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Apple Updates Power Mac Line
Phreck writes "Apple has announced an upgrade to its Power Mac line today. The new Power Macs all feature dual G5 processors, 512 MB RAM, and dual-layer 16x SuperDrives. On the low end is the dual 2.0GHz with 160GB HD and ATI Radeon 9600. The mid-range includes dual 2.3GHz processors with 250GB HD and ATI Radeon 9600. The top-end system has dual 2.7GHz processors with 250GB HD and ATI Radeon 9650. The processors are not the dual-core variety as has been rumored for weeks now."
Just a small speed bump. And no dual core G5 yet unfortunally.
How does a dual-processor compare to a dual-core processor? How do these powermacs compare to the latest AMD?
Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.
I just bought a Dual 1.8 on eBay a week and a half ago, and the bum took a week to send it out. I just got it last night. Now this news. Nearly the same damn machine is $1499 refurbished, and I paid $300 more than that, and didn't even get Tiger.
Word for the wise: listen to everyone and WAIT when you hear something will be updated soon!
In summary: FUCK!
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
(no, Taco, you'll never live that one down).
The new dual Power Mac G5 models complement the existing 1.8 GHz single processor Power Mac G5, providing customers with an affordable entry-level system priced at just $1,499 (US).
According to this the low end Power Mac is still the old 1.8 GHz single processor Power Mac, the summary indeicates that the lowest end Power Mac is 2.0 GHz dual processor. However asside from that one slip-up the Power Mac line is shaping up to be incredibly fast.
What sort of performance improvements will I see over my Apple II?
I've heard Apple will come up with a new one button keyboard, soon. Because it's so much easier to use.
Georg
Does anyone think this amount of RAM is ridiculously low, especially for a high-end system? RAM ain't that expensive these days, especially for 2x512MB ... *sigh*.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
And you have to buy a new mouse too!
Why, does it come with a cat?
So ... why would anyone choose such a device over the PC??
* Clicks 'Post Anonymously'
* Submit
* ducks
Perhaps you should start visiting the rumor sites. this powermac update was not a surprise
MacRumors.com
MacRumors' Buyer's Guide also keeps track of time since last release and a summary of recent rumors, and a buy or not-buy recommendation.
23" now $1,499
30" same $2,999
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
About to upgrade to Tiger as I have a couple of macs. Can one of you fine people with experience beta-ing or who currently have tiger running give some indication of the extra processor load with the new OS? Is there any significant difference between panther with spotlight, dashboard, etc ad infinitum running away in the background? Basically do I need a new mac ;)
I do not understand their choice of base video card. Why would they use a 9600 series when the 9800s and X series are available? From a price concious view I can see it however the top end is Nvidia.
Also, are they still stuck on PCI-X? Is Apple going to move to PCI-Express anytime soon or will they be left behind for the time being?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
When Steve Jobs first announced the G5 chip, Jobs said they'd be at 3GHz by August 2004.
Where's the Gigs?
Sam
...my boss to announce an update to my salary. Until then my old school G4 will have to do.
zork% mv *.asp
283 files eaten by a grue
Tell AMD that 2.7 GHz is "5 years ago", then.
Even Intel is finally figuring out that pushing the whole clock speed = performance myth is starting to cause problems.
I realize you have an irrational need to bash Apple products, but please, try to do so in an informed fashion.
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
So buy the RAM from a third party and install it yourself.
If you throwing $2000-3000 into a computer, I somehow doubt $65 bucks to upgrade it by a gig of RAM is going to break the bank.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
I noticed an oddity on the linked page to Apple's store: the older 1.8 GHz dual had a built-in modem, but the new ones did not. Sure enough, if you actually order one of the newer PowerMacs you find that built-in modems are now a $29 option.
I suppose nearly everyone who buys these machines is using them in a networked office or can afford broadband at home, and the not-so-recent advent of internet faxing has made the other role of the built-in modem obsolete.
Still, it's an interesting omission. Like the floppy disk, Apple's opinion now is that the POTS modem is sufficiently obsolete to remove it entirely and free up space inside the box, rather than leave it in and lose the $10 OEM or whatever it actually costs them.
Never buy a computer when it's TODAY.
Always wait until it's TOMORROW, because something better may come out.
I am an Apple fan, but it makes me wonder...
The upgrades all feature tech that isnt brand-new, hell even Apple doesnt consider it front page news.
So what makes this news? Because Apple is relatively a closed-end retailer?
Dell/Gateway/HP doesnt get Slashdot headlines like this.
Its more then just a 'small' speed jump.
