500,000 G5s? [Archive] - MacRumors Forums

ffakr

Dec 16, 2003, 04:37 PM

I think there will actually be two major surges of G5 sales (possibly a third smaller one).

The first were people who needed the machine last year. Those would be the designers and such who were languishing on older G4s, but who were too stuborn to move to the PC. In this group I'll include the 'must have' people who had cash and wanted the latest-greatest.

The second wave will be all those people who have been saying 'I'll wait till rev 2, just to make sure they work out the bugs'. These buyers don't NEED all that power but they want it. They figure that they'll be better off waiting a bit.. they'll get the more stable, faster, possibly cheaper rev. 2.

The third possible wave could be the people who always crave the next thing. They may be fixating on the 3GHz promise. I've heard a lot of people saying.. 'I'll buy when SJ delivers those 3GHz machines'. 3GHz has strong psychological implications. It's been the clock of Intel's high end offerings for a while (back into about half a year of G4 only mac desktops). It's a hurdle to reach... parity with Intel (even though They'll be farther ahead in clock by then too, they are already at 3.2)

So... I figure there will be another big swell when the new boxes ship... then a smaller swell when the next revision comes out.. though isn't that always the case, to some extent. ;-)

x86isslow

Dec 16, 2003, 04:46 PM

i wouldnt worry about how many people are apple converts to powermac G5s.

the only other company making money off of computers is Dell. Dell's computers are by and large cheaper than those offered by apple.

so if people do convert from PC-> Mac, expect to see it in consumer lines, since Mac has basically market saturation in pro-fields right?

i think the 20" imac is a good example of this phenomenon. people converting to mac don't see it as a compromised desktop, they see it as a great hub. whereas a lot of people on this site rag on it for having some not so upgradable features, it really is more than sufficient for someone converting from a dell/pc. so the fact that they added a model to a line-up that seems to be deficient may point to where the growth from switchers is coming.

MongoTheGeek

Dec 16, 2003, 04:51 PM

Half of them went to VA Tech :D

rog

Dec 16, 2003, 05:34 PM

Not very impressive. The article says it only brings them up to the level the G4 was selling at 3 years ago, and they were considered terribly slow selling back then. I think sales would have been much better if they'd packed them all with dualies and started at $1600 instead of $2000. The G5s are getting old and overpriced. I hope they update them soon. Back in the mid 90s they sold something like 1,000,000 desktops per quarter. The G5 is not going to increase market share. They are just too expensive.

NusuniAdmin

Dec 16, 2003, 05:46 PM

heh, 500k g5's would make you a kick @$$ supercomputer. Imagen that, 1100 are the 3'rd fastest. 500k would cream any suppercomputer cluster, and would not be beaten for years (unless you make 500,001 g5's in a cluster).

Bear

Dec 16, 2003, 06:08 PM

Originally posted by rog
Not very impressive. The article says it only brings them up to the level the G4 was selling at 3 years ago, and they were considered terribly slow selling back then. I think sales would have been much better if they'd packed them all with dualies and started at $1600 instead of $2000. The G5s are getting old and overpriced. I hope they update them soon. Back in the mid 90s they sold something like 1,000,000 desktops per quarter. The G5 is not going to increase market share. They are just too expensive. You are rather negative.

As for the total number of desktops per quarter, remember to add in iMac and eMac sales. Also, I suspect some of the laptops are taking away from the desktop sales.

The number getting up as high as it was 3 years ago is actually good in this economy.

Yes, we would all like Apple to sell even more systems, however, this is a nice start to an upward swing.

As for the next round of Powermac upgrades, wait a month or two, these haven't even been out 5 months yet.

NusuniAdmin

Dec 16, 2003, 06:27 PM

Originally posted by rog
Not very impressive. The article says it only brings them up to the level the G4 was selling at 3 years ago, and they were considered terribly slow selling back then. I think sales would have been much better if they'd packed them all with dualies and started at $1600 instead of $2000. The G5s are getting old and overpriced. I hope they update them soon. Back in the mid 90s they sold something like 1,000,000 desktops per quarter. The G5 is not going to increase market share. They are just too expensive.

What are you talking about. Find a dell of equivalent EVERYTHING of the dual 2 ghz g5. The dell will be a few hundred dollars more, just count on it, And it has to be a 64 bit dell computer, not 32. [edit: the dell also has to be dual processor] Has to have same amount of default ram, and same amount of default vram. And plus a computer that was made less than 6 months ago is not old. So dude, get your facts right before you post a bogus messege like that.

ITR 81

Dec 16, 2003, 06:48 PM

Actually thats not true.
MacAddict Jan issue did just this.
They took a G5 dual 2Ghz with 1GB of ram and compared them to whats similar in the PC world. All them had 3.2GHz P4 processors and 1GB of ram.

G5: $3,549
Dell: $3,079
Gateway: $2,519
hp Compaq: $2,089
HP: $3,318
IBM: $3,372

So really the G5 compares more with the HP and IBM which are only couple hundred cheaper then the G5. But if your like me you use a edu account which gets me basically the same pricing as IBM and HP.

Did the PC's whup up on the G5 no. In alot of the tests the G5 matched the P4 performance and passed it on alot those.

Only if the game section did the G5 get screwed over. But according to Macsoft and Aspyr this was due to the games not being optimized for the G5.

ddtlm

Dec 16, 2003, 06:48 PM

NusuniAdmin:

Imagen that, 1100 are the 3'rd fastest. 500k would cream any suppercomputer cluster, and would not be beaten for years
Well the thing about clusters is that cramming ever-more processors into one is not a key to infinate performance in general because communication between the nodes keeps getting slower. Yeah if 500k G5's were made into an "ubercluster" it could crank a lot of folding@home, but it would not be hard to find problems were it was a dog. It always bothers me a bit when people equate big clusters with true supercomputers, as in, machines where there is one unified memory space.

What are you talking about. Find a dell of equivalent EVERYTHING of the dual 2 ghz g5. The dell will be a few hundred dollars more, just count on it, And it has to be a 64 bit dell computer, not 32. Has to have same amount of default ram, and same amount of default vram.
Well I agree that fellow was over-negative, but at the same time I think you're being over-positive. In PC-land all the vendors try to change the "pro tax" for anything with two or more processors so demanding matching specs is just stacking the deck for Apple. Similarly, I could point at a Dell with 3 internal hard disks, 2 optical drives, 4 PCI cards, 256 MB of VRAM plus a TV-tuner, and demand that you match that.

That said, single-processor PC's will still challenge and often defeat a dual G5 where two processors are not useful, and they'll do it for a lower price (than $3000+).

NusuniAdmin

Dec 16, 2003, 07:49 PM

Originally posted by ITR 81
Actually thats not true.
MacAddict Jan issue did just this.
They took a G5 dual 2Ghz with 1GB of ram and compared them to whats similar in the PC world. All them had 3.2GHz P4 processors and 1GB of ram.

G5: $3,549
Dell: $3,079
Gateway: $2,519
hp Compaq: $2,089
HP: $3,318
IBM: $3,372

So really the G5 compares more with the HP and IBM which are only couple hundred cheaper then the G5. But if your like me you use a edu account which gets me basically the same pricing as IBM and HP.

Did the PC's whup up on the G5 no. In alot of the tests the G5 matched the P4 performance and passed it on alot those.

Only if the game section did the G5 get screwed over. But according to Macsoft and Aspyr this was due to the games not being optimized for the G5.

