Apple posted a net profit of US$61 million, or 16 cents a share, for its fiscal 2004 third quarter ended June 26, 2004. Apple said it shipped 876,000 Macs and 860,000 iPods during the quarter, representing a 14 percent increase in CPU units and a 183 percent increase in iPods over the year-ago quarter. During Apple’s third quarter conference call, CFO Peter Oppenheimer revealed that the next generation iMac, which will begin shipping in September, will be powered by the PowerPC G5 processor.
Apple posts 61 million USD profit; G5 to power new iMac
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Now I wonder what range of clock speeds the new G5 iMacs will come in. Hopefully up to a single G5. Can’t wait to see the new design as well.
“Hopefully up to a single G5” Should read “Hopefully up to a single 2GHz G5”
Since it will be a single G5 CPU, I would like to see the 2.5Ghz, mabe in the high-end iMac. A good lineup would be 1.8Ghz, 2.0Ghz and 2.5Ghz – Like the PowerMac lineup.
They killed the Dual 1.6Ghz for the PowerMac, I hope they are not thinking of putting them in the iMac. I would put it inside a future new eMac mabe…
With iMac having only one G5 CPU, running at whatever speed, I wonder how they will perform VS Intel CPU or Athlon64.
New iMac shipping in september, Intel will be close to release the 3.8Ghz P4 and AMD will be there with something as good or better. And we will probably finaly see Windows XP 64 bits.
In many benchmark, the Dual G5 is sometime faster than one single Intel P4 CPU…. Other time, the P4 wins. So i’m curious about a single G5…
I know, speed is not everything and benchmark are not the best way to feel the power of a complete system. OS X does give Apple extra point VS Win XP….
In all the benchmarks I’ve seen, a Dual 2+Ghz Power Mac G5 blows a single P4 out of the water, and usually beats Dual Xeon machines. In my opinion, the only comparable system to a G5 these days is a dual Athlon 64/Opteron, with either coming out slightly ahead depending on the benchmark.
I hope the G5 chips used in the iMacs are pretty speedy, because the kind of power you can get in a cheap PC (less than $700 from Compaq, for example) these days is pretty scary. The new iMac has *got* to compete, or Apple will still see sluggish sales in that area.
Jared
In a few years (5 I beliebve) CRTs will go the way of the dodo. Apple will still need an econo level model, so the eMac will still exist, but it will have an LCD. I wonder what iMac will have to really differentiate it then. Right now I’m thinking that it really is the CRT vs LCD. I don’t think that just different clock speeds or number of USB ports will be enough to make a difference. Any ideas anyone?
BTW I don’t consider this OT since it is about the future (albeit far future) of the iMac.
Good news about the 970chip and the iMac. I hope Apple prices them aggressively. IBM get a moving!
“because the kind of power you can get in a cheap PC (less than $700 from Compaq, for example) these days is pretty scary”
I agree, my Compaq is running a 2800+ chip/512 or ram runs nice. I was looking at refurbs the other day, 374.00 now from hp…….runs ps and premeire pro fine.
The eMac typically has lower end graphics cards than the iMac. Although I believe that gap no longer exists due to the fact the iMac hasn’t been updated in quite a while. I believe the eMac will stay G4, while the iMac will be G5. So there will be a much larger speed difference between the two.
I hope the G5 in the iMac didn’t shock anyone.
I would guess they do something like a 17″ with the 1.6, and then a 20 inch model with 1.8 and 2.0 G5 in them. Doubt they would put the top chip in one, have to keap a spread in the line, and they probably are making all they can to get in the powermacs. Now they probably have lots of 1.6 and 1.8 G5s around they can use up.
A 20 inch imac with a 2.0 G5 under 2 grand would be great.
I never liked the original iMac design nor was I particularly crazy about the desk lamp but I did like the 20″ flat panel monitor on the newer iMacs. I’m hoping Apple can tone down the “cutsey” factor a bit and come up with something that’s functional and aesthetically pleasing. This is the first time I’ve seriously considered purchasing a Mac system and with the news of the G5 being the base for the newest line of iMacs I’m really excited.
But that hasn’t stopped Apple from making a profit.
I recently bought a new 1GHz iBook, so they got my money.
