New iMac disassembled

wild_berry writes "Found, via Ars Technica's Apple journal, Infinite Loop, a Japanese site disassembling Intel Core Duo iMac. Clint, from the Ars blog, points out that the Core Duo processor is socket-mounted, allowing for possible upgrades, unlike the IBM chips which were soldered to the PCB's. Please use the - cached pages."

Comments

MAc Dissa

[Anonymous Coward]

I love an intelligernt, well thot out first post!!! Woo Hooo!

Noise?

[antifoidulus]

From the blog: "There are no less than 3 blowers inside the machine" I wonder if the machine is quiet(can anyone comment from firsthand experience?) Some of the Rev. A iMac G5s sounded like a jet taking off, but it appears they fixed it in later revs. I want to get one of these bad boys, but only if they are silent.

Re:Noise?

[arachnoprobe]

That would indeed be far more interesting than most of the speed related specs. Especially for the iMac, which is designed for Home Theater oder Desk use. Apple should include that into their specs. Noise level was my reason to get a Dual PowerMac G5 instead of an G4 Dual (back in the ol' days, where both were available...)

Re:Noise?

[Ithika]

Drunks [whitehouse.gov]kill more USians a year than all war/terror since Nam

Please move that space from the inside to the outside of the link text, so the spacing looks right. Thanks :)

Re:Noise?

[ed__]

is the powermac g5 actually quieter than the dual g4? i've got the g4 and it could be quieter, but i heard the the g5's were as bad if not worse wrt noise.

Re:Noise?

[heavy snowfall]

I wonder why Apple doesn't care more about noise, surely a lack of noise must fit in well with the rest of their expensive/stylish marketing strategy?

A shiny white box that screams like a jet doesn't impress anyone.

Re:Noise?

[XMilkProject]

OffTopic:
You know I see your sig almost every day. Best I can tell it's some anti-bush sentiment. I thought it would be interesting to point out though, that it is indeed true. In fact, more people died last year from alchohol related deaths (including drunk driving), than have been killed in all US military conflicts since AND INCLUDING vietnam. Vietnam making up the largest number of lives lost at ~50,000 american deaths (from wikipedia), while ~85,000 deaths last year were attributed to alcohol.

Re:Noise?

[baryon351]

People seem to have the impression that these Intel machines have been designed haphazardly, and the lack of aesthetics inside have made for many comments online that the insides must have been designed by Intel themselves to look so different to the G5s. A friend of mine has put together a picture of various models to show that they are almost identical inside to the previous model G5 iMacs. It's those G5 iMacs with iSights that introduced the messier interior, not the Intel ones.

Just so people know.

Re:Noise?

[modmans2ndcoming]

big deal... it is about air movements, the Powermacs had 9 fans, but they were not blowing at high RPMs, so it was quiet and heck.

Re:Noise?

[modmans2ndcoming]

who said it was noisy? they do care about the noise of the machines... A LOT.

Re:Noise?

[Anonymous Coward]

The intel versions looks like airflow would be so much better than the G5 one, I bet these versions don't have overheating problems just looking at the design.

Re:Noise?

[hey!]

I dunno whether more fans translate to more noise, it might be in fact the opposite.

I'd rather have several strategically placed fans, running at low RPM and generating very little turbulence, than having single fan sized to move enough air that everything that needs it gets enough airflow, even it a tangle of ribbon cables stand in the way.

Re:Noise?

[tigersha]

Bingo. You just nailed the thermal management system of the Powermac right on the head. The thing has 10 (ten) fans but is quiet as heck because the machine is split up in thermal zones and each fan only runs when necessary.

Instead of the PC horror of one fan that has to suck out a large volume the whole time and runs at full blast no matter what.

Re:Noise?

[feijai]

Due to its fan design, the G5 is much quieter than the G4 in standard use, and much much much much quieter than the final G4 revision (the QuickSilver).

Re:Noise?

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno whether more fans translate to more noise

In my experience, apple fans are very noisy, especially on slashdot.

Re:Noise?

[daveschroeder]

First, the few G5 iMacs that sounded like a "jet taking off" were iMacs with specific, acknowledged motherboard problems that resulted in their fans ramping up to full speed. This was fixed on-demand in any iMac with that issue, and it was indeed addressed completely in later revisions. This issue never affected more than a small percentage of machines.

Further, Apple's design is to use *more* fans such that they don't need to be running at full speed (you did know that those are all variable speed blowers, right?). For example, the G5 towers that use 9 fans. None of them are running at too high a speed, keeping the entire machine quiet. Aside from a few models of machines with more audible airflow, Apple's goal is to have machines that run very quietly and are audibly unobtrusive.

I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Re:Noise?

[Shivetya]

Looks as if they are cutting costs. The early versions look much more refined and "professional". Hopefully it doesn't mean other corners will soon be cut.

Re:Noise?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that the hard drives have gone to for-shit Maxtor drives versus longer warranty Seagates.

Re:Noise?

[Anonymous Coward]

seems to me they're really making a mess of the Intel macs. Look back at the G5 model, and you can see everything has its place, and all the air cooling goes through strictly defined paths. I wouldn't be surprised to see the new intel boxes overheating with that design

Re:Noise?

[NutscrapeSucks]

The big difference is that the original G5 iMacs were designed to be user-serviceable. The iSight models (G5 or Intel) are not -- nobody's supposed to be looking in there except Apple techs.

(Now why you aren't supposed to be able to upgrade RAM or disk in 2006 is another question.)

Re:Noise?

[EntropyEngine]

You have to admit that it's easy to see why people think that lots of fans means more noise.

About the only time I hear anything from my dual G5 is when an application falls over and tries taking all of the CPU time with it.

I get a brief whoosh of sound and then the errant application is killed...

Re:Noise?

[John Whitley]

Looks as if they are cutting costs. The early versions look much more refined and "professional".

The interior design and layout of a computer mainboard is not driven by superficial aesthetics, but by a host of pragmatic issues. These issues include airflow and heat dissipation management, crosstalk issues between various components and/or traces on the board (ever had a laptop where you could hear the hard drive in the audio out?), placement of offboard connectors, access for upgrades, and so forth. Hardware manufacturers shouldn't be wasting time trying to lump the requirement of "pretty, pretty" on a concealed part! Some board designs do turn out to have a certain visual appeal, but I certainly wouldn't want that at the cost of any of the practical concerns, or at an increased system cost.

Re:Noise?

[legalize.ganja.now.]

>and runs at full blast no matter what.
that's really 80's. modern mobos regulate fan speed.

Re:Noise?

[mr_zorg]

Not to mention that the hard drives have gone to for-shit Maxtor drives versus longer warranty Seagates.

Let us not forget that Seagate has now bought-out Maxtor... So, does it really matter?

Re:Noise?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Instead of the PC horror of one fan that has to suck out a large volume the whole time and runs at full blast no matter what."

Hmmm my fans are regulated automatic, I can even override it if I want. Doen this for years. But I know that there will be some people who will say this is an of apple's innovative inventions :|

For fuck sake if you want to spread FUD do it right.

Re:Noise?

[baryon351]

RAM is still upgradable. Look down the bottom of the 4 rightmost images, and you can see latches/pull catches that unfold so the RAM slots are accessible from the outside, through a small hole in the case.

Doesn't explain the non-user upgradeable disk - though non-user upgradeable only means "officially".

Re:Noise?

[arachnoprobe]

I agree - the fans are not in use for most of the time, which is very important to me. Of course, using 100% CPU for a longer amount of time (e.g. computer games) brings up real airport takeoff experience to your desk. But my speakers are still louder than that ;)

Re:Noise?

[petermgreen]

hmm is it like with the ibook where non user upgradeable means user upgradeable if you have a lot of time, a lot of tiny screwdrivers and a very steady hand?

what i don't get is why apple make life so hard for thier own techs.

Re:Noise?

[adrianmonk]

Some of the Rev. A iMac G5s sounded like a jet taking off, but it appears they fixed it in later revs. I want to get one of these bad boys, but only if they are silent.

It's probably relevant here what Jobs had to say in the keynote address about power consumption of these Intel processors versus the PowerPC G5 processors Apple was using. When you compare computing power versus electrical power used (bang for the watt), the Intel Core Duo processors' ratio of computing power to watts is something like 4.5 times as good as the G5.

Combine that with the fact that they say the Intel processors they're using are 2-3 times faster than the G5s, and if you do the math, it would seem that even though they are faster machines, they are using about 35-55% less electricity than the G5s did. And of course, using less electricity translates directly into producing less heat. And that translates into less noise.

Re:Noise?

[NutscrapeSucks]

Thank you for the correction.

Re:Noise?

[NutscrapeSucks]

Well, basically Apple is using warranty logic to segement the market. Take the Mac Mini -- everyone knows that you can use a putty knife and get at the RAM. But the fact it's not officially user-serviceable will eliminate it from many corporate purchases. In other words, the iBook is probably a sewn-up box by design.

Re:Noise?

[NutscrapeSucks]

Actually it does, because whereas before people just thought Maxtors were shitty low-end drives, now it's pretty much official that Seagate is using the Maxtor brandname that way.

Re:Noise?

[dfghjk]

The powermac is not quiet. it's the noisiest machine I've ever owned going away. It's quiet only when it's doing nothing.

Re:Noise?

[aonaran]

Generally Apple machines, like Dell machines have more and bigger fans than necessary so they can turn them more sowly and produce LESS noise than a standard PC.

Re:Noise?

[Ungulate]

A friend of mine has a dual 2.5 G5, and the amount of noise it makes is astounding. If it stayed at a constant level you could tune it out, but it's constantly spinning different fans up and down at different rates, even when it's doing stuff that shouldn't produce significant load - just web browsing or ordinary tasks. I'm thinking that it's because the 2.5s just run too hot and the lesser models wouldn't be as bad. Anyone able to confirm?

Re:Noise?

[jafac]

One of the great disappointments of my dual 2GHz G5 Power Mac was that when I first bought it, it was not just relatively quiet, it was unusually quiet. Not silent, but quiet.

Then came the first OS update, and a series of firmware updates, and with virtually each one, the behavior of the fans has changed dramatically. And it has never returned back to it's original baseline state of "unusually quiet".

Anyone else feel cheated?

Re:Noise?

[MojoStan]

Instead of the PC horror of one fan that has to suck out a large volume the whole time and runs at full blast no matter what.

As others have pointed out, this is incorrect and sounds suspiciously like FUD. Intel chipsets have had temperature-controlled fans since at least the 845 chipset, which was released in 2001. From that link to Intel's site:

With Intel® Precision Cooling Technology, your system fans will automatically adjust their speeds according to the internal chassis temperature. If your system temperature is within normal operating specifications, your fans will operate at reduced speeds, thereby reducing noise and power consumption.
...

• Fan speeds adjust real time according to system temperatures
• Reduces unnecessary noise & energy consumption
• OS-independent - not affected by a software failure or virus
• Separate thermal zones for CPU & system temperature

Re:Noise?

[macshome]

The one's I messed with on the show floor at MWSF were very quiet. FWIW, the only loud G5 iMacs were defective ones.

Re:Noise?

[feijai]

You must have one of the G5's that's not water-cooled. The water-cooled ones, when at full blast, bring up the fans a little, but when the water cooling kicks in, the fans die away again.

Re:Noise?

[toddestan]

that's really 80's. modern mobos regulate fan speed.

True, but if you try to run a modern PC with just one large fan, the motherboard is going to end up telling it run full blast anyway.

Re:Noise?

[dfghjk]

mine was a dual 2.5 and it sounded like a jet airplane as soon as you launched safari

Re:Noise?

[jerkychew]

"Instead of the PC horror of one fan that has to suck out a large volume the whole time and runs at full blast no matter what."

You haven't used one of the new Dell Dimensions. They're so quiet that you can barely tell they're powered on, unless you're doing any major hard drive access that causes the disks to thrash.

Re:Noise?

[dfghjk]

You speak for Apple on this? You think it's not every manufacturer's goal to do the same?

More fans doesn't mean a quieter system. It only means a more failure prone one. Large, slow moving fans are quieter than small, fast ones. Ideally you'd have as few of those as you could. There's a lot of ways to make quiet machines.

PowerMacs are noisy. Other macs are not. Same thing could be said for a lot of PC's. Apple hasn't cornered the market on quiet nor was it their original idea.

Re:Noise?

[dal20402]

I have a dual 1.8GHz G5 and a cheap HP Athlon XP 2400+ box sitting here, both about 4' from my ears.

The dual G5 is quieter both at idle and, especially, under load, while the Athlon's CPU fan (one of three small fans in the box, including the power supply fan) throttles up to full power at about 20% CPU load and sounds like a jet on takeoff. There is no middle setting; the CPU fan is either on or off. The G5's (9, in my box) fans can ramp up gradually as the load increases; they only get loud if the thing uses both processors at 100% for more than about 10 minutes.

