[jcadam]

From macrumors:

MacBidouille claims that the first 970 PowerPC machines are assembled, stacked and ready to be shipped to resellers. According to the article, the boxes are also sealed with a tamper proof seal with warnings not to open before June 23rd.

There have been conflicting rumors regarding the availability of 970 machines. This rumor would indicate immediate availability at/after WWDC's Keynote.

um.... I seriously doubt it. Where do they get this sh*t from?

[Timo]

where all sh*t comes from

[tikki]

Wasnt MacBidouille the site that had pictures of the MDD Powermacs a few weeks in advance? That makes them somewhat reliable.

[euphras]

Quote:
"Wasnt MacBidouille the site that had pictures of the MDD Powermacs a few weeks in advance? That makes them somewhat reliable."


Exactly what i�m thinking (hoping )

[greenG4]

Wow. If that's true then I'll faint in total amazement! Has Apple EVER had product ready to ship is sufficient quantity before announcement? This is the way they need to do it. I kinda doubt this, but I really want to beleive...

[-Q-]

I'll eat my shoes if they're ready to ship after WWDC. Which wont' be that bad cuz hell will have obviously frozen over and the end of the world near if Apple can ship a new product immediately upon an announcement.

[mac freak]

If that happens, the Mac world will explode. KABOOM!

[Nick_G]

I want to believe.

Trust no one.

The truth is out there.

[JB72]

Even though I won't be in the market for a new PowerMac anytime soon, this would be pretty neat. Somehow I don't think it's likely to be true though.

[rambo47]

Fingers crossed!

One of the best ways to examine something is to follow the money. I trust Wall Street when examining "what ifs" and "could they?". In that vein, the recent article in Barron's Online magazine quoted several analysts about Apple's recent stock rise, attributed almsot exclusively to the new music store with iTunes. But the real interesting thing was that several anaysts suggested that a change in processors is inevitable. Of course they were referring to Apple going to x86 processors, with one guy saying the decision has already been made. I say that's crap. But couldn't they have gotten their signals crossed and got wind of the switch to IBM's RISC processor, the 970? So if they got the processor switch idea partially right, which is the kind of thing that happens all the time, then maybe the 970s are a done deal and ready to go!

Pretty thing reasoning, I know, but I want to believe.

[CubeBoy]

This could well be true but I do wonder at the logic of it all, everytime IBM or any other company (Intel, AMD, Alpha) finished a processor, they've always made announcements saying they've finished the processor and include with the launch a series of technical papers and benchmark claims (specmarks, applications) to market the processor. So far I've heard no such announcement for the PPC970. Also, if it's been out for so long that the next Powermacs are already assembled, we should at least already see blade servers out with PPC970s in them, I haven't seen any of these either.

[kupan787]

Originally posted by rambo47:
I trust Wall Street when examining "what ifs" and "could they?".

Hasn't Wall Street been predicting Apples death since 1985

But seriously, I would not trust the analysts (sp?) at all. Half the time they don't know what they are talking about, and the rest of the time they just happen to guess correctly.

[Eug]

Originally posted by CubeBoy:
This could well be true but I do wonder at the logic of it all, everytime IBM or any other company (Intel, AMD, Alpha) finished a processor, they've always made announcements saying they've finished the processor and include with the launch a series of technical papers and benchmark claims (specmarks, applications) to market the processor. So far I've heard no such announcement for the PPC970. Also, if it's been out for so long that the next Powermacs are already assembled, we should at least already see blade servers out with PPC970s in them, I haven't seen any of these either.

PPC 970 Performance (estimated)
� SPECint2000
� 937 @ 1.8 GHz*
� SPECfp2000
� 1051 @ 1.8 GHz*
� Dhrystone MIPS
� 5220 @ 1.8 GHz*
� 2.9 DMIPS / MHz
� Additional Performance
� Peak scalar GFLOPS = 7.2
� Peak SIMD GFLOPS = 14.4
� RC5 : 18M keys/sec*
*All results are estimated performance;
subject to change without notice
A Verticle Bar Graph showing the SPECfp2000 SPECint2000
Estimated SPEC2000 Performance from 0 to 1200
For PPC 970 @ 1.0 GHz | POWER4 @ 1.0 GHz | PPC 970 @ 1.8 GHz
PowerPC 970 � MPF 2002

[MindFad]

Originally posted by Eug:
PPC 970 Performance (estimated)
� SPECint2000
� 937 @ 1.8 GHz*
� SPECfp2000
� 1051 @ 1.8 GHz*
� Dhrystone MIPS
� 5220 @ 1.8 GHz*
� 2.9 DMIPS / MHz
� Additional Performance
� Peak scalar GFLOPS = 7.2
� Peak SIMD GFLOPS = 14.4
� RC5 : 18M keys/sec*
*All results are estimated performance;
subject to change without notice
A Verticle Bar Graph showing the SPECfp2000 SPECint2000
Estimated SPEC2000 Performance from 0 to 1200
For PPC 970 @ 1.0 GHz | POWER4 @ 1.0 GHz | PPC 970 @ 1.8 GHz
PowerPC 970 � MPF 2002

The logic dos not compute.

