Rumor: Disaster at MWNY... :( - Page 6

Didn't SpyMac also bring us that two-headed iMac rumor? Not sure, but I remember a picture.

[quote]Originally posted by b8rtm8nn:
<strong>I forgot all about Moto's fab's, Programmer. When their financial problems really hit the fan 2-3 yrs ago they started shutting down fabs, then started laying off people, then sarted centralizing the org - all in reverse order to what normal companies do. At some point, they realized that putting all the working, reliable equipment in the same fab increased their yields. Now they were generating products at closer to the theoretical numbers they used to quote to their customers.

After making an actual profit based on this exerience, they figured they could try keeping a few fabs instead of selling them off (which they considered). I actually think that we will get better than 1.2 Ghz chips next month, now that I think about it.</strong><hr></blockquote>


It was more than their equipment, it was a factor of their priorities and policies. Friends and co-workers of mine quit Moto after endless frustration at managements inability to listen to their suggestions on how to improve defectivity and yield.

To contribute to this thread a good friend of mine who is a former Moto employee talked to some of his old co-workers this week. The rumor inside of Moto itself is that they will no longer be producing CPUs for Apple in the future. Apple has decided to go with someone else. Whether that is IBM I don't know, but if Moto's own employees are whispering about it, there certainly is some credence to those rumors. And since this person barely knows who Apple is and would never bring the subject up in conversation I put some stock in it.

[quote]Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg:
<strong>...A scaled down Power chip? If so, then that is a LONG ways off, too long...Why didn't Apple do this SOONER? That's my question. Clearly Apple has been sucking Moto's old, gnarly tit far too long.</strong><hr></blockquote>

If it's true, there's no reason to think that this wasn't decided upon more than a year ago.

Here is part of an article from siliconstrategies.com, dated 4/4/02. The 2nd paragraph sounds like it says that Motorola's getting out of the personal computer business.

"In another filing with the SEC, Motorola said its new semiconductor strategy, adopted in response to
last year's downturn, is to focus our internal manufacturing capacity on leading edge and specialty technologies, while supplementing our internal manufacturing capacity with joint venture manufacturing facilities and purchases of products from outside vendors, primarily foundries.

The new business model calls for focusing on providing silicon-to-software solutions to the wireless communications, networking and transportation markets because the company believes that these are growth markets, the filing said. The personal computer market is maturing, and is dominated by a single well-entrenched competitor, providing little opportunity for us, it added."

One thing the article mentioned that I didn't know was that Apple was one of their (Motorola's) top 10 customers last year.

Here is the link to the article.
<a href="http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20020403S0039" target="_blank">http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20020403S0039</a>

[quote]Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg:
<strong>So it's true. Every reliable source points towards Apple ditching Moto and their sorry-ass G5....but in favor of who? IBM? A scaled down Power chip? If so, then that is a LONG ways off, too long. </strong><hr></blockquote>

You're assuming that just because you haven't heard about something, it hasn't been happening for quite some time.

I bet there will be some interesting stuff going on next year.

[quote]Originally posted by moki:
<strong>You're assuming that just because you haven't heard about something, it hasn't been happening for quite some time.

I bet there will be some interesting stuff going on next year.</strong><hr></blockquote>


There you go again, Moki.

My guess would be that when the G4 debacle happened Steve threw a fit and sent his chief hardware engineers on a mission to find alternatives. IBM may have been the only one, and I'd expect that Apple would have given both potential suppliers an opportunity to prove themselves. Once enough work had been done to make a solid decision, Apple would have awarded a contract. Shortly thereafter is when Motorola revamped their roadmap and ditched pretty much any sign of desktop processors. That would make next year a reasonable time frame for the "replacement killer" processor.

The real question is: did Moto continue on with the 7500 for their own purposes, and if so will Apple use it? MOSR seems to think so, but I'm not convinced.

My gut says that 2003 will be a big year. Thanks moki for making me feel a bit better

Ryan Meader's infected, ulcered gut says that a "7500" will debut MWNY. Well, slap my bitch.

