This will only be achieved if we see a rapid spread of the 970 (and perhaps later the 980) to consumer/portable machines. In this respect, Apple should move to a single processor platform - drop the G4 ASAP. I guess this means putting all your eggs in one basket but Apple has a knack of pulling this off (68K - PPC, OS 9 - OS X...). However, the cost savings of buying in bulk and only having to support one motherboard and processor architecture can only be beneficial.
I believe that you will never see Apple drop back to uniprocessor systems. They have gained considerable knowledge building SMP systems. Apple is/was right...SMP systems are the future. Going with Uniprocessor systems puts you in Intels predicament which is working hard to crank up the Clockrate but seeing smaller improvements with each boost. Looking at the future crystal ball will tell you that the majority of consumer machines will stay Uniproc for the next 2 years. Once the transition to 90nm has been reached the next step may be 65nm. At that point Intel has mentioned that they plan to investigate Dual Cores. So what we need in preparation for this new market is an OS that handles threads and multiple processors well. Apple has already started the software trend and the hardware has been available. It's only going to get better.
Now that Apple has the Apple Stores people who live close enough should go "Test Drive" a Mac. Consumers are always easy to please because when they are looking for a new computers they generally have a much slower computer at home so everything "feels" fast to them. You just have to get them in the store.
Apple is breaking even with virtually nonexistent Pro sales. If you aren't selling G4's, then you aren't making any money on them. Therefore, Apple can afford to lower margins on their pro machines because where they will make less money per box, they will actually be selling boxes. Apple should go for lower margins on everything but the highest end 970.
Apple sold 158,000 PowerMacs last quarter. Poor by PowerMac standards, but still hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. As I said before, they haven't had that much slack, because they've been breaking even operationally. The question is, could they cut prices enough to spur sales enough just to break even? They slashed PM prices this spring, and I haven't seen people running out of stores in a crazed fervor, clutching PowerMacs. Price is not the PowerMac's problem. Performance is.
The only way to get the PM to sell is to goose the performance up considerably.
I believe that you will never see Apple drop back to uniprocessor systems. They have gained considerable knowledge building SMP systems. Apple is/was right...SMP systems are the future. Going with Uniprocessor systems puts you in Intels predicament which is working hard to crank up the Clockrate but seeing smaller improvements with each boost. Looking at the future crystal ball will tell you that the majority of consumer machines will stay Uniproc for the next 2 years. Once the transition to 90nm has been reached the next step may be 65nm. At that point Intel has mentioned that they plan to investigate Dual Cores. So what we need in preparation for this new market is an OS that handles threads and multiple processors well. Apple has already started the software trend and the hardware has been available. It's only going to get better.
Now that Apple has the Apple Stores people who live close enough should go "Test Drive" a Mac. Consumers are always easy to please because when they are looking for a new computers they generally have a much slower computer at home so everything "feels" fast to them. You just have to get them in the store.
Apple sold 158,000 PowerMacs last quarter. Poor by PowerMac standards, but still hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. As I said before, they haven't had that much slack, because they've been breaking even operationally. The question is, could they cut prices enough to spur sales enough just to break even? They slashed PM prices this spring, and I haven't seen people running out of stores in a crazed fervor, clutching PowerMacs. Price is not the PowerMac's problem. Performance is.
The only way to get the PM to sell is to goose the performance up considerably.
But when Apple announces new 970 based machines, they are going to sell like mad. If Apple sells twice the machines (which they easily will), then they could cut their margin in hald and still be making the same ammount of money. I think that Apple would sell considerably more than twice the number of PM's, and so they could halve their margin and still make more money. When you have greater sales, you can have lower margins and still make more money.
Those Mhz ratings must go UP UP UP if we want market share to grow! The Mhz wars are unknown to the general public. Show Joe Six-Pack a 2 GHz+ Intel and a 1 Ghz iMac. Sure, he may think the iMac looks all 'pretty' but what hes thinking is that 2 is better than 1 and hence he is getting more bang for his buck. Apple has failed time and again in trying to show that 'Mhz doesn't matter'.
I will now go smoke a J ....
