The analysts are weighing in on the expected incusion of PowerPC 970 CPUs in Apple’s upcoming Power Macintosh G5 line. Some analysts’ takes on Power Mac G5 are breathtaking. Breathtakingly stupid:
“Although it’s a new processor, I’d expect to see less brandishing around the processor and more around the features and packages that the systems come in,” Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds told NewsFactor Network. “I expect to see more about the Mac than I do about the processors.”
“The challenge that Apple has had is that they’ve occasionally pulled past Intel on pure speed — I think those days are behind us now,” Reynolds told NewsFactor. “I don’t think we’ll see them crowing about raw performance; instead, they’re more likely to stick with Apple’s core values where they have a real advantage in terms of usability.”
Although these specifications enable the Macintosh to be on par with leading-edge Windows boxes, Reynolds told NewsFactor that “this won’t affect their market; they’re really a niche player now.”
“In light of Intel’s upcoming launch of its Pentium 4 with hyperthreading, IDC analyst Alan Promisel noted, Apple might benefit by moving its architecture to the Pentium side. ‘And Apple has been looking at it,’ he told NewsFactor,” full article here.
“I think it is a big morale booster for the Mac user base to see a brand-new next-generation platform,” IDC analyst Roger Kay told CNET News.com. “It gives them confidence that there are still some legs to the Mac platform.” If you’ve just eaten, wait a bit before tackling this one. Full mess here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’re speechless – except to say that if you know anything about the 970’s performance, the personal computer world is in for quite a surprise come Monday.
Frankly, I’m not worried about market share. In fact, I don’t give a damn about it. Apple is doing a fairly grand job at making a profit, and as long as they do, they’ll keep making Macs. That’s what I care about. And the fact that I can count on Apple to continue innovating and pushing the envelope means that I can always count on having the best computer on my desk. PC users can care or not…it won’t change the fact that their system will always eat Apple’s dust.
Like I mentioned in the other forum maybe Apple should adopt AMD’s arbitrary naming scheme where 2200 or whatever isn’t directly related to clockspeed.
The 970 1.4 ghz can be the G5 3000 or some such.
Even better call it the �G5 Ultra 3000 TURBO!�
See : �My G5 Ultra 3000 Turbo can kick your P4 2.5�s ass!� sounds more convincing than �My G5 1.4 ghz is faster than your P4 2.5 ghz!�
(It�s a joke. It�s a joke. I�m not serious about the naming scheme and to mac users it�s disgusting but it might actually look convincing to a lot of the ‘common folk’ i.e. non macusers and probably to a lot of brain deficient �analysts�.)
G5 will roast the P4! I can’t wait for the bunny suit commercials again.
Expect a photoshop comparison but all so an MP3 encode and an Mpeg 2 encode to show off real world simple task differences.
I would also guess there will be a high end scientific Application comparison that uses altivec heavily.
The analysts may be correct. Apple may be a niche player and this might not help market-share. But if that’s the case it will be because apple does not take off the gloves in advertising them.
You have the heavy weight punch. Now use it Apple!
You know what? All this build up has been so much fun I don’t care if Steve just reveals an update to iChat
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
Never seen this much buzz or passion within 100 yards of a wintel box.
IF the G5/970 stuff happens Monday the best bit is the way that Jobs is such an enthusiast. I may be being an idealist here, but there’s something real neat about seeing the CEO of a company you enjoy being a customer of actually raving about his products with real passion – IF he does a G5 v WIntel bake-off you just KNOW it’ll rock so much.
Monday feels like Xmas, Birthday and Payday all rolled into one x 100.
I can’t wait!
MP3 encode?
A calculator can do that. Lets see some hardcore DIVX and MPEG4 encoding. Lets see some UT2K3 scores (cpu intensive game). Lets see some 3d rendering benchies. Lets see some intensive multitasking benchies to demo the workflow advantages for pros. I want to see 8GB Ram XServe benchmarks running Oracle dB’s compared to Itanium 2.
970 will really shine on EXTREMELY HEAVY lifting in apps that are optimized. An MP3 encode will never beat a P4, beacuse the best encoders are tuned for the P4 chip and all its cool features – yes, the P4 (since the Northwood version) is a cool chip and anyone who tells you different is an idiot or some one that does not read.
