G5 iMac Specs?

[Rousterfar]

In a consumer machine? Pass me the crack pipe. 🙂 The Athlon64 and the Opteron compete with the PowerMac. I'm sure there are pro-sumer Athlon64 systems, but we're talking about consumer machines. Most consumer machines (nearly all?) come with a P4 2.8 GHz or lower CPU.

Ummm... You have no idea what you are talking about. You can easily get consumer PC with an Athlon 64. It's not a workstation CPU like the Opteron. It was created to provide a consumer level 64-bit CPU.

The ram and GPU listed here, if true are pathetic. Guess what people? It's 2004! PEOPLE PLAY GAMES! The GPU can also have a large impact on overall performance of a computer. Is not Tiger supposed to be coded to take more advantage of the GPU? Apple is clearly penny pinching here.

OSX needs 512 ram to run well. I hope this all proves to be untrue.

 

[tibor]

Dear Whiners

• The imac is NOT a powermac. It's not intended for PROFESSIONAL users. It's intended for people like my grandfather to surf the web and read email. Stop using "Maya" and "imac" in the same sentence.

• The Mac has never been, and never will be, a first-rate gaming platform. Deal with it. Anyone who says otherwise is insane. The game options aren't there and never will be - the graphic card options aren't there and never will be.

• Macs are not more expensive than PCs in any kind of apples-to-apples comparison. That's been proven time and time again. TCO of Macs is far less than PCs.

Why do these same arguments keep coming up? I can only imagine the whiners are new to the Mac platform, or new to computers. Heh - people freaked when they saw the 10th anniversary mac posting, that's pretty funny.

The mac is not a computer for everyone. It never will be. That doesn't mean Apple is not very successful. Porche has a very small market share, and not everyone can afford their products. I don't know, maybe there are people on Porsche sites whining about how they want a 500 h.p. convertible for $16,000, but I kind of doubt it.

</rant>

 

[GFLPraxis]

Am I the only one who noticed?

The first consumer-level iMac should have the following additions to the base education model:
- Single 1.6 Ghz G5 Processor
- 17" widescreen display
- slot-loading Combo drive
- 80GB Serial ATA hard drive
- NVIDIA GeForce MX 5200 Ultra graphics processor with 64MB of DDR video memory
- 56K internal modem

There's no such THING as a Geforce MX 5200 Ultra! It's either an MX, or an FX 5200 Ultra!

Starting with an education-aimed model lacking any optical drives presumably to replace the current eMac, the low end machine should sport

It says nowhere in the article that it will replace the current eMac. If it does, I will be *very* annoyed. The eMac is the lowest priced Mac there, and not all customers NEED to have a flat screen- look at Dell, they sell ultra-cheap, pathetic systems ($799 Dell has weaker specs than the eMac, but Dell also sells $399 systems with monitors and $299 without) and people buy them like nuts!

Apple needs to keep the eMac, and drop the price on it by $100 or $200. That will attract some customers, and shut up those "Macs are too expensive!" whiners. Or upgrade the eMac to G5. If all of a sudden the cheapest Mac you can get is $1300, and has no optical drive, a pathetic graphics card, and an expensive screen not all consumers care about...they're gonna start losing new customers.

Oh yes, and why dump the 15" iMac? They could sell the low end 17" with a 15" screen, for $200 less, and give a lower priced iMac.

 

[Jovian9]

look at imac sales for the g4 imac compared to the g3 imac, the g3 imac sold 3 times as many

The G3 iMacs have an advantage though.....they were on Apples shelves for a lot longer. They still sold these on the front bottom of the main Apple Store page long after the G4 iMac was released (up until they introduced the eMacs). Also, times have changed and laptops are a lot more popular and accessible now than they were during the iMac G3 run. Especially considering bluetooth abilities, wireless internet popularity, and the size of these laptops.

 

[Ensoniq]

Regarding the speeds of 1.6 GHz and 1.8 GHz ...

The only reason for Apple to limit the iMac to those speeds when 2 GHz and higher processors are available is one: PowerBook G5

Apple has recently followed a rule that the top of the line iMac can be no faster than the top of the line PowerBook and the bottom of the line PowerMac.

