Wii2 Mk 2: Nintendo's 8G Console Hits the Gym

Since the last time I wrote about Nintendo's eighth-generation console development efforts, some major strides have been made that specifically address the top-five complains of the currently-shipping seventh-gen Nintendo console, the much-beloved Wii. (Those top-five complaints, for those who don't know, are: graphics, graphics, graphics, lack of a DVD player, and graphics.)

The Wii2 will have a much more muscular set-up than its predecessor. Much like the original Wii's competition, the Wii2 will have a core processor for running the operating system, game AI, and system IO but most of the game will be rendered by a combination graphics/number-crunching engine. But while this strategy resembles the beefy 7G powerhouses, the hardware will a touch of finesse that the competition doesn't seem interested in.

Playing With Its Wii: Nintendo's 8G Console

Now that the dust has settled in the Seventh Generation console wars, with the Nintendo Wii emerging the clear winner and the Xbox360 and PlayStation 3 duking it out in the dust behind, game manufacturers are already tapping out prototypes of their next-generation consoles in the race for the eighth-generation console war.

At stake is billions in licensing and sales revenue, and each company is straining to optimize its next-generation offering to slaughter its competition. And as before, Nintendo is playing it cool and designing a low-footprint system that will zip between its peers' enormous specs and straight to players' hearts.

Having been conservative in its last two console releases and realizing success from multi-segment appeal and diverse game interaction, Nintendo sees no reason to break this formula. So going by it, you can expect a direct follow-up to the Wii, codenamed "Wii2."

Unseen PowerPC: The Cores That Didn't Make It

Ever since Apple, IBM, and Motorola jumped into bed together twelve years ago, tech media—and Apple watchdogs especially—have had a field day with speculation, rumors, and actual news regarding new PowerPC projects. Apple gave a familiar face and a flair of iconoclast to the affair while IBM lent a grave sobriety. This thing could really happen, then, someone to challenge the Microsoft/Intel duopoly. And the stories just kept coming, well into the next decade. But not all of them were so real.

So what were these projects that came and went faster than a Quad Xeon Mac? Handily enough, they're right below, broken down by project. Read on to find out what Apple, IBM, and Motorola had in store for us throughout the Nineties and what didn't make the cut. Through all the rumors, one thing was certain: AIM never had a lack of imagination, even if it didn't always end up in silicon.

Rip. Mix. Burn in Hell.

All Mac users, until recently, were destined for Hell. If you owned or used a Macintosh, you were getting a one-way ticket to Sheol free of charge. But thanks to Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and Mac Messiah, the Mac community maintained their grace. The dark part of the story, however, is that Jobs himself is the one who put Mac users' souls in danger to begin for the sole purpose of market share. It was Steve's gamble that made Apple what it is today, but things weren't always so sunny. And it all began during Apple's Dark Ages.

A Deal with the Devil

December 20, 1996 was a date fateful not only for Apple but also for the souls of 25 million Mac users. At this point, Apple's next-generation operating system, Copland, had fizzled and Apple purchased NeXT for its OS. Mac users and the rest of the industry waited with eager ears for news. By August of that year, it was clear: Jobs had taken back his company and was simplifying everything, focusing on the G3 and pushing Mac OS 8 through while work on a new OS derived from OPENSTEP began. Jobs slashed many projects at Apple. But, as Apple's market share had fallen to 3.3%, Jobs began new projects in the shadows. And as 1997 drew to a close, he put one of them into motion.

After weeks of meticulous planning, Jobs called an emergency board meeting. As the board members arrived, Jobs drew a magic circle and muttered in Church Latin. In a ritual that CFO Fred Anderson described as scarier than losing a billion dollars in one quarter, Jobs had summoned the Devil. Many of the board fell ill and had to leave while Jobs and Satan haggled over the future of the company, but by the end of the meeting Steve presented a three-year plan to save Apple. After thanking Satan, he flew home in his private jet. Jobs would later have to replace most of the board, now demented or ill from their encounter with the prince of darkness, with his cronies from NeXT.

First Sprouts of the Demon Seed

The first and most obvious sign of something devilish was at MacWorld Boston later that Summer. Steve Jobs announced the departure of Gil Amelio, a new board of directors, and a $500 million deal with Microsoft that featured future Microsoft Office updates. It wasn't hard to believe the Devil was behind this deal. And many in attendance at the Boston MacWorld that year said they could make out distinctly goatish features in Bill Gates's face during his address to the audience. Little did the world know how close to the truth they were.

Several months later, Apple debuted the iMac. And it was a hit. The iMac revolutionized industrial design, got Apple's feet back in the consumer market, and — most importantly — garnered massive media attention. Indeed, the iMac became a thing to remember about 1998. Within another year the iBook and the Blue & White Power Mac G3 debuted, which were also hits with their stylish looks. Satan and Jobs's plan was coming along nicely so soon and they looked ahead to newer, faster systems and in late '99 the seemingly impossible happened: Motorola had completed and released a new PowerPC core without the help of IBM.

Granted, the PowerPC G4 was just a revision of the G3, but it was groundbreaking at the time and gave Mac users a huge speed-boost and something to brag about to their Pentium II-using coworkers. But then Motorola stalled, even with the Devil working behind the scenes, and the G4 was stuck at 500 MHz for 18 months in what Mac users called The 500 MHz Fiasco. This in turned caused Apple's board to see a weakening in Satan's side of the bargain with Apple and they began to mull litigation against Satan for breach of contract.

Devil Inside

As the 500 MHz Fiasco loomed, Apple was hard at work renegotiating with Satan. Since Satan's efforts had flagged, Apple pushed for much more demanding terms the second time around: Instead of culminating in the year 2000, Satan's contract would now end in 2006 and encompass not only hardware but software as well. Apple stuck several more clauses in the dark angel's contract, several at Steve's own behest, and the two parties went back to work making the Mac the best computer platform in the world.

The first move of the new deal between Apple and the Devil was the Power Mac G4 finally moving beyond 500 MHz. Apple also released Mac OS X to the public after five years of development Hell. Mac OS X itself was riddled with daemons, minions in Satan's army that run silently in the background and provide useful functionality to the user. The most important announcement that year, however, was that of the iPod. Seemingly innocuous at the time, it would eventually extend a halo effect — a cross between Steve Jobs's Reality Distortion Field and Satan's unholy aura — that would become the most powerful weapon in Apple's arsenal.

Indeed, Apple's popular ad series at the time — the Rip. Mix. Burn. — reflected exactly what was happening behind the scenes. 2001 through 2003 were Apple and Satan's segue. Apple released Mac OS X update after Mac OS X update, each faster than the last, which was unheard of in the industry. Apple's iPod caught on like burrs in fur, and Apple debuted the iTunes Music Store, making music downloads legal for a nominal fee. Steve Jobs walked around campus with his chest out, shoulders back, as he listened to his new lucky song, INXS's Devil Inside, on his red-and-black special edition Satanic iPod. Apple's success and Satan's allotment were ripening at a fantastic rate.

Annus Diaboli?

Year	Mac OS X	Processor
2001	v10.1	PowerPC G4
2002	v10.2
2003	v10.3	PowerPC G5
2004	v10.4
2005	v10.5	PowerPC G6
2006	v10.6

Figure 1 Apple and Satan's plan for 2006.

