Idea: perhaps apple plans to introduce a workstation class mac with dual dual core CPUs and keep the powermacs dual single core but lower their price.
We are always bitching about how the powermacs are too expensive and yet at the same time bitching about how they are not advanced enough. Perhaps apple said fuck it we're going to have two powermac levels. The workstation class and the regular powermac class. This way they can lower the price of the powermacs so that more people can afford them. And on the other end they can have the workstation macs with top of the line everything. Workstations would start at 3,000 while regular powermacs would top out at 2,500 or so. Honestly I think the above would be a good play on apple's part.
Honestly I just think it is too expensive right now to be putting dual core CPUs in dual towers.
Well if anything if this turns out to be true then I can get a cheaper Dual 2Ghz and a bigger Monitor maybe even the 30''. I'm graduating soon and desperately need a new Mac. If this doesn't happen then I can wait till WWDC but not any later. I will be using some high-end apps like Maya Unlimited and need all the power I can get.
Since i'm always an internal realist and external optimist...
I'm loving the stalled hardware specs.
My dual 450 (now a dual 1.4) should last another few years at the least. It's five years old now yet feels responsive when running tiger and is more than sufficient for all of my needs. Basically, i've no upgrade-ightous at the moment.
I suspect the same thing is happening to an increasing percentage of consumers. Computers are now "good enough" for quite a few common tasks. While I'm a full fledged techo-weenie, I also realize that most people aren't on a processing power quest anymore. If anything, they're more concerned about software; things like security and ease of use.
I believe we're seeing the beginning of a trend, a trend in which hardware iterations are slowed to better match people's needs. Business and home users are starting to focus on security and longevity more now. A valid question is: "Will this system last me five years, ten years, or fifteen years?"
A slower upgrade cycle has always been popular in the realm of servers. Is it possible we'll see more and more occupations start to prefer the slower pace? Secretarially duties, data entry, inventory management, manufacturing, sales reporting, and financial systems are already moving in that direction.
The interesting thing is that Apple?s pro users don?t commonly think that the hardware is ?good enough?. Video,audio, and 3d work all could benefit from more power. However, most consumer do fall into this category.
One thing is for certain though, upgrade cycle length won?t remain constant over the long term...
Well you can get one of these drives for $70 online....
Quote:
Originally posted by Messiah
Cheer up!
Perhaps these machines will be 'the first' to ship with 16X SuperDrives and DL support - (i.e. Apple might choose to de-cripple the drives that they have been installing for however many months...).
ThinkSecret doesn't have news, they have rumors. I'm referring to the thread subject title. The sooner one gets that nuance understood, the better.
The new Power Mac revision is going to be a reputation-breaker for ThinkSecret. de Plume likely gets pseudo-anonymous rumor emails, for awhile now. If he actually knows - the name and position - of who is leaking reliable Mac hardware specs (he doesn't get iPod or software specs correct) to him, said person is stupid.
In the meanwhile, I'm sure Apple has been slowly tightening the circle of people who knows what the real specs of upcoming hardware is. I wouldn't want to be that leaker right now.
I pray that you are right, but with how the G5 has been going I really dont know. What makes you say so confidently that TS will be wrong on this revision?
i think someone has been spending too much time/money developing cheap mini and ipods
btw... i heard dual core was going to be no more expensive then normal processors.. oh well maybe that was wrong
DC chips are more money. They take up more wafer space because now you have to have a contiguous block of functional transistors. This increases your odds of having bad areas that scrap the whole chip. Intel is aggresively pricing their DC chips barely above the single core chips to generate support for multithreaded apps. DC chips might not hit their stride until 65nm where the sizes will return back to easier to fab sizes.
I reckon they have a dualcore/pci-e G5 in testing but reliability,price etc are currently issues so they are going to speed bump them yet again.
They should drop the price by $500 at least on the top the range and wait until the new ones come out in Oct/Nov for the Xmas rush and then deliver in Jan as we are now used to.
It is becomming a real farce with their CPU's. Even Sun has ported Solaris for x86 and it runs very reliably on Operton machines. There is no reason why Apple couldn't do this as well.
The updated G5 will appear without song and dance on their website around when Tiger comes out.
So after showing us all of the great Pro Video and Audio applications on Sunday whose realtime capabilities are limited only by your CPU and graphics card performance, Apple's going to deliver a 200Mhz speedbump to their Powermacs. Nice one, Apple. While your software division is making products who fuel the need for faster hardware, your hardware division has been making...nothing, apparently. Seriously, 200Mhz? You could get that out of overclocking. One year and they've got nothing to show for themselves. And I can't do realtime graphic design and animation on an iPod Shuffle, so that doesn't count.
