Rumor: Dual-Core Power Mac G5 Coming Soon?


The PowerPC G5 may not be quite dead, despite Apple's switch to Intel in mid-2006. Late last week, Think Secret reported on Apple's planned Power Mac upgrade, supposedly due to 'poor sales' of the current model line-up.

The 'poor sales' line isn't unexpected, as Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer warned this might happen in his last quarterly financials conference call.

In fact, the PowerPC 970MP - which is the processor that's likely to take over from the current 970FX - may even see a drop in the current MHz rating, even if it's much more powerful. IBM currently has it available at a maximum clock of 2.5GHz.

The story is that 970MP Power Macs would have been available earlier, but IBM couldn't deliver sufficient quantities of the dual-core processor in time - in other words, the same old story. And why Apple's decided to move to Intel.

It will be even harder to tell, precisely, how well - or badly - Power Macs are selling when Apple next reports its quarterly results, as Apple decided to roll all of its Mac sales numbers into one big ball. So analysts' guesses will probably be as good as yours or mine.

What's more - possibly due to supply constraints - a dual-core Power Mac G5 may be available only in the up-spec models.

Is even a dual-core, high-octane Power Mac G5 enough of a stop-gap measure before Planet Intel comes to town? Yes, there will be a core market of graphics and scientific professionals who will buy some of the last G5s (if that's what they are - after all, Apple has given no real indication as to when they'll phase out production and support for the G5 models).

In other related news, Think Secret also relates that news of a PowerBook update is hard to get hold of: there may be another revision around Macworld SF in January next year, which would mean the PowerBooks have languished in no-update land for well-nigh a year.

The bright spots like Nano and Mac Mini aside, it's not looking like a tremendous second half of the year for Mac sales. But we hope we're wrong.