Apple has proved that having to make a virtue of necessity is not necessarily a bad thing. For the past six months or more, Apple has been the horns of a dilemma; to wit: the fact that while PC competitors Intel and Athlon have been leapfrogging over each other to 1000 MHz and soon beyond, Motorola has been unable to vault the G4 chip past the 500 MHz threshold.

This has not only prevented Apple's high-end Power Mac G4 machines from keeping pace with the PC competition, but also created a bottleneck whereby the low and midrange Macs had to be held back clock speed wise for marketing reasons. Having your entire range of computers from consumer entry-level to high end professional all within a 100 MHz range of clock speeds would make it difficult to explain the price premium of the more expensive boxes.

What to do? While IBM has announced that it will be shipping 700 MHz G3 chips in the fourth quarter of 2000, Apple has invested a lot of image making effort in the G4, and presumably would be very reluctant to "backtracked" to the G3, even if the G3 is actually faster than the 500 MHz G4.

Apple also had some other image/marketing problems to address. Despite its phenomenal success over the past two years, iMac sales had begun to slip, and there were rumblings of discontent about no upgrades for more than 10 months; that 350/400 MHz was beginning to look puny in comparison with the competition, and that the $999 entry level price was too high. And, truth to tell, I think a lot of people were getting kind of tired of bright candy colors. I know I was. They were sort of an interesting novelty at first, but I suspect that I would have found any of them ultimately enervating had I been in iMac owner. The Graphite color of the iMac SE would fare much better, but it was not available on the iMac standard and the basic iMac DV.

Then there was the issue of monitor size. While from my perspective, a 15 monitor seems more than adequate (my workhorse PowerBook has only a 12.1 in. 800 x 600 screen), for some people the iMac's 15 inch monitor seemed cramped compared with the 17 inch units that commonly ship with similarly priced PCs.

Finally, there was the excitement factor. While Apple's product lineup was substantial and solid across the board, the newest form factor was the iBook, which is a year old. (yes, I know that the iMac plastics were completely new last September, but the basic shape is essentially the same as that of the original iMac when in was first shown in May 1998. The Power Mac G4's form factor dates back to the G3 Yosemite which rolled out in January 1999, and the PowerBook Pismo, wonderful as it is, looks identical to its Lombard predecessor of May 1999, which in turn was basically a slimmed down version of the WallStreet form factor that debuted in May 1998.

Apple clearly needed to somehow address the G4 clock speed constipation issue, the iMac's price, power, and color issues, and just is importantly, generate some excitement with a new innovation -- something really new.

Happily, with its new hardware introductions at MacWorld expo this week, Apple has largely succeeded on all fronts.

On Wednesday, Steve Jobs introduced a revamped line of Macintosh desktops plus what he surely hopes will be Apple's next big thing -- the tiny new Power Mac G4 Cube. The iMac family has been expanded, speed-bumped, price-reduced, and given four completely new earth-toned colors (Graphite is the only holdover) and the two higher-end G4 Power Mac get dual-processors for the same price as their single-processor predecessors. Not only that, Apple's new desktops also ship with Apple's new optical mouse and full-sized pro keyboard.

The G4 Cube

In his MacWorld keynote, Steve Jobs noted that two and a half years ago Apple announced its "product quadrant" plan, and "today we are changing it." Proving the rumor sites accurate this time, Mr. Jobs proceeded to unveil the new Mac G4 Cube, which should adequately address the excitement factor issue for a while.

The G4 Cube delivers the performance of a Power Mac G4 in a 7.7" wide, 7.7" deep, and 9.8" tall, 14 pound, crystal-clear cube enclosure. The G4 Cube is less than one fourth the size of most PCs, yet houses a 450 MHz PowerPC G4 processor (configurable to 500 MHz through the Apple Store) with Motorola's Velocity Engine (Altivec).

Other Cube features include 64MB of memory expandable to 1.5GB; 20GB of storage (configurable up to 40GB through the Apple Store); a slot-loading DVD drive on the top of the G4 Cube; two FireWire and two USB ports; 10/100BASE-T Ethernet and a 56K V.90 modem. Interface cables connect to the bottom of the unit and use a new cable standard called DVII to carry the digital video signal, power, and USB to the monitor. The Cube uses a PowerBook-style external power supply, which helps keep down internal temperatures and makes for less crowding inside the tiny enclosure. Digital and VGA video connectors are provided.

