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Macworld: No new Towers, But 17-inch iMac 266

Posted by CmdrTaco from the no-surprises-here dept.
Les writes "Mac insider site Think Secret has its scoop on what Apple CEO Steve Jobs will announce at Macworld Expo in New York next week. The site says that Power Mac G4s won't be updated until August, but we'll instead see a 17" flat-panel iMac and a demo of OS X 10.2 Jaguar."
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Macworld: No new Towers, But 17-inch iMac More

Macworld: No new Towers, But 17-inch iMac

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  • There goes their ticket to Macworld... (Score:5, Funny)

    by 1010011010 ( 53039 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @08:19AM (#3855663) Homepage

    I assume they're "on the list," now.
    • I think they were already on the list. Not sure why Apple would bother, though. Wouldn't it make more sense to go after rumor sites that leaked real secrets? (Maybe I just haven't read ThinkSecret enough for a good data sample, but few of the rumors I've read there have proven out.)

      • Actually they were really the one's that broke the story [thinksecret.com] way back on July 2nd. I guess figuring they had nothing to lose...

        And also just as clarification they aren't banning people from the event - they're just denying them press passes. But as they mention in the article many press outlets were going to regular badges anyway because employees are being instructed not to talk to people with press credentials.

        Actually of the usual rumors sites this one seems pretty reasonable and will probably be proven mostly right... As a rule Think Secret is the best "rumors" site at the moment.

        =tkk

    • Re:There goes their ticket to Macworld... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I just don't get the handwringing about not giving press passes to "rumour sites". Its Apple's party and they can invite who they want. If a rumour site hurts apple's bottom line (and they do by pre-announcing products such that people are waiting for the speed-bumped processor or bigger screen) then why should they receive any sort of benefit (in the form of a press pass to see the keynote)? If the rumour site wants to be there, they can pay the conference fee just like everyone else.

      Possibly the more important thing to note is that almost two years ago, Jobs announced that Apple would be moving away from announcing products at MacWorld because it sets the expectation of the public and hurts apple's bottom line. Remember, the iPod was introduced at an "Apple Event", not a conference.

  • Rumors! The Expo has not yet happened. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EchoMirage ( 29419 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @08:23AM (#3855679)
    Unfortunately Taco forgot to denote that these are rumors. Although Think Secret claims to "know" definitively, they only publish rumors based on heresay, second-hand knowledge, and claimed industry "insiders." Many times, they have been wrong.

    If you will remember a day or three ago, sites like Think Secret were prevented from obtaining a media pass [slashdot.org] to the Expo because of their ability to wildly spin incorrect information (amongst other conspiracy theories).

    In other words, this is only a possibility, but the Expo hasn't happened yet.
    • "Earlier in the week, Think Secret reported that Apple's iTools web services would be rebranded as ".Mac" Sources have since confirmed the news, and that the name change will be made public at Macworld."

      Is ThinkSecret trolling?

      • Re: Is ThinkSecret trolling? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by interactive_civilian ( 205158 ) <mamoru&gmail,com> on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @10:03AM (#3856265) Homepage Journal
        I dunno if they are trolling or not. Some carracho bandits out there are reporting [macnn.com] that this is the latest builds of Jaguar, under the Internet tab in the System Preferences (where it is currently iTools).

        Some have speculated [infopop.net] that this might be Apple competing w/ Microsoft as far as brand recognition (note these are pretty much the same people who said the same thing when Microsoft decided to call the latest Windows "XP" about a month before OS X 10.0.0 was released).

        However, for my own useless speculation, I don't think this will be a direct competitor to the .Net idea, but being a fairly nice set of network services (homepage, file storage, email, iCards, etc) might make some think that it is close enough.

        Just my humble opinion.

      • Someone in a Mac forum (I forgot which, sadly) played with the .MAC image in Photoshop and proved that it was simply another victim of the clone stamp. If you look at his blowups, the evidence is pretty clear.

        He also pointed out that the capitalization of .Mac (versus .mac) was inconsistent and that's something Steve would never tolerate. I tend to agree with him.

