On the contrary. The writing style is very similar. Dorsal was right smack on once, and once quite off. It could be argued that since he seems to deal closely with hardware that he would not be privy to release dates etc for the test boxes he has access to. In other words, we can expect him to be wrong sometimes WRT to dates, but his overall description of feature sets should coalesce at some point.
I read what he/she writes very carefully. Like always, remain sceptical, and believe only as much as you want to believe. For me, Dorsal's posts are entertaining and more true than most.
I am sceptical, but inclined to believe that he is the "Real" Dorsal. Doral has always said he tests proto-type machines. That means we cannot either confirm nor disprove what he is saying.
1. Machines he tests might never be released.
2. He claims to have a G5 but the machine may be no where near ready for public release.
3. The enclosure he has "Quicksilver" is unlikely to be used in the model sold to the public.
4. The fact that he has not recieved any duel processors does not mean that they will not exist. In fact it probably means that the G5 is a long way from release.
5. I think he assumption of two pro lines could indeed be true. G4 = PowerMacs G5=SuperMacs Apple has to have models to suit all price levels. If ther G5 is that good and it is expensive, then they cannot aford to abandon the main pro customer base. The G5 will sell and I am sure it is formly aimed at the SGI market place.
6. This is a rumor site, never forget that. Courtesy costs nothing.
During the last 2 years that I visit this forum I never understood why people believe Dorsal. During these 2 years EVERY statement that he made was wrong or it was what everybody anticipated to be released. He offered not even ONE breakthrough or accurate information and to be on the safe site he just said that he "is testing prototypes" and that he "was surprised that apple did not release the machines that he had tested". But people here just kiss his .... as if he is some kind of God that they are afraid that he will leave the forum.
<strong>During the last 2 years that I visit this forum I never understood why people believe Dorsal. During these 2 years EVERY statement that he made was wrong or it was what everybody anticipated to be released. He offered not even ONE breakthrough or accurate information and to be on the safe site he just said that he "is testing prototypes" and that he "was surprised that apple did not release the machines that he had tested". But people here just kiss his .... as if he is some kind of God that they are afraid that he will leave the forum.
Bezbozny.</strong><hr></blockquote>
He was right that we would stay at ATA/66 when we all thought it had to be ATA/100. Everyone was shocked. Yes, he has been wrong too.
I am still not sure about his stuff. It would very easy to make it up from publicly available data. And, as others have pointed out, he always seems to give two scenarios, one relatively pessmistic and one moderately to very optimistic. Then, when something close to either one is released, he gains trust.
Watch:
"We have in our possession what we believe to be two different machines from Apple in test box enclosures. They look the same but perform very different. The first, appears to be based on the PPC 7451:
933MHZ
133MHZ Bus
ATA/66
PC133 RAM
The second is much different. It has what appears to be a the PPC 8500 family of processor in it, running at 1.5 GHZ. Performance is staggering. It supports PC 2100 or P2700 and also has some parts moved around for heat dissipation.
We don't know when the products will be released.
Really, what has he said here?
But, my gut still tells me to believe him anyway. Sure, it could be BS.....who knows. But everyone has to make a call here and mine goes FOR him, not against.
He was quite right once. True, was not right the second time but it just goes to show that Apple is not going to keep to his product release timeframe. Apple will release new hardware when they are ready.
He really does not say when the G5 would ship. I have to think the specs are pretty close.
[quote]A 500Mhz bus would beat intel's P4s bus.<hr></blockquote>
Umm... no. Intel will release P4s on an 800MHz FSB soon.
Dorsal, how is performance on those machines? Are they 64 bit? What OS do they run? how is performance of your apps without recompiling? With recompiling?
Hm now, Intel currently has Quad 100MHz FSB for 400MHz effective, and will be moving to quad 133 for 533 effective. That already mean the have to move to 1066MHz RDRAM, which costs a LOT at the moment. moving to quad 200 or octo 100 for 800 is very unlikely if you ask me, they'd eitehr have to change the Ram controllers to run at the same speed as teh FSB, which is very unlikely, as the FSB is at least 32bit while RDRAM is only 16 bit, thus requires double the Mhz to perform the same.
Concluded that means a 800MHz FSB would need 1.6GHz RDRAM, which I find is way off yet.
Dorsal has had some very accurate information in the past. Go back and read his previous postings if you want to know what they were. Suffice it to say I put sigificant weight in what he says, but still take it with a grain of salt.
800 effective MHz could well be equal to 4*16bit@400 Mhz RAMBUS or 2*16bit@800MHz RAMBUS channels. The downside to this is that RDRAM would have to be added in either groups of four or in pairs.
I think most of his most accurate predictions were lost when the AI hosting company disappeared during the last prolonged AI blackout. Those archives were a huge resource and it's a shame that they are gone.