The fanless Cube is claimed to be "virtually silent" in operation, and is bundled with two spherical Harman Kardon transparent speakers with mirrored cones, as well as Apple's new optical mouse and extended 108 key keyboard. There are no internal expansion slots. The Cube has a somewhat hefty US price is $1799 and will ship early August.

In some respects, the Cube is the so-called "headless" iMac for folks who want a monitor larger than the AIO iMac's 15 incher. There will be complaints about the lack of expansion slots, but really, folks -- if you need PCI expandability, pay $200 less and buy a PowerMac G4 400.

The Cube is overpriced for sure. Apple is counting on its avant garde stylishness to attract the high end of the market, and who can blame them? With the PowerMac G4 prices staying the same with a lot of value added, and iMac prices dropping (see below), there are plenty of other attractive choices.

High priced or not, I'm predicting that Apple will sell a ton of these units. Look for the Cube (I think they were correct to resist calling it an "iCube") to supplement or even largely displace the iMac as the computer most frequently encountered in upscale ads and magazine layouts.

PowerMac G4 Cube Specs
• 1.5 GB RAM, 40 GB, modem,10/100BASE-T Ethernet, USB, FireWire, Airport
• 1MB of backside level 2 cache
• 20GB Ultra ATA/66 hard disk drive
• ATI RAGE 128 Pro graphics card with 16MB of graphics memory, Apple Display Connector, and VGA connector
• 100MHz system bus supporting up to 800MBps data throughput
• 8-inch cube
• no fan
• slot-loading DVD in the top
• Harman Kardon apple design speakers
• 450/64/20/DVD/FW/iMovie - US$1799
• 500/128/30/DVD/FW/iM - US$2299 (Apple online store exclusive)

The Earth Tone iMacs

The revamped iMac line now starts at $799, which should silence some of the cheap PC advocates. The candy colors are gone, and the new, richer, more subdued iMac colors are Indigo, Ruby, Sage and Snow, the only holdover being Graphite. The latter two colors are reserved for the SE model exclusively.

The new iMac family features G3 processors ranging from 350 MHz to 500 MHz and hard drive capacities to 30GB. The iMac DV models also include iMovie 2, the new version of Apple's consumer digital video editing software.

The iMac model range has been expanded to four models:
• The basic, entry-level iMac 350 Mhz with 7 GB hard drive at a new lower price of $799 comes in Indigo only
• The standard iMac DV 400 MHz adds FireWire, a 10 GB hard drive, and iMovie 2 at a $999 price point, and is available in Indigo and Ruby, but very oddly, considering its name, has only a CD-ROM drive instead of a DVD drive.
• The $1,299 iMac DV+ does have a DVD drive, as well as a 450 MHz processor and a 20 GB hard drive, and adds Sage to the color choices.
• Rounding out the iMac family is the $1,499 iMac DV Special Edition, featuring a 500 MHz PowerPC processor, a monster 30GB hard disk drive, 128MB of DRAM, and is available in Graphite and Snow.

All four machines come with the new Apple Pro Mouse optical mouse and the new 108 key Apple Pro Keyboard with a built-in 2-port USB hub. The three extra keys allow you to adjust audio volume, mute the speakers, and eject a CD or DVD disk from the slot-loading drive.

The iMac DV, iMac DV+ and iMac DV Special Edition comes AirPort-ready with a built-in antenna. You still need to add the optional AirPort Card, and all the new iMacs have the ATI RAGE 128 Pro graphics accelerator — the same card that ships with the Power Mac G4, and the Harman Kardon Odyssey audio system. All four are still fanless. The new iMacs are also able to sleep, and wake up in 12 seconds.

Software bundled with the new iMacs includes the aforementioned iMovie 2 with the three DV models, and AppleWorks 6, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook Express, Netscape Communicator, Earthlink Total Access, Quicken Deluxe 2000, QuickTime 4, Bugdom, Nanosaur, Palm Desktop, FAXstf Pro and Adobe Acrobat Reader with all models.

While the changes in the iMacs are evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and cosmetic in the case of the new colors, I think they should be enough to reverse that slumping sales curve. I expect some people will miss the bright colors, but I won't be one of them. I like all of the new ones. It would be tough to choose. It will be interesting to see if some of the new colors appear on the next iBook revision, and if so which ones.

All four iMac models look like great values at their respective price points.

