First Developer Intel Macs (Photos)

[steeldrivingjon]

The FSB is 800 MHz because the memory is effectively 800 MHz. The FSB is also 64-bit bi-directional.

The PPC970 (in the high end PM) is also using 800 MHz memory, so Intel isn't "sandbagging" as much as Apple is "over-hyping" a bus that's under-utilized because it's running faster than the memory controller in the Northbridge.

Apple marketing has it's own "MHz myth" about FSB speeds (of course we don't mention the Powerbooks).

Apple's faster FSB speed would also effect access to fast cache memory, so it's not necessarily wasted capacity.

 

[whatever]

To add to that:

Microsoft could find more legitimate Windows customers by allowing installs on Macs; I know that I would seriously consider purchasing Longhorn to dual-boot on my Mac, simply because my job (computer support for many different people) requires that I have both PC and Mac. That's over $200 to Microsoft right there! But this would *mostly* destroy any market for Virtual PC (however, a few people might like the ability to run many virtual machines...).

Dual Booting sucks. I remember back in the day when I did Technical Support, it sucked having to reboot my machine to test a customer problem on DOS 5 and then reboot into Windows 3.1 and then reboot again XYZ. OS/2 (yes that gem of an OS from IBM) saved me when I was allowed to just open multiple OS's on top of it. Fast forward to today, Vitural PC allows me to do the same thing. And I don't have to worry about missed e-mails, stopping an iChat conversation or turn off iTunes. Can you imagine how much faster VPC will be when it doesn't have to emulate Intel! And when Windows crashes, I just restart VPC.

Screw dual booting!

Whatever!

 

[capran]

the video card is in the pci-express x16 , who know if its pc compitable or not.

some one can always take it out and try

I'm wondering if you dropped an off-the-shelf Geforce or Radeon card in one of these developer rigs if it'd work.

Here's to hoping that future Mactels (is that the word we're going to be using from now on? geh) will all have standard PCI-E slots.

I wants me a Mini with a decent gaming card. Granted it'd have to be a "low-profile" card to fit inside of something that small, but...it could be done. I hear many of Dell's laptops have upgradeable GPUs.

 

[iMeowbot]

And the virus writer would have to take the time to learn how HFS+ filesystems are arranged, to know where to write. (That is, assuming that the Mac puts files in predictable locations on disk.) Much easier to just mess with the partition table, which is already well-known.

They will only need to grab the inevitable HFS+ driver. (Commercial HFS+ drivers for Windows already exist, and it's only a matter of time for someone to cobble together a free one -- HFS+ is already implemented in the Lunix world, and the conversion work has already been done for Windows ext2fs implementations. At this point it's a matter of incentive.)

 

[GuyClinch]

You do know that a virus can format a hard drive without being able to read the indivual files, right?. Also, a clever virus writer can create a virus to delete critical system files without even being able to read them (example, by erasing random sectors on disk, overwriting random sectors of the disk, etc). Would be a tough virus to write as it would have to be written in a low level language.

Well for the home user this whole virus thing is overblown. I never had a virus on any of my window machines. Spyware and Malware is more of a problem then viruses.

Pete

 

[corywoolf]

Honestly noone really needs to worry about all the concerns on this thread.

If you actually thought that you were going to be able to run OSX natively on any other PC other than a Mac... well then you don't know Apple very well do you. They have and will put every single barrier possible, both software and hardware to prevent any sort of 733t h@x0r to crack it and run on other PCs

And stated before Apple has officially announced that they will not prevent anyone from running Windows on any Mac. So you WILL be able to run Windows on any Mac natively.

And they are going to totally redesign everything in support for the new x86 Macs. At the VERY least the new Powermacs insides will look as neat and tidy as the PM G5's you've all grown to love. Apple hasn't changed as a quality company. Its just a new chip.

This new x86 Mac is going to blast Apple into the stratisphere. Everyone buy stock when it slips cause of the purchase slow down.

