Apple has been concerned with space saving since he introduction of the iMac. The iMac, eMac, ad the Cube all save desk space, and you sacrifice expandibility. The portable have gotten thinner and the 12" PB and iBook save space on all axes. Expandibility of portables is very limited. The Xserve is as thin as it can get at 1U. The flat panel displays save much horizontal desk space, and we'll probably see that improve even more in the future. Point being, Apple has been addressing the idea of saving space. However, I'm not sure that means they've got to do it with the PowerMacs.
PowerMacs offer expandibility, and have been slowly building on the exandibility. To fit dual optical bays, dual processors with heatsinks and fans, four hard drives, an AGP card and 4 PCI card, the PSU, and the motherboard with it's memory slots and interfaces, you have a lower bound on how small you can make the housing. If you want to save space, then you buy and iMac or eMac and it's right in front of you on your desk. But if you want expandibility, you go with the PowerMac and you put it on the floor if you lack the desk space. You make sacrifices depending on your needs.
I think it would be a step backward if Apple decreased the expandibility by making the case much smaller. Their whole product line would be small, but you would not have the choice of a higly expandable machine. They can make the case a bit smaller, and maybe work some miracles to make it smaller than I'd expect, but if they sacrifice expandibility, some people will feel that they will be getting much less Power out of their new PowerMac.
A lot of people want a Cube redux, and it's been discussed to death. It's not a bad idea at all, but I really don't think that concept should completely replace the PowerMac.
I whole-heartedly agree. Have the expandable PowerMac and bring out the cube redux, when the time is right for Apple to do so. If it falls flat again, I doubt if it will come back for a third time.
But also, don't forget that there is a substantial market within Apple's core markets for a small, quiet, powerful machine. The Cube was imperfect in many respects, including price (not because it was all that costly to make, either: Apple's margins were insane). I'm not expecting or advocating its return, and I did allow in my post for the existence of a conventional tower.
The main reason to remove as much internal expandability as possible is that cooling becomes an exponentially easier proposition when people aren't stuffing variously large, hot things into the case. You could try a compromise, allowing one 7" PCI and one 7" AGP card and using an external chassis for more and larger cards, but then you still have to set up the cooling system to account for the radical and unpredictable changes in internal heat and airflow that those cards will introduce in various configurations, and your machine suddenly gets a lot bigger. Or, like those Shuttle machines, it just overheats and dies. Real professional...
So that's what I figure. If Apple sells a barebones workstation for less than the current tower (rather than $200 more, as with the Cube) and then offers expansion options via a high-speed connection, I think they'll have an excellent chance of expanding their sales. The base PowerMac will be an excellent high-end office machine and an ideal workstation for publishing and 2D visual arts, and increasingly for audio as well. Rendezvous, the sundry networking options, and clustering/distributed computing support can turn a classroom or office full of them into a renderfarm of sorts (in fact, I imagine that Apple is just waiting for the first reasonable 10Gb Ethernet chip to appear...). High-end audio, video and 3D, and laboratory scientists, can use expansion chassis for various internal expansion needs, and again, they could allow for far more expandability than the current minitower can provide.
But then, I've been banging this drum for a while. Maybe it's because I have a Cube on my desk.
This might be a little strange also, but what about turning the tower sideways, mounting the optical drives so they still come out towards you, and having the PCI slots vertical with the ports to the top and covered by a hinged cap that is open to the back to route the cables out of. With a wide tower you could have your 2 optical drives mounted side by side and have lots of room for other bays.
You could mount the motherboard on the back of the unit. With some nice plastic design I think it might be a good orientation.
I'd even like it if they could make the LCD monitors, esp. the 23" and larger on an arm (upgradeable/replaceable of course). I like the iMac I have for that feature (grumble on the not upgradeable monitor though). The old CRT's I have swivel and tilt, why not the new top of the line Apple Displays.
