Apple PC on Mon. related that it started to ship 2 models of its Power Mac G5, with a dual-processor version of the desktop PC set to ship sometime this month. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company claimed it has received 100,000 orders for the top-end desktops, which were exposed in June. Apple has started shipping 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz single-processor models ; a dual-processor 2GHz model is anticipated to ship by the end of Aug, fulfilling the organization’s pledge to send out the machines this month. Apple is depending on the new machines to enhance Power Mac sales, which have lagged in current quarters. Last quarter, the company sold just 156,000 Power Macs, down from a top of more than four hundred thousand 1 / 4 in early 1999, and down from 211,000 units sold a year before.
“Our Power Mac business has required this type of boost,” asserted Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice chairman of hardware selling.
As well as the 100,000 orders for the Power Mac G5, Apple continues to sell a lower-cost version of the Power Mac G4.
“We’ve been selling G4s in the meantime at $1299,” he revealed. The Power Mac G5 starts at $1,999 for the 1.6GHZ version. Sales of the Power Mac are critical for Apple because of their high profit markups and as they are employed by graphics and music executives, a key market for the Mac. Apple had warned that its overall profitability would be in jeopardy if the company did not improve its Power Mac sales. “If future unit sales of Power Macintosh systems fail to partly or completely recover, it is going to be tricky for the company to boost its overall profitability,” Apple related in a December filing with the US SEC Commission. Joswiak asserted Apple has been untouched by issues that IBM has been having with low yields from its East Fishkill, N.Y, chipmaking plant, where the G5 is produced. “Our stuff has really been going rather well,” he announced.
“They’ve been doing a great job supplying us with G5s.”. Though the Mac operating system remains a 32-bit OS, Apple said the machines are shipped with a new version engineered to use some of the G5′s 64-bit processing capabilities.
Application developers can recompile their programs to make further performance gains, Joswiak said.
Adobe Systems’ Photoshop is among the programs being changed to gain an extra speed boost from the G5.