I've said it time and again....Apple needs to show people Mac OS X and iApps only to sell machines. People are afraid of the unknown, and while they may see a Mac or an iApp in a Magazine or Internet-news article, they just aren't getting it. OS X can make them get it, in a big way. The main reason I started s...canning my PCs at home was because I would wind up rebuilding the damn things every other month because the OS crashed to the point of having to rebuild. I have NEVER had to re-install OS X on any one of a number of machines I have used over the past 2-1/2 years (including the Public Beta, for God's sake!) That's all they really need to show to gain marketshare.
But when Apple announces new 970 based machines, they are going to sell like mad. If Apple sells twice the machines (which they easily will), then they could cut their margin in hald and still be making the same ammount of money. I think that Apple would sell considerably more than twice the number of PM's, and so they could halve their margin and still make more money. When you have greater sales, you can have lower margins and still make more money.
Surely Apple does do Market Analysis. I think we as consumers love to sit in the armchair and do "what ifs" but Apple is not a Private company..they have Shareholders to answer to and cutting your profit in half and attempting to sell twice as many computers is risky. All markets have finite numbers. There are only so many people who will purchase Powermacs regardless of price.
The PC market is not doing well. Funny how we seem to want join that party. I have recently witness unprecedented levels of agression coming from Marketers. I routinely have to hit the registry and track down Spyware offenders, watch out for virus' and have had to move away from Internet Explorer because it becomes riddles with Spyware leeches.
Low cost can only help on area but PC's are simply becoming hostile environments which require inordinate amounts of time for maintainence. Having two PC's has only solidfied my preferrence for Macs and if spending more money for a Mac relieves me from the headaches of the PC platform then sobeit.
Surely Apple does do Market Analysis. I think we as consumers love to sit in the armchair and do "what ifs" but Apple is not a Private company..they have Shareholders to answer to and cutting your profit in half and attempting to sell twice as many computers is risky. All markets have finite numbers. There are only so many people who will purchase Powermacs regardless of price.
The PC market is not doing well. Funny how we seem to want join that party. I have recently witness unprecedented levels of agression coming from Marketers. I routinely have to hit the registry and track down Spyware offenders, watch out for virus' and have had to move away from Internet Explorer because it becomes riddles with Spyware leeches.
Low cost can only help on area but PC's are simply becoming hostile environments which require inordinate amounts of time for maintainence. Having two PC's has only solidfied my preferrence for Macs and if spending more money for a Mac relieves me from the headaches of the PC platform then sobeit.
Use *nix on them then and point the finger of blame where it belongs....MICROSOFT! They're the ones that release the absolute joke that is Windows and IE and Outlook and......you get my point. And I agree with you. Ad-aware can only do so much. Our virus protection system picked off about a dozen Fizzer viruses today alone! Kazaa, Hotbar...tools of the devil propogated by the beast (Redmond) itself. This is all that needs to be said:
Systems Affected: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Me
Systems Not Affected: Macintosh, OS/2, UNIX, Linux
Exactly. Microsoft is a company that wants to "lock down" your computer so that the Entertainment Company feels safe about letting us view THIER product when I can't even lock it down to protect my own data!
I got companies putting weblinks on my Desktop, changing the pages I see with extraneous links. Yet IE still has no protections. Microsoft has taken the OS from individuals and put it in the control of Rogue Programmers. The more I witness this the more I'm outraged and dumbfounded that Mac users want to switch over to this crap. I swear some people would take a "kick in the teeth" for an extra $20 off but I'm not that person. </end rant>
Back on Topic. If Apple ships Duallies on 2/3 their Powermac line then we must at least be equal in performane as according to Stokes the 970 will roughly %75 the speed of the P4 at that time. Add that second processor in and we now have a nice advantage as long as the OS handles each proc as efficiently as possible(Panther please be that OS). Exciting times indeed.
The real question is what does Apple do with the G4? Shelve it in lieu of a revamped G3 from IBM?
But when Apple announces new 970 based machines, they are going to sell like mad. If Apple sells twice the machines (which they easily will), then they could cut their margin in hald and still be making the same ammount of money.
Uhm, no. If Apple cuts their margins in half they will make half as much money.
What you are thinking about is how to maximize revenue. That is, at what point does the price begin to reduce demand for the product? That's the sweet spot to find. But merely reducing the price won't necessarily allow you to sell enough additional units to make up the difference in lost revenue.
Look at it another way. If Apple could easily sell twice as many units at the current price, then they should raise the price until they are selling as many as they have at as high a price as the market will allow.
Use *nix on them then and point the finger of blame where it belongs....MICROSOFT!
