[Thain Esh Kelch]

Appleinsider just sort of confirmed the specs... (Note the sort of)


I find it weird that the bottom end machine isnt gonna be updated...

[osxisfun]

Originally Posted by Thain Esh Kelch

Appleinsider just sort of confirmed the specs... (Note the sort of)


I find it weird that the bottom end machine isnt gonna be updated...

where? i just checked the site and the last post is april 16th.

[aafuss]

Where did they confirm the specs at AI (can't see anything about it on their front page)?

[Krypton]

Apparently Apple's booth at NAB is covered in black sheets and surrounded by security guards - the wraps come off tomorrow (Monday).

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Briefly: Apple Remote Desktop 2.2, Dashboard, Mac RAM boost

At the bottom:

Inline with previous reports, the site says iMacs will see a bump to 1.8GHz and 2.0GHz, with each model packing 512MB of standard RAM. Meanwhile, predictions for new Power Mac models also include 512MB of standard RAM and processors ranging from 2.0GHz to 2.7GHz.

Could be based on TS report though.

[Edit:] Never mind, it is. Stupid me. Move along...

[osxisfun]

Originally Posted by Krypton

Apparently Apple's booth at NAB is covered in black sheets and surrounded by security guards - the wraps come off tomorrow (Monday).

but is the floor open today?

super -strange if they keep up black curtains while people are walking around.

seems like new Hardware monday then.

thanks

[Thain Esh Kelch]

No, but some times people can make their way past security, or maybe they just work there. etc. etc.

Its normal that they keep everything under wrap though. Last years WWDC was a funny one with all those black curtains pictures on the net..

[drHo]

wow. well over the past years ive seen updates come and go. some good, some are 'whatever' the biggest from recent memory was when they announced the g5's. i was like 'damn!' but at this point ANY macintosh would be an update for me. my powermac is a 450mhz G3 B&W, and a Tibook 550.So yea. even a dual 800mhz g4 or an MacMini @ 1.25ghz would be like night and day for me. but back to topic.....im starting to worry about IBM now. its now almost the middle of 2005 and still no 3ghz G5. i mean i know that mhz aint everything-look at the PC side, AMD64's clocked much lower than p4's almost always win out-but still. i would love to see dual-core g5's in this upcomming update with PCIe slots (PCIexpress video cars are much cheaper than their AGP counterpats in the PC world at least). but prob. not. unless IBM can crank out some awesome hardware within a year....the jump to x86 (by that i mean AMD) dont sound like such a bad idea. but mauybe im just getting a bit dramatic here i need to know which direction to thrown my almost $3k i plan to spend on my next mac.

[osxisfun]

http://acme.blogs.com/apple/

[P]

Originally Posted by Cadaver

nVidia's TurboCache solutions are not very good performance-wise. Not much better than Intel Integrated Graphics with shared memory.

Dedicated video RAM - high-speed (aka expensive) dedicated GDDR3 @ 256-bits wide - will be far faster than main system memory for a while to come yet. Even DDR2 RAM has little to no performance gains over standard DDR RAM due to the higher latencies (which are part of the DDR2 spec).

Until system/main bus RAM uses something faster than what we've got now, a video card with dedicated high-speed specialized RAM will offer far more performance than sharing system RAM over a 16x PCI-express bus can.

And ATI & nVidia are still pumping out AGP-based chips of even their top-end GPUs. The AGP business is far larger still than the PCIe equivalent.

I know the TC solutions are slower than the regular boards they're replacing, but Apple is still delivering machines with 32 or 64 MB of video RAM. To go from 64 MB to 64 onboard + 256 via TC can only be an improvement, and I think it is something Apple is going to do. The TC and similar solutions are here to stay for "mainstream" graphics solutions, and like it or not that's what Apple puts in most machines. That Apple ought to spend a little more for the mid-range boards is another discussion entirely.

[Eriamjh]

The most honorable and always accurate site MacOSRumors.com calls for Dual 2.3, Dual 2.5, and Dual 2.7 (or 2.8) PMs.</sarcasm>

[Pierre B.]