Indeed, everything up to this point was in support of the final day of the contract, the sixth of June, 2006, by which time Apple would have released Mac OS X v10.6 and would be using IBM's PowerPC G6 in its high-end Power Macs. Thus triple-six values would be achieved and every Macintosh user on the face would be damned for all of eternity. They even had a deal where Mac users that didn't believe in a place of eternal damnation could participate in unending punishment with Apple's Mac OS X Up-To-Date program. Unbeknownst to the Devil, however, Jobs had other plans. Though wanting success for Apple, he did care for his customers.

Just as Microsoft had only been able to purchase non-voting stock in 1997, Apple's contract with Satan — the new one, rewritten after the 500 MHz Fiasco — left Jobs a lot of leeway in light of any unforeseen circumstances. And those circumstances just so happened to be leering: IBM, like Motorola before it, was failing to meet Apple's demand for faster processors, and developers and the Fortune 500 IT community complained about the yearly roll-out of new OS technologies. Jobs took his time with his one-two punch for Satan's contract and planned the next two Worldwide Developers Conferences meticulously. The first blow came at WWDC '04.

Tiger will be out in 18 months, Jobs said on June 28, 2004, cutting one piece of the Satanic jigsaw puzzle out of the picture. On this new 18-month cycle, Mac OS X v10.6 wouldn't debut until halfway through 2008! And with that the bottom began falling out of Satan's contract. A year later, at WWDC '05, Jobs dropped his other bomb, the one that would sever Satan's ties to Apple: We're switching to Intel, he announced as the world gasped. Steve had made sure a Power Mac G6 would never exist. Well, at least not publicly. And with these two announcements, Satan's chances of swallowing 25 million Mac-using souls went down the drain.

In the end, Satan had been hornswoggled by the best.

A Devil Put Aside

Since just after WWDC '05, when Apple officially cancelled Satan's contract, things have remained rosy for Apple. The transition to Intel has gone without a major slump in sales and Intel's new chip, the Core, has been a great performer. Intel's Core 2 will be even faster, unlike Mac users' experience with Motorola or IBM. Apple introduced more new iPods to acclaim and sales have gone further through the roof than ever. More TV content has come to the iTunes Music Store, and even the PC mags are starting to doubt Microsoft and laud Apple.

And all without the Devil or sacrificing your soul! It was a gamble Jobs made with our divine essences as the collateral, and it worked. (Except for Apple's lawyers, who must have some very special rooms waiting for them at H繫tel Diable.) So in the end we should be thankful, Mac users, that Jobs isn't afraid to think outside the confessional box. We owe the very success of the Mac and Apple in the 21st century to his deal with and subsequent tricking of the Trickster. Think of this every time you boot up — that startup chime could have been a chorus of demons. Instead, it's the trumpet of our salvation.

Back to Kansas: A Look at the Fastest, Most Expandable Pre-G3 Power Macs

Remember the Power Mac 8600 and its bigger, badder brother, the 9600? You know, the beige titans based on the Kansas motherboard architecture, Apple's exclamation point to the end of the cloning era meant to outperform every previous Mac that had ever shipped? The systems that, at their fastest, would challenge their successors for months? I bought one of these beasts, a Power Mac 8600/300, in May '01 for use as a hobby system and found that, despite its age, the system was far from being a relic.

The Top End

The last of the second generation PowerPC Macs, the Kansas systems ruled Apple's high end for quite some time. Announced August 5th, 1997, this revision used a speed-bumped version of the PowerPC 604e, the Mach V. This chip ran from 250 to 350 MHz in the Kansas systems, though it eventually reached 400 MHz elsewhere. The 9600 had 12 RAM slots, enough for 768 MB at the time. It also housed a whopping six PCI slots. The 8600 was slightly less robust, with eight RAM slots and three PCI slots. Needless to say, these systems whipped Mac OS 7.6 around like a a tricycle tied to the end of an F-22 Raptor.

As more of the operating system was rewritten for PowerPC as Mac OS 7.6 gave way to Mac OS 8, these systems got even faster. The same held true when Mac OS 9 was released. The systems could also house double their original memory capacities as newer RAM chips debuted. So powerful and expandable were these systems, in fact, that Apple actually reintroduced the 9600/350 to supplement the G3 high end due to its greater expandability. Even as PCIe and PCI-X appeared there were never any other Macs with six PCI slots.

8600 vs. G3 iBooks

My primary systems in 2001 were a 300 MHz clamshell iBook and a 500 MHz Dual USB iBook. The clamshell ran Mac OS 9.2 and the Dual USB ran Mac OS X v10.0. And the 8600, running Mac OS 9.1, wailed on both of them. Of course, a lot of this was due to the chip, as the Mach V was a high-end workstation processor and the 750 was a low-end chip. But the difference was there and it was startling. Only the PowerPC G4 truly eclipsed the PowerPC 604 and 604e in Apple's high end.

	Power Mac 8600	iBook	iBook (Dual USB)
Processor	300 MHz 604e	300 MHz 750	500 MHz 750CXe
L2 Cache	1 MB (2:1)	512k (2:1)	256k (1:1)
Bus Speed	50 MHz	66 MHz	66 MHz
Max RAM	1,024 MB	320 MB	640 MB

Figure 1 Power Mac 8600, iBook, and iBook (Dual USB) compared.

The first thing I did with the 8600 was upgrade the memory to 1 GB. After turning virtual memory off, the system was the most responsive Mac I had ever used. Turning my disk cache up to a ludicrous 32 MB resulted in a Finder that seemed never to access the hard drive. For daily use the 8600's performance easily surpassed either of my iBooks, and even processor-intensive applications ran faster. The only thing the iBooks had over the 8600 was OS X, which I had just started to seriously evaluate.

Switching to OS X

I continued using the 8600 as my primary system while I adjusted to Mac OS X on my Dual USB iBook. After upgrading to Mac OS X v10.1, however, I completely switched to OS X. Musing over my switch, I recalled that Apple had developed the operating system on 604-based Macs but later reneged on its deal to support those systems and wondered if there were some way to install OS X on the G2 systems. Mac OS X officially supported the G3 or newer only, but the possibility of running Mac OS X on the 8600 was too great a temptation to abandon.

Ryan Rempel's XPostFacto, then called Unsupported X Installer, allowed for just such installations, and in no time at all I made the switch. In testament to Mac OS X's G2 heritage, it accurately reported my processor and speed. And everything just worked. I eventually updated to Mac OS X v10.1.5 and was hard-pressed to tell OS X wasn't running on a supported system. And Mac OS X loved the gig of RAM to say the least. And now, since I had overcome the one drawback to using the 8600, it became my primary system again.

No Jaguar for You

A few months later, Apple debuted Jaguar. And with the new features and optimizations in the operating system, Mac users upgraded as fast as they could. Except for G2 owners. Not long after, the XPostFacto site had the news: Jaguar would not work on PowerPC 603 and 604 systems since Apple had dropped support for the chips from Jaguar. If you wanted Jag on your G2, you had to buy a G3 or G4 upgrade card. There was no other recourse, just a new CPU or bust. Period. Finito. The end.

And so the line had been drawn for my 8600. If I wanted to move forward with Apple technology, I had to shell out for a CPU upgrade that I just didn't have the money for. Instead, I switched over full-time to my Dual USB iBook and made the 8600 a headless home server and storage system. It served that purpose well, but a few months later I mothballed it when I moved and its hard drive died while in storage. My iBook went on to run Panther and Tiger and I eventually bought a Power Mac G4 Digital Audio.

