[Macintosh]

Astheappleturns.com Or at http://64.67.147.234/

Read and be amazed,they were right about the titanium and it's external cdrw,u never know....

[imacaholic]

I'm glad I took along my saltshaker!

[zac4mac]

Ya, Ryan has an interesting blurb today too...
Well, my duallie is almost paid off.
Guess I'll have to buy a new Mac when I can get a Dual 1GHz+.
Hope I have time to buy an iBook first.

Z

[Outsider]

Well I work for a mac mail order catalog and the word is from Apple sources 733MHz will be the entry level..

[waffffffle]

I hope it's right. I'm pretty confident it will be.

Just think, if MOT can manage 500MHz speed increases every 7 months or so I think we can be in mighty fine shape in the future. But there are also these rumors that the G4 is going to be tapped out soon at 1.3 GHz. That would suck..

[BrunoBruin]

I wouldn't be surprised to see 733 as the new base configuration, if the yield of chips is as good as it sounds. Even if there was just one new, higher speed for now, two faster G4s -- perhaps with duals in at least the 733 -- would be okay until 1GHz chips are available and certainly make more sense than FOUR speeds and one dual configuration, which is what we got last time!

[bil207]

I wonder if Apple will keep the current price structure. With the entry level 466MHz G4 going for $1699 what will they charge for the 733G4s that are already in the pipeline? If the price drops to $1699 for a new 733 G4 they will have to discount the current models to at least that amount. That is going to be quite a steep drop on a model that today is going for $2999 - $3499. Also, the 533s and 466s will have to cleared out at similar discounts. With the rumored discontinuation of the Cube I think it is very important for Apple to have a G4 in the $1300 - $1500 price range and I'm wondering if the 733MHz G4 will be priced that low.

[BrunoBruin]

The proposed new "low-end" 733 could be made cheaper by throwing overboard some of the extra features. 128MB RAM (I know, I know, but Apple insists on being miserly with the stuff), smaller hard drive, RAGE, etc. It could be configured like the current 466 but with the faster chip. I don't know what the cost difference would be, but I agree Apple needs something around this price, especially if the Cube goes away. Hmmm.

Motorola has historically never had a broad range of speeds in a processor family.

G3 233 - 300 (IIRC)
G3 300 - 400
G3 350 - 450
G3 400 - 500

(Of course, IBM has taken the G3 up to 600 now)

G4 350 - 450
G4 400 - 500
G4 466 - 533
G4 667 - 733 (7450)

So, if the new G4 is lowend 733, then I expect the high-end to be 800 or 866.

My bet is that we'll see:

G4 733 - $1700 - CDRW/128MB/30GB/GeForce 2MX
G4 733 Dual - $2500 - Combo Drive/256MB/40GB/GeForce 2MX
G4 800 - $2200 - Combo Drive/256MB/40GB/GeForce 2MX
G4 866 (Coming soon!) - $3000 - Combo Drive/512MB/60GB/GeForce 3
G4 866 Dual (Supplies limited, coming soon!) - $3500 - Super Drive/1GB/80gb/GeForce 3

at Javits Center.

The unregistered Gabeezabuzit

G4 733 - $1600 - CDRW/128MB/30GB/GeForce 2MX
G4 733 Dual - $2300 - Combo Drive/256MB/40GB/GeForce 2MX
G4 800 - $2100 - Combo Drive/256MB/40GB/GeForce 2MX
G4 866 (Coming soon!) - $2600 - Combo Drive/512MB/60GB/GeForce 3
G4 866 Dual (Supplies limited, coming soon!) - $3300 - Super Drive/1GB/80gb/GeForce 3

My price guesses slightly modified.

the unregistered gabeezabuzit

So what year was it when we had G3 Mac from 350-450Mhz? That was like, what, 1999?

Hopfully the days of the bottom of the line Macs taking two years to go up ~100Mhz are behind us. Truly dreadful performance from Motorola.


The part that makes me the happiest will be seeing the prices of 500MHz towers drop sub-$1000....