Unfortunately Apple didn't manage space as well as temperature. From the factory the huge and heavy PMG5 can only hold 2 hard disks. Although aftermarket chassis are available to mount more, they interfere with the airflow and make the CPU fans work much harder, from what I've heard.

Steve Jobs has cared about quiet since the first Mac. Remember all the overheated Mac Plus power supplies, and those aftermarket fans that sat on top of the machine? And then there was the Cube, and now the iMac G5, both of which have had cooling issues possibly related to the search for quiet.

I wonder if the poster complaining of his loud PowerMac actually has a PM G4. The later "Quicksilver" and Mirrored Drive Door models were the loudest products Apple has ever made. The overengineered PM G5 design was a direct response to overwhelming customer complaint about those machines.

Re:Noise?

[dal20402]

Which G4 do you have?

the original G4s (Yikes and Sawtooth), with the translucent-and-graphite case, were pretty quiet.

The later revisions, Quicksilver and the various Mirrored Drive Door machines, got progressively louder.

A dual-processor MDD ("wind tunnel") is way, way louder than a G5. A Quicksilver or single MDD is louder than a G5. A Yikes or Sawtooth is probably about the same, except that the optical drive in the G5 is louder because it's only hidden behind the Swiss-cheese front panel.

Re:Noise?

[Eil]

Instead of the PC horror of one fan that has to suck out a large volume the whole time and runs at full blast no matter what.

One? Heh. :P

Re:Noise?

[cthulhu11]

The Macbook *still* only has one mouse button, and offers no pccard slot, only some uselessly speculative expresscard slot. Is this haphazard, or just stupid?

Re:Noise?

[ed__]

ah interesting.

according to some website out there, i have a 1.25Ghz DP FireWire 800 which would be one of the louder ones.

i'll have to go and stick my head near one of those quad g5's sometime.

thanks all.

Re:Noise?

[arachnoprobe]

That's right, I have the "classic" 2x1,8GHz.

Buttes

[55555 Manbabies!]

i'm going to plug one of these into my butt socket

Re:Buttes

[fbroooooz]

that is dedication to compatability

wait.... I mean

Finally someone invented a universal connector

wait...

goats.ce

Is apple the new google?

[Anonymous Coward]

With three sequential artlices submitted to slashdot, one would think so. I had to check my address bar to make sure i wasn't viewing apple.slashdot.org. Frosty Pist.

Re:Is apple the new google?

[Red Flayer]

Please check out last week's thread re: article selection.

Don't want to see so many Apple articles? Then find different material and submit it yourself.

Re:Is apple the new google?

[Tim Browse]

Or they can log in and turn off Apple stories in the preferences...tricky stuff.

Re:Is apple the new google?

[m50d]

It's google that's the new apple. Slashdot has always had a large population of apple zealots.

Re:Is apple the new google?

[feranick]

I agree! Look at Google Earth (just one example). It's a wonderful, innovative program. But since google did it, there is no much talk about it. Would have been Apple, we would hear plenty of people praising how innovative, "the best of the world", the first.... (unfortunately it wouldn't be free though)...

Don't get me started.

Re:Is apple the new google?

[DJ LUCiTE]

Google didn't even do it, Keyhole did way back before Google did. Google bought them and released it for free.

Re:Is apple the new google?

[feranick]

True. At least they bought the company. Look at what Apple did with the Dashboard and the widget. They stole them from another company. Now they are praising how good the widgets are. Lame.

But will it run Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not buying one unless I can put Win 95 on it!

Re:But will it run Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure whether to laugh at or cry for the mod who gave parent +1 Insightful when he was talking about putting on Windows 95....

...now, if it was a beowulf cluster of Intel iMacs with Windows...

Arts and Crafts time

[TripMaster Monkey]

Clint, from the Ars blog, points out that the Core Duo processor is socket-mounted, allowing for possible upgrades, unlike the IBM chips which were soldered to the PCB's.

I's possible to upgrade a soldered chip...just takes a soldering iron, a little skill, and a lot of paitence.

(A commercial-grade desoldering tool is also useful.)

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever tried to desolder a BGA chip? You need more than an iron. I've seen people do it with two hot air blowers, but I always end up cooking the things.

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[dc29A]

I's possible to upgrade a soldered chip...just takes a soldering iron, a little skill, and a lot of paitence.

(A commercial-grade desoldering tool is also useful.)

I haven't upgraded a CPU for like ... ever. IMO ugprading is not worth it. Usually when I upgrade it's more than CPU only, I need new type of RAM, new stuff like USB 2.0. And at the end, new mobo + CPU = better choice than simply a bit faster CPU that would run in the old machine.

My good ole' 486 wasn't worth upgrading with Pentium Overdrive, my Athlon Thoroughbreed neither with a faster CPU, and so is my current Athlon 64 3000+ (939). I could upgrade my 939 3000+ with a dual core, but then again I don't need it now and when I would need it, probably early next year I would be better off with a AM2 socket (or whatever it's called) to get DDR2.

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[ciroknight]

To the original point of the article: You're staring down the barrel of a revolver half loaded, half not when it comes to upgrading CPUs these days. Sockets are flying by so quickly that you might only see two different cores and only 3-6 speed grades for each core (Banias->Dothon->new socket).

To me, computers are so damned fast now if you actually *need* to upgrade, you probably need to just get a new computer. Everything about these new Macs breathes cutting edge, from the new PC slot on the MacBook to both being entirely SATA (the only thing that ISN'T cutting edge is Firewire, and there's probably a very sound reasoning behind that such as chip availability (any current Intel ICHs with FW800?)), and so a lot of shifting and settling still has to occur. In that time, some of the standards today might meet the axe, and you're going to be SOL when trying to upgrade anyways. Just buy a quality computer and replace it every 3-5 years as nessicary (yes, if you're nerdy, go with every 18 months).

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[vidarlo]

I's possible to upgrade a soldered chip...just takes a soldering iron, a little skill, and a lot of paitence. (A commercial-grade desoldering tool is also useful.)

No, you can't desolder an BPGA chip, without desoldering all other components on the same PCB. Forget the idea.

It'd be 1/100 of the cost to simply buy a new pc...

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[TripMaster Monkey]

No, you can't desolder an BPGA chip, without desoldering all other components on the same PCB. Forget the idea.

Funny...I've done it (granted it was a 386 back in the day, but it's certainly possible).

It'd be 1/100 of the cost to simply buy a new pc...

I merely claimed it was possible. I mentioned nothing about it being cost-effective...

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[vidarlo]

AFAIK, 386 chips seldomly where BPGA. They had lines connecting along the lines of the chip, which is a big difference. A modern P4 has 776 pins, in 4x4cm, or 16cm^2. Thats far more dense than a 386 either was. And how was you gonna heat the points (which is under a neat layer of delicate electronics)? Especially when resoldering the new one? Infrared oven?

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[foniksonik]

Yeah, but you didn't spend 2 grand on any of those machines. Well maybe the 486 back when PCs were still expensive...

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[essdodson]

Thanks for calling his bluff. It's un-possible!

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[Peter La Casse]

I haven't upgraded a CPU for like ... ever. IMO ugprading is not worth it. Usually when I upgrade it's more than CPU only, I need new type of RAM, new stuff like USB 2.0. And at the end, new mobo + CPU = better choice than simply a bit faster CPU that would run in the old machine.

But then you've got an old mobo + CPU + RAM just begging to be thrown inside of an old chassis and hooked up to an old HD... and then you notice that for hardly any dollars, your old, secondary machine can have a faster processor. It's sure nice when you can take your "crash and burn" machine up a notch or two for peanuts.

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[Life2Short]

Good point. Plus with an Apple product it's not as easy as ordering a new motherboard, processor, and RAM and then sticking it in the old case. I've got a PC100 memory Wintel machine that I could get a new processor, mobo, and RAM for the price of changing out my 128 simms for 256. But I've found upgrading processors on G4 towers to be a good way of squeezing a bit more good out of my initial investment. At work (they were PC only so I brought in my own Mac) I have an old 433 mhz digital audio mac that I upgraded to 1.33 ghz with an Other World Computing card (cost $200-300). The upgrade card features more cache than the original processor, so you really notice the speed improvement. Did the same thing with a 733 G4 tower (Quicksilver) I had lent to my nephew. He really notices the difference, and has a lot more luck with streaming video on web sites like ESPN. Here's a great site for user reviews of upgrades to old macs (processors, drives, video cards, etc.): http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[tzanger]

I's possible to upgrade a soldered chip...just takes a soldering iron, a little skill, and a lot of paitence.

As someone who does this as part of his job -- you're full of shit. I would love to see you desolder a 900-and-some-odd pin chip (or are these uBGA?) without causing damage to the board, even with professional equipment. It's simply not worth the time or energy. If this thing is an actual pinned chip it's even more difficult than with a uBGA. And let's not forget the x-ray equipment required to verify that your soldering was done properly.

Not to mention that once you've got the chip off, you now have to solder another one on. High-density SMT rework is possible, but it's prohibitively expensive and done only out of necessity.

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[tzanger]

The 80386 was never a BPGA footprint. It was a regular 0.100" PGA, which no, is not impossible but still unbelievably difficult on a multilayer board where you have heavy copper pour for the ground and power planes.

Fast-forward to today, where the pin spacing has shrunk to sub-millimeter pitch and the number of pins has jumped by a factor of 7x. I have personally desoldered 0.5mm pitch TQFP devices and hand-soldered the same and it's not difficult with "prosumer" equipment (Weller iron with a superfine tip) but BGA/uBGA and the pinned versions are no, not realistically desolderable/resolderable.

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[dohcvtec]

"I's possible to upgrade a soldered chip...just takes a soldering iron, a little skill, and a lot of paitence." - TripMaster Monkey

"Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time." - Stephen Wright

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[sgarringer]

You also need a very nice 3d microscope to be able to even begin. But still, anything BGA is going to be inpossible to solder back on merely because you cant see below the chip to line up the pads.

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[Anonymous Coward]

Clint, from the Ars blog, points out that the Core Duo processor is socket-mounted, allowing for possible upgrades, unlike the IBM chips which were soldered to the PCB's.

I's possible to upgrade a soldered chip...just takes a soldering iron, a little skill, and a lot of paitence.

Well, I'd still rather have it socketed.

Another issue with the iMac is that for a person who doesn't want to spend the big bucks on a system capable of playing Mac games (yes, there are some actually ported to the Mac.. gasp) the video is a limiting factor. On my Athlon system my XP 3000 has served through three video upgrades and two ram upgrades with zero CPU upgrades. If Apple were to put the video on a daughtercard that maybe was electrically PCI Express compliant (though more than likely not physically) I'd suck it up and buy their future upgrades at a moderate premium. Mid-range video is fine for me, but the definition of mid-range with respect to games moves somewhat quickly (yes, again even Mac games.. I'm glad I've got high end video in my G5 tower) coupled with the longer lifespan of most Macs makes this an issue for me.

And before anybody bleats "but Macs aren't gaming machines" I'll reply: yeah, mine basically functions as a UNIX workstation for development and day to day office tasks... but every once in awhile I like to get my frag on!

And in the interest of comic relief, has anybody run games (say "Battlefield 1942" or "Command and Conquer:Generals) under Rosetta yet? Did you have a meltdown, or did it just core dump? ;)

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[TeamSPAM]

Back in the 90s, I know Apple had some computers where partial upgrades where decent investments in prolonging the life of your computer. I have a PowerMac 7500, it had a processor slot for the CPU upgrades. I had 3 different CPUs in that computer (a 601, a 604 and a G3). The 7500 also had 8 memory slots and could address about 1GB of memory. Rarely did I take memory out to do the upgrade, you just kept adding.

In the time that has elapsed since then CPU speeds are way out of sync with the speeds of the motherboard. At this point, if you're buying a new CPU, a new motherboard is not far behind with new memory tagging along. It seems upgrades for a computer are down to video card, HD, optical drives and possibly memory. I put memory as a possible, because it seems that motherboards are shipping with less memory slots every year and people put in as much as they can when they get the motherboard.

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[bedouin]

I haven't upgraded a CPU for like ... ever. IMO ugprading is not worth it.

I don't know how this will play out post-Intel switch, but by simply replacing my 800mhz CPU with a 1.4ghz one my XBench scores are higher than the current Mac Minis, many iBooks, and some Powerbooks, and my machine is over three years old. Granted, I added a new video card, more RAM, and SATA along the way -- but those were all pretty minor incremental upgrades. When compared to some iMac G5s its performance isn't too shabby either. Also take into consideration that adding dual CPUs to a Mac that originally shipped with a single CPU doesn't require a motherboard replacement like in the PC world, and you get some serious speed boosts.

