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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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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Right, but you said "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."
What the Apple page says, bolding mine, "nVidia: GeForce2MX, GeForce3, GeForce4 Ti, GeForce4 or GeForce4MX. ATI: any AGP Radeon card. 32MB VRAM recommended for optimum performance."
So what you mean is "With the announced new graphics pipeline through OpenGL and it's recommended 32 MB of video RAM I'm betting we'll see that met across the board."
I'm not disagreeing, you won't see the full advantage of QE with only 16mb of VRAM, so I'm sure everything will get bumped up to 32mb, or more.
that is 100% true, they have had a promotion run through the release of updated hardware. as confusing as it might turn out to be, i understand the rebate form has a checkbox for which system you bought (faster machine = bigger rebate). since only the current systems are on there, then new ones would not count unless they update the form. also remember the rebate is $x00 back on G4 tower and display. so if they release a new minitower, they can drop the price of the current ones and still run the promo. generally Apple sorta stays tot he same pricing structure. there are fluctuations depending on models and the cost of parts (like LCDs for the new iMacs).
then again there is also no reason they can't offer a package deal if you buy a new (if there will be new ones next wednesday) G4 and a flat panel display. the economy is just not doing so well, so selling machines at a lower price is better than not selling any machines. at least this way it keeps things flowing.
i'm not going to make predictions (i want to keep my badge, ha), but i don't see this being any indication to rule out new desktops.
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.
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.
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!!!!:))
A few years ago I was speaking with an American who had been doing missionary work in Brazil. He told me that Brazil tariffs the living sh*t out of computer products entering the country. This, of course, is to help protect Brazil's box makers from predatory pricing or something like that. I don't know if this is still true as this conversation was held 7 or 8 years ago.
There's not a whole lot Apple can do against steep tariffs. Even if Apple were to import the boxes into Brazil at cost, they still would be priced near $3,000.
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.
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.
AAPL is always saying things to the effect of "we can't tell you what is is, but prepare to be blown away" and "it'll be way beyond anything the rumor sites are reporting"
If by "always" you mean once, then you're right. Usually Apple stays quiet. They never say anything. Then last year when MWNY2001 was closing in people had HUGE expectations (read: G5) and when nothing was announced there was HUGE disapointment (read: booing Steve). 6 months later MYSF2002 was coming up, Apple planted rumors about iWalk, then hyped up the show to beat every rumor site. They released a G4 LCD-iMac. No one saw it coming (until Time Canada pbished their story on it).
So Apple's strategy has been changing. No one knows what's going to happen in a week, but mark my words, Apple is on the ball will rumors.
Now that you mention it, there's another reason for apple to want to keep the rumor sites away from press passes. Time canada released their story about the LCD imacs before the announcement was made at the expo. That understandably pissed off Apple. If they restrict those that have press pass acesss, they can help control those leaks.
Ahh, yes, the Pentium, named by some dillhole marketdroids who didn't even think that the logical successor to "Pentium" would be "Sexium," a name sure to set off the bible-thumper crowd. And too bad, too, think of the lost marketing opportunity: "The Sexium: It makes surfing for pr0n on the Internet more fun!" If I close my eyes, I can see the "Sex Inside!" case emblems that were almost printed up.
So now we've got Pentium II; Pentium: The Revenge; Pentium IV: The Pentium's Identical Cousin; Pentium XIV with Sprinkles... it's like how the Hitchhiker's Trilogy stretched to five books, only it was funny when Adams did it... with Intel, it's just stupid.
"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!
the newton division was losing money, a lot of money. One of the developers doing the handwriting recognition had recently thrown up his hands and decided that it would never be transparent (I thought it was great, but..).
Finally, when the new CFO was brought in, guess how much cash apple had in the bank? One month's worth. They really truly were almost in a situation of not being able to make payroll.
You certainly may be right about his reasons. After I heard all of the above, though, I was less enamored of that conclusion.
the newton division was losing money, a lot of money.
