Amazon.com has posted specifications for the new Power Mac dual G5 2.7 GHz, indicating that its release is imminent. This has been suspected by the online community for the past week, since Power Mac shipping times listed at the Apple Store have recently increased, something that often indicates an update to the line is coming soon.
The specs of the top end Mac are as follows:
Apple Power Mac G5 - M9749LL/A
- Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
- Dual 2.7 GHz PowerPC G5 processors
- 512 MB of DDR SDRAM
- 250 GB hard drive
- 16x Dual Layer SuperDrive (CD/DVD+/-RW)
Also listed are dual 2.0 and dual 2.3 GHz Power Macs, with 512 MB RAM, and 16X dual-layer SuperDrives. The dual 2.0 sports a 160 GB hard drive, while the dual 2.3 has a 250 GB one. These specs confirm the specs listed in Think Secret's article from several weeks ago.
It will be interesting to see if this machine is liquid cooled or air cooled. A 200 MHz upgrade at the top end after 10 months isn't terribly impressive, especially considering there is no price drop, but it would be more impressive if the update is with a change to air cooling at the same time.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Friday, April 22, 2005
Tiger is now shipping
'Nuff said. :)
[Update 2005-04-22]
Here is a picture from one lucky person who has already received it.
[Update 2005-04-22]
Here is a picture from one lucky person who has already received it.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
HD-DVD: iMac G5 1.6 is fine, but no G4s need apply
Apple today announced Final Cut Studio. It includes 4 applications, Final Cut Pro 5, Soundtrack Pro, Motion 2, and DVD Studio Pro 4. Shake 4, was also announced today.
One interesting tidbit from the release is that high definition (HD) DVDs created with DVD Studio Pro 4 will be playable on any G5 Mac, including the 1.6 GHz iMac G5, with OS X Tiger 10.4's DVD Player 4.6 and QuickTime 7. However, playback on any G4 Mac, even the dual G4 1.42 GHz Power Mac, is not supported. DVD Studio Pro 4's HD-DVDs use traditional DVD media, but with H.264 encoded video at up to 1920x1080, 59.94 Hz interlaced.
What's surprising about this announcement was that it was only last year that a dual G5 Power Mac was required to play back progressive scan 1920x1080 at 24 Hz, a form of HD that represents about 20% less data than what the iMac G5 1.6 can achieve today.
2005 is indeed the year of HD.
[Update 2005-04-29]
Nope, we were wrong. The listed G5 specs were misleading, because a single G5 only supports up to 720p playback, and that's with a 1.8 GHz G5. For 1080p playback, a dual G5 2.0 GHz Power Mac is needed. See this article.
One interesting tidbit from the release is that high definition (HD) DVDs created with DVD Studio Pro 4 will be playable on any G5 Mac, including the 1.6 GHz iMac G5, with OS X Tiger 10.4's DVD Player 4.6 and QuickTime 7. However, playback on any G4 Mac, even the dual G4 1.42 GHz Power Mac, is not supported. DVD Studio Pro 4's HD-DVDs use traditional DVD media, but with H.264 encoded video at up to 1920x1080, 59.94 Hz interlaced.
What's surprising about this announcement was that it was only last year that a dual G5 Power Mac was required to play back progressive scan 1920x1080 at 24 Hz, a form of HD that represents about 20% less data than what the iMac G5 1.6 can achieve today.
2005 is indeed the year of HD.
[Update 2005-04-29]
Nope, we were wrong. The listed G5 specs were misleading, because a single G5 only supports up to 720p playback, and that's with a 1.8 GHz G5. For 1080p playback, a dual G5 2.0 GHz Power Mac is needed. See this article.
Safari 1.3 from Panther 10.3.9 is FAST
Apple on Friday released the 10.3.9 update to Panther. It addresses a number of different issues, but the most noticeable update is to Safari. Safari in Panther is now at version 1.3, and it gets much of the core of Safari 2.0, which is coming soon in OS X 10.4 Tiger.
Dave Hyatt comments in Surfin' Safari weblog about the changes:
One note of concern however, is Test 7. This test calculates the day of the week on which Christmas lands each year. With Safari 1.3, every day listed starting in 2038 is Friday. I don't know if this error is an error in the original JavaScript code, an error in the output by both Safari 1.2 and Safari 1.3, or an error unique to the new Safari 1.3. Unfortunately, I did not notice the error until after I upgraded my machines.
One interesting point of note also is the claim by some that enabling Quartz 2D Extreme in Tiger 10.4 can slow down Safari 2.0's BenchJS performance significantly on some hardware.