[chrisutley]

Can anybody come up with a logical business explanation for Apple sitting on new inventory for two months?

What's that? Clear the channel of MDD's you say? Um, I dunno... It seems to me from a financial standpoint they would be better off doing a fire sale on existing G4's to schools and what not, and get the new product in the channel and start getting a return on the huge investment of a brand new line. I think there is a huge pent up demand for new desktops, all they have to do is ship them and BAM they are going to sell like snow cones in hell.

I know we all want new Macs, but think about it ... it doesn't make sense.

[3.1416]

Originally posted by CubeBoy:
So far I've heard no such announcement for the PPC970. Also, if it's been out for so long that the next Powermacs are already assembled, we should at least already see blade servers out with PPC970s in them

Apple could very well have arranged for priority access and gotten IBM to not say anything until the 970 Macs are announced. That's essentially what they did with the G4 as well. (Let's hope the 970 launch is a tad smoother).

[3.1416]

Originally posted by chrisutley:
Can anybody come up with a logical business explanation for Apple sitting on new inventory for two months?

The report doesn't say they're "sitting on new inventory", it says production has just started. Given the huge pent-up demand, Apple would need to build up at least some inventory, otherwise there would be ridiculous delays on orders.

I'm not saying this report is true, but it's not clearly false.

[Rabid Duck]

MacBidouille even says it's just a rumor... a June release just wouldn't make any sense. Think about it. No Jobs keynote. IBM stating 970 production will begin 2nd half 2003. "Year of the laptop" mumbo jumbo. Apple and IBM would have to invest a significant amount time and energy working in tandem to deceive the public into thinking the 970 machines are a long way off... for what purpose? You think they're all sitting around during board meetings saying, "OK, now how can we fool our customers into thinking we're going to stick with these crappy Motorola processors for even longer, when in fact they're almost ready for launch"? I will be more than happy to eat my words if this unlikely rumor comes true, but glancing at the evidence, my money's still on 2004.

-RD

[RevEvs]

Nooo, they have to come out around September when i have money! How dare they ruin my masterplan...

revs

[michaelb]

Originally posted by Rabid Duck:
MacBidouille even says it's just a rumor... a June release just wouldn't make any sense. Think about it. No Jobs keynote. ...

I have my doubts as well, but Jobs *will* be doing a keynote at that time.

And the keynote will be at the Moscone center, where all the great keynotes have been delivered from.

However, my money's on the keynote being devoted entirely to Panther, and I'm waiting in suspense to hear the entirely novel way of pronouncing it:

Panthire, Panthwire, Panthuar, Longhorn-killer.

[GoGoReggieXPowars]

Originally posted by RevEvs:
Nooo, they have to come out around September when i have money! How dare they ruin my masterplan...

Hey, you could wait for rev 2...

[KaosDG]

I dunno... I'm all for 970 PowerMacs...

But we all know that the x86 PowerMacs are coming first

[MindFad]

Originally posted by michaelb:
Panthire, Panthwire, Panthuar

LoL

[Leonis]

Originally posted by KaosDG:
But we all know that the x86 PowerMacs are coming first

Hammer to be exact

[CubeBoy]

Originally posted by MindFad:
The logic dos not compute.

Unfortunately, the benchmarks posted by Eug were all estimates done by IBM (save for the peak Gigaflops), we have yet to see a real PPC970 system be benched.

[CubeBoy]

Originally posted by 3.1416:
Apple could very well have arranged for priority access and gotten IBM to not say anything until the 970 Macs are announced. That's essentially what they did with the G4 as well. (Let's hope the 970 launch is a tad smoother).

Their is the possibility of this but remember, the PPC970s main market will be blade servers, at it's current state, the powermac market is insufficient to give the profit margins that would substantiate the delaying the introduction of the PPC970 into blade servers (a booming market and the introduction of the PPC970 will be big). Then again, IBM could see great potential in Powermac with 970s in them which would substantiate keeping the processor delayed and secret for so long. Oh well, only time wiill tell.

[Commodus]

One thing to remember is that IBM's strategy for several years or more has been to compete against itself: that could well mean having the semiconductor business (which would make the PPC 970) selling CPUs that may end up in systems that compete against IBM's own blade servers.

It's not far-fetched to imagine that IBM would rather sell more PPC 970s overall, by having Apple as an immediate customer, than try to be overly protective of their server market. In fact, trying to minimize or deny Apple's demand could be counterproductive, as the smaller supply of chips would mean a higher cost per chip in each blade server. Not to mention that Motorola is a competitor in the PowerPC market that IBM would probably love to trounce.