The G5s will be good but the P4 will still win performance/$ – but if you really cared about that you would be posting on a Dell board. Yuck!
My local Apple retailer won’t have the 970 next week – that much I know. Hopefully Apple fills the channel fast because I can think of lots of uses for a 2*2GHz 64 bit PC with Serial ATA and a couple GB or DDR.
PR ratings ala AMD are a good idea. Especially if you select some cool 64 bit native apps that really use the extra mem addressing and bandwidth.
G5 5500+ anyone?
If you can back up your claims there is nothing wrong with this approach.
It may be that MP3 encoding is not the hardest task to throw at the 970, but it’s a task that most people can relate to. If they’ve got an optimised 64-bit version of iTunes, then they could run a test to encode a whole album from the time it takes toinsert the disc to the time it takes to eject it.
Now I’m not entirely sure, so I’m willing to be corrected here, but I suspect that the encoding won’t start automatically and the disc won’t be ejected automatically by the PC doing the encoding, with the user having to click a button somewhere to do that in the PC app. That could be used as an example of how the workflow is better on a mac. Show the time to do the raw encoding, but also the time to accomplish the real-world task.
And if it’s not significantly faster, then do another test !
What would be really cool is a bake off between the Dual 2GHz G5 against 2 high end P4s. Set one P4 off to do digital movie encode, and the other doing something like a MP4 encode. Then set the Dual 2GHz G5 to do both. Now Apple might need to work the tests just right for this, but it would be great to say “My Dual G5 beats 2 of your P4 wintel boxes”. Also it would show off the great multitasking of OS X. Oh, we need to max the RAM on both, so when CNET says they didn’t match the RAM, Apple can say “But the P4 only holds this much, ours holds 8 GBs”.
Here’s a simple way to explain the gigahertz myth to a Dull drone.
64=32 bit x 2
2.0 gig 64 bit 970= 4.0 gig 32 bit x86 or PPC
So Apple wins the gigahertz race!
Simple, technically wrong, but about as accurate as any of intel’s advertising.
(Anyone else see a possible issue with IBM selling intel-based thinkpads?)
If I can convince three people to switch just by showing them my .mac webpage, then apple’s marketing, if done right, should convince another 10% of the computer market to switch. Apple, would you please actually advertise in a way that convinces people that Macs are better experiences? Most people don;t even have a clue…
I don’t think we DO know anything solid about the 970’s performance yet. But neither do these analysts. Come Monday, they may well wish they had waited for information before speaking!
As for “expecting more about the Mac”… they do know this was a single leaked GIF bullet list, right? Not the whole official 2-hour announcement? Not the whole PMG5 mini-site?
All press is good press–draw attention now, and THEN see what the press says AFTER the 970s and Panther are out.
hywel thomas
My ThinkPad does encoding without any user input and ejects the cd when done. If you’re going to make comments about the “other” platform, at least be familiar with it. Some of us dual-platform users know the advantages of both.
Right now, my TP kicks my G4dual all over the place… if a 970 measures up, the G4 will be replaced and a Mac will reign again in my household. Right now, they’re thoroughly outpaced.
Thank You, Matthew24.
For those of you who haven’t read Matthews links, there’s some great information on the PPC970. A well researched piece of outstanding journalism..
Humph,
read my bloody post. ‘willing to be corrected’. I suggested something but also qualified it by saying I wasn’t sure if wintel machines did that. We typically criticise them for having awful workflows when it isn’t always the case. All you needed to say was that it wasn’t the case. You didn’t need to say “If you’re going to make comments about the “other” platform, at least be familiar with it. ” What I said was ” Now I’m not entirely sure, so I’m willing to be corrected here, but I suspect…”
So that justified your attack does it ?
Twat !
Dear fellow Mac users,
Do you really _want_ all those Wintel users to switch to the Mac?
Please think about that for a second. To me, the Macintosh experience consists of more than just the hardware and software – the actual _users_ contribute a large part to the mix.