It is a lot more then just microsoft. PC hardware is significantly more difficult to deal with for the average person. I have 4 PC's and two Macs. The Macs are the slowest machines in numbers, but they are also the two boxes that do most the work. I started to buy into the PC is cheaper/faster syndrome, and it has cost me. My Macs run 24/7 and barring a sustained power outage or some other event seperate from the Macs, they just don't stop. Since OS-X they have been rock solid day in and day out. The cheaper/faster PC's are a different story. Replaced components, downtime (especially under windows, but I have tried Linux as well), random freezes, the constant monitoring required to make sure they are still working. My time is worth something to me, and when that is factored in, the PC's have cost as much or more then my Macs not to count the aggravation and lost productivity. It doesn't matter how fast your box is, if it doesn't keep working.
If the 970 successfully resolves the performance issues, and Apple holds the line on pricing to what it is now, then Macs will be the value leader, and worth every penny.
The difference between simple and complex instruction units:
Quote:
Think of the multiple fast IUs (or SIUs) as express checkout lanes for one-item shoppers and the single slow IU as a general-purpose checkout lane for multiple-item shoppers in a supermarket where most of the shoppers only buy a single item. This kind of specialization keeps that one guy who's stocking up for Armageddon from slowing down the the majority who just want to duck in and grab eggs or milk on the way home.
Uhm, no. If Apple cuts their margins in half they will make half as much money.
What you are thinking about is how to maximize revenue. That is, at what point does the price begin to reduce demand for the product? That's the sweet spot to find. But merely reducing the price won't necessarily allow you to sell enough additional units to make up the difference in lost revenue.
Look at it another way. If Apple could easily sell twice as many units at the current price, then they should raise the price until they are selling as many as they have at as high a price as the market will allow.
Nice try Tomb but they won't listen. Just wait ten minutes and the next one will tell you why Apple should follow his wishfull thinking \
The real question is what does Apple do with the G4?
i sense a new thread being born... and call dibs on credit.
101 uses for an obsolete G4 CPU. Illustrations by B. Kliban, perhaps.
if removed with pins intact...
world's smallest grooved zen rock garden rake
angel hair pasta maker with a 100+ tine fork
heatsink augmented as thermal barbecue tongs or pliers
"cyberpunk barbie" hairbrush
1/172 scale diorama component for matrix world
segway upgrade (better vector processing for extreme sports)
without pins
poker chips (value by MHz... Moto has kindly constrained the bank to small denominations for years)
sequins/rivets/applique for high-tech supermodel couture
earrings/brooch/jewelry/watches
wind chimes (maybe better if connected with ribbon cable)
coasters for shot glasses
skateboard wheel covers
---
WRT the ARS Part II article:
cache speed/latency are a major unknown left hanging... and a major influence on overall performace
lack of L3 seems to get glossed over, but perhaps the vastly improved FSB and memory subsystems obviate the need? nah...
performance benchmarks of recent dual G4s -vs- 970 must remember that the 970 is without L3 (so far) and only 512kb of on-chip L2 (according to reports, including the ARS links). some G4 systems go up to 2Mb L3 per CPU, most are 1Mb L3, some of the PBs have actually lost L2 or L3 compared to previous models and some iBooks.
if the 1.8 Single 970 can smoke a current 1.42 Dual G4 without giving the 970 any L3,
imagine how far back into the POWER league it could go once it gets its cache back
reading Hannibal's articles sure makes me long for a dual-core 970 (which would basically make it a POWER4 again) in order to get that lovely lebensraum of on-chip L3 cache...
IBM has proposed POWER4/5 models with 128Mb of cache on the die
One must also remember that Apple has to be able to keep up with demand to satisfy customers (and get paid). Which is why with a new product, like the 970 Powermacs will be, you keep the price at a bit of a premium. I'm sure they'll be marketing it as "the fastest desktop computer ever!", so if they sell them at too good of a price, they'd never be able to meet demand. They aren't set up to sell 1,000,000 Powermacs a Quarter.