Love,
Bozo

[11011001]

I am waiting until macworld to get a g4 tower, and the longer I wait the more money I can spend. And with this news I have been most pleasently rewared (or misled) for my patience.

I was expecting 600 - 900, but if the low end is really 733 that would be great.

Anyhow I hope they also have the new cases that have been rumored about.

[Scott_H]

After the great 18 month MHz stall I've learnd to expect nothing from Apple. So I say that come MWNY Apple will sell the 666 as a 733 and increase the price by $500. That way if we get anything better it will be a major speed bump.

I'd like to see dual 866's. Anyone hear about DDR SDRAM?

[sauria]

Also, what's the scoup on the new tower enclosures?

Originally posted by sauria:
<STRONG>Also, what's the scoup on the new tower enclosures?</STRONG>

My $$$ is on no new tower enclosures. That will come out when the G5's are released in MWSF. One new enclosure (iMac) is enough for Apple for a convention.

I think the case wont get any bigger, but I do think Apple will ditch the 3.5" bay for an additional 5.25" bay.

Or at least, that's what I'd do.

The unregistered gabeezabuzit

[jay999]

Will they faze out the 533 chip architecture in favor of the 733's(i think 7450)?

If so then maybe

733 sp + dp
866 sp + dp
1000 sp + dp (limited)

;&gt;

[dfbennett]

Correct me if I'm wrong but to accomodate a 5.25" device in the lower bay wouldn't the case need to be bigger because of the heatsink and the ram? I've heard that people have tried to put a 5.25" device in a Sawtooth G4 but it wouldn't fit without cutting off part of the heat sink and having only the top two ram banks filled. Unless the current G4s internals are radically different you'd need a bigger case to fit two 5.25" drives in a G4.

[sauria]

SO do you think the 7400/7410 G4 chips are iMac material now instead of Desktop G4 material which will all be 7450? Anyone see 7450 MP prototypes?

[Cipher13]

Hmm.

Intel will pass 2GHz within a month, just about.
We are discussing whether we'll pass 1GHz and the general consensus is 'no'.

Heh. Great time to be a Mac fan.

[Nimisys]

i still think apple would do better to switch to PC hardware, continue the designer inclosures and MacOS... they no longer have to compete as much in the hardware arena and can now push harder in the software/OS side where they would stand a decent chance of grabbing Marketshare

[muchfresh]

Intel will be releasing 1.8Ghz P4 next week!!! Apple may or may not announce a 1GHZ G4 in three weeks that may or may not be available by september!

As long as Apple can release a 1.5Ghz+ G5 by next MWSF I don't care much what happens in the meantime.


here are some tidbits I have found

geek.com:

MOSR has misinformation... (1:50pm EST Tue Apr 10 2001)
...as usual. The G5 will not start out multicore and MacOS Rumors has the speeds wrong. On a 130nm process with SOI and copper, the 14 stage pipeline G5 will start at 1.6GHz and scale well beyond 2GHz. But before that we will see a 7460 G4 made on a 130nm SOI process, functionally equal to the 7450 but on an improved process. This G4 (codenamed Apollo), will achieve 1.2GHz and scall to most likely 1.7-1.8GHz.
Shortly (a quarter) after the debut of the 7460, you will see the 7500 on the same process in early 2002 with speeds between 1.6GHz and 2.5GHz. In late 2002 you will see the 100nm 75X0 start out at 2.4GHz and scale up to 3.5GHz. Also, MOSR neglected to mention that the 7500 will make extensive use of Rapid IO and have an on die DDR memory controller. The RIO ports will have a fast serial connection to several devices on the motherboard such as PCI-X bridges, peripheral controllers, ethernet and firewire controllers. The RIO bus is a serial 16-bit hub topology but runs at high speed (500-1000MHz). - by Mot insider

digit-life.com:

Apple is the first to appear in our mind after the word 'PowerPC'. It has stopped the shippings of the Power Mac G4 with the 667 MHz Motorola processor in the middle of April, having made the 733 MHz version a minimum of the model line and having aimed all the main forces at it. Moreover, some dual-processor workstations have been released and Apple has to play under new rules because of the lack of 1.7 GHz processors. Probably, the Motorola PowerPC 7500 (G5), that is being developed now, will be able to change the situation, a 0.10-micron (copper+SOI) processor with 512 KBytes L2 cache and the clock rate of about 2 GHz and higher. If Intel, according to its schedule, after making a fast dash stops having surpassed the 2 GHz limit, then Motorola will have a chance to catch up with it.

