Opinion: Will the G5 Kill Consumer Mac Sales?


Exhale. The G5's been announced. Fast, very fast. A professional machine. Eats Pentiums for lunch. Want one?

Sure. $2,000 and it's yours. Plus monitor.

Apple's new high-octane Power Macs may not be the computer for the rest of us, but its the Mac the rest of us want. Real-bad.

So how will that affect eMac/iMac/iBook/PowerBook sales? In a word - badly.

It's essentially trickle-down theory. The Pro Mac processor you want today is destined for tomorrow's Consumer Mac. There're plenty of precedents: '030 processors in LCs; Quadra 040 CPUs in Performas; G3s in iMacs and iBooks; and G4s in virtually everything (except iBooks).

What does that tell us? Namely, that the G5 may not be in your iMac overnight, but it will happen.

In fact, Apple's Greg Joswiak has even told us in advance, in an inteview with MacCentral that the PB G5 is not going to happen "anytime soon", and that Moto's G4 is still integral to Apple's line-up. Sure, you might manage to squeeze an overclocked G4 @ 2GHz out of Moto eventually, but who'd want it, given the 64-bit promise of the 970+Panther?

This isn't a revelation; far from it - it's dead obvious. Regardless of the fact that most consumers don't need that kind of power, Apple Marketing will decide - ultimately - that they have to have it whether they want it or not.

Would you buy an iMac now if you knew that inside 12 months a G5 iMac would be released? Probably not. Will you buy an AlumBook in the next 12 months knowing the PowerBook G5 arrives in '04? Definitely not.

Apple's only trump card is us not having more than half a clue about when the next model's about to be released. Thus, we check whether the AppleStore's 'Back in 20 minutes' sign is up (daily), or cruise the rumor sites looking for nuggets of potential veracity.

I remember when the G3s came out - particularly the original PowerBook G3 in late '97. No longer did I crave a PB3400/240. Everyone, everywhere, Mac owner or not, recited the magic words, "G3". Of course, G3s just killed in the market place, and when the put one in the iMac in '98, the thing sold up a storm.

But now there's the G5, and people will have to live with lesser chips and lesser motherboards. The bottom line is that Apple will have to live with Moto for a while longer yet. But the G4 now lives in the towering shadow cast by the G5. And that is not good for business.