Rumored Timeline: G4, 970 and Beyond

This sounds a bit shady...

Faster G4s? Not for much longer I hope...

They must have a mole in Apple.

Interesting it talks about everything except the Powerbooks... the 970 known to be perfect for the Powerbooks. I wonder how this fits in with this timeline, if this is somewhat closish to what happens.

After redirecting our (my software company) technology goals tward the perception that Apple will soon tackle the high-end Enterprise markets, this is very good news! I was hoping not to sink the ship in hopes of "Apple Enterprise".

Arn, what confirmations have you came across with regards to the XStation and/or XServer Enterprise?

I would love to see Apple competing with the high-end Sun SunFire (maybe even the Sun Enteprise 10000?) and HP Nclass (maybe even the HP Superdome) servers.

I know it is comming, but how soon? Are we really talking about dual fibre channel (Xserve/XRaid already has this), up to sixtyfour processors, and secure management enviroments? (drooling)

And where is Apple heading with it's storage stratigy? The XRaid is a great start, but what about true SAN solutions with Apple quality integration?

Arn, what do you know?

Originally posted by mproud
Interesting it talks about everything except the Powerbooks... the 970 known to be perfect for the Powerbooks. I wonder how this fits in with this timeline, if this is somewhat closish to what happens.

970 powerbooks are mentioned in March 2004

arn

with the g4? if the 970 can be ready for all the lines in june, why not do em? i hope there are enough reasons for a clean sweep of the g4 in the PM, PB and xserve and toss that 970 in there.

i love the possibility of apple picking up the power4 and 5s for some high end enterprise stuff. maybe steve got ticked off that the best rendering farm pixar could use was an intel/linux box . . .

dump the g4. now. ok, please? :)

Originally posted by herocero
with the g4? if the 970 can be ready for all the lines in june, why not do em?

Why does the eMac need a 970? Or the iMac? Clearly there's plenty of reasons not to put the 970 across the line - esp when there will only be a certain number of speed-points available. Why don't PC makers put Pentium 4's in every computer? The G4 will certainly be a cheaper chip than the 970 when it first comes out.

Besides... I see everyone's getting their hopes up... and getting a little greedy... personally, if they _demo_ the 970 at WWDC, I'll be pleased. You'll be lucky if "only" the PowerMacs get the 970 as early as June.

arn

Well, it is my opinion that these rumors about soon-to-be-released PPC970 Macs are entirely wrong. I don't expect that we will see PPC970 based Mac desktop systems until VERY late this year or more likely in early 2004. PowerBooks probably won't appear until well into year 2004. Just because Apple is in desperate need for faster systems won't make them just happen (all wishful thinking aside).

Some may remember rumors at about this same time last year concerning the then soon-to-be-released Motorola G5. It was reported that benchmarks on those prototypes were so good that they could actually run Windows under VirtualPC at a speed that was comparable to a high-end PC.

At about that time I posted a note to a discussion forum stating that it was my opinion that the __G4__ would probably be the last desktop PPC processor that Motorola would ever produce and that we should forget about ever seeing a Motorola-based G5 PowerMac. I also said that Motorola would be out of the desktop processor market in less than two more years.

I received a fair amount of "flack" for those comments, but it seems that time has proven me correct, and I suspect that I will also be correct about the PPC970.

Of course, these are only my opinions and I have no direct, inside knowledge about anything that is happening at Apple, Motorola, or IBM. My opinions are just based upon common sense and my over twenty years experience in the computer and semiconductor industries.

And now for my disclaimer, if Apple does release a PPC970 before the end of July 2003 I will not only be surprised (and humbled) but I will be first in line to buy one. ;-)

Originally posted by fpnc
I don't expect that we will see PPC970 based Mac desktop systems until VERY late this year or more likely in early 2004.

I also think June 2003 is very optimistic. But... we'll see. Maybe MacBidouille knows something we don't. :)

arn

they'll pull a crazy "look we have these, check out the new powermac that isn't coming out for 6-7 months, but we are showing it to you and here is panther with 64 bit support..."

i believe it's not too far fetched to announce them next month or so, justt for powermacs at least. that doesn't mean anything, it'll just get developers pepped (and cut their prices on current ones, one would hope).

thinking about that, it seems odd to imagine that apple could take 6 months of people waiting to buy a new mac, but i suppose stranger things have happened... (3.5 month wait on 17 powerbooks?)