Id take a true dual cpu machine over dual 'core' any day.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
On the one side we've got the Apple XServe servers which are absolutely awesome. On the other we've got client computers in the G5 towers and the iMac series. In our pockets, we've even got the amazing iPod. So where does this Powermac fit?
What if you're a Photoshop guy and you need loads of power and RAM? What if you're a serious developer? Isn't that what PowerMacs are for?
Hmm. Not sure how your math works out to 30%.
On my calculator (unfortunately, I don't have a G5 to do this calculation), 3.0/2.7 = 1.11 meaning 11% behind.
Still, it's clear someone at IBM was far too optimistic.
Uhh, these PowerMacs ARE the G5 towers. You can't reasonably like one and dislike the other. Apple has 5 computer lines:
Server: XServe
Professional "Desktop": PowerMac
Professional Notebook: PowerBook
Consumer Notebook: iBook
Consumer desktop: iMac, eMac and Mac Mini
Which division is redundant?
Hmm lets see the fastest AMD 64 chip, the FX-55 is 2.6Ghz. AMD must be really be behind the times now.
And all of those multimillion dollar IBM p690 machines filled with dual core 1.7 GHz Power 4 chips(slower than these 970s even in single die form), what a waste.. They clearly should have gone with intel and bought 3+ Ghz Xeon based x-series boxes instead.
I really like the andantech's review of the mac OS from A Die-Hard PC User's Perspective
personally a $500 mac is a few hundred dollars to expensive to buy and so I'm just too cheap to even consider a mac. though i think emacs take too long to boot (remember I care for the lowend) but do have some good UI.
Some people believe 1-1=3 and for the sake of being politically correct, we should respect their differences
If I had mod points, I'd mod you a troll.
I know a million other people are going to say this, but...
The G5 at 2.7 GHz is significantly more powerful than a P4 at 3.8. The best comparison is to the Athlon64 or Opteron (also a 64-bit cpu.) And as has been said before, 2.7 is actually higher than the fastest current A64 (which appears to be the 4000+ at 2.4 GHz.)
And don't forget the whole apples to oranges deal.
http://www.barefeats.com/g5op.html
Thats for the 2.0 GHz chips, but you get the idea. Thats been posted before too. Go ahead mod me redundant. Does it show the G5 is always faster than an Opteron. No. So what? Pick the tool you like/that does the job you need. If you like OS X, doesn't get better than that. If not, you can still get your x86-64 box for less.
Am I totally impressed by the G5? No. Too much money, and I don't need that much power anyway. I recently replaced my Powerbook G4 with a Mini. 80-90% of the capabilities but at 20% the price.
I'd love to have a G5 dual-core Mini with a Geforce 6800GT, but that just ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
Good work on the math there. Not that your opinion is of any interest to anyone anywhere either. Why is it that people feel that saying "this is uninteresting" is interesting for anyone else?
My God, how thick can you get?
The PM is designed for creative professionals.
Ever stop and look at the performance reqs for pro video editing, or pro audio, or even the new Adobe Creative Suite?
This isn't designed for PC users looking to move over without switching machine types. What the hell does that mean anyway?
(like last time ibook 800mhz g4 logic board failure grrr back on this g3 500mhz now)
Did you take it into the shop? The Logic Board failure is a known issue that Apple will fix at no charge. I had to have mine repaired, and they even replaced the outer casing on mine for free!
(The case got beat up after a bus driver stopped suddenly, throwing a woman who was in the back right onto my laptop. It bent the screen backwards (!), but the computer still worked fine. It didn't close quite right after that, though.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Wait until the new revisions come out, then buy whatever you can afford. This allows you the maximum time to enjoy the "best your money could buy." Don't wait on rumours.
If you can't wait, you'll pay the cost of impatience.
> If you throwing $2000-3000 into a computer...
Almost exactly correct... if you're throwing that much money for a high-end system, the last thing you want is to run around stores trying to find good/compatible RAM (or wait for it to ship) and then mess with the case. Not to mention the Radeon, which was mid-range two years ago.
Check your math again 2.7 is 11% behind 3.0 not 30%
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You have a really low user ID, so I find your comment very odd. You know that /. has already been around several years with the same typos and other problems...and it keeps marching on. They're not just starting out like Technocrat.net; they're established. Obviously, many people (including you) are taking them at least somewhat seriously, or they wouldn't be here. Slashdot's goal isn't to become the next CNN - it's to provide a forum for people to talk about tech-related news.
Yes, we know you're trolling.
It's an almost bizarre one-liner in Thurrott's blog entry, so it's hard to say what to make of it. The Mac rumor sites sure haven't picked up on it yet.
