[Eug Wanker]

...and gives it a

Apple Power Mac G5 - Huge improvement over G4, competitive price/performance

The Power Mac G5 is a formidable machine, representing a giant leap in performance over the G4. But the 64-bit transition so far only represents a small step. Even though there's not much of a benefit from 64-bit computing yet, this marks the beginning of a new era for Apple, where the 64-bit world will enable new capabilities for the content creation community. For now, finally Apple has shed its albatross-like partner Motorola, which did more harm than good to the Mac over the years. The G5 brings an entirely new level of responsiveness and performance to Apple's brilliant software line. Even better, as OS X and more applications become completely 64-bit capable, and as IBM improves the PPC 970 chip line, even higher levels of performance will be reached. Another key factor is cost. Apple has decided to competitively price the G5, where it's much less expansive than its similarly-configured PC competitors, which beat it by only slight margins in the benchmarks yet some cost over $1000 more than a comparably-equipped $4398 G5. As we've looked closely at most of the computing platforms, operating systems and software available today, we've come to the realization that we're getting to a point where all computers are fast and all the operating systems on which they run are exceedingly stable. So it boils down to what software is available and how well does that software get the job done? Thinking along those lines, this Mac G5 serves as a dongle for Apple's excellent software like Final Cut Pro, with even more innovative software like the remarkable Motion 1.0 compositing application on the way. Taking all that into account, if you're a Mac user, or even if you're not, you will certainly want to consider updating your tool box with this powerful computer. It's a great value and receives our highest recommendation.

[The Placid Casual]

Finally people in the media are seeing the light... good to see!

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by The Placid Casual:
Finally people in the media are seeing the light... good to see!

Esp. considering how negative he has been in the recent past with Apple (G4) hardware. The G4 towers were slow, and he made no bones about that in his articles, but of late they had seemed almost like anti-Apple rants.

It's refreshing to see a more well-balanced article, but a lot of it has to do with the fact the dual G5 is finally competitive, both on performance and on price (as the title suggests). The Boxx machines were very expensive. Now, they came with SCSI RAID and that sort of thing, but they still cost a lot more with only minor speed advantages. (He may have been swayed too by the fact that Adobe After Effects 6.5 is much faster than 6.0 on the Mac.)

Boxx Technologies 3DBOXX R4.2, Dual AMD Opteron 248 (2.21GHz), 2GB 333 ECC DDR RAM ($5728)
Alienware Roswell 3200 Extreme, Dual Intel Xeon 3.06, 2GB PC2100 ECC DDR RAM ($5586)
Apple G5, Dual 2GHz, 3GB DDR 400 SD RAM ($4398)

Plus it helps that only Apple hardware can run Final Cut Pro HD and Motion. He likes FCP a lot, and he is beside himself about Motion.

And Apple should send him a machine as soon as the dual 2.5-2.6 machines are out.

[itai195]

Nice. Now if only Apple could squeeze out a favorable price-performance offering in the consumer line, they'd be set... The iMac G4 is getting long in the tooth.

[booboo]

More good news for Apple:

The BBC adopt FCP HD

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by itai195:
Nice. Now if only Apple could squeeze out a favorable price-performance offering in the consumer line, they'd be set... The iMac G4 is getting long in the tooth.

iMac G5 at WWDC my friend...

[itai195]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
iMac G5 at WWDC my friend...

Hope you're right