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G4 Powerbooks Predicted For January 2001
Spittoon pointed out this ZDNet article claiming that development proceeds apace on G4 portables for Apple's PowerBook line, and that if all goes well, they'll be shown off at Macworld Expo in January. I could live with ads claiming that "The new PowerBook is a supercomputer" in exchange for knocking a couple notes off the price of a G3 PowerBook ;) Slot-loaded CD / DVD drives are long overdue in notebooks, anyhow, so I hope at least that part of the story pans out.
"Some developers would rather kill themselves than contemplate working on a non-Mac system."
;)
We lose more developers that way......
Tom
The problem with slot load is that you can't use mini-CD or buisness card CD etc... as far as i can remember the will fly inside the drive and may break it! :-(
Did they change that?
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I think Apple's G4 advertising campaign was pushing the fact that anything over 1 GFlop was considered a supercomputer (And hence, a non-exportable munition) by the US Government.
So that's the definition the guy is talking about - The government was saying that 1 GFlop was not exportable because it was a supercomputer, and now they've upped that number.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Yes, I know MHz can be meaningless.
But last I heard, PowerPCs weren't nearly as hot as Apple made them out to be. Remember long ago when Slashdot covered a set of benchmarks that discovered that the whole "G3 is twice as fast as a PII" was utter bullshit except for one or two special circumstances?
PIIIs were an incremental increase over the PII, and last I checked, the G4 was only an incremental increase over the G3 if you didn't take into account AltiVec. So the speed comparison of the two probably still remains similar. Hence a 1 GHz PIII is going to beat a 500 MHz G4 by a significant amount. It's not going to be the 2x performance increase that the clock speed says, but it will be quite significant. Throw the Athlon in there, which has a tendency to kill the PIII at a given clock rate in floating-point performance, and those G4s start looking anemic even to someone who thinks seriously about the situation.
And next is where the "Processor MHz isn't everything" idea works against Apple. Given that the PowerMacs and PCs have the same memory bus width (Both use SDRAM and neither have a requirement of memory being installed as matched pairs), when it comes to memory bandwidth, FSB MHz means everything. When most PCs moved from 100 to 133 MHz FSB is when Apple finally started moving to 100 MHz. And the Athlon has 100 MHz DDR for an effective FSB clock of 200 MHz... Although unfortunately, that's limited by the RAM running at only 133. (I haven't seen on-motherboard cache since L2 was moved from the mobo to the CPU.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Just wait 'til you see the upcoming 'Infrared' and 'Ultraviolet.' Oh sure, they look black to humans, but they're different blacks ;)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Uh Oh, did they say Reportedly? I expect ZDNet to be getting a Cease and Desist letter from the determined lawyers over at Apple any time now.
The word "Reportedly" appears 5 times. The word "Sources" ALSO appears 5 times. The article states that "Apple did not immediately answer phone calls requesting comment on the reports."
Notice all of these "sources" are unidentified?
This article sure looks like it's churning rumors. READY THE LEGAL STAFF, MEN!
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Mac users are much more likely to pay for software than Linux users. The audience is more affluent, and it's used to paying for what it gets.
I predict success for MacOS X, mainly because they've rejiggered things like Carbon to make it easy to port applications to it. The "cool factor" of Aqua is hard to ignore, too.
I think the Mac has a good chance of attracting a sizable crop of new adherents with X and the spiffy new systems. The biggest problem at this point is continued high pricing. An eMachine costs around $ 450, plus a $ 120 monitor is $570. $799 is still a far cry from that, especially with the dearth of dealer discounts I've noticed in Mac-land.
D
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When I used X there, I meant it as a shorthand for MacOS X - I'm aware that MacOS isn't X-Windows.
When I was at Fry's last night, I also noticed that an e-machine is a bit more expensive than I thought - so I think the iMac might be more price-competitive than I said previously.
D
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Either way they need to get those processors running faster.
My understanding was that the apparent gap in clock speeds was due to Apple using a different clocking scheme than Intel.
Benchmarks would provide a more reliable comparison of performance between the platforms. Unfortunately, Apple hasn't submitted SPECmarks in quite a while.
Now that MacOS X is out, it should be straightforward for a third party to compile the SPECmarks with a compiler optimized for the platform (gcc is almost certainly sub-optimal due to lack of specs).
I would encourage you to look at the history of computing for about the last forty years.
