I'm talking about shipping times. 7-10 weeks is pretty darned close to 2-3 months! People in this board were expecting G5's in everything Apple sells by MWSF '04, and even in iMacs or PB's by MWNY! Clearly it's going to take longer than that.
From browsing current hardware it looks like everyone who ordered shortly after their announcement have actually had the ship date moved up from on or before Sept. 2nd to on or before Aug. 29th.
Where on Apple's web site do people find these shipping times that are always being talked about? Do you have to pretend you're placing an order to get this info?
NEW YORK, July 17 (Reuters) - IBM's new $3 billion microchip factory was supposed to bring the company efficiency and profit. Instead, it is giving the technology leader a headache.
Demonstrating the risk of huge investments in advanced chip-making tools, International Business Machines Corp. (nyse: IBM - news - people) on Wednesday cited production problems at the gleaming chip plant in East Fishkill, New York, as a reason why its microchip business would lose money this year.
IBM shares fell almost 5 percent Thursday, in part because of that disappointing disclosure in IBM's second-quarter earnings released on Wednesday evening. IBM met analyst profit expectations.
In contrast to IBM, advanced chip equipment is easing the way for Intel Corp. (nasdaq: INTC - news - people), the world's largest microchip maker, which this week raised its profit margin target for the year in part because of tools that produce chips with finer features on larger discs of silicon.
The disappointing start at the IBM plant is likely to reignite debate about whether IBM should be in the business of making semiconductors for other companies, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said in a research note on Thursday.
"The disappointment in microelectronics is a major executional blunder, and we can't help wonder why IBM did not have a better read on what its customers plans were, or why IBM has experienced a sudden contraction in orders while some other semi players have not," Sacconaghi wrote. He rates the stock "market perform."
IBM's business of producing specialized chips for different customers made efficiency a bigger problem than at Intel, which produces one type of product at its advanced plants, said Chris Danely, an analyst with J.P. Morgan.
"If it's your first time doing something, whether it's making a semiconductor or baking a cake, after the 10th time it's going to be a lot easier," Danely said.
IBM announced plans for a $5 billion expansion in its chip making efforts just as a global downturn in semiconductors began in October 2000. As the downturn took hold, the division began losing money and IBM closed down some older chip-making capacity.
The company stuck by plans for the plant, setting itself up as a competitor to the world's largest contract microchip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. <2330.TW>. It began production this year.
IBM's chip business lost $110 million in the second quarter and is now expected to lose money for the year, in contrast to earlier company predictions for it to add to profits.
Production problems and plant underutilization took away $45 million from IBM's overall profit, Chief Financial Officer John Joyce said on a conference call after IBM's earnings report on Wednesday.
Joyce said he did not expect to see revenue improve in the division until the fourth quarter. The customers who had signed deals to buy specially designed chips from IBM are not ordering "at a rate and pace" that IBM had assumed, he said.
So far this year, IBM has said, it will make specialized chips for Analog Devices Inc. (nyse: ADI - news - people), Nvidia Corp. (nasdaq: ADI - news - people) and Xilinx Inc. (nasdaq: ADI - news - people). It is also making PowerPC chips for Apple Computer Inc.'s (nasdaq: ADI - news - people) PowerMac G5 computer, which is due to ship in August.
The company isn't losing market share to competitors, Joyce said, describing the bad performance as "somewhat of an economic issue."
"We'd like to see the semiconductor industry begin to pick up and we think if the economy begins to pick up, we will benefit from that," Joyce said.
IBM's shares lost $4.06, or 4.7 percent, to $82.68 midday Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.
NEW YORK, July 17 (Reuters) - IBM's new $3 billion microchip factory was supposed to bring the company efficiency and profit. Instead, it is giving the technology leader a headache.
Demonstrating the risk of huge investments in advanced chip-making tools, International Business Machines Corp. (nyse: IBM - news - people) on Wednesday cited production problems at the gleaming chip plant in East Fishkill, New York, as a reason why its microchip business would lose money this year.
IBM shares fell almost 5 percent Thursday, in part because of that disappointing disclosure in IBM's second-quarter earnings released on Wednesday evening. IBM met analyst profit expectations.
Without more to go on -- what the current problems are at East Fishkill, how easily they can or cannot be resolved, etc. -- this article comes off as a typical short-sighted "Profits down this quarter! The sky is falling!" overreaction.
