[MindFad]

A dual 2.2GHz PPC970 Power Mac under $2000.

[MacGorilla]

Originally posted by Terri:
What is the going rate for a grandmother?

Depends, is she spry? or a cripple? Can she cook cookies?

[Kissargi]

i just want panther to be great, well ok, id also like free ipods sent to evereyone who bought a new g4 tower in the last 3 months (compensation due to the fact the 970 came out so soon after) and i also dreamed fairys would start producing sony clies running pocket osx, with optional beer tap.

[osxisfun]

All I can add is that new G4 tower owners will be pleasantly surprised

i wonder if this had anything to do with the mini bump of the g4's reported by thinksecret.com

[MindFad]

Originally posted by MacGorilla:
Depends, is she spry? or a cripple? Can she cook cookies?

Fully mobile and bakes a damn mean cookie.

[TheTraveller]

Check out this page on AppleInsider:

http://appleinsider.com/article.php?id=114

Delicious, yes? Now what are the odds it's actually going to happen?

[MindFad]

There's a thread about it in the lounge. Sounds tasty to me -- don't know about the odds, though. 16 days. Just 16 days.

[ja]

Also look for Renderman coming back to its roots... in a very surprising configuration specifically built for movie industry. Will definitely SHAKE the industry

and

I still think that Apple should purchase SGI

The big potential emerging markets for Apple [with 970's in their lineup] are architecture, engineering and industrial design - where there is a gap at the top end on Mac OS X
Character animation is sexier but the technical markets are there to be [re]claimed
Maya is on X but what about Alias Studio

As for apple's $4bil - who knows if they might get involved - look at shake and logic

If you follow the news at architosh you will see that there is a lot of interest in other widely used products such as autocad, microsation, pro/E, Solidworks etc

Also products such as solidThinking - already on the mac - are up there with the best, but in my experience virtually unknown.
sT in particular has NeXT roots.

So let's see what comes

[JB72]

Originally posted by rm-rf /etc:
Dual 2.2 GHz at sub two-grand...

Hrrmmm... That conflicts with my sources that are saying we'll see this model offered at $59.99.

Also hold off on those 15" Powerbook purchases 'til the end of summer... you never know

So you're saying we''ll eventually see an update to the 15" PowerBook? Well this changes everything. It totally throws my purchasing plans.

[rmendis]

Originally posted by ja:
Maya is on X but what about Alias Studio

Well if Apple were to purchase SGI, that would include it's whole owned subsidiary Alias|Wavefront.
That would make Alias|Wavefront a whole owned subsidiary of Apple.
So A|W Studio could be ported to Mac OS X as well.

I mean SGI is only a measly $250 million.
In contrast Apple purchased NeXT for $400 million. Though in the case of NeXT it was the technology and talent not the brand that was worth that price tag. SGI has much technology (in Alias|Wavefront, etc..) but two very important brands SGI and A|W that would make it worth that price tag.

Apple has said it wants to be the Sony of the degital media market...that is produce hardware and software for the consumer as well as for the high end professional markets.

Of course one must remember that Sony is a very versatile brand.
Not all brands are versatile - Coke-Cola, Mowtown, AT&T, KLM etc..while some are extremly versatile like Virgin in the UK which produces competes in all of the above markets - cola, music, wireless networks, airlines and more.

Apple is a strong brand and sits rather cosily in it's own niche.

With the PPC970 and technology like HyperTransport and Mac OS X, Apple is in a position to produce high end solutions to compete in those markets. What it would need most is a high end brand to really help it penetrate those markets. SGI is in many ways a similar brand to Apple holding the other end of the same markets.

SGI is IMHO, the perfect brand to suppliment or complement Apple at the high end the way Aston Martin is to BMW or Porche is to VW or Jaguar is to Ford.

[shrink]

From http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=114

Don't know much about their information, but here's what they published for whatever it's worth...

Apple to Announce the Power Mac G5 at WWDC
By: Kasper Jade 06.08.03

Panther, the next generation of Apple's modern-day Mac OS X operating system, won't be the only thing turning heads three weeks from now in San Francisco. The computer maker, which will not be attending the Macworld "Creative Pro" conference in July, will use its annual developers conference to showcase this summer's product offerings, sources tell AppleInsider.

Traditionally, Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) is scheduled during the month of May. However, in March of this year, the company announced that it had rescheduled its 2003 Worldwide Developers Conference for late June, in order to provide developers with a more complete preview release of "Panther." What the press release did not say is that this first developer release of Panther would be demonstrated by Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, on the company's new line of Power Mac G5 desktop computers.

