...gee, must imagine WHAT those desktops sales would have been IF they'd have bothered to update their Mac desktops... I guess we'll never know until they DO update them.
Unlike you, I DO know that. Computers were a major part of my companies needs, and those of the others in the industry, as well as those I worked with in the Tv, motion picture, and even scientific areas of businesses that gave us work to do.
You can also look up information on this. See how the pharmaceutical industry used first Powermacs, and now Mac Pros in their labs.
The Mac Pro is aimed at a certain type of user, just as all the other heavy duty machines from other manufacturers are. Apple isn't looking for gamers to supplement these users.
My contention is that a small number of gamers might be buying lower end Mac Pros if different graphics cards were available, an area in which I would agree with you if you said that Apple's offerings there are inadequate.
But to say that an xMac with half the power of a Mac Pro would drive users away from the Mac pro isn't true. It could make possible iMac buyers hesitate though.
Ergo: it's a moot point. As there will be no choice anyhow by the looks of things. As for 'dual', Apple only ever started offering that when their PPC chips speed stalled. There's no need not to deploy a proper range of 'Power Towers' with explosive i7 power. With a decent price range. That would in no way effect the 'dual' range considering sales are in the toilet (through no fault of Apple's own, of course...)
Lemon Bon Bon.
That's going back a very way. They supported up to 4 chips long before that, but they didn't produce the machines themselves.
That doesn't mean they're not competitive where they do compete.
I can't believe you typed that with a straight face.
The mini is a joke. No Keyboard. No monitor. It's an out of date piece of junk in a 'kool' biscuit tin. It is in no way competitive in the sub-£500 market.
The iMac doesn't have any quad cpu option vs machines costing half as much with the i7 chip and a 4850! (escuse me for waffling, now...)
And what Workstation has a 2600pro in it? (Can you smell the carcass on that one?)
Just me humble subjective opinion now.
Lemon Bon Bon.
PS. I'll have a side bet with you that...um...desktop sales improve when Apple updates them...that's despite the 'fact' they aren't an important market anymore...and sales are clearly shrinking 'overall'.
Don't be petulant and patronising because I don't agree with you. (Yeah, I know it's credit crunch time! But what happened to the Apple that always 'innovated its way through recession? That doesn't apply to its desktops, does it?)
Apple hasn't updated them enough the past year or so. I haven't been denying that. I've stated it in other posts. I don't know why.
Quote:
Apple's desktops are not competitive.
Simple. No fat. No waffle.
I'm not being patronizing. But your statements are pretty strongly stating big things about the sales drop which isn't allowing for the economic situation, and you're not allowing that other computer manufacturers are having a FAR worse time of it. You're making it seem as though it's just Apple.
I don't agree with that though. Macs are not PC's. They don't compete directly in the way you think. It's mostly Mac owners who hold back to wait for newer machines, not new buyers. And Mac owners are very loyal.
Quote:
PS. Note how when Apple does upate its desktops...the sales figures, historically, squeeze much closer to desktops. It's ingenuine to say that we only sell 30% of desktops when specs are in the toilet and haven't been given a moderate 'spec' bump in all that time. Who buys crap like that? I don't.
We know that there are sales bumps before an upgrade. I've said that people were waiting for new machies in Macworld, and that that was one of the reasons why the sales dropped as much as they did last quarter.
But a lot of that drop was because of the economy as well.
If Apple updates its machines in a month or so, we will see that sales bump.
But you are saying that the machines aren't competitive altogether, other than for the lack of updates, and that's where I disagree.
My contention is that a small number of gamers might be buying lower end Mac Pros if different graphics cards were available, an area in which I would agree with you if you said that Apple's offerings there are inadequate.
But to say that an xMac with half the power of a Mac Pro would drive users away from the Mac pro isn't true. It could make possible iMac buyers hesitate though.
Your contention holds no sway over my contention. They have the option to use i7. Would you then buy a dual Xeon in light of that? Nope.
For the record, Apple offered the G5 tower for £995 with crap amounts of ram, hd, no monitor bundle and some half ass motherboard. And they wondered why people/gamers, cheap ass prosumers wouldn't buy the cheap ass product. They could offer the i7 with 4850 for that price now...and it would make the Mac 'Pro' Xeon look like the laughing stock it is.