        This, of course, throws doubt on the credibility of Think Secret, which traditionally has been very accurate. I frankly don't believe the dotmac story. 17" iMacs would make me drool, but what we professional users really need is faster towers.

        Rumor sites come and go, but the timing of promotion expiration dates is almost always entirely accurate as an indicator of when new stuff is coming. This is understandable; you don't need promotional discounts to move the latest and greatest stuff.

        So we have a new clear screen promotion that runs until August 12th, and that means, with very little doubt, that we'll get new PowerMacs around August 13th. Nothing, ahem, clearer than that.

        D

    • Re:Rumors! The Expo has not yet happened. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Saint Fnordius ( 456567 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @09:34AM (#3856089) Homepage Journal
      1. ThinkSecret is less than useless, since their rumor hit miss ratio is equal to "dart board" methods.

      2. Ziff-Davis (ZDNet and C|Net) seem to be the source of this smokescreen. Also not the most accurate source of Apple news. Sometimes I get the feeling that the guys over at C|Net are more knee-jerk than factual (although David Coursey got real Mac-lustful after his trial with a flat-screen iMac).

      3. The other rumor was the resurrection of the Cube, bundled with 17" flatscreens. After all, the Cube wasn't killed, just put into hibernation. Maybe they had to pull it back out of the freezer to make room for Ted Williams?

      4. If it is true, then Apple needs to lower their inventory of current iMacs, as their price is going to drop as soon as the bigger, better version hits the market. The only explanation as to why they haven't done so yet is because they know it's a sign the sages look for. But it isn't a good reason at all.
      5. There was a fifth reason to discount this rumor, but the RDF rays are wearing off. Fnord.

      • Cube - yes please! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by iainl ( 136759 )
        "The other rumor was the resurrection of the Cube, bundled with 17" flatscreens"

        I'll take one of those! Particularly if they make them in purple this time, to match my Nintendo Cube. A friend has one of the Apple Cubes from last time, and they are a thing of beauty and a joy to behold.

  • Flawed reasoning (Score:4, Insightful)

    by YanceyAI ( 192279 ) <IAMYANCEY@yahoo.com> on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @08:23AM (#3855681)
    According to the article:

    How are we so certain that Macworld won't bring new towers? Use common sense! Just look at the Apple promotion announced earlier this week offering $300-$500 back when a Power Mac G4 is purchased along with a 17-inch Studio Display, 22-inch Cinema Display, or 23-inch Cinema HD Display. This is a clear sign that Apple is sitting on a huge inventory of G4 towers. (emphasis mine)

    I'm not saying that they're wrong, just that the speculation is weak. They may have a ton of displays, or they may be trying to move the inventory for the very fact that they are releasing a new tower.

    • Business Reasoning (Score:3, Insightful)

      by maggard ( 5579 )
      How are we so certain that Macworld won't bring new towers? Use common sense!

      Er, howzabout economic sense?

      Apple is looking to bump their numbers.

      While Apple has weathered this downtown better then almost any other PC manufacturer they did just have a 5%+ layoff in Cupertino, their numbers are down, and things likely won't heat up until late August/September when back-to-school starts (traditionially a strong season for Apple.) So they're trying to push what appears to be their slowest moving boxes - the top-of-the-line ones with the lovely Apple LCD displays. This doesn't require any great insight but just a quick course in modern make-the-books-look-good-for-The-Street management.

      Will there be a 17" flat-panel iMac (remember they're still selling the old all-in-1-CRT iMac as well as the 17" eMac)? I hope so - I just advised a buddy to buy an eMac for the extra screen-space & faster processor for only $100 more. On the other hand that arm is a complicated device, there have been complaints about it, and scaling it up to 17" may be a jump Apple's not ready to make so soon.

      My own guess? With the announced new graphics pipeline through OpenGL and it's requirement of 32 MB of video RAM I'm betting we'll see that met across the board. But Towers? If they're ready in time; otherwise they may wait 'till late summer. It depends on what other marvels Steve has to trot out and if new towers would get much attention next to those (really they're more-of-the-same-but-faster.)

