Apple Mac and Mac-related products on the cusp of existing (using off-the-shelf parts from other products) you wish had been sold

[weckart]

Would love to have a Power Mac G4 AGP with a G3 B&W enclosure (or grape / sage/ ruby, as previously discussed!)

You're not the only one

Put PowerMac G4 into G3 case?

I have my PowerMac G4 DA, which I recieved in a little worse for wear condition. One of the handles was completely shattered in shipment, and the entire case is dented. I like the look and colors of the PowerMac G3 cases, so I was wondering if I can switch between them. I saw a G3 on Craigslist...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[mectojic]

Oh, one other product I kinda yearn for a 17-inch Intel white iMac without iSight. I think in terms of aesthetics, the iSight slightly diminishes the perfect minimalism of the G5. It’s meant to just be white bezels, black display, and nothing else- like a perfect balance of yin-yang.

You only get that balanced feeling on the 17-inch though- on the 20/24 inch iMacs, the larger black display outweighs the balance of the white.

 

[Amethyst1]

Oh, one other product I kinda yearn for a 17-inch Intel white iMac without iSight.

And, while we're at it, replace that TN panel with an IPS one!

 

[lepidotós]

Would a 970MP iMac G5 fit here?​

 

[B S Magnet]

Would a 970MP iMac G5 fit here?​

I’d think so, in that Apple actually re-engineered the iMac G5 logic board for the final revision to use PC2 RAM — the same tack they used to update the A1117 Power Mac G5 for late 2005 and also the final PowerBook G4s.

As to why they didn’t toss in an MP processor could be due to an established practice that the flagship product always got the newest CPU first, and a subsequent update, had it occurred for the PowerPC Macs (it was definitely, at least, planned, given the updated logic board), would have placed the CPU in other, consumer-level products in that particularly, uh, captialistic trickle-down effect.

 

[B S Magnet]

Oh, one other product I kinda yearn for a 17-inch Intel white iMac without iSight. I think in terms of aesthetics, the iSight slightly diminishes the perfect minimalism of the G5. It’s meant to just be white bezels, black display, and nothing else- like a perfect balance of yin-yang.

You only get that balanced feeling on the 17-inch though- on the 20/24 inch iMacs, the larger black display outweighs the balance of the white.

I always felt that the finish on the iMac G5/slab intel iMacs should have been a satin and not glossy one. Glossy showed the scratches and fingerprints exceptionally well and, in bad office lighting with overhead fluorescent tubes, had a lot of glare to deal with. With a satin or matte finish to the plastic, much like the iMac G4 base, the camera whilst still disruptive, may have been slightly less so.

Then again, the adaptation of the existing case for the iMac G5 with iSight and the aluminium MacBook Pros reveals how this addition was an afterthought, as subsequent Macs equipped with an iSight camera were designed to blend in with a black background (realized with the unibody slab iMacs of 2007 and the unibody MacBook Pros, along with the remedial release of a black MacBook in the A1181 form factor).

That said, I always smile whenever I see an anti-glare option on the unibody MacBook Pro, because it was clear Apple didn’t want that as an option and hadn’t designed the unibody MBP as such, but was losing a lot of existing professional customers without at least an add-on order option for anti-glare display.

Anyway, yeah. There should have been a delete order option for customers who didn’t want the feature on the final iMac G5. But Apple made the built-in iSight the “killer” feature of that revision, hinting at what would become a ubiquitous component later.

 

[B S Magnet]

The 2000 Sony GDM-F520 is 21 inches... and can do 1920×1440 at 85 Hz or 1600×1200 at 110 Hz.

Ah yes… Sony, with their ::cough:: inimitable 5 BNC connectors — requiring the cable to be special ordered from a retailer for a lot of money in the event you have a faulty cable or your secondhand Sony GDM-series display unit didn’t come with said cable…

(Ask me where I come up with these situations.)

 

[Amethyst1]

Ah yes… Sony, with their ::cough:: inimitable 5 BNC connectors — requiring the cable to be special ordered from a retailer for a lot of money in the event you have a faulty cable or your secondhand Sony GDM-series display unit didn’t come with said cable…

It also comes with a VGA input. Signal quality is supposedly better using BNC (I've never been able to try it unfortunately), and when pushing resolutions that high via an analog connection you want the best signal quality you can get - back in 2000, that meant BNC... and a Matrox graphics card.

