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arn

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Apr 9, 2001
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Apple's new PowerMacs were released yesterday, as expected...

The biggest information leak was that of the PowerMac enclosures on July 19, 2002. A mysterious PDF appeared, as well as photographs on MacBidouille which accurately depicted the new PowerMacs.

CNet and ThinkSecret provided hints of the rest of the details with reports of an August 13th release as far back as July 12th. The new PowerMacs were also expected to be "in excess of 1.2GHz, faster memory, and bus".

Spymac's prediction of an October Superdrive'd eMac came early.

Rumors to keep an eye on include Apple Junkyard, more iTools integration and Powerbooks in January.
 
emac

You're right, the eMac was running a slower processor than the iMac. If I hadn't just bought a new 667 Tibook DVI I would probably be looking at getting an eMac now that they have the Superdrive. Hopefully the eMacs will sell well to the schools.
 
No Fan on the PowerMac

Another thing that everyone seems to be overlooking is that the PowerMac has a larger heatsink and NO FAN! There were a bunch of people complaining on the message boards about how loud this new PowerMac was going to be...and then Apple releases it with no fan. I love Apple, and I hate how pessimistic a lot of rumormongers are.
 
Re: No Fan on the PowerMac

Originally posted by cbrantly
Another thing that everyone seems to be overlooking is that the PowerMac has a larger heatsink and NO FAN! There were a bunch of people complaining on the message boards about how loud this new PowerMac was going to be...and then Apple releases it with no fan. I love Apple, and I hate how pessimistic a lot of rumormongers are.

Where did you get the idea there was no fan? The QuickTime VR on Apple's website shows a rather huge fan...
 
No Fan

This is from MacMinute.com

• processor heatsink is considerably larger than previous models, but lacks a fan

Looks like a fan to me too...is MacMinute wrong?
 
yes there is a fan!! But its a huge slow moving fan that slowly moves large volumes of air across the heatsink. Hence the front and rear vent holes! This large slow fan idea is as good as a small fast one but it produces much less noise.

The same volume of air per second is moving because of the larger amount of air moving but its slower speed. Very clever, well done Apple!!! (oh i'm sure loads of other companies have done this before and its not an apple innovation so don't flame me!!)
 
Re: No Fan on the PowerMac

Originally posted by cbrantly
Another thing that everyone seems to be overlooking is that the PowerMac has a larger heatsink and NO FAN! There were a bunch of people complaining on the message boards about how loud this new PowerMac was going to be...and then Apple releases it with no fan. I love Apple, and I hate how pessimistic a lot of rumormongers are.


love apple? yes, you have to admire some of their marketing gall. the larger heatsink is simply because these are overclocked 7455's - save your money and overclock your old 1 ghz dual for the same effect.... what surprises me even more is that given this box has more holes in it than a sieve, it needs a fan in the first place! ;) I cant believe apple can stick in DDR and call it a selling point, when the first "D" is hardly being used.

Loving apple is all well and good (I love my iBook!!), but failing to point out their flaws and lack of delivery , whilst continually being sycophantic will only lead us back to the dark days of the 90's....
 
New PowerMac has FAN and is NOISY

I just spent 2 hours with the new PowerMac yesterday at the Apple Store.

YES, it has a fan. It actually has 3, one big one that blows across the huge heatsink that cools the processors.

A second one blows across the internal CD/DVD drives.

A third one inside the PowerSupply of the unit.

The POWER SUPPLY fan is VERY NOISY. This was a busy store and the whine of that fan was unmistakable. I walked over to an older PowerMac and it was quieter!!!

YIKES!! So don't congratulate Apple just yet. It's a really loud and noisy box.

But the 867 and 1 ghz boxes do perform well with the final release of Jaguar.
 
Re: Re: No Fan on the PowerMac

Originally posted by Pants



love apple? yes, you have to admire some of their marketing gall. the larger heatsink is simply because these are overclocked 7455's - save your money and overclock your old 1 ghz dual for the same effect.... what surprises me even more is that given this box has more holes in it than a sieve, it needs a fan in the first place! ;) I cant believe apple can stick in DDR and call it a selling point, when the first "D" is hardly being used.

