Woodcrest to power Apple's next-gen Mac Pro desktops - Page 2

Pls plokoonpma

try to use proper English.

There certainly isn't the "right" time to buy a computer, but there are plenty of "wrong" times. For example, do not every but an Apple for Christmas because the January Expo more often than not makes it old news. Same way buying a new G5 from Apple before the WWDC is a mistake.

As for the MacBook Pro, I was waiting for the 17" model to be released. Apple was slow on the release of the larger model so a lot of the components in this model are already getting old (graphics chip and CPU). I know almost as soon as I buy my next computer it will be phased out by something newer and sexier. For what it is worth I'd rather have three to six months of enjoying my "top of the line" computer instead of just one.

-Kerrum

I don't know about that. There is always some skill involved in lining up the pins, applying the right amount of thermal greece etc. Woodcrest uses Land Grid Array, so if you don't place the CPU correctly, you won't damage the CPU but you may damage the socket on the motherboard.

Check out Sun's 8 Socket X4600 x86 Server that was announced today to see how easy they make it replacing/upgrading a CPU. The CPU is on a separate card/module that just slides in into the HyperTransport backplane.

Yeah, I couldn't disagree with Chucker more.

The consumer line provided increased the prices by greatly increasing the value -- the mini now includes the $100 wireless and bluetooth upgrade, plus many other included items, all for the $100 price bump.

People don't simply upgrade when they need to. They upgrade when there is a compelling reason to do so. Moving from dual G5's to quad woodcrest at the 2K price would be such a reason, whether I need it or not.

Wireless and Bluetooth are worth $100?

What "many other included items"?

Yes, they charged 100 smackers for that upgrade with their G4 PPC chips.

What other items? I'm not going to look it up, sorry.

Very, very true.

And with WWDC just a few weeks off, now may not be a great time to buy.


The graphics chip was and is mid-end; there is no better graphics chip that could be reasonably put into the MacBook Pro. The Mobility Radeon X1800's heat output is impossible to handle in such a small case. The X1600 is a huge upgrade over the 9700 in the last-generation PowerBook, too.

And the CPU was and is high-end.

So, I don't think it's fair to say the components were getting old. The 17-inch one got 2.16 GHz standard, whereas the 15-inch one, at the time, had 1.83 GHz standard.


Inevitably.

And you can keep being angry over it

or you can be happy with what you'll have anyway: a damn fine computer.


Sure, but trust me, six months is pushing it.

I can think of at least one more thing - Front Row and Apple Remote.

That's right. People keep forgetting this. what happened to the $799 iBook (or MacBook)?

PPC's were CHEAPER that Intel's chips are. People keep forgetting this as well.

The funny thing about that is that when Apple has come out with a new display, it was always cheaper than what was being offered. when it was a new catagory, it was at a price that was much lower than was expected.

But then Apple maintained their pricing at levels, even with price drops, that were ending up, over time, to be higher than the competition. This is hard to understand.

How often have we discussed this one?

It's not likely that Apple will do that.

Most people don't look at it that way. They see a rise in price. They see that they are competitive in performance with PC's, finally, and they say; About time they aren't so slow, but Apple raised the price.

$ 799.00 G4 iBook......

Not with dual processors
Not with 802.11 / bluetooth standart
Not with Front Row + Apple Remote
Not with 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Not with 667MHz frontside bus
Not with 1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet
Not with Mini-DVI port
Not with Extended desktop
Not with Built-in iSight camera

I think it worths the price bump

Hey Melgross,

I agree with you that not all the people look the "raise" as a good thing.
But often the same people add a lot of stuff with the BTO option and end paying more than the base price they where supposed to pay.
Also, I worked for Hell (jeje) selling parts for consumer and business division, and let me say that they recieve a huge amount of people that has to call back or order via web more upgrades or usually replacements for component of their computers.
I work now for a Store that its specialized on Macs and HP + some extra PC brands.
We receive more than 10 times more PC's with failures than Macs, and in the case with Macs its rare to see a new model.
Personally I never had a hardware problem with any of mine.
So its hard for me to think that if I pay a few bucks more for a product that has more quality and its very reliable I will lost in the short, medium or long term.