IMHO the average Mac user outperforms the average PC user in a number (if not all) fields. Intelligence, creativity, wit, taste, style, social abilities, humor, elegance – to anyone who has been on both sides of the fence there can be no doubt – the average Mac user is the brighter light.
If you take a look at the Mac web and its contributions it becomes quite obvious that there is nothing that comes even close on the PC side of the web. PC web boards are cluttered with immature commentary, foolish questions, primitive jokes.
Visit a brick-and-mortar Mac store and talk to the people -sales persons and customers- and compare that to the crowd in PC shops. Anyone not noticing the difference must suffer from a lack of perceptiveness.
To get back to my initial question – do you _want_ that to change?
If Apple really went for it to get the average PC-using Joe to switch to the Mac, e.g. by using advertising aimed at the not-so-bright-want-lots-of-mhz-no-matter-what-and-as-cheap-as-possible customer, sure, they might considerably extend the Mac’s market share, but at what price?
The result would be a crowd of idiots invading the Mac world and I sure would not want that to happen.
I rather have the uninformed and naive people stick with the Wintel side and am quite sure the advertising and information currently provided by Apple and the Mac media is absolutely sufficient to convert anyone with half a brain in its skull to buy a Mac.
Best regards
In response to think (different), again…
I think you’re absolutely correct. Well, almost. I’d like to see market share rise to maybe 10 or 15% so that a lot of the yawn-inducing Apple-are-about-to-fold arguments are blown away and for the support of things like banking websites to be driven by a commercial need to support a significant user base rather than just being lazy and only guaranteeing that stuff works on Windows, under IE only (despite all the technologies and standards in place meaning this should not happen – W3C / Java etc).
If Apple become dominant, they won’t innovate like they do now. There’d be too much to lose short term. With a small but significant market share, as Apple have now, they have to beat the competition in a number of areas to survive. Currently they’re best in terms of design, arguably the GUI and most certainly software ‘under-the-skin’. Performance is obviously a problem, but hopefully that will change next week.
If they were to get to, say, 10% share of the server market too, that would be great.
“From: Ashami
Frankly, I’m not worried about market share. In fact, I don’t give a damn about it. Apple is doing a fairly grand job at making a profit, and as long as they do, they’ll keep making Macs. That’s what I care about. And the fact that I can count on Apple to continue innovating and pushing the envelope means that I can always count on having the best computer on my desk. PC users can care or not…it won’t change the fact that their system will always eat Apple’s dust.”
You have a selfish and narrow view of the Mac going forward.
An increase in Mac market share of 10 to 15 percent would represent numbers too large to ignore by websites, and apps developers. That is the importance of adding market share.
People that get tied up over platform polemnics are dumb. Coke – Pepsi, INtel – AMD, Wintel – Apple, whatever. Smart people buy the best value for their needs. Sometime Apple sometimes not. My last two machines were not Apples. That is Apples fault, not mine.
The 970 may change all that. I hope it does.
re: ‘Anyone else see a possible issue with IBM selling intel-based thinkpads?’
IBM is not getting out of the Wintel business. The 970 sales will be a fraction of their x86 sales. IBM is a smart company that makes everyting their customers could ever need. Power serves, Itanium, AMD-64, P4 and Athlon machines, you name it.
Maybe it’s a conspiracy!
These analysts have their $$$ in the likes of Intel and Microsoft. They’re not gonna like it when Apple brings out hardware and software that craps all over what those companies have to offer. If the professional Mac users say they’re going PC because the G4s aren’t fast enough then they’ll come right back when the G5 kicks Pentium 4 butt.
If a G5 is twice as fast as a Pentium 4 then a job will be done in half the time.
That means you can do twice as many jobs in the same time as you had done in the same time before G5.
That means twice as much money in the bank.
Then the only ones not to switch to Mac will be those dumb analysts with their $$$ in the Microsoft/Intel cartel.
And people, let’s not forget all those analysts who were recommending buying Enron or Worldcom shares, only for us to find they were the M.O.A.B (Mother Of All Bullsh*ts). It’s funny how THEY all made money from those shares whilst hardworking people were swindled out of their life savings and pensions.