      • Quartz Extreme will only require 16MB of Video RAM on an AGP 2x bus. All of Apple's current machines, minus the old iMac currently meet this. Yes, it would be nice to see all of them meet the reccomended 32MB, but as it is, they'll all be able to take advantage of hardware accelerated Quartz when 10.2 ships.

  • Take This With a Grain of Salt (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TomHandy ( 578620 ) <<tomhandy> <at> <gmail.com>> on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @08:27AM (#3855700)
    ThinkSecret is one of the less accurate rumor sites......and I don't think they're even all that good. Look at their explanation for why they are so sure G4 speed bumps won't be announced.....all they are going on is "common sense" that there is a special promotion running right now for current G4's.

    And some of their other rumors reported for Macworld New York are patently ridiculous, despite being labeled as 100%....i.e. iTools being renamed .Mac.....which is so inherently stupid it isn't even funny, considering that the name makes no sense at all since it would only cause consumer confusion, especially since there is no .mac TLD to use for such a thing. And it would probably add unnecessary confusion with .NET as well, even though iTools and .NET are not really related technologies or systems at all.

    • the .Mac nugget is gleaned from beta builds of OSX that they've obtained wherein - apparently - iTools is rebranded as .Mac. This could be a ruse on Apple's part to wind up the rumour mongers (who they HATE) or a working title or any one of a hundred other things. Face it TS, nothing's 100% until it's in the shops - and even then it might die due to any number of reasons. Think Cube.
    • .mac would be rather bass-ackwards for the company that freed us from filename extensions.

  • Yeah, Think Secret is reliable (Score:5, Interesting)

    by francism ( 563893 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @08:28AM (#3855705)
    Seriously, Think Secret might be the only rumor site still spewing out stuff on a daily basis, but they have NO RELIABILITY! Before AppleInsider disappeared and As the Apple Turns turned into a 'sometimes weekly depending on the baby' show, Think Secret was the joke of the Mac community. They were like Weekly World News; amusing but you knew you were reading garbage. Now we are expected to take their 'rumors' as fact? Sure, they can speculate like everyone else, but the fact that Slashdot and CNET News.com run the story at all is embarassing. The guy does this for hits, plain and simple. If they were somewhat reliable, don't you think that Apple would take them down? This especially holds true when the mass media picks up the story.
    • MacOSRumors is even worse. There you can read the kind of articles you got to wonder if they were written as to make you laught about the Mac platform and people who use it or not.
      What's funny with all these rumor mill sites is being able to use google caches and search back in time prior to major announcements. Now you know that you read predictions even further away from the truth than when Bill Gates opens his mouth on how he sees the future two years ahead.

      PPA, the girl next door.
  • Here in Brazil all Apple machines are import from the US. Ok, no problem with that, the problem is that a iMac, while costing $1,400 in the US, costs almost $3,000 here! :((( Sure we have taxes, but 3,000? Come on Apple, I would buy one for 2,000!!!! :))

  • C|Net too (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JHromadka ( 88188 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @08:42AM (#3855763) Homepage
    C|Net has an article [com.com] that almost mirrors what ThinkSecret is saying. Personally, I'm happy with my PowerBook, so if the big news is getting 10.2 on August 5, I'll be happy.

    • Re:C|Net too (Score:2, Informative)

      by Paul Burney ( 560340 )

      You said:

      C|Net has an article [com.com] that almost mirrors what ThinkSecret is saying

      From the article:

      As reported Monday by Mac enthusiast site ThinkSecret

      So it looks like C|Net is just rumor mongering as well. They aren't really confirming anything, just re-reporting.

    • So, is Apple going to revoke [slashdot.org] C|Net's press pass?
  • The problem with the Mac web is that expectations run much higher than Apple can realistically deliver. So there's always a lot of hype prior to a Macworld and then much dissapointment following. Just look at the iPod: when it launched, the /. discussion was very critical, but now there's an abundance of stories about what a ground breaking product it is. That's ass-backwards if you ask me.

    So, I'd like to help make this a better Macworld, and at risk of incurring the wrath of Apple, I'd like to give you my rumor list for what we'll see:

    - A return to beige towers and CRT monitors
    - No more G4s. All Macs will now run on 1st generation G3s
    - Mac OS 9 will rise from the dead, and Steve will hold a funeral for unix (which is, afterall, dying .... if you believe the trolls around here).
    - An all new iPod will be 5 times the size and hold upto 7 songs!