The new Power Mac G5s will sport a completely new motherboard design utilizing DDR 400 RAM as well as AGP 8x graphics, FireWire 800 (FireWire 2), and USB 2.0, sources said. "In the box" connectivity among the news systems is based on Hypertransport -- a universal chip-to-chip interconnect developed by AMD and partners -- which provides 64-bit addressing and will replace Apple's multilevel bus architecture found in current systems. This royalty-free technology sports a low manufacturing cost and is capable of transferring data at up to 12.8 Gigabytes per second.

The new Power Macs will be powered by IBM's 64 bit PPC 970 processor, otherwise known to Apple Marketing as the the "G5." Initial offerings of the Power Mac G5 are said to boast 1.4 to 1.8GHz, single core PPC 970 processors, with the possibility of a dual 1.8GHz chips shortly thereafter.

To accommodate the new motherboard architecture, Apple has developed a modified Power Mac G5 enclosure, which is said to be more square and compact than the current Power Mac G4's deep, rectangular form-factor. It lacks the 4 curved handles found on current units, but sports a single USB and a single FireWire 800 port on the front of the casing, with additional ports in the rear.

According to sources, Apple plans to make the Power Mac G5 available to the public following their introduction on June 23rd. These initial units will ship with Mac OS 10.2, and hence, will not be optimized for the 64 bit PPC 970 processor. Consumers who purchase these Power Mac G5s will receive a coupon for a free copy of Mac OS 10.3 (Panther), which will ship in September and will be optimized for the new 64 bit processor.

[ja]

SGI is IMHO, the perfect brand to suppliment or complement Apple at the high end

Agreed
But let's hope that it would not mean the death of smaller fries with good top-end mac os x products
Let's also hope that if this happens apple can convince users to buy/switch to say 'Apple Studio' on Mac OS X becuase they are also impressed with the quality of the hardware offerings and not just because the a linux version doesn't have a half-price bribe [like shake] or because the windows version has been cancelled [like logic]

[shrink]

Ugh! Sorry, I didn't see the post to this link just a few reponses above.

[rm-rf /etc]

My sources say that the G5 towers will be very aggressively priced. Hypertransport is a given. Apple has thrown its weight behind this architecture. Apple plans to bring down the price for the top end towers. I know for a fact that 2.2 GHz procs exist. One source said that they were thinking about $1599 for the top end config (seemed way too low for me...) but we'll definitely see a dramatic cut in the top end models...

The new pricing reflects the fact that Apple will be looking to compensate the loss in margins by selling exclusive Apple apps (FC Pro, EMagic, Shake, etc...)on these machines... effectively maintaining their 27-33% margins...

The new pricing model will definitely surprise a lot of people.

Also, there seems to be a grain of truth in the XStation rumors (16-64 processor renderboxes) which will outperform most Linux boxes on a price-performance benchmark. Apple will charge Hollywood and take it as a stronghold... SGI's days seem to be over, especially with low priced hardware from Apple. SGI is not a good acquisition target for Apple, they have most of the pieces in place to effectively dethrone SGI... also, most of the talent from SGI (working on NUMA stuff) is now working at Apple...

Another pivotal software from Apple will be X Window System with great performance... making it easy to port a lot of OpenGL/UNIX apps to OS X. From what I hear PB will be updated to make porting XWindows apps a snap. Like it or not X Window System will be a first class citizen on Panther...

There seems to be grain of truth in the Pal rumors (I am hazarding a guess that the box shots are fake). I had first reported this over a year ago (iDevice to go...)

Panther will see major UI changes introduced system-wide. It is designed to get a lot of people who haven't upgraded in over 2 years to want to upgrade... (500 MHz + will be optimal to run Panther..., a lot G3 towers, early iMacs will have to upgrade-- or run Panther at sub-optimal speeds...). Anything over 3 years old will run a lot of Panther at pokey speeds....

The UI of Panther is a closely guarded secret, fewer than 20-30 people have seen it... I can't get any info on it, for now. But a few things are certain, more browser like features in the Finder (guess who hired most of Easel). From what I hear a lot of ideas that were brainstormed for Nautilus (but couldn't be implemented due to X window limitations) will be making their way in...

In my post a couple of years ago (look it up!), I mentioned the philosophy behind OS X apps. iLife was the first true implementation of that philosophy.... Panther will be the next step in that direction... That I am confident off...

[rm-rf /etc]

A couple of clarifications... most of my hardware sources are outside Apple (key third-party hardware companies..) I know that 2.2 GHz configs exist, whether or not Apple chooses to release them at WWDC or wait for an update post Panther remains to be seen.

The price points of sub 2 grand are from outside sources... but whatever said and done, the prices are coming down (heard it from an Apple insider)....

[MindFad]

Well, if the lower pricing is true, that can only bode well for sales, no doubt. Man, it can't get here fast enough.

[Esquare]

Originally posted by MindFad:
Well, if the lower pricing is true, that can only bode well for sales, no doubt. Man, it can't get here fast enough.

