My fear is that if we don't see a speed-bumped G4 by MWTY then we won't have a G5 until MWSF '03. Seriously.
I keep going back to the article that appeared last month where the Moto rep was quoted as saying 'there's still a lot of life left in the G4.'
I doubt he was referring to iBooks and iMacs. I think this was a nervous guy saying 'hey..who needs the G5? The G4 is really good and we're gonna stretch it out as far as we can.'
So if Apple waits more than two months to update the Power Mac, I predict only two more bumps for it this year. One will be relatively quite, bump to the G4 as we know it. The other, probably at MWNY (possibly later), will be Jobs' introducing the Apollo chip and maybe the associated motherboad enhancements.
That's it. Two incremental bumps for the whole lousy year. Apple can easily stall for the G5 with two bumps, provided that the first one doesn't come too soon.
I know that display/tower promo runs out at the end of the month, so I really hope we see something soon after. If we don't see anything by March, I predict no real G5 til '03. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
<strong>Whatever Apple Rep you're talking about, is full of shit.
Apollo is a smokescreen.</strong><hr></blockquote>
heh -- well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what Apple puts out next. If it doesn't end up being Apollo G4s, an awful lot of people are going to be extremely surprised (especially at Apple).
Moki- I know you know what you know, but it's it a possibilty that the Apollo is intended for the iMac and portables? There's no doubt the Apollo is real and is the next G4, but that doesn't neccessarily mean it's for the towers. The iMac will need a chip that will keep it going for a while, that sounds like the Apollo to me.
If the G5 is really the monster chip that everybody thinks (no reason to doubt it, really), then its going to have >50 million transistors. Hardly ideal for a portable or a (nearly) fanless desktop machine. In the Apollo the G4 will live on for quite a while, and will probably see much higher clock rates. The G3 and G4 have co-existed for this long, why would the G5 suddenly obsolete them both?
[quote] No GHz breakage. This one didn?t happen for obvious reasons, too, though all the Macheads (myself included) sometime like to look the other way when all signs are pointing in another direction. We didn?t get speed-bumped G4?s for one main reason: current chip integrity versus demand for the product. Everyone knows/has heard that Moto has pushed the G4 processor up to 1.8GHz (and over that to fail safe), but less than one out of ten chips can maintain that level. That?s just no good statistically. Of course, every chip coming off the line won?t be perfect and there?s an anticipated number of lost chips that will be recycled.
<hr></blockquote>
I had no idea the G4 scaled that high, shit, I'll take a 1.8ghz G4 and be happy about it
<strong>Got some information from an apple rep today. He said that the G4+ (7460?) would be out by Macworld Tokyo, maybe sooner, and would be a bit above 1Ghz (but not waaayyy over like some are speculating). He said that there wouldn't be any G5 till next year at the earliest. Also that the new machines would still be quicksilvers and may not have DDR memory (but apple is trying as hard as they can to get DDR in them). He said he's seen the machines and they are fast. Also he mentioned that they might have some dual core feature or hypertreading in that one chip would operate like two. I'm not sure if he's right about that, but it does sound interesting. He's also not sure if there will be dual procs versions of these new machines. But he did say they were fast and that anyone is stupid who would buy a new tower right now when these machines are right around the corner.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Moki, you would never break your NDA, so even if you had a 2.4 GHz Powermac G5 sitting on your desk, if you were in fact typing on it to post these messages, you wouldn't say a word about it.
In fact your NDA is so binding that you couldn't even HINT at the G5 being ready.
Actually, if you DID have knowledge of a Powermac G5, then saying nothing would be complying to the "letter of the law", it would not violate your NDA to say nothing. But to fulfill the "spirit of the law", you would have to deny the G5's existence! This would be what Jobs would expect from you.
So I'm going to take your incessant denials of the existence of Powermac G5s as incontrovertible evidence that the G5 not only exists, but that you are in fact testing one at this very moment!
Can I just say that it's now 5 days after MacWorld, and for a product that's been out for six months, and should be in ample supply given their age, the current PowerMac line up still lists a 10 day wait. The old iMac is as low as 1-3 days. Something's -a- comin'...and I don't think it will wait all the way until MWTokyo
<strong>I think another clue to an update at the end of january for the powermacs is something steve said during his keynote.
"starting today, OS X will be the default boot-OS on the products shown here today and they rest of our products by the end of the month."
hmmm.....