    There it is. Don't hold your breath, but I think this is what we'll be seeing next week.
    • Well, now you've done it, no free passes for you.

  • CNET (Score:4, Informative)

    by aengblom ( 123492 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @08:45AM (#3855780) Homepage
    CNET has a story [com.com] on the 17inchers too.

  • My predictions... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Equuleus42 ( 723 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @08:56AM (#3855829) Homepage

    - The current Apple Macintosh line will be cancelled.
    - New Apple computers, such as the Golden Delicious and Granny Smith will be unveiled.

    What do you think?

  • Steve and the PDA... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by soboroff ( 91667 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @08:58AM (#3855837)
    "0% - Mac PDA or tablet
    Our sources tell us Steve Jobs constantly complains about how bad the user experience is for Mac users using PDAs. From one source: "'Why is it so complicated?', Jobs has often said." Apple is working on something, that's for sure."
    I wonder if the user experience with PDAs wouldn't have been so bad if Jobs hadn't killed the Newton. I love my Palm, but I can't count how many times I wished it was a 4oz Newton!
    • Jobs has often said." Apple is working on something, that's for sure."

      translation: Stick with us, our next version will be better. *cough* F.U.D. *cough*

  • No matter what (Score:5, Interesting)

    by feldsteins ( 313201 ) <scott.scottfeldstein@net> on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @09:03AM (#3855872) Homepage
    No matter what Apple finally announces, at this or any other keynote, about half the comments in these forums will be filled with "no big deal" or "The Man is trying to crush us!" or some other wacky thing. Sometimes intelligent conversation about the Macintosh platform is hard to come by on slashdot. And that's a shame.

    I'm thinking back to when the iPod was branded "lame" on the front page of slashdot within minutes of it being announced. Of course it if had run Linux it would have been heralded as an indredible technological breakthrough and an "industry leading" product and a shining example of why open source software is better than other kinds.
    • No matter what Apple finally announces, at this or any other keynote, about half the comments in these forums will be filled with "no big deal" or "The Man is trying to crush us!" or some other wacky thing. Sometimes intelligent conversation about the Macintosh platform is hard to come by on slashdot. And that's a shame.
      Okay, I'll bite. Maybe I'm feeding a troll, but --

      Are you saying that "intelligent must equal enthusiastic" where Mac announcements are concerned? Or since you explicitly mention keynotes, do you only mean that anyone not excited by getting another stevejob is beneath contempt?

      • Are you saying that "intelligent must equal enthusiastic" where Mac announcements are concerned?

        Certainly not. But in the case of the iPod I suspect hardly a thought was given to the merits of the product before dismissing it. And many of the subsequent comments to that post were of similar tone. Yet - and this is the important part - the iPod has proven to be a big seller and one of the most relevant and discussed products even here in these forums.

        Maybe I'm just feeling the rub more than usual today. The rub one feels when using a platform made by a company whos products and services - no matter how cool - can never rise above the 50% mark on the meritorious-o-meter because they're not open source or because they belong to that mysterious "other" platform which the majority of members here do not use.

        getting another stevejob

        Or maybe I can just let that comment say it all.


        • Feldsteins-- you're right on.

          Lets not forget that Apple's product IS open sourced, and in fact, is the most successful open source OS out there in terms of number of installations (maybe not yet, but certainly will be in a couple years, as Linux cannot match Apples volume.)

          That's the real reason slashdotters bash apple-- that and the fact that pre-linux they were stuck with windows and were jealous of the superior usabiltiy and cost benefit of Apple products.

          Its the only thing I can think of. Certainly a lot of the comments don't make sense.

          Hell, they all assuemd that teh ipod had a 2.5 inch drive, and ignored the superior battery technology, etc.

          This prejudice is annoying, but I think jealousy is its root.

