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PowerBooks & iBooks Get Speed Bumped
Currawong writes "Apple has, as rumors predicted, speed bumped its line of portables. The PowerBooks now come in 1.33 and 1.5Ghz G4 versions, including either NVidia 5200's or Radeon 9700 video hardware. The iBooks can now be had at 1 or 1.2Ghz with Radeon 9200 video included. All can be purchased at the Apple Store. This complements nicely the recent speed and feature increases on the eMac range."
Good news, I've been looking at getting a notebook for some time now and my little research indicated a superior battery life on Apple notebooks.
The prohibitive price is still a bottleneck for me though.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
Why can't I have paid of the loans for my old one so I can get a new?
*damn*
Guess now I will just have to wait for my carbon-fiber, dual G5 PowerBook with fold out twin displays and fuel cell technology battery with 12 hours of life that the rumor sites are talking about.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I bought one because I needed a new card to play Neverwinter Nights - my faithful old Voodoo4 finally having become obsolete. It's slow enough running that, yet it claims DirectX 9 capability; I shudder to think what it would do if I tried to play Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 on it in a few months' time.
Is there something I'm missing, maybe?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Why does Apple never drop the price of current hardware instead? I would love a 700mhz Powerbook for $600 or so (no thanks, refurbed units).
http://www.rayn.net . Funny. Stuff.
Can someone refresh my memory? How fast is a 1.5ghz Apple processor when converted into Intel ghz?
Pfft. Now I just want one more! Luckily I always manage to remember "...I could buy the parts and build like 7 high end Linux boxes myself for this! WTF AM I DOING!?!?!" right before I hit Checkout ;)
Maybe someday Apple will make affordable (to poor collage kids with a large portion of their annual income devoted to beer and video games) hardware for me. Until then I guess I will have to be happy with occasionally playing with Darwin x86...
Matt
You have 1 Moderator Point! Use it or lose it! Is that a threat? -vapid
When you compare the price of a Powerbook to a Dell, that this is a UNIX laptop.
Unless you run Linux, of course.
I have a year old powerbook and the new ones for the same deal I got have halk gigahertz speed improvement, 20 gig bigger hard drive, over twice the speed of dvd burn, faster wireless, faster firewire bluetooth and more. And it's the same price. That's quite an increase for a year. It's so cool to see yet so depressing at the same time.
Evolution or ID?
it is looking like Apple is going to keep the G4 around for low powered mobiles, just like the Pentium-M .
all that is needed is a 15 inch and 17 inch G5 model, I was hoping that it would be this summer, perhaps in the fall.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Is there any news available about if or when there are going to be G5 based laptops released?
I'm looking to get an Apple notebook in about 6 months but I don't want to have a big jump like the G4 to G5 be released a few months later when I could've gone without it for a little longer and then got the G5.
While I love my 17" 1ghz G4 more than anything in the world... .5 ghz would not be any incentive to ever upgrade it.
Unfortunately for Apple, the lack of speed differences felt between the G4 processors has totally sealed my next laptop to be one of the smaller iBooks. Until recently, I was actually looking at the slower 800mhz G4 iBook.
I think what the public really wants at this point is a G5 laptop, but I thinks they run a lil hot. I love the fact that I can keep my powerbook on my laptop without any harm to me or my children. So, hopefully Apple can find a nice compromise for us yearning for a portable G5.
Is this a standard term to describe the process of increasing processor speed in a line of computers? If so it's very poorly thought out. A speedbump is normally something that is used to slow down motorists on a tretch of road. So I instinctively interpreted that as meaning that Apple had released a line with capped processor speeds!
I suspect that this is just the poster's own term to describe this. Oh well!
A little planning goes a long way...
Does anyone have any benchmark comparisons (3rd party comparisons, none of this "Apple-funded / Intel-funded" stuff) I'm a bit skeptical considering I bought a Dell laptop with 1.6Ghtz about 1.5 years ago.
This isn't considered to be a troll, I'm just wondering about the performance difference.
So, my question is, alongside these great hardware updates just announced (12" PowerBook got bumped 33% to 1.33GHz!!!), has Apple updated any of the included software? I'm especially interested in things related to the Darwin UNIX core, or the Fink system. It'd be really great if Apple included a newer version of Fink, because the version of apt-get which was included with my 2003 12" PowerBook is a little out of date now. If apt-get has been updated, then I'll be getting my current PowerBook onto eBay, and I'll be ordering a new 1.33GHz 12" PowerBook tomorrow!
I look forward to the community's response!
Usually a "speed bump" is something that slows you down.
The real question (rumor?) floating around other mac-specific news sites is whether or not this is just to hold us over until the release of G5 notebooks sometime in the not to distant future (January?) A couple interesting threads:
Apple Insider
MacNN
Posting as directed.
actually two years ago the 2.0Ghz was out and about. So figure it was at least 4 years ago. That said, I still want one. Its not a pissing contest you know. I have a ultrasparc that kicks my pc servers ass.
Because dropping the price would kill their nice margins, and they wouldn't make as much money. Let's say it costs (pulling numbers out of thin air) $500 to build a $1500 laptop, and $200 to build a $800 laptop. Assuming they sell the same number of each, which are they going to want to sell? Of course, they'd probably sell more of the $800 laptop, but they'd have to sell a lot more to make it worthwhile...
You can usually find good deals on older hardware right around the time that they are about to announce a new model. They just don't offer it to everyone through the Apple Store. Instead, I usually see them advertised in the Mac User's Group store and places that other long time customers have a chance at them.
"speed bumping" is the act of bumping the speed up on a product line.
This has been in use for years.
So I have been looking at getting a 15" powerbook in the last few days and it's probably good I didn't do that. I noticed a few retailers started selling their models with price cuts a couple days ago -- now I know why. Anyhow, the base price of the new line is cheaper than the old line, which I find to be interesting.
My little sad piece of the internet: www.mtndewd
Because Steve wants to maintain the aura of an elite, boutique brand. Besides, how else would he pay for all those ads in GQ and Cosmo?
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I was thinking of getting a 17" PowerBook to replace my 15" model, and this is usually the best time to buy, with lower prices on the outgoing models and of course the excitement of the incoming ones.
.25ghz in actual use? And would I notice the graphics chip differences at all as a non-gamer who mainly uses the system for pro applications such as Final Cut and After Effects?
How much difference is there between the old and new 17" models? Would I notice
D
I currently own a 17" Powerbook with 1Ghz.
:). Oh yeah!
Personally I sense, that it is a bad time for upgrading to a new Powerbook, which only has a G4 processor in it. I'll lean back and enjoy the notebook I own until G5s are built into Powerbooks. This can not last much longer. Remember, that there is the WWDC around end of June / beginning of July. Jobes' keynote might hold the long anticipated G5 powerbook gift
twi
I think that, because apple has far less inventory than, say, dell, they manage to clear out the old stock pretty well with EOL. On the other hand, if i remember, i think you can get old-new hardware if you're part of a MUG (but i'm really not positive).