[JB72]

I'm waiting for the 980s.

[Leonard]

Originally posted by chrisutley:
Can anybody come up with a logical business explanation for Apple sitting on new inventory for two months?

What's that? Clear the channel of MDD's you say? Um, I dunno... It seems to me from a financial standpoint they would be better off doing a fire sale on existing G4's to schools and what not, and get the new product in the channel and start getting a return on the huge investment of a brand new line. I think there is a huge pent up demand for new desktops, all they have to do is ship them and BAM they are going to sell like snow cones in hell.

I know we all want new Macs, but think about it ... it doesn't make sense.

Ummm... you don't know much about Apple do you? They are infamous for not having enough stock to fill demand. Maybe, they finally learned to actually get enough stock ready BEFORE you announce something. These things are going to sell like hotcakes when they are announced and Apple better have at least some inventory before they announce them. And by the way, how do you know Apple will announce these in two months? How do you know how many items they have stocked up? The rumor doesn't mention how many items are ready. There was a rumor that 970 chips were delivered for about 60,000 new PowerMacs... 60,000 PowerMacs would sell in less than a month. You also have to ship these PowerMacs to the US from Taiwan is it? That takes time.

[Eug]

More from Macbidouille.

We have information on some of the mysterious external connectors on the PPC 970 motherboard. One of them (and probably 2) is a Fiber channel connector, to connect for example an Xserve RAID.

[MindFad]

Fiber channel built in? Isn't that **** expensive as hell? Now that's a tough one to believe. Will that be Apple's justification for pricing?

[CubeBoy]

Originally posted by Commodus:
One thing to remember is that IBM's strategy for several years or more has been to compete against itself: that could well mean having the semiconductor business (which would make the PPC 970) selling CPUs that may end up in systems that compete against IBM's own blade servers.

It's not far-fetched to imagine that IBM would rather sell more PPC 970s overall, by having Apple as an immediate customer, than try to be overly protective of their server market. In fact, trying to minimize or deny Apple's demand could be counterproductive, as the smaller supply of chips would mean a higher cost per chip in each blade server. Not to mention that Motorola is a competitor in the PowerPC market that IBM would probably love to trounce.

The thing is, this isn't about IBM having Apple as an immediate customer, their is little doubt that 1)The next Powermacs will have PowerPC 970 processors in them. and 2)Apple will get (or already has gotten) PPC970 processors as soon as they come out (if they are not already out). The question is, will IBM throw away a sizeable sum of potential profits from PPC970 blade servers just for priority access for Powermacs despite knowing that all future Powermacs will have no other option but to use PPC970s?

[-Q-]

Originally posted by CubeBoy:
The question is, will IBM throw away a sizeable sum of potential profits from PPC970 blade servers just for priority access for Powermacs despite knowing that all future Powermacs will have no other option but to use PPC970s?

Entirely possible. Apple very well could have negotiated a clause in the contract that said they get the first X million 970 processors as they come off the line. The question is, did they? Selling the processors to Apple is a guaranteed profit, while the blade servers, while a sizeable profit, require a lot more effort to sell and are not guaranteed.

Hopefully in less than a month we'll know...

[Eug]

Originally posted by MindFad:
Fiber channel built in? Isn't that **** expensive as hell? Now that's a tough one to believe. Will that be Apple's justification for pricing?

1) It's just a rumour.
2) They just said 970 mobo. If it were true (and that's a big "if"), it could be an Xserve mobo and not a PowerMac mobo.

[BrunoBruin]

If the rumors are true and Apple is providing a big chunk of development resources on this project, both manpower and financial, it's entirely possible that the agreement with IBM specifies that Apple gets to ship the chip first.

The other consideration, as has been stated elsewhere, is that the server market is not exactly a bleeding-edge, gotta-have-it-right-now population. Why not let Apple establish a real-world reliability track record with the chip?

[Loco Engr]

Originally posted by chrisutley:
Can anybody come up with a logical business explanation for Apple sitting on new inventory for two months?

EGO.

"No new products from this company are announced unless I'm on the stage. When's my next keynote scheduled?"

June 23rd @ WWDC.

[tikki]

I wouldn't want it any other way.

[jcadam]

Originally posted by BrunoBruin:
If the rumors are true and Apple is providing a big chunk of development resources on this project, both manpower and financial, it's entirely possible that the agreement with IBM specifies that Apple gets to ship the chip first.

The other consideration, as has been stated elsewhere, is that the server market is not exactly a bleeding-edge, gotta-have-it-right-now population. Why not let Apple establish a real-world reliability track record with the chip?

Well, it's not as if the PPC 970 is meant to be "cutting-edge" in the server space anyways. Just a poor-man's Power4.