Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Can Apple afford to wait?

M

MacManiac1224

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 21, 2001
227
0
NY
I just read this article in MacOSrumors, here is a piece of it:
------------
In Steve-speak, we're led to believe that this means: we're not going to trample all over the performance issue in one fell swoop, but we're going to continue to come out with systems that widen the gap in certain areas, and catch up in others. In short, the G4 has legs and will move to 1.6GHz+ in the year ahead, along with 400-500MHz high-bandwidth memory. But for those seeking the G5....expect to wait a little longer. It may also not be the processor we are expecting....unless of course Apple passes off the new high-bandwidth G4s as "G5"s
--------------
I am not usre what is going on, but answer me this:
Of course the G4 has legs, it is now in the iMac, so it needs room to move, and doesn't Apple have to show it's Pro consumers that it has something that is a lot better then it's consumer line? I mean, it's also pychology: Why would a pro consumer buy a Powermac G4 1ghz (with monitor)? when he can get a G4 800mhz for almost half the price? I personally think in this economy that Apple has to play ball soon with this G5,, or we might have problems. One more thing:

Apple always talks about the megahertz myth, that is all well and good, and a full believer of this myth, but I think that myth is dying. Once AMD comes out with thier Hammer chip, and Intel with thier McKinley: will the G4 be able to stand up to those chips? It still has Alitvec, but I don't really think so. So, Apple has to put a G5 in a machine: either MWNY 2002, or at least in MWSF 2003 for it to still stay competitive. What do you guys think?
 
I think everyone is pretty much aware that Apple need to shift Pro macs to the G5, dump the G3 and move the iBook over to the G4 family.......

The G5 is coming, the last thing I want is for Apple to rush release it, or rename the new hi-end G4 the G5......., the G5 should and hopefully will be released when it is completely ready, unlike the G4, which was an highly embarrassing f**k up for Apple......

Of course when the G5, Hammer and McKinley are all released, my betting is on the G5 to be the far superior processor........

If the G5 isn't released at MWNY then it isn't the end of the world, Apple will go on........

I still think we are more likely to see the G5 at MWSF 03, but I really hope that if Apple do release a G5 this year, it isn't just a re-badge of the current hi-end G4's...... that would be bad!!
 
He's talking about the the G4 competing against the new chips, well, I for one don't think the G4 can compete head to head agains the current ones. I mentioned this before, but in order for the G4 to get respect, Apple needed to make it a dual processor against the single one from Intel.

Speed bumps, coupled with bus and memory improvements will give it 'legs' only until MWSF or so. The G5 is needed now, and I know, the release of the G4 back in 99 (can you believe it was so damn long ago) was a huge snafu. I got caught in it. The first day it was available I order the new 450 G4 and they then sent me the wrong one, 350 G4 - bottom of the line, G3 mobo, G4 CPU. I send it back and then the whole - we need to cancel all outstanding orders, blah, blah, blah--- 4 months later I get my machine. Was I pissed.

I hope they learned a lesson and can aviod this from happening again. But they also really need to get the new CPU up and running, soon!
 
Oh definitely the G4 won't be able to match the next generation chips from AMD and Intel..... I don't believe anyone would really expect it to!!

Hence why we need the G5...... but only when it's ready!!!

I think if they can scale the G4's upto 1.4 maybe even as high as 1.6 Ghz, then this will be superb for the consumer range, but for the pro range, the G4 is coming to the end of it's useful life, so it's kind of detrimental to compare the current G4 with next generation chips from Intel and AMD.......

Apple could really do without the problems they experienced with the original G4 and the new iMac, so hopefully the next generation machine will do without the problems its predecessors experienced!!!
 
I'm gonna talk seriously for first time

Guys, we know that PC's can run 10Ghz chips and wwe won't get them. I do not buy a Ferrari engine in a Geo metro.

Every body seems very please wityh the multi processor G4. The Mac architecture save uf from more than the 80% of the compatibility issues that our PC friends have to deal with. In that case the "MHz mith" would be legible.

I'n my case, I do not look at PC's, I know my computer is superior. I would like to have a good PC some day but just to test things never as a main computer. To work seriously I would like to have a very fast Mac togather with my G4 400 and my Pismo, then I would get a PC that I would share with my mom I think.

Any way, Apple wants to impruve overal performance of the computer, I think that they want the computers to give a good "service" in every aspect, specially with the OSX tht still so-so for me (and they know that). Because if they lunch the G5 now that would change a lot of things in their marketting plans and they are having a good time with the new iMac right no, so as a surfer: why should I take another wave if this one is big enought?
 
