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Apple Unveils New Pro Products
porcupine8 writes "As many had speculated, today Apple unveiled upgrades to their PowerBook and Power Mac lines (although no PowerBook G5). They also introduced a new professional photography application known as Aperture, rounding out their software lineup for creative professionals. Can't wait to find out what they announce next week!"
So the dual-core G5 finally arrived (with the top end machine having 2 of them), plus PCIe and 533MHz DDR2. I expected PCIe, but didn't expect DDR2. This is a very nice transition machine to wait for the Intel Macs.
:)
Things to note:
All nVidia videocards, now -- one of which is a Quadro FX 4500 for $1650. Nice knowin' ya, ATI, don't let the door hit you in the rear on the way out.
"In addition to the 16-lane graphics slot, the Power Mac G5 features three PCI Express expansion slots: two four-lane slots and one eight-lane slot. Each slot uses a standard connector that can accommodate a card of any size."
This mobo has better PCIe support than any other mobo I've heard about, by _far_. Crazy. 2 x4 slots and an x8? The new Fibre Channel Card seems to be an x4 PCIe, which is the first x4 card I've heard of. There are hardly any x1 cards, yet, either, and PCIe has been out quite a while.
Dual gigabit ethernet now, too, instead of just single. (they were just single before, right?)
The optional modem is now an external USB dongle style model, instead of an internal card. The end of an era. Good riddance.
I guess Apple finally stepped into the 'future.'
The bad:
Only SATA '1', no 'SATA2' (no such thing, really, but...).
Still only 2 internal HDs? C'mon - these are supposed to be workstations, Apple. Get with it.
I wants my internal RAID 10!
I'm definitely waiting for the Intel Macs, but for those who are opposed to the idea of an Intel Mac, these machines are about as sweet as one could ask for. The low-end PowerMac is now a 2gHz dual-core G5, which is pretty nice (and meets the recommended specs for their new application, Aperture, as long as you upgrade the hell out of the RAM).
As usual, the submission leaves out critical details.
The new Power Mac G5 highlights include dual core G5 processors (IBM PowerPC 970MP), PCI Express, DDR2 RAM, and dual gigabit ethernet on all models:
Single 2.0, single 2.3, or dual 2.5 GHz dual-core IBM PowerPC 970MP (G5) processor
1.0, 1.15, or 1.25 GHz frontside bus per processor
512MB PC2-4200 DDR2 RAM, expandable to 16GB
160GB or 250GB Serial ATA drive
16x dual layer CD-RW/DVD+/-RW SuperDrive
Three open PCI Express expansion slots: two four-lane slots and one eight-lane slot
NVIDIA GeForce 6600, 6600 LE, 7800 GT, or Quadro FX 4500 video
Dual gigabit ethernet
USB 2.0, FireWire 400 (IEEE-1394), FireWire 800 (IEEE-1394b)
AirPort Extreme (802.11g), Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
Analog and optical digital audio in and out
Mighty Mouse (Two button scroll mouse)
The new PowerBook highlights include higher resolution screens, longer battery life, and standard SuperDrives:
1.67 GHz Freescale PowerPC 7458[1] (G4) processor, 512MB PC2700 DDR RAM, expandable to 2GB, 80GB or 120GB Ultra ATA/100 drive
8x dual layer CD-RW/DVD+/-RW SuperDrive
1440x960 (15") or 1680x1050 (17") resolution screen
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with 128MB DDR SDRAM and dual-link DVI (supports 30" display)
Gigabit ethernet, 56K V.92 modem, PC Card slot
USB 2.0, FireWire 400 (IEEE-1394), FireWire 800 (IEEE-1394b)
AirPort Extreme (802.11g), Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
Illuminated keyboard
Analog and optical digital audio in and out
DVI/VGA/composite/S-Video out
Also new is the amazing pro photography software Aperture, as well as new lower pricing on Apple Displays.
I might as well send my writeup on last week's announcements as well, since the submission (and discussion) there were really light on info too...
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iMac G5
A new, even thinner, iMac G5 with an integrated 640x480 iSight camera and integrated media center software called Front Row.
1.9 or 2.1 GHz IBM PowerPC 970fx (G5) processor
512MB PC2-4200 RAM, expandable to 2.5GB
160GB or 250GB Serial ATA drive
8x dual layer CD-RW/DVD+/-RW SuperDrive
ATI Radeon X600 Pro or XT PCI-Express video
Gigabit ethernet, USB 2.0, FireWire 400 (IEEE-1394)
AirPort Extreme (802.11g), Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
1/8" stereo audio or optical out, 1/8" line in
VGA/composite/S-Video out
Mighty Mouse (Two button scroll mouse)
The inclusion of PCI-Express and PC2-4200 RAM in the new iMac bodes well for the upcoming updates to the Power Macs and PowerBooks.
