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."

Comments

Just bought a new 15"..

[xtal]

The 12" is really just a hopped up iBook. It doesn't have DVI, making it incompatible with all of Apple's displays .. including the Cinema display. I don't know why Apple did this.

Lots of people have bitched about the scaled back memory too. There probably isn't a technical reason why it was limited to 640Meg, and there's no L3 cache onboard. Those issues wouldn't have bothered me as much as the lack of DVI.. I mean, apple themselves have sold it pretty heavily.

Anyhow, my TiSD should be here soon.. I won't even get into the mystery shipping on the 17". 17" makes a great desktop replacement, but if you're going to multihead it with a very large display it's kinda moot.

Re:Just bought a new 15"..

[AKnightCowboy]

Maybe it's so much like an iBook because they're looking to phase out the G3 processor? When they do that they can just move the 12" Powerbooks down to the $1200 price range with a slow G4 processor and eliminate the iBook line altogether. I know if I had the option I would've bought the 12" Powerbook instead of the 12" iBook I bought in October even though it would've been about $400 more. The G4 alone is worth it. As for the 17" Powerbook.. is anyone buying these things? I can't imagine lugging a 17" iMac's display around all day. I'd rather have a 15" Powerbook with the same specs as the 17" (800 Mb Firewire, DDR ram, etc.)

Re:Just bought a new 15"..

[SlamMan]

Fankly, we tend to use our older Ti's over out new ones at work because they have vga. Our users seem to have problems with the DVI-VGA adaptors for some reason when they're doing ppt presentations on the road.

Re:Just bought a new 15"..

[Mononoke]

Our users seem to have problems with the DVI-VGA adaptors for some reason when they're doing ppt presentations on the road.

Oh good, I'm not the only one who's seen that. I rent projectors and had a few PO'd customers that blamed it on me. Of course, then I also see them unplug the adaptor from their TiBook by yanking on the cable.

Luckily, I've added some projectors with DVI inputs to my inventory. Solves many problems.

Re:Just bought a new 15"..

[splateagle]

Apple are unlikely to eliminate the iBook line, though you can probably expect to see G4 iBooks before long (certainly once the desktop PowerMacs move to whatever they end up branding the G5 - most likely IBM's 970 I think)

In the same announcement as the introduction for these 12"ers and the new 17" PowerBooks, Jobs mentioned that Apple are moving their focus increasingly toward portables - if anything I'd expect their "consumer" end range to expand in a similar way to their "Pro" stuff, possibly even introducing an "eBook" (an economical and robust low-end laptop offering) before long...

as for the 15" with the new specs - they're certainly on their way as soon as the old TiBooks clear the distribution channels.

Wow...

[rastachops]

Well done slashdot!! An extremely relevant news article (im not being sarcastic).

I'll go read the articles and see... I was planning on ordering the 12" Powerbook this evening :)~

So does anyone here that owns a 12" PB have anything that should be brought to my attention before buying one? I've never owned a mac before but Im quite interested in this Powerbook because of how small it is and also it means I'll have a portable Unix based laptop. Im a student learning C++, Java and AWK right now.
Thanks for any info.

Re:Wow...

[Alan Partridge]

don't buy the Powerbook. The 800Mhz 12 inch iBook is a MUCH better deal - and is actually FASTER in normal use ( the PPC 750fx has 512KB L2 cache vs the G4's 256KB). The price difference is so large that you could put a top spec IBM Travelstar AND max the RAM and it still wouldn't cost as much as the pb.

If you don't believe me, check out www.barefeats.com where they have a comparative speed review. If you want a Powerbook, go for the 15inch model, if you want an OSX portable - 800Mhz iBook is the king.

Re:MHz vs. GHz

[Vollernurd]

Whilst you're right that the Motorola RISC architecture that Apple utilise cannot be compared MHz for MHz with an Intel CISC device, they have been lagging for a little while in trms of raw power (MIPS). However, their speed/performance ratio is quite high.

