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And
Now Back To Earth... Originally
posted January 7th, 2002 I was
VIRTUALLY at the Keynote. I had reserved an
executive suite at the Marriott and received a
PRESS PASS in the mail. But at 9AM San Francisco
time, I was still in Honolulu at my 40th floor
penthouse apartment, sitting in my massage chair,
with my Titanium G4 PowerBook in my lap, watching
the Keynote Live QuickTime broadcast, and sipping
my cafe latte. I'm glad I didn't
go to MacWorld San Francisco in person. I could
have endured the 5 hour flight, the bumpy airport
shuttle, a cold night in a strange bed without my
sweetie, and the long wait in line before entering
the Keynote presentation. But now that it's over,
the virtual version of the keynote was all I could
take. NEW G4
iMac I don't know if it was the leak
of the new iMac photos 12 hours early by Time
magazine or what... but I was left wanting more...
much more. Like where are the Power Mac
improvements? I'm embarrassed for Apple. The event
was over-hyped to say the least. Wrapping existing technology in
"different" form factor, pricing it too high for
bargain hunting consumers, and running too slow for
demanding power users is not a "backstage pass to
the future," much less "beyond the
rumors." It's like they said, "Okay.
Let's reshape the G4 Cube into a half sphere and
screw a flat panel display to the top of it..."
This is not innovation. This is retooling. What is
it with Apple (or Steve's) fixation with all-in-one
computers? YET, I ADMIT, IF VIEWED AS AN
MUTATED G4 CUBE... ...the new iMac is an
improvement... at least in price. Max Memory Level 2
cache Graphics Optical
Drive Ethernet
speed PCI slots Spare Drive
Bays Price with 15" LCD and
CD-RW HOW DOES THE IMAC G4 COMPARE
TO SIMILAR WINDOWS PC's? I configured two Windows systems
as close as possible to the basic iMac
G4: CPU Graphics Hard Drive Optical
Drive USB ports FireWire or
1394 Airport or
802.11b Display Price In light of the table above, I
have to say that the iMac G4 is priced to compete
well with the "other" computers. However,
performance wise, the "iLamp" could be in trouble
based on my recent tests comparing the Dual G4/800
to a 1.8GHz Pentium 4. AT THE SHOW, WE DIDN'T GET A
POWER MAC SPEED BUMP. IT CAME A FEW WEEKS LATER,
THOUGH. THE DUAL 1GHZ MODEL IS
WELCOME.... ...BUT I WAS REALLY LOOKING
FOR POWER MAC IMPROVEMENTS LIKE ... ...DDR or Rambus memory and
faster bus ...a choice of Geforce3 Titanium
500 or Radeon 8500 graphics card ...dual AGP slots for support of
two ADC displays ...dual channel FireWire so
FireWire RAID runs faster ...dual channel ATA-133 internal
drive controller (duh) ...dual channel USB
2.0 None of it earthshaking. All of
it doable. All of it adds serious speed to the
already serious Power Mac towers. BARE FEATS DESIGN
LAB Some of my MacGeek friends and I
have been already brainstorming on improvements to
the iMac G4. How about.... ...wireless keyboard and
mouse? ...ability to twist the screen
90 degrees and it converts to a Portrait
display? ...adding TwinView capability to
support a second display instead of just mirror
mode? ...a Special Edition with Dual
800 G4 (133MHz bus) and Geforce3 (4X
AGP)? ...a "headless" iMac G4 with an
ADC connector on top so you can use it with any
size display? THERE WERE PERFORMANCE
RELATED PRODUCTS THAT DID DELIGHT
INCLUDING... ...Apple's Final Cut Pro 3.0
with Real Time editing effects ...Apple's iPhoto
software ...Adobe's OS X version of
InDesign, Illustrator, GoLive, After Effects, and
(soon) Photoshop ...Wolfram's OS X version of
Mathematica ...Id Software's OS X version of
Quake3 Arena ...QPS's DVD rewrite FireWire
drive (coupled with Toast Titanium 5.1, it's the
hot setup) ...ATI's Radeon 8500 -- faster
than any other graphics card offered for the Mac --
great replacement for existing AGP cards -- DVI and
VGA connector -- so if you have an ADC screen,
you'll need a DVI to ADC adapter from Gefen.com or
DrBott.com. ...FWDepot's "Cutie" drive
enclosure with FireWire and USB 2.0
ports ...Adaptec's PCI card with
FireWire and USB 2.0 ports ...FirewireDirect's FireWire
Hardware RAID --- claims to solve the bottleneck
caused by single channel FireWire when using
software RAID ...ATTO'S UL4D Ultra320 SCSI
controller (including 133MHz PCI support) -- expect
a similar card from Adaptec ...ATTO's
Express Stripe for OS X -- software that will let
you stripe SCSI and ATA drives with the volumes
able to be "seen" if you switch back to OS
9. What are the
key differences between the 14" iBook
600 and Titanium G4 PowerBook 550 (and the
"closeout" G4 PowerBook 500)? The table below
should help. Standard Screen
Rez Graphics
Accelerator External Monitor
Support Max Memory CD config Ethernet
Speed CardBus Slot Infrared
Port Est. Battery
Life Width x
Depth Weight/Thickness Case
Materials Price with Combo
CD THANKFULLY,
APPLE... ...doesn't limit themselves to
MacWorld events to introduce new products.
Hopefully all our dreams will be fulfilled sometime
this year. Just not this month. SPEED
TEST RESULTS
from Bare Feats (by CATEGORY) LINKS
to SPEED tests on other web sites HOT
SPEED DEALS DOWNLOADS
that add more SPEED SPEED
UPGRADE
guide ©
2002 Rob
Art Morgan. (Bare
Feats is hosted on a G4 Power Mac server by MacDock.com)
Updated January 29th
by rob-ART
morgan,
Bare Feats Mad Scientist
(Radeon,GeForce2MX, GeForce3 optional)
AGP 2X
AGP 2X
(Geforce3 optional)
AGP 4X
(CD-RW optional)
(Combo & SuperDrive
optional)
(refurb at SmallDog)
Gotta Question? Comment?
Email rob-art@barefeats.com