[ccrider]

Check it out, beautiful pics- this machine is MUCH bigger than the quicksilver!

Still looks awesome, IMPO...

G5 Images

[-Q-]

Wow. It's HUGE. Good to know if I'm ever homeless, I can live in my G5 when it arrives.

Seriously, I'm really liking the looks of the machine, even with the clearly visible innards.

[JLFanboy]

Jesus!

That's fcukin' ginormous. I knew it was taller, but I had no idea...

Still looks beautiful, but damn!

[Busemann]

Looks more like a workstation than a desktop, but hey! i'm still gonna get one

[terrancew_hod]

Originally posted by Busemann:
Looks more like a workstation than a desktop, but hey! i'm still gonna get one

It looks like the handles make it taller; but hey all those fans have to go somewhere...

Terrance

[neilw]

Appears that a *huge* amount of space is allocated to the second processor and its associated airflow. So what about the single-processor units? Is there just a gigantic hole where the second processor would sit? How bizarre would that be, a monstrous case, with minimal internal expandability, and a huge unusable void smack dab in the middle of the case.

I don't mind the aesthetics of the new design, in fact I sort of like its industrial minimalism, but I really question how seemingly poor their space utilization is.

[MilkmanDan]

"Hey babe, why you seeing that PC user and his small PC, when you could be having my large G5!"

Wow, I mean, it appears big, until mice or a large amount of ants make their home inside a G5. Than what'll you do?

http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/16/1617235

You know its true.

He he he... bugs in the G5...

[DeathMan]

Size matters, but in the computer world its the opposite. Its supposed to be: Look how small and sleek and sexy this is, not: Look how huge this is.

Apple used to understand this. Desperate times call for desparate mesures I suppose.




And I still want one.

[DrBoar]

If it is faster and quiter I am happy

That it only have one optical drive and maxes out at two HDs is not good, but bring on the speed and I will forgive it with a smile

[scottiB]

The G5 actually has a smaller footprint (151.47 sq. in vs. 163.76 for the G4). The G4s handles protrude quite a bit from the front and back, and it's wider.

[Brazuca]

Can you imagine how much dust will find its way inside?

[Hash]

waste of space, time and design

[awcopus]

Assuming this enclosure is here to stay, Apple is obviously moving at least the mid-range and probably the whole damn line to dual G5 configs. What a waste of space if they don't! But can they do this and keep the prices the same?

Those pictures are revealing. Given the mammoth size of this enclosure, it seems bizarre that Apple didn't make it taller still and retain the dual optical drives and space for additional HDs that pro users had grown accustomed to. But, assuming the pricing would be even higher if those amenities were present, I suppose Apple did what it had to do to offer a $2000 low-end Mac that it can still make a profit on.

Cannot imagine buying a nondual G5.

***

Side note: How the hell is Apple going to fit ONE of those G5s in any of their other enclosures?

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Dear lord that is the biggest scariest thing in the world.

I thought for sure Apple would make the next towers smaller not bigger and gaudy!

[teh tenk]

christ, it's not that big. the g4 is pretty small.

[Apple Pro Underwear]

Originally posted by Busemann:
Looks more like a workstation than a desktop, but hey! i'm still gonna get one

exactly what a apple desktop owner wants after all these years.


if size matters more than performace � get a imac or an powerbook.


I WANT A WORKSTATION and i will be getting one after my current upgrade cycle completes.

[Azzgunther]

It's not much larger than many Wintel boxes guys.

Why would you care how tall a box is anyway?

[AssassyN]

Hmmm, putting it right beside a MDD case makes that G4 look awful good.

The G5 case doesn't "wow" me like the G4 Case does, but hey, it's what's inside that counts after all, eh?

[awcopus]

Azzgunther, assuming your question wasn't rhetorical, I'll take a shot at answering it.

I'd say that I care what's inside when I see a substantially smaller enclosure (G4 MDD) accommodating a whole helluva lot more functionality. More hard drives, optical drives, namely.