  • ThinkSecret Credibility (Score:3, Informative)

    by usr122122121 ( 563560 ) <usr122122121@braxtech . c om> on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @09:28AM (#3856037) Homepage
    I recently emailed the guy in charge of ThinkSecret to ask him if he thought that it spoke any to his credibility the fact that the "System Preferences Screenshot" has "firewall" misspelled as "firewal"... and I encouraged him to place the "l" there in order to seem more credible...

    He replied that it was Apple's mistake, and that they need to fix it, not him.

    He left that image [thinksecret.com] alone, but released a Newer One [thinksecret.com] that is in almost a completely different style- look at the tabs... and "firewal" is now fixed.

    I will be SO MAD if apple does the .Mac sh*t. Since when do we copy Microsoft?

    Think Secret's integrity as a rumors site is existent only in the fact that it is one of the few rumors sites remaining. This, in turn, is because I believe that Apple is playing them: feeding them doctored images, blatantly false rumors, and such. That would explain why they haven't gotten in trouble yet with apple... and would also explain why half the stuff there seems ludicrous!

    I do have to confess, though, I do read Think Secret regularly. Definitely not for an authoritative source of information, but just for fun. Every thing they say should be taken with a grain of salt. No, change that, the whole salt shaker.

    uh-oh, i'm 2 cents poorer

    • Perhaps you should look at ".mac" as a neat thing. Perhaps Apple is starting their own TLD of .mac. Then you would have an address of something like: me@mac

      You could also visit the sites: g4.mac and i.mac.

      Only registered Macintosh owners could register names and email addresses in this domain. And unlike Microsoft who took an existing TLD and made it a product name (.net) Mac would take a product and make it a TLD. Certainly a first.

      I mean, as long as we're starting rumours here, this seems like a neat one.

  • Improved powermacs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Space Coyote ( 413320 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @09:35AM (#3856099) Homepage
    If anything, Apple would be stupid not to bring some of the technology from the Xserve into their desktops, like DDR RAM. If they leave new Power Macs off of the table completely I think we can be sure that they'll come shortly afterward, with the only reason for a delay being inventory backlog of current G4 units and supply problems with faster G4 chips.

  • RumorTracker (Score:3, Informative)

    by EyesWideOpen ( 198253 ) <curtis@noSpAM.cusmith.com> on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @09:49AM (#3856188) Homepage Journal
    If you have a rumor fix, the site RumorTracker [rumortracker.com] acts as a sort of rumor portal including rumors from seven different sites including MacOSRumors [macosrumors.com], ThinkSecret [thinksecret.com] and SpyMac [spymac.com].

  • 17" iMac! (Score:4, Funny)

    by mosch ( 204 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @09:50AM (#3856193) Homepage
    Holy shit, I can't wait for the 17" flat-panel iMac!

    It's... slightly larger!!


  • Apple is in somewhat of a tight spot in terms of the cpu. While on the wintel side you have four competing companies making x86 chips, Apple is reliant solely on Motorola for it's G4's. (sidenote: IBM was a source for G3's, but Motorola was unwilling to license the technology for the G4. Is this still the case?)

    Also, the average cpu speed for apple is growing at a fairly small rate. In 2 years, x86 cpu speeds are around 2.5 times faster (from 1ghz to 2.5 ghz). On the apple side, the top G4 speed in the past 2 years has gone from 766mhz to 1ghz. Apple's only resort to scale up processing power has been to release multiprocessor configurations.

    I see a tough road for Apple. If they stick with Motorola, they are subject to Motorola's utter inability to perform. They could jump to the x86 or Itanium, but they would face a migration nightmare (the osx migration was tough enough). Either option doesn't look good.

    • CPU is, literally, small apples. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 2nd Post! ( 213333 ) <gundbear.pacbell@net> on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @11:08AM (#3856790) Homepage
      The CPUs, at 800MHz or higher, is no big thing. Really.

      The current bus speeds, at 133MHz, is nearly 6-8 times slower than the the CPU. Some of that memory bandwidth is also being allocated the AGP, DMA transfers, firewire transfers, and just about anything else in the Apple mobo that uses the RAM. So the CPU is *starving* at the GHz level, especially at the dual CPU level.

      Being force to wait 10 cycles while waiting for memory is bad.

