TS reports on new imac specs - Page 7

Ahhhhh... so you're intimately experienced with the hardware requirements of CoreImage? You know for a fact that CI will have problems on this? Do share with us your in-depth experience, I'm sure we'd be thrilled to hear it. Newsflash: realtime is as fast as it gets. Added power is wasted on CI.

The 5200 will *CONTINUE* to be a fine choice for the low end.

As I said before, UNTIL THE DAMNED THING SHIPS ALL THIS WHINING IS USELESS. Good lord. Everyone's acting like they know the facts... you know speculation, that's it.

I give up. Rational argument has no place here, this is just religious warfare. Carry on.

If your thing is being able to swap video cards and such things, well, get a $500 PC that won't break the bank. Good things cost money. If the PowerMac costs a lot it's because it's much better than a $500 dollar computer. Macs have never been cheap.

This forum is labeled "Future Hardware" (IE: not shipping) and we are discussing specs released by TS. Of course it's speculation. A lot of us have put up very rational arguments about the iMac G5 based on these specs, why are you so upset?

You missed my point. Apple fails to make computer that people want and have proved will sell. Instead, your line of thinking keeps Apple at stagnate unit growth and 3% marketshare.

I didn't say that. If you had READ my post rather than just glancing over i, I said "Then we can get a fresh round of whining when Apple throws out the next GPU accessing software..." This means, when Apple turns out the NEXT, software. Next, meaning after Core Image. Meaning after Core Video. GPUs are getting faster and more useful, its only a matter of time before Apple introduces a Core Image "Extreme" that leaves the FX5200 gasping, or worse, totally useless.

The chip is crap. It oughta be RadeonX300 level or higher given that Apple seldom updates.

Marketshare is an overrated concept because that's a percentage that can decrease while the total number of users is increasing.

We simply do not know enough about the actual architecture of the iMac g5 to make statements about future upgradability.

I grow tired of the abuse of marketshare numbers because the scope is too wide. Servers and X86 PC used in vertical markets does nothing to describe the potential market for desktop applications. Typically now when marketshare is used by a Mac users it is in a pejoritive manner meant to solidify their weak arguement for a tired topic. ie OSX Intel or Headless Macs.

The new iMac shape will carry us forwared for 2 years. The internal guts will change, getting faster of course. The thing that will sell the iMac the most is the appearance. It's as simple as that. Last weekend I took my woman into the Apple Store in the Univerity Village. She's a technophobe and barely uses here Gateway computer. What item did she like the most and has mentioned 4 times since then? The iPod mini. She doesn't care that $50 gets her 15GB more space with the iPod. She loves the colors and the look of the mini. I joke with her all the time about the infamous WAF factor. For the uninitiated that is Wife Acceptance Factor. It is "very" real. Apple knows that making computers that don't look like "computers" is key with just as many people(particularly picky wives) as adding a rip snortin GPU is to others. You can't please both so at this level,Apple has decided to please the former so it seems.

Ahhhh... so you're not only experienced enough with the innards of CI to make an educated comment *cough*, but also know enough of the directions Apple will be taking their display technologies in the next few years to be able to make statements related to their hardware needs.

Gotcha.

Bottom line: what imaging technologies do you see *beyond* CoreImage/Video that *could* be lumped over to the GPU? Seriously. We already have compositing, texture mapping and transparency (Quartz Extreme), and now real-time color, geometry, effects, and amazing levels of fine tuning in the CoreI/V suite. What else is left, and can you express it as anything other than FUD hand-waving?

Have you *used* CoreI/V? I have. I've gone over the API with a fine-toothed comb. I'm blown away by it, and it completes the offloading of image and video processing to the GPU in a fantastic manner. Frankly, I've been expecting this for three years.

Pray tell, what do you see coming down the pipe that would *REQUIRE* boosted hardware? This is a very serious question. Dodging it or saying "well *WE* don't know!" will be taken as acknowledgment that you don't have an answer to it, and are sticking to the FUD. If you do, I'd love to hear it, because I can't think of anything from my years of graphics research.


