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PowerMac RoadMap Past and Future

The main reason I use (and have been using) Apple computer is mainly for the software - ease of use and all that.

So if I had the option to get a PC with OSX, I would definately consider it.

Their hardware sales would definatley be affected!
 
ok...

quote:
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Originally posted by fatalerror101
It killed my weekend because i had hoped that thier would be a new line of somewhat faster G4's at MWSF. I was secretly hoping that perhaps Apple would suprise us or something....
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Well, I can tell you now - just based on educated guessing... PowerMacs will NOT be updated at MWSF

arn

Thanks arn, i kinda figured that. That's why i had said hoped...ok
 
MWSF is going to be all about iApps..and maybe another iDevice... apple dug to the bottom of its barrel last month (er whenever it was - i have the worst sense of time) to meet a consumer demand I think and released the new machines and bumped the speeds.. they could have waited until Jan but that would have hurt them more.. I agree with arn.. apple has never made two updates to any line in that short period of time. But it never hurts to keep your fingers crossed.. the 970 is an amazing processor based on its specs.. the sooner the better, apple.
 
Originally posted by Mudbug
It stings a tad to come home with your new scanner/copier/fax/buttwiper and find out there is no driver made to make that work with your computer, even though it says it will on the box.
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Don't I know it! I can't wait to stop having to use wadded up sheets of paper on my filthy arse...
 
speed isn't everything

I switched to the Macintosh platform almost a year ago now and since that time many of my friends have switched to it, and to tell you the truth none of us cared about speed. I love that so many of you in this forum consider yourself experts on what the rest of the world wants. Lets face it, we are the nerds of the tech world, we are the ones who care about every little detail. To be right honest I highly doubt that more than just a few percent of us Mac people care about the speed bumps. Most people buy when they see a cool new announcment or because there old computer is almost dead. Don't get me wrong I would love to have faster Macs, I just think that a lot of us place way to much emphasis on it. PC sales are down not because of bad processors but because of recession. I think that we should be much more worried about that than what speed the new processors are going to be. Steve will come through for us, he always does.

Just my two cents.
 
Re: speed isn't everything

Originally posted by jaredbbauer
I think that we should be much more worried about that than what speed the new processors are going to be. Steve will come through for us, he always does.
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Sounds of choirs singing in the background...
Amen, brother. Amen.
 
Like others so far, I find the OS X x86 and Xserve portions of this rumor to be kind of wild... but I wonder how the Motorola/IBM saga mentioned in the first part correlate to those leaked pictures of prototype Apple machines we saw a few months ago - one from eBay and wasn't there another?

We were hearing rumors of G5 Mac test boxes, and even saw a photo or two of these boxes which may or may not have been fakes. Could one of these old photos have showed a 970 or a G5? I'm not sure that this is very important - just a curiosity.

Is Motorola still on track for the G6 and G7, starting in 2005, as rumored? The G5 was a failure, but one thing that's not vaporous is that Motorola are building a new state-of-the-art fab in Grenoble. Will IBM induce them into getting back into the PPC game?
 
this article said that when ibm does produce the 970 some time within the next year, it would run at 1.3 ghz. i thought that there was an official ibm doc a few weeks ago that said it would start out at 1.8 ghz. was i mistaken, or was that the power4+? i think that this is one of those deals that must be taken with a grain of salt until steve pulls back the curtain. after all, the man is always grinning like he knows something we don't.
 
iginally posted by FattyMembrane [/i]
after all, the man is always grinning like he knows something we don't. [/QUOTE]

Steve is a Genious
 
Originally posted by FattyMembrane
this article said that when ibm does produce the 970 some time within the next year, it would run at 1.3 ghz. i thought that there was an official ibm doc a few weeks ago that said it would start out at 1.8 ghz. was i mistaken, or was that the power4+?
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You were mistaken... it's the G4 that is being rumored not to go beyond 1.3GHz by the next revision. The lowest GHz number I've seen for the 970 is 1.5, with 1.8 on the high end. Those sound low, but there is a lot of headroom there, since IBM will have the 970 on 0.09u (and thus be able to scale the chip very well) before Intel.
 
Originally posted by FattyMembrane
this article said that when ibm does produce the 970 some time within the next year, it would run at 1.3 ghz. i thought that there was an official ibm doc a few weeks ago that said it would start out at 1.8 ghz. was i mistaken, or was that the power4+?
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Nope. It said 1.4-1.8 Ghz. Check it here.

Chris
 
alex_ant:

Those sound low, but there is a lot of headroom there, since IBM will have the 970 on 0.09u (and thus be able to scale the chip very well) before Intel.
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I swear I corrected you on this before... or was it someone else? Oh well, anyway IBM is not getting to 90nm any sooner than Intel (Moto says that they will... so perhaps all the rumors got smashed together into some fantasy... but I digress). Intel has pushed back their plans, but 3 months ago they were on track to have 90nm chips out before the PPC-970 was even available for sale. All the in-the-know people I have read still seem to think that 90nm in late 2003 is possible from Intel.
 
8 CPU Xserve

If i didn't know better, I'd swear this nonsense came from Ryan Meader. He's been pulling 4 and 8 processor Mac rumors out of his ass since the days of the 604e.
 
Arcady:

Yeah, a lot of people have been hyping 4 and 8 processor Macs for a long time... seems silly to me but for some reason it just never dies despite being wrong 100% of the time. A 4-way G4 would be such an aukward beast.