 

[B S Magnet]

It also comes with a VGA input. Signal quality is supposedly better using BNC (I've never been able to try it unfortunately), and when pushing resolutions that high via an analog connection you want the best signal quality you can get - back in 2000, that meant BNC... and a Matrox graphics card.

The GDM-1952 (or 1953, I always forget) I used to own was one of Sony’s BNC-only units, for which I’ve no doubt — for analogue signals — was a big step over an integrated, relatively tiny VGA connector. The quality of the image, despite being a lower resolution than my much newer Hitachi CRT of the same size, was solid — no ghosting or anything suggestive of a weak signal. The only reason why I didn’t keep it when I moved inter-city in ’02 was my new workspace was much smaller and wouldn’t fit my old desk (literally a solid wood uncut door resting on sawhorses) — and, thus, no room for a second display. I missed losing that extra screen room, especially when working in Illustrator, Photoshop, and QuarkXPress.

 

[Amethyst1]

[...] The only reason why I didn’t keep it when I moved inter-city in ’02 was my new workspace was much smaller and wouldn’t fit my old desk [...]

Yeah, the problem with CRTs, more so multiple ones, is how much space, specifically depth, they require.

And while we're at it... why don't Matrox' dual-/triple-head expansion boxes have BNC inputs next to DVI/DP? I mean, we're talking about pushing, say, 3840×1200 via VGA!

 

[ahurst]

Same here. I love my two MateViews. I'm actually sort of considering getting a third.

Huh, just last month I was trying to figure out whether anyone made a 16:10 4K monitor out there (other than that ultra-rare IBM one), didn’t even think to look up 3:2. Cool! A bit out of grad student price range, but good to know it exists.

I agree the 2015 was pretty slow (on par with a 2011 MBA as you say) but the last generation (2017) is supposedly quite a bit faster due to substantially higher turbo clocks.

No clue whether Geekbench 5 is long enough to get the full effect of that turbo boost, but since I’ve been digging into the numbers in the other thread:

Early 2011 13” MBP (i7-2620M, same CPU as my ThinkPad X220 hackintosh): 567 single / 1206 multi

Mid 2017 12” MacBook (m7, fastest CPU): 714 single / 1471 multi

2020 MacBook Air (M1): 1705 single / 7413 multi

For a long time I was holding off on a new Mac laptop, waiting until that $1000-$2000 would get me at least double the single-core and multi-core performance of my 300$ eBay X220. It wasn’t until ~2019 that they actually offered anything at a 13” size that met that! I’m sure the 2017 m7 12” MB is a speedy machine in its own right, but think of how much more capable that form factor would be with even an underclocked variant of the Thunderbolt-supporting M1. It’s the chip that thermal profile was always waiting for!

 

[Amethyst1]

Huh, just last month I was trying to figure out whether anyone made a 16:10 4K monitor out there (other than that ultra-rare IBM one) [...]

I have two IBM T221s, affectionately called "Bertha".

 

[ahurst]

I have two IBM T221s, affectionately called "Bertha".

Incredible! Where did you find them??? Do they have the special connector that lets them run at above 30 Hz at full resolution?

I remember reading up a ton on them back in 2012, when the first retina macs were introduced and I was imagining what kind of magic an external retina display would be like.

 

[Amethyst1]

Incredible! Where did you find them???

eBay.

Do they have the special connector that lets them run at above 30 Hz at full resolution?

They have two LFH-60 connectors, each branching off to two single-link DVI connectors via a Y-cable shipped with the monitor.
You need three — that is not documented and only possible if you have a DG5, DGM or DGP revision — or, officially, four single-link DVI connections to exceed ≈33 Hz.
The DG5/DGM/DGP is compatible with the optional dual-link converter box, one of which was included with the DG5.

The following table lists the configurations and maximum refresh rates attainable using CVT-RB timings:

Number of DVI links	Type of DVI links	Maximum Refresh Rate
1	single-link	17 Hz
2	single-link	32.6 Hz
3	single-link	46.7 Hz (DG5/DGM/DGP)
4	single-link	41 Hz (DG1/DG3) 48 Hz (DG5/DGM/DGP) 55 Hz (DG5/DGM/DGP; requires mod)
1	dual-link	33.8 Hz (DG5/DGM/DGP)
2	dual-link + single-link	48 Hz (DG5/DGM/DGP)
2	dual-link	48 Hz (DG5/DGM/DGP) 55 Hz (DG5/DGM/DGP; requires mod)

 

[JoyBed]

This is a legit product which should have happened. My opening post was only considering hardware. SL-PPC was very much a thing and, with a nod from up top, would have come to fruition as a merchandised product.