Sure, i could have got a 3 GHz Dell for the same money, but the Dell is huge, heavy, has the most enormous fan and heatsink i’ve ever seen on a laptop, is plain ugly and runs Windows.
Basically the Dell represents everything I dislike about the modern computer industry.
I wouldn’t actually get anything done appreciably faster – a portable WiFi ssh client and MP3/DivX player isn’t exactly taxing on CPU resources.
The iBook/Panther is fast enough for me – extra CPU would just be wasted on heat and battery drainage.
Personally, I attach a lot of value to elegance and style when it comes to computing. Something the manufacturers of x86 machines have seemingly no appreciation for whatsoever.
Thats why Apple continues to make a profit, why they probably always will as long as they avoid falling into the ‘200 separate models in the product line’ trap.
This whole ‘Megahertz myth’ is responsible for a lot of confusion – Even Intel are now feeling the sting since they can’t sell Itaniums to the general market until they compete on clockspeed with x86-64 chips (I won’t hold by breath).
Some of us buy computers because we feel we have to have the fastest machine possible, and some of us buy computers because we feel we have to have a pleasant environment in which to work and play – I think Macs appeal more to the second group.
I guess a similar analogy is cars – I drive a Mazda RX-7, but my mother drives a BMW. They both use comparable amounts of gas to get from A-B, but neither us enjoy driving each others vehicles – because hers is too mild and mine is too wild.
Homogeneity is not what I want to see in the computer industry – I want to pick and choose a machine that works for me, even if it costs a bit more.
I, for one – am damn glad Apple is here.
There are many who are comparing the iMac against the PC world, lets put it this way, the decline of PowerMac sales, before the introduction of the PowerMac G5, wasn’t due to the PowerMac being beaten but due to the “bang for the buck” coming out pretty badly.
However, now that the there is a G5, people don’t strictly say, “that computer is faster, therefore I’ll buy that one”, people will look at the complete computer, what software it has to offer, the specifications, the warrenty, the quality of the support.
Having owned this eMac for over a year and exercised the technical support supplied by Apple; the quality of the support is worth the price difference alone.
I’m stuck down in the south pacific (Australia/New Zealand) and let me tell you, want to order a Dell under five minutes, try learning Hindi or otherwise you’ll spend a good 30 minutes talking in Pigeon English trying to order the computer “of your dreams” or try to get support for that “dream machine” that has just arrived.
HP is just as bad, try ringing them up to get a straight answer on buying a computer from them; why can’t I just ring up, order a computer and thats it? why do they have to shove me through their blood sucking reseller network that suck the life out of every customer who comes through?
As for the G5 iMac and eMac, I wouldn’t be surprised if the low end eMac is upgraded at the end of this year with the new Freescale “system on a chip” which will debut at around 2Ghz and scale beyond 3Ghz. Yes, it is 32bit, however, from the rumour mill I have heard clock for clock, it will be faster than the P4/XP(32bit)
Well, somebody has to mention it. This is terrible news for all the analysts that keep predicting Apple’s demise.
[url]http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell/index.shtml%5B/url]
I really liked the G4 as a low-end desktop chip. The G5 is just too power-hungry to light my fire. I am going to miss the G4 when it is gone. Hopefully it will live on in the eMac and the iBook.
Goodbye old friend.
The same day they start offering a G5 Cube. The 500MHz G4 Cubes still sell used for $800 – $1,000 on eBay.
They sell used for more than a 1.25 GHz eMac!
Put an eMac in a box without a monitor and sell it to me for the same price and I am game.
Apple is ignoring that market only becase they are afraid it would take away from powermac sales.
“The same day they start offering a G5 Cube. The 500MHz G4 Cubes still sell used for $800 – $1,000 on eBay.”
I think the Cubes go for so much precisely because there were so few produced. If they sold in iMac-like number before being killed off, there is little doubt they would sell for a fraction of the pricethey are going for today. Thus, I don’t think used Cube prices are indicative of how large the market is for such a headless iMac/eMac, nor does it really say anything about whether such a beast WOULD decimate pro desktop sales.
“Sure, i could have got a 3 GHz Dell for the same money, but the Dell is huge, heavy, has the most enormous fan and heatsink i’ve ever seen on a laptop, is plain ugly and runs Windows.”