I wish I cad kept some of the more detailed posts.
the original "dorsal" never did post much and rarely responded directly to posters. im one of the old posters from the earlier ai board and remember scrolling through pages, and pages, of posts looking for the rare "dorsal" post.
this "dorsal" "sounds" like the old one.
does anybody here remember last year reading posts about apple delibratly sendnig out test machines with tiny diffrences in them to smoke out nda breakers? i remember "dorsal" from last spring writing about the oddly shaped curved feet of the box he was sent and couldn't picture it in my mind. is that maybe one of those "tiny diffrences" used to check up on testers?
however i read his and other's posts mostly for entertainment
As I recall he was dead on the first time around but this was long before AI was down all those months and it seems those messages are long gone. I think he may just get ahead of himself, thinking that what he has now is what will be announced next when in reality it was what he had a few months ago. I think the only thing we can do is dig up what he has said since AI came back online. The comment about there being four USB hubs raises an eyebrow though. Logic would dictate this means two USB ports on the computer and two on the keyboard just as they describe the new iMac as having five USB ports in this manner. I hope he comes back and answers my questions.
the sad thing is at one point i archived the boards daily for awhile as a lark before they went down because they were getting so intresting. and i just assumed ai archived them as well! lol (not that these are the pentagon papers or anything but still)
and now amongst my hundreds of cdrw's i cannot find them! there was a great flame war when i first came on (we got invaded by folks from another board) i usually posted late at night when i got home and decided to save them.
Even the posts still in the AI database have a certain credible feel to them, in my opinion. He claims to be a testing engineer of some sort, and his writing reflects that... and so does the content. The complete miss back in May of last year jivves perfectly with the complete miss of anything really new at MWNY -- there is a strong feeling that Apple decided to pull their new PowerMacs at that point. They were probably pulled for parts supply or economic reasons, and nothing has shown up since then because it would make the iMac look like a much bigger leap than it was (a cool new consumer Mac with the performance of the mid-range PowerMac... err, well sorta).
Dorsal's late-2001 posts and this one fit together very nicely, and are sufficiently far apart and well thought out that it makes it unlikely that they are completely fake... fakers do it because they like the attention and usually post too frequently and with too much verbosity to be credible. Dorsal has been around long enough, posted rarely enough, and with enough detail and consistency that I tend to believe he is what he claims.
The technical details are very believable. No dual G5s make sense because if it is really that fast then one processor will be enough for now, and shipping duals would impact the supply problems for the new chip. The 4x USB thing posted before was based on the actual existance of the extra posts, so it is plausible and who knows maybe the other poster guessed right and Dorsal is just confirming this. The lack of timeframe is frustrating, but it makes sense that he doesn't know when they will show up on the market since he's just working with prototypes. This does confirm the existance of G5 prototypes in a fairly advanced state.
Dorsal could deliberately give us one right and one wrong, purposely to throw Apple off. Who knows.
Anywayz, how bout we get into specifics then. You didn't mention what graphics cards were in these machines like you previously did. Do you have any prototypes featuring the GeForce 4? Is there any way you can tell whether the system uses AGP8x? Is the PPC8500 system you are in contact with 64-bit or not? And what OS are these machines running on?
One thing bugs me why doesn't "Dorsal" post more often or respond to the doubters?
<hr></blockquote>
Assuming all of this is true. If you have real information about a product and you share it in a public forum why should you feel the need to defend the truth? It would a waste of that individuals time, there will always be people who don't believe and there is no concrete way of proving what you say is correct without revealing who you are and then your NDA busting days will be over since you'll be fired and most likely sued.
[quote]
He could address some of the doubters without giving his identity away. Some info obviously would lead to his identification.
<hr></blockquote>
Assuming he does have real information I'm sure he has more important things to do (i.e. work, family) then hang around the boards answering questions for a company he doesn't work for, he doesn't even claim to work for Apple remember?
[quote]It seems starange the he has macnines to test but can't give any real info as to performance of applications.<hr></blockquote>
That's why it's called a non-disclosure agreement. He's not going to disclose actual perfromance as not only would that get him in trouble with Apple but his own employer to which I would think he has enough loyalty not to betray confidential information like that.
Comments
I read what he/she writes very carefully. Like always, remain sceptical, and believe only as much as you want to believe. For me, Dorsal's posts are entertaining and more true than most.
1. Machines he tests might never be released.
2. He claims to have a G5 but the machine may be no where near ready for public release.
3. The enclosure he has "Quicksilver" is unlikely to be used in the model sold to the public.
4. The fact that he has not recieved any duel processors does not mean that they will not exist. In fact it probably means that the G5 is a long way from release.
5. I think he assumption of two pro lines could indeed be true. G4 = PowerMacs G5=SuperMacs Apple has to have models to suit all price levels. If ther G5 is that good and it is expensive, then they cannot aford to abandon the main pro customer base. The G5 will sell and I am sure it is formly aimed at the SGI market place.
6. This is a rumor site, never forget that. Courtesy costs nothing.
Bezbozny.
<strong>During the last 2 years that I visit this forum I never understood why people believe Dorsal. During these 2 years EVERY statement that he made was wrong or it was what everybody anticipated to be released. He offered not even ONE breakthrough or accurate information and to be on the safe site he just said that he "is testing prototypes" and that he "was surprised that apple did not release the machines that he had tested". But people here just kiss his .... as if he is some kind of God that they are afraid that he will leave the forum.