      On the PC side a CPU may be 2GHz now, but the memory is also quad pumped 133MHz as well. 2x the CPU but *4* times the memory bandwidth.

      So yes Apple needs faster CPUs, but they need faster memory even more.

      Let's hope for DDR interfaces come MWNY
    • sidenote: IBM was a source for G3's, but Motorola was unwilling to license the technology for the G4. Is this still the case?

      Not exactly. IBM has G4 class CPUs. In fact the POWER4 is much much faster then any Moto CPU (and more costly), it will run PowerPC code (and POWER code, and PowerAS code, and...). What it won't do is AltiVec, which as far as the Apple world cares is what makes G4 a G4.

      Moto was always willing to licence the AltiVec stuff to IBM, but IBM was untilling to pay the fees for quite a while. Then somewhat quietly last year they licenced it. I was hoping htey had put it in the POWER4 and left it disabled, but that clearly didin't happen (and of corse I expect the POWER4 CPU brick itself to cost way more then any existing Mac, so Apple would have to be serious about going into the scientific and DB Unix markets...and IBM would have to decide getting money for the CPUs is worth possabably losing Unix box sales!).

      I see a tough road for Apple. If they stick with Motorola, they are subject to Motorola's utter inability to perform.

      That is a pretty tough road to hoe. Of corse Moto may have tricks up it's sleave. I think they are using a SOI process for the CPUs, and there is a recent embeded DRAM process for SOI that could let them put 32M of L2 cache on the same chip as the CPU...which could be a serious help for anything that is memory bandwidth bound...as long as OSX's scheduler has processor afinity.

      Or Moto could be the same bunch of incompetent boobs who had the 32 bit world on a platter with the 68000, then refused to make RISC chips for Sun, couldn't keep ahead of the x86, and eventually fell totally flat on it's face.

      I know which I want...but I know which is more likely. Bummer.

  • "I see no inventory showing for all PowerMacs, and existing orders are not
    being filled. MacWorld is next week. 'Nuff said."

  • Zdnet and Cnet spilled the iMac beans last night (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Arcturax ( 454188 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @11:09AM (#3856798)
    http://news.com.com/2100-1040-942608.html
    http:// zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-942646.html

    Both of them stole Jobs thunder, I wonder if they will join the MacWorld blacklist now?

    Then again, if Jobs doesn't throw a wobbler and Apple did let them post this early, then that can only mean that Jobs is still sitting on something else that is very significant.
  • As I'm in the market for a new laptop, I've been doing some research and have come to the conclusion that the Market is indeed getting narrower for Apple. Since I really would prefer a Powerbook to a x86 machine and since this is /. , here is my wishlist:
    1.2 x G5 @ 1.5GHz and fat DDR in a Tower near you.
    2.New iBook with a G4 in it @ 800MHz
    3.New Powerbook with a G4 @ 1GHz
    4.iMac with 17" screen and 1GHz inside(tm)
    5.OSX 10.2
    6.Lots of money.


    • Remember, the Pentium has a much much bigger die than the PowerPC and thus draws a LOT more power (like 10 times).

      Thus when you run on battery power with a PC, the chip cuts its clock rate by 6... so that 2GHz pentium which is slower than a 800MHZ powerPC actually is running at 400MHz on battery power.

      So, when comparing a titanium to any PC laptop, there's no comparison-- the PCs are dramatically slower on battery power.

    • Re:Cool new toys. (Score:2, Informative)

      by PythonOrRuby ( 546749 )
      iBooks aren't getting G4s, so don't hold your breath.

      The G3 is still scaling, and it uses less power, which means better battery life, which is Good Thing(tm) in a laptop.

  • The rumor is part wrong! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My employer is a system integrator for professionnal digital video editing solutions (www.Avid.com)

    Since there is no more G4's available anywhere in Canada whe asked hard question to our supplier and where told to be patient and that we would be selling our systems on G5 by Wednesday 17... This one aint a "maybe".

    But... dont tell anyone... its a secret!

    Thereza

  • Is the quote in The Nation by one of the members of the Doors saying that Apple had called him recently wanting to license one of their songs for Apples new "Cube computer software".