One, what does this have to do with future hardware (at least non-tangentially)?
anything that isn't shipping and hasn't been received by the general public or 3rd parties for testing and review is still future. especially since shipping dates can be perpetually pushed back. sorry, you can't tell me that, if 5 weeks from now, no one has a G5 yet, that we can call it "current"
Quote:
Originally posted by Anonymous Karma
Second, looking at shipping times for orders placed now is probably not the best way to gauge when the first batch of orders will be shipped. It may just be Apple playing CYA with all new orders.
well, it's worked for almost every other product announcement in the past five years (few exceptions)...
Quote:
Originally posted by Anonymous Karma
Lastly, I'm sure they would not have announced the G5 if production of the processor weren't already gearing up. There's no way to announce at the end of June and get product assembled and to customers by the end of August otherwise. Thus I'm fairly confident that Apple will hit its original stated time +/- epsilon (hopefully -).
unless, of course, they really WEREN'T prepared for that WWDC "premature specification," and at first they just wanted to get everyone psyched about the tech without putting a due date on it. since the shock and surprise of the G5 was killed by the slip-up, they may have felt they had to put a "shipping by" date with IBM's best guess to keep anticipation high. i personally doubt that (since they have apparently been working on commercials and IBM had a conference ready for WWDC), but it is reasonable. more likely, IBM wanted to make steve et al. happy, and pulled a motorola on them and said it'll be ready "real soon now." \
and at first they just wanted to get everyone psyched about the tech without putting a due date on it.
Ya, and that wouldn't have killed off any and all Powermac sales...
I can't belive that some people still think that the WWDC anouncement was made do to the "slip up". Why would they have had the image ready to upload, if the release wasn't anywhere close? You think Steve just quickly scrambled together that keynote? Got all those guys there? Please.
Apple almost always announces a product early, and says shipping in 1-3 months. They have done it time and time again.
Kickaha and Amorph couldn't moderate themselves out of a paper bag. Abdicate responsibility and succumb to idiocy. Two years of letting a member make personal attacks against others, then stepping aside when someone won't put up with it. Not only that but go ahead and shut down my posting priviledges but not the one making the attacks. Not even the common decency to abide by their warning (afer three days of absorbing personal attacks with no mods in sight), just shut my posting down and then say it might happen later if a certian line is crossed. Bullshit flag is flying, I won't abide by lying and coddling of liars who go off-site, create accounts differing in a single letter from my handle with the express purpose to decieve and then claim here that I did it. Everyone be warned, kim kap sol is a lying, deceitful poster.
Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.
Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.
Anyone who believes the slip-up wasn't intentional is exactly the type of individual P.T. Barnum loved most.
Anyone who does think it was intentional doesn't understand the stupidity of mucking with a live revenue-producing retail site, including shutting it completely down for a time, for a PR stunt of questionable value. Not to mentions taking the risk of being accused of false advertising for listing the wrong features *intentionally* with the wrong product.
Also, anyone bent of thinking the early G5 specs were intentional doesn't realize how easy, if one wasn't being careful, it would have been to simply transfer an image or two to the wrong directory during a web site update.
I'm not saying it's impossible that the "slip-up" was intentional, but even P.T. Barnum would likely point out that there's no sense pulling a trick on people when the benefit of pulling the stunt verses the risk of the stunt is unfavorable.
Why would Apple start its intensive advertising for the G5 if production schedules were not going smoothly. Why exerbate the problem of timely delivery unless you were confident of your meeting delivery schedules?
that Reuters article was a POS, most "news" in general is a POS. Has anyone noticed how MANY typos there are in stories published by CNN and major papers on the internet - there's no control anymore on the crap speculation that's given a voice by the wanker reporter who can type the fastest and get his/her story in first (without even bothering to check spelling or grammar). I believe these reporters only as far as I can throw my tiBook (get it, i would never throw my tiBook, renob)
IBM indeed stated that they were having problems with the Fishkill plant. They did not say if it affected G5 production however. Whether Reuters or CNN had typos in their reports is besides the point. Blaming the messenger and not the message is an old rant. Apple certainly would not have started their massive print and tv ad campaign if they didn't think they'd have enough chips to fullfill initial orders.
anything that isn't shipping and hasn't been received by the general public or 3rd parties for testing and review is still future. especially since shipping dates can be perpetually pushed back. sorry, you can't tell me that, if 5 weeks from now, no one has a G5 yet, that we can call it "current"
This is not AI's policy, as I understand it.
