No 3GHz Soon and No G5 Laptop

[shecky]

just a funny aside, i don't know if anyone else has had this happen to them, but i was in my Boston-area Apple Store yesterday evening and after chatting with the clerk for a few minutes regarding a new powerbook for my Dad, as we walked to the counter with my purchase he asked me, slightly exasperated, "can i help you find anything else, OTHER than a 3Ghz G5 tower?"

i cracked up... he told me people have been busting his balls all day, like its his fault. take it easy on these guys

 

[PolarbearTed]

No, the Mac faithful (read: zealot) automatically thinks what Apple does is great regardless of what the truth may be. The faithful also makes excuses for any shortcomings in order to rationalize the disadvantages of their dear company (as many have done in this thread). The basher on the other hand does the complete opposite. As always, the unbiased viewpoint lies somewhere in between those extremes.

But, you're right, we shouldn't be critical we should just take anything they give us with a smile on our faces, because it isn't our money after all. It isn't Apple's responsibility to make products people want to buy. We shouldn't be critical; we should gloss over the flaws and hope no one notices. We shouldn't make Apple know that we, the customers, are not happy and expect better. No, it's all up to us, the fans, to make Apple great and to throw up smoke and awe around Apple. Give me a break.

This time Apple dropped the ball, and now I am very disillusioned. I want to believe, but I would simply be turning away from the truth and just blindly following the big shiny apple. I am beginning to think Apple has decided to focus on the mindnumbing entertainment arena instead of focusing on making cutting edge computers.

Wow you can really read between the lines, congratulations.

I'm sorry I should have selected a better term like 'mac community' instead of the the 'mac faithful'.

But, get over it. I *never* said we shouldn't be critical (and I used the term in the context of people being overtly critical - personal insults and smug lines??), but there is a fine line between being critical and being smug and disdainful.

I'm all for engaging in intelligent debate, but when some members feel the need to bring the argument down a notch (not necessarily a reference to your post) -- it's deplorable and disappointing.

 

[dr.Zoidberg]

yeah...

just a funny aside, i don't know if anyone else has had this happen to them, but i was in my Boston-area Apple Store yesterday evening and after chatting with the clerk for a few minutes regarding a new powerbook for my Dad, as we walked to the counter with my purchase he asked me, slightly exasperated, "can i help you find anything else, OTHER than a 3Ghz G5 tower?"

i cracked up... he told me people have been busting his balls all day, like its his fault. take it easy on these guys

my reseller didnt know they had upgraded until i called to order one from him.....and then it was obvious he hadnt even read about them, he thought they ALL were liquid cooled....its annoying to know more than the authorized dealer...

 

[GrannySmith_G5]

my reseller didnt know they had upgraded until i called to order one from him.....and then it was obvious he hadnt even read about them, he thought they ALL were liquid cooled....its annoying to know more than the authorized dealer...

I see you are in Portland, Maine. Who's your closest reseller? I'm south of you in wells, and as far as I know the apple store in salem,nh is the closest location. Is there anywhere in Portland that sells Macs?

Actually 30 minutes away in dover, N.H is a MacEdge, but I've never been there.

 

[dr.Zoidberg]

new to area

I see you are in Portland, Maine. Who's your closest reseller? I'm south of you in wells, and as far as I know the apple store in salem,nh is the closest location. Is there anywhere in Portland that sells Macs?

Actually 30 minutes away in dover, N.H is a MacEdge, but I've never been there.

i'm new to Portland, my reseller is in my old town (in central NH), so i dont know about the seacoast area, the Salem NH store is nice, i also liked the Natick store(i think thats where it was)....but you would think with Maine using ibooks in the classes there would be something around here....also i think USM is a big Mac school

 

[afields]

Heres a link for video of steve's "promise". Not trying to complain or anything, just thought you guys would like to see it. 3ghz thingy

 

[thatwendigo]

Except you know that the popularity of AMD has allowed for many online smaller companies that build custom systems to rise up to challenge big names like Dell and HP. To name a few, ABS, Velocity Micro, VoodooPC, Poly Polywell, and to some extend Falcon Northwest (Even though they mainly make custom gaming PC's).

These shops tend to have even less recognizability than Apple, though. Walk up to someone on the street, or even just one of your family members, and says something about VoodooPC or ABS and see how many know what you're talking about. Now do the same thing with Dell, HP, IBM, and Apple. Until you're talking about products in the second group's kind of field, then they're not mainstream, nor are they a serious challenge.

