More PowerMac G5 Details...

[~loserman~]

Mmmm.... the Justice Department would certainly be interested in that!

ABSOLUTELY NOT.

There is nothing wrong with a company selling a product at a loss as long as it isn't being done to drive a competitor out of business. And as long as they don't follow up the sales later by raising the price of the product once they have driven the competitor out of business.

This is called a "loss leader". It is a common business practice. You sell item A that is needed to sell item B. You sell item A cheap usually even at a loss to gain enough market penetration to allow the selling of item B at a profit.

Item A = Xbox
Item B = Games

 

[Frobozz]

Misdirection

This might be the biggest dissapointment in a LONG time for Apple PowerMac fans. I have a sense that since ThinkSecret is being sued by Apple that they might be building a case by spreading misinformation to them. Seriously, this update is rank. Just pitiful. 8% in a year, assuming linear performance which doesn't occur in the same processor family? I don't think so.

Unless they drop the prices on these, there's not much of a reason to be excited. Maybe this:

dual 2.0 $1,800
dual 2.5 $2,200
dual 2.7 $2,600

 

[FlyNolJ]

This might be the biggest dissapointment in a LONG time for Apple PowerMac fans. I have a sense that since ThinkSecret is being sued by Apple that they might be building a case by spreading misinformation to them. Seriously, this update is rank. Just pitiful. 8% in a year, assuming linear performance which doesn't occur in the same processor family? I don't think so.

Unless they drop the prices on these, there's not much of a reason to be excited. Maybe this:

dual 2.0 $1,800
dual 2.5 $2,200
dual 2.7 $2,600

Frobozz, for these specs, something like this:
2.7=2,499
2.3=1,999
2.0=1,499

 

[dicklacara]

ABSOLUTELY NOT.

There is nothing wrong with a company selling a product at a loss as long as it isn't being done to drive a competitor out of business. And as long as they don't follow up the sales later by raising the price of the product once they have driven the competitor out of business.

This is called a "loss leader". It is a common business practice. You sell item A that is needed to sell item B. You sell item A cheap usually even at a loss to gain enough market penetration to allow the selling of item B at a profit.

Item A = Xbox
Item B = Games

The rules/laws are different for monopolies...

Normally a monopoly will do everything possible to avoid the appearance of doing anything illegal.

If it sold a "loss leader", MS could be seen as using its size and market presence to illegally prevent others from entering the market and/or competing on a level playing field.

While someone smaller may be able to offer "loss leaders", MS is inviting legal action.

I worked for IBM during the years where they had 70% of the maimeframe market-- you can compete vigorously, but you must be careful that it is fairly.

 

[~loserman~]

The rules/laws are different for monopolies...

Normally a monopoly will do everything possible to avoid the appearance of doing anything illegal.

If it sold a "loss leader", MS could be seen as using its size and market presence to illegally prevent others from entering the market and/or competing on a level playing field.

Point of contention.
Microsoft IS a monopoly in their OS division. (They were found guilty by both the U.S. and the EU.)

They are not a monopoly in their gaming division. Microsoft only has about 30% market share in their gaming division.
By the way Sony lost money on the early PS2 also.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Frobozz, for these specs, something like this:
2.7=2,499
2.3=1,999
2.0=1,499

If those were the prices I would be first in line for the new one.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

We're initially talking about things like TVs, etc.-- things that will have a much higher volume just computers.

When low-power, portable versions of the CELL become available, they will be used in cameras, cell phones, iPods, etc.

You are letting Sony blow smoke up your butt. I remember all these claims for the emotion engine. It is all part of the processor hype they use to prod people into thinking their system is the best.

I have yet to see console chips jump to other markets in any countries other than China and Japan, and even then they remained minituraized versions of the original consoles.

 

[dicklacara]

Point of contention.
Microsoft IS a monopoly in their OS division. (They were found guilty by both the U.S. and the EU.)

They are not a monopoly in their gaming division. Microsoft only has about 30% market share in their gaming division.
By the way Sony lost money on the early PS2 also.

I see where you are coming from... but...

It is more a matter of the size of MS, and their ability to misuse it to constrain trade.

What if General Motors decided that they wanted to enter the market, and also included their own box (at a loss) in every vehicle....

Nothing wrong with GM:

1) building its own box
2) including it in every car (though, this could be challenged)

but doing it at a loss to prevent others from selling into a market...

