Updates from New York Media Event

[mduser63]

Probably already been mentioned, but Aperture won't even run on a current iBook or 12" PowerBook. It requires an iMac G5, Power Mac G5 or 15" or 17" PowerBook G4. Some pretty hefty video card requirements too. The recommended requirements are a dual 2.0 GHz G5 with at least an X800.

Of these updates only the Power Mac G5 Quad is interesting to me. If I had enough money, I'd buy one as a last PowerPC machine, and use it until software support for PowerPC ends in 5 or so years.

Just priced out a maxed out BTO Power Mac G5 Quad with 2 30" displays, and with educational discount, it comes out to $20,667.00! The Quadro FX 4500 upgrade alone is $1485! Of course, you could knock that price down a lot with third party RAM, Apple is charging $10,000+ for an upgrade to 16 GB of ECC RAM.

 

[mcdermd]

How long has GraphicConverter been bundled with new Powermacs?

 

[luke_s]

I really like the PM updates although, graphics still suck. I think you can expect more from a computer which starts at 1999€, especially you can expect more graphic power from a so called "powerbook", mine has got a Ati 9600 build in and is about 2 years old, WOW Apple thats big progress, maybe in 3 years we'll get a 9800LE with the option to make it XT for 300€. What kinda game do you want to play at 1440*960 with an 9700???? Monkey Island?????

 

[nbame786]

I just ordered my Quad GFizzle with 8Gb of RAM. God i'm such a Macintosh WHORE!

i have a dual 2.0 powermac g5 w/ 2.5 gigs of ram... wanna help a starving student go quad and become a whore too

 

[mongoos150]

OK I answered one of my own questions, it's still 200 pin. Does anyone know if I can put in a 1GB chip in addition to the std. 512mb chip Apple puts in, or do they have to be the same?


PS - THIS is the place to get new ram for your NEW PB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ATT=Memory+Notebook+Memo&CMP=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r

 

[Stella]

Before any one tries it, think about your iBook display...
...it could be damaged.

The heat dissipates through the keyboard on the iBooks, unlike the powerBooks.

The dual screen hack is very nice though, I used this on my iBook G3 all the time.

Technically you can attempt this on a ibook too. If you download that hack to enable dual monitor on the ibooks.

 

[Sogo]

OK, but where the bloody h*ll is 10.4.3?

Yea, i was hoping that it would come out today.

 

[ZorPrime]

Hey guys, I am a mac newb, and looking at getting my first PB!!! I can understand that some people are disappointed but the fact remains that they are of better value now then they were and that's always a good thing. Increased res, better standard features (super drive, 128 mb vid, etc) and the 7200 rpm harddrive option, while not incredible are still good upgrades. I for one am glad I waited for the updates and am on my way to purchasing the 15" with the 7200 rpm harddrive upgrade and I can't wait

I agree and it never hurts to have a dual layer dvd burner included now on the 15" and 17" with an overall price drop.

 

[beatle888]

You have to keep in mind that at that time Apple was also making the transition to OS X. This transition required pushing developers very hard to update code, a task that would have been very difficult if there had been a switch in Intel at the same time. Besides, the G5 looked very promising at the time. IBM gave Apple a few years breathing room to get OS X on Intel going, with Rosetta technology and the ability to compile for Intel from Xcode. It seems that Steve did foresee the possibility that IBM couldn't deliver and hedged his bets. Smart business sense, I think.

thats one way to look at it but since it was steve and ibm that made us the promise of 3GHZ by the end of the year, i doubt it went down as you described above. looks like steve had all his cards on a promise from ibm "3ghz by the end of the year". doesnt seem like hedging bets, it seems like putting all your eggs in one basket. so now we wait with our thumbs stuck where the sun dont shine waiting for apple to correct the situation with Intel.

 

[JCT]

Of these updates only the Power Mac G5 Quad is interesting to me. If I had enough money, I'd buy one as a last PowerPC machine, and use it until software support for PowerPC ends in 5 or so years.

This is exactly my plan.... now to dig up the $$.