Assuming I don't splurge on a new system first, this machine should feel comfortable for a few more years. I've gotten way more life out of this machine than any PC I've owned.

Re:Arts and Crafts time

[foniksonik]

yeah Sonnet technologies is in my neighborhoood so I've done a few CPU upgrades to G4 Macs myself... personally my favorite is upgrading a wallstreet PB to a G4 a year ago or so ;-p

Silence is overrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you have kids you will appreciate any machine that creates white noise. My 3 month old sleeps best next to a running washing machine and/or dryer.

Re:Silence is overrated

[FinestLittleSpace]

That'll do their base level hearing a great deal of good!

No Disassemble

[troc]

No Disassemble iMac (5)

or something

T.

Re:No Disassemble

[antifoidulus]

G5 alive!




Nope, sorry, dead.

Re:No Disassemble

[karlandtanya]

.
  NO
KILL
    I

shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle

Cache of the caches?

[gasmonso]

Anyone have caches of the cached pages??

http://religiousfreaks.com/

Re:Cache of the caches?

[Anonymous Coward]

The pages load fine for me, even when automagically loading the pictures with QuickGallery.

Re:Cache of the caches?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cached caches here: http://www.mirrordot.org/

Re:Cache of the caches?

[VGPowerlord]

Only if you have the cash to support them. Or is that cache to support them?

ANOTHER MAC STORY!

[copponex]

I'm sorry, your story has been rejected because:

|x| No Steve Jobs!
|x| It has a benchmark showing G5s sucking Athlon wind (DEPRECATED)
|x| It has a benchmark showing Duo sucking Athlon wind (NEW)
|x| It's not a dupe about a Mac rumour.
|x| It is an advertisement for a new product that is NOT from Apple.
|x| DRM is bad on Macs? WHAT WHAT WHAT?

Seriously, fuckers! I've seen more relevant and non-Apple related news this past week on hardmac!

(reposted from the Apple story that preceded this one.)

'bout the link...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars

hehehe *snort* hehe...

Slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't remember my nickname.
Ummm... It's slashdotted. A mirror with pictures would help.

Nerd porn!

[Psykechan]

Hooray! We have now entered the nerd porn phase of the Apple Product Cycle.

Sigh... if only the cached site wasn't so slow.

Re:Nerd porn!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I was going to look at the disassembled photos, but really I'm waiting for Rev. B.

socketed chips

[gEvil (beta)]

Something to remember about the last few batches of socketed processors in Macs (G3s and G4s): the FSB, voltages, and processor frequency settings were controlled via a series of unlabeled jumpers on the motherboard, which had a prefabbed jumper block taped onto them (warranty void if removed blah blah blah). I'm sure if they're using a similar mechanism that it will only be a matter of time before someone figures out the jumper scheme and posts them. Then again, maybe EFI handles all of this now. Anybody familiar enough with EFI to know?

Re:socketed chips

[gEvil (beta)]

Now that I've managed to get the front and back mobo pictures loaded, it doesn't look like there's a jumper block anywhere. I guess they're either controlled by EFI or by those resistors near the backside of the processor socket.

Re:socketed chips

[Anonymous Coward]

Chicken and egg problem: how do you set the voltage of the processor core at power-up time by software?

Some Intel processors (PPro at least) had pins that were connected to ground or not to program the external voltage regulator. At least for the power-up phase you need to put some reasonable (not necessary optimal) frequency and voltage values. There is no guarantee that two processors which can be put into the same socket would have a common setting, so the only solution is to have the processor tell the system what its power-up parameters are.

On a G5, no a PPC970, these values are stored in a on-chip ROM which is accessed at boot by an auxiliary processor through a serial bus (I2C I believe, but don't quote me on that).

Re:socketed chips

[diegocgteleline.es]

Speaking of EFI, linux supports it. I've heard lot of noise about windows support, but what about linux support, will linux (and BSDs) be able to run on those things? I'm not buying a machine that can't run open operative systems...

but, where is the socket?

[pimpimpim]

I've been staring at the cached pics a bit, could find the chip,m but couldn't find the socket. Anyone else of you found it?

Re:but, where is the socket?

[pimpimpim]

Nevermind, found it here: http://mactree.sannet.ne.jp/~kodawarisan/imac_inte l/01141082.jpg

Yeech

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has moved on from the "Think Different" to the "We Just Don't Give A Shit Anymore" phase in the company's history.

The only reason to buy one of these Intel Macs is as something to sell on eBay a couple years from now as a novelty item. The number of people out there willing to pay the Apple tax on x86 hardware just for the 'privilege' of running OS X is tiny.

Apple should cut to the chase and just can the computer hardware and move on to where they are inevitably heading - trying to bundle OS X on x86 OEM systems.

Or just can it all and go with the booming iPod/iTMS stuff.

Re:Yeech

[nko321]

No way. Do you think they're really going to use "We Just Don't Give A Shit Anymore" for all their future branding?

I mean, it speaks to *me*, but I doubt it speaks to, say, my mom.

Re:Yeech

[vmardian]

So you are saying that customers that were willing to buy apple hardware when it was slow (ie: PowerBook) will no longer buy it when it's faster and can also run Windows (inevitble).

Re:Yeech

[Carthag]

TOTALLY! Just the idea of being albe to ruen windoze lol on my computarmac makes me so mad i am nevar goign to buy wonagain!!1 OLOLO

Re:Yeech

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah. That was a quite a lame attempt at, uh, saracasm? I guess...

Re:Yeech

[kfg]

"We Just Don't Give A Shit"

Can't use that. It's an AT&T trademark.

Although their tag was, "because we don't have to."

KFG

Coral Cache of the actual article

[m0RpHeus]

http://mactree.sannet.ne.jp.nyud.net:8090/~kodawar isan/imac_intel/imac_intel01.html

Re:Coral Cache of the actual article

[Jaruzel]

Are there any cache sites that are on port 80? My work proxy (and probably most other peoples) blocks web traffic that isn't on 80 or 443.

Thanks,

-Jar.

Re:Coral Cache of the actual article

[jrockway]

Maybe that's an oh-so-subtle hint that looking at the inside of an iMac is not what you're supposed to be doing at work?

Re:Coral Cache of the actual article

[Anonymous Coward]

My work proxy (and probably most other peoples) blocks web traffic that isn't on 80 or 443.

Dear Jaruzel,

Please put down the nerd porn and get back to work.

Sincerely,
Your Boss

Re:Coral Cache of the actual article

[rjung2k]

Maybe that's an oh-so-subtle hint that looking at the inside of an iMac is not what you're supposed to be doing at work?

But what if I'm an engineer at Dell?

Re:Coral Cache of the actual article

[technos]

But what if I'm an engineer at Dell?

Then the question becomes

"What the hell are you still doing at work? It's like midnight in New Delhi!"

Easy disassembly = cool

[standards]

In a way, the new iMac is like a laptop - you can pull it apart and replace components, but it isn't as if it was designed for home user disassembly (like an ATX beige box.)

On the flip side, there are Mac designs like the eMac, which require significant disassembly to upgrade the drives. And to upgrade the CPU, your only real choice is to overclock with your soldering iron. And you have to deal with the high voltage CRT.

I always liked internal Mac design, but older Macs, although somewhat elegant on the inside, were very difficult to upgrade. Sometimes you open up an old Mac and you go "woah, it is shocking that they made it so fancy on the inside of this computer". No wonder they sold the translucent iMacs. But that pretty inside was designed for ease of factory assembly, not for ease of upgrades.

Re:Easy disassembly = cool

[Neoprofin]

The easiest way to deal with the high voltage CRT is to just leave it unplugged for a couple of days. I work with litterally hundreds of CRTs a day and two days is more than enough time for any dangerous shock potential to dissipate fromt he capacitors.

That is assuming of course you can go without the system for two days. You could always do it in less and just be careful.

Re:Easy disassembly = cool

[Bazzalisk]

Agreed about the lovely internal designs. The inside of my Powermac G5 is truly a thing of Beauty - everything is easily accesible - there's plenty of room inside - it makes a huge change from old piece-assembled PC boxen that are so choked up with cables you can bareely reach anything.

Re:Easy disassembly = cool

[SlamMan]

I haven't check out the picks yet, but it looks like its designed like he first run G5 iMacs, where the entire thing is full of user installable parts. Three turns of a screwdriver, and you have easy access to every part in the thing.

Beats getting to any laptop I've ever had to work on

Re:Easy disassembly = cool

[ShyGuy91284]

Hah, you haven't seen an iBook then. Other then the battery and RAM, you apparently need to rip the whole thing apart to change anything else like a hardrive.

Re:Easy disassembly = cool

[jrockway]

AFAIK, these iMacs are sealed like the iSight G5 iMacs. We tried to open one, but all that's there is a slot for the memory. If you want to get to the real insides, fine, but the thing's not going back together.

Re:Easy disassembly = cool

[jred]

Our monitor guy at work does something w/ that suction cup looking thingy & a screwdriver to dissipate excess zap juice. Dunno what it is, or why it works, but allows him to work on monitors w/o waiting.

Re:Easy disassembly = cool

[technos]

That "suction cup thingy" is a cover for one side of the high voltage transformer. If the caps on the other side of the transformer are still retaining a charge, grounding it for a moment will do the trick and render the unit safer to work on.

The tech is probably doing what I used to do; Take the clip end of a resistive antistatic strap, clip it to a screwdriver. Slip cuff side tight over grounded metal workbench. With fingers well away from the blade of the screwdriver, slip it under the cup till you hear "POP!". Wait 20s, do it again. No pop, cool bones.

There are other capacitors in monitors other than the ones used for the high voltage supply to the CRT. Those still may contain dangerous voltages, even after you have discharged the one connected to the flyback transformer. But accidentally poking yourself on one of those looking for a dead component is not likely to kill you or permanently damage the monitor, so.

Warning follows:

I once powercycled a monitor I was testing and forgot to redischarge it before working on it again the same day. I woke up a few minutes later, five feet away, and the arm that held the slightly discolored screwdriver hurt like I had been attempting one armed pullups for the better part of the afternoon. If the unit had been live, I shudder to think.

Re:Easy disassembly = cool

[starman97]

Best to leave that strap attached, a big tube can re-acquire a charge after time.
Especially if it's been on for a long time before you shut it down.

Re:Easy disassembly = cool

[fermion]

I guess it is what you consider 'old macs'. The tiPB, as opposed to the AL models, did require the removal of the bottom cover, about 8 screws, to put in a hard disk or Airport card, while memory was under the keyboard. The Al models are much simpler to work with, though memory is now harder, but perhaps more secure.

On the desktop side, once we get past the classic design, upgrading, at least memory and hard disk and wireless, is much easier than most PC. On desktop machines like the Mac II and performas, the top just popped off. Memory slipped into clearly visible and accesible slots. Hard disk could be removed with just a few screws. No lifting out the disk holder, no calastenics. The early machines would not take a lot of extra stuff. On the tower G4 and G5, which dates back 6or 7 years, it is a simple matter of lifting a lever and the entire box is displayed. No need to remove a harddisk to put in memory, but again if one wants another CD drive one is screwed. It is important to remember that the Mac has a SCSI or Firewire port for external devices. The culture is more an applience that can be plugged into, rather than a box that can be added to.

The thing is machines like the eMac are made not to be easily taken apart, and are not expected to need to be upgraded. They are workhorses, like the old VT100. One big problem in schools is that if a machine is easy to get into, then your memory and HD often disapper. The G4 and G5 have a cable slot to lock the case, but many of the PCs do not.

Re:Easy disassembly = cool

[dal20402]

I always liked internal Mac design, but older Macs, although somewhat elegant on the inside, were very difficult to upgrade.

Understatement...

I still remember the afternoon (yes, afternoon) I spent upgrading the RAM on my PM 7100. The mobo was buried in the bottom of the case under a large number of non-easily-removable components. Eventually, I had to fully take apart the upper case (containing HD, floppy, CD-ROM and power supply) and have probably 30 pieces on the floor. Just to put two lousy 16MB SIMMs in.

And my next machine, a PM 8500, was not much better. Apple didn't get user upgradability religion, even for its pro machines, until very late in the game.

How come when I clicked on the article link

[netglen]

I got he Alien autopsy film?

HOW BOUT YOU DESOLDER YOUR HEAD OUT FROM YOUR ASS?

[Anonymous Coward]

You fucking karma whore!

Pics are nice, but what about battery life?

[dirtyhippie]

One of the things I loved about the G4 powerbook I briefly had was that it could do useful work for 5 hours on a routine basis. My wintel laptop knocks out after about 3-4 hours (and if I'm running my favorite Free OS where power management isn't a priority, I'm lucky to get half that much).

