The Washington Times has joined the chorus of mainstream newspapers and magazines that have been praising Apple's new iMac G5. The reviewer, Mark Kellner, offers the by-now familiar compliments concerning the unit's set up, the display, the ergonomics, and, best of all, the presence of Panther itself. As with those other reviewers, the closest thing he has to a complaint is to say that the unit should come with 512 MB of RAM standard.
The arrival of Apple Computer's iMac G5 raises the question: How much better can a computer get? In the case of the iMac, the answer is, substantially better, in ways large and small.
In a world in which you can get a very good Windows-based computer and flat-panel display for less than half the $2,152 price tag of the (very well-equipped) 20-inch iMac G5 sent for review, why shell out the extra money for the Apple logo and operating system?
Well, the Apple logo and operating system are themselves compelling reasons: Apple Computer is known for building very good computer systems, ones that are high in "initial quality" and that last in the long term. And Mac OS X, now in its "Panther" incarnation, is a rock-solid operating system that doesn't crash.
The US$2,152 price tag mentioned by Mr. Kellner includes the additional RAM, Bluetooth module, and wireless keyboard and mouse that Apple included on his review unit. There's more in the full review at the Washington Times' Web site.
The Mac Observer Spin:
It's near unanimous: Everyone loves the iMac G5. The message is being broadcast far and wide by big name, mainstream media outlets. Perhaps that's why Piper Jaffray sees the Apple's market share rising, but whatever the case, it seems that significant momentum is building for the Mac platform as a whole.
From that article:
Still, the maximum memory is just 2 gigabytes (it costs $1,125 if you buy it from Apple). That's odd because one of the selling points of the IBM-built G5 processor is its ability to handle much more than the 4 gigabyte maximum of most of today's PCs.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't the Power Macs have 8 GB of RAM BECAUSE they're dual-chip machines?
I mean, he's still right that the iMac doesn't even allow UP to 4, but to say that the G5 chip allows MORE than 4 is, I think, not correct.
Anyway, that review wasn't even that bad. His biggest complaint was that you had to spend an extra $275 to make it worth buying.
After that, he liked it. Maybe one of the worse reviews, but it's hardly a "bad" review.[/b]
Anonymous wrote: The reason the G5 allows more RAM to be used is that it can address the RAM using 64 bit addresses, and so can address more than 4GB of RAM
Right, but answer this:
Can a SINGLE chip G5 machine ever have more than 4 GB of RAM?
I'm not sure of the answer, but I THINK it's "no."
From that article:
Still, the maximum memory is just 2 gigabytes (it costs $1,125 if you buy it from Apple). That's odd because one of the selling points of the IBM-built G5 processor is its ability to handle much more than the 4 gigabyte maximum of most of today's PCs.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't the Power Macs have 8 GB of RAM BECAUSE they're dual-chip machines?
I mean, he's still right that the iMac doesn't even allow UP to 4, but to say that the G5 chip allows MORE than 4 is, I think, not correct.
Anyway, that review wasn't even that bad. His biggest complaint was that you had to spend an extra $275 to make it worth buying.
After that, he liked it. Maybe one of the worse reviews, but it's hardly a "bad" review.[/b]
Well, the review wasn't glowing, either. The problem is that your average consumer could read an article like this and say, "Hey! I need to spend an additional 300 bucks just to make it interesting?" Even though a similar machine from Dell might be equal or more in price, this kind of review is still not totally helpful. But yes, in effect, the guy did think it was okay, but not stellar.
There is no relationship between how many processors a computer has and how much memory it can address. The limits of how much RAM can be used in any particular machine are:
1. If it is a 32 bit machine, it is limited to 4GB of RAM. In practice most 32 bit processor machines are limited to even less because of physical constraints (eg it only holds up to 2 sticks of RAM with a maximum size of 256 MB) and OS limitations (ie Win98/ME are limited to addressing 512 MB).
2 If it is a 64 bit machine, its limits are for all practical purposes limited by how much RAM can be physicaly stuffed into it.
Guest wrote: There is no relationship between how many processors a computer has and how much memory it can address. The limits of how much RAM can be used in any particular machine are:
1. If it is a 32 bit machine, it is limited to 4GB of RAM. In practice most 32 bit processor machines are limited to even less because of physical constraints (eg it only holds up to 2 sticks of RAM with a maximum size of 256 MB) and OS limitations (ie Win98/ME are limited to addressing 512 MB).
2 If it is a 64 bit machine, its limits are for all practical purposes limited by how much RAM can be physicaly stuffed into it.
I'll second all that, but with one modification. I believe the G5 addresses are "only" 42 bits wide, so we're looking at a maximum of 4 terabytes [2^42] of byte accessable memory. Nothing to sniff at, since even the biggest hard drives I know of are still only 400 gigabytes - or one tenth of the total addressable memory space of the G5. And OS X can handle 64 bit addresses, right? Now if only someone would build a 2-terabyte stick of RAM, we could cram 4 terabytes of RAM into an iMac .
