iGary said:
um yeah. it's not the sole focus, but it's an aspect of it, just like the fact that people can do more than just check mail and surf the web, then we'll still be using G3s....
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New iMac In September
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um yeah. it's not the sole focus, but it's an aspect of it, just like the fact that people can do more than just check mail and surf the web, then we'll still be using G3s....
AMD 64 vs. IBM 64
Regarding the speed of these two chips, I have to say that I've seen benchmarks that give both the upper hand.
However, having used both for long periods of time, I've got to say that the G5 KILLS the AMD64 3200+. The chips are surely comparable, but the G5 runs clean code, while the AMD spends a great portion of it's clock cycle running useless, garbled, piled on, old code.
So, the G5 absolutely spanks the AMD in responsiveness, which is my personal expectation for a new 64-bit processor. AMD's don't suck, their OS does.
Regarding the speed of these two chips, I have to say that I've seen benchmarks that give both the upper hand.
However, having used both for long periods of time, I've got to say that the G5 KILLS the AMD64 3200+. The chips are surely comparable, but the G5 runs clean code, while the AMD spends a great portion of it's clock cycle running useless, garbled, piled on, old code.
So, the G5 absolutely spanks the AMD in responsiveness, which is my personal expectation for a new 64-bit processor. AMD's don't suck, their OS does.
Reason for unusual Apple Announcement about new iMACS
It was a financial decision pure and simple. Apple's stock, which had been trading at multiyear highs ahead of this week's developer conference, dropped Monday after CEO Steve Jobs failed to introduce any new iMacs. What Jobs, perhaps, didn't anticipate was that shares slipped another 6 percent in after-hours trading Thursday as word of the iMac delay, as posted on the Apple website, hit Wall Street. I think that Jobs was trying to hedge any further slip of the Apple stock by making the website announcement, but it didn't work, for it just made things worse.
It was a financial decision pure and simple. Apple's stock, which had been trading at multiyear highs ahead of this week's developer conference, dropped Monday after CEO Steve Jobs failed to introduce any new iMacs. What Jobs, perhaps, didn't anticipate was that shares slipped another 6 percent in after-hours trading Thursday as word of the iMac delay, as posted on the Apple website, hit Wall Street. I think that Jobs was trying to hedge any further slip of the Apple stock by making the website announcement, but it didn't work, for it just made things worse.
Anyone think that the iMac will be headless and they will just add a 15 inch and 17 inch aluminum display to the new lineup? I think this makes more sense than a seperate "consumer display" line.
Maybe even, the new mounting system of the LCD's will attach to the iMac, thus having all the befits of an AIO and all the benfits of a seperate at the same time. The iMacs could be sold as AIO's out of the box, you could choose any of the range of monitors, you could upgrade the monitor at a later time, and when your iMac is old and boring, you could take the moniotr off it and use it for your next computer if you wanted.
This makes SO much sense especially considering the rumors of a "vertical" design.
Maybe even, the new mounting system of the LCD's will attach to the iMac, thus having all the befits of an AIO and all the benfits of a seperate at the same time. The iMacs could be sold as AIO's out of the box, you could choose any of the range of monitors, you could upgrade the monitor at a later time, and when your iMac is old and boring, you could take the moniotr off it and use it for your next computer if you wanted.
This makes SO much sense especially considering the rumors of a "vertical" design.
iGary said:
Um yes. I'm not saying all every home Mac or PC is used for games, or that they're used exclusively for game. But it's a core segment for home computers. A home computer that can't play games isn't much different from a business PC that can't do spreadsheets.
Don't forget, gaming has one key benefit for hardware sellers - it forces frequent upgrades at a time when there is a degree of market saturation. I'd still be using my old G3/350 for email/browsing/programming, if it weren't for the fact I do a lot of gaming.
Headless option? Hope so
(Thoughtful on so many levels, rog... but I think IBM's problems--the same ones as Intel's with 90nm--are the likely cause here.)
Yes utsava, that kind of flexibility is EXACTLY what I'd envision
Now maybe Apple has some other design in mind with its own advantages, but that sounds perfect to me. All-in-one or headless, it's still an iMac. Upgradable video cards, please
Offer a choice of G4 or G5 and now you have a new lower-cost Mac than ever. Offer a CRT option that can attach to the CPU or not, and you've replaced the eMac too.
Bingo, the iMac name now covers ALL consumer bases, low-to-high, and the options are very easy for the buyer to grasp.
And there could be many display mounting options--like wall hangable (like the new Al ones already are), or an iMac-style swing arm on its own base that lets you hide the CPU away.
Now, what would such a CPU LOOK like to be so flexible and not ugly? I'll leave it to Apple. A flat rounded-squared base sounds doable--could stand on its edge like a micro-tower as an option maybe.
(Thoughtful on so many levels, rog... but I think IBM's problems--the same ones as Intel's with 90nm--are the likely cause here.)
Yes utsava, that kind of flexibility is EXACTLY what I'd envision
Now maybe Apple has some other design in mind with its own advantages, but that sounds perfect to me. All-in-one or headless, it's still an iMac. Upgradable video cards, please
Offer a choice of G4 or G5 and now you have a new lower-cost Mac than ever. Offer a CRT option that can attach to the CPU or not, and you've replaced the eMac too.
