Timetable for future PowerMac G5's ???
Hello all,
I'm seriously considering purchasing a new PowerMac G5 (dual 2.0 Ghz) to replace my rather ancient 400Mhz G4. Of course I'm eager to get a new PowerMac but I would like to get the most for my money. Does anyone know when the next generation of PowerMacs are scheduled to be released? Is there any chance that a new generation of PowerMacs will be released sometime next year, maybe around the time Tiger is released?
I'm seriously considering purchasing a new PowerMac G5 (dual 2.0 Ghz) to replace my rather ancient 400Mhz G4. Of course I'm eager to get a new PowerMac but I would like to get the most for my money. Does anyone know when the next generation of PowerMacs are scheduled to be released? Is there any chance that a new generation of PowerMacs will be released sometime next year, maybe around the time Tiger is released?
Comments
Originally posted by baranovich
Hello all,
I'm seriously considering purchasing a new PowerMac G5 (dual 2.0 Ghz) to replace my rather ancient 400Mhz G4. Of course I'm eager to get a new PowerMac but I would like to get the most for my money. Does anyone know when the next generation of PowerMacs are scheduled to be released? Is there any chance that a new generation of PowerMacs will be released sometime next year, maybe around the time Tiger is released?
We'll have a better idea after January.
You can also check the Macrumors buyer's guide.
Originally posted by onlooker
No matter when it comes I'd rather be shocked, and see them release something amazing in JAN, and surprise me by it actually performing exceptionally well in the graphics department. I doubt it though.
jsut get the top end ati or nvidia cards and wait for tiger.
Integrated memory controller is something that could be implemented already at 130nm but perhaps the 130nm will be phased out as soon as 90nm is working.
I am sure Jobs is eager to get to 3GHz even is a 20% clockspeed boost is quite marginal in itself but for 3 GHz IBM have to make strides in the manufacture of the 970 and when that will happen is anyones guess
To touch again on my last post I think if they could update the pro line more frequently rather than waiting, and watching technology pass by sometimes I think the platform would look more attractive to prospective buyers.
I agree with this to a point. I don't think Apple has much option with regard to making more updates more readily with the business model they have. What I have issue with is that they do not correct the price for the age of the hardware they have. If they introduced a method of slowly reducing the products price, over the lifetime of that product (or by offering discount rebates, as has occasionally been done with the PBs etc), then I think they may not see quite a drastic drop in sales when people start expecting something to be revised. The PowerMac G5 was an example of this, whereby you'd pay the same for the dual 2 GHz at the end of the cycle, as you did at the beginning - a year later.
Apple 'not commenting on unannounced hardware' is a double edged sword.
due to the ipod, it seems the powermac is getting second bannana.
everyone says apple is an innovator but i beg to differ. what apple is good at is industrial design and packaging existing hardware.
everything else has been said regarding pricing and incrimental bumps which they should do but don't.
the longer a revision of a powermac has been out the value declines due to apple's price structure.
why apple don't do simple things regarding their business model and their cpu's i don't know.
the patients are running the asylum.
chung lee
Originally posted by chunglee
why apple don't do simple things regarding their business model and their cpu's i don't know.
the patients are running the asylum.
Apple has made some buisness mistakes in the past, but they've proved to be pretty savvy overall. As for CPUs, IBM makes them, Apple doesn't. Your statement is ignorant.
Patients running the asylum is the defintion of Linux, and suprisingly enough, it works pretty well.
Originally posted by chunglee
i have no confidence a faster powermac will be out sooner then june macworld or whatever it's called.
due to the ipod, it seems the powermac is getting second bannana.
everyone says apple is an innovator but i beg to differ. what apple is good at is industrial design and packaging existing hardware.
everything else has been said regarding pricing and incrimental bumps which they should do but don't.
the longer a revision of a powermac has been out the value declines due to apple's price structure.
why apple don't do simple things regarding their business model and their cpu's i don't know.
the patients are running the asylum.
chung lee
Good post n00bguy. I agree with that statement. Apple does still innovate but we haven't seen, or heard anything in big hardware innovation from them since the FireWire gig, and that wasn't a totally overwhelming success to where every PC user decided he had to have it as well. As were previous Apple innovations that made the platform so attractive.
what i meant by cpu was their powermacs but even if you take it literally apple is responsible for what they put in their computers. i buy a computer from apple not a 970 processor from ibm.
ever since the g4 motorola days with slight speed bumps considered a major revision apple had even less room for failure on their next gen powermacs.
it took a whole year for customers to be able to purchase a revision b powermac. that in of it self would not have been too bad if they increased stock ram, increased the stock graphics card lowered price etc...
apple would rather protect it's margins then sell more powermacs. even this doesn't bother me at face value but it limits marketshare.
as i have stated in a previous post, market share is important because it gives software developers incentive to optimize for osx. the next jump in performance isn't hardware, it's going to come from optimized software.
i use the apple pro apps and photoshop and they are great but i use numerous other sofware like epson software to print directly to optical media and it runs like a dog.
since jobs came back to save apple from the brink of extinction, the orginal imac and the ipod were huge successes but due to some enormous mistakes it's a zero sum gain.
i would rather have one of apple's cpu's (computers) be a success over the ipod if i had my choice but that's not the case.