I am no lawyer (nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn), but that certainly appears to be unfair.

 

[MacWhispers]

One man's trash is another's treasure

You know, I think the G5 is an embarrassment, but not for the lack of 3.0 GHz. It's an oversized case with none of the expandability of previous Apple Towers. 2 Hard Drives? One Optical? No BTO Hardware RAID option, 3 slots with one being hard to use due to the AGP card? It's kind of silly that case has gotten bigger and heavier but the amount of stuff you can put inside has shrunk.

Gosh, the very things you point to as negatives, I consider to be positives. I've been enjoying being able to add these capabilities outboard to the Powermac, via USB 2.0 or Firewire 400/800, rather than being forced to use internally mounted devices. It makes all of my add-ons simple to migrate to the next machine. I had never considered that others might prefer burying money into dedicated, internal devices... hmmm. As for the case size, if that's what let's Apple make this dual 2.5GHz beast run as quietly and reliably as it does, it's fine by me.

 

[SaleenS351]

what are the chances of a new iMac coming out in the next two weeks? I just purchased a new imac last week and have 2 weeks to return it. I'm thinking tha I should just return it and wait for the new ones to come out. When would they be available for purchase if they a said to be updated in the next two weeks.

 

[ImAlwaysRight]

what are the chances of a new iMac coming out in the next two weeks? I just purchased a new imac last week and have 2 weeks to return it. I'm thinking tha I should just return it and wait for the new ones to come out. When would they be available for purchase if they a said to be updated in the next two weeks.

If TS says 2 weeks for new powermacs and imacs, I'd say return the one you have now while you can.

 

[dosers]

waiting ?

If TS says 2 weeks for new powermacs and imacs, I'd say return the one you have now while you can.

Yeah, but this waiting game never works. Your system will always be outdated very quickly. You'll never buy a computer if that's your strategy We don't KNOW if new Imacs are coming that soon. And IF they do, we are talking a 200Mhz bump. Sure, that is nice, but it hardly make your system obsolete. If this keeps you up at night, by all means, return it !! EVENTUALLY, a new Imac will come out....

 

[paulsonn]

PowerMac speed bump

Assuming the rumor is true...

You mean I've been waiting months and months for THIS? There had better be a big price break to justify such a wimpy upgrade.

 

[dosers]

Assuming the rumor is true...

You mean I've been waiting months and months for THIS? There had better be a big price break to justify such a wimpy upgrade.

But.... you didn't HAVE to wait. Especially months and months - it makes no sense in the tech sector to wait that long for something that will be outdated again in the same amount of time it took you to wait for it. Unless you were planning on getting the top end model they introduce, regardless of price, what's wrong with the choice right now ? Why didn't you get a dual 2.5 with, say 4GB Ram 'months and months' ago ? You would have been cruising all this time, and still pack plenty of whallop. Heck, even when the dual core system get released the end of the year - that doesn't make a dual 2.5 some kind of dog !?

I want to see a new PM revision as much as everyone else, but let's be realistic. The vast majority of users are fine right now.

IMHO

 

[fpnc]

Frobozz, for these specs, something like this:
2.7=2,499
2.3=1,999
2.0=1,499

I'd say those prices are only possible if they are in Euros for sale in the U.S. For example, at today's exchange rate: 1499 Euros == 1929 U.S. dollars.

In any case, with Dell asking between $2300 and $2900 for the new dual-core Pentium (without display) I don't think Apple needs to drop prices anytime soon. A very minor price adjustment might be justified, but by offering a small speed bump and new video cards they can probably keep pretty close to their current prices.

Dell XPS 5 (announced yesterday)
-----------------
3.2GHz dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition 840
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 w/256MB (nice)
80GB HD
512MB DRAM
DVD-ROM (no burner)
-----------------
$2900

Except for the video card, I'd say that on certain tasks this Dell system could have some difficulty keeping up with the rumored dual 2.3GHz Power Mac (likely price point $2500). And the PowerMac will have at least twice the hard drive space (160GB) and a DVD +/-RW burner.

And, of course, with Tiger the Power Mac gets GPU accelerated image processing (Core Image/Core Video -- CI/CV). Thus, on Core Image optimized tasks you'll have three dedicated "processors" working concurrently on the Power Mac, while the dual-core Pentium will only have two connected to an often under utilized GPU (but true, that Dell is a pretty damn fine game machine).