XPostFacto Comes Through

And then, just over a year ago, XPostFacto 3.1 arrived with support for Jaguar on 603 and 604 chips. The XPF forum-goers seemed happy with stability on G2 systems, and Mac OS X v10.2.8 was quite a bit more capable than v10.1.5 had been. I started looking for a new hard drive for the 8600 and fished out my Jaguar CDs, which I hadn't touched since September '03, eager to revive my sleeping giant. In the meantime, I took the tower apart and blew all the dust out, lovingly cleaning the system in anticipation of its reawakening.

But what happened on my return to Kansas is another story, for another time, in another column.

Apple Thinks Freescale Sucks

Whispers around the loop in Cupertino have had Mac mini fans abuzz. After leaving the Mac mini to languish for months, Apple is finally planning a major update to the petite personal computer that is sure to drive new sales. No surprise, then, that the mini will see its first Intel processor, probably the Intel Core Solo, and ditch the PowerPC G4 once and for all. Though some certainly don't want to see it that way.

The PowerPC 7448, from Freescale, is the latest in a series of upgrades to the G4. This one uses the e600 core, which is essentially identical to the traditional G4 core but relies on Freescale's new ultra-modern naming conventions meant to make the company look like it's hard at work on new technology instead of just tweaking a design that goes all the way back to 1994.

Contacts at Freescale confirmed the news. “Apple has loved the PowerPC 603 since we introduced it in 1995, and we'd kept them happy ever since,” one anonymous source said. When asked why Apple was moving the rest of their lines to Intel, the same source scoffed. “Apple demanded a lot — first they want new cores, then they want improvements to them! Lot of good it did them too. Good luck with SSE!”

One source close to mini development at Apple commented:

Steve Jobs made the decision to stick with the G4 as long as he did for one reason: Being over a decade-old design, it's really, really cheap and he thought it was a good way to run the contract with Freescale out. It just so happens, however, that we never told Freescale when exactly we were going to stop ordering from them. So look who gets stuck holding the G4! Bwahaha!

Further questions to Freescale regarding the debut of their dual-core G4 chips and the new 64-bit e700 core went unanswered, though an engineer from IBM was candid on the topic: “If they release 64-bit by Summer, they'll only be four years behind us. I guess you can't expect much from a company who thinks processor development is icky and that the 603 core was the pinnacle of technology for all time.”

Apple, Freescale, and IBM were not available for official comment.

Why Apple Really Ditched PowerPC

Apple wants to make their switch to Intel chips seem like a no-brainer, but the reality of it was a lot more complicated than just faster chips for Macs. Apple's claims of their Intel systems being "4-5x faster" than their PowerPC systems is a little much to swallow, especially with Intel Macs landing in users' hands and failing to live up to the hype. So if these Intel chips aren't really that much faster than the G5, why did Apple make the switch? The answer to this question is a lot more interesting than what Apple's telling you.

The Power Mac G6

"Mr. Jobs?" the small, tinny voice said through the intercom speaker. "It's Fed-Ex, we got a package for ya."

"Sure, sure, come on through," Steve said into the little box, his finger depressing a small, shiny brown button. "Let it off next to the gazebo half-way up the drive."

Steve Jobs smiled so wide his face hurt. The Fed-Ex truck was passing through his gate and would be at the gazebo in his front yard any second now. He stepped through his front door, hopped down his porch steps, and strode down a brick path shaded by willows. Even now he heard a roaring diesel engine and chirping brakes as the dusty delivery truck wandered along his drive. He jumped all three brick steps up to his gazebo and seated himself on a small park bench.

Steve sighed as he crossed his legs, put his hands behind his head, and waited. The sounds of the Fed-Ex truck were getting closer now among his veritable forest of spruces, pines, and firs that dotted his impossibly large lawn. He'd been waiting for almost a month for this delivery, the culmination of painstaking secret meetings with IBM over the course of 2005. And now Steve was just moments from enjoying the unique fruits of his labors and deal-making.

Steve's smile grew even larger.

With a final cacophony of squealing brakes, clinking chains, and grinding gear-shifts, the Fed-Ex truck stopped several yards away from the gazebo, next to another small walk that led from his drive. Steve stood up and waved to them.

"Hey guys, right here!" he shouted as he descended the steps to the walk.

Two men emerged from the truck's cab, one looking over a clipboard. The driver was a short, squat man with an orange handlebar mustache that crept down his neck. His name tag was covered in oil and grease and read Grunt. The man with the clipboard was tall and lanky and had a shock of white hair exploding from the back of his dirty, crumpled baseball cap. He had Stretch stitched above his uniform's right breast pocket.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" Steve said, approaching them. He pulled a pen from his pants pocket. "Where do I sign?"

Stretch looked up from his clipboard at the overenthusiastic middle-aged weirdo standing in front of him.

"Ah, just sign here, bottom copy's yers," Stretch said, extending the clipboard to Steve.

Steve barely bothered signing, trailing his pen along the page just hard enough to leave a wavy line, ripped the bottom copy out from the clipboard and stuffed it into his pocket, and shoved the paperwork back at Stretch.

"Can you and you guys dolly it up to the gazebo and leave it there?" Steve asked.

"Sure thing, mister," Stretch said as he turned towards the back of the truck.

"And if you and your friend do it quickly and quietly," Steve began, stopping Stretch where he was, "there might be something extra in it for you."

Steve rubbed his fingers together, implying money.

Stretch looked at this partner and then back to Steve.

"We'll gitcha taken care of real quick," he said to Steve, attempting to smile. It didn't look like something he practiced often.

Minutes later, a large box about the size of a refrigerator stood in the middle of Steve's gazebo. It was plain and unmarked save for some stickers that read THIS SIDE UP and CAUTION: FRAGILE. Steve waved at Grunt as he slowly backed down the drive. Stretch never looked up but was busy counting a small wad of crisp green bills as they edged away.

Steve walked over to one of the columns of his gazebo and opened what looked like a fuse box. Inside were two black buttons, labeled with two arrows, one pointing up and the other pointing down. He hit the button next to the down-pointing arrow, and the gazebo shook lightly.

"Finally," Steve said aloud to himself.

The gazebo dropped completely out of sight and was replaced by a plain concrete court that emerged seconds later from just under the lawn.

❖

Steve wheeled the dolly, carrying the huge box, into his private office. The walls were solid earth, covered with an intricate series of pipes and wires and tubes all running in different directions. Dim fluorescent lights hung from fixtures in the dirt ceiling of the grotto. Steve's desk and filing cabinet cast shadows against the dark sodden floor. Steve set the dolly down in a bare spot next to a computer desk and exhaled.

Producing a box-cutter from his back pocket, he began cutting at the rope and tape that sealed the cardboard box together. He was careful, making his cuts gingerly as if he might break something precious inside. Sweat beaded on his brow and he readjusted his spectacles several times. He bit his tongue in concentration as he cut around the bottom of the box. With another swipe, the packaging was shaken loose.

Steve disappeared for a few second to a dark corner of his office and reappeared seconds later dragging a large cord behind him. At the end of the cord was a huge metal plug with different pieces of metal jutting out from it. Steve hauled it nearer to the box and threw it down, breathing hard. He wiped the sweat from his brow as he dropped to all four and began dragging the cord behind the box, looking for a place to plug it in. With a satisfying metal clack, he backed up and stood away.

