One Last Chance?
I recently posted this comment on a Macworld forum page and add it as my first comment on the Appleinsider page. I hope it reflects both hope and frustration, in appropriate degrees....
I'd be interested to know how many "pro" users (especially those who are still fed up with Apple for its "way beyond the rumor sites" deflation this past January) are considering jumping ship if Apple doesn't make a SERIOUS and SPEEDY upgrade to both its motherboard and clock speeds on the Power line. Maybe OSX and ease of use will keep the faithful ... faithful, but there has to be a degree of disenchantment with a BMW caliber company, the horsepower of whose machines is no longer commensurate with the grace and handling of the same.
I for one will BUY and STAY if I can be convinced that Apple isn't destined to fall farther and farther behind in terms of raw power. And maybe I'll stay anyway--for a great operating system, great software, and lack of a better alternative. I just hope that Apple is getting the message. Last January still smarts for some of us who were ready to buy and, more importantly, BELIEVE.
I'd be interested to know how many "pro" users (especially those who are still fed up with Apple for its "way beyond the rumor sites" deflation this past January) are considering jumping ship if Apple doesn't make a SERIOUS and SPEEDY upgrade to both its motherboard and clock speeds on the Power line. Maybe OSX and ease of use will keep the faithful ... faithful, but there has to be a degree of disenchantment with a BMW caliber company, the horsepower of whose machines is no longer commensurate with the grace and handling of the same.
I for one will BUY and STAY if I can be convinced that Apple isn't destined to fall farther and farther behind in terms of raw power. And maybe I'll stay anyway--for a great operating system, great software, and lack of a better alternative. I just hope that Apple is getting the message. Last January still smarts for some of us who were ready to buy and, more importantly, BELIEVE.
Comments
After that "way beyond" stuff, and then pushing the iMac up to nearly powermac levels, I was expecting an equally huge leap in the performance/specs of the towers.
Then all we got was 133 MHz and a better grafix card! No faster bus, no DDR, etc.
R&D on the towers = zero...these are holdovers
<strong>I agree Syb...
After that "way beyond" stuff, and then pushing the iMac up to nearly powermac levels, I was expecting an equally huge leap in the performance/specs of the towers.
Then all we got was 133 MHz and a better grafix card! No faster bus, no DDR, etc.
R&D on the towers = zero...these are holdovers</strong><hr></blockquote>
I agree. Paying $3K for one of the new towers is nuts unless you're forced to buy a new machine or have money to burn. These are just window dressed older models.
Good point and apologies for the double-post.
That said, I bet both of us would like to see Apple do more and, in my case at least, avoid unreasonably elevating expectations like they did this past January. The statement "Apple's current crop of PowerMacs aren't horrible, even if they are holdovers" doesn't exactly make a person want to jump up and pluck down three Grovers for a top-of-the-line model.
Let's hope matters improve. I agree that 800mhz to 1gig was a decent improvement.
<strong>Spart,
Good point and apologies for the double-post.
That said, I bet both of us would like to see Apple do more and, in my case at least, avoid unreasonably elevating expectations like they did this past January.</strong><hr></blockquote>
They released stuff that was "way beyond" the rumors sites. They just weren't pro products.
[quote]<strong>The statement "Apple's current crop of PowerMacs aren't horrible, even if they are holdovers" doesn't exactly make a person want to jump up and pluck down three Grovers for a top-of-the-line model. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Considering that the top-of-the-line model is cheaper, and also faster than the MHz boost would indicate, it's a solid upgrade.
Apple wouldn't be moving into one high-end market after another if they didn't feel they had the hardware in the pipeline to do the job. If the current duallie isn't up to your needs (take one for a spin before you conclude that!) and you have the luxury of time, then, as always, there's no harm in waiting. Otherwise, it's a sweet machine for the money.
Once Windows catches up in these respects, Apple will have a hard time keeping the pros, but until then, slower processors won't drive them away in droves I guess.
I must, for the record, disagree with your statement. It does not reflect my sentiments at all.
