The Lonely PowerMac
The Apple Store online seems to point out the stray Mac – the PowerMac G5. The last of a dying breed of PowerPC based machines. The gasp of breath through those little holes in the front is strong. What will become of him, this Zeus of Macs, this fallen god of power?
Why upgrade him, of course! Apple can’t let this ultimate of machines sit idly by while his brethren are moving to overtake him. What would go into the new PowerMac? If Steve called you and said he needed a fresh customer perspective from you, what would you put in the MacZeus Pro?
Dual and Quad core offerings?
What graphics card(s)? SLI?
What would the enclosure look like?
How would you keep the cost reasonable?
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And I already know the name – ProMac. :)
I have a dream… No, litterary – I woke up in the middle of the night and thought: “Apple should make a PowerMac that features BOTH a PowerPC processor, and Dual Intel!” That way native PPC-programs wouldn’t need to go through the emulator, and universal binary-built programs would go to Intel…
Or, Apple could be the first manufacturer to use the Quad-core Intel that they showed a prototype of a while back… *drool..*
I do SO need a new Mac by now, and I hate thinking about that whenever I buy it (Intel iMac or Quad), Apple will upgrade the PowerMac two weeks after I buy it… ARGH!
i thought they were going with MacPro?
In my opinion (and i know people will have issues with it) they should perhaps have two ‘woodcrest’ chips in there at the high end: ie: 2 quad-core processors for 8 total cores. for all those recording engineers screaming that they need a faster way to encode high definition video to multiple formats.
and in such case they may as well throw in enough graphics memory and processing to power 4- 30″ cinema displays… (though i’d like to see it without nvidia)
I assume they’d keep the same enclosure since there were no major style changes to the mini or iMac, although I’d like to see room for multi-TB storage capacity
overall I think apple has the potential to make government supercomuters jealous with this one, but with a ‘conroe’ proc. and less gfx. it would still be affordable and lighning fast.
on a final note: Apple, for the premiums we pay for these things. could you at least add a tuner and television to FrontRow?
ok theres my three cents, have at it, lol
“The last of a dying breed of PowerPC based machines.”
(cough) XServe (cough)
Of course, I’m probably one of only a handful of folks who want an intel XServe sooner than later.
I don’t care so long as I can render on Final Cut while still editing. Still don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to render one timeline while I work on another one. Silly.
Lonely?!? Last?!?
I guess as long as you don’t count the XServe and eMac.
anyone know when the high-ends intels will be announced
Want one…so bad
Ditto, Scott.
@Kiel: It’s Apple… You won’t know untill it hits you… But it’s most likely going to happen right in the middle of paychecks, a week after you bought another mac – and when you least expect it…
@ Scott and Hackand
The eMacs have been missing from Apple’s lineup for a good while now. If I’m being perfectly honest I don’t count servers as being a part of the Apple Line up. They aren’t really consumer machines.
The case should look exactly like the G5, except smaller so I can once again put it in the desk I built that had enough room to hold a G4. Grr.
I love the new Mac. Has everyone seen the new Apple commercial with the Mac and the PC falling over due to spyware and virus. It’s hilarious.
http://www.str8up.com/watch.php?v=62
it will be surely expensive (it’s a pro machine , as hp ones or sun ones , not a consumer)
it will be surely alike the actual powermac casing
and maybe we will have the quad-core future intel in high-end model
no ?
Well, I would take a six litre V8 engine. That would be what gave the computer the power.
I would want at least twenty gigs of ram.
a 2×500 harddrive.
Ten g5 processors.
any drive and slot or software you would want.
all for ten dollars.
mmm having wet dreams f replacing my 1.25 mini with a 3.2 macpro. yummie!
Well if we are making up our own SuperPowerMac Pro you might as well toss the best stuff into it.
dual Woodcrests at moderate clock speeds or single Conroe at 3.2 GHz.
2-4 gigs of decent DDR2
dual 500gb or 750gb drives in raid1
either dual 7900GTX, x1900xt master card, or the new DX10 cards
motherboard that supports ~8 sata ports w/ 2 controllers and SLI/CF
A large capacity watercooling setup with slow 120mm fans to cool the beast and copper waterblocks for everyone, including north and south bridges.
I think this box would scream, especially with dual woodcrests, price would be an issue though, video cards alone are $1100, hard drives another $600, and the processor and motherboard would be outrageous. It is a good thing I’m not on the design team for this computer.
(Q) How would you keep costs reasonable?
That’s easy. Use a lot of the same components other Macs are using.
(Q) What would the enclosure look like?
PowerMac should use its current form factor — like other Macs.
(Q) What graphics card(s)? SLI?
Since its Cinema display is likely to be as large as (or larger) than the screens other Macs are using, the best graphics option for the rest should be the core configuration for PowerMac.
(Q) Dual and Quad core offerings?
Apple should serve the same Core Duo the rest of its line is getting, well, for the meantime anyway.
So there you have it: an inexpensive, easy-to-make PowerMac that can be ready for Christmas! :)
Core duo?!?! in a proper desktop? are you crazy, DeMYSTiFieD? You’re basically saying put an imac in a bigger case. hmm, not really ‘power’ is it?
Bigger HD, faster processor and graphics card, and 2GB ram as standard. How about that?
It is power — Core Duo will run circles around a dual-core G5 — it’s just not the absolute power you were looking for.
Because new chips pop out of Intel like weeds in springtime, it seems more advantageous to introduce a barebones desktop now and follow an upgrade path later on.
Design?
A new Cube :D
Mmmmmmmmm……………………………
I say, as base, two 2.16Ghz Core Duos; as best, two 3.2 Core Quaddros…
As base, 256Mb graphics card with core running at no less than 400Mhz
as best, upto 4 512 Mb graphics cards with core clock speeds as fast as ATI can make them.
HD? well, upto 4 Tb sounds good.
ram? depends…… for lesser, upto 16Gb, for best, upto 32Gb….. of ddr2, of course.
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM… GOOD.
Well, assuming that they will be released by the end of ’06 as Steve Jobs announced – there would be no quad core processors. So the PowerMac for Intel for me would look something like this:
Single or Dual Woodcrest dual core processors with options from 2.4Ghz -> 3Ghz
Dual channel DDR2 memory, up to 32GB
SATA2 Hard Disks – room for upto at least four hard disks in the machine, options including 10,000 RPM Hard disks, and upto 750GB Hard Disks in capacity
Video cards … PCI-E 16x of course, Various Radeon, Geforce, Quadro and FireGL options would be nice. Crossfire support would be awesome, since Intel’s chipsets support it.
Optical drives – dual layer 16X DVD burners for sure – BluRay/HD-DVD support maybe.
I’d also hope that Apple doesn’t skmp on the memory and video cards this time around. These are PRO machines, 2GB of ram should be stock. A decent video card should be stock. 512mb ram and a Geforce 6600 LE in a pro machine is just lame Apple!
Hi all
here is how I see it.
-2.66 and 3.00 Ghz core 2 duo (conroe) and 2X 2.66Ghz core 2 duo xeon (woodcrest)
-Ati x1800x, x1900 xtx and x1900xtx crossfire with quad link DVI
-16 to 32 Gb ram
-2X 750 Gb 7200rpm drives
-16xDL superdrive (optional Blueray ???)
-USB (alot), FW 400, 800 eSata
-Same case
anything else???