CNet link to other dual-core Pentium configuration and prices:

http://news.com.com/Dual-core+desktops+hit+the+market/2100-1042_3-5675050.html?tag=nefd.pop

Link to announcement of CI accelerated image editing program:

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/04/19.6.shtml

EDIT -- some small changes to the wording.

 

[SaleenS351]

yeah to honest a 200mhz bump rea;;y isn't worth to me. But are there any woth while upgrades expected that would be worth it?

 

[daveL]

yeah to honest a 200mhz bump rea;;y isn't worth to me. But are there any woth while upgrades expected that would be worth it?

How would anyone be able to answer that question? Unless, of course, you'd be satisfied with someone's baseless speculation.

 

[GFLPraxis]

We're initially talking about things like TVs, etc.-- things that will have a much higher volume just computers.

When low-power, portable versions of the CELL become available, they will be used in cameras, cell phones, iPods, etc.

One of the beauties of the CELL architecture is that all apps do not need to be redesigned (maybe just recompiled, or not).

Optimization can be limited to critical AV interface apps such as QuickTime.

There are already special-purpose chips announced/available to do h264 low-power decoding,and normal-power h264 encoding/decoding... these will prolly be used in the near future, then superceeded by the more general-purpose CELL.

The potential is for billions of chips (in the China cell phone market, alone).

Not necessarily, you need apps to be HIGHLY multithreaded.

 

[GFLPraxis]

In the end, I don't think this will matter. If Apple puts a Cell chip in their Macs, they'll throw it in as an accelerator for highly parallel code, write up some SDKs (software development kits) for the hardware, release it to their developers, and encourage them to make use of it. In fact, once GCC gets auto-vectorization capabilities, encouraging the developers won't be necessary.

That works fine. People who need it can buy the Cell accelerator, while normal people won't. But its not going to be replacing the main chip in every Mac.

 

[GFLPraxis]

Point of contention.
Microsoft IS a monopoly in their OS division. (They were found guilty by both the U.S. and the EU.)

They are not a monopoly in their gaming division. Microsoft only has about 30% market share in their gaming division.
By the way Sony lost money on the early PS2 also.

The court's order was that Microsoft be split up. The gaming division would be a seperate company from the OS division which would be a seperate company from the ones that make the apps (like IE, or Microsoft Office, etc), which would be a seperate company from...etc.

They escaped on appeal IIRC, but I think that was the best plan.

 

[GFLPraxis]

I see where you are coming from... but...

It is more a matter of the size of MS, and their ability to misuse it to constrain trade.

What if General Motors decided that they wanted to enter the market, and also included their own box (at a loss) in every vehicle....

Nothing wrong with GM:

1) building its own box
2) including it in every car (though, this could be challenged)

but doing it at a loss to prevent others from selling into a market...

I am no lawyer (nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn), but that certainly appears to be unfair.

Thats not a big deal because there are companies close in size to GM that could also sell at a loss.

It is a big deal for MS because they have no competitors.

Their biggest competitor is Apple, which has 1/20th or less the amount of money in the bank. Their second biggest competitor is Linux, which is technically not competition because, well, it ain't owned by anybody

MS CAN sell things at a loss to drive out competitors because due to their monopoly they have many, many times more money than any of their competitors.


HOWEVER, in the realm of their monopoly they have no need to do this. Because there is no competitors, they can now control the price and drive up the cost of Windows as high as they like, because there are no real competitors (Apple is technically a computer company, but can you install OS X on a Windows machine? Nope, if you buy an x86 box you're forced to go Windows), so the people have no choice but to pay.

 

[SaleenS351]

I still have a week to return my imac so hopefully some new developments will come out in that time.

 

[FlyNolJ]

Pricing better be significant.

I'd say those prices are only possible if they are in Euros for sale in the U.S. For example, at today's exchange rate: 1499 Euros == 1929 U.S. dollars.

In any case, with Dell asking between $2300 and $2900 for the new dual-core Pentium (without display) I don't think Apple needs to drop prices anytime soon. A very minor price adjustment might be justified, but by offering a small speed bump and new video cards they can probably keep pretty close to their current prices.