once apple peaks with the ipod it will gradually lose it's dominance and revenue from the ipod just like every other company with a hit product. it isn't a question of if but when. at that point will the computer division have atrophed beyond repair. i don't think it will but it will not have gained marketshare and we will always have slower machines not because of the hardware but the software.
apple will always need faster machines then winbloze because of this.
citing linux as a success depends on how you define success.
the saving grace for apple has been and always be it's operating system not the hardware. the stability, security etc...
if i could use osx on a windoze box i would in a heart beat because of apple's unpredictable upgrade path.
i have a rev a dual 2gig with 9800 pro vid card and 3.5 gigs of ram. compared to a dual xenon i have been working on at a production house, batching photshop files and rendering video clips is noticibly faster with the dual xenon. have no clue how much more the dual xenon is but for sheer power the xenon is faster no matter what jobs says.
i haven't worked on a dual 2.5 gig powermac and don't use audio software so my observations are limited.
as always,
chung lee
Unfortunately, the statement about the OS carrying the hardware line is also true...mostly. Apple has made some neat innovations (not just in the software field), but it's always been sort of a diversionary tactic to gloss over the processing power issue.
However, if I am correctly reading the tea leaves of the chip makers, outright processor speeds are becoming secondary to other issues like multiple cores, etc. In this situation, Apple could have a lot to gain based upon their relationship with IBM.
Like you, if I could get OSX to work on any other architecture, I would. The whole price disparity between macintosh version video cards and PC is enough incentive right there.
I'm still plugging away at a 400mHz G4 myself, and simply haven't upgraded because I don't do anything at home that requires any more (I use my xbox to play games). I will upgrade as soon as the price on the liquid-cooled G5 comes down just a bit. That's the last thing holding me back, I want to say that I have a liquid cooled computer...really I am that sad.
Originally posted by chunglee
i have no confidence a faster powermac will be out sooner then june macworld or whatever it's called.
due to the ipod, it seems the powermac is getting second bannana.
everyone says apple is an innovator but i beg to differ. what apple is good at is industrial design and packaging existing hardware.
everything else has been said regarding pricing and incrimental bumps which they should do but don't.
the longer a revision of a powermac has been out the value declines due to apple's price structure.
why apple don't do simple things regarding their business model and their cpu's i don't know.
the patients are running the asylum.
chung lee
so i read your profile and saw that you have a rev a dual 2.0 G5. why are you complaining about apple's innovation? surely youre satisfied with the speed of your machine, and you know its going to last longer than a PC purchased at the same time as your G5.
Originally posted by chunglee
apple would rather protect it's margins then sell more powermacs. even this doesn't bother me at face value but it limits marketshare.
Everyone's seen this one:
"[Sculley et al] cared about making a lot of money so they had this wonderful thing that a lot of brilliant people made called the Macintosh and they got very greedy and instead of following the original trajectory of the original vision--which was to make this thing an appliance, to get this out there to as many people as possible--they went for profits and they made outlandish profits for about four years. Apple was one of the most profitable companies in America for about four years.
What that cost them was the future. What they should have been doing was making reasonable profits and going for market share, which was what we always tried to do. Macintosh would have had a thirty- three percent market share right now, maybe even higher, maybe it would have even been Microsoft but we'll never know. Now its got a single digit market share and falling. There's no way to ever get that moment in time back. The Macintosh will die in another few years and its really sad. The problem is this: no one at Apple has a clue as to how to create the next Macintosh because no one running any part of Apple was there when the Macintosh was made--or any other product at Apple. They've just been living off that one thing now for over a decade and the last attempt was the Newton and you know what happened to that. It's kind of tragic, but as unemotionally as I can be, that's what's happening. Unless somebody pulls a rabbit out of a hat, companies tend to have long glide slopes because of the installed bases. But Apple is just gliding down this slope and they're loosing market share every year. Things start to spiral down once you get under a certain threshold. And when developers no longer write applications for your computer, that's when it really starts to fall apart." ---Steve Jobs 1995
Originally posted by chunglee
everyone says apple is an innovator but i beg to differ. what apple is good at is industrial design and packaging existing hardware.
hmmmm... who has the fastest front-side bus? Apple
Who came out with firewire first? Apple
Who has the best selling music player? Apple
Who has the best integrated music player/music software/music store? Apple
I'm sure they've had a PCI-E based motherboard in their R&D just waiting for Nvidia and ATI PCI-E cards. Once Nvidia and ATI is able to produce cards in volume, the motherboard will be out.
What has Intel or Microsoft done lately. Hmmm... gone to dual CPUs. Yeah, like that's new. Microsoft hasn't done anything except work on something called Longhorn for the last couple of years.
Originally posted by Leonard
Microsoft hasn't done anything except work on something called Longhorn for the last couple of years.
Yeah but I hear Longhorn's going to have this innovative search feature that'll blow Spotlight away. Am I wrong?
Originally posted by benzene
Apple has made some buisness mistakes in the past, but they've proved to be pretty savvy overall. As for CPUs, IBM makes them, Apple doesn't. Your statement is ignorant.
Patients running the asylum is the defintion of Linux, and suprisingly enough, it works pretty well.
Yep, I agree quite ignorant. As for Linux, If I wasn't a mac user Id be running that. Well..on second thought, I guess I sorta am running a variation of unix/linux..anyhow I have a feeling we'll see some new speeds this Jan on either a PM or possibly the laptop line...who know though.