Going from the low power G4 with circa 6 hours of battery life to a dual core Intel, regardless of all the good reviews of the Duo, makes me nervous. Apple has also been consistently mum about battery life on these units.

Battery life is listed right on the front page of the powerbook page in the apple store - up to 5.5 hours. The MacBook page says nothing about battery life - nor does any other page I can find on apple's website.

I would probably spring for one of these guys if I knew battery life was comparable to the lowly G4 laptops apple sells - hell even if they told me it would only get 3-4 hours of battery life. But the fact that they omit battery life after raving so much about performance per watt leaves me wondering if folks who are ordering these puppies are going to be severely disappointed when they find their shiny new toy conks out after playing a full length movie.

Can someone with one of these beasts tell us how long the thing runs unplugged?

Re:Pics are nice, but what about battery life?

[avalys]

According to one of the Mac rumors sites, the battery life hasn't changed much on the MacBooks, but they don't have official figures yet.

Re:Pics are nice, but what about battery life?

[jcupitt65]

Someone (sorry, forgotten who) said they'd played with one at the show and if you moused over the battery thing the popup said "3:03 minutes".

Of course that could change for the final production models.

Re:Pics are nice, but what about battery life?

[freedom_surfer]

Yes...I'm glad I'm not alone. I searched all over the new MacBook site too. The fact I couldn't find anything was also scaring me. If your first responder was correct, 3 hours isn't too bad, but it does make you wonder about the performance per watt business. I've also been curious about the clockspeed. Intel performance at 1.83 ghz is like 3 years old. Have the improvements in memory and bus speed as well as this new architecture really made 1.83 ghz 'fast' again? Makes me think they are just providing lots of legroom for short step ghz improvements over the next few years to help make up for the wall they are hitting with Moore's law...hehe

Re:Pics are nice, but what about battery life?

[realmolo]

Actually, yeah, 1.83GHz is fast again.

The new cores are better than the Pentium 4 cores. Which is amusing, since they are basically tweaked Pentium 3 cores. And the Pentium 3 is basically a tweaked Pentium 2. And the Pentium 2 is a tweaked Pentium Pro.

When did the Pentium Pro come out? 1994 or so? It's amazing that a design that is 12 years old is still the best Intel can do. Either the Pentium Pro designers were brilliant, or the Pentium 4 designers were idiots. ;)

Re:Pics are nice, but what about battery life?

[Critical_]

I find your argument to be without merit. Somehow a mentality was set in that suggested to technophiles that for something to be great, it must be completely new. This would be predicated on the idea that somehow humans are perfect designers and can make no mistakes. The truth is that humans are not perfect and it takes a few revisions to get a products bugs worked out. It's a lot easier to make improvements to a basic design rather than start over. In terms of the Pentium Pro debate that keeps popping up, it seems like a non-issue. Better power utilization, better branch predictors, etc. etc. etc. have allowed the Pentium M to do what no other processor from Intel can do (I would argue that even AMD's mobile offering can't compete). Let's put your argument this way...

The Porsche 911 is a decades old design that is updated by Porsche every few years. The Porsche 911 Twin Turbo and 911 GT2 are arguably some of the best sports cars in the world. So are you going to tell me that a 911 is somehow worse off because its not all new from the ground up? Wrong. With your logic the new Ford Fusion is inherently better than any 911 design. Right... get real.

Re:Pics are nice, but what about battery life?

[MsGeek]

The reason why Intel is now playing games with chip names is that they found out something about the P4 round about 3GHz or so: the P4 can only scale in a limited way. PIII was a way more scalable chip design. And the folks at Intel's Israeli division who designed Pentium M/Core designed a chip which can do more per clock cycle than a P4 can.

A car with an engine that runs at more revolutions per minute than another car is not necessarily the faster car.

Re:Pics are nice, but what about battery life?

[freedom_surfer]

tis good news then...

Now I just need to see a few benchmarks from some independent people and go from there. I'm one of those windows hold outs because of games and because of x86 linux. Now that I should be able to run linux x86 on a Mac, and considering that the only two games I play now, World of Warcraft and Enemy Territory both play on OSX, I am officially done with Windows. Gosh, I hope that they release a intel compiled Enemy Territory soon as one running through Rosetta might be a little sluggish. (but I guess with x86 linux I can play Enemy Territory there...=P) I used to be so anti-mac. Lost so many hours of work at school to system lockups and the restart 13. My how they've come a long way....woot! Go MacTel.. =P

Re:Pics are nice, but what about battery life?

[milimetric]

actually, 1.8 ghz by itself is neither "fast" nor "slow". A processor's speed is not determined by ghz. It's determined much better by how many millions of instructions per second it can do, and under what conditions. It's tied in with compilers and what code they produce, and for what applications. So it's not as easy as GHz. This is a Pentium M. It's a new breed of chip, different than a Pentium 4. If you followed the reviews for the last year, you'd see that Pentium Ms on the desktop are KILLING the Pentium 4 in performance, where a P IV at 2.6 GHz is comparable to a Pentium M at 1.6 GHz. This is because of a shorter pipeline (that the instructions have to traverse to be completed) and a bigger cache (so more instructions can be closer to the processor when it wants to access them). Now, these are DUAL core 1.8 GHz, so you can bet your bottom dollar that if Apple optimized their stuff to run on two cores or if the chips just work with the software inherently somehow, they will absolutely be faster than any chip out there right now. BLAZING. Now, as far as 3 hours of battery life... that'd have to be qualified - under what load? If it's under normal load, that's kinda bad - the regular Pentium M does better than that. What I want to see is a small battery that lasts 10 hours.

Re:Pics are nice, but what about battery life?

[Criton]

No it's the radeon X1000/x800 making the thing fast OSX allways was demanding on video hardware if it had an intel GMA900 instead it would run like a slug. OSX uses whats called a PDF display a superset of postscript it's also rendered in opengl making use of oepngl textures for the UI effects. So ATI should rightfully get more credit for the performance then Intel.

Cache?

[BumpyCarrot]

Surely listing the cache right there in the article is just going to get coral's servers fragged as well?

Re:Cache?

[wild_berry]

I put the links to Coral's cache because I didn't know how many AppleSlash people would click through or how strong the original server is. Coral's s'posed to be tough...

May I please have more cooling rather than less?

[ianscot]

The G5 iMacs have also supposedly suffered from a rash of "bulging capacitor" and heat-related problems. The anecdotal stuff I've heard runs from thinking it's simple heat management to talk about power surges and so on... Kind of disturbing.

If we have to choose between quiet and cool -- and I'd rather not, but this design has a history -- I'll lean toward the machine that doesn't croak six months after I buy it. Better still, waiting six or nine months on this model in its new incarnation seems wise.

(Or the MacBook instead, but no guarantees there either...)

Zero-day Pimping

[wild_berry]

I'll just say it here: I'm sorry. I'm embarrassed by my foolishness in submitting the story... :S

OSX whats the big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

I study Operating Systems at a top CS school here in the United States - Rockhurst College in Kansas City. I don't understand why people go so ga-ga over OSX - it isn't even a pre-emptive multitasking OS, people!

That's so unbelievably lame! OSX aint the shit.

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[vmardian]

I don't know what pre-emptive multitasking is, but i like it because of the following reasons: Spotlight, Expose, Dashboard, software like iLife, no sign of any viruses or spyware, beautiful clean user interface.

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[oberondarksoul]

Mac OS X not pre-emptively multitasking? I think you're either misinformed, thinking of Mac OS 9 (the 'classic' Mac OS) or are just trolling. Mac OS X boasts pre-emptive multitasking just as other modern Unices do.

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[r_benchley]

Nice try dumbass, but OS X does have preemptive multitasking. OS 9 and earlier used cooperative multitasking, but OS X does implement preemptive multitasking. Go and troll somewhere else.

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/

Become less ignorant.

Or at least change majors.

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

>I study Operating Systems at a top CS school here in the United States

Obviously not a top school any longer

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[feijai]

Who marked this guy a troll? It was hillarious! I particularly loved the Rockhurst College bit.

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[MECC]

"it isn't even a pre-emptive multitasking OS, people!"

Actually, it is. Were you thinking of MacOS9, perhaps? Or, do you have a different definition of pre-emptive multitasking?

just curious...

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

I study Operating Systems at a top CS school here in the United States - Rockhurst College in Kansas City. I don't understand why people go so ga-ga over OSX - it isn't even a pre-emptive multitasking OS, people!

No, OS X, built on the Mach kernal, does have pre-emptive multi-tasking. Think of it as an evolutionary improvement over past versions of...

Oops! Sorry Kansas.

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

That's Kansas City, Missouri, smart boy.

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[juiceCake]

Indeed, OS X is a pre-emptive multitasking OS whereas previous Mac OS's are not. Back then, when they weren't (and nearly every other OS like Linux, Windows, Amiga was), pre-emptive multitasking "really wasn't that good" or "really wasn't needed", in fact, it was overrated and actually problematic. Strangely, the moment it was a feature of the Mac's OS it was suddenly a "great" feature!

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the name of the city across the river from it? Missouri City, Kansas? Stupid Americans.

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[gnasher719]

'' Nice try dumbass, but OS X does have preemptive multitasking. OS 9 and earlier used cooperative multitasking, but OS X does implement preemptive multitasking. Go and troll somewhere else. ''

Actually, even on MacOS 9 there was preemptive multitasking. The only problem was that everything that is now the "Classic" environment, including all MacOS 9 applications, was one single process, with cooperative multitasking being used to switch between the applications.

But any application could easily create separate threads that would run multithreaded. Unfortunately, no access to the user interface from preemptive threads. But things like an MP3 encoder could easily run in a thread using preemptive multitasking.

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[jasongetsdown]

Well, you seem to have outlined all the major headings at apple.com/macosx.

Seriously though, I'm a mac user, and I don't have much use for any of the iLife apps. I do love Spotlight though. Expose is nice, dashboard is cute, but spotlight is the real seller.

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[smithmc]

  I don't know what pre-emptive multitasking is

Um, I'm afraid we're gonna have to ask you to turn in your Slashdot ID...

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[theurge14]

It was a buzzword when Windows 95 attempted to have it, so you're excused! :)

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

They are both Kansas Cities, differentiated by the state.
Hope this helps!

Re:OSX whats the big deal

[feijai]

Let's not kid ourselves. OS 9 never had preemptive multitasking.

Late versions of OS 9 had a limited preemptive-ish thread model, but it was never a system-level thing, and the process level was never preemptive. Even if you agreed to go for a preemptive model in the threads you could still screw things up and take control, which rails against the very definition of "preemptive". You could still go crazy and steal all the cycles if you wanted. Background windows got a tiny sliver of time compared to the foreground window. Etc. Preemptive this is not. More importantly, OS 9 had zero memory protection.

There's also the "form" factor

[IAAP]

A lot of folks buy the Apples because they also look good. Most PC's look shitty; even the black ones.

Jobs, the brilliant marketer that he is, realizes that computers are appliances and accessories.

To be honest, OS X doesn't impress me - as a user. If I were in an artistic field, maybe my opinion would be different, but I can't see any reason to pay the Apple tax either.

My computers are tools. I make my purchasing decision just as if I were buying a cordless drill or something. Except with computers, I keep in mind that the technology will be obsolete in a year.

Re:There's also the "form" factor

[modmans2ndcoming]

as a developer, I find OS X to be very much worth the "apple tax"... but then again, if I bought a PC (I am over the putting machines together phase of my life, I have more important things to do) I would be purchasing one with the same specs as what ever mac I would buy, so the price is near enough that I am not hurting...and now that Apple has intel inside, the machines should get bumps every quarter or sooner when intel releases new versions of a chip line that Apple uses.

Re:There's also the "form" factor

[wootest]

As an owner of a PowerBook G4 1.5GHz (which amazingly is not only, predictably, obsolete at a year and three weeks, but was in fact more or less obsolete when it shipped; that the MacBook Pro is reportedly only 4-5x faster in benchmarks is surprising) I'll have to disagree.

I'm a programmer. OS X has some of the best tools I've ever used, and it gives me access to both tools I used before (most of the unixy goodness like the scripting languages and simple, focused command line tools) and now continue to use, and to some completely awesome new tools (Cocoa). This isn't me being a zealot (I'm presumably much more annoying when I'm a zealot), it's just facts.

It's true that lots of people who are 'in an artistic field' appreciate Macs too, because it's what they've been using all these years. But I, as a programmer, find that I write apps much easier and that the other tools in my toolbox are plenty and good. I like the industrial design (swap out with 'pwetty boxes' if you seriously think they're the same thing) as much as anyone, but aside from a fleeting fascination with it, it's not why I bought it - I bought it because of an awesome OS and some very good tools. And so far, I have not been let down.

