AppleInsider Reports - analysis

I looked for some more info on this Sahara chip, which IBM just introduced a few weeks ago at the Microprocessor Forum in October. Found these:

<a href="http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0110/15.ibm.php" target="_blank">http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0110/15.ibm.php</A>

And this is from IBM's own press release:
<a href="http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/news/2001/1017_750fx.html" target="_blank">http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/news/2001/1017_750fx.html</A>
[quote]Select customers are currently evaluating the hardware with general sampling available in January of 2002. The PowerPC 750FX is planned to initially debut at 700 MHz, with versions at speeds up to 1 Ghz later that year.<hr></blockquote>This doesn't make it sound like whatever Mac uses this chip will hit 1Ghz in the near future, certainly not January or March.

[edit: Fixed a few of the 218 different spelling and UBB errors]

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: BRussell ]</p>

<a href="http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-8065180.html?tag=pt.excite.cinews..ne8065180" target="_blank">http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-8065180.html?tag=pt.excite.cinews..ne8065180</a>

That link pretty much sells me on the Flat-panel iMac, if they are sure of the component order of 100,000 per month (and I assume they meant the screens) then it's a done deal. Still just have to figure out if it's Jan, Feb, or Mar.

i don't see a superdrive as a very likely addition to the imac

The superdrive in an iMac still troubles me.

We've previously been told that iDVD can compress MPEG2 in near real-time solely because of the altivec optimisations for the G4 chip.

So will iDVD on an iMac create discs much slower in software (without altivec) or will the top iMac have a hardware compressor?

A flat panel iMac would never survive in a school setting. Apple should keep one model of the current iMac around and sell it for $499.............................................. ......

It [edit] the superdrive in an imac [/edit] seems quite feasable if consumers are willing to pay for it. I don't see anything wrong with having to wait longer for the encoding. Even if the encode time is 2x run length it would be fine with me, especially if it runs in the background.

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: Mike D ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by steve666:
<strong>A flat panel iMac would never survive in a school setting. Apple should keep one model of the current iMac around and sell it for $499.............................................. ......</strong><hr></blockquote>

But would Apple have more than one case design and model iMac?

[quote]The superdrive in an iMac still troubles me.

We've previously been told that iDVD can compress MPEG2 in near real-time solely because of the altivec optimisations for the G4 chip.

So will iDVD on an iMac create discs much slower in software (without altivec) or will the top iMac have a hardware compressor? <hr></blockquote>



perhaps the 9.8mb/sec (or whatever it is specificially) has something to do with the "fast" encoding speed.

[quote]A flat panel iMac would never survive in a school setting. Apple should keep one model of the current iMac around and sell it for $499.............................................. ......
Mike D <hr></blockquote>

give me a break. schools have thousands of laptops they give students but a stationary desktop machine with a much more durable LCD screen somehow won't hold up.

The flat panel iMac will not hold up in schools....

The G4 is too hot a processor for a portable....

No way will Apple release a widescreen laptop....

Funny how there are always Apple Urban Myth's.

I really would like to know the reason why everyone says that a LCD iMac wouldn't last in schools.

Considering that a much thinner LCD seems to last in a very droppable package (iBook)

....

sheesh.

and Apple isn't into the 2-different models with the same name thing... The old form, if it stays around will be only for education, and it will be like 799.. not for sale to the public. People who are willing to spend 800 on a computer are equally willing to spend 999 for something as much cooler as an LCD iMac would be than the old iBubble...

[quote]Originally posted by cdhostage:
<strong>
1) I've lost track. Is IBM now the official producer of the G3, with Moto doing no production work nor research on the now-dated processor line? Is this why IBM's new "Sahara" is going to power the new iMacs?

2) Assuming it will cost less to miniaturize components as in the iBook, is a $999 bottom price tag reasonable? If the predicteed standardized clock speed is low (let's assume 800 MHz) then this possible.

3) Is the SuperDrive worth offering in a consumer computer?</strong><hr></blockquote>


1. IBM makes G3's. End of story. Sahara is the newest generation of G3.

2. The Sahara G3 is *very* cheap. 999 is very possible, in my mind.

3. Yes- note, iDVD is a *consumer* application, meant to be used on the *consumer* computer... Steve would love to tout being the first to bring a good dvd authoring solution to the public.

