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Apple Releases Intel iMac

Price

As far as mac's being still expensive remember that old saying, 'you get what you paid for'. It's a real unique computer with unique software, no one pc manufacture comes close to apples experience.

I don't think apple at this point wants to overtake microsoft as yet, that's probably 5-10 years away. Mac is still a niche product and apple will keep it that way for a while to come so don't expect prices to come down.
 
skunkworks said:
It will be at least a year or two for developers to make the transition to intel, so all you G5 people shouldn't be whining, its still a great machine to have and works very well. There will always be something better, you should sit back and appreciate what you have, people are still running G4's and G3's...

Look at it this way in two years you can sell your imacs and hopefully by then adobe will have gone native and that's probably the best time to upgrade anyways.

my two cents....
Click to expand...

Actually most software should be native my years end including adobe.
 
I just cant belive theyre going to screw up the whole the naming system. new intel notebooks have a different name but the desktops dont. either change them all or change none. heres what i propose:

imac - mac
powermac - mac pro
mac mini - mac mini
mac student (emac ressurected)
ibook - macbook
powerbook - macbook pro
macbook mini (tiny notebook for those ppl i dont get who want tiny 10" crazy high res. notebooks)
macpad (tablet)


thus we have macs and macbooks, with well defined pro and consumer lines, and any other specialty items like the mini and whatever else they want to do later.

EDIT: I guess that does pose one problem- one can buy a mac without it being a mac. i guess we'd go back to saying 'buy a macintosh' if it is likely to lead to confusion.
 
chaos86 said:
I just cant belive theyre going to screw up the whole the naming system. new intel notebooks have a different name but the desktops dont. either change them all or change none. heres what i propose:

imac - mac
powermac - mac pro
mac mini - mac mini
mac student (emac ressurected)
ibook - macbook
powerbook - macbook pro
macbook mini (tiny notebook for those ppl i dont get who want tiny 10" crazy high res. notebooks)
macpad (tablet)


thus we have macs and macbooks, with well defined pro and consumer lines, and any other specialty items like the mini and whatever else they want to do later.

EDIT: I guess that does pose one problem- one can buy a mac without it being a mac. i guess we'd go back to saying 'buy a macintosh' if it is likely to lead to confusion.
Click to expand...

i like the idea of a subnotebook since most pc makers have at least one model in that 3-4 lb. range...and tablets, too

the imac, however, should be called the "imac" since it's such a strong brand name, much like "ipod" imho
 
Peace said:
That comparison can not be made until the pro apps are released as native apps..
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I thought all of Apple's own software was dual binary. In any case how about iLife 06- I do seem to recall Steve saying something about the discs shipping in iLife 06 being dual binary- Granted iMovie isn't as full fledged as Final Cut Express but it still does many of the same things- I would love to know how well iMovie performs on the CoreDuo compared to the G5.
 
Ravenflight said:
Anybody know how the video performance is on these new machines? I read somewhere that the iMacs on display at Macworld could not handle 1080p without dropping tons of frames- while the 'old and slow' G5's could handle 1080p just fine.
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Interesting, I hadn't heard that. Do you know where you read that or can anyone else confirm?

I guess that's another reason Apple wants to shift the decoding to the graphics card. Perhaps that hasn't been debugged YET :)
 
jefhatfield said:
i like the idea of a subnotebook since most pc makers have at least one model in that 3-4 lb. range...and tablets, too

the imac, however, should be called the "imac" since it's such a strong brand name, much like "ipod" imho
Click to expand...

I agree...it is iMac becasue it is i using the mac and its i apps ;)
 
I think they should stick to iMac too, silly to change it when a few more people are starting to know about Macs. It will only confuse.
Powerbook had to go since they now want to use "Mac" in all their lines, and they no longer use PPC.
They don´t "have" to change iMac in the same manner
 
GregA said:
Interesting, I hadn't heard that. Do you know where you read that or can anyone else confirm?

I guess that's another reason Apple wants to shift the decoding to the graphics card. Perhaps that hasn't been debugged YET :)
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Ok, heres where I read about it skipping frames on h.264. It's down toward the bottom of the page under "Performance" http://www.unsanity.org/archives/000445.php
However, the loss of AltiVec is a HUGE problem which Apple didn't show in their test. I watched a display MacBook Pro here at MWSF play a H.264 trailer for Fun With Dick & Jane and it was very, very noticeably skipping frames. My current 1.5Ghz PowerBook (with AltiVec, of course) plays the same trailer with no skipping. The skipping is highly noticeable on machines with 128megs VRAM (which is the default configuration for the MacBook Pros) but not very noticeable on the MacBook Pros with 256megs of VRAM. My current PowerBook G4 has 128megs of VRAM, for comparison. A friend pointed out Apple's page with some basic application benchmarks. He also seems to mention that the performance increase is very similar to the performance increase you'd get if you just added another core to the current G4s, much like Freescale's neé Motorola's e600 PowerPC does.
Click to expand...
 
Ravenflight said:
Ok, heres where I read about it skipping frames on h.264. It's down toward the bottom of the page under "Performance" http://www.unsanity.org/archives/000445.php
Click to expand...