Re:There's also the "form" factor

[prichardson]

Can your computer do what you want it to?

If so, it's not obsolete.

A powerbook G4 1.5Ghz is more than adequate for software development. Just because there's something better out there doesn't make your machine any less worthwhile. I have a 5 year old G4 tower running at 533mhz (x2) and I think it's just great. It plays WoW (graphics turned way down), it runs XCode, and I still have room to pop in more RAM if I want it. Yes, I'll probably upgrade at some point in 2006, but mostly for the sake of a few games I like to play.

Re:There's also the "form" factor

[wootest]

Can your computer do what you want it to? If so, it's not obsolete.

Yes, that was kind of my point, hence the reference to the parent.

Re:There's also the "form" factor

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, OS X doesn't impress me - as a user. If I were in an artistic field, maybe my opinion would be different, but I can't see any reason to pay the Apple tax either.

My computers are tools. I make my purchasing decision just as if I were buying a cordless drill or something. Except with computers, I keep in mind that the technology will be obsolete in a year.

So pleeeease tell me that you buy a P3 used or at auction for $20 and put Linux on it, and not a $500 Dell.

Re:There's also the "form" factor

[klubar]

I used to think that Macs looked good until I compared a recent G5 pro machine with the looks of a Dell Pro-equivalent. The G5 is huge-- the thing weighs about 40 lbs and has a footprint that is bigger than a suitcase. It's also pretty noisy. The Dell (an Optiplex in a small form factor case), is small, not unattractive and quiet.

Back when PC came in big ugly white tower boxes the Mac with its shinny metal case lookd attractive--now it just looks obsolete.

Re:There's also the "form" factor

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

To be honest, OS X doesn't impress me - as a user. If I were in an artistic field, maybe my opinion would be different, but I can't see any reason to pay the Apple tax either. My computers are tools. I make my purchasing decision just as if I were buying a cordless drill or something. Except with computers, I keep in mind that the technology will be obsolete in a year.

Really? I don't know anyone who is computer savvy and who has used OS X for any length of time that is not impressed by it. Some of the features are so obvious that after using one I'm astounded that every OS has not implemented them. I mean some of the features like Expose and Dashboard are really convenient once you get to use them, but no UI feature will be everyone's cup of tea. Other features, however, like system wide services and apps that are directories are just so obviously superior to everything that has come before that I can't see how anyone would doubt that they are the way things should be done. How could one argue that having features from one program (or independent of any program) that can be used by all other programs. It saves the hassle and overhead from multiple programs replicating the same functionality. It will be very difficult to convince me to downgrade to a system where you can't use your spellchecker in all applications. I'd never pay money to have my word processor be able to translate from German, but I'm happy to pay a few bucks to let my word processor, chat client, e-mail, web browser, terminal, and newsgroup reader do the same.

And applications as folders. I can e-mail or transfer via chat programs that actually work properly when they get to recipient. I can copy a program onto a flash drive or an ipod and it works just fine. I can back up programs without worrying about installers. I can look at the resources within a program and copy or edit them without any special tools. It's so simple it is obvious. The real question is, why can't all OSs do this?

The UI is great and more consistent, but more importantly for me is the multitasking. It actually works under high loads. I have a dozen applications running right now, and that is normal. Having one open does not cause all the others to crawl, as happens on Windows. Stability is great. My uptime on my laptop right now is 45 days, even though I carry it back an forth to work every day and used it to game at a LAN party last weekend. I reboot when I upgrade the kernel or major system components. I can run the vast majority of software designed for Linux, including X apps, as well as most mainstream software, since most things have a mac port. It saves me from having to maintain a separate Linux workstation. I run Windows in emulation in order to test a few things when I'm away from a test box.

I guess what I'm not seeing is how you consider another OS to be superior. Maybe if you need some specific, resource intensive application that only runs on Windows, you're stuck. But in general OS X is simply the best workstation OS I have ever used. I'd also question your comments about it being an OS for artists. I work at a firm that creates network security devices. We have a lot of engineers and a handful of well respected security experts. Guess what OS most of them run? OS X is pretty prominent in a lot of fields, especially computers, sciences, arts, news, publishing, video production, etc. The areas it is not popular are home users (MS monopoly on pre-installs), office work (too expensive in the short term), and fields with specific, locked-in applications (like CAD).

With the new, intel based machines now being released I'm looking at consolidating three workstations into one. I don't know any other system that will let me do this, especially given that the performance hit for running Windows and Linux as virtual machines will be relatively small. I like having a screwdriver and a good knife and a good pair of pliers in my workshop. On my belt, however, I carry a multi-tool that combines all of these and more. I only carry one laptop. Guess which one it is and will be for the foreseeable future?

Re:There's also the "form" factor

[prichardson]

Ahhh, sorry.

The parent was (and still is) below my threshold.

[condescending]In the future, please quote statements like that from people who have no hope of getting modded up.[/condescending]

Re:There's also the "form" factor

[Anonymous Coward]

Shrug. I'm not sure what the grandparent poster thought about macs, but after using one for a bit I can say I've generally found it interesting but it makes me homesick for linux.

One annoyance of OSX is that it is oriented towards a single-user running local (cocoa) programs, rather than a multiuser system. For example, suppose I want to check my mail. On linux, I have kmail set up on my home computer. If I'm at work, I can ssh back and run kmail remotely via X. Cocoa programs are local, so I'd have to use ... VNC, maybe? And that wouldn't work if someone else was using the computer at the same time.

Another annoyance is the idea of tiered sales. With linux, you generally get unencumbered software. With OSX, I understand you get a client to browse windows file shares - but not the server. With OSX server, you get a client and a server - but have a limited number of clients who can connect at once. Only with OSX server (more expensive version) do you get software that isn't intentionally hobbled. On linux, you usually just get Samba with the distribution - noone's trying to limit you. I understand you can download and compile Samba on OSX - but then you don't get the pretty control panel and integrated browsing. It's no simpler than running it on Linux.

It seems to be a lot easier to find Open Source software for linux (or X11) than for native OSX. OpenOffice and Gimp both require X11, so they are no slicker or integrate better than they would on Linux or BSD. Plus, since they are generally developed on linux, it's easier to work out the library dependencies. Also, many of the utilities (eg. compression, image viewers) that have historically been "shareware" on Mac/Windows are Free Software on Linux. Of the three OSX ports listed for Gimp, for example, one wanted to charge users...when all he did was compile the software someone else wrote. It's allowed by the license, but still...it seems rude.

I'll admit I haven't looked very deeply at Cocoa & XCode...I've been using Borland C++Builder / Kylix / Visual Basic too much, and I've gotten used to a certain standard of RAD development and help from the IDE. I'm interested in code for numerical calculations, so I'm mostly interested in not wasting my time learning a user interface library in depth. The book I picked up on Cocoa used Objective C for all its examples, and I haven't sat down to learn the language well enough to compare it properly. I was left with the impression that it was better than Qt/GTK/wxWindows, but still had a steeper learning curve than the RAD IDEs. And would it really have hurt them to make Cocoa network-transparent, or have a compatibility library for porting to Linux? (eg. if I can write for Linux and make portable programs that can still run on OSX, why write non-portable code for OSX?)

Another development related question (which I don't know the answer to) - is there a component model system for OSX, similar to COM/DCOM or Corba? That seems to be how Windows intended to implement reusable components (like a spellchecker for all applications - easy to do if you can count on Office being installed), and the idea is severly underused in Linux. (Last I checked, the documentation on ORBit was "we don't have any - read the source code to figure out what to do")

I guess, in the end, OSX just ends up feeling a bit too proprietary, and the limitations are not ones I can readily accept. Sure, features like Expose are cool - but if it weren't there, I could still use Alt-Tab or click on the Launcher. If network transparency isn't there, there is no suitable substitute.

Re:There's also the "form" factor

[TobyWong]

I've got a G5 dualie and a brand new optiplex here, I use them both on a daily basis. The G5 is a little bigger but also much more rugged and sturdy. I can't say I've noticed the G5 to be any louder. The dell is quite ugly however with stickers all over the place and a chinsy plastic look to it.

Re:There's also the "form" factor

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

One annoyance of OSX is that it is oriented towards a single-user running local (cocoa) programs, rather than a multiuser system.

The non-server version is certainly geared towards one or few local users, but what I think you're talking about here is multiple, remote users. You're right that it is not geared towards this and assumes you will use a real client server model for remote uses. Still X11 works remotely just as well as on Linux, so at worst you are forced to use the same subset of programs as on Linux. I'm not sure how this is any worse than Linux.

Another annoyance is the idea of tiered sales. With linux, you generally get unencumbered software. With OSX, I understand you get a client to browse windows file shares - but not the server.

Again, this is only true for software that is not available for Linux. As you even mention you can always just install and run Samba or whatever yourself.

It seems to be a lot easier to find Open Source software for linux (or X11) than for native OSX.

I don't know of much open source software that you might run on Linux that you can't find a OS X port of. Everything I use I found a version of for OS X. Conversely, however, I don't find a lot of of the closed source shareware/payware that is available OS X on Linux. Companies like Adobe, Macromedia, MS, etc. have ports of almost everything for the mac, but little for Linux. I also find the body of OS X only open source freeware to be useful. I can't count the number of times I've wanted some functionality only to have Google hand me a nice, polished little app that does just that.

I'm not the person to answer your questions for development on OS X (I played a little but don't have the time to code non-work things). Obviously there is some sort of model for re-using code since so many things offer system services that do run in any application, regardless of whether or not the originating application is running. I haven't seen real, working examples of this type of thing anywhere in Windows or Linux (although I really wish it would take hold).

I guess, in the end, OSX just ends up feeling a bit too proprietary, and the limitations are not ones I can readily accept. Sure, features like Expose are cool - but if it weren't there, I could still use Alt-Tab or click on the Launcher. If network transparency isn't there, there is no suitable substitute.

I guess I know how you feel. I need certain applications that just aren't on Linux. I have a hard time living without translation services in my publishing application and e-mail and without a pile of text manipulation scripts I apply everywhere. The problem is, on Linux I have to copy and paste between formats to apply them. I can use VNC for the rare instances I need a remote GUI on my machine and SSH the rest of the time. What is important is your way of working and what it is you need.

The original point I was trying to make, however, is how so many things on OS X are superior and how working on other systems often feels like a downgrade. All of the points I made in my original post stand. OS X is superior in those ways. It is inferior in its ability to display applications over a network, but never in a way that has restricted me. I hope if you stick with Linux, some day it manages to copy applications as folders, services, and the other features I mentioned. Good luck.

Re:There's also the "form" factor

[HuguesT]

No offense, but you need to compare OS/X with more recent systems.

> I mean some of the features like Expose and Dashboard are really convenient once you
> get to use them

Only compared to using nothing to organize your windows. I use desktop manager for keeping my various apps organized by default. I hardly ever used Exposé as result.

> system wide services

Very few applications provide services (in the application's menu). To make applications interact, windows' COM is actually superior.

> How could one argue that having features from one program (or independent of any program)
> that can be used by all other programs. It saves the hassle and overhead from multiple
> programs replicating the same functionality.

This is exactly what Microsoft COM does, and like I said it's more powerful than Apple services. You can integrate application components into your own, like for example an Excel spreadsheet into your own accounting software, whatever.

> apps that are directories

Superior to the windows' way of installing anywhere and modifying the registry, but not as good as something like stow IMHO. Anyway, this is a 1990 NeXTStep feature.

> It will be very difficult to convince me to downgrade to a system where you can't use
> your spellchecker in all applications

System spellchecking is great, but it's not enabled for all applications under OS/X, only certain Cocoa apps. Firefox doesn't have the system spellchecking at all for example. Word comes with its own spellchecker (incompatible with the system's). None of the Adobe apps, all built with Carbon, have system spellchecking.

> I can copy a program onto a flash drive or an ipod and it works just fine. I can back up
> programs without worrying about installers.

For some apps yes, for others, no. Usually the large applications require an installer.

> The UI is great and more consistent,

Between Cocoa (white and brushmetal), Carbon and X apps, I tend to disagree.

> but more importantly for me is the multitasking. It actually works under high loads.
> I have a dozen applications running right now, and that is normal.

Windows since 2k has no problem with this. Under Linux I typically run 2-3 users at once, 10-20 apps each with no problem, and Linux is faster and much better than OS/X at memory management.

> My uptime on my laptop right now is 45 days,
> even though I carry it back an forth to work every day and
> used it to game at a LAN party last weekend.

This is true that I love this aspect about my iBook.

> I can run the vast majority of software designed for Linux, including X apps,
> as well as most mainstream software, since most things have a mac port.