The mini is a joke. No Keyboard. No monitor. It's an out of date piece of junk in a 'kool' biscuit tin. It is in no way competitive in the sub-£500 market.
The iMac doesn't have any quad cpu option vs machines costing half as much with the i7 chip and a 4850! (escuse me for waffling, now...)
And what Workstation has a 2600pro in it? (Can you smell the carcass on that one?
That's where we are. That's Apple.
Lemon Bon Bon.
PS. It's ingenuine to say Apple are competitive in their chosen markets when there are cheaper, better, more powerful components out there. If you were talking laptops we wouldn't be having this discussion. But, desktops? They're a joke. If there was a mid-tower option or a Mac Pro with an i7 consumer tower option a 'Mac' then...we wouldn't be having this discussion either. Apple are rigid. That is my opinion I guess. But the desktop line up as it stands speaks for itself. Square pegs. Round holes.
I can't believe you typed that with a straight face.
Oh please! That was just plain silly. You know very well what that means. Boxx, a well known maker of expensive PC workstations also doesn't compete in the "cheap" space. Does that mean they aren't competitive in the space they do compete in? Of course not. Here's the pricing of their single i7 chip workstations:
The mini is a joke. No Keyboard. No monitor. It's an out of date piece of junk in a 'kool' biscuit tin. It is in no way competitive in the sub-£500 market.
They seem to be selling a lot of them for professional purposes in hotels, cruise ships, casinos, etc. I'd like to see them update that s well, but it must be selling well enough, or Apple would pull it, as they did with the Cube.
Quote:
The iMac doesn't have any quad cpu option vs machines costing half as much with the i7 chip and a 4850! (escuse me for waffling, now...)
According to tests, it actually can run PS faster than a mid Mac Pro. Thats pretty fast. We may be seeing a new 4 core model now that Apple will have Grand Central.
By the way, look up the word "waffle". It DOESN'T mean telling all the facts.
Quote:
And what Workstation has a 2600pro in it? (Can you smell the carcass on that one?)
Just me humble subjective opinion now.
It's very subjective, and not at all humble as you know.
But, if Apple only offered the 2600, you would be right. As they don't, you are wrong.
Quote:
PS. I'll have a side bet with you that...um...desktop sales improve when Apple updates them...that's despite the 'fact' they aren't an important market anymore...and sales are clearly shrinking 'overall'.
You don't need a bet for that. I've said it before you did. It's pretty obvious. But it's not really your argument, is it?
And no one said they weren't an important market anymore, unless you are the one saying it.
This Lemon Bon Bon is so odd. He replies to a post by dissecting a line from a post, replying, then repeating the process. He removes the name of the poster from the quote making it more difficult to discern the thread unless you are the original poster, and he finsihed all his posts by writing his handle at the bottom despite it being obvious who wrote the post. None of that says rational thinking.
Your contention holds no sway over my contention. They have the option to use i7. Would you then buy a dual Xeon in light of that? Nope.
On gaming sites, after the Mac Pros came out, a lot if gamers said that they would buy a Mac Pro instead of an Alien, or Voodo, or other top performance/price PC IF there were better graphics cards available.
Even they do more than play games, and a lot of them apparently would like to have a Mac. It's not that surprising.
Quote:
For the record, Apple offered the G5 tower for £995 with crap amounts of ram, hd, no monitor bundle and some half ass motherboard. And they wondered why people/gamers, cheap ass prosumers wouldn't buy the cheap ass product. They could offer the i7 with 4850 for that price now...and it would make the Mac 'Pro' Xeon look like the laughing stock it is.
For the record, that's meaningless.
Until Apple moved to Intel chips, there was NO reason why most gamers would go to a Mac. Running Windows under emulation isn't the best gaming experience, to say the least.
I don't agree with everything Apple does, and not having better gaming boards, along with the expensive pro board, and the cheaper boards, is something I don't understand. I think it's wrong of them, esp. since they have very carefully made sure that a dual slot width graphics board wouldn't take a slot away, which is something that even most PC don't do.
But you seem to miss the idea that I've been stating over and again, which is that I agree that there should be an xMac. How many times must I state that to you before you understand it?
This is all semantics anyway. An xMac would sit between the iMac and the Mac Pro.
Whether you realise it or not, we're basically saying the same things.
That's nonsense now we're on Intel. That is an old sacred cow argument.