Second, I hear the 970 is cheaper to produce than the G4, which would allow them to sell cheaper Powermacs, except that their consumer products will still be using the more expensive G4 processors until the 970 is transitioned into all of their products. They can't sell slow consumer iMacs and Superfast Powermacs at the same price point, and they can't lower the iMac prices enough without selling them at a loss. Which is why I don't think we'll see any notable price reductions on Apple hardware until all of their hardware has moved to the 970. If the new IBM G3 GOBI processor is dramatically cheaper than the current G4 processors, I could see Apple moving the eMac and iBook to the Gobi, and the iMac and PowerMac to the 970, which would allow price cuts across the board. Of course, if it's true that the PowerBook will have to wait for the 980 later this year, then they'd either have to stick a GOBI in the Powerbook or sell the PowerBooks at a premium (for using the higher cost G4) which of course would kill Powerbook sales, and this year would become the year of the desktop instead of the portable.
It'll be interesting to see what they do. I am hoping that they transition everything away from the slow, expensive G4 as soon as possible. The two biggest reasons for people not switching to the Mac right now are because they are slow and expensive. They've got their Apple Stores in place across the United States, now they just have to supply products that make financial sense to a customer. Pay more for a slower computer during a time when money is tight? It doesn't matter how fantastic the iApps are, people just can't afford it.
lack of L3 seems to get glossed over, but perhaps the vastly improved FSB and memory subsystems obviate the need? nah...
[/B]
The FSB is fast enough that it might be sensible to put the L3 on the other side of the bus, in the chipset. There it would cover stalls and contention in the memory system itself without complicating the processor with additional pins and the transistors necessary for the L3 controller. If extra transistors are spent on cache, hopefully they're used to bump the L2 to a full megabyte.
Multi-core designs will come in time, but I'm actually more interested in IBM's SMT (aka HyperThreading) implementation. They claim to be able to have one core run two threads at full speed, which is much more efficient from a transistor & power budget perspective than having 2 full cores. No memory sharing issues, either.
Second, I hear the 970 is cheaper to produce than the G4, which would allow them to sell cheaper Powermacs, except that their consumer products will still be using the more expensive G4 processors until the 970 is transitioned into all of their products.
The CPU is not the only cost component of the computer. The new FSB, RAM, etc. is presumably more expensive than the dated slow mess the G4 requires. Just a quick check, DDR400 is 20% more expensive than what is used in the PowerMacs today. I have no idea what the FSB will cost Apple.
I only hope that prices are within $200 of the current prices. I'm not expecting cheaper. I hope I'm wrong!
The new FSB, RAM, etc. is presumably more expensive than the dated slow mess the G4 requires. Just a quick check, DDR400 is 20% more expensive than what is used in the PowerMacs today. I have no idea what the FSB will cost Apple.
Good point. I hadn't taken that into consideration. However, since Apple rarely reduces their prices on a Hardware product as it gets older and older, Their cost of building the current Powermac at this time compared to February when they were new is most likely significantly less. So, my point is that those components always cost more than the last model when the new model is released, but Apple makes up for this by selling those same components at the same price for 8 months or more, selling the hardware at the same price as the components get cheaper.
The G4 processors on the other hand probably haven't gotten cheaper for Apple since the very first ones, so the fact that the 970 is cheaper to buy than the G4 should still allow Apple to sell new machines slightly cheaper, if they choose too. In a more healthy economy, I'd be they'd add a good $200 to the current prices of Powermacs when they move to 970s, but since the Powermac has lagged behind for so long and today's economy, I bet they'll sell at the same prices as today's Powermacs.
Think back to when the Blue & White G3s were released. They were leaps and bounds above the beige G3s in expandability, performance, and components, but they started at $400 less than the beige G3's sold for a day before the Keynote. I'm sure we won't see price cuts like that (they'd be cheaper than iMacs!) but Apple should certainly be able to sell the new machines at today's Powermac prices, based on these observations.
The FSB is fast enough that it might be sensible to put the L3 on the other side of the bus, in the chipset. There it would cover stalls and contention in the memory system itself without complicating the processor with additional pins and the transistors necessary for the L3 controller. If extra transistors are spent on cache, hopefully they're used to bump the L2 to a full megabyte.
Multi-core designs will come in time, but I'm actually more interested in IBM's SMT (aka HyperThreading) implementation. They claim to be able to have one core run two threads at full speed, which is much more efficient from a transistor & power budget perspective than having 2 full cores. No memory sharing issues, either.
And depending upon configuration, probably more than two threads from what I read of their development lately...
