ISSUE 564: The high-tech office- Aug
15 2000
ALAN ZISMAN
Apple's most recent
splash more show than substance
The annual summer MacWorld convention
is one of the times when Apple's Steve Jobs likes to
make a splash with new product announcements. This year's New York City
show was no exception.
Last year at this time, Jobs an nounced the company's
low-cost iBook notebook. This year, he focused on the desktop computer
lineup.
Besides replacing the much-criticized mouse and
keyboard designs, Jobs announced new versions of the popular iMac
series, new use of dual processors for the high-end G4 towers, and an
all-new in-between model sporting a back-to-Jobs'-future cube design.
But while Jobs always gives a good show (you can view it online at www.apple.com/quicktime),
this time around there may have been less than meets the eye.
Take the iMac revision. The base model remains much
the same 350 Mhz computer as last January's model, though its blue
shade is now "Indigo" in place of "Blueberry" and its price drops to
$1,199. The other fruit colours introduced 18 months ago are also, in
Jobs' words, "collectors' items," replaced by ruby-red, sage-green and
ice-white. The higher-end models sport larger hard drives and slightly
faster processors than the previous generation, topping out with a 500
Mhz G3, for the same prices as the models they replaced, ranging from
$1,499 to $2,299. All new colours, only modest improvements.
With the tongue-in-cheek slogan "Two heads are better
than one," Jobs showed off a G4-tower Mac with dual processors, putting
it head-to-head with a 1 Ghz Pentium III running a complex Photoshop
task. The Mac finished in about a minute, taking just over half the
time of the Intel-powered computer, even though the Macs'
processors run at a slow-sounding 500 Mhz.
At the same price as previous models with a single
processor and slower networking, these new G4 Macs, with dual
processors and gigabit Ethernet networking built-in, offer good value
for powerful computing. But it's important to be aware of the fine
print:
* The low-end model ($2,399), with its 400 Mhz
processor, remains a single-processor model, though it does gain the
faster networking.
* The 450 Mhz and 500 Mhz models ($3,799 and $5,299)
both come with the pair of processors. However, the current Mac
operating system and most Mac software does not use the second
processor. Photoshop jockeys will benefit; most of the rest of us
won't.
* To get full benefit from the dual processors, we'll
need to wait for the release of Apple's next-generation operating
system, OS X, sometime next year. Mac fans who were hoping that Jobs
would release a preview beta of OS X at MacWorld were disappointed.
* While the G3 and G4 processors are more efficient
than Intel models, Intel (and competitor AMD) have been
continually able to pump up the speed of their CPUs. While 700 MHz G4s
have been demoed, Apple's computers have been stuck at the same 400_500
Mhz speeds for the past year or so.
While the iMac and Power Mac G4 towers offered new
takes on existing models, Jobs also showed off something all new: a
Power Mac G4 Cube. And a cube is what it is, eight inches to a side,
taking up about as much desktop space as a toaster, but powered with a
450 Mhz G4 processor (for $2,699, or $3,499 for a 500 Mhz model) in a
transparent fanless case. Downsizing (and quieting) the desktop
computer is a good idea. But, again, it's much less earthshaking than
it may at first look.
There may be more to the cube design than meets the
eye, however. Jobs was forced out of Apple, the company he cofounded,
in 1985. At his next start-up, NeXT, Jobs offered a stylish and
innovative computer that lacked a floppy drive, was shaped like a cube
and ran on a new, NeXT-Step operating system. Few NeXT cubes were sold
and the company bled through several hundred million dollars of
investors' money until Apple purchased it in late 1996.
Now, Jobs is back in charge, NeXT-Step forms the basis
of the upcoming OS X, Apple's models all lack floppy drives and the
company releases a cube-shaped computer. Revenge is sweet.
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