Originally Posted by Eriamjh

The most honorable and always accurate site MacOSRumors.com calls for Dual 2.3, Dual 2.5, and Dual 2.7 (or 2.8) PMs.</sarcasm>

While we here are speculating about if and when Apple/IBM will release dual core PPC970-based systems , Intel as expected already did it. You can read it here. Sad days for a big chip manufacturer with so much experience in dual core designs like IBM.

[osxisfun]

is intel getting more out of the 2nd core than amd? i thought amd said that the 2nd core would only get you40% more speed.

if ibm's dual core gives us more and ships in the next few months then i do not see anything sad at all...

[Pierre B.]

Originally Posted by osxisfun

is intel getting more out of the 2nd core than amd? i thought amd said that the 2nd core would only get you40% more speed.

At this point, such things do not matter much. Why I am saying this: you have probably seen how Intel and AMD adjusted their dual-core release dates the last weeks/days. It was a furious I-will-beat-you-to-the-punch marketing game. Apple/IBM are the losers in this one. Even if IBM delivers some months later better performing dual core processors to Apple, the impressions game is already lost. I feel sometimes angry when I read comments on Intel's dual core solution, written as if Intel is the inventor of this technology that will change our computing habits. That's why I feel it is bad for Apple to join the party late.

And I have no explanation where this long experience in designing and producing dual core chips of IBM has lost. Shouldn't Apple/IBM be there first and with big difference? What actually happened?

if ibm's dual core gives us more and ships in the next few months then i do not see anything sad at all...

There would be more hope if we had not this TS rumor. If this rumor comes out true, don't expect new (with dual core processors I suppose) Power Macs before WWDC 2006. Apple seem to have well established yearly update cycles for the G5 machines.

[osxisfun]

>There would be more hope if we had not this TS rumor. If this rumor comes out true, don't expect new (with dual core processors I suppose) Power Macs before WWDC 2006. Apple seem to have well established yearly update cycles for the G5 machines.

I would say(guess) that if we do not see dual core by wddc then we will see them in late sept....

apple can always change their schedule for something big.

[osxisfun]

> I read comments on Intel's dual core solution, written as if Intel is the inventor of this technology that will change our computing habits. That's why I feel it is bad for Apple to join the party late.

Intel always does that. (home pc, video etc...) apple always manages a way to make tech seem new to people... apple humanizes tech.

[Pierre B.]

Originally Posted by osxisfun

I would say(guess) that if we do not see dual core by wddc then we will see them in late sept....

apple can always change their schedule for something big.

Sure, they can, I am not saying they would not if they have something big at hand. I just see that they update yearly the G5 machines since the G5 processor has been proved problematic in scaling. Now, saying "problematic" is somehow relative, since the competing processors have similar problems. But I cannot forget S. Jobs own words: "believe me, this architecture has legs" .

[Pierre B.]

OK, it may finally be as we all here fear. This is the second TS report on the subject, and it repeats the same thing: 970FX processors up to 2.7 GHz, and minimal other changes. The probability for TS to be wrong on that becomes more and more slim .

[Link]

Originally Posted by osxisfun

> I read comments on Intel's dual core solution, written as if Intel is the inventor of this technology that will change our computing habits. That's why I feel it is bad for Apple to join the party late.

Intel always does that. (home pc, video etc...) apple always manages a way to make tech seem new to people... apple humanizes tech.

Until the "geeks" come along and whine about the details.

How about this:

When apple bumped from the MDD to the Fw800, there was a 200mhz speedbump, but back then that was 16%, bumped airport to airport extreme, included the option of bluetooth, and of course, firewire 800..

This isn't going to change ANYTHING but the default video card from a 5200U to a 9600, and a 200mhz (8% this time) speedbump..

Almost a whole year after the 3ghz G5 was supposed to be available...

[tonalsickness]

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0504g5notes.html

looks like apples gonna dissapoint this year with not only staying under 3 GHz but still using the FX over the MP chips.