[reader50]

Originally posted by the unregistered Gabeezabuzit:
<STRONG>Motorola has historically never had a broad range of speeds in a processor family.
[speed ranges]
So, if the new G4 is lowend 733, then I expect the high-end to be 800 or 866...</STRONG>

According to the speed ranges shown, if the percentages held up: A low end of 733 could make the high end 933. Using the 350 -&gt; 450 ratio, the high end would map out to 942 MHz, or 933 using a 133/133DDR bus speed.

dfbennett, the current motherboard has moved the CPU and RAM slots to the back of the motherboard. There is no longer any potential conflict with a full-sized lower drive bay.

[Macintosh]

What if the G5 is introduced at MWNY! This is a possibility because rumors call for a new enclosure,the 667 was discontinued,and some say the G5 will come at MWSF. I think that the G5's could very welll be introed at MWNY and be released at Paris. I think it may be possible considereing the G4 is pretty old and already 3 products have used it for over 6 months. If the G5 is not introduced at MWNY then it will be at MWSF,if none of these happen Apple is likely to forever trail in the MHz race.

Sorry for the wild rant from nowhere. What is said above makes me look rediculous to most but that speculation is really wishfull thinking.

[Clive]

Originally posted by &lt;Gabeezabuzit&gt;:
<STRONG>Motorola has historically never had a broad range of speeds in a processor family.

G3 233 - 300 (IIRC)
G3 300 - 400
G3 350 - 450
G3 400 - 500

</STRONG>

Your first gen G3s are out, they went up to 366 I think, while the bottom end was 266. Also the implications are wrong 500 is 25% faster than 400, but 333 is about 40% faster than 233.

Right now G4s have managed a less than 50% speed bump in two years, so anyone thinking we're going to get to 1.5GHz or more in the next year (with a G4) is just dreaming. The only way we're really going forward is with multi-processors and maybe G5.

(And can people take anything on MOSR as being "entertainment" rather than "rumour"? The guy contradicts himself on a daily basis and still says "this is in line with all the known facts"!?)

[GetSome681]

I'm not too sure about the whole G5 issue (which I do believes will be shown at MWSF), but with the G4 issue, I'm pretty confident that the cases will be the same as now, with maybe a small increase in size so as to accomodate more drives maybe. I also believe that the G4 will reach 1 GHz, and you all will be pleasantly surprised. What I'm trying to say, is that you will either get a new case, or GHz G4s....and my bet is on the processors.

More importantly, and I don't know about this stuff myself, only what I hear about the multiprocessor compatibility of the 7450, but I'd really like to see Apple introduce a quad system, in the 533-733 range. Could you imagine quad 733s? Not sure if those chips would be capable of that, but I guess I could deal with a quad 533 or 633 if I had too. I think the introduction of a quad is of the utmost importance to apple, especially if motorola continues having problems making chips.

[dfbennett]

Originally posted by Nimisys:
<STRONG>i still think apple would do better to switch to PC hardware, continue the designer inclosures and MacOS... they no longer have to compete as much in the hardware arena and can now push harder in the software/OS side where they would stand a decent chance of grabbing Marketshare</STRONG>

They could never do it. The installed base of Mac running PPC chips is so high. They'd have to rewrite all of their software to run on an x86 processor not the RISC PPC. This alone makes in completely impratical.

