Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Event on Thursday May 18th, 2006?
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Multimedia said:
i dont know, i think it has to be motivated by competition and demand. i dont think apple for instance would of had any problem putting out a really nice wide format iPod video...but they dont have to. why stop selling something that people still buy, unless theres competition, then you'll have to in order to stay ahead. who knows. i dont even care right now. i'll leave the arguments to you guys.
I dunno, I just can't see iBook/Macbooks going to Merom any time soon. The iBook stayed at G3 for a long time after the Powerbook went G4 and this could be repeated with Merom.
Apple need to be able to differentiate their consumer from product lines technically and Yonah/Merom is the best way to do this.
Obviously the Macbook will eventually go Merom, most likely when it goes rev.B at MacWorld '07 but I think it'll hold out till then.
As for the 64bit argument I can't see a 64 bit revolution anytime soon for one plain reason, the 32 bit environment is more than enough for the average consumer, sure for the pro market it would be nice to be able to address for memory (Final Cut would love it) Consumers would see no difference.
I am an Network Admin by trade and remember clearly the release of XP 64bit. The company I was working for had some Athlon64 workstations (Now that is a great processor and years ahead of its time) and the users were waiting for this dramatic performance increase.... it never happened.
Yes Microsoft is planning to ship Exchange 12 as 64bit and kickstart 64bit computing but they do say A LOT of things at Microsoft. Like the Windows Vista database driven filesystem (WinFS Oh! WinFS, where art thou WinFS?) that suprise suprise aint gonna be in the first realease of the OS. Also the 3D GUI that has been boiled down so much there's barely anything left.
The long and the short is that very little happens in computing overnight, mainly because business takes years to react to it. I now work for one of the largest 100 companies in the UK and we only migrated to Exchange 2003 from 5.5 a few months ago! The reason being is that it took over a year of planning, 6 months of virtualized testing and then about 3 months of AD Schema changes and rollout. Business will not go 64 bit overnight, they couldn't do it in a year.
Also Apple will not get themselves in the situation whereby they make the revA Macbook Pro's obselete in a year. How would that look on a balance sheet whereby you have to buy a new unit after a year, so depreciate the cost of the asset over its useful life in the business (In this case $2000 over 12 months) and the TCO on a Macbook is REDICULOUS hence you stop buying Macbook Pro's adn buy a Dell Mobile Workstation, bye bye Apple's Pro business market.
If you wanna wait till August you'll get a Merom based Macbook Pro and very nice it will be too (Faster and longer battery life)
If you wanna wait till January you'll get a Macbook Merom (As above)
If you don't wanna wait you'll get a Yonah Macbook (Hopefully this week!!!!) and it'll do you proud (At least CPU-wise the graphics maybe a sticky area) for all the tasks a consumer notebook is designed for (i-Life and similar apps and maybe some light Photoshop/Video editing work)
Would I buy a Macbook Yonah now - Yes
Would I buy a Macbook Pro Yonah now - Not unless I really really had to
Yonah is a great architecture and Core (Merom) looks even greater, yes Merom is more appealing but Yonah is by no means whatsoever a waste of money today.
It's not always about having the best, just what will do what you want it to do for as long as it can and Yonah is definetly that.
Also to anyone who buys a RevA Merom, come next year there's the Santa Rosa chipset and that will make RevA Meroms look humble in comparison (Start reading up on Robson Cache technology!!!!) oh yeah and 802.11n Networking
All the above in my humble opinion!
Apple need to be able to differentiate their consumer from product lines technically and Yonah/Merom is the best way to do this.
Obviously the Macbook will eventually go Merom, most likely when it goes rev.B at MacWorld '07 but I think it'll hold out till then.
As for the 64bit argument I can't see a 64 bit revolution anytime soon for one plain reason, the 32 bit environment is more than enough for the average consumer, sure for the pro market it would be nice to be able to address for memory (Final Cut would love it) Consumers would see no difference.
I am an Network Admin by trade and remember clearly the release of XP 64bit. The company I was working for had some Athlon64 workstations (Now that is a great processor and years ahead of its time) and the users were waiting for this dramatic performance increase.... it never happened.
Yes Microsoft is planning to ship Exchange 12 as 64bit and kickstart 64bit computing but they do say A LOT of things at Microsoft. Like the Windows Vista database driven filesystem (WinFS Oh! WinFS, where art thou WinFS?) that suprise suprise aint gonna be in the first realease of the OS. Also the 3D GUI that has been boiled down so much there's barely anything left.
The long and the short is that very little happens in computing overnight, mainly because business takes years to react to it. I now work for one of the largest 100 companies in the UK and we only migrated to Exchange 2003 from 5.5 a few months ago! The reason being is that it took over a year of planning, 6 months of virtualized testing and then about 3 months of AD Schema changes and rollout. Business will not go 64 bit overnight, they couldn't do it in a year.
