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12" Powerbook: Slick and Sexy, But Not Without Issues
Gentu writes "Two very good reviews on the 12" Powerbook have been published today. The first review can be found at the Washington Post and is very positive but not very thorough, while the second one found at OSNews is an in-depth review of the popular Mac laptop, tackling down many issues that future purchasers should be aware of. 'The new 12" Powerbook is nothing more but an iBook on steroids with a G4 in it' OSNews concludes, but the overall read is very interesting."
Call me naive or whatever, but this new powerbook comes with a 867MHz processor.
And while I realize that's not a direct measure of speed, I have to ask:
Is apple falling way behind? How do these systems compete with the 2 and 3 GHz intel systems coming out?
The reviewer stated that this model was much faster than their 450. Well, ya, its double, but its not a 2.4GHz chip or anything....??
Thanks for your comments,
mj
>Yippee, I can resize Safari and even IE now with >not much lag
Because it should obviously take an 867mhz processor that fries your lap while working to redraw a 1024x768 window 'almost fast enough'. What is it with GUI designers these days?
Well, most PowerBook owners really don't seem to be concerned that an AlienWare desk/laptop with a 3.06GP4 can run Photoshop so-and-so times faster; they seem to be more into the idea of a gorgeously-designed machine with an OS that allows them the ease of use to actually work efficiently, while still allowing them all the power they could ever want. Laptop people tend to realize much more than desktop people that a computer isn't always and end unto itself; most of the time it's just a tool for getting the job done, and they'll choose the best one available.
Plus they have that great ad with Yao Ming and Verne Troyer...still can't figure out why they didn't premiere it during the Superbowl, though.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
The question has to be why would you want it to boot into linux. Don't get me wrong, Linux is great, but if you've got OS X why do you want something that is basically the same (minor differences) but without the flexibility of running all your aqua apps.
Bob
You're forgetting that the Alienware machine is 10 freaking pounds. That's not portable IMO.
OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" indeed has subpixel rendering.
It doesn't have "ClearType" because "ClearType" is Microsoft's trademark for their own specific subpixel rendering technology.
If people are indeed complaining about the lack of ClearType in OS X, then Microsoft marketing has won yet again.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Amazing, isn't it, how people end up on the CPU treadmill? I just bought a digital camera. Already have a film SLR -- decent enough, and certainly a better picture than any digital camera under $1800 or so. What I needed was a complement to that. The kids are nine, they're old enough to enjoy taking pictures but not old enough not to waste hundreds of worthless frames learning how on film. The SLR's big to lug around, too, so a decent little digital made sense. For what we were doing, a 3 MP model seemed fine, and small-but-not-ultra-compact -- emphasis on durable, for the kids. I narrowed the models down, read some reviews, and chose something at that sweet spot. It happened to be one of the Sony models -- because it has a nice little design that's easy to tuck in a pocket and a decent little interface. Seemed better-engineered than the comparable Canons.
Apple gets that. They understand how to pitch to different market segments. Their machines have design sense, they're meant to work with you. They're durable. The OS is pleasant -- the kids haven't given me much chance to use the new camera, but they tell me iPhoto is easy as can be... :-) And they're using it on the 17" iMac that's displaced the PCs in the household because it'll fit in a weird spot and it's better at the stuff we actually do.
But why do people not "get" the whole tradeoff idea except for portables? The hutch/shrines people set up for their computers are surreal. (Hide it in the basement, please, honey.) Or look at that /. article last week about upgrading your machine to play games -- that's technology for its own sake, for people who can only be satisfied with a shooter if they know they're getting a respectable FPS rate. For some reason people "get" it for portables, but not for desktop systems. Weird.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
The new 12" Powerbook is nothing more but an iBook on steroids with a G4 in it.
I understand that this isn't necessarily intended as a positive comment, but isn't this exactly what a lot of potential Apple laptop customers have wanted? I purchased an iBook right after the revision in May 2001, and replaced it with a 15" PowerBook G4 last fall. I've enjoyed having the better performance, particularly when running Virtual PC, but I miss the smaller form factor and more convenient portability of the iBook. To me, an "iBook on steroids" would have been just what I was looking for, and my understanding was that a lot of folks who loved the iBook but needed better performance felt similarly. I think the bottom line is that, if you approach this from the high end of wanting a PowerBook, just a little smaller, you risk disappointment, but if you approach it from the lower end of wanting an iBook, just with a little more oomph, you'll be fairly satisfied.
I looked at it at the Apple store in SoHo this weekend, and it's a sweet little machine. Light, bright, nimble. Pulled up a terminal and wrote little perl scripts for twenty minutes. Completely forgot there was a candy-apple GUI grafted onto the ass of the BSD kernel.
Makes me sad for the lives the reviewers must lead that they can't be happy with the 12" powerbook. You know, the kind of people who let their whole day be ruined because the color of one of their cocoa puffs was off by a shade. For Pete's sake, they could, **horror** of horrors, be saddled with an IBM thinkpad!
Think on that, and wonder.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
If you can afford a 17" Powerbook, you probably don't need to be flying coach.
At my work, we went through a phase where everyone wanted and got a laptop. After a while, people got fed up with hauling them around, unstandard keyboards, and the expectation that since they had a laptop, they could do work at home. The shift now is back to desktops -- thank god.
I know it depends on the site and nature of the work. I need a laptop for example, but my office machine is a desktop.