Bezbozny.</strong><hr></blockquote>
He was right that we would stay at ATA/66 when we all thought it had to be ATA/100. Everyone was shocked. Yes, he has been wrong too.
I am still not sure about his stuff. It would very easy to make it up from publicly available data. And, as others have pointed out, he always seems to give two scenarios, one relatively pessmistic and one moderately to very optimistic. Then, when something close to either one is released, he gains trust.
Watch:
"We have in our possession what we believe to be two different machines from Apple in test box enclosures. They look the same but perform very different. The first, appears to be based on the PPC 7451:
933MHZ
133MHZ Bus
ATA/66
PC133 RAM
The second is much different. It has what appears to be a the PPC 8500 family of processor in it, running at 1.5 GHZ. Performance is staggering. It supports PC 2100 or P2700 and also has some parts moved around for heat dissipation.
We don't know when the products will be released.
Really, what has he said here?
But, my gut still tells me to believe him anyway. Sure, it could be BS.....who knows. But everyone has to make a call here and mine goes FOR him, not against.
[ 01-27-2002: Message edited by: SDW2001 ]</p>
He was quite right once. True, was not right the second time but it just goes to show that Apple is not going to keep to his product release timeframe. Apple will release new hardware when they are ready.
He really does not say when the G5 would ship. I have to think the specs are pretty close.
All in all, I think this is pretty reasonable.
Umm... no. Intel will release P4s on an 800MHz FSB soon.
Dorsal, how is performance on those machines? Are they 64 bit? What OS do they run? how is performance of your apps without recompiling? With recompiling?
He could address some of the doubters without giving his identity away. Some info obviously would lead to his identification.
It seems starange the he has macnines to test but can't give any real info as to performance of applications.
Concluded that means a 800MHz FSB would need 1.6GHz RDRAM, which I find is way off yet.
I wonder where you read about that 800MHz FSB.
G-news
I wish I cad kept some of the more detailed posts.
hi!
the original "dorsal" never did post much and rarely responded directly to posters. im one of the old posters from the earlier ai board and remember scrolling through pages, and pages, of posts looking for the rare "dorsal" post.
this "dorsal" "sounds" like the old one.
does anybody here remember last year reading posts about apple delibratly sendnig out test machines with tiny diffrences in them to smoke out nda breakers? i remember "dorsal" from last spring writing about the oddly shaped curved feet of the box he was sent and couldn't picture it in my mind. is that maybe one of those "tiny diffrences" used to check up on testers?
however i read his and other's posts mostly for entertainment
[ 01-27-2002: Message edited by: apple.otaku ]</p>
<strong>Nostradamus = Dorsal</strong><hr></blockquote>
No, Nostradamus = PowerMac G4/codename from the old AI.
and now amongst my hundreds of cdrw's i cannot find them! there was a great flame war when i first came on (we got invaded by folks from another board) i usually posted late at night when i got home and decided to save them.
those were the days...
Dorsal's late-2001 posts and this one fit together very nicely, and are sufficiently far apart and well thought out that it makes it unlikely that they are completely fake... fakers do it because they like the attention and usually post too frequently and with too much verbosity to be credible. Dorsal has been around long enough, posted rarely enough, and with enough detail and consistency that I tend to believe he is what he claims.
The technical details are very believable. No dual G5s make sense because if it is really that fast then one processor will be enough for now, and shipping duals would impact the supply problems for the new chip. The 4x USB thing posted before was based on the actual existance of the extra posts, so it is plausible and who knows maybe the other poster guessed right and Dorsal is just confirming this. The lack of timeframe is frustrating, but it makes sense that he doesn't know when they will show up on the market since he's just working with prototypes. This does confirm the existance of G5 prototypes in a fairly advanced state.
i wondered where codename went to...
why did codename change his codename? lol
Anywayz, how bout we get into specifics then. You didn't mention what graphics cards were in these machines like you previously did. Do you have any prototypes featuring the GeForce 4? Is there any way you can tell whether the system uses AGP8x? Is the PPC8500 system you are in contact with 64-bit or not? And what OS are these machines running on?
One thing bugs me why doesn't "Dorsal" post more often or respond to the doubters?
<hr></blockquote>
Assuming all of this is true. If you have real information about a product and you share it in a public forum why should you feel the need to defend the truth? It would a waste of that individuals time, there will always be people who don't believe and there is no concrete way of proving what you say is correct without revealing who you are and then your NDA busting days will be over since you'll be fired and most likely sued.
[quote]
He could address some of the doubters without giving his identity away. Some info obviously would lead to his identification.
<hr></blockquote>
Assuming he does have real information I'm sure he has more important things to do (i.e. work, family) then hang around the boards answering questions for a company he doesn't work for, he doesn't even claim to work for Apple remember?
[quote]It seems starange the he has macnines to test but can't give any real info as to performance of applications.<hr></blockquote>
That's why it's called a non-disclosure agreement. He's not going to disclose actual perfromance as not only would that get him in trouble with Apple but his own employer to which I would think he has enough loyalty not to betray confidential information like that.
(I'll admit that I enjoyed reading it!)
- Mark