Apart of the cost thing, if my memory dont fool me, the mini and the iMac doesnt have soldered socket, actually I found sometime ago (weeks) that somebody changed processor on a Mac Mini to 2.16 ghz and its was working nice.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=91459


Hopefully, the processors wont be soldered and we will be able to upgrade easy and trouble free the new MacPro's.

8)

Apple could easily release a Macbook with a Celeron-M 430 and a 40gb hard drive for that price if they wanted to. Hell, I'd buy it to replace my iBook G3.

I know the commercial end of Hell very well. Good products.

But, back to Apple. People don't mind if THEY make the choice to raise the price by adding features. They don't like to see the base price high. The choice being made for them. Apple sometimes makes the mistake of including features in their base model that raises the price substantially.

I know that Apple feels that those features are the "Apple experience". But many people don't use those features. Yes, Apple makes it simple to buy, by including them. I know all the arguments.

But, nevertheless, many people get turned off by the prices. When they question friends and colleagues, they are told Macs cost more. Then they look at the price and agree. They don't even get to WHY they cost more. The fact that they do is enough.

Apple also uses very expensive custom cases that raise the price.

As far as reliability goes, sure, they are more reliable, despite well publicized flaws.

But as we know from Japanese cars, quality DOESN'T have to cost more. It could even cost LESS. It's the attention to quality that matters. Though Apple has slipped up on a few things as of late.

You said the magic words: could, and wanted to.

It's not that they can't. It's that they won't.

The data in that table at the bottom seems to suggest they'll stick with Core Solo for the cheaper mini...not good.

I don't understand this comment.

Apple competes with Windows PC manufacturers no more, or less, than it did before. We can, IMO, neglect the small number of people that would buy an Apple computer but use Windows as the primary OS.

The competition is between Windows and OS X, and changing the hardware hasn't affected that.

Uh, no

Apple never planned on using anything from Intel older than Yonah

(not counting the P4s in the developer machines, duh)

So get over it already folks, not gonna happen

Well, there is a Yonah-based Celeron M; somewhat retardedly/confusingly named, of course. Not sure if it's the 430.

It does when people can benchmark the two systems more easily.

Any idea what the thermal characteristics of this Woodcrest chip are like ? A Quad-code machine at 3GHz does not sound cool !

You mean Quad-Core?

I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure it's a hell of a lot cooler than a Quad G5.

No joke. I hope Apple was ready for this fact.

To my ears it sounds pretty cool, but it does not feel so to the touch.

As onlooker said, I expect it to be substantially more cool than a G5 quad.

It is all polotics now...if Boxx, Dell XPS/Aleinware, Falcon Northwest,and other high end builders use sockets and Apple solders, they will catch hell...and loose a TON of sales; the only reason that x86 won the CPU wars was because of the openness of the archetexture, any part is pretty much a component, it can be changed...soldering in the Mini or a laptop is one thing, but it will not be acceptable in the intel/x86 workstation market.

- the Intel chip cost considerably more than the g4 chip that it replaced.
- Bluetooth and Wi-Fi added standard (previously $100 upgrade)
- Front Row and Remote added
- Gigabit ethernet added
- Max Ram capacity was increased from 1 to 2 gig
- Extra USB ports (2) added
- digital and analog audio in/out added
- Faster HD (5400 rpm vs. 4200 rpm)
- Larger HD (60 gig vs. 40 gig)
- Faster RAM used

All in all, the mini was upgraded in just about every aspect for the $100 price increase.

Do you have sources for this?

Specifically, do you have sources for the prices Apple paid Freescale vs. the ones Apple paid Intel?

I guess not.


$100 being a completely inflated price, since this costs Apple, what, $5? If even that.


Laughably cheap.


Comes as part of the chipset.


Yeah, woo, ¢50?


I'll give you those. Being as there was a gap of well over a year, however, that's not much.


Most of which came virtually free for Apple.

everything looks great, now...
can we finally get a "pro" machine that can be rack mounted!?!?!
this is really no longer an option for me, and many others i would think.