There specs are out of date when there are cheap, competitive AND more powerful options that have been available for some time. That's my argument.
Apple have stagnated on desktops. Zero link. Zero waffle.
Lemon Bon Bon.
So then, since you won't respond specifically to what I'm saying about the basic model line-up, you are stating that it's only updates that are hurting most of the lines? That's what this post is saying.
The Mac Pro isn't competing with the lower priced i7 machines that are out there, or will be out there. They compete with workstations that cost about the same. You could have said the same thing about the old Mac Pros. Why did Apple only use Xeons in them?
In addition, why would Apple wait so long after the i7 comes out before releasing a Mc Pro based on it? They've never done that before, so why would now be different?
Why Apple hasn't updated their machines more often lately, is something I don't know. They obviously have some reason.
None of Apple's desktop models are "selling like hotcakes" lately. The Mac Pro isn't the only one.
Nehalem Xeons will cost about the same, possibly even less that the current Harpertown models when everything is taken into account. You have to figure in all that Apple doesn't have to pay for as well as the actual price of the cpus. They don't need the separate memory controller, which is expensive. They don't need the extra power supply parts. They don't need the extra real estate on the mobo, etc. This simplifies the design process. It allows for a less expensive board. Simpler testing, etc.
Overall, the costs should be about the same. This is what sites such as Anandtech are finding, even though only high end boards can be used, that's no different from before.
As for your pricing, I don't see it as being as high as that. It's possible that prices may be a bit higher than today, as each generation seems to gain a bit because of inflation. If Apple adds features, then pricing may go higher.
Let's talk about nehalem EP:
- the cpus will cost more than current Harpertown and a lot more: e.g. a 2.80 harpertown costs $800, a 2.66GHz xeon nehalem will cost $960. Apple would have to go down to 2.53Ghz to have a nehalem xeon that costs about the same as the 2.80 harpertown. I'm not saying that a 2.53 nehalem is not better than a 2.80 harpertown, I'm just saying that the entry price for nehalem cpus is higher than for harpertown ones.
- AFAIK, motherboards based on nehalem xeon cost more to manufacture than previous ones, more layers, expensive chipset (just like for harpertown), and while the DDR3-ECC RAM may be less expensive than FB-DIMMS, you need to buy them in trio and in the case of a dual-cpu computer, you would need 6 of them to make good use of the memory controller.
- IMO, the power supply will be the same since the TDP of nehalem xeons (95-130W each) will be about the same as the TDP of the current harpertowns (80-150W each) in the Mac Pro.
I believe you're being too optimistic in thinking that moving to nehalem xeons for the Mac Pro will not induce another price increase, and another price increase for the entry point, too. Of course Apple is not paying the "retail" price of the cpus, but a percentage of it, in any case if they were paying $800-x% for harpertown, they still will be paying $960-x% for nehalem xeon and unless you change x, $960-x% will always be higher than $800-x%. The chipset for Harpertown or nehalem Xeons is a small percentage of the cost of the cpu, probably around $100. While the new "northbridge" doesn't include a MC, it includes 2 QPI links and a 24/32 PCIe lanes controller: new technologies, new chips = expensive. X58 is more expensive than X48.
Quote:
Another thing that must be factored in here is that Harpertowns have been out for a while and have seen price drops, as is usual. Here is one of them:
The price cuts you have mentionned here concern the xeons that are in fact desktop quad-core cpus renamed, those are for uniprocesseur servers and have seen price cuts just like the other desktop chips from Intel. The DP-capable Xeons HAVE NOT seen any price cut since their launch late 2007.
There was nothing to update it to. No price cuts on harpertown cpus from Intel, no new chipset and "just" one more expensive 3.40Ghz model. What Apple could have done is just a new BTO option for the 3.40GHz.
What wait to release a Core i7 Mac Pro?
To release it at the same time as the dual-Xeon Mac Pro. The same family. Releasing a Core i7 Mac Pro alone would have probably cut all the potential sales of the harpertown Mac Pro. There is also a Core i7 speedbump to 3.06/3.33Ghz planned for Q2... Or they could wait for the Xeon labelled Core i7 (W3500 series) priced just like the desktop Core i7, so that they could say that all Mac Pro have Xeon-class cpus.
Desktops Macs.