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
Well.. cheaper models will be sold more.
And.. think about the mass economy.
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Why does Apple never drop the price of current hardware instead? I would love a 700mhz Powerbook for $600 or so (no thanks, refurbed units).
The answer is simple really. Apple would like to maintain their products as objects of desire. Sexy bits of computer art that both inspire lust and allow us to accomplish our work easier and/or faster than ever before, making a difference. To lower the prices would reduce Apple computers to commodity items much like the rest of the Wintel world.
How many Dell, HP, Compaq, graybox etc.... hardware rollouts are greeted with the same kind of fervor that Apple computer hardware announcements inspire?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
You *are* participating in the same reality as the rest of us, no? You know, the one with Moore's Law and upgrade curves and profit?
There's no profit in dropping prices on old units (prices drop faster because of market forces than you save in producing old tech). The profit comes from having a 'leading edge' and charging a premium for it.
Not to mention that the old units are available at lower prices, they have to blow stock out somehow. You just need to know where to look. This is how I got my old iBook on the cheap (a 500 MHz model right after the 600's came out and I paid just over $1k CDN. this is a couple of years ago.)
Main Entry: speed bump
Function: noun
: a low raised ridge across a roadway (as in a parking lot) to limit vehicle speed
We had to slow the car down, as there was a speed bump in the street.
They drop prices all the time. You just never noticed. You know the eMac dropped in price, right? And a couple bumps ago, the PowerBooks too.
After a year's time, what is the difference between a price drop or a feature increase?
GPL Deconstructed
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Dude. Go to eBay, and you will see people have been buying used 700mhz iBooks for more than that.
Macs cost money. If you can't cope with that, run Linux on a Toshiba Satelite for now and dream of better days ahead.
yes, there's something you're missing. a fucking clue. jeebus. can't tell the difference between a 5 and a 9, get off slashdot.
Why does Apple never drop the price of current hardware instead?
They do, at the same time discontinuing it. Go to an Apple Store this week and you'll surely find some new, unopened last-generation powerbooks and ibooks on sale price.
A caution to anyone who'd likely buy one of these new PowerBooks: may your lap beware!
I own one of the "older" 12" G4 PowerBooks (867 MHz), which I absolutely adore, but it has heat issues. The main heat venting location on the case (that I've found) is the bottom rear of the machine. This means that if you're sitting down with it on your lap and you're wearing shorts, prolonged use (3+ hours) may result in warming to the point of extreme skin discomfort. This isn't usually a problem, though it's something you become aware of after the first couple of times you accidentally scald yourself. With the increase in speed, however, the speedy processor would cause an even higher temperature level, barring a radical change to the way in which heat is vented (which is not apparent from the official specs).
Mercifully (in a way), a semi-recent update changed the fan kick-in temperature to a lower threshold, meaning less built-up heat but a lower battery life. Expect the batteries on the new PowerBooks to not quite last as long as they're listed as, though they'd probably last long enough as is. For a college student like me, just having them last through class so that I can go back to my dorm and plug in for the evening's homework is fine.
I'd still buy one (if I had the money and needed a new computer), though I'd be careful to do most of my work on a table.
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
In keeping with a 50-year-old trend, the latest computers from [insert name here] are faster and more powerful than the previous generation. Wow. There's news.
Does this mean I can't use the "I don't want to start a holy war, but" troll anymore?
Part of the reason you cant directly compare is because of the processor achitecture. PowerPCs and x86 based processors have differing binaries/commands/structures/etcetera. Photoshop is one of the few products on both the Mac and Windows platform that is almost identical in code and function. You'll notice in comparison between the two platforms Photoshop is a common program used.
.deviatefromtheabsolute.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Uh-huh... and here's a brand-new 1 GHz x86 laptop that sells for $800 MORE than the 1 GHz iBook...
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There's a new Airport 3.4 available and a third AEBS which supports Power Over Ethernet.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I bought my 1.0ghz iBook for $1499 to weeks ago!
The local CompUSA is trying to hawk a 500 MHz icebook for $1000... It's a loaded machine, too. 10 GB Hard Drive. CD Rom, 128 Megabytes of memory. And it runs 9.2.2 like a dream.
Because a benchmark of a modern FPS game is a terrible way to benchmark the processor since most of the work is dependant on video cards.
Here's is something from a post I made somewhere above concerning speed compairisons:
--------
I have the previous version of the 12" PowerBook running at 1ghz and it's noticably faster than my p4 1.5ghz. I'd rate it as feeling about the same as a 2.0ghz p4.
So I'd say the 1.5 would be about a 2.8 or 3.0ghz pentium.
While we're on this topic I'd like to point out that Macs feel much faster than they actually are because of the superb multi tasking and UI response under heavy load.
When I am encoding a video on my Windows machine I can't do anything else on my computer, if I try to click something it takes about 30 seconds for the menu to popup.
On the other hand, my Mac can have 20 apps running and encoding a video at the same time and the UI still responds beautifully.
This is why using a Mac is a great experience, you so rarely get frustrated at it because it just works.
----
FYI it has the same NVidia FX5200 the new ones have and it plays all the current games very well (Except the super high end FPS games like Ut2004...playable but not that enjoyable). Anyway, anyone who intends to do serious gaming on a laptop is a damn fool, even more so on a Mac laptop.
Because the CPU isn't the only expensive component.
They can't make new-but-slower iBooks very much cheaper than the current bottom of range. You ask for a lower price because of the slower speed, but the price difference you want is more than the saving they could make by using a cheaper CPU.
Even if Apple didn't have to pay for the CPU at all I don't think they could build the rest of an iBook for $600.
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Gee, why won't Toyota sell me a brand-new 1998 Camry? I don't want to pay the price for a 2005 model.
Life is hard. It's harder if you're stupid.
so the /. editors froth at the mouth whenever apple makes a move. Try posting something that will generate lively discussion - what is so interesting about Apple bumping their notebook speeds up a notch?????
'Speed increase' is no better. If there's more speed, why is it in a crease?
Perhaps 'road hump' doesn't mean gettin' some in the car anymore.
Mainly because the Apple hardware market is an exclusive price cult, from the Mac user selling used all the way up to Steve's sales department.
I surely wish BMW would sell me a 2002 3-series instead of the improved 2005. I don't want to buy a used one, I just want to buy a new old one. I mean, surely they keep all those old parts around.
Dude, warehousing old graphics cards, HDs, etc costs money and would actually increase Apple's Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). If they then dropped prices, they would have slimmer margins in both directions (lower revenues, higher COGS).
I got my dad to buy a Apple refurb iBook and save $300. It works great, has no physicial defect and as far as I can tell, is identical to a new one with three $100 bills stuck in the DVD/CDR combo drive.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Sometimes they raise the price a bit, I think. Like when they went from G3's to G4's in the iBook series. But, I was happy about that option. Couple hundred bucks bought a faster processor, combo drive, double the RAM, included 10.3 (brand new at the time), etc.