The newton division spent a lot of money developing the product, but it was not losing a lot of money at the end. As a separate company, Newton Inc was well on track to profitability. Steve chose to roll the company back into Apple a month after it was separated. There were interested buyers. If the financial situation was that bad the right thing to do would have been to sell the rest of Apple's interest in it.
One of the developers doing the handwriting recognition had recently thrown up his hands and decided that it would never be transparent (I thought it was great, but..).
Speaking as the guy who was testing the handwriting recognition, I challenge that statement. Rosetta's recognition was fantastic and getting better all the time. Just before the company was split off, the recognition development team was justifiably proud of their work and was already thinking about extending the same engine to do continuous recognition, to do voice recognition, and so forth. Newton recognition came a long, long way between 1.0 and 2.0. So unless you can tell us which of the developers had "thrown up his hands" I'm inclined to believe you're just blowing smoke.
I don't really have an agenda. I can't remember the name of the guy that told me that, or even exactly what he said. He was working with another guy I knew on some mathematics presentation/rendering/calculating stuff that looked really cool to me but never took off.
Like I said, I thought it was great. I was surprised that anyone that had worked on it would be frustrated with it. Maybe I mistranslated what he said. It was right after they let them all go, and he told me that one of the guys had given up on it ever being transparent. That's all I can remember.
I heard other rumors--one was that none of the interested buyers was willing to pay what Apple thought it was worth. Another was that Jobs took an eMate home and fell in love with it, prompting hime ot want to keep the technology so that Apple could go with it. (Having had an eMate and fallen in love with it, this was believable to me.)
It's not that I don't believe Jobs could be that petty--I'm just saying that there are alternative possibilities. If it's really important to you I can track down the name of that guy for you:). (But seriously, send me and email and I'll look him up. I'm curious about it now.)
I hated that the newton was killed, probably not as much as you, being as close to it as you were, but I was at that time hoping to find work developing for the newton full time. Every time I look at a Palm I just shrug and say "they're not there yet". Maybe my exploration of the alternative possibilities is because I really hope deep down that it will come back. If it was killed solely on account of ego it's not likely to. I guess we can always pray.
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.
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.
Actually, that's an excellent point. It's almost as disheartening to see a Mac-oriented site analyze Apple products and services only to come up with an overly rosy view of their worth as it is to see a non-Mac-oriented site not analyze the products/services and surmize that the products are worthless.
Unfortunately, most people don't understand pipelines, branch prediction, what having a 386 co-processor for compatibility on there implies, what Risc processing really does, and that floating point is a major part of CPU intensive applications leaves us with people doing what you're doing...
claiming that anything with a higher clockrate is faster.
Never mine that a G4 can do 2-6 times as much work in a given clock cycle.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
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.
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.
What I'm saying is that either a) the G4 is reaching the end of it's lifecycle or b) Motorola sucks. I'm leaning towards b). Either way, Apple has a problem on their hands. They need to up the cpu speeds and especially the bus speeds (as another post intelligently pointed out).
The clock-speed gain for x86 is 150%. The current speed is 250% of the original, but an increase of 1.5Ghz is only a 150% increase from 1Ghz.
Oddly, you correctly calculated the G4's speed increase as 30% (30.5% actually)
No, he was saying clock speeds in Intel world have increased by 2.5x and therefore 2.5x faster than then, which is also erroneous, not as bad as comparing with PowerPC. Any comparison with P4 clock speeds needs to be thrown out the window immediately, since P4 clock speed is cheating to be inflated. G4s are clock for clock faster than any x86 solution out there, but they certainly no longer keep up with current x86 offerings.
And for this they charge a high premium... Apple really needs to figure out how they are going to get out of this mess. They have some good hardware but the core piece of the platform is castrated (cpu/memory). I know their target market isn't performance freaks, but a system can get only so much slower before the niceties of the platform are outweighed by the perfomrance hit taken. I would love to get quality mac hardware with OSX running on it, but one glance at what I can get in the x86 world strongly dissuades me..
