We need more options at the Apple store (I want to buy an empty box with a G5 in it, lemme buy harddrive, graphics card and RAM myself!).
Apple is a hardware company first and foremost. To sell stripped down PowerMacs would cut into their profits tremendously. If they allowed people to build their on box this way, they'd be out of business in no time. They might as well just port OS X to Intel and say the hell with it.
Although I think it's *very* bad marketing to do so, I think Apple should release the PowerMacintosh based on the PPC 7470 (although that's a G4, really) as the PowerMacintosh G5.
This would be devistating to Apple as well. This sounds similiar to what Apple did with the PowerMac G4 Yikes! and Sawtooth. They couldn't get the issues with the Sawtooth worked out in time so they dumped an inferior product, the Yikes! G4, into the market only to produce it for 3 months then yank support for it for the Sawtooth G4. Many were bitter and resented Apple for this.
They G4 was comparable to the P3 and in some ways superior to it architecturally wise, but that's certainly no longer the case when compared to the new P4 or Athlons. By the time this "super sonic especially advanced G5 microprocessor" hits the market, is it really going to be that special or advanced? The end of 2003 is quite a ways away, I guess we'll just have to see.
I think the best thing Apple could have done was cut their losses with the G5 years ago, ditch Motorola and find someone who can actually produce microprocessors in a timely maner. Now their into it for so much time and money, they have no choice but to spread the G4 for all it's worth, which would probably explain the small increments in which the G4 is sped up. If they dropped a 1.5GHz G4 on us at MWNY, It would suck for Apple to have to be stuck at that speed for the next year because of the limitations of the G4.
Also, if they G5 doesn't get here soon, the iMac may do more harm than good for Apple. With the G4 in almost every system except the iBook, consumers are going to be less likely to drop fat cash on a PowerMac when the iMac has the same processor around the same speeds. Yes, the L3 cache makes a difference but all Joe Average Consumer cares about is MHz. I'm sure the profit margin isn't as high on the iMacs as PowerMacs.
You also wont be seeing the G4 in iBooks anytime soon because of the same reasoning.
The release of the eMac into the consumer market less than a month after they said it would be education only brings a lot into question as well. One can assume they weren't selling like hotcakes in the education market and now they only taint the consumer G4 line even further.
Apples future is very much dependent on the G5, and as of right now, that future is looking extremely bleak.