But, I get your point. Seems like people pick a baseline market price and build the technology to match the price.
Is the apple apologist. Go ahead mod this down, but its true.
You go to the Mac boards, and its all the same "Gee, a G4 is all you need, you don't need any more speed".
The G4's FSB is only running at 167mhz. That's pathetic in 2004. Its why the G4 chip never seemed all that fast and why the G5 kills.
If you find yourself saying "You don't *need* a G5...." slap yourself. You're apologizing for lackluster products instead of voting with your wallet and not buying.
HEY APPLE! My money is waiting until you get a G5 and build a goddamned 2 button mouse into the case. Don't make me buy an add-on mouse to a laptop to cover up your inability to adapt to the times.
resellers including smalldog.com and macmall.com often offer older models (ones that are totally gone from the apple store) for more reasonable prices.
Dunno if anyone else noticed this, but wireless networking is now STANDARD in the Powerbook line, while you have to spend the extra $100 to get the AirEx card in the iBooks.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
These are low-margin machines... think about what you're getting for this kind of money. You can only go so low before you lose your shirt.
"That's quite an increase for a year."
If the PC took this attitude, we'd all be using P2's running 1.3Ghz and burning our DVD's at 2x.
I sort of laugh at Appledot these days. I mean a $1,299 eMachines Athlon 64 laptop with widescreen and Radeon 9600 video is ignored, but a laptop three times the cost that is not as feature rich or powerful not only has to be mentioned in rumor, and then again when it is announced. How about mentioning the new 4 way Opteron HP server just announced, or eMachines fine laptops? I'm XP, XP 64, Mandrake 64, and FreeBSD 64, and I can cluster three of them for the price of one of the Apples!! Heck, even Compaq has an Athlon 64 notebook for $1,299 in Best Buy now, but people are drooling over a small speed bump from Apple? I don't get it. Anyway, I think I'll buy a 7200 RPM Apricorn drive, swap out my 3000+ for an Athlon 64 3400+, and upgrade to a GB of memory and load levels faster in UT2004, Farcry, and Battlefield Vietnam. After those upgrades the cost will be closer to the Powerbook in cost except that I get to Ebay the parts I replace, and I get to enjoy 2.2GHz of 64 bit power! You see you can upgrade the Athlon 64 laptops yourself. Can you do that with a Mac, or a Dell for that matter? Nope.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
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" MHz for MHz, G4 is faster than P4."
Riiiiiight.
Its about the same. Apple has no answer to the 3.2 & 3.4 ghz processors from Intel.
This is a HUGE difference for me, since the stuff that I'm most interested in doing isn't so much CPU intensive as RAM intensive. I can live with just about anything, but under 1GB of RAM was a deal-killer on the iBooks.
For me, this changes everything.
I'd love a Corvette for 15 grand, but instead of just building the same thing every year the keep changing it. Those jerks.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
I guess I will have to take back my 15" powerbook I bought last week then. I guess it's the same effect when I wash my car, it rains later that night.
Oh well. I never thought I would be this happy with an Apple. Four years ago I would've beat myself up for saying that. If Apple keeps its fast paced direction for OS X, I won't be looking back (well at least at Windows, my long time marriage to Linux will never go).
Actually, the same thing happens with PeeCee/commodity hardware too; try and find a new 10GByte disc for 10GBP, or a new Celeron 500 for 5GBP. This is particularly annoying if you want to put together some ultra-cheap new machines (for an undemanding user such as Aunt Tilly, say) without resorting to the skankiest hardware out there (which is probably still more expensive than obsolete stuff would be, if it were still available).
--
The iBooks have had their memory limit raised to 1.25GB. Better still the soldered in chip is now 256MB instead of 128MB, this gives all the default configurations a free slot to upgrade with. This resolves what was for me, my biggest gripe about my G4 ibook.
This does not make you clever.
I agree with you, I think it'd be great if they could make a new Powerbook, say ~800Mhz, with all the up-to-date features and design, and sell it cheap- but they can't.
Three reasons:
a) skimping a little on the processor really doesn't save them that much money, so there wouldn't be that much in the way of savings to pass on to the consumer.
b) Part of what makes any computer company money is pushing out incremental upgrades. Some people out there have a perfectly functional Powerbook Al running at 1 Ghz are now lusting after these new upgrades just because they are running at 1.33 Ghz. Some of these people will actually spend a couple thousand dollars just for that tiney upgrade that they won't even notice. Apple wants to keep them coming back.
c) Perception. People are still looking at Macintoshes and saying "It's running at 1 Ghz?! You can buy a new PC laptop running at 3Ghz! What gives?!" It doesn't matter to them that, using your word processor, you hardly notice the difference. Apple needs to kepp pumping up the Ghz just to give the appearance that they aren't being left behind.
but maybe a MacZealot can help me 'find the switch'??
From Smalldog.com:
iBook 14in G4/1GHz 256/60/combo/56K Mac n 4 $1499.00
From Apple Store
256MB DDR266 (256MB built-in)
60GB Ultra ATA drive
Combo Drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)
Keyboard/Mac OS X - U.S. English
14.1-inch TFT XGA display
1GHz PowerPC G4
ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 w/ 32MB DDR video memory
Subtotal $1,349.00
Is the reason we don't see used Macs and big price cuts is because there is no difference??
Even if Apple cut prices today, shouldn't there be a bigger separation (or ANY!!) between new and refurbished??
and don't give me anything about 'macs keep there value'. They have HD's that spin just like PC's...and they get used by there owners just the same....
I just don't get it...
Looking at the specs, it looks like the following have also changed on the iBook line:
- The default memory doesn't use up the expandable SO-DIMM slot anymore. This previously made upgrading the memory annoying because it was split into 128MB internal and 128MB in the slot, so you were forced to replace memory rather than just add.
- 512KB of L2 cache instead of 256KB.
I got a 1.0GHz iBook a few months ago, but I'm still happy. I wouldn't have waited just for these minor boosts. The SuperDrive may be an option now, but at that price ($280 extra CDN) I'd still rather get an external FireWire drive.
First a disclaimer: I am a Mac fanboy. I've got one, I love it and I reccomend it to everyone who's looking for a new computer.
But what the heck is with all the sexy nonsense? Since when did we start humping Macs and iPods?
"Sexy bits of computer art that both inspire lust..."
Lust?
Sure their products might be sleek and very well designed, but to call them sexy and lusty ALL the time? I'll take good ol' T&A over hardware any day.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Let's compare. Doing what I usually do (listening to music, ripping, burning, editing ID3-tags; Surfing; Office), I have 3 computers to do this:
iBook G3 600MHz
PowerBook G4 1.25GHz
Pentium4 2.4 GHz (with 2GB of RAM!)
