eWeek article on Smeagol and Q37 - Page 4

If Q37 really is the internal name for the PM970, then we will DEFINATELY see them in june......

Because:

The first PPC-driven PowerMac was launched in march 1994.
Now we are in Q37, counting from that particular PPC launch-date.
(9 years times 4 quarters = 36 + 1 = Q37)

So the real question is, is Q37 the codename???

Moki??

You're setting yourself up for a big disappointment.

ouch!! thats told 'em!

ouch...now that post hurts...


g

I guess this counts out a 970 based 15" Powerbook then...

Cheers for the heads up on this Moki...

and availability

and duals to follow

at least...

i take it to mean singles in july or aug

duals not till september

970 in PB maybe for xmas buying season (late oct, early november)

Gobi iBooks around same time...though the iBooks will be due an upgrade in sept or oct

g

Yeah!, but I don't take it too seriously. If it doesn't happen, life will go on. Besides I can always run over to Ambrosia to see what new jewells they have to sooth my frustration.

I have a perfect traffic record of being wrong with my rumor predictions. One of these times I'll mess up and actually be right.

Still, I think you might agree that no matter what, it will be an interesting summer. There were a "few" items you didn't comment on.

OK, let me take a shot, so long as so many of us are making (un)educated guesses at what will happen at WWDC....

Considering the rumors out there, tempered by both ATAT and Moki, I am guessing we will see:

970 demo, but not available until Sept at the earliest. Single processor only, with no mention of duals.
Panther Demo (of course)
Miscellany (maybe an iBook refresh, probably a PB 15", but using the G4, simply updated a bit, etc),


I figure these expectationa are low enough that Moki won't rain on my parade!


Fish

Hey, this is my first prediction/guess on AI - go easy on me!

i bet you we will see new machines this summer, for the education factor alone. Schools and students cant wait till september to buy new machines. Apple isn't dumb they know this. And i'm talking computer art schools that arent buying emacs and ibooks.

edit: oh really, woops

most schools buy their new computers by may.

schools yes, but students often buy later (often much later) as they wait for summer job money, fall student loans and such...if they updated iBooks and powerbooks in july or aug, they would see lots of student sales...parents also buy back to school stuff...i am getting my daughter an iBook for her start to high school...i was going to get it this month, but i will wait till just before school starts hoping for an iBook update....

g

agreed. and agreed that the students will be buying imacs and ibooks and not 970s.

go gobi, go gobi!?

1.5 weeks to go.

i think they gave 10 days notice for the itune apple music rollout.

hmmm...

You really know how to make a grown man cry, huh?

I would normally agree but not since the mention of smeagol. I think 970's demoed at WWDC and announced maybe in July and shipping with smeagol that same month or around there. I think they are shipping early because Apple may have done the 10.2.7 for some reason. Unless 10.2.7 is only for developers who get a 970 box and need to run code on or something.

sure most are going to school and need a computer to write papers. But not if they are going for highend graphics, video, audio, etc.. When i started college i bought a tower. If there are no really powerfull macs available they will be more likely to buy a pc. And these kids are their future pro market

A less than glowing report from eWeek that stated a goal was to have the 970 (remember MUCH faster bus - 64bit - etc) be ON PAR with the G4 (reminder 166Mhz bus - 32bit - etc).

Moki: "Don't believe the hype"

Me: What hype? If the 970 is on par with the G4 mhz for mhz then WTF was the point of switching CPUs in the first place?

Shaktai: "Power PC 970 introduced at WWDC Availability? Immediatly or within 2 weeks for Single processor machines. Probably 1.4 and 1.8 ghz...."

Moki: "You're setting yourself up for a big disappointment."

Me: A BIG disappointment? The only thing I can assume given the very little the author of that quote speculated on would be the the 970 isn't even gonna be talked about or if it is it'll be stated that the unit wont ship till January. After all if its just that 'shipping in two weeks' is to soon and it's more like 'aug/sep' then I wouldn't exactly call that a BIG disappointment, more like 'a tad too anxious'.

Given his comments the only thing I can say is Moki isn't expecting anything to come from WWDC wrt the 970 and/or the 970 is gonna be a total bust...

D

I doubt that the 970 will be introduced only in january. The chip is already in production, and Apple has troubles to sell his high margin powermac line.