But looking at the market for a new system, you can either get a high-end pc, or a mac that can't match the performance. Being someone who can easily get BSD or Linux and grok it, the appeal of OSX is really insufficient to pursuade me to fork over *more* cash for less performance. Sure it's the Unix with the most supported desktop applications, but wine doesn't run on non-x86 systems so the tradeoff made is huge.... Would you pay twice or three times as much for a car that could only go 25 MPH than a car that is somewhat less sexy but can go as fast as you want?
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
it's built into the machine, numb-nuts. Apple have been selling larger screens for years. But we're all really impressed with your big LCD - I bet it drives all the girls crazy when you tell them about it.
I used to be a certified mac tech... you take it back to the dealer, and they charge you shizzy amounts of $$ to replace it... it will wait to fail until after the limited warranty is up..
No, you send it in and then wait a month and a half because their parts are all on backorder because everyone else seems to have the same problem that you did. Then you get your unit back after a month and a half only to find they didn't fix the problem.
Sorry. I am just a little bitter over my apple care experience.
I ended up fixing the problem myself so I wouldn't have to wait a totaql of 3 months for the damn part.
I've sent my PowerBook G4 in twice (once right when I got it in February of 2001 because Airport wouldn't work, and again three months ago because the LCD backlight was dying). The first time, they replaced the motherboard and had it back to me almost immediately. The second time, they had parts backordered, but when I got it back, they replaced not only the LCD backlight, but the motherboard, trackpad, and part of the actual frame.
I've found AppleCare to be worth every penny I paid for it.
The "Hard-core" Apple users are going to stay no matter what, Apple doesn't need to worry about making them happy at this moment. They need to focus on getting the casual computer user to pick up their systems so they can gain some ground on Microsoft and Intel.
Question: Why should they look at this at all? The only possible binaries they could support would be from PPCLinux (and Yellow Dog). The resources for those two are nice, but are starting to be eclipsed by the Darwin ports lists. And since I don't know of any PPCLinux binary-only software... where would that work get them?
My company uses Virtual PC to solve this, we just run our old PC accounting software on the Mac.
VPC is perfect for this situation, as it's not a particularly speed critical task, and the cost of buying VPC to run your existing software is probably less than the cost of buying a Mac alternative (if one existed) would be, and that is without factoring in the cost of learning a new app.
Search the news archives on CNET for Apple. You'll see their consistent mac hatred and propogation of anti-Apple FUD for yourself. Passing along rumors that they read on thinksecret.com is just another way that CNET declares its indifference, laziness and stupidity about Apple.
There's a difference. CNET is a new site, and is established as such. ThinkSecret and many other rumor sites are not, regardless of what they claim. Honestly it may not be the best PR move, but apple is perfectly within their bounds to restrict press passes to the press.
eh, not really. saying "new G4s" is nothing. many many people predicted a new iMac last January. a lot of those predictions were 17" CRT (now the eMac) or a 15" LCD. NOBODY predicted that it would turn out like it did.
same thing with the ipod. everyone was buying the iwalk rumors, so they lost focus on the more true leaks.
the most recent time i think Steve was really caught was with the leaks of the cube. it was on a few rumor sites, though nobody really had it quite right (most said it looked like a G4 case but pushed into a little cube, handles and all). before those leaks nobody expected a "new" mac. then ATI backed it up in a comment about their new card coming out at MacWorldNYC and how it would be featured in the new Mac Apple was going to suprise everyone with. OOPS! that one got Steve's goat.
