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."

Comments

"Cassie" is back?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me, or does the new wireless keyboard looks a lot like the old "Cassie" keyboard prototype? (white, almost frameless)

--
-Sid

innovation

[hrbrmstr]

OK. I switched (back) to Apple this year (in Feb) for many reasons, one of which was innovation.

Where's the innovation here? The mouse *still* has only one button (yeah, go ahead, start the button wars flame game) and, while the mouse has rechargable batteries, neither the kbd or mouse has a "dock" to plug in to so they can be recharged easily.

And, at ~140.00USD MSRP (more if you don't have a bluetooth-disabled Mac) for the Apple combo, it seems like the Logitech bundle would be a better choice.

Since Apple used bluetooth, they could have at least done something extra with the kbd (like add a mini-tablet area or speakers or *something*).

I sincerely hope this isn't the beginning of a (bad) trend.

encryption key?

[v1]

The notes say the keyboard uses encryption. I'm a little curious how the key is shared between the keyboard and the computer? At first I thought it might use a standard USB cable to connect to the computer and maybe charge rechargeable batteries, (seems like a good idea!) but it does say "no cables". Maybe you have to type a key in that's presented on the setup control panel? Although I suppose it could be exchanging keys with PGP or other public key technology.

It'd also be a nice touch if they'd have put USB ports on the keyboard, that could "tunnel" through the bluetooth back to the computer. Sure it's slow, but if you happen to have some other peripherals like a touchpad or multibutton mouse etc., that'd be a nice way to deal with some of the cord issues while maintaining compatibility with existing non-bluetooth peripherals.

Kudos to Apple though on a bluetooth optical mouse + bluetooth enabled laptop. I don't use an external mouse on my powerbook, but I can see this as "one less cable to plug in" when getting the 'book out of the bag. As it is, when I arrive home I plug in my speakers, ethernet (yes, I have 802 but cable is faster), firewire (for my pod), and power.

Economics 101

[Llywelyn]

>overpriced, plain and simple

A commodity is only overpriced if one of two things is true:

1) It does not sell.
2) You have reliable evidence that a lower price point would have increased your earnings (note I did not say "unit sales").

We don't know if these things will sell yet. Simply.

In absence of evidence whether they will sell at *this* price point, we *certainly* don't have evidence that they would make more money by selling it at a lower price point.

You think they are overpriced? Don't buy them. For me personally it wouldn't matter whether they sold them at $20,000 or $5+S&H: I don't have a use for them.

Whoa whoa whoa... where'd the L3 cache go?

[bluemilker]

When the old 12" powerbook came out, a major issue of contention was that the G4 was losing a significant chunk of its performance advantage over the G3, because it didn't have the 1 meg of L3 cache (google cache link) that the rest of the powerbook line came with.

My first thought about these updates was "maybe apple has finally put some L3 cache in the 12" model!" But when I went to check it out, they had removed every mention of L3 cache on their pages. I doubt that they took the cache OUT of the larger models, so is this just an attempt at obfuscation by no longer mentioning the cache, or did they finally equalize the chipset?

4200 RPM HD?!?

[sbot5000]

Did anyone else notice that the stock 80 GB HD is 4200 RPM - almost 30% slower than the 80 GB 5400 RPM HD Option(+$125)?

Is this lame? How much does it matter performance-wise?

Not for a long time!

[MarcQuadra]

You won't see the G5 in a laptop for quite a while, maybe never. IBM is working on building a G3 with parts of the G5 SIMD logic (or compatible logic). What you'll see is that the G4 as we know it, the 7XXX series, will die. The 750+SIMD and the 970 will be Apple's chips.

Remember that the G5 comes from the Power4, which was NEVER designed to be a low-power/low-heat CPU, it will NEVER be as suitable for laptop use as the 750-series will. Even with a major die-shrink and voltage drop, the G5 will STILL put out much more heat than the G4 did, and even that was too much.

Don't worry though, I'm sure IBM will be using a lot of what they developed for the G5 in the 'mojave' G3s. They might even be marketed as G4s or G5-mobiles because they will have roughly the same features.