I don't know where unsanity comes up with this stuff but I can tell you this much.

My DTK ( 3.6 P4) plays Movie trailers with no frame drops.And it uses shared memory.

[edit] I booted into my DTK..Downloaded the fun with dick and jane trailer and played it with QT.
Framerate stayed at 24fps..

I'm guessing the unsanity guy was streaming it from the servers at MWSF.And since there were probably other people streaming various stuff the bandwidth bogged down.

[/edit]
 
some people are forgetting steve's last keynote when he said theyd be switching to intel.

he said every apple project has been running on both ppc and intel since the start of OSX.

that says to me that they already have the apple pro apps in universal binary, or close to it, and theyre waiting a few weeks so they dont overwhelm the consumer with too many announcements, or maybe so the pros will be ordering a few weeks later and thus spread out the ordering/shipping.
 
chaos86 said:
some people are forgetting steve's last keynote when he said theyd be switching to intel.

he said every apple project has been running on both ppc and intel since the start of OSX.

that says to me that they already have the apple pro apps in universal binary, or close to it, and theyre waiting a few weeks so they dont overwhelm the consumer with too many announcements, or maybe so the pros will be ordering a few weeks later and thus spread out the ordering/shipping.
Click to expand...

You misunderstood Jobs.He never said "every Apple project".He said each build of OS X was done on both platforms.
 
Peace said:
You misunderstood Jobs.He never said "every Apple project".He said each build of OS X was done on both platforms.
Click to expand...

i could have sworn he said something that meant theres a team of geniuses in that building that recompile every apple software project for use on intel along with the intel OSX.
 
Peace said:
I don't know where unsanity comes up with this stuff but I can tell you this much.

My DTK ( 3.6 P4) plays Movie trailers with no frame drops.And it uses shared memory.

[edit] I booted into my DTK..Downloaded the fun with dick and jane trailer and played it with QT.
Framerate stayed at 24fps..

I'm guessing the unsanity guy was streaming it from the servers at MWSF.And since there were probably other people streaming various stuff the bandwidth bogged down.

[/edit]
Click to expand...
Mmm. perhaps. Or perhaps ATI's implementation of h.264 decoding is flawed, or Quicktime needs to be optimized to use these new video chips more effectively- or maybe now that h.264 video is being offloaded to the video chip the bus is bogging down.

In any case I won't be pre-ordering a new CoreDuo's till I can get down to my local Apple Store and see for myself if the Video performance really is that much worse than the supposedly slower G4 and G5 macs.
 
You really have to look at these new machines with an open mind. Seriously you didn't expect them to blow you out of the water considering they've had about 6 months to bring these out. If you don't like them hold off and wait till end of the year. I really don't think apple deserves this type of bashing considering that there is a lot of work involved in making everything work again. You should give apple some slack and some credit for pushing the whole industry forward with innovative designs and compelling applications.

cheers,
 
My brother wants to know if the new Intel iMac will run Quake 4 ?

Anyone know what the benchmarks are for the 20" iMac ? Will Quake 4 run ok on this machine ? I haven't played Quake in years so I don't know if he is pulling my leg or not. He is in the market for a new machine though.
 
hey y'all
I just ordered one of these guys today. I've been on a 500mhz G3 iMac since the summer of 2001. That was our first new computer at my family's house. Before then we had old used macs, like an SE and an LCII. Now i just moved out, and I really need a computer. I was gonna buy one right after new years, but the clever people on this site advised me to wait till the 10th. Thanks for that advice, that was a good call.
I just ordered a 17 inch with 1GB of ram and the apple care 3 year thing. If I was still at home, i might've waited at least to hear some reviews or something, but i really need a computer now so i'm just diving in. Its supposed to get here on the 23rd. Then i can stop using the computers at school! yeah!

Was the apple care thing a good call? I figured i should go for it. You never know what crazy crap will go down with these new processors.
I woulda liked to have gotten the 20 incher. But for one thing, with the student discount, the 17inch was $1399CDN while the 20 incher was $1849 or something. $450 a lot of money and i'm tight for cash. Plus, i've got a tiny room, so the couple inches smaller will help.

I'm also hoping this thing'll play Quake 4. Quake 3 was the only game i had the full version of for my old mac, and i love it. Not too addicting, but always good for a fun half hour or so. I'd love to be able to play Quake 3 on the intel iMac, but i have my doubts, especially since the game wasn't even working that well for OSX. It'd just be really sweet if this thing could handle a huge catalog of old school games, but i guess that won't happen.
 
jeffy.dee-lux said:
It'd just be really sweet if this thing could handle a huge catalog of old school games, but i guess that won't happen.
Click to expand...


i think if a 500mhz g3 can handle quake 3, then a rosetta'd 1.83ghz yonah with more than 3 times the ram and 4 times the vram will be able to handle it. i think the it will even be able to fake the old school altivec that quake3 g4 needs.
 
skunkworks said:
You really have to look at these new machines with an open mind. Seriously you didn't expect them to blow you out of the water considering they've had about 6 months to bring these out. If you don't like them hold off and wait till end of the year. I really don't think apple deserves this type of bashing considering that there is a lot of work involved in making everything work again. You should give apple some slack and some credit for pushing the whole industry forward with innovative designs and compelling applications.

cheers,
Click to expand...
Well, the loss of altivec was one of my concerns with this switch to Intel. Granted the only thing I know of that I use altivec for is watching high-def movie trailers and editing home movies, but those are two thing I do a lot. Plus I've always felt a sense of smug satisfaction that my iMac could playback high-def while my supposedly much faster Windows PC at work could not.

