[lacrymology]

... could you please help?

I realize that 1st gen computers are a bit sketchy for any company, but with Apple it's moreso (because of the price -- I am not rich). However, after selling off my old PowerMac to help with a down-payment and languishing with Windows XP for almost a year, I am ready to return.

HOWEVER, although I love the new G5, I am not ready to purchase it. I would like to avoid the 1st gen models for a number of reasons:

1) No Panther.

Can anyone provide an educated guess on when this might be available.

2) 64-bitness.

I'm willing to concede that Panther will not be a true 64-bit OS. However, I have heard that developers will be able to tap into the 64-bit extensions. I do not want to have to jump through hoops to do this however. That is, if I have a chuck of code that uses ints, I do not want to have to use strange data types like AppleInt. The ideal situation would be a compile flag. Does anyone know of the specifics (or a reference to) for enabling the 64-bit extensions.

3) What is the usual time frame for the 2nd gen models? Again, an educated guess would be helpful.

4) Bluetooth keyboard/mouse. While this is not extremely important, I have heard rumours of this. Is there any substance to this?

5) Will the 2nd gen be 'better' or 'worse'?

Again, I'm unaware of the trend that Apple follows regarding 2nd gen capabilities. Any insight would be appreciated.

6) Only 8GB memory? Apple mentions that 8GB of memroy can be addressed. This should be higher (although I know I will never have that much). Is this a hardware ceiling or an OSX one?

7) Any chances that a 2nd gen model would have 10,000 RPM ATA drive options?

8) Which version of Omnigraffle is included? I'm hoping for 3.0 Pro.

Thank you in advance.

-m

[RevEvs]

lets see what i can answer...

1) Well hopefully panther will be out soon... (date given in Paris Expo on the 16th?)

2) Panther (like 10.2.7) will have parts that will be boosted by being 64bit, yet not everything will be 64bit.... as i read somewhere, What is considered 64bit? As long as whats needed to be 64bit is, then thats ok, no need to rewrite 32bit things that would have noa dvantage in being 64bit.

I havent heard anything about any kind of AppleInt etc, Apple supply updated dev tools with have an option for G5/64bit compiling im pretty sure, no need for any odd 'hacks' etc.

3) next revision is probably around February.

4) These are definate, as they are mentioned in all the latest Panther builds, and in 10.2.7/8 i think. So they will be out very soon, probably onthe 16th in Paris Expo.

5) I dont see how the 2nd gen would be worse? Most definately better id think, any kinks would be worked out, they will be faster and more up to date.

6) 8Gig is a hardware limit of the machines. They have 8 slots and being as 1Gig RAM modules is the max right now, 1Gig * 8 = 8Gig. When 2Gig RAM modules are available the limit will be 16Gig.
The software limit is something stupidly extreme...

7) Nobody knows. If there are 10,000rpm SATA drives available then its possible, you can always add your own.
Otherwise you can always set up a RAID of the two internal HD's for much better performance.

8) No Idea. I was told it usually takes a while for apple to upgrade the bundle from when new vrsions are released. My guess is that its the standard version of 3, with a special upgrade price to 3Pro? this is just a wild guess based on nothing whatsoever

revs

[HodyOne]

Originally posted by lacrymology:
... could you please help?

2) 64-bitness.

I'm willing to concede that Panther will not be a true 64-bit OS. However, I have heard that developers will be able to tap into the 64-bit extensions. I do not want to have to jump through hoops to do this however. That is, if I have a chuck of code that uses ints, I do not want to have to use strange data types like AppleInt. The ideal situation would be a compile flag. Does anyone know of the specifics (or a reference to) for enabling the 64-bit extensions.

Thank you in advance.

-m

Do you have code that would really benefit in any way from 64-bit int's? I would imagine you could compile any code that you have, not even worrying about 64 vs 32-bit and not be any worse off. And isn't that the way it should be?

If you do have code that would benefit from 64-bit data types (i.e. you are currently using > 32 bit integer data types because of dynamic range issues), I believe I read that there is a way to tell gcc to use long long's in a single register which is basically what you want to do. Unfortunately, I can't find a reference to it right now.

[lacrymology]

Originally posted by HodyOne:
Do you have code that would really benefit in any way from 64-bit int's?

Yes I do.

I would imagine that Apple would be flexible enough to provide a mechanism for 'transparent' (i.e. some sort of compiler flag) 64-bit data-type compilation.

-m