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January iMacs?

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Apr 12, 2001
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MacNN posted this article from Bloomberg.com:

[/i]Initial product orders for the new iMac, which may feature a flat-panel screen, call for 100,000 units to be produced next month, Munson said, citing unnamed contacts. The new computer could help Apple increase iMac sales to 500,000 units per quarter from current levels of less than 300,000, she said. [/i]
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2001/12/04/january-imacs/
I'd be willing to go with this

It wouldn't surprise me in the least to see this happen come January. Apple has been doing a lot this past year to get better hardware out, and they still need a boost in sales badly! The iMac brought them back a few years ago and it's time for them to do it again.
 
Best Story Yet!

This is the best rumor story I've heard yet that contains actual fact.
 
G4 imac

G4 imac will be announce at SFMW flat panel and will be 867mhz-1.2ghz
 
Re: G4 imac

Originally posted by kaneda
G4 imac will be announce at SFMW flat panel and will be 867mhz-1.2ghz
Click to expand...

thats one ambitious prediction kaneda. and i thought i was the ambitiouslemon here. id love to see it happen but... seems like the lcd will cause a bump in cost and a g4 would cause another bump, if apple wants to keep the imac below $999 lcds AND g4s would probably be too ambitious a goal for january. i think there are two reasons we all want to see a g4 imac:
1) with the rumors regarding the apollo chip it seems new g4s in january are imminent, so unless g4s arent in powermacs (in an imac or cube instead) it means no g5s.
2) osx, itunes, quicktime, dvdr is unbearable to impossible on a g3. apple needs to get altivec in the consumer line if it wants osx to catch on. who wanst to rip mp3s at 2x in a g3 when any other computer (g4 or pc) can do it at 12x +?

if g4 lcdimacs and g5s debut in january apple will have pulled the greatest mw yet and may be poised to take some more marketshare (i know i said it but please dont let us get into a marketshare discussion)
 
I'm tired of this...

No offense guys but I'm tired of hearing that the G3 is almost unusable for all these tasks. I have a G3 iMac with a CDRW and 400mb of ram at home. My office at work has a PowerMac G4 450 with around 500mb of ram. I use Quark, Illustrator and Photoshop all day long and I gotta tell you that I don't see enough of a difference between the 2 machines or processors to justify the difference in cost (for my personal machine). I don't have the tech expertise that a lot of you have but the bottom line for me is screen size and all my graphic designer colleagues agree. I think some of you forget that there are way more people like me out there than like you.

I hear so many of you guys saying that the altivec will boost the filtering speeds and stuff like that but it's not like you're filtering all day long are you? The fact that the G4 does everything faster is one thing but I can do absolutely every task I do on my G4 on my G3 iMac also.

p.s. I rip CD's at around 10-12x on my iMac.
 
Very true about the G3 v G4, especially in the laptops. I plan on getting an iBook now that they have the 100 mhz bus. If you compare a new G4 (133/ATA-100), to a new iMac (100/ATA-66) though, there should be more of a visual difference.

By the way, DVD-R IS impossible on a G3. The chip itself just can't handle the encoding. Other than that...you're right.

-Pete
 
ive got a g3 333mhz with 256 mb ram and a 32gb 5400 rpm hard drive powerbook and i notice a HUGE difference. try looking at application launch speeds on a g3 versus a g4. lauch speeds for many apps are nearly instant on a g4 whereas a g3 i often launch an app and then get up and do something while it launches because it take so long. mp3 ripping is another thing that is completely unacceptable on a g3. a g4 will rip a whole cd in like 2-3 minutes whereas a g3 take 2-3 minutes per song. and thats only if you keep itunes in front while ripping and dont touch your mac for the 20-30minutes it takes to rip the cd. if i try ripping in the background it slows down yto less than 1 speed. quicktime in osx is unusable on a g3, even at full screen (which is only available in the quicktime pro application) the glitches occur so often that the audio will often be out of synch. and anything less than full screen is so fully of twiches you cant watch anything. window resizing in osx with a g3 is still terribly slow. i often use photoshop and bryce on my powerbook and will often have to get up and do something else for 20 minutes to and hour while a filter is rendering. and as far as processing large amounts of data my g3 will often take as long as a month on a data set that a g4 will complete in a week. i still love my lil powerbook but im not going to pretend its comparable in anyway to a g4. a g3 has a lot of uses but what i was saying is that there is a trend in apple software to take advantage of the altivec technology in lines of software that are aimed at all levels (consumer and professional). we often see posts here about people wanting to speed up their itunes visualizations or quicktime performance and we all know about performace problems in osx. i dont think any of us intend to "get down" on the g3, many of us use g3s, but we are realistic about the limitations of our computers and are just noting that if this trend in apple software continues these performance issues are only likely to become greater.
 