[Loco Engr]

At MWNY, I'm confident Apple will immediately take orders for 1 GHz G4 hardware.
Be near the front of the line for your 2002 Macintosh.

[Leonard]

Originally posted by Nimisys:
<STRONG>i still think apple would do better to switch to PC hardware, continue the designer inclosures and MacOS... they no longer have to compete as much in the hardware arena and can now push harder in the software/OS side where they would stand a decent chance of grabbing Marketshare</STRONG>

when hell (is that the Microsoft campus) freezes over... I think it's about time to stuff this idea in a rocket and send it to Mars... it's pure nonsense and it'll never happen...

[Nimisys]

Originally posted by dfbennett:
<STRONG>

They could never do it. The installed base of Mac running PPC chips is so high. They'd have to rewrite all of their software to run on an x86 processor not the RISC PPC. This alone makes in completely impratical.</STRONG>

actually it might be eaiser than you think... remember Darwin is x87 also... so they have the core basis is a go... the rest is adjustments to the slightly differnt RISC form. But that one of the plus's of unix/linux is that you recompile and your good to go.

As for why it to do it? switching to a common hardware base would solve Apple's hardware problems as they no longer have to do it all (you get the speed bump as the CPU's bump) allowing them to focus on the software side of things... something that they excel in. so whats the problem with that.

Apple is looking at it else the x87 darwin would never had been released.

Originally posted by Cipher13:
<STRONG>Hmm.

Intel will pass 2GHz within a month, just about.
We are discussing whether we'll pass 1GHz and the general consensus is 'no'.

Heh. Great time to be a Mac fan.</STRONG>

A 2GHz P4, that should be about as fast as the current PIII

Though we have beat this to death the MHz thing still comes up. Why are people excited about the P4 when the peecee nerds are all in a panic about what a dog it is? The peecee guys tried to mount a boycott of the P4 because they hated it so much.

The MHz thing is now mostly a matter of bragging rights. In the real world, most people buy sub GHz peecees. Only when they discontinue the PIII will people start buying the P4 in big volumes.

Not that having a fast CPU is bad but the rest of the machine is important as well - memory I/O, Firewire speed, peripheral integration and that other little thing - the OS.

[Mactoid]

Originally posted by Nimisys:
<STRONG>Apple is looking at it else the x87 darwin would never had been released.</STRONG>

IMHO, their are several other better reasons for why darwin was released for intel. For one thing, since the full source was released, it was inevitable that it would have been ported by someone. More importantly I thing they are supporting the intel port because they want to build up a base of Darwin users and developers. Can you imagine trying to get together a team of Unix kernel hackers having only the Mac user base to draw from. That would be severly limiting to say the least.

[Graymalkin]

I think some of the better observations were made by MOSR (dispite credibility problems) in terms of processor release schedules. Remember when Motorola told everyone they couldn't meet Apple's demand for chips? Apple ended up eating its hat after touting that it was going to have a bunch of dual processor systems available when PC manufacturers wouldn't think of more than one processor in a single beige case. Since then I think Apple has decided to make sure they could meet their production goals BEFORE they let Steve get up and brag about the new systems. The G4 is made with a 130nm SOI process could probably fairly easily get up to 1.5 Ghz though it might mean fans needing to be attached to heat sinks and production models will probably stop at 1.3Ghz because the G5 will have been released. The G5 which I hope will be relased at MWSF ought to get pretty competitive clock speed wise with the P4 and Athlon. Development of the bigger and badder x86 chips has slowed down a bit over the past year because the market got way too saturated too quickly. The P4 is and will be frowned upon by most speed geeks because they've got qualms with Rambus and the price of RDRAM. That won't change until VIA releases their P4 board using DDR-SDRAM. Not only will the G5 have the apparent speed increase due to a high clock speed but it's also got a widely implimented vector unit whereas most Windows/x86 software has few or no optimizations for special instruction sets. I certainly hope there's a good speed jump at MWNY because I'm waiting to buy a G4 tower until after the expo just for that reason.