As far as I understand, the iMac represents probably 90-95% of Apple's desktop sales for the previous quarters, that's still a lot of sales, hot cakes or not. It's the only desktop Mac that's not too old and that can be of a certain value for the consumer. You know that the ASP for Apple computers is about $1500, it wouldn't hurt having another computer with more potential sales (than the dual-xeon Mac Pro) at that price and higher. People who wouldn't have bought a Mac Pro would probably be interested in a less expensive tower (instead of an iMac with probably lower margins than a 2.66GHz Core i7 tower starting at $1499), and people who really need that much power won't be disappointed with the dual-xeon nehalem Mac Pro (and they have the cash, the +$3K, to spend on those).
Other updates:
Mac mini: IMO, it's a shame this one was not updated to the specs of the white MacBook (to make it simple).
iMac: I hope Apple was waiting for the 65W desktop quads, because other than that, it's custom mobile chips again and probably a very small speedbump.
PS. It's ingenuine to say Apple are competitive in their chosen markets when there are cheaper, better, more powerful components out there. If you were talking laptops we wouldn't be having this discussion. But, desktops? They're a joke. If there was a mid-tower option or a Mac Pro with an i7 consumer tower option a 'Mac' then...we wouldn't be having this discussion either. Apple are rigid. That is my opinion I guess. But the desktop line up as it stands speaks for itself. Square pegs. Round holes.
So you're quoting yourself, and responding to your own post?
I notice that you studiously ignore each part of the post where I talk about the xMac. Is it possible that you don't read the lines where I agree that there should be one?
Comments
And that's with the lower desktop sales.
...gee, must imagine WHAT those desktops sales would have been IF they'd have bothered to update their Mac desktops... I guess we'll never know until they DO update them.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Apple has never tried to be competitive
Not in the last year. I'll agree with you on that point.
Lemon Bon Bon.
You don't 'know' that.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Unlike you, I DO know that. Computers were a major part of my companies needs, and those of the others in the industry, as well as those I worked with in the Tv, motion picture, and even scientific areas of businesses that gave us work to do.
You can also look up information on this. See how the pharmaceutical industry used first Powermacs, and now Mac Pros in their labs.
The Mac Pro is aimed at a certain type of user, just as all the other heavy duty machines from other manufacturers are. Apple isn't looking for gamers to supplement these users.
My contention is that a small number of gamers might be buying lower end Mac Pros if different graphics cards were available, an area in which I would agree with you if you said that Apple's offerings there are inadequate.
But to say that an xMac with half the power of a Mac Pro would drive users away from the Mac pro isn't true. It could make possible iMac buyers hesitate though.
Ergo: it's a moot point. As there will be no choice anyhow by the looks of things. As for 'dual', Apple only ever started offering that when their PPC chips speed stalled. There's no need not to deploy a proper range of 'Power Towers' with explosive i7 power. With a decent price range. That would in no way effect the 'dual' range considering sales are in the toilet (through no fault of Apple's own, of course...)
Lemon Bon Bon.
That's going back a very way. They supported up to 4 chips long before that, but they didn't produce the machines themselves.
That doesn't mean they're not competitive where they do compete.
I can't believe you typed that with a straight face.
The mini is a joke. No Keyboard. No monitor. It's an out of date piece of junk in a 'kool' biscuit tin. It is in no way competitive in the sub-£500 market.
The iMac doesn't have any quad cpu option vs machines costing half as much with the i7 chip and a 4850! (escuse me for waffling, now...)
And what Workstation has a 2600pro in it? (Can you smell the carcass on that one?)
Just me humble subjective opinion now.
Lemon Bon Bon.
PS. I'll have a side bet with you that...um...desktop sales improve when Apple updates them...that's despite the 'fact' they aren't an important market anymore...and sales are clearly shrinking 'overall'.
but they didn't produce the machines themselves.
They have greater choice and more standard parts now than they ever have had. No excuses now, Melgross.
Lemon Bon Bon.
The Mac Pro is aimed at a certain type of user
Yes. Nods head slowly. I get that.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Don't be petulant and patronising because I don't agree with you. (Yeah, I know it's credit crunch time! But what happened to the Apple that always 'innovated its way through recession? That doesn't apply to its desktops, does it?)
Apple hasn't updated them enough the past year or so. I haven't been denying that. I've stated it in other posts. I don't know why.