Obviously Darwin for x86 has been around for a long time, and people speculate that Apple might maintain a complete build of OSX on x86 so that they're not dependant on IBM. If this is so it would certainly be interesting to see Apple systems with something like AMD64. Though of course third-party developers might be annoyed about such a move.
I would be skeptical of whether that would mean a release that would run on commodity PC systems, though. It would seem more likely that OSX would continue to run on Apple systems only, probably by some kind of enforcement mechanism.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
What is all this that people have started to talk about dual core g5? There is NO dual core g5 and most likelly won't be one for a long time. So get this in your thick skulls and stop complaining. A dual g5 is damn fast computer and you don't really need a dual dual-core g5. Plus who says that Apple should follow the same route that all the x86 companies are following? When have they ever done that? So all the people that are trying so damn hard to convince everybody that Apple is better than Intel or AMD should just give up. Apple alwasy pulls ahead and then let Intel and AMD catch up and even get better so why would this be any different?
That would be around the time you could get a bash terminal on apple machines...
The Logic Board failure you're pointing at is the one with G3 iBooks:
http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/
The guy seems to have a G4
I just want to say that perhaps I haven't been paying attention, but 2.7GHz PowerPC? That's faster than the fastest AMDs I see in the shops, and PPC is supposed to be very fast for its Hz. Maybe it's gone away with the G5 line? Any comparisons anywhere?
-Lars
...But did they have to lose the single CPU starting at the low-low price? The just raised the entry price of the PowerMac line by quite a bit which is a shame because while I would like a Mac that could actually run OS X (Beige G3 tower I have lying around not really up to it) I don't wanna spend a bomb. The Mac mini is nice, but it's not really up to what I need. (Don't even suggest an all in 1 -_-)
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
You mean they don't consider it front page news because they.... put it on the front page of their website?
Look again.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Quote:The case is still gigantic (2003 size), and still only sports 1 external drive bay I thought they had an infinite number of external drive bays. Maybe I've had too much RDF. Or wine. Probably wine.
Not that you should ever put too much stock in any vendors quoted ads, and bearing in mind all the inherant problems with benchmarking as a figure of merit:
Apple has some benchmarks up that show a pretty significant relative performance advantage on Apple's side. This particularly on compute-intensive work such as rendering and scientific work. Makes sense considering where the chips comes from(IBM) and where they're being used (Virginia Tech's cluster, for one).
Not that you should use this to make a buying decision or anything, but it's probably better than MHZ at telling you what is what.
Yeah, and this is this year. Now that isn't good enough. Welcome to computers. I bet 5 years from now 1GB won't be enough either, huh?
For this specific example, 256MB running Mac OSX is damn near a joke. 512MB is fairly adequate - that's what I have, but I run a fair amount of stuff, and I get the beachball more often than I'd like. 1 GB is the "transparency point" for Mac OSX, so a good desktop priced over $1500 should come with that standard.
I've never understood why Apple skimps on RAM - I know the idea is to sell you an upgrade, but magazine articles usually compare machines "stock," and we don't want Mac OSX, a very nice operating system, to seem klunky because it doesn't have enough RAM do we?
The lesson is and examples ahve been posted amny times on ./ is that selling a Mac on eBay is a very chancy thing to do. Apparently you never read ./ or you'd know this.
If you car was stolen, would you hate all Daewoo owners out there?
This guy is way out there
I just ran Hardware Update, and everything is much snappier!
I don't know if you're just trollin', but here's some pertinent info:
1. The Powermac *is* the G5 tower. Go to the apple website (www.apple.com/powermac/) and you'll see a nice cut-away of the G5 tower.
2. You might be thinking of the Performa line, which hasn't been made since roughly the period you mention. I'd be willing to bet that they haven't made the Performa line since *at least* the release of the iMac in 1998.
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
The G5 tower IS the Powermac.
Well, it fits the market of those PC users who want to switch operating systems without changing their machine types.
Powermacs are not for PC switchers, but for professionals that need workstations with room for extra drive bays, extra AGP/PCI slots and more power.
In my dual 1.8 G5 at my home studio, I have a second video card (PCI) and an additional 400gig SATA hard drive. This allows me to run 4 monitors and use the extra HD space for video editing. I can't do that on an iMac, nor would I want to.
Steve Jobs, despite his genius, sometimes needs to be more confident in his feelings and get rid of this outdated and completely redundant division.
Powermacs represent the bleeding edge in Apple tech. They get a good number of new Apple technology first: the G5, the DVD/RW (now dual layer), digital audio in/out, SATA, etc. They may not be computer industry firsts (though some are), but the tech that goes in Powermacs ultimately trickle down to the iMacs, eMacs, Powerbooks, iBooks, and so-on down the line.