Say good bye to virtual pc, it may have a small bit of use still, because it is nice to instantly switch and be able to drag and drop windows to mac and vise versa. I sure as hell would rather use Windows XP then virtual PC. Unless virtual pc can be as good as native XP. I smell microsoft thinking up a awsome plan to have a special mac xp that is like virtual pc but has more features, maybe integration with spotlight? I would actually laugh if apple really thought they could prevent someone from installing os x on a dell. It will happen no matter what, and kevin rose will be there to show us how. Maybe apple will end up having both windows and mac icons on their keyboards in the future? mah ha ha ha! I know you guys hate that idea, but it would be helpful, guess it would never happen, but if microsoft can form a deal with apple and maybe have pro system versions preloaded with both xp and os x available that would be a hit. I think apple should hipe this compatability more then it is going to. So here is the timeline:


1 year- powerbook intel based
1.3 years- ibook intel based
1.5 years- imac intel based
1.55 years- k rose gets os x to run on a dell
1.6 years- mac mini intel based
2 years- powermac intel based dual processor of course
2.3 years- xp available pre installed with osx on select systems
2.5 years- word spreads that os x can now easily be installed on a dell, companies form specifically to install hardware/ software to make it run on a dell.
2.55 years- Apple very upset and shooting out lawsuits
3 years- apple announces os x or os 11 for sale on pc's. Dell offers preloaded os x or os 11 with longhorn.
3.5 years- after a few more refreshments of the product line, apple announces they are dropping their consumer based line of computers.
3.6 years- Apple's iPod reaches 160 GB's with widescreen and movie capability. Apple now specialises in pro apps, and pro macs, as well as the ipod.
4 years- iLife now available for longhorn.
4.5 years- Pro apps available for longhorn.
5 years- Apple announces end of os and is sold to microsoft.


Although very drastic, some of these are going to happen while others might not.

 

[fluidinclusion]

VW's catch my eye too.

Some people are just able to tune them out, like a bad Country song playing in the car next to you.

I am a car guy, and I can honestly say I can't remember the last time I have spotted an az. I can however remember the last time I spotted a Touareg. I just block out the cars I don't like, no matter how big, or comon they are.

(yeah we are WAY off topic now)

I look at EVERY Toureg too!

 

[steveh]

Big whoop. Waste of Aluminum, IMO. It looks nice on the outside, but it could have been 3x smaller! Stick it into an eMac case or something, I dunno. Honestly, I don't see the big deal about these boxen (personal slang )

Why in the world would Apple go to the expense and bother of coming up with a new case for a non-product that will be shipping to a small number of developers for a strictly limited period of time?

And the eMac approach is likely a nonstarter because the bits they need for the developers' machine wouldn't fit; how are you going to test PCI cards and the like in an eMac case?

Using the existing G5 case represented the least required effort for getting a development system out the door in a hurry. It's not intended to be a product, there's no point in polishing it.

 

[seashellz]

well, it looks like APPLE shut 'em down-at least I cant get in-but maybe its just traffic. Oh well, they were beginning to suck anyway.

 

[davidchristophe]

Dual Booting sucks. I remember back in the day when I did Technical Support, it sucked having to reboot my machine to test a customer problem on DOS 5 and then reboot into Windows 3.1 and then reboot again XYZ. OS/2 (yes that gem of an OS from IBM) saved me when I was allowed to just open multiple OS's on top of it. Fast forward to today, Vitural PC allows me to do the same thing. And I don't have to worry about missed e-mails, stopping an iChat conversation or turn off iTunes. Can you imagine how much faster VPC will be when it doesn't have to emulate Intel! And when Windows crashes, I just restart VPC.

Screw dual booting!

Whatever!

Um. Win 3.1 ran on top of Dos 5. All you did was shut down the window manager. Real dual booting means taking the hardware down to initialization and loading an entirely new os.

 

[weldon]

The ability to install Windows and run at native speeds is going to be a big deal for some people (like me). I have both platforms (and have since 1994 or so) and would like to keep Windows around for a few things (Quickbooks Pro, specialty apps I like, testing web sites with IE6, and some games). I think it will also be a big deal for corporate laptop users and college students (esp. law school students) that are required to run Windows programs for their business or university. This way they can get the killer Apple laptop and still run their Windows programs without suffering through the horrible performance penalty of Virtual PC hardware emulation.

I've been keeping a PC desktop for a while (I build my own from parts) but my next purchase will be an Intel Mac so I can use OS X on my desktop and still have Windows for when I need it.

I'd still like to be able to use Virtual PC for hardware virtualization and so I don't have to shut down OS X to access XP programs. A WINE solution might be good enough for Quickbooks Pro certainly, but probably wouldn't run games. I haven't run Virtual PC on Intel, but I imagine that the multiple OS's still run faster on Intel than on a PPC emulating a Pentium. In any case, I'm really looking forward to having my cake and eating it too (using OS X all day and being able to run XP programs just fine when I need to).