anyway i can predict updates to whatever device i want, and of course something will happen. last year they kept saying "this is a software focused expo" and still updated the G4 towers (nothing too major, but and update) and bumped iMacs i think. next week will probably be the first legit public molestation of 10.2, and probably some tweaks to hardware. hopefully a revamped G4 tower will be there, but between a first hand look at xserve and 10.2/Jaguar i am ready to take the hike up there. anything on top of that is just bonus. of course i am hoping they will have at least a few machines with 10.2 if not more. last year they had a handful of machines running 10.1 but they were staffed so you could not poke at them too much. with the expected release date of it so near, i would think a solid build on the current powermacs is ready for display.
problem with your theory is, Apple lives off of hype. That's how the company runs. They don't have to have the greatest product in terms o technical specs, they just have to have the greatest product in terms of user experience. And whether you like apple or not, the hype is fun. It gets imaginations running, and gives you something other than the next speed processor for you to be excited about. Being an aple customer is fun, and the hype is all part of the experience.
As for not having anything good to release at their expos, when was the last time you saw any company with a great expo release? Hell, half the time, you never even know when the PC expos are.
I've been watching the Apple store and the iMac availiblity went down to immediate shipment, but has again increased to 1-2 days. So, they are selling them a little faster than they can make them.
They may be selling fewer than they expected, but they're making even fewer then (Which means profitabiltiy should be good-- profits really hurt when you have to eat machines that won't sell.)
Yeah, the fact that unless you spend more than $10,000 there are no computers as fast as the apple equivilents is NOT ENOUGH! WE need serious performance improvements.
Sounds like you need to find a nice 400 or 500 mhz G4 and upgrade it to either a dual 500 mhz G4 setup via Sonnet Technologies [sonnettech.com] or a brand spankin' new upgrade option of a 800mhz or 1ghz G4 via Power Logix [powerlogix.com]
There are also a few over-clockable Sahara G3 upgrades available now. Look around a little in the classifieds or on the sites mentioned or in general ie: google.
Remember also that with 10.2 OS X will be a viable OS on many older systems as long as you can add a 32 MB AGP graphics card to the mix (Quartz Extreme promises to increase performance across-the-board by at least a 150% if not more). That is not to mention the fact that it is supposed to be compiled with GCC 3.x which brings it's own performance boosts as well.
There goes their ticket to Macworld... (Score:5, Funny)
I assume they're "on the list," now.
Re:There goes their ticket to Macworld... (Score:2)
Re:There goes their ticket to Macworld... (Score:2)
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)
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.
Re:There goes their ticket to Macworld... (Score:2)
I'd honestly be surprised if a tweaked tower featuring the new northbridge from the Xserve doesn't materialise though?
Re:There goes their ticket to Macworld... (Score:2)
True, but that is twice a year when they really have everyone's attention, so it makes it a good time to announce new products.
But I think you're correct in pointing out the trend.
Re:There goes their ticket to Macworld... (Score:2)
Re:There goes their ticket to Macworld... (Score:2)
Yeah, clearly they aren't rumors sites! Sheesh.
All the bullshit you see running around is annoying-- people with rumors in their name claiming not to be about rumors
and people claiming apple employees won't talk to the press-- that's absurd.
Its rampant paranoia.
Unfortunately the people who run these sites are like your average slashdot linux whiner-- probably 15 and not quite yet mature.
Rumors! The Expo has not yet happened. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Rumors! The Expo has not yet happened. (Score:2, Funny)
Is ThinkSecret trolling?
Re: Is ThinkSecret trolling? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
.mac or .Mac looks unlikely. (Score:2)
He also pointed out that the capitalization of
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)
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)
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)
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)
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.)
The Quartz Extremem "requirments" myth (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Quartz Extremem "requirments" myth (Score:2)
Documented where?
Re:The Quartz Extremem "requirments" myth (Score:2, Informative)
See the note at the bottom, and be sure to take note of the "reccomended".
Re:The Quartz Extremem "requirments" myth (Score:2)
?
Right, I said "Required", Apple sez "Recommended". Whatever the case to take full advantage 32+ MB VRAM remains the number to look for.