The optimistic prediction is the 970 introduced at WWDC, the pessimist one is the 970 introduced in september. I think that the release of the new chip is just a matter of months.

I think the odds of the 970 showing up at WWDC are 100%. There's no other way.

The question is whether they are introduced formally, shipping within months or weeks or days, or whether they're snuck in as a "hypothetical" 64 bit platform at the Panther demo and perhaps shown off to a few high-powered developers in private.

Apple has had the time to work on the necessary boards and chipsets. They've had the time to do the work. There can't be too much more time before the new platform appears.

If Panther is going to appear in September (more or less) then I don't see the point to Smeagol unless it'll appear a comfortable period of time before September (of course, there's the possibility that Smeagol gets stalled and killed as Apple gets close enough to Panther's release as no matter). This points to an attempt by Apple to get the 970 out pretty quickly. Of course, not everything goes the way they want it to go, but I have trouble believing that Smeagol will appear in August - unless, of course, Panther won't appear until fall.

Now I just have a thought

Looks like Panther is going to be on schedule to be shipped in September.

If 10.2.7 (for new PM) is like what eWeek said is delayed an won't be shipped until two months after WWDC....that means no PM until September

Now the question is. Why ship 10.2.7 if Panther is shipping at the same time? What's the f*cking point?!

I start to have a feeling that the info that eWeek get is already two to three months old.

I think we at least will see an announcement in WWDC and shipment of the low end model two weeks after

Leonis -

No, eWeek said the G5 would probably ship by August. I think that's probably true. Everyone else is thinking that G5 will ship at WWDC, and they'll be disappointed. It will probably just be announced, and then ship several weeks later. Makes sense to have 10.2.7, 'smeagol', in the interim.

eWeek said 10.2.7 was to be released a couple of weeks not months of WWDC. I think mid-end of July or so we might see shipping 970s if we are lucky and get them early.

Everyone seems to be basing their timeframes on Panther being released in Sept. What's the evidence for that? I know that historically the major updates have been in late September, but I don't remember SJ saying, like in previous years, that Panther will be released "This Summer."

If you discount the idea that Panther will ship in September, then things make a lot more sense. Hypothetically speaking let's say Panther ships in time for Holiday sales. That means that Smeagol can be released in a resonable time frame after WWDC and it still makes sense to have a stopgap OS for new hardware; i.e it will be used for many months. It just makes no sense to invest the engineering resources into Smeagol, just to have it exist for a month or so. Releasing Smeagol in July and expecting Panther in Sept doesn't jive for me.

My Guess:
Smeagol and 970 PowerMacs in July/August.
Panther and upgrades in Nov/Dec.(maybe MWSF).

I'm with you Kid. This whole thing has been misquoted and blown out of proportion. The whole point of Smeagol (whether it's delayed or not) is to run the G5s before Panther is available, otherwise they'd just wait to announce them until they ship with 10.3.

Steve will announce and demo the entire line of new 970 based Power Mac G5s at WWDC. They will ship with Smeagol/10.2.7 at the end of July. Anyone who buys one will get a free upgrade to 10.3 when it comes out in September.

We need to keep reminding ourselves that MWNY was canceled for a reason. WWDC was delayed and its venue changed for a reason. If no G5s are announced on the 23rd then G4 sales are going to suck even worse all summer anyway. Steve has to announce G5s now and worry about the shipping dates later. God knows he's done it before, and for less important products too.

I'm surprised no one else has spotted this followup to the Mac Whispers WWDC article. It's a posting in the MacWhispers comments from Jack that further explains the article. He seems to think the performance issues suggested by eWeek are baseless. Sure hope he's right about the 15" Powerbook...


"I am being extremely cautious about what I say and how I say it... mainly just retelling what I'm getting from guys who I know have given me solid data in the past. That said, I might do a speculation roundup this week, just rambling on about coulds, shoulds, mights, and what ifs... All I actually "know" with any degree of certainty is in this article.

The Xserve motherboards are built elsewhere, as is the assembly done elsewhere. So, I have nobody I deal with who has information on that product at this time.

And yes, the PPC 970 fully supports the precise same PowerPC instruction set that is supported by the G3 and G4, with zero "code optimizations" to make that basic level of functionality happen. ALL G3 and G4 compatible software, including all flavors of OS X and OS 9 (in Classic), will run just fine on the 970 systems. "Optimization" can improve basic performance a tweak here and there, but only very, very modestly.

