Tuesday, May 13, 2003 |
11:50 - iMacX970-Power64
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LoopRumors has word that the 970 shipments to manufacturers in Taiwan are well underway:
We received word that two large shipments of Power PC 970 processors went to Foxconn in Taiwan, under a purchase order from Apple computer. Twenty thousand 1.4Ghz PPC 970's and forty thousand 1.6Ghz PPC 970's have already arrived in their hands. IBM's inventory contains fifty thousand 1.8 Ghz PPC 970's, of which forty thousand are destined for Foxconn tomorrow (Wednesday).
IBM has listed as pending 2Ghz parts as well, which means that it will be in inventory within a month if their fab in East Fishkill produces sufficient volumes of them, and from what we hear they should be in stock by mid-June.
I don't like getting my hopes up, but... dammit, I need a new machine. Preferably one with a better audio-ripping optical drive than the DVD-RAM combo drive in my G4/450 which still results in clicks and pops whenever I import any CDs, something that doesn't happen on my iBook or the current iMacs. (I think the DVD-RAM just has a bum driver that they never really had the incentive to keep current, once DVD-RAM stopped being a useful form of media.)
And if it can rip at 25-30x instead of my current 6-7x, so much the better, eh?
Anyway, the question that ultimately arises from these 970 rumors, and one that I was pondering this morning in the shower, is... what the hell will the machines themselves be called? PowerMac G5? G6? PowerMac 970? Here's a discussion forum whose denizens discuss exactly that; possibilities range from "something with X in it" to weird combinations of "64" and "970" and all the other monikers that have become common memes lately. As some of the commenters are correctly noting, they'll have to come up with a name that maintains existing mindshare capital ("PowerMac"), yet doesn't suggest discredited or outdated technology (e.g. "64", as in "Nintendo 64"); something that leverages "next-generation" terminology (Xmac?) without being hard to say quickly. I guess this is why the marketing guys get paid the big bucks, huh?
Sheesh. I wonder what other company gets this kind of speculation going about its own product names.
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