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Apple Announces Faster G4s, Upgraded Powerbooks
yuriwho writes, "Apple has announced several upgrades: an extra 50 MHz clockspeed for G4's, as well as an upgraded powerbook with extra MHz, firewire, RAM space and airport compatibility (tech specs/marketing here). There's also an iBook special edition. Check out hotnews for the info on the various product lines. Several minor improvements added together may make quite a bit of difference especially in the mobile market - unfortunately nothing stunning. "
Actually...
The iBookSE is the only Graphite one, the Blueberry and Tangerine are still out. But the SE is the 366MHz one. They all come with 64MB of RAM now and they all come with 6BG HDs...but the old ones only had a 3.2.
I think it's pretty sweet that every Macintosh model now has Airport capability, and 3 out of 4 models have Firewire.
Of course you could add an Airport compatible card to the PCMCIA slot of the old Powerbook...but it was $299 where the Airport card is $99 and you still have your PCMICA slots free since it goes under the keyboard.
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Apple still keeping thier hardware specs to themselves? Well, I won't be buying a mac anytime soon then.
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Hrm.
http://www.publicsource.apple.com/
http://www.totalimpact.com/
http://www.linuxppc.com/
http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/
http://www.suse.com/ppc/
http://www.mklinux.org/
...perhaps you forgot the previous links? Note that in some of these cases, Apple has commited actual developers to producing open-sourced code.
Also note that Mac hardware has moved towards industry standard parts (NuBus to PCI, ADB to USB, etc), and has worked to detangle their OS from the hardware (ROM in RAM architecture, etc).
Then again, you probably weren't going to buy a Mac anyhow - this was just a good place to troll. Perhaps you were even drinking a little Be kool-aid...?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
The newer iBook:
I have to admit it is nice. It has a nice new graphite color and some internal improvements. I wonder if they have fixed that flimsy-feely keyboard. It made me think my hands weigh 10 pounds each. Very delicate hardware, and somewhat tiny keys. They doubled the ram and hdd which is of course a good thing.
It is interesting to note that it is one of the more expandable laptops I've seen recently, with a maximum 320 megs of ram. 366 is a decent speed for a portable device, especially when combined with RISC hardware. Unfortunately, you probably won't see much of an improvement until you run OSX client to take advantage of the chipset.
The G4:
I suppose Motorola caught up. Still upgrading the processor to 500mhz doesn't help much in a world full of 800 mhz PIIIs and Athlons. Should add a boost for professional video and photoshop folks out there.
The powerbook:
Late again. This was expected last month, but at least they put some polish on it. A 500mhz laptop is something to look at twice, regardless of the operating system it runs. Couple that with a max 512mb of RAM, and you have a nice little lapwarmer. I was fully expecting a G4 in this puppy, but I suppose I'll need to wait. 1 meg of backside cache is also a bonus. Oh yeah, it also has firewire ports. Nifty. One more thing: it only comes in one color. Thank the goddes for that one.
Looks like a nice bunch from Apple again. Hopefully they can deflate Steve's ego enough to get him out the door..
Lowmag.net
I like the black and white colour scheme, it would
be great to run Linux on it - the colours are
Tux-like! I wonder if you could put a yellow
beak on it or something to make it even more like
a Tux?
Substance: the shape of the case is such that if you drop it, the shock is spread out over the rest of the polycarbonate shell, instead of being concentrated on a corner and shattering it.
Style: integral handle
Substance: keeps you from dropping it. The handle looks very flimsy - it's not. try it out sometime; it will easily support a few times the iBook's weight.
Style: colored case
Substance: indifferent. for one thing, I'm not so insecure as to be embarrassed to be carrying a candy toilet seat. what do I have to prove? besides, it's not like they had to neuter the processor to make it candy-colored. There's still a dope machine inside.
I'm to lazy to elaborate on the six-hour battery life (from my experience, not a sales brochure), integrated Airport antenna, the finest trackpad I've used, integrated modem/Ethernet, fast battery charger, and any of the other things that you won't understand unless you use the machine before you mock it. Imagine that.
Silly troll.
Compatable Devices?
l
Lets see...VST is shipping a buttload of Firewire devices.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000215/vst_techno_2.htm
The little 2.5 inch VST Firewire drives are sweet, small, fast and don't need an external power supply. They also have larger 3.5 inch Firewire drives. Sony and LaCie are shipping Firewire CD-R and CD-RW drives. All those digital video cameras, scanners all kinds of goodies.