Let's, for the sake of argument, suppose it's true that there will be new 2.2 GHz PowerMacs. And let's assume these will be offered at groundbreaking prices...

How many bricks (or more likely obsolete G4's), do you think, will hit Apple offices and stores in the first few days after the announcement?



EE

[rmendis]

Originally posted by rm-rf /etc:
SGI's days seem to be over, especially with low priced hardware from Apple. SGI is not a good acquisition target for Apple, they have most of the pieces in place to effectively dethrone SGI... also, most of the talent from SGI (working on NUMA stuff) is now working at Apple...

It is not about products or technology. Or even talent.
It's about brand and mindshare:
customers and service.

I'm sure the SGI brand could be reinvigorated under Apple and Steve Jobs' leadership.

Apple could produce low end servers and workstations, but i can't imagine big iron packaged with an Apple logo...enterprise, goverment and research are probably going to have a similar opinion.

Xserve style blade renderfarms sound fine.
Though what will the difference between a "node" Xserve and a so called hypothetical Xstation?

[MindFad]

Originally posted by Esquare:
Let's, for the sake of argument, suppose it's true that there will be new 2.2 GHz PowerMacs. And let's assume these will be offered at groundbreaking prices...

How many bricks (or more likely obsolete G4's), do you think, will hit Apple offices and stores in the first few days after the announcement?



EE

More than a few, I imagine. It'll be a good way to get people into Apple Stores. They could start demoing FCP, all the iApps, maybe some Maya and high-end stuff. Or do they do that already? I've never been to an Apple Store where they were giving a presentation. That'd be cool, though. And set up gaming section to show off the PPC970s. Apple nerd heaven right there.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by rm-rf /etc:
Panther will see major UI changes introduced system-wide. It is designed to get a lot of people who haven't upgraded in over 2 years to want to upgrade... (500 MHz + will be optimal to run Panther..., a lot G3 towers, early iMacs will have to upgrade-- or run Panther at sub-optimal speeds...). Anything over 3 years old will run a lot of Panther at pokey speeds....

Don't tell me Panther is going to be slower than Jaguar... are you saying that if I have an old machine that runs Jaguar just fine, it may not run very well with Panther? Or are you talking about upgrades from OS 9?

[JB72]

Originally posted by rm-rf /etc:
A couple of clarifications... most of my hardware sources are outside Apple (key third-party hardware companies..) I know that 2.2 GHz configs exist, whether or not Apple chooses to release them at WWDC or wait for an update post Panther remains to be seen.

The price points of sub 2 grand are from outside sources... but whatever said and done, the prices are coming down (heard it from an Apple insider)....

read as: even If my guesses are way off, still believe me regardless.

[bewebste]

Apple will announce that the next version of OS X isn't just Panther, it's Panther Extreme. This will of course include Quartz Extreme, but alongside that will come HFS Extreme, Safari Extreme, Cocoa Extreme, and most importantly, Stickies Extreme. All processing will be routed through the graphics card, making the laggard speed of Motorola's chips irrelevant. New hardware will be announced shipping with 8Mhz 68000 chips that have been sitting in one of Motorola's warehouses for 15 years, thus chopping the price of all Apple's computers in half.

Oh yeah, and they'll ship with anti-gravity units. That is all.

[midwinter]

I think you meant to say that Pather Extreme will feature support for the new version of Airport Extreme, "Airport Extreme Extreme," which will be marketed with a massive ad campaign whose primary slogans will be "Airport Extreme Extreme--now with 100% more extreme!," "Way Extremerer Than The Last One!," "So Extreme That Everyone Else's Extremes Look Slightly Less So," and, it is important to point out, will be replaced within a year by "Airport Ultra."

(Aside and OT: Has anyone gone down the dishwashing soap aisle in the supermarket lately? The other day, it took me 5 minutes to find a bottle of Dawn that wasn't "ultra." I don't need no stinking ultra, since my dishes really aren't that remarkable, and I figure ultra would just be overkill.)

Cheers
Scott

[CharlesS]

The thing that will make Panther Extreme so "extreme" is that it will include a real panther. It will stalk around and sneak up to you unawares, and right when you don't expect it, it will pounce on and devour you.

[JLL]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
The thing that will make Panther Extreme so "extreme" is that it will include a real panther.

Cool, I always wanted a Panther - cute little kitty

[rmendis]

Anything to add to the rumors?

[clarkgoble]

Those who don't have X11 and Gnome might find the following interesting. *If* Apple really did hire the Eazel team it could be interesting. On the other hand there is a big difference between OSX and Gnome/Linux. I kind of wish they'd hired the Omni team to rewrite the Finder instead.

http://www.gnome.org/projects/nautilus/

http://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/03/Nautilus.pdf

Personally I like KDE better than Gnome. But that's me. Further Nautilus to me is far too much like Windows Explorer. In some ways that's a good thing. In other ways. . . Well I hope they aren't just making the Finder into Nautilus.

