Got myself a

[Hurmoth]

Well, I won an iMac G5 20" off of eBay :D

This will be my first Mac and stoked! I cannot wait to get it in. UPS' Estimated Delivery date is Wed.

• 20" 2.0GHz iMac G5
  
• 1GB RAM (2x512MB)
  
• 250gb hard drive
  
• Airport Extreme and Bluetooth built-in
  
• ATI Radeon 9600 w/ 128mb VRAM
  
• Original Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse
  
• External Apple iSight
  
  
• Original install discs
  

All for $1300.

Now, I didn't go with one of the new Intel-based Macs because I'm going to wait until, (#1) someone gets Windows to install and work properly, which leads me to (#2) when Vista is released. I'll probably go to one of the new Intel-based Macs when Vista is released this Fall/Winter.

How long do you think it will be before developers stop making apps for the PowerPC platform? Will they continue to create Universal Binaries for both PowerPC and Intel or will I be forced to go to the new Intel platform before I want to upgrade?

[iconboy]

hey congrats! :) Nice find. Im sure PPC apps are here for at least another 5 years! Im thinking of getting a G5 imac to supplement my MacBook Pro when it comes out seeing as how i wont be able to run final cut pro on it til March and i need final cut pro to start working on the Macbookpro right away!

[the evn show]

How long do you think it will be before developers stop making apps for the PowerPC platform? Will they continue to create Universal Binaries for both PowerPC and Intel or will I be forced to go to the new Intel platform before I want to upgrade?

Apple sells in the neighborhood of 4 million macs per year.

At WWDC Apple estimated that OS X user base at 14 million.

Assume that all mac sales are existing mac uses replacing old machines with intel ones.

Let's assume that most developers are willing to ignore support for the bottom 15% of the market. At current rates it will take 3 full years to discount the existing PowerPC user base assuming that. But, we have to remember that only one machine in apple's lineup is shipping with Intel processors right now, and that you can still buy the PPC version of it (though how many people are is not-known and probably not very significant anyway).

Lets assume that Apple can completely end the PPC line-up by January 1, 2007; the target date at WWDC. That means that sometime around 2010 or 2011 we can expect that most third parties and Apple will have given up on any special considerations for PPC types.

But then there are a few other things to keep in mind:

• 1. Not all mac sales are people replaceing PPC computers
  2. Not all companies are willing to ignore 15% of their market
  3. All products that expect to sell in any volume between today and 3 years from today will have to be universal
  4. If a product is universal, there is no cost to continue to compile it that way
  

Of course I could be way wrong?I was way off about Apple not switching to Intel any time soon in 2004?but I'd count on seeing Universal binaries for pretty much every mac program until at least 2010.

[CDog]

Nice buy. Apps for the Mac will be universal for years - Apple's product line might all be using Intel processors by the end of this year but the millions of Mac users won't all upgrade for a very long time, if ever. I'd give it five years minimum before the major developers stop creating universal binaries :)

[Skeeterific53]

Why dont you get Virtual PC and load up XP or something. Works almost the same as dual booting.

[Hurmoth]

Why dont you get Virtual PC and load up XP or something. Works almost the same as dual booting.

Well not exactly. The graphics wouldn't be no where near as good when playing games such as Half-Life 2. That's the only reason I use Windows full time today.

[Hurmoth]

Well, I got my iMac today and I'm exciting... I am going to have to get use to the one-button mouse though. Other than that, I am very happy, so far with my purchase. :D

[tOta]

Enjoy that its a kickass machine ;)

I want one it doesnt matters is it PPC or not :D

[MacOSXMan]

I had a kid in my class today say that Macs are too easy for him, and that he likes to use his command prompt, and "Control Alt Delete", and menubar in his winodws blah blah blah (I had to show the lil' twit all this could already be done in Mac OS X just in a better way!).... then he was telling me how the right mouse button is the best thing in the world, and that regular mice, not optical, are the best out there... Then he said standard serial keyboards are more responsive then USB keyboards, also he said World of War Craft is a lousy game...I died laughing :laugh:

Oh yea and my favorite he goes; "why can't Apple cooperate with Microsoft more and have windows on their machines instead of OS X?" I then replied "cuz then it wouldn't be a freakin Macintosh!!!"....some people are sooo pathetic :wacko:

Our Graphics Design teacher retaliated too and so did alot of us students, beacuse after all this was a Graphics Design class and PCs don't compare when using Adobe products! Macintosh is standard in the Graphics World!