Get rid of that, and what do you have left?
Apple's performance page: http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/
What would be interesting is if someone took that page and listed the total cost of each system next to each machine type.
http://slashdot.org/~tf23/journal
- Then did St. Steve raise on high the Holy G5 of Cupertino, saying, 'Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine Dell enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.' And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the renderings of lambs and toads and tree sloths and fruit bats and orangutans and lickable icons.... Now did the Lord say, 'Thou in 12 months, thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the GHz and the number of the GHz shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two-point-five, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the GHz, be reached, then thine will be great and powerful in my sight, however if thou shall have more than one button on thou mouse, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff thine's life.
Now has thy Matriarch of the Macintosh forsaken us or what here?Artist will always make art.
I would still have taken it in. Even if they won't replace it under their extended logic board program, they might have still been covered under the standard 1 yr warranty plan. Never hurts to ask.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
> 2.7 is actually higher than the fastest current A64 (which appears to be the 4000+ at 2.4 GHz.)
Close, but the fastest available Athlon is the FX-55 at 2.6GHz and 1MB L2 cache.
Sort of expensive though :-)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
That rumour has been circulating since 1993 when Apple was readying the PowerMacs. If anything, they'd bring AMD in to pick up the slack of IBM and Motorolla.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
Did you verify that the address on the Paypal account matched the shipping address? If not, why?
A question, if you don't mind. Can you give an example of more complicated floating point arithmetic that can be performed on the PowerPC, yet not performed on the latest AMD 64-bit processor.
I'm asking, because I really can't think of any myself. I'm asking as a question of ability, and not just speed.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And they'll switch from BSD to Linux because, as we all know, BSD IS DYING!
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
OMG, that is sooo funny. Seriously, that's the first time ever somebody made "Macs are expensive" joke!! Classic.
Now go build a dual 3GHz PC with 4 Gig of RAM for 500 or STFU.
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
Please, try and remember.
The original Bondi iMac was what pushed USB into the mainstream. No one was doing it, then Apple pushed it with their iMac, and then everyone realized what a great idea it was.
Apple is on the ball with some things, but not others. It's fine to criticize them about PCI Express and their video cards and heck, even SATA. But USB? Bzzt.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
*This is an honest question, this is not a troll*
Why is it front-page-newsworthy when Apple updates their product line, but it is not newsworthy when Dell, Microsoft, or Intel updates theirs?
Apple makes CHUDs? We're all doomed.
Best Slashdot Co
Yes. The delay is a well-known phenomenon called the Longhorn Effect.
-- often wrong; never in doubt
Oooh! An Insider!
:)
Can you answer one question? Why'd they take the "Do not eat iPod Shuffle" footnote off the website? It was funny and lent Apple a level of...I dunno... fun...that's sometimes missing.
1) With my Mac, I can devote all my gaming time to WoW. There are fewer choices to tempt me.
2) I get to ignore the EBGames on my walk to work every morning since I just bought (the other) Blizzard game they sell that is dual-platform in the box. This saves me lots of RL time. More for gaming.
3) I don't have to scan for viruses, defrag, clean my registry, kill ad/spyware, reinstall my OS on a regular basis, or reboot--*EVER* (except for timely security releases).
4) PROFIT! Well, in-game at least...
And yet still ONLY 512MB of RAM?
I gladly rejoiced when they upgraded the laptops to 512MB, but they need to upgrade ALL Power Macs to at least 768MB.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Maybe the grandparent post was referring to the use of the Alivec? You can do lots of single-precision floating point operations at once.
I don't think there is anything more you can do, but you can't deny the amazing speed with which the Altivec can get certain operations accomplished. I've personally experience a scenario in which it was feasible to do a more accurate approximation because the Altivec made it easy and fast.
So, maybe speed can translate into ability when you look over a given unit of time? I dunno.
Oh, and the 970fx has about a hojillion registers when compared to the x86 world. The grandparent was right about that. I'm hoping that the GCC4.0 optimizations that Apple and the GNU teams have been working on will better leverage an architecture with strict alignment rules, more registers and a powerful vector unit.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Lot of people are complaining about the "just 200MHz" speed bump for the high end model. 8% may not be that much of a speed bump, but neither Intel or AMD has been able to pull off dramatic clock frequency jumps lately. Clock speed stagnation seem to be a general problem in the processor design industry.