An electric hum filled the cavern.

"Time to see what this baby can do," Steve said to himself.

Steve stepped forward, grabbing the cardboard that now hung loosely from the thing. With one swift motion he flung the packaging off of the object and to the floor and stood back. Before him on a metal pedestal stood something that looked like a cross between a transformer and a portable restroom. It was a muted grey-blue in color and came to a soft apex at its top. It stood a whole head taller than Steve.

Steve stepped closer to it with a towel in his hand. Emblazoned in the middle of its front was a large chrome Apple logo that shown brightly enough tomake Steve blink. He took is towel and started to polish the apple. He polished the chrome text immediately below it, too, taking care to make sure it gleamed and shined. It was the machine's model. It read: Power Mac G6.

He stepped back again, admiring the monstrosity. With quick motion he kicked a button near the bottom of the thing, and the humming increased in intensity. On the desk next to the machine a 30" Cinema Display blinked to life and started scrolling white text on a black background — the Power Mac G6 was booting!

Steve sat down at his desk. Before he could look at the monitor, however, it had already booted to his desktop. Steve worked out the math on his fingers and realized it had taken less than ten seconds from the time he hit the power button to the time the system was ready to go. Wiggling his top-secret Bluetooth Mighty Mouse, Steve wheeled around the desktop and wondered what to do first.

With a sudden inspiration, Steve clicked the iChat icon. It was done loading before the icon had bounced once, ready and asking for his name and password. People would never buy another Power Mac G5 if they knew this existed, Steve thought as he marveled at the G6's speed. It had to be at least a full magnitude faster than the G5. After entering his information, Steve logged in and checked out his buddy list.

Steve smiled as he messaged Phil Schiller.

Steve Jobs: what up, bitch-boy?
Phil Schiller: hey Steve, what's up?
Steve Jobs: oh, nothing, just checking out my new Power Mac G6.
Phil Schiller: lol. nice try, but those don't exist.
Steve Jobs: sure, keep telling yourself that. How's your Developer Transition Kit running?
Phil Schiller: pretty good. tt's about as fast as the G5. wish it had dual processors though.
Steve Jobs: try sixty-four processors.
Phil Schiller: lol, yeah right steve. so what're you really up to?
Steve Jobs: i'm serious. i'm chatting to you with sixty-four processors.
Phil Schiller: you can't be, steve. even with the new G5s you're only running a total of four.
Steve Jobs: how much memory do you have?
Steve Jobs: because i bet I'm running more.
Phil Schiller: a gig.
Steve Jobs: only a gig? ha! i'm using that just for file system cache.
Steve Jobs: i'm playing with thirty-two gigs, phil.
Phil Schiller: shut up.
Steve Jobs: i think i'm gonna go play fifty copies of DOOM 3.
Steve Jobs: have fun on your suck-ass system, I'll catch you later.

With that, Steve signed off. Steve then dove for the Utilities folder and opened System Profiler, rubbing his hands together as he anticipated all of the very large numbers he was about to see. A gigabyte seemed like child's play now, a mere piffle. System Profiler finished loading the system information and Steve clicked on the Hardware category. He rocked back and forth as he read the numbers.

Hardware Overview:
Machine Name:	Power Mac G6
Machine Model:	PowerMac13,1
CPU Type:	Power5+
Number of CPUs:	64
CPU Speed:	2.0 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU):	1.92 MB
L3 Cache:	288 MB
Memory:	32 GB
Bus Speed:	2.0 GHz
Boot ROM Version:	4.9.6f3
Serial Number:
Sales Order Number:

Steve's eyes continued wandering up and down the list of numbers, shining in awe. He glanced over at the blue-grey hulk, comprehending the incalculably powerful hardware contained within the slick metal tower that his system so plainly described on its own screen. He chuckled to himself at his system's penis-extending numbers one last time and closed System Profiler.

Bringing up the Applications folder, Steve proceeded to open iTunes. He fished the new Depeche Mode album out of his CD case and stuck it into the CD-ROM slot in the front of the G6 tower. iTunes gathered track and artist info from the Internet and presented it to Steve. He scrolled his mouse to the upper-right corner of his iTunes window and hit the import button.

Nothing happened.

Steve hit the import button again, but was met this time by a dialogue box, which asked him if he wanted to replace the existing tracks or not. He hit replace, and then watched as nothing happened yet again. Confounded, he ejected the Depeche Mode and inserted Grace Jones's Nightclubbing. After loading the track info, he hit the import button again. And once again, nothing happened.

His new system hadn't even been running for ten minutes and already it was acting weird. He knew it was a one-of-a-kind, a prototype, but he and his secret team of Apple and IBM engineers had spent months painstakingly debugging this system. It was perfect, a pure expression of visionary thought and superb engineering, polished and cared for and given birth to. And it wouldn't rip tracks in iTunes.

"What the fuck!" Steve shouted.

He ejected the CD, replaced it, and decided to check his iTunes library. To his surprise, he found both albums sitting there waiting to be played. Unsure of what he saw, he clicked on the tracks and checked their info. They had just been added a minute ago. Steve blinked and realized: iTunes had ripped these albums so fast he hadn't even seen it.

"Holy fucking shit," Steve said aloud. "Holy fucking shit."

Steve swallowed as he stared intently at the screen.

"I can't wait to try CockBand on this bad-boy."

❖

YOU PUT THE BOOM-BOOM INTO MY HEART
YOU SEND MY SOUL SKY HIGH WHEN YOUR LOVIN' STARTS

George Michael screamed as a 30-inch Cinema HD blinked to life in darkness.

"Huh? What?" Steve said, sleepy and dumb.

JITTERBUG INTO MY BRAIN
GOES A BANG-BANG-BANG 'TIL MY FEET DO THE SAME

There was a fumbling noise, and something heavy fell and hit the floor with a dull thud.

"Shit!" Steve swore amid more fumbling sounds.

BUT SOMETHING'S BUGGING YOU
SOMETHING AIN'T RIGHT
MY BEST FRIEND TOLD ME WHAT YOU DID LAST NIGHT

Steve, bathed in the pale light of his 30-inch Cinema HD, scrunched his eyes and looked around.

"Oh shit! No!" Steve shouted as he rose from his make-shift pile of towels and rags in the floor and tripped toward the screen.

LEFT ME SLEEPIN' IN MY BED
I WAS DREAMING, BUT I SHOULD HAVE BEEN WITH YOU INSTEAD

As Steve floundered toward the computer desk, he almost bit the back of the chair as he stumbled one last time before aligning his buttocks with the chair's cushion and seating himself. Before his eyes, iTunes was open of its own accord, volume slider all the way up, playing Wham's Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. Steve scrambled for the Mighty Mouse but it was too late.

WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO
DON'T LEAVE ME HANGING ON LIKE A YO-YO

"Oh dear lord!" Steve shouted. "I'm awake already!"

He grabbed the mouse and wheeled it around the desk wildly, but the cursor didn't move on the screen.

WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO
I DON'T WANT TO MISS IT WHEN YOU HIT THAT HIGH

"Shut up!" Steve yelled at the screen, still shoving the mouse around on the desk impotently.

With a jerk he dropped the mouse and ducked down, rummaging through a box on the floor near the desk. Papers and empty plastic wrappers flew here and there. Cords and CDs went flying in all directions. Finally, after flinging a pile of papers and booklets away, Steve reached his hands around the smooth plastic form of a regular Apple mouse, USB cord dangling from one end.