JT

 

[zakatov]

check out the sound effects during Aperture's Quick Tours. Is that an Aperture-only thing or is this a taste of what's to come in future OSX?

 

[LagunaSol]

Again...Apple expects the pro users who buy a machine at this level will want to spec, buy, and install their own RAM. 512 is enough to boot Tiger or Leopard, that's it. Anyone who can change the paper in a copy machine can add RAM to a PowerMac in a few minutes.

Yep, and anyone who can fill a gas tank can swap the wheels on their car, which is why Porsche specs 15" steel rims with hubcaps on their new cars, because, you know, buyers are just going to want to upgrade them anyway...

 

[PCMacUser]

Wow, those are some dissapointing PB updates. No bump in processing power whatsoever. This has to be a stop-gap update. They will be ramping down production of the PB's while they put in place their new production lines for the Intel PB's. They can't hope to compete for another six months with these machines.

Creative pro's must be drooling at the Quad-Core machine, that thing is a beast!! And I personally will be looking into Aperture which looks absolutely amazing.

Yeah, even the resolution bump on the PB's is not as good as I was hoping. The res of the 17" is what I expected for the 15" Ah well. I'm curious about Aperture - Apple are advertising it in their usual style - 'the most powerful image processing in the world'... I'm not sure where that leaves Adobe Photoshop.

 

[devman]

Anyone know or have an idea if Aperture will lock people out if they have below the minimum specs? I have a new iBook with 1.5gb of RAM and a pretty fast hd, and it would really suck if there would be no way to run it on there. I don't mind if it runs slow, I just would like to have the ability to use it.

I doubt it will lock you out, but it would be unusable on an iBook.

 

[Rocketman]

Thank you for the coverage for the past month or so. Todays coverage aided in making a couple of buy decisions today.

Thanks.

 

[mddharma]

The 12" powerbook didn't change at all (except superdrive is now at the combo drive price) so today's announcements shouldn't effect your decision. I really can't see getting a 12" PB over a 12" ibook at this point. 50% higher cost... for what?

The PB 12" hard drive is at 5400 instead of 4200 and is 80 Gb instead of 40. Pb 12" has dvd burner, better graphics card and more more DDR Sdram memory, better external display resolution, dual display mode, lid closed mode, more options to hooking up to external displays, is lighter and smaller. Last but not least - IT does look good.

Well, I convinced myself to still buy one!

 

[Hattig]

F-

Lame and overpriced all the way around. $3300 for a powermac with a dead end chip? No thanks.

The Quad has a total of 21 double precision gigaflops via the G5's FPU (8 in total) and 76 single precision gigaflops via Altivec.

In comparison, the Cell processor in double precision at 3.2GHz can only get around 25 gigaflops, although in single precision (albeit non-IEEE compliant) it is a monster at over 200.

It'll take Intel a few years to get an x86 processor out that has SSE2 or SSE3 performance like the above. You certainly aren't investing in something dead end there.

Anyway, since when is buying a computer 'investing' anyway? You buy it, use it for 2-5 years and then get another one. What is the problem with the Intel dunderheads? If you need the power today, then this system is a pretty good purchase regardless of the future.

 

[Fabio_gsilva]

Man, everybody wants the best of both wolrds: cheap equipment and awesome perfomance. But, you know, you pay for what you whant and get for what you pay.

The quadPM is a huge beast, it's a extreme powerfull machine with all new improvements!!! Quad cores running at 2.5ghz, 1mb cache each core... it's a great new machine!

Come on!!! Stop complaining!

If you want a pro machine, you have to pay for it!

Dell sells PC for less than 200 bucks...

 

[halfapie]

The PB 12" hard drive is at 5400 instead of 4200 and is 80 Gb instead of 40. Pb 12" has dvd burner, better graphics card and more more DDR Sdram memory, better external display resolution, dual display mode, lid closed mode, more options to hooking up to external displays, is lighter and smaller. Last but not least - IT does look good.

