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Apple Previewing New Power Mac?
dunric writes "CNET.com reports that Apple Computer may be previewing a new Power Mac, complete with dual G5 processors and a more advanced memory configuration." The "previewing" isn't intentional, though -- the report is based on service and repair documents distributed last month and reported on AppleInsider.com. AppleInsider has taken down at least one image from their report, but have added an artist's rendering.
Honestly, the life of an Apple product is a lot longer than a typical windows PC. I still use my Powermac 9500 (running 10.3.4) but I have retired my 600Mhz Pentium III.
And how many people do you see driving old BMWs compared to Toyotas? Which looks better?
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Care to share your parts and prices? Also, are you using a legal copy of Windows?
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
Only for an apple product would the fans care more about how pretty it looked, rather than how fast it ran. Not saying it isn't fast, but why all the fuss over pictures?
:)
This time, because there are no specs to go with the pictures. We have an image to pore over, look at, spot the differences in, all in the vacuum before a product release. It gives us something to do
Last year was the opposite. A leak for a few hours on Apple's own site had a picture of the current G4 models, but with the new G5 specs listed next to it. Then, we didn't have a picture but only an idea of how fast it ran.
Apple hardware is supposed to be where form meets function, the state of the art in personal computers. At several times this has been true and these machines may very well represent that principle from a technical standpoint. Early and recently in Macintosh's lifetime it has been the pinnacle of home computing in many ways. Right now, whatever you think of their politics or their price tags, you have to appreciate their technology. And, at the same time, they havr tended to have some of the most functional and attractive cases in the personal computer market.
So, naturally the Macintosh today attracts both people who want a good-looking computer, and those who want a technogically superior (not in every way, obviously, but it has some serious advantages over "the competition". This hasn't really been true for Apple since the days of the Macintosh II family - when it was young, that is. Arguably they reached that point with the dual G4, and equally arguably with the existence of some of the nice shiny hammer-core processors available now they don't have it at this moment, either, but this is my personal perception :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
God I hate posts like this.
My iBook has had the logic board replaced 4 times. In the first year I owned it, I had a month of downtime. After the OS 10.2.8 update, I had to reboot almost every day, even when I wasn't doing anything more than browsing the web. That's more than windows.
Some people have perfect experiences with Apple. But some don't.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
This is also why rumor sites tend to keep careful track of promotions and discounts from Apple, believing they are efforts to clear out inventories of older models in preparation for a new product launch.
You forget fans of automobiles, they obviously care how their products look!
In fact, it's rather difficult to find fans of anything that don't care how their products look - with x86 computers being the only odd exception. Fans of automobiles, home cinema, audio systems, motorcycles, biking, hiking, surfing, wine tasting etc. - they all care very much about the look. They wouldn't accept the ugliness of a plain, nondescript beige-box like your average PC (try selling such a nondescript surfing board or mountain bike!). Why x86 computer fans accepted it, it's actually a very interesting question.
It doesn't have fins, so it's not a heatsink. Apple's long-stated goal with the thermal design of the G5 was to compartmentalize heat sources; the extension of the box(which appears to be one piece of formed metal) seems purely to help compartmentalize the CPU area more. Wouldn't it be interesting if this was done because the heatsinks are taller? Taller but thinner heatsinks would let you put(ahem) more CPUs into that space. I honestly can't say I think they bumped processor speeds; wasn't IBM at a brick wall in that regard with the G5? Seems like we'd be more likely to see a quad box, although for 90% of even high end users, 4 processors wouldn't be terribly useful.
What is also interesting is that the motherboard has shrunk by a few inches, hence the longer connecting cable in one set of photos; it's a few inches back from the front of the case instead of nearly abutting it.
Please help metamoderate.
Is it too early to start talking about a case redesign from Apple?
I'd love to see a small box instead of a tower. Worked great for Sun's "pizza box" and "lunch box" server models, and those are even stackable.
If they really can't design something that size that would be heat efficient with the (expected) speed bump, they could still use that smaller board with slower speed CPUS that use the new die. Surely they've already figured the temperature issue out with their work on the XServes, though?
If Apple doesn't do it, I'll bet someone else will.
Get off my launchpad!
it does have fins. The current G5's are just like this. There is just a seperate cover for each.
=1000101
Here's a link that spares you the need to scoll past a bunch of ridiculous speculation:
t hreadid=42736#post627583
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?s=&
Also, in the process of looking at the source to figure out how to make the above URL, I found these comments in the HTML starting at line 45:
"DO NOT CHANGE THIS AGAIN
THERE NEEDS TO BE A WAY FOR MEMBERS TO RETURN TO THE CONTENT"
(some HTML code removed here)
"DO NOT EDIT ABOVE THIS LINE
GO FUCK YOURSELF - The Management"
Nice. It's always good to see design arguments that have escalated into profane insults embedded in one's publicly visible HTML source. The least they could do would be to use the scripting language's comment syntax so those little love notes wouldn't be visible to anybody looking at the source code...