I think that the general feeling of the Mac-hardcore is that Motorola just do not invest enough time or money in development of their chips.

Someone more knowledgable than me can correct this fact though. Were Apple also not once considering swicthing to Intel (?!).

Probably all lies.

My take...

[djupedal]

I have one of the previous 12" iBooks, (dual USB w/combo drive), and it appears to be one of the best kept stealth business tools around.

I originally headed out to buy a Ti, but this one was put in front of me, and discounted heavily, as it was a floor demo. Big deal, if it didn't work out, I'd just pass it along to a family member. Now, I'm in no hurry to let it go.

The 12" iBook has a form factor that happens to fit my needs exactly. I've had original PB's and Duo's, and felt I knew what I wanted when it came time to go portable, again.

In my case, I wanted a real portable...not something that shouted 'identity crisis'...something that was 1/2 desktop machine and 1/2 laptop, not doing either well. I wanted something to use with my digital cameras (still and movie), while adding as little as possible to the amount of tech bulk in the process. My iBook weighs a bit more than a Ti, but it's smaller, and that was what I really wanted. Performance is great...the screen is bright and it works...and works...and works. Long battery life. Outputs to the TV in the hotel room. Wireless networking in the airport. Burns CD's on demand. Command line if I need it. Nothing like a Unix based notebook to make you feel like you're toteing a tool instead of a wanna-be workstation. I've never thought about using it as a primary machine, but with all it has going for it, I'm sure it would do just fine. As soon as my Mac guy has a demo G4 12" iBook, I'm going to trade up.

Re:Really?

[MyGirlFriendsBroken]

"The new Porsche is nothing more than a VW Golf on steroids with a much better engine in it."

Sort of, but the origonal 911 WAS nothing more that a VW bettle on steroids with a much better engine in it. Indeed is was possible to take a 911 engine and put it in your bettle as the engine mountings etc were the was.

And yes the qoute is amusing, especially as I get the feeling that this was the intention when designing the new PowerBook.

12" powerbook vs older machines

[vegasman]

Based on this article it looks like if I add a $400.OO Sonnet g4 upgrade to my powerbook prism (g3, 266mh, 40GB HD, 392mb ram, firewire card, 14.1" screen) I will have at least as good a machine. Has anyone done this? If so what is your experiance with third party upgrades? Would you do this or buy a new 15 or 17 inch?

I have one.

[chipset]

I picked mine up this week. Sure, it's a little warm, but nothing more than my t30 thinkpad or my athlon based hp notebook. But I can say this, the "cool" factor is certainly there. It has more style that either of my other laptops combined. I was at a work function this week and everyone I work with got new T30s,but the true hit was when I opened up my 12 Powerbook. Everyone wanted to play with it. It has very clean lines, a great screen, longer life battery and all the ports I need, save one. I wish it had a PCCARD. But, having an internal 802.11g port and Bluetooth builtin is very cool. My wife, a non-geek to the core, wishes her hp had an internal 802.11b port, as she has bumped the card a few times.

All-in-all, the laptop does get warm, and I think people feel it a little more than other laptops because of the casing, but, I can touch the back of the LCD display without getting the "water effect".

As the VP of R&D said in a presentation this week, "I said we would support apple over my dead thinkpad. We are about to support apple, and it is cool!".

xserve experiences

[goombah99]

two words: raid 5. its missing from apple. You can buy a third part raid 5 however.

A while ago I bought two xserves to act as diskserves to a linux cluster and to backup my desktop macs. I bought these machines because I felt they were a good deal. I got bids on several pc based linux disk servers, as well as several NAS boxes. I was comparing 480GB machines. a high quality generic brand (supermicro) with scsi disks and dual Gigabit ran about 8000 (at the time). The mac xserves ran just under $7000 using IDE disks with 4 indepenedent masters (out performs the scsi). Additionally the mac had other nice features such as: 1U versus 3U. hot swap. I bought both systems in the end. after I unpacked the mac I was even more impressed with the high quality construction and ease of access to the interior.