I care because my general assumption about hardware upgrades is that they will continually build in more and more functionality and processing power, not some things at the expense of things *already accomplished*.

You look at the two computers side by side and ask yourself, "which contains more stuff?" And the ironic answer is, the MDD G4 does. But the G5 is faster. So it's effectively a step forward in speed and backwards in expandability, but ironically in an enclosure that's larger than the MDD. D'oh!

In an ideal world, Apple would have produced a G5 that was both faster and more expandable. I'm sure that when Apple set out to make the G5 they wanted it to be as expandable as the G4, but I imagine that it's just not possible to produce such a machine cost-effectively at this point.

Maybe (probably) in the future, smaller/more powerful versions of the G5 (G6?) will enable Apple to match the expandability of an MDD G4 in an affordable package.

You seemed astounded that one would care about the size of the G5. I hope this clarifies the astonishment of those who consider the G5 a behemoth in light of its lack of expandability.

[Axo1ot1]

I think the size and expandability are totally acceptable. Apple is charging a totally reasonable price for dual 250 GB HDs (and if you need more than .5 TB you should be using a SCSI RAID anyway), and you have a SuperDrive which can burn DVDs and CDs. If you need a faster CDr then you can get a FireWire drive that does 52x for not much more than $100. The MDD can accommodate 1/4 the amount of RAM that a G5 can. The G5 is reportedly much quieter, and it contains 2 processors that are way hotter than the ones in the MDD.

I think people are way too quick to judge the enclosure's looks. I don't think its fair to judge it based on pictures. The MDD is a very good-looking machine in real life, but people were horrified by the promotional pictures. Of course its all subjective, but I think people are way too quick to jump on the Hate On What Apple Just Released bandwagon.

Regarding the loss of a PCI slot: Who do you know that uses all 5 slots on their G4? At work I have a computer that uses all the slots, but it has a Cin�Wave cards, a Kona card, and a pair of SCSI cards in addition to the graphics board. This machine is for testing purposes and in no way represents a realistic system configuration. A high end Cin�Wave system needs a slot for the TARGA card, a slot for SCSI and maybe another slot for an audio card, but realistically, I think 1 AGP and 3 PCI is plenty for 99% of the people buying this machine, and the other 1% can get a Magma chassis or something if they're really desperate.

[awcopus]

Axo1ot1

I agree with you for the most part.

For the record, I do think the G5 is ugly, but in a sexy, brute force kind of way. I wasn't any more quick to judge its looks than I am to judge anything that I look at in aesthetic terms, from boobs to fine art. People's initial responses are legit. The machine generally creates a powerful but aesthetically ambiguous impression. And I am willing to revise that opinion upon actually seeing it with my own eyes. I think it's going to have dust problems, but I'm not going to second guess the design any more. It is what it is.

You are wrong about the HD limit of .5 TB. As a video editor, you know that you never fill these drives to capacity and really shouldn't use the boot disc as a scratch disc. I started a monster thread about HD issues, I'm not going to rehash those issues here except to say that the Quicksilver can accommodate 1TB now and will eventually support well over 1 TB. No RAID necessary, thank you very much.

I agree with you about the PCI slot thing.

[Axo1ot1]

Well I work on a Cin�Wave every day, and we scratch video to FibreChannel and SCSI RAIDs and audio to the boot disc most of the time, so I think you have plenty of space, and if not there's always FireWire, FibreChannel and SCSI.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

The reason the G5's are so big is because they had to figure out a way to fit NINE fans in it.

[awcopus]

Axo1ot1, don't take this the wrong way. I think the fact that you work on relatively cutting edge hardware has distorted your ability to assess the HD storage capabilities of the G5 as opposed to the G4. Because you obviosuly have absolutely NO storage issues ever in your elaborate and very expensive setup at work.

In the world of independent filmmakers and video-editing boutiques (one man shops) where DV is the standard source material, ATA/133 PCI cards and copious EIDE-based storage options are cheap and incredibly effective and reliable options.