I definitely agree on some front ports for USB and Firewire. But I'd also like some internal drive bays for something like a zip drive or multi-type flash reader, or whatever new removeable media comes along (optical still writes so slow to me).
For the case, I just figure, there's a lot of space behind a LCD monitor, like with the iMac, to fill with something useful.
How deep do you think a cofiguration like this would need to be? Anything under 12" deep would be perfect for me. Apple's 23" display is pretty wide. You could cover quite a lot of tower with that display.
This might be a little strange also, but what about turning the tower sideways, mounting the optical drives so they still come out towards you, and having the PCI slots vertical with the ports to the top and covered by a hinged cap that is open to the back to route the cables out of. With a wide tower you could have your 2 optical drives mounted side by side and have lots of room for other bays.
...
How deep do you think a cofiguration like this would need to be? Anything under 12" deep would be perfect for me. Apple's 23" display is pretty wide. You could cover quite a lot of tower with that display.
This was what I was originally trying to get at. LCDs are changing the way desks and computer peripherals are organized.
The shape of desktop and tower cases were designed for an era when everyone was using CRTs. While most people don't have LCD screens, the installed base is increasing at a pretty surprising pace. It would make sense and be in character for apple, to rethink if the current, narrow but deep, cases make sense for LCD owners.
My half-depth proposal came more out of a desire for efficient use of desk space rather than a desire for a smaller computer. Half depth computers would be most successful if their expansion options weren't crippled.
Image, a fully expandable, half-depth tower... A computer that wouldn't loom over everything else on the desk.
Convenient but expandable. I think there would be palm-to-forehead bonking like when apple introduced el Capitan. A door? Its so simple. Why doesn't every computer come with a door?
The Cube was only possible because the power supply was made external. I think the minimum for a decent tower would be a depth of 14 inches. Any smaller and you have to think about ducted cooling, like the MDD Macs. Apple needs to get on the ball here and go with more traditional cooling.
A a pair of low RPM 92 or 120 mm intake and exhaust fans. A quiet thermally controlled PSU like Antec's TruePowers and a heatsink fan combo.
i too am very interested in what the next Towers will look like. I think not as deep is not as likely as not as wide. How about a tin Tower, or perhaps just an all around shrunk Tower but same dimentions as now.
But we must also consider how small the Powermac is now. Has anyone seen a Dell tower. Its HUGE, tall. But thats bad. Small is better. Then again quite may be better. perhaps they will keep the current size and go for better circulation and quieter computers.
Comments
Originally posted by Placebo
How 'bout a PCI card that somehow folds to adapt to case design? That might be nice.
Nice but impossible...
PowerMacs offer expandibility, and have been slowly building on the exandibility. To fit dual optical bays, dual processors with heatsinks and fans, four hard drives, an AGP card and 4 PCI card, the PSU, and the motherboard with it's memory slots and interfaces, you have a lower bound on how small you can make the housing. If you want to save space, then you buy and iMac or eMac and it's right in front of you on your desk. But if you want expandibility, you go with the PowerMac and you put it on the floor if you lack the desk space. You make sacrifices depending on your needs.
I think it would be a step backward if Apple decreased the expandibility by making the case much smaller. Their whole product line would be small, but you would not have the choice of a higly expandable machine. They can make the case a bit smaller, and maybe work some miracles to make it smaller than I'd expect, but if they sacrifice expandibility, some people will feel that they will be getting much less Power out of their new PowerMac.
A lot of people want a Cube redux, and it's been discussed to death. It's not a bad idea at all, but I really don't think that concept should completely replace the PowerMac.
EDIT: changed a would to a would not
I whole-heartedly agree. Have the expandable PowerMac and bring out the cube redux, when the time is right for Apple to do so. If it falls flat again, I doubt if it will come back for a third time.