What goes up on MOSR is no more reliable than me or you (with possible exeptions of smart people/insiders like Programmer, Moki, JYD, maybedorsal etc).

They got the cube wrong. Apple Insider predicted it pretty good, MOSR came up with crap like a PCI slot and 10" instead of 8", replacing the Power Mac etc etc.

Barto

[quote]Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg:
<strong>Next year is too long. MWSF? Apple could pull through by the skin of their teeth. But any later, and game over. Apple cannot sell 1 GHz Powermacs against 3.5 GHz Pentium boxes, it just ain't gonna happen.

I fear that by the time the G5 arrives, Apple's user base will have migrated to Wintel.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Too long for whom? You. I have patience and my dual gigger is pretty good for what I do, it could always be faster but patience is a virtue.

Besides all this means is that no one who's even making Apples next processor. Maybe AMD is already working on it ( for you windows lovers).

This is the strongest case yet for Apple not having a massive update in July, and I will tell you what it will be. The fact that people are alleging insider trading on Apple due to the fact that so many execs, filed and sold their stock before their announcement about a sales shortfall.

These same execs that "didn't know" about the shortfall and selling their stock before it was announced also know if there is a real update in July that would cause the same said stock to rebound.

Based off of that I believe we will have the iMac staying with GF2mx and being bumped to 1 ghz across the line with only the drives and ram changing the price. They will also get a 133 mhz bus and a price drop. eMac will also get 1 ghz across the line, drives/ram changing price points, but will stay at 100 mhz bus.

The PowerMac line will get dual processors at 933, 1 ghz, and 1.2 ghz. Superdrives will be standard. Radeon 32 meg 7500 will remain on the low end and mid will keep 64 meg GF4mx and the top come standard with 128 meg Radeon 8500.

Motorola will not have created a true DDR solution for Apple. Apple will have engineered around this with the same solution we saw in the xserve only now they will have had a little more time to improve it a bit more. Steve will explain that the DDR implementation is DDR all the way up to the processor just like in the xserve. However on the xserve the bus to the processor is still sdr-133 that is all the G4 will support.

Apple will explain that their new dual processor machines now have two cpu buses instead of just one. The two buses are independent and can each access the DDR solution at their full sdr133 speed.

Apple will also include ATA-RAID capability in the new PowerMacs, but will not be included in on the low end to help seperate the lines a bit. (dual 933 to dual 1 gig isn't much of a jump, but dual 1 gig to 1.2 is pretty large)

Steve will announce that the prices have been dropped $300 across the board. ($200 on the low end) (Making all the folks who bought at the old price points feel like complete asses) He will also point out (just as he did before) that the previous high end Mac is now available with better throughput and drive options for $1000 less than it was just a week before.

So new pricing

$1399
dual 933
Radeon 7500w/32 megs
superdrive
256 ddr ram
60 gig HD (no raid option)

$1999
dual 1 gig
Geforce4mx w/64 megs
superdrive
512 megs ddr ram
120 gig HD (possibility of raid option by adding drive or also added via Applestore)

$2699
dual 1.2 gig
Radeon 8500 w/128 megs
512 megs ddr
superdrive 2 (just announced today in press release)
dual 120 gig HD(with 8 meg cache) preconfigured in fast array.

It will be enough for now and will raise PowerMac sales up to their old levels but Apple will sell less of the high end machine and thus make a smaller profit.

I have no insider info, I just know Apple, and have been a Mac user since 1990.

Trumptman

[ 06-28-2002: Message edited by: trumptman ]</p>

I don't think too many people have really put enough thought into the fact that Powerlogix and company are now selling 1GHz AIB's. Apple wouldn't have tolerated such a scenario if they didn't plan on having something substantially faster at MWNY. Of course, Moto may have said to Apple to hush up as they want to sell as many faster and more profitable processors as possible.

IMO, there's gotta be more than just a 1.2 GHz coming out. I would venture and say there's at the very least a 1.4 GHz system coming out, and if anything less, Apple is finally in deep doodoo.

