zephyrprime
Diamond Member
- Feb 18, 2001
- 7,512
- 2
- 81
zephyrprime
Diamond Member
- Feb 18, 2001
- 7,512
- 2
- 81
I just took a look at the benches and realized how much the 5200 sucks. Man! The mac people are getting screwed!
- Feb 16, 2003
- 26,108
- 5
- 81
Profit margins have no effect on the total return. They may be losing money, but look at where its going. First, they make A LOT of money when they sell a computer for $3000. I don't know how much, but comparing it to PC's, it must be a good amount.
Apple does a lot of research as well, I don't remember exactly which articles in magazines I've read, but from time to time they dedicate articles to their research. For this kind of research, there are large costs and Apple is working more towards the future just like any other company. Just because they lose money does necessarily mean they don't have a huge profit margin.
I remember looking at $2000+ G4's and seeing that they only had GeForce 2/4 MX cards in them. Honestly, that is pathetic. If I'm going to pay a price premium like that, I should at least get premium or very near the top parts.
Just because they are losing money, that doesn't mean they don't have a good profit margin. It just depends on the whole of the company on where all the money is going. Research, development, advertising(tv airtime for switch ads), etc.
I know that others here have mentioned that they really don't need high end vidcards for many apps that Mac users may typically run, But there is still many non-gaming apps that thrive on the best vid performance you can get. CAD programming comes to mind. Filling in surfaces and doing 3D rotating can be very taxing on a vidcard.
Why should they lose money to make people happy? Wouldn't make any business sense. Or would you really buy a PowerMac else? Oh, and the $3000 model comes with an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro.
As for the benchmarks, see slashdot for Apple's position on them. They have a good point by saying "If we wanted to screw you, we wouldn't disclose the benchmarks details in first place". Besides, they also demoed the applications that potential customers would run and the applications were fast. I also don't think they really had access to a Pentium4 3.2 GHz to do the benchmarks with.
ViRGE
Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
- Oct 9, 1999
- 31,516
- 167
- 106
One thing to realize on Mac video cards is the economies of scale. Simply put, it costs Apple more to buy a Mac Radeon than it costs Dell to buy a PC Radeon, since ATI makes far fewer Mac cards than PC cards. Apple's making a good profit no doubt, but they're definately not getting the greatest deal on those cards compared to you, I, or Dell; ATI simply can't sell them as cheap since they aren't high production.
Mac graphic cards also use different PCB due to the extra tap with pins next to the AGP pins, that's use for powering external LCD monitor.
IBM's prices on POWER4+ would bowl you right over.
Those are the cheap ones. So if you consider what the PPC970 cost relative to its big brother (POWER4+) it's not insane.Apple now has machines and an OS that can contend in this market.
I expect to see pro level cards show up before the mongo gaming stuff.
Originally posted by: addragyn
IBM's prices on POWER4+ would bowl you right over.
Apple now has machines and an OS that can contend in this market.
I expect to see pro level cards show up before the mongo gaming stuff.
Apple isn't comparing their systems to IBM Power4+ systems. They are comparing them to a 3GHz Dell system that likely retails for $1000 less, which makes their price pretty exorbitant.
Oh good god lighten up. See the wink. I'm not comparing the systems. It sounded like the poster was curious about the chip cost. Those are the closest systems out there w/ regards to the CPU.
The 3GHz dell ins't competition to those Suns I linked. The Apple machine is. It all depends where you let the comparision fall. Compared to other 64 bit workstations these new boxes are very competitively priced. Compared to single CPU consumer PCs the price isn't gonna sweep anybody off their feet.
Of note the G4 prices have gone down. http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?family=G4 To bad they didn't go all the way and offer the dual at the low price.
The 3GHz dell ins't competition to those Suns I linked. The Apple machine is. It all depends where you let the comparision fall. Compared to other 64 bit workstations these new boxes are very competitively priced. Compared to single CPU consumer PCs the price isn't gonna sweep anybody off their feet.
Of note the G4 prices have gone down. http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?family=G4 To bad they didn't go all the way and offer the dual at the low price.
May want to take a look at this link:
Power Mac G5
Notice what is says in huge letter multiple times:
"world?s fastest personal computer and the first with a 64-bit processor"
That doesn't sound like a product intended to compete with Sun. Where are the G5 vs Opteron and Sun benchmarks? If Apple intended these systems to be industrial workstations they wouldn't be benchmarking them against a Dell 8300 desktop system.
Originally posted by: GL
Oh come on NFS4
Oh, and the next time I'm at my favourite computer store, I'll ignore all those riced-up computer cases that PC users have been buying in droves. And I'll ignore the riced up cases on and in that magazine CPU which your boss might know about
heh, my sentiments exactly. my powerbook is in the shop having a part replaced, and i miss OS X dearly.
totally untrue. according to ATi (several ATi employees have posted at the Arstechnica Mac forum about this) many parts of the card have to be redesigned and a new driver has to be made. when you are selling fewer cards on the Mac market then on the PC marker, you end up having to charge more to balance out the additional costs.
Keynote Video
Go to 1:37:40. It's Luxology - 3D stuff. This is SGI territory.
Go to 1:41:20. Wolfram Research - Mathematica. This is definitely workstation-ville. Look at the supported platforms.
BTW - Photoshop is @ 1:35
Go to 1:37:40. It's Luxology - 3D stuff. This is SGI territory.