What is so difficult about making X the default boot-OS on powermacs now? I mean if the intro of the new powermacs is months off (MWtokyo) why would you wait months to follow through?
When he says that the powermacs will have it default by the end of January leads me to believe there will be a lil "special event" taking place at apple intro the new pro machine.</strong><hr></blockquote>
WOAH. did not catch that. looks like special event to me too!
Â*"The iMacs generally don't make a big hit in corporate America except for . . . someone that wants to have a cool machine at the reception desk," said David Salav, president of Bohemia, N.Y.-based Apple VAR PWR Systems. "I think Apple will have bigger corporate mind share when it comes out with a server product."
PWR's Salav said he is more interested in the server, which he expects Apple to unveil by summer. Several former server manufacturer engineers are currently working in Apple product development, he said.
--------------------------------------------
OK, let's think about this...
1. Former server manufacturer engineers are working for Apple product development.
2. Apple will be releasing a server that will make serious inroads into the business market (as far as this Salav thinks, anyway)
3. It should be out by this summer.
I don't think that means a 900 MHz G4, even with DDR. This sounds like he expects some seriously butt-kickin' machinery by MWNY, personally.
Well they only said July in reference to the servers.
The MacOS X by default at the end of the month is an interesting observation. One thing that has been bothering me about radically new PowerMacs is that if they are really that different, would Apple bother to get the MacOS 9 kernel running on them natively? If they are 64-bit G5 machines w/ a new bus architecture this could be difficult, if not impossible. Perhaps they pulled in the default-to-X date because they want to ship the good stuff?
Just saw this from another forum, it's a quote from eetimes.com about the SF show. I couldn't find the article to get more info.
[quote] The company also held off adopting G5 PowerPCs made in a 0.13-micron process. Those chips will sport a longer pipeline and hit speeds up to 1.4 GHz, but are not expected to be available in volume from Motorola until midyear. <hr></blockquote>
So, I guess this means MWNY for the G5s, and a speed bump in a few weeks to hold us till then? That sucks, I gotta wait 5 months now.
<strong>Moki, you would never break your NDA, so even if you had a 2.4 GHz Powermac G5 sitting on your desk, if you were in fact typing on it to post these messages, you wouldn't say a word about it.
In fact your NDA is so binding that you couldn't even HINT at the G5 being ready.p </strong><hr></blockquote>
I have no NDA with Apple regarding any of their upcoming hardware
Comments
I keep going back to the article that appeared last month where the Moto rep was quoted as saying 'there's still a lot of life left in the G4.'
I doubt he was referring to iBooks and iMacs. I think this was a nervous guy saying 'hey..who needs the G5? The G4 is really good and we're gonna stretch it out as far as we can.'
So if Apple waits more than two months to update the Power Mac, I predict only two more bumps for it this year. One will be relatively quite, bump to the G4 as we know it. The other, probably at MWNY (possibly later), will be Jobs' introducing the Apollo chip and maybe the associated motherboad enhancements.
That's it. Two incremental bumps for the whole lousy year. Apple can easily stall for the G5 with two bumps, provided that the first one doesn't come too soon.
I know that display/tower promo runs out at the end of the month, so I really hope we see something soon after. If we don't see anything by March, I predict no real G5 til '03. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
<strong>Whatever Apple Rep you're talking about, is full of shit.
Apollo is a smokescreen.</strong><hr></blockquote>
heh -- well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what Apple puts out next. If it doesn't end up being Apollo G4s, an awful lot of people are going to be extremely surprised (especially at Apple).
<a href="http://www.macnn.com/news.php?id=11867&startNumber=10"; target="_blank">http://www.macnn.com/news.php?id=11867&startNumber=10</a>;
Looks like Moki is going to be pissin' his pants in surprise, and thankfully I'm not going to have to suck my own dick.
<strong>
an awful lot of people are going to be extremely surprised (especially at Apple).</strong><hr></blockquote>
I imagine most Apple employees have no more idea of the next PM revision than we do.
[quote] No GHz breakage. This one didn?t happen for obvious reasons, too, though all the Macheads (myself included) sometime like to look the other way when all signs are pointing in another direction. We didn?t get speed-bumped G4?s for one main reason: current chip integrity versus demand for the product. Everyone knows/has heard that Moto has pushed the G4 processor up to 1.8GHz (and over that to fail safe), but less than one out of ten chips can maintain that level. That?s just no good statistically. Of course, every chip coming off the line won?t be perfect and there?s an anticipated number of lost chips that will be recycled.
