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Apple Moves to All Dual-Processor Power Mac Lineup
Jason Siegel writes "Apple will no longer be selling single-processor Power Mac computers, according to GeekInformed. The company has officially dropped 1.8 GHz G5s from their lineup to pave the way for exclusively dual-processor Power Macs. The systems will range from dual 2 to 2.7 GHz G5s. This is the first significant announcement since the Worldwide Developers Conference declaration that Apple will transition away from PowerPC to Intel chips."
Apple released a statement last month that the company would be transitioning away from IBM's PowerPC CPU's in favor of Intel's microprocessors. The shift to the new processors, however, will not begin until the first part of next year.
So who would buy dual PowerPC CPU now, knowing a major shift is happening in less than a year's time?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
I don't know how much G5 parts Apple's got in their warehouse, but surely this move is to clear their existing inventory to make way for x86?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Is this how it is going to be from now on? Any time Apple changes a model, drops a speed, or something it's going to be attributed to Intel?
The 1.8GHz was an expensive system for no more than it offered, especially compared to an iMac. You started around $1899 and then had to buy a monitor and it wasn't any faster than an iMac based on reader reports.
So it makes sense to remove single proc models from the lineup with dual proc models available.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
OK. I love Macs. I'm terribly interested in the future of the platform. But come on. Half the Apple stories the last few months haven't been news at all. This one certainly isn't. I bring this up because I kind of worry about the Mac losing it's nice Karma due to some of the silly hyping of the platform.
This move is good for more clearly differentiating Apple's product lines. Now there's a clear difference between a PowerMac and an iMac: the former have two processors. (And the clear difference between a PowerBook and an iBook is that the former are silver-colored.)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
you buy a mini or an iMac.
Surely not, given that the first Intel Macintosh won't be released until mid-2006.
OS/X on a top-of-the-line dual Opteron. I think many geeks cry at night at the thought of this child of imagination that may never be born. I've had to hold back a tear.
But they said "Intel".
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
My guess is that the single processor G5 had a similar price point to the iMac, which has similar specs, plus a built in LCD. MacMall lists the 1.8 Ghz power mac at $1495 and for the same price they offer a 2 Ghz iMac. My feeling is that they want to keep the lines between the iMac and the Power Mac pretty clear to eliminate customer confusion. Plus, dual processor Power Macs have been available for about 4 years and there have been several times that they've only been available in dual processor configurations. I wouldn't read much into it and I think its too early to start thinking about clearing inventory of Power PC chips. Remember that the high end chips are rumored to be transititioned in late 06.
The opteron would be faster in about everything. Cheaper too.
clicky
I am almost tempted to wonder if this is a troll. Is there really anybody left who doesn't understand that this isn't a useful question?
What do you want to do? The G5 will be excellent at some things. The P4 at others. Some server apps which use lots of system calls, thread management, and such will be hampered by the architecture of Mac OS X. Some compute intensive apps will run incredibly well on the G5 compared to the P4. If you want to use Final Cut Pro, the G5 will run it faster, and if you want to run XSI, the P4 will be faster, because you would have to run under emulation to try and run FCP on a P4 or XSI on a G5.
Anand Tech recently did some benchmarks, which you may find interesting.
Are you planning on running your own code? I quite like the XCode IDE because it uses gcc as a backend. Is all your legacy code MSVCPP MFC projects? Then it will be more hassle to get it running on the G5.
So, yeah, it all depends. I use an iBookG4 as my primary system, because it is fast enough for 90% f what I do. It's light, it's portable, it has UNIX guts and a top notch UI. My secondary system is my Athlon64 with Nvidia GFX. It's big, it's fast, I have to turn it on with my car key, the GUI is adequate, and it runs lightwave almost fast enough. (Just need it to be about 10-100 times faster, like always). It's got four fans, and it is noisy. I wouldn't dream of getting rid of either.
Surely once Apple moves away from the PPC architecture, the developers will not continue developing software for the platform, will they?
:-)
Well I don't know, if you were writing software would you prefer to sell to 10 million people or one million? That's the kind of question you are asking.
Furthermore the dev tool (XCode) makes it super-easy to build universal binaries - it's not like you have to ship an Intel version and a PPC version. They are all bundled as one "App". That's the handy thing abou tmaking applications really directories in hiding. So if you have something that works now you just need to make sure it can also work on Intel and then you can ship universal binaries in perpituity.
It's the new Intel macs where the situation will look a little sketchy the first year or so. The current PPC macs are going to see universal binaries for something like 99% of apps for several years just for marketshare reasons alone. I do think that after a short time some games may be Intel only, but since when have you bought a Mac because of game support?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Still, there were rumors that the keynote announcing the Intel deal, which included a demo on a PowerMac, was in fact powered by a quad-Pentium powered box. Were these the musings of a frantic fanbase or real facts? Impossible for me to say."
I really doubt this. Most of the demo things that Steve Jobs showed on the Pentium were things that wouldn't necessarily have benefitted much from multiple CPUs. The execution speed for the tasks he did certainly seems in line with what a Pentium 4 3.6GHz running Windows can do. My gut feeling is that the "quad Pentium" theory is just put out there by fanboys not wanting to give up there "Pentiums suck versus the G5" line.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Building universal binaries takes only a checkbox. Only the insane would drop support for PPC when it's so easy to support it.
diegoT
So who would buy dual PowerPC CPU now, knowing a major shift is happening in less than a year's time?
Someone who wanted software stability for the next few years? The new Intel boxes are not magically going to run all current software with 100% success. Universal binaries will be shipped by 99% of the Mac software vendors for years to come as only an idiot would cut off half his customers for no reason. It's not like they have to ship an Intel and a PPC version apart, it's all bundled as one.
Furthermore the current PPC Powermacs are really, really fast. They are plenty fast for just about anything you'd want to do with them. So why would you not buy one now to have a fast computer to get work done? In fact a lot of the people buying Powermacs need as fast a computer as they can get so they might buy another one in a year anyway.
I think though the Powermac line might be the last line to get Intel chips, I'd think they would update iMacs and minis first.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Satan chances his guise often during the IT world , IBM was the great Satan at one point. .
Its business , And Intel can Supply the Mobile and Desktop chips needed to power the systems at a good rate and a reasonable price.
In the IT business , you go with what can most effectively get the job done for you company , and from the looks of it Apple believe Intel are the way forward.
looking at the current share prices i would say they have a good amount of agreement
Apple and IBM were at a time business rivals , However Apple and Intel have never had any real problems with each other.
I am sure Apple would have loved to be using AMD tech , but AMD just couldn't handle Apples needs whilst satisfactory handling the needs of the grey box producers and end users.
So the only real choice for chips was Intel, No other company has the Fabrication Capacity.
Plus the P4 may not be a great chip , but the Pentium M is certainly a pocket rocket
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
It's not compiling for PPC that will be difficult. It's testing it sufficiently to achieve release quality that is expensive. Very small vendors might just make a build and have users test it for them, but vendors with reputations usually need more assurance than "it compiles". I don't think Photoshop or Word will ever ship with "use at your own risk" PPC binaries.
But as you said, it's not at all stupid to support the PPC. This is because even when the number of PPC Macs sold drops to zero, there is still a big installed base of PPC Macs to sell to. If you look at the MacOS 8/9 section of versiontracker.com, you'll see that there are at least five (on a Sunday!) software updates a day for the past five days, when MacOS 9 was discontinued in 2002 and and the last Mac that could boot MacOS 9 was discontinued in June 2004.
On a side note, the whole Macintel deal looks pretty interesting, we'll just have to wait and see what happens...