Slashdot Mirror
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."
When I first got my 17" Powerbook, I was dreading my inability to boot into OS 9. After the first couple of months, I stopped missing my OS 9 apps, having found better OS X replacements. Every once in a while, I'd accidentally launch a Classic app, but that was rarely an issue. The only problems I see with OS X now is that it's slightly less secure (though much more stable and powerful), and power users such as myself may run into a lack of available applications for specific tasks. (Rasterizing NOAA vector maps, for example.)
I imagine we'll hear a few people here and there complain about needing to migrate to OS X, but I think the pros for dropping G4s from the line outweigh the cons. Besides, I have a feeling that, unless they require very specific compatibiliy with a legacy app that's no longer available, they're going to be fine. Now we're going to see price drops increase on these suckers dramatically, and suddenly a bunch of students and other low-income folks be able to afford a machine that they didn't think possible for their budget. I'll bet DealMac will be listing some price slashing within a couple of days.
"The PowerMac G4 had continued to be in production largely for users of Mac OS 9"
I believe that statement is mostly speculation. There are people, like myself, who need a low cost Mac that doesn't saddle them with a built in monitor. I have a single processor 1.25ghz G4 with 2 gigabytes of RAM and I am totally happy with it.
Hopefully, Apple will one day offer something like the eMac without a built in monitor.
Apple has always been certain not to offer any "new world" Macs in a tower case for less than $2000. It seems like a bad move, discouraging people from switiching into Apples, but at least they are consistent. I would have bought an Apple by now if they kept selling a Power Mac a generation or two behind in the $1000 range, but I will never buy the eMac/iMac style computers they offer for that price segment.
For great justice.
This is, far and away, the stupidest subject of rumor I've ever heard.
This isn't a case in which Apple could build them (faster G5's, and a laptop with a G5 in it) if they wanted and they're just holding out for a business case. And this isn't a case where they're making incremental improvements to the design to get it just right.
Both a 3 GHz G5 and a laptop with a G5 in it are TECHNICAL IMPOSSIBILITIES at this time.
When they cease to be impossible, Apple will make them.
This whole "they'll be announced in January" thing is crap. Utter, utter crap. It's not a rumor. It's just a guess.
I write in my journal
Your guessing.
No, he's quoting. "Mac OS X dynamically adjusts the flow of the fluid and the speed of the fans based on temperature." How can you adjust the flow in a system that lacks any mechanism to regulate the flow?
The Apple diagram you linked to shows no pump.
LOL. The "diagram" is an illustration from a marketing brochure. You might as well say, "The diagram shows no floor. Therefore, the G5 floats unsupported above your desk."
This is hardly innovation.
So?
I write in my journal
For most people, a dual CPU offers no real advantage.
Boy, is that ever not true.
Remember, we're talking about Mac OS X here. Mac OS X uses a task model that's very similar to the UNIX model you're probably familiar with. (It's Mach, not UNIX, but the gist is the same.) That means there's support for dual processors at the thread level, sure, but there's also support at the process level.
Right now, on the G4 I'm using to type this, I have 69 processes running. Not much: just the base OS, Safari, Mail, iChat, and iTunes. But on my machine, whatever task is next in the run queue gets run on whichever processor is free. (Yes, there's processor affinity. That's not important right now.)
The net result is that the amount of time a given process is runnable but not running is reduced, because I've got two, two, two Macs in one.
Bottom line? My Mac is faster and more responsive than an equivalent single-processor Mac. Not just sometimes, but always.
Two processors are better than one, period.
remember, the new machines are 4 months late because the CPU has hard to get
First, WTF? Please don't pull things like "4 months late" out of your butt and expect to be taken seriously. You haven't seen Apple's product release roadmaps. You don't know what you're talking about.
And secondly, the 2.5 GHz G5 isn't hard to get; it's hard to MAKE. IBM had lots of problems with their 90 nm fab process. It's not like supplies were constrained. The suckers just weren't coming out of the plant.
I write in my journal
It's just as much the fault of the makers of QPS, for failing to port their product to OS X for the entire 5 years that Apple has been saying that OS 9 is a dead end.