I don't think we'll ever seen a dual MPX bus setup -- it burdens the chipset too much with so many pins and bus snooping duties, not to mention the dual and single processor machines would need different chipsets and motherboards. And all this just for 6-12 months until the next big thing comes along. More likely we'll see exactly the Xserve solution, or a G4 w/ 166 MHz (which Motorola has mentioned).

Other than that you're probably not far off.

JYD: Hardware sales are off throughout the market, its not just Apple (nor just their Pro machines). Better machines would probably improve sales slightly, but I doubt it would be a very large effect.

[quote]Originally posted by trumptman:
<strong>This is the strongest case yet for Apple not having a massive update in July...</strong><hr></blockquote>

This might not be a 'massive' update, but this would be a significant jump. Good enough to keep a lot of people happy.

At any rate, it would not be a "Disaster at MWNY."

A Dp 933 with a superdrive and a 17" LDC for around $2000

Not the 2.6GHz G5v we all wanted but $500 cheaper than my last purchase (a brand new pismo 400) and about 4 times faster, not bad for the "low end".

Where do I sign.

[quote]Originally posted by KidRed:
<strong>Ok, if true then Apple will be bumping the towers by 200mhz at once.

When was the last time Apple bumped 200 mhz? OR better yet, when has Apple ever bumped more then 200mhz?</strong><hr></blockquote>

<img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> Uhh, you're looking at the wrong numbers. Speed increases "used to be" improvements upon a common mulitplier. As when the G4 came out at 400-450-500,(or should have) it superseded the then top 300 G3. So though 500 is 200 more than 300, the important number is the percentage of increase...1.66 times faster. So it is not unreasonable to expect a 1.6ghz g4. Though I won't hold my breath for it. But face it, the only times that we weren't just a little "let down" at a MWxp were when new generation computers were unveiled.

[ 06-29-2002: Message edited by: imaviligidiot ]</p>

In response to trumptman's post.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't apple execs simply FILED to sell their shares. I don't believe they have actually been sold yet.

[quote]Originally posted by imaviligidiot:
<strong>As when the G4 came out at 400-450-500,(or should have) it superseded the then top 300 G3.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Actually, B&W G3 Power Macs were shipping at 450 MHz before the G4 debuted a few months later.

The biggest MHz jump we've seen from Apple was the introduction of the 733 MHz Power Mac G4 at MWSF 2001, which finally superseded those with 500 MHz chips.

Yeah, got one of them

[quote]Originally posted by Daver:
<strong>
Actually, B&W G3 Power Macs were shipping at 450 MHz before the G4 debuted a few months later.

The biggest MHz jump we've seen from Apple was the introduction of the 733 MHz Power Mac G4 at MWSF 2001, which finally superseded those with 500 MHz chips.</strong><hr></blockquote>


Which was a 46.6% clock rate jump, for those who are math-impaired.

As long as Apple can give us a &gt;30% performance increase at the same price as today's machine, I'll be getting a new Pro machine. Coupled with a Jaguar performance boost, these new machines should scream. Originally, I was going to hold out for the G5, but I'm getting tired of the wait.

My guess for a the top end machine at MWNY would be a dual 1.33 GHZ machine with a 166MHZ DDR using the X-Serve hack. Maybe an increase of the L3 cache to 4MB. This machine should be at least 30% faster than the current dual 1GHZ machines.

Overall, despite all the naysayers in this forum, I believe Apple is doing a surprisingly good job of competing in a very depressed tech economy. Despite the Megazhertz gap, OSX continues to mature and get faster. Apple is milking performance from their software which is better than the Wintel solution of using all the extra MHZ to run bloated code. My guess is that one of the reasons Microsoft code seems fast (ie. IE6 for Windows) is that they do not do all the bounds checking and exception handling that is needed to make a system secure. Yes, each security patch that I download for my Windog machine seems to make things a little bit slower. Security has its price. I would much rather waste a second or two for a web page to load than to re-install my OS and restore all my backed up software.