Honestly, I can work almost as fast on my iBook G3-600 as on my P4-2.4. But I'm even faster than that on PowerBook.
So for me, the surplus in CPU-speed on the P4 outweighs the usability-advantages of OS X on a CPU that's one generation behind and 1/4 the clocking. It's by far not enough to outweigh the advantage of OS X on a comparably advanced CPU with half the clock-speed.
Now, did that help? Propably not. All you can do is compare for yourself.
(no thanks, refurbed units)
Apple refurbs actually have a very good reputation. I think AppleCare (which have an excellent reputation too) is the same price and length as brand-new machines too.
It's not like a third rate brand that simply reships the thing without testing.
Note: I do not own a Mac, I just know some people that do, and they have bought refurbs. One even got like 300MB more memory than was advertised for the unit.
Search for "refurbished" at the Apple Store for great deals. These are usually returns, got a 1GHz G4 17" with 512MB RAM, 60GB drive, superdrive, Airport Extreme, etc., for $2300 there about two months back. In perfect condition, no less.
I'm not attempting to say you are wrong, as I have no experience with that model. However, I wanted to offer a second opinion.
I recently (January) purchased a 15" PowerBook and can say it is the coolest running laptop I have ever owned.
Previously I owned a Sony VIAO which was decent for temperature but had serious hardware failures 1 month out of the year long warranty (for which they wanted to charge me $2700 to repair). After that I bought an HP notebook, which was so hot that I'm sure I would have melted the skin off my legs had I ever set it there more than once beyond the first time.
Now, combined with wireless and my PB, I constantly recline on the couch in front of the TV with the laptop. No heat issues whatsoever. In fact, when I'm wearing jeans a barely notice much difference in temperature.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
I use an IBM Thinkpad that's got a 14" screen with 1400x1050 resolution. That's more pixels than the 17" Powerbook on the same screen that Apple's only fitting 1280x854 (Powerbook) or 1024x768 (iBook) on.
I'd happily take a G4/500 with a Radeon 7500 if I could get decent resolution with it. I'm sure Sonnet will have a CPU upgrade for me when I need it, but it's a lot harder to upgrade the screen.
The crummy screens on Apple's current low-end lineup is why I'm upgrading my almost 10 year old Beige Powermac (upgraded to G4/466 and 768M RAM) instead of getting an eMac (17" screen, but it's a really ugly last-century shadow mask) or iMac (15", 1024x768) or a notebook. I don't need a red hot machine and I can't imagine giving up my 1280x1028 (up to 1600x1200, if I wanted) aperture grill display (a nice Trinitron clone by CTX, under $200) for the eMac or iBook...
The G4's FSB is only running at 167mhz. That's pathetic in 2004. Its why the G4 chip never seemed all that fast and why the G5 kills.
Despite posting AC, I'm not trolling. I'm must wondering does anyone make a laptop with very high FSB speeds? I'm thinking that laptop might have battery longevity issues.
Sory, but a 1.5GHz G4 is nothing like a P4 3.0GHZ.
For one, the data bus is *way* slower than the data bus on a P4. There is no way that the G4 has anwhere near as much memory bandwidth as the P4 with an 800MHz FSB.
Two, despite the fact that the G4 is faster MHz for MHz, it's *never* 2X except in some very specailized situations (highly AltiVec optimized code, extremely floating point heavy code).
MHz for MHz, G4 is roughly equivelent to Athlon XP "Barton".
So, a 1.6GHz G4 = 2.0GHz P4.
What you "feel" isn't reflected by the benchmarks.
Oh, well... I bought my new powerbook 45 days ago, but anyway there are good news for us two, even though they don't come from apple.
While I don't doubt for one second what you're saying, the same UI response could be achieved on Windows by dropping the priority of the video rendering task - I do it all the time with Vdub. Set it from Normal to Low and you'll get your responsive desktop back without noticing any meaningful loss of render speed. Unless, of course, you've got other tasks running that hit the CPU a lot, in which case you might want to batch your tasks or play around a little more with their priorities. Granted, messing with task priority is not the most user-friendly way of managing things in Windows, but it's there and it works :)
"It's got-wide bore cams, dual exhausts, and a microflake red paint finish"
I mean, beyond the most insecure fanboy when does the raw speed of a modern PC matter?
- Does it run 'fast enough'?
- Are the tools I need available?
- Can I be efficient with this?
- Will it hold up long enough to pay back it's investment?
- Thus, is it a good value for me?
What does it matter exactly how many clock-cycles this thing burns off while waiting for you to type in your nextWe reached the point a few years ago where, for most folks doing most tasks, any computer was good enough. Yes if you're doing huge math problems, or 3D rendering (same thing really) or other similar comparatively exotic activities then CPU-to-CPU comparisons (and motherboard architecture and bus bandwidth and memory latency etc.) are interesting metrics.
But for 99% of folks, and even for ~90% of /.'ers, clockspeeds only good for bragging rights and extreme future-proofing of machines.
Computers are toasters now and everything on the market is gonna be good enough for the vast majority of folks. The important questions now are not "Can it do it" but "How best to do these, and how can I, with my workflow and my available skillset and my needs, best get them done?"
So look at what you use a computer for, what your time and efforts are worth, what tools you use and need and have investment in, and judge if Product A can do what you need, if Product B can too, and then which is a better value for your particular situation, clock-speeds be damned.
Oh, and these new laptops ROCK!
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
your ignorance.
I have both a dual 2.0 GHz G5 and a 1.25 GHz 15" PowerBook G4. The G5 is without a doubt faster, but for the typical user and his/her uses, it doesn't offer much. The G5 excells at video encoding and also compiles larger code bases much faster. However, for typical uses (web browsing, word processing, etc.) there is not much of a performance gain.
As for your two-button mouse argument: TRY IT! I figured I wouldn't like it much, but I find it to work out quite well. Now, I always have one hand on the keyboard, which makes me operate my computer much more quickly and efficiently. My experiences with Apple lead me to believe that if they are doing something, there is usually a damn good reason for it, and that reason is usually right.
So, instead of loudly proclaiming your ignorance and demand Apple do things your way, I suggest you open your mind to "thinking different" and begin to realize that things can be better than the way you've been ingrained to beleive.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Tell me about it, I bought my 12" 800MHz ten days ago!!!
*twitch*
and all of a sudden, the computer was like BEEP BEEP BEEP. Now I have a Powerbook and crank out C&Ds in record time, with no crashes.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
you can, apple just doesn't advertise it. They hide these options on the side bar under "special deals". Also many times if you go into an apple store and ask them about discontinued items, if they have them in stock they will sell them at a lower price (I got a 10 gig iPod for less than the mini price that way right after the minis came out).
The current 15" PB only has the slow bus and can't consistently get 2 hours out of a battery. Add the screen issues, and slow CPU, and you get a stinker.
Raising speed by a few percent does nothing.
Also, now would be a good time to GO TO THE APPLE STORE in person.