When? Two years? Three? About the time most people will be upgrading anyway? How's that roadmap looking?


...

Like I said, religious warfare is all this is.

ah hah! and this has screwed marketshare for Apple for years. Apple doesnt build a consumer machine apple builds what its art dept is pondering and then takes all that cheap leftover hardware like 1.6 G5 from last year and fx5200 from last year makes a chinese iMac and then wonders why the hell no one is buying iMacs? Come on people Apple should have a consumer tower that holds the fastest G5 with a few slots. screw the all in one looser design of one size fits all. it doesnt work sales have proven that. consumers want options not communist computers of we have decided FX5200 glued to a lcd is all everyone needs for this moment in our Apple time. Apple does not listen to consumers hence apples consumer computers have been poor sellers of recent because they fit almost nobody but the design staff& bean counters at Apple. i said it before the 4 tier crap has killed off consumer desktops from Apple. its not about the buyer its about Apple. mistake. consumer is king not Apple or Steve Jobs. Alienware,Dell,Gateway allow the consumer to configure the machine. does Apple? This arrogance is going to bite their Macs and has.

Hmurchinson,

That's pretty funny, and true -- WAF -- but every dollar more in cost adversely impacts the wife acceptance factor.

You're a treat sometimes. You've even taken to advocating more rigorous financial planning in order to subsidize mac purchases. LOL. Most people do that level of financial planning to finance other frills, like mortgages, college, retirement funds, or even more mundane stuff like ultilities and food, and sometimes, for really high WAF items like new appliances, jewelry, vacations!

1299 is an absolutely ridiculous entry price for a family computer. Mac heads will buy it for the first quarter it's out, if prices don't change fast after that, or that 1299 model doesn't get a minimum 512MB RAM, a superdrive, and larger HDD -- sales will peter out to sunflower levels very quickly and Apple will come up with another excuse for lack-luster sales.

You know, some people don't give a rat's ass about being able to swap video cards, or anything like that. I'd buy an iMac in a second because it's pretty, it's got a neat design, it runs OS X. Some people don't care about that stuff. Then, 3 years later you buy a new one. iMac users don't want upgradability. And if you do, then you're looking at the wrong computer. You need a PowerMac if you want all that.

PowerMacs are the towers you're talking about. But those things come at a price. It's really sad some of you want PowerMacs at sub-eMac prices.

If the total number of users is increasing, their unit sales would reflect that. They don't. They hover around 800K quarter after quarter, while the rest of the PC industry continues to see growth.

More than that, Macs are competing in both the OS and the hardware market share numbers. I thin that I have read that Apple hardware sales are actually pretty good when compared indavidually to venders like HP, Sony, and IBM. What gets them is the OS numbers where Apple is competing against Windows computers being sold.

That being said what is undeniable is the year over year sales figures for the iMac and to a lesser degree the PowerMac (with the exception of last year) over the last 3 years. That is a failure of the hardware devisions ability to come to market with a product which will adequatly compete in its intended market. This may be partially blamed on other comanies failures but it was Apple that adopted the components that limited their hardware development so they are at least partially to blame. This is especially true now that OS X has matured to the point that they should be able to reap the rewards of having a "portable" OS which would require little more than a recompile of the code to support a different processor.

The real reason to pay attention to market share is the direction that it points in developer support, and software pricing. If the market share gets too low then developers may not be able to justify selling the software on the Mac platform, or they may charge their own "Mac Tax" for the software which makes it even more expensive to own a Mac than just the premium price paid for the Mac.

That is the bottom line isnt it. In a growing market Apple is for the most part stagnate at 3% new sales. Their consumer offerings have missed the market big time. when they should be selling 10 consumer machines for each so called pro they sell at 1 - 1. So what does apple do? it looks like they decided to stay with the loosing all in one formula but with a G5. this would have worked a year ago but now its behind before its released. 1.6 G5 cant touch a P4 at 3.0 which are cheap by the way, FX5200 is dead last so we dont need to go there. so again what is going to sell this mac? only the OSX. it wont be the stale hardware in new clothes.