Ya..i hope apple adds more integer units, if they do that then in any benchmark the g5 will cream, especialy with its mega floating point units. Then again, not much in the X86 world lately, they should really upgrade. X86 is like '80's technology, they really need to upgrade. Lets see, the g5 will be up to 2.6 in the not to distant future, and i predict the intel P5(maybe 4) will be released around same time with a 3.5 ghz processor. Then in about a year G5 (or g6) will be up to about 3-3.25 ghz and P5 will be up to about 3.8-4 ghz (and maybe 64 bit), then another 6 or so months G6 will be about 3.5-4 ghz and P5(or 6) will be about 4-4.3 ghz, these are just my predictions but i doubt they will be tooo far off.

Overall you get more stuff for the g5 price. Plus i doubt that dell machine u mentioned had a "superdrive" (or at least a dvd/cd rw) in it

NusuniAdmin

Dec 16, 2003, 07:55 PM

Well I agree that fellow was over-negative, but at the same time I think you're being over-positive. In PC-land all the vendors try to change the "pro tax" for anything with two or more processors so demanding matching specs is just stacking the deck for Apple. Similarly, I could point at a Dell with 3 internal hard disks, 2 optical drives, 4 PCI cards, 256 MB of VRAM plus a TV-tuner, and demand that you match that.

Ya but... why do you really need more than 1 or 2 hd's or over 1 cd drive....seriously...how much p0rn do you have? :P j/k I have 2 hd's in my current beige g3 (i am upgrading soon....i hope) 1 is a 8 gig ata 66 (5400 rpm), the other is a 60 gig ata 133 (7200 rpm). I have about 60 games on the computer all on my 60 gig (for obvious reasons) and i still have about 25 gigs left, and i have about ten tousand songs on it as well.....Please explain how you need 3 hd's....DO you use it for work as well?

[edit: OOps, forgot to mention I have a few big programs, including photoshop 7, and studio MX....All the main oses are on the 8 gig drive]

ddtlm

Dec 16, 2003, 08:45 PM

NusuniAdmin:

Ya but... why do you really need more than 1 or 2 hd's or over 1 cd drive
Oh I see how it is, anything the G5 lacks is "unnecessary". You are proud of dual processors and 64-bitness, both of which are wasteful for most everything, and yet you dismiss extra drive bays as needless because you have no use for them? These very forums saw many people, owners of Macs, bitching about the return to a single optical drive and the loss of hard drive bays, and I can agree with them. Working with images, audio and film it's easy to overflow a piddly few hundred GB, and anyone who values their data will be running RAID which cuts into the low ceiling further. Even a 3rd bay would allow for raid-5, providing both speed and safety benefits, and any extra bays at all would simplify upgrading and replacing of drives.

NusuniAdmin

Dec 16, 2003, 08:49 PM

ITR 81

Dec 16, 2003, 09:55 PM

Originally posted by NusuniAdmin
Ya..i hope apple adds more integer units, if they do that then in any benchmark the g5 will cream, especialy with its mega floating point units. Then again, not much in the X86 world lately, they should really upgrade. X86 is like '80's technology, they really need to upgrade. Lets see, the g5 will be up to 2.6 in the not to distant future, and i predict the intel P5(maybe 4) will be released around same time with a 3.5 ghz processor. Then in about a year G5 (or g6) will be up to about 3-3.25 ghz and P5 will be up to about 3.8-4 ghz (and maybe 64 bit), then another 6 or so months G6 will be about 3.5-4 ghz and P5(or 6) will be about 4-4.3 ghz, these are just my predictions but i doubt they will be tooo far off.

Overall you get more stuff for the g5 price. Plus i doubt that dell machine u mentioned had a "superdrive" (or at least a dvd/cd rw) in it

I would say your close.

This is my outlook on it.
By the middle of this yr. we should see the 3.0GHz processor. But it could also come with a 3.2GHz if the 2.6 makes it to the market in Jan.

Also if IBM's rumored 3 speed bumps remains true we could see another speed bump by yr end. This would be the 3.2, 3.4, and 3.6. if they keep following this pattern. Then in Jan/Feb they could release the 3.8,4.0, and 4.2. This would then match whatever Intel is putting out by then and if not it will come in mid-05'.

As for the Superdrive they got those in the + ver along with RW DVD Rom drive...which I believe will come with the new G5's in Jan.

But they don't have the capacity for 8GB of space. The most they will do is around 4GB. They also don't have digital audio output from Sony/Philps which is on all G5's. They also don't have PCI-X slots either or Firewire 800 ports. Some of them don't even include Firewire 400 ports and most of the ones that do have them because they came with the audio card.
Also the G5 is the only one that has both USB 1.1 ports(2 on keyboard) and USB 2.0 ports.

Also they sortof lack in the video card depts as well because some of them have PC video cards that are under the 9800 Pro which was included on the G5. Only the 3K computers had higher end cards.

So I could see why the G5 costs abit more then the other 3, $3k PC machines. It costs more to be first and usually Apple is always first to adopt stds first and then PC's end up falling inline after it.

I believe by mid-05' processing speed won't matter much since thats when IBM would like to hit 4GHz if not higher.

ffakr

Dec 16, 2003, 10:21 PM

Originally posted by ITR 81
Actually thats not true.
MacAddict Jan issue did just this.
They took a G5 dual 2Ghz with 1GB of ram and compared them to whats similar in the PC world. All them had 3.2GHz P4 processors and 1GB of ram.

G5: $3,549
Dell: $3,079
Gateway: $2,519
hp Compaq: $2,089
HP: $3,318
IBM: $3,372

So really the G5 compares more with the HP and IBM which are only couple hundred cheaper then the G5.

I'd take a DUAL G5 over a single P4 3.2GHz any day. The fact that the single P4 systems approach the price of the dual G5 is NOT a ringing endorsement for PC price superiority.

The P4 will win in some benchmarks today (and it is a wicked fast machine) but those P4's are essentially at the peak of their performance. The compilers have been optimised for the P4, for SSE2, for netburst.. for a couple years now. That P4 is never going to get any faster (aside from a faster vid card or faster HD).

The dual G5 OTOH is still an infant from a software support standpoint. GCC is decidedly un-optimized for the 970 at this point. The Beta of xlc is up to 70% faster than gcc 3.3.

As far as I'm concerned, all benchmarks that seek to guage the performance of the G5 hardware at this point are next to worthless. They only give you a guage of what the machine performs like today.. not how the machine can perform. Apple had delivered 2 OS updates that have provide great speed acceleration. There is more to be gained by providing optimized compilers that can actually take advantage of the G5 processor. Our dual G5 screams... but every time I use it, I realize that this is just the beginning.

ffakr

Dec 16, 2003, 10:53 PM

Originally posted by ddtlm
NusuniAdmin:

Oh I see how it is, anything the G5 lacks is "unnecessary". You are proud of dual processors and 64-bitness, both of which are wasteful for most everything, and yet you dismiss extra drive bays as needless because you have no use for them?

first off.. I see your argument and it's hard to NOT get excited about the G5. Mac users need be honest about shortcomings though.

I'd like to offer that Hard drives are easier to upgrade than cpus though. Even the G5 comes with two bays which are simple to upgrade. With cpu power, it's easy to drop a boat load of cash for a top end CPU to replace an existing one (if the vendor hasn't made the bus obsolete by then) but you can't simply slap another CPU in. The dual G5 2GHz is pretty overpowered for most people, but that horsepower will be there down the road when everyone's camcorders are streaming in uncompressed HD video in a few years. ;-)
Also, Apple ships configs today with up to 500 GB internal. Not too shabby.