"Aha!" Steve shouted. His voice was drowned out, however, by George Michael's.

WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO
COS I'M NOT PLANNIN' ON GOING SOLO

Fumbling, Steve jammed the USB dongle into the end of his keyboard, stopped, and realized his Apple Wireless Keyboard didn't have USB ports. Grunting, Steve dropped to his hands and knees and reached behind the giant grey-blue tower in the corner with his left arm. After a second his mouse glowed laser-red in his right hand. He sat down at the desk again, mouse in hand.

WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO
TAKE ME DANCING TONIGHT

"I'll take you dancing alright," Steve said to iTunes. "Let's see how you like dancing muted."

I WANNA HIT THAT HIGH

Steve sped the mouse to the upper-left portion of the iTunes window and hit the mute symbol to the left of the volume slider. Or tried to. His eyes were still bleary, full of sleep, and in his sudden waking he'd forgotten to put his glasses on. He could barely see the screen in front of him. Squeezing his eyes, he moved the mouse toward the mute symbol a few pixels at a time.

YEAH, YEAH, YE—

And George Michael was silenced.

"Finally," Steve said.

"This damn thing. I thought I set it to wake me up at ten, not—" Steve paused here, squinting at the time on the menu bar. "Five thirty in the morning!? Jesus fucking christ!"

Steve opened Mail in less than one bounce of its dock icon and began writing a letter to his special dev team, those special engineers from Apple and IBM that had put his Power Mac G6 together in secret over most of the last year. He was hopping mad that BlueTooth was buggy and that AppleScript seemed to want to forget what time it was supposed to launch alarm scripts. He let them have it.

And you'd better make sure all of this stuff is taken care of by 10.4.3, Steve typed furiously, because if it's not you know what'll happen!

With a command key clack he sent the email off and his anger subsided. He was awake now, and it was barely a quarter to six. Usually he wasn't up and about until eight or nine, when he would sit for an hour in his sauna and then wander to his kitchen and have Ricardo, his chef, cook breakfast for him before he dressed and caught his private jet to work.

Steve realized he was still in his subterranean small office/home office bunker and not his house and sighed. He'd stayed up late last night stress-testing the G6. First he'd been deleting threads on the Apple support forums, then tested how fast Mac OS X could mail-bomb Ryan Meader's inbox. Finally he had hooked his handJobs unit to his genitals and had a CockBand jam session until two in the morning.

"No rest for the wicked, eh?" Steve said to no one in particular.

He walked to a wardrobe at the far wall of his bunker and grabbed a pair of jeans, a black mock turtleneck, and some comfortable running shoes from inside and put them on. He finished by pulling his belt through his loops and clasping it together. He checked himself in the mirror on the wardrobe door and fussed with his hair. After he was satisfied, he walked over to the G6.

"Time to get some sleep," Steve said to the G6 as he pulled down the Apple menu. "I'll wake you up when I get back."

After a second, the G6 went into sleep mode and its Apple icon pulsed ominously in the dark. Steve grabbed his glasses from the bookshelf near his makeshift bed, cleaned them on his shirt, and slipped them on. He went over to a mini-fridge next to the book shelf and took out a bottle of clear spring water, opened it, and took a sip. He exhaled slowly, looking around.

"Time to get to the jet," Steve said aloud.

He walked out of the chamber through a doorway that led to some step, then climbed aboard his gazebo. A push of the up button and he was rising up slowly. The ceiling of the underground cave system opened and blinding daylight poured in. Steve stood still while the gazebo rose a few more feet and locked into place. Then he hopped down the steps and walked toward the drive.

Fishing his keychain out of his pants, he clicked a button and a whining sound filled the air. He ducked down another path through his wooded yard in time to see his private mini-jet ascend on its platform up through his lawn. The pilot opened the cockpit and saluted Steve, who was even now climbing the ladder up to his seat behind the pilot's.

"Morning, Mr. Jobs," the pilot said. "Apple this morning, or are we doing Pixar?"

"No, just Apple," Steve shouted. "And since I got you up so early, you can eat breakfast in the executive suite with me once we get there!"

"No problem, Mr. Jobs!" the pilot yelled in return.

The cockpit closed and the plane's whining grew louder. Thunder exploded as the plane took off vertically, maneuvering in mid-air until its rear thrusters pulsed and it wooshed away into the sky toward 1 Infinite Loop. Seconds later, the plane was little more than a black pin-dot in the morning sun.

Deep below ground, the pale light of the Apple logo ebbed and pulsed, sleeping.

The Ninety Nanonmeter Speed-Bump

Last Summer, Apple launched a serious upgrade with the Power Mac G5 and for the first time in a decade used a totally new PowerPC core not based on the PowerPC 603. With IBM's PowerPC 970, Apple is using a mainframe-level chip capable of massive parallel computing, access to hyper bus speed, and huge volumes of cache. Since the industry hit the wall shrinking to 90nm, however, the Mac community has expressed unrest at the clock-starvation: Memories of Motorola's 500 MHz Fiasco five years ago bubble up to the surface.

Kill your worry processes, Mac users. There's no clock-stall in the PowerPC's future any time soon. Motorola's failure to achieve speeds above 500 MHz was a result of it recycling the PowerPC 603 core far too many times, something that IBM avoids in using its Power series core. The speed-bump at 2.5 GHz is the result of a one-shot problem involved in shrinking the die. But let me explain in more detail.

The PowerPC 603 started life at 50 MHz but after reaching 100 MHz Motorola doubled its L2 cache and shrank the die due to niggardly performance. It tapped out at 300 MHz before receiving the backside cache of the PowerPC 620 to become the G3. By this time, however, the core was already three years old and the advancements put into the G3 dropped the clock back to 233 MHz.

Chip	Debut	Initial Clock	Max Clock
PowerPC 603	1994	50 MHz	300 MHz
PowerPC G3	1997	233 MHz	450 MHz
PowerPC G4	1999	350 MHz	533 MHz
PowerPC G4+	2001	667 MHz	1,300 MHz

Table 1 The PowerPC 603 and its descendants.

The G3 had reached 450 MHz when Motorola added a better FPU and AltiVec to it thus bringing the PowerPC G4 to market. Again the addition of new technology dropped the clock, this time down to 350 MHz. The net result was a whopping gain of 300 MHz over the span of six years. At this point the G4 lost steam at 500 MHz and wouldn't surpass that speed for 18 months.

Unlike the 603 line, IBM's PowerPC 970 is based on the Power4 mainframe design. Without being hobbled by adding new technology to an aging, creaky core, IBM is able to outline the PowerPC 980 and 990 processors for Apple today as it's beginning work on taping out the Power5. Unlike Motorola's lethargic climb up the megahertz ladder, IBM confidentally expects to hit 10 GHz with the PowerPC 990 in mid-2008.

Power	PowerPC	Apple	Initial Clock	Max Clock
Power4	PowerPC 970	G5	1.4 GHz	3.0 GHz
Power5	PowerPC 980	G6	3.0 GHz	6.0 GHz
Power6	PowerPC 990	G7	6.0 GHz	10.0 GHz

Table 2 IBM PowerPC roadmap.