While I don't think there's any more danger in selling flat panel monitors to schools than to anyone else, I do agree that it would be wise to keep around an ultra-cheap CRT-based option. Even if they offer it only to the education channel, I bet that $799 Mac helps get a foot in the door for many school RFP's. If they could somehow knock it down to $499-$599, all the better.

The only thing that bothers me about that article is the mention of a GeForce 2MX. I had heard a couple of months ago that the 2MX was being sunsetted. Even if it were to be available for a month or two after launch, why would you launch a completely new computer with such a component? It doesn't make sense.

The new computer would more than likely incorporate a Geforce 2/3 Ti 200, or the new nvidia mobile solution, the NV17 (I'm just wondering, if the new model is REALLY flat, would there be room for a conventional AGP card slot?)

[quote]Even if the encode time is 2x run length it would be fine with me, especially if it runs in the background.<hr></blockquote>A 733 MHz G4 could encode DVD data at 2x; does anyone think Apple could get a 1 GHz G3 without Altivec support to get this kind of performance? I don't think so, personally. But maybe Apple has cooked something up. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />

[quote]A flat panel iMac would never survive in a school setting. Apple should keep one model of the current iMac around and sell it for $499 <hr></blockquote> I agree. I was pushing for a couple of G4s for my high school journalism lab but I was told I couldn't order an Apple flat-panel display for the department because my [cheap] school district thinks LCDs are too costly and not worth their weight in gold. Obviously a flat-panel iMac is somewhat different because it's an all-in-one unit but keeping around an excess of CRT iMacs for the education market couldn't hurt.

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: cooop ]</p>

It will be interesting to see whether or not Apple will offer an older CRT model with the old design (similar to the 533 MHz G4 they offer now to education with the old case design) or if they will just sell a $799 LCD model with CD-ROM, 16 MB graphics card, and maybe a tad slower processor to drive down price.

We shall see.

[quote]Originally posted by cooop:
A 733 MHz G4 could encode DVD data at 2x; does anyone think Apple could get a 1 GHz G3 without Altivec support to get this kind of performance? I don't think so, personally. But maybe Apple has cooked something up.
<hr></blockquote>

Not sure what you mean, I was trying to say that the performance would be acceptable if the encode rate was twice the run length of the movie/file whatever. I think my "2x" was a little misleading.

I personally don't see them offering a SuperDrive in an iMac, especially if it's a flat panel display.

First of all, I don't think that any drive manufacturer has produced a DVD-R in a low-profile form - if they had, I would think that you would have seen it first in the PowerBook G4, not in the iMac.

Second, the reason that iDVD works as fast as it does is due to the Velocity Engine (AltiVec) in the G4. If the iMac stays with the G3 in an increasing clock speed, I don't see that it would have the muscle to be able to burn DVD's in any kind of respectable length of time.

Third, currently the SuperDrive retails for $450... even given some significant price drops, I don't see Apple including a drive that (given that the price point remains around $1000, +/- $300) costs 1/3 to 1/4 the selling price of the entire machine.

I personally would put money on seeing a Combo drive, not a SuperDrive, in the iMac. Those are very available, at a low enough cost, and in a low-profile form factor which would work in a flat panel style display.

[quote] The only thing that bothers me about that article is the mention of a GeForce 2MX. I had heard a couple of months ago that the 2MX was being sunsetted. Even if it were to be available for a month or two after launch, why would you launch a completely new computer with such a component? It doesn't make sense. <hr></blockquote>

Actually this makes perfect sense. Apple used the Rage 128 Pro for years after it was a defunct product. It fits with Apple's strategy of offering the lowest quality components possible to fatten their profit margins. As long as the iMac is targeted at computer illiterate users, then Apple can get away using obsolete video chipsets.

I will be very surprised if the new iMac uses a motherboard any more advanced that what is found on the current powerbooks. Expect an ultra-cheap/cheesey LCD with poor brightness, narrow viewing angle, and lots of dead pixles.

