iMacs vs. Power Macs
These new iMacs appear to bridge the current gulf between yesterday's G3 iMacs and Power Mac G4s. I believe they do so in a way that the Cube didn't ... small form factor, G4s nearly as fast as the Power Mac G4s, and design elegance. They are one thing the Cube was not, however, and that's affordable, particularly at the level of performance they offer.
This bridging of product lines suggests to me that when the Power Macs are updated (and I would be surprised if that didn't happen in the next three months), that they go upmarket. Dual processors in all configurations, for example, and quad processors at the high end.
Mac OS X and G4s are natural partners in being very multi-processor-friendly. It's high time we start to see the fruits of that marriage.
I agree with you in doubting that Apple will sell a whole lotta Power Macs this quarter, unless they can roll out new ones in Tokyo next month and have them ready to ship immediately.
Other differences between the high-end iMac G4 and Power Macs include:
iMac has a 100 MHz system bus, Power Macs have a 133 MHz system bus.
iMac has no L3 cache, Power Macs have a 2 MB L3 cache per processor (both have 256K L2 cache)
Buona fortuna |
