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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."
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
I saw this posted by an AC somewhere around /. and I think it sums it up fairly well..
Yes, Apple does get a better response these days... and why shouldn't it? They've clearly got a clue since OS9, and while not everything is open source, much of it is. They also seem committed to standards and interoperability. While Microsoft is busy mangling standards so that customers are compelled to buy other Microsoft products to assure everything works, Apple has become a vendor that actually cares about playing well with others.
If you think Slashdot is an Apple love-in without merit, go back and find praise predating recent versions of OS X. Slim pickings, I'd say.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
yes. MS bluetooth is great.
/Ex
Except it doesn't work with anything. A friend was trying to get a bluetooth mouse and keyboard for his ibm ultra-small laptop (with bluetooth built in). He looked at the microsoft kb/m, and, well, basically you had to use a MS bluetooth dongle and disable your internal bluetooth.
Just great. Really helpful MS.
Asshats.
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?
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?
Er, yes. And it doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I love that I can just lean to the side a little to see what I'm doing when I need to connect a cable. No more standing up and/or blindly feeling around the back of the laptop for the correct port. Apple did the right thing by putting the most commonly-used ports (i.e. modem and ethernet) closest to the rear, where they are least likely to get in the way. Same with the AC input on the opposite side. I've been working like that for two years with my iBooks, and never felt like protruding cables were stealing valuable workspace-- and I'm a lefty!
Also, you can't make the laptop particularly slim if you've got to put the hinge on top of a row of ports.
I also have no complaint about the single trackpad button. I am apt to click with either thumb at any given time, and it's nice to know that I don't have to worry about which side of the trackpad button is under that thumb. When I want to pull up a context menu, I have to consciously hold down Ctrl. I think this is the right way to go about it, because you're not concentrating on hitting the correct button by default-- only when you WANT to activate the secondary function.
I use a multibutton mouse with scroll wheel on my G4 at home, and I've set it up so that both buttons return a click, but clicking the mousewheel brings up context. This way I can tell by feel exactly what I'm clicking (and also so I don't get used to having the context menu pop up when I left-click, so I don't keep hitting the wrong button when 'm working on a righty's computer.)
~Philly