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Front Row
Media center software currently only included with the iMac G5. Allows for seamless interface with music, movies, movie trailers, pictures, TV shows, and so on via either the iMac's screen or an external screen such as a projector or TV. Includes an infrared remote control. A demonstration of Front Row is available here.
It is likely that Front Row will make its way to other products in the near future, such as the Mac mini. It is only available for the iMac G5 "at this time", according to Apple.
The one feature of typical media centers that Front Row does not support is TV recording. But Apple seems to have a different idea for TV shows, as will be seen below. (However, TV recording can be accomplished with a wide variety of third party tuners.)
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iPod (iPod video)
Apple introduced two new iPods to completely replace the existing "larger" iPods. The same height and width as the older i
Aperture is geared toward professional photographers. It allows you to work directly with RAW files (as well as many other file types). It is similar to Googles Picassa but on steroids. It doesnt look like it will compete with Photoshop though at this stage. It is more of a basic organization and editing program. It looks pretty slick but has some fairly hefty system requirements.
.... With all of these updates, the 12" PowerBook Specs are exactly the same as before this announcement (that is it uses DDR333 RAM, has NVIDIA Go5200 64MB video, etc.) with the exception of the DVD-RW drive being standard.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Apple monitors use DVI. But be careful; the 30" is only compatible with a handful of video cards.
It's a different piece of software. The most similar thing I can find is Capture One which is in exactly the same price category with a much shorter feature list. This is pro software for photo professionals. If its organizational tools (and that really is a possibility) save a pro 5 hours (at $100/h) of work or a single reshoot, it'll be worth it.
All of the new displays use DVI. They haven't used ADC connections for awhile now. http://www.apple.com/displays/digital.html
Go to the Apple Store and look on the opening page. Near the bottom on the right hand side you'll see a red "Sale" tag. Click that and then scroll down about 2/5 the way down the page.
In general, this is where Apple sells over stock and refurbished machines. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell the difference, but whether refurbished or old stock, they come with the same warrantees. No, they don't really advertise these in proud, bold print accross the front page of the store, as they want to sell new machines, but they're there for the buying, if you know where to look.
This is the first I heard of it, but when I was going to play around with the new pricing options, I noticed that the 30" display was $2499 instead of 3 grand. I'm pretty sure it was 3 grand a week ago.
it's 'wary', not 'weary'. weary means tired of.
Finale does have a competitor. It's called Sibelius. It's the standard in Europe - it's designed by *musicians*, not software engineers, and the UI is a godsend compared to Finale. Having just moved to states and been forced to use Finale, I have one piece of advice - get Sibelius. The simple reason Apple won't release a Finale competitor is that Sibelius always does a pretty good job.
Not quite - I was saying (incorrectly) that the new systems meet the recommended requirements, but he caught me on the videocard business. You're listing the minimum requirements. So, you're wrong. So there! Victory is mine! (until someone spots some other error I made *sigh*)
Either way, I think we're all agreed that Aperture _really_ wants some hefty hardware to do it's thang, which shouldn't be surprising considering how much data it needs to move around to do what it does. Can't wait to try it out at an Apple store when it's released -- the Apple store says shipping in 6-8 weeks.
I'd not want to run this thing on the minimum specs, but I bet one could squeak by pretty easily without the hefty videocard as long as you have the memory and something near the CPU power required (dual 1.8s would likely be more than fine, especially if you have 2GB RAM).
Mac monitors haven't been 1 printed point = 1 display pixel for a long time. It was a big deal back when the first Mac came out with a 72 dpi screen that you could hold a ruler up to and have it match documents. However, things have greatly changed past 1984,
Recently, most Apple screens hovered around 100 dpi except for the 14 inch iBook. dpi on monitors continues to increase, and operating systems are having a hard time keeping up. Windows XP and OS X Tiger don't scale overly well currently. Both have the underpinnings to do it, and show signs that Vista/Leopard will do a much better job.
Printers are also widly varried, though a direct dpi compairson can't be made since a computer monitor can display many colors with one pixel, where as a printer is limited to usually 4 or so colors per pixel. More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dpi
Aperture is NOT a photoshop killer - if anything, its going to make Photoshop get back to what its good at - editing photos - and let it NOT be a photo organizer.