Also Apple will not get themselves in the situation whereby they make the revA Macbook Pro's obselete in a year. How would that look on a balance sheet whereby you have to buy a new unit after a year, so depreciate the cost of the asset over its useful life in the business (In this case $2000 over 12 months) and the TCO on a Macbook is REDICULOUS hence you stop buying Macbook Pro's adn buy a Dell Mobile Workstation, bye bye Apple's Pro business market.
If you wanna wait till August you'll get a Merom based Macbook Pro and very nice it will be too (Faster and longer battery life)
If you wanna wait till January you'll get a Macbook Merom (As above)
If you don't wanna wait you'll get a Yonah Macbook (Hopefully this week!!!!) and it'll do you proud (At least CPU-wise the graphics maybe a sticky area) for all the tasks a consumer notebook is designed for (i-Life and similar apps and maybe some light Photoshop/Video editing work)
Would I buy a Macbook Yonah now - Yes
Would I buy a Macbook Pro Yonah now - Not unless I really really had to
Yonah is a great architecture and Core (Merom) looks even greater, yes Merom is more appealing but Yonah is by no means whatsoever a waste of money today.
It's not always about having the best, just what will do what you want it to do for as long as it can and Yonah is definetly that.
Also to anyone who buys a RevA Merom, come next year there's the Santa Rosa chipset and that will make RevA Meroms look humble in comparison (Start reading up on Robson Cache technology!!!!) oh yeah and 802.11n Networking
All the above in my humble opinion!
With regard to, and I hesitate to use this word, the "debate" on whether to wait for a 64 bit CPU in an effort to future-proof a personal computer, I just want to know who it was that proclaimed "It's so stupendous living in this tube" in this forum? I've seen it quoted in somebody's signature--that person deserves a medal.
I am waiting to buy a Merom Mini, but not because I think the Yonah version will be outdated or obsolete. I'm waiting because technology triggers a certain level or paranoia in me. As long as I can laugh at myself, I guess.
For the record, I tend to agree with BRLawyer. I will tote my G4 PB around until it dies. Not because I can't afford to upgrade, but because it does what I need and I have an unhealthy attachment to it.
I am waiting to buy a Merom Mini, but not because I think the Yonah version will be outdated or obsolete. I'm waiting because technology triggers a certain level or paranoia in me.
As long as I can laugh at myself, I guess.For the record, I tend to agree with BRLawyer. I will tote my G4 PB around until it dies. Not because I can't afford to upgrade, but because it does what I need and I have an unhealthy attachment to it.
It's not about 20-50% faster - it's about no software available in 2 years.vikas soni said:
I've said many times that IMO it was a big mistake for Apple to ship any Yonah systems. They should have waited for Merom, and hyped the "all 64-bit" line.
And before you whine about "had to move to faster Intel" - look at Apple's CY05Q4 and CY06Q1 results. Record sales and profits - not a panic situation in the slightest. Maybe the G4 and G5 systems were "dog slow", but they were selling anyway.
Again, IMO, Apple would be smart to kill Yonah ASAP and move to all 64-bit. If the small number of people who bought systems in early 2006 get burned by that, well - as Mr. Spock said "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one".
This is f#cked. I don't care personally but one of my work colleagues is spitting chips. He's had money set aside for a couple of months now... This is destroying my reputation as a Mac geek here...
aussie_geek
aussie_geek
AidenShaw said:
Exactily! Many people have G5's, but even more people have G4's, since that's ALL that you could get if you wanted a laptop or sub $1000 desktop.
Companies won't make their software obsolete to the core users (no pun intended) who are still using PPC. In this case, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one".
Granted, I would never buy a PPC mac right now, and I wouldn't buy a $2000 flagship laptop when I know that there's a major CPU upgrade coming out in 4 months, but I would buy a $1000 MacBook because it does what I need it to do, now, I buy it knowing it's not the fastest flagship computer, and I'm not worried that I won't be able to do something on it 5 years from now because of the CPU architecture.
This has *nothing* to do with PowerPC
The discussion is about the potential for 64-bit x86 (x64) to very quickly render 32-bit x86 obsolete - since it is possible that very shortly Apple will drop all x86 and have a pure x64 lineup. If Apple do that, then soon there won't be enough x86 MacIntels for 3rd party software vendors to even care about makeing fat binaries for x86.
no one is suggesting that Merom will kill off 32-bit PowerPC - there's a large base of customers for this old architecture.thejadedmonkey said:
The discussion is about the potential for 64-bit x86 (x64) to very quickly render 32-bit x86 obsolete - since it is possible that very shortly Apple will drop all x86 and have a pure x64 lineup. If Apple do that, then soon there won't be enough x86 MacIntels for 3rd party software vendors to even care about makeing fat binaries for x86.
netdog said:
The 80386 was launced in 1986. Windows 3.0, arguably the first popular operating system to make use of the '386, wasn't released until 1990. Before Windows 3.0, pretty much all mass market apps ran on the 8086, and relatively few applications made use of '286 or '386 features. Even after the release of Windows 3.0, most applications requirement for a 386 or better had to do with a combination of processor performance and Windows's own requirements.