I suspect if there is a “bake-off” at WWDC, Jobs will show Pentium toasting performance and then look at the doc, and bring up a video or DVD burning in the background; “well,” he’ll say, “I must have logged in without noticing someone was already using the computer. I suppose we could re-run the performance test if 3x faster than a 3.4 Ghz Pentium isn’t fast enough for you…”
At least, that’s how I’d play it off.
All just fantasy. All I know is, if they don’t have a Dual 2Ghz box with 1Ghz bus, I am going to be so dissappointed. I’ve always wanted them to outdo the rumours sites. Maybe 2.4 Ghz with a 1.2 Ghz bus?
Does not the author of this article see that he is on the opposite end of the same breathtakingly stupid spectrum? How analysts and “professional” commentators continue to make comments about things that they have never even seen.
“at only 2ghz this wont erase the ghz gap..” – wow a stupid comment.
” if you know anything about the 970’s performance, the personal computer world is in for quite a surprise come Monday” – wow a comment just as stupid.
No one even knows if the apple page “slip” wasnt the result of hackers, an internal prank that got out by mistake, or just a malicious employee. and even if they are real specs, No one has seen these machines! None of you at all has any clue how these machines will perform.
Do us all a favor and hold your breath until monday.
yawn! just more blah blah blah bull from Wintel pukes try to pull some ones strings. As if anyone cares what they think, if you can call it thinking.
” ” if you know anything about the 970’s performance, the personal computer world is in for quite a surprise come Monday” – wow a comment just as stupid.
No one even knows if the apple page “slip” wasnt the result of hackers,”
You’re an idiot Dave. As the original writer pointed out “if you know anything about the 970” not “if you saw the specs on the Apple Store site”..
If you truly KNEW anything about the 970, you’d stick that foot back in your mouth where it belongs and strap in for some computing horsepower.
Hey Munan you are a moron.
The point is, where did we see ppc970 on Apples page?
I DIDNT – did you?
The point is, NONE OF YOU KNOW ANYTHING. Yet you all have these god awful mindless opinions.
For all you know, the ppc970 could be a mac-rumor pipe dream. the G5 could still be a motorola chip.
For all you know, until if/when an Apple box ships with a ppc970 it might be a total dog.
I’ve heard the same thing for 10 or 15 years. Wait for the PPC601 – its simply amazing its going to DESTROY the Pentium – yeah we all know how that turned out. Then, its wait for the ppc604! Thats the real PPC we were promised the 601 was just a tech demo. The 604 now that was a GREAT chip for its time, but in Apples boxes it was a ho-hum performer. I remember PowerComputings 604 systems wiping the floor with Apples 604’s, not to mention the Pentiums it was supposed to thrash. Just because you have a good chip, doesnt mean you have a good system. Then came the great G3, the real real result of the PPC partnership that we had all been waiting for. Flop… dont worry because the G4 was going to be soo superior, altivec is UNSTOPPABLE! (quick how many altivec enabled programs do you have? And how many YEARS has the G4 been out? Just how many 64bit ppc970 apps do you expect to see? If your expecting a flood, you’re going to be one disappointed idiot) Anyone who actually believes that a currently shipping G4 system is anywhere near as fast as a current Pentium system needs to pull their foot out of their brain. Oh, but thats ok, because… now we have the great G5!!!! and of course, despite the fact that you dont even know what it is, you’re all ready for the computer world to turn on its ear by sheer force of its unstoppable greatness..
LOL.. People like you are breathtakingly stupid, gullible, mindless and unable to see past their 2 dimensional preconcieved opinions.
Well, Dave, i won’t call you a moron, but i must correct your statement that “None of you know anything.” IBM has already released a fair amount of information about the 970 (beginning at last year’s Microprocessor Forum). Based on that information, many people expect the 970 to rival the fastest Pentiums currently available, if not surpass them. These expectations are not pure Mac-biased fantasy.
In reference to the earlier post about how increasing the Macintosh market share would introduce undesirable people into our community, I’d have to say there’s got to be millions of Mac people out there waiting to be awakened. Let’s face it, the Macintosh presence in the general population is so minimal that plenty of people who could stand to benefit from a pleasurable computing experience simply don’t know what they’re missing. Once they do, they will embrace it like the rest of us.