As for the guy saying Apple should just switch to x86 based hardware (FYI the x87 is the floating point coprocessor on Pentium chips) there is ALOT more then just recompiling the kernel and having your system ported. There is no magical quality of Unix that makes it magically portable. Does an Alpha kernel look anything like a PPC kernel or x86 kernel? Not really. Besides which, an OS is much more than a kernel it's the entire operating environment. In order for Apple to switch to x86 they'd need to port all of the Carbon libs and Cocoa libs over to x86 (a monumental task considering a majority of Carbon most likely has assembler code in it) as well as redesign the Classic environment to emulate a PowerPC chip. PowerPC chips can be insanely powerful (POWER4 anyone?) and are alot more efficient in terms of real estate because there's no instruction decoder taking up space and clock cycles. SGI has already made the mistake of abandoning an architecture their engineers know well for a new one. Their Intel boxes are expensive and pretty looking but no one buys them. They should be selling O2s with R12ks in them for the VS line's prices and have bigger boxes with R14ks replacing the O2s niche (but thats an entirely different message board ). I can't believe the suggestion was made that Apple ought to focus on software because it is what they are good at. Apple has ALWAYS BEEN A HARDWARE COMPANY. The fact Macs run an internally written OS is a happenstance of the Lisa (and original Mac) needing to manage a virtual environment on top of the hardware in order to get the functionality and expandibility that the project needed (ie multitasking). Hardware makes Apple plenty of money because of the control they have over components they use. They get PPC chips at near cost because no one else uses them. Dell and Gateway make next to nothing on hardware because they're paying bulk OEM prices for their components (which is 4x or more than cost or so). Use your wetware before spouting off nonsense like that.

[smeegs]

Originally posted by Graymalkin:
<STRONG>I think some of the better observations were made by MOSR (dispite credibility problems) in terms of processor release schedules. Remember when Motorola told everyone they couldn't meet Apple's demand for chips? Apple ended up eating its hat after touting that it was going to have a bunch of dual processor systems available when PC manufacturers wouldn't think of more than one processor in a single beige case. Since then I think Apple has decided to make sure they could meet their production goals BEFORE they let Steve get up and brag about the new systems. The G4 is made with a 130nm SOI process could probably fairly easily get up to 1.5 Ghz though it might mean fans needing to be attached to heat sinks and production models will probably stop at 1.3Ghz because the G5 will have been released. The G5 which I hope will be relased at MWSF ought to get pretty competitive clock speed wise with the P4 and Athlon. Development of the bigger and badder x86 chips has slowed down a bit over the past year because the market got way too saturated too quickly. The P4 is and will be frowned upon by most speed geeks because they've got qualms with Rambus and the price of RDRAM. That won't change until VIA releases their P4 board using DDR-SDRAM. Not only will the G5 have the apparent speed increase due to a high clock speed but it's also got a widely implimented vector unit whereas most Windows/x86 software has few or no optimizations for special instruction sets. I certainly hope there's a good speed jump at MWNY because I'm waiting to buy a G4 tower until after the expo just for that reason.

As for the guy saying Apple should just switch to x86 based hardware (FYI the x87 is the floating point coprocessor on Pentium chips) there is ALOT more then just recompiling the kernel and having your system ported. There is no magical quality of Unix that makes it magically portable. Does an Alpha kernel look anything like a PPC kernel or x86 kernel? Not really. Besides which, an OS is much more than a kernel it's the entire operating environment. In order for Apple to switch to x86 they'd need to port all of the Carbon libs and Cocoa libs over to x86 (a monumental task considering a majority of Carbon most likely has assembler code in it) as well as redesign the Classic environment to emulate a PowerPC chip. PowerPC chips can be insanely powerful (POWER4 anyone?) and are alot more efficient in terms of real estate because there's no instruction decoder taking up space and clock cycles. SGI has already made the mistake of abandoning an architecture their engineers know well for a new one. Their Intel boxes are expensive and pretty looking but no one buys them. They should be selling O2s with R12ks in them for the VS line's prices and have bigger boxes with R14ks replacing the O2s niche (but thats an entirely different message board ). I can't believe the suggestion was made that Apple ought to focus on software because it is what they are good at. Apple has ALWAYS BEEN A HARDWARE COMPANY. The fact Macs run an internally written OS is a happenstance of the Lisa (and original Mac) needing to manage a virtual environment on top of the hardware in order to get the functionality and expandibility that the project needed (ie multitasking). Hardware makes Apple plenty of money because of the control they have over components they use. They get PPC chips at near cost because no one else uses them. Dell and Gateway make next to nothing on hardware because they're paying bulk OEM prices for their components (which is 4x or more than cost or so). Use your wetware before spouting off nonsense like that.</STRONG>