In fact, I would say that I am quite pleased with the progress Apple has made with it's pro models over the last 12 months. They have roughly doubled clock speed in 12 months. The current machine is indeed still behind the top of the line Athlon and P4 in raw speed, but it has a much better software bundle and is plenty fast, and does great vector ops. I won't buy one, because I expect Apple to maintain this good growth pace for some time yet. I will wait for the nearly mythical DDR motherboard revision. OS X is maturing nicely. The time to have been angry was during the Long Dark Tea Time of the 500MHz Soul. Not now.
Go buy an iPod; It'll make you smile. You need to smile.
Why are people so wrapped up in the need for speed? I am a scientist; I actually use the speed, in that many of my analyses actually run for periods of detectable time (you know, minutes to hours). I wish it was faster, but I know that that will almost always be true; it certainly HAS nearly always been true, and I see no reason why that will change. It's as fast as it is. The 30% decrease in time gained by the Athlon in that floating point calculation is NOTHING compared to the gains of a preferred interface. If your happy with your computer, you will be more productive that the guy who hates his very fast machine.
You're right, but by looking at this forum and others, we find a number of ongoing voices of genuine disaffection, most of whom have a sincere desire for Apple to succeed against competitors ON ALL LEVELS, not just some. Granted, it's not a Long Dark Night of the Apple User Soul--but a nasty little ingredient during Tea Time (and during early January press time) left some of us with a hangover.
[quote] Why are people so wrapped up in the need for speed? I am a scientist <hr></blockquote>
On the face of it, it seems to me that your second sentence offers a clear retort to your question. We ALL need speed, and, as you say, you as a scientist need it in particular. But if Apple were to fall farther behind in the speed game, the beauty and ease of an excellent interface might begin to seem less valuable than it does now. I know that you don't expect Apple to lag, and I hope that you're right.
Finally, users other than scientists appreciate speed, from 3D artists to those of us who run multiple audio effects on track after track in Pro Tools. Maybe this analogy is wrong but for video editors, the current hardware does for Final Cut what the old Power Computing towers did for Photoshop. The present line really gets you into the ballgame but you still are left itching for more.
So I'll sit and wait and chastize myself for impatience. And, yes, I'll smile.
Offstage in Nashvegas.
<strong>We ALL need speed, and, as you say, you as a scientist need it in particular. But if Apple were to fall farther behind in the speed game, the beauty and ease of an excellent interface might begin to seem less valuable than it does now.</strong><hr></blockquote>
On the other hand, 3D artists used to use Macs extensively back in the mid-90s, when they were barely capable of rendering at all: They greatly preferred the interface, so they did all their design on Macs, then did all the rendering on a nearby SGI.
There's no reason that someone who likes the Mac interface but craves as much performance as possible can't put a similar setup together, with a fast enough Mac as the primary workstation and one or more hand-built Athlons doing the hard labor. In fact, that's a better arrangement than getting one fire-breathing workstation, because you can continue working while the render farm churns away.
[ 03-04-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
Now to the question at hand: am I about ready to jump ship because of Apple's still-lagging hardware offerings? Only if three conditions come to exist concurrently in the next 10 months:
1. Photoshop 7 turns out to be slow as molasses on older G4 hardware (doubting this, but it's possible).
2. Photoshop 7 does not integrate well with InDesign 2 and GoLive 6 (while there will be glitches, I also doubt this).
3. Apple adds only incremental Power mac releases during 2002 / early (MWSF) 2003 - say by only getting up to 1.2 GHz dual, but no DDR, no extra USB ports, etc. This is the most likely of the three conditions if you ask me. The G5 (as a desktop chip) is nothing but a rumor-fed wet dream right now. But the new crop of G4's is promising - the only question is how much higher will they clock on a .13µ process, and is Apple dumb enough to not update the mobo next time around?
So for me at least, it's not just Apple and Motorola who hold the keys for getting my money this year and beyond - it's Adobe too. What runs on the hardware is equally important to me as how fast it runs. That goes for OS X too.
I've grown to like OS X quite a lot and for the most part, I see absolutely nothing that Windows XP can do for me on one of these penis-envy P4 systems, that X can't do better on my 500 MHz G4. Other than games (which I could care less about for the most part) there is nothing Wintel has to offer me.