The new iMac will probably be a bust. Same old sh!t with Apple, nothing changes.

the other interesting thing is that they say that the imac will get a GeForce 2MX.........

1. isn't that what the powermacs have now?

2. if they do give it a GeForce 2MX, then what do you think they'll give the powermacs??? new radeon, GeForce 3 on all of them????

3. with a GeForce 2MX, doesn't that hint at the possibility of superdrive? high end GPU probably needed for encoding and such???

GPU has no effect on MPEG 2 encoding unfortunately

There's not going to be a superdrive on the iMac.

1. Price. Superdrives are too expensive for imacs. Unless Apple sold a $2000 imac they couldn't get a phat profit margin with superdrive.

2. G3. The iMac needs a G4 for the superdrive. Apparently, since the Apollo is going into the Powermacs, the iMacs will remain G3 dinosaurs.

3. Apple wants to keep an incentive for people to buy the powermacs. IF the iMac can do everything that the powermacs can do, then why buy a powermac?

4. Even the low end powermac doesn't currenty have a superdrive. It will trickle down to all powermacs before the iMac.

5. The iMac would need a slot loading superdrive, which to my knowledge doesn't exist.

6. Price. imacs are already overpriced at $1499. There is no way Apple could use a superdrive and keep their giant margins. Never would happen.

I say 2003 at the earliest before the imac gets a superdrive, if ever. It may turn out that DVD burning doesn't take off like CD burning. Since DVDs are copy protected, much of the incentive for DVD burners is gone...but if people could copy DVD movie discs,. then they might become popular.

[quote]Expect an ultra-cheap/cheesey LCD with poor brightness, narrow viewing angle, and lots of dead pixles.<hr></blockquote> <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
Hello no. Apple won't cut corners here. If it is LCD it will be same ones they are using for their 15" displays now, since they are moving from 15-17-22 to 17-19-22 in their displays.

[quote]2. G3. The iMac needs a G4 for the superdrive. Apparently, since the Apollo is going into the Powermacs, the iMacs will remain G3 dinosaurs.<hr></blockquote>

That's not a very good reason. People seem to be indicating that the encoding time is more a matter of the large fixed bitrate than anything else. Also, the Sahara G3 that has been reported on has been rumored to include an IBM implemented Velocity Engine.

[quote]Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg:
<strong>There's not going to be a superdrive on the iMac.

1. Price. Superdrives are too expensive for imacs. Unless Apple sold a $2000 imac they couldn't get a phat profit margin with superdrive.

2. G3. The iMac needs a G4 for the superdrive. Apparently, since the Apollo is going into the Powermacs, the iMacs will remain G3 dinosaurs.

3. Apple wants to keep an incentive for people to buy the powermacs. IF the iMac can do everything that the powermacs can do, then why buy a powermac?

4. Even the low end powermac doesn't currenty have a superdrive. It will trickle down to all powermacs before the iMac.

5. The iMac would need a slot loading superdrive, which to my knowledge doesn't exist.

6. Price. imacs are already overpriced at $1499. There is no way Apple could use a superdrive and keep their giant margins. Never would happen.

I say 2003 at the earliest before the imac gets a superdrive, if ever. It may turn out that DVD burning doesn't take off like CD burning. Since DVDs are copy protected, much of the incentive for DVD burners is gone...but if people could copy DVD movie discs,. then they might become popular.</strong><hr></blockquote>

1.) price... not as much an issue as it was. If Apple is getting them for about 300-350 a piece its not out of question for a 1499 iMac with decent margins. They retail for 499 now so they are getting cheaper.

2.) G3.... that has yet to be proven. iDVD 2 is fast simply because it uses a set bitrate which is very high so its less compression. if you use Apple's MPEG 2 decoder with VBR and and higher compression it crawls on a G4. There is no reason a G3 clocked at greater than 700Mhz can't handle 9mb/sec MPEG 2 compression at a realistic speed.

3.) Apple wants to take over the market for DV. Sony already has a cosumer machine in the imac's price range with DVD-RW. The iMac is where iDVD 2 is meant for. Apple wants to do this as fast as they can possibly do it. It's only going to increase sales.

4.) Why can it not be standard on all PowerMacs come january and at the same time on the high end iMac?