The people who buy from Alienware and VoodooPC are the kinds who would have bought a premade box anyway. They're not going to build their own, but they know enough to look around a bit. That's not the market that Apple aims at, and it's not really one they're going to break into soon - high-end games machines. These are the console-on-steroids makers.

However, if you want a closer comparison of professional machines. Boxx Technologies would be a very good one. Although, their machines are very expensive even compared to Mac's, they do offer configurations that more or less rival the performance and features of servers.

Aside from being ugly, I actually agree with you about Boxx being a decent shop to use for comparison on professional stations. This is one area I want to see Apple make a big, big push into, and that I still have some hope for being a part of the major revelations at WWDC. The G5s already smoke as it is, they're amazing products, but what happens if they stick a Quadro FX 3000G or Wildcat4 7210 under the hood for that support infrastructure to keep fed? How about offering the mAudio pro audio cards as an OEM option for the people who work in that field?

There's a lot of headroom to do things that don't even require processor changes, and I know Apple's got hte bank to work on it right now.

I don't know if these companies make large amounts of profit... but they've been around for a while and are more or less gaining popularity.

Unlikely. Mosts of them aren't publicly traded, and that's usually a good sign that you're making profits worth risking on the market.

 

[yuphorix]

These shops tend to have even less recognizability than Apple, though. Walk up to someone on the street, or even just one of your family members, and says something about VoodooPC or ABS and see how many know what you're talking about. Now do the same thing with Dell, HP, IBM, and Apple. Until you're talking about products in the second group's kind of field, then they're not mainstream, nor are they a serious challenge.

Yes, I agree that they cannot fit in the mainstream category, but they do tend to put a dent in the market. First off, they get plenty of publicity from PC sources such as Cnet, PCWorld, and plenty of other publishing sources. If you look at Cnet's desktop section, more than half of those computers are from Velocity Micro. And, that's exactly who these guys are tailoring their computers for, people that tend to be more conscious about computers than the average person, that also want value and performance. Not everyone is in digital video, and even people in digital imaging know that you don't need that kind of performance. Programmers like me also like the ability to go from Windows to Linux, since you have to be able to write both kinds of applications. Yes, their profits aren't huge, but as a consumer I only care that the product I'm buying works.

There's a lot of headroom to do things that don't even require processor changes, and I know Apple's got hte bank to work on it right now.

Of course, the problem here is whether or not people are willing to pay for extra features and performance upgrades. I'm actually very surprised that Apple doesn't have any deals with soundcard companies. I don't know what kind of audio performance the G5 onboard has. But, like everyones said, Apple cannot afford to release so many versions of their computers so they have to only incorporate what most people will use in their computers. And I don't think apple is ready to convince people to spend $5k on their workstations (I guess you put enough gig sticks into the G5, it'll get around $5k?).

 

[rdowns]

What was your point, jiggy?

And what is yours? This is like the 10th time you have posted something like this. We all know anyone can go to Dell and configure a similar to Apple system for more or less. What you select is based on what side you are arguing. Give it a rest.

Oh yeah, might I suggest you change your avatar to

 

[rdowns]

*applause*

I am sick of people saying, "Steve lied to us", "Steve promised 3 GHz by this year", etc...

He made a prediction, probably based on the best information he had from IBM at the time.

He made an "announcment" and they didn't meet it. Plain and simple.

Jobs took the stage and said, "What about the future? We're at 2 GHz today. IBM and Apple are today announcing that within 12 months, we'll be at 3GHz." Verbatim

 

[jragosta]

He made an "announcment" and they didn't meet it. Plain and simple.

Jobs took the stage and said, "What about the future? We're at 2 GHz today. IBM and Apple are today announcing that within 12 months, we'll be at 3GHz." Verbatim

So?

Apple made an announcement based on information available to them at the time. In 2003, they believed they would meet the target.

Things turned out to be more difficult than they thought and they're not at 3.0. No one has a crystal ball. They assume that when they make an announcement (particularly in the computer field) that people will be bright enough to realize that it's their best estimate at the time and could change.

During the 130->90 transition, IBM increased the G5 clock speed by 25%. Intel increased the P4 clock speed by 6%.

It turned out to be a more difficult transition than ANYONE expected.

Get over it.

 

[MacSA]

No 3GHZ for at least 1 year?

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=8893

" Aberdeen Research Group executive vice president and chief research officer Peter Kastner said: "In switching to 90 nanometers, the industry has had more problems raising the clock speed than anyone anticipated a year ago.

"Intel, for example, has only cranked up a couple of hundred megahertz from 3.2GHz to 3.4GHz. IBM gets an 'A' for the second quarter for being able to crank the chip up from 2GHz to 2.5GHz that's a 25 per cent increase."

