IBM Preps for Apple Announcements

[GregGomer]

What if?

Originally posted by Macrumors
These hints simply confirm what has been widely expected, and while the question of the PowerMac specs may have been laid to rest (for the non-conspiracy theorists), the questions of shipping time and price remain open.

Yah, that's what concerns me now, what if Apple is sitting back and saying...

"look at all these happy people, and they don't know what we originally planned to sell these at do they. Well then, lets raise the price $500 across the board, from the looks of things we could raise it $1000 and no one would care..."

 

[gwangung]

Originally posted by macman21
Oooops! Sorry about that. I read it and assumed it meant December 2003.

Sorry to laugh at the mistake, but I thought this was one of the funnier things over the last 24 hours....Guess it means we are REALLY on edge for Monday....

 

[macfan]

Can we expect the same price structure? Looks like it's time for an upgrade, but if the new chip ramps up faster on speed to make up for lost time, maybe I should wait a little while... To buy or not to buy... drool.

 

[hmmfe]

Originally posted by macman21
Oooops! Sorry about that. I read it and assumed it meant December 2003.

No worries - an honest mistake. It is true, thought, that most SATA drives out there are P-ATA drives with a SATA bridge added. Seagate is a native SATA drive.

 

[Frobozz]

Faster than the 970's about the be released on Monday, or faster than what is available as of today (dual 1.42 G4)?

There's a whole world of difference between the two. The first would imply dual 2.5 970's or something in Dec./Jan.

 

[Mr Jobs]

Originally posted by macman21
I have serious doubts about the availability of these machines. One problem is Serial ATA. I have done some research, and while there are plenty of Serial ATA controllers out, there wont be any true Serial ATA hard drives out until December of this year.

http://www.explosivelabs.com/articles/sata/

Unless Apple plans on using plane old IDE hard drives with an adapter so they will work with Serial ATA controllers. This will of course work, but there would be no increase in performance. I really hope they have something up their sleve for this.

Another thing I hope is that they are all DP. I want a DP G5, but I am pretty sure I don't want to fork over the money for the top of the line dual 2GHZ.

Yep you really need to get up to date with technology. i'm using a 'Western Digital 'Raptor 36GB' SerialATA HD with 10,000RPM on my PC. Now you telling me that isn't a real SerialATA but a standard ATA, then tell me how may 10,000RPM ATA HD's have you seen?

 

[DGFan]

Re: PCI-X

Originally posted by cthorp
Is there anyone who can give a breakdown on what PCI-x is and how it compares to the current PCI slots and some evaluation of the audio optical vs. analog would be good too. Also, how much is 8 Gigs of RAM going to run?

Thanks,
Cameron

PCI-X is basically twice as fast. Google it if you want more info.

 

[dongmin]

No, they're not talking about another update...

Originally posted by pilotgi
Yes, faster than 2Ghz by the end of the year. And next year, they'll have the 980 built on the 0.90 nm process. IBM ought to be getting close to 4 Ghz by the second half of 2004.

Just to throw up a red flag, I think the Mercury News article was written before the G5 leak by Apple; there's no mention whatsoever of the leak. So when the article says 'significantly faster Apple machines should arrive before the end of the year' I think they're talking about being faster than the current G4s, not the soon-to-be-announced G5s. If the article was posted Friday, it probably went to press around 9-10 pm Thursday, before the leak.

The Mercury News story is mainly summarizing recent rumors (before the Apple leak) in preparation of the WWDC. The bits about IBM working closely with Apple is interesting, but it's not anything we haven't heard/assumed.

Anyways, So PLEASE DON'T SPREAD any new rumors about another update before X-mas. It won't happen. I gurantee it. Apple will have hard enough time meeting the demand for this round. Is anyone who's been waiting to buy a power mac the last year or two seriously gonna wait for the next update??? How can anyone pass this up? Are you serious? It's the biggest jump Apple has made, EVER. As soon as I go back to school in the fall, I'm taking out a serious loan. Apple has my $4000 in the bank.

 

[Frobozz]

Originally posted by macman21
I have serious doubts about the availability of these machines. One problem is Serial ATA. I have done some research, and while there are plenty of Serial ATA controllers out, there wont be any true Serial ATA hard drives out until December of this year.

http://www.explosivelabs.com/articles/sata/

Unless Apple plans on using plane old IDE hard drives with an adapter so they will work with Serial ATA controllers. This will of course work, but there would be no increase in performance. I really hope they have something up their sleve for this.

Another thing I hope is that they are all DP. I want a DP G5, but I am pretty sure I don't want to fork over the money for the top of the line dual 2GHZ.