Re:The Quartz Extremem "requirments" myth (Score:2)
What the Apple page says, bolding mine, "nVidia: GeForce2MX, GeForce3, GeForce4 Ti, GeForce4 or GeForce4MX. ATI: any AGP Radeon card. 32MB VRAM recommended for optimum performance."
So what you mean is "With the announced new graphics pipeline through OpenGL and it's recommended 32 MB of video RAM I'm betting we'll see that met across the board."
I'm not disagreeing, you won't see the full advantage of QE with only 16mb of VRAM, so I'm sure everything will get bumped up to 32mb, or more.
Re:The Quartz Extremem "requirments" myth (Score:2)
they have released hardware during rebates before (Score:2)
then again there is also no reason they can't offer a package deal if you buy a new (if there will be new ones next wednesday) G4 and a flat panel display. the economy is just not doing so well, so selling machines at a lower price is better than not selling any machines. at least this way it keeps things flowing.
i'm not going to make predictions (i want to keep my badge, ha), but i don't see this being any indication to rule out new desktops.
Take This With a Grain of Salt (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Take This With a Grain of Salt (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Take This With a Grain of Salt (Score:2)
why need a TLD? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well...it could be really cool if Apple did something more like this:
Then all Apple users would have their very own .Mac(.com) domain name. Of course, there is absolutely no proof of this...just rampant speculation.
But, isn't that what this entire story is about?
Yeah, Think Secret is reliable (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, Think Secret is reliable (Score:2)
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.
iMac prices here in my country (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:iMac prices here in my country (Score:2)
There's not a whole lot Apple can do against steep tariffs. Even if Apple were to import the boxes into Brazil at cost, they still would be priced near $3,000.
--Mike
Re:iMac prices here in my country (Score:2)
Re:iMac prices here in my country (Score:2, Funny)
Re:iMac prices here in my country (Score:4, Informative)
C|Net too (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:C|Net too (Score:2, Informative)
You said:
From the article:
So it looks like C|Net is just rumor mongering as well. They aren't really confirming anything, just re-reporting.
Press Pass Revoked? (Score:2)
Macworlds are always ruined by high expectations (Score:5, Funny)
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
- 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.
Re:Macworlds are always ruined by high expectation (Score:2)
Re:Macworlds are always ruined by high expectation (Score:2)
If by "always" you mean once, then you're right. Usually Apple stays quiet. They never say anything. Then last year when MWNY2001 was closing in people had HUGE expectations (read: G5) and when nothing was announced there was HUGE disapointment (read: booing Steve). 6 months later MYSF2002 was coming up, Apple planted rumors about iWalk, then hyped up the show to beat every rumor site. They released a G4 LCD-iMac. No one saw it coming (until Time Canada pbished their story on it).
So Apple's strategy has been changing. No one knows what's going to happen in a week, but mark my words, Apple is on the ball will rumors.
Re:Macworlds are always ruined by high expectation (Score:2)
CNET (Score:4, Informative)
Re:CNET (Score:2)
Dang...that just sounds so wrong!
.
My predictions... (Score:4, Funny)
- 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?
Re:My predictions... (Score:2)
So now we've got Pentium II; Pentium: The Revenge; Pentium IV: The Pentium's Identical Cousin; Pentium XIV with Sprinkles... it's like how the Hitchhiker's Trilogy stretched to five books, only it was funny when Adams did it... with Intel, it's just stupid.
~Philly
Steve and the PDA... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Steve and the PDA... (Score:2)
translation: Stick with us, our next version will be better. *cough* F.U.D. *cough*
Re:Steve and the PDA... (Score:2)
Finally, when the new CFO was brought in, guess how much cash apple had in the bank? One month's worth. They really truly were almost in a situation of not being able to make payroll.
You certainly may be right about his reasons. After I heard all of the above, though, I was less enamored of that conclusion.
