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Apple Updates iBook
micq writes "After the PowerBook was updated with a faster processor at the end of April, the iBook was sure to follow. Apple announced today that the popular iBook line has been updated, upping it to a 700MHz G3. It's good to see they're still keeping the 12.1" models, which are of the few remaining small screen, ultra-portables..." They've also improved the video card to an ATI Mobility Radeon. Prices range from $1500 to $1800 for the 700MHz model (12" and 14"), and there's a 12"/600MHz model for $1200.
sweet.....it was itching for an update, but it is truely a great computer
A computer without a Microsoft operating system is like a dog without bricks tied to its head
The upcoming Jaguar update to MacOS X will require 32MB of video memory for "optimum" performance, but this iBook update will not allow such a configuration (I did not see any such option at the Apple Store). Too bad. I am interested in buying an iBook, but this looks like a glaring oversight.
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
I like apple but buying their iBooks with a G3 processor is a joke. In about a year I'll need a new computer. This is a really bad move they should focus on upping the speed on their G4 chips and dicontinue the G3 all together.
The G3 is a nice, lower-power chip at a decent speed. It's probably a better choice for an ultraportable than the G4 would be. And with the upgrade to a Radeon, it's now capable of taking advantage of Quartz Extreme (though not optimized, it now meets the spec). 700 MHz is a respectable speedbump - which we all knew would come soon after the PBG4 was bumped to 800 MHz. Personally, the only thing I'd like to see is the ability to support a little higher res (maybe 1152x870 or something like it) on the 14" model, but it's a nice upgrade anyways.
A lot of folks squawk about the iBook's lacking a Cardbus slot, but I don't see it as a problem. The most common additions you'll see via Cardbus are Ethernet, modems, and wireless cards - these already have 'em, plus a Firewire port as well.
This makes a heck of a nice little reasonably-priced Unix box, really. I've owned both the old toilet seat model and the newer iceBook model, and they're darn near bulletproof.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Something that should help the revised iBook's speed beyond the 100MHz speed boost is the doubling of it's L2 cache to 512K from it's previous 256K.
I really like these devices and want to try them. But I need Debian Woody on it. So had anybody already tried one of the new IBooks with Woody? Are there any special components (like soundcard) or ports (like usb) which don't work at the moment?
Which is just as irrelevant, as the G3 they're using now has double the L2 cache as their last G3, which is at least one architectural improvement. I wouldn't be surprised if this were IBM's Sahara chip...
But we'll see.
GPL Deconstructed
If only I had the money for one of these I would probably buy the lowest spec or perhaps a new iMac? :D~
I can't find any information about the processor. Is this the PowerPC 750FX ("Sahara")? The specs page doesn't provide more detailed informations :/
As long as it's a Radeon, on Apple's OS X page:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/newversion/
Near the bottom in grey.
Anyway, you're saying the small form factor, the reasonable price, the excellent battery life, the full complement of ports and features, the Unixy OS, *and* it's future OS update isn't enough for you?
Man, what do you want then?
GPL Deconstructed
Is it not possible that 32mb of VRAM would be entirely wasted on a system capable of no greater than 1024x768 resolution, even with Quartz Extreme?
True, the iMac has the same resolution and 32MB VRAM, but I would assume that's mainly for gaming; I would not expect gaming to be a priority for iBook users.
I remember when upgrading my beige PowerMac G3 to 6mb VRAM gave me all the VRAM I thought we'd ever need. I'm going to guess that even with Quartz Extreme, 16MB would be ample at the resolutions iBooks run at.
Otherwise, you'd need tons more VRAM if you ran a Cinema Display or Cinema HD Display, and I see nothing to that effect in the specifications.
Of course if I'm wrong, I'd welcome corrections.
D
Aw, damn. So you can only buy an iBook (THE CONSUMER LEVER LAPTOP) with a G3. But wait! You could buy a TiBook - and hey! That has a G4!
But I guess that only has one cpu in it, and not 2 [sigh].
Quit whining. It turns out that a G3 at 700 Mhz is plenty enough to run OSX. If you're planning on playing games -- maybe not (if they're hardcore 3D, anyway).
But I'm sitting here doing Dev work on mine, and it is FINE. If I had any complaint, it'd be the disk speed - but it can't be all that bad, or I'd have upgraded it myself by now. I do wish I could find a ramdisk for OSX, though. That'd suite me fine.
