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New PowerBooks, Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse
no_demons writes "This morning Apple iCEO Steve Jobs gave the keynote at the Apple Expo in Paris. The whole PowerBook line up got an upgrade, with the 15" model now sporting the much rumoured goods (1.25GHz, backlit keyboard, bluetooth, Airport Extreme), available from today. Apple also announced a new wireless keyboard and mouse."
This is everything i've been waiting for!
The updates for the 12" and 17" are also welcome. I wish Apple would allow a mix on the line however - that I can't get the 12" I really want with a 1.33...
Which I'm sure is due to heat and such when I think about it.
On a serious note, I'm thinking about getting a laptop and the Powerbooks are looking like a good bet; Unix core (so I can run apache & Postgresql etc; yes, I know they work on Windows too, just about) with a nice GUI and everything "just works"(TM) rather than having to download beta drivers to get wifi kind of working under linux.
News for nerds, or advertising opportunities for big corporations?
Everytime Apple scratches their butt, slashdot.org approves someones ravenously excited submission regarding the fact.
I'm all for posting pieces when major advances in technology are made, but what's next?
Dell makes 80gig standard in Inspiron 8500 instead of 60gig?
Come on...'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
to put the fastest processor in the biggest machine, you cannot sell them like powermacs and leave pro features out of some of the lower pro models just to make the 17"inch sell more. People might not want the weight that comes with the biggest and so the 17" isn't everybodies cup of tea, these have to be carried around remember. They should have near enough the same features across the board and have screensize, HD's, memory, BL keyboard as the features to set them apart. Apples strength isn't in processors anyway so why market their PB's them as such?
Jonathanjk.com
I suspect cooling issues are the reason. There's less room in the 12" and 15" models for good cooling for the CPU. I remember the bottom of the 12" gets hot as hell as it is.
All I want is a slim, compact keyboard with basic functions. Like this.
Are there any keyboards like this for the PC? I would much appreciate being able to find one.
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
And it makes sense that Apple is the first to ship it (they seem to pick this kind of thing up much earlier than pc manufacturers or microsoft). Bluetooth was invented for this kind of connectivity.
Jilles
As a note: I'm typing this on a 12" PowerBook.
When I got this machine, speed was not the reason why I purchased it. Performance was part of the reason why I chose it over an iBook--which I am pleased to report it is much faster than my old iBook (with its 8MB graphics card and lack of Altivec, which I needed) ever dreamed to be--but you could have made it significantly faster beyond that and it would not have held more than marginal appeal over this model.
I purchased it for the form factor. The weight and the size. 802.11g and Bluetooth were both positive points in its favor but the true "killer app" here was that it was smaller than my iBook and I needed a small laptop.
Apple looked at their target market and said "who is buying each of these systems and why? How much does performance matter to them compared to size and weight?"
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
...do they propose to create a Mac tablet PC.
;)
I'm sick and tired of having to admin an office with 10 Macintosh machines, and one stupid tablet PC running XP, because one of our staff members has severe RSI. The compatibility problems are endless and annoying, nevermind licensing one set of PC software among all the Macintosh apps.
Mac need to produce one, and fast, if only to satisfy me
This never ceases to come up, and it's always from people who think that companies are in business to provide them with neat stuff at low prices. News flash! - companies like Apple (and MS, and Dell, etc.) are in business to *make money*.
If Apple went to stock x86 hardware, yes, their prices probably would fall. This helps Apple how?
Apple has assiduously avoided having to compete in the low margin, backwards compatibility nightmare, stock x86 hardware realm for a reason. Apple make systems with a level of hardware/software integration across the product line that is only dreamt of in the wintel world. Because their systems provide such a superior user experience, Apple can, and does, charge a premium for a premium product. This premium price makes Apple profitable.
Moving to x86 destroys all of Apple's advantages. Their systems would no longer work seamlessly because the near infinite combination of possible hardware would guarantee the same sorts of nightmares seen by windows users daily. And Apple would have to drop prices to compete with MS and Linux on the same hardware platform.
No wonder Apple have wisely opted to keep their platform different from the low cost, hardware incompatibility swamp that is the world of stock x86.
And I got it a little over a year and a half ago. The good old PB 667mhz and what now a redesign and faster processor. When will apple stop the pain!
