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New iBooks and Apple Store
Vokbain writes "Apple just released new 800 and 900 MHz iBooks, and unveiled a redesigned Apple Store as well." Looks kinda cluttered to me.
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I played around with the options on the new iBooks, and the extra batteries are all showing up as opaque white.. previously this was only on the base model. Seems the lovely crystal white model is no longer available. Worse still, does this mean they all have the nasty, nasty, grey plastic hinge and chassis edge finish? Though the opaque white is fine, the plastic hinge looks much cheaper - acceptable in the very cheap low end, but not in the others.
;-)
If true, this will make most of the purchasers at our site go for the 12" PowerCook
Clearly I have too much time on my hands.
I not so sure the 800 is new, I've had one for 4 months now, is this just an updated range with the 900 Mhx model new and the 800 Mhz model the only other one available?
If you read a speed reading book, does it take you less time to read the second half?
The Apple Store appears to be more usable to me. For starters, I can click on a picture of an iPod and jump right to the iPod page, instead of the digital lifestyle device page. This link used to be in the upper left of the old store.
I can see and pick from pictures of Apple products instead of going to a 'software' page and first. This is a big usability plus.
All of the laptops and systems are laid out and ready to be clicked upon.
If you want cluttered design, pick up a MacMall catalog, or visit the MacMall site, both grand examples of clutter and inappropriate exclaimation.
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
It's just the same old range of 3 iBooks, but with an extra 100 Mhz and an extra 10Gb drive capacity all round.
Any other changes are too subtle for me to spot comparing the applestore spec with ads in last week's MacUser.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Hate to say it, but this is pretty disappointing. I bought my current iBook 18 months ago - it's a 600 MHz G3, very close in configuration to these iBooks. Only a 50% speed bump in a year and a half? That's just pathetic.
It seems pretty clear to me that Apple is holding their iBook line back, limiting them to G3s, to encourage sales of their pro laptops. They are the only system Apple still sells with G3s, the iMac went G4 a long time ago and the low-end eMac is thoroughly G4. Oh well.
I love my iBook, and I'd love to upgrade it after this long - but not for only a 50% increase in speed. I might be an Apple die-hard, but I'm not quite that eager to give them my money.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
I recently saw an Apple store in my local mall for the first time. Having all white glowing walls and glass tables it felt a little space-fantasy-ish. It was nice and had all their products laid out with salesman around but not annoying. The new online store gives me the same sort of feel. Someone probably gave their marketing department a good kick in the pants recently and it's paying off. Someone in marketing is earning their bonus.
Developers: We can use your help.
Well, to Apple's credit, the iBook battery life still beats the pants off anything that Intel or AMD make. Also note that the iBook has held this advantage for a year and a half. IMNSHO battery life makes a much bigger practical difference than processor speed.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Apple has done it before. Close all the rumors of product upgrades, new products (ok music site) by announcing them before Macworlds and provide a single focus on Macworld. I can see many product launches over the next month, and then starts the evangelization of Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) right from developers conference and going into Macworld.
Because then no-one would buy the 12" PB. Fewer people would buy th 15" probably and the prices would be that bit higher. Of course,t hey'd probably gain a few sales form the higher specs, but would it be enough to make up for blurring the product lines and canabilsing PB sales? Evidently they don't think so. I think the iBook still does everything it needs to and represnts excellent value for money. My iBook 500 is still going very strong and the currnet line would kick its ass, largely because of the faster bus and grpahics card.
Point(s) taken. I agree with all of your points, and have passed your feedback onto people that can actually do something about it.
The one thing that I can comment on is the "free memory". You should know that nothing in this world is free, except for the free beer that I got at a bar a few weeks ago near my house. While it seems like a rip-off, it does list the price (albeit small print) for installing the memory. That sort of deal is aimed at people who aren't very tech-savvy, and don't want to mess with the install themselves. You can look at it as free memory - paid install or paid memory - free install.
Also, about the 'custom' machines. We buy a bunch of each model machine from Apple - normally a bare-bones model. Then we offer specials for "free memory" or "free printer", etc. If you see that there is a custom config, it is physically getting taken out of the box and configured. A side note is we can do custom configures direct from Apple. So you could run through the Apple Store, config your system, email the specs, and I can order it for about 9% less than list from Apple Store.
When reading the specs I initially thought about the same thing. Even though the high end is 80% faster than my 500 MHz iBook and has 24 more megs of VRAM, there isn't anything screaming for me to upgrade. No Airport extreme, no G4, no screamin' fast Firewire upgrades, no higher screen resolution, no G4, and sure as heck no Superdrive, not that I expected one.
But for a new/prospective Mac user, the iBook continues to be a great value. The things really do have five hours of battery life. The design is wonderful, especially the 12" model, which is noticibly smaller and easier to carry than most of the x86 notebooks I see coworkers and students lugging around. And 802.11 reception with the built-in antennae puts PCMIA cards to shame. What's more, the 32 meg video card means you get to take advantage of Quartz Extreme. All together, the performance of OS X on a new iBook -- 80% faster than the iBook I'm using now (which, though slow, is my daily-use PC, not the 2 GHz P4 with WinXP sitting next to it) *plus* Quartz Extreme -- has to be decent for your typical home user, which is what the "i" in iBook is all about.
The only place I can fault my old iBook is the speed of running complicated Java apps, like Java-based IDEs, which suggests to me I was in the market for a *Power*book all along, whether I come around to admitting it or not. Same with anything that needs a G4. If you're editing video 50% of the time your laptop's powered on, you need a Powerbook. For consumer needs -- email, browsing, word processing -- the iBook was and is the perfect laptop.
And heck, when was not wanting to upgrade a bad thing? It's nice to finally have a Mac that doesn't feel horribly obsolete in a few years!
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
the exact same thing happened to me, I bought an 800mz iBook with a 30gb hard drive two days ago, instead, i'll be getting a 900mz with a 40gb hard drive. w00t!
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