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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 think I speak for a lot of Apple fans when I say "YEEESSSS!!! This rocks!!! It's absolutely brilliant!! Steve Jobs, you're my hero!!! This just shows Apple's ability to reinvent the computer industry in a way that Microsoft can only dream of!! HAHAHAHAAAA!!!!"
what's this story about again?
Thank god for credit card companies, if i didn't get rejected i would of bought one of the 700mhz ones about 2 days ago.
:(
Now i can get one of these slightly faster beauts for the same price...oh wait i cant
"What do you mean you have no ice? Do you expect me to drink this coffee hot?" - Random Customer, Clerks
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?
1. Cluttered website
2. ????
3. Profit!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
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
Looks kinda cluttered to me.
And Slashdot is what? The web's best use of white space?
Call it a hunch but Apple probably spend a few million dollars on testing and revising the hell out of this design. You wouldn't be seeing it on apple.com if they weren't sure it would increase sales and confuse users less than the old one. This is Apple we're talking about.
It looks like the new iBooks still use 802.11b instead of 802.11g.
... for jumping the gun on technologies, why don't they just go to 1GHz G3's? Leftover stock and engineering complications aside, it seems to me that the top-of-the-line ibook by now should be a 1GHz G3 processor, 1GB RAM (640MB is too low of a minimum), 60GB Hard Drive (finally they moved up to this), Radeon 7500 64MB DDR, and Airport Extreme. Why can't they just move it up to Airport Extreme? I don't know much about Mac laptop internals, but would they have to change something on the motherboard, or do they just want to get rid of the old Airport cards lying around? I've got way too many questions to ask here... but i am glad that they finally upgraded the iBooks to 60GB. Now i might actually get one...
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.
New iBooks still boot with Mac OS 9. It's right enough to people needs only 9 on G3, and cheap :).
If they put all that stuff in the iBook, it would be competing against the pro model.
The model you describe would even have more RAM and a higher processor speed (though no AltiVec).
It would be a foolish move from a marketing point of view, and the internals would probably need a significant redesign to fit the differently-sized Airport Extreme card.
So that's why.
- 15.1" screen, 16MB ATI Rage
- 667 MHz G4, 256 MHz L2, 133 MHz bus
- 30GB HD, 512MB RAM (in bottom slot), Combo Drive
- 2 USB, FireWire, PCMCIA, S-Video out, GigE, Airport
- OS X and 9.2, Graphic Converter, OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle, Snapz Pro X, PixelNHance
All for $2200! Had a scratch on the bottom. And you can get it with all the Apple Protection Plan you want, just like it was new. If you're a student, it gets knocked down by another 5% or so. Those Educational deals are more easily spotted as well in the new layout.The new design is busier for sure, but so is the rest of the web--hell, I can barely find the product I searched for on Amazon nowadays. They wanted more purchases on the front, trading "cleanliness" for "money."
blarg.
No kidding! My Apple //e had 64K, and now these iBooks only have TWICE that? After 20 years they should have made a bigger jump than that. (/me tries to image OS X booting with 128K)
:)
BTW:
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
runs OS 9 & OS 10, iLife, More Video Ram on low end model, 100MHz is 12.5% faster clock speed all for the same price.
What's your beef again?
I'm getting one of these for my wife (and it will be mine if she doesn't like it!).
But if anyone can point towards any hacks to get iBooks dual displayin' please do :)
Here you go!
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.
that is quite possibly the worst layout for the store I could imagine. No, no... there's no blinking text or animated icons.
"Let's throw one of every product line on the main screen. Make sure there are at least 30 images so modem users have to wait as long as possible. Use a low contrast color set of light blue text on a light gray background. And oh yea, let's really confuse everyone: instead of showing you the one product you click on, lets just show them all the products in the family in case they spontaneously change thier mind. And just so things are harder to find, be sure the page is at least three "screens tall so people have to do a lot of scrolling to find what they want."
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people