On a more serious note. I don't really see to much of an improvement in powerbooks. A couple of extra features and the wireless stuff added is cool. But nothing really big enough to really need an upgrade yet. Probably when the G5 is able to shrink and run cool with less power for a power book. But right now the 667mhz power book meets all my needs and it is fast enough. For most of my use (The Maxed out RAM helps).
I don't have an issue with the wireless keyboards but I do with the wireless mouse. It seems way to easy to loose. Especially with mice because those are the things I drop all the time because of the fact they are always physically moved all the time. I would be happier if the wireless keyboard had a USB port on it to hook up the usb mouse to. I know the wired keyboards had that and Sun Had that on all their keyboards until they went USB and I really liked that concept because of where the keyboard is the mouse it close buy so you can sit back and still have the keyboard and mouse reach. Also when the mouse dropped the wire acted like a safety cord preventing it from hitting the ground, Also making it easier to pick up while typing because you just pull the wire up. Now with wireless you drop the mouse it goes clunk on the grown scratching its nice finish. and worse when you go to try to reach for the mouse you bend over and the keyboard then fall to the ground hitting in a way that some of your letters pop out. because you always touch type you have no real idea where they keys go back to. so you put them in First come First serve. But because one of the keys that fell off was the shift key you put it in replace of the V and B key so when ever you try to write any word with b or v in it will always put vb in it. This will make you look like a Microsoft guy which will then cause all your coworkers to loose all respect for you. So they work the political engine of your company and find a way to get you fired. Now without the job you cannot finish the payment on your powerbook so the Repo man comes and takes it. But after he looked at the keyboard he points out the keys are in the wrong spot. So you cannot even get full reboed value from it. Which puts you in debt.... When will apple stop hurting people!
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The difference is, Apple doesn't nessesarily make new products. They make new products that work well.
Take for example, USB. Apple didn't invent it, but Apple made it big. USB had been arround for a while on the PCs, but everyone in the x86 world is lodged into legacy hardware. Apple was in a very good position to start making USB only based computers and as a result gave USB the life it needed to take hold.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
You don't have to support more than one machine with one set of configurations.
Likewise, too many choices can almost be as bad as not enough choices. And when it really comes down to it, how many choices do you really have? AMD or Intel, Radeon or GForce, soundblaster or soundblaster.
Not a whole lot of real choice.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Like Macally's iceKey and iceMouse.
Someday I'll have money to pair them up with my iBook.
>wouldn't catch me using a bluetooth or non-bluetooth
>wireless kbd no matter what the price was.
When why the fsck does the price matter to you? As your initial post would indicate?
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
> With their laptops however, it's a much more serious
>issue.
Not really. Ambidexterity is a good thing.
When I am using the trackpad on my laptop I tend to use my left hand probably around half the time (no apparent reason, I'm actually right handed).
That I have a single clickable surface to press, no matter where my thumb is on the pad, can only be qualified as a Good Thing(TM).
When I need it I pull out my optical trackball. It has two buttons and works just fine, and in most situations having an extra mouse button under my trackpad would just cause problems.
All in all, that's a pretty good overall solution.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
I would love to see Apple become vastly more successful--nothing would keep MS in check better than a serious alternative for mainstream desktop customers.
The problem is Apple does not WANT the mainstream as customers. Apple is afraid that if they lowered their prices, the "we paid a premium price for a premium product" crowd would be pissed and Apple would lose that niche. Even with more realistic prices, the mainstream might just give Apple the collective shrug and keep buying PCs - leaving Apple with less profit.
It's a tight spot Apple is in, but I for one welcome our new Microsoft overlords - same as the old ones.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
>Another stunning lack of innovation ... Why not put two
>contacts on the bottom and create a USB powered
>charging base, like the Logitech etc cordless mice.
Let me get this straight: "Innovation" now means doing what your competitor has done for a long time? Am I missing something?
As to why they did it this way: My best guess is that they didn't want them to slowly die. Rechargeable batteries need to be plugged in more and more frequently when you keep them plugged in when not in use and their charge lasts for less and less time.
So rather than have an ignorant customer say "I've had this mouse for three years and its completely unusable now!" they make it clear from the get-go that you need to swap the batteries every so often.
The real factor here is how often they need to be replaced.
>I suppose because most people still wouldn't get this for
>an aftermarket mouse as it has no scroll wheel. Come on
>Apple! Put your flat-scroll wheel patent to work! Let's at
>least see something!
If you want those features, buy your hardware from Logitech. Stop asking Apple to make everything from Desktops to Hummers.