OTOH, it is a limitiation to ship a 'pro' machine that isn't capable of being configured with RAID as an option. It would be nice to have shipped with the option for 3 sata drives and support for RAID 0,1 or even 5.
I also think that one optical drive is a limitation. Apple's current solutions for copying CDs is rather clunky. There should be an easy way to do disk to disk copies without paying the external drive premium. If Apple built in room for 3-4 drives stacked and two stacked removable drives, you could configure the system with a very fast CDR and a DVD-R. DVD-R drives are pretty slow when it comes to burning CDs.

.. Now Apple does have a more elegant solution for the very few users who need more than 2 250GB drives... it's called xServe RAID. It works great over the net.. or you can even plug it into that under-drived G5 tower with a Fibre Channel card.

ffakr

Dec 16, 2003, 11:10 PM

Originally posted by NusuniAdmin
Ya..i hope apple adds more integer units, if they do that then in any benchmark the g5 will cream, especialy with its mega floating point units. Then again, not much in the X86 world lately, they should really upgrade. X86 is like '80's technology, they really need to upgrade.
It wouldn't help. The G5 is already a very wide processor (the 970 that is). It's problem isn't that it can't do enough per clock cycle.. it can do more work per clock than the Opteron and a lot more than the P4. The problem is that the software support for the new CPU isn't there yet. The compilers don't know how to create fast code that can efficiently use the full power of the CPU yet. The G5s will continue to get faster but it will take time. Look at what's been done already... The Apple Pro apps got a big boost, Cinebench got like 35% faster after optimizations..

Lets see, the g5 will be up to 2.6 in the not to distant future, and i predict the intel P5(maybe 4) will be released around same time with a 3.5 ghz processor. The next P4 is Prescott. It is apparently still having current leaking issues that are keeping the clock low. I think they are targeting 3.2 GHz at launch in February... but that might be optimistic.
posted by X86isslow
ABRHS Class 04!
alright... senior year anxiety has definately set in. what oh what does the future hold./. will i get accepted?
i'm still waiting to hear from UChicago.
ooh the anticipation...
You applying as an undergraduate? It's up to $37K a year now!! The last Dean of Physical Sciences told me that they are getting way more undergrad apps now than in the past. Apparently they have to be more discerning in the application process these days.
Great school though. There aren't a lot of places where the city haz-mat team gets corrected on the flashpoint of a spilt chemical by a Nobel Prize winner. :-P

good luck.

ffakr.

x86isslow

Dec 16, 2003, 11:55 PM

well i just got deferred from UChic, so suddenly, i have to finish a bunch more applications :mad:

it looks like they got swamped with Early Actions..

thats the one downside with the internet. all the valedectorianish nerds can apply to 12 schools, and that means less seats for other ppl who arent in the top 5% of their class.:mad:

ddtlm

Dec 17, 2003, 01:21 AM

ffakr:

I'd take a DUAL G5 over a single P4 3.2GHz any day. The fact that the single P4 systems approach the price of the dual G5 is NOT a ringing endorsement for PC price superiority.
I don't know what they heck they did to cook those prices up, but I just went over to Dell and configured this $3207 Dell:

3.2ghz P4 800mhz FSB, HT
1 GB dual channel DDR-400 RAM
2x 250 GB SATA disks
DVD+RW and CD+RW
17" LCD
128MB Radeon 9800 pro
sound blaster audigy
speakers & subwoofer
gigabit ethernet

You know what that costs in 2.0ghz G5 trim? $4773 Almost 50% more. The Mac doesn't even come with speakers or the second optical drive. Does that qualify as a ringing endorsement of PC price superiority?

I'd like to offer that Hard drives are easier to upgrade than cpus though. Even the G5 comes with two bays which are simple to upgrade. With cpu power, it's easy to drop a boat load of cash for a top end CPU to replace an existing one (if the vendor hasn't made the bus obsolete by then) but you can't simply slap another CPU in.
Tell that to my Xmas-1997 Gateway that's running a 2.06ghz Athlon. The nForce2 mobo cost $120 or so, the Radeon 9700 pro cost about $400 9 months ago, the CPU might have cost $200, $40 for a heatsink, $150 for the RAM. Its possible to mount 3 hard disks and 2 optical drives in there at once. All this is made possible by replacing my standard form-factor motherboard, something that you seem to have ignored.

Now Apple does have a more elegant solution for the very few users who need more than 2 250GB drives... it's called xServe RAID.
While I'm sure Apple doesn't mind selling many-thousand-$ raid boxes to people who can't get by on two internal disks, the cost-sensitive part of the world will "get by" on tidily sized cases that get around the problem for a whole heck of a lot less money.

As far as I'm concerned, all benchmarks that seek to guage the performance of the G5 hardware at this point are next to worthless. They only give you a guage of what the machine performs like today.. not how the machine can perform. ... There is more to be gained by providing optimized compilers that can actually take advantage of the G5 processor. Our dual G5 screams... but every time I use it, I realize that this is just the beginning.
This is the same song and dance that acompanied the P4, explaining away all its troubles. Well here we are years later and the P4 still can't beat Athlons by much, except in certain cases. You can dream about performance increases forever but, except for certain cases, they just aren't going to amount to much of anything. (Apple's OSX upgrades have little to do with compilers and a lot to do with efficient software design.)

NusuniAdmin

Dec 17, 2003, 07:21 AM

Originally posted by ITR 81

I believe by mid-05' processing speed won't matter much since thats when IBM would like to hit 4GHz if not higher.

Yep.......STEVE JOBS GET OFF UR BUTT AND GET WORKING! :P

NusuniAdmin

Dec 17, 2003, 07:30 AM

Originally posted by ddtlm
ffakr:

I don't know what they heck they did to cook those prices up, but I just went over to Dell and configured this $3207 Dell:

3.2ghz P4 800mhz FSB, HT
1 GB dual channel DDR-400 RAM
2x 250 GB SATA disks
DVD+RW and CD+RW
17" LCD
128MB Radeon 9800 pro
sound blaster audigy
speakers & subwoofer
gigabit ethernet

You know what that costs in 2.0ghz G5 trim? $4773 Almost 50% more. The Mac doesn't even come with speakers or the second optical drive. Does that qualify as a ringing endorsement of PC price superiority?

Yes but if you want to get technical (i'm sure my microelectronics buddy would love to get technical with NM and ****) The g5 is faster. it has dual processor. First of all mac is NOT ment for poor little sissy boys, they are "the rich mans computer". Apple has always targeted richer people with their computers. Only until recently have they started putting prices lower. But also the G5 IS 64 bit, and can run existing 32 bit apps. Very very few X86 processors can do this (if any). The G5 is expected to have a 90 NM release then maybe a 65 NM, which will increase clock speed but lower heat. Perfect for buisnesses with a crap loada computers and want to lower their cooling bill. Yes I agree in general terms "pcs" are cheaper. But then again the all in one g4...the emac is only 800 bux (or is it 700?). The g5 is only rev 1 dude, trust me the prices will go down, it is true with any computer on the market. P4 is pretty old now. Released in what 1998 or 1999? Their just about getting ready for a next generation processor but who knows...the only good intel tech is the centrino. The xeon's controller sux, if you have ever used a quad 3 ghz xeon you know wut i mean, it really only seems to use 1 processor and is extremely sluggish at times.