I have gotten great deals on older units once the new ones come out - ask if they have any returns still in the original packaging.
So what you're saying... If Windows boxes were made to look more funky and sold at a higher price, then Windows will be much easier and faster to use? Wow! I'm calling Bill Gates right now...
Ooh! Look! Something new and shiny from Apple!
I was the sucker who bought an ibook yesterday. Not only yesterday, but 15 minutes before closing. They want a 10% restocking fee because I had an airport card installed. And the worst of it is that I bought it because my powerbook flaked. This should be the last time I get burned by apple. What the hell should I do? They're offering me a $49 "price protection" rebate. That's barely worth the gas to get there. I'm heated....
ascii art
Fast forward one year. "The G5 laptops are OUT?!?...."
(This is a repost of an old post of mine, but as relevant today as it was then...:)
"So, instead of loudly proclaiming your ignorance and demand Apple do things your way"
Yes, the consumer is generally pretty stupid. Thank heavens Apple can correct them.
Although looking at market share, they seem to be "correcting" fewer users each quarter.
But hey, there's always the iPod thing.
Uh, well, as for the "G4 is all you need" complaint...for some users, it is. It's true that the PowerBooks are coasting along on woefully obsolete hardware by current standards. But I'm very happy with my 400MHz PowerBook G4 and 266MHz G3 desktop. I simply don't have the need for anything more powerful right now. A new PowerBook would last me for a very long time.
On the other hand, you're right, there really is no comparison between a G4 and a G5, and the G5 is only going to get better. The G4 should be dead at this point.
As for the two-button mouse argument, give it a rest. Apple machines ship with a one-button mouse because that's all you need to use the GUI effectively. That XFree, for example, basically requires a three-button mouse is symptomatic of design problems with X, not a result of its or its users' sophistication.
How many Dell, HP, Compaq, graybox etc.... hardware rollouts are greeted with the same kind of fervor that Apple computer hardware announcements inspire?
Dell has 27% market share to HP/Compaq's 21% to Apple's 5%, so judging by facts rather than emotionalism... all of them.
( BTW, Scientology announcements also are greeted with fervor by devotees. )
The $200 laptop. Here's why:
For $1000, you can build 5 $200 laptops and sell them at $800. Gross $4000, net $3000.
For $1000, you can build 2 $500 laptops and sell them at $1500. Gross $3000, net $2000.
So, in your hypothetical case, you should determine demand on the lower-cost laptop, make enough to fill that demand completely, and then use the rest of your manufacturing capacity to make the high-end model.
Chargeback.
Consider "open box" purchases and/or get to online stores promptly for current inventory. You may find some of what you're looking for.
They have done. Looking at the UK prices, the 12" Combo powerbook is now 1149 GBP, which is 150 quid cheaper than it was. It now has an airport card and 60gb HDD (rather than 40) as standard, so that's another 80 gbp off the price I paid for mine.
That's G3, not P3.
in 9 months is pretty respectable. You can argue the veracity of just how fast 1.25Ghz was in comparison to the X86 ad nauseum, but if you were a mac user and 1.25Ghz was very fast for you work, 1.5Ghz is very, very fast.
It is rather sensless to argue 'orders-of-magnitude' since there is a quantifiable improvement. This is not a 1.25Ghz P4 bumped to 1.5Ghz.
I'm sure Dell fans would be glad to hear the 2.8Ghz 9100 was bumped to 3.2Ghz in 9 months...
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
These are low-margin machines...
Ha! HA! HAHAHAHA!
So, at how many hundred percent margin does a product stop being "low-margin"?
I'd write a paper letter to Apple, saying how I'd bought my first and last Mac, and would be telling everyone who would listen about my experience. But before that, I'd check to see if my credit card company offers some kind of price protection (American Express does, for example).
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Not a joke, but an 800mhz laptop is pretty much 2-3 year old technology at this point. Not to mention that its used.
Let me know.
--S. Jobs
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I feel your pain all to well brother.
Which is exactly why those attracted to Macs will ignore it.
The previous generation iBook 12" was slow (800MHz G4) and had a low RAM ceiling (640MB) with 256k L2 cache on-chip.
The iBook G4 12" announced today is no speed demon, but at 1GHz, it's fast enough for its target user (students/education professionals), and the 512k L2 cache certainly helps. With up to 1.25GB DDR RAM, the machine is basically identical to the previous generation 12" PowerBook.
Add an Airport Extreme card and upgrade the disk to a reasonable size (60GB), and you can get the machine for $1273. The 12" PowerBook, meanwhile, costs $1600 in more or less the same configuration.
Is there a really compelling reason to buy the 12" PowerBook if you're Joe Student? Doesn't seem like it. Graphics are nominally better, but the nVidia 5200 isn't so hot, is it? There's a 333MHz speed bump, which nobody will notice during normal use. Bluetooth is included, but you can add it to the iBook for $50 if you need it.
So I wonder if the current iBook rev. will take a bite out of PowerBook sales. There are few (if any) "must have" features on the PowerBook 12", and the current iBook speed and RAM capacity are finally on par with other modern machines.
My money would be on the iBook, I think.
Obviously iMac needs more MHz than last september's models, but I don't see G5s there until fall. Also, the GPUs definitely need bumping (currently 4MX low or 5200 high).
But more important is the PowerMac G5, also stagnant for the past 6 months. Everyone is looking for exactly one number: 2.5 GHz. Bumping the low-end mobo to PCI-X and ditching the FX5200 would also be nice.
Basic bottom line, and this goes for every thing that Apple produces, from hardware to UI to programmatic APIs to Pepsi promotions to online services: they either get it really really right, and it's a dream to use, or they get it really wrong and are too stubborn to ever change. There isn't a happy medium, ever, with the notable exception of the leap from OS9 to OSX.
As much as you and I want a two button mouse standard, we won't ever get it from Apple.
Except those cost estimates are absurd... -
Apple occasionally dumps old stock (some refurbished, some new) at Dovebid.com, an online industry liquidation auction house (they're the uys that handled the Enron liquidation).
When Apple dropped the CRT iMacs I managed to pick up a new, fully loaded 600MHz iMac for $600 US. The same machine (refurbished) at the Apple store was $900.
1: I can't believe the mouse the computer ships with would keep you from buying it if you wanted it. Have you ever not bought a prebuilt PC because it had a crappy mouse?
2: Single button mice are good for new users. They have no idea what a "contextual menu" is, therefore it is just another confusing complicated button they will undoubtedly press.
3: I understand more on laptops. Having a one button mouse on laptop is retarded, because it can't be reasonably upgraded.
I think the solution is simple. Apple should ship ALL macs with 2 buttons but make a recessed switch on the bottom of the mouse/laptop to toggle.
In the "Off" mode ( default ) both the left and right buttons act as a normal mouse press (mouse1).
In the "On" mode the left and right buttons are the normal (mouse1, mouse2).