Re: I'm gonna talk seriously for first time

Originally posted by mymemory
Guys...
Click to expand...

Hey mymemory, I hadn't seen you in a while. I'm super happy you're ok and still with us after all the stuff in the news.
 
Hi people!

Do you remember the cold war? we have one right now but between the east side and the west side of the Capital. Every body is getting armed. The people from the east re the opositors to the goverment (me), we do not want violence, the poeple from the west (the poor people) are not more than 5.000 people but they are fully armed because the goverment gave them arm.

Now, the army placed the president again but with a large ammount of conditions, I mean, he has a gun pointing his head all the time. That is good, and better if that gun shoot soemthing because we do not want that man in the goverment. Looks like next week all his cabinet is gonna be replaced, from the vice president to the guy who cleans the windshield of the car of the first lady (that is actually living some where else with her set of young guys around her).

The economy is... imagine swiming in petroleum, well a bit slower than that.

The thing is that there is a lot of tension in the atmosphere, people are recovering psicologicadly from the shootings and the president is alone, basically with some other stupid people behind him (but armed).

The reason of living him in the goverment is because the poeple in the arme that believe in the constitution wnats a constitutional exit of the president, not with coups, because that is gonna end up in a polictical dynamic to resolve things in Venezuela. So, the armey is fragmented too, some poeple likes the president, some others wants to kill him and others are with the constitution.

This is not over, it is a cold war situation. The problem of taking the president out the goverment at once is that the 5.000 poeple that likes him (we have a population of 24 million in Venezuela and 6 million in Caracas) are armed so we (the army) has to disarm that poeple first.

Pretty complicated situation specially when there are people with money buying other poeple in the goverment to get a position and blah, blah, blah.

I'll keep you inform.

Thanx for your interest:)
 
sorry to hear that things aren't that good over there. there isn't much about the situation on the news over here, so you're my only source to find out whats going on.
it's probably not best to talk about that kind of stuff too much, so what do you think? can Apple afford to wait? personally i think that the sooner Apple gets to the G5 and dumps the G3, the better!
 
I say <no ,Apple has no time to waste with making new processors, and furtermore, I think Appple needs to get rid of Motorola, and go with IBM. I think if IBM started to make the g4 and the g5, Apple would be much more well off.
IBM has much more funds and personell in their R&D dept. and will probably be making processors at higher speeds quicker. Apple is being left in the dust as we speek.

All this from a 14 year old........ HA!!!!!!:D :cool:
 
:mad:its not like apple has the g5 ready to go and is just sitting on it for no reason! It must be tested, perfected, etc. by both apple and morotola

Furthermore, anyone considering a powermac who doesnt know the difference between the powermac and imac g4 processors should be using an imac anyway. those who really need a powermac will know what they are doing and understand the differences in the processor, not to mention the greatly added expandability that the powermac can offer. So if they wind up with the imac, they will actually be getting a better deal and probably be happier with its consumer oriented design. :cool:

also, it may be diffucult to just suddenly switch to IBM if they wont make the g4/g5 in high enough quantities for apple's market, if at all.
 
Everyone is talking about the G5 as if it's going to be Apple's savior. So, let's be very optimistic and say that the G5 will be released at MWNY at 1.6GHz.

What then? More tiny MHz increases every six months as x86 continues to pull ahead?

Fed up with this, will we then begin pining away for the G6, continually expected at every successive MacWorld expo for the next four years?

I think Jobs has something up his sleeve, and I don't think it's the G5.

I am going to go out on a limb and speculate that it involves IBM in a big way.

That said, I am going to go out even further on this limb and speculate that it involves the POWER architecture. If the goal is to absolutely flatten every other commercially available chip on the market in any price range, then there is no better chip than the POWER4 with which to do so.

Like I said, I think Jobs has something up his sleeve. :)

Alex
 
Originally posted by alex_ant
Everyone is talking about the G5 as if it's going to be Apple's savior. So, let's be very optimistic and say that the G5 will be released at MWNY at 1.6GHz.

What then? More tiny MHz increases every six months as x86 continues to pull ahead?

Fed up with this, will we then begin pining away for the G6, continually expected at every successive MacWorld expo for the next four years?

I think Jobs has something up his sleeve, and I don't think it's the G5.

I am going to go out on a limb and speculate that it involves IBM in a big way.

That said, I am going to go out even further on this limb and speculate that it involves the POWER architecture. If the goal is to absolutely flatten every other commercially available chip on the market in any price range, then there is no better chip than the POWER4 with which to do so.

