what will you actually do with your Mac?
I was appalled to see some of the reactions to the latest PowerMac revisions.
The majority of posts on these and other boards were filled complaining and whining regarding the speed increase and the reports that the 3GHz barrier had not yet been reached.
By the way some of you were behaving it was like Apple had betrayed you!?
I was honestly puzzled as to why people were reacting in such a way- which begs the question: what you do actually use your mac for?
Do you use your Mac for employment or entrepreneurial ventures?
Will the magic 3GHz number enable you to do anything that you could not do on say a 1.8 or 2.5 G5 system?? Do you use all this power to just encode mp3's? or do you use for mac for playing video games?
To all those who were disappointed and complained - what do you want a Mac that fast for? And to all those that want these forth coming 2.5 systems- what will you actually do with all that grunt?
The majority of posts on these and other boards were filled complaining and whining regarding the speed increase and the reports that the 3GHz barrier had not yet been reached.
By the way some of you were behaving it was like Apple had betrayed you!?
I was honestly puzzled as to why people were reacting in such a way- which begs the question: what you do actually use your mac for?
Do you use your Mac for employment or entrepreneurial ventures?
Will the magic 3GHz number enable you to do anything that you could not do on say a 1.8 or 2.5 G5 system?? Do you use all this power to just encode mp3's? or do you use for mac for playing video games?
To all those who were disappointed and complained - what do you want a Mac that fast for? And to all those that want these forth coming 2.5 systems- what will you actually do with all that grunt?
Comments
Originally posted by @homenow
expectation is built up too much and when you can't match that expectation then your customers are disappointed.
Disappointment in the situation you mention above is a completly natural and predictable reaction. However in order to be disappointed in this fashion you would expect that the disappointment is based upon the expectation that in the future you would purchase a faster PowerMac in order to use it for various work loads accordingly.
So the question still stands- what do / will you do with all that power?
I am honestly puzzled here.
I don't need a dual 3Ghz for this. Just patience and lot's of RAM. I'm far from disappointed with this release. Disappointing was watching Apple stuck with a 500Mhz G4 for a year and a half and hearing the laughter as PCs demolished Apple in every test. No we have a system that can meet and beat the "wunderkind" AMD Opteron systems but that means nothing to some fanboys who see only the value of the newest components in terms of machismo and bragging rights.
In retrospect I look at my own desires about PCI express and have to laugh. What motherboard maker makes huge architectureal changes every revision? Rev1 of the G5 motherboard was surely to lead to Rev2 no matter how long it took.
Another misconception is where people think Apple has access to every product supplier out there. The fist initial batch of superdrives were strictly Pioneers. Then eventually Sony became a supplier. Apple would generally have two HD suppliers, Maxtor and I believe Seagate. They need to have these suppliers allocate large sums of product for new launches. So it matters not that Dual Layer burners have "just" hit the market to Apple what matters is them getting the supplies they've spent months preparing for so they can ship their product.
I see a clear rift. On one hand I see producers with their nose to the grindstone cranking out new product. They have no time for speculation and "what ifs" they need to be able to assign a dollar value to each feature. Then there is the consumer who needs everything front loaded because they want that machine to last as long as possible. They won't be able to depreciate it and take write offs. They won't earn income with it. Therefore they are constantly reaching for that last megahert or Megabyte. These are the people flipping out and once they get upset it sours their whole view. Thus PCI becomes a "crippling" technology and HD bays become an untenable situation. Rationality flies out the window. Those of us who have been on AI know this is a bi-annual event. It never fails. See ya in 6 months!
Being a recent 'switcher' I was getting a negative impression of some of mac users who were complaining so vocally.
Its refreshing to see some of you do actually need a G5 and therefore some disappointment is warranted.
btw masahs; enjoy your new beast!
Originally posted by Stylesheet
I was appalled to see some of the reactions to the latest PowerMac revisions.
The majority of posts on these and other boards were filled complaining and whining regarding the speed increase and the reports that the 3GHz barrier had not yet been reached.
By the way some of you were behaving it was like Apple had betrayed you!?
I was honestly puzzled as to why people were reacting in such a way- which begs the question: what you do actually use your mac for?
Do you use your Mac for employment or entrepreneurial ventures?
Will the magic 3GHz number enable you to do anything that you could not do on say a 1.8 or 2.5 G5 system?? Do you use all this power to just encode mp3's? or do you use for mac for playing video games?
To all those who were disappointed and complained - what do you want a Mac that fast for? And to all those that want these forth coming 2.5 systems- what will you actually do with all that grunt?
The fastest of the new Macs have clockspeeds that are 25% faster than the fastest of the original G5s. I would consider that to be a dramatic increase in speed. It is most certainly not lost on me that Apple promised 3 GHz before the end of Summer 2004. Seeing as how Summer 2004 has not even begun, Apple has broken no promise. At any rate, my 2 GHz G5 is serving me well. I will probably not replace it for another 4 or 5 years.
As for what applications people are using, I saw a similar question on MacRumors. One would be hard pressed to locate a true productivity app in the lists submitted by the three respondants. Nothing listed was particularly taxing on the processor. You may surmise that the bellyaching comes from children who are wishing that the computer they can't afford were 500 MHz faster than the one that Apple introduced that they can't afford. This group includes Apple fanboys would love to embarass their Windows-using friends about how much faster Apple's lastest offering is compared to the fastest Intel offering. For at least the next 4 years, however, I will be using my Mac rather than complaining about the Macs I don't have.