Have you tried OpenOffice 2.0 on Mac yet? It's pretty terrible, whereas it works great on Linux and Windows. The truth is the Mac port of F/OSS is usually behind and of lesser quality than what is found under linux. Moreover Apple's X11 server is slow and poorly integrated.

> I guess what I'm not seeing is how you consider another OS to be superior.

For me, I don't much like Windows, but it is unmatched for games. Games suck on OS/X, they are usually older and more expensive, except for a few. For file and compute servers, I like Linux, especially on 64-bit machines. OS/X is not 64-bit despite what Apple pretends, and Linux is much more efficient on the same hardware (see Berkeley link above).

I like my little iBook - OS/X, but I'd love it more if I could have a decent CPU in it and if OS/X were more efficient.

> Maybe if you need some specific, resource intensive application that only runs on
> Windows, you're stuck.

It's all a matter of compromises. Mac + OS/X is a good platform but not perfect. It

Re:There's also the "form" factor

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Only compared to using nothing to organize your windows. I use desktop manager for keeping my various apps organized by default. I hardly ever used Exposé as result.

Perhaps you misunderstood me. Different people like different GUI features. I did not even bother installing a virtual desktop client on my latest machine. A lot of "UNIX guys" are still using them, but for me expose is easier. The statement I made was that it is nice to have choices.

Very few applications provide services (in the application's menu). To make applications interact, windows' COM is actually superior.

You just keep telling yourself that. In the mean time I use the same spelling checker in my browser and my professional layout applications. I have a grammar checker in my chat client, and I have the same text transformation scripts everywhere. I use both a Windows box and an OS X box. One gives me this functionality. One does not. Gee, which is better?

This is exactly what Microsoft COM does, and like I said it's more powerful than Apple services. You can integrate application components into your own, like for example an Excel spreadsheet into your own accounting software, whatever.

That is not quite the same thing. On Windows where do I put the service that lets the majority of my applications translate German to English? On OS X it is ~/Library/Services. On Windows I've seen no generic functionality like this. Every application has to specifically tie into every other, rather than allowing generic services to be offered for all text or all images. Expecting all developers to collaborate with each other is ridiculous.

Superior to the windows' way of installing anywhere and modifying the registry, but not as good as something like stow IMHO. Anyway, this is a 1990 NeXTStep feature.

Gee, with stow I can run a separate program that manages applications, installs, uninstalls, and backs them up. Or I can just drag applications where I want them to install, uninstall, or back up. I'm going to go with the latter option. Especially given the extra ability to keep applications contained, the lack of worrying about dependencies, and the ability to easily access the resources within an application. Sure this is old Next technology, but they did it right. If only Linux developers would see the light and adopt GNUStep.

System spellchecking is great, but it's not enabled for all applications under OS/X, only certain Cocoa apps. Firefox doesn't have the system spellchecking at all for example. Word comes with its own spellchecker (incompatible with the system's). None of the Adobe apps, all built with Carbon, have system spellchecking.

You're somewhat mistaken. It works for all applications that use the default handling routines for that type of data. Some Carbon apps can access the spell checking just fine, for example. You're right in that some application cannot, like Word and java apps. You're also wrong about Adobe applications. It works in Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator at the minimum. Firefox's lack of text services is one reason I avoid it. You're right about me overstating the case though. Services work in most applications, but do not work in some old applications, ports, and runtime environment applications.

For some apps yes, for others, no. Usually the large applications require an installer.

MS Office does not. No it is not large apps, it is apps that want to modify the kernel or subsystem. Also a few apps from developers that can't wrap their brains around OS X and thus include an unneeded installer. Beware of apps that do run an installer. They are usually messy apps that don't follow the appropriate guidelines and may contain call-home features. It is what tipped me off to the fact that some Adobe apps try to randomly contact a foreign web server for no particular reason.

Between Cocoa (white and brushmetal), Carbon and X apps, I tend to disagree.

Where are the preferences

I heard macs are for attention whore fags

[Anonymous Coward]

with more money than brains.[br]Confirm/Deny?

Re:I heard macs are for attention whore fags

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back to trolling whatever PHPBB you normally ruin.

Diagnostic Lights?

[NardofDoom]

The original iMac G5 had a series of diagnostic lights inside that showed possible problems. Does this one have that?

Re:Diagnostic Lights?

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Considering these are PC notebook components, I doubt Apple went to any trouble to break the mold. If your PC notebook has diagnostic lights, then this one will, but it isn't in Intel's specs to have diagnostic lights with their chipset. Remember, Apple is abandoning their proprietary innovation by going with Intel so they can offer cheap PC OEM equipement in an expensive fancy package, they are not really IMPROVING PC technology.

Re:Diagnostic Lights?

[Dan Ost]

They may not be improving PC technology, but by improving the packaging, they are improving the PC.

Counts for something.

Re:Diagnostic Lights?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... since TypeR stickers make cars go faster and all... Form over function... don't believe the hype. I like a decent looking computer as much as the next guy but looking good doesn't mean that I get more work done or that my work takes less time to finish.

Re:Diagnostic Lights?

[grumio]

According to the service manual, no diagnostic LEDs on the motherboard.

Re:Diagnostic Lights?

[toddestan]

Remember, Apple is abandoning their proprietary innovation by going with Intel so they can offer cheap PC OEM equipement in an expensive fancy package, they are not really IMPROVING PC technology.

Did you even look at the pictures? The insides of the Intel iMac looks just like the later G5 iMacs - basically a bunch of custom, propriety, Apple hardware in a custom, propriety Apple case with a few standard bits thrown in, such as the standard SATA harddrive. I really wasn't anything else either.

Whether or not this is better than standard parts is another issue entirely.

Inner beauty

[Winterblink]

Anyone got a side-by-side comparison between this and the G5 iMac innards? This new one's definitely lacking in the interior design department. I mean I know it's basically a PC now, but...

Anyway, maybe it's a nitpicky point, but just something that occurred to me when I saw the pictures.

Re:Inner beauty

[zbrimhall]

This new one's definitely lacking in the interior design department.

Actually, its pretty much the same as the iMac G5 w/iSight. Granted, the iMac G5 before that looked a bit neater on the inside, but I hardly see how that matters, since the machine is not meant to be user-serviceable.

See for yourself.

Re:Inner beauty

[Winterblink]

Actually that's not entirely accurate. The intent of the iMac G5's interior design was to allow the user to upgrade any part of the hardware, from the RAM to the screen if necessary.

All Wrong

[senocular]

Need input!

Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I study Operating Systems at a top CS school here in the United States - Rockhurst College in Kansas City. I don't understand why people go so ga-ga over OSX - it isn't even a pre-emptive multitasking OS, people!

I guess the top schools aren't taking very many bright students these days, sigh. OSX is absolutely a preemtive multitasking OS. It's built atop the Mach kernel which is preemptive.

Perhaps you're thinking of MacOS 9 and below which were cooperative. Either way, get your facts straight, esp if you're gonna start your post all puffy chested.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rockhurst College in Kansas City? Never heard of it. Been doing engineering and computer science since 1970.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even OS 9 had pre-emptive multitasking (Multiprocessing services - MPTasks), though it wasn't integrated throughout the OS. It was up to the individual applications to use it, and was only useful for complute bound tasks (ie. you were't going to move part of your UI to another thread).

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a Jesuit school, and is about as much of a "top CS school" as Eastern Michigan University is. It's obvious that they think that beliving the received dogma is more important than understanding reality.

Re:Say what?

[theurge14]

Top Jesuit CS school maybe...

OSX isn't pre-emptive? Wow. Tell you what, I've got a WinME CD I'll sell you for $300 bucks, it's a steal.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

So its almost as if they had to cooperate to use it! Good old cooperative pre-emptive multitasking

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your information is a mere six years out of date... What is the matter with Kansas?

Which Intel CPU is it, exactly?

[tinrobot]

The words "Intel Dual Core" tell me it's probably a Pentium D of some sort. But, is it just a commercial chip or are the chips made specially for Apple with additional doodads? How fast is it?

Re:Which Intel CPU is it, exactly?

[Venlaw]

http://www.apple.com/imac/intelcoreduo.html It's a Core Duo "Yonah". Prety sure.

Re:Which Intel CPU is it, exactly?

[thesman]

Its the Intel Core Duo, also known as Yonah.

Its not Apple exclusive.

Can't tell you about the speed because I don't have one (yet :-)).

Re:Which Intel CPU is it, exactly?

[TERdON]

No, it's not a Pentium D [insert joke about molten computer here].

It's a Core Duo, also code-named Yonah, the successor of the current Pentium M. Basically, a chip developed specifically for laptops. It still works well in desktops as well...

Re:Which Intel CPU is it, exactly?

[wild_berry]

It uses the new Core Duo processor, which is the product name of the Yonah chip. This is a tweaked Pentium M, puts two their cores on one piece of silicon. They say each core is comparable to an Athlon64 -- but they only have 32-bit x86 capabilities (albeit with the SSE3 instructions).

Re:Which Intel CPU is it, exactly?

[Criton]

Equivlent to an athlon 64 highly doubtful even both cores would not be equal to one AMD 64 for most tasks the duals might be faster for highly multi threaded applications but these are an exception not the rule.
The cores are equivilent to an AMD XP or Pentium Norwood since they are 32bit.

mod 0p

[Anonymous Coward]

don't want to feel Series of internal the same operation go find something in any way related your own towel in *BSD Is dying It is sling, return it to Kreskin

Ars, are you looking?

[numbski]

If you are, could you check something for me?

Will these things come up in target disk mode? Can you boot from a firewire device?

People seem to mod me down for this, but it is critically important to me to know whether or not I can still do ye olde CCC, keep a dmg around, and restore as needed. :\

Re:Ars, are you looking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you joking?

Apple's Intel hardware is rapidly racing to the bottom like the rest of the crap in the x86 OEM world. Anything that made a Mac worth its price are either gone or soon to be gone.

IBM giving Apple the boot over the mobile 970 design effectively killed the Mac as we know it.

Re:Ars, are you looking?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Intel-based Macintosh CPUs in Target Disk Mode will only mount on PPC machines running MacOS X 10.4 or later, and may show one contiguous partition rather than separate partitions on the host machine."

Re:Ars, are you looking?

[DECS]

Several MacWorld demo people assured me that the new Intel Macs do in fact, support both option-boot startup and firewire target mode. They were apparently trained to not allow users to restart the prototype Macs however.

The MacWorld article cited nearby is nearly information free on the subject. It says "features such as the Open Firmware password remain under EFI, [as well as TDM, etc]" which is a poor way of saying Apple migrated features common to OF Macs to EFI.

Restated: Apple's implementation of EFI is customized. Intel's standard EFI does not include firewire target disk mode.

I'm actually kinda disappointed that Apple didn't go further. Option-Booting could have been extended to a really fancy boot manager with a utility partition that allowed you to do such things as repair installed disks, or offer a USB target disk mode, or even better, a network disk mode, that turns your Mac into an instant Bonjour, GigE, embedded file server, even wirelessly. That would be a handy enabling technology!

Re:Ars, are you looking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah. I rebooted a macbook twice (in verbose startup mode). Course I also had a group of people with me crowding around it so the dude couldn't see.

Wow, three Mac/Apple stories in a row today

[oDDmON oUT]

Does that set any kind of /. record?

Not that I'm complaining, after all Apple is worth more than Dell (in more ways than one) at this point.

Intel Motherboard

[texspeed]

If, as has been reported, the new Intel-based Macs are based on an Intel motherboard, it is not too surprising that the processor would be placed in a socket. However, the initial post is at least partly incorrect in that many prior Macintosh systems had socketed processors, hence the existence of an upgrade market, maybe just not the recent iMacs.

iMac battery life

[kfg]

Can someone with one of these beasts tell us how long the thing runs unplugged?

Couple of nanoseconds.

KFG

Free development tools.....

[IAAP]

I have to admit, regarding development, if I had to consider the cost of development tools in with the cost of the machine, Apple might just squeak by as being lower in total cost. MS charges waaaayyy to fucking much for their tools!

Which is interesting, I'm currently in a startup phase of an endeavor and that may be something to consider. So far though, I've been concentrating on OSS solutions and with Apples BSD base and GUI, this may be an option....Hmmmmm...

Re:Free development tools.....

[wootest]

Take my word for it - if you're doing GUI app development, Mac OS X in general and Cocoa in particular is where it's at. Cocoa is like a proven, tested .NET-like framework, and it has matured to the point that some of the stuff it can do for you really is unprecedented anywhere else. Look up Core Data and Cocoa Bindings in specific.

