WWDC 2003 - Mac Heaven

[Jonbo298]

I was slightly off. I guess they are comparing (in the pic Bond uploaded) the new Mac to a Dell.
*Now only needs 60,000 pop cans*

[gekko]

Ok, time for the big wrap up. Stream is up, but getting pounded, as is everything else at Apple. Might want to wait a couple hours, it will start over at about 4 PM CST.

Panther - http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/
In the meantime, they showed off Panther and all the new features. Ships before the end of the year for $129. No surprise to anyone. There are a ton of new things added to Panther that won't make much sense unless you actually see them demonstrated in the keynote. The best OS just got better

Safari - http://www.apple.com/safari/
The final version of Safari is out. No huge differences, but it is out of the beta phase. Over 5 million downloads to date.

iChat AV - http://www.apple.com/ichat/
The public beta of iChat AV is out. Adds support for webcams, and audio chatting (I think).

iSight - http://www.apple.com/isight/
Apple released a webcam. Not just a webcam, the best webcam the world has ever seen. 640x480, 30fps. Steve Jobs did a fullscreen video chat with a guy in Paris. It's just sick. Of course, it's not cheap either. $149, so don't get it unless you're really going to use it. But like everything else, as time goes on, it will get cheaper. Though, I must say, if you see what it can do, $149 makes sense.

PowerMac G5 - http://www.apple.com/powermac/
Yes, the world's fastest personal computer Motorola is really the reason the G4 chip barely gained any speed as the years went on, so Apple pleased all Mac fans by giving it to IBM, and damn they did a good job. 2.0 ghz G5 chip (3.0ghz within 12 months), with speeds comparable to 3.0 ghz Intel chips (will get to that later). Of course, it still supports dual processors Apple finally updated the FSB, which was a big problem earlier. they basically had DDR RAM but a bus too slow to take advantage of it. Didn't make much sense. But they have a 1ghz FSB, surpassing the current 800mhz FSB used on PCs. Also has support for up to 8GB of RAM, AGP 8X, PCI and PCI X, FireWire 400 and 800, USB 2.0, Bluetooth, AirPort Extreme, Optical and Analog audio In and Out, 4X SuperDrives, and a new aluminum case. Has 9 fans, and it still very quiet, quieter than the current G4s. Shipping this August. Of course, you weird PC fans probably wonder how powerful it is, after all, that's been the major downfall of Macs, right?

The G5 was tested with both single and dual processors against a 3ghz P4 and Single/Dual 3.06ghz Xeon. They tested them on both floating-point and interger calculations. The G5 lost in single processor interger calculations to both processors, but won in the other 3 tests.

System throughput


Single processor speed


The tests were done by VeriTest, using SPEC CPU2000 industry standards. They also used Unix for both, making the tests even more accurate. Here are the published results, but it's just technical mumbo-jumbo going more in-depth into how the test was performed. http://www.veritest.com/clients/repo...erformance.pdf

And of course, there were other tests.

[bobcat]

I'll look at the benchmarks later, but those specs are like :eek:

Dual 2Ghz? What type of market r they going for?

[One Winged Angel]

I was thinking about buying a mac... I might consider this.

8 GB SDRAM?!?

*orgasms

[bobcat]

Originally Posted by One Winged Angel

I was thinking about buying a mac... I might consider this.

8 GB SDRAM?!?

*orgasms

Same

[Bond]

If you start off with the top of the line G5 and you would like to upgrade to 8MB of RAM it's only....

$3,750.

[gekko]

That's because of the RAM they use: 400MHz, 128-bit DDR SDRAM. Most places sell RAM much cheaper than Apple, but I don't know about this stuff.

Either way, HDs are incredibly slow (150 MB/s I believe), the G5s can transfer to the RAM at 6.4 GB/s. Translation, you can copy an entire DVD to your memory in less than a second. Having more RAM allows programs to store more in the memory, making things go much faster, where usually it would have to start writing to the HD. Imagine editing 5 GB of raw DV, keeping it all in the RAM would be a dream come true. But the average consumer doesn't need nearly that much.

The Power Mac line is the best computers Apple offers. Where most PC companies have different models for consumer and businesses, Apple has their consumer and power user lines, and the Power Mac G5 is supposed to suit everyone from your consumers looking for top-of-the-line, to your businesses editing 200 GB of video and photoshop documents ranging in the hundreds of MBs. Most people never need everything maxed out, but if you have the cash, go for it