I don’t know the story behind why those models were limited to 1.5GB.



As noted earlier, the iBooks — in particular, the 12-inch variant — was discontinued before the existence of the 12-inch, 20-pin LVDS 1440x1050p display, so that’s a non-starter.

I would need to look into when the first 14-inch 1440x1050p displays were being engineered and by which manufacturers, but my guess is the bulk of those models didn’t come out until after Apple had migrated to Intel. Moreover, a 14-inch display of that resolution on an iBook would have severely cut into sales of the 1440x960 display of the 15-inch PowerBook G4.

So I’m not sure any of these products were on cusp of existing, which is the topic of this discussion.



Do we know of any other 32-bit laptops being sold in 2005 (Intel or AMD) which managed to accommodate all 4GB of RAM? I know @JoyBed has tried to crack that nut with the DLSD PowerBook running PC2 RAM, but hasn’t been successful to date. Even if 32 bits could accommodate 4GB RAM, it doesn’t mean any 32-bit laptop was able to use 4GB due to other technical limitations.




OK, now you’re just spitballing.



That was in my list above, as Apple were actively developing a PowerBook to use it before dilly-dallying about it after the Intel announcement, and then leaving Freescale’s development team on the hook until the bitter end. As we know, the redesigned logic board in the DLSD PowerBook models were engineered to accommodate a 7448 CPU.



Do you know whether Apple were developing this? If not, then it probably doesn’t fit with this discussion. This isn’t so much about fantasy products as it is about “products which were in some stage of known, active development by Apple — or designed with planned forward-compatibility (like those unused RAM pads on the iBook clamshell logic board) for products which never came to pass, because the company responded to other factors which took the product line in a different direction (like the dual-USB “icebook” iBook G3 which hurriedly got rolled out in May ’01).



I’m aware Radius were always at the fore of high-end CRTs, including 21 and 23-inch CRTs used in the design industry (replete with detachable hoods), but do you know of a vendor at the time which could have supplied Apple with a 21-inch CRT with the ability to display 1600x1200 at 75Hz? If no, then this isn’t an on-the-cusp product.



What?



Halo wasn’t an Apple product, so nope.



Indeed. And a “fantasy machines” thread would be perfect for talking about this kind of stuff — the stuff which was never actually in the works by Apple or technically achievable with the most minor of modification to the production of that product (such as designing a variant of the Magic Trackpad for USB use and not for battery/Bluetooth use).




These deserve their own fantasy thread!

Actually I came to a trick that enabled more than those sacred 2gigs but OS X crashes every time I try it. OpenFirmware doesnt mind it but I never tried making it permanent thru reboots. And now I cant as both my MDD mobo and DLSD mobo are dead. ON the DLSD the charging circuit died and also the PMU outputs for wnabling charging are dead. When i charge the battery I can use the PowerBook but just to the point till the battery is discharged and then I need to charge it externally… And the MDD mobo died when I tried to tuck in a new 1000W PSU which I modified just as that previous ATX one which did not killed the MDD… So now for me to be able to continue in my ppc adventures I need both mobos new from somewhere which I cant find… I even modified the DLSDs BootROM to accept 7448 cpu but now its useless to solder it there. But also good news is that the dual 7457 CPU module for the MDD is still working. I will probably sell that CPU module for a working DLSD mobo.

 

[B S Magnet]

Actually I came to a trick that enabled more than those sacred 2gigs but OS X crashes every time I try it. OpenFirmware doesnt mind it but I never tried making it permanent thru reboots. And now I cant as both my MDD mobo and DLSD mobo are dead. ON the DLSD the charging circuit died and also the PMU outputs for wnabling charging are dead. When i charge the battery I can use the PowerBook but just to the point till the battery is discharged and then I need to charge it externally… And the MDD mobo died when I tried to tuck in a new 1000W PSU which I modified just as that previous ATX one which did not killed the MDD… So now for me to be able to continue in my ppc adventures I need both mobos new from somewhere which I cant find… I even modified the DLSDs BootROM to accept 7448 cpu but now its useless to solder it there. But also good news is that the dual 7457 CPU module for the MDD is still working. I will probably sell that CPU module for a working DLSD mobo.

I hope you can acquire another DLSD board soon and can continue your experimenting on both the CPU and the memory!