Bottom of the line PowerMac G5: 1.8 GHz Dual. So iMac at 1.8 GHz max makes sense.

Top of the line PowerBook G5: Doesn't exist yet, but I'd guess for a first release that 1.8 GHz would be the top. Apple needs all the 2 GHz chips they can get for the PowerMac line.

Another benefit of releasing the first iMac G5 and PowerBook G5 machines at a 1.8 GHz maximum speed is that 6 months later, Apple can release 2 GHz updates and spur on new sales. From a marketing standpoint, if you "shoot your load" on the first revision, you have nothing to upgrade to as easily later. With IBM's current situation, Apple is better off knowing they can definitely handle a 2 GHz upgrade 6 months from now than releasing 2 GHz right off the bat, and not being able to provide enough 2.5 GHz chips in the future to provide an iMac upgrade.

It sucks for all of us "spec whores" who want the best right now, but for Apple's marketing and sales teams, 1.8 today and 2.0 in the next revision is a much safer bet.

 

[kcmac]

These are just rumours people. Settle down a little. If nothing else, all this enthusiasm just shows how much interest there is in Apple and the iMac.

And for you over the top whiners, I would bet 80% of you (if not higher) griped just as loudly when the iPod was introduced. (Assuming you were old enough to type back then. ;-) ) Too expensive. Not enough of this and that. Apple is delusional. Something must be wrong with the company.

Save your self a little space for backpeddling or added vitreole when we know what is really going to happen. I'm betting Apple surprises us all.

 

[GFLPraxis]

• The imac is NOT a powermac. It's not intended for PROFESSIONAL users. It's intended for people like my grandfather to surf the web and read email. Stop using "Maya" and "imac" in the same sentence.

True, but it's pricing is higher than my gaming PC.
Not only that, it's pricing is higher than some Athlon 64 gaming systems on the market.

• The Mac has never been, and never will be, a first-rate gaming platform. Deal with it. Anyone who says otherwise is insane. The game options aren't there and never will be - the graphic card options aren't there and never will be.

Pfft. I say you really don't know much and are basing this off public opinion.
The Mac's support for 3d graphics deep in the OS is a good boost, and Tiger's CoreVideo will probably blast the Mac's 3d performance above equivilant Windows PC's, I imagine, especially with OpenGL 2.
The only problem with Macs and gaming simply is OpenGL, which is about equivilant to DirectX 7 in special effects capabilities, but it's still not bad at all.
An equivilant Mac can easily perform as well as a PC. My old iBook had pretty good Jedi Knight 2 performance, this being a G3 800 iBook...with a tiny little graphics chip. I've seen benchmarks where the G5 loses to the fastest Pentium 4 by about 15% in gaming...and
a) the game is known to be P4 optimized
b) the game is known to be DirectX optimized, only ported to OpenGL
c) the Pentium 4's graphics chip has twice the VRAM (128 vs 256 MB).

I'd say this is good gaming performance, wouldn't you?
Apple just needs to include faster graphics chips. NVidia just announced a $199 graphics card that will outperform the Radeon 9800XT... 🙂

• Macs are not more expensive than PCs in any kind of apples-to-apples comparison. That's been proven time and time again. TCO of Macs is far less than PCs.

Heck, sometimes Macs are cheaper than PC's on the initial purchase!
http://gflpraxis.no-ip.com/mvp-price.html
The $799 eMac has better specs than the $799 Dell, and the Powerbook has far, FAR better specs than equivilant Dells.
And of course, we all know that Macs have a lower TCO than most PC's. My neighbor is still using his 7 year old PowerMac G3 running Panther, alongside his 6 year old Apple display...

Why do these same arguments keep coming up? I can only imagine the whiners are new to the Mac platform, or new to computers. Heh - people freaked when they saw the 10th anniversary mac posting, that's pretty funny.

I can imagine that you're, while not new to computers or Macs, not that knowledgeable about them 😉
I've seen your arguements before.

 

[dragonslive]

• The imac is NOT a powermac. It's not intended for PROFESSIONAL users. It's intended for people like my grandfather to surf the web and read email. Stop using "Maya" and "imac" in the same sentence.