Apple's desktops are not competitive.
Simple. No fat. No waffle.
I'm not being patronizing. But your statements are pretty strongly stating big things about the sales drop which isn't allowing for the economic situation, and you're not allowing that other computer manufacturers are having a FAR worse time of it. You're making it seem as though it's just Apple.
I don't agree with that though. Macs are not PC's. They don't compete directly in the way you think. It's mostly Mac owners who hold back to wait for newer machines, not new buyers. And Mac owners are very loyal.
PS. Note how when Apple does upate its desktops...the sales figures, historically, squeeze much closer to desktops. It's ingenuine to say that we only sell 30% of desktops when specs are in the toilet and haven't been given a moderate 'spec' bump in all that time. Who buys crap like that? I don't.
We know that there are sales bumps before an upgrade. I've said that people were waiting for new machies in Macworld, and that that was one of the reasons why the sales dropped as much as they did last quarter.
But a lot of that drop was because of the economy as well.
If Apple updates its machines in a month or so, we will see that sales bump.
But you are saying that the machines aren't competitive altogether, other than for the lack of updates, and that's where I disagree.
My contention is that a small number of gamers might be buying lower end Mac Pros if different graphics cards were available, an area in which I would agree with you if you said that Apple's offerings there are inadequate.
But to say that an xMac with half the power of a Mac Pro would drive users away from the Mac pro isn't true. It could make possible iMac buyers hesitate though.
Your contention holds no sway over my contention. They have the option to use i7. Would you then buy a dual Xeon in light of that? Nope.
For the record, Apple offered the G5 tower for £995 with crap amounts of ram, hd, no monitor bundle and some half ass motherboard. And they wondered why people/gamers, cheap ass prosumers wouldn't buy the cheap ass product. They could offer the i7 with 4850 for that price now...and it would make the Mac 'Pro' Xeon look like the laughing stock it is.
Lemon Bon Bon.
They don't compete directly in the way you think.
That's nonsense now we're on Intel. That is an old sacred cow argument.
There specs are out of date when there are cheap, competitive AND more powerful options that have been available for some time. That's my argument.
Apple have stagnated on desktops. Zero link. Zero waffle.
Lemon Bon Bon.
But you are saying that the machines aren't competitive altogether, other than for the lack of updates, and that's where I disagree.
Are you serious?
Lemon Bon Bon.
The mini is a joke. No Keyboard. No monitor. It's an out of date piece of junk in a 'kool' biscuit tin. It is in no way competitive in the sub-£500 market.
The iMac doesn't have any quad cpu option vs machines costing half as much with the i7 chip and a 4850! (escuse me for waffling, now...)
And what Workstation has a 2600pro in it? (Can you smell the carcass on that one?
That's where we are. That's Apple.
Lemon Bon Bon.
PS. It's ingenuine to say Apple are competitive in their chosen markets when there are cheaper, better, more powerful components out there. If you were talking laptops we wouldn't be having this discussion. But, desktops? They're a joke. If there was a mid-tower option or a Mac Pro with an i7 consumer tower option a 'Mac' then...we wouldn't be having this discussion either. Apple are rigid. That is my opinion I guess. But the desktop line up as it stands speaks for itself. Square pegs. Round holes.
I can't believe you typed that with a straight face.
Oh please! That was just plain silly. You know very well what that means. Boxx, a well known maker of expensive PC workstations also doesn't compete in the "cheap" space. Does that mean they aren't competitive in the space they do compete in? Of course not. Here's the pricing of their single i7 chip workstations:
http://www.boxxtech.com/products/3DB...erformance.asp
The mini is a joke. No Keyboard. No monitor. It's an out of date piece of junk in a 'kool' biscuit tin. It is in no way competitive in the sub-£500 market.
They seem to be selling a lot of them for professional purposes in hotels, cruise ships, casinos, etc. I'd like to see them update that s well, but it must be selling well enough, or Apple would pull it, as they did with the Cube.
The iMac doesn't have any quad cpu option vs machines costing half as much with the i7 chip and a 4850! (escuse me for waffling, now...)
According to tests, it actually can run PS faster than a mid Mac Pro. Thats pretty fast. We may be seeing a new 4 core model now that Apple will have Grand Central.
By the way, look up the word "waffle". It DOESN'T mean telling all the facts.