The situation's even more positive than that. There are no compelling reasons to go 64 bit at the moment. It'll happen, but not yet. Certainly not in the next three years. Meanwhile, coding for the 8086 in the 1980s was a PITA. You were forced to use 64k pages, and most applications needed considerably more than 64k of memory. The flat address spaces with 24/32 bit index registers offered by the protected modes of the 80286 and its successors were extremely desirable for the sake of writing simple, easy to program, applications.
I seriously doubt that Core 2 Duos being 64 bit is going to mean a sudden end to 32 bit computing. People who write 64 bit code for the next three years are usually needlessly locking out a market they can support by checking a check box. And this is especially true if the MacBook has regular 32-bit Core Duos, not Core 2 Duos. If every mass market machine in 2006 from Apple has 32 bit Cores, any developer requiring a 64 bit Intel machine had better have a good justification for doing so.
You should have done your homework.aussie_geek said:
Had you seen the potential for Merom to destroy the value of Yonah-based systems - you would have been able to give your colleagues useful advice.
Now, they see you as a simple fanboi...
Does a 20% performance improvement to stay even with Windows 64-bit apps count as "good justification"?peharri said:
AidenShaw said:
No, it doesn't, because it's a bogus justification.
The fact that "64 bit" code may run "20% faster" does not, in any way, mean that developers will refuse to generate UBs containing 32 bit code. Developers will continue to write programs in high level languages. They'll compile their applications to run on 64 bit, 32 bit, and PPC systems as normal. At some point, they're likely to drop the PPC binaries, because the endian issues means that there's genuine reason to find maintaining both versions awkward. However, there's not a single reason on Earth for them to not click the "32 bit" binary option.
They do not gain a 20% performance increase by refusing to support 32 bit architectures. They gain a 20% performance increase by supporting 64 bit architectures. You don't have to drop 32 bit support to support 64 bit code.
So, no, "a 20% performance increase" is not justification. That doesn't justify dropping 32 bit code at all. Dropping 32 bit support will not give you a 20% performance increase.
someone just lost their job ... latest MacBook slip FROM APPLE!
This seems to be a fake, but I'm posting it anyway. I wet my pants at first. (credit to mavherzog for posting in another thread)
http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/14/supposed-macbook-ad-accidentally-posted-to-apple-site/
This seems to be a fake, but I'm posting it anyway. I wet my pants at first. (credit to mavherzog for posting in another thread)
http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/14/supposed-macbook-ad-accidentally-posted-to-apple-site/
Wow, that is a nice job--worthy of the front page even! One thing, and I might be nitpicking, but there is no mention of the iSight. Apple usually points that out.
Remember how the Mac Mini was supposed to be introduced at MWSF this year but they pushed it back to the special event that made so many people rabid a few weeks later? The store opening could be a sort of makeup for a prior missed date as well...just a thought.
Remember how the Mac Mini was supposed to be introduced at MWSF this year but they pushed it back to the special event that made so many people rabid a few weeks later? The store opening could be a sort of makeup for a prior missed date as well...just a thought.
are the letters "QA" on your keyboard?
There are at least two reasons not to click the "x86" option - QA and support.peharri said:
my brain is hurting, i've been using a (shhhh) pc and it's nothing like a mac. it doesn't have an intel. instead it has a slugish 900mhz AMD Athlon in it. i prefer amd for pc if anything, but i wont care once i get a mac again. Btw, when will mac start using AMD if ever? or would they have to change everything again? oh, and when will macbooks going to be in store? a week after they are announced or that day?
When intel can't deliver promised chips. If Apple ever move to AMD (Which they probably won't because Intel has competition and stays up near the top with chip specs), it would be much easier than PPC=>Intel switch because it is still x86 architecture [or x64].vccavtech said:
My guess is that Apple will like to have them shipping NOW. Steve usually releases the consumer computers as soon as they are announced.vccavtech said:
boncellis said:...I just want to know who it was that proclaimed "It's so stupendous living in this tube" in this forum? I've seen it quoted in somebody's signature--that person deserves a medal.
Trey Anastasio?
What's that got to do with buying hardware?
epepper9 said:
OMG, you're right about that. I can't remember a consumer product not shipping immediately after beeing announced. For example: iMac "shipping today", Macbook Pro shipping in a month, Mac Mini "shipping today". This has been going on for some time actually, the consumer products ship immediately. So it's very likely the Macbooks will be in stores the moment they are announced. And this means, if they are announced this week, they should already be on their way to or already in the shops. Did anyone see some boxes? Come one, there must be someone camping in front of an apple store with a 24/7 observation team
.
When you're in the store and in the search field you type in :
macbook -pro
it shows you ibook g4 12" & 14" and Powerbook G4 12"...
What to think about it ?
macbook -pro
it shows you ibook g4 12" & 14" and Powerbook G4 12"...
What to think about it ?