The Grimace

Dec 17, 2003, 07:35 AM

Originally posted by NusuniAdmin
Ya but... why do you really need more than 1 or 2 hd's ...

Can you say RAID?

...or over 1 cd drive....seriously...

How about disk-to-disk copy? Or what if I want to watch a movie while a cd/dvd is burning?

Don't assume that what meets your needs meets mine as well. Seriously.

(tig)

The Grimace

Dec 17, 2003, 07:46 AM

Originally posted by NusuniAdmin
First of all mac is NOT ment for poor little sissy boys, they are "the rich mans computer".

I'm a poor little sissy boy. And the computer that is largely credited with saving Apple - the original iMac- was targeted at me. In other words, poor little sissy boy sales -mine included- saved Apples a$$.

But also the G5 IS 64 bit, and can run existing 32 bit apps. Very very few X86 processors can do this (if any).

Check out the AMD Opteron (http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_8825,00.html). 64-bit w/ 32-bit compatibility. And it hit the market before the PPC970 (aka G5).

(tig)

littlejim

Dec 17, 2003, 09:46 AM

If Apple have sold 500,000 units, things are looking very good.

At the recent MacExpo in London, there were 23,000 visitors - a majority of which already own a Mac. In a survey (http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_news.cfm?NewsID=7431) of the visitors, only 3% had upgraded to a G5.

I, and at least two other friends are waiting for the top of the range machine to hit 2.5 - 3.0 before buying.

fixyourthinking

Dec 17, 2003, 09:51 AM

The average profit margin for Apple on a unit is 27% - for some items it's 34% - some 22% SO if Apple is doing average profit margin and the typical unit selling for $3000 (average between all lines) that puts EACH sale netting close to $1000.

To put this figure into perspective - that's 500 million. (1k x 500k) That makes this very hard to believe. Hope it's true though.

If true, combined with iPod sales which are 640K units this quarter ALONE at $75 profit for Apple a pop. Plus, new 20" iMac sales and iBook G4 sales which are VERY HOT - Apple should post the biggest profit since Steve Jobs return - previous record was 65 million profit.

Edited: After perusing through other stats on Yahoo finances I did notice that current holdings are 7.87 Billion up from 7.26 Billion last quarter AND up from 5.32 Billion in 2001 which was up from 4.1 Billion in 1997. I also notice that figures from November and December haven't been added yet.

wdlove

Dec 17, 2003, 11:49 AM

No matter what the breakdown happens to be the 500,000 Power Mac G5's sold is very impressive. Congratulations to Apple and Steve Jobs. I just hope that this is only the begining of increased sales. With all those that said they are waiting for Rev. B, there is no reason not to top the 500,000 mark.

ffakr

Dec 17, 2003, 01:19 PM

Originally posted by ddtlm
ffakr:

I don't know what they heck they did to cook those prices up, but I just went over to Dell and configured this $3207 Dell:
You know what that costs in 2.0ghz G5 trim? $4773 Almost 50% more. The Mac doesn't even come with speakers or the second optical drive. Does that qualify as a ringing endorsement of PC price superiority?
You are comparing two very different machines though. The Mac is a dual processor machine with loads of bandwidth, optical audio in/out, fw400 and 800, and PCI-X .. a feature only found on high end PC workstations and servers. It has support for 8GB of ram and it will likely take 16GB of ram when compatible memory becomes available.

Now I understand your take on this... You were just trying to show that you could get more goodies for less, but that isn't really fair is it, considering you aren't starting from the same base. I'm sure the options at the Ferarri dealer cost a lot more than the options at the Chevy dealer too.

Tell that to my Xmas-1997 Gateway that's running a 2.06ghz Athlon. The nForce2 mobo cost $120 or so, the Radeon 9700 pro cost about $400 9 months ago, the CPU might have cost $200, $40 for a heatsink, $150 for the RAM. Its possible to mount 3 hard disks and 2 optical drives in there at once. All this is made possible by replacing my standard form-factor motherboard, something that you seem to have ignored.
No, I understand this. I was speaking in terms of the Mac G5 specifically, but also in PC terms. What I didn't make clear was that you can't simply convert a single processor machine to a dual by slapping in another CPU. Also, you can't (inexpensively) put in a significantly faster cpu in a Mac (I'm using the G4 upgrades as reference)
PCs have the advantage that you can replace the motherboard in any ATX standard case for around $100 and get a fairly nice new board. But... there is a huge premium to be paid of you want to upgrade to a cutting edge dual processor PC. You pay an 'smp tax' to upgrade to an Opteron 2xx or Xeon. You pay twice as much or more for an SMP motherboard.

While I'm sure Apple doesn't mind selling many-thousand-$ raid boxes to people who can't get by on two internal disks, the cost-sensitive part of the world will "get by" on tidily sized cases that get around the problem for a whole heck of a lot less money.
Well I guess this comes down to market. The people who really need more than 500 GB of space probably aren't cost concious enough that they can't afford a storage server or a FW800 RAID cabinet.

This is the same song and dance that acompanied the P4, explaining away all its troubles. Well here we are years later and the P4 still can't beat Athlons by much, except in certain cases. You can dream about performance increases forever but, except for certain cases, they just aren't going to amount to much of anything. (Apple's OSX upgrades have little to do with compilers and a lot to do with efficient software design.)
This isn't the same old song and dance as the P4. The P4 made significant design choices that lowered IPC in favor of a much higher eventual clock speed. The first P4s performed poorly against the PIII because they weren't all that much faster. Many apps did, however, speed up quite a bit when the compilers started writing better code, specifically quality SSE2 code.
You can't possibly seriously argue that the G5 isn't crippled by the current compilers and unoptimized code. Many apps have reported serious gains from optimization. Apple is claiming some of the functions in their pro apps are 55% faster. The Cinebench scores went up by something like 35%. xlc is producing code that is up to 70% faster than gcc 3.3 and xlc is still in beta.
I'm firmly confident that we'll see a speed up that rivaled the increases that G4 owners saw as graphical apps were optimized for Altivec. The 970's architecture is significantly different enough from previous designs that there is a LOT of performance to be wrung out yet.
ffakr.

ddtlm

Dec 17, 2003, 02:18 PM

NusuniAdmin:

Yes but if you want to get technical ... The g5 is faster. it has dual processor.
Sometimes faster, sometimes slower.

The G5 is expected to have a 90 NM release then maybe a 65 NM, which will increase clock speed but lower heat.
Hmmm, you know, all the important processor makers plan on doing these migrations.

The g5 is only rev 1 dude, trust me the prices will go down, it is true with any computer on the market.
Yeah they'll go down on Ebay, but Apple isn't gona lower their prices much, they never do.

P4 is pretty old now. Released in what 1998 or 1999? Their just about getting ready for a next generation processor but who knows...the only good intel tech is the centrino.
You mean the Pentium M I'm sure, since Centrino is a stupid marketing name for the package including the P-M, Intel wireless networking, and perhaps some other stuff.