Incidentally, they do put their "flat scroll-wheel patent to work": in the iPod.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
I had bought a PC laptop (HP ze5375us) because it was cheaper than the powerbook I really wanted. As long as I can have a development environment I don't really care much about the OS. But the laptop broke after 2 months. HP are being turds about fixing it. So I'm writing that off as a total waste of money and buying a new powerbook. My main gripe with PC hardware is that it doesn't seem to be of the same quality as Apple hardware.
Am I the only person who would rather deal with a couple of cables than have to feed batteries to my keyboard and mouse every couple of months?
Two things:
First of all, there IS something wrong with x86 hardware... Intel engineers have bent over backwards to maintain legacy compatibility. The results are impressive. Clearly superior to Motorola's PPC chips, but at what cost? Intel was making a profit by pouring R&D dollars into Pentium engineering, Motorola was all but neglecting its PPC line. I don't doubt that Motorola chips could catch up given the investment considering how much less bloat they are starting with.
Secondly, it never ceases to amaze me how many people think Apple is just built on clever marketing and that Macs are at best more expensive PCs. At times in Apple's past I would have agreed (particularly in the OS 8 & 9 days). I'm not some kind of zealot, I own and use both a Mac and a Windows machine daily. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but since I don't care about games or being able to download a lot of random software I don't really find any negatives working on the Mac. To the contrary, I am consistently amazed with OS X and Apple's bundled software. Aside from the fact that I am a web developer, and thus having Apache and MySQL on a BSD platform is a no-brainer decision, the OS X apps such as Safari, Mail, Address Book, iSync, as well as the Omni suite keep impressing me with the possibilities. Apple is constantly making refinements that make a difference in my life. On the other hand, when I boot up WinXP I have yet to find one genuinely useful improvement over Windows 2000. Sure it's more stable and it looks purty or whatever, but it has done nothing for my productivity.
First -- where's the bloody VGA port? You can't just grab your TiPB and use it as a portable office. The one time you forget to put the DVI-2-VGA adapter in your pocket is the day you'll want to project the current project in the conference room. I wouldn't replace the DVI with VGA but add it to the base system.
Also, what's with moving all the ports to the sides? Have you spent any time typing on a laptop with cables sticking out the side? I know -- Apple's pushing wireless connectivity but most offices still don't (and won't) have 802.11x connectivity due to security concerns. And there's still no wireless Firewire. As a bonus the older TiPBs looked tidier with the cables flowing out the back, hidden by the screen. Now they look like Pippi Longstocking when cabled up.
Lastly, an old rant, two buttons on all mice -- especially the built-in track pad. I understand the argument that one mouse button is less confusing for some users, but for whom? All the Macworld video clips tout high-end use by graphic designers, photographers and music producers. I can hear them in the focus group "Come on, Wayne...it's for the noobs." How about putting a big red icon in the middle of the desktop that reads "Don't Panic". Clicking it (with either button) would display a help entry accompanied by soothing music: "Right-button - Mostly harmless. Used by the smart set to get more work done. Safely ignored by you."
To think that I can now buy a 15 inch PB for $200 more than the price I paid for my iBook 600....pretty awesome actually. I love when a company can continue to improve a product and actually bring prices down.
I bought a 12" powerbook yesterday, and today they announce a new model...
Every Apple user on the planet knows that you never buy a new computer from Apple right before one of their expos or conferences, precisely because Apple almost always unveils new and upgraded models then. You're an idiot.
The middle mind speaks!
Keep waiting. You'll never see it. Go ahead and a Dell or IBM. They come with even more than just two. They even have little red buttons on top of the main buttons. You can have that kind of superior functionality too! Dells even have a trackpad and the little eraser-head-in-the-keyboard.
The rest of us "pro" Mac users will drive with two hands, one on the keyboard ready to hit control for a contextual menu or any of the other modifier keys that most "pro" apps require for efficient operation.
You'd think that the accurate and accelerated mouse operation would be far more important than the number of buttons. But if Mac OS' superior mouse support isn't as important as two buttons built in, then yes, a Windows machine is right for you.
Geezus,
If you dont like apple's 1 button mouse, then why dont you just go get a logitech mouse? I've got one and use it with my ibook. 2 buttons and a scroll wheel. I set the 2nd button to control-click which opens a contextual window.
Strangely, OSX has support for 2 button mice.