Bingo, the iMac name now covers ALL consumer bases, low-to-high, and the options are very easy for the buyer to grasp.
And there could be many display mounting options--like wall hangable (like the new Al ones already are), or an iMac-style swing arm on its own base that lets you hide the CPU away.
Now, what would such a CPU LOOK like to be so flexible and not ugly? I'll leave it to Apple. A flat rounded-squared base sounds doable--could stand on its edge like a micro-tower as an option maybe.
An intersesting note, seems that someone said to me that Apple is going to announce a product that was as revolutionary as the cube, don't know if it's the new imac, but my guess it's a revival of the 3rd pillar concept.
CubaTBird said:you will still see a g4 in the imac come september, just beefed up. For example, 1ghz, 1.2 ghz, and 1.5 ghz ~ simlar to those found in the powerbook g4's.
Man, I pray you are wrong.
Peace!
CmdrLaForge said:
I think the biggest error they made is they should have gave us a speed-bumped iMac G4 1.5Ghz with a few other improved "gee whiz" features back in April. They would have had a decent consumer line to sell for the 5 month until the new iMac was ready in September. I bet they are kicking themselves for not doing that now, because it is too late. I assume they did not plan an improved iMac G4 for April because they thought the new one would be ready...I am sure there are some tempers flaring around Apple these days!
The current iMac is a great machine for the average consumer. Pricing was the issue.
I can't see Apple dropping this pricepoint. Everytime they come out with a new model, it stays in the same spot.
Headless or all in one (I am still in the AIO camp as a space issue) I am at least hoping they bundle a headless with a screen and at a pricepoint that would be less than the situation we see with the Powermac line. I am not interested in going past the 1800 to 2K price point.
I am also hopeful that this combo works in such a way the screen could attach to the box or tower or whatever it is.
For all of you that have a monitor, (which also could include switchers) great for you. But for me as a longtime iMac owner wanting desperately to upgrade, the thought of buying a separate monitor only sounds expensive and bulky.
Come on Apple. Hurry up and give us a glimpse of the thing. I want to know if I should go ahead and the get the last of the AIO's at my local vendor and stall my trip into the land of the G5's.
I can't see Apple dropping this pricepoint. Everytime they come out with a new model, it stays in the same spot.
Headless or all in one (I am still in the AIO camp as a space issue) I am at least hoping they bundle a headless with a screen and at a pricepoint that would be less than the situation we see with the Powermac line. I am not interested in going past the 1800 to 2K price point.
I am also hopeful that this combo works in such a way the screen could attach to the box or tower or whatever it is.
For all of you that have a monitor, (which also could include switchers) great for you. But for me as a longtime iMac owner wanting desperately to upgrade, the thought of buying a separate monitor only sounds expensive and bulky.
Come on Apple. Hurry up and give us a glimpse of the thing. I want to know if I should go ahead and the get the last of the AIO's at my local vendor and stall my trip into the land of the G5's.
appleguy said:
Indeed. Just got my college-bound daughter a 12"/1.0 GHz G4/512 MB/60 GB iBook, and it's perfect for her; plus, she's enjoying the blazes out of the superiority of Panther after 10 years of using Windows (that was her school system's choice, so I reluctantly gave in; now we're free from it because her college is Mac-friendly]. There are many students for whom the recently upgraded eMacs and iBooks will do the job. iMacs are cool and apparently soon to be more so, but remain beyond many middle-class families' means and hard to justify when there are cheaper Panther-running boxes.
Back to you lucky boys and girls with $$$ now...
whooleytoo said:
Yes and no. Have you ever tried using a computer at TV resolution? It's terrible.
You need at least 1024x768 to be productive on a Mac, at least thats what I and most other people find. Not couting the problems that you just can't buy 17" TFTs with a 10x7 resolution, it's still a hell of a lot of data and still too much to realistically push over even UWB.
If you want to start compressing it, you need to keep on pushing up the receiving CPU and RAM power, and before long you are looking at a low end iBook.
utsava said:
I don't think it will be a vertical design, but I really hope that there is a consumer display line. Headless iMac is what everyone is really waiting for. 15 and 17" displays at competitive prices while looking good would be great.
Abercrombieboy said:
This would have been great, but they could even have kept production relatively steady, and sold their current models for a discount for the next 2-3 months. I'm surprised that their fallback plan was to simply stop selling any iMacs for that time period. They blew it on this one - especially from a Wall Street perspective.
longofest said:
Apple very smartly only focuses on benchmarks that take advantage of the PPCs strong DSP capability. Clock for clock, the AMD64 cores are slightly faster than PPC970 cores on average in every general purpose high-performance computing benchmark I've seen conducted. They have different strengths though where one will clearly outshine the other.
The PPC chips are very good at DSP type workloads, and therefore give superior performance for audio, video, and graphics processing, nominally the primary target market for Apple. Anything DSP will run faster on a PPC.