Loving apple is all well and good (I love my iBook!!), but failing to point out their flaws and lack of delivery , whilst continually being sycophantic will only lead us back to the dark days of the 90's....

pants, i agree with what you're saying here. its difficult to tell yet just how good or lame these new machines are considering the skill and inventiveness of apple engineers. i guess we'll have to wait till some actually get these machines and put them through everyday use.

what i'm wondering now is ( and i don't think its too early to speculate) whats in store for us in january or when can we expect the next "new" powermacs?

anyone?...
 
What about the eBay motherboard?

One other question regarding the previous rumors. Anybody know how the new Power Mac motherboard compares to the red eBay motherboard that was offered a few months ago? Also wasn't there a mystery connector on that board? I'm just curious as Arn didn't seem to mention this in his round up.
 
so it is noisy! darn!

DOes anyone know if the fans are swithed off in sleep mode? I am buying one of these for university and would like to keep it on but asleep during the night so I can get some rest, my current beige g3 makes a hell of a racket when asleep so I have to boot it up every morning and close it down at night! I have a feeling that macs have been silent while asleep for awhile but seeing as my only experience with recent macs has been a TiBook 400 and an iMac DV 400. I've not even seen a recent G4 Tower let alone USED one!!
 
Re: Re: No Fan on the PowerMac

Originally posted by Pants


Loving apple is all well and good (I love my iBook!!), but failing to point out their flaws and lack of delivery , whilst continually being sycophantic will only lead us back to the dark days of the 90's....

I absolutely agree!

If customers don't demand better, then they will never get it. Espeically from Apple.

TL
 
The time is now Apple....

Time to move on from this case design that's only begetting consecutively uglier face-plat changes.

Time to come up with a processor that doesn't need to be overclocked AND dualed in order to appear competitive.

Time to see some real world speed comparisons that don't involve a rigged Photoshop speed test with scripted actions that heavily revolve around Alvitec.

Perhaps Apple dropped "Think Different" because they don't anymore...
 
WOw, the most whinny people about this are the ones who come here and read the least. This is a major update. Apple's been behind for awhile, and this update has brought them into the present. Thye'll get to the future in a some time, but it will probably take awhile. For those of you waiting for a G5 for less that $800 bucks, quit dreaming. If your from the PC camp, look to SONY's high end stuff or a good comparision. Not cutting edge, but up with the new stuff and well, built, well fit together, and operrates fairly well minus windows.

If you want a cheap computer, buy an eMAc, that's what they are for. If you think its too expensive, you're gonna think an Alienware PC with almost as much stuff is too expensivve ($50 difference.) Buy an eMac or god forbid a Dell and shut up.:rolleyes:
 
whine whine whine

Damn... no one has seen performance tests or even used on of these machines yet, OR have used Jaguar... and the bitching never ceases.

What do you people do that a 1.2 Dual wouldn't suffice?
Or does it just irk you that the PC's have higher megahertz?
If the PC and XP is so much better... then switch.

I don't believe that Macs are running just as fast as the top of the line
PCs... and I don't really care. When I need a new Powermac I'll buy one.

Did we get spoiled there for a while when macs were faster or just as fast as PCs? Are we so jaded now that only the reinvention of the Powermac can suffice?

Do you think all this bitching is really going to make Apple come out with a Quad 2 GHz PowerMac in December? If they did you would probably complain that it's not fast enough and there's no 2 button mouse.
 
It seems that most people are looking at the high end machine, and saying oh 1.25DP instead of 1.0DP machine. Ugh.

Many (including myself at first) are failing to look that the LOW-END PM is an 867DP, compare that to the last model's 800MHz configuration and that is a big friggin jump!