And what Workstation has a 2600pro in it? (Can you smell the carcass on that one?)
Just me humble subjective opinion now.
It's very subjective, and not at all humble as you know.
But, if Apple only offered the 2600, you would be right. As they don't, you are wrong.
PS. I'll have a side bet with you that...um...desktop sales improve when Apple updates them...that's despite the 'fact' they aren't an important market anymore...and sales are clearly shrinking 'overall'.
You don't need a bet for that. I've said it before you did. It's pretty obvious. But it's not really your argument, is it?
And no one said they weren't an important market anymore, unless you are the one saying it.
They have greater choice and more standard parts now than they ever have had. No excuses now, Melgross.
What? Of course they do. What makes you think I said anything different?
Your contention holds no sway over my contention. They have the option to use i7. Would you then buy a dual Xeon in light of that? Nope.
On gaming sites, after the Mac Pros came out, a lot if gamers said that they would buy a Mac Pro instead of an Alien, or Voodo, or other top performance/price PC IF there were better graphics cards available.
Even they do more than play games, and a lot of them apparently would like to have a Mac. It's not that surprising.
For the record, Apple offered the G5 tower for £995 with crap amounts of ram, hd, no monitor bundle and some half ass motherboard. And they wondered why people/gamers, cheap ass prosumers wouldn't buy the cheap ass product. They could offer the i7 with 4850 for that price now...and it would make the Mac 'Pro' Xeon look like the laughing stock it is.
For the record, that's meaningless.
Until Apple moved to Intel chips, there was NO reason why most gamers would go to a Mac. Running Windows under emulation isn't the best gaming experience, to say the least.
I don't agree with everything Apple does, and not having better gaming boards, along with the expensive pro board, and the cheaper boards, is something I don't understand. I think it's wrong of them, esp. since they have very carefully made sure that a dual slot width graphics board wouldn't take a slot away, which is something that even most PC don't do.
But you seem to miss the idea that I've been stating over and again, which is that I agree that there should be an xMac. How many times must I state that to you before you understand it?
This is all semantics anyway. An xMac would sit between the iMac and the Mac Pro.
Whether you realise it or not, we're basically saying the same things.
That's nonsense now we're on Intel. That is an old sacred cow argument.
There specs are out of date when there are cheap, competitive AND more powerful options that have been available for some time. That's my argument.
Apple have stagnated on desktops. Zero link. Zero waffle.
Lemon Bon Bon.
So then, since you won't respond specifically to what I'm saying about the basic model line-up, you are stating that it's only updates that are hurting most of the lines? That's what this post is saying.
The Mac Pro isn't competing with the lower priced i7 machines that are out there, or will be out there. They compete with workstations that cost about the same. You could have said the same thing about the old Mac Pros. Why did Apple only use Xeons in them?
In addition, why would Apple wait so long after the i7 comes out before releasing a Mc Pro based on it? They've never done that before, so why would now be different?
Why Apple hasn't updated their machines more often lately, is something I don't know. They obviously have some reason.
None of Apple's desktop models are "selling like hotcakes" lately. The Mac Pro isn't the only one.
Nehalem Xeons will cost about the same, possibly even less that the current Harpertown models when everything is taken into account. You have to figure in all that Apple doesn't have to pay for as well as the actual price of the cpus. They don't need the separate memory controller, which is expensive. They don't need the extra power supply parts. They don't need the extra real estate on the mobo, etc. This simplifies the design process. It allows for a less expensive board. Simpler testing, etc.
Overall, the costs should be about the same. This is what sites such as Anandtech are finding, even though only high end boards can be used, that's no different from before.
As for your pricing, I don't see it as being as high as that. It's possible that prices may be a bit higher than today, as each generation seems to gain a bit because of inflation. If Apple adds features, then pricing may go higher.
Let's talk about nehalem EP:
- the cpus will cost more than current Harpertown and a lot more: e.g. a 2.80 harpertown costs $800, a 2.66GHz xeon nehalem will cost $960. Apple would have to go down to 2.53Ghz to have a nehalem xeon that costs about the same as the 2.80 harpertown. I'm not saying that a 2.53 nehalem is not better than a 2.80 harpertown, I'm just saying that the entry price for nehalem cpus is higher than for harpertown ones.