igordi, how did you manage to get 400MB of ram into an iMac??? It is impossible.

You either have a very, very good iMac at home, or a severly hamstrung G4 at work to not notice the difference.

I have a G4 500 at home, with 1.5GB of RAM, and a G4 733 (not QuickSilver) and notice the difference between them. Granted, it is not a huge difference, but that is mainly because I have done a lot of work on my home system. Between the ton o RAM, additional hard drive, video card upgrade and such at home which has made a lot of difference.

I am selling it in Feb. to someone from work that it will be a serious upgrade for and getting a G5 (whenever they are released).

I can understand the arguement between single and dual processors. Personally, I will be going for the fastest single processor when I buy it, since I don't have enough applications that will benefit from the dual processor. I will be adding a Gig of Ram though, since that is something that I will need, and use. You know, games are memory hogs.
 
G3 and G4

I respect the Mac knowledge floating around here, but after reading this thread, I had to join this forum and add my own thoughts.

Be careful about attributing speed only to G3 versus G4. 333mhz G3 powerbooks (Bronze keyboard model I assume?) only has a pokey 66mhz system bus. Of course this is going to look really slow when you compare it with a 133mhz bus equipped G4 computer or even one that has a 100mhz bus like the G4 cube or the early Titatium powerbooks.

I have an early 2001 model iMac, 600mhz machine with a 256K on-chip cache that runs at full processor speed and runs across a 100mhz system bus. When I compare this to my old 333mhz iMac with its 66mhz system bus I really notice the difference too!

True under OS X, a G4 is a faster than equivalent G3s. I ran my 600mhz iMac against my 400mhz Titanium PowerBook exporting a quicktime file out of iMovie and they were almost neck and neck.

Also for the person who says an iMac can't have 400megs of RAM, I've got 640megs, all recognized. I'd up it to a full gig if I could see the need.

So, this is one long time Mac user who really loves the "consumer" model Macs. This is one very cool computer with plenty of power to spare. Right now, it's also operating as a web server and personal FTP site.

Can't run iTunes or OS X on a G3??? Have to shoot down that opinion.

Naturally, I'd love a faster machine and if there were a G4 iMac I'd definitely consider the better processor. I agree it IS a better processor, I just don't like hearing people make claims that just aren't true.

CH
 
Re:G3 and G4

The reason that I said you can't have 400MB of RAM, is because you cannot get that round of a number. With only 2 memory slots, the very most you will be able to fit into it (at least right now) is 1GB of RAM. In order to get 400MB you would have to have a combination of chips that simply doesn't exsist (256 + 144=400).

Currently there is almost a Mac for every kind of user. From the portable, to the cheap desktop, to the high end desktop. It all depends on what your needs are and how deep your pockets are.

The previous post with an iMac (no speed given) compared to a G4 (didn't post which revision or if it has a PCI video card or is one of the AGP models) leads me to suspect that there is something wrong with the G4. Either that, or utilities have never been run, and virtual memory is active. Those two things have been known to severly criple Mac's (of any generation). I have seen a G4 (any generation) go from ok speeds to blazing fast after turning off the virtual memory, and running our full set of utilities on it. The same can almost be said of any Mac that was made from the iMac forward.
 
G3 vs. G4

In lots of cases, one won't notice an incredible difference between the two processors. It's only with work that's processor intensive where one will see the difference (examples: Photoshop, iTunes, Final Cut Pro). There have been lots of comparison tests showing relatively small differences between two similar speed computers, one G3 & one G4, and not much difference unless with certan tasks.
 