Well, they did this with FireWire. There really has NEVER been a native firewire drive... only ATA drives with Oxford 911 chips to serve as a translator.

There are Serial ATA drives out right now. But my guess is that Apple is just trying to make a new standard by jumping the technology curve a bit-- even if they have to use ATA133 to SATA adaptors on the drives to do it.

 

[GregGomer]

Originally posted by macman21
I have serious doubts about the availability of these machines. One problem is Serial ATA. I have done some research, and while there are plenty of Serial ATA controllers out, there wont be any true Serial ATA hard drives out until December of this year.
.

I think you already realized the date error. But just tto help further explain how it may work.

My new PC has Serial ATA and standard IDE, pretty standard practice so that you can be backwards compatible. After all, Superdrives and CD ROM drives aren't serial ATA, just plain old standard ATA/IDE. It doesn't look hard to get both to fit on a motherboard either, after all, the serial ATA connectors are very very small.

 

[yzedf]

Originally posted by macman21
I have serious doubts about the availability of these machines. One problem is Serial ATA. I have done some research, and while there are plenty of Serial ATA controllers out, there wont be any true Serial ATA hard drives out until December of this year.

http://www.explosivelabs.com/articles/sata/

Unless Apple plans on using plane old IDE hard drives with an adapter so they will work with Serial ATA controllers. This will of course work, but there would be no increase in performance. I really hope they have something up their sleve for this.

Another thing I hope is that they are all DP. I want a DP G5, but I am pretty sure I don't want to fork over the money for the top of the line dual 2GHZ.

1. Date: October 23, 2002 Author: Adam Lechowicz (your linked article)

2. You can buy today a 10,000 rpm SATA drive (Western Digital Raptor). http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=property&DEPA=1

 

[soggywulf]

Re: PCI-X

Originally posted by cthorp
some evaluation of the audio optical vs. analog would be good too.

Analog audio I/O connects to most stuff. Digital I/O connects only to stuff that has optical or copper digital I/O ports (aka SPDIF or toslink). The digital I/O is pure streaming bits, with no noise like the analog lines can have. E.g. if you are playing a CD, the data on the CD will stream straight out the pipe.

Also, Dolby AC3 (surround sound from DVD's etc) will most likely be piped straight through the digital output, all 5 channels intact and separated (so they can be processed individually by a surround receiver). If you play a DVD through the normal 2-channel stereo analog outputs, the 5+1 surround channels are pre-mixed by the computer into 2-channel stereo...which is non ideal if you already have a separate surround processor.

 

[kb9000]

Re: Re: PCI-X

Originally posted by DGFan
PCI-X is basically twice as fast. Google it if you want more info.

Be careful how you Google: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3006486.stm

 

[KershMan]

Originally posted by macman21
I have serious doubts about the availability of these machines. One problem is Serial ATA. I have done some research, and while there are plenty of Serial ATA controllers out, there wont be any true Serial ATA hard drives out until December of this year.

http://www.explosivelabs.com/articles/sata/

Unless Apple plans on using plane old IDE hard drives with an adapter so they will work with Serial ATA controllers. This will of course work, but there would be no increase in performance. I really hope they have something up their sleve for this.

Another thing I hope is that they are all DP. I want a DP G5, but I am pretty sure I don't want to fork over the money for the top of the line dual 2GHZ.

Hum, must be December already:

http://www.cdw.com/shop/search/Results.aspx?grp=HDA

 

[soggywulf]

Originally posted by macman21
I have serious doubts about the availability of these machines. One problem is Serial ATA. I have done some research, and while there are plenty of Serial ATA controllers out, there wont be any true Serial ATA hard drives out until December of this year.

http://www.explosivelabs.com/articles/sata/

By this time I am sure you have realized that this article was written last year.

See http://www.pricewatch.com/1/26/5138-1.htm for a cheap list of 120 gig SATA drives. The prices are actually quite good compared to IDE, considering that they are 7200 RPM and 8MB cache.

Originally posted by macman21
Unless Apple plans on using plane old IDE hard drives with an adapter so they will work with Serial ATA controllers. This will of course work, but there would be no increase in performance. I really hope they have something up their sleve for this.

You actually will not see any increase in performance with SATA if you are not running a RAID (the majority of users). Even with a RAID, ATA133 speeds will be more than enough for quite some time, given the slow rate of HD speed progress. The data can only stream so fast from the platters, no matter what interface technology you use.

The real benefit of SATA will be the thin cables (can I get an Amen!). If you've tried stuffing a lot of extra HD's into your Mac, you will instantly realize the enormous benefit of this, at several levels.