That is the most babbling i've heard in a long time, and I can't make my mind up whether you know what you're talking about!

[dfbennett]

If he was babbling, why did you quote the whole message?

[Lolo from Paris]

Originally posted by Graymalkin:
<STRONG>They get PPC chips at near cost because no one else uses them.</STRONG>

PowerPC are used a lot in embed devices...

Sorry to say that but I doubt Apple is the biggest buyer of PPC chips, if so they wouldn't have so much problems with Motorola.

[pierce1979]

Apple _is_ the single largest buyer of PowerPCs and with out a doubt the highest profiled user of them. HOWEVER, all the little guys that look for the PowerPC as an embedded product far out number Apple.

I have a friend that works for Motorola, while he doesn't work in the semiconductor group. He says they hear the horror stories that come out of that division and that group is under the most pressure to deliver....working crazy hours and pushing their morale to the limits. So who knows what we will have at MacWorld...

[sauria]

Maybe Apple will buy back the PPC from Motorola and get some help from IBM to get into the GHz scene?

quote]They could never do it. The installed base of Mac running PPC chips is so high. They'd have to rewrite all of their software to run on an x86 processor not the RISC PPC. This alone makes in completely impratical.[/quote]

Take a look at this thread in the MacNN Lounge.

According to the news, Emulators Inc. plans to release the next-generation version of their Softmac Macintosh emulator software for Windows XP, which will add native PowerPC support and eliminate the need for a ROM. They claim that under the initial version of the software released at MW NY this month, a 1.2GHz "Palomino" Athlon will offer PowerPC G3 emulation of about 500MHz, with some-unnamed Intel or AMD cpu (combined with optimizations to the software) delivering 1GHz PowerPC G3 performance by year's end.

Won't it be reeeeaaaaly sad if a 2.2-2.4GHz P4 or 1.70GHz Athlon (both coming this year) is able to outperform Apple's fastest system using emulation?

[mikerally]

From what we can tell, Motorola is getting good yields of the G4 733Mhz
Processor, we coukd see that when Apple started offering the 733Mhz G4 without the SuperDrive and axed the 667Mhz model.

With the 733Mhz processor in good abundance, it's value goes down, allowing Apple to easily bring it down the line.

I don't think we've seen the end of 533Mhz model, it will now cover the bottom end because it has been cheap and abundant for quite a while (saying goodbye to the sub 500Mhz 466 once and for all - hooray!!!)

I think Apple will aim for something the range of the 933Mhz-1Ghz ballpark, they've definately got a supply of 833Mhz+ so we can hope to see some progress.

DDR RAM (with a very nice and fast FSB to the processor) and a Geforce3 as standard would be good for Apple's flagship computer, and 1Ghz would restore some faith.

I don't think it is asking too much.

However, as a brief thought, I'd like to see USB 2.0, Firewire 2.0 (800mbps revision), Airport 2.0 (22mbps 802 revision), make appearance alongside the already standard Gigabit Ethernet.

Highspeed connectivity would put these machines in better light than you're average home PC.

[KidRed]

So everything I've read hear and other places are saying either in NY or in Januaray the G5s will come out. So if they don't come out in July is it safe to assume the G5 will come out in Janurary? I'm waiting for the new one to come out so I can get it, but I can wait 6 months more to get a G5.