Re:Steve and the PDA... (Score:2)
Re:Steve and the PDA... (Score:2)
Like I said, I thought it was great. I was surprised that anyone that had worked on it would be frustrated with it. Maybe I mistranslated what he said. It was right after they let them all go, and he told me that one of the guys had given up on it ever being transparent. That's all I can remember.
I heard other rumors--one was that none of the interested buyers was willing to pay what Apple thought it was worth. Another was that Jobs took an eMate home and fell in love with it, prompting hime ot want to keep the technology so that Apple could go with it. (Having had an eMate and fallen in love with it, this was believable to me.)
It's not that I don't believe Jobs could be that petty--I'm just saying that there are alternative possibilities. If it's really important to you I can track down the name of that guy for you
I hated that the newton was killed, probably not as much as you, being as close to it as you were, but I was at that time hoping to find work developing for the newton full time. Every time I look at a Palm I just shrug and say "they're not there yet". Maybe my exploration of the alternative possibilities is because I really hope deep down that it will come back. If it was killed solely on account of ego it's not likely to. I guess we can always pray.
No matter what (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:No matter what (Score:2)
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?
Re:No matter what (Score:2)
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.
Re:No matter what (Score:2)
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.
Re:No matter what (Score:2)
Re:No matter what (Score:2, Informative)
A 1GHz G4 IS faster than a 2GHz P4.
Unfortunately, most people don't understand pipelines, branch prediction, what having a 386 co-processor for compatibility on there implies, what Risc processing really does, and that floating point is a major part of CPU intensive applications leaves us with people doing what you're doing...
claiming that anything with a higher clockrate is faster.
Never mine that a G4 can do 2-6 times as much work in a given clock cycle.
ThinkSecret Credibility (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:ThinkSecret Credibility (Score:2)
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)
RumorTracker (Score:3, Informative)
17" iMac! (Score:4, Funny)
It's... slightly larger!!
Apple's long-term trouble. (Score:2)
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)
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
Re:CPU is, literally, small apples. (Score:2)
(My guess is they will announce the towers and have them "available in August")
Re:Apple's long-term trouble. (Score:2)
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!).
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.
Re:Apple's long-term trouble. (Score:2)
IBM has, in fact produced AltiVec-enabled CPUs on a production sample basis.
Re:Apple's long-term trouble. (Score:3, Interesting)
Um, no. I'm re-reading my post to try to fathom where you came up to with that. Let me restate.
Fastest x86 cpu 2 yrs ago: 1ghz
Fastest x86 today: 2.5ghz
Speed gain: 250 percent
Fastest g4 2 years ago: 766mhz
Fastest g4 today: 1ghz
Speed gain: 30 percent
What I'm saying is that either a) the G4 is reaching the end of it's lifecycle or b) Motorola sucks. I'm leaning towards b). Either way, Apple has a problem on their hands. They need to up the cpu speeds and especially the bus speeds (as another post intelligently pointed out).
Bad math (Score:2)
Re:Apple's long-term trouble. (Score:2)
And for this they charge a high premium... Apple really needs to figure out how they are going to get out of this mess. They have some good hardware but the core piece of the platform is castrated (cpu/memory). I know their target market isn't performance freaks, but a system can get only so much slower before the niceties of the platform are outweighed by the perfomrance hit taken. I would love to get quality mac hardware with OSX running on it, but one glance at what I can get in the x86 world strongly dissuades me..
Re:Apple's long-term trouble. (Score:2)
Official word from an Apple Sales Rep: (Score:2, Interesting)
being filled. MacWorld is next week. 'Nuff said."
Zdnet and Cnet spilled the iMac beans last night (Score:3, Interesting)
http:/
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.
Cool new toys. (Score:2)
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.
Re:Cool new toys. (Score:2)
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)
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)
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
Only real info I know of... (Score:2)
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)
New PowerMacs at MacWorld!!!
----
http://www.cube-zone.com/ reports:
The current PowerMac line has been EOled.