Comments
This will only be achieved if we see a rapid spread of the 970 (and perhaps later the 980) to consumer/portable machines. In this respect, Apple should move to a single processor platform - drop the G4 ASAP. I guess this means putting all your eggs in one basket but Apple has a knack of pulling this off (68K - PPC, OS 9 - OS X...). However, the cost savings of buying in bulk and only having to support one motherboard and processor architecture can only be beneficial.
I believe that you will never see Apple drop back to uniprocessor systems. They have gained considerable knowledge building SMP systems. Apple is/was right...SMP systems are the future. Going with Uniprocessor systems puts you in Intels predicament which is working hard to crank up the Clockrate but seeing smaller improvements with each boost. Looking at the future crystal ball will tell you that the majority of consumer machines will stay Uniproc for the next 2 years. Once the transition to 90nm has been reached the next step may be 65nm. At that point Intel has mentioned that they plan to investigate Dual Cores. So what we need in preparation for this new market is an OS that handles threads and multiple processors well. Apple has already started the software trend and the hardware has been available. It's only going to get better.
Now that Apple has the Apple Stores people who live close enough should go "Test Drive" a Mac. Consumers are always easy to please because when they are looking for a new computers they generally have a much slower computer at home so everything "feels" fast to them. You just have to get them in the store.
Originally posted by Yevgeny
Apple is breaking even with virtually nonexistent Pro sales. If you aren't selling G4's, then you aren't making any money on them. Therefore, Apple can afford to lower margins on their pro machines because where they will make less money per box, they will actually be selling boxes. Apple should go for lower margins on everything but the highest end 970.
Apple sold 158,000 PowerMacs last quarter. Poor by PowerMac standards, but still hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. As I said before, they haven't had that much slack, because they've been breaking even operationally. The question is, could they cut prices enough to spur sales enough just to break even? They slashed PM prices this spring, and I haven't seen people running out of stores in a crazed fervor, clutching PowerMacs. Price is not the PowerMac's problem. Performance is.
The only way to get the PM to sell is to goose the performance up considerably.
Originally posted by Amorph
The only way to get the PM to sell is to goose the performance up considerably.
... yeah, I'd have to say I agree with that ... price does matter, certainly, but it just isn't the dominant factor here.
Originally posted by hmurchison
I believe that you will never see Apple drop back to uniprocessor systems. They have gained considerable knowledge building SMP systems. Apple is/was right...SMP systems are the future. Going with Uniprocessor systems puts you in Intels predicament which is working hard to crank up the Clockrate but seeing smaller improvements with each boost. Looking at the future crystal ball will tell you that the majority of consumer machines will stay Uniproc for the next 2 years. Once the transition to 90nm has been reached the next step may be 65nm. At that point Intel has mentioned that they plan to investigate Dual Cores. So what we need in preparation for this new market is an OS that handles threads and multiple processors well. Apple has already started the software trend and the hardware has been available. It's only going to get better.
Now that Apple has the Apple Stores people who live close enough should go "Test Drive" a Mac. Consumers are always easy to please because when they are looking for a new computers they generally have a much slower computer at home so everything "feels" fast to them. You just have to get them in the store.
Notice I said single processor platform 8)
Originally posted by Amorph
Apple sold 158,000 PowerMacs last quarter. Poor by PowerMac standards, but still hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. As I said before, they haven't had that much slack, because they've been breaking even operationally. The question is, could they cut prices enough to spur sales enough just to break even? They slashed PM prices this spring, and I haven't seen people running out of stores in a crazed fervor, clutching PowerMacs. Price is not the PowerMac's problem. Performance is.
The only way to get the PM to sell is to goose the performance up considerably.
But when Apple announces new 970 based machines, they are going to sell like mad. If Apple sells twice the machines (which they easily will), then they could cut their margin in hald and still be making the same ammount of money. I think that Apple would sell considerably more than twice the number of PM's, and so they could halve their margin and still make more money. When you have greater sales, you can have lower margins and still make more money.
Originally posted by jamm
Those Mhz ratings must go UP UP UP if we want market share to grow! The Mhz wars are unknown to the general public. Show Joe Six-Pack a 2 GHz+ Intel and a 1 Ghz iMac. Sure, he may think the iMac looks all 'pretty' but what hes thinking is that 2 is better than 1 and hence he is getting more bang for his buck. Apple has failed time and again in trying to show that 'Mhz doesn't matter'.
I will now go smoke a J ....