Quote:
well, it's worked for almost every other product announcement in the past five years (few exceptions)...
Looking at the shipping times for the first batch of orders, yes. But if they have recieved more orders so far than their first production run, then of course they're going to start quoting later dates! Geez. You'd think people could think this through.
Quote:
unless, of course, they really WEREN'T prepared for that WWDC "premature specification," and at first they just wanted to get everyone psyched about the tech without putting a due date on it. since the shock and surprise of the G5 was killed by the slip-up, they may have felt they had to put a "shipping by" date with IBM's best guess to keep anticipation high. i personally doubt that (since they have apparently been working on commercials and IBM had a conference ready for WWDC), but it is reasonable. more likely, IBM wanted to make steve et al. happy, and pulled a motorola on them and said it'll be ready "real soon now." \
Oh, and so Apple was just preparing that graphic three years in advance of when it was supposed to go up on the site? Give me a break. They intended to announce at WWDC, or they wouldn't have been fussing with the Apple store, trying to get it ready.
They have G5's now. They are in every piece of prototype hardware they've shown. Getting the chip is just the first stage in the assembly of the machine. If Apple is to start shipping G5 orders in August, then that means that chips should have been rolling off the line (and that means packaged silicon, not just wafers) already. Apple would not have announced otherwise.
This whole thread is just mis-speculation based on a stupid article written by some financial reporter whose major was probably in gerbilism anyway. We know nothing about the process - except that IBM originally announced 1.8, and delivered 2.0. When's the last time you remember Moto doing that?
(Are the mods asleep or are they just tolerating this article for some inscruitable reason?)
Next week Apple will make an announcement on the "new" config to the G5 line
Fast: 1.4GHz G5
Faster: 1.6GHz G5
Fastest: Dual 1.8GHz G5
What it means: Slower CPU at the SAME price. Just like what they did with the G4 towers in 1999
So what you're saying is that:
One, this article actually is intended to say that there are fabbing problems at the IBM plant, and wasn't just written by a stupid gerbilist who thinks "production problems" means "not having enough orders to run the plant at full capacity".
Two, these production problems, of all the things being fabbed at Fishkill, affect the PowerPC 970.
Three, that Apple would lower the speed on the G5 after going through all the mess about their benchmarks and advertising at as "the world's fastest personal computer".
Four, that we're all incredibly stupid for reading this thread.
Have we become this skeptical due to years of garbage from Motorola? Have we forgotten that this is the IBM that originally announced 1.8 and is now saying 2.0 (even on their literature)? Are we ignoring the fact that IBM manages to successfully fab the much more complex POWER4+ at 1.7 without issues?
I'd be more inclined to believe that Apple would upgrade the speed than downgrade it. There's still much we don't know about the G5 - like why they're showing it with that horrible eMac keyboard.
Kickaha and Amorph couldn't moderate themselves out of a paper bag. Abdicate responsibility and succumb to idiocy. Two years of letting a member make personal attacks against others, then stepping aside when someone won't put up with it. Not only that but go ahead and shut down my posting priviledges but not the one making the attacks. Not even the common decency to abide by their warning (afer three days of absorbing personal attacks with no mods in sight), just shut my posting down and then say it might happen later if a certian line is crossed. Bullshit flag is flying, I won't abide by lying and coddling of liars who go off-site, create accounts differing in a single letter from my handle with the express purpose to decieve and then claim here that I did it. Everyone be warned, kim kap sol is a lying, deceitful poster.
Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.
Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.
Also, anyone bent of thinking the early G5 specs were intentional doesn't realize how easy, if one wasn't being careful, it would have been to simply transfer an image or two to the wrong directory during a web site update.
I'm not saying it's impossible that the "slip-up" was intentional, but even P.T. Barnum would likely point out that there's no sense pulling a trick on people when the benefit of pulling the stunt verses the risk of the stunt is unfavorable. [/B][/QUOTE]
Taking all the negative things you note into consideration would mesh nicely with an intentional release. The downage and "slip-up" were at times where the cost/benefit curves were at their most favorable. i.e. Not many buyers, if any, but plenty of dirt diggers. Not much risk with releasing specs as they were correct so there are no improper disclosure issues. No false advertising issues either, just because the G4 buy now buttons are on the page tabled together with correct specs doesn't preclude information on a upgraded product elsewhere on the page. It's a real case of negligible downside, but tremendous PR upside from the added buzz going into the actual announcement.