The main reason to remove as much internal expandability as possible is that cooling becomes an exponentially easier proposition when people aren't stuffing variously large, hot things into the case. You could try a compromise, allowing one 7" PCI and one 7" AGP card and using an external chassis for more and larger cards, but then you still have to set up the cooling system to account for the radical and unpredictable changes in internal heat and airflow that those cards will introduce in various configurations, and your machine suddenly gets a lot bigger. Or, like those Shuttle machines, it just overheats and dies. Real professional...
So that's what I figure. If Apple sells a barebones workstation for less than the current tower (rather than $200 more, as with the Cube) and then offers expansion options via a high-speed connection, I think they'll have an excellent chance of expanding their sales. The base PowerMac will be an excellent high-end office machine and an ideal workstation for publishing and 2D visual arts, and increasingly for audio as well. Rendezvous, the sundry networking options, and clustering/distributed computing support can turn a classroom or office full of them into a renderfarm of sorts (in fact, I imagine that Apple is just waiting for the first reasonable 10Gb Ethernet chip to appear...). High-end audio, video and 3D, and laboratory scientists, can use expansion chassis for various internal expansion needs, and again, they could allow for far more expandability than the current minitower can provide.
But then, I've been banging this drum for a while. Maybe it's because I have a Cube on my desk.
You could mount the motherboard on the back of the unit. With some nice plastic design I think it might be a good orientation.
I'd even like it if they could make the LCD monitors, esp. the 23" and larger on an arm (upgradeable/replaceable of course). I like the iMac I have for that feature (grumble on the not upgradeable monitor though). The old CRT's I have swivel and tilt, why not the new top of the line Apple Displays.
I definitely agree on some front ports for USB and Firewire. But I'd also like some internal drive bays for something like a zip drive or multi-type flash reader, or whatever new removeable media comes along (optical still writes so slow to me).
For the case, I just figure, there's a lot of space behind a LCD monitor, like with the iMac, to fill with something useful.
How deep do you think a cofiguration like this would need to be? Anything under 12" deep would be perfect for me. Apple's 23" display is pretty wide. You could cover quite a lot of tower with that display.
Originally posted by Zharazi7
This might be a little strange also, but what about turning the tower sideways, mounting the optical drives so they still come out towards you, and having the PCI slots vertical with the ports to the top and covered by a hinged cap that is open to the back to route the cables out of. With a wide tower you could have your 2 optical drives mounted side by side and have lots of room for other bays.
...
How deep do you think a cofiguration like this would need to be? Anything under 12" deep would be perfect for me. Apple's 23" display is pretty wide. You could cover quite a lot of tower with that display.
This was what I was originally trying to get at. LCDs are changing the way desks and computer peripherals are organized.
The shape of desktop and tower cases were designed for an era when everyone was using CRTs. While most people don't have LCD screens, the installed base is increasing at a pretty surprising pace. It would make sense and be in character for apple, to rethink if the current, narrow but deep, cases make sense for LCD owners.
My half-depth proposal came more out of a desire for efficient use of desk space rather than a desire for a smaller computer. Half depth computers would be most successful if their expansion options weren't crippled.
Image, a fully expandable, half-depth tower... A computer that wouldn't loom over everything else on the desk.
Convenient but expandable. I think there would be palm-to-forehead bonking like when apple introduced el Capitan. A door? Its so simple. Why doesn't every computer come with a door?
A a pair of low RPM 92 or 120 mm intake and exhaust fans. A quiet thermally controlled PSU like Antec's TruePowers and a heatsink fan combo.
Originally posted by pesi
you mean you haven't seen this: ?
This would also give you several spots on your desk top to keep a coffee mug and muffin warm while you work!
Originally posted by MacGregor
This would also give you several spots on your desk top to keep a coffee mug and muffin warm while you work!
LOL
But we must also consider how small the Powermac is now. Has anyone seen a Dell tower. Its HUGE, tall. But thats bad. Small is better. Then again quite may be better. perhaps they will keep the current size and go for better circulation and quieter computers.
the drives would be virtical not horizontal and you could still have 5 PCI and an AGP...if not more
it would be just relaly thin, but basically same depth and height