Who needs a $2,200 mac of ANY kind to surf and email????? Stupid arguement.

[/QUOTE]• The Mac has never been, and never will be, a first-rate gaming platform. Deal with it. Anyone who says otherwise is insane. The game options aren't there and never will be - the graphic card options aren't there and never will be.[/QUOTE]

An extra $50 spent on the card would go a LONG way to fixing this.....another blind arguement.

[/QUOTE]• Macs are not more expensive than PCs in any kind of apples-to-apples comparison. That's been proven time and time again. TCO of Macs is far less than PCs.[/QUOTE]

rubbish

[/QUOTE]The mac is not a computer for everyone. It never will be. That doesn't mean Apple is not very successful. Porche has a very small market share, and not everyone can afford their products. I don't know, maybe there are people on Porsche sites whining about how they want a 500 h.p. convertible for $16,000, but I kind of doubt it.[/QUOTE]

Porche is not made of the same parts and built by the same people as you average mini. On the other hand, apple is made by the same companies as the generic PC's......deal with it and forget the glory days.....

end rant in reply to a delusional rant.

 

[Jovian9]

I'm sure everyone will be amazed by the new iMac....so much so that the usual-discussed specs will not really be disappointing when all things G5 iMac are considered. Apple does not copy designs/ideas, they innovate. Creating something new means none of us are thinking about it. There is a lot more to a computer than just specs.......they can only be an extension of the person who uses them.

 

[GFLPraxis]

Well, I disagreed with Tibor on a couple points, but the one thing I agree with him...

• Macs are not more expensive than PCs in any kind of apples-to-apples comparison. That's been proven time and time again. TCO of Macs is far less than PCs.

rubbish

Duh. The Total Cost of Ownership of Macs have been proven in test after test to be cheaper than PC's! They:
A) Last longer and sell for a higher price used- the PowerBook G3 still sells for $700! TiBook for $1000 or more!
B) Take less power than equivilant PC's...with all the complaints about the power usage of the G5, I sometimes laugh a little, since the power usage and heat generation of the G5 is still less than the Pentium 4...the G4 processor takes as much power as a MOBILE Pentium 4, maybe even a bit less.
C) Since Windows bloats in each new version, your PC will be obsolete much sooner than my Mac 😉 Trust me, after using the Alpha version of Longhorn (next version of Windows) for a day on a 900 mhz Celeron, without ANY of the advanced features (graphical effects, WinFX, WinFS, Avalon, etc) that will be in the final version turned on, and barely being able to USE it, I know how bloated it's gonna be 😉

 

[edesignuk]

Why do these same arguments keep coming up? I can only imagine the whiners are new to the Mac platform, or new to computers. Heh - people freaked when they saw the 10th anniversary mac posting, that's pretty funny.

I'm not new to the forums or Macs, and I have a problem with these reported iMac specs, now button it newb! 😀 😛

 

[edesignuk]

C) Since Windows bloats in each new version, your PC will be obsolete much sooner than my Mac 😉 Trust me, after using the Alpha version of Longhorn (next version of Windows) for a day on a 900 mhz Celeron, without ANY of the advanced features (graphical effects, WinFX, WinFS, Avalon, etc) that will be in the final version turned on, and barely being able to USE it, I know how bloated it's gonna be 😉

A 900Mhz Celeron is already an old piece of sh*t. Longhorn is early alpha, it'll run like a dog whatever you put it on simply because nothing is anywhere near to being finished. Say that PC's will age faster if you like (simply because hardware development is faster on the x86 side), but to use this as your example is complete ignorance.

 

[csubear]

The iMac has always been about small form factor. Always. Each gen is has a smaller foot print.

I can tell you right now what this thing will really look like:

Take 1 17" power book. Remove hing. Flip screen. Insert G5. Attach a cinema display base. Paint white. Ship with bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

 

[Little Endian]

to hell with the imac. My next Computer will be a PowerMac. Whether these specs are true or not the next imac will still feauture an underpowered GPU and limited expandability. I could buy a new imac every two years or I could buy a PowerMac and have at last 4 years or even longer with upgrades, either way I would spend roughly the same amount except at least with the PowerMac I shall have the bliss of knowing I have the most Powerful Macintosh available (if not for a brief moment in time) with Power to spare.