[quote]Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg:
<strong>Next year is too long. MWSF? Apple could pull through by the skin of their teeth. But any later, and game over. Apple cannot sell 1 GHz Powermacs against 3.5 GHz Pentium boxes, it just ain't gonna happen.

I fear that by the time the G5 arrives, Apple's user base will have migrated to Wintel.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Actually, from my perspective, more people are moving to Apple, rather than away. Mac OS X is the sole reason.

There are probably more people out there than you realize (remember, 5% of computer users would be tremendously huge to Apple) that feel faster CPUs are not the problem with computing right now.

These are people that value reliability, stability, integration, and so on and Apple is delivering on these points. I've got a 400MHz iBook and a 450MHz Cube and while at times they seem a bit slow, it's not like 5+ years ago when I always felt that I needed a faster system.

I'm seeing a lot of switchers - people that have used unix at some time in their past, people that are just sick and tired of having virus after virus sweep through their system. There are also those that started to switch to Windows 1+ years ago that are still finishing that process up, but I haven't seen anyone switch that way in the last 6 mos, rather people starting the switch to Mac.

Just my perspective.

[quote]Originally posted by Programmer:
<strong>I don't think we'll ever seen a dual MPX bus setup -- it burdens the chipset too much with so many pins and bus snooping duties, not to mention the dual and single processor machines would need different chipsets and motherboards. And all this just for 6-12 months until the next big thing comes along. More likely we'll see exactly the Xserve solution, or a G4 w/ 166 MHz (which Motorola has mentioned).

Other than that you're probably not far off.

JYD: Hardware sales are off throughout the market, its not just Apple (nor just their Pro machines). Better machines would probably improve sales slightly, but I doubt it would be a very large effect.</strong><hr></blockquote>


Again I will fully admit that I could be just pissing in the wind so to speak. The thing that makes me think this is the same thing that is holding us back, the G4 has it's memory controller on chip. I took this quote from Ace's Hardware


[quote]For multi-processor systems with a full on-die memory controller, the aggregate memory system bandwidth increases linearly with each extra CPU, which makes designing a system with high bandwidth easier, and also more scalable - memory resources increase with memory demands. This also helps for server systems which need lots of memory as it's very hard to control multiple memory DIMMs from a single controller at high speed - having more controllers and fewer DIMMs per controller makes a higher speed design easier.

Multi-processor systems for CPUs with on-die memory controllers still need high-speed cache coherency connections, and also a way to access "non local" memory - this is a bit like having a system with multiple northbridges. Such a coherency/non-local connection could be rather like a "front side bus" in current multi-processor systems, which would mean that non-local memory requests would have similar latency and bandwidth characteristics as current systems.
<hr></blockquote>

Again from what I understand, Apple doesn't have a northbridge/southbridge combo like all the PC motherboards. They have one controller chip. (which has to already have been redesigned due to xserve)

Adding a second cpu bus wouldn't require as much trouble as you think because it isn't requiring access to a shared memory controller for both cpu's. In this regard it would be more like AMD's 760mp solution only more elegant and better.

It would be a neat engineering trick to turn a disadvantage (old on chip memory controller) into an advantage via some engineering magic. It would also allow us Mac users to tell PC users to stop comparing our Mac's with true server/workstation engineering to their PC's with an antiquated n/s bridge and all the resources associated with it.

Trumptman
(wondering why his shins are wet)

[ 06-29-2002: Message edited by: trumptman ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Eskimo:
<strong>To contribute to this thread a good friend of mine who is a former Moto employee talked to some of his old co-workers this week. The rumor inside of Moto itself is that they will no longer be producing CPUs for Apple in the future. Apple has decided to go with someone else. Whether that is IBM I don't know, but if Moto's own employees are whispering about it, there certainly is some credence to those rumors. And since this person barely knows who Apple is and would never bring the subject up in conversation I put some stock in it.</strong><hr></blockquote>
i knew there was someone on here who used to work for moto. yes, what eskimo is saying is true. i mentioned it back in january, so it's been going on for quite some time. this isn't new information. someone else mentioned the "pi" part of it (which i had heard about in jan, but didn't want to disclose because the info i got would have made the source very obvious). that was the straw that broke the camel's back. ibm's doing the next gen chip.

and from what i heard back then, they should have been in production by now for a month or two. of course, i have no idea if that means they'll show up at mwny. plus, i'm not very technical honestly, so a lot of the information he told me got lost in the mush that is my artsy brain. i would have given more information, but at the time i didn't want to risk anyones' jobs.