Now, let's spin this around a little. IF these Athlon and Pentium machines were clock-for-clock as fast as a G4, AND XP offered a significantly improved user experience over NT and W2K (it doesn't IMO), AND Apple kept stalling over the next year - I'd consider switching. But that's just not how it is, or how it's likely to be. OS X, while a little sluggish in some areas, is only getting more stable and faster with each release. And with the early 2002 release of all these Adobe apps and evidence that MOT is doing well with its new process technologies, there is more reason to stay than to go IMO.
If I were going to jump ship, two years ago would've been a much smarter time to do so than now.
[ 03-04-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ? ]
[ 03-04-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ? ]</p>
I have a feeling Apple will market the machine as a PowerMac G5, regardless if its a tru 8500 CPU or not, and they'll get Moto to change the 7470 moniker to 7500 or something like that. Speeds will probably be 1.2, 1.4, and 1.6 GHz by MWNY in July. (Like they were rumored for MWSF)
With Apple's obviously abundant supply of GHz G4s, as well as long in the tooth motherboard and tower design, I think it's obvious we will see a revolutionary leap in the PowerMac line this year.
<strong>With Apple's obviously abundant supply of GHz G4s, as well as long in the tooth motherboard and tower design, I think it's obvious we will see a revolutionary leap in the PowerMac line this year.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, your reasoning sounds suspiciously like a colletion of wishful rationalizations, but I understand where you're coming from. I just don't think anything is obvious at this point, other than the fact that Apple has now gotten itself behind the technology curve in another area that a year ago it was just barely keeping up with. UMA.
The bus speeds are too slow, the RAM types used are dated, and the systems themselves are not as expandable as they should be. Basically, they've put these new GHz processors on top of a bandwidth-choked system. Not saying they aren't good computers - just that with some added effort on Apple's part over the last 12 months, they could've been substantially better than they are.
Is it obvious they NEED to imrove this set of confitions for future product offerings? Of course. Is it obvious they will DO this? No. Not if the last 2+ years are any indication. Sometimes I think Steve is in la-la land with his ergnonomic digital devices and lifestyle theories. He seems to lose sight of the obvious - pun intended.
All that said, the points I made earlier still stand IMO - there's more reason to stay than to go - especially given all the positive variables at this date (vs. say two years ago).
[ 03-04-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ? ]</p>
What do you think Apple's PowerMac team has been working on for over a year now? The bump to 867 MHz and Dual GHz are not huge time consumers, and obviously have not had any significant changes to the motherboard. Apple is not dumb enough to just stop and not adavance their motherboard technologies, especially on their PRO towers. Like I said, I think they have been working on the next gen stuff for quite a while now, and that we will finally see the fruits of their labor this July.
As for the G4/G5, i think its time to split the PowerMac line into prosumer and professional. The old product quadrant is old and breaking apart anyway. The server line and cube never fitted into it, and now the imac line is split into CRT and LCD.
If the G5 comes in July, that can be used in the professional PM and server lines with slots and bays coming out of its ears. They should also really use a more functional/stackable/rackable design.
The prosumer line can stick with faster Apollos and the QS design. I think the QS case would satisfy most prosumers' expansion needs.
I have a dual 1Ghz P3 sitting next to my G4. The P3 runs XP, and the G4 runs X. Despite my frustrations with Apple, I still enjoy using my Dual 250 G4 than I do the P3, and I have this feeling that isn't going to change.
I went through the whole "Should I jump ship" thing too. I got over it quickly though. You can't please all the people all the time, and everytime I get out the scales and weigh the Wintel world against the Mac world, I still power up my mac everyday for work (and the P3 for gaming ;-)).
Besides, have you ever tried using Photoshop in Windows? Christ... what a pain...
[ 03-05-2002: Message edited by: DaveLee ]</p>
I don't understand what Apple thought to gain by giving these sites as much credence as they have (when they obviously can't live up to even the most pessimistic of expectations).
I think the fact that the least anyone was expecting (in the pro line up anyway) was a 1.0 GHz Apollo base powermac, up to 1.2 GHz top and with DDR says something.
(And I know that the iMac was only to supposed to have a G3 - I think it was this they were referring to.)
[ 03-05-2002: Message edited by: DaveLee ]</p>
[ 03-05-2002: Message edited by: DaveLee ]</p>