Now What?
Written: Dec 12 '04 (Updated Jun 20 '05)
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Pros: Fast, elegant, superb design
Cons: Pricey yet for its performance. Mostly justified in pro applications.
The Bottom Line: Apparently obsolete as of this writing
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| fwarren94551's Full Review: Apple Power Mac G5 Dual (M9457LL/A) Mac Desktop |
When Jobs introduced this machine two years ago, he promised 3 Gigahertz. It's only at 2.7 now, and 3 will probably never get here; Jobs has announced barely two weeks ago that all newly designed systems will use, gasp, Intel processors. Well, this only makes sense; OS X is based on FreeBSD and Apple has had to tune and develop it on Intel machines all along. FreeBSD does not have a native Mac port.
So the "new" news is that the PowerPC is now obsolete; it's just a matter of time.
One cannot blame Apple for this. Intel just, cycle for cycle, generates less heat. the 2.5 and 2.7 Gigahertz models of this machine have to use liquid cooling arrays to keep the chip alive. Apple is providing a single processor version of this machine, using Pentium 4 at 3.6 GIGHz, for $999 and it has to be returned at the end of two years. As a developer I get this deal too.
The real deal is less than half the heat, Intel already will give Apple some money back as the SMP architecture is an Intel patent that Apple had to pay a royalty on via IBM.
The sad news is that this machine, barely a year old, is already history. And jobs never was able to keep his 3 GHz commitment for this model; IBM's die technology just generates too much heat. Intel's does not.
This will make it easier for this machine's Intel successors to more successfully use dual processor technology. So far, only internal Apple applications, as well as Adobe applications, have ever taken advantage of the dual processors. Sad but true. It's not hard to use dual processors but most people porting games and other apps are only concerned about getting them to run in what has become a backwater eddy of a computer market, just a 3.5% market share. That's sad, as Apple really has, wiht OS X, been building a better mousetrap.
When these machines are replaced iwth dual processor Intel models is anyone's guess, but with it announced at the Worldwide developer's conference in early June of '05, it's not far off. Apple has already been shipping new Intel-based developer systems for two weeks as of this writing, and has already provided a porting guide for old PPC Velocity Engine instructions in terms of Intel Assembler for MMX and SIMD instructions.
I work professionally on the PC side so it makes Apples friendlier to me and reduces the number of ASM instructions I carry in my head. But it's sad too. This is pretty much the last gasp for the PPC except for embedded applications. Intel now has it all on the desktop. Apple was the last holdout apart from the SPARC architecture on Sun Workstations.
This machine represents the last of an era, when Apple still went its own way and tried to have a complete industry break with the PC.
It will take a while to see if this will mean more dual-ported appls for the Apple. In the meanwhile, if you know Apple, the 2.7GHz machine of this vintage may be worth having for old time's sake.
Next years model will probably feature pairs of Intel dual-core machines at 4 GHz. Intel is some ways off from hitting its heat limit for its current chips. Yield, not speed or heat, is the current problem.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 4500
Operating System: Macintosh
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: SuperDisk
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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Epinions.com ID:
fwarren94551
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Reviews written: 16
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