G5 in an iMac

babbage writes "I recently bought a Power Mac G5, and when I registered it with Apple, I was offered a free subscription to MacWorld. When signing up for the subscription, one of the questions you're asked is which Apple product you purchased most recently, and one of the items on the list was 'iMac G5.' Does the MacWorld marketing department know something that the rest of us don't?" Maybe they had seen the page that incognito writes about: "Over at AppleFritter, there's an awesome mod that changes an ordinary iMac into a mini version of the aluminum G5 tower. There were lots of details in the creator's work that leads to a very polished final product."

Comments

Or maybe....

[AtariAmarok]

Or maybe it was a typo. Someone so used to typing iMac, that when it came time to type just "Mac" in this document, they put an "i" there by mistake.

This being said, are there any technical reasons a G5 could not be stuffed into an iMac console?

Re:Or maybe....

[kalidasa]

Current G5s run pretty hot. On the other hand, they're stuffing the newer ones into XServes, and the form factor of the XServe isn't ideal for air flow, so I don't think there's any reason they couldn't eventually stick 1 G5 into an iMac. But I'm expecting a Powerscale G4 for the next iMac revisions.

Re:Or maybe....

[Anonymous Coward]

Current G5s run pretty hot.

While they do run warm (and certainly warmer than the G4s used in iMacs, eMacs and PowerBooks), they are still run cooler than most x86 chips, such as the Athlon XP and Pentium 4. The large heatsinks and elaborate cooling system in the PowerMac G5 are more to do with keeping the system cool quietly rather than trying to deal with some non-existent nuclear furnace CPU trapped inside the aluminium case. Remember, any kid with a screwdriver and $30 can keep a raging 3.6GHz Pentium 4 throwing out 100W of heat cool enough to run stably. However, it sounds like a cyclone.

The challenge with the G5 was not keeping it cool...that's easy. It was keeping it cool and quiet. That is the origin of the G5's elaborate cooling system. Don't misattribute it.

Re:Or maybe....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it IS a typo...

Notice what's missing from that list? What if I wanted to choose a PowerMac G5?

Anonymous Joe

It's not that there is a G5 iMac now...

[Fortunato_NC]

It's not that there is a G5 iMac now, they just don't want to have to update their survey when one comes out (hopefully) sometime around WWDC in June.

WWDC should be interesting, since the G5 boxes are overdue for a speedbump, and the iLamp, er, iMac LCD, is also overdue for a refresh. However, since the current iMac's motherboard is based on the powerbook's, I'm not 100% positive that there will be a G5 iMac announced in San Francisco.

Re:Popularity of miniATX is validation for the Cub

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The popularity of miniATX boards and Shuttle's mini PC are a proof that Apple was on the right track with the Cube.

And yet the dismal sales figures say... not so much.

Some people want a Cube, obviously, but not enough of them to make it worth Apple's while.

Re:Popularity of miniATX is validation for the Cub

[huchida]

The Cubes failed because they were too expensive-- they weren't a "headless iMac", they were a luxury item that cost more than the stock G4 while delivering fewer features. It wasn't a bare-bones Mac box, it was a costly conversation piece,

Plus, they had a few well-publicized flaws that made them unappealing... A hair-trigger on/off switch and a lucite case prone to cracks.

Apple could do well to make a low-end "cube", a cheap and portable desktop without the screen. Include iLife and a Superdrive and it could be sold as a multi-purpose media box, a component of the home entertainment system.

Re:Popularity of miniATX is validation for the Cub

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Plus, they had a few well-publicized flaws that made them unappealing... A hair-trigger on/off switch and a lucite case prone to cracks.

I don't buy it. The whole G4 series and the currently shipping monitors have these. (Well, the G4s have the same mechanical power switches the G5's have, but the monitors have touch-sensitive switches, and when the monitor's plugged it, its switch controls the sleep/wake behavior of the computer, just like the mechanical switch on the computer itself does.)

Apple could do well to make a low-end "cube", a cheap and portable desktop without the screen.

Don't buy that, either. Remember, in order to be successful, Apple has to sell hundreds of thousands of units a month of whatever products they're making. The demand for the kind of niche box you describe just isn't there.

Rise & Fall (& Rise?) of the Cube

[maggard]

Have you actually used a Cube? The button was on top, larger and more conspicuous... Waving your hand past it would shut the machine down.

The button on a monitor is right there, glowing invitingly. And it's also very sensitive, just like a Cube's. Maybe it's slightly less sensitive, but not in practical terms.

There's a b-i-g gap between waving-your-hand-past a button to trigger it and slightly-less-sensitive poking it to trigger it. You can keep arguing the point or just be honest and concede that current monitor switches != Cube switches.

It was kewl with the Cube your didn't even need to touch the darn thing. Then it got confusing. Then oftentimes annoying. (Note to Ives: Don't put proximity switches close to the CD slot...)

As to why the Cube tanked there were actually two reasons, or at least, one depending on the other. Yeah, bang-for-buck it was lacking, unless you took your stylin' bang real seriously. The other was that it was a machine ahead of it's time, or more clearly, ahead of it's OS.

The Cube was built to run MacOS X. And it didn't have it. Clearly it was meant to be the next-gen machine with the next-gen OS. Power switch? Why would you turn off a MacOS X box? At most you'd put it to sleep. Big empty box? That's so... "Wintel". Small, sleek, clever design, that's a unix workstation.

Quick test: Ask a PC user which of a series of PC's on a table they want? Usually it's the biggest chassis with the most ports, slots, and drive trays in it. However ask an old unix workstation hound and they'll pick the smallest. In that world everything (at least 'til a few years ago) was getter smaller, and faster. Newer==smaller/better/faster.

So yeah, it sucked that the Cube didn't have the OS it was designed for. Apple's hardware got ahead of their software. Or, more accurately, their OS development took a lot longer then they'd anticipated. So the Cube was half of a shiny pairing that never happened.

Of course there were lessons learned too. Yeah, high price point and no expandability aren't a good combination. But look at the desire the Cube still creates in folks! There's still no PC design that inspires such comment or techno-lust. Clearly Apple was onto something, something they've since assiduously applied across all of their lines. Not just stand-out-from-the-crowd looks, but smooth, sleek, glossy vs matte, "high end". Technology as sculpture.

Would a Cube Jr. make it in today's market? Possibly. Actually I'd more expect an eCube: small workstations schools and the like could use, booting off an X-Serve. Nothing terribly exciting feature-wise but field-maintainable, cheap, and very robust. Plug any junk monitor the school has sitting around, keep that investment, but replace the PC "big box" with something paperback book sized, quiet, and secured.

There's probably a good market there. Same as the eMac; if it takes off it could be made a consumer product too. Heck, even an enterprise product paired with XServes (thin client, anyone?). Build for an assured market: .edu. If others demand it sell it to 'em too. As long as it pays back it's R&D, manufacturing capital, and doesn't seriously cannibalize other sales, yeah, go for it.

(Expandability? Put support for peripherals being virtualized in MacOS. USB & FireWire ports redirected across the network so only a few well-cared-for devices are needed per room, or even per site. Not terribly hard but very impressive.)

I Call Shennanigans

[joel8x]

That list is just phony. Server G4? That's not even a real product name. And you can no longer even buy a G3 iMac from Apple. Also, where the heck is an eMac option and why not iBook options if your going to list out dated iMac options?

This story might be relevant as a Macrumors page 2 article.