Posted on 01/10/2006 12:11:17 PM PST by Panerai
Apple claims its newest iMac, which features Intel’s new Core Duo processor, is twice as fast as its predecessor. Despite the major change under the hood, the iMac remains with the same design and at the same price as before, with systems starting at $1,299.
The new iMac, which starts shipping today, will be Apple’s first computer to feature a CPU built by Intel. Up until now, Apple has used the PowerPC architecture developed in conjunction with Motorola and IBM to drive all of its iMac computers.
On the outside, the iMac G5 looks the same as before — it’s a square, all-in-one design that features either a 17-inch or 20-inch LCD display. But under the hood it’s considerably faster, according to benchmarks that Apple CEO Steve Jobs put up on the screen during his keynote presentation to Macworld Expo attendees in San Francisco, Calif. on Tuesday.
The system features a built in iSight webcam, 8x “SuperDrive” optical drive capable of burning recordable DVD media, 512MB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 2GB, hard drive storage capacity up to 500GB, and ATI Radeon X1600 PCI Express-based graphics with 128MB GDDR3 memory. Also standard is a wireless remote control that is held magnetically to the iMac when not in use — that remote provides you with the ability to control music, pictures and movies using Front Row, an Apple application that’s included on the iMac.
(Excerpt) Read more at macworld.com ...
Had they done this 10-15 years ago, they might have had a shot at remaining a viable competitor in the PC market.
And supposedly, that iMac is now faster than a 3gHz P4-Prescott. How much faster, we don't know yet.
I just ordered mine. I'm so glad I waited.
Apple: The Power To Crush The Other Kids - Mercilessly!
"Apple claims its newest iMac, which features Intel’s new Core Duo processor, is twice as fast as its predecessor."
The Macintosh Apple Core? That's cute.
Wow! How fast would it be with an AMD CPU under the hood?!Or rather how much faster than with the Intel CPU?
That's OK, Apple owns the MP3 player market. They're not going to repeat the mistakes of last time, either.
Microsoft's "Urge" music store isn't iPod compatible. I predict it's not going to go anywhere. And as more and more people buy iPods (14 *million* this quarter alone), they're going to want Macs to go with them....
The war isn't over yet.
You gotta say, whether you hate em or like em, they have style.
Does this mean I can run OS/X.x on any old X86 platform?
Apple tried going with the technologically superior processor - twice (G4, G5). It got them nowhere except screwed, so now we're on Intel and Apple's not going to play that game again.
That said, now that Apple's on X86, it wouldn't take long to port to AMD's variants (like, um, a week - wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't an AMD-optimized version already), they can play Intel and AMD off against each other if Intel gets abusive (hello IBM and Motorola, sound familiar?) to get better tech or prices. Just like Dell does.
They really couldn't have, not until they change to OS-X. Its a unix based OS, so the porting was alot easier. So much of the earlier macs was tied to processor specific nuances, the change from the 68000 to the PPC was quite painful. Other than "endian" issues which are fairly easy to resolve for software writers, this change has been fairly simple.
I think this proves Bill Gates is not a genius.
There's a hack to do that, sure.
However, I suspect you'll run up against major driver issues if you try that with the retail, as opposed to the development, version.
After using OSX for the last couple years i'll never switch back. It'd be like switching to a Corolla after driving an S600. Sure there might be more Corolla's out there and they might get you to the same places, but they ain't quite as smooth and as slick as that S600.
Correction - now it's like driving an S55. (AMG version - faster than the S600.)
So it's already here? I was assuming it'd be later in the year. Dunno why . . .
I thought they were half fast!
So did I. Apple apparently did most of the R&D in secret, and when they announced, they were just about ready to ship it seems. Apple REALLY wanted to have at that Centrino stuff... the ultra-low power P-M had them salivating.
Day Late, Dollar short. In other news...
10-15 years ago there would have been a lot of red faces given the fanatic rwars over Motorola vs. Intel, particularly on the Motorola users.
So have most of the apps used on the Mac been ported over? Just curious, since I'm not a Mac person.
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