[Update 2005-04-18]
Thanks to Screed and Squozen for pointing out that the Xmas calculation error is present in Safari 1.2 as well. There is no such problem with Mozilla Firefox in Windows 2000 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 in OS X 10.3.9.
Dave Hyatt comments in Surfin' Safari weblog about the changes:
Those of you running Panther can now update to 10.3.9. This update includes Safari 1.3 and new versions of WebKit, WebCore, and JavaScriptCore that contain thousands of improvements we've made to the engine since Safari 1.2.On my 1.7 GHz Cube G4 7447A, the perceived speedup in real-life surfing is quite impressive, and the speedup as measured by BenchJS is nothing short of astonishing. It's a ten fold change in benchmarked JavaScript performance:
What you are getting is all of the new standards support, new WebKit capabilites, site compatibility fixes and performance optimizations that are also present in Safari 2.0 for Tiger. The layout engines for the two are virtually identical.
Here are some of the highlights:
Page Load Performance
Safari 1.3 loads pages overall 35% faster than 1.2 as measured by IBench. In addition to improving the overall page load, Safari 1.3 will display content sooner than 1.2 did, so that subresources don't hold up the initial display of the page.
JavaScript Performance
We have substantially improved the performance of the JavaScript engine in Safari. I encourage you to check out Safari 1.3 on this benchmark for example to see the improvement relative to 1.2.
Did I mention it's really really fast? :)
One note of concern however, is Test 7. This test calculates the day of the week on which Christmas lands each year. With Safari 1.3, every day listed starting in 2038 is Friday. I don't know if this error is an error in the original JavaScript code, an error in the output by both Safari 1.2 and Safari 1.3, or an error unique to the new Safari 1.3. Unfortunately, I did not notice the error until after I upgraded my machines.
One interesting point of note also is the claim by some that enabling Quartz 2D Extreme in Tiger 10.4 can slow down Safari 2.0's BenchJS performance significantly on some hardware.
[Update 2005-04-18]
Thanks to Screed and Squozen for pointing out that the Xmas calculation error is present in Safari 1.2 as well. There is no such problem with Mozilla Firefox in Windows 2000 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 in OS X 10.3.9.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
New Power Mac, iMac, and eMac specs from Think Secret
Think Secret today published pre-release specifications for new Power Macs, iMacs, and eMacs. The machines are to be released soon, with Tiger and iLife '05.
The rumoured Power Mac speeds are dual 2.0, 2.3, and 2.7 GHz. Although TS mentions the possibility of dual-core 970MP chips, the 512 KB L2 cache spec would suggest that these machines in fact utilize the single-core 970FX chips. The top of the line speed boost is not a terribly impressive, at only 0.2 GHz, but is more impressive if the new machines no longer use liquid cooling like the current dual 2.5 GHz. It's nice to see the line more balanced now though. 2.0, 2.3, and 2.7 makes more sense for a desktop line than 1.8, 2.0, and 2.5, since the latter line's chip speeds are not evenly spread out.
No quad Power Mac is mentioned, which is not unexpected if the chips used are still the 970FX. PCIe is also a no show. One might expect the next revision of the Power Mac to include both PCIe and 970MP support, with one quad (dual dual-core) G5 model. A new Power Mac line might also support DDR2. However, with an April/May release of this new Power Mac line, we shouldn't expect a new PCIe-endowed 970MP Power Mac revision until fall at the earliest.
The stock Power Mac, iMac and eMac GPUs are all listed to be from the ATI Radeon 9600 series, with the high end Power Mac using the 9650. I suspect the 9600 listed may be the slower non-Pro 9600 GPU, but the version is not specified in the article. The 9650 appears to be ATI's RV351, which is a 110 nm die shrunk 9600 Pro class GPU. These chips will likely be fanless, and probably relatively inexpensive for Apple as well. The adoption of the 9600 series GPUs across these desktop lines is especially important for the eMac, since Core Image requires Shader 2.0 compliance for full GPU acceleration, and the previous Radeon 9200 did not support this feature. One may guess that the Mac mini will also get this GPU (or something comparable) at the next revision, possibly in the fall. The 9600 series GPUs also support Quartz 2D Extreme hardware acceleration, although this feature does not (yet) appear to be enabled in Tiger.
Overall, if the TS pre-release specs are accurate, this is a relatively solid update to Apple's desktop lines, although the Power Mac line is still in definite need of a further boost this year.