The total number of users is increasing because marketshare is just a percentage. If Dell and other vendors sell more machines than Apple, then their marketshare is increasing. But selling less machines than Dell doesn't mean you have a smaller user base. That number keeps increasing quarter after quarter.

Marketshare is just overrated because the important thing is the installed user base. You could sell a lot of computers, but if the others sell more, then marketshare numbers will make you look bad, even though you're getting more users than you previously had.

It's a little tricky and you could get carried away thinking marketshare is vital to surviving.

A couple things bug me about the Think Secret article:

(1) Why would they remove the optical drive for security concerns when the Firewire port allows anyone with an iPod to wreck havoc if they want?

(2) Apple is a licensee of Dolby so why wouldn't the optical port support Dolby 5.1 surround? Doesn't the PowerMac G5's already support it?

(3) I guarantee the high-end 20" model will be different in more ways than one. The larger hard drive is not going to be the only difference. More memory plus built-in Airport and Bluetooth at least. Maybe even bundled with the wireless mouse and keyboard.

Thoughts?

Think Secret doesn't always get the "facts" right. They have no direct knowledge (i.e.: information from Apple) only indirect. Perhaps the top of the line model will have built to order options. I would guess that before the unveiling TS will do an update. Remember they didn't have all the correct facts on the recent iPod 4G release.

Kick, I totally respect you man, and agree with most of what you say, but you're dead wrong about this.

Your generalization of spec-whore gamers is nearly as bad as their generalization of Mac users, who wouldn't mind if Apple sold them ten-year-old hardware, as long as it came in a pretty colored shell.

The GF5200 isn't high performance. It's not mid-performance. It's not even low-performance. It is literally UNUSABLE to run any game released in the past three years. Period. It was the embarassing bottom of the barrel when it was released. In mid-2004 it is stunningly inadequate.

I've tolerated some shockingly bad frame rates in the 32-bit console era. I take it you haven't experienced just how bad it is, so please go find a 17" iMac with a GF5200 to test the UT2004 demo out on. It yields five or six frames a second in 640x480. The game can't even be played because there's no stream of movement with the mouse. It's just chop chop chop. I'm talking every setting on minimum.

Saying that only hardcore gamers play games is a cop-out. Do you know any serious Mac gamers? I don't. Then why are there games on the Mac platform?

Telling people they should never be able to play a game with their $1300 computer, and that they have to buy a console or Windows PC is a cop-out. There are some games that are unfeasible on consoles. Real-time strategy games, like WarCraft and Age of Mythology, for example, or The Sims-type games, which are in fact very popular even among very casual gamers. Most of the first person shooters (the most popular genre in the industry right now) ported to consoles have unrefined control schemes, unlike the nuanced stick-control of Halo. And some of last holiday's biggest games were actually on the PC, like Call of Duty.

But who are these casual gamers? Pretty much any male aged 13-24 these days, and an increasing number of females. For anyone in that age bracket, the iMac is insanely limited in at least one of the three major forms of entertainment today. On the other hand, Apple covers movies and music quite well. It's just a shame they're so clueless when it comes to this.

I can tell you don't play games, so of course you can't understand why anyone would want to engage in something so "silly." Think about that the next time we're all typing out massive paragraphs on how giddy the forthcoming architectural upgrades nested in QuickTime 7 are making us.

While installed user base is important for software sales and attracting developers, growing your hardware business requires that your market share stays the same as the market increases or that your market share increases. Apple is keen to point out that they are a hardware manufacturer, and though the OS is the key to their product their main profits come from those hardware sales, not the software. Therefore, from an investors point of view, Apple needs to increase their sales year to year through an increased market or an increased market share. If Apple were to change their business model and become a software company then install base would be a more acurate measure of future sales, but to date they have not done that. Apple's management does have a responsibility to their investors to grow their business to that they can offer a return on their investment through increased stock prices and or divident payments.

