“Bid farewell to the PowerPC-based iMac G5, ladies and gentlemen. Apple has dropped the 20″ model from its online stores in the UK, Europe and Japan, though the machine remains on sale in the US. Not for long though, we’d guess. Apple pulled the 17″ iMac G5 early in February, almost a month after introducing the Intel-based models in January. By the end of February, the 15″ PowerBook G4 was gone from the retail site, and early this month the PowerPC G4-based Mac Mini was dropped too.” That leaves us only with the iBook and PowerMac machines still being PPC (ignoring the Xserve). Reports suggest that the Intel iBook will arrive early April, and that the PowerMac might get the Intel treatmentent as soon as Intel pushes out its Conroe line.
I wonder what’ll happen to the Xserve. I would have thought that this would be easy enough to transition to Intel since it doesn’t rely on the Pro Apps. Maybe they’re ditching the Xserve ’cause making OS X server Universal is not worth the bother?
More likely they’re waiting for Intel to release a server CPU based on their “Core” Architecure. While Conroe is a possibility, it’s more likely that they’d go with either Woodcrest (dual-core) or Clovertown (quad-core, but bandwidth starved in some areas). These won’t be available till the end of the year, maybe the start of 2007, so they’re a long way off.
When Steve announced the Mac Mini on February 28th, he said it, along with the iMac and Macbook Pro accounted for half of Apple’s computer products. The other three are iBook, PowerMac and XServe, so XServe is still a part of their strategy, however given its function it’ll probably be the last box to get transitioned.
For more on Intel’s architecture, see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_Architecture
Edited 2006-03-14 00:00
I think it would be safe to assume that the Xserve line will be updated along with the PowerMac line. Except for the iMac which would not miss the loss of 64-bit computing.
The PowerMac line and Xserve line will regress in features if they are transitioned to the 32-bit core-duo processors. Once intel rolls out thier 64-bit dual core cpus I guess the PowerMac and Xserve lines will see refreshes.
Normally, dropping a line of computers in favour of ones that don’t run the most popular apps (Office, Photoshop) natively would seem like a stupid move;
but then I suspect Apple is trying to cajole Adobe and Microsoft into getting their asses into gear…
G5 PowerMac next, this is going to be big!
OS X Server and OS X are the same code base with areas of distinction. We aren’t talking apples and oranges here.
Before the “business” decision to make separate products they were, like their predecessor–Openstep, the same damn product.
The 12″ and 17″ Powerbooks are still PPC too.
I wonder what they’ll do with any “left over” G5’s? I guess I’ll have to get my G5 from TerraSoft Solutions
Title pretty much sums it up.
Bert
I wonder if Apple has toyed with the idea of an Itanium-based server, even though that would add another architecture type to Universal Binaries (we can have i386, ppc, ppc7400, ppc970, and ppc64 at the moment in the same binary).
Although the primary factor here would be performance per cost, and I don’t think an Itanium would match a Conroe in that respect.