As for the dual cores, obviously AMD and Intel have much more incentive. The entire PC world is built around a standard form factors: ATX motherboards and ATX cases. Intel's efforts to move to a new form factor (BTX) has been quite unsuccessful so far. It is very hard to put two "hot" processors on an ATX motherboard in an ATX case. PC market is also driven by cut throat price pressure and low margins. There is a huge price difference between the prices of single processor motherboards and dual processor motherboards. Given the stagnation in the clock frequency, the only practical way for Intel and AMD to drive the mainstream PC to higher performance is the SMP model through dual-core chips. This way, all of the rest of the system components (motherboard, chipset, case, cooling system) can stay the same.
Apple does not have this constraint. Apple has been manufacturing mainstream multiprocessor desktops for manty years. Overall, it may actually be more cost effective for Apple to ship multiprocessor system. It may be a lot cheaper for IBM to manufacture two instances of a small die like the PPC970 FX (less than 60mm2) than a larger dual core die. As for Apple, having the source of the heat distributed accross two chips makes thermal management somewhat easier than dealing with one extremely hot dual core chip.
I am sure Apple will eventually move to dual core PPC970MP chips, potentially later this year, but this will most likely be in the context of being able to offer quad systems (two dual-core processors) for higher performance.
As for the choice of the base graphics card, the 9600 or 9650 is a perfectly reasonable choice. The primary driving force behind high end graphics cards in the PC world are 3D games. PowerMac G5 is obviously not the best 3D game platform. Most people buy PowerMacs to use in professional applications. Many pro applications do not require super-duper 3D performance. For those who are planning to do serious 3D work, the 6800 Ultra upgrade is the reasonable choice. There is no reason to burden all customers with an expensive (and potentially loud) graphics card.
He probably means that it can be performed on the chip in a single operation. More registers means higher possible complexity of result for a single operation.
:-)
Yes, the AMD can do it too, but it requires multiple operations on the chip to come to the same result.
This is of course only an example, I'm not familiar with either chip's instruction set, it's just a way that I can imagine the superiority of one over the other. I still don't like macs
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Uh..............the Bash terminal is the default when you click on the Terminal icon (since Panther).
That rumour has been circulating since 1993 when Apple was readying the PowerMacs. If anything, they'd bring AMD in to pick up the slack of IBM and Motorolla.
On the contrary, there has been talk of AMD dealing with IBM to pick up the slack to make Athlons. AMD doesn't have that kind of manufacturing capacity.
The problem with blogs is that anything can publish anything. It doesn't have to be true.
Apple is not going to use Intel compatible chips anytime soon.
Thanks to all the pedants who replied, and replied to the replies. One could argue that my 8MHz Macintosh Plus can do any floating point operations you want - it'd just take a little while since the thing doesn't have an FPU. Indeed if you like your twiddle factors (known as wank factors round here after (W_n)^k) Of course I was referring to the SIMD and simultaneous-issue capability of PPC.
Same pricepoints or slightly less
Heh, the same pricepoint indeed. Why the hell this equipment is so expensive? If Apple want's PowerMac to be only hi-end then good luck.
I don't care so much about performance, but still Mac Mini is not enough for Java developer. PowerMac would be great to switch from PC but no, it has to be worth 2 or 3 PCs.
* author of this post asks to be ignored
Ah... We need your SSN, address, phone number, bank account number, credit card number to check your credit number.
What? You are NOT in the USA? Would you like to join our business?
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
I'm surprised that this hasn't been brought up, but Apple is using a liquid cooling system on the 2.7Ghz model.
Details (including a cutsie animation) here.
Because there is no need. Why would you need 6800GT if there is no games needing it?
ducks
Unfortunately, that's not possible, due to the fact that you can't buy a 384MB stick of RAM. Powermacs have to have dual sticks of RAM in to work. The 512MB standard is made of (2) 256MB sticks. You'd have to go up to 1gb.
3MHz? Have fun running number munchers on that thing.
Wondered if anyone was going to catch that. What the hell, I still have an 8Mhz Mac that runs (512k Mac). And it cost about the same as the base model 2GHz G5.
I drank what? -- Socrates
The PowerMac G5's suck! I'm glad I bought my Dual G4 1.25GHz for $1,299 when they started clearing them out after the G5 was announced.
The PowerMac G5 case design is nothing but a big window fan. That's the last thing I want on my desk. Two years now and they don't seem to be looking at at least a low power G5 that allows you to use all that case space for internal hard drives instead of fans.
Crow T. Trollbot
http://www.macworld.com/news/2004/06/28/liveupdat
See also this explanation from this very thread.
"Ad infinitem et ultra!" - Buzz Lightyear
I didn't go through the full list of options in excruciating detail, but by "slightly less" I meant that I noticed some minor changes in BTO configs.