[snip]
Personally, I attach a lot of value to elegance and style when it comes to computing. Something the manufacturers of x86 machines have seemingly no appreciation for whatsoever.”
Uh, have you tried any Sony Vaio’s lately? They are lighter and have more battery life than iBooks and PowerBooks and Sony has put a lot of attention to elegance and style into their new models (hell, the Sony computer division is being called SonyStyle now..)
Sony Vaios – i looked at some, but the iBook is cheaper than they are.
Plus they run Windows, and just don’t feel as solid and as sleek as the iBook.
I like the look of the X505 and the little TR, the TR’s screen is pretty nice, and the built-in camera is cool.
But where i’m from the TR costs NZ$4,200 and my iBook cost NZ$2,500.
The others are just as fat and ugly as any other x86 laptops – theres a certain style about them, but Sony have nothing on Apple with the styling of those products. Of course, your opinion on that may differ.
The X505 is thin, but i doubt it has the battery life of the iBook, and besides, they both run Windows, which is not particularly useful to me.
I could put Linux on the vaio, but i’d likely lose functionality – I much prefer to have a UNIX-like environment with complete support from Apple.
If you’re in the market for a Windows laptop, I agree the Sonys are quite attractive.
I recently purchased an iBook, glad to see that a lot of other people have been too. Dollar for dollar, they aren’t very much more expensive than other laptops with similar features. The 1Ghz G4 is fast enough for everything I want to do (email, web, office apps, music, VPN access to work and digital photos).
I’ve never owned a Mac before, but it completely blows me away. Things a simple, they work and I don’t spend all my time tweaking things. Small things make it nice to use e.g. battery indicator, plug in an ethernet cable and it just works with my network(no config needed), small and light and huge battery life!
I’ve shown it to a lot of people and every single one of them has been impressed. There is life after Windows and it is very good!
The result looks very positive for Apple!
Cheers
Steve
PS I’m from New Zealand and I don’t have to many problems with accents over the phone. The real issue is that often you are talking to someone who knows nothing and is working from a trouble shooting sheet. I guess if you want better help, you have to pay more for it 🙂
The customer service reps tend to go through a script. Perhaps the poor and unsatisfactory customer service is also due to the fact that Indian customer service reps stick with the script however annoying or silly it can be. I’ve experienced it first hand with the Dell customer support … quite frustrating.
I have experienced the same scripted nonsense from Apple’s all american customer support as well. I have a 15″PB which had to go through 2 LCD replacements becuase of white spots.
The tech support rep made me ” reset the PMU”, “clear the PRAM” and do the whole dance, for “white spots on the LCD screen”. I can’t tell you how furstrating it was.
Dell, was no better , if not worse. This was American support in 1998 (no out sourcing then).
“Dell, was no better , if not worse. This was American support in 1998 (no out sourcing then).”
LOL. Outsourcing, both manufacturing, support, and otherwise, has been around much longer than that. Off-shoring and near-shoring are perhaps more recent…
LOL. Outsourcing, both manufacturing, support, and otherwise, has been around much longer than that. Off-shoring and near-shoring are perhaps more recent…
Thanks for the correction… I am quite aware of the usage of those terms.
However, slips do happen.
I wonder how much RAM the iMac will be able to hold? It has 64-bit addressing, why not utilize it.
Why would you need more than 4GB of RAM on a machine designed for home users?
My guess is around 2-4GB accounting for the size of the motherboard of the current iMac. Also the industrial desgin constraints apple puts on the iMacs won’t allow for enough slots or cooling for enough DIMMS to get more than about 4GB of RAM. I am guessing 2-4 slots.
I’m not going to join this minor skirmish, but the pedant in me forces me to note that the term “Pigeon English” should actually be “Pidgen English.”
Well, if you are going to go all pedantic on us, then at least be correct. Nothing more embarrasing than making a pedantic correction that is itself wrong. So, FYI: it is not “Pidgen English”, but “Pidgin”. Btw., you can also spell it lower case: pidgin.
See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin
Or here:
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=Pidgin&x=1…
Now that we’re done with that useless little scuffle, I’m happy to hear about the G5, though I’m waiting for it to appear in the PowerBooks. I’m so all over it when that happens. Of course, I won’t jump on the very first model, I’ll give it 3-4 months to see if any bugs turn up… sadly, a lot of problems with screens recently… seems maybe the QC is not where it should be.
