New Hardware in April/March?

[Opteron]

But Apple doesn't do much of that stuff except the harddrive now, the iSight not really being more than it is, a simple fixed lense. The iPod is soemthign that just required them to build a different sort of simple computer ands work hard on the software and Hollywood to make it work. A digital video camera is an entirely new market which is already highly competative, requiring several signifcant areas of expertise specifically optics and CCD sensors. If they got it just right, and the PC/Mac compatability, price point etc were on the mark, then they might get a profitable product but it would not be done cheaply and would require signficant resources to bring out a new camera every 6-12 months to stay

Very true, Apple needs to look at its 'core' business. Hell I'm not even sure myself anymore. Is it selling computers, music, ipod or software? Apple needs to have a long hard look at what market they are trying to satisfy.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Very true, Apple needs to look at its 'core' business. Hell I'm not even sure myself anymore. Is it selling computers, music, ipod or software? Apple needs to have a long hard look at what market they are trying to satisfy.

however, this is precisely what kept Apple in the green for the last 3-6 qtrs in the recent recession. Widening their business approach. I do remember Christmas of 2002; Every computer manufacturer had HUGE losses on full systems they were hoping would be sold as upgrades. Customers are savvy then as they are now. A desktop system doesn't become obsolete, or shouldn't if its 1Ghz or more. Need a CD/DVD burner, buy one and pop it in. Need a new graphics card pop it in (laptop users are SOL on this). Need more performance outta your OS (Windows) buy more ram...(Apple) upgrade your OS if Ram doesn't do it. Need another storage medium (windows) buy a HDD,Apple buy internal/external (like windows initially) or buy an iPod. This was as important then as it is now.

Yet I aggree the core of Apples business needs to be more focused on, especially since Intel is now gonna focus on CPU performance instead of cpu speed - which will vindicate Apple/IBM relationship. I expect Apple's new PowerBooks to feature a minimum 64MB DDR video memory with significant bandwidth, and upwards to 256MB on built-2-order systems.

iMac's shouldn't have less than 64MB for video memory as well, upto say 128/256.

 

[aswitcher]

SNIP

Yet I aggree the core of Apples business needs to be more focused on, especially since Intel is now gonna focus on CPU performance instead of cpu speed - which will vindicate Apple/IBM relationship. I expect Apple's new PowerBooks to feature a minimum 64MB DDR video memory with significant bandwidth, and upwards to 256MB on built-2-order systems.

iMac's shouldn't have less than 64MB for video memory as well, upto say 128/256.

Whoa, 256MB Video on a Powerbook...cool but pricey.

I agree, 64 shoudl be base, and 128 should at least be an option.

Bring on the G5 PB

 

[Opteron]

Whoa, 256MB Video on a Powerbook...cool but pricey.

I agree, 64 shoudl be base, and 128 should at least be an option.

look at http://www.ati.com, the Radeon 9600moblie chip has 128, and the Radeon 9700 mobile has even more hosre power.

The PB G5 is a must in the next revolution of the mac. Since AMD is now shipping in volume it's 64-bit mobile chips. (And I plan to get one, which is odd since I don't really like laptops, but the specs are just too good.)

 

[ffakr]

This is what Mac users always want you to believe but it couldn't be further from the truth. I do motion graphics, 3D, and video for a living and have been doing this extremely processor intensive work for ten years. For the last three or four it's really been no contest about which is the superior machine for these power uses. PC's win hands down for speed, reliability, stability, dependability, networking, and just about everything. Mac's are slower, more crash prone, expecially under heavy loads, require more time troubleshooting, and force you to spend more time in the OS. You'll find yourself getting to know you Mac's inner workings much better than the PC, because guess what, you'll need to. I recently bought my wife a 20" iMac for it's sweet monitor, small footprint, and good looks which go very well in our small apartment. But in terms of processor it's of no use to me at all. Though I have need to do network rendering of long animations using otherwise idle machines, there is absolutely no point whatsoever of even hooking it up for that. I would be pointless the processor is so slow. Aside from that it doesn't network with the other machines PC and older Macs at home using Appletalk, always losing it's connection and requiring a restart.

Wow michael, is that the best lame troll you can do? You're comparing Apple's from the past few years to PCs for 3d rendering and you declare that Macs are inferior to the PC in every way? Then you use a new iMac to reinforce your view that Macs are inferior in every way because your consumer, low power, elegant machine can't do hardcore 3d rendering? I'm sorry, but the iMac isn't designed to sit in a rendering farm. It's designed to look good on a desktop, to just work and to just work elegantly. It's designed to consume low power, to produce little waste heat, and to function at a minimum of noise. It's a beautiful design given it's goals.

I'll be getting a G5 to edit with only because Final Cut Pro runs exclusively on Macs, and I am getting the machine for that. In terms of power it's barely as fast as my now more than two year old PC. In terms of stability I've seen the G5's in action and work and know from experience that they are as unstable and crash prone as Macs have always been. They also are very slow to respond to new instructions, sometimes just throwing the spinning ball at you for no apparent reason. Window resizing is again dog slow compared to PC's, and again, the networking sucks.

To say that these machines are for power users is simply not true, and hasn't been true for years. It's just a slow to die myth.

So, let me get this straight. You hate the Mac. It's more crash prone than the PC. It's slower. It can't network (probably because of that crappy BSD IP stack)... so you are buying a G5 in addition to your 20" lcd imac?
right.
Apple must be so very happy to hear that Final Cut Pro is the only professional video editing software.. that it's so good that people will buy computers that they HATE just to use it. ..That there are no reasonable alternatives on the Windows platform.