Well, I convinced myself to still buy one!

the iBook can be modified (simple downloadable script) to have nearly as much versitility in the external resolution.
And it is possible to upgrade the hard drive to a faster one. (i did that myself once. It took a lot of plastic bending and unscrewing over 30 screws)

 

[neutrino23]

So you folks who are waiting for the first Intel PBs...Are you looking forward to getting the first Yonah release - which is a chip that will be the short-term solution for at most 6-9 months or are you going to hold out for the real thing - Merom which will make the Yonah badly absolete the minute it comes out?

BTW, industry trades say Intel is having mucho problems with Yonah in terms of heat and energy consumption. May be a longer wait than we think.

I think we won't see Intel based PBs for a year. Yonah looks to be in trouble and, more importantly, the pro apps aren't there. I'd guess we'll see two more PPC PBs before the switch to Intel.

The PB updates are mostly quite nice, better displays, better battery life, better HD (100GB 7200RPM is attractive), digital audio I/O, more VRAM. It is disappointing that they didn't do anything at all with the CPU. Maybe there were problems with the 7448. Perhaps we'll see that at MWSF then in June we'll get the dual core version and that will be it for the PPC in the PB.

 

[amac4me]

Overall, I'm disappoined with the Powerbook updates. I was expecting an incremental speed bump I will wait and get an Intel based system ...

It was smart by Apple to get these out prior to the Holiday shopping season. It looks like Apple will enjoy a great quarter with a lineup of new products

• iPod nano
• iPod with Video Capability
• Powerbooks
• Powermacs

Expect those Apple stores to be packed the next few months!

 

[mduser63]

Is this new? Looks neat.

http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/images/portables_comparison_chart_con.html

It's new, but it's got some errors. Unless I'm mistaken, most of the information about display connections/adapters is wrong. For example, on the 12" PB, VGA is supported with a mini-DVI->VGA adapter, not a mini-VGA->VGA adapter like they list. Also, the 15" and 17" models don't have mini-DVI adapters/ports, they've got full-size DVI ports.

 

[rjc]

The PB updates are mostly quite nice, better displays, better battery life, better HD (100GB 7200RPM is attractive), digital audio I/O, more VRAM. It is disappointing that they didn't do anything at all with the CPU. Maybe there were problems with the 7448. Perhaps we'll see that at MWSF then in June we'll get the dual core version and that will be it for the PPC in the PB.

Will the 7200-rpm HD option reduce the battery life?

I can't quite figure it out...

 

[iGuy]

buying the dual-dual

I'm going to buy the new PowerMac Dual-Dual.

I'm just not sure how much RAM or HDs to put in it now, knowing that I can add more later.

I'm tempted to try and squeeze in a 30 inch Cinema Display as well so that it will be covered by Apple Care.

I'm definately going to get the FX 4500 unless someone can talk me out of it.

I confess I'm dissapointed that with most high-end video cards taking up two slots, that most motherboards don't leave space for it and place the additional slots further away. It seems a shame to waste a good slot. No doubt that is why Apple put the 4x slot there and not the 8x slot, but still....

If I can get the FX 4500 and the 30 inch display, that will be one wicked workstation that I'm sure will hold its own for some time to come. Wish me luck.

I'll probably buy a copy of Aperture when I get a new digital SLR. But with this new Mac, it will be some time before I have any money to spend again. Where did I put those lottery tickets....

~iGuy

 

[HiRez]

Yep, and anyone who can fill a gas tank can swap the wheels on their car, which is why Porsche specs 15" steel rims with hubcaps on their new cars, because, you know, buyers are just going to want to upgrade them anyway...

Cute, but your analogy is silly. For one thing, PowerMacs will have a bunch of empty slots available. You don't need to replace anything. You want Apple to add more standard RAM for you? OK fine, you'll now get four of your RAM slots filled with 256 MB DIMMs (which you'll have to throw out later if you want to add a lot more RAM), and pay $200 more for your PowerMac. Is that really a good idea? Would that really make you happy? The point is, I want to make those decisions myself, not have Apple make them for me (and charge me extra). If you really want Apple to give you more RAM and install it for you, you do, right now, have the option of paying them for the privilege.