Personally, I use a 5 button scrolling optical mouse.
I can see why they stick by it so much though.
My dad's iMac has the "the whole mouse is the button" apple optical mouse.
He seemed to have a lot less problems using it with no scroll/right click to accidentally press.
Additionally, it solves the "Why isn't it going? oh, my finger wasn't quite on the button" problem.
Great for most people, bad for expert computer users.
You can't see it because using a mouse is like breathing for you. Try to get your grandmother to use a mouse or understand a modern cellphone.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
I just bought a 17" PB about 2.5 months ago. I love it, it is fast and what a notebook computer should be. (I use whatever works, I have Mac's, PC's with windows, PC's running Linux, so I'm not a zealot by any measure.
But man... I wish I had a 1.5 now.
I ordered a PowerBook 1.25ghz 15" SuperDrive on Friday. I awoke this morning to see that my order had been cancled, but re added. I was pretty confused until I saw this post on slashdot, and I checked some emails, and bam! They switched my order for me! Why do I think this wouldn't have happened with a company whose name begins with M and ends with -onopoly.
Why does Apple never drop the price of current hardware instead?
Because eventually, so the theory goes, you will cave in and buy at the price that Apple sets. They're not trying to "get rid of" PowerBooks -- they're interested in the money made. Why should they sell you one for $600 today if you might be willing to pay $1200 six months from now? One of the side-effects of doing so would be that you would be less likely to ever be willing to pay more. Multiply that by the thousands that would love to scoop up a 'cheap' PowerBook and you can see how big a dent that would make into their income.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
And the `average' battery life on that machine is 1.5hours. On an iBook it's 3-4. I think I'd be more than willing to pay $800 less for better battery life (and a bigger screen. And OS X)...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I don't know about the US, but here in Canada the new models have been accompanied by a significant price drop. The new 17" PB G4 is about the same price the old 15" SD model was.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
. . . um, Photoshop
The 970FX runs much, much cooler than any model 74xx at the same clock speed
It's quite simple, it's because Apple is a monopoly.
FCP really likes 2 button mice i think, and Shake requires one to operate well. It's just for their lower apps they see no reason
Tibbon
tibbon.com
About the same time Apple reps started pronouncing SCSI (most say scuzzy) "sexy". That's when.
Whatever .... 50% of a computer's "feel" is going to be Reality Distortion Field + the size of the dent in your credit card. Mac or PC, no difference.
I only have a wimpy G3, but Mac OS X is perfectly willing to go off into Happy LaLa Spinning Rainbow Beachball Time by 'intensive' activities such as pressing the fucking Back button in Safari. For some users, OS X's fancy effects are "slick" and for others they are "slow". I've seen G5s visibily grunt while resizing windows, so the eye candy isn't for free yet.
As mentioned, the G4 is no faster than a PIII/Barton, clock-for-clock, so stop pretending it's a 3.0 Ghz Pentium. If it was, nobody would need a G5.
You aren't a sucker because you bought it yesterday :).
That's so 7-years-ago.
- When you're approved for an Apple/MBNA loan, they make a point of not mentioning what APR you actually GET- think 24%
- They don't send the paperwork on this loan for close to two months, so if you want to get on the ball and start making payments during the initial 6 mo. period- too bad!
All that being said, I actually order a 1GHz 15" PB when they were first released, then cancelled the order based on rumors of a redesign, and ended up ordering the 17" I'm on now. Just had to pay off the sleazy MBNA loan with a credit card (sigh).SS = "spec sheet"
The 15" and 17" PowerBooks include a single Type I & II PC Card slot, and always have. The iBooks don't have it as a means of feature differentiation from the PowerBook line. The 12" PowerBook doesn't have it for obvious reasons.
Of all the people I know with PowerBooks, absolutely none of them have ever used a PC Card in one. Why would you, when every PowerBook since about 1998 has had everything you'd add via PC Card already built-in?
The only thing I can think of anymore that someone might have a use for is a memory card reader-- but why buy a PC Card one and limit yourself when you can use a USB one on any computer?
~Philly
I could make up a different set of numbers that just as conclusively proves the opposite.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
you must like having cards jutting out of the side of the laptop!
I know I don't. the PC Card slot isn't as useful on a 12" PB when you already have Bluetooth and 802.11g out of the box. what would you put in there that isn't either already handled by the PB or could be done through USB (such as hooking up a camera to transfer photos)?
Assuming they sell the same number of each, which are they going to want to sell? Of course, they'd probably sell more of the $800 laptop, but they'd have to sell a lot more to make it worthwhile...
Johnny, please explain to the class how Wal-Mart became the largest, most successful retailer on the planet doing exactly the opposite of your brilliant recommendations?
Lesson: volume beats single-unit margins every time.
www.ebaymotors.com
You can get a nice Vette for 15k.
I never knew so many people played games with Media Access Control IDs!
;)
perhaps you mean "Mac" as in Macintosh?
Not only did they beef up the processor and videocard they also dropped the price by $500 (cdn)
Ahrm.
So why is it you need PCMCIA? Is the current Cardbus slot not sufficient? It's like PCMCIA, only much faster and with a wider bus.
Oh, and it's backwards compatible.
Let me guess -- didn't read the specs? I understand.
Actually, I seem to recall reading that Moore's law is older than computers - extending back to old adding machines, abacus's (abaci?), maybe even older. No idea where I read that though, feel free to disregard it. :)
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
The 15 inch and 17 inch Powerbooks do have PCMCIA slots.
Serious Reply:
Parent was implying they'd like to buy new, not old from some stranger. Cheap iBooks/Powerbooks are available on ebay as well.
Non-serious Reply:
If only ebay sold a sarcasm detector.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Checking out the new IBook on the Apple site I see some major changes that far outweigh the slight processor speed increase.
Memory now maxes out at 1.25 GB instead of 640MB.
Available Superdrive
Built in Airport Extreme in 1.2Ghz model
Downsides:
Still only Firewire 400
I think this makes these the best IBooks yet. It may just be time to upgrade. These are now the best values in the Apple lineup.
I'm not an actor, but I play one on tv.
You didn't get burned by Apple, you got burned by whatever reseller you bought it from. Had you ordered it from the Apple Online Store yesterday, or even last week, they would have automatically shipped you out the new model for the new price.
:-(
I realize that doesn't help you very much at this point, but maybe it will be useful in the future... Sorry about your situation though, that sucks
Same reason there's no $199 ultra-low-end Apple product... margins. Compete right in the middle (or at least not the low end) of the bell curve, where the market supports better margins.
What do you want more -- an Apple and the OS X OS, or a cheap laptop? You can get a desktop eMac NEW for $799. That's a steal. Order one through a school and it's $50 cheaper.
Powerbook for $600? Ha. Not even an iBook.
MAYBE you can find a 700MHz iBook on eBay, used -- or dealmac.com -- for $600. I've seen 500MHz ibooks for sub-500 some months back. These systems are suitable for UNIX or Mac development, which is what I use mine for.