Kastner doesn't expect the industry to reach the 3GHz target for another year. "

 

[~Shard~]

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=8893

" Aberdeen Research Group executive vice president and chief research officer Peter Kastner said: "In switching to 90 nanometers, the industry has had more problems raising the clock speed than anyone anticipated a year ago.

"Intel, for example, has only cranked up a couple of hundred megahertz from 3.2GHz to 3.4GHz. IBM gets an 'A' for the second quarter for being able to crank the chip up from 2GHz to 2.5GHz that's a 25 per cent increase."

Kastner doesn't expect the industry to reach the 3GHz target for another year. "

I think it will take some time, but I don't think it will take another enitre year.

Hmm, maybe if the IBM engineers worked a few hours of overtime each day and skipped their coffee breaks they could have it ready for WWDC still...

 

[Shagrat]

Yes, I agree completely; I think that the only people who really have use for even the lowest-end G5s are video professionals / people doing a lot of rendering-intensive tasks.

I myself am a graphic designer using a G5 1.6 GHz with 2 GB of memory and am very satisfied.

Well there are also Audio/music people like myself who would like to plaster tracks of High power plug-in softsynths (jeez, some of those just EAT processor cycles!) convolution reverbs like Space designer (ditto).
This sort of stuff, that is available now, just keeps on making huge demands of the processor, buses, etc. And th enext genration of audio software?
Only goes to show you can NEVER have enough power!

 

[jragosta]

I think it will take some time, but I don't think it will take another enitre year.

Hmm, maybe if the IBM engineers worked a few hours of overtime each day and skipped their coffee breaks they could have it ready for WWDC still...

Actually, that's one of the problems. Working harder doesn't help that much.

It takes something like 8 weeks from the time a wafer enters the system to the time that finished chips come out the other end. That means that any change, no matter how trivial, takes at least 8 weeks PLUS the time required to make the change. This is true even if you're dealing with known process chemistry.

This favors gathering up a bunch of changes and making them all at the same time. Of course, if two of the changes conflict with each other, you're back at the beginning.

It's simply a very time-consuming task. When you combine this with the fact that the 90 nm process itself is new, untested process and will have its own glitches, it's not surprising that this takes a long time.

 

[jragosta]

Well there are also Audio/music people like myself who would like to plaster tracks of High power plug-in softsynths (jeez, some of those just EAT processor cycles!) convolution reverbs like Space designer (ditto).
This sort of stuff, that is available now, just keeps on making huge demands of the processor, buses, etc. And th enext genration of audio software?
Only goes to show you can NEVER have enough power!

Well, that's certainly a group who doesn't need a faster video card......

 

[jragosta]

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=8893

" Aberdeen Research Group executive vice president and chief research officer Peter Kastner said: "In switching to 90 nanometers, the industry has had more problems raising the clock speed than anyone anticipated a year ago.

"Intel, for example, has only cranked up a couple of hundred megahertz from 3.2GHz to 3.4GHz. IBM gets an 'A' for the second quarter for being able to crank the chip up from 2GHz to 2.5GHz that's a 25 per cent increase."

Kastner doesn't expect the industry to reach the 3GHz target for another year. "

I think he misspoke. 'The industry' is already at 3 GHz - with Intel's 3.4 GHz P4 chips.

What he presumably meant to say is that IBM won't reach 3 GHz for another year. Or perhaps, more generically, that 64 bit processors won't reach 3 GHz until next year.

Personally, I think he's a bit pessimistic, but probably only by a few months.

 

[pjkelnhofer]

I think he misspoke. 'The industry' is already at 3 GHz - with Intel's 3.4 GHz P4 chips.

What he presumably meant to say is that IBM won't reach 3 GHz for another year. Or perhaps, more generically, that 64 bit processors won't reach 3 GHz until next year.

Personally, I think he's a bit pessimistic, but probably only by a few months.

While I agree that he technically mispoke. I think everyone that knows alot of processors knows that the Pentium 4's (with the exception of the "Extreme Edition") is at 3GHz in name only, and that clock for clock it is the slowest "top-of-the-line" chip out there (comparing it to the G5 and the AMD FX-5x).

My question is, with Intel dropping the actual speed from it's chip naming, what is AMD going to do since the Athlon XP 2400+ was named that because it was as fast as an Intel 2.4 GHz chip, etc. Are they going to mimic Intel's new naming system?

 

[Shagrat]

Why is 4 years a long time for a computer? I have three Macs and the newest one is 3 years old. None of them are ready to be replaced any time soon. Heck, I can afford to replace my dual G4/533 at work and can't justify it (I upgraded the CPU to dual 1.25 last year).