---
Re:Bullshit rumor. Current Powermac G4 EOl'd (Score:2)
Holding my breath for Jaguar (Score:2, Interesting)
It's about time for a 17" iMac (Score:2)
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.
What I think they'll show (Score:2)
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)
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
Re:i like mac and all but.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:i like mac and all but.. (Score:2)
Re:i like mac and all but.. (Score:2)
Re:i like mac and all but.. (Score:2)
Sorry. I am just a little bitter over my apple care experience.
I ended up fixing the problem myself so I wouldn't have to wait a totaql of 3 months for the damn part.
Re:i like mac and all but.. (Score:2)
I've found AppleCare to be worth every penny I paid for it.
Re:Why publicise this? (Score:2)
Re:Jaguar or Jagwer or... (Score:2)
Re:Slightly OT: UK accounts packages for Mac? (Score:2)
VPC is perfect for this situation, as it's not a particularly speed critical task, and the cost of buying VPC to run your existing software is probably less than the cost of buying a Mac alternative (if one existed) would be, and that is without factoring in the cost of learning a new app.
CNET hates Apple. (Score:2)
Re:Double Standard (Score:2)
Re:Oh No! (Score:2)
Re:Steve's thunder... (Score:2)
same thing with the ipod. everyone was buying the iwalk rumors, so they lost focus on the more true leaks.
the most recent time i think Steve was really caught was with the leaks of the cube. it was on a few rumor sites, though nobody really had it quite right (most said it looked like a G4 case but pushed into a little cube, handles and all). before those leaks nobody expected a "new" mac. then ATI backed it up in a comment about their new card coming out at MacWorldNYC and how it would be featured in the new Mac Apple was going to suprise everyone with. OOPS! that one got Steve's goat.
anyway i can predict updates to whatever device i want, and of course something will happen. last year they kept saying "this is a software focused expo" and still updated the G4 towers (nothing too major, but and update) and bumped iMacs i think. next week will probably be the first legit public molestation of 10.2, and probably some tweaks to hardware. hopefully a revamped G4 tower will be there, but between a first hand look at xserve and 10.2/Jaguar i am ready to take the hike up there. anything on top of that is just bonus. of course i am hoping they will have at least a few machines with 10.2 if not more. last year they had a handful of machines running 10.1 but they were staffed so you could not poke at them too much. with the expected release date of it so near, i would think a solid build on the current powermacs is ready for display.
Re:damn those high expectations... (Score:2)
As for not having anything good to release at their expos, when was the last time you saw any company with a great expo release? Hell, half the time, you never even know when the PC expos are.
Re:What does Time Canada say? (Score:2)
iMacs have not stalled, that's bullhockey.
I've been watching the Apple store and the iMac availiblity went down to immediate shipment, but has again increased to 1-2 days. So, they are selling them a little faster than they can make them.
They may be selling fewer than they expected, but they're making even fewer then (Which means profitabiltiy should be good-- profits really hurt when you have to eat machines that won't sell.)
Re:Yawn. More "innovation" from Apple. (Score:2)
Yeah, the fact that unless you spend more than $10,000 there are no computers as fast as the apple equivilents is NOT ENOUGH! WE need serious performance improvements.
Yawn.
Re:Apple is dying! (Score:2)
Which explains why their market share keeps doubling.
Did you notice that Netcraft shows more people run Apache than any other server combined? OS X runs Apache.
Therefore, Apple has a monopoly on the market.
Sheesh
Re:Please Goddess let them release some new models (Score:2)
There are also a few over-clockable Sahara G3 upgrades available now. Look around a little in the classifieds or on the sites mentioned or in general ie: google.
Remember also that with 10.2 OS X will be a viable OS on many older systems as long as you can add a 32 MB AGP graphics card to the mix (Quartz Extreme promises to increase performance across-the-board by at least a 150% if not more). That is not to mention the fact that it is supposed to be compiled with GCC 3.x which brings it's own performance boosts as well.