The xeon's controller sux, if you have ever used a quad 3 ghz xeon you know wut i mean, it really only seems to use 1 processor and is extremely sluggish at times.
There is no quad 3ghz Xeon, the fastest Xeon (an "MP") that can run 4-way is 2.8ghz. But honestly who gives a crap about Xeon, why don't you confront the issue head on and consider a quad Opteron, the 64/32-bit x86 chip that is always ignored by people trying to put the G5 on a pedestal?

ffakr:

You are comparing two very different machines though. The Mac is a dual processor machine with loads of bandwidth, optical audio in/out, fw400 and 800, and PCI-X
The Mac has the same bandwidth in most places as those P4's do, the only edge is in the PCI-X vs PCI department (remembering of course the the P4 only needs one FSB cause it has one processor).

It has support for 8GB of ram and it will likely take 16GB of ram when compatible memory becomes available.
And so do Opterons, especially the dual Opterons with quad memory channels.

Now I understand your take on this... You were just trying to show that you could get more goodies for less, but that isn't really fair is it, considering you aren't starting from the same base. I'm sure the options at the Ferarri dealer cost a lot more than the options at the Chevy dealer too.
Hey if a Corvette outperforms a Ferrari, when only a fool buys the Ferrari (unless its about image).

PCs have the advantage that you can replace the motherboard in any ATX standard case for around $100 and get a fairly nice new board. But... there is a huge premium to be paid of you want to upgrade to a cutting edge dual processor PC. You pay an 'smp tax' to upgrade to an Opteron 2xx or Xeon. You pay twice as much or more for an SMP motherboard.
Anyone willing to build their own dual-CPU PC can beat Apple's prices, the only expensive dual-CPU's PC's are the ones coming from Dell and such. The Tyan K8W mobo-of-doom runs $500 and about $1000 for two 2.0ghz 2-way Opterons, about $200 for 1GB of reg-ecc DDR-333 to fill it's 256-bit wide memory interface, $400 for the 256MB R9800 pro, $200 for a nice case, $100 for a super PSU, $100 for nice heatsinks, $200 for a DVD-R, $400 for some nice SATA hard disks, $600 for some 17" LCD... I'm thinking this costs about $3600. (Give or take a couple hundred.) That's a 64/32-bit machine, has more PCI-X slots and more bandwidth (in every way) than the G5, has an additional old 33-32 PCI slot, can hold and cool 4-6 drives in addition to 4-6 5" bays (depending on the case). It's not that I don't like the G5, BTW, its just that some realism needs to be dished out.

Well I guess this comes down to market. The people who really need more than 500 GB of space probably aren't cost concious enough that they can't afford a storage server or a FW800 RAID cabinet.
I think you're trying too hard to defend Apple's position.

You can't possibly seriously argue that the G5 isn't crippled by the current compilers and unoptimized code.
Its no more crippled than the P4 was, or that the Opteron still is. The P4 was not only poor at running legacy code, but it had an expanded ISA to use, unlike the G5, which isn't too bad at legacy code, and has no expanded ISA. In 64-bit mode the Opteron has twice the registers to use vs older x86 chips. Of the three, the G5 was apparently the least divergent from its predecessor; about the only compiler-level optimization is to reorder the code thats already there.

Apple is claiming some of the functions in their pro apps are 55% faster. The Cinebench scores went up by something like 35%. xlc is producing code that is up to 70% faster than gcc 3.3 and xlc is still in beta.
"Up to ... up to ... up to" ... meanwhile, in the real world you're gona see much smaller gains.

I'm firmly confident that we'll see a speed up that rivaled the increases that G4 owners saw as graphical apps were optimized for Altivec. The 970's architecture is significantly different enough from previous designs that there is a LOT of performance to be wrung out yet.
And I'm firmly confident this will not happen. AltiVec optimization was a one-time gain and the G5 has nothing that revolutionary to add. Its a very nice chip and can be quite fast, but I don't see any software miracles coming.

NusuniAdmin

Dec 17, 2003, 05:36 PM

Originally posted by ddtlm

There is no quad 3ghz Xeon, the fastest Xeon (an "MP") that can run 4-way is 2.8ghz. But honestly who gives a crap about Xeon, why don't you confront the issue head on and consider a quad Opteron, the 64/32-bit x86 chip that is always ignored by people trying to put the G5 on a pedestal?
[/B]

Exactly, and I just rounded up, 2.8 is a ugly number. The whole point of all of my messeges is, compare G5 to other "dual" 64 bit processors and you will find that it is not that much. But never by any means compare G5 to P4, especialy since the G5 is dual and is 64 bit, they are totaly different. Actualy last time I went to comp usa i saw about 10 dells someone brought in that were all malfunctional and the fans did not come and correctly and stuff, all the motherboards were melted and part of the casing wus melted....it wus pretty funny.

Scottgfx

Dec 18, 2003, 03:25 AM

Scottgfx

Dec 18, 2003, 03:41 AM

Originally posted by ddtlm
Anyone willing to build their own dual-CPU PC can beat Apple's prices, the only expensive dual-CPU's PC's are the ones coming from Dell and such. The Tyan K8W mobo-of-doom runs $500 and about $1000 for two 2.0ghz 2-way Opterons, about $200 for 1GB of reg-ecc DDR-333 [/B]

I built a dual Athlon-MP system a couple of years ago. Tyan Tiger MB, Enermax PSW, ECC RAM, etc... The thing is, I hardly ever use it. WinXP is a lot nicer than 2000 or NT, but I have little use for the machine other than a render engine for Lightwave 3D. Every few months, I turn it on and play with it. (or render an animation for work) Mac OS X, to me, is just so much nicer to use, and all of the apps that I want to use work great on the G5. I'm proud of my Athlon, I built it from scratch and it always runs great. I just wish I had saved the $2500+ and put it into a new Mac. I did gain the experience though and that is worth something. Wanna' buy it? It's got a 240GB Raid-0 and a DVD-ROM, 40X CD-RW, Intel Gigabit NIC, Audigy, HDTV Tuner. Make me an offer!!!

Edit? Grammar check.

iChan

Dec 18, 2003, 03:54 AM

1/2 million is quite an impressive number...

however, i do think that Macs are much more expensive than Windows PCs, but in reality, apples last much longer than windows machines and one thing I do know...

Since switching, it is the first time I have felt happy with what I had in a computer... and that is so commendable... that is worth the SMALL premium in price alone.

NusuniAdmin

Dec 18, 2003, 07:17 AM

Originally posted by iChan
1/2 million is quite an impressive number...

however, i do think that Macs are much more expensive than Windows PCs, but in reality, apples last much longer than windows machines and one thing I do know...

Since switching, it is the first time I have felt happy with what I had in a computer... and that is so commendable... that is worth the SMALL premium in price alone.

Yes, i know a few people that bought new dells about 3 years ago, they were top of the line 2.4 ghz (i think), and they have had so many problems, they've had to replace the motherboard about 4 times. Heck...my performa 550 still runs......runs pretty good to.... And its wut about 10 years old now?

SiliconAddict

Dec 18, 2003, 09:57 AM

Originally posted by NusuniAdmin
Ya but... why do you really need more than 1 or 2 hd's or over 1 cd drive

Its called RAID. Specifically RAID 5. In the next 2-5 years this is going to be standard in every PC. (Along with SATA.) It would be smart of Apple to get on the ball and at the very least have multiple drive slots to accommodate this NOW. RAID 5 requires at minimum 3 drives.
The beauty of RAID 5 is it adds redundancy so there is almost zero chance of data lost from a failed drive, and it speed up the system by distributing the data across 3 drives.
Again most workstations already are running some form of RAID be it RAID 0,1, or 5. It would be nice if Apple took this into consideration when they design their systems

SiliconAddict

Dec 18, 2003, 10:03 AM

Originally posted by NusuniAdmin
Yes, i know a few people that bought new dells about 3 years ago, they were top of the line 2.4 ghz (i think), and they have had so many problems, they've had to replace the motherboard about 4 times. Heck...my performa 550 still runs......runs pretty good to.... And its wut about 10 years old now?