After you get done with that, you'll realize that something better, faster, and cheaper is always about six months down the road.
Thus, quit waiting when something you can afford fits your needs, and buy it. Otherwise you'll be waiting forever.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
MHz may be meaningless to geeks, but geeks don't make up the bulk of the buying public.
:-)
MHz *is* important, and it's often a deciding factor. People go into a store, see an iBook for $1600 with a 350MHz G3 or a Pentium III 500/600 for about the same price. They're going to choose which they think gives them more for their money.
You can spout technical terms at them, but they'll either not get it, or they'll yawn, walk away, and go get the Pentium notebook. The ones that do get it are very intelligent people, though
So, Apple needs to find a way to get Motorola and IBM on the stick making slightly faster processors, especially for desktop machines, because power requirements there don't really matter.
I know they'll figure it out eventually.
--Bernie
Sources said the company has not determined whether the trackpad will support Apple's forthcoming handwriting-recognition software, code-named Rosetta Stone.
:)
It doesn't sound "forthcoming" so much as "rereleased". The handwriting recognition included with NewtonOS 2.0 was code-named "Rosetta", I would assume this is the same thing. But I hadn't heard Apple was planning on reusing Newton technology anytime soon! Does anyone have any info on this? Will I finally be able to replace my MP2K?
But the huge gap is gone, and I wonder why people spend so much time doing mac ports of software instead of *bsd and linux ports.
Funny comparison, really.
The Mac market is huge. It isn't as big as the PC market, yes, but that's like saying that ten million dollars is chump change because someone else has a billion dollars. There's a much different user make-up, too. Linux and bsd people tend to be fiddlers and tinkerers and idealists. Macs tend to get bought by people who don't obsess about operating systems and don't mind paying for software.
Last bond movie, the gal was using a laptop running Win2k professional beta. As was I, so I leaned over to my friend to ask why I , if a beta tester as well, wasn't meeting those kinds of chicks. hmmph
matt
I believe the reason that CD-RW isn't commonplace in the laptop market is due to the power usage of a CD-RW's laser. Many CD-Rs in a desktop computer have fans in them to help cool the mechanisms inside the drive due to the high heat output from the laser. As far as desktops go Ricoch(sp!) makes a combo DVD/CD-R/RW drive, but its only IDE and will set you back ~$270. IIRC Dell offers a removable CD-RW drive in their Inspiron 5xxx line of computers for a few hundred bucks, but I'm sure that you can't just burn cds for hours on end with one battery.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
This is and will always be a problem. If you keep waiting for the next big thing to come along, you will never buy a computer ;-)
My advice to you is to take a look at your needs right now and decide if it is worth the purchase price to go ahead and buy a PowerBook or iBook or wait another 6 or 7 months and re-evaluate your situation.
You said that the lack of expandability of the iBook is keeping you from purchasing one of the current models? What expandability options are you looking for that you could not get as an external USB device?
I recently bought one of the 400 Mhz model PowerBooks. It's a great computer, will run OSX and will last me for quite a while. I would not consider it to be "on the way out" technology-wise, but I fully expect that Apple will replace it with a newer and cooler model at some point.
I guess that you just have to consider your current needs and base your decision on the present situation. If your current hardware is adequate then by all means, wait until the next announcement, but if your current hardware is inadequate and you have the money, then go ahead and purchase something.
I discussed this mysterious 6th square in the previous /. thread. My personal suspicion is that the space should correspond to the ultra-compact but professional-powered G4 Cube -- e.g. subnotebook.
Something that the Excite News article completely failed to discuss is power consumption. The G4 is of course a miser compared to P3 or Athlon, but it puts out way more heat than a G3. Perhaps you could make a PowerBook G4 without the AltiVec unit, but in that case what would be the point?
I keep asking myself how the mac, with its limited install base, keeps developers? In its heydey, when its technology and UI was superior, that was one thing. But the huge gap is gone, and I wonder why people spend so much time doing mac ports of software instead of *bsd and linux ports. It's often been pointed out how things like C# can go down the tubes because they can't get developer critical mass. I wonder how the mac keeps it going? Anyone out there a Mac developer? Is it just an easy port? A roommate of mine used to develop simultaneously with codewarrior, but those were simple apps...
