and even execs) in various other
industries may feel similarly about switching from what they
know and are comfortable with ("FooSolution", which runs on
Solaris or whatever) to something else different. So it takes
years for the vendors to get all their customers migrated.
That means _even after_ a new server & workstation maker sells
their platform to the ISVs, it's _years_ before the revenue
pours in.
So, just because the G5 is as powerful as a SPARC and a lot
cheaper doesn't mean the SparcStations will all be replaced
with PowerMacs any time soon.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
This is the machine that I have been waiting for (and have been putting off upgrading my G4/450).
:), but having that many slots allows you to upgrade at your desired rate. ie: you are less likely to have to pull out chips to make room for new ones. My G4's slots are all full right now, so if I wanted to add RAM, I'd have to ditch one chip.
Still, there are a few things I would like to have seen different, that I think are a step back from my Sawtooth:
1) Only one outward-facing drive. My Sawtooth can only have one optical and one 3.5" (A now-nearly-useless Zip drive for me), but the last generation of G4s had those dual optical drive bays. Given how cheap standard IDE CR burners etc are, it would be great to have that upgradeability option. In my quest to convert my friends, this has been a sticking point for many of them (most have at least two optical drives). Externals work, yes, but are much more expensive, and take up much more space.
2) Two hard drive bays. Even my Sawtooth has room for four internal hard drives. Again, IDE hard drives are cheap (Serial ATA not as much, but still....) and not everyone wants to pay a $100 premium for an external firewire box, just to do a drive upgrade. In many cases, that doubles the price of the bare drive. There are PC cases out there (ugly ones, natch) which give six front-facing bays and as many hard-drive bays.
3) The G4s were notoriously easy to access. The one side just flipped down and BAM! there was your whole motherboard. While the side of the G5 may be easy to remove, you still have to cram your hands into that tiny space to reach anything. Having everything fold out was a great innovation that I'm sad to see go.
4) The handles look OK in my opinion but are fairly thin metal. I can't imagine these things not hurting your hands if you're carrying a G5 around. I know you don't move a tower case that much, but if you're going to bother putting on handles, at least put on comfy ones.
5) As others have said, it would be nice to see a 128MB graphics card in the high end. But that's a minor quibble, really.
6) No reset button on the front. I know OS X crashes quite rarely, but sometimes this thing comes in handy. And it's a lot easier and more intuitive than holding the power button.
That said, I think these are fabulous machines, and will do Apple proud. Aside from the obvious blazing speed, a few other touches I liked:
1) front-mounted USB & firewire. Finally!
2) Optical digital audio ports. Also finally! Crossing my fingers that this means there's a 5.1-enabled DVD player app en route.
3) I think the cooling system is a stroke of genius. Nine fans sounds like a lot, but it gives much more custom air circulation patterns.
4) Eight RAM slots! I will likely never need 8 gigs of RAM (at least not before the Power Mac G7 in 2008
All my whining aside, this is a great machine! Now if only I had some money...
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
As someone who uses and develops bioinformatics software for a living I should point out that BLAST is not a great benchmark in this case. The performance graphs Apple is showing are very misleading. The longer word lengths are rarely used because they are very insensitive. More usually a word length of 14 down to 7 would be used for nucleotide searches and at those word lengths the difference in performance is nothing like as marked.
Also, BLAST is IO bound rather than CPU bound so what the graphs are showing is that BLAST needs a lot of memory and a 64 bit processor is a significant advantage in this case. This is why SGI, SUN and Alpha systems are popular for running BLAST as services. You really need gigabytes of RAM especially for DNA searches. I expect a comparison of BLASTp (protein search) would be nothing like as impressive which is why Apple chose BLASTn.
Now, this is not to dismiss the performance in any way, the new Apples look very quick and I am surely not the only one who is very interested in getting one.
Actually, the performance of HMMer is more telling, this is a CPU bound application and clearly AltiVec is doing some good, I wonder if the x86 version is as optimised though?
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Now hot grits, I know that was a joke, but seriously, what can one get in a 2 processor opteron system for USD 3K? One place a checked wanted about $750 for each Opteron 242. That does not leave much of a budget left.
Before people jump on me about comparing a Linux server to a Mac, this is really what I want to buy, a cheap (err, relatively speaking) 64bit box with at least 6G of memory. If it has to come with pretty box and a religon (well, true in both cases I suppose).
The opterons are a bit faster, at least at the top end, but the 970s seem ok. And the Macs are much easier to buy for a University (as in one phone call, compared to chasing down 3 quotes and filling out extra paperwork).
So here is a partial answer to my own question. Looking at one vendor (www.einux.com) then a server with twin opteron 240 (1.4GHz, right?) and 512M memory (for comparison), 120 G disk, prices out at $2500 w/o OS. So the extra $500 is not so bad considering what you get.
My back of the envelope calculations suggest the fastest 970 (2GHz) is about the same speed as the slowest opteron (that I quoted above). Namely, take the Linux gcc specint 2000 1045. Scale down by 0.77 to get a number for 1.4 GHz of 811.
Then of course you have to spend about the same amount on RAM. Sigh.