 

[mcdawson]

If you have the ability to dual boot and get 1,001 viruses on Windows you will have 0 on OSX. No matter if its seperate hard drives or partitioned or anything else. They are two totally seperate beasts, viruses don't work the same on OSX as it does on Windows. The virus would have to be written for OSX, not just Windows.

So in other words anything bad that happens to Windows should not affect OSX in the least.

If the Windows side an see the Mac volumes/drives, the viruses CAN cause problems--they could write data to that hard drive. While they would have to know about Mac OS X to be intelligent, you don't have to be intelligent to erase or write crap all over that drive. Does anyone know enough about Window to know if that could be an issue? This kind of issue, even if it could happen, would pale in comparision to the havoc a "normal" Window's virus can cause (e-mail destruction, taking over your computer to forward attacks on other computers, etc).

 

[tazznb]

empty space

look at all that empty space...

Now we can finally have a powermac with 2-3 optical drives, and more than two hard drives.

The reason Apple limited the G5 is because those large energy sucking G5 processors.

I can't wait.

 

[BillHarrison]

If the Windows side an see the Mac volumes/drives, the viruses CAN cause problems--they could write data to that hard drive. While they would have to know about Mac OS X to be intelligent, you don't have to be intelligent to erase or write crap all over that drive. Does anyone know enough about Window to know if that could be an issue? This kind of issue, even if it could happen, would pale in comparision to the havoc a "normal" Window's virus can cause (e-mail destruction, taking over your computer to forward attacks on other computers, etc).

While possible, it would be somewhat self defeating as a purely destructive virus would have a hard time spreading itself.

 

[unfaded]

Say good bye to virtual pc, it may have a small bit of use still, because it is nice to instantly switch and be able to drag and drop windows to mac and vise versa. I sure as hell would rather use Windows XP then virtual PC. Unless virtual pc can be as good as native XP. I smell microsoft thinking up a awsome plan to have a special mac xp that is like virtual pc but has more features, maybe integration with spotlight? I would actually laugh if apple really thought they could prevent someone from installing os x on a dell. It will happen no matter what, and kevin rose will be there to show us how. Maybe apple will end up having both windows and mac icons on their keyboards in the future? mah ha ha ha! I know you guys hate that idea, but it would be helpful, guess it would never happen, but if microsoft can form a deal with apple and maybe have pro system versions preloaded with both xp and os x available that would be a hit. I think apple should hipe this compatability more then it is going to. So here is the timeline:


1 year- powerbook intel based
1.3 years- ibook intel based
1.5 years- imac intel based
1.55 years- k rose gets os x to run on a dell
1.6 years- mac mini intel based
2 years- powermac intel based dual processor of course
2.3 years- xp available pre installed with osx on select systems
2.5 years- word spreads that os x can now easily be installed on a dell, companies form specifically to install hardware/ software to make it run on a dell.
2.55 years- Apple very upset and shooting out lawsuits
3 years- apple announces os x or os 11 for sale on pc's. Dell offers preloaded os x or os 11 with longhorn.
3.5 years- after a few more refreshments of the product line, apple announces they are dropping their consumer based line of computers.
3.6 years- Apple's iPod reaches 160 GB's with widescreen and movie capability. Apple now specialises in pro apps, and pro macs, as well as the ipod.
4 years- iLife now available for longhorn.
4.5 years- Pro apps available for longhorn.
5 years- Apple announces end of os and is sold to microsoft.


Although very drastic, some of these are going to happen while others might not.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAh

Given that Apple has complete control over its resellers, you would be hard-pressed to find a mac pre-installed with XP. Complete crap.

 

[calyxman]

I've always hated the Apple=BMW analogy too. I thought it was especially silly because I spent so much time picking up my buddy from the BMW service center in my Ford. Everyone I've known with a BMW spent a ton of time in the shop and eventually traded it in on something else because they were tired of how often they had to take it in for service. Seems like a really bad thing to compare your Apple to, unless you're trying to impress someone who only cares about style (most of them do look pretty good).

True, but not only that, it's not even a fair comparison. Most of us can't even afford to drive a lousy BMW. Macs and PCs all use similar made-in-China parts as well. That's not always the case for cars.

People who make that comparison are only style conscious, because brands like BMW and Apple appeal to their insecurity.

 

[Docrjm]

Mac not Winblows

I actually just want a mac, I don't want to dual boot etc. Great if VPC is faster, that would more than meet my windows needs. Dual booting with ease can only be detrimental to the Mac, as software companies redirect their energies.
Vive La Difference!

