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Whooooooooooooosshh! (2/2/98)
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So, uh, you think those new-fangled G3 Powermacs are fast, hmmmmm? Zippy little numbers that let you feel the wind in your hair? Well, prepare to break the sound barrier-- Mac OS Rumors has a little sneak preview of the Mac of Tomorrow, and its performance is amazing. Actually, "alarming" might be a better word.
Rumors sources at Apple report that they've got a prototype Gossamer II-based Mac running a beta version of a silicon and copper G4 PowerPC processor. This G4 (apparently called an "801") runs at a blistering 750 MHz, and what benchmarks they were able to hack together seem to indicate that this prototype runs about eight times faster than a 300 MHz G3-based system. And don't think that Powerbooks will be left out; there's a lower-power G4 chip called the 803 that runs only about as hot as today's G3's, making it perfect for the only laptop that's faster than the jet on which it's being used...
Remember, this tech demo was an early, early experimental prototype; it'll probably be over a year before systems like it become available. But by the same token, that also means that the technology will have time to improve. The chip will be tuned to run even faster. The subsystems will be tweaked for ultimate performance. And Rhapsody should be in full swing by then, eliminating most of the OS bottleneck that can hinder the chip's raw speed. Prepare for liftoff.
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SceneLink (414)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 2/2/98 episode: February 2, 1998: Feverish whispers tell of a prototype G4 Powermac that leaves current G3 offerings choking on its dust. Meanwhile, Apple confirms that it's dropped all national resellers except for CompUSA, amid what can only be described as "suspicious circumstances," and James Coates uncovers a fiendish Redmond plot to deep-six Claris while Apple's down...
Other scenes from that episode: 415: All Its Macs In One Basket (2/2/98) It's official-- Apple's formally announced that it made a conscious decision to pull out of Best Buy, Computer City, and all other national retailers except for CompUSA, who is now the exclusive national reseller of Macintosh computers... 416: All In It Together (2/2/98) And speaking of conspiracy theories, Chicago Tribune columnist James Coates seems to have been bitten by the paranoia bug himself, recently. In a long and rambling article, he builds his case that Apple's breakup of Claris was in fact a "ransom payment" to Microsoft. Jim's paranoid rant goes something like this: ClarisWorks Office (which Jim repeatedly refers to as "Claris Office," but we won't hold it against him) is a serious competitor to Microsoft Office, both on the Mac and the Wintel side, due to its speed and modest requirements versus the best bloatware Microsoft was able to ship...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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