Yes, we are certain (as we can be, depending upon other people's word) about the 970 Powerbook 15.4-inch. At this time, we have zero information on the 12 and 17-inch variants... again, nobody to talk to (yet).

Finally, the 980 migration is presently happening upstream from our sources... meaning no tangible activity has migrated down to the production floor anywhere... which is where we get our info."

The only reason there was a change to MWNY (the show was renamed, not canceled) is that Apple got into a pissing match with IDG over plans to move the show to Boston.

Did you notice how Apple's position during that whole "pissing match" was so ridiculous? The whole thing was a smokescreen to get out of supporting two trade shows. They didn't care about Boston vs. New York, they cared about control. Apple wants to go in house as much as possible for their announcements. WWDC is an inhouse event and was moved and relocated to accomodate that new role.

And yes, MWNY was canceled. IDG can call their show whatever it wants, but without Apple's usual presence it ain't no MacWorld.

The thing about that is, MacWhispers is claiming the specs for the 970 against same speed G4s, we know they are-1-2 times faster. What eWeek is saying is that Apple's goal was to get 10.2.7 to run at least as fast on the 970 as it would on a G4 considering it's not 64 yet. That's really no big deal or anything to lose more energy thinking about.

Yep, I think it comes down to 2 scenarios.

1) Original fall release of September (not because of usual updates but because Sept starts fall IIRC and IBM stated a fall release) along with fall release of Panther.

2)IBM simply rocks, has the 970 almost ready to ship. Apple disses IDG, reschedules WWDC for announcement either at or few weeks later. Because of it's earlier then anticipated release, Apple needs to get an OS that will run on it so it can salvage towers sales ASAP. Enter Smeagol.

So you have the pessimist and optimist view, however, there are a lot of interesting points that make the pessimistic view sound pretty damn reasonable.

Do we know this for certain? I haven't seen anything other than rumors that says that the 970 really is in production right now.

I do believe 970s are very likely for WWDC, just trying to keep facts and rumors separated.

Apple has to introduce the Power Mac G5 at WWDC. There is no other way around it. Apple has suffered more losses in the creative pro sector than they ever did in the dark years of '96-'97.

It may be shipping in three days or three months, but they just have to introduce a machine.

Barto

This is very wrong.

He may just not be clear with this... but he's really talking about PowerMac 970s. (As OS 9/X couldn't run on a PowerPC 970 in isolation).

ALL new hardware from Apple has required tweaked OS's to allow them to run... in the old days, called "enablers"... because there are slight changes to the hardware.

With these machines, not only is the Processor new, but the subsystems are new. You will not be able to run OS 10.2.0 on the new PowerMacs.

Matt Rothenberg has made mistakes before, but if it comes down to trusting him or Jack Campbell, my money's on Matt.

Besides, "at least as fast as the G4" can simply mean that they're making sure it never runs any slower, except perhaps in a few pathological cases (in compute-bound cases, the 7455's AltiVec unit will outperform the 970's clock for clock). It doesn't mean that you could swap a 970 for a current G4 and the user would never notice.

agreed.

if you take it as "no matter what test you throw at it, the 970 , in a worst case, will be as fast as a g4 at the same megahertz as the 970. (of course in most other tests, it will be much faster.)"



then it does not sound bad.

New info from CNET:

apple to use hypertransport

Everybody in the know on Apple's plans cannot all be 100% mum. If you follow the previous patterns, leaks will happen, and they will increase as we draw closer towards Monday, June 23rd.

IIRC, Jaguar was released early. It was released on August 24th or something like that, wasn't it? Wasn't the stated reason WWDC was delayed because Apple said they want to demonstrate a more feature complete version of Panther? Apple wants attendees to be able to leave the conference with a preview release of Panther in their hands. Might this suggest that, like Jaguar, Panther may also be moving along quickly enough to be available in mid-August too? Therefore, Smeagol a stop-gap measure on 970s until Panther is done?

When I was searching C|Net, I came accross this...

Actually a good part of the reason is that Apple wants to spend their money in a way that isn't preaching to the choir so much.

How strange, HyperTransport isn't supported by the G4!

You are pushing people to one corner and then to another corner Mr. Moki

Then why don't they keynote Comdex?