Refurbs are great if you have a warranty.
If you were happy with the product and the price you paid when you bought the iBook, then quit worrying about today and just accept that the timing happened the way it did. Take their $49 rebate and have a decent dinner with somebody.
There will ALWAYS be "better deals" after you buy. You can only worry about what things were like when you bought. If your reseller won't happen to help you as a courtesy, there's nothing you can do other than irritate yourself further with anger or worry. It's your choice whether you enjoy your new iBook or complain about something beyond your control.
Yeah, I just got mine in december...
Oh well, at least it's still cooler than the competition.
ibook12" annecdote:
I was complaining to my friend in a cafe the other day that when I use airport to download large files as well as listen to itunes, run word, Fire im, and a dozen other apps, my battery life only lasts for about 3 and a half hours instead of 5. He told me to go fuck myself because his computer lasts about half as long and most of that time is spent configuring his wireless card, then his computer froze up and he had to take out the battery to reboot it.
Man I wish I owned a wintel!
: )
I bought a refurb'd Powerbook 12" 1Ghz recently, and have had zero problems with it. It was in flawless physical condition (no scratches on the aluminum or anything), and other than the fact that the box has "APPLE REFURBISHED UNIT" stamped on it, you'd be hard-pressed to tell this was refurbished. It also came with all the same software upgrades that the new PowerBooks have, too (Panther, iLife 4).
Plus, the warranty is identical to a new unit (1 year), the extended warranty costs the same as the extended warranty on a new one, and you don't need to buy the extended warranty until yours is up.
If you can somehow luck into finding an in-stock refurbished PowerBook or iBook, I recommend buying one. The $350 I saved over a new one allowed me to pick up a new iPod and a refurbished Airport Extreme card at the same time.
I'm not cool enough to have a
I wish they'de lose that weirdo Airport Extreme slot (since that hardware only has drivers for one OS) and replace it with a PCMCIA slot of some kind. That would make the PowerBook into The Ultimate No-brainer Best Choice for laptop
My old TiBook has a PCMCIA slot, in addition to the internal Airport slot. Do you mean that you want two PCMCIA slots?
"take a 15' powerpc"?? Now that's the kind of screen I've been wanting to see on a laptop. When you open that one up, everyone in the office really brings you a glass of water!! Hard to setup in tourist class though!
Yeah, I could just be happy with MacOS (and maybe that's what I'll end up doing, if I buy one and if MacOS turns out to have enough security features) or use a clumsier USB thingie, but it's still a point of awkwardness.
I'm happy to be corrected by those who point out that the 15" and 17" models are more expandable and have Cardbus slots, but I'm trying to avoid getting such a large machine; it partially cancels out the advantage of getting a laptop. I want the tiniest thing I can get. Sometime in the next 3 weeks, I need to get a portable computer of some kind, either a small (prefer 12" or less) laptop, or a Zaurus.
The 12" PB is soo close... just not quite perfect.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
and RTCW, Jedi Academy, UT2k3, UT2k4, Halo and a whole slew of other recent 3d games. Not as many as the PC but many of the good ones.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I thought I had the Aunt Tilly contract.
Find funky gifts
The ibook can't drive an external monitor at greater resolution than the internal lcd (1024x768) one, unless you do some open firmware hack. Odd for a machine with lots of video ram. There is a chance it won't work with the new machines, or that apple will break your ability to use the change you made with an os update. So far apple hasn't done anything that devious.
>Man I wish I owned a wintel!
;-)
But dude, according to your story, you DID *0wN* that wintel laptop!
See if you can trade it for a new one, or get a retro-active discount on the one you bought. You might be shot down on the first try, but a few calls wont hurt anything if you get 100+ bucks back.
Maybe because that machine weighs 3 lbs and the iBook weighs 6 lbs? Oh, it has a PCMCIA slot that "doesn't fit" on an iBook as well.
The iBook was a sexy form factor years ago, but nowdays it's looking rather bulky.
Bzzt! I found a 15" 1400x1050 (SXGA+) notebook with Athlon 64-bit 3000+ processor, 60GB hard drive, DVD-+RW, gigabit ethernet, 54mbps wireless, for 1009 (about $1800).
Compare this to the PowerBook, which, even ignoring the CPU difference, costing $2,499 for the equivalent features.. is way more expensive. And don't even look at the UK PowerBook prices which are way higher than even the US ones.
Web Hosting Reviews
You're wrong on this one -- there are a lot of slashdotters who've been considering buying a Mac (finally a UNIX with a nice GUI!), or considering upgrading. This story could have an immediate impact on their decisions. Same thing with the x.org story -- many /. readers are active users of the x.org software, or are considering switching to it. Again, the active presence of UNIX in our lives.
Bubble fusion -- yes, it's interesting, and may eventually change all of our lives, but at the moment it has *no* impact on anyone's decisions except the scientists working on it. What, are you planning on duplicating it in your bathtub?
... as i bought a 12" last tuesday from the apple store. i recieved it on saturday, thereby making it absolutely certain they would release a new model the next business day :)
now, the fun of trying to see if i can switch to the new model - it's a BTO, so we'll see what happens.
*** For a better tommorow, change your life today ***
The local CompUSA is trying to hawk a 500 MHz icebook for $1000... It's a loaded machine, too. 10 GB Hard Drive. CD Rom, 128 Megabytes of memory. And it runs 9.2.2 like a dream.
Ouch. What a rip.
I've got that exact model.. I think we paid that much for it EIGHTEEN MONTHS ago.
While the video chip is fluid and the OS IS very smooth... it's unsuitable for games, video, and probably Photoshop. Reboots do take forever, but those are rarely needed.
Development, web, email, and OpenOffice (X11 version) all run fine in OS X 10.2. I've yet to have the OS crash on me.
I just bought a ibook a couple of weeks ago. I wonder if they will send me a new one....
Are the "collage kids" the ones that are pieced together from pictures of other kids? Dr. Frankenstein would be proud.
You need new PC servers then. No UltraSPARC can compete with a top end PC in physical raw compute power.
I would say...
Unless you run FreeBSD, of course.
FreeBSD is a true UNIX.
Linux is an UNIX clone.
"Apple just had a performance bump"
Intel and AMD just had a performance leap. They keep leaping and leaping, and my poor old mac is bumping and bumping.
I'm going to have to think different again.
"If you were happy with the product and the price you paid when you bought the iBook, then quit worrying about today and just accept that the timing happened the way it did. Take their $49 rebate and have a decent dinner with somebody."
Take the Mac back, refuse payment on the credit card. Write a "screw you" letter to steve jobs and buy something faster at a lower price from Costco (who, incidentally, has fantastic return policies).
The main problem has been that Apple will not release review samples to any reputable hardware review site. If they would then there would be plenty of benchmarks.