    That's pretty much what he said-- so it sounds like he doesn't really know what the product is, so it could be a re-emergence of the cube, or it could be a software application that he somehow stuck the word "cube" to.

    As to Think Secret (And most all the rest of the rumor sites) they are useless-- often they just post wild speculation when a reasonable person could figure out what's likely to happen.

    For instance, since PowerMacs are long in the Tooth and iMacs are rather new, its more likely PowerMacs will be refreshed than iMacs.

    I would never say that this is what's going to happen-- cause it could be the reverse as the sites claim, but other than knowing about key components (17 inch displays are cheaper, G5 isn't ready yet) and apple's previous history and overall strategy, you can't say much other than the obvious implications of these bits of info.

    Apple really has closed the leaks and frankly, I'm much happier being surprised... not that the rumor sites were ever that accurate anyway.

  • Bullshit rumor. Current Powermac G4 EOl'd (Score:5, Informative)

    by d0n quix0te ( 304783 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @12:05PM (#3857357)
    The current crop of PMG4's have been EOL'd. Yup. Limited shelf life plus great discount packages can only mean one thing:

    New PowerMacs at MacWorld!!!
    ----
    http://www.cube-zone.com/ reports:
    The current PowerMac line has been EOled. ... the current PowerMac line (800 Mhz, 933 Mhz and dual 1 Ghz) has been EOled. Computers dealers cannot order those computers from Apple anymore...

    ---
  • I'll be thrilled if they release Jaguar (although I think it will be 10.5, not 10.2), mostly because of the improvements to Mail. Those #*&!%# spammers finally got ahold of my email address, and the new Mail app has excellent spam filtering. That, and the ability to specify a port# for your SMTP server, so I don't need to keep switching from mail.earthlink.net to mail.pacbell.net when I take my laptop from home to work, since both ISPs block traffic on those ports to any other server. Lots of other goodies in there, too.
  • After all, Apple has had a 17" monitor for a while, and they've had the iMac for a while. The only big question is whether the base had to be made heavier to keep the thing from falling over. And, of course, how much it will cost.

    The cheapest 17" flat panel you can get is now $499 [computingreview.com]. Apple's 17" was at $999. There probably hasn't been enough progress since the iMac was launched to bring out an iMac at 17" at the same price point as the original iMac. (Although it's time for the version with the DVD-RW drive to get cheaper.)

    This should be a nice looking unit. The 15" iMac always looked like the screen was too small for the base.

  • The subject here seems to be rumors that are pulled out of your ass (see iTools --> .mac for evidence), so I consider this "on-topic."

    I think they'll show an iPod with a mic/line input. This will let you record direct from an analog source or even record stuff like conversations or your own music demos. Additionally, they're gonna implement their voice-recognition software so all you have to do is speak the name of the artist and album into the mic and the iPod will play it. I have a feeling the iPod software will now also include the ability to slow down or speed up a song by as much as +- 100%, in addition to changing the pitch by the same amount. This will effectively be the iPod's killer app for DJs and riff-studying guitar players everywhere.

    Well, at least I hope they show this.

  • Consider the source (Score:3, Interesting)

    by inkswamp ( 233692 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @02:00PM (#3858337)
    Mac rumor sites are a strange thing (are there such things for the Wintel world? I really don't know.) I've monitored them for some time and I can say that the only one with any track record to speak of is macosrumors.com [macosrumors.com]. They have consistently outguessed nearly every Apple announcement that I've seen in the last two years, and they only publish stories when something is worth publishing. I suspect the person behind the site has some knowledge of journalistic methods and waits until he can independently verify news before reporting. The site really is shockingly accurate and I suspect the publisher has lots of contacts with beta-testers and Apple seed recipients willing to quietly break their NDAs.

    The only thing macosrumors didn't immediately predict was the flat-panel iMac, but they didn't have to. They mentioned it almost a year before its release (along with a couple schematics of its design) and then left the rumor alone.

    Rumor sites are fun but should not be trusted. Mainstream sites reporting off those rumors should not be trusted either. Think Secret [thinksecret.com] in particular has no credibility, but they often publish tantalizing screen shots prior to releases so they are worth watching for that only.

    --Rick

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