Slashdot Mirror
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."
This being said, are there any technical reasons a G5 could not be stuffed into an iMac console?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
this story has been mentioned several times at rumor sites, such as MacRumors (www.macrumors.com). it's a typo. it was there when G5 was announced for a PowerMac - no way iMac G5 was even a thought back then.
G5 iMac will happen sooner or later, perhaps WWDC next month. but there's nothing here... it's simply a typo.
The popularity of miniATX boards and Shuttle's mini PC are a proof that Apple was on the right track with the Cube. People want small powerful computers but not the attached LCD screens in the iMacs.
This is exactly the type of product Apple needs a scaled down version of the PowerMac G5. The full size machines should all be dual processor and the PowerMac G5 mini should be single processor.
Now I know why I have no aptitude to do any kind of case mods -
;)
I used 2mm and 1mm thick Polystyrene plastic sheets. I got them in sizes of 2x1 metres from a local reseller and I use it to build accessories for my model planes and dioramas
I'm not geeky enough
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
At MacWorld, they're so indoctrinated by Apple, they've made a script that puts an i in front of every word.
The article shows a G3 in a Powermac-style mini case, not a G5 in an iMac. An impressive hardware hack, but not a G5.
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.
According to Babelfish, it just seems to be a tech news site parroting a rumor. Here's the Babelfish version of the article, with mild corrections where I can [in brackets]:
So, nothing to see here, no "codes" to break... :-/
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Well, the monitors have some of the same problems. The touch switches are not incredibly reliable (Apple has gotten much better with them, so they're not as bad as the Cube switches were in the beginning) and that does cause problems.
The "cracks" were a myth. A few people who bought cubes decided that mold lines (which are present on just about all plastic products) were cracks - and the rumor spread.
That rumor IS what caused the cube to fail in the market, though. They were selling like crazy at the Apple dealer where I work until that story broke, then sales dropped to almost nothing.
I also think you're underestimating the market for a cheap headless Mac. If Apple were to ship something in the $500 range (with a useable configuration below $700) I think Apple could take a significant share of the home market. Many people want to pay nearly nothing for a computer, and Apple has no offering in that market segment - even though they've got the best value in the high end of the market.
I think a $500 box with a G4 (or even a slow G5 - if you underclock them, they're cooler and cheaper than a G4) would sell well - the only problem for Apple would be capacity to build enough of them.
I think we can count on an iMac G5 in the fairly near future. The only reasons not to do it are portable marketing and an abundant supply of the current G4 units. I'm not sure what the supply of G4 iMacs is right now, but I suspect Apple is near a replacement.
The G5 is a less expensive chip, easy to cool if you underclock it, and should be a good choice for the iMac and eMac very soon.
(think about it - it's quite possibly costing Apple more money for the iMac processor chips than the G5 tower chips. that alone is a good reason to switch chips.)
In our area, the cube was useful because of the small footprint and quiet; very much like a G4 iMac would have been.
The problem was that the combination of a cube and an LCD screen was prohibitively expensive (at least in education); and buying a cube with a CRT monitor defeated the purpose.
At the end of its lifespan, when the price of cube+LCD became more attractive, we bought (or at least ordered, I don't recall if we ordered them in time) several of them.
Nowadays, the people who would have purchased a cube purchase an iMac. Not because the iMac is cheaper than the tower, but because it has a small footprint and looks nice on the desktop and isn't overly expensive compared to the tower.
I'm not sure who in our area would want a headless iMac. The clients who want headless computers also want easy access to RAM, they want PCI cards, they want a tower.