Old G4's bit the dust

The older G4's (I believe that Sawtooth motherboards) were terrible! My iMac can waste my G4 at work, and they both run at the same clock speed (400MHz)! The configuration of the two is nearly identical, except for the fact that my iMac has LESS memory. The G4 I use at work is one of the first G4's released, I believe. Wasn't the 400MHz G4 one of the first?
 
re: G4 400

it was the second one up with the 350 being the low end and 450 being the high end if your are referring to the original introduction of the G4

the very first G4 to be shipped (350 mhz) was kind of like a souped up blue and white G3 but with a G4 processor in it and it only had pci graphics

it still was a better machine than the blue and white G3, but benched only slightly faster

the G4s now are much better now but getting "old" in design

we are ready for the G5 but the question is, "will apple be ready to announce it in just a few weeks?"
 
Awright, I am confused.

My understanding is that the difference between the G4 and G3 is MINIMAL, other than the G4 having the VE. So at comparable clock speeds, in a non-VE enabled app. (that would be most of them...) you aren't going to see much of a difference. Real world experience seems to be split 50-50 between "there is a huge difference" and "there is no difference"

This I do know--my buddy has a 12x CD-R (external Firewire, of course!) and a 400 MHz G3. He routinely rips and burns CD's while playing tetris, and very quickly, to boot. It doesn't take 1 or 2 minutes PER SONG to rip a CD. If someone was having that experience, I would suggests that they take theior machine in for service, or upgrade their CD-R to a non-USB (try ScSCi or Firewire) because it doesnt sound like the bottleneck is the processor.

I agree with other people's observations that bus speed (66 v. 100 v 133) makes a monster difference, too. Unfortunately, I also agree witht guy who said that it is time for better hardware for the same money, because the G3 is a 3 year old chip. I can build a 1.5 Ghz. AMD PC for less than $1000--and the concensus seems to be that it will run rings around any G3 and probably most G4's too...

Once again, Macs need better video cards in their consumer models, if they want market shore--no one wants a laggy game experience, and lets face it, games sell consumer PC's...
 
I still don't agree..

I still don't get it. Someone earlier said that my 450 G4 at work must be screwed because it should be smoking the 500 iMac at home but it's not. In fact, you say it takes you 2 minutes to rip a song on your G3 but it takes my iMac about 20 seconds. Also, my apps launch faster on my iMac than my G4 (only slightly). Lastly, I think that EYELIKEART is one of the only ones who seems to get my other point, that being, I believe that the majority of professional mac users are graphic designers using Photoshop 5, Illustrator 8 and Quark 4. Seeing as Photoshop is the only app with Velocity enhancements and we maybe run about 10 really huge filters a day that means the total time saved is about 5 min. a day maybe.
 
Re: I still don't agree..

Originally posted by igordi
I still don't get it. Someone earlier said that my 450 G4 at work must be screwed because it should be smoking the 500 iMac at home but it's not. In fact, you say it takes you 2 minutes to rip a song on your G3 but it takes my iMac about 20 seconds. Also, my apps launch faster on my iMac than my G4 (only slightly). Lastly, I think that EYELIKEART is one of the only ones who seems to get my other point, that being, I believe that the majority of professional mac users are graphic designers using Photoshop 5, Illustrator 8 and Quark 4. Seeing as Photoshop is the only app with Velocity enhancements and we maybe run about 10 really huge filters a day that means the total time saved is about 5 min. a day maybe.
Click to expand...

sorry but you are VERY wrong here. i dont like being an ass, but you people seem to be throwing around a lot of bull here. check out apple's web site. check out the imac. it says can rip cds "several times faster than the time it actually takes to play the song itself." take a look at the computers you are comparing i was saying my 333mhz powerbook with its built in cd player rips songs at 2-3x (several times faster than it takes to play the song). maybe if you have a g3 with wtice as many mhz and a faster bus you get more out of your system, but it still doesnt compare to a g4. as far as photoshop being the only velocity engine app... are you on crack? everything (ok i exagerate) apple has made recently iss designed for velocity engine! heres apple's list
Apple http://www.apple.com/powermac/processor.html

notice every major apple app is in this list. itunes, osx, quicktime, imovie, fcp, webobjects, etc.