Apple doesn't change their major pricepoints often, particularly in the Pro line - they don't have to. In the consumer lines, there's been a slow, steady lowering of price levels over the last few years as Apple's nosed their way down-market. But the major thing here is that (right or wrong) Apple has a market that craves their high-end gear, even if it doesn't provide the same raw horsepower as a nicely tweaked PC can. It just doesn't matter to them at all, and they've shown it consistently.
Mac users don't buy them (generally) for the raw performance, they buy them because they fill a need better - real or perceived. Sure, they market image in a way Dell and the like can only dream of, there's more to it. Apple doesn't really want the Slashdot crowd as their customers (and they don't have them) - the Apple market is still the graphics person, the end users who are sick of dealing with Windows, the science community, and the alpha geeks (just count the PowerBooks at a Unix conference).
They aren't pure enough for the Free Software diehards, but they provide a slick, functional Unix that adheres to most standards that matter, can do all the day-to-day tasks that most users would ever want, interoperate well with other systems, and are immune to pretty much all the woes that plague the Windows world. They don't build a slick bare-bones box that you can buy cheaply and tweak to your hearts' desire, but they do have complete systems that are clearly differentiated across the full spectrum of top-tier pricepoints.
For your purposes, a PowerMac would be great, but you don't need all that expansion to develop Java apps. If a mini doesn't float your boat, try an iMac G5, for instance - maybe it's still above your target price but you can get a nice one for under $1500, and then you get G5 goodness for your Java wants. Heck, I'd like a PowerMac too, but since I didn't win the lotto this week I'll just stick with my iMac G5 for now.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Looking at the store, it seems they dropped the price on their 20" cinema display by $200 too. Now only $800!
Hi, Benny. How's the golf game?
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
The problem with iMac is that i do hate all-in-one solutions, and as I have been working few times with iMac's lately I find it quite uneasy to adjust the screen position that suits me.
Simply Apple is not for all computer users.
Wow, a [probable] M$-paid shill said it, therefore it must be true.
cat
oh wait, no games....... :P
j/k, but seriously they can't even include the 9800 Pro if not the X800? For $3K+ I want a damn good card in there.....
Ram can be ordered from a reputable dealer, like Crucial. You can order the RAM at the same time you order the computer. Crucial ships fast - one or two days depending on your location.
As for the video card I can understand the concern. However, the Mac as much as I like it is not a gaming platform. If you aren't interested in pushing high FPS for your shooter, then even a lowly card like my Geforce2 MX is perfectly adequate for most Mac tasks.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
This gets brought up a lot, but it isn't going to happen.
Recompiling OSX for AMD64 might not be too bad. Recompiling the libraries on top of it would be much harder - those aren't even optimized for 64-bit processors yet for compatibility reasons (and because it doesn't yet offer a big performance boost.)
Recompiling everyone's applications would be fatal for Apple. Application vendors aren't going to support both Mac/PPC and Mac/x64. The Mac marketshare is small enough as it is - dividing it in half wouldn't help at all.
Apple won't go to x64 or x86 processors unless they absolutely have to, and even then it wouldn't surprise me if they invested in chip design and fabrication themselves before they got to that stage.
No problem, as long as it also has a 104-button mouse.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
But they suck bricks when you buy your second machine and want to hook them in to a KVM switch.
I'd be all over a G5 Mini based on an iMac G5 without the screen. So, until I can afford a really spiffy G5 tower that I'm not really sure I need anyway, I'll just get the current Mini. Real Soon Now.
(I have to wait a few weeks anyway, so let's see if they really do bump the base RAM to something sensible.)
By "OSX" do you mean "the OS X kernel"? "The libraries", if by that you mean libc^H^H^H^HlibSystem, libthis, libthat, libtheotherthing, and all the frameworks, are part of OS X, just as much as the kernel (xnu + loadable modules) is.
What do you mean by "optimized for 64-bit processors"? The Tiger kernel is 32-bit code (although it supports 64-bit userland code); libSystem, however, comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions (see Apple's page on developing 64-bit applications).
nt
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
I saw that Amazon had posted these G5 updates on their website for pre-order at least as early as yesterday like they do for albums that haven't hit the shelves yet. Not sure when Apple officially announced the news but I didn't see anything on their site at the time.
To wit: in terms of hard drive access speed, the G5 iMac actually scored somewhat slower than the G4 Mini on benchmarks available at Macintouch. So for our purposes, which included some video editing, we'd have been torn between the two models.
I'm waiting on an incremental change in the iMac's guts to make that choice again. Maybe by then the Mini's got some more kick to it, too. (Meanwhile my friend got a Mini, swapped it into his existing monitor and peripherals, and has had nothing negative to say about performance or anything else.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Huh? You're glad to be stuck with a 167 Mhz system bus and slow, limited RAM?