Aperture is built for the prosumer to professional photographer that laughs at 25,000 photos. I can easily shoot 3000 (and want to keep 500) in a single week at work, but there has never been a good way to DO that.
Aperture helps guys like me because when i shoot, say, 20 shots of a single moment at an event (a la, a football tackle, a guy hoisting a flag, etc) i really don't NEED 20 shots - i just want to get as many as possible so i can look thru the 20, find the best, and then (for some unknown reason) never want to delete the 19 others. iPhoto is a joke for this, of course, because i often could have row after row of pictures that were all pretty identical. I was about to go layout some cache on something to replace my iPhotoBuddy multi-library self organization setup i'm using now.
Instead of manually organizing thousands of photos in dozens of groups, Aperture does it all for me. It also helps out with batch processing that iPhoto+Photoshop couldn't do (because iPhoto does all its organizing in a bunch of weird subfolders) without making mass exports, then deleting the non-edited photos, etc.
Photoshop is still The premiere photo editing tool, but for making my livelihood livable and organized, to be able to grade, select, and throw out pictures (without deleting), to help make simple and fast output for customers to view online or to build USEFUL contact sheets, Aperture will save me untold hours of my life. Photoshop has has some sad organization tools - and the built in browser is just this side of Finder or XP's thumbnail view...
there's no multi-image review with simultaneous panning, no UI benefits from dual screens, no loop zooms on both open images and previews... none of that.
this is serious software - this is probably even a larger, more important jump from iPhoto than Final Cut is from iMovie...
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Apple has never, until today, offered a 7200rpm hard drive in a PowerBook. You are either mistaken or you put the drive in yourself.
On second glance, you are right. This has a 5400rpm. So at least it's not a downgrade, but it's certainlly not much of an upgrade either.
One thing that is easily overlooked is the addition of an digital audio out jack on the 15" powerbook. With the 17" being just too big, this makes the Powerbook much more attractive as a desktop replacement if great audio quality is important to you.
Mac monitors have always rendered one point = one pixel. Always. To this day, in Tiger, 1px=1pt.
Let's get some terminology straight beforehand
pixel = smallest uniquely controllable element on a screen
point = unit for font measurement
dot = smallest uniquely controllable visual element of anything (printer, screen, etc.)
inch = unit for linear measurement; equal to 2.54cm
The original Mac was designed so that 1pixel=1dot=1point=1/72 of an inch. Software, displays, and printers all agreed to this. Worked well in '84.
Today, on, say, a 12" PowerBook, 1pixel=1point=1/106 of an inch on the screen.
But in the software, 1pixel=1point=1/72". Still. To this day.
The difference between 1/106 and 1/72 is exactly the problem that the resolution-independent UIs in Leopard/Vista are attempting to solve.
In a word, no.
http://media.99mac.se/g5_dualcore/
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
No, only the 30" requires dual-link DVI. The 23" works fine on a regular DVI card.
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Read that page more carefully. You posted the "Recommended" not the "Required". Supports all G5s (with enough RAM) and the Aluminum PowerBooks >1.25GHz. Still hefty, but trying to say it requires the latest G5s is just misleading.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to red, gold & green)
It's not particularly hard as an Apple developer to take advantage of highly optimized and MP-aware code. Apple provides a very cool framework on every mac called "Accelerate.framework" (you can find it in /System/Library/Frameworks). This framework is very easy to use (from a C standpoint) compared to competitors and offers MP-aware, Altivec-Aware code. What's even wilder is that on the intel macs, apple can bind Accelerate.framework in the same way. Using this framework, you can make fast code and reduce migration woes.
Far from being a weird apple invention, Apple basically optimized BLAS and LINPACK very tightly to the Mac OS X platform and then exposed via C-apis. They also built some higher level manipulations (as well as part of CoreImage and CoreAudio, from my understanding) on top of these basis, along with other heavily-optimized-and-profiled utilities.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
As others have said, that is a DVI connector.
You ought to be able to get a PC videocard with a DVI connector without too much difficulty.
If you go the 30" route, you'll need a special videocard... specifically one with "Dual-Link DVI" which basically means a newish nVidia Quadro, any ATi X1x00 series, or any newish FireGL. Check the specific model to be sure. This limitation applies to any monitor that gets above about 2048x1536 (I think that's the number)... it's a bandwidth issue.
If you're going 20" or 23" might I recommend at least considering the Dell 2005FPW (20") and 2405FPW (24").