The AMD64 chips have one of the best memory subsystems you can buy and therefore give superior performance for any memory intensive application. Unlike PPCs strong DSP performance which is only useful in narrow application spaces, most applications can take advantage of a high-performance memory subsystem. In fact, this is the primary reason that AMD64 looks better clock-for-clock in most cases.
So it really boils down to picking the best tool for the job. In the GENERAL case, AMD64 is slightly faster. In the case of multimedia processing and other DSP-ish apps, PPC is slightly faster. For my work, we use Apple workstations as visualization front-ends to monster AMD64 back-ends. Because our codes exercise memory vigorously, the superior memory performance of the AMD64 means it runs rings around the G5s at the same clock speed for our most intensive workloads.
So when people say the G5 is faster than AMD64, they need to qualify that with "for DSP-ish codes". Otherwise, it isn't true.
Ranting about Marketing Madness
Oh C'mon IBM has had over half a year to fix their chips. I don't believe that crap for a second. And what about no Powerbook G5s til next year? I don't believe that either. Everyone was expecting G5s Powerbooks in January this year! But it sounded like Apple had to oblidge their contracts with Moto. Does Moto have another round coming? Personally I don't care if Moto makes a knock-off of the IBM chip or whatever. As long as there are timely updates... Or price drops. I think it's all a bunch of Marketing crap.
Anybody think the iMacs will get new LCD screens? They've been using the TFT XGA ones forever! I really want to see the iMacs and Powerbooks get new screens... And it seems like Apple is always batch buying all their screens to keep prices down (atleast that is their argument for not replacing the dead pixel ones). And since they just came out with those new displays it would seem more than likely.
Oh C'mon IBM has had over half a year to fix their chips. I don't believe that crap for a second. And what about no Powerbook G5s til next year? I don't believe that either. Everyone was expecting G5s Powerbooks in January this year! But it sounded like Apple had to oblidge their contracts with Moto. Does Moto have another round coming? Personally I don't care if Moto makes a knock-off of the IBM chip or whatever. As long as there are timely updates... Or price drops. I think it's all a bunch of Marketing crap.
Anybody think the iMacs will get new LCD screens? They've been using the TFT XGA ones forever! I really want to see the iMacs and Powerbooks get new screens... And it seems like Apple is always batch buying all their screens to keep prices down (atleast that is their argument for not replacing the dead pixel ones). And since they just came out with those new displays it would seem more than likely.
blissed said:
And what is wrong with TFT XGA displays? They are among the best LCD screens in the industry. If you got a bad looking screen, I feel sorry for you, but you should really take it up with AppleCare and their customer relations.
OLED displays which they could use are too cost prohibitive at this point. Otherwise they'd have added OLED to the new displays announced at WWDC.
whooleytoo said:
aldo said:
oh, good lord, yes. there's no WAY you could dumb down the resolution on a computer & run it on a TV. that was a pretty sweet option back when i had my C64 and the smallest text size was about 36point, but could you imagine trying to read a web page w/ 10pt verdana on a wall-hanging "monitor" w/ TV resolution? we'd all be blind w/in months.
a headless iMac is an interesting concept. and Apple HAS kind of made way for lower end monitors w/ this latest line of swank (i.e. pricey) displays, but all this talk about "i want a headless that mounts on the wall, and i want one that's wireless, and i want one that can balance on it's corner, and i want one that that's blue sometimes & orange the rest..." c'mon. Apple will just end up w/ umpteen-dozen options/configurations that will just clutter & confuse the majority of the consumer market, not to MENTION switchers.
people want an iMac b/c it's a beautiful, simple & relatively powerful consumer computer. it does what you need it to do w/o a lot of hassle. yes, it could use an upgradable grx card & we need to drop Moto altogether, but for all of us that REALLY want to upgrade, tweak & max out a machine, the G5 PM is right up our alley...
Servaas SP said:
No way would Apple split its hardware line between two completely different architectures. Different related proccessors is fine, you just have to do a little fine tuning to take advantage of the newer ones, but the complete difference between x86 and PowerPC would be a major pain for trying to keep the OS updated.
Krizoitz said:
Yep, I agree - not going to happen! I think the next revision will be a G5 iMac, and the reason it has been delayed and Apple's JIT inventory failed them is due to all the unforseen IBM isssues/delays. If Apple was simply putting a 1.5 GHz G4 in the new iMac, I don't know why it would take them so long and why they would run into problems, especially when the 1.5 GHz can already be found in the PowerBooks.
Current iMacs have no fans so assuming this new iMac will also have no fans then that could mean a G5 that runs cool enough for a laptop, that is if they use a G5 in it.
Sometimes Apple makes me want to scream!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay, there are too many replies to go through, so I just want to say this: September is too late to release one of Apple's leading consumer computers!!!! 99% of students going to college have already bought there desktop computers! Why is Apple not previewing the computer and taking orders ahead of time? Only the die-hard Apple students will wait to make their main educational computer purchase based on Apple's announcement!
Okay, there are too many replies to go through, so I just want to say this: September is too late to release one of Apple's leading consumer computers!!!! 99% of students going to college have already bought there desktop computers! Why is Apple not previewing the computer and taking orders ahead of time? Only the die-hard Apple students will wait to make their main educational computer purchase based on Apple's announcement!