Actually, the source of the cost increase was from an article here at AI. I don't have it bookmarked, but I'm sure you could find it if you did a search. If i remember correctly the cost of the Intel chip was almost 2x the cost of the G4 chip at the time.

As far as bluetooth/Wifi, I honestly don't know what it costs Apple but my guess would certainly be more than $5 and it still doesn't change the fact that it WAS a $100 upgrade.

Laughably cheap? Maybe cheap, still an addition that cuts into the margin.

Comes as part of the chipset - True, but that is why that chipset costs more

Yeah, woo, 50 cents - Unlikely that 2 usb ports and digital and analog in/out cost 50 cents.

I'll give you those - Good, don't forget the additional cost of the faster RAM.

You discount all these things, but you have to remember, this was a $499 box with a very low profit margin compared to the higher end machines. All these small things add up.

Anyways, you asked.. I told you.

On this news I'm afraid my worst fears will come to fruition. Instead of Mac Pro prices become more reasonable and going lockstep with the PC market, Apple is likely YET AGAIN going in the other direction; with an even higher priced tier. I had hoped Apple would offer a good entry-level mainstream Pro system for around $1,699. With an all Woodcrest line I don't see how an entry-level model would appear for less than $2,499.

I hope my fears are unjustified, but when I see current pricing of Woodcrest chips vs. Apple's penchant for premium pricing, I start sweating. So much for my plans to buy a Mac Pro.

Oh yeah, these babies will fly. Looking to replace my 2004 PowerMac G5 Dual 2.5

Can wait for WWDC

Foo Fighter. The article said there would be a single processor version. I don't think Apple is going to waste a woodcrest in a single socket. I think the SP version will have a Conroe.

The cost for the mini's single-core Yonah was $209. I still am looking for the cost of the G4, but I believe it was around $75.00.

http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/12/...s.performance/

You guys are arguing about cost and upgradability over and over and over again.

The "Apple Tax" still exists, and Apple continues to value their profit margins highly. And they do weird stupid stuff like soldering CPUs on some models for who knows what reason. Remember our external perception and evaluation is separate and can be quite different to the internal workings and perceptions of the different departments within Apple itself. Not to mention a highly dominating CEO figure... So this all leads to quite a lot that is different to what we expect, and leads to the complaints we see regularly on the forums.

But the stuff that we enjoy about the Mac, yes, that also comes out of Cupertino, so, excellent on that part.

At the end of the day, maybe 1 in 20 posts are "sweet, I'm gonna get it" compared to the rest of "OMFG what a rip-off". And you know what? That speaks of the market share Apple has and will continue to have.

You can't get confused with the volume of computers that Apple is moving with definite increase in market share. Because, overall, the volume of other PC manufacturers is also increasing.

What are we going to be happy with?
1. More people using the Mac, by numbers.
2. Marketshare maintained at 3%-5%, maybe edging to 6% if possible.
3. Apple continuing to have healthy profits each quarter.
4. Stock price going up (what would make this happen?? Woodcrest Mac Pros??).
5. iPod/ online music and videos continuing to be strong and dominating.

What are we not happy with? Well, here's mine:

I personally have an issue with the Cinema Displays, they are outdated and overpriced. Ridiculously slow given the huge improvements/ sales/ price reductions of LCD panels in general, eg. as fueled by the World Cup.

I have seen at least 3-4 local Apple resellers in my city (capital city of a SouthEastAsian country) and they have the MacBookPro and iMac CoreDuo but I have yet to fracking see a MacBook. WTF

Investors would prefer to see Mac Marketshare increasing more than anything. AAPL was on a ride over the past 4 years because of iPod growth. iPod sales are still huge, but growth has slowed considerably, and look what has been happening with the stock..

Growth is what drives the stock price and motivates investors.

Woo, you should start selling your own computers since you have access to these wonderful prices that no one else does.

You are so warped. That "Apple Tax" myth it's not even funny any more. Give it a rest. The so called Apple Tax has been disproved many times over, but for some reason people keep going on about it like it's a given truth. It's just PC weenie propaganda now.