So I guess those tiny dual Opteron systems were just a figment of our collective imagination?
Get off it, Apple certianly is a company that can claim many innovations but the MOTHERBOARD isn't one of them. They don't even build them (Foxconn does) and have very little to say in their design. Most of it is simply dictated by what they want on it. You want 8 memory slots and 64-bit PCI slots? Ok, that is going to take a certian amount of traces and a certian amount of space to do.
Apple doesn't need any innovation to stick a G5 in a smaller case, they could do it now. They just put less on the board. iMacs do not have all the expansion slots towers do and that makes the board much smaller both because the slots take up space, and because the traces they need do as well.
The real issue with G5s in lower end systems is cost, heat and competition. They don't want their lower lines competing with their towers, and the G5 DOES generate a good bit more heat than a G4, which is something you have to deal with. It's more expensive too.
So no, actually, Apple's proprietary system is doing the OPPOSITE of what you suggest. If it was commodity hardware, smaller boards would exist, as the existance of mini-itx P4, Athlon and Opteron boards demonstrate. Given that there is competition, companies usually roll out hardware as soon as they can. As is, Apple decides when it is in their intrests to roll out the G5 in their lesser lines.
A good example is the HP I have sitting next to my mac. When the mac is asleep, a small 1 inch circle of dim light slowly and pleasently pulsates. OTOH, the HP has a huge 3 or 4 inch square of bright blue light that blinks to indicate the machine is asleep. The mac pulsing can be ignored. The HP demands the attention of all in the room. Is this some inferiority complex on the part of HP. I mean it is like a child who screams just to get attention.
The pulsing is a good idea. Unfortunately, the designers at HP just haven't a clue of what the idea is.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Maybe a new iMac could be built into the back of the LCD itself? The disc slot could be a small thingy that slides out from the bottom.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
Your implying that Linux is not an OS. It very much is. It doesn't have the same shiny brushed metal theme, but you can d/l it for KDE, IceWM, Gnome, etc. Linux is just as fast and stable as OSX. Plus, OpenOffice, I believe gnome has a calender program, but I don't use it. Linux comes with just as many if not more packages depending on your distro. G5's are great, but so are the new x86-64's from AMD. Their up there too, plus not that expensive depending on the model. Apple is better for dual-processing I'll agree, and for certain people OSX is just great (too flashy for me personally though). If you know where to look, you can configure a PC for a good bit less (www.pricewatch.com), and for those of us not into 3d animation, a $500 box will just be fine. For most people on slashdot, the only thing that will tax the processer/ram is a compile of some sort. Any of the AMD64's should be just fine with anything though. If your using that up, i don't know what your doing besides media.
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Let me know next time. I'm looking to replace my circa 1998 PowerBook G3 - 300MHz, 320MB, original 8GB HDD, OS X.3.4 via XPostFacto, loaded to the hilt with Fink, dev tools, Office vX, Virtual PC 6, and more.
There is some lag during some tasks, and when I boot into OS 9 I'm reminded how much of a performance hit OS X incurs, but it's gotten faster with each OS upgrade.
(tig)
Ignorance and prejudice and fear
Walk hand in hand
The Mac mobo supports pci-x, serial ata and up to 1ghz fsb. It can also take up to 8 gigs of DDR-400 RAM if you want/need it. Also, what about the gigabit ethernet, optical spdif audio, bluetooth, etc?
Yawn. My ASUS motherboard (model P4P800 I think) has gigabit ethernet, serial ATA, optical spdif audio, DDR-400 RAM and an 800MHz bus. I have a hyperthreading P4/3GHz chip in there - and my current desktop setup is about a year old. Way to party on with 2003, Apple.
The Mac video card, a GeForce FX 5200, supports two monitors and is rather faster than that entry level card.
But the GEForce FX 5200 *is* an entry-level video card. Flash forward from 2002 - the FX 5700, FX 5900 and the FX 6800 are the current performance winners.. although personally I prefer ATI's range of card.
The G5 is probably not as fast, but it has a faster fsb and a comparable vector processing unit. I don't know about you, but in most of the stuff I do, the fsb and vector unit are more important than raw crunching here (not to mention the video card).
Do enlighten us with your assembly programming prowess? Unless you can - you should not care about such features unless you're playing games. Which is doubly pointless with the Mac.. uh.. because there are no games for the Mac.
Apple is using larger drives (yours is only 40gb)
I bought a 120GB Western Digital SATA drive. Last year. Yawn.
I mean - come on. Wake up. I own (and love) a Powerbook G4 because it was the best integrated mobile solution - and even I would buy nothing except the bare machine from Apple. They wanted to charge $100 for a 256MB memory upgrade that was $59 online for a brand-name part with a lifetime guarantee. Any system integrator - including Dell and Apple will take you to the cleaners at each and every opportunity that they have. They lure customers with a bare-bones base price and massively overcharge for periperals (I mean - come on - they think 256MB is usable for a workstation? I think not).
Wasn't it Enzo Ferrari who said "Build one less than you can sell" ?
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway