MWSF - PR Mistake? New G4 Tower To Be Released Today At MACWORLD

by , 11:00 AM EST, January 9th, 2001

In a situation eerily familiar to the ATI blunder at last summer's MACWORLD NY, in which an ATI press release slipped out ahead of Apple iCEO's Steve Jobs' keynote speech, a company called TriPath has released a PR stating that their technology will be used in, "...Apple's new Power Mac G4 minitower, which was unveiled at Macworld Expo this week."

Oops.

Not that the release of a G4 surprises anybody, but we can't imagine that Jobs is particularly happy with this faux pas, and we are taking bets on how long TriPath technology remains to be featured in Macintosh computers. According to TriPath:

Tripath Technology, Inc. creators of Digital Power Processing (DPP(TM)) technology,today announced that its TA1101 digital audio amplifier is featured asstandard equipment in Apple's new Power Mac G4 minitower, which was unveiledat Macworld Expo this week. Tripath's audio amplifiers are now behind thehigh-fidelity, all-digital audio experience provided by two of Apple' newestsystems, the Power Mac G4 Cube and the Power Mac G4 minitower.

Tripath's 20W Class-T amplifier, which is up to 90 percent energyefficient, was incorporated onto both computers' main circuit board assembly.The resulting improved level of energy efficiency reduced the amount of heatgenerated by the computer and allowed Apple engineers to design top-qualityaudio into high performance desktops. It also eliminated the need for an ACpower adapter for the systems' speakers.

Apple turned to Tripath in response to growing consumer demand for audioquality that compliments music from the Internet, CD and DVD sources.Tripath's TA1101 delivers a low distortion of 0.01% THD+N. The end result isan all-digital sound system that extends the standard for audio quality Appleset with the Power Mac G4 Cube to the Power Mac G4 minitower line.

"Tripath is pleased to support Apple's drive to provide a richer audioexperience to their customers," said Neal Carney, Tripath's vice president ofMarketing. "This latest use of Tripath technology by Apple demonstrates thata high fidelity audio system can be achieved cost effectively without a hugeburden on the system design."

Perhaps even more interestingly, this adds more fuel to the rumor fire that Apple is going to drop the "iMusic" bomb during MACWORLD. Recent rumors have Apple acquiring SoundJamMP from Casady & Greene, and all of this information points to a shift toward digital music and the MP3 revolution.

Stay tuned, as the "official" announcement of these new Macs is just an hour away, and we will have full coverage, updated every couple minutes, of this morning's keynote speech.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Oh boy. We know how happy Jobs was with ATI after their MW slip-up. Rumor has it that he had Radeon cards pulled from every Mac on the show floor at in NY, and dropped the Radeon portion of his keynote at the last second.

It will be interesting to see how he responds to this.

Apple