Apple hasn't exactly burned this bridge, or rather they have but there's still hope "for the rest of us" because third party vendors will fill those PCI-X slots with connections to external storage solutions that are as fast and big and reliable as having 4 Western Digital Caviar 200 GB 7200 RPM drives inside my Quicksilver.

Nothing personal, Ax. Just that when people say that if I need more storage than 250 GB I should just buy a ing XRaid or setup a SCSI RAID solution, I'm thinking they're either being sarcastic or flippant or are simply not business owners who have to watch the bottomline conscientiously.

[saru boy]

Question - on the bottom of the unit, there seems to be a whole lot of space from the base of the enclosure to where the floor of the inside compartment starts. From the pictures, it seems like 4 inches or so.

So what do you think is in there, if anything? The power supply? If it's just hollow down there, it would seem like a big waste of space.

[Simon]

Originally posted by saru boy:
Question - on the bottom of the unit, there seems to be a whole lot of space from the base of the enclosure to where the floor of the inside compartment starts. From the pictures, it seems like 4 inches or so.

So what do you think is in there, if anything? The power supply? If it's just hollow down there, it would seem like a big waste of space.

It's the power supply. This lower area has its own "fan channel" as well. If you look at the back side of the new PowerMac you can also see that the power plug is down there - right at the back of the power supply unit.

The space is not wasted. From looking at the internal layout I'd say forget about mounting additional disks in there.

It's SCSI and FibreChannel for those that can afford it and FireWire 800 for the rest. That's fast and cheap, so I can't see what the problem really is.

Fact is, if the case had been an additional 3 inches higher people would be bitching to no end about the incredible height - actually, they already are.

It cracks me up. Two months ago there were roughly three thousand threads here about how slow the G4 was, how far the Mac was behind Intel/AMD, how every guy and his dog were getting an Athlon because the dual 1.42GHz G4 sucked worse than an Atari 2600, yadda yadda. Now we have the killer Mac and everybody gets all sissy about the internal bays. Ha, what a bunch of wusses.

[DrBoar]

One take of the big case is that Apple want to end up with an other windtunnel scenario in the future. Looking across the room I see a first generation B&W that maxed out on one optical drive , one HD and a ZIP drive and that case is the same size as the DP1.25 that can have twise the number of optical drives and four times the HDs and still have more card slots...

I can imagine that the current form factor of the tower will be with us for several years just like the G3/4 towers 1999-2003. What ever we will have in the towers in 2007 I do not know but it will be as different as the current G5s are to the B&W G3.

Apple did the right thing with towers that offer real speed without turning into wind tunnels. The design suggest that if Apple for some reason chose to use even hotter CPUs the case can accomodate such things well.

With regard to external drives Acard have a serial ATA to LDV SCSI adaptor so there are ways to get a lot of storage

[saru boy]

Originally posted by Simon:
It's the power supply.

That would be a pretty large (and odd shaped) p/s. I wonder how many watts it's good for. All those fans must suck alot of energy.

[Simon]

Originally posted by saru boy:
That would be a pretty large (and odd shaped) p/s.

Well, I guess it is then.

There are four distinct air flow channels. The top is for the SuperDrive and the two SATA drives.

The next is for the PCI cards.

Then you have the large channel for the processor(s) and RAM.

These upper three can be seen when you take off the side panel.

The lowest channel is closed, so you can't see what's inside right away by taking off the side panel. But if you look at the back you'll see that that's the area where the power plug is.

[DeathToWindows]

Mopping up lake of drool.... can't afford one

[Axo1ot1]

Originally posted by awcopus:
In the world of independent filmmakers and video-editing boutiques (one man shops) where DV is the standard source material, ATA/133 PCI cards and copious EIDE-based storage options are cheap and incredibly effective and reliable options.

