Has anyone here yet purchased a G5? I'm interested in hearing some feedback on user impressions, particularly those who have used it for things such as video editing, and Photoshop related stuff.
Apologies in advance - my G5 "experience" yesterday really rubbed me raw, and a death-by-chocolate didn't fix it. :\
Yesterday, I went to the Apple Store in King of Prussia, PA - just outside of Philadelphia. Semi-waste of two hours driving time, bridge toll, and gasoline. They didn't have a G5. They didn't have literature on it. They couldn't answer the questions about it I asked. They couldn't answer PCI card compatibility questions about older Macs I asked. And their prices for the paltry selection of peripherals they carried sucked - higher or par with CompUSA! So much for my first visit to an Apple Store. Luckily there was a well-stocked low-price Microcenter just a few miles away. So I at least managed to buy the peripherals I wanted. (To be fair, Microcenter didn't have a G5 either, but their staff was very very knowledgable and helpful).
As for the G5 itself... The specs look great - 1 GHz frontside bus, faster i/o buses, etc. But, IMO, it's a don't-bother season of machines. Why?
1) This is a new motherboard and i/o implementation for Apple. Traditionally, their rev 1 systems are buggy and they don't offer upgrades after fixing 'em.
2) The included OS X 10.2.7 (Smeagol) has only minimum 64-bit enhancements.
3) The next OS X (Panther), which is a $100+ upgrade, has only a few more 64-bit enhancements.
IOW, for at least the next year or so, half the throughput (compute and i/o) of the machine is going to be wasted/inaccessable[*]. And that time frame may be extended even more, because the application developers can't really do their thing until *after* Apple fully supports the 64-bit architecture.
Why pay good money for wasted/inaccessable performance? By the time the performance is fully supported, there will be faster debugged hardware available in the same price range...
[*] ROFL. Even with half the power poured on the floor, +/- benchmark quibbling, these puppys beat the fastest PCs! Eat that Wintel!
- Dan.
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