Also keep in mind that the slowdown is industry-wide. Cores from AMD, Intel, MIPS, Sun, and others are all experiencing unexpected problems in the transition down to 90nm. Unlike Motorola's failure to innovate, all chips companies bear the brunt of the shrinkage which has everything to do with electrical limitations and nothing to do with business decisions. Rest assured that IBM hasn't lost its edge. In fact, IBM is already shaping up to be the industry leader again as its points the way past these problems.

Apple zealots have nothing to fear as the industry trudges forward through the 90nm quagmire. Mac users also have the most to look forward to as the PowerPC line has the most room for performance enhancement out of any of the architectures involved in the recent slowdown. Not only will IBM be first out of the gate soon, but will have the fastest horse on which to ride — which means Mac has the greatest benefit to reap from this slowdown.

Put on your seat-belts and hold on tight, Mac fans. Apple's putting the peddle to the floor out of the gate and there's no telling where they'll bury the needle.

Power Mac G5³

Recently, many in the Mac community have been discussing the possibility of a G5-based Cube design, similar to Apple's Power Mac G4 Cube. I don't think this will happen, as the thing that killed the original G4 Cube, and that would damn the G5 cube to the same fate eventually, is the lack of market for the thing. Yes, I would like to have one, but being a Mac geek is not a characteristic most Mac users share. Let me explain the lack of market for the Cube and why it's destined to fail.

The Power Mac G4 Cube was 8"x8"x8" masterpiece of space efficiency. It was a powerful system; especially considering the space it existed in. But it was also a powerful system with no expansion capabilities. For years Mac users had been clamoring for a low-budget headless iMac-like device, and the Cube almost met those requirements. The premium of a PowerPC G4 processor was not one of the things that had been asked, even though it's safe to assume that people like power. It was that premium, however, that killed what the Cube could have been.

Apple had a headless iMac G4 well before it came up with the real iMac G4 much later. Apple had answered the calls of something small without a monitor, but they flubbed up when they included a G4 and made the Cube unaffordable: At the time of its release, as is true now, the G4 cost a lot more than any G3 chip. Professionals had little interest in the Cube due to its lack of expansion.

So, where was the Cube meant to go? Into the homes of the old NeXT fans, Apple aficionados, and the niche of people who wanted a workstation and knew that they would never, ever need to add anything to it. In short, the market for the Power Mac G4 Cube was virtually non-existent and it was doomed to low sales figures before it ever made it out the lab. Perhaps Apple expected this, but publicly Apple had been pushing the Cube and then stated regrets when they killed it — Apple has been known for its marketing blunders before, if you can believe that.

Before Apple prepares the Power Mac G5 Cube, maybe they should take a look at the 20th Anniversary Power Mac and look upon the project with a very limited lifecycle. Already the G5 Cube is hobbled more than its predecessor was: heat considerations over the G4 will require more R&D; effort to overcome and maximum RAM will be severely hobbled from the current platform's 8 gigabytes due to space considerations. R&D costs would outweigh potential profits at this point, but Apple has a few other roads to take if it's dead set on a Cube.

IBM's PowerPC 750GX processor, with 1 MB L2 cache on the chip, running at 1 GHz and up, will be a performer. Folks who don't need the Velocity Engine and already have a monitor would be the perfect target for the system. Development costs wouldn't be so steep since Apple has worked the G3 over for years. If Apple wants AltiVec, they could wait for IBM's successor to the 750GX, the VX, which is rumored to have the Velocity Engine but still beat Motorola's G4 in the space and heat departments. Such an economy system could go for well less than anything else Apple offers and could just be Apple's first true foray into the budget PC market, nudging aside Windows competitors in the $700 and lower price range.

If Apple wants to move far and away from the G3, which it seems to of late, then the latest G4 processors from Motorola would be apropos. They're smaller, faster, and cooler than the G4 that Apple used in original Cube, have on-chip L2 cache, and run Mac OS X more than swiftly. Of course, Apple isn't likely to repeat history, so a G4 Cube Mark II isn't likely to happen either, as easy as it would be to update the old design for a minimum of effort. Customers may avoid a system because similarities to the old Cube, dooming it even more than it might be before it ever reaches shelves.

Since Apple likes to push itself and not rely on old technology, making a G5 Cube would still be the most likely move for Apple, just a very difficult one. They must realize that such a system has a limited market and should in turn expect a limited life cycle. It would make a great Mac to commemorate 20 years of Macintosh, and with Panther's darker, metallic look, this could be a great opportunity to return to the black cube motif of yesteryear and allow Mr. Jobs a true revitalization of his dream machine of almost two decades ago. But even that scenario sounds like a dream.

The Cube carries with it a Biblical metaphor: It will return one day, but no one knows exactly when that day will be. Nothing tells Apple to concentrate on a product more than sales, and the chorus of Mac geeks clamoring for Cubes is infinitesimal by comparison. Mac users need to remember what killed the last Cube and realize that things have evolved in a manner that would only complicate development of a new one. There are plenty of Mac lines out there with healthy life cycles and established market interest with something to offer to everyone. Rest assured that the reality of Apple's product line is more than good enough to serve us even without a Power Mac G5 Cube.

iBook G4 Lacks Velocity Engine?

It appears that Apple's new iBook G4 lacks a Velocity Engine, and may not be using what we've known as a G4 processor at all. The iBook G4 tech specs fail to mention the Velocity Engine at all in stark contrast to all of Apple's other G4-class products. This comes to the chagrin of many users who expect a G4-labeled system, using what Apple calls a G4 processor, to include AltiVec technology.

Prospective Apple customer Daryl Stimm wrote that after having talked to a sales rep at 1-800-MY-APPLE, who claimed that the iBook G4 does not include the Velocity Engine. Furthermore the sales rep also stated that the G4 processor in the iBook is not a Motorola product at all, but instead an IBM chip.

Adding to the strength of the claim is the fact that the PowerPC 970—used in Apple's Power Mac G5—is the only IBM processor to include AltiVec. We can be quite sure that Apple hasn't slipped a 970 into the iBook under our noses. There have been rumors of a G3 that will include the Velocity Engine, but even the IBM's latest, the PowerPC 750GX, doesn't have AltiVec and won't ship until later this year.

I called 1-800-MY-APPLE and spoke to Josh, who couldn't find anyone at that time of night (1:00 AM EST) to answer my query about AltiVec in the iBook G4. He noted that several people had also asked the same question, and agreed with me when I suggested that it was odd for Apple not to trumpet AltiVec, let alone fail to mention it at all.

Where does this leave us? Still wondering about the new iBook until Apple posts detailed developer notes or someone from Apple confirms or denies suspicions. While we wait for new developments, there are a few important points to keep in mind.

One fact to consider is that names like G3, G4, and G5 are Apple labels only. For instance, the G3 has seen three revisions of the PowerPC 750, and the G4 includes several different chips from Motorola's 7400 line. Also keep in mind that while Apple has heretofore dubbed their systems after the CPU used in them, there has never been a hard and fast rule about it. Perhaps we are seeing a new flexibility in Apple's naming conventions?

Perhaps the chip in question is a PowerPC 750FX, or a Motorola G4 manufactured by IBM without its Velocity Engine, or just an older Motorola G4 and a confused phone rep. At this point in time, while Apple moves away from Motorola, it seems to make little sense that they prolong dependency on the company. IBM has also been Apple's sole supplier of G3 chips for the last several years. Until there is confirmation of an actual processor model number the mystery remains open. The issue will not truly be resolved, however, until Apple's customers are satisfied and informed.