- AFAIK, motherboards based on nehalem xeon cost more to manufacture than previous ones, more layers, expensive chipset (just like for harpertown), and while the DDR3-ECC RAM may be less expensive than FB-DIMMS, you need to buy them in trio and in the case of a dual-cpu computer, you would need 6 of them to make good use of the memory controller.
- IMO, the power supply will be the same since the TDP of nehalem xeons (95-130W each) will be about the same as the TDP of the current harpertowns (80-150W each) in the Mac Pro.
I believe you're being too optimistic in thinking that moving to nehalem xeons for the Mac Pro will not induce another price increase, and another price increase for the entry point, too. Of course Apple is not paying the "retail" price of the cpus, but a percentage of it, in any case if they were paying $800-x% for harpertown, they still will be paying $960-x% for nehalem xeon and unless you change x, $960-x% will always be higher than $800-x%. The chipset for Harpertown or nehalem Xeons is a small percentage of the cost of the cpu, probably around $100. While the new "northbridge" doesn't include a MC, it includes 2 QPI links and a 24/32 PCIe lanes controller: new technologies, new chips = expensive. X58 is more expensive than X48.
Another thing that must be factored in here is that Harpertowns have been out for a while and have seen price drops, as is usual. Here is one of them:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-an...d-Xeon-Prices/
Here's another one:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Int...Cuts,6862.html
The price cuts you have mentionned here concern the xeons that are in fact desktop quad-core cpus renamed, those are for uniprocesseur servers and have seen price cuts just like the other desktop chips from Intel. The DP-capable Xeons HAVE NOT seen any price cut since their launch late 2007.
Jan_18_09_1ku_Price.pdf
Harpertown.22_.28standard-voltage.2C_45_nm.29
Gainestown.22_.2845_nm.29_.5B1.5D_.5B2.5D
Why the Mac Pro hasn't been updated yet?
There was nothing to update it to. No price cuts on harpertown cpus from Intel, no new chipset and "just" one more expensive 3.40Ghz model. What Apple could have done is just a new BTO option for the 3.40GHz.
What wait to release a Core i7 Mac Pro?
To release it at the same time as the dual-Xeon Mac Pro. The same family. Releasing a Core i7 Mac Pro alone would have probably cut all the potential sales of the harpertown Mac Pro. There is also a Core i7 speedbump to 3.06/3.33Ghz planned for Q2... Or they could wait for the Xeon labelled Core i7 (W3500 series) priced just like the desktop Core i7, so that they could say that all Mac Pro have Xeon-class cpus.
Desktops Macs.
As far as I understand, the iMac represents probably 90-95% of Apple's desktop sales for the previous quarters, that's still a lot of sales, hot cakes or not. It's the only desktop Mac that's not too old and that can be of a certain value for the consumer. You know that the ASP for Apple computers is about $1500, it wouldn't hurt having another computer with more potential sales (than the dual-xeon Mac Pro) at that price and higher. People who wouldn't have bought a Mac Pro would probably be interested in a less expensive tower (instead of an iMac with probably lower margins than a 2.66GHz Core i7 tower starting at $1499), and people who really need that much power won't be disappointed with the dual-xeon nehalem Mac Pro (and they have the cash, the +$3K, to spend on those).
Other updates:
Mac mini: IMO, it's a shame this one was not updated to the specs of the white MacBook (to make it simple).
iMac: I hope Apple was waiting for the 65W desktop quads, because other than that, it's custom mobile chips again and probably a very small speedbump.
Are you serious?
Lemon Bon Bon.
That response isn't saying anything. Be more specific. Your posts are wandering. I can't tell what you think at this point.
That's where we are. That's Apple.
Lemon Bon Bon.
PS. It's ingenuine to say Apple are competitive in their chosen markets when there are cheaper, better, more powerful components out there. If you were talking laptops we wouldn't be having this discussion. But, desktops? They're a joke. If there was a mid-tower option or a Mac Pro with an i7 consumer tower option a 'Mac' then...we wouldn't be having this discussion either. Apple are rigid. That is my opinion I guess. But the desktop line up as it stands speaks for itself. Square pegs. Round holes.
So you're quoting yourself, and responding to your own post?
I notice that you studiously ignore each part of the post where I talk about the xMac. Is it possible that you don't read the lines where I agree that there should be one?