 

[whooleytoo]

• The imac is NOT a powermac. It's not intended for PROFESSIONAL users. It's intended for people like my grandfather to surf the web and read email. Stop using "Maya" and "imac" in the same sentence.

• The Mac has never been, and never will be, a first-rate gaming platform. Deal with it. Anyone who says otherwise is insane. The game options aren't there and never will be - the graphic card options aren't there and never will be.

So the iMac isn't a pro machine, and isn't much of a consumer machine either (if it can't do games).

Sure you can can say, it's a fine machine, if you don't need games on your home Mac. Then again, my shoe is a powerful PC, if you don't need input, output, storage or processing... 😉

Games are as important to consumer purchasing as Photoshop is to creative purchasing. As evidenced by the sheer number of posters here irate at the graphics card included (and lack of GPU upgradability), gaming is important to a LOT of potential buyers.

 

[wizard]

How could you rationally want to place an order for this crap? I truely mean crap too, except for the processor, this is as minimalist as one can get hardware wise. There is no way that this machine can be described as high end. Not even middle end. More likely it will take on the term "yesterdays computer" as the technology is certainly fine for a PC built a couple of years ago, but certianly not something that will serve a consumer going into 2005.

There really is very little time left in the year, knowing Apple of Late we will be lucky to get the hardware in September. So we basically have a computer for the year 2005 that is using technology that would be considered good in 2003. Apple is doing us really good here.

Maybe the TS story is completely wrong and thus this rant is out of place, but I doubt that is the case. So I do urge you to step back in think about what the machine offers for the money after they are released. It will be difficult to describe this machine as high end in any shape or form. Unless of course you considered the Cube to be a high end PC, if that is the case this whole discussion is sensless.

Dave

Where do I click to place my order? The high-end iMac is exactly what I'm looking for.

 

[Mord]

you people have no life



It's 10am (CST) the day of an announcement and there are already 11 pages. omg

Ok, new imacs are kewl since it means G5 powerbooks are even closer, YEY

no we do have lives, not everyone lives in america it is 6:00 as i post it and it's around 12:00 in america 🙄

 

[Moonlight]

Hmmmmm.....

Say that PC's will age faster if you like (simply because hardware development is faster on the x86 side), but to use this as your example is complete ignorance.

Hardware Development faster?

Is that why the processors are suck at 3.2 FOREVER.....?

And I don't want to start naming all the things that came out first on a mac (hardware wise)

 

[NickFalk]

IC....and how would you explain the performance difference for 99% of real apps being just MHZ between G4 and G5?
😉

Well, there's no evidence that 64-bit will make any speed-difference all over, what is clear though is that the possibility to address 64-bit memory already makes a difference when working with large, or rather huge files. While I agree that the marketing is somewhat over the top, the real advantages of 64-bit will not be apparent unless you work in a domain where the extra memory-bits is applicable... 🙂

Just had a revelation about the greatness of the internet. Here I am, sitting in Norway discussing Apple with an Aussie on an american message-board. 😀

 

[Mord]

The G3 iMacs have an advantage though.....they were on Apples shelves for a lot longer. They still sold these on the front bottom of the main Apple Store page long after the G4 iMac was released (up until they introduced the eMacs). Also, times have changed and laptops are a lot more popular and accessible now than they were during the iMac G3 run. Especially considering bluetooth abilities, wireless internet popularity, and the size of these laptops.

i'm baseing my estimate at units sold per year (i saw the figures a while ago in a mac mag)

 

[jayb2000]

Possible system?

Ok, these are "parts" prices I found online, so presumably Apple would be able to buy them in bulk for less. All prices in USD and I picked prices from well known vendors (newgg, circuit city, etc).