Apple has an entire section of their site devoted to showcasing High-Def video- presumably because Macs can do it so much better than PC's. I had heard that Apple was working with ATI to get h.264 support built into the video accelerators- probably to partially make up for the loss of Altivec- now we have the fruits of this colaboration and what have we got? Well from at least one source we have buggy frame dropping video performance not even on par with my old G4 iMac.

I hope I am proved wrong about this, but if I go into an Apple Store next week, go into Apple's Quicktime HD Gallery, and find I can't seamlessly playback any of those 1080p videofiles with their latest and greatest '2-4x faster' Macs (which last years 2-4x slower models all did just fine), it does not bode well for Apple's chances of getting me to part with 2500.00 of my hard earned money.
 
Ravenflight said:
I hope I am proved wrong about this, but if I go into an Apple Store next week, go into Apple's Quicktime HD Gallery, and find I can't seamlessly playback any of those 1080p videofiles with their latest and greatest '2-4x faster' Macs (which last years 2-4x slower models all did just fine), it does not bode well for Apple's chances of getting me to part with 2500.00 of my hard earned money.
Click to expand...

Well, before we get ahead of ourselves, that was one source claiming that 1080p was dropping frames and that was on the MacBook Pro.
Could very well be the bandwith clogging like someone stated earlier.

This is from the MacNN forum regarding the Intel iMac:

"First of all, the specs aren't BS. Go play with one of the machines at the expo yourself. I had 3 1080p videos playing flawlessly at once."

"Core Duo could play one 1080p H.264 movie, maaaaaybe two on a good day, but for three they must be using the X1600 for acceleration. I'm happy to hear that Apple added support for that to the driver."

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=281357&page=3

This is of course just another source claiming that. But he has first hand experience with the iMac Intel himself.
 
MartinAyla said:
Well, before we get ahead of ourselves, that was one source claiming that 1080p was dropping frames and that was on the MacBook Pro.
Could very well be the bandwith clogging like someone stated earlier.

This is from the MacNN forum regarding the Intel iMac:

"First of all, the specs aren't BS. Go play with one of the machines at the expo yourself. I had 3 1080p videos playing flawlessly at once."

"Core Duo could play one 1080p H.264 movie, maaaaaybe two on a good day, but for three they must be using the X1600 for acceleration. I'm happy to hear that Apple added support for that to the driver."

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=281357&page=3

This is of course just another source claiming that. But he has first hand experience with the iMac Intel himself.
Click to expand...

Hi.
Thanks for that link. This was of great concern for me too.
It sounded unlikely that the new iMac couldn´thandle it, but previous posters had me concerned.
 
Keep in mind that decoding H.264 1080p in software is very, very CPU intensive. Even the new Core Duo chip isn't a guarantee for smooth playback. What's going to help out these new Macs (as well as any other machine out there, PC or otherwise) is the hardware acceleration in the video card. If you want great HD decoding, it's going to come because Apple wrote good drivers to take advantage of the video hardware. Not just because the new machines are a lot faster on SPECmark scores.

I've been following the HTPC hobby for a couple years now and even WMV-HD files (which take less CPU than H.264) are demanding on 3.0GHz+ Pentium 4's. Hardware acceleration from nVidia and ATI video cards have been the key to smooth playback on the PC side as well.
 
I just got back from my local Apple Store (Plano, Texas). They have both the 17" and 20" intel iMac in stock.

There's a trial version of Office on the boxes so I tested Office to see how well the Rosetta technology works. I couldn't even tell that the emulation was going on. I thought the performance was pretty good. I opened up a large Word document off the Internet and it still seemed to perform pretty good. I was a little skeptical about Rosetta, but as long as your not doing intensive processing (i.e. advance photoshop) Rosetta seems to be a home run for Apple.

I rebooted the iMac to see what happens. I was curious to see when I rebooted uf the first screen would be similar to a PC's screen, where you normally see memory info, info on going to setup, etc. Well instead you see what you see when you boot a PowerPC. The grey screen with the Apple logo on it. With this you cannot tell if your on an intel or powerpc.

During my experience nothing stands out to say this is not the powerpc architecture. The only way to tell is to go to the "About this mac" option in the Finder.

Apple deserves an "A+" for migrating to the new intel architecture. They migrated beautifully and at the same provide near 100% backwards compatability.

I almost walked out the door with the 20", but I really want the Macbook Pro. So I guess I just have to drool until the end of February. Hopefully by then my IRS refund will come.

cheers, scott.
 
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