AI general policy is that anything Apple's announced is Current Hardware: FH is for speculation and rumormongering, and there isn't much to speculate about hardware that Apple's already revealed.
Apple has been advertising the G5 during ABC's coverage of the British Open all weekend. That to me says the dates (from today's orders) is about right, because it reminds me of the 17" PB. They did the Yao Ming thing right away, and then for weeks everyone went around to Apple Stores and CrapUSA looking for them to no avail. Same thing is going to happen with the G5 apparently.
I don't think it's a particularly wise strategy. They shouldn't advertise a huge product offering like that until people can actually get their hands on them (or close to it). It's a real kill-joy to go to a store and find out that "oh yah, you can't get one for 8 weeks yet". Turns a lot of potential customers off.
Comments
PM G5, it's "announced" and will be here first.
Then the
Xserve G5
then...
A G5 "cube"ish product to replce the PM G4.
And then, mebbe by the end of '04
a laptop possibly sporting the G5
From browsing current hardware it looks like everyone who ordered shortly after their announcement have actually had the ship date moved up from on or before Sept. 2nd to on or before Aug. 29th.
Originally posted by Matsu
I love to say it, Told ya so.
What is it you already told us Matsu?
Originally posted by shetline
Where on Apple's web site do people find these shipping times that are always being talked about? Do you have to pretend you're placing an order to get this info?
Anybody? Anybody? Beuller?
IBM's new microchip plant not measuring up
Reuters, 07.17.03, 12:55 PM ET
By Daniel Sorid and Caroline Humer
NEW YORK, July 17 (Reuters) - IBM's new $3 billion microchip factory was supposed to bring the company efficiency and profit. Instead, it is giving the technology leader a headache.
Demonstrating the risk of huge investments in advanced chip-making tools, International Business Machines Corp. (nyse: IBM - news - people) on Wednesday cited production problems at the gleaming chip plant in East Fishkill, New York, as a reason why its microchip business would lose money this year.
IBM shares fell almost 5 percent Thursday, in part because of that disappointing disclosure in IBM's second-quarter earnings released on Wednesday evening. IBM met analyst profit expectations.
In contrast to IBM, advanced chip equipment is easing the way for Intel Corp. (nasdaq: INTC - news - people), the world's largest microchip maker, which this week raised its profit margin target for the year in part because of tools that produce chips with finer features on larger discs of silicon.
The disappointing start at the IBM plant is likely to reignite debate about whether IBM should be in the business of making semiconductors for other companies, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said in a research note on Thursday.
"The disappointment in microelectronics is a major executional blunder, and we can't help wonder why IBM did not have a better read on what its customers plans were, or why IBM has experienced a sudden contraction in orders while some other semi players have not," Sacconaghi wrote. He rates the stock "market perform."
IBM's business of producing specialized chips for different customers made efficiency a bigger problem than at Intel, which produces one type of product at its advanced plants, said Chris Danely, an analyst with J.P. Morgan.
"If it's your first time doing something, whether it's making a semiconductor or baking a cake, after the 10th time it's going to be a lot easier," Danely said.
IBM announced plans for a $5 billion expansion in its chip making efforts just as a global downturn in semiconductors began in October 2000. As the downturn took hold, the division began losing money and IBM closed down some older chip-making capacity.
The company stuck by plans for the plant, setting itself up as a competitor to the world's largest contract microchip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. <2330.TW>. It began production this year.
IBM's chip business lost $110 million in the second quarter and is now expected to lose money for the year, in contrast to earlier company predictions for it to add to profits.
Production problems and plant underutilization took away $45 million from IBM's overall profit, Chief Financial Officer John Joyce said on a conference call after IBM's earnings report on Wednesday.
Joyce said he did not expect to see revenue improve in the division until the fourth quarter. The customers who had signed deals to buy specially designed chips from IBM are not ordering "at a rate and pace" that IBM had assumed, he said.
So far this year, IBM has said, it will make specialized chips for Analog Devices Inc. (nyse: ADI - news - people), Nvidia Corp. (nasdaq: ADI - news - people) and Xilinx Inc. (nasdaq: ADI - news - people). It is also making PowerPC chips for Apple Computer Inc.'s (nasdaq: ADI - news - people) PowerMac G5 computer, which is due to ship in August.