Well, whatever makes you happy. Personally, I love my G5.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
What, like Doom3, WoW, UT2004, Halo, Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, KOTOR.........
That mac gaming jibe isn't even that funny anymore. However, feel free to keep ragging on Apple's crap video choices. I'm a mac fan and I _love_ venting about it. Apple crap video is the one thing keeping me from recommending OS X to anyone but grandmas.
This is the classic method for getting extra replies, in any forum on the internet:
:)
Post something hilarious, inflammatory, or clearly wrong.
[lights up applause sign]
Somebody with no connection to Apple speculating about what Apple might do someday is not news, even if he does his speculation for a Windows publication.
Nor is it worthy of much discussion.
The PowerMac G5 case design is nothing but a big window fan.
WTF!? You gotta be kidding!
The G5 is whisper quiet, while the dual G4 towers are infamous for sounding a lot like fighter jets landing on an aircraft carrier deck in a heavy windstorm which is being power-cleaned with a sandblaster right at the moment your tea kettle starts whistling that it's ready.
Reasons Apple is not switching to Intel
1. Apple Software is heavily optimized for the PPC processor.
2. Emulating the PPC (which will be needed for a transistion) with any speed at all is a challenge.
3. Software developers have less incentive to write software for the Mac platform, if all the user needs to do is dual boot into windows.
4. Apple's been here before (more then once) and didn't switch.
If you throwing $2000-3000 into a computer, I somehow doubt $65 bucks to upgrade it by a gig of RAM is going to break the bank. hrm.. so if I buy a $60,000 car, it shouldn't come with tires?
Latewire
"Apple is unhappy with the PowerPC production at IBM and will be switching to Intel-compatible chips this very year. ...seriously"
Actually, it was "Yeah, seriously," which makes the sarcasm more obvious.
At this point, it seems like nobody is using Intel compatible chips except people who are tied into Windows legacy code.
GameCube: PowerPC
Playstation3: fancy multicore PowerPC
TiVo: PowerPC
XBox2 (or is it XBox360?) PowerPC
I'd find it easier to believe a rumor that Microsoft was releasing a version of Windows for PowerPC, especially in the wake of XBox2.
But isn't this really about Apple's unannounced game console, the iFrag? Microsoft goes to Power architecture for xbox2, Apple goes to Intel or AMD for their new console? What a world...
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Yes, IBM has clearly demonstrated it knows nothing of processor and memory design. Perhaps you can enlighten them.
If you have anything that has the serial number or other unique info, give it to ebay and the police. You may not get your money, but maybe you can but the bastard in jail. There's always hope.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
...specifically an NEC for $159. It's a CRT, but if you want a 17 incher, there you go.
I have a more plausible rumor. Microsoft has abandoned Intel for the XBox, and is using a PowerPC family chip instead (this part is fact, not rumor). Presumably, this means that Microsoft has already implemented much of its core OS technology on the PowerPC chip. So why not go all of the way, and release a PowerPC native version of Windows with the next generation of VirtualPC? Microsoft could offer PowerPC native versions of its office apps, while apps that have not yet been recompiled to run natively in PowerWindows could run in emulation (as with the current version of VirtualPC) but with the speed boost of a native PowerPC Windows OS.
yep... and Jobs hangs out at a gay bar in San Jose...
c'mon folks move along..
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
uhm... "He" hasn't...
Now stand there as I prepare my Holy AAC Player of iAntioch....
And what about a cheap keyboard or mouse?
You're supposed to buy it somewhere else.
I feel very sad for poor cray/SGI customers... They are so clueless that they buy 600 Mhz cpus at best.
;)
Intel of course "knows" mhz is a myth at some point but they were happy to trick the newbies.
When they moved to real stuff like 64 bit, they couldn't continue that thing, so "mhz" levels as you said, silently disappearing from ads
An Apple story on Slashdot, lots of comments and it even mentions the high end powermac g5 line...
No "D" word yet?
Someone find me a good online bible etc site!
The plural of "thief" is "thieves." Posted from your Mac.
This guy is way out there
Sorry, I'm not a millionaire, so you can't have my DP 2.5 and 30". =P :)
I agree with you. I never understood why Apple hobble the low end PowerMac. It should be PCI-X and 8GB Ram capable across the board. I would seem to me cheaper to just produce one board for all 3 Powermac systems and just set the bus speed accordingly.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
He's probably a college student working at an Apple store who somehow feels qualified to outline the entire business strategy of the company.
doesn't anybody find it ironic (or funny) that the chips that macs use are called powerPC?
:)
and co-developed with IBM?
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
That would be a 100% Apple stunt.