For me the upgrade is great - The big issue for me at the moment (on an upgraded DP 1.3 G4) is rendering times in FCP, compression times for MPEG-2 in Compressor, rendering in AE and DVD build times in DVDSP.
I may well order a 2.5 soon - the ROI for me is high as it will reduce my cycle from shoot to final DVD by about 30% from where I am now. Time is money for me.
I could not care less about the video card that's in it - If I want games, I've got a GameCube and my son has a PS2.
For high capacity storage, I use FW800 drives. Plenty fast enough for me doing DV work - If I wanted to do uncompressed SD or HD, I would buy an xRAID. Two drives is fine for me - one for the system, and the other for capturing video. Everything else can be done with Firewire drives.
So, for a small solo video producer like me, the upgrade is very nice and I'm very happy - especially by the liquid cooling as it bodes well for them to be able to scale when they get the wrinkles out of the 90nm process.
The only thing that might make me more concerned about the video card would be Motion - but I'll wait and see how it performs.
This could well be a different story if I was doing 3D work like I used to. Even then, when I was doing it I was more concerned about compositing speed rather than real-time lighting since I used multi-pass renders same as most big studios do - for those who haven't done 3D a lot, you generally don't do a single render with all lighting and texturing, you render each as a pass and then composite them to get the effects you want - much faster to tweak lighting when you can e.g. just re-composite your reflection map to reduce it rather than completely re-rendering.
I will be getting the dual 2.5 for a couple reasons - plan to keep this machine for ages, I simply do not see my *use* of computers changing drastically in the next few years - but then again new software may call for an upgrade. I use quite a bit of Photoshop, iMove, iDVD and a little bit of Final Cut Express. I want to give garadge band a try. The extra hdd bay in the G5 will be utilized pretty soon and I'll be hogging the 8X SD quite a bit. Will buy this BTO with 128MB 9800XT, 1Gig ram, BT and AE.
Plan to use Maya a bit as well - apart from everything else I do - that probably won't be as power hungry as what I've mentioned above.
I have an 800mhz 17in iMac which struggles a little with iDVD and occasionally becomes a little wheezy if pushed. I have, however, yet to upgrade the RAM from the original 256mb. Once I do this and upgrade to OSX.4 later this year I expect to get at least another two years out of the old girl. Might even invest in an external firewire HD?
I am waiting for something like a 2GHz G5 iMac. I can promise you that I can sufficiently use up that much processing power.
But I think that there won't be a 2GHz G5 iMac until there is at least a 3GHz dual G5 Powermac. So that's why I am disappointed. Kind of in a indirect way.
The other issue is that Apple won't let the specs of their various lines cross. So if the PowerMac lines only gets X, then you know the updates in other product line areas are now only going to get Y. This means those of us further down the line know we aren't going to get what we want either.
For example say I was shopping for the updated iMac. We can now conclude that the iMac's non-upgradeable video graphics chip is likely to remain the 5200 even if they knock it up to a G5. If Apple believes they can sell $2500 with that card, why would they believe the iMac needs something different? People can shrug it off for $60 at the PowerMac level, but below that there isn't a way to do that. It just means Apple stays stuck at 2% marketshare and the iMac's sit on the shelf.
You can see this in all the "pro" areas of Apple's product line. They won't allow the iBook to have a better chipset or higher speed cpu than the Powerbooks. So if the Powerbook update were underwhelming, the prosumers and consumers will complain as well because they know it doesn't look good for their preferred product as well.
So no I don't need a dual 2.5 ghz monster. But I know since they are willing to ship that monster with only a 9600xt video card (stock) that the eMac, iMac, or iBook I look into are probably going to be stuck with something worse.
Nick
And browse these boards for rumors.
Dual 2.5Ghz G5 with 9800XT 256MB, 1Gig Ram, Bluetooth and Airport Express = £2,250
OR
Dual 2 Ghz G5 with 9800XT 256MB, 1Gig Ram, Bluetooth and Airport Express = a little less than £2,000
+
iPod 15/20 gig
Taking the total to the same cost as a Dual 2.5...
I will be going with the Dual 2 + iPod now..makes alot more sense...
So, I love unix-like OSs, want commercial quality and support. Sounds like OS X to me.
My problem is that switching to a Mac is an expensive proposition. I don't want to do it unless I am completely sure that Apple (which occupies a minority position in the market) have a long-term viable product, that is capable of competing over time with current PC hardware. So, for me to take the plunge, Apple need to compete performance and OS - wise with PCs for a period over time. I see G5 (and rumoured future hardware) as a new beginning for apple and really want it to succeed. I guess that this sentiment applies to both software and hardware for the platform.
My decision window is rather narrow - I have to return to Australia in a couple of years, where the cost of a Mac is not $3000 - $3500 US, but $AUD7000+ - a cost I cannot justify, when I can build a competent PC for a fraction of that cost.
So, I'm hoping that over the next little while, Apple can convince me to make the jump...
Brendon
edit: this is all for work, not just fun)