WD 700RPM 250gb Serial ATA Drive - $170
ATI Radeon 9800PRO 128 for Apple - $299
512mb Ram from Crucial - $207 (Upgrade to 1gb for $300 more)
Bluetooth module - $30
802.11g Wireless card (used netgear and linksys to get prices) - $45
Lacie Dual Layer DVD burner - $225
Totals $976

I found a G5 1.6 for sale for $1677
# 1.6GHz PowerPC G5
# 800MHz frontside bus
# 512K L2 cache
# 256MB DDR333 128-bit SDRAM
# Expandable to 4GB SDRAM
# 80GB Serial ATA
# SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
# Three PCI Slots
# NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
# 64MB DDR video memory
# 56K internal modem
# Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English
# Mac OS X - U.S. English


So, if we can guess around $500 for OS X, the motherboard, case, keyboard, and processor (a 1.8 G5), we could have a very kick ass system for under $1500.
That still leaves plenty of room for Apple to make money, espcially if we assume they can get those parts for at least 10% under retail.
Now, that would be a pretty good system, and by going to 160gb drive, no wireless, no bluetooth, and 64mb video card, we could drop another $300 off that.

I would buy the $1500 system in a heartbeat. I use my computer (450mhz G3 slot loader) for iTunes and iPhoto, email, web, etc. I would like to do video, but its too slow and I don't have nearly enough disk space. Not gaming yet, but I do like Myst/Riven style games and the occasionaly FPS and would play them more if my machine could support it.

Heck, if they threw in Appleworks X, Keynote, and bluetooth keyboard/mouse I would happily pay $1750 for that.

Any thoughts?

 

[tibor]

Pfft. I say you really don't know much and are basing this off public opinion.
The Mac's support for 3d graphics deep in the OS is a good boost, and Tiger's CoreVideo will probably blast the Mac's 3d performance above equivilant Windows PC's, I imagine, especially with OpenGL 2.
The only problem with Macs and gaming simply is OpenGL, which is about equivilant to DirectX 7 in special effects capabilities, but it's still not bad at all.
An equivilant Mac can easily perform as well as a PC. My old iBook had pretty good Jedi Knight 2 performance, this being a G3 800 iBook...with a tiny little graphics chip. I've seen benchmarks where the G5 loses to the fastest Pentium 4 by about 15% in gaming...and
a) the game is known to be P4 optimized
b) the game is known to be DirectX optimized, only ported to OpenGL
c) the Pentium 4's graphics chip has twice the VRAM (128 vs 256 MB).

I'd say this is good gaming performance, wouldn't you?

Oh gee, you're totally right. I'm going to go play Doom 3 right now on my mac. And then I'm going to play some Final Fantasy XI, because on a first-rate platform, I have more to choose from than just one type of game. And then I'm going to play some Vice City, even though that game has been out for YEARs. I half half-life 2 on the way, along with Far Cry. All on the Mac. Because it's a first-rate gaming platform, no doubt.

Microsoft bought the last good Mac game developer. What do we get now? Starcraft released two years after it's out on PC? Game developers don't care about the Mac because of the market share. And if there aren't many games, there aren't many gaming cards.

How can you possibly debate this? Name five top-tier games that came out on the Mac at the same time as the PC, within the past year. OK, within the past two years.

I don't deny that the Mac COULD be a good platform, but the market just isn't going to allow it to be.

-d

 

[edesignuk]

Hardware Development faster?

Is that why the processors are suck at 3.2 FOREVER.....?

And I don't want to start naming all the things that came out first on a mac (hardware wise)

They're at 3.6 numb-nut 🙄

 

[ITR 81]

Remember these are just basic config iMacs.

I'm almost willing to bet Apple will have a optional graphics card option available to us when these iMacs debut.

As for the edu model...you don't need a optical drive in a networked school.
A optical drive in a school computer is just asking to be hacked.
I use to carry all of my hacking tools on a disc and I could either boot from it or just install the ones I wanted.

Now what about un-networked schools. They can always use an external HD or CD-ROM drive if not both to each computer and upload programs and OS upgrades. It's slow but it works.

 

[Eric_Z]

@jayb2000

The sad thing is that as a small formfactor machine, this rumored new iMac might be semi decent in comparison to it's PC (Mini-ITX) counterparts. But as an all round consumer computer it's just not up for the job.

If only there where a "Cube" option or equivalent, as say a single CPU Power Mac, with upgradable GFX. :-/