 

[makkystyle]

I think Frobozz's sig summes it up perfectly:

"Oooh! There is no emoticon for what I am feeling!" - Comic Book Store Guy

I was LMAO when I saw that.

 

[soggywulf]

Originally posted by macman21
Oooops! Sorry about that. I read it and assumed it meant December 2003.

Sorry, just realized that about 500 ppl got in ahead of me. Anyway, it's clear.


What concerns me more is the availability of "PC4000" DDR500 RAM for the 1 GHz bus. As far as I can see, such RAM doesn't even exist yet, not even as a JEDEC spec. So are they just using PC3700 and overclocking? Hmm... Kinda makes me think maybe that web store slip-up was just a hack after all.

 

[JoeRadar]

Originally posted by bertagert
Theres no way they would announce system and not ship for 6 months. They will release the 1.6 - 2.0 GHZ on monday and by the end of the year we will see 2.2 - 2.5 GHZ.

Generally I would agree with you, but here is a potential approach:

(1) Since the new models will provide Apple its biggest speed delta in history (?), they may be confident that people will rush to these machines and not worry about waiting.

(2) A signal that IBM has a serious plan to continue the speed increases (i.e., they won't stagnate like Moto did) will help developers decide to commit to the new architecture and bring out 970-native applications for Panther.

 

[Haenk]

That's plain wrong

Originally posted by macman21
I have serious doubts about the availability of these machines. One problem is Serial ATA. I have done some research, and while there are plenty of Serial ATA controllers out, there wont be any true Serial ATA hard drives out until December of this year.

SATA drives are available now (though demand & supply is low) - somewhat 6 months late though

on the NDA-breaking side, one major HDD manufacturer will ship their next generation line as SATA soon (it appears to be SATA only - judging by the documents, but I don't believe that yet)

 

[rickag]

Well, since it appears Apple will be using IBM's 970, wouldn't it be logical to use serial ATA drives from IBM?

Wasn't there something about IBM and Hitachi combining efforts or something. Anyway here's IBM's serial ATA hard drive.

 

[gothamac]

I've done some research myself and can confirm, that we are in the year 2003.

 

[ryan]

Originally posted by Vlade
Remember the old iMacs with 5 colors, and how apple always was short on some colors and had so much tangerine it was 100 bucks less?

Sure it would be nice, but apple probably won't do it.

Depending on the motherboard design slapping another processor in is not the same as having to deal with maintaining an inventory of various colors. Dell offers single and dual processor configurations on the entire range of workstation machines, it would be nice if Apple were to do the same.

I agree with the OP, I would love to be able to buy a dual processor machine with two "slower" chips. As a software developer I tend to not push any one program all that hard but I typically have a dozen or so different applications (web server, database, app server, etc.) running at one time so a dual processor box can really make a difference.

 

[Haenk]

Originally posted by soggywulf
Sorry, just realized that about 500 ppl got in ahead of me. Anyway, it's clear.


What concerns me more is the availability of "PC4000" DDR500 RAM for the 1 GHz bus. As far as I can see, such RAM doesn't even exist yet, not even as a JEDEC spec. So are they just using PC3700 and overclocking? Hmm... Kinda makes me think maybe that web store slip-up was just a hack after all.

think about asynchronous RAM timing - this is a standard Northbridge feature within the Wintel world

Taking the ramp up in production of DDR400, I would assume PC3200 to be used (maybe 2700 or even 2100 on the slower machines?)

Quite possible is a dual channel memory concept - but I seriously doubt, that Apple has advanced this far.

On a sidenote, I expect 4 DIMM slots only, with support for 2GB modules. 8 slots are very expensive, most users won't need them and they eat up a lot of room in a desktop enclosure. (My RX4610 has 64 slots <g>)

 

[wrc fan]

Originally posted by rickag
Well, since it appears Apple will be using IBM's 970, wouldn't it be logical to use serial ATA drives from IBM?

Wasn't there something about IBM and Hitachi combining efforts or something. Anyway here's IBM's serial ATA hard drive.

I certainly hope not, IBM hard drives have been known to be prone to failure, which is one of the reasons for the Hitachi agreement. I hope they just offer a 120GB+ model from Seagate and/or Maxtor, and the 36GB 10,000rpm Raptor drive from Seagate as an option.

 

[wrc fan]

Originally posted by Haenk
Quite possible is a dual channel memory concept - but I seriously doubt, that Apple has advanced this far.

Apple is gonna need to have dual channel, specially if they have dual processors. If you have a 2GHz with a 1GHz FSB using DDR400, that's limiting the bandwidth enough already, add in a 2nd processor, and it's even worse. So if they don't have dual channel, then they have been seriously wasting their time.