Bull. Or maybe they got lemons. But we are running 126 Dell Optiplex GX110's (36 Optiplex GX260's) in the office I work and we've had maybe 2 or 3 go bad on us. We got that model in 2000 and the only thing we've added to these systems is another 256 to bring up the RAM to 384MB. The systems are 550Mhz with 10GB drives and again they are running perfectly fine. Laptops are another matter. The hard drives are dieing on us left and right but Dell doesn’t make hard drives so *shrugs*

ffakr

Dec 18, 2003, 10:33 AM

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
Its called RAID. Specifically RAID 5. In the next 2-5 years this is going to be standard in every PC. (Along with SATA.) It would be smart of Apple to get on the ball and at the very least have multiple drive slots to accommodate this NOW. RAID 5 requires at minimum 3 drives.
The beauty of RAID 5 is it adds redundancy so there is almost zero chance of data lost from a failed drive, and it speed up the system by distributing the data across 3 drives.
Again most workstations already are running some form of RAID be it RAID 0,1, or 5. It would be nice if Apple took this into consideration when they design their systems
You do know that RAID 5 puts additional overhead as the data needs to be encoded to span multiple drives with redundancy. Granted, this overhead shouldn't be significant considering running software RAID 5 on my last LinuxPPC box ran pretty well on a B&W G3. It is, however, a stretch to say that RAID 5 will automatically make your machine faster unless you have a proper RAID 5 controller... that is an extra processor to do the encoding. Real RAID cards (SCSI RAID cards) have a DSP on them for the RAID algorithm, and they have a large RAM buffer so your system can dump data into RAM and the card can encode the data properly when it can.

I don't disagree that a lot of vendors will add more RAID support to their motherboards (PC Motherboards) including RAID 5 support in the near future. It's already very common to see hardware RAID 0 and RAID 1 (stripped and mirrored) support in todays IDE chipsets.. a few even support IDE RAID 5 already.
I don't, however, agree that RAID 5 will be in common USE in PCs any time soon.
RAID is still an expensive option for most people. It requires (in all but RAID 0) a loss of useable drive space in return for redundancy. Most people don't like the idea of buying 2 - 120 GB drives to get 120 GB of space when they can buy one 250GB drive. Most people don't think about dataloss... or if they do, they figure they'll be good about backing up the important stuff.
Additionally, RAID is hard to implement on IDE systems. SATA has one drive per channel. Using SATA RAID 5 requires at least 3 SATA channels dedicated to your drives. If you are building parallel ATA RAID 5 arrays, you can't put 3 drives on 2 buses and expect reasonable performance. Because of the nature of Parallel ATA you can't access a master and a Slave on the same bus at the same time. In this case you need at least 3 (or more) seperate ATA channels for your RAID.
It's a whole lot easier with SCSI. You put all your drives on one bus. The number of drives you choose is usually dictated by the speed of the drives and the bandwidth available on the bus. There is a point with SCSI RAID 5 arrays where adding more drives slows the RAID down because there isn't enough bandwidth to feed all the devices.

This doesn't mean that Apple shouldn't support hardware RAID in a $3,000 computer. I think that Apple should at least give support for hardware L0 and L1 RAIDs. providing capacity for more drives and hardare RAID 5 would also be nice, but I still don't expect that most people would ever take advantage of it.

jmho
ffakr

ffakr

Dec 18, 2003, 10:59 AM

Originally posted by ddtlm
ffakr:
The Mac has the same bandwidth in most places as those P4's do, the only edge is in the PCI-X vs PCI department (remembering of course the the P4 only needs one FSB cause it has one processor).
well, the same bandwidth except in SMP processor to chipset bus(es) and PCI-x. I also, however, mentioned that the G5 ships with FW400, FW800, and spdif optical audio ports out of the box and these are usually extras on most PCs. It also has the option for integrated 802.11g and Bluetooth (though I honestly don't see the real value of wireless in a desktop these days)

And so do Opterons, especially the dual Opterons with quad memory channels.

You mention quad memory channels and 256 bit memory paths a few times. You know that in multiple processor Opterons still only have dual channel memory controllers. Multiple proc Opteron boards have seperate dual channel memory banks for each cpu, though the cpu's have processor to processor HT links (and I assume this is how cpus can access each other's memory). I don't think this could be characterized as having a 256 bit quad channel memory bus. The truth is that there are multiple dual channel memory buses (one per cpu). Personally, I think it's a hassle to have to populate multiple banks of memory in parallel.. but that's just me.

Hey if a Corvette outperforms a Ferrari, when only a fool buys the Ferrari (unless its about image). well, yea it's image but it's also about quality, fit and finish, polish. Corvette's are sweet rides (wish I could afford another.. and not a beater this time ;-) but they aren't Ferrari.

Anyone willing to build their own dual-CPU PC can beat Apple's prices, the only expensive dual-CPU's PC's are the ones coming from Dell and such. The Tyan K8W mobo-of-doom runs $500 and about $1000 for two 2.0ghz 2-way Opterons, about $200 for 1GB of reg-ecc DDR-333 to fill it's 256-bit wide memory interface, $400 for the 256MB R9800 pro, $200 for a nice case, $100 for a super PSU, $100 for nice heatsinks, $200 for a DVD-R, $400 for some nice SATA hard disks, $600 for some 17" LCD... I'm thinking this costs about $3600. (Give or take a couple hundred.) That's a 64/32-bit machine, has more PCI-X slots and more bandwidth (in every way) than the G5, has an additional old 33-32 PCI slot, can hold and cool 4-6 drives in addition to 4-6 5" bays (depending on the case). It's not that I don't like the G5, BTW, its just that some realism needs to be dished out.

You can always build a PC cheaper than a mac. Vendors need to make some profit for building systems after all. Couple things though.. you didn't include your OS price. Also, you don't get a system warranty with OEM parts. If you buy shrink wrapped parts you're OK.. even though you have to deal with a dozen different companies for support on your machine. A lot of people buy OEM though and they get a lot of hassle when they try to get a warranty repair. I used to buy OEM parts by the case for a previous job and the response we'd often get from the vendor is 'you need to contact the OEM for that return'. Problem was, we were essentially the original equipment manufacturer because we bought the OEM parts from a distributor. More than a few hard drives went into the trash after agrueing for too long with manufacturers.

I think you're trying too hard to defend Apple's position.
I think you should re-read my posts here and elsewhere which consistently point out my opinions that Opteron is a great CPU, G5s should have more room for devices, you can build cheaper PCs than Macs... These points in no way mean I can't also defend the current macs based on their strengths and they also don't preclude me from airing my perceptions (as someone supporting Mac an PC users for 7 years) of what features users actually use/want/need.

Its no more crippled than the P4 was, or that the Opteron still is. The P4 was not only poor at running legacy code, but it had an expanded ISA to use, unlike the G5, which isn't too bad at legacy code, and has no expanded ISA. In 64-bit mode the Opteron has twice the registers to use vs older x86 chips. Of the three, the G5 was apparently the least divergent from its predecessor; about the only compiler-level optimization is to reorder the code thats already there.