But apparently now 4-way isn't enough for the rumor-mongers. 🙄
 
Don't forget AMD....

AMD recently announced they're no longer competing with Intel to put out faster chips, they're going to focus on other areas. So guess what this means? No competition to Intel, Intel processers get more expensive and stay at their current speed, giving us a chance to catch up! Intel is now at 3GHz, and with no competition, they probably have no need to go any faster.
(Note: This is not an AMD rumor. If you think it is, re-read this again).

If all of this is true, it just killed off about 2 years worth of upcoming rumors... It's like having the answer key to a big Apple test 😀

It'll be interesting to see which ways Apple can keep the G4 fresh in the high end. In the lower end they just have to slowly raise it a few hundred MHz and change the graphics chip, but in the higher end, there'll be problems. AGP 8x, anyone? 😉
 
dricci:

AMD recently announced they're no longer competing with Intel to put out faster chips
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You're apparently confused. I am aware of a recent article:

http://www.forbes.com/newswire/2002/11/19/rtr799607.html

Which you may be referring to. However you are saying things that were not said in the article. The closest the article came to agreeing with you was saying that AMD no longer sees having the fastest chip as being a big deal... this is not to say that they have stopped "competing with Intel to put out faster chips". They have simply said it hardly matters... and they are right.
 
we're in trouble...

This is not looking too good. All we have is vapor ware. Rumors built upon rumors, and nothing concrete to hold onto. I'm very worried.
 
You know, this makes the timing regarding the introduction of the G4 iMac make a lot more sense to me.

In late 2000, if Apple was anticipating going to the doomed G5 in early 2002, they probably planned to also move their entire consumer line to the G4 processor and started work on the G4 iMac (and possible, eMac) -- assuming that at MacWorld they'd release the G4 iMac and G5 PowerMac. When the G5's fizzled out they still had the new iMacs ready to go.

I remember people being upset at the time that the new iMacs rivaled the desktop line in speed and other specs, and this was probably never intended to be the case, since Apple likes to make their i-line seem a whole lot less capable than the Pro-line. If it weren't, we'd be seeing the currently available 1.5GHz G3's. Stupid Apple...
 
All These Rumors!

Well first we heard that apple may switch to IBM's new chip, which made me happy i think we're all tired of what motorola can do. Then we get another rumor short after that speculates apple using AMD's clawhammer/athalon 64 chip which made me even happier! but then we get this that says there will just be another G4? that just dropped the bomb there =[ . But IBM has a new chip, and aple people were seen at comcast or whatever hopefully one of these companies can surely replace moto! I just hope we're not stuck in the low 1ghz again while intel is at 3ghz unless apple gets a 64 bit chip then it will be all good. But im hoping for a new chip none the less. What will MWSF bring! pLease i want to know!!!!!!! Waiting sucks!
 
Originally posted by alex_ant
Like others so far, I find the OS X x86 and Xserve portions of this rumor to be kind of wild...
Click to expand...

Rather, it is intended to be offered to X86 users when Apple sees market conditions being fit for it. What it means by this is regarding Intel's Lagrande technology, and Microsoft's Palladium technology. Apple intends on releasing OS X on Intel, when consumer dissatisfaction falls to an all time low for Microsoft when users become restricted to what they can do on their PC's due to Lagrande and Palladium.

I don't know if there has been a forum discussing Palladium in the past, however it seems that most people here are unaware of the details of it. To me, the release of Palladium is the greatest possible switch campaign for Apple. I won't try to tell you what Palladium does, you can read for yourself here . I realize that this site looks kinda shady, but just look at all his resources at the bottom, of specific interest is the MS Palladium FAQ, which is linked at the bottom of the article. I hope you all enjoy and get a bit frightened as I have.

-altair

--------------------------------
beastly iMac rev B 333, w/40gig HD
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Originally posted by joed
The main reason I use (and have been using) Apple computer is mainly for the software - ease of use and all that.

So if I had the option to get a PC with OSX, I would definately consider it.

Their hardware sales would definatley be affected!
Click to expand...

I totally agree, Mac OS 10.2 conquers but apples speeds are killed by pc's also the hardware compatability, pc's get the new graphic cards and addons cheap. If os 10 was on a PC it would own, but i doubt apple will do that and if they did they would definatley do some things to the software to make sure everyone was paying for it.
 
The winds of change

What if Apple put OSX on x86 to be able to compare performance between x86 and powerpc architecture. Maybe performance differences between the two could provide valuable information, so that Apple could tweek OSX performance on powerpc. Is this a far off suggestion?

As for the news about the PPC 970. I think it is great to know that IBM probably will be taking over the production off Apple's Pro line cpu's. For the ones who can't wait a year for this. Buy a new Power Mac and then sell it on Ebay. You won't loose that much 🙄
 
Other hardware possibilities....

Let's see what is Apple still missing BESIDES faster processors? or put another way, what could Apple ADD to their current hardware offerings?

Faster Frontside Bus (The number one problem IMO)

Fully supported DDR RAM

Serial ATA -- (well to be fair PCs also don't really have this yet either)

More L2 and L3 cache (this is still one of the biggest speed boosters available)

Firewire 2

On board Bluetooth support

Faster hard drives, Superdrives (value adds)

What else?
 
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