[ 06-29-2002: Message edited by: admactanium ]</p>

The eMac

<a href="http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/eMac/art/nor01.gif" target="_blank">http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/eMac/art/nor01.gif</a>

PowerBook

<a href="http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/PowerBook_G4/art/iv01.gif" target="_blank">http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/PowerBook_G4/art/iv01.gif</a>

and Power Mac

<a href="http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/PowerMacG4/art/nicr01.gif" target="_blank">http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/PowerMacG4/art/nicr01.gif</a>

Use a Uni-N Northbridge and KeyLargo south bridge.

The iMac

<a href="http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/iMac/art/ts01.gif" target="_blank">http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/iMac/art/ts01.gif</a>

and iBook

<a href="http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G3/ibook/art/dsl01.gif" target="_blank">http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G3/ibook/art/dsl01.gif</a>

Use a single "Integrated Controller" or IC.

SiS used to make a Pentium 4 motherboard with an IC as opposed to a north/southbridge setup.

An IC is good in that there is no north/south bridge bottleneck, but means for a very large chip. There is no way you'd get decent integrated graphics, or surround sound onto an IC without making it too large to be fabbed.

A G5 iMac, with its new approach where the CPU controls the memory, and Rapid-I/O switch(es) link main controllers like a LAN would probably look something like



Barto

[ 06-29-2002: Message edited by: Barto ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg:
<strong>Next year is too long. MWSF? Apple could pull through by the skin of their teeth. But any later, and game over. Apple cannot sell 1 GHz Powermacs against 3.5 GHz Pentium boxes, it just ain't gonna happen.

I fear that by the time the G5 arrives, Apple's user base will have migrated to Wintel.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I'll say this much:

My predictions and timetable have softened based on info in the past week. I know it sounds cheesy given that its directly following MOSR's predictions, because they are similar, but maybe we have the same source:

1.0, 1.26, 1.4 Ghz Dual G4s
133 system bus (that's right folks, no change...)
PC133 SDRAM (again, no DDR, or MAYBE the so-called "Hack")
Explanations can be provided if you want to private message me...

MOSR claims 1.0, 1.26, and 1.4 with a 166 bus. Someone want to explain how you achieve these frequencies with this bus? Sounds like a load.

Now, before you get all "Game over" Junkyard Dawg, please rest assured that the game has only begun. The bus doesn't need an update, and DDR would be there only for marketing, it wouldn't add much speed at all. (Private message me for more)

Steps have been taken to lighten the load on the Northbridge so memory can function better. I won't go into details....yet....but think about what could be unloaded from Northbridge and how.

Will be an amazing machine.

Now, updated timeline:
MWNY02:
See above

MWSF03:
G4s at or around 1.5 Ghz (maybe midrange)
166 Mhz bus (check multiplier...it works)
DDR for sure.

MWNY03:
G5.
3 of my sources have confirmed that the G5 is IBM sourced. No more talk of Moto in the G5s. I don't know yet if it will be a PowerX derivative, or what, but if I hear anything I will put it down.


Now, for some this might be a let down, but seriously folks, the 133 bus isn't our problem, no matter how much JYD (and admittedly, I, previously) has said so.

Pvt message for more info.