On a side note though, how many of your average consumers (the target audience for the iMac) have 2 gigabytes of RAM installed in their computers? If I had to guess, I'd say most people average 512 megabytes to a gigabyte of RAM installed at most. Serious power users may install more, but they're more likely to opt for the G5 tower anyhow, so only putting in the hardware for two memory modules (in the iMac) sounds like a sensible cost-conserving measure to me.
I'd say most people average 512 megabytes to a gigabyte of RAM installed at most. Serious power users may install more, but they're more likely to opt for the G5 tower anyhow, so only putting in the hardware for two memory modules (in the iMac) sounds like a sensible cost-conserving measure to me.
Yeah, I could see an iMac user wanting to have UP TO 2 GB of RAM...that's fine if you're into Final Cut Express or something...but if you want more than that I'm afraid you've picked the wrong computer.
DocRoss wrote: Great article except for one point: The Washington Times is no mainstream newspaper. It is a extreme right-wing newspaper.
Actually, it's owned by Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a South Korean cult leader who heads the "Unification Church" (Aka, "Moonies") Rev. Moon believes that he is the Messiah and the "True Parent" of mankind, as well as a convicted felon (tax evasion).
The Washington Times is one of many organizations that Moon owns and uses to represent his interests, and present a positive "mainstream" face to his cult, and his ability to project his views into the mainstream. The man may be insane, but he's also very well funded, very well connected, and very shrewd.
Not that I'm complaining about the positive Apple press, nor the choice to list the Washington Times story here. I just think it's important for people to know about the Man behind the Curtain, when the man is as loony as Moon.
Guest wrote: No, 64-bit processors can support 8+ GB's of RAM.
Not necessarily. The native word size of a processor dosen't define it's memory addressing capabilities. For example, the data bus width to/from memory for the 64-bit PowerPC 970/970FX is actually only 32 bits wide, and real addresses are only 42 bits wide. So yes, in the case of the G5, it can access 8+ GB of RAM (4TB or 4096GB actually), but a 64-bit address space would be 16 Exabytes (16 Giga-gigabytes).
In any case, we've wandered a bit from the more important point - the iMac G5 could use more than 2 GB of RAM if memory manufacturers would build a stick bigger than 1GB.
It drives me a little crazy when reviewers and critics talk about pricing on Mac computers, and they don't even bother trying to compare machines with similar specs. I'd like to challenge the reviewer to go to Dell's website and configure a Dell for half the price of the $2100 iMac setup he is talking about. What do you get? You certainly don't get a system that has the same specs as the 20" iMac. To get a comparable system, you end up paying roughly the same amount.
To be fair, he reviewed the system he got, which was the 20" model. But did he bother doing any research? No, otherwise he would have found that there are two other iMac models at lower prices, and their specs are also comparable to the systems you would get if you looked at the half-priced Windows computer he reckons people are shopping for.
SWC, the G5 can have 8GB beacuse it has four slots, and right now, the biggest sticks availble are 2GB sticks. The G5 proccessor can handle, in theory, 18 Exabytes of memory, which, I belive, is 18 X 10-27.
CloseViewName:Guest Fri Oct 01, 2004 2:53 pmSubject:
Quote
AFCdtLoeb wrote: SWC, the G5 can have 8GB beacuse it has four slots, and right now, the biggest sticks availble are 2GB sticks. The G5 proccessor can handle, in theory, 18 Exabytes of memory, which, I belive, is 18 X 10-27.
RAM is still generally sized in base 2, not base 10, so in this context an exabyte is 2^60 bytes (1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes) - approximated using base 10 math, this would be 10^18. So a 64 bit address would allow for 2^64 bytes or 16 exabytes, approximating to 1.8 x 10^19 (or 18 x 10^18).
CloseViewName:Guest Fri Oct 01, 2004 3:01 pmSubject:
Quote
AFCdtLoeb wrote: SWC, the G5 can have 8GB beacuse it has four slots, and right now, the biggest sticks availble are 2GB sticks. The G5 proccessor can handle, in theory, 18 Exabytes of memory, which, I belive, is 18 X 10-27.
The base PowerMac G5 (1.8GHz) has 4 slots, the higher end models (2.0GHz, 2.5GHz) have 8 slots, but the iMac G5 only has 2 slots.
CloseViewName:Guest Fri Oct 01, 2004 3:26 pmSubject:
Quote
AFCdtLoeb wrote: Ummmm... I'm getting a B- in calc.... Could you break that down for me?
OK - assuming you're not be facetious. Unless I typoed (which is entirely possible ) ... First, an exabyte of RAM is two to the power of sixty bytes (2^60). In decimal this is 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 (approximately 1.15 x 10^18). So for a 64 bit memory space,
2^64 bytes,
which equals 2^60 x 2^4,
which equals 2^60 x 16,
which is approximately (1.15 x 10^18) x 16,
which equals 18.4 x 10^18,
which is approximately 18 x 10^18. Ta-Da!
(Depending on how many decimal places you round off, your milage may vary ).
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