The Future of Apple's Pro Desktop Line 266
SB_SamuraiSam writes "WWDC is drawing nearer and ArsTechnica has a thorough look at what they think Apple's plans are for their future Pro desktop line. It's a decent read. As always Ars has a competent pulse on Apple and is more reasonable than purely speculative. From the article:
I think Apple's CPU choice is clear cut. Strange as it sounds, the Xeon 5100 series is the best fit for the Mac. If Apple wants to keep the Quad name alive, it's the only option. Dual CPU configurations are not possible with anything else in Intel land, so if Apple wants to offer two CPUs and four cores, Xeon is the only game in town. With the benchmarks we have seen, the Core 2 Duo is a clear winner for Intel, outperforming anything AMD has to offer. The Xeon? With its faster FSB and different memory, it's even faster than the Core 2 Duo."
Windows faster on a Mac (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Switch? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still not fully convinced. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Switch? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Switch? (Score:3, Insightful)
And don't forget Pros using Apple apps - they're UB already.
Re:The Switch? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have any numbers of any kind to back this up, so take this with several large dollops of salt, but: I suspect that the number of creative pros who rely on Adobe tools is much, much higher than the number of those who rely on the Apple in-house tools.
And don't underestimate the capacity of design pros to drag their feet. For years, I knew graphic artists who refused to upgrade to OS X because Quark wouldn't run natively in it. Of course, when the new version of Quark finally was release, Adobe's answer was arguably much better.
Re:pure speculation (Score:2, Insightful)
Its a workstation.
Abd sadly, AMDs advantage rather violently evaporated the last 2 weeks.
Re:Windows faster on a Mac (Score:2, Insightful)
Although Apple has introduced Boot camp, I find it difficult to believe that they intended the primary OS to be Windows.
I tend to be optimistic, and believe that Apple is trying to woo third party vendors to take advantage of the new architecture, and introduce more applications.
Woodcrest for the high end, Conroe for others (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple desperately needs to update their powermac line; its embarassing when compared to any current PCs.
Apple:
Dual-core 2.3GHz PowerPC G5 processor
512MB of 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-4200)
250GB Serial ATA hard drive
16x SuperDrive (double-layer)
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 with 256MB GDDR SDRAM
$2,499.00
Dell XPS 700:
Dual-core 3.0ghz Pentium D
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 2 DIMMs
320GB Serial ATA Harddrive
16x DVD-ROM
16x Dual-Layer DVD+/-R/RW Dvd burner
Dual 256MB nVidia GeForce 7900 GS in SLI
20 inch UltraSharp(TM) 2007FPW Widescreen Digital Flat Panel
$2503
For $4 more, you get a faster processor, 4 times the memory, more harddrive space, dual optical drives, SLI, and a 20" LCD. Apple has done a good job of making sure that they add a lot of mac only accessories (or gimmicks depending on your point of view) that make direct comparisons to a PC harder. Stuff like backlit keyboards with light sensors, integrated webcam, frontrow, firewire, small formfactor, etc.
On a tower, things like expandibility, quiet operation, and size are pretty important and apples last workstation was fairly poor by that standard. The powermac looks nice, but 2 harddrive bays and 1 optical bay aren't going to cut it in such a large case.
Apple's brand is strong enough to command some premium, but they certainly are immune to market pressure and may need to realign their pricepoints. Mac minis need to start at $500, imacs at $1000, and Mac pros at $1500. Notebooks should start at $800 and $1500 respectively.
Re:Xeon are for the XServe! (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's rescue the term "creative pro" (Score:5, Insightful)
Your suspicion is based on the erroneous assumption that all "creative pros" are people who work in graphic design, publishing, web design, etc.
Let's not forget that filmmakers are "creative pros" and a lot of them are using Final Cut Pro Studio and Shake. Musicians are "creative pros" and a lot of them are aready using UB versions of Garageband or Logic. Ableton Live is also already Universal Binary, and very widely used by laptop musicians and DJs.
In fact, a lot of musicians are even using Final Cut Pro Studio, because they loved Soundtrack Pro and their only option to upgrade was an attractively priced crossgrade offer to FCP Studio.
There are many professional creatives already working on Intel Macs to earn their daily bread.
So let's stop acting as if design pros are the only pros who are "creative". They didn't invent creativity, and judging by the current state of the majority of the web, they're not the final word in it either.
Re:As A Quad-970 Owner I'm Sick To My Stomach (Score:5, Insightful)
People like you - the PowerPC devotee - make me embarrassed to be a 20+year Mac user.
Wasn't your Quad worth the money you paid for it when you bought it? You do realize Apple has to keep revving it's product line, don't you?
Face it - Intel's latest offerings are a better than the 970FX, which is a several-year-old design. The Core 2 has longer legs than the G5 in any form.