[rm-rf /etc]

Bud Tribble of Easel joined Apple last year as the VP of Software Technology

www.apple.com/pr/library/2002/jan/09tribble.html

I am pretty sure that Andy Hertzfield [multifinder fame] is now back at Apple also ... Hmmm, I should drop him a call and find out what he's upto ;-)

Bill Atkinson consults with Apple, last I knew he was working on something called iFile (Apple borrowed heavily from his ideas on the OS X finder -- transparencies, dock etc all find inspirations in Bill's work...)

This time around there seems to be very little on the grapevine about the new interface paradigm... vague rumblings but nothing substantials...

BTW, I heard another interesting piece. On the G4 towers that are shippping today, there are four chips on the motherboard, based on a technology acquired by Apple a few years ago... these should come alive with Panther....



----

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
Those who don't have X11 and Gnome might find the following interesting. *If* Apple really did hire the Eazel team it could be interesting. On the other hand there is a big difference between OSX and Gnome/Linux. I kind of wish they'd hired the Omni team to rewrite the Finder instead.

http://www.gnome.org/projects/nautilus/

http://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/03/Nautilus.pdf

Personally I like KDE better than Gnome. But that's me. Further Nautilus to me is far too much like Windows Explorer. In some ways that's a good thing. In other ways. . . Well I hope they aren't just making the Finder into Nautilus.

[calumr]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
I kind of wish they'd hired the Omni team to rewrite the Finder instead.

That's something I'd definitely like to see (unlikely as it is).

[osxisfun]

, there are four chips on the motherboard,



Racyer?

[JB72]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
, there are four chips on the motherboard,

That's nothing. The 970s will have eleven chips on the logicboard, surpassing the previously assumed maximum of ten. And yes, you guessed it, "This one goes to eleven" will be the marketing slogan.

[elmer]

You know those Smart Playlists in iTunes? Well, I bet they could extend this idea all over the place with the help of a BeOS database-filesystem. Smart lists of all kinds of files. Smart Font Collections. Smart Bookmark lists.
Similarly the Search boxes everywhere could return smarter results, perhaps with the help of Google technology.
Just an idea

[clarkgoble]

There was a thread over on Ars about "piles" and the piles patents. Part of it was the UI for dragging icons on top of one another. That never seemed that helpful.

The other was using this to generate bayesian filters to "group" related icons. Some speculated something like iTunes' smart playlist combined with this grouping (like how Mail discerns junk email).

If so it would be a very powerful addition to the "find" command in the Finder. Indeed if they did it well it would revolutionize how we browse our disks. That "if done well" is key though.

[//ey3dea]

I hear Steve is bringing back shared memory because it was so l337


he's sick of his computer being so stable

[ls -al]

rm-rf perhaps you are thinking about Bruce Horn not Bill Atkinson...

rm-rf wrote:

-----
Bill Atkinson consults with Apple, last I knew he was working on something called iFile (Apple borrowed heavily from his ideas on the OS X finder -- transparencies, dock etc all find inspirations in Bill's work...)
-----

As far as I know it's Bruce Horn who was working on iFile the Finder replacement. For those who don't know Bruce's work, in 1983 he came up with a program called the Finder. Who better to write a Finder replacement.

I found this

http://www.ingenuitysoftware.com/Cur...cts/ifile.html

---------------
Without divulging too many details, we are working on an information assistant to work alongside the Macintosh Finder. It has been over seventeen years since Bruce Horn created the first Finder, and a lot has changed since then.

While the Finder's basic design is clearly still viable--witness Microsoft's desktop interface, based on Finder concepts, and the usability and relative scalability of the existing Finder--it still was designed with 400K floppies and small numbers of files in mind. We believe that the Finder could use some help in managing the huge new volumes of information that pour onto everybody's desktop.

Our solution for this is iFile. iFile uses patent-pending technologies and user interface innovations to bring mountains of information under control. We think that our new approach will make finding your information faster, more convenient, and more intuitive, and of course, more fun! We think that it will be well worth the wait; we are striving to create a product that you won't be able to live without. To do that, we need to hear from you.
----------------

From what I know the Savannah ifile project uses Bayesian filtering to learn your filing habits and automates them...

Apple has an excellent engine (Latent Semantic Analysis which is similar to Bayesian filtering but better...) in form of the Junk Mail routine in Mail... I wouldn't be too surprised to see this extended as a basis for automated Filing in the Finder (or filing tips that are generated...) or Piles or auto-routing e-mail to folders in Mail 2.0 I would expect to see a lot more Bayesian filtering/indexing based algorithms in Panther.