Like I said, I think Jobs has something up his sleeve. :)

Alex
Click to expand...

Let's hope he has something up his sleeve!

Personally, I don't care if it's a G5 or the POWER4, as long as it, like you said, "absolutely flattens every other commercially available chip on the market in any price range". Where can we find some more info about this chip?
 
Originally posted by Rower_CPU
Personally, I don't care if it's a G5 or the POWER4, as long as it, like you said, "absolutely flattens every other commercially available chip on the market in any price range". Where can we find some more info about this chip?
Click to expand...
Well, the G5 won't flatten anything but the G4. The POWER4 already flattens everything. And it's fully PPC-compatible (minus AltiVec - but trust me, this chip doesn't need AltiVec). IBM has an info page on it at http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/hardware/whitepapers/power4.html

It's currently only offered in IBM's server lines, and none of the systems in which it's available cost less than $40k at the moment. But take into consideration that IBM is also currently selling 275MHz 604e servers at $10k, and the POWER3 is available in a $6k workstation. As to how much the POWER4 itself costs, I'm not sure if IBM is keen on letting that info get out. Server vendors are notorious for marking their prices up several hundred percent, so "MSRP" is not a valid basis for determining manufacturing cost.

It does draw more power than the PPC, obviously, but that can be improved upon... :D

Alex
 
Originally posted by alex_ant
Well, the G5 won't flatten anything but the G4. The POWER4 already flattens everything. And it's fully PPC-compatible (minus AltiVec - but trust me, this chip doesn't need AltiVec). IBM has an info page on it at http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/hardware/whitepapers/power4.html

It's currently only offered in IBM's server lines, and none of the systems in which it's available cost less than $40k at the moment. But take into consideration that IBM is also currently selling 275MHz 604e servers at $10k, and the POWER3 is available in a $6k workstation. As to how much the POWER4 itself costs, I'm not sure if IBM is keen on letting that info get out. Server vendors are notorious for marking their prices up several hundred percent, so "MSRP" is not a valid basis for determining manufacturing cost.

It does draw more power than the PPC, obviously, but that can be improved upon... :D

Alex
Click to expand...

Maybe SOI will help that power consumption problem...if they have any plans for doing that anytime soon.

Intriguing specs. It looks like it's heavily optimised for SMP functioning (obviously beneficial in the server world). I wonder how that translates to desktop functionality...dual systems for the low-end and quads for the top?

I for one am not married to Motorola chips, so anything that brings about a major increase in power is A-OK in my book. Let's see what happens at MWNY...don't you just hate the wait? 2 months and a couple of weeks never seemed so long...:D
 
if they redesign the G4 with a larger bandwidth, and it really kicks a over the previous G4, then call the thing G5, but get it out this year or january at the latest

in the pc world the pentium pro, the pentium II, and the pentium III are all basically the same architecture with a few small redesigns...they are six generation intel processors

before 286...first generation
286...2nd gen
386...3rd gen
486...4th gen
pentium...5th gen
pentium pro, pentium II and pentium III...6th gen
pentium 4...7th gen
itanium...8th gen, but formerly considered 7th gen

got it? good?
hey who cares about the wintel world anyway:)
 
Originally posted by alex_ant
That said, I am going to go out even further on this limb and speculate that it involves the POWER architecture. If the goal is to absolutely flatten every other commercially available chip on the market in any price range, then there is no better chip than the POWER4 with which to do so.
Click to expand...
Who siad that was the goal? I don't think it's ever been Apple's goal to have the most sophisticated hardware. Apple's more interested in the total user experience. That depends more on the software than the hardware.
 
Originally posted by alex_ant

I am going to go out on a limb and speculate that it involves IBM in a big way.

That said, I am going to go out even further on this limb and speculate that it involves the POWER architecture. If the goal is to absolutely flatten every other commercially available chip on the market in any price range, then there is no better chip than the POWER4 with which to do so.
Click to expand...

The POWER4 is an interesting chip. Dual CPU per chip and the high end runs at 1.3 GHz. I looked in the IBM site and didn't find anything good on overall performance compared to other chips. I think this might be due to the fact that they're selling it as a server.

If this becomes the next big change for Apple, what's going to happen to Motorola? Sure they're going to be supplying all the chips for the low end machines, but that will only be for a while. Does anyone think they might just drop the G5 development altogether? Would they then move on to the G6 instead? And we're going to have to wait until MWNY most likely.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back