Power challenge of new Macs
By Ian Hardy
BBC ClickOnline
Apple released its latest desktop machine with all the usual pizzazz,
with Chief Executive Steve Jobs claiming the Power Mac G5 to be "the
world's fastest personal computer". But can we take his word for it?
Nick Stam, Director of PC Magazine's testing laboratory in New York is
not convinced quite yet.
In 1998 he successfully challenged Apple's claims that the original
iMac was faster than a Windows machine under certain conditions.
So is the new G5 truly the world's faster personal computer?
"You take that with a grain of salt because you don't know what
they're presenting in the benchmark up there," said Mr Stam.
"We don't have a system to test ourselves and we know there is all
kind of tweaking that can be done and that's the big issue right now."
Steve Jobs also made a big announcement about the G5 processor, ahead
of competitors such as chip maker AMD.
"The 64-bit revolution has begun and the personal computer will never
be the same again," said Mr Jobs in his address last week to Apple
devotees in San Francisco.
"The new Power Mac G5 combines the world's first 64-bit desktop
processor, the industry's first 1GHz front-side bus and up to 8GB of
memory to beat the fastest Pentium 4 and dual Xeon-based systems in
industry-standard benchmarks and real-world professional
applications."
But his statement about being the first 64-bit machine has to be taken
in context.
"Of course it isn't shipping yet. It's not shipping for a couple of
months. So they're not first-to-market today as Steve said," said Mr
Stam.
"AMD may likely decide to come out in August instead of September with
their new desktop Athlon 64. It's bragging rights is what it is, and
that's what Steve is great at."
Hardcore fans
True Macintosh believers see things a different way.
POWER MAC G5 SPECS
1.6 GHz 64-bit PowerPC G5
800 MHz front-side bus
256MB 333 MHz Dual Channel (128-bit) DDR
4 DIMMs, 4GB maximum memory
80GB Serial ATA hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra-64MB DDR
US retail price - $1,999
For people like Matt Cohen, co-owner of Tekserve, an Apple reseller in
Manhattan, comparing Macs and PCs is a long-established yet
meaningless tradition, especially to his customers.
"I don't think that the PC market is their competition, in that
sense," said Mr Cohen. "The performance and the ease-of-use of a Mac
operating system is at the forefront of his argument."
Apple is currently on a roll after recovering from such problematic
products as the Cube computer.
They now have a growing list of recent achievements which customers
crave. It goes on with Apple's online music store iTunes and its chain
of US stores have also been doing very well.
"When Apple agree that a standard makes sense, they embrace it," said
Mr Cohen.
"I'm actually quite impressed that Apple is able to innovate new
standards that they then make accessible to the rest of the computing
community as well."
Challenges ahead
Just days before the official launch of the G5, details of the new
machine were posted on the Apple website for a few seconds.
But Mr Jobs even turned that major blunder into a promotional slogan
calling it a premature specification.
Apple's CEO delivered his presentation as if no-one in the audience
had heard the rumours.
Yet the biggest question still remains - can Apple generate enough
excitement in the coming months from developments such as its new
Panther operating system and its iSight video web camera to increase
market share from a miniscule 3.5%?
That is where big announcements and banner headlines really play their
part.
Story from BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/3044824.stm
Published: 2003/07/05 07:32:57 GMT
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