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

To: Richard Habib who wrote (25047)	6/4/1999 1:00:00 PM
From: FruJu	Respond to of 213176

Jim, I suppose the concern is that Apple has based its updated chipset on the G4 processor. It appears to me that using IBM chips will mean no real progress on the motherboard. The PC world on the other hand will have a 133 Mhz front side bus, rambus 800 Mhz memory, 4X AGP available to it in Sep. Rich My reading of the G4 technical documentation that has been made available is that it was designed to run with two different memory bus interfaces. The high-end called "MaxBus" is primarily an improvement on the backside bus interface. It increases maximum backside cache to 2MB along with other optimizations to increase memory bandwidth about 2-3x over an existing G3 backside cache memory system (particularly important for multiprocessor G4s). However, it can also fallback to a G3 PowerPC-compatible mode, where it can just be slipped into an existing G3 chipset design. This is how the accelerator companies were going to ship G4 processors for G3 machines. With regards to Apple, from what little rumour has been published on these, it has usually been said that the initial Sawtooth designs would ship in this G3-compatible mode, rather than making full use of the high end "MaxBus". So what does this mean? The 4X AGP and 133MHz front side bus, 800MHz RamBus [incidentally, I think this is still at least 2 years away], depend on the memory controller and PCI bus controller chips, rather than the processor. So it's possible that a 600-700MHz G3 could be slipped into the Sawtooth design without a major redesign, yet still ship with a 4X AGP port [remember that it was thought for a long time that Yosemite would ship with a 2X or 4X AGP]. E>

To: Richard Habib who wrote (25047)	6/4/1999 1:08:00 PM
From: FruJu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 213176

By the way I agree IBM does know its business. Probably too late to backtrack on Altivec but I am very leery of MOTs ability to execute. Agreed. This is eerily reminiscent of 1992, when Apple was totally dependent on Motorola for 680x0 chips. The 68040 (compare G3) had shipped, but Motorola was having a terrible time getting its clock speed up (they struggled to get anything shipping beyond 33MHz), while Intel had the 80486 humming along at 50 and 66MHz. Meanwhile, the 68060 (compare G4) was so late, and had gone through so many silicon revisions.. it eventually shipped, but after Apple was almost on the verge of releasing the first PowerPC 601 machines. Unfortunately, we seem to be in the same situation today. The G4 is horribly late (it was originally supposed to ship at the beginning of 1999). The G3 is rapidly losing the MHz rate to Intel. And Apple is seemingly dependent on Motorola again for their next gen chip architecture. The decision by Apple to commit to Altivec, and then have Motorola the sole provider of it may come back to haunt Apple in the long term. Personally, I believe Apple should have not put all their eggs into the Altivec basket, and instead pushed IBM to up the clock rate on their G3s, possibly moving to a "G3.5" design (with longer pipelines) to push the clock rate even harder. IBM has tremendous silicon and fab processes, and could probably ship a 700-800MHz G3 by the end of this year, if Apple had committed to go that route instead of with Altivec. In any case, now those rumours of Apple going with Merced/McKinley in the long run make more and more sense.

To: Richard Habib who wrote (25047)	6/4/1999 1:16:00 PM
From: Doren	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213176

Other Apple backtracking. ATI makes the video cards for the G3s. Currently you can buy an extra board with a new G3 so you can run two monitors. You can also buy the equivilent ATI board for a PC. However, Mac users with older equipment wishing to upgrade or G3 owners who need an extra monitor are out of luck. ATI has delayed the availability several times from a Feb. release to what now looks like a July release. Is Apple pressuring ATI to drag its feet on this in order to sell more G3s? Sounds like it. As I have previously said, the guys who run these corporations do it for a personal ego trip. Anyone who thinks they do it out of a sense of purpose for mankind is nieve. They will sacrifice anything or anyone to grab or hold on to power, to feed their egos. Money is part of it but only in that money enhances power. That is capitalism and it works better than anyother system. Just don't think Jobs is above this fray. He'll take the glory from Amilio, and he'd sacrifice anything to stay on top. What makes Apple, is the dogged insistance of the complaining consumer, and the ever watchful eye of the stockholders. You should distrust Jobs, don't let his ego screw your profits. I'm not saying he should go, I'm just saying don't trust him too far. Short term goals are short term money true, but sometimes a battle is won but a war is lost.