Sovereign Semiconductor

In the best decision out of Motorola in years — now that Chris Galvin has resigned — the Motorola Semiconductor Product Sector will be spun off into its own independent corporation. After years of mismanagement and dwindling mindshare, setting SPS free could spark the rebirth of the sleepy chipzilla, but sadly for Apple and Mac users the move has come too late to benefit Macintosh.

Quite simply, SPS going on its own isn't really that big of a deal. Motorola is such a vast company that it operates as several independent entities, SPS among them. The biggest potential challenge that an independent SPS will face is that of reduced R&D; funding, as SPS will no longer enjoy the bankroll of an aggregate Motorola. A tighter budget will lead to either increased efficiency, the lack of which has stifled Motorola PowerPC efforts since the late Nineties, or oblivion. After starting with a bang, it didn't take Motorola long to stall out with PowerPC.

After IBM's PowerPC 601, Big Blue and Motorola collaborated on the Somerset designs. Among these processors was the venerable PowerPC 603, a low-cost, low-power part targeted at low-end and portable systems. The 603 flourished in the embedded and desktop worlds and acted as the cornerstone for virtually every one of Motorola PowerPC designs after it. It was also the engine behind Apple's first PowerPC PowerBooks and their consumer desktops.

Following up their success with the Somerset designs, IBM and Motorola created the PowerPC 750 — the G3 — from the core of the PowerPC 603. At the time, it was the cheap, fast, and simple processor that Apple required to weather a trying transition period. Soon after the G3, however, IBM and Motorola parted ways, with IBM leaving Motorola the Somerset facility. Sadly, Motorola was dependent upon IBM for architectural innovation, so this move was the beginning of the long, slow end for Motorola's PowerPC.

Not long after the Somerset split, Motorola began an old bad habit of rehashing ad nauseum, extending the 603 core year after year with add-ons, hacks, and kludges. This philosophy of upgrades translates into less performance and an increase in complexity with each new iteration, a recent example being the 500 MHz Fiasco, where Motorola's PowerPC G4 (another 603 derivative) was stuck at 500 MHz for 18 months. Apple was forced to downgrade their new Power Mac G4 processors shortly after introduction and weathered a horrific year and a half standing still while Intel and AMD raced ahead with faster and faster chips.

These problems, alongside a dodgy fabrication process, poor yields, and constantly slipping schedules, caused Apple to move away from its dependence on Motorola and the G4. With Motorola's development efforts pouring into the embedded market with the PowerPC 8500 line — yet another 603 variant — it became clear not only to Apple but to Mac fans as well that moving the Mac platform ahead in speed and performance meant moving away from Motorola as a chip supplier.

In the end, SPS having a go on its own won't really affect Apple as they move toward using IBM's G3 and G5 chips everywhere, especially as IBM's 750 line gains AlitiVec in its next major revision. Motorola has made this last move with SPS far too late to do Apple any good, though it became obvious long ago that retaining Apple as a customer was no longer a significant goal.

Motorola Semi's Failure to Innovate

Motorola struggling isn't news to anyone who watches Apple, nor is it news to anyone else with a vested interested in Motorola's semiconductor branch. But it's not like the company is beleagured. It's not like it takes Motorola's last gasping breath to release a new G4. The problem with Motorola's struggle is Motorola's attitude toward innovation.

Since the joint IBM/Motorola Somerset facility was turned over to Motorola, all innovation within its PowerPC division has stopped. "Don't mess with a good design," you say? Consider this: the last new cores Motorola helped to create were the the G2 contingent: the PowerPC 602, 603, 604, and 620 chips and their variants. Working with IBM on their last joint project, Motorola produced the 750, a tweak to the 603 core. Since then, every new chip has been based on something that came from that effort.

The entire G4 family is naught but a 750 core with a SIMD unit and an FPU ripped from the PowerPC 604. While not a bad chip, it's obvious that there was something inherently stifling about the G4's architecture. Remember the 500 MHz Fiasco? It's easy to understand if you look at the 74xx series as a 603 with major kludges thrown on top. That they even reached past 1 GHz is impressive.

Motorola's new PowerQUICC III family (rumored to be the PowerPC G5 for some time) is also based on the 603 core, as were the PowerQUICC I and PowerQUICC II families. Zooming out for a broader perspective, PowerQUICC III and Motorola's automotive PowerPC 52xx line are both based on the e500 core, more or less a 603 core with tweaks to meet the BookE spec.

The above examples are not just symptoms, however. Motorola innovates rarely and rides the wave for as long as possible, even when it's clear that they need to get back to the drawing board. They've been extending 1994 technology for ten years, and while that may work in some cases (IBM still successfully updates its own PowerPC 750 variants), in the end it serves only to decrease the quality of its product. Motorola is shooting not just itself, but also its customers, in the foot.

In the end, Motorola's upper management is at fault for making the decisions not to innovate; the engineers and designers at Motorola do an excellent job of what they have to work with. Hopefully with CEO Chris Galvin's resignation the attitudes and practices of management will change and Motorola can produce some astounding new cores for the PowerPC family.

The PowerPC G5 Bits Drought

According to Apple, the G5 is the fastest desktop computer in the world, as well as the first 64-bit desktop system. Something doesn't sit right with me though. Aside from the nigh-universal ranting about skewed benchmarks that has been circulating recently, there's another aspect the Power Mac G5 not many have touched upon.

Mac OS X is a 32-bit operating system and since the PowerPC 970 is a 64-bit chip, Mac OS X will effectively be running at 800, 900, and 1,000 MHz in the new Power Macs and not 1.6, 1.8, and 2.0 GHz as Apple claims. Let's stick to the specs and look a little deeper into this problem.

Mac OS X v10.0 debuted in March 2001. By October, Mac OS X v10.1 optimized the code in the operating system for G3 and G4 chips — until this point, a lot of the components in the operating system still had optimizations for PowerPC 603 and 604 models. Apple continued this trend with Mac OS X v10.2 by removing support the 60x family. Try installing Jaguar on a G2 system — it just can't happen. But by doing so, they were finally able to push the system to its limits with Velocity Engine tweaks.

With the PowerPC 970, however, Apple is in a different pickle.

One just can't scale an operating system to 64-bits on a whim. In two months the G5 systems will ship to consumers with an operating system that will halve the clock since it can't use half the bits of the chip it will run on! There will be a gap of four months between the 64-bit G5 ships and the 64-bit-friendly Mac OS X v10.3 arrives. Tell me, Mac users, what are we going to do in the meantime? This is worse than when Apple downgraded the speed on their Power Mac G4 systems while keeping the prices the same.

Your new Power Mac G5 will only run at half its clockspeed!

I wouldn't pay $3,000 for year 2000 performance. Apple better have something marvelous up their sleeve during what I like to call this four-month bits drought we're all facing. Otherwise, I'll be planting my foot firmly in their ass, and so should you.

Trading Megahurtz For Megahertz

For the last few years Motorola has been the sole supplier of Apple's high-end chips, all from the G4 family. And for the last few years, Mac fans and industry pundits alike have expressed grief over the speed — or lack thereof — Motorola has reached with these processors. While Intel and AMD reach speeds nearing 3 GHz, or 3,000 MHz, the Motorola/Apple camp have slowly crawled to 1.25 GHz.

A cacophony of possible solutions to the Megahurtz problem have been heard from within the Mac community, and finally an end is in sight. The light at the end of the PowerPC tunnel is shining, Mac faithful, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Well, not quite yet.