Dell XPS 5 (announced yesterday)
-----------------
3.2GHz dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition 840
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 w/256MB (nice)
80GB HD
512MB DRAM
DVD-ROM (no burner)
-----------------
$2900

Except for the video card, I'd say that on certain tasks this Dell system could have some difficulty keeping up with the rumored dual 2.3GHz Power Mac (likely price point $2500). And the PowerMac will have at least twice the hard drive space (160GB) and a DVD +/-RW burner.

And, of course, with Tiger the Power Mac gets GPU accelerated image processing (Core Image/Core Video -- CI/CV). Thus, on Core Image optimized tasks you'll have three dedicated "processors" working concurrently on the Power Mac, while the dual-core Pentium will only have two connected to an often under utilized GPU (but true, that Dell is a pretty damn fine game machine).

CNet link to other dual-core Pentium configuration and prices:

http://news.com.com/Dual-core+desktops+hit+the+market/2100-1042_3-5675050.html?tag=nefd.pop

Link to announcement of CI accelerated image editing program:

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/04/19.6.shtml

EDIT -- some small changes to the wording.

Other than a minor speed bump, a little more RAM and a little better BUT still a sad feature of a graphics card I would hope that after ten months of waiting they could atleast drop the price 500 as you said. At the LEAST.

 

[MacQuest]

Their biggest competitor is Apple, which has 1/20th or less the amount of money in the bank.

Hmmm. Apple's 7 billion x 20 = 140. So youre saying that m$ has 140 billion. I don't think so. I believe that they are somewhere around 47 or 54 billion at best.

So Apple has approximately 1/7 or 1/8 of the equivalent of m$'s cash reserves. Not bad for a company that was nearly bankrupt in '97 when SJ came back on board and also considering that Mac's [argueably] only have 2.5% marketshare, or 1/38th of m$'s supposed 95% marketshare.

Interesting discrepancy in numbers heh? Looks like m$ should have quite a bit more money [ 7 x 38 = 266 billion] considering the size discrepancy of their "installed" user base vs. ours... and the gap just keeps closing quicker and quicker.

Apple is technically a computer company, but can you install OS X on a Windows machine? Nope, if you buy an x86 box you're forced to go Windows), so the people have no choice but to pay.

If you buy an x86 box you're a moron who should pay attention to why inHell processors have been kicked out of every next generation gaming console. Plain and simple, PowerPC is a superior architecture to x86.

It'll be funny watching miCrapsoft XSUX players enjoying their PowerPC based consoles.

When Mac's go with dual-core and [hopefully] cell processors, the war will really begin. Keyword of course being "when"...

It'll happen though, and I'll be laughing my a$$ off when it does!

 

[Object-X]

Cell division

See above. Apple might make a video-editting station with Cell, because Cell is great for that kind of stuff, BUT if they made the whole PowerMac line Cell-only, they would alienate a lot of other people. The Cell's performance on regular Mac apps wouldn't be so good.

I don't think I said the whole workstation would run off a Cell. You seem to be reading that into my posts, but that isn't my contention. As others have already pointed out in response to your post, a Powermac G5 with a Cell chip for development purposes (which the Powermac is used for) or added media capabilities (think iMac and gaming) would make sense and good marketing; this is what I believe is coming in the next Powermac revision, or shall I say the next generation Powermac.

As far as the Powerbook is concerned, you suggest the Cell is as hot as a G5, but they are claiming to be able to put Cells in phones! How can they be that hot? I don't know, I haven't seen any technical specs on the Cell chip so who can say? How about some links to your information on their heat generating stats? If Apple and IBM can't solve the G5 heat issue they may have to go with a different kind of chip for the Powerbooks. Intel did for notebooks. So, we'll see.

My main contention here is that the Cell chip fits perfectly into Apple's agenda, IBM is manafacturing the chip, and Sony needs Apple's media creation software; I think a strong case can be made that the Cell chip will appear in Apple hardware soon after Tiger's release; and the Powermac is the clear choice. As far as some of your technical questions I already claimed that I was punting because, well, I don't understand them. I'm just a lowely programmer.

Oh, and don't think this "Cell" paradigm is for real? Check out this clip from RedHat...

Movie

Notice the similarity to Apple's 1984 commercial and the cell metaphor. I'm telling you, a whole new thing is just about ready to immerge around this Cell chip and Apple is going to be on board; and it's going to be on the board, if you know what I mean.