Looking forward to seeing these new iMacs. I’m hoping for a 1.8/2/2.5 range, but my guess is it will start at 1.6 🙁
My next machine will be a duel 2.5 I think, but the new iMacs will be worth looking at. Be interested to see how Virtual PC runs on these G5’s when MS finally gets it out. That will be my bench.
b.t.w. I love ringing support (for my mobile, not computer) and being put through to India. I normally find support there as good, if not more friendly than here in Australia, besides, it’s fun to talk about the Cricket 😉
CaptainPinko,
Remember that the ‘e’ in eMac is for education — and one of the reasons that it is a CRT is that they are less prone to damage at the hands of K-12 kids (the other big reason being cost, of course). My prediction is that the CRT eMac will remain in the product line for quite a while.
I loved the globe (aka desklamp) iMac. They look great and they’re relatively silent. eMacs make a lot more noise. G5, hurray, I just wish they make the new ones as pretty and as _silent_, with a large, low-RPM fan or no fans, and a rubber suspended harddisk. Preferrably Seagate’s 7200.7 series. A new G5 cube model would rock too. The only thing I’m not sure I like with globe iMac is the closed nature of it. You can easily add RAM (I think) and an Airport card, but what if you want or need to change the harddisk or gfx card? I’d rather not have to send the entire thing to the repair shop. I guess it is possible to open the globe yourself, if you really want / need to, though. I’ll probably get me a used G4 iMac to have as a server, when the G5 iMacs have pushed down second-hand prices.
I for one am fed up of MS. My next machine will be an apple. Yes apple’s MHz are a bit behind but the overall peformance is good enough for me and i have no desire to paticipate in the longhorn (bloathorn) migration. XP had some value to it. it really is a lot more stable than 95/98 but i see absolutely no value in my world for the feature set that MS intends to push for longhorn.
Apple’s leadership with and improvements to OS X have impressed me as has their smooth transition to 64 bit. IBM will solve its problems soon enough.
I wonder if just hanging in there showing leadership and not being MS will eventually pay dividends for apple.
The iPod is not just brillant design. That little machine has given apple massive free publicity. Apple gets so much promo, good and bad, that the exposure could break down windows users….eventually
G5 iMac are much more interesting than G4… at their current price, one could get an iBook, or an eMac at half the price. But with the G5…
“G5 iMac are much more interesting than G4… at their current price, one could get an iBook, or an eMac at half the price. But with the G5…””
I agree, I want one or 2 for my office. Won’t be to long before we have G5 powerbooks.
The current generation of iMacs, IIRC is largely convection cooled, or if there is a fan, it only kicks on rarely.
The size of a single G5 heatsink very nearly the size of the heatsink over my dual G4 processors. It’s the biggest heatsink I’ve ever seen on a single processor.
I very much doubt that convection cooling will be enough to keep a G5 from going into meltdown.
ok, lets review for the one bazillienth time why the G5 PowerMacs have large heatsinks because it allows them to be much more quiet.
ok, lets review for the one bazillienth time why the G5 PowerMacs have large heatsinks because it allows them to be much more quiet.>>
And let’s review for the 999millionth time that one of the selling points of the iMac is that it’s practically silent. The only noise is that of the hard-drive whirring.
So, if they want to keep it that way, the case will have to be redesigned to accomodate the ginormous G5 heatsink.
If they keep the current case/formfactor, a fan will have to be added.
The size of a single G5 heatsink very nearly the size of the heatsink over my dual G4 processors. It’s the biggest heatsink I’ve ever seen on a single processor.
I’ve often wondered just how usefull those massive G5 heatsinks are and how much of it is for looks. Regarding their size for sound issues, I think Apple could have come up with a quiet design with smaller heatsinks, but damned if it isn’t impressive to see those beasts under the plastic skin. I mean, talk about industrial strength
!
… the G6 cometh … perhaps a POWER5 derivative to drive the high-end dualies
(I wish!)
So, if they want to keep it that way, the case will have to be redesigned to accomodate the ginormous G5 heatsink.
If they keep the current case/formfactor, a fan will have to be added.