It's mostly just that I have been giving Slashdot crap about their idiotic grammar mistakes for a long time now, and it's a tough habit to break. That (-1, Offtopic) dinged my karma up a little. ARGH.
....that my Dual 2GHz G5 (Rev. A) is still holding onto its value, nearly two years after it was introduced. I suspect that Apple will announce an entirely new form factor in the PowerMac design when they roll out a 3GHz model.
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
Well, there shouldn't anything in PPC64 that is impossible in MIPS, or IA32, or any other architecture with an FPU. For those that don't have an FPU, then you would have to emulate FP in software.
So, yeah, it will just be a question of speed.
That said, PPC has twice the number of registers that AMD64 has, so it will be quite a bit more efficient if you need to have 17+ variables in play. Fewer loads and stores means a greater % of your instructions spent on the actual math. Combine that with the possibility that you might have an algorithm that makes heavy use of an instruction on PPC which would require 2-3 instructions on AMD64, and the ppc architecture may be much better suited for you algorithm.
In theory, it should be possible to find a way to port the exact same algorithm to an integer only MISC system with an accumulator (single register design) running FP emulation software. It'll be slow. If the MISC can make up for it with an overwhelming clock speed, it may execute the algorithm faster than the architecture which is better suited. The likelyhood that you could actually clock it high enough... Well, that's pretty slim.
No, because PowerPC means:
Performance Optimized With Enhanced RISC Personal Computer
or if you want to take it a step further:
Performance Optimized With Enhanced Reduced Instruction Set Computer Personal Computer
At this point you can see where all those acronyms and abbreviating abbreviations leads:
;-)
A lot of repetitively redundant pleonasms
Alright I'll bite.
It ships with 512MB by default. Pull the extra RAM and if the problem remains, ship the machine sans RAM to Apple. If not, ship the funky RAM module to Crucial.
There's plenty of methods describing how to determine if RAM is the problem on the 'net. Use them.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
What does a professional want with a Radeon9800?
The 9600 is overkill.
I'd prefer an option to drop out the GPU altogether (and get my own), and also drop RAM and hard drives to zero.
is that no matter what they do, they cannot and will not ever catch frickin microsoft which has bound apps so tightly to the OS that they not only launch faster than the Macintosh, they out perform them 2:1 in most circumstances where it really counts. No matter what Steve shows onstage, there are those of us who really know that it's tweaked and not available to the general public. normally it's betaware that's then downrevved to not get the public too excited. I wish that they'd actually produce a fast computer and quit jerking off.
With tiger's core tech, everyday GUI tasks can be offloaded to the GPU if it's better than a Nvidia 5200. So you will see results even if you don't do gaming on a mac.
If you buy a $60,000 car and want some dubs, you will pay extra, but not everyone want's dubs. But if you are buying a $60,000 car you can either order it as an option or you can buy them from tirerack and do it yourself.
1994 called and they want their irony back (I think that's when Apple & IBM formed the PowerPC alliance)
I wasn't actually, but it's interesting to see that before you posted that I had been modded "interesting", and afterwards I was modded "troll". Guess it shows how suggestible mods are...
You can't blame people for assuming
Hmm... how does that aphorism go
"To assume, makes an ASS out of U and ME"
That's not born out by the numbers. The first dual-core Opterons will arrive at clock speeds of 1.8, 2.0, and 2.2GHz.
Note also that he original Opteron processor debuted two years ago today at speeds up to 2GHz. Two years later, the same processors are available at 2.6GHz--only a 600MHz increase. So Apple's incremental speed increase doesn't look so shabby by comparison.
I don't know what the numbers are for Intel off the top of my head. I expect its a similar story.
Intel & AMD may have got to dual-cores first, but they are hardly making any real industry waves yet. Its going to take time to build volumes and for app vendors to tune for them. We all know that a dual-core PowerPC chip is in the works, and it will arrive soon enough to keep Apple in the game.
Not mentioned story, but Apple also dropped the prices of their displays yesterday. The 20" is looking more and more tempting (the 23" was tempting until a friend of mine got one and I saw quite how ugly it was - far too thick.)
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Oh, wow. I've been called alot of names on the internet before, but 'kid' isn't one of them. Just FYI, I've been playing online games with the "big kids" since I was 9 (Starting with Starsiege. Yeah, I know, I feel old. Which is pretty sad.) I hang out on [H], Gruntville.com, and others. I know what the internet is like. So please refrain from calling me a kid. Just because it's normal doesn't mean we should just accept it and let it happen.
"I don't really care if they label me a Jesus Freak / There aint no disguising the truth!" - DC Talk
Well, who needs mod points then! I think I may have to experiment with that theory of yours.