 

[mcdawson]

Now we can finally have a powermac with 2-3 optical drives, and more than two hard drives.

The reason Apple limited the G5 is because those large energy sucking G5 processors.

I can't wait.

Don't get your hopes up. The developer system truly is just a system that Apple slapped together that would allow developers to test and develop their stuff with. AND, knowning, Apple, would give NOTHING away as to what their REAL system would look like. The "big, bad" high end Intel desktop machines are probably 1.5-2 years away. Apple would be due for an enclosure change anyway by that time. All you can bet on is that the system will be fast and look cool. I'd bet it would have to run Photoshop and Final Cut Pro faster than the last G5 release (the last before the transition--some new, faster, G5s have to come out before the transition, or the desktop G5s will die), and at least some parts of Photoshop faster than the equivalent high end Dell.

 

[DStaal]

WINE

My one question: How hard will it be to get WINE running on this thing? With ties to Aqua?

(For those who don't know: WINE is a Windows compatablity layer for Linux. Open Source, basically all it does is map OS calls over. The end result is you can run Windows code with no emulation. It won't work on a PPC based Mac because it needs the same general architecture, but it might work on this thing...)

 

[XForge]

Secksay. Me want.

 

[Mechcozmo]

Does anyone know enough about Window to know if that could be an issue?

It doesn't have to read the other partition. It can just reformat it while in Windows. Or corrupt it trying to write to it. Or wipe everything out, on both hard drives/partitions.

 

[Eniregnat]

An interesting thing about Apple using EDID is that Microsoft could have Longhorn not work (or least be able to be installed) on any Apple built computer. All it has to do is look for any EDID and stop working if it detects it.

People would say good, but I know users that would like to have one machine that runs multiple OS. For those working with media, it would greatly improve work flow and perhaps, even make the transition between OSs (either way) and software easier.

 

[GeeYouEye]

Say good bye to virtual pc, it may have a small bit of use still, because it is nice to instantly switch and be able to drag and drop windows to mac and vise versa. I sure as hell would rather use Windows XP then virtual PC. Unless virtual pc can be as good as native XP. I smell microsoft thinking up a awsome plan to have a special mac xp that is like virtual pc but has more features, maybe integration with spotlight? I would actually laugh if apple really thought they could prevent someone from installing os x on a dell. It will happen no matter what, and kevin rose will be there to show us how. Maybe apple will end up having both windows and mac icons on their keyboards in the future? mah ha ha ha! I know you guys hate that idea, but it would be helpful, guess it would never happen, but if microsoft can form a deal with apple and maybe have pro system versions preloaded with both xp and os x available that would be a hit. I think apple should hipe this compatability more then it is going to. So here is the timeline:


1 year- powerbook intel based
1.3 years- ibook intel based
1.5 years- imac intel based
1.55 years- k rose gets os x to run on a dell
1.6 years- mac mini intel based
2 years- powermac intel based dual processor of course
2.3 years- xp available pre installed with osx on select systems
2.5 years- word spreads that os x can now easily be installed on a dell, companies form specifically to install hardware/ software to make it run on a dell.
2.55 years- Apple very upset and shooting out lawsuits
3 years- apple announces os x or os 11 for sale on pc's. Dell offers preloaded os x or os 11 with longhorn.
3.5 years- after a few more refreshments of the product line, apple announces they are dropping their consumer based line of computers.
3.6 years- Apple's iPod reaches 160 GB's with widescreen and movie capability. Apple now specialises in pro apps, and pro macs, as well as the ipod.
4 years- iLife now available for longhorn.
4.5 years- Pro apps available for longhorn.
5 years- Apple announces end of os and is sold to microsoft.


Although very drastic, some of these are going to happen while others might not.

You blew your credibility with some of this stuff, saved it with the disclaimer that some of it might not happen, and shot it completely to hell by saying it'll be Kevin Rose who first hacks it.

 

[ailleur]

Hey i got one kickass solution for everybody who doesnt wanna get windows viruses on their mac. Dont run windows. Youre buying a mac, not an hybrid pc and youll be to only one to blame if your osx partition gets deleted.

 

[rhpenguin]

This raises a question I have been running around in my head for a while. A pointless question but one I want answeared none the less. Will the new boards be green or remain blue. I know no one knows but do all boards HAVE to be green. I had no idea how sick I am of green boards until I saw the inside of a Powermac for the first time with lucious blue boards *drool*.

Then get a Gigabyte motherboard. Theyre blue.