I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

I just got a 20 inch Dual Core iMac yesterday. Screen is a monster. The mac, for everything except games (cal of duty, battlefield, etc) is DEAD QUIET. I can't hear ANYTHING. I love it.

\ Dual Core 2 ghz iMac is do damn fast it's not funny. Editing home movies while 10 apps run in background is nothing short of a delight. I'll exit fanboy mode now, but if you are thinking of Dual Core, go for it.

What about buying a powerpc mac now?

[Gyorg_Lavode]

I would dearly love a mac. And w/ the Intel ones coming out, the powerpc macs are heavily discounted. But I don't want a mac if the software for it is going to disappear within the next 3 years. Anyone have a feeling on what the lifespan of powerpc macs is now? Even a brand new G5?

Re:What about buying a powerpc mac now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your best choice is a Quad, great price for killer performance and PPC software will still be around for at least 5-7 years with universal binaries. Also the PPC Mac's don't have that damm DRM chip locking future software, music etc to hardware. Do get the 7800 card and a RaptorX as a boot drive. Do get AppleCare and get a Playstation 3 to game on.

Re:What about buying a powerpc mac now?

[Jay Random the Other]

The PowerPC Macs are not heavily discounted, at least not by Apple. In fact, they're not discounted at all. At this moment, you can buy an iMac G5 from the Apple Store online for exactly the same price as an iMac Core Duo. Unless you already have a significant investment in PowerPC software, you might as well just buy an Intel Mac and save yourself the worry.

In practice, a PowerPC Mac is likely to last just as long as if the Intel Macs had not been introduced. Software vendors will go on supplying universal binaries at least until Intel Macs have a significantly bigger installed base than PowerPC Macs. According to Apple's plans, the G5 towers will be the last machines replaced by Intel models. The media pros who are the biggest buyers of Power Macs are also the biggest buyers of high-priced software. I will be extremely surprised if any major vendor leaves them in the lurch before 2010.

Re:What about buying a powerpc mac now?

[Dethpickle]

I just picked up a iMac G5 20" Display 2.0 GHz, 512mb, 250GB HD, SuperDrive, BT, AE, Wireless Mouse & Keyboard. Price: $899 from the my university bookstore.

I thought that was a decent deal - yeah, its the pre-iSight one.

Looks a real mutha to clean

[ettlz]

That looks like some disassembly is required to clean dust from the heatsink and fan. Even my notebook only needs one panel removed and I can blow it out; I do wish designers would pay more attention to this. Dust settles — even in Macs.

Re:Looks a real mutha to clean

[Anonymous Coward]

Dust? In a Mac? No way. All Macs live in wide open studios with spotlights and polished wooden floors, usually converted out of disused warehouses, with glass coffee tables, stainless steel accessories, modern kitchens, plenty of natural lighting, and an assortment of white, black and asian looking artisans, usually wearing trendy thick-rimmed glasses and turtle necks in primary colours. Macs never get dusty.

Apple lovers are gay. proof inside

[Anonymous Coward]

1. More and more number of people are accepting that they are gay.
2. Apple is posting better results every quarter.
3. iPod is selling better and better..

Thus we can conclude that Apple lovers are gay.

Supports Apple Boot Features

[Anonymous Coward]

MacWorld covered many of these questions.

See http://www.macworld.com/2006/01/features/intelfaq2 006/index.php

(particularly the bottom of the page "Does this mean that Open Firmware is dead?")

According to a College ranking

[feranick]

A Community College close to where I live claims it's an ivy league...

Re:According to a College ranking

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think poison ivy counts .......

Faked?

[pvera]

I am sorry, but as a long time victim of the iMac G5 series, I have to question these pictures.

Background:

I have one personal iMac G5 20", and five work iMac G5 20"s all within the serial number range affected by bad capacitors and bad power supplies. A coworker also has a personal iMac G50 20" within the affected range.

Out of these seven machines, three have already killed one motherboard and a power supply. Two of these machines have burned at least two motherboards.

So yeah, I have a damn good idea of what the innards of an iMac G5 20" looks like. Because of this I am having a hard time coming to terms with these pictures. They look shoddy as hell, like they are pictures of a pre-production mule or mockup. Tear open any Apple product from the last 5 years and you will notice the fanatical attention to detail in the way the hardware components are laid out. They are very clean and pretty. The iMac G5 20" is extremely well laid up, everything is tucked in, there are no lose wires, and there is basically no space left unused.

Either these pics are a PS job, or somebody leaked pictures from older test mules. There is no way in hell that Apple is going to sell something that looks so messy.

Re:Faked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Compare to the latest revision iMac G5 that was released this past fall. Nub.

Re:Faked?

[wvitXpert]

Nope, not fake. This is the way iMacs have looked since they added the iSight. I'm disapointed (mainly because it is supposedly VERY difficult to open the machine up), but that didn't stop me from ordering one anyway.

Re:Faked?

[Anonymous Coward]

They look exacly like the isight G5 iMacs. someone posted a link further up with pictures of all iMacs for comparison

Re:Faked?

[bjornte]

Well, Intel presumably have had 1000 people working on the new Macs the last 6 months. Is it possible that in order to meet the insane deadlines, that Jobs gave specs to Intel personnel, that then were in charge of the actual hardware layout?

Re:Faked?

[rabidlemur]

If you have an iMac with bad caps, the you have the first or second gen design. The iSight model is ugly as all hell, with em shield, ie foil, and other nasty bits. The intel iMacs look almost the same as the G5 isights inside.

Re:Faked?

[baryon351]

Either these pics are a PS job, or somebody leaked pictures from older test mules. There is no way in hell that Apple is going to sell something that looks so messy.

They look almost identical inside to the previous generation G5 iMac. 90% of it's the same machine, the only difference is the layout of components on the motherboard, with the case, frame, fans, drives and power boards all in exactly the same place in the 17" and 20" Intel iMacs as in the previous generation g5 iMac. EXACTLY.

Re:Faked?

[Anonymous Coward]

> So yeah, I have a damn good idea of what the innards of an iMac G5 20" looks like.

Obviously you don't have any idea whatsoever. I have an iMac G5 too, and it looks exactly like the one in the article. You aren't making stuff up are you? perhaps your post is a fake...

Re:Faked?

[grumio]

I don't believe these internal photos are faked. While I haven't opened one of the new machines myself, I've seen the service manuals, and it matches the photos posted at kodawarisan. Very ugly though.

Not likely

[Zebra_X]

Intel chips are designed to be socket mounted, and not surface mounted. Intel would probably not not change the package type for such a small quantity of chips.

Macs have a long history of addin CPU cards, and clock modifying chips. I'm sure that upgrades will be available. However in recent years there have been major breaking changes (FSB speeds, Dual Core, x64) between lines of chips every year or so. So, to upgrade to the latest and greatest might require a new motherboard anyway.

Only time will tell

Will OS X 10.4 still work on PowerBooks?

[ShyGuy91284]

I've heard from the previous transition software was still designed for non-PPC processors for a while. But what about OS X? How many revisions went by until the old Motorolla chip was not supported by new releases of the OS, or was it immediately dropped? I know current OS X supports pretty early PPC processors, but I'm not sure about Moto. ones.

Intel chipsets used

[daveschroeder]

It's interesting to note that the new iMacs are using a standard Intel 945 Series chipset, and an Intel 82801GBM southbridge, as well as other standard Intel chipsets and features:

Other interesting hardware features can be discovered by browsing the output of system_profiler, kextstat, and ioreg .

Of note:

- Full 802.11a support is present, though unadvertised, as well as 802.11b/g
- Intel High Definition Audio is used
- the iMac's optical drive does have dual layer support, unlike the ultra slimline 9mm drive used in the MacBook Pro
- the iSight is USB
- a TPM entry is present in ioreg
- com.apple.Dont_Steal_Mac_OS_X is an active kernel extension

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[samkass]

I don't have any mod points, but someone mod the parent up since it's the only one in this thread that has actual data.

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[xtracto]

haha
How does a bunch for fanboist comments can be actual data?
read again:

I just got a 20 inch Dual Core iMac yesterday. Screen is a monster. The mac, for everything except games (cal of duty, battlefield, etc) is DEAD QUIET. I can't hear ANYTHING. I love it.

\ Dual Core 2 ghz iMac is do damn fast it's not funny. Editing home movies while 10 apps run in background is nothing short of a delight. I'll exit fanboy mode now, but if you are thinking of Dual Core, go for it.


OMG iMac RULEZ!!!! its teh leet!!1!1

I just got a 20 inch Dual Core iMac yesterday. Screen looks very small. The mac, for everything is FUCKING NOISY. I can't hear ANYTHING besides the computer. I hate it.

\ Dual Core 2 ghz iMac is do damn slow it's not funny. Editing something while 2 apps run in background is nothing short of a dream. I'll exit troll mode now, but if you are thinking of Dual Core, do not go for it.

I know, I will be model troll or whatever, I have karma to burn but, really, really, think again in the point I am rising here... how is that considered "actual Data".

Re:May I please have more cooling rather than less

[cygnus]

as far as i understood, this problem had a lot to do with an epidemic of bad capacitors in the industry and not anything having to do with the iMac design itself.

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[simonecaldana]

How does a bunch for fanboist comments can be actual data

you must be new here...

Yes but...

[ArAgost]

...does it run lin- er, winblows?

Trusted Platform Module

[hfollmann]

On one of the pictures you can see a Infinion-TPM module. Is that activated on the Mac?

Re:Trusted Platform Module

[Kombinat]

I read somewhere else its activated and can't be switched off. Thank you Apple!
Sources: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/68398 (in German, sorry)

Re:Trusted Platform Module

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's stuck activated I'll just stay with linux/windows X86 machines and save about $800 and still have a faster box. Besides it'll get cracked in a month or two so why do something so stupid and turn people off. Will they ever learn if you treat people like pirates they will become pirates just to stick it to you.

Try Mirrordot

[gkhan1]

Mirrordot provides a neat mirror to slashdot stories.

http://mirrordot.org/stories/9c3bd659da6c792dabde3 b7902c92e93/index.html

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole article is just Apple fanboi crap without substance anyway, how is discussion of battery life offtopic?

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole article is just Apple fanboi crap without substance anyway, how is discussion of battery life offtopic?

That would be because the article is about the new iMac, not about the new Macbook Pro.

Informative??

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking bullshit more like.

A soldering iron and a 'little skill'?

To desolder a BPGA chip and put another one in it's place?

Only if you're Tom Thumb!

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the UI any snappier than the PPC macs? I was a bit miffed at the UI response when I bought my powermac.

Re:Will OS X 10.4 still work on PowerBooks?

[CottonEyedJoe]

I think you are asking about 68k macs (pre PowerPC). If so, IIRC, the newest system that will work on a 68k mac is 8.5 or 8.6. Keep in mind PPC's came out around 7.1.x and Apple continued to make the OS compatible with 68k macs for 4 or 5 years after the PPC's were introduced. Long enough that any 68k machines were good and obsolete. The newest 68k mac is now over 10 years old.

Probably 99% of mac Owners are using PPC machines. I wouldnt expect them to dump PPC support any time soon. Steve Job's old company NeXT continued to make versions of OpenStep for black (NeXT) hardware long after they stopped making the boxes.

However, Apple has little qualms about releasing Apps and features that require new(er) hardware. If youre running OSX on a G3 you'll find some of the newer features and apps are not practically useful or are unavailable (iChat Video conferencing is a good example). That said, so long as you have sufficient RAM (512 MB +) OSX 10.4.4 is perfectly useful on a 300 MHz G3.

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, I will be model troll or whatever, I have karma to burn but, really, really, think again in the point I am rising here... how is that considered "actual Data".

It's called anecdotal evidence. Just because it isn't numerical data doesn't make it an invalid data point, either. Fanboy or not, he's relating actual experience, which is more than most posts in this article have done.

What does your post contribute to the discussion?

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[markholmberg]

Really stupid question, can you really get Battlefield and COD on Macintosh? I did not there were Macintosh versions available? Only thing stopping me from changing to Apple has been the games...

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Jinjuku]

Well... how about the statment "except games (cal of duty, battlefield, etc) is DEAD QUIET. I can't hear ANYTHING."

I don't think this is opinion here, Some one wanted to know if it was loud with 3 fans or not. Someone answered w/ what I would consider a fact.

Re:Will OS X 10.4 still work on PowerBooks?

[ShyGuy91284]

Well that's good to hear. I got an iBook at the beginning of this academic year (couldn't wait for x86 based ones), and I would like to keep it up to date long enough to get me through a few more years of college.

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Bellum Aeternus]

but if you are thinking of Dual Core, go for it.

As soon as I find an article telling me how to get Windows running on one, I'll be buying one to dual boot. ;-)

As it is now, the only thing I use a PC for is Visual Studio (job requirement) and WoW (addiction). So it's got to be Windows at least 50% of the time.