Go to 1:41:20. Wolfram Research - Mathematica. This is definitely workstation-ville. Look at the supported platforms.
BTW - Photoshop is @ 1:35
So if Apple doesn't make the G5 for gaming (and there's not a lot of gaming on the Mac, granted) ... and I know that there are applications that are better on the Mac than on the PC (graphics, etc.) ... why don't they include some super-duper-high-end option for a Quadro or a FireGL or something like that? All you've got is the choice between a 9600 Pro and a 9800 Pro ...? Seems kinda poopy to me ...
well for one thing mac people dont really game.
if you were a gamer you'd have a pc, all the games come out earlier on pc.
also on the old g4 macs, even with a radeon 9700 it made no difference, the cpus were holding back the card. dont know if thats how it is still.
if you were a gamer you'd have a pc, all the games come out earlier on pc.
also on the old g4 macs, even with a radeon 9700 it made no difference, the cpus were holding back the card. dont know if thats how it is still.
I don't think that it is a issue of either profit margin, simple oversite, or performance. It's cooling.
They probably can stick a much quieter heatsink on a the lower power ATI then the newest one.
That's part of the high quality bit that Apple banks on. THey have top of the line componates in a machine you can live with. It's target audiance is a bit different then then PC's, they are usually more creative artistic types then most geeks are. Lots of people would rather sacrific a few frame rates on quake to own a computer that doesn't sound like a buzz-bomb like PC's.
People freaked out on apple when they stuck a too-loud fan on the power supply, but that power supply was still worlds quieter then most cut rate PC's or PC's geared for performance.
Apples are designed to be lived with. For the long term. That's one of the reasons it has a loyal following.
You were right in saying that somebody who spends 3000 dollars on a computer is going to hang onto it for 3 years at least.
In PC land with windows the slower the computer you have the crappier it is. It will crash more, the waits are painfull and programs don't operate correctly. You are going to have a very hard time running XP on a 600mhz machine with 96megs of ram compared to a 3.0ghz with a 512megs.
At work we have 5 year old G4's with 400mhz proccesors that run the latest versions of the relatively high-end desktop image editing software. (Photoshop, Freehand, Quark, Illistrator etc etc.) (No 3d stuff, though.) They have the latest versions of OS X (10.2.6) and have been running the same OS's since 10.1 without reinstalling them, just thru upgrades. Hell they still have the originall OS 9 that people used in them, it's just now in classic mode. These are perfectly stable. Then run just as well (pretty much) as the newest dual proccessors g4's we have, just slower. And the difference to the end user (students) that only the computer-geeky ones can realy tell the difference in speed.
However if one group of computers were to be unusually load, then it would be unforgivable. People like quiet when they work.
They probably can stick a much quieter heatsink on a the lower power ATI then the newest one.
That's part of the high quality bit that Apple banks on. THey have top of the line componates in a machine you can live with. It's target audiance is a bit different then then PC's, they are usually more creative artistic types then most geeks are. Lots of people would rather sacrific a few frame rates on quake to own a computer that doesn't sound like a buzz-bomb like PC's.
People freaked out on apple when they stuck a too-loud fan on the power supply, but that power supply was still worlds quieter then most cut rate PC's or PC's geared for performance.
Apples are designed to be lived with. For the long term. That's one of the reasons it has a loyal following.
You were right in saying that somebody who spends 3000 dollars on a computer is going to hang onto it for 3 years at least.
In PC land with windows the slower the computer you have the crappier it is. It will crash more, the waits are painfull and programs don't operate correctly. You are going to have a very hard time running XP on a 600mhz machine with 96megs of ram compared to a 3.0ghz with a 512megs.
At work we have 5 year old G4's with 400mhz proccesors that run the latest versions of the relatively high-end desktop image editing software. (Photoshop, Freehand, Quark, Illistrator etc etc.) (No 3d stuff, though.) They have the latest versions of OS X (10.2.6) and have been running the same OS's since 10.1 without reinstalling them, just thru upgrades. Hell they still have the originall OS 9 that people used in them, it's just now in classic mode. These are perfectly stable. Then run just as well (pretty much) as the newest dual proccessors g4's we have, just slower. And the difference to the end user (students) that only the computer-geeky ones can realy tell the difference in speed.
However if one group of computers were to be unusually load, then it would be unforgivable. People like quiet when they work.
I'm exactly the same way. I have all three OSes running at my house. I use OS X for daily use, XP for gaming and linux for all of my servers (DNS, DHCP, mail, FTP, etc).
I think most people would do the same if they had access to an Apple computer. But most of them would rather spout off with a bunch of hackneyed quips about how they are overpriced or not compatible.
Now that the G4 Quicksilvers are two generations old their prices should go down quite a bit, and maybe some of the Mac haters will actually go out and TRY one for a month to see if they really hate it as much as they have convinced themselves that they do.
I don't know, I mean, I agree with you completely in theory. But in practice, even the highest end Dells i've been around have been pretty darn quiet. Not silent, but definitely not "buzz-bombs."
TRENDING THREADS
-
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)- Started by DisEnchantment
- Replies: 25K
-
Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes + WCL Discussion Threads
- Started by Tigerick
- Replies: 23K
-
Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread- Started by TheF34RChannel
- Replies: 23K
-
-
Facebook
Twitter