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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FruJu who wrote (25243)	6/25/1999 12:27:00 AM
From: Matt Peterson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 213174

re: G3 fpu Exactly! What I do might be a weird anomoly (running SuperAnova with SoftFPU mapping 68k fpu calls to the PPC), but my Powerbook G3/250 takes 3x longer to solve an ANOVA than my PowerCenter Pro 210, despite having higher mhz and all of that fast cache handy to keep the cpu fed. I'm not so sure that the G4 was due in early 1998, though. My impression was that the 760 would come out 6-9 months (5/98-8/98) after the 750 (11/97). The rumors behind the cancelation of the 760 were that they were behind a bit on solving the multiprocessing problem, but that they were also ahead of schedule on the G4. Their reasoning was that with such a short span between the delayed release of the 760 and the G4 (6 months?), releasing the 760 didn't make a lot of sense. Actually, my educated guess was that we would see the G4 this month. I guess I was wrong. Personally, I'm not upgrading my PowerCenter Pro 210 until the G4 comes out. After all, upgrading to a G3 would be a downgrade for me (it would take a 750mhz G3 to match my PCP210 using SuperANOVA). We're not talking about milliseconds here, were talking about 10 vs. 30 seconds. That's a lot of agravating time when submitting several different stats analyses!

To: FruJu who wrote (25243)	6/25/1999 4:04:00 PM
From: Doren	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 213174

Apple lost the fpu race once it started converting to G3's almost two years ago. The cancelled PowerPC 760 would have brought the 604e's fpu to the G3 line. Now we have to wait for the G4. On the other hand, how many of you have to wait for calculations to complete? For the vast majority of people, fpu doesn't matter (it does to gamers, people who do heavy number crunching, and some graphics & music people). The CORE of Mac users are graphics people, who USED to brag about FPU performance. Can Apple survive an exodus of these people? Consider my dilemma. I have just graduated from college. I have a fixed amount of money I can spend upgrading to a G3 from my 8500 (with a G3 upgrade). I want to spend this money on equipment before I fritter it away on living expenses. I'll also be building a modest NT machine so that I can work with 3D software. I want to do both graphics and semi-pro video editing. Both are heavy FPU users. The G4's were supposed to come out in Fall. So what would you do? Fall is about as long as I can wait while filling my time with productive tasks, like sending out résumés shopping for and buying compatible equipment etc. The G4 machines should smoke the G3 machines considering the FPU and AltaVec. In order to buy some of the peripherals I need I have to figure out if I should abandon my SCSI stuff or install a SCSI card in my new machine (thereby loosing a precious slot). Since I'll be doing video one of the three slots will be taken up by the second video card. (Don't tell me about the expansion chassis, I know about it but can't afford it.) One option I've already decided on is to buy a ProMax card with which I can install cheap but fast IDE drives on my 8500 and raid them. These drives and the card will install on the G3/G4 but will also take up another precious PCI slot. I have to consider if I can buy ABS stuff or should I go USB. Since G3s support ABS but G4s will not. During the meantime I cannot use firewire on my 8500 because the BUS speed is too low, even with a firewire card. I am planning to buy a firewire camera. It's a difficult dilemma, this waiting. Apple knows it. Apple wants us to buy the G3s and now Apple has disabled the ability of the G3 to accept a G4 processor. Apple wants us to later blow a lot more money upgrading again when the G4 comes out. Yes I know, Apple is a business, but again, Apple is trying to live on profit margin in a cash flow world. That has been its problem traditionally and it still can't seem to shake it. from FruJu: Originally, the G4 was supposed to have shipped IN SYSTEMS at the end of last year. It's now over half a year late, and looks like it will be at least another half a year. This is why Apple is losing the race at the high end. To me, it seems that either Apple is abandoning the high end or just can't get it together with Motorola/IBM. Maybe casual web surfers sitting behind iMacs are where the $$$ is, I don't know. Whatever I do, I'll have quite a bit of money invested in the Apple platform. But the scary thing is that if Apple does poop out in the high end, all my learning on the Mac platform will be useless. I'll have to relearn everything again on the Wintel platform. I'll say it again, I love Apple products and I want them to succeed. I'm an extremely loyal customer. I've used the same mechanic for 15 years despite the fact he charges more and is a 2 hour drive from me. But if I get screwed on this deal, I have a long memory. And there are lots of professionals out there in the same situation as me.