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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.