[quote]Originally posted by The All Knowing 1:
<strong>
1.0, 1.26, 1.4 Ghz Dual G4s
133 system bus (that's right folks, no change...)
PC133 SDRAM (again, no DDR, or MAYBE the so-called "Hack")

Steps have been taken to lighten the load on the Northbridge so memory can function better. I won't go into details....yet....but think about what could be unloaded from Northbridge and how.
</strong><hr></blockquote>

So, new G4 with integrated memory controller. I'd be surprised if Xserve DDR wasn't there considering that Apple's already invested the R&D to bring it to market, and the Xserve pricing suggests that it's not overly expensive to implement. (.edu gets a $500 discount on each config, so there are either some real margins in these things, or Apple is courting higher-ed like they haven't in quite some time.)

Toss in some upgrades around the edges (Firewire, etc.) and this could be a damn nice update. I'd really like to see up to 2 of the Xserve removable drives used in a tower config - dual IDE controllers + striping could improve disk perf rather nicely for video applications, but after playing with an Xserve today, I'm not sure those drives would fit - they're damn big.

That'd just be icing on the cake. It'd help drive down costs of the drive modules due to the volume, and deliver added revenue to Apple instead of 3rd parties, but the prospect of a $350 60GB drive might cool people off a bit.

Okay, I have been lurking too long. I guess it is time for me to post.

Let me start by saying that Motorola is probably not getting complete out of the CPU business. They don't want to burn that bridge, but at the same time they don't want to invest the resources right now to get the job done. As a result, they will honor their obligations most likely by "contracting" out CPU production to a third party. Initially this is likely to be an asian semi-conductor producer, but the long term future will be dependent on how well they do.

When motorola dropped the ball on G5 development, Apple stepped in and invested further resources. As a result, Apple has certain rights to some of Motorola's technology. Apple wants the chips, and they don't care who makes them or what they are called (other than for marketing purposes) as long as they get them. Motorola is most likely going to contract out production for the time being, in the meantime, Apple is "hedging its bets" by talking with IBM and possibly AMD to produce its futrue chips as well. Understand, these things are all in the early development phases, and any the winds could shift at any moment.

If AMD or IBM was contracted to produce chips, it would most likely be the the chips that are of Apple's and Motorola's joint design. i.e the G5 in some form. Motorola will keep just enough control, to allow them to bring it back in house, if their fortunes turn in their favor, otherwise they will themselves subcontract manufacture and development out or allow Apple to do it. Either way, they dispose of a part of business that is not making money for them, while they collect royalties on their intellectual property unless Apple buys it outright.

Now what will we see? Well I don't care what anyone else says, but we will see a faster motherboard with an improved implementation DDR RAM, and it will make a "significant" performance difference. There will also be faster chips, of at least 1.3 ghz.. The 1.6 does exist, but not in sufficient quantity to meet demand. 1.3 to 1.4 would be the highest top end to hope for, but combined with the new mobo, the performance increase will be substantial.

When will we see this? Well time is a nebulous beast, and difficult to tame. Steve wants it for MWNY. There is a chance of delays, but I think still before September.

What will we most likely see? Okay, here in a fit of optimism, I will stick my neck out. If you end up with me at chopping block, be merciful and chop quickly.

I predict the top end to be around 1.4 ghz. Not exactly that, but around that. Mobo speed on the top end will by fall be 333mhz. The chips will have 512k on chip L2 cache per processor running at processor speed, backed up by 2 mb of L3 cach per process. These puppies will scream.

The new iDevice will be bit of a letdown for Apple Loyalists. It just won't be gee-whiz enough, still it will do okay in the marketplace where it will attract new customers to apple. It may be capable of working with multiple computer platforms, but of course, Apple will have the complete package that works seamlessly together.

-----------
...what is that shadow? why, why, wh..... It looks (gulp!) like a really, really, huge ax..... (tremble).

a question for any of the other people with moto information: will moto continue to make "PowerPC" chips in the future? if you know what i'm talking about it makes sense.

[quote]Originally posted by trumptman:
<strong>This is the strongest case yet for Apple not having a massive update in July, and I will tell you what it will be. The fact that people are alleging insider trading on Apple due to the fact that so many execs, filed and sold their stock before their announcement about a sales shortfall.