Or they could be watercooled…. A single 1.6-2.0Ghz should be easy to watercool with a smaller heat exchange system than the dual 2.5 Ghz G5 wihtout a fan.
Even Intel are now feeling the sting since they can’t sell Itaniums to the general market until they compete on clockspeed with x86-64 chips (I won’t hold by breath).
Itanium was never meant to be an average consumer processor. It was primarily designed as a replacement for Hewlett Packards precision architecture(PA-RISC). HP is ramping up for the conversion now and despite percieved slowness due to lower MHZ it is right on line with with the MHZ curve from PA-8900. Believe it or not Itanium2 really kicks but in certain Unix applications.
It seems to me that the slow rate at which the G5 is incrementing its MHZ kills the market. I mean would you really notice a 500mhz different between a 2.0 and a 2.5? and would it be worth an extra $500? $1000? we chall see what Apple has planned.
I heard from someone that the new iMac will be an LCD monitor on a stand (i suppose it’ll look kinda like the new cinema displays) and the computer will be inside the actual monitor. Dunno how true this is but it sounds kinda interesting.
“It seems to me that the slow rate at which the G5 is incrementing its MHZ kills the market. I mean would you really notice a 500mhz different between a 2.0 and a 2.5? and would it be worth an extra $500? $1000? we chall see what Apple has planned.”
in the past year the (only going in to frequency here, not die size) went from 2 GHZ to 2.5 GHZ, an increase of 25%, on the x86 side of thingz intel went from 3.06 to 3.4? (though 3.6 is around the corner or out by now, i dont know). is the lower percentage increase of speed killing the x86 market? not really.
yes, it would have been swell to have a 3GHZ G5 out right now, but even a dual 2 GHZ G5 is pretty impressive as far as speeds go
>Itanium was never meant to be an average consumer processor.
> It was primarily designed as a replacement for Hewlett
> Packards precision architecture(PA-RISC). HP is ramping up
> for the conversion now and despite percieved slowness due
> to lower MHZ it is right on line with with the MHZ curve
> from PA-8900. Believe it or not Itanium2 really kicks but in
> certain Unix applications.
Of course the Itanium is a fast CPU, thats the whole point – In floating point and integer, it kicks ass on anything else from Intel or AMD, even at half the clockspeed.
I’d like to see the industry dump x86 and the ridiculous baggage that goes along with it like limited IRQs, legacy BIOS etc.
But it’s low clock speed means it simply will never appeal to the wider market who have been beaten with the ‘Megahertz stick’ by Intel for so long. I think they underestimated this problem enormously.
But Intel have created a market where new sales are driven by relentlessly ramping up the clock speed and painting this as the primary performance metric of their product, to try and sell new products that run at less than half the speed is a tough row to hoe.
And from what I remember, Itanium was supposed to be the Xeon’s successor – Intel were banking on AMD not having big enough balls to do what they did with x86-64, which would have essentially given Intel the volumes to bring the cost right down on Itanium, license the architecture back to AMD, give them huge clout over compiler and tools development, force an upgrade of applications across the board to be IA64 optimised – Which would have meant huge extra profits for Microsoft etc. and basically give them a license to print money for the next generation of Windows-oriented hardware.
That was the ‘big bet’ to use Steve Ballmer terminology they made on Itanium, but thanks to AMD and Microsoft’s sluggishness, it didn’t quite work out like that.
Of course the Itanium is a fast CPU, thats the whole point – In floating point and integer, it kicks ass on anything else from Intel or AMD, even at half the clockspeed.
On Benchmarks that have heavily optimized code. Itanium, and EPIC processor, leaves all the heavy lifting to the compiler. Spec Benchmarks are very easy to optimize in compilers. Not all code will run faster on an itanium.
From what I have heard generating optimized code for the itanium is a nightmare. So don’t expect apps to sunddenly perform better on itanium. Don’t go by benchmarks.
Itanium will always be relegated to a niche becuase it is too expensive and will always run x86 code (majority of the core floating around) much slower than xeon or any of the AMD variant.
>I’d like to see the industry dump x86 and the ridiculous >baggage that goes along with it like limited IRQs, legacy >BIOS etc.
Count how many IRQs in an nForce 2(e.g ASUS A7N8X Deluxe) based motherboard…