Except for maybe Quake 3! That will probably rock nearly as well as Q3 for BeOS will on the (perpetualy) forthcoming dual Athlons.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
My pioneer car stereo works like a charm too, except it skips when I hit a bump while turning... probably the Tokikos' (performance struts) fault rather than the CD player ;)
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
This is technically true, but newer kernels don't seem to support direct OF booting at all. They want you to use BootX or a OF bootloader like yaboot.
If you're running a "new world" (anything non-beige) Mac, you no longer need MacOS at all to boot Linux.
If I remember correctly, the PowerBook G3's weren't very hot on your lap because of their low power consumption. And, if I'm correct on this also, the G4 does use more power than the G3. My (late) AT&T laptop was HOT all the time. I hope not to see the samething in the G4, esp. when I think back the cube. Apparently, they get so hot that if you cover the holes on top, they'll shutdown in 15 minutes because of overheating. I wonder how they plan to fix that problem on the G4 laptops.
hlag
Wasn't Pismo the PBook they released that has firewire? I'm pretty sure the Pismo codename had to do with the newer black Pbooks.
... and Apple subtly encourages, to the extent of doctoring technotes on the PB 1999 Series, to keep attention deflected from the REAL Pismo. Some people have posted the truth, including the oft-maligned Ryan Meader, but they are generally not believed.
;)
That's the majority of conventional wisdom, as alluded to above
Here's a not-so-subtle hint: If you want to know what Pismo styling is like, check out the power adapter on the PB 1999s. Funky, eh? Now imagine a 3/4" 3.5 lb. PB like that. Mmmmmm. Sluuuuurp
My understanding was that the apparent gap in clock speeds was due to Apple using a different clocking scheme than Intel.
No, the clock speed of a chip is a quantative measure. A synchronous chip runs at its quoted speed (unless you overclock it :-). What you may be thinking about is the fact that a 500MHz PowerPC may be a lot faster or slower than a 500MHz Pentium. This is certainly true, leading us to conclude that clock speeds are a very poor measurement of actual performance.
Benchmarks would provide a more reliable comparison of performance between the platforms. Unfortunately, Apple hasn't submitted SPECmarks in quite a while.
Well, benchmarks like SPECmarks are only slightly better indicators of real world performance than raw CPU clock speeds. The only real way to compare is to try running the actual applications you need to use on both platforms. If you are a Photoshop user, then the multi-G4 Mac is a pretty awesome system. For other apps, a Pentium III is probably going to be faster.
Sailing over the event horizon
The rumor that Apple will put a G4 into a laptop Real Soon Now is not news... it's almost inevitable, as the logical progression of the product line. I might as well put up a web news site and proclaim that Gnome is expected to adopt the drag-and-drop paradigm that Macs and Windows have been using for text manipulation.
Now, any hard news about a subnotebook... that would be interesting. However, given that the Cube was one of the first rumors that the MacGossip sites have gotten right in a long, long time (and that was not until the week before the announcement), I would not hold my breath waiting for them to come up with any real dish on what the Cupertino campus is up to.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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MacSlash: Your Daily Dose of Mac News and Discussion.
I would have complained but they would have come back and said "we are not responsible for mistakes"... yeah, right.
I'm amazed at how slowly laptops have adopted CDRW as a standardized device. Seems to make sense to me... no need for a zip and can drastically increase the desktop's current storage workspace. BTW, DVD/CDRW would be nice.
Is there a Linux kernel that's functional on G4's, or anyone working on it?
11*43+456^2
My iBook's battery can run a screen bright enough to use as a flashlight for four hours straight (longer if I turn it down); I don't think the energy required for loading and ejecting CDs is significant. Worrying about that would be like wearing less when you go driving so your car gets better gas mileage due to carrying less weight. Sure, in theory it will, but it doesn't matter.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Apple System Profiler reports that the slot-loading CD-ROM drive on this iMac is from Matshita, product ID is CD-ROM CR-1750 revision 0A0C.
Lots of two-button mice are available that work great with a Mac.
In other words, I'm glad to see that you no longer have any reason not to buy a G4 laptop when it comes out. :-)
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Apple reportedly will clothe the system in a new chassis that is more streamlined than the current generation of G3 PowerBooks.
More streamlined? Jeez, I hope it doesn't hurt anybody. Pretty soon all Apple products will either be completely round or 2-dimensional.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
The article was talking about laptops. Why would you rack-mount laptops and use them as servers?