I hope Apple doesn't have the balls to sell that Dual 2.7Ghz for more than $2,700. Make the price right and don't castrate the "low-end" Powermac and this update will suffice for a couple months.
So after showing us all of the great Pro Video and Audio applications on Sunday whose realtime capabilities are limited only by your CPU and graphics card performance, Apple's going to deliver a 200Mhz speedbump to their Powermacs. Nice one, Apple. While your software division is making products who fuel the need for faster hardware, your hardware division has been making...nothing, apparently.
That was freekn' halarious dude!!
You have hit the heart of the situation. Their software division is screaming while the hardware division is in the sand box playing with legos...Maybe we can expect a new power pod from the hardware side.
It will be an interesting annoucement from Apple, either way the apple peels. I will be right back here in this thread the day the annoucement is made.
Well, it's the old Apple conundrum: being a small market force, picking up the GPU morsels, taking a contrarian position on chip producers, and so on. Uniqueness breeds its own limitations ... and strengths.
The truly dire times for Apple were the Motorola-in-freefall years. Steve landed on the IBM helicopter pad just in time to keep Apple users from hurling themselves off into the bitter sea. Can you imagine what things would be like today if the fastest PowerMac were a dual 1.67 G4, with its slim little bus? Imagine the contortions that some of us still would be going through to try to justify sticking with Apple through THAT kind of frightful vision.
Some of you contend that we are in precarious shape vis-a-vis the PC world, but we do have 64 bit CPUs, big busses, large RAM capabilities, dual core in the offing, a kind of uneasy parity. Given the nature of the relatively tiny Apple beast, there is always reason to be concerned and wary, but I think the Cupertino team will pull through just fine for the next few years at least.
You have hit the heart of the situation. Their software division is screaming while the hardware division is in the sand box playing with legos...Maybe we can expect a new power pod from the hardware side.
It will be an interesting annoucement from Apple, either way the apple peels. I will be right back here in this thread the day the annoucement is made.
Yeah, this is EXACTLY why so many people are confused bythe news from Thinksecret. All the new Pro apps announced at NAB are just screaming out Dual-core and PCI-E goodness, yet Apple are going to release hardware that doesnt enable the power of the new features? It just doesn't add up. And I find it VERY difficult to believe that IBM cannot improve their 90nm process at all, in a whole year?!?! it beggars belief.
Perhaps Apple knows info will leak so they allow it to leak... but only for the single core versions.
I tend to be pretty skeptical, but I have to admit that I'm hoping this might be true.
I'm fantasizing about a higher model priced at maybe $3500, aimed squarely at Pros. PowerMac HD: 2.5 dual dual-cores. PCI-E. Blu-Ray. Stuff like that. I imagine blowing through uncompressed HD Motion 2 projects like butter, smooooth as silk...
Nice one, Apple. While your software division is making products who fuel the need for faster hardware, your hardware division has been making...nothing, apparently.
This quote reminded me of the story - oh about 3 months ago - of the Apple division chief who suddenly left. Wasn't he in hardware? Anybody know the whys and wherefores of the story?
And on another tack... Morpheus seems to think 2.8 duals are achievable. (Of course mobo problems are out of his purview. Just because 2.8 duals are fabbed with acceptable heat characteristics in the plant doesn't ensure a successful implementation in a desktop.)
I kept falling back during weak moments thinking I might
be happy getting by with a 12" PB, but as nice as they are,
I simply can't justify that much money right now for a single G4 processor.
Then looking at these figures, I don't dare spend one cent
until I see how the next PowerMac revisions are priced.
PRICING FOR DUAL-CORE Opterons has wibbled onto the web, suggesting that AMD will charge as much for a low-end dual-core offering as it charges for a single-core high-end part.
The Taiwanese Digitimes, here, says local motherboard makers spilled the beans on the AMD's pricing plans. It says the dual-core Opteron 865 processor will cost $1,514, which happens to be the price of a single-core Opteron 852. The 870 will cost $2,149 and the 875 $2,649, the site says it was told. We guess these are volume prices.
I wonder how these prices would compare to the 970MP or a de-tuned Power5 dual core, since the Power5 is a long established processor?
And I find it VERY difficult to believe that IBM cannot improve their 90nm process at all, in a whole year?!?! it beggars belief.
They have improved it -- dramatically. They went from something approximating 0% yield to something remarkably high (can't remember the exact number announced recently, but it was silly... 90%?). That's quite an improvement.