Now, if someone can just tell me how fast of a machine VPC would emulate on one of those babies ... :D
 
iShater, fast enough to do any type of office tasking, I'll promise you that. If you need cusstomized aplications running, that will probably be a little slower.
 
the speed

the new overclocked or hacked 1.25 seems to me like it does a pretty good job at fps. Now is the 1.25 like the xserve, which really doesnt take advantage of ddr at all, is the new 1.25 like this or is it true ddr. and i would have to say that 169 fps on the new mac aint bad. considering pc users aim for 180fps.. and apple has always been lagging behind when it came to gaming. so lemme know
 
Originally posted by amnesiac1984
so it is noisy! darn!

DOes anyone know if the fans are swithed off in sleep mode? I am buying one of these for university and would like to keep it on but asleep during the night so I can get some rest,

I would imagine the fans do turn off when the computer goes to sleep. The last few G4 PowerMacs have had this feature, so I'm sure this is no different (no need to keep the fans running in sleep mode).

Also, if the main noisy fan is in the power supply, that may be hard to replace. I think the power supplies are difficult to get into. But if it is as noisy as a Quicksilver, I'll sure find a way.

(FWIW - I believe the large fan that blows across the heatsink will be fairly quiet -- plus it is in the middle of the computer, which will not put out so much noise. But the small fan by the CD drives may be noisy, as, I'm sure, is the Power Supply fan. I'll be looking to make modifications to the fans on my dual 1GHz if it is noisy. Noise was the main reason I didn't like the Quicksilver.)
 
chubakka, well said. I can't think of any new hardware release by Apple in recent years that didn't have it's share of critics.
 
Re: whine whine whine

Originally posted by chubakka
Damn... no one has seen performance tests or even used on of these machines yet, OR have used Jaguar... and the bitching never ceases.

What do you people do that a 1.2 Dual wouldn't suffice?
Or does it just irk you that the PC's have higher megahertz?
If the PC and XP is so much better... then switch.

I don't believe that Macs are running just as fast as the top of the line
PCs... and I don't really care. When I need a new Powermac I'll buy one.

Did we get spoiled there for a while when macs were faster or just as fast as PCs? Are we so jaded now that only the reinvention of the Powermac can suffice?

Do you think all this bitching is really going to make Apple come out with a Quad 2 GHz PowerMac in December? If they did you would probably complain that it's not fast enough and there's no 2 button mouse.


no i don't - but when loyal mac users like myself are sitting on (corporate) money and seriously looking at the opposition, I expect apple shareholders will take notice. If nothing else, its becoming harder to justify to other workers why they should shell out a premium for apple hardware. Reports like the following are merely excuse making to shareholders:-

"Sales of the PowerMac collapsed this year, down 26 per cent from the same quarter last year, which the company attributed to "current economic conditions are having a pronounced negative impact on its professional and creative customers and that many of these customers continue to delay upgrades of their Power Macintosh systems due to the Company's ongoing transition to Mac OS X ... and in anticipation of certain software vendors transitioning their Macintosh applications to run natively in Mac OS X. Further, the Company did not experience the anticipated increase in Power Macintosh sales it expected following the introduction of Adobe's PhotoShop 7," in its most recent SEC filing"

No - I'm not buying because I dont see them as 'good value' - its no other reason than that. 4000 plus pounds is an AWFUL lot of money to pay for a fudged DDR solution and an overclocked 1 ghz dual. As I said earlier, I have absolutely no gripe with my iBook (or the tibook) - excellent design and value for money. I just wish this ethos spread throughout the range.

The more customers accept, cheer and defend poor business judgements, the less likelyhood campaigns like the current 'switch' will succeed.

The point made earlier about noise is very valid - we have had office wars over a noisy DEC workstation and who it sits near, resulting in somone turning it off and weeks worth of work being lost. Unix boxes are left on all the time, but background noise *is* an issue, and one some of us would like to minimize, if only for office harmony! :)
 
one other note -- I wish Apple would go back to using a jumper block for CPU speed. I didn't mind overclocking the Blue G3's (typically they were easy to overclock at least 50MHz or about 10+ % and ran stable.) I'd be nice to try to overclock my dual 1GHz, but I'm not about to try to solder teeny tiny resistors as I can't afford any goof-ups.
 
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