And here you missed *MY* point.

The 5200 is *FINE* for the *LOW-END* iMac, aimed at the budget consumer, enterprise desks, and educational labs. Couple that with the fact that the TS report *could be completely wrong* on several details, and suddenly this entire argument looks pretty stupid. The 5200, if it is indeed on the higher-end machines, would be a bad move, even in my opinion, but, and just for the clue-impaired, this is the important bit coming up here... I am going to reserve my whining and ire for when the machines are actually released, and we see what the performance and price points actually are.


Actually, I do. I just don't expect to be able to play Unreal Tournament at highest resolution on a low-end iMac any more than I expect to be able to compete in an F1 race in a Honda Accord. Different markets, different products. Believe it or not, there *are* some market segments for whom a 5200 is not only adequate, but a damned smart move, since it saves them money. The viewpoint that there are *no* such markets, because the poster can't see past their own spec-whore gaming nose, is what I'm trying to bash down here. It's short-sighted and inane. Whining that 'no one' will want the 5200 is idiotic. For some people, it's just freakin' fine.


Actually, I believe we're not too far off on this, since we're both clued in to the fact that there is a wide array of markets. It's too bad that many posters here seem to be missing the fact that *they* are not the sole market demographic. I would firmly expect an optical-less 5200-graphics card iMac to be $999 or less... and at that price, it's a great idea, period. For $2k, yeah, I'd expect more in the graphics card, but frankly, not much. It simply isn't worth the expenditure to 95% of the people out there.

Gamers drive the hardware on the PC, to be sure. But they're still a niche market *there*, compared to the masses of PCs sold to businesses and such. Because of this, there is still a low-end market for enterprise and educational labs... with low end graphics hardware.

*Until the iMacs actually shop and we get real confirmation of spec and prices*, this argument is meaningless.

Although I believe Apple should not leave the high end iMacs with a 5200 in them, I see a problem in your argument. You know perhaps that UT2004 is a game that relies much on CPU power and that the weak G4 is to blame in this case. Furthermore, this poor G4 has to do also computations for the sound. Do you know perhaps that disabling the sound (by editing by hand the configuration file), the frames per second you get almost double. Now what is this game without sound, you may tell. Right, but it is not the graphics chip the culprit.

The Geforce 5200 is fine in the low end iMac. Perhaps not fine in the middle model, and sure bad if it actually appears in the high end one.

I bought a Performa 6360 in 1996 from Apple. It costs 1299 and and had a PCI slot for expansion/graphic card upgrade, a comm slot for ethernet/modem upgrades, a video slot for video i/o and fm/tv tuner, an L2 cache slot for faster performance upgrades, and user accessible drive bays.

It was 160Mhz 603ev and was a good performer for the time.

That's a better consumer machine than anything Apple has produced in the last couple years.

Macs haven't always been expensive

Yeah I bought an Impala in in 1976 and it had an 8-track.

I'm speaking about the iMac era. I shouldn't have generalized.

Think secret does have a pretty good record on this stuff and these specs sound like Apple we all know and "ahem" love. when you consider they are putting this P.O.S 5200 in $2000 and $2500 Powermacs. They must have contracted a boatload of these last year and still have boatloads to get rid of. I do think its funny though when you go to Apples gaming page. you would think 5200 is a godsend to Macgamers. read over at toms hardware and they dont even bother with that card on benches of newer stuff. the fact is we as consumers are buying top end computers from Apple and they are pushing the cheapist video crap made and wanting high dollar for what is considered garbage in PC land. Truth hurts but apple cant go lower on its video unless it goes backward in time.

They might do it. Think Secret just reported the G5 iMac will actually be a re-release of the 20th Anniversary Macintosh.

you were not speaking about the iMac era. and you're attempt at being a smart ass only succeeded in one thing, making you look like an ass

the original iMac was a better value at its time than this current one will be.