What really made it for me on the macs was the fact that I had to hire a sysadmin to correctly set up my linux box with load balancing, Ldap, mail server, and moreover to keep it patched and to monitor it. On the macs I set them up myself. No detected problems with load balance. and the mac tools let you set up nearly all the services you might want with an intuitive gui.

Actually, I had a few snags but even here I have to give apple a good reprot card. they chancged how they did network admin right when I got my box. so all the documentation was for the obsolete tools and none for the new. So I got things really screwed up with services I could not turne off once turned on. The machines would gag when they could not find their ldap serviers or when they were cut off from the internet. But I called apple on the free service plan. after a ten minute wait on came a guy who really knew his stuff and spent about an hour with me getting all of my various problems sorted out and teaching me the new system. And in fact the next day he called me back! said he had another idea about a question i had asked him. I was really impressed on the customer service. its much better than for my other mac computers. Since then Ive had mac people call me back three times with ideas for me. Now that the new tools are better docuimented (still a few gaps), life is easy.

perhaps the best feature is the software update feature. I get patches and new tools delivered automatically and have the confiudence they wont screw up my all apple configuration. thus I still have not needed a sys admin. At the purchase time I had considered some NAS boxes (e.g. iomega,snap...) for the purpose of making sys admin simple. But these things have lousy throughput for the price and aren't versatile computing machines.

However I have had three problems with my xesrves that I dont have with my linux box.

first no raid 5. that's absouluetly maddening. I bought a raid 5 solution from a third party but I'm nervous it wont be effieicnt or it will die someday when I do a self-update that makes it incompatible.

second, and this compounds the above problem is the UFS/HFS+ dichotomy. while macs do run UFS, they dont do it effieicently or with any advanced features like journalling. Moreover the OS and some mac apps wont work unless they are on UFS. so you always have to have a HFS+ partition. but wait! you cant partition a raid disk with different file systems (on apple) so this means if you want to have any hfs raid the whole disk has to be HFS+. on our four disk Xserve this means I ended up with two disks RAID1 HFS+ and and two disks UFS raid 1- a whopping 120GB of UFS out of my 480GB (raw) can be UFS. yuck!. fortunately there is now a partionalble raid 5 soultion from a theird party which fixes this issue. (the reason I wanted UFS, was because even though I lost some effieiceny i wanted no surprises for my linux systems due to the filenaming case sensitivity)

The third problem I have had is that while the admin tools are wonderful and run on remote machines, there are a few tools and apps that will not run remotely. for example, if I want to use the GUI software update remotely, I cant. I have to use the terminal CLI tool. This is not too bad, but its just an example. if you use other gui tools, like brickhouse firewall or whatever, you have to go to the terminal attactched to the machine.

My work around for this is to use OSXVNC which does the job. However there is a catch I dont like. You cant use osxvnc on a headless mac. that is you have to have a display device connected to the mac to use osxvnc!! there's no way I want to have a display for each mac xserve. Of course I could use a KVM switch but my preference would be that it should be unneccessary for remote admin. my work around here is that I can fool the macs by briefly connecting a display to them after boot. I can then unplug the display and OSXVNC will still work on my headless mac.

My conclusion is that apple has a wonderfulhigh quality machine. And it will work perfectly for you if you dont require UFS or remote admin of GUI based apps. When I bought my system I had just had a bad experience with 20 athalon servers that had died from heat delamination of the fans and were unstable due to current glithces from the cd roms. I was thus very risk averse. when I bought the apples I knew I was buying peace of mind, and not paying extra for it. I had no idea what good customer service I was going to get. PLus I did not realize I could also buy a complete replacement part kit (down to the motherboard) to have locally. Since my experience with their customer service I bought the extened warantee. its lot cheaper than a sys admin.

when mac comes out with native raid5 and someone writes a VNC that can run headless all will be well

Not the purpose of the 17"

[First Person]

As for the 17" Powerbook.. is anyone buying these things? I can't imagine lugging a 17" iMac's display around all day.