Firewire is going to replace SCSI for things like scanners, USB scanners just don't cut it after you've used a SCSI or Firewire scanner.
Airport is completly IEEE 802.11 compliant, it's from Lucent.
While the old "Apple ain't compatible - look at Nubus" just isn't an arguement anymore. PCI, AGP, Airport, USB and Firewire...doesn't look propitary to me.
Ok, I'll bite.
Uh. Hmm. I'd agree that the iMacs and iBooks aren't for everyone. But can you really call that Powerbook a toy? Does Sony's Vaio have a Rage 128 chip in it? I mean, I'd take one if given to me, but can it even do 3D? Is it interesting to anyone else how a toy company can affect so much of the industry? Besides the color thing, there's USB adoption, Firewire, and Mac OS X around the corner. I don't see Fisher Price supporting opensource projects like Darwin, do you? Man, buy the thing and throw LinuxPPC 2000 on it, if you want. Apple is far from perfect. I've had to work with them, so believe me, I know. But it's just amazing to me how old, unfounded grudges don't die.
Ah well.
-doenermord
Don't blame the games. It takes a village to screw up a child.
Nice to see the iBook in the Graphite though - I was never a fan of the iBoox colours - they seemed to suit the iMac more than theiBook.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
A lot of PC users snicker at the Mac as a toy and say that it can't do any real work. Well, get off your high horse and face reality... I am a tech-consultant / system technician, and my area of expertise is the Mac, over a decade of use and 6 years of the techical side.
I've worked with just about everything out there, SGI, Alpha, Data General, *nix, Linux, BeOS, Amigia... you name it, I've been called on to fix it, and by far, I prefer the Mac. Admittedly, the PC market has the larger footprint in the business world, but look at the markets where Macintosh is the de-facto standard. Graphic Design and Print Production are where the Mac's rule, and they rule with an iron fist.
I'm presently working at Putnam Financial Investments, and we have an enclave here of 140 Mac users... the only ones in the entire company, and they are here to stay. Periodically, someone in management makes some noise about standardizing on the PC's for the entire company and switching out the Macs here.
They talk about standardizing, repurposing assets and other PHB-speak, but they get squashed like a bug when word gets out to the people who manage and work the design department.
The multiple suites of design, illustration, photo-manipulation, layout and print management are all Mac-based, and the people who use them are all mac users. I previously worked at a company where the vunderkin new-hire in the design department was a PC guy, and he needed a new fully loaded PC instead of the standard Design Mac that everyone else with his role had. $16,000 later, his machine was ready, and he went to work....
I know for a fact, that he kept having to hand projects back to the Mac people, because his machine couldn't match the work that they produced, and in many cases, tools existed on the Mac that had no counterparts on the PC platform. All that work, and non-recoverably investment, was hampered by the fact that he was trying to mimic the Mac's capabilities, a sobering thought when you consider that when he leaves, his machine will be given to the CFO's assistant because none of the other designers want to touch the damn thing.
Admitedly, I'm ranting about a specialized segement of the computer-using population, but understand this. The Macintosh has not survived this long, and kept it's integrity as a cutting edge machine for creative and design work, by being second best. The Mac you see on the market today is the product of selective breeding, the machine that has evolved to fill the needs of people in high-production environments and creative positons.
The Mac was not built as and Enterprise server.
It was not made as a thin-client.
It was not made to be a gaming platform (yet!)
And people still insist on pushing it into those roles and judging it's performance against systems that are built for those tasks. I have used Macs as firewalls, servers, kiosks, data-aquisition clients, and remote access terminals. I have found the most efficient ways to use the Mac in these roles, and dealt with the issues that arise. The Macinosh isn't perfect. But don't compare Apples to Oranges and then ridicule the Mac when it isn't all things to all people... Compare the Apple to the competitors that want to take it's market share. Show me a PC that can fill the shoes of a Design Mac in a high-flow Advertising Agency. Show me a PC that can handle 3 different size monitors of different resolutions and refresh rates for an illustration who uses a mouse, tablet, and trackball. Show me a PC that matches my Mac, and I'll be impressed. but untill I see designers with Intel Inside on their desks, I'm going to keep my Mac...
"If I can't take my Mac with me to heaven when I die, I'm not going."
- Anonymous Mac-Marine
"If I wanted your input on my pet project, I'd stick my hand up your ass and use you like a sock-puppet." - Muse