5.) This is a valid point and could be a problem

6.) yawn... Occasionally Apple does surprise us with bringing expensive components to the masses because they standardize on it and thus lower the cost. look at gigabit ethernet. 1000 bucks for a card when Apple made it standard on every powermac. if Apple wants an imac with a superdrive in january they could do it.

Steve Jobs already stated the superdrive would be in the imac in early 2002 early this year so i can't see how you could say 2003 if ever.

[quote]Originally posted by BRussell:
<strong>I looked for some more info on this Sahara chip, which IBM just introduced a few weeks ago at the Microprocessor Forum in October. Found these:

<a href="http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0110/15.ibm.php" target="_blank">http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0110/15.ibm.php</a>

And this is from IBM's own press release:
<a href="http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/news/2001/1017_750fx.html" target="_blank">http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/news/2001/1017_750fx.html</a>
This doesn't make it sound like whatever Mac uses this chip will hit 1Ghz in the near future, certainly not January or March.

[edit: Fixed a few of the 218 different spelling and UBB errors]

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: BRussell ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
They said also that at equal mhz the fx is 25 % faster than the previous G3. It's mean that an 750 fx at 700 mhz cheap equal 867 mhz ppc 750, and a 800 mhz fx equal a one Ghz ppc 750. Despite the lack of altivec this chip is not so bad.

Wow, that Sierra is a phat chip!

[quote] Hello no. Apple won't cut corners here. If it is LCD it will be same ones they are using for their 15" displays now, since they are moving from 15-17-22 to 17-19-22 in their displays. <hr></blockquote>

You mean like the iMac's CRT? I use several iMacs at work, and the display quality is BAD. Fuzzy corners and edges, poor contrast, and what's up with the convex screen? In 2001 a flat screen CRT should be standard on iMacs.

As for Apple using the 15" ASD LCD in the iMac, I wouldn't count on it. That's a high quality LCD display...Apple will choose something cheaper for the iMac. Much cheaper.

I'm afraid that much dissapointment will ensue after the new iMac is introduced. In fact, considering the size of the iBook LCD display, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple went with a 14" LCD in the new iMac. Same size viewing area as now. It would be a tragic decision, but I guess it doesn' tmatter to me because even 15" is too small for these eyes. Liebensraum! I need space on my display! I'm used to handling big things and my display is no different! l)

JD, don't try to hide it: you're gonna want/buy one of these things.

Also, the Sahara is phat. 512kB on die cache at full speed (double Apollo's) plus a four stage pipeline (vesrus Apollo's 7) running a Gigahertz or near speeds?

@#$%ing sweet, if you ask me.

Altivec schmaltivec... I spend 3/4 of my time in linux, anyway.

jd likes the contra-position and likes also to be a pessimist. people are different...

1. Steve Jobs is on record as having said the he expects DVD burning on consumer machines in Q1 2002.

2. We do not know that the new iMac will be slot loading.

3. I believe that there is a slot loading DVD-RW but it is too thick for the Ti book, may be it would fit into an LCD iMac.

4. I don't believe we will see a DVD-RW without Altivec or equilivent. Consequently we should either get a Sahara with the IBM version of Altivec or a G4.

5. We hear stories of 14" and 15" LCD prototypes withing Apple. I do not believe that Apple will bring a 14" iMac to the market, the shortcomming would be all that anyone would talk about, thus ruining all the good work that had been done. The machine needs to compete with PC's which usually have 17" CRT's as standard. What we will really need is a 15" widescreen as per the TI or a 16", I know the costs are an issue and I am not sure it can be overcome. But I think that as the prices of LCD's are still falling it is possible that they will introduce a 16" with all the positive publicity that they would get accepting a temporally reduced margin knowing that as the price of LCD's continues to fall margins would rise to "Normall" levels.

[quote]Originally posted by JW Pepper:
<strong>1. Steve Jobs is on record as having said the he expects DVD burning on consumer machines in Q1 2002.</strong><hr></blockquote>This has become one of those urban legends. At the financial analysts' meeting in January, Jobs was asked when we could see a Superdrive in a consumer machine, and he said not this calendar year, but next.

He definitely did not say Q1 2002.