Thinksecret is right 90% of the time... so even at being only 90% right right now... this still stinks... how in a year did all that change is a 2 MHz top end increase a better burner and better video cards... seems like stuff you could change aftermarket and with overclocking (although I wouldn't want to overclock a 2.5 due to its heating already)

i may just get the 2.0 GHz iMac G5 and wait until the PM's break 3 GHz to get one... naw I would have been happy with a adual 2.5 so i'll be fine with a dual 2.7. o well anything over 1 GHz is a major upgrade from my 700 MHz iMac that I have now.

do you think they are planing another update in 6 months or something?


*edit* woops didn't see the link already posted...

[tonalsickness]

i had a thought... one that i hope is true... oh i hope...

Apple knows think secret is somehow getting the inside scoop on their products... we all saw that from the law suit... so what if now they are feeding think secret false information on the PM's so that when they release something better than a 200MHz boost with very little else, everyone will be shocked because we all looked at think secret and then lost confidence... or what if they release these minor upgrades within the next 2 weeks... then blow everyone away with better ones at WWDC, I mean what else can they release there, usually its the Mac upgrades.

oh well i guess i'm just grasping at straws over this because i thought they would have done better with the new technology and not having updated in a year...

[Eriamjh]

Well, it's Tuesday and the Apple store isn't down so no new PMs today, right?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Eriamjh

Well, it's Tuesday and the Apple store isn't down so no new PMs today, right?

Well, not necessarily. The store normally goes down in about a half an hour from now. If it stays up for another one and a half hours, I'd say that's it for today.

[The Ancient One]

I hate to bring this up, but Apple is pretty predictable, so, if Think Secret is more or less correct, I guess we can expect the next Power Mac upgrades after these at MacWorld '06 in January. Apple has always seemed to space these upgrades out as evenly as possible. I hope that's not the case, of course, but there is the ugly possibility that we've been deluding ourselves with unsubstantiated hype. Now where did I leave my asbestos suit?

[pman68]

I heard there would be no dual core, not because IBM can't do it, but because of PRICE. (Even DELL's new dual core system is $2,999 without monitor, pretty pricey for a PC.)

[tonalsickness]

ya know for some reason that satisfys me... if dell can't even get it below 2999 w/o monitor i feel better

[lyall]

post NAB visit yesterday. A bit tired, long drive and all. It's a big day when an industry CEO (and legend to boot) makes a dual 3.0Ghz announcement. You get to thinking, when the thing doesn't show up for a year after that. But when it still doesn't show up almost another year after that, you set to wondering about what the hell's going on (or what isn't but should be, as far as chip development is concerned).
Sure you can console yourself with the JVC Hdv cams, and FCP 5.0 and Shake 4.0, but the tinkerbug wont go away when you stare at the same silver towers you stared at the last time and nothing's changed on their inside whatsoever.

Why does all of this matter to me? Because my dual G5 (2.5 + 5Gb ddr3200+nvidia 6800ultra) still takes its time over even standeard def video effects renders and abso. crawls over 1920p Hd files- even with a sonnet tempo- the older one- not the new sonnet-esata).
And that's why I like to keep up with how things might be progressing over at big blue filled as it is with sealed tight lipped buggers about what the hell's going on with Antares MP. Last I checked, it was a hot star 600 light years away. I'm hoping Apple's Antares gets here quicker- don't think I can hang out waitin' for that long.

So is the dual 2.7 with 9650xt going to to do it for me? Nope. I need FPU and Integer units that can rip through 192Mb/sec bitstreams like- well, maybe quad onyx processors running an Inferno suite.
Does the hardware create better stories in film (where I work)? Nope again- but if I don't get old waiting to render- I can sure tell more of 'em.
Guess I'll wait till WWDC and hope light from Antares that left 600 years ago. See you then Steve, and don't go makin' no promises about quad/ dual 3.00's.

That said, if you take G5 dual 3.00's remove the decimal, multiply 300 by 2 (since it's a dual after all), you do get 600- which in light years is as far as Antares the star really is.
Maybe 'ol Steve wasn't fibbing after all.