I've said it time and again....Apple needs to show people Mac OS X and iApps only to sell machines. People are afraid of the unknown, and while they may see a Mac or an iApp in a Magazine or Internet-news article, they just aren't getting it. OS X can make them get it, in a big way. The main reason I started s...canning my PCs at home was because I would wind up rebuilding the damn things every other month because the OS crashed to the point of having to rebuild. I have NEVER had to re-install OS X on any one of a number of machines I have used over the past 2-1/2 years (including the Public Beta, for God's sake!) That's all they really need to show to gain marketshare.
But when Apple announces new 970 based machines, they are going to sell like mad. If Apple sells twice the machines (which they easily will), then they could cut their margin in hald and still be making the same ammount of money. I think that Apple would sell considerably more than twice the number of PM's, and so they could halve their margin and still make more money. When you have greater sales, you can have lower margins and still make more money.
Surely Apple does do Market Analysis. I think we as consumers love to sit in the armchair and do "what ifs" but Apple is not a Private company..they have Shareholders to answer to and cutting your profit in half and attempting to sell twice as many computers is risky. All markets have finite numbers. There are only so many people who will purchase Powermacs regardless of price.
The PC market is not doing well. Funny how we seem to want join that party. I have recently witness unprecedented levels of agression coming from Marketers. I routinely have to hit the registry and track down Spyware offenders, watch out for virus' and have had to move away from Internet Explorer because it becomes riddles with Spyware leeches.
Low cost can only help on area but PC's are simply becoming hostile environments which require inordinate amounts of time for maintainence. Having two PC's has only solidfied my preferrence for Macs and if spending more money for a Mac relieves me from the headaches of the PC platform then sobeit.
Originally posted by hmurchison
Surely Apple does do Market Analysis. I think we as consumers love to sit in the armchair and do "what ifs" but Apple is not a Private company..they have Shareholders to answer to and cutting your profit in half and attempting to sell twice as many computers is risky. All markets have finite numbers. There are only so many people who will purchase Powermacs regardless of price.
The PC market is not doing well. Funny how we seem to want join that party. I have recently witness unprecedented levels of agression coming from Marketers. I routinely have to hit the registry and track down Spyware offenders, watch out for virus' and have had to move away from Internet Explorer because it becomes riddles with Spyware leeches.
Low cost can only help on area but PC's are simply becoming hostile environments which require inordinate amounts of time for maintainence. Having two PC's has only solidfied my preferrence for Macs and if spending more money for a Mac relieves me from the headaches of the PC platform then sobeit.
Use *nix on them then and point the finger of blame where it belongs....MICROSOFT! They're the ones that release the absolute joke that is Windows and IE and Outlook and......you get my point. And I agree with you. Ad-aware can only do so much. Our virus protection system picked off about a dozen Fizzer viruses today alone! Kazaa, Hotbar...tools of the devil propogated by the beast (Redmond) itself. This is all that needs to be said:
Systems Affected: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Me
Systems Not Affected: Macintosh, OS/2, UNIX, Linux
Exactly. Microsoft is a company that wants to "lock down" your computer so that the Entertainment Company feels safe about letting us view THIER product when I can't even lock it down to protect my own data!
I got companies putting weblinks on my Desktop, changing the pages I see with extraneous links. Yet IE still has no protections. Microsoft has taken the OS from individuals and put it in the control of Rogue Programmers. The more I witness this the more I'm outraged and dumbfounded that Mac users want to switch over to this crap. I swear some people would take a "kick in the teeth" for an extra $20 off but I'm not that person. </end rant>
Back on Topic. If Apple ships Duallies on 2/3 their Powermac line then we must at least be equal in performane as according to Stokes the 970 will roughly %75 the speed of the P4 at that time. Add that second processor in and we now have a nice advantage as long as the OS handles each proc as efficiently as possible(Panther please be that OS). Exciting times indeed.
The real question is what does Apple do with the G4? Shelve it in lieu of a revamped G3 from IBM?
Originally posted by Yevgeny
But when Apple announces new 970 based machines, they are going to sell like mad. If Apple sells twice the machines (which they easily will), then they could cut their margin in hald and still be making the same ammount of money.
Uhm, no. If Apple cuts their margins in half they will make half as much money.
What you are thinking about is how to maximize revenue. That is, at what point does the price begin to reduce demand for the product? That's the sweet spot to find. But merely reducing the price won't necessarily allow you to sell enough additional units to make up the difference in lost revenue.