As far as I can tell, the 17" is intended to be a mobile desktop not a portable. Combined with wireless networking, this is a computer which may be carried from room to room in one site (say your home or office). As such, this may be a great machine for many on Slashdot. The smaller units are more appropriate for travel (just try to open and use a 17" in airline coach seating).

The market for traditional desktop computers is shrinking quickly . The current segments are shifting to small handhelds (palm / cell phone sized), travel computers (sony Vaio), single site (powerbook 17"), and servers (often rackmounted). Presumably we'll see another shift in a few years as next generation display technologies become available.

Re:Not the purpose of the 17"

[Arctic Fox]

Amen. Just last week, I was in 1st class, and two guys on the other side of the aisle opened their 17" powerbooks. They were travelling together. Some sort of artsy-fartsy business travelers I gathered. I could not help looking at those laptops for the 5 hours. They were fantastic.

Re:Wow... - Go for the G4

[rjrjr]

I don't know what makes you think the iBook is fragile. The thing is a tank. Its clamshell predecessor was designed to be abused by schoolkids, and the current iceBook is reputed to handle drop tests from twice the height. I've dropped my wife's twice and it's still purring along...don't tell her.

I'm also told by an informed friend that the 12" powerbook is on the fragile side, which certainly makes sense (and seems reasonable). Nice thick plastic has to offer more of a cushion than thin, flexible aluminum.

My thoughts...

[singularity]

I posted a journal article about the "AlBook as a pimped out iBook" idea when they first come out. Some thoughts:

My first reaction when hearing about the new 12 ince PowerBook is the effects that would have on high-end iBooks. Some Slashdot comments were dead on the money with their question.

Then I read the specs. I have been looking for a computer to replace my aging PowerBook Duo 2300c. I want something small and useful. I have a full desktop that I will be using 90% of the time, the laptop would be a stop-gap between times when the Clie 665C is too little and moving my desktop is way too much. The laptop would supplement the desktop, and not come close to replacing it.

I do quite a bit of flying, so a DVD player was a requirement. Size was also an issue. I would rather have a smaller laptop that I can bring more places.

I had been seriously looking at the iBooks, mostly around the middle of the line. The size advantage they had on the full PowerBooks was nice, as was the price. In the end, with DVD player and an Airport card, I was looking at spending about $1500 on the iBook. I decided that when I got the money together, I would buy one.

I am glad I waited. The features that the new 12 inch PowerBook has over the iBook is enough that I want to get it instead. The size difference is also very nice.

What does this mean? This means that I am going to be buying on the the smaller PowerBooks (at a cost of about $2000) instead of the $1500 iBook. So Apple ends up with about $500 more of my money - money I am glad to give them because of the new product.

I know in Japan and in a lot of fields there is a large demand for smaller sub-notebooks. I think that the 12 inch PowerBook fills that nicely. I think that Apple will have a hit on their hand, even more so than the 17 inch model.

I do have to say that the price-drops on the 14 inch iBooks are nice, as well, and make them all the more tempting.

Ahh, the joys of having too many choices. Apple is doing well, I think.

Since that time a student of mine showed me his new 12" AlBook. I only held it for a minute - any longer and I fear that I would just run off with it. The form factor is perfect, the weight is perfect. It is a wonderful machine.

My conclusion? Who cares if it could be described as n iBook on steroids? It is a wonderful second computer to compliment (not replace) a full dektop machine.

What about Mac-on-linux??

[commodoresloat]

Here's the thing - I still have to boot into OS 9 to do sound recording, because the software I'm comfortable with there (mostly Coaster) has not been ported to X yet, and it doesn't run under Classic. I'd like to install linux so I can run OS X and 9 side by side in separate mol windows. Does that make sense? Or is OS 9 under linux the same as classic -- i.e. you can't run anything you want to without booting into OS 9 directly. It would be nice to not have to reboot. Then again I don't want to lose speed on OS X but my understanding is that mol runs OS X natively so there isn't a change there. I don't know and I haven't had the time to install it and see; does anyone here know if I would be wasting my time?