Of course, there's not a bat's chance in hell I'll buy it, because (AFAIK) it won't play Diablo 2
Yes, it will. And does.
and I tried to use Cakewalk for Mac once, but that one-button thing kept causing me to delete my songs.
Then you sound like the perfect customer for the new no-button mouse. Even less chance of clicking on the wrong thing. ^_^
I think we can all rest safe in the knowledge that some random manufacturer will close this thing and stick in IBM-compatible components within the next two years.
Lets see...the iMac is now 2 years old. PC manufacturers tried to clone it. They all failed. Some for legal reasons, and some because the clone they came up with wasn't worth buying. Anyhow, it would be interesting to see a passively cooled IBM compatible that was smaller than a file cabinet. I doubt it could be done, though.
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NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
- A subnotebook with a G3 at up to 700 MHz and a 14.1" 1024x768 LCD, available March/April 2001
- A PowerBook G4 with a 600 MHz+ G4e, 15.3" 1280x1024 LCD, available January 2001
See their article for more specifics.What's coming, it's speculated, is some form of subnotebook or tablet.
:)
:)
That space is for Pismo, which is not the 1999 Powerbook G3 as everyone thinks. It's a superslim notebook enclosure, all curvy and sexy but pretty much what you'd imagine the Elle MacPherson version of the PBG3 would look like. About the only nifty innovation is that there's speakers in little forward-pointing 'ears' on either side of the screen that give this sucker really remarkable sound for a portable.
I'm eagerly anticipating this... watch Seybold very, very, carefully
Actually, it was supposed to be introduced in Japan this spring, the Japanese being the kind to have a collective orgasm at the sight of this thing. Heat problems have put Pismo on indefinite hold until a suitably cool processor can be found, since of COURSE they couldn't POSSIBLY compromise on the design. That would be like SO not Apple
That said, I think that the G4 powerbook will not be in the sixth square - the black units will simply move to the G4. What's coming, it's speculated, is some form of subnotebook or tablet. I'm eagerly anticipating this... watch Seybold very, very, carefully :) Jobs is on a roll.
Good god, I was impressed with the iBook size and weight, often weighing less than an iBible. I wonder what the official name will be, iSheet?
Err wait, I just said that out loud and it doesn't sound like an attractive name.
I wonder how the mac keeps it going? Anyone out there a Mac developer? Is it just an easy port?
I've done minor development under MacOS, Windows, and Linux.
In my experience, the MacOS development environment is just cleaner. APIs "feel" neater, simpler, and more cleanly packaged, and the developer help pages on Apple's site are extremely useful.
Under Windows, the API has a fair bit of bloat and isn't as neat, and digging through the help files is annoying as all heck, because they aren't sanely organized and often skimp on important details.
Under Linux, I'll spend a few days of research to write a few hours' worth of code. There isn't any unified API - there are several competing APIs for window managers, and a patchwork of micro-APIs for other aspects of the system. It's great fun to dig into, but it's not a cakewalk.
Just my personal experiences and opinions.
No, the clock speed of a chip is a quantative measure. A synchronous chip runs at its quoted speed (unless you overclock it :-)
"Clock speed" means different things on different architectures, as there are *different ways* of clocking a chip.
You can have a single square-wave clock (single-phase). This is a bugger to design logic for, because eliminating race conditions is difficult, but allows you to push your circuits a little harder because you don't have to worry about keeping non-overlapping multi-phase clocks non-overlapping.
You can have two non-overlapping square-wave clocks with a duty cycle lower than 50% each (two-phase clocking). This makes functional units *much* easier to design, but you have to add enough padding between pulses on alternate clocks that clock skew won't cause them to overlap anywhere.
You can have four non-overlapping square-wave clocks with a duty cycle lower than 25% each (four-phase clocking). This is very hairy to design logic for, but if you can pull it off, the resulting logic is a bit more forgiving on timing constraints and can be clocked a bit faster than might otherwise be possible.
Now, this is relevant because the shortest possible pulse _length_ under any clocking scheme is roughly constant, but the number of pulses per full clock cycle is the number of phases. If I can make clock pulses 0.5 nanoseconds long, a single-phase clocked system would be running at 1 GHz, while a two-phase clocking system would be running at 500 MHz, and a four-phase clocking system would be running at 250 MHz - while doing the same amount of work.
So, comparing the clock speeds on two architectures that use different clocking methods islike comparing apples and oranges. It just doesn't work. Compare performance instead.