Look at it another way. If Apple could easily sell twice as many units at the current price, then they should raise the price until they are selling as many as they have at as high a price as the market will allow.
Originally posted by Rhumgod
Use *nix on them then and point the finger of blame where it belongs....MICROSOFT!
It is a lot more then just microsoft. PC hardware is significantly more difficult to deal with for the average person. I have 4 PC's and two Macs. The Macs are the slowest machines in numbers, but they are also the two boxes that do most the work. I started to buy into the PC is cheaper/faster syndrome, and it has cost me. My Macs run 24/7 and barring a sustained power outage or some other event seperate from the Macs, they just don't stop. Since OS-X they have been rock solid day in and day out. The cheaper/faster PC's are a different story. Replaced components, downtime (especially under windows, but I have tried Linux as well), random freezes, the constant monitoring required to make sure they are still working. My time is worth something to me, and when that is factored in, the PC's have cost as much or more then my Macs not to count the aggravation and lost productivity. It doesn't matter how fast your box is, if it doesn't keep working.
If the 970 successfully resolves the performance issues, and Apple holds the line on pricing to what it is now, then Macs will be the value leader, and worth every penny.
Think of the multiple fast IUs (or SIUs) as express checkout lanes for one-item shoppers and the single slow IU as a general-purpose checkout lane for multiple-item shoppers in a supermarket where most of the shoppers only buy a single item. This kind of specialization keeps that one guy who's stocking up for Armageddon from slowing down the the majority who just want to duck in and grab eggs or milk on the way home.
Originally posted by Tomb of the Unknown
Uhm, no. If Apple cuts their margins in half they will make half as much money.
What you are thinking about is how to maximize revenue. That is, at what point does the price begin to reduce demand for the product? That's the sweet spot to find. But merely reducing the price won't necessarily allow you to sell enough additional units to make up the difference in lost revenue.
Look at it another way. If Apple could easily sell twice as many units at the current price, then they should raise the price until they are selling as many as they have at as high a price as the market will allow.
Nice try Tomb but they won't listen. Just wait ten minutes and the next one will tell you why Apple should follow his wishfull thinking
Originally posted by hmurchison
The real question is what does Apple do with the G4?
i sense a new thread being born... and call dibs on credit.
101 uses for an obsolete G4 CPU. Illustrations by B. Kliban, perhaps.
if removed with pins intact...
world's smallest grooved zen rock garden rake
angel hair pasta maker with a 100+ tine fork
heatsink augmented as thermal barbecue tongs or pliers
"cyberpunk barbie" hairbrush
1/172 scale diorama component for matrix world
segway upgrade (better vector processing for extreme sports)
without pins
poker chips (value by MHz... Moto has kindly constrained the bank to small denominations for years)
sequins/rivets/applique for high-tech supermodel couture
earrings/brooch/jewelry/watches
wind chimes (maybe better if connected with ribbon cable)
coasters for shot glasses
skateboard wheel covers
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WRT the ARS Part II article:
cache speed/latency are a major unknown left hanging... and a major influence on overall performace
lack of L3 seems to get glossed over, but perhaps the vastly improved FSB and memory subsystems obviate the need? nah...
performance benchmarks of recent dual G4s -vs- 970 must remember that the 970 is without L3 (so far) and only 512kb of on-chip L2 (according to reports, including the ARS links). some G4 systems go up to 2Mb L3 per CPU, most are 1Mb L3, some of the PBs have actually lost L2 or L3 compared to previous models and some iBooks.
if the 1.8 Single 970 can smoke a current 1.42 Dual G4 without giving the 970 any L3,
imagine how far back into the POWER league it could go once it gets its cache back
reading Hannibal's articles sure makes me long for a dual-core 970 (which would basically make it a POWER4 again) in order to get that lovely lebensraum of on-chip L3 cache...
IBM has proposed POWER4/5 models with 128Mb of cache on the die
Second, I hear the 970 is cheaper to produce than the G4, which would allow them to sell cheaper Powermacs, except that their consumer products will still be using the more expensive G4 processors until the 970 is transitioned into all of their products. They can't sell slow consumer iMacs and Superfast Powermacs at the same price point, and they can't lower the iMac prices enough without selling them at a loss. Which is why I don't think we'll see any notable price reductions on Apple hardware until all of their hardware has moved to the 970. If the new IBM G3 GOBI processor is dramatically cheaper than the current G4 processors, I could see Apple moving the eMac and iBook to the Gobi, and the iMac and PowerMac to the 970, which would allow price cuts across the board. Of course, if it's true that the PowerBook will have to wait for the 980 later this year, then they'd either have to stick a GOBI in the Powerbook or sell the PowerBooks at a premium (for using the higher cost G4) which of course would kill Powerbook sales, and this year would become the year of the desktop instead of the portable.