The company isn't losing market share to competitors, Joyce said, describing the bad performance as "somewhat of an economic issue."
"We'd like to see the semiconductor industry begin to pick up and we think if the economy begins to pick up, we will benefit from that," Joyce said.
IBM's shares lost $4.06, or 4.7 percent, to $82.68 midday Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.
Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service
Originally quoted by MacsRGood4U
NEW YORK, July 17 (Reuters) - IBM's new $3 billion microchip factory was supposed to bring the company efficiency and profit. Instead, it is giving the technology leader a headache.
Demonstrating the risk of huge investments in advanced chip-making tools, International Business Machines Corp. (nyse: IBM - news - people) on Wednesday cited production problems at the gleaming chip plant in East Fishkill, New York, as a reason why its microchip business would lose money this year.
IBM shares fell almost 5 percent Thursday, in part because of that disappointing disclosure in IBM's second-quarter earnings released on Wednesday evening. IBM met analyst profit expectations.
Without more to go on -- what the current problems are at East Fishkill, how easily they can or cannot be resolved, etc. -- this article comes off as a typical short-sighted "Profits down this quarter! The sky is falling!" overreaction.
Originally posted by shetline
Anybody? Anybody? Beuller?
Yes, you pretend you're going to buy it.
Originally posted by Anonymous Karma
One, what does this have to do with future hardware (at least non-tangentially)?
anything that isn't shipping and hasn't been received by the general public or 3rd parties for testing and review is still future. especially since shipping dates can be perpetually pushed back. sorry, you can't tell me that, if 5 weeks from now, no one has a G5 yet, that we can call it "current"
Originally posted by Anonymous Karma
Second, looking at shipping times for orders placed now is probably not the best way to gauge when the first batch of orders will be shipped. It may just be Apple playing CYA with all new orders.
well, it's worked for almost every other product announcement in the past five years (few exceptions)...
Originally posted by Anonymous Karma
Lastly, I'm sure they would not have announced the G5 if production of the processor weren't already gearing up. There's no way to announce at the end of June and get product assembled and to customers by the end of August otherwise. Thus I'm fairly confident that Apple will hit its original stated time +/- epsilon (hopefully -).
unless, of course, they really WEREN'T prepared for that WWDC "premature specification," and at first they just wanted to get everyone psyched about the tech without putting a due date on it. since the shock and surprise of the G5 was killed by the slip-up, they may have felt they had to put a "shipping by" date with IBM's best guess to keep anticipation high. i personally doubt that (since they have apparently been working on commercials and IBM had a conference ready for WWDC), but it is reasonable. more likely, IBM wanted to make steve et al. happy, and pulled a motorola on them and said it'll be ready "real soon now."
Originally posted by rok
and at first they just wanted to get everyone psyched about the tech without putting a due date on it.
Ya, and that wouldn't have killed off any and all Powermac sales...
I can't belive that some people still think that the WWDC anouncement was made do to the "slip up". Why would they have had the image ready to upload, if the release wasn't anywhere close? You think Steve just quickly scrambled together that keynote? Got all those guys there? Please.
Apple almost always announces a product early, and says shipping in 1-3 months. They have done it time and time again.
Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.
Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.
Originally posted by AirSluf
Anyone who believes the slip-up wasn't intentional is exactly the type of individual P.T. Barnum loved most.
Anyone who does think it was intentional doesn't understand the stupidity of mucking with a live revenue-producing retail site, including shutting it completely down for a time, for a PR stunt of questionable value. Not to mentions taking the risk of being accused of false advertising for listing the wrong features *intentionally* with the wrong product.
Also, anyone bent of thinking the early G5 specs were intentional doesn't realize how easy, if one wasn't being careful, it would have been to simply transfer an image or two to the wrong directory during a web site update.
I'm not saying it's impossible that the "slip-up" was intentional, but even P.T. Barnum would likely point out that there's no sense pulling a trick on people when the benefit of pulling the stunt verses the risk of the stunt is unfavorable.
Fast: 1.4GHz G5
Faster: 1.6GHz G5
Fastest: Dual 1.8GHz G5
What it means: Slower CPU at the SAME price. Just like what they did with the G4 towers in 1999
But seriously.....I wonder where the 1.2GHz & 1.4GHz G5 chips will go to....PowerBook or iMac?
