RIP G4 PowerMac

squiggleslash writes "An a not entirely surprising move, Apple has taken the PowerMac G4 out of production (see the last few paragraphs of this interesting article in Mac Central about the new G5s.) The PowerMac G4 had continued to be in production largely for users of Mac OS 9, and it had been speculated it might be kept as a lower-end headless entry-level Mac. You can still buy them from the Apple Store, while stocks last. On a seperate note, it looks like the 3GHz G5 is a while away, and G5 PowerBooks are no nearer production."

Comments

INCORRECT! Dual G4s still to be made

[sribe]

Apple's actual quote is:

The single 1.25 GHz Power Mac G4, with suggested retail price of $1,299 (US), will no longer be in production and is available for purchase while supplies last through the Apple Store (www.apple.com), at Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers.

This is only the low-end of 3 configurations, leaving both dual-processor G4s still in production.

Re:Good riddance!

[Smurf]

Still no 90nm process chips in the powermacs.

No, no. The new PowerMacs are using 90 nm process G5s.

And to the people that responded saying that the system is not liquid cooled, well, you are wrong. (Although you are right in that the liquid isn't water). Apple didn't use a heat pipe. In heat pipes the liquid is evaporated (taking the heat away) and the resulting vapor is condensed by releasing the heat to the outside. The fluid motion is produced passively. In Apple's design apparently the fluid is always in liquid state and is actively pumped (controlled by the processor).

(Credit goes to TamMan2000 for the finding the last link and providing some info.)

Whither the iMac?

[Zhe Mappel]

To summarize the main points of the Mac Central piece (from which /.'s factoid is taken):

The G5 heatsink is too big to put in a laptop

The G5 heatsink is too big to put in an iMac

Putting the big G5 heatsink anwhere but inside a Power Mac is a "heck of a challenge," according to an Apple marketing director

But we have also heard, in the past week, that the G4 iMac is no longer being shipped to Apple stores. So, is Apple just being coy here? Or is the iMac line going into hibernation?

Re:Not surprising, and not bad.

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Nevertheless if someone has found a way to get on your machine

You do know that there's never been a recorded instance in the wild of a remote compromise of a Classic Mac OS machine, right? You could cook one up in your basement, I'm sure, but it's never happened out there in real life, ever.

come on, Appleshare is installed by default on OS-9!

Installed... but off. It has to be manually turned on.

You'd better back the hell off OS 9, man. As far as network security goes, it's top of the list.

Re:Speculation

[squiggleslash]

Nope, not speculation. Oh sure, people may have bought the PM G4 for other reasons, but Apple's primary reason for continuing to sell it was that they'd promised to continue to support (and sell hardware capable of running) Mac OS 9 until this year.

The PowerMac G4 is/was the last product in their line that ran Mac OS 9. Everything else they currently sell is incapable of running any of Apple's operating systems pre-OS X.

Re:Good riddance!

[TheRaven64]

Not entirely. All Apple (should) need to build a G5 powerbook is for IBM to sort out the yields on PPC970FXs. Presumably they've kept a couple of dozen of them back from the XServe G5s to go to their R&D division. I wouldn't be surprised if they already have a working G5 powerbook design (the 970FX is electrically compatible with the 970, so they could have been working on one for over a year), but without sufficient quantities of 970FXs they can't launch them. January is roughly when IBM are expected to get their act together, so this seems entirely feasible.

Oh, and the exact same problem exists for 3GHz G5s. The current ones still use the 130nm 970, which was expected to be phased out in favour of the lower power and higher speed 90nm 970FX by now.

Re:Message from the Extreme Conclusions Club

[Twirlip of the Mists]

ID has a very small user base, and none of it is in major newspapers.

Does the Washington Post count as "major?" How about the Wall Street Journal?

Thou shalt know what thou art talking about before thou postesth.

Re:Message from the Extreme Conclusions Club

[lawnboy5-O]

QPS is OS X native as of this month. As with most of the Globe, it is the industry for workflow. Many contenders will try possibly take a little, but never achives what has been done by Quark. It great for a reason... and getting only better. You should have been at their summit this past first week of June. Other dont stand a chance; if you value the ROI on your workflow that is. They have re-invented workflow, again.