In fact, the way Apple usually marks time, "next calendar year," even if it was a promise, would mean Dec. 31, 2002.

I found the AI article to be very believable but that is mostly because it sums up existing information and provides very little new. I figure after six months of being turned off their sources might need to be warmed back up ... so goes the world.

As far as iMacs go. I would be very surprised to see G5s January. I think that will be put off. New iMacs, maybe a DVD-RW drive but if so it will be expensive, not because it should be but because its such a strong feature. Last year Jobs said the goals was to bring the Superdrive to the consumer line in a year, well here we are.

Flat panel is the logical move, they don't make CRTs any more and most of the low end Dell PCs iMacs compete against are now packaged with LCDs. They need it to bring the iMac back into the market in a competitive way.

Apple will not do more than one form factor for a product, none of this Performa garbage again.

I think the G4 will move to the iMac soon but not before the G5 is released, the spread of G4 clock speeds is not wide enough for it to be across all product lines. If they put a 500MHz G4 in an iMac people would be like great ... Apple is still stuck at 500MHz. When G3s are around 700, and G4s are pressing at 1GHz, with the G5 hoping to debut at 1.2GHz and higher I figure they will have to work this very smartly.

The transition you want to have is that the iMac is at G4 when the PowerMac becomes G5. But you can't really do G4s in both iMacs and PowerMacs for long due to the current MHz market crap. I think the G5 will not be out for a while, either that or iMacs and PowerMacs will both be updated very close.

One problem with this is that I can't see Apple supporting three processors in Macintosh. Seems that the G3 would have to fade from current products fast, not just be pushed back to the iBook line. A new product .... G3 powered PDA ... is too much to hope for at this point so I think our G5 hopes are premature.

[quote]If they put a 500MHz G4 in an iMac people would be like great ... Apple is still stuck at 500MHz.<hr></blockquote>

In fact, I think one of Steve's unspoken goals is to reach a point where he never has to say "500MHz" again.

Why do most people say Apple won't put a G4 Chip in their iMac until the G5 comes out for Powermacs?

I bet every Apple employee wants the G4 in EVERY computer that Apple makes, I even think some want G5 accross the board.

If they can do and make money doing it, they will. that's it. If the opportunity cost of sticking with G3 is fewer predicted sales, then they'll put the G4 in to reach the most efficient sales numbers (highest gross margin curve meets highest features curve)

[quote]Originally posted by Amorph:
<strong>

In fact, I think one of Steve's unspoken goals is to reach a point where he never has to say "500MHz" again. </strong><hr></blockquote>

Yeah, that's probably about right.

Well, the G3/G4 iMac thing comes down to this for me:

They need to maintain the PowerMacs are superior performance Macs over the iMacs.

This means that they either need a gap in MHz between the two using two different chips - the better chip at slightly higher MHz goes in the PowerMac.

---or---

They need larger MHz gap and both use the same chip.

The difference basically needs to be enough that it is obvious that one is a high performance Mac and one is not.

Right now the MHz gap in G4 performance [350-867MHz] is fine but the current G3 chips are running at 700MHz.

To drop from the current 700MHz to a lower clockspeed would not be acceptable. So the other option is that the highend iMac uses a 733MHz G4. But if this is the case then the low end PowerMac would have to be significantly higher in clockspeed [since both would be using G4s and therefore be directly comparable performance wise].

Since we don't expect G4s to clock over 1.2GHz anytime soon I just see it as unlikely that Apple would move the G4 to iMacs and thus blurring the line between them.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Bogie:
[QB]Well, the G3/G4 iMac thing comes down to this for me:

They need to maintain the PowerMacs are superior performance Macs over the iMacs.

This means that they either need a gap in MHz between the two using two different chips - the do you not remember when the iMac was a 233Mhz G3 and the powermacs were 233, 266, 300?

same processor, not a huge clockspeed gap.

266 iMac G3 PowerMacs were 300, 350,400 Not a huge clockspeed gap, same processor.

333 iMac G3 PowerMacs were 350, 400, 450. not a huge clockspeed gap, same processor.

450 Mhz iMac G3, PowerMac G4 450. same clockspeed different processor.