I wonder how these prices would compare to the 970MP or a de-tuned Power5 dual core, since the Power5 is a long established processor?
Power5 pricing is probably way out of line with desktop microprocessors, and you wouldn't want a "de-tuned" one as they already run at fairly weak clock rates and don't have VMX units.
The 970MP pricing will probably be quite good, based on the small size of the 970 core and IBM's recent success with their yields.
Comments
Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg
...at which point I'll be the first one swingin' from the rafters if Apple does an 8% speed bump on their flagship model
No, Junkyard, no!! You're needed around here.
We are always bitching about how the powermacs are too expensive and yet at the same time bitching about how they are not advanced enough. Perhaps apple said fuck it we're going to have two powermac levels. The workstation class and the regular powermac class. This way they can lower the price of the powermacs so that more people can afford them. And on the other end they can have the workstation macs with top of the line everything. Workstations would start at 3,000 while regular powermacs would top out at 2,500 or so. Honestly I think the above would be a good play on apple's part.
Honestly I just think it is too expensive right now to be putting dual core CPUs in dual towers.
I'm loving the stalled hardware specs.
My dual 450 (now a dual 1.4) should last another few years at the least. It's five years old now yet feels responsive when running tiger and is more than sufficient for all of my needs. Basically, i've no upgrade-ightous at the moment.
I suspect the same thing is happening to an increasing percentage of consumers. Computers are now "good enough" for quite a few common tasks. While I'm a full fledged techo-weenie, I also realize that most people aren't on a processing power quest anymore. If anything, they're more concerned about software; things like security and ease of use.
I believe we're seeing the beginning of a trend, a trend in which hardware iterations are slowed to better match people's needs. Business and home users are starting to focus on security and longevity more now. A valid question is: "Will this system last me five years, ten years, or fifteen years?"
A slower upgrade cycle has always been popular in the realm of servers. Is it possible we'll see more and more occupations start to prefer the slower pace? Secretarially duties, data entry, inventory management, manufacturing, sales reporting, and financial systems are already moving in that direction.
The interesting thing is that Apple?s pro users don?t commonly think that the hardware is ?good enough?. Video,audio, and 3d work all could benefit from more power. However, most consumer do fall into this category.
One thing is for certain though, upgrade cycle length won?t remain constant over the long term...
Originally posted by Messiah
Cheer up!
Perhaps these machines will be 'the first' to ship with 16X SuperDrives and DL support - (i.e. Apple might choose to de-cripple the drives that they have been installing for however many months...).
Originally posted by THT
ThinkSecret doesn't have news, they have rumors. I'm referring to the thread subject title. The sooner one gets that nuance understood, the better.
The new Power Mac revision is going to be a reputation-breaker for ThinkSecret. de Plume likely gets pseudo-anonymous rumor emails, for awhile now. If he actually knows - the name and position - of who is leaking reliable Mac hardware specs (he doesn't get iPod or software specs correct) to him, said person is stupid.
In the meanwhile, I'm sure Apple has been slowly tightening the circle of people who knows what the real specs of upcoming hardware is. I wouldn't want to be that leaker right now.
I pray that you are right, but with how the G5 has been going I really dont know. What makes you say so confidently that TS will be wrong on this revision?
btw... i heard dual core was going to be no more expensive then normal processors.. oh well maybe that was wrong
Originally posted by unregistered
i think someone has been spending too much time/money developing cheap mini and ipods
btw... i heard dual core was going to be no more expensive then normal processors.. oh well maybe that was wrong
DC chips are more money. They take up more wafer space because now you have to have a contiguous block of functional transistors. This increases your odds of having bad areas that scrap the whole chip. Intel is aggresively pricing their DC chips barely above the single core chips to generate support for multithreaded apps. DC chips might not hit their stride until 65nm where the sizes will return back to easier to fab sizes.
I reckon they have a dualcore/pci-e G5 in testing but reliability,price etc are currently issues so they are going to speed bump them yet again.
They should drop the price by $500 at least on the top the range and wait until the new ones come out in Oct/Nov for the Xmas rush and then deliver in Jan as we are now used to.
It is becomming a real farce with their CPU's. Even Sun has ported Solaris for x86 and it runs very reliably on Operton machines. There is no reason why Apple couldn't do this as well.
The updated G5 will appear without song and dance on their website around when Tiger comes out.
Dobby.
I hope Apple doesn't have the balls to sell that Dual 2.7Ghz for more than $2,700. Make the price right and don't castrate the "low-end" Powermac and this update will suffice for a couple months.