Apple's done it's users a favor by moving to a faster, less expensive, more readily available microprocessor part. They've also done users a favor by producing an easily-portable OS and gracious backwards compatibility.
You may pine for the days when you could argue the vagaries of microarchitectures you don't understand on Slashdot, but some of us actually have work to do and look forward to faster, more productive machines - and don't mind paying a few extra dollars for Apple design and the Mac OS. We like the relative simplicity Apple has brought to the x86 platform and we'll enjoy using our faster machines while you moan about your "Four by four monster style" PowerPC.
Go complain up a rope.
Re:As A Quad-970 Owner I'm Sick To My Stomach (Score:5, Insightful)
For games consoles with dedicated software? Perhaps.
For scientific computing and HPC? Sure.
As an off-board number cruncher and accelerator chip? Yup.
As a desktop? Heck no, a multi-core x86 or indeed PPC knocks it in to a cocked hat.
BTW, I own both a dual 2GHz G5 and a dual-1.8 iMacIntel. The intel box smokes the G5 by a long distance.
Re:The Switch? (Score:5, Insightful)
To stay on topic, I've always felt that Apple releases hardware and then developers create software to take full advantage of it. In short, hardware drives software development. It seems to differ slightly from the WinTel universe where hardware upgrades are often invoked by mew software. Admittedly, I have this perception because I always upgrade when new software runs dog slow on my PC. I don't seem to do that on my Mac as much, though the Intel move will probably hasten an upgrade from suddenly ancient G4.
Re:Woodcrest for the high end, Conroe for others (Score:3, Insightful)
However, it doesn't change much to your conclusion. A decent dual-core, dual cpu rig powermac G5 from Apple with 2GB of RAM, the Nvidia 7800 graphics card and a 20-inch monitor costs about 5k, whereas the similarly specced Dell Precision costs 3.5k. The difference is substantial.
However the Powermacs are nice, well made and powerful enough, at these prices only relatively rich companies buy them, but evidently Apple wants to be in that market.
Re:I'm still not fully convinced. (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple is doing what is possible whith the chips that are available. And of course its a no brainer that as soon as a CPU with four cores or more is available from Intel, Apple will be looking for ways to get it in a Mac.
Re:pure speculation (Score:3, Insightful)
Amd Also has plans for Hyper Transport based cards and Co-processors that sound like the next thing to have in the high end market and people in it who are not into games may want to go for it.
Re:Woodcrest for the high end, Conroe for others (Score:5, Insightful)
Capacity of 16GB of memory. (the Dell maxes out at 8)
The video card has a Dual-Link DVI capable of driving 30" displays. (not on the standard Dell, probably an option)
Apple has two 4x PCI-Express slots and one 8x slot open. (the dell has one 1x and one 8x open.. but in fairness does have the space for SLI)
The Apple has FireWire 800, which if you are doing video is a god-send. (not an option on the Dell... you just can't pump that data over the busses if it is not connected to the NorthBridge and expect to have decent performance)
Optical audio in and out (probably an add-in option on the Dell... possibly third-party)
Go look at Dell's site for things that have those sorts of specs and you will be in the "Workstation" class products, and you will be looking at a large price jump.
And your summary judgement that the G5 is not as good as the Pentium D is very arguable. The two processors are in the same class as each other, to the point where saying either one of them is "faster" is misleading at best. You have to be very specific about what "faster" means in order to have an honest comparison. Anything else is simply a lie.
And as to the prices you say that Apple "has to" have. I think that Apple's continued existence over the last few decades means that they have a good idea what they "have to" do. And if you look at products that are comparable (and I challenge you to find a product that is comparable to the Mac mini... remember size is a real feature) I think that your illusions of Mac's being significantly more expensive disappear.
Re:Quad CPU is expensive software wise too (Score:4, Insightful)
If your needs justify the expense of a Quad-core computer, then your needs also justify the expense of the professional software needed to drive it properly. After all, "professional" means that you are making money doing that.
Re:The Switch? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no evidence for this. You can buy a Dell or HP that has the exact same components as a Mac Pro.
Re:Nope (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Quad CPU is expensive software wise too (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:pure speculation (Score:2, Insightful)
Why unfortunately?
Let's leave brand loyalism out of this. The whole purpose of capitalism is for this exact phenomenon to happen. The "underdog" company (AMD) came up with great products, people bought those products, the big bad corporation (Intel) got spooked and was forced to play harder to catch up. Result? The stunning results we're seeing from Conroe.
As long as we're moderately sure that Intel is playing fair and not leveraging their position to kick AMD out, I don't care who has the best processors. I want them to compete for that spot, just like I see nVidia and ATi doing.
Re:As A Quad-970 Owner I'm Sick To My Stomach (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:pure speculation (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Nope (Score:3, Insightful)