As best I can tell, the panels are equivalent. They both have the same resolutions 20" = 1680x1050, 23 or 24" = 1920x1200. I can't tell if one has a better image than the other -- they look the same to me. Others will surely disagree.
But the Dells are cheaper. They start at $699 and $1199 instead of $799 and $1299. But, you can usually (such as right now) get nice discounts on the Dell...
DealMeIn.net has the 20" at $394 after a bunch of coupons right now. Until yesterday they had coupons to make the 24" $774, but that seems to have expired... it'll be back at some point.
Of course, Apple's pretty silver frame and stand is cooler than Dell's black one. But then, the power button on the Dell monitor turns off the monitor, whereas the power button on the Apple monitor confusingly turns off the computer it's connected to without turning off the monitor. (That may or may not happen on a PC... but it sure does on our powermac!)
Up to you, but these days I think the Dell is just as good for much less... anyway, hope I was helpful.
A point isn't a "unit for font measurement" - it is a unit of length. It is exactly 1/72nd of an inch, always. If one pixel is 1/106th of an inch on a 12" powerbook, then 1px!=1pt on that system.
Open the Display preferences (Under System Preferences) and select the options, you can have it just turn off the monitor if you want.
I think a bit of clarification on your statement is necessary. The high-end G5 has two front side busses, one for each processor. This was always the case, even on the first dual 2GHz G5. The latest model features two front side busses, one per dual-core processor, at 1.25GHz each. This gives a maximum throughput to each dual-core processor of 10GBps, and 20GBps total between the CPUs and the system controller. The memory has a maximum throughput to the system controller of 8.5GBps, the video has 4GBps, and the PCI-x has 4GBps. The I/O subsystem (dual gigabit ethernet, dual SATA, USB, Firewire, Superdrive) has 1.6GBps. So all combined, 18.1GBps to the system controller, which can talk to the processors at 20GBps. While it would be nice to have dual memory busses, that would only leave 3GBps of bandwidth available for the rest of the system devices to share. In terms of the Athlon dual-core, I'm not positive on this, but I think it's integrated memory controller maxes throughput at 6.4GBps, and the I/O at 8GBps. Another point to note when comparing the architecture of the two processors is the design of Apple's front side bus. It has a 64-bit bus divided into two 32-bit busses, one travelling into the processor, one travelling out. Thus, 5GBps in, and 5GBps out. The Athlon has a 128-bit memory bus and a 16-bit system bus, both of which are unidirectional (either in or out, not simultaneous). The Apple bus architecture eliminates the latency associated with flipping the direction of the bus as well as the latency associated with the processor and system controller negotiating who will be using the bus next.
Use a Folder Action Script to automagically add and delete stuff from iTunes if you want "watched folders". Go here for some documentation.
A point is a "unit of length," but it's a unit of length that was developed for typography to measure fonts. And no, it is not "exactly 1/72nd of and inch, always." It is approxiametly 1/72.27 of an inch. 1/72nd of an inch is what the developers of postscipt rounded points to in order to simplify things.
This is the PJ industry standard right now for organizing and culling high-volume takes.
http://www.camerabits.com/pages/PM4.html
And it's a lot less expensive than Aperture, especially if you take the ridiculous system requirements for Aperture into account.
iPhoto is terrible for this sort of work compared to software like Photo Mechanic, Extensis Portfolio, iView Media Pro, etc.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Just to follow up my own question...
Alias updated their qualified hardware list, the document is dated Oct 4 but only appeared online today (Oct 20) so they've obviously been testing these machines internally for a while now.
Maya 7 now officially supports all the new Macs, and the nVidia 6600 and FX 4500. BUT there is no word on the 7800 yet. I called Alias tech support and they said that the quad processors are "supported but not optimized" whatever that means. I pressed them on the issue, they said they'd research it and get back to me. I suspect that this means that they still only support 2 processors and that Maya will run on a quad-G5 but with no speed advantage for the extra processors. But I can only guess at this, until I get better info.
I think we're going to get a lot of this sort of waffling until the quad G5s get into developer hands, although it is not a good sign when a developer obviously HAS the machines and has tested them but hasn't publicly committed to 4 processor support. And this is the crux of the issue, are developers going to support these last-generation quad-G5s or are they going to skip over them and put their resources into preparing for the Intel macs? It would be a shame if they didn't support the quads, as the performance looks like it will beat anything on the market. I guess time will tell. And there's not much time left on the G5s, so this could be a problem.