The Official WWDC Live News Thread

This is ridiculous. How am I supposed to afford the Mac Pro now that the only option is the most expensive? I would be very fortunate if I could even afford the lowest-level G5 at this rate. Unlike some people, I'm not made of money.

 

And where are the Core 2 Duo processors in the laptops? Absolutely no laptop vendor seems to get the idea that some of us start college in a week. I need a 64-bit laptop now, so that I'll be able to use the 64-bit EFI-compatible Vista, considering that the college is more than likely going to mandate the upgrade to Vista anyway.

 

I sure hope that ATI and NVida cards for PC now work on the Mac Pro. If they don't, I'm going to be really pissed off.

Thats the funnyest thing ive ever seen.

This is ridiculous. How am I supposed to afford the Mac Pro now that the only option is the most expensive? I would be very fortunate if I could even afford the lowest-level G5 at this rate. Unlike some people, I'm not made of money.

 

And where are the Core 2 Duo processors in the laptops? Absolutely no laptop vendor seems to get the idea that some of us start college in a week. I need a 64-bit laptop now, so that I'll be able to use the 64-bit EFI-compatible Vista, considering that the college is more than likely going to mandate the upgrade to Vista anyway.

 

I sure hope that ATI and NVida cards for PC now work on the Mac Pro. If they don't, I'm going to be really pissed off.

 

what did you expect the Mac Pro's to cost? 1000?

As for Core 2 Duo, Intel only released it not too long ago and it will take at least a month or two for production to ramp up. Remember how it took until end of March for MacBook Pro's supply and demand to reach equilibrium? Why do you need 64bit to run Vista anyway. Vista is gonna be 32bit and 64bit compatible, and it's almost a guarantee that Boot Camp on Leopard will support Vista. I wouldn't be shocked if VMWare and Parallels become Vista compatible as well.

This is ridiculous. How am I supposed to afford the Mac Pro now that the only option is the most expensive? I would be very fortunate if I could even afford the lowest-level G5 at this rate. Unlike some people, I'm not made of money.

 

And where are the Core 2 Duo processors in the laptops? Absolutely no laptop vendor seems to get the idea that some of us start college in a week. I need a 64-bit laptop now, so that I'll be able to use the 64-bit EFI-compatible Vista, considering that the college is more than likely going to mandate the upgrade to Vista anyway.

 

I sure hope that ATI and NVida cards for PC now work on the Mac Pro. If they don't, I'm going to be really pissed off.

 

 

It's interesting that you say that....

 

The PC will combat the MAC with LAPTOPS with DUAL dou and AMD duo and quad cores probably before the Holiday season. Therefore making the MAC top of the line as of today available in a laptop.

 

Mac will respond with the OCTOpro with is slated to have 2x8 cores (16 cores).

 

All is good in the land of computing....

 

The price of this for $2499 seems to be a good deal but what GPU can be used and can you use your own.

 

Perhaps this deserves it's own thread but I wonder what mother boards are in the new MAC PRO's and chipsets and what if any, manufacture will come out with a motherboard that is similar as buying two chips, motherboard and DDR would be about 1/3 the price. Add in overclocking and we are talking RT FCP rendering to the hearts desire! As mentioned in one of my blogs the new duo cores due to the low heat and wattage overclock amazingly. This leaves a lot of head room for the new intel chips.

 

As well, AMD still needs to go to .65 with SOI (IBM) and we should also see huge improvements from AMD as well - - in addition to cooler GPU's (ATI).

This is ridiculous. How am I supposed to afford the Mac Pro now that the only option is the most expensive?

Thats not quite true - the way the store is layed out is a sort of "build your own" style. You can choose a lower processor speed / hard drive capacity etc. if you want.

And where are the Core 2 Duo processors in the laptops? Absolutely no laptop vendor seems to get the idea that some of us start college in a week. I need a 64-bit laptop now, so that I'll be able to use the 64-bit EFI-compatible Vista, considering that the college is more than likely going to mandate the upgrade to Vista anyway.

 

 

I am a student who works in a Univerity IT department. We still (in theory) support Windows 98 even though I have only ever once seen Windows 98 on a students computer at school. It will be years before you are mandated to upgrade to Vista. All IT departments are different but schools do not want to put a burden of an operating system on a student.

 

And if you are at school studying computer science, most programming is done in OS neutral languages like Java and also on Solaris, which you'd have to visit a lab for anyway. I wouldn't worry for a second about forced upgrades or that not having 64 bit will hurt you in school as the vast majority of students don't even know what half this stuff is.

 

and im done hijacking this thread

what did you expect the Mac Pro's to cost? 1000?

As for Core 2 Duo, Intel only released it not too long ago and it will take at least a month or two for production to ramp up. Remember how it took until end of March for MacBook Pro's supply and demand to reach equilibrium? Why do you need 64bit to run Vista anyway. Vista is gonna be 32bit and 64bit compatible, and it's almost a guarantee that Boot Camp on Leopard will support Vista. I wouldn't be shocked if VMWare and Parallels become Vista compatible as well.