Read the G5 optimization guide from Apple. There are quite a few differences in the architectures. G5s can have something like 10x as many in-flight instructions. They have dual FPs, they fetch altivec data differently than G4s, they don't have pseudo-little-endian mode op anymore...
There is a LOT of difference between the G5 and previous PPC desktop processors. I have to say that I think you're mistaken here.

"Up to ... up to ... up to" ... meanwhile, in the real world you're gona see much smaller gains.
And I'm firmly confident this will not happen. AltiVec optimization was a one-time gain and the G5 has nothing that revolutionary to add. Its a very nice chip and can be quite fast, but I don't see any software miracles coming.
That's a powerfull dismissal without much to back it up. I've seen the benefit that apps have seen from optimization already. Cinebench is MUCH faster after the developers optimized for the G5. The numbers I've seen from the Beta of xlc show code speed improvement of 30-70% over gcc 3.3.
You have any numbers or links to support your assumption that the G5 won't benefit greatly from software and compiler optimizations?

SiliconAddict

Dec 18, 2003, 02:01 PM

Originally posted by ffakr
You do know that RAID 5 puts additional overhead as the data needs to be encoded to span multiple drives with redundancy. Granted, this overhead shouldn't be significant considering running software RAID 5 on my last LinuxPPC box ran pretty well on a B&W G3. It is, however, a stretch to say that RAID 5 will automatically make your machine faster unless you have a proper RAID 5 controller... that is an extra processor to do the encoding. Real RAID cards (SCSI RAID cards) have a DSP on them for the RAID algorithm, and they have a large RAM buffer so your system can dump data into RAM and the card can encode the data properly when it can.

I don't disagree that a lot of vendors will add more RAID support to their motherboards (PC Motherboards) including RAID 5 support in the near future. It's already very common to see hardware RAID 0 and RAID 1 (stripped and mirrored) support in todays IDE chipsets.. a few even support IDE RAID 5 already.
I don't, however, agree that RAID 5 will be in common USE in PCs any time soon.
RAID is still an expensive option for most people. It requires (in all but RAID 0) a loss of useable drive space in return for redundancy. Most people don't like the idea of buying 2 - 120 GB drives to get 120 GB of space when they can buy one 250GB drive. Most people don't think about dataloss... or if they do, they figure they'll be good about backing up the important stuff.
Additionally, RAID is hard to implement on IDE systems. SATA has one drive per channel. Using SATA RAID 5 requires at least 3 SATA channels dedicated to your drives. If you are building parallel ATA RAID 5 arrays, you can't put 3 drives on 2 buses and expect reasonable performance. Because of the nature of Parallel ATA you can't access a master and a Slave on the same bus at the same time. In this case you need at least 3 (or more) seperate ATA channels for your RAID.
It's a whole lot easier with SCSI. You put all your drives on one bus. The number of drives you choose is usually dictated by the speed of the drives and the bandwidth available on the bus. There is a point with SCSI RAID 5 arrays where adding more drives slows the RAID down because there isn't enough bandwidth to feed all the devices.

This doesn't mean that Apple shouldn't support hardware RAID in a $3,000 computer. I think that Apple should at least give support for hardware L0 and L1 RAIDs. providing capacity for more drives and hardare RAID 5 would also be nice, but I still don't expect that most people would ever take advantage of it.

jmho
ffakr

Ya its amazing how much you learn when you bury your head in a book for your A+ tests. I think I'm going blind but at least I know my RAID 1 Duplexing from my RAID 5 :p
Poor man's EIDE RAID isn't all that expensive. The card itself runs around $50-$150 depending on if its doing the encoding through software or via an onboard CPU. *shrugs* Its not a good method but EIDE RAID is still in its infancy right now. Hence the 2-5 year estimate. Then again I'm expecting PATA to go the way of the dodo and be replaced by SATA. As you mentioned the most expensive part of these devices is now the hard drive since you need, at minimum, 3 drives for striping. Not saying RAID is ready for prime time now for anyone other then the uber nerd but in a year or 2 *shrugs* very possible. And as Mac user are always claiming Macs have a longer lifespan then PC's. It would be nice to know that a $3,000 investment would be upgradeable to this tech in 2-3 years.

Rower_CPU

Dec 18, 2003, 02:07 PM

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
Bull. Or maybe they got lemons. But we are running 126 Dell Optiplex GX110's (36 Optiplex GX260's) in the office I work and we've had maybe 2 or 3 go bad on us. We got that model in 2000 and the only thing we've added to these systems is another 256 to bring up the RAM to 384MB. The systems are 550Mhz with 10GB drives and again they are running perfectly fine. Laptops are another matter. The hard drives are dieing on us left and right but Dell doesn’t make hard drives so *shrugs*

We've had numerous hard drive and zip drive issues with our 50 GX150s.

Dell doesn't make all the parts, they just use cheap ones. ;)

NusuniAdmin

Dec 18, 2003, 03:49 PM

Originally posted by Rower_CPU
We've had numerous hard drive and zip drive issues with our 50 GX150s.

Dell doesn't make all the parts, they just use cheap ones. ;)

Exactly

MacRAND

Dec 18, 2003, 06:12 PM

500,000 G5 Macs per Quarter As a long time Mac user, I love all the new product from G5s to 20" iMac to the G4 iBooks and PowerBooks.
But, 500,000 Macs over a quarter may be good for Mac, until you consider that Dell sells 100,000 units per DAY. I didn't believe it when I was told, so I went to their corporate web site, checked their disclosure to shareholders and... per DAY!
Current sales levels of Macs are not going to improve market share that much.
That's not why we buy a Mac, and another, and... It's ease of use, design, and feel. We are in love.
With the new G5 Macs likely due out Jan 6th, prices on the current crop should drop dramatically as soon as the new Macs are in plentiful supply and are shipping. Eager to buy? Just wait. ;)

Macmaniac

Dec 18, 2003, 11:04 PM

I'll add my name to that growing list as soon as the Rev B's come out:)

ffakr

Dec 18, 2003, 11:58 PM

Unfortunately, renovating a house isn't cheap.. so I blew my developer discount on an office machine and I'm not buying my G5 till I renew my developer status (with my next WWDC ticket). I'm thinking I'm in for Rev. C unless it doesn't look like that is near by late next spring (early summer).

fixyourthinking

Dec 19, 2003, 08:14 AM

Originally posted by MacRAND
As a long time Mac user, I love all the new product from G5s to 20" iMac to the G4 iBooks and PowerBooks.
But, 500,000 Macs over a quarter may be good for Mac, until you consider that Dell sells 100,000 units per DAY. I didn't believe it when I was told, so I went to their corporate web site, checked their disclosure to shareholders and... per DAY!
Current sales levels of Macs are not going to improve market share that much.
That's not why we buy a Mac, and another, and... It's ease of use, design, and feel. We are in love.
With the new G5 Macs likely due out Jan 6th, prices on the current crop should drop dramatically as soon as the new Macs are in plentiful supply and are shipping. Eager to buy? Just wait. ;)

Well, your preception is skewed slightly. 500K is ONLY for G5's. That doesn't include the 200K iBooks for the quarter, 230K iMacs for the quarter 204K PowerBooks for the quarter 119K eMacs for the quarter - still not 100K a day, but gives you a better perception. Some of the figures I quoted don't include educational sales either.