Originally posted by Cory Bauer
So after showing us all of the great Pro Video and Audio applications on Sunday whose realtime capabilities are limited only by your CPU and graphics card performance, Apple's going to deliver a 200Mhz speedbump to their Powermacs. Nice one, Apple. While your software division is making products who fuel the need for faster hardware, your hardware division has been making...nothing, apparently.
That was freekn' halarious dude!!
You have hit the heart of the situation. Their software division is screaming while the hardware division is in the sand box playing with legos...Maybe we can expect a new power pod from the hardware side.
It will be an interesting annoucement from Apple, either way the apple peels. I will be right back here in this thread the day the annoucement is made.
The truly dire times for Apple were the Motorola-in-freefall years. Steve landed on the IBM helicopter pad just in time to keep Apple users from hurling themselves off into the bitter sea. Can you imagine what things would be like today if the fastest PowerMac were a dual 1.67 G4, with its slim little bus? Imagine the contortions that some of us still would be going through to try to justify sticking with Apple through THAT kind of frightful vision.
Some of you contend that we are in precarious shape vis-a-vis the PC world, but we do have 64 bit CPUs, big busses, large RAM capabilities, dual core in the offing, a kind of uneasy parity. Given the nature of the relatively tiny Apple beast, there is always reason to be concerned and wary, but I think the Cupertino team will pull through just fine for the next few years at least.
Originally posted by aplnub
That was freekn' halarious dude!!
You have hit the heart of the situation. Their software division is screaming while the hardware division is in the sand box playing with legos...Maybe we can expect a new power pod from the hardware side.
It will be an interesting annoucement from Apple, either way the apple peels. I will be right back here in this thread the day the annoucement is made.
Yeah, this is EXACTLY why so many people are confused bythe news from Thinksecret. All the new Pro apps announced at NAB are just screaming out Dual-core and PCI-E goodness, yet Apple are going to release hardware that doesnt enable the power of the new features? It just doesn't add up. And I find it VERY difficult to believe that IBM cannot improve their 90nm process at all, in a whole year?!?! it beggars belief.
Originally posted by Programmer
Perhaps Apple knows info will leak so they allow it to leak... but only for the single core versions.
I tend to be pretty skeptical, but I have to admit that I'm hoping this might be true.
I'm fantasizing about a higher model priced at maybe $3500, aimed squarely at Pros. PowerMac HD: 2.5 dual dual-cores. PCI-E. Blu-Ray. Stuff like that. I imagine blowing through uncompressed HD Motion 2 projects like butter, smooooth as silk...
Well, a man can dream OK?
Originally posted by Cory Bauer
Nice one, Apple. While your software division is making products who fuel the need for faster hardware, your hardware division has been making...nothing, apparently.
This quote reminded me of the story - oh about 3 months ago - of the Apple division chief who suddenly left. Wasn't he in hardware? Anybody know the whys and wherefores of the story?
And on another tack... Morpheus seems to think 2.8 duals are achievable. (Of course mobo problems are out of his purview. Just because 2.8 duals are fabbed with acceptable heat characteristics in the plant doesn't ensure a successful implementation in a desktop.)
be happy getting by with a 12" PB, but as nice as they are,
I simply can't justify that much money right now for a single G4 processor.
Then looking at these figures, I don't dare spend one cent
until I see how the next PowerMac revisions are priced.
PRICING FOR DUAL-CORE Opterons has wibbled onto the web, suggesting that AMD will charge as much for a low-end dual-core offering as it charges for a single-core high-end part.
The Taiwanese Digitimes, here, says local motherboard makers spilled the beans on the AMD's pricing plans. It says the dual-core Opteron 865 processor will cost $1,514, which happens to be the price of a single-core Opteron 852. The 870 will cost $2,149 and the 875 $2,649, the site says it was told. We guess these are volume prices.
I wonder how these prices would compare to the 970MP or a de-tuned Power5 dual core, since the Power5 is a long established processor?
Originally posted by Thereubster
And I find it VERY difficult to believe that IBM cannot improve their 90nm process at all, in a whole year?!?! it beggars belief.
They have improved it -- dramatically. They went from something approximating 0% yield to something remarkably high (can't remember the exact number announced recently, but it was silly... 90%?). That's quite an improvement.
Originally posted by FallenFromTheTree
I wonder how these prices would compare to the 970MP or a de-tuned Power5 dual core, since the Power5 is a long established processor?
Power5 pricing is probably way out of line with desktop microprocessors, and you wouldn't want a "de-tuned" one as they already run at fairly weak clock rates and don't have VMX units.
The 970MP pricing will probably be quite good, based on the small size of the 970 core and IBM's recent success with their yields.