I was hoping for a minimum of $1999. That's why I was also hoping that Conroe would be used. Woodcrest is a server processor, not a workstation processor. I don't mind Woodcrest being in the Mac Pro, but a Conroe option would satisfy those of us on a budget who don't need the best computer money can buy as much as an expandable Macintosh tower. I was also hoping for at least one PCI slot, however I can live without PCI since almost every PCI card now seems to come in a USB equivalent.

 

Thats not quite true - the way the store is layed out is a sort of "build your own" style. You can choose a lower processor speed / hard drive capacity etc. if you want.

Ah, I see that now. The lowest is $2,124.00. However, even that is still a bit pricey. I did notice that the educational discount will lower the lowest configuration to $1,962.00, which I am at least content with.

 

I am a student who works in a Univerity IT department. We still (in theory) support Windows 98 even though I have only ever once seen Windows 98 on a students computer at school. It will be years before you are mandated to upgrade to Vista. All IT departments are different but schools do not want to put a burden of an operating system on a student.

 

And if you are at school studying computer science, most programming is done in OS neutral languages like Java and also on Solaris, which you'd have to visit a lab for anyway. I wouldn't worry for a second about forced upgrades or that not having 64 bit will hurt you in school as the vast majority of students don't even know what half this stuff is.

 

and im done hijacking this thread

The university doesn't, but apparently my college does. I'm in business information technology, not computer science. I would have chosen computer science if it hadn't taken me hours to code stuff in Visual Basic in high school when it took everybody else thirty minutes (although it turns out that most of them either copied each other's projects or did a mediocre job). In any case, the business college seems to be stressing on a "future-proof" laptop for class use, despite the only sanctioned programs used in classes are Office, Visio, and OneNote. Already the college requires Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 and Office 2003, and that all laptops be "Vista-ready," so I suspect a mandatory Vista upgrade as well. As we all know, Vista will not include EFI support in the 32-bit version. The betas, however, still do have EFI support, which is why Microsoft would be downright stupid to remove it at this stage. Nevertheless, the EFI support is most likely why Vista can work on an Intel Macintosh now. I suspect that the final, EFI-less Vista will not. I'm positive that Vista will be able to run in Parallels or VMWare due to legacy BIOS support in those programs, but I doubt that native support will be possible.

I have to say this on the Mac Pro even though most Apple hardware is overpriced:

 

you are getting a QUAD core 64bit processor, 1 gig ram, powerful graphics card, 250 gigs hard drive, alot of ports (2 firewire 800, 2 firewire 400. 5 US 2.0, OPTICAL audio in/out), 16X dual layer dvd burner. That is alot for $2499. That machine will not be upgrade (barring memory and graphics cards for gamers) for 6 years or so.

I was really ticked about seeing a Tiger GUI on screen yesterday. That was, until I saw this from the WWDC 2004:

 

 

We all know that the current Tiger install disc looks nothing like that. And I'm pretty sure they've replaced the Panther wallpaper since then. [/sarcasm]

 

On the bright side, that goes to show how much can change. Just look at how far tiger came in 9 months. Between now and Spring 2007 is about 9 months also.

I have to say this on the Mac Pro even though most Apple hardware is overpriced:

 

you are getting a QUAD core 64bit processor, 1 gig ram, powerful graphics card, 250 gigs hard drive, alot of ports (2 firewire 800, 2 firewire 400. 5 US 2.0, OPTICAL audio in/out), 16X dual layer dvd burner. That is alot for $2499. That machine will not be upgrade (barring memory and graphics cards for gamers) for 6 years or so.

True, but I would really also like to see a "budget" version of the Mac Pro line with basic hardware that users could upgrade later. That's what I did with my previous system, and that's what I plan to do with my built PC.

 

What I want to see is a "Mac Basic" instead of a "Mac mini:" same spefications as the latter (except with Conroe) but the expandability of the former. Some of us can't afford this kind of stuff up front, and don't really want to be locked into monthly payments.

 

Man, I should have gotten a summer job.

 

In any case, is that all or will there be more today?

True, but I would really also like to see a "budget" version of the Mac Pro line with basic hardware that users could upgrade later. That's what I did with my previous system, and that's what I plan to do with my built PC.

Its called the iMac. Apple tend to group there products in consumer and pro (and budget in the case of the mac mini). Apple built the Mac Pro with sheet performance in mind budget did not come into it at all as the people who will be buying these things are pros (in their minds). Also the price is a $1000 cheaper than an equivalent Dell!!

But I do see what you mean about the expandable mac mini idea.

Apple loves to sell hardware. They're not going to sell you a machine that is easily upgradable unless you drop at least a couple grand. If you could upgrade, you'd buy stuff from other vendors instead of buying a *new* computer from Apple.

 

As it stands, there is still a huge hole in the Macintosh lineup. That's where a hackintosh fits in perfectly. I don't think Apple cares though. We people are the extreme minority. This is too bad, because I've been on the PC side for many technology generations due to hardware costs.

 

That being said, the Mac Pro is a good deal- if you're a developer. If you're interested in creating a nice customizeable inexpensive machine, Apple doesn't care about you.

Clearly.

 

Also, Apple does care, just like every copyright holder cares about people infringing their products in any miniscule manner.

I need to download the entire WWDC 2006 Keynote. I cant view the webcast. I need to download. I have not eaten anything for three days until I get my webcast on my hard drive. Lol ok I ate a few tacos but those dont count right?