Unless you're doing some extremely heavy number crunching, 4 years shouldn't be a problem.

Well my g4 533 SP (1 Gb Ram) is about 4 years old, and i can run ONE, (count 'em!) instance of Space designer in Logic Pro. When i add more than about 3 ES-2 synths and about 6 track of stereo audio, it chokes my system. This isn't heavy number crunching as far as music goes. I know that Space designer is much better optimised on a G5.
And before you ask, this is a specific profile just for running Logic, and a dedic ated audio disk that gets cleaned on a regular basis.

I need the speed!

 

[pjkelnhofer]

Well my g4 533 SP (1 Gb Ram) is about 4 years old, and i can run ONE, (count 'em!) instance of Space designer in Logic Pro. When i add more than about 3 ES-2 synths and about 6 track of stereo audio, it chokes my system. This isn't heavy number crunching as far as music goes. I know that Space designer is much better optimised on a G5.
And before you ask, this is a specific profile just for running Logic, and a dedic ated audio disk that gets cleaned on a regular basis.

I need the speed!

Have you looked into any of the processor upgrade at somewhere like OtherWorldComputing? For $300 bucks you could double the G4 in your system up 1 GHz for $500 you could nearly triple it!

 

[Shagrat]

Well, that's certainly a group who doesn't need a faster video card......

Er, I also do a fair bit of video, as do several musicians I know. Try running a full res PAL video locked to Logic on anything less than a fast g5 and it ain't gonna happen. Whether the fastest video card is going to help, i don't know, but it sure isn't going to hinder things.
Plus, isn't a good video card going to help with screen redraws, Expose, and whatever is coming in Tiger?
All things considered I would like the best i can afford.

Alos, for what it's worth,my original post wasn't about video card performance.

 

[Shagrat]

Have you looked into any of the processor upgrade at somewhere like OtherWorldComputing? For $300 bucks you could double the G4 in your system up 1 GHz for $500 you could nearly triple it!

Well, i did consider a CPU upgrade, as i have done with previous Macs, but it's not only the processor that helps. Might as well retire the machine to what it will be used for, an internet/word pro/ simple Pshop stuff.

There is no comparison between the extra power that a G5 with it's surrounding architecture will give me, over a single G4 in my old machine no matter how fast it will go.

 

[jragosta]

Well my g4 533 SP (1 Gb Ram) is about 4 years old, and i can run ONE, (count 'em!) instance of Space designer in Logic Pro. When i add more than about 3 ES-2 synths and about 6 track of stereo audio, it chokes my system. This isn't heavy number crunching as far as music goes. I know that Space designer is much better optimised on a G5.
And before you ask, this is a specific profile just for running Logic, and a dedic ated audio disk that gets cleaned on a regular basis.

I need the speed!

I'm sure you do.

But the post you responded to was my comment about a college student's need for a computer that would last 4 years.

For professional level work, 4 years is a long time. For the average college student, a 4 year old Mac is going to almost always be sufficient. Far from state of the art, but plenty to get the work done.

The exception, of course, would be someoen who's doing professional level work while in college - someone studying architecture or video editing or whatever. I was referring more to the average college student's use of computers - word processing, internet access, IM, and so on.

 

[Shagrat]

I'm sure you do.

But the post you responded to was my comment about a college student's need for a computer that would last 4 years.

For professional level work, 4 years is a long time. For the average college student, a 4 year old Mac is going to almost always be sufficient. Far from state of the art, but plenty to get the work done.

The exception, of course, would be someoen who's doing professional level work while in college - someone studying architecture or video editing or whatever. I was referring more to the average college student's use of computers - word processing, internet access, IM, and so on.

Point taken.

I suppose i had in mind the general belief that Macs tend to stay more useful for longer than PC's. Certainly my G4 still does a lot of good work for me, but it is simply nor fast enough anymore, for my purposes.

 

[yuphorix]

Point taken.

I suppose i had in mind the general belief that Macs tend to stay more useful for longer than PC's. Certainly my G4 still does a lot of good work for me, but it is simply nor fast enough anymore, for my purposes.

I think that's only a general trend of Mac users, while PC users tend to want to get the best of the best, or atleast keep up with the upgrades. You can't say an old PC running windows 98 is useless, it's about as useful as having an mac running something other than OSX. My family had a 133mhz computer running windows 95, and after getting a 1.6ghz computer, the 133 was still being used as a linux server for web pages until a lil while ago that we decided to retire it since the case was pretty massive to be having around the house.