The PowerPC Conspiracy

Since the late 90s, when Apple introduced the PowerPC G4 and Intel introduced the Pentium III, there has been a severe performance gap between the venerable Macintosh and the ubiquitous PC. Not only did the Pentium III have a higher clock speed than Apple's G3 or G4, but its performance per clock also increased. The days of Apple/IBM/Motorola (henceforth AIM) triarchy in the microprocessor business were at an end, its pinnacle reached with the Mach V, a PowerPC 604 variant that outperformed the Classic Pentium, MMX Pentium, and Pentium Pro clock-for-clock. With plans for the Mach VI and Mach X (the PowerPC 604r and 605, respectively) canned, Intel took sweeping strides toward the throne of CPU superiority and has held on with an iron grip ever since.

What Motorola doesn't want you to know is that this obsolescence was planned from the beginning of its involvement in the PowerPC fiasco. Owing to spite and jealousy over Apple's choice of IBM's PowerPC architecture over its own Ripfire 88k series, Motorola decided to trumpet Apple's decision despite the fact that it had something better Apple desperately needed at that point in time: the M68060, the sixth CPU in the hot 68k family. Keeping its hands quietly in its pockets and staring at the floor in silence, Motorola remained mum on the new specs for the '060 and let Apple purchase the PowerPC 601 from IBM, which would act as a time bomb set to destroy Power Macintosh performance.

The PowerPC 601 was the Piltdown Man of its family: it bridged the gap between the older POWER instruction set architecture (ISA) and its direct successor, the PowerPC ISA; in fact, the 601 actually included some POWER instructions and emulated others by stringing together PowerPC instructions—it could run binaries compiled for POWER chips unmodified. This little dynamo also out shined the Pentiums of the day, which ran at 50, 66, and 75 MHz. The 601 was generally 1.2-1.5 times as fast as a Classic Pentium at the same clock speed. Apple and IBM were pleased while Motorola snickered silently in the shadows: their M68060 was running circles around both the Pentium and the PowerPC 601 in a beast called the Amiga. To put it in perspective, the '040 and '060 Amiga lines actually used PowerPC chips as text co-processors!

As Intel glacially moved from the Classic Pentium to the MMX-enhanced Pentium (and also down-clocking the new line), AIM released the PowerPC 602, 603, 604, and 620 parts, all designed to conquer niches in the market that the stop-gap 601 could never be specialized for. The 602 was used in stadium scoreboards, remote-controlled Transformers, and the popular Nintendo64. The 603 was a very power-friendly chip and could turn its various subsystems off and so was used in low-end desktops, laptops, and network computers. Its older brother, the 604, was created to compete with the secret P6 project that would eventually produce the monstrous Pentium Pro. Finally, the 620 was a 64-bit 羹berzilla with support for up to 128 MB of L2 cache and top clock speeds exceeding 200 MHz.

Years later, in 1997, the PowerPC 602, 603, 604, and 620 chips had either been canned or were severely losing steam. In a seemingly clever move, AIM took the 603 and augmented it. The result was the PowerPC 750, which came to be known as the G3. Motorola's plan to sabotage Apple's desktop performance had just been realized. By the end of the year, Apple was selling Power Macs that ran at 233 and 266 MHz while the last of its PowerPC 604-based line had been running at 350 MHz! Aside from the obvious fabrication limitations of the G3, it also ran slower per clock than the 604 had. Of course, with Apple's interim CEO Steve Jobs at the helm, Mac users did not question this blatant paradox. G3 systems were snatched up by the thousands.

Presently, it is clear that Motorola's nefarious plot has almost come to its fruition. Apple just recently reached 1,000 MHz while the Intel (and now also AMD) attained clock rates of 2,400 MHz in the same time frame. Motorola injected additional roadblocks into Apple's plans by not letting it move away from the abysmally performing 603 core—the G4 was just a hacked-up G3 with AltiVec and an FPU borrowed from the outdated 604!

It is clear that for Apple to survive, it must look beyond Motorola's PowerPC: IBM's own processors would be a good choice, and a logical one at that. One thing remains plain: Motorola is slowly killing Apple—from the inside.

The PowerPC 7455 Is Too Little, Too Late

Let's face it: Apple's new offerings in the Power Mac line are too little, too late. The PowerPC 7455 is a cop-out for the real deals (the 7460, 7500, and the 8500). If Apple doesn't get its act together soon on the high end, it'll be relegated to a consumer-only nitch and dwindle until it's bought out for its brand name.

Apple's been severely slacking when it comes to keeping its high end customers appeased. Just how long did the Power Mac stay at 500 MHz? 18 months? Well, you do have to hand it to Apple: they broke Moore's law. But don't drone on about Motorola's bug in the 7400 that kept it at 500 MHz and no higher. IBM has a 1 GHz G3 out now (the PowerPC 750FX) and could have easily provided Apple with the firepower it needed then. No AltiVec you say? Motorola's a greedy miser. They could easily release an AltiVec-only co-processor, but they want to keep it tied to PowerPC so they're guaranteed business. Business from a company too stupid to drop deadbeat technology, Apple.

Motorola's PowerPC 7455 is a compromise. It's basically a rehash of heretofore substandard processor technology with a few new fabrication features added to let it crawl towards the 1 GHz mark. There's nothing new on the table with it, and that's what makes Apple look even stupider. How long have rumor sites been predicting Apollo (the 7460)? And it's a well-known fact that the 8500 has been in testing for over a year. Yet Apple finally breaks the gigahertz barrier with something that barely is capable of doing so, a silly token upgrade to the 7450.

Why do we Mac users put up with Apple delivering slop from a bleeding company that can't keep a schedule? The only thing that makes these systems "fast" compared to the new 2.2 GHz 786/Pentium4 or AMD's XP is Steve Jobs's Reality Distortion Field. That in itself is amazing, but not perpetually sustaining. Eventually (hopefully) Mac users will smarten up to this kind of marketechnology.

It's really kind of funny. Apple has awesome machines and stays ahead of the competition hardware-wise but runs Mac OS 8 and 9, which aren't at all native to PowerPC and can't do SMP, then it gets an OS that has memory protection, SMP support, full native PowerPC code, preemption, etc. (Mac OS X) and lets its hardware fall behind by a year.

I remember back when when Apple was encroaching on SGI's low and mid end systems; now you need a PowerPC 74xx to run Mac OS X because the 750 is under-powered but still shows up in the iMac and iBook lines. That's called selling snake-oil.

If I were you I'd consider the above and think about jumping ship. I didn't like to admit it but once I was honest with myself I felt like technology was going somewhere besides the Barbie aisle.

The PowerPC G4 Is a Lie

At the heart of the current high-end Macs, routers, and switches is the PowerPC G4, which is what Apple and Motorola claim to be their fourth generation CPU that is the result of the three-way Apple/IBM/Motorola alliance, which has been designing and fabbing various PowerPC chips since 1991.

I contend that “G4” is a blatant misnomer by Apple and Motorola to spur sales and compete with Intel's Pentium 4 product and nomenclature. Below I'll give some historical background, technical information, and plain facts that support my claim that the PowerPC G4 is really a second-generation processor, and the broader notion that the PowerPC family has not evolved significantly since 1995, something Apple and Motorola propaganda has repeatedly accused the competition of in recent years. But first, the background.