It's not even a top 40 school

[drewness]

I guess the top schools aren't taking very many bright students these days, sigh.

On the website for Russel and Norvig's AI textbook they have a list of schools that use their book, and at the bottom is a list of the top 40 CS programs in the US. (Their point being that 39 of the 40 use their book, and the one that doesn't also doesn't teach AI. But that's beside the point here.) Rockhust College is not on the top 40 list.

Plus yeah, way off base about OS X. Wow.

p.s. I went to #39. (Not that it matters.)

Incorrect for RAM.

[Anonymous Coward]

The new iSight model of iMacs allows for an extremely easy RAM upgrade. There's even instructions on the back of the stand. There is simply a slot that you open on the bottom of the monitor and there's your RAM slot right there.

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is not whether the fans make much noise now, its whether the fans will make much noise in 18 months. Its annoying how the longer you have your computer, the louder it gets, til you replace all the fans and hard drives to make it quiet again.

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[vague disclaimer]

Yes you can get both (although the UK online store has CoD listed as "Currently unavailable" - an expansion pack is in stock though, so I assume it is just sold out).

I disagree...

[CrimsonScythe]

I dunno whether more fans translate to more noise, it might be in fact the opposite.

Well, I think you're underestimating how loud the die-hard Mac fans can be, so obviously more of them will generate a lot more noise.

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got a 20 inch Dual Core iMac yesterday. Screen is a monster. The mac, for everything except games (cal of duty, battlefield, etc) is DEAD QUIET. I can't hear ANYTHING. I love it.

\ Dual Core 2 ghz iMac is do damn fast it's not funny. Editing home movies while 10 apps run in background is nothing short of a delight. I'll exit fanboy mode now, but if you are thinking of Dual Core, go for it.

Are you implying that the games actually ran in emulation?

Just curious!

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Dogers]

I take it you missed this earlier story then?
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/15/ 0532245

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Bellum Aeternus]

No, see... I was referring to Visual Studio being the reason I needed Windows...

This article is looking good though: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/16/ 150239

Well, as a guy who owns a dual G5...

[Penguinisto]

Yep - prolly as quiet as a corpse. The G5 Powermacs have way more than three fans (nine --yes, NINE fans-- in mine, counting the vidcards), and aside from a momentary "whoosh" when you cold-boot it (or remove the plastic inner-case panel, which causes all of 'em to go turbo-speed), the thing is far, far quieter than the P4-based PC next to it (which has the P/S Fan, the CPU fan, and the vidcard fan).

Noise is the last thing you'll ever have to worry about in a Mac desktop (laptops may be a different story, but the current Powerbooks are whisper quiet too...)

/P

The problem is

[unassimilatible]

At least up until now, unlike building a PC, you couldn't just run out and select a mobo for a Mac from 15 different companies. Apple tends to sell replacement parts only, and they tend to be a fortune.

I upgraded my non-socketed beige G3 running at 300 MHz (zoom!) to an IBM 400 that ran at like 485 under stock cooling. Now that was a kick-ass upgrade, at a time when buying a new Mac would have cost me 5 times as much.

One of the beauties of the Mactel platform is that I am sure it allows for some awesome upgrade potential. Now, if it were only possible to DIY a Mactel from the start, that would get me off of Wintel forever - unless you count dual-boot.

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah but are you fucking stupid? those are for ppc macs

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

I never see the "beachball" mouse curser (the Windows equiv. is the hourglass mouse cursor, indicates OS is busy). I can have iDVD, iMovie, Call of Duty, iTunes playing, 10 Tabs open in Safari, FTP serving files to active connection, and no beach ball in Windows, game still plays nice, and iTunes "skipped" once in three hours of all this crap running while playing Call of duty.

And to the anti-fanboy like-dells-balls people out there, the above is simply a subjective review of my experience. Simple real world usage. And remember, it takes almost NO desk space and I plugged in electric, mouse and keyboard usb, and was using this thing, including registration, in 4 minutes. Have fun loading spybot/adaware/ms antispyware/clam av/avg/zonealarm just before you can even use your box. ha. the only windows I have in my life is now Virtual PC, and as I find good mac replacesments, eventually that app will go the way of the DoDo bird.

crap

[pbjones]

PPC chips were soldered onto small daughter boards, or in zif sockets, just like x86. In laptops they were soldered in, just like x86. And several companies provide PPC upgrades for some pretty old PPC Macs, not so with x86.

It's not new, x86 people are only just waking up.

Re:May I please have more cooling rather than less

[FuturePastNow]

The magazine "Popular Mechanics" bought a bunch of iMacs, and when 40% of them died, the magazine looked into it: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/compute rs/1707756.html

The thermal-imaging camera shot is interesting.

Re:Will OS X 10.4 still work on PowerBooks?

[baryon351]

Before 1994, the 68k ruled the roost - then in March 1994 the first PPC Macs arrived in the form of 6100/7100/8100 macs running PPC601 CPUs.

That was MacOS 7.1.x era, and it wasn't until 8.5 that the system went all-PPC, leaving 68ks to use 8.1 and earlier operating systems. 8.5 was released October 1998, which gives a good 4 and a half years worth of 68k support after the first PPC macs came in. if we get the same or similar from Apple today, we should see PPC operating systems until at least 2010.

Re:There's also the "form" factor (Apple Tax)

[javaxjb]

Every time I see people mention the "Apple Tax" I wonder if they've done a true side-by-side comparison. When I bought my first Mac (a 17" PowerBook) two years ago, I went to Dell to configure a Dell (widescreen) with the same memory, drive capacity, DVD writer, etc and the Dell was several hundred dollars more. Last week, I was asked to write up specifications for my replacement system at work (I'm requesting the new Mac even though it's not the corporate standard and it looks like it may get approved). As a backup (in case it's not approved), I wrote up specs for a similarly equipped Dell (3.4 GHz, but only single processor, but a 2-layer DVD was not available). The prices was essentially the same (within tens of dollars). But the way I see it (between dual core, a 2-layer burner and a better video processor [though I don't really care about that]), I'd be getting more for the money with a Mac. Now, it's true that there are lower cost systems than a Dell. But that is our corporate standard (and back when I was self-employed I always purchased Dell because I felt the slight premium bought a better PC). It's also true that most low-end Macs have more premium features than low-end PCs. But that's not a tax, that's simply a more realistic base configuration. The whole PC pricing scheme reminds me of the way American car companies price vans (and probably other cars) -- put in an engine that's really too small, leave off options that most buyers would add to the package and advertise an unbelievably low price that almost nobody would end up paying.

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Zemrec]

I'd love to know how well games run with Rosetta as well. Although what I'd really like to know is how many games developers will be releasing updated universal binaries for their games.

It's cool that the Core Duo is socketed, so there's the possibility of a CPU upgrade in the future for the first time in a Mac in a long time. How about the Ati X1600? Any luck there? I'm sure it'd be fine for today's games, but what about a couple years from now?

And, goddammit! I got a Mini last year and I was looking forward to a new Intelimini. I've already got a great 20" flat panel that I can share with the Mac and PC, and I don't want an iMac because of that.

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[McDutchie]

I have no data, but I would imagine that the graphics processor does a huge chunk of the processing in games like those mentioned, and the video cards haven't changed architectures, so the speed hit caused by the CPU emulation would have relatively little effect.

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[failedlogic]

As a jealous reader (going by your sig), I have only one thing to say:

Kyle says: "Shutup Cartman!"

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to know how well games run with Rosetta as well. Although what I'd really like to know is how many games developers will be releasing updated universal binaries for their games.

I read someplace that Aspyr already had Doom 3 up and running (in a matter of hours no less.. then again, Carmack seems to do portable code) and the impression I have is that they will release binaries of selected games. Which ones I dunno, but you can bet Command and Conquer:Generals won't be one of em cuz I play the hell out of it. ;) I don't know about the other software houses though.

As far as GPU, they need one of two solutions: a consumer grade Mac with slots or an iMac with a proprietary version of the PCI Express card crammed in there. Right now I have a dual 2.3Ghz G5 tower that suits me fine, but in reality I over purchased by an order of magnitude as it was my first Mac and I assumed I'd need a rocket sled. I quickly learned that with the exception GPU upgradability, the iMac fits the bill. I get so tired of hearing "so buy a console" (hell no, console FPS and RTS suck!) or "keep a cheap PC around" (I get enough Windows at work). I want a machine that will do it all. Oh yeah, and I wanna pony. ;)

Being a Mac newbie I wasn't aware of the cult following surrounding the G4 cube, and there are calls to bring this form factor back. Apparently it actually had upgradable video. Maybe with the new Intel chips it could shake off the heat issues.

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Zemrec]

Being a Mac newbie I wasn't aware of the cult following surrounding the G4 cube, and there are calls to bring this form factor back. Apparently it actually had upgradable video. Maybe with the new Intel chips it could shake off the heat issues.

Well, the Mini is sort of the successor to the Cube, although its CPU and GPU are soldered. But the way I figure it, its only $500, so you buy one, wait a year and the new one will be faster and have better video. Probably for the price you'd pay for a CPU and GPU upgrade in an upgradeable machine.

Then again, since it's the bottom of the barrel Mac, it's the red-headed stepchild of Apple. Hasn't gotten any love from them since introduced. I'm just hoping they'll update it soon and not let it die.

Therefore, Merom (64-bit) CPU might be supported

[MojoStan]

It's interesting to note that the new iMacs are using a standard Intel 945 Series chipset, and an Intel 82801GBM southbridge...

I haven't seen any articles confirming if Merom will work with the earliest Yonah motherboards, but some articles have confirmed that Merom will be compatible with this chipset:

• Intel Merom to Be Pin-to-Pin Compatible with Yonah
• Fall IDF 2005 - Day 1: Coverage of Everything

From Anandtech's link:

One thing that we found very interesting is that Napa also appears to be the platform of choice for Merom. In fact, Intel's platform for Merom is listed in their literature as either being Napa or a Napa Refresh, not a brand new design. We are hoping this means that Merom will work in Yonah motherboards, also hopefully meaning that Conroe will work in the next-generation Pentium D motherboards.

For those that don't know, Merom is the next-generation "Core Duo" with EM64T (64-bit), Virtualization, floating point performance enhancements, longer pipeline (14 stages), and a 4-issue out-of-order execution engine (Yonah is 3-issue).

Re:May I please have more cooling rather than less

[Khabok]

MacBooks with good heat characteristics? Count on it. I don't even remember the last time I heard my iBook fan turn on. I've also heard the PowerBooks are great about that too. They tend to get warmer underneath and on the left handrest area (over the drive) but they still don't have to blow themselves out like a Dell.

I keep hearing that PPC is a hot chip, and supposedly Yonah is very cool, so I'd say the MacBook will be better if anything.

Haven't actually seen one yet, though.

Re:There's also the "form" factor (Apple Tax)

[toddestan]

The whole PC pricing scheme reminds me of the way American car companies price vans (and probably other cars) -- put in an engine that's really too small, leave off options that most buyers would add to the package and advertise an unbelievably low price that almost nobody would end up paying.

On the other hand, Apple reminds me of how the Japanese do things. If you want the moonroof, you also have to buy the upgraded wheels, the spoiler, power seats, and the 6 disk CD changer.

If you can't tell, I rather prefer building my own computers.

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Numen]

ha. the only windows I have in my life is now Virtual PC, and as I find good mac replacesments, eventually that app will go the way of the DoDo bird.

But until you do, you must still resort to using Windows to meet your needs as OS X doesn't do so... am I right in reading that is your current state of affairs until you one day find those replacements?

Which fanboism is it, exactly?

[wild_berry]

The Pentium M and Athlon 64 (when running in 32-bit mode) are comparable performers. I said that the Core Duo chips are not 64-bit processors. Your "even both cores would not be equal to one AMD 64 for most tasks" sounds a bit fanboytastic -- what did you mean?

Liquid Cooled

[herbierobinson]

Would you look at that. Those "cool running Intel CPUs" have liquid cooling too. I wonder what Steve Jobs has to say about that?

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[MonkeyBoy]

Technically the beachball means a process is not responding to GUI events (or a facsimile of that kind of problem).

If you get a beachball while hovering over an Entourage window, that means Entourage is off doing something and can't respond to any kind of GUI input. It doesn't mean the OS has gone off into limbo, just the Entourage process(es).

No matter what hardware is running OSX, you're still going to see beachballs from time to time, since they're generally the result of poor code. I see them in Entourage all the time, hence my example - though in initial versions of OSX you'd see a distressing number of beachballs in Finder. (shrug)

Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT!

[Criton]

Who the hell signs the registration thing I allways command Q that.