The rumoured Power Mac speeds are dual 2.0, 2.3, and 2.7 GHz. Although TS mentions the possibility of dual-core 970MP chips, the 512 KB L2 cache spec would suggest that these machines in fact utilize the single-core 970FX chips. The top of the line speed boost is not a terribly impressive, at only 0.2 GHz, but is more impressive if the new machines no longer use liquid cooling like the current dual 2.5 GHz. It's nice to see the line more balanced now though. 2.0, 2.3, and 2.7 makes more sense for a desktop line than 1.8, 2.0, and 2.5, since the latter line's chip speeds are not evenly spread out.
No quad Power Mac is mentioned, which is not unexpected if the chips used are still the 970FX. PCIe is also a no show. One might expect the next revision of the Power Mac to include both PCIe and 970MP support, with one quad (dual dual-core) G5 model. A new Power Mac line might also support DDR2. However, with an April/May release of this new Power Mac line, we shouldn't expect a new PCIe-endowed 970MP Power Mac revision until fall at the earliest.
The stock Power Mac, iMac and eMac GPUs are all listed to be from the ATI Radeon 9600 series, with the high end Power Mac using the 9650. I suspect the 9600 listed may be the slower non-Pro 9600 GPU, but the version is not specified in the article. The 9650 appears to be ATI's RV351, which is a 110 nm die shrunk 9600 Pro class GPU. These chips will likely be fanless, and probably relatively inexpensive for Apple as well. The adoption of the 9600 series GPUs across these desktop lines is especially important for the eMac, since Core Image requires Shader 2.0 compliance for full GPU acceleration, and the previous Radeon 9200 did not support this feature. One may guess that the Mac mini will also get this GPU (or something comparable) at the next revision, possibly in the fall. The 9600 series GPUs also support Quartz 2D Extreme hardware acceleration, although this feature does not (yet) appear to be enabled in Tiger.
Overall, if the TS pre-release specs are accurate, this is a relatively solid update to Apple's desktop lines, although the Power Mac line is still in definite need of a further boost this year.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
No Quartz 2D Extreme for Tiger 10.4?
One of the most exciting things to come out of WWDC 2004 was the description of a technology in Tiger called Quartz 2D Extreme.
Introduced in Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar, Quartz Extreme replaced Quartz to offload portions of OS X's 2D display work from the CPU to the GPU. Quartz 2D Extreme similarly would replace Quartz 2D to further offload work to the GPU.
(Click picture for video. Go to 22'52".)
However, while the Quartz 2D Extreme code is present in Tiger, rumour has that it is disabled by default in the shipping version of Tiger. Also, there is no mention of it on Apple's public webpages about Tiger. So apparently, even if the hardware includes a Shader 2.0 compliant programmable GPU (which is required for Quartz 2D Extreme), Tiger unfortunately does not use it at this time.
If these rumours are true (and we will only know for sure on the 29th), one can only hope that later point updates of 10.4 will reenable it. In the meantime, one can enable it for testing purposes using the Quartz Debug application in the Developer Tools.
(Note that Core Image is something completely different from Quartz 2D Extreme, and is included and enabled in Tiger. Core Image's GPU acceleration does share Quartz 2D Extreme's requirement for Shader 2.0 support however.)
[Update 2005-04-25]
Several people who now have the release version of Tiger 10.4 (8A428) are reporting that Quartz 2D Extreme is indeed disabled by default.
Introduced in Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar, Quartz Extreme replaced Quartz to offload portions of OS X's 2D display work from the CPU to the GPU. Quartz 2D Extreme similarly would replace Quartz 2D to further offload work to the GPU.
(Click picture for video. Go to 22'52".)
However, while the Quartz 2D Extreme code is present in Tiger, rumour has that it is disabled by default in the shipping version of Tiger. Also, there is no mention of it on Apple's public webpages about Tiger. So apparently, even if the hardware includes a Shader 2.0 compliant programmable GPU (which is required for Quartz 2D Extreme), Tiger unfortunately does not use it at this time.
If these rumours are true (and we will only know for sure on the 29th), one can only hope that later point updates of 10.4 will reenable it. In the meantime, one can enable it for testing purposes using the Quartz Debug application in the Developer Tools.
(Note that Core Image is something completely different from Quartz 2D Extreme, and is included and enabled in Tiger. Core Image's GPU acceleration does share Quartz 2D Extreme's requirement for Shader 2.0 support however.)
[Update 2005-04-25]
Several people who now have the release version of Tiger 10.4 (8A428) are reporting that Quartz 2D Extreme is indeed disabled by default.
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