Dell's profit margin is also MUCH lower than Apple's (they still make more money based on volume) but it's somewhere between 2%-7% - Apple's profit margins are between 22%-34%. The average Dell goes for >$1000 - The average Mac goes for >$2500

visor

Dec 19, 2003, 12:04 PM

Originally posted by ffakr
OTOH, it is a limitiation to ship a 'pro' machine that isn't capable of being configured with RAID as an option. It would be nice to have shipped with the option for 3 sata drives and support for RAID 0,1 or even 5.

Raid in a desktop? IN a desktop? I think you've looked at PC's to much recently. OK you can use a cheap raid controller and build a so called raid 0 or 1 with it. but thats not PRO at all. If you say raid, better mean one of those RAID racks with 5 HD's or more in them, extra cooled, noisy as hell and bound to be somewhere with aircondition and without ears around. a Raid sure as hell doesn't belong in a desktop. the less Drives, the less noise - that's what counts on desktops.

I also think that one optical drive is a limitation. Apple's current solutions for copying CDs is rather clunky. There should be an easy way to do disk to disk copies without paying the external drive premium. If Apple built in room for 3-4 drives stacked and two stacked removable drives, you could configure the system with a very fast CDR and a DVD-R. DVD-R drives are pretty slow when it comes to burning CDs.

Well, OK that may be a bit unnerving if you copy a lot of cd's.
I think I've copied my last cd sometime last year, possibly before that, so for me personally, I don't need a lot of Optical drives. fast network is important to me, and do get that from a mac.

sethypoo

Dec 19, 2003, 04:38 PM

I wish I could be in those ranks.....maybe when the PowerBook G5 comes out.

Here's hoping.

Scottgfx

Dec 20, 2003, 03:40 AM

Originally posted by ffakr
You do know that RAID 5 puts additional overhead as the data needs to be encoded to span multiple drives with redundancy.

It's a "be careful what you wish for" type of thing. Statistically, as you add more hard drives to a system, you increase the chance of a hardware failure. I have a two disk, striped Medea brand drive array. it's twice failed in three years, and I don't think I'm fixing this time. (it's only 50MB)

Can you imagine if they started putting 3 and 4 hard drives in a computer standard? Just think of how many more support calls would come in?

How about a RAID 5 made up of Toshiba 1.8" drives that would fit in a 5.25 bay. :)

fixyourthinking

Dec 21, 2003, 03:14 PM

Originally posted by Scottgfx
It's a "be careful what you wish for" type of thing. Statistically, as you add more hard drives to a system, you increase the chance of a hardware failure. I have a two disk, striped Medea brand drive array. it's twice failed in three years, and I don't think I'm fixing this time. (it's only 50MB)

Can you imagine if they started putting 3 and 4 hard drives in a computer standard? Just think of how many more support calls would come in?

How about a RAID 5 made up of Toshiba 1.8" drives that would fit in a 5.25 bay. :)

I'm sure you meant that as a joke but just in case, I'll reply.

The speed and reliability that one would gain with RAID would be lost to rotational speed and size/reliability of a 1.8" HD.

1.8" Rotaional speed = 3800RPM
3.5" Rotational speed up to 15000 RPM with majority at 7200 and 10K RPM

Scottgfx

Dec 22, 2003, 05:29 AM

Originally posted by adzoox
I'm sure you meant that as a joke but just in case, I'll reply.

The speed and reliability that one would gain with RAID would be lost to rotational speed and size/reliability of a 1.8" HD.

1.8" Rotaional speed = 3800RPM
3.5" Rotational speed up to 15000 RPM with majority at 7200 and 10K RPM

Damn! There goes my presentation for the investors! That's it, we're moving to USB Flash key RAID. ;)

MacRAND

Dec 22, 2003, 11:38 AM

Originally posted by Scottgfx
Damn! There goes my presentation for the investors!
That's it, we're moving to USB Flash key RAID. ;) Flash Memory that is large and fast does not yet exist outside R&D labs, but it is coming. So your idea of a "flash RAID", while premature, is actually visionary.

Reportedly, IBM dumped its billion dollar Hard Drive division earlier this year on Hitachi, participating in a partnership conversion period first, because the speed and size of "mechanical memory" has reached its theoretical limit and is no longer cost effective. Platters of Aluminum alloy and composite glass can rotate only so fast, heads can search over the surface of stacked platters only so much, and miniturization of the standard sized HD can be shrunk only so much before the physical boundaries of molecular structure resist further reduction. On 2D printed circuit boards, how can science reduce the size of something any further when the width of an inorganic (metal) electrical circuit is the smallest size of the material itself, a single atom or molecule?

So the challenge has been to make artificial memory (intelligence? like our brain) 3D (from a square to a cube), organic (like plant cells or bacteria that can record a digital signal) and non-mechanical ( because "moving" a something solid or liquid is slow compared to the speed of light).

What is flash memory, how is it made and of what, I have no clue. But I do know that the technology is in its infantcy compared to old man Hard Drive, and it or something derived from it or possibly parallel to it is the future.

In about 1983 a 15MB Hard Drive cost $15,000; or, $1,000 per meg.
Now in 2003 (20 years), an 80GB Hard Drive cost about $80; or $1.00 per gig.
:eek: Now, that's progress. Think of what the next 20 years will hold. :)

Rotational speed of platters has gone from maybe 1,500 rpm then to 7,200 rpm for FireWire drives, and 10,000 and 15,000 rpm for hot SCSI drives. But, today's miniaturizeded one-inch drives are much slower. Physical boundaries.

The point is - mechanical, inorganic hard drives as we know them will soon be replaced by non-mechanicl possibly organic memory chips with speed approaching a factor of the speed of light itself.

So, your "flash RAID", I believe to be prophetic. I can imagine very large, very fast flash memory the size of a stick of Wrigley's Double Mint gum, and a server RAID the size of a pack of gum.
;)

Now, the question becomes, what kind of redundancy in your RAID do you want or need and why?
:confused:

Dont Hurt Me

Dec 23, 2003, 04:52 PM

actually ibm has been working on a punch card type plastic film memory thats activated or rather open and closed by wether a hole has or has not been burned into this memory location. think of a self sealing hole that can be used over and over could replace harddrives with a solid state memory device that holds its memory even with power loss. wonder how the progress has been doing?

ffakr

Dec 23, 2003, 06:26 PM

Originally posted by MacRAND

So, your "flash RAID", I believe to be prophetic. I can imagine very large, very fast flash memory the size of a stick of Wrigley's Double Mint gum, and a server RAID the size of a pack of gum.
;)
You don't need raid for this. You can put ECC into the memory (error checking and correcting parity). RAID provides more speed [stiping, RAID 5 if configured properly] and/or redundancy [mirrored, RAID 5,10,20...] and/or data integrity [mirrored, raid 5...]

Solid state drives could provide integrity with ECC. It would provide speed via increased bandwidth data paths. The only think I think you'd need solid state RAID for would be for real redundancy.. where one solid state device would be dead yet the data would still be available.

I don't think we'll see this for a long time though. Right now, solid state memory degrades over time. That cool flash key fob will eventually have problems recording and retrieving data. They have to fundimentally change the technology of solid state memory to make it usefull enough for day in, day out use as a primary drive technology... though that day will come. Maybe 10 years from now, IMHO (till it's mainstream)
We'll probably see drive manufacturers pull a little bit more data density out of current drive tech. Maybe 400GB in the same form factor... but more importantly, we'll see what's now considered high capacity (160GB +) coming down in price in the near future.

... but I'm just a stupid Ffakr.