OK, you assholes, one last time-- try to get this one simple fact through your thick Steve-washed braincases:
MAC OS 10.2 DOES not REQUIRE 32 MEGS OF VIDEO MEMORY TO USE QUARTZ EXTREME.
Every time there's new Apple hardware released, or some new rumor or tidbit regarding Mac OS 10.2, AKA Jaguar, there always seems to be at least one idiot who posts something uninformed yet totally rude and arrogant like "ah, [new hardware], outdated before it's even released." This makes my blood boil.
So what is it that you people think exactly? That upon installing Mac OS 10.2 on, say, a Power Mac G3/450 it'll reboot into VGA text mode with a blinking text message "PLEASE UPGRADE VIDEO HARDWARE: INSUFFICIENT RAM TO DISPLAY MAC OS X?" Come on people, please. We know Apple's playing the "planned obsolescence" game now but that's a bit fucking ridiculous.
If there's not 16 megs of RAM, regular Quartz will run. If there's 16 megs of RAM, Quartz Extreme will run. And if there's more than 16 megs of RAM, it'll run really nice. GET THIS THROUGH YOUR FUCKING SKULLS . Mac OS 10.2 will run on any system that Mac OS 10.1 will run on. Jesus fucking Christ, I run 10.1 on my stock Power Mac 8600/300 with no video card!!! You people really need to wake up.
To said idiots, morons, and imbeciles (which the Mac world seems full of nowadays, thanks to the Apple's fruit campaign bringing over loads of PC lusers), I'd like to shout a resounding FUCK YOU and link you to Apple's Mac OS 10.2 spec page so that, on the off chance that you can read, you'll see that Quartz Extreme doesn't require 32 megs of RAM, it just prefers it over 16 megs of RAM (which is the actual base requirement).
I hope this little rant helped get the message across about Mac OS 10.2's actual graphics requirements. I need to go lay down before I have some sort of blowout. I can feel my heart pounding in my head at 180bpm.
How old is the Athlon? Almost as old. It's still damned fast.
Quit whining. It turns out that a G3 at 700 Mhz is plenty enough to run OSX. If you're planning on playing games -- maybe not (if they're hardcore 3D, anyway).
Quake and Quake II (see Fruits of Dojo for a port to OSX) run just fine under OSX. Unreal and Unreal Tournament run just fine under OS9. Starcraft runs great on both.
I'll agree about its disk speed. Its developers tools are kick-arse, and are fairly easy to learn. I'm still trying to leard ObjC.
Oh, my computer is a 2001 iBook Combo/600mhz.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
The new iBook runs up to 35 percent faster than previous models in CPU performance tests such as encoding a song from an audio CD into an MP3 file using iTunes(TM). iBook also now features a new video-out port that supports VGA output, as well as S-video and composite video with optional adapter.
Quite a little performer. The G3 has some life in it yet. Check out IBM's spec sheet on the PowerPC 750FX Microprocessor.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
Are there any benchmarks? Who do you think will have them first. Is the 700mhz worth several hundred more dollars?
It's a shame, because it really is a nice piece of hardware - great battery life, compact size and lightweight. But it's SLOW. For OS X, you really need a fast (and apparently Altivec enhanced) CPU, and the iBook just isn't it.
It will have support for hardware accelerated Quartz as well as an extra 100MHz on the olde iBooks.
GPL Deconstructed
slashdot is broken, so i can't post accurately.
I love the form factor. I love the Altivec in the PowerMacs. I love the excellent battery life. I love the unix OS. The laptop prices are reasonable.
However, I can't use the keyboard. I need the key to the left of the 'A' to be a Ctrl key. Please note that this is not just a want; it is a genuine need based upon ergonomic reasons.
It is not possible to reprogram the keyboard as can be done on x86 boxes, because all Apple laptops still have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboards have a horrible design flaw.
When Apple redesigns their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards, instead of built-in ADB keyboards, they will have fixed the problem. They have not yet done so.
Note: is is now possible to use the built-in ADB keyboard with Debian GNU/Linux, but as of yet, Apple has not made it possible for unix old-timers to use with OSX. Nor is it possible (as far as I know) to use with FreeBSD, NetBSD, or OpenBSD.