I support over 2000 desktop machines from a small office. Of those, roughly half are Windows and Mac.. and so far our inventory suggest that we have a roughly 2-1 Windows to Mac ratio. That's roughly 700 or so Windows PCs and roughly 350 Macs based on our finishing about 1/4 of the inventory of our division (our overall numbers are based on router logs of active nodes on our subnets.. that's how we got over 2000 total.. it should be over 2200 as we discover machines not on the network)

As someone directly responsible for the supervision of the windows and Macintosh computers here, I can say that Windows is responsible for at least 9/10 of our issues here. Windows XP is a nice OS but it isn't nearly as stable as OS X in my experience. It is, by FAR, more difficult to troubleshoot. It is more prone to violation by external hack, by virus, by worm, and by misguided User error (the installation of nefarious code being just one example). The Windows machines consumer the majority of our time here, even though the average Mac user has less knowledge of how their machine works (PC users generally are forced to learn how to troubleshoot their machines if they want to be productive).
As for hardware. We see far more problems with PC hardware and the software support for that hardware with few exceptions (exceptions like HPs Terrible software support on the Mac side). The cut throat pricing with Wintel PCs has ensured that nearly every machine has some cut rate component installed in it somewhere.

Now, I'm not an Apple apologist. They do stupid stuff from time to time and every thing they produce doesn't always work perfectly. The CUPs priniting in OS X gives us more problems than any other part of the system. The quality control issues with the powerbooks were real, and unacceptable (though we only saw one such issue in our division). The G4s are underpowered (not Apple's fault) and the iMac does need to move to the G5 asap.

This, however, doesn't mean that Apple's aren't a joy to use compared to a typical Wintel PC.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Windows XP is a nice OS but it isn't nearly as stable as OS X in my experience. It is, by FAR, more difficult to troubleshoot. (PC users generally are forced to learn how to troubleshoot their machines if they want to be productive).

Stable?? XP Pro SP1?? Nuts I say, I've got a PC with three users (1 limited 2 administrator - not the hidden admin that has power over all), and with all of them logged in; 1 admin running mIRC, Mozilla (2 tabs), and MS Word, another admin with NO apps running, and limited user with IE 6.0.28 (SP1) running; Everytime I logoff the limited user and the other Admin user I cannot get to use my Amin user account. All I see is a black screen. I have no network - just internet- and EVERY update installed thus far. THis happens all the time. Why you ask don't I just "switch user"?? because I want to hog all the resources for myself, as the other members in my family don't need the PC anymore at that point. THis isn't what I call a true multi-user system!!

I'm estimating another 3-4 months maybe less that the PowerMac G5 will be mine. The PC will go exclusively to my kids.

The whole point of owning a home computer is for it to be intuitive, easy to use for ANY task you want it to do! Hence the Windowing system is employed by EVERY MAJOR OS on the planet. I shouldn't be forced to learn administration skills to troubleshoot my issues of using the system for seemingly end-user tasks. That shouldn't stop me from ever wanting to learn administration skills for more powerful use of my PC (web-hosting/webserver/network administration/webblogging/compiling code/etc).

And I'm no newbie of the Windows OS. Just think MS could better integrate their applications with their OS in terms of updates & harmony.

 

[m,tz206]

I can't wait until April comes - then I'll see a Page 2 article aboue "New Hardware in May/June?"

 

[numediaman]

I can't wait until April comes - then I'll see a Page 2 article aboue "New Hardware in May/June?"

Ain't gonna happen. 10.3.3 was released today (as I predicted!! Look it up ), G5s are soon to come. It's about time.

 

[Bilvox]

1st qrtr=music, 2nd qrtr=powerbook and power macs

With apple concentrating their first quarter on Itunes store, the new line of Ipodmini's and other Ipod goodies I think come april first when the financial 2nd quarter begins we will see their focus now include what sort of new updates and upgades to help boost the sales of Mac computers.
They will be helped in this by wider interest and compatability with their Ipods, welcomed upgades to their lines of computers, perhaps a focus on the stability and virtually virus free nature of the Mac OSx will also help.
So those like me waiting for any sort of bump in an upgrade in the powerbooks 15 I think our chances of having our patience pay off will be apparent come the first weeks of april...
well...
I hope
-bilvox


http://www.bilvox.com

 

[spinko]

if they are concentrating so much on mipods, how come they underestimated demand so badly ?

 

[spinko]

from yet another rumor site, no idea how reliable
http://croquer.free.fr/

basically it's saying that US gov. institutions and labs are buying up all available new G5 systems to replace some of their virus prone Winboxes. In all around 10'000 units (some labs using super computers with 1024 processors).... take it with a pinch of salt

2004-04-08 - Retard G5 (suite)

Environ 70 U9 (cf. plus bas) ont été commandé par des grands comptes et agences gouvernementales, style NSA... Une dizaine de laboratoires institutionnels ont déjà reçu leur super-ordinateur équipé de 1024 processeurs G5 @ 2.6 GHz. Cela représente déjà plus de 10000 G5, soit une bonne partie de la production d'IBM => pénurie.

Apple annoncera officiellement le projet U9 cet automne avec une version équipée de PPC975 @ 3 GHz disponible aux personnes aisées (+- 3 M$ par unité).

 

[windowsblowsass]

from yet another rumor site, no idea how reliable
http://croquer.free.fr/

basically it's saying that US gov. institutions and labs are buying up all available new G5 systems to replace some of their virus prone Winboxes. In all around 10'000 units (some labs using super computers with 1024 processors).... take it with a pinch of salt

pretty possible there was a rumor about goverment securitie or something in tiger and thay used NEXt boxes for awhile