Any idea when we might see the G5?

[DoctorGonzo]

I'm willing to bet that the Geeforce 2 MX will be standard on everything but the high end G4s.

My question is Why?

It is the ultra-cheapo-low-end Geeforce 2. Why can't they just you know, use something that isn't going to be abandoned by 99% of PC makers in a few months time?

[OverclockedHomoSapien]

Here's my predictions, take them with some salt and perhaps a shot of fine scotch...

1. New Powermac enclosures. The problem with the current case is that it isn't designed to effectively cool a processor running at high watts. Apple will introduce a new case design that can cool new, hotter processors, and dual processor versions. HOPEFULLY, Apple will use this opportunity to add an expandable full sized drive bay. I think odds are good since they listened and added a PCI slot. Even more importantly, I hope that Apple keeps the easy access side door. It would be typical of Apple to redesign the case to look cool but be a bitch to open.

For those who say that Apple will wait for the G5 to redesign the powermac case, remember that the G3 powermac got a new case, and soon after followed the G4. So perhaps we will get a new case for the G4, designed to cool and house a G5, and then soon enough Apple will fill the case with a G5!

2. Same old 7450 G4s, with a minor speed bump. Remember that Motorola is the same company that hobbled Apple at 500MHz for over 18 months. 933MHz....Jobs might announce a GHz powermac that will be available in several months. More likely, I suspect that Apple will hit 1 GHz at MWSF 2002. It sucks but I'm just being realistic. For all we know, Apple will be stuck at 733MHz for another 12 months.

[Group51]

Originally posted by &lt;Gabeezabuzit&gt;:
<STRONG>G4 866 Dual (Supplies limited, coming soon!) - $3300 - Super Drive/1GB/80gb/GeForce 3
</STRONG>

They super-drive is now shipping with iDVD. Under you proposal, the superdrive and iDVD are suspended until an unspecified time.

I hope Apple don't do that.

Has anyone priced a computer at Dell lately? You can get a 1.8 GHz pentium 4, 20 gig hard drive, 128 mg ram for $1609!

I know all the arguments and extras PowerPC is faster etc. BUT 1.8GHz is 4x faster than our current 466MHz. Even if the PowerPC is inherently twice as fast at the same clock speed, well you do the math. Motorola has been lagard.
We lost a year.

[New]

I'll eat my new ibook if a PC mac-emulator ever outperforms a high end powerMac... its not gonna happen, unless apple goes ou of business

[pele]

I don't know about the fastest Mac, but if a high-end PC can run Mac software as fast as a 500 Mhz iMac, as they claim it will, that's still a huge blow to the Mac, considering how slow Virtual PC is. I will check these guys out at MW next week, and see if there's any truth to their claims.

[mikerally]

When it comes to claims of Mac Emulators for the PC, it's usually a bunch of crap.

Does FUSION ring any bells? The guy claimed he had a fully working iMac emulator a year or two back.

I'll believe it when I see it, and the best performing Mac emulator I've seen for the PC is of course Basilisk (which can pull off the emulation of a 68040+FPU Mac running Mac OS 8.1).

As we all know 68k is and has been dead for years. We're not going to see iTunes or iMovie running on any PC anytime soon.

I'm still faithfully hoping on 1Ghz G4s to be announced for shipping in August/September at MWNY. Or at 933Mhz at the very least. Apple really need a 1GHz G4 shipping before the end of the year, otherwise there will be some serious reprocusions.

[pele]

mikerally, I think you're not getting it. Nobody's talking about 68K emulation here.

These guys are claiming they will launch a product at MWNY that will be able to run PPC software at iMac speeds, they're also saying that with further optimisations and upcoming X86 processors, it will reach the performance of a 1 Ghz G3 by year's end. So iMovie and iTunes and Final Cut Pro are exactly what these guys are saying their emulator will be able to run.

Their claims may be bogus, I'll be at MWNY to see if they are in a couple of weeks.