By the way, in his MacWorld address, Steve Jobs noted that 3.7 million iMacs have been sold over the past two years, which amounts to 5000 a day, 200 an hour, and one new iMac sold every 18 seconds. Additionally, 14% of iMac buyers are Wintel switchers, 44% are new customers, and 89% of iMacs are on the Internet

The Power Mac G4 Goes Dual Processor

The new 450 MHz and 500 Mhz models of the upgraded Power Mac G4 line are claimed to be the first mainstream personal computers to come standard with dual processors. The 450 MHz and 500 MHz Power Mac G4s each contain twin PowerPC G4 chips. Apple claims that when running Altivec ("Velocity Engine") optimized applications like Adobe Photoshop, the dual processor 500 MHz Power Mac G4 is as fast as the 2GHz Pentium III is expected to be when it is release a year or more from now. Of course, most Mac applications are not Altivec-optimized, and the dual processor machines may not be much faster than their single processor predecessors for many real-world tasks right now under OS 9, but the dual processor machines will be able to take advantage of OS X's symmetric multiprocessing support when it ships later this year.

Apple's hand was forced by Motorola's continuing problems getting G4 processors faster than 500 MHz on stream, and it was doubtful that the fruit company would have considered dual processors (although there was an optional dual processor Power Mac 9600 back in 604e days) had G4 development proceeded as had been hoped.

Dual processors are a thus a band-aid solution to the clock speed constipation problem, albeit a rather elegant and powerful one adding a lot of value at price points that are holding steady. It may also be a short-lived one if Motorola can get its ducks in a row and roll out the 700 MHz G4 Plus. The new Power Mac G4's also have been upgraded with speedy gigabit Ethernet and larger hard drives.

The Power Mac G4 Line now consists of:
• The $1599 (non dual processor) G4/400 64MB/20GB/DVD
• The $2499 The G4/450 MP 128MB/30GB/modem/DVD
• The $3499 G4/500 MP 256MB/40GB/modem/DVD-RAM

Returning good stuff on the PowerMac G4s includes the ATI RAGE 128 Pro graphics card and built-in USB and FireWire, and built-in DVD. Hard drive capacities are bumped to 20GB, 30GB and 40GB, (with room for up to 200 gigabytes of hard disk storage — and up to 1.5 gigabytes of SDRAM). The only ones complaining are likely to be those who recently purchased single-processor G4 450 MHz and 500 MHz machines.

The Power Mac G4s of course come with Apple's new optical Pro Mouse and the new Pro Keyboard, and can be coupled with Apple's new trio of displays which include:
• The $499 17 inch (16-inch viewable) Apple Studio Display CRT supports multiple resolutions at over 100 Hz vertical refresh rate. A Theater Mode provides increased screen brightness for enhanced viewing of full screen iMovie, DVD or QuickTime content.
• The $999 15-inch Apple Studio Display flat panel offers a pure digital interface delivering 1024-by-768 distortion free pixels. It offers 16.7 million saturated colors at twice the brightness, twice the sharpness, and twice the contrast ratio of typical CRT monitors.
• The $3,999 22 inch Apple Cinema Display offers a pure digital interface, an extra wide viewing angle and support for true 16.7 million saturated colors, making it perfect for even the most demanding graphics-intensive applications. Delivering 1600-by-1024 distortion free pixels, it is the largest LCD based flat panel display ever brought to market and ideal for viewing two full pages of text and graphics.

Each display is powered from the computer, eliminating the need for a separate power cord; each has a two port powered USB hub for convenient connection to desktop USB devices; and each utilizes the Apple Display Connector, a new cable interface specification which carries analog and digital video signals, USB data and power over a single cable.

Summary Thoughts

Some will say that Apple's new desktop hardware represents a triumph of style over substance, and it is true that there is nothing earth-shatteringly revolutionary in the new Macs except for the Cube's form factor, which is pure style, and perhaps the iMac's drop-dead gorgeous new earth tones. However, the engineering improvements, while modest, are welcome, and holding or reducing prices while adding value is always commendable. As I said at the beginning of this piece, making a virtue out of necessity is not necessarily a bad thing.

As a portable computing fan, I was disappointed, but not surprised that we saw no iBook upgrade at MacWorld Expo. The addition of FireWire is rumored to be in the works, and a major iBook revision in the pipeline behind that. Guess they had to hold something back for next time. Anyway, the Cube should be reasonably portable!

Charles W. Moore

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Saturday, 26-May-2012 16:31:47 EDT