---------------------------------------------------

Oh good luck with your new iMac G5! :D

Edited February 3, 2006 by WinMacsta06

[Toastyone]

Well, I got my iMac today and I'm exciting... I am going to have to get use to the one-button mouse though. Other than that, I am very happy, so far with my purchase. :D

You can use a two button mouse... I have for years works the same as in Windows ;) Congrats on the iMac (Y)

[chrisgeleven]

You can configure the mighty mouse to use two buttons. Works quite well.

[Hurmoth]

You can configure the mighty mouse to use two buttons. Works quite well.

Yes, I did this over the weekend. Very nice :yes:

[Jaqueh]

i thought i would also need a pc on mac when i fist got my mac (for school this year) but after 2-5 months u'll love the machine and hate bill gates for not being as simple as jobbs

[Hurmoth]

While I've really enjoyed my new Mac, I'm a little concerned or, rather curious about something.

I've noticed that a lot of things cause the processor usage to go "sky-high". For instance, I've had the Activity Monitor up while doing some of the cool "eye-candy" that Mac OS X has (i.e. ripple effect, etc.) and when doing that the processor goes up to 40-60%. Is this because a lot of the visual work is still software driven, which uses the processor more, and not hardware driven, which would use the graphics card?

iTunes does the same thing. In Windows, I can have iTunes playing music and it usually fluctuates between 4-20%, but on the Mac it usually stays between 30-70%.

Is this normal?

[the evn show]

I've noticed that a lot of things cause the processor usage to go "sky-high". For instance, I've had the Activity Monitor up while doing some of the cool "eye-candy" that Mac OS X has (i.e. ripple effect, etc.) and when doing that the processor goes up to 40-60%. Is this because a lot of the visual work is still software driven, which uses the processor more, and not hardware driven, which would use the graphics card?

Dashboard widgets are individual instances of webkit. Firing one up requires a fair amount of work to go on behind the scenes: spawn an instance of web kit, parse the xhtml/javascript/css/cocoa/etc. and setup an execution environment, gather info from the web/system/etc.

The fancy graphics happen at the same time but that's incidental. If you drag/drop a new widget and then click on it right away you'll stop the animation but still see increased CPU load.

iTunes does the same thing. In Windows, I can have iTunes playing music and it usually fluctuates between 4-20%, but on the Mac it usually stays between 30-70%.

I have slightly better hardware than you do but still have iTunes playing back AAC tracks to a pair of airport expresses while using about 5% CPU according to top.

There is some CPU cost for those graphics but they're marginal (loading the libraries, images, converting to standard internal formats, and sending the mess to quartz compositor). The real cost is actually executing the Image Unit and that'll be offloaded to any ARB Fragment 2.0 capable video card, like the one in your computer. I would expect that you'd see that show up in either Dock.App or WindowServer.

Is this normal?

As long as it's not crippling performance then it's nothing to worry about.

[Hurmoth]

There's no performance hit, so I guess there's nothing wrong then. Thanks :D

[Ethere]

Hey Hurmoth, how's the mac handling? I just picked up a mac too off ebay, (my first one too) but not half as nice as yours. Here's mine:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29392-2357-0...Item=5867396494

No monitor or anything, but hey, for $225, you can't beat it. I hope to someday be able to afford a nicer one, but for my first mac, it should prove to be ok for me.

[Hurmoth]

It's awesome! If I wasn't a gamer, I'd switch completely, but I need my Windows for my games :p

Other than that though, just simply awesome (Y) Good luck with your new Mac :D

[SamNeeds]

I'd like a Mac - specifically the one you have. However i don't have the money to get one!

[notuptome2004]

nice you one it but to bad it wasant the dual core intel chip in it. but hey nice none the less