i didnt mean to insult anyones computer. we all love our computers thats the great thing about apple, apple users love their computers. and so if anyone felt like i was insulting the g3 then im very sorry i didnt mean to come off that way. all i was saying is apple keeps making all of its apps built around the g4. its amazing to me that they package basic apps like quicktime and itunes on a g3 but have these apps barely functional on that computer. im sure my use of teh phrase barely function will bother some people since we all use these apps on our g3s but this is what i mean: try watching a movie in full screen with quicktime in osx (and i dont mean in present mode thats the pro version feature). you cant do it on a g3. a g4 can handle this just fine. my biggest point is even the new os is built for g4 processors and its not fair to g3 users that we cant even run osx at acceptable speeds (ok its questionable whether g4s can run osx at acceptable speeds). this trend toward coding new apps for the g4 is severely limiting performance on the consumer line. sure us consumer users can still get by especially if we load our machines with heaps of ram (my machine came with 64, and that was fine back then!) and invest in firewire cd players and harddrives, but out of the box the consumer line should be able to use the apps that are shipped on it to their fullest extent.

oh and the video card thing in imacs, oh so true!
 
Quote:

"igordi, how did you manage to get 400MB of ram into an iMac??? It is impossible. "

Rubbish, you can get 400mb (well 384mb Same THING)

Doh!

Guy

 
How am I wrong?

I'm sorry Mr. Lemon but once again you aren't getting my point. All the apps you mentioned were Apple apps and I am talking about professional apps. I thought the original argument was something along the lines of "you can't use the G3 in a professional environment". This is the point that I'm arguing. Photoshop 5, Illustrator 8 and Quark 4.1. This is what the majority of designers use and they don't use OSX yet and they don't even have the latest versions of some of the apps either (Photoshop 6 or Illustartor 9). I can't argue with anything except my own experience but I can tell you these few things with certainty:

Photoshop 5 launch time:
iMac 500 (384mb ram) = about 4 sec.
PowerMac G4 (512 mb ram) = about 5 sec.

iTunes rip speed for 1 CD:
iMac = starts at about 4x ends around 15x
PowerMac = starts about 4x ends around 17x

Photoshop Gaussian Blur (40mb image):
iMac = around 14 sec.
PowerMac = around 8 sec.

Once again, these are only my computers and I won't get into all the other areas like Quark files and sending to print to local copiers. The only worthwhile improvement is in filtering and as you see I saved 6 sec. WOW! Multiply that by 20 large filters a day and I just saved 2 whole minutes! I'm not saying that I don't want a G4 tower or even one in my next iMac. I just don't NEED it for the inevitable huge price jump.
 
It's not the same thing... If you are sloppy in one thing, it makes all the other statements suspect. It would be like rounding 512 MB to 550 or 600MB, or instead of the speed being 450MHz he might have rounded that as well from either 400 or 500.

Is it REALLY that hard to put in the correct/accurate number?? I can understand a processor maker rounding a few points, like calling a chip that clocks at 656MHz a 650MHz(which AMD has been known to do). Also, use the correct cap's when you are talking about things... mb would equate to mega BITS not Bytes... which is 1/8th the number.

I know I am being a stickler for accuracy, but is that so wrong??? At least I know that the Mac platform rules, even if 95% or so of the world doesn't.
 
Re: How am I wrong?

Originally posted by igordi
I'm sorry Mr. Lemon but once again you aren't getting my point. All the apps you mentioned were Apple apps and I am talking about professional apps. I thought the original argument was something along the lines of "you can't use the G3 in a professional environment". This is the point that I'm arguing. Photoshop 5, Illustrator 8 and Quark 4.1. This is what the majority of designers use and they don't use OSX yet and they don't even have the latest versions of some of the apps either (Photoshop 6 or Illustartor 9). I can't argue with anything except my own experience but I can tell you these few things with certainty:

Photoshop 5 launch time:
iMac 500 (384mb ram) = about 4 sec.
PowerMac G4 (512 mb ram) = about 5 sec.

iTunes rip speed for 1 CD:
iMac = starts at about 4x ends around 15x
PowerMac = starts about 4x ends around 17x

Photoshop Gaussian Blur (40mb image):
iMac = around 14 sec.
PowerMac = around 8 sec.