These same execs that "didn't know" about the shortfall and selling their stock before it was announced also know if there is a real update in July that would cause the same said stock to rebound.

Based off of that I believe we will have the iMac staying with GF2mx and being bumped to 1 ghz across the line with only the drives and ram changing the price. They will also get a 133 mhz bus and a price drop. eMac will also get 1 ghz across the line, drives/ram changing price points, but will stay at 100 mhz bus.

The PowerMac line will get dual processors at 933, 1 ghz, and 1.2 ghz. Superdrives will be standard. Radeon 32 meg 7500 will remain on the low end and mid will keep 64 meg GF4mx and the top come standard with 128 meg Radeon 8500.

Motorola will not have created a true DDR solution for Apple. Apple will have engineered around this with the same solution we saw in the xserve only now they will have had a little more time to improve it a bit more. Steve will explain that the DDR implementation is DDR all the way up to the processor just like in the xserve. However on the xserve the bus to the processor is still sdr-133 that is all the G4 will support.

Apple will explain that their new dual processor machines now have two cpu buses instead of just one. The two buses are independent and can each access the DDR solution at their full sdr133 speed.

Apple will also include ATA-RAID capability in the new PowerMacs, but will not be included in on the low end to help seperate the lines a bit. (dual 933 to dual 1 gig isn't much of a jump, but dual 1 gig to 1.2 is pretty large)

Steve will announce that the prices have been dropped $300 across the board. ($200 on the low end) (Making all the folks who bought at the old price points feel like complete asses) He will also point out (just as he did before) that the previous high end Mac is now available with better throughput and drive options for $1000 less than it was just a week before.

So new pricing

$1399
dual 933
Radeon 7500w/32 megs
superdrive
256 ddr ram
60 gig HD (no raid option)

$1999
dual 1 gig
Geforce4mx w/64 megs
superdrive
512 megs ddr ram
120 gig HD (possibility of raid option by adding drive or also added via Applestore)

$2699
dual 1.2 gig
Radeon 8500 w/128 megs
512 megs ddr
superdrive 2 (just announced today in press release)
dual 120 gig HD(with 8 meg cache) preconfigured in fast array.

It will be enough for now and will raise PowerMac sales up to their old levels but Apple will sell less of the high end machine and thus make a smaller profit.

I have no insider info, I just know Apple, and have been a Mac user since 1990.

Trumptman

[ 06-28-2002: Message edited by: trumptman ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
I think that you are very near from the truth. Considering the rumors and the good info from Eskimo (good : reliable) i think your prediction will be ok.
But i will put some minor restriction : i think that they will be still a single powermac computer (let's say a 933 mhz one) and two dualies the 1 ghz one and a 1,13 one or a 1,2 ghz one (it depends on the progress of mot ).
The mpx bus will be still a 133 mhz one (the 166 mhz memory module are not enough common), they will use the same memory controller than the xserve , so they will use DDR ram.

In the future i see two lines : a line of consumer chips with sahara and sahara 2 chips for the consumers and powerbook line, and the proline with a single core power4 with an altivec like unit.

In the near future perhaps Mot can do an ultimate G4 developpement a G4 blended with G5 stuff like I/O and memory support for DDR ram. 2002 seems to be the year of transition. The year of change will be 2003.

[quote]I fear that by the time the G5 arrives, Apple's user base will have migrated to Wintel.<hr></blockquote>

You're basing that on the assumption that processor speed is all anyone cares about. It would never even occur to me to switch to peecees just because they're running 3HGz processors. Okay, I'm only responsible for a dozen Macs (not including my own machines), but they will all be replaced by new Macs next year. Most of our current Macs are single G4 450s and they're already faster machines than the people using them need for the work they do. But we're on a three-year upgrade schedule and next year we get new machines.

Sure, I want a G5 for myself, but the one thing people in my office care about MOST is...the size of their monitor. Nobody (except me) could tell you what processor they have, or how fast it is, or whether it's faster than the 8500 it replaced, but man, they can tell you that they have a 17-inch monitor and it's SO much better than their old one.