What happens when the mobo fries on one of the old PowerMacs?
You call Apple and have them replace it. (I'm assuming. I have no idea what "mobo fries" means. Is that anything like chili fries? 'Cause I like chili fries.)
Apple's got the same basic support policy as every other vendor: five years after end-of-production to end-of-life.
What happens when you need to buy more computers?
If you're still stuck on five-year-old software and have no intention of upgrading, I'm pretty sure you're not anticipating a monster corporate growth spurt.
Can you dual-boot into Mac OS 9 for that legacy application that Classic won't run?
Can you name one such application? And QPS obviously doesn't count; we've already covered how (1) it's poop, (2) Quark in general has become poop, and (3) the industry is migrating away from Quark products. Let's talk about applications that people still actually use.
Gotta run. I'm desperately craving chili fries for some reason.
I write in my journal
I haven't heard anything about the G4 iMac EOL (link?), but even if it's true, that doesn't necessarily mean G5. They could just be updating the thing with faster G4s, more memory and disk space, etc. Dualie G4 iMacs would be cool, especially given their current slow speed (1.25 Ghz? yuck), but I wouldn't count on G5 iMacs just yet. My brother has a G5, and that thing runs damn hot. I can't imagine putting it into an iMac case without a major redesign, and considering how much trouble they're having keeping up with tower production, it just seems unlikely that we're there yet.
Consider also that for a while, Apple had "pro" processors and "consumer" processors--G3 iMacs and iBooks, G4 towers and Powerbooks. I doubt we'll be seeing G5s in the iMac before the Powerbook, at the very least.
Most of the the time, the system is idling.
Wrongo. If you get up and walk away, maybe, but not if you're actually, you know, USING your computer.
Whether my computer is faster than a single-processor equivalent when both are doing nothing is a question I've never bothered to ponder.
I write in my journal
we should say OS 9 is dead. The death of an entire OS is more notable than the change from 32 to 64 bit.
How can you adjust the flow in a system that lacks any mechanism to regulate the flow?
:)
Wow...did you ever fall for a marketing come-on...think for a second and you'll realize how easy it is.
The hotter the temp, the faster the fluid moves thru the Burnoulli tube....no mechanicals involved. When it is cold it doesn't move at all...no moving parts - when it's hot...hey! It moves!!
Just like the copper heatsink on the 1.24 GHz G4's....the first 'liquid cooled Mac' !
The marketing guys took liberty with the word 'dynamically' and I'll give you a break and not poke fun. Unless you argue, and then it's "everybody point and laugh at TOTMs! hjehehe!!!"
By discontinuing the G4 before Microsoft has released VirtualPC for the G5, isn't Apple telling a lot of people that it doesn't want their business?
Anyone who relies on a Windows-only product, and who could previously accommodate that need on a G4 running Virtual PC, will in the future need to buy a Windows PC.
Unless Apple is about to announce at WWDC its own G4-friendly Windows emulation, this could be a MAJOR step backwards for Apple among cross-platform users who prefer Apple but NEED access to Windows applications from time to time.
Will there necessarily be driver support for anything in your new Dell configuration under Windows 98?
Very possibly not.
Hell, I remember when I tried to take a Gateway laptop back from Windows Me to Windows 98 - total disaster. There was no display driver in existence for it under 98.
So this argument overstates the case rather dramatically.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
Apple has always said that they would continue to produce these machines in response to demand for them. That they've stopped producing them means that demand has dropped sufficiently for them to rely on existing stocks. So clearly, the "lifeline" isn't so important any more.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Heat.
The G5 puts out a decent amount of it. And it's great that they could cram it into an XServe. But the Xserve is about an inch and a half thicker, and can have 3 very loud very fast fans running to cool it off (sorry, Xserves just aren't quiet). By contrast, people bitch and moan about the low hum that comes from their powerbooks when the fan kicks in. So while it may be possible to cram a g5 into a powerbook, it isn't possible to release a G5 powerbook until stylisticaly and operationaly it runs better than the current powerbooks.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Actually, it looks a whole lot like the G5s used in the new Power Mac are 90 nm.