Originally posted by rok
anything that isn't shipping and hasn't been received by the general public or 3rd parties for testing and review is still future. especially since shipping dates can be perpetually pushed back. sorry, you can't tell me that, if 5 weeks from now, no one has a G5 yet, that we can call it "current"
This is not AI's policy, as I understand it.
well, it's worked for almost every other product announcement in the past five years (few exceptions)...
Looking at the shipping times for the first batch of orders, yes. But if they have recieved more orders so far than their first production run, then of course they're going to start quoting later dates! Geez. You'd think people could think this through.
unless, of course, they really WEREN'T prepared for that WWDC "premature specification," and at first they just wanted to get everyone psyched about the tech without putting a due date on it. since the shock and surprise of the G5 was killed by the slip-up, they may have felt they had to put a "shipping by" date with IBM's best guess to keep anticipation high. i personally doubt that (since they have apparently been working on commercials and IBM had a conference ready for WWDC), but it is reasonable. more likely, IBM wanted to make steve et al. happy, and pulled a motorola on them and said it'll be ready "real soon now."
Oh, and so Apple was just preparing that graphic three years in advance of when it was supposed to go up on the site? Give me a break. They intended to announce at WWDC, or they wouldn't have been fussing with the Apple store, trying to get it ready.
They have G5's now. They are in every piece of prototype hardware they've shown. Getting the chip is just the first stage in the assembly of the machine. If Apple is to start shipping G5 orders in August, then that means that chips should have been rolling off the line (and that means packaged silicon, not just wafers) already. Apple would not have announced otherwise.
This whole thread is just mis-speculation based on a stupid article written by some financial reporter whose major was probably in gerbilism anyway. We know nothing about the process - except that IBM originally announced 1.8, and delivered 2.0. When's the last time you remember Moto doing that?
(Are the mods asleep or are they just tolerating this article for some inscruitable reason?)
Originally posted by Leonis
Next week Apple will make an announcement on the "new" config to the G5 line
Fast: 1.4GHz G5
Faster: 1.6GHz G5
Fastest: Dual 1.8GHz G5
What it means: Slower CPU at the SAME price. Just like what they did with the G4 towers in 1999
So what you're saying is that:
One, this article actually is intended to say that there are fabbing problems at the IBM plant, and wasn't just written by a stupid gerbilist who thinks "production problems" means "not having enough orders to run the plant at full capacity".
Two, these production problems, of all the things being fabbed at Fishkill, affect the PowerPC 970.
Three, that Apple would lower the speed on the G5 after going through all the mess about their benchmarks and advertising at as "the world's fastest personal computer".
Four, that we're all incredibly stupid for reading this thread.
Have we become this skeptical due to years of garbage from Motorola? Have we forgotten that this is the IBM that originally announced 1.8 and is now saying 2.0 (even on their literature)? Are we ignoring the fact that IBM manages to successfully fab the much more complex POWER4+ at 1.7 without issues?
I'd be more inclined to believe that Apple would upgrade the speed than downgrade it. There's still much we don't know about the G5 - like why they're showing it with that horrible eMac keyboard.
Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.
Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.
Also, anyone bent of thinking the early G5 specs were intentional doesn't realize how easy, if one wasn't being careful, it would have been to simply transfer an image or two to the wrong directory during a web site update.
I'm not saying it's impossible that the "slip-up" was intentional, but even P.T. Barnum would likely point out that there's no sense pulling a trick on people when the benefit of pulling the stunt verses the risk of the stunt is unfavorable. [/B][/QUOTE]
Taking all the negative things you note into consideration would mesh nicely with an intentional release. The downage and "slip-up" were at times where the cost/benefit curves were at their most favorable. i.e. Not many buyers, if any, but plenty of dirt diggers. Not much risk with releasing specs as they were correct so there are no improper disclosure issues. No false advertising issues either, just because the G4 buy now buttons are on the page tabled together with correct specs doesn't preclude information on a upgraded product elsewhere on the page. It's a real case of negligible downside, but tremendous PR upside from the added buzz going into the actual announcement.
Moving...
I don't think it's a particularly wise strategy. They shouldn't advertise a huge product offering like that until people can actually get their hands on them (or close to it). It's a real kill-joy to go to a store and find out that "oh yah, you can't get one for 8 weeks yet". Turns a lot of potential customers off.