Well my day job does involve working on editing rigs ranging way up into the tens of thousands of dollars, but I am also a broke-ass indie film maker, and I can't understand your aversion to firewire drives. I've been doing serious editing projects using a B&W G3, a 550 MHz G4 PowerBook and recently a dual 1 GHz powermac for 3 or 4 years now. On all of these systems I have used firewire drives with the Oxford 911 chipset with great results. I have had very few dropped frame/drive4 speed issues, and when I did it was generally because of jumper settings on the drives. I know you have cited Apple's lack of official support for FireWire disks for use with FCP, but based on my years of experience, FireWire's 50 MB/sec. of transfer speed is plenty for DV (hell even SD, AJA has that new rackmounted capture dealy, runs on FireWire). I think Apple's chioce to not officially support it has more to do with the sheer volume of different options people have shopping for FireWire drives/enclosures.

If you're still worried about speed then use one drive for video and another for audio, letting the drive costing get spread around.

[awcopus]

Axo1ot1, surely as someone who has used Firewire (via your Powerbook) and someone who has owned a dual 1 GHz PowerMac (where internal HDs running off your ATA bus would be both faster and more affordable than external Firewire), you've noted the dramatic performance difference between Firewire and ATA-driven scratch solutions.

I know the difference because I have a "high performance" Firewire enclosure from Granite Digital with a Western Digital 200 GB / 8MB Caviar drive which I use primarily for temporary storage and the same exact drive in my Quicksilver, and when in the past I used the Firewire connection it was dramatically slower?

I'll be the loudest cheerleader for Firewire (400 or 800) when it matches the performance of less expensive ATA/133 internal EIDE drives. Now that Apple's moved to Serial ATA, I imagine that performance gap has widened, unless there's a big advantage using Firewire800 on the G5, which is a possibility.

Curious to hear your thoughts on what I'm saying, Ax. Thanks in advance.

[Simon]

Originally posted by awcopus:
I know the difference because I have a "high performance" Firewire enclosure from Granite Digital with a Western Digital 200 GB / 8MB Caviar drive which I use primarily for temporary storage and the same exact drive in my Quicksilver, and when in the past I used the Firewire connection it was dramatically slower?

I'll be the loudest cheerleader for Firewire (400 or 800) when it matches the performance of less expensive ATA/133 internal EIDE drives. Now that Apple's moved to Serial ATA, I imagine that performance gap has widened, unless there's a big advantage using Firewire800 on the G5, which is a possibility.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Of course SATA is faster than EIDE, but FireWire 800 is also faster than FireWire 400. Rob over at barefeats.com did some benchmarks and found external FireWire 800 drives to match the speed of internal IDE drives. It seems with FireWire 800 the bottleneck is now the drive itself and that is the same if you take FireWire 800, IDE or SATA.

So chill, with the new PowerMacs you can connect disks externally as fast as they would be as internal drives.

I guess this is exactly the reason why Apple didn't hesitate to sell the PowerMac with only two internal HDD bays.

[Axo1ot1]

What enclosure were they using in the benchmarks at barefeats? I've been thinking about getting a firewire 800 enclosure, haven't decided yet, but I know they vary in price.

[awcopus]

Simon, I'm chill, dude. I'm cool. It's all good. I just want a solution that retains the cost-effectiveness of my current setup and provides at least the same if not better performance. But basically, I'm ecstatic about the G5.

By the time it's shipping in quantity (the duallie, probably by mid to late September, right?), I'm hoping that vendors sensitive to the needs of DV long-form editors will produce affordable, massive storage options.

Sure would be wonderful if there were some way to continue taking advantage of Western Digital Caviar drives with the G5.

[mrtew]

I can't see the pictures.... I wanna see them.... something's wrong!

Error message says....
Warning : mysql_connect(): Host '213.113.18.109' is blocked because of many connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts' in /home/inetpub/galleri.mac.se/pp-inc.php on line 58
I cannot connect to the Members database. [$php_errormsg]

[CobraMantis]

Originally posted by mrtew:
I can't see the pictures.... I wanna see them.... something's wrong!

Error message says....
Warning : mysql_connect(): Host '213.113.18.109' is blocked because of many connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts' in /home/inetpub/galleri.mac.se/pp-inc.php on line 58
I cannot connect to the Members database. [$php_errormsg]

Same here.