That's a fact that you can't ignore.

Don't get angry, nut.

The iMac has never been upgradable and has never been cheap. So I was talking about the iMac era. Even when iMacs were 999 they weren't cheap. And they've never been truly upgradable.

The original WAS a better value at its time, but I was never debating that, so you tell me how it feels to look like an ass. I was debating the fact that the iMac will never be a PowerMac priced at the eMacs price. Sorry, kid.

Testify!

You have to admire Apple a bit for doing things their way, but they take it too far - the customer IS right at least some of the time. Stubbornly, Apple ignores this fact at its own risk and pays the price.

I laugh at the Apple Apologist who say "If you want a faster video card/more ram/ get a Dell!" THe problem is, that's what people are doing! Supposedly that's a trend Apple wants to reverse. As I recall, as they began opening stores, Apple said they wanted to increase market share to 10% - you simply can't do that by charging higher prices for crippled consumer machines - they are proving that every year.

IF they want to improve marketshare, they have to improve GPU and RAM offerings. It probably wouldn't hurt either if warranties were longer or extended warranties and support less expensive. These are simple indicators of performance and service potential that average consumers relate to when comparing competing products.

I was at the Apple store in West Farms today. No employee told me any inside information but I took a good look at the new Cinema Displays, If the new iMac looks like a Cinema Display with the exception of thickness to accommodate the guts I will definitly get one. Those new aluminum displays are truly kickass. minimal border and clean styling. I picture one with just keyboard and mouse and I like it. I like it a lot.

The above is the one of the most stupid things I've read on these boards.

I have read all the comments about the need to have an iMac that is upgradeable (hardware).

Sorry but most of the world does not need a computer that they upgrade beyond adding RAM.

I have installed hundreds of AIO Macs and found that most (85%) never add anything to the machine except RAM. After having the machine anywhere from 3-5 years they just replace the machine.

They obviously would not receive any benefit by the additional complexity and cost of an upgradeable iMac.

I do agree that apple does need an additional line of machines that would consist of a single CPU, the ability to install 2gB of RAM, replaceable Video card and 1 additional card slot. This would be used by game players and people who like the Mac but want more that an iMac but do not need a tower.

Thank you. I agree that marketshare is a very misleading number at times (most all the time in fact). PC's are available in many markets that Macs are not. Mac sales could grow in the markets like the US/Europe/Canada etc and still show declining marketshare.

Are we talking about the same 5200FX Ultra here?

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...ournament_2003


Make sure you don't base your performance estimates on the iMac's performance -- the G4's slow bus is the culprit there.

Actually the first iMac had a mezzanine slot which people exploited to add SCSI support and there was also a Voodoo graphic upgrade for it. Apple disabled it in an update and ensured it did not ship on any iMac post-rev. A.

Actually you are wrong, the original Bondi Blue iMac was upgadable. It had a slot called a Mezzanine slot if I recall corectly which was there for future upgrades from Apple that never appeared. There was an upgrade manufacturer that did release a card for it as well, I think it was a video upgrade.

Every bit of it is true. A powermac is better than any 500 dollar PC. and Good things cost more.

My mistake! You're so right!

Right. You're right. But since then, the iMac has moved away from that. It's handled very differently and marketed very differently than when it first appeared. People that want to upgrade are better suited with a PM to get their choice of video cards, displays, etc.

In my opinion all this bickering about the video card is just missing the fundamental flaws of the current and now apparently next generation iMac. It seems like if Apple throws in a slightly better video card, you all will be content.

NOT ME!

Attached screen, no upgradeability is just killing. I think Apple only has a real chance to sell to consumers who want to >do stuff< with their computers. But they just don't have any hardware for that market. At least not on the desktop.

Well, if they want to release such a computer in a new lineup, that would be fine with me too. But they would just be inviting another eMac style embarrassment.

From reading the posts is looks like Apple is releasing a graphics card with a computer attached and no one is that interested in the computer.