There are a LOT of Mac users who don't know anything about processors or clock speed or DDR RAM. They don't compare the specs of Macs to peecees because they don't know enough about computers to understand what they're comparing. What they know is: Macs are fun and easy to use. Peecees are complicated and crash a lot. EVERYONE in my office who buys a computer to use at home buys a Mac. They always ask my advice about what model to buy, but nobody has ever said to me "Gee, this Dell runs at 2.1GHz, should I consider getting one of those instead of a new Mac?"

So you say.

Besides I'm just finishing up my 383 for my '69 roadrunner and I don't want a Windawg 2zigahertz box I want the torque of a big block with out all the tuning hassle of the 426 Hemi (yeah I know, should have gone with the 426 wedge)

[quote]Originally posted by Shaktai:
<strong>Let me start by saying that Motorola is probably not getting complete out of the CPU business. They don't want to burn that bridge, but at the same time they don't want to invest the resources right now to get the job done. As a result, they will honor their obligations most likely by "contracting" out CPU production to a third party. Initially this is likely to be an asian semi-conductor producer, but the long term future will be dependent on how well they do......When motorola dropped the ball on G5 development, Apple stepped in and invested further resources. As a result, Apple has certain rights to some of Motorola's technology. Apple wants the chips, and they don't care who makes them or what they are called (other than for marketing purposes) as long as they get them. Motorola is most likely going to contract out production for the time being...........If AMD or IBM was contracted to produce chips, it would most likely be the the chips that are of Apple's and Motorola's joint design. i.e the G5 in some form. Motorola will keep just enough control, to allow them to bring it back in house, if their fortunes turn in their favor, otherwise they will themselves subcontract manufacture and development out or allow Apple to do it. Either way, they dispose of a part of business that is not making money for them, while they collect royalties on their intellectual property unless Apple buys it outright.
</strong><hr></blockquote>

Be a nice deal for them too if they retain rights to seel the proc in the embedded space. Apple pays for getting the chips fabbed right and Moto has a new high end chip for marketing to makers of super-routers and the ilk.

[quote]Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg:
<strong>That's an interesting point.

However, the problem is NOT existing mac users, it's professionals who have no platform loyality. These pros will use whatever gets the job done fastest, because time is money. The advantage of OS X counts for a bit, but it doesn't make up for the gross performance differential between Wintels and Powermacs.

Furthermore, Apple needs to expand their market share. They MUST win over rednecks/morons for this to happen, and these types do care about GHz, very much so. We're talking about the sorts who would just as soon overbore their small block chevy V8 on a saturday as play Quake, or drop a radical cam into their Mustang rather than burn a CD of Poison's greatest hits. Apple's got to win over these idiots and it's not going to happen with 800 MHz cutesy computers.</strong><hr></blockquote>


I'm sorry, why?

Surely there are enough sensible people out there that Apple don't need this particular segment of the market. The truth is that for the majority of people current machines are plenty fast enough, what they want is ease-of-use, reliability, and functionality. This is one of the reasons for the extended slow-down in computer sales, even corporations realise they don't need to upgrade their machines regularily any more. Since Apple are starting from such a small percentage of the market, they need only attack this portion of it to be able to massively increase their market share.

Personally, I want a much faster Mac, as I write scientific code that needs fast double precision floating point performance, which Apple can't yet deliver. I do, however, write the code on a Mac (B+W G3 350 O/C to 450) and run it on a PC, but I'm very much in a minority here. My field (mainly microwave/optoelectronic circuit analysis and design) is strictly PC, the only Mac programs I know of are the ones I compile for my own use. The Mac is just so much more pleasant to use, and for all my purposes bar running this code, quite adequate.

BTW, make up you mind whether Apple are bleeding market share, or failing to expand their market share.

Michael

Just like them pencil neck 'puter geeks says Fred Blassie.

[quote]Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg:
<strong>Douglass Adams was a Mac freak. Now he's dead.</strong><hr></blockquote>

What does that have to do with future Mac hardware? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">