<hr></blockquote>
I had no idea the G4 scaled that high, shit, I'll take a 1.8ghz G4 and be happy about it
<strong>
I imagine most Apple employees have no more idea of the next PM revision than we do.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Most employees? Quite likely. Engineers? Not quite as likely.
<strong>Got some information from an apple rep today. He said that the G4+ (7460?) would be out by Macworld Tokyo, maybe sooner, and would be a bit above 1Ghz (but not waaayyy over like some are speculating). He said that there wouldn't be any G5 till next year at the earliest. Also that the new machines would still be quicksilvers and may not have DDR memory (but apple is trying as hard as they can to get DDR in them). He said he's seen the machines and they are fast. Also he mentioned that they might have some dual core feature or hypertreading in that one chip would operate like two. I'm not sure if he's right about that, but it does sound interesting. He's also not sure if there will be dual procs versions of these new machines. But he did say they were fast and that anyone is stupid who would buy a new tower right now when these machines are right around the corner.</strong><hr></blockquote>
<strong>
I imagine most Apple employees have no more idea of the next PM revision than we do.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I wonder how many of them are reading this site to find out what their company will bring out next?
In fact your NDA is so binding that you couldn't even HINT at the G5 being ready.
Actually, if you DID have knowledge of a Powermac G5, then saying nothing would be complying to the "letter of the law", it would not violate your NDA to say nothing. But to fulfill the "spirit of the law", you would have to deny the G5's existence! This would be what Jobs would expect from you.
So I'm going to take your incessant denials of the existence of Powermac G5s as incontrovertible evidence that the G5 not only exists, but that you are in fact testing one at this very moment!
an excellent Stalinist.
and ironically an excellent MacCarthyite.
<strong>I think another clue to an update at the end of january for the powermacs is something steve said during his keynote.
"starting today, OS X will be the default boot-OS on the products shown here today and they rest of our products by the end of the month."
hmmm.....
What is so difficult about making X the default boot-OS on powermacs now? I mean if the intro of the new powermacs is months off (MWtokyo) why would you wait months to follow through?
When he says that the powermacs will have it default by the end of January leads me to believe there will be a lil "special event" taking place at apple intro the new pro machine.</strong><hr></blockquote>
WOAH. did not catch that. looks like special event to me too!
<a href="http://www.crn.com/sections/news/top_news.asp?ArticleID=32486"; target="_blank">CRN News - MWSF</a>
Â*"The iMacs generally don't make a big hit in corporate America except for . . . someone that wants to have a cool machine at the reception desk," said David Salav, president of Bohemia, N.Y.-based Apple VAR PWR Systems. "I think Apple will have bigger corporate mind share when it comes out with a server product."
PWR's Salav said he is more interested in the server, which he expects Apple to unveil by summer. Several former server manufacturer engineers are currently working in Apple product development, he said.
--------------------------------------------
OK, let's think about this...
1. Former server manufacturer engineers are working for Apple product development.
2. Apple will be releasing a server that will make serious inroads into the business market (as far as this Salav thinks, anyway)
3. It should be out by this summer.
I don't think that means a 900 MHz G4, even with DDR. This sounds like he expects some seriously butt-kickin' machinery by MWNY, personally.
The MacOS X by default at the end of the month is an interesting observation. One thing that has been bothering me about radically new PowerMacs is that if they are really that different, would Apple bother to get the MacOS 9 kernel running on them natively? If they are 64-bit G5 machines w/ a new bus architecture this could be difficult, if not impossible. Perhaps they pulled in the default-to-X date because they want to ship the good stuff?
[quote] The company also held off adopting G5 PowerPCs made in a 0.13-micron process. Those chips will sport a longer pipeline and hit speeds up to 1.4 GHz, but are not expected to be available in volume from Motorola until midyear. <hr></blockquote>
So, I guess this means MWNY for the G5s, and a speed bump in a few weeks to hold us till then? That sucks, I gotta wait 5 months now.
<strong>Moki, you would never break your NDA, so even if you had a 2.4 GHz Powermac G5 sitting on your desk, if you were in fact typing on it to post these messages, you wouldn't say a word about it.
In fact your NDA is so binding that you couldn't even HINT at the G5 being ready.p </strong><hr></blockquote>
I have no NDA with Apple regarding any of their upcoming hardware