Once again, these are only my computers and I won't get into all the other areas like Quark files and sending to print to local copiers. The only worthwhile improvement is in filtering and as you see I saved 6 sec. WOW! Multiply that by 20 large filters a day and I just saved 2 whole minutes! I'm not saying that I don't want a G4 tower or even one in my next iMac. I just don't NEED it for the inevitable huge price jump.
Click to expand...

ok i see the confusion now. all this g3/g4 thing goes back to a post i made where i said people want to see a g4 in an imac for two reasons: 1) g4imac could mean g5 powermac (not relevevant to our confusion) and 2) people want to see g4 in imac because many basic functions and apps are much slower or impossible on a g3 and then i listed a bunch of stuff. basically im saying that one fo the reasons we all keep wanting a g4 imac is that osx quicktime and itunes all have big performance boosts on a g4 because of ve. and also some things like quicktime at large sizes and dvdr are impossible on a g3. i think thats how we got into this big hoopla.

anyway my point in all of it is if apple is going to optimize apps like osx quicktime and itune (apps aimed at consumer level users) then these apps should be optimized for the consumer level computers not optimized for the pro level. will the g4 ever replace the g3 in these markets hmm... no. apple needs to keep ibm in the picture so until ibm buys moto's semiconductor department it will mean g3s all around. but this isnt a bad thing, ibm is doing some amazing things with these chips.

i didnt mean to get everyone into a g3 vs g4 debate i was mostly speaking to explain why everyone keeps predicting g4 imacs and also questioning apple's optimized for ve strategy. (oh and if you follow that link there is a huge list that includes all major mac apps not just apple ones)

did this clear anything up?
 
iTunes RIP Speed Difference, 1 Possible Explanation

Folks,

When it comes to ripping CD's there is something else that is just as limiting as the processor. I have a 400 Mhz G3 iMac DV (with DVD Player) as one of the first such machines it has a 4xDVD player in it. This is also used as 4XCD most of the time. The best speed I ever get when ripping a CD is 4X. Guess why. I have an external (older) firewire CDR, it is 8X/4X/24X - I get faster times with it, not 24X, but faster. Guess Why.

There is more at work in comparing these machines than JUST processor speeds. Amount of RAM, Speed of RAM (CL2 vs CL3, PC133 in latest G4's vs PC66 in OLDEST iMacs vs PC100 in iMac DV and up) On top of VE performance. The RULE, and I do MEAN RULE in this is the newer the machine, the faster it is.

OSX is acceptable to me on my iMac DV, but on one built just a few months later (same CPU MHz, but a new revision) it is even faster. A LOT of things determine the speed, and you'll find that not only is MHz a small part of it, VE isn't as much of it as we would like either (although it doesn't hurt! :))

Just my $0.00002 and probably about all it is worth,
Necris
 
g3 vs g4

The only way that the argument about g3 vs g4 (g5) can be well and truly solved was if Apple produced two identical machines, but the only difference (and I mean ONLY difference) was to put a g3 chip in one and a g4 chip in the other and then see the speeds. Oh yes, do not only do this is a lab and post the results on the net or in the press, but let the buyer see for themselves, because people will still argue over the results if they came from a lab.
You could also say, Apple produce a mac with an Intel and AMD chip and do likewise and see what toasts what.
 
A few years ago I did something similar. I upgraded my PowerMac clone from the 604e (210MHz) to a G3 chip (400 or 500MHz, I don't remember which). There was a huge difference in speed. Everything from startup to applications, even the internet seemed faster (exact same modem as before the upgrade).

The same could be done by installing a G4 upgrade into a G3 B&W system, of the same speed (such as a 400MHz or so). I can virtually guarantee (within 99%) you WILL see a difference in performance. Most likely, it will be anywhere from 50% to 2x faster (depends on what you do and how healthy your system is).

Some people comment about how bad their computer performs either at home or work, but when you ask when any maintenance was done to it you get the 1000 mile stare. Depending on what you are doing, or running for software, something should be run on it at least every month or two. Even if you only run Disk Doctor and Speed Disk on it (current version, not from years ago). Also, DON'T install it on your computer, that can cause any number of issues, some of which people are showing by the posts, even though they might not realize it. ALWAYS boot up off of the CD, run the utilities, and then restart off of your hard drive.

out
 
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