For full details on how the ADB keyboard was mis-designed, check out my previous slashdot posts.
Please note that my intention is not to troll. My intention is to warn other long-time unix users that Apple's laptop keyboards are not yet acceptable, and also to try to communicate this fact to people inside Apple. I want to effect change. I want Apple to fix this last problem, so that I can enthusiastically support them. If I didn't care, and if I didn't want to see this positive change, I wouldn't have bothered spending the time to make these posts.
Unfortunately, I have almost no hope. Apple has demonstrated for more than 10 years that they will not address the concerns of unix users. I sincerely hope that they change their ways. The fact that they now have a very-high quality unix OS gives me hope that they might start to care about unix users.
> Unfortunately, I have almost no hope. Apple has demonstrated for more than 10 years that they do not care about unix users, and they will not address their concerns [google.com]. I sincerely hope that they change their ways, and start to care. The fact that they now have a very-high quality unix OS gives me hope that they might start to care about unix users.
t e. html
Apple do care about Unix users. In fact, if you listen to Steve Jobs, Avi Tevanian, or Phil Shiller, you would know that they take great pride in the fact that OS X has already become the single largest Unix platform since its first release just over a year ago.
According to Tim O'Reilly
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/19/invi
alpha geeks simply love Mac OS X because they get the best of both worlds without the hassle of dual-boot - a fully functional Unix system to hack around and an amazingly rich collection of applications for home and office. To further prove his point, O'Really stated
"Almost all of the Perl 6 core team has switched to Mac OS X, as have many of the top Java and XML developers. Developers in new fields like bioinformatics and peer-to-peer networking are also climbing on board."
and apparently, James Gosling (co-inventor of Java) from Sun uses OS X on a TiBook.
The keyboard is might be valid point for you personally, but it doesn't seem to bother others. I myself is a Unix developer for many years, but never noticed any inconvenience with any Apple keyboard, and my PC keyboard is similar to the iBook's.
My iBook is much slower than the latest with only a 500 MHz G3 and 66 MHz bus, but I love it and use it for almost everything I do, because it's light, beautiful, quiet, faster than my 600 MHz PC. Most importantly, it has never crashed since I got it nearly a year ago, and I normally leave all applications (a dozen or more) running in the background for weeks and never shut down the system unless necessary.
In contrast, my 600 MHz PC running Win XP is only used to run IE and Outlook, and is hybernated or shut down daily because it's too noisy, but it typically crashes once every 2 days or so. The crash is the most destructive I have ever seen - it simply restarts with a black screen and disk checking followed by a half screenful of text messages that only Bill Gates cares to read - no warning - no time to save anything.
So if the keyboard is the only issue for you, consider that as a blessing and go get yourself a iBook now and you will enjoy it.
Is there anything perfect in this world?
Okay, Michael Dell...
Don't you have something more important to do...? Like maybe running your crappy company into the ground? Get to work on that would ya.
Why didn't this make the frontpage? There are a lot of people buying iBooks to run various flavors of BSD, Linux, and obviously Mac OS X on that are coming from Slashdot's target audience. Any story related to the iBook should obviously hit the frontpage.
mbbac
Do you have any benchmarks to prove your claims?
Apple got it right back in the 80's. The user interface is ultimately important! When the user interface suffers, the entire experience is bad.
The keyboard and mouse are the ultimate in user interface elements. When either the keyboard (can't reprogram the CapsLock key to be a Ctrl key) or the mouse (hockey puck mouse? one button mouse?) is bad, the entire experience is spoiled.
For me, the keyboard is essential. The mouse is important, but secondary. (I really do want a 3-button mouse, but I'm willing to put up with re-mapping a couple of keyboard keys to get it. I absolutely must have an acceptable keyboard, which for me (as a long-time unix and vi user) means having a Ctrl key to the left of the A key. If this is not possible, then they keyboard is absolutely unacceptable.
I wish it weren't so. I want to be able to buy and use Apple's laptops. I like their low power consumption. The price is acceptable. I love not paying the Microsoft tax. I would even be able to use the pre-installed OS!
But since I can't use the broken-by-design ADB keyboard, I can't buy one. Until Apple changes their ways. If ever. I can dream ...
Granted, the CPU is a G3, but apple can do better than a 100 Mhz FSB.