It'll be interesting to see what they do. I am hoping that they transition everything away from the slow, expensive G4 as soon as possible. The two biggest reasons for people not switching to the Mac right now are because they are slow and expensive. They've got their Apple Stores in place across the United States, now they just have to supply products that make financial sense to a customer. Pay more for a slower computer during a time when money is tight? It doesn't matter how fantastic the iApps are, people just can't afford it.
Originally posted by curiousuburb
lack of L3 seems to get glossed over, but perhaps the vastly improved FSB and memory subsystems obviate the need? nah...
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The FSB is fast enough that it might be sensible to put the L3 on the other side of the bus, in the chipset. There it would cover stalls and contention in the memory system itself without complicating the processor with additional pins and the transistors necessary for the L3 controller. If extra transistors are spent on cache, hopefully they're used to bump the L2 to a full megabyte.
Multi-core designs will come in time, but I'm actually more interested in IBM's SMT (aka HyperThreading) implementation. They claim to be able to have one core run two threads at full speed, which is much more efficient from a transistor & power budget perspective than having 2 full cores. No memory sharing issues, either.
Originally posted by Cory Bauer
Second, I hear the 970 is cheaper to produce than the G4, which would allow them to sell cheaper Powermacs, except that their consumer products will still be using the more expensive G4 processors until the 970 is transitioned into all of their products.
The CPU is not the only cost component of the computer. The new FSB, RAM, etc. is presumably more expensive than the dated slow mess the G4 requires. Just a quick check, DDR400 is 20% more expensive than what is used in the PowerMacs today. I have no idea what the FSB will cost Apple.
I only hope that prices are within $200 of the current prices. I'm not expecting cheaper. I hope I'm wrong!
Originally posted by atomicham
The new FSB, RAM, etc. is presumably more expensive than the dated slow mess the G4 requires. Just a quick check, DDR400 is 20% more expensive than what is used in the PowerMacs today. I have no idea what the FSB will cost Apple.
Good point. I hadn't taken that into consideration. However, since Apple rarely reduces their prices on a Hardware product as it gets older and older, Their cost of building the current Powermac at this time compared to February when they were new is most likely significantly less. So, my point is that those components always cost more than the last model when the new model is released, but Apple makes up for this by selling those same components at the same price for 8 months or more, selling the hardware at the same price as the components get cheaper.
The G4 processors on the other hand probably haven't gotten cheaper for Apple since the very first ones, so the fact that the 970 is cheaper to buy than the G4 should still allow Apple to sell new machines slightly cheaper, if they choose too. In a more healthy economy, I'd be they'd add a good $200 to the current prices of Powermacs when they move to 970s, but since the Powermac has lagged behind for so long and today's economy, I bet they'll sell at the same prices as today's Powermacs.
Think back to when the Blue & White G3s were released. They were leaps and bounds above the beige G3s in expandability, performance, and components, but they started at $400 less than the beige G3's sold for a day before the Keynote. I'm sure we won't see price cuts like that (they'd be cheaper than iMacs!) but Apple should certainly be able to sell the new machines at today's Powermac prices, based on these observations.
Originally posted by Programmer
The FSB is fast enough that it might be sensible to put the L3 on the other side of the bus, in the chipset. There it would cover stalls and contention in the memory system itself without complicating the processor with additional pins and the transistors necessary for the L3 controller. If extra transistors are spent on cache, hopefully they're used to bump the L2 to a full megabyte.
Multi-core designs will come in time, but I'm actually more interested in IBM's SMT (aka HyperThreading) implementation. They claim to be able to have one core run two threads at full speed, which is much more efficient from a transistor & power budget perspective than having 2 full cores. No memory sharing issues, either.
And depending upon configuration, probably more than two threads from what I read of their development lately...
Originally posted by Rhumgod
And depending upon configuration, probably more than two threads from what I read of their development lately...
Any links? I read my private messages if you don't want to publicize.