[Link]

It might simply be, as said before, that they're making the top end "lower" to make space for the dual 3, or whatever it is.. dualcore or not... Quad 'processor' setup and all! I think people would rather see a $3500 quad 3ghz than nothing, though!

[tonalsickness]

yeah i mean what if these are the Powermac g5 specs because the quad g5 3.0 GHz isn't called Powermac anymore... maybe it's like the ProMac G5 or MaxMac G5 or something... who knows

[Goldfinger]

XStation

[jamil5454]

I'm ready for a surprise.

[polendo]

don't we all like suprises

[Eriamjh]

Bam! Nothing.

[efuseakay]

If these specs end up being legit, I will need to build myself a PC... *sigh*

[ajprice]

Why would they release a new computer with 10.3 on it a week or so before 10.4 comes out? If there are new PM's coming, its on the Tiger release, or at WWDC.

[Appleman]

Remembering the era when there was a company named PowerComputing. Those were the days when you could look into the near future of Apple: since PowerComputing (a licenced computer maker who made the fastest Macs in those days, later bought by Apple) was a relative small company, it got the newest chips from Motorola first, since Apple needed a much larger supply. Therefor it was able to stunt with speedbumps like the very first 200 MHz chips, while Apple had to try to sell its PowerMacs equiped with slower 175 MHz chips.

This exactly showcases the recent problem Apple has: even if there are 3 GHz dual core chips available, the supply probably isn't large anough to make it into the stores. No one would like the idea that only a handful of Mac users somewhere in x-city have been able to buy these newest and fastest Macs, while all the other mortals have to wait some months before they will ever be able to "spot" one in an Apple Store (of course, loyal resellers have to wait even longer!).

I prefer to have them readily available, instead of pre-ordering one and then wait for half a year on it.

On the other hand, from a marketing point of view (marketing, however, have never been Apples best side), maybe it would have been better to showcase a prototype on NAB, so Intel wouldn't have the opportunity to walk away with their "first in the world"-"changing the way computers will be used in the future"-blabla.

We know better though.

[Kristoff]

Originally Posted by efuseakay

If these specs end up being legit, I will need to build myself a PC... *sigh*

Go right ahead.

Dell has a really nice dual core machine starting at $2999.

Have fun with that.

[tonalsickness]

hmmm for me, I need a new computer, and I'm working and will have enough money by July I hope... so heres my choice...

dual core dell for $3000 ($3060 w/ firewire and DVD burner... no student discount availible yet) with crappy Windows XP Home and no update for a year.

or the new Powermac G5 $3000 ($2700 w/ student discount)... with a faster FSB, and Tiger... hmmm I think we have a winner...

[Brazuca]

Originally Posted by tonalsickness

hmmm for me, I need a new computer, and I'm working and will have enough money by July I hope... so heres my choice...

dual core dell for $3000 ($3060 w/ firewire and DVD burner... no student discount availible yet) with crappy Windows XP Home and no update for a year.

or the new Powermac G5 $3000 ($2700 w/ student discount)... with a faster FSB, and Tiger... hmmm I think we have a winner...

Its worse than that. Apparently, Dell offers 34% off that box, making the total around $2000.

I haven't confirmed it though, but Apple will look very bad until it releases a significant revision to the Power line.

[Link]

Originally Posted by Brazuca

Its worse than that. Apparently, Dell offers 34% off that box, making the total around $2000.

I haven't confirmed it though, but Apple will look very bad until it releases a significant revision to the Power line.

It'd still be worth the extra ~$500 depending on how it all went down, but I agree, if they don't hit dual dualcore this is going to suck, there's not even PCIe or anything of the like!

[badtz]

Originally Posted by ajprice

Why would they release a new computer with 10.3 on it a week or so before 10.4 comes out? If there are new PM's coming, its on the Tiger release, or at WWDC.

exactly what i was thinking.

No PowerMacs for sure [at least, not shipping] before then..

[himself]

Originally Posted by ajprice

Why would they release a new computer with 10.3 on it a week or so before 10.4 comes out? If there are new PM's coming, its on the Tiger release, or at WWDC.

If Apple were to announce new G5's today, they most certainly wouldn't ship for at least another month (especially if they are either dual core, 3.0 Ghz, or both)... which means that those machines would most certainly have 10.4 installed.

Even if they were announced today, they wouldn't ship until sometime after Tiger's official release. However, I do agree that Apple probably doesn't want to steal Tiger's thunder by pre-empting its launch with a significant update. I'm guessing the new G5 announcement will come on or soon after April 29. You won't get me to speculate on the hardware specs, though.

[DrBoar]

The sad thing with IBMs 970 is that they could have been first with a dual core PC in the market with a dual core G5 in a Apple computer. Now Intel is first with that grafted second core of the Pentium D. It even looks like the slick AMD implementation with IMC will come out before IBM/Apple will.

The G5 did look way better than the G4 it replaced at the start but now it starts to look like G4 revisited

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by DrBoar

The G5 did look way better than the G4 it replaced at the start but now it starts to look like G4 revisited

Except that a G5 2.7 GHz is actually still reasonably competitive. It only went up 35% in 2 years, but I'm still optimistic we'll see dual core in the fall.

[tae667]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Except that a G5 2.7 GHz is actually still reasonably competitive. It only went up 35% in 2 years, but I'm still optimistic we'll see dual core in the fall.

It's competitive only if the update comes with ~500� price drop.

[NY152]

Originally Posted by Kristoff

Go right ahead.

Dell has a really nice dual core machine starting at $2999.

Have fun with that.

All kidding aside.

My beautiful Hammerhead is getting a bit long in the tooth as it's the first version. So I am now (last six months really) in the market for a desktop. Obviously I was leaning toward the next "top o' the line" PowerMac. But with these horrible rumours I can't help but visit the inquirer and anandtech and notice that once again the PC world is steadily gaining altitude while "it looks" like were standing still. AMD and Intel as of today have now announced dual core chips. And those video cards are really nice.

I will wait and see what Apple does before I pull the trigger. I have my fingers crossed.

[tonalsickness]

I don't know what the ADC NAB meeting was last night but as of this morning PM orders on the Apple store claim to ship same day. So I guess nothing today.

I don't know if it was earlier on this thread or on a different one, but Apple won't make OS X for the PC because as soon as they do almost no one would be on a Mac. PC's have the speed, availible upgrades, etc. and if Apple made a PC version there would be no need for the slower more expensive hardware. (more expensive some of the time) Except for maybe the notebook divisions.

[deboerjo]

I'm suprised nobody's noticed and pointed out the fact that these new dual-core Pentium Ds from Dell and the like are all single-processor systems (physical processor, that is). So these new Pentium D systems are nothing more than what Apple's been offering since the late 90s; dual processor systems. We won't likely be seeing quad-core Xeon workstations for some time. Moreover, Intel has had to really cripple the clock speed on their dual core processors to keep heat under control. The Processor options for the Dell Precision 380 workstation that uses the Pentium D are either a 3.8GHz single core or a 3.2 dual (Using the 2/3 formula comparable to a 2.5 and 2.1GHz G5 or Athlon64 respectively).

AMD is likely going to be more of a threat to Apple, with dual-processor (quad-core) multicore Opterons at 2.2GHz being available soon, but still, that's only 2.2GHz

-Jon

[deboerjo]

Originally Posted by Brazuca

Its worse than that. Apparently, Dell offers 34% off that box, making the total around $2000.

No, they don't. It's a $400 discount, and only applies to the XPS model. Making prices $2600 for the XPS Gen5 and $3086 for the Precision380.

[tonalsickness]

how did you get the discount? when i went and did the whole create it thing... no discount, and to make it comparable to the PM it cost 3060 with no monitor. All i added was I changed it to a single DVD-burner from a combo drive, made it a 160GB HDD instead of the 80GB, and added the firewire card. I also removed the monitor that they had on it to try to take away some price... that was for the XPS Gen 5... and as I said no student discount so the $3060 was the price you pay... + s&h which is free from Apple right now... and if you go to the Apple store (and live near DE and can go to the Christiana Apple store) the $2699 price is what you pay (lucky for me)