Hope: "With this new powerbook, the chicks will dig me"
Reality: "eeeeeew! A nerd! get away!" (girl)
I bought it from the Apple store. I don't think they'd upgrade me automatically, they gotta get rid of new stock somehow.
ascii art
on an iBook, my $900 audio kit is useless.
this will perhaps be moot in a few months, but my preferred (and owned) audio card (rme hdsp) is only PCI / PCMCIA ...
;)
and before you tell me about firewire solutions, do as much research as i have.
Apple's designs are fine, but its build quality is poor
As an Apple user, I have to agree with everything said in this article. I've experienced bad build quality from Apple first hand, on more than one occasion -- including the infamous paint-peeling TiBook, multiple bad RAM fiascos (Apple's own RAM installed at purchase time, not aftermarket RAM installed by me), BAD heat problems, and, most recently, the dead-after-3-weeks-iPod Mini.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
It's KB, not kb.
I just bought an iBook like, two weeks ago. :) It only runs at 800mhz, and, truth be told, I can feel it.
Bummer....
- undoware.ca
I'm considering a 15" PowerBook, but lack of a hardware scroller is a show stopper. I don't want external mouse on the go.
Apple: I can live without a 2nd mouse button, but please add a scroller?
VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
mod maddness!!
It's KB, not kb.
:)
No, it is kB (but it would be MB and GB). Capital K is reserved for Kelvin. Unless you're following the IEC recommendations, in which case it would be KiB. Happy?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
And you'd be right. The numbers the original poster gave were made up, which is why I noted that I was speaking hypothetically. I'm sure Apple's numbers are completely different.
Hey, I didn't make up the cost estimates, the original poster did. I was simply pointing out that their reasoning wouldn't always be accurate.
A DVD burner without a reader is useless to me.
Are you saying you don't think a DVD burner can read DVDs? Are you saying you don't realize that set-top DVD players can be had for $35 at Kmart? Are you just afraid of the DVD standard because you love VHS so much?
No parallel or serial port? That means I'd have to throw out all of my hardware and buy new stuff.
What ghetto hardware do you have that needs parallel and serial ports?? You'd better say $30,000 medical-imaging systems or something, because unless your hardware is highly specialized (or essential for business but not produced in a modern version), you're at serious risk of being branded a silly Luddite. Personally, the last printer I bought that didn't have a USB port was the one I got in 1999. Next one was combo (USB+parallel) and thereafter, they're USB-only. Last serial device was an old Palm cradle (that's $30 to replace by the way, but my current Palm came with USB only.
iTunes? I've got Winamp. It's free.
I've got iTunes. It's free too. And it's better--it does everything the paid version of Winamp does (in terms of audio; QT does the video stuff), for free.
Silly troll.
Most peolpe don't want and/or need all of that stuff, and certainly don't want to pay for it.
Correction: Most people want or need most of that stuff, and obviously many are willing to pay for it. Some people want actual modern technology on their laptops! And the only thing Wintel laptops can offer that is cheaper than a similarly-outfitted PowerBook or iBook is CELERON! Sorry, that's unacceptable to me. Celeron is just plain pathetic and I will never own a Celeron-based machine of any kind. Celeron laptops are for people who want to say they have a laptop and who just want to get on the IntarWeb and run Kazaa in their dorm rooms. Real computers are a totally different market.
Perhaps my entire comment can just be summed up in a revision of yours:
I disagree completely. I have no need for a parallel or serial port. I need DVD authoring. A portable video-editing studio without DVD recording is useless to me. No FireWire or Bluetooth? That means I'd have to throw out half of my hardware and buy cheap, crappy stuff. Winamp Pro? I've got iTunes. It's free. The Apple laptops are full of actual modern technology that you (and obviously, not many others) are afraid to adopt. Cheap PC laptops are designed for those with a SERIOUS budget problem, and no real demands for performance. They have their niche, but that's all it is: a niche. Many people want or need a lot of those features, and clearly 711,000 people were willing to pay for it last quarter alone.
I don't suppose the screens on the 12" model have been updated? I remember hearing that the screen model used on the 12" Powerbook and the 12"/14" iBooks was a much lower quality screen than the 15"/17" powerbooks.
...and that's all there is to it.
Oh goody, the standard Mac fanboy qouting the over priced and under powered Dell compuers.
Your response here, based on the normal Slashbot Steve Jobs Fanboy way of doing things which is something along the lines of, "Pick a PC company that screws the customer for the most, pick the lower end components while making sure they are under the mac's specs. If a company dose have a exactly compairable low priced or better system either ingore it, or argue about how much better the Mac is because it is made by Apple, and it can not be compaired to anything. Also if anyone mentions that there is no competition for Macs, ignore it and continue qouting a crappy Dell system."
(WARNING: this post has nothing to do with wanting a G5 Powerbook or complaining how a year and a half ago I bought a Powerbook and now Apple has upgraded them *again* and I am so mad. Thus, most people will want to skip this post.)
What do you think about the standard Airport Extreme (80211.g) and Bluetooth in the Powerbooks?
I think this is the most overlooked "new" item. Just as USB and Firewire were first standards on the Mac, is Apple again ushering in a new era of wireless connectivity by making these items standard?
When Intel released the Centreno and those wireless ads that went with them, I never heard it having much response. Is there a high demand for these wireless standards?
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
so the /. editors froth at the mouth whenever apple makes a move. Try posting something that will generate lively discussion
With 529 comments, this discussion only has more comments than 12 of the latest 15 front page stories as of this moment. Yeah, slashdot def needs to find something else that will generate more lively discussion.
Little Bricklets
What the fuck are you smoking... Sorry but UltraSPARCs compete in every way shape and form with top end PC's in physical raw compute power.
Check your sources.
I don't need an Apple mp3 player, there are lots of the other high quailty MP3 players out there that cost less then Apple's player.
Because they know their user base doesn't care about wasting their money, and apple loves to exploit them.
No 30 day return policy?
If so, do as the other reply suggests, haggle. You might need to mention that you are seriously considering returning it.
Perhaps you would be happier with a "speed nudge" or a "speed increase?" :-)
I agree. Speedbump is a bas term for it.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
They did. Not as much as you'd like, but the PB17 now starts at $2799 instead of $2999.
Ha! Buy mine instead! Only, er, three weeks old...
Grr.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
With regard to laptops... Apple's laptops alwaays come out less expensive.
Only stupid Apple Fan Boys (tm) would speak in such absolute terms...
PowerBook G4
800Mhz FSB
15" screen
ATI 9700 128Mb video
1GB RAM
US$3,049
Sager NP8790
P4 3.4Mhz/800Mhz FSB
17" screen
ATI 9700 256Mb video
1GB RAM
US $2,972
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
(a) HP dual 3.2-GHz processors, 2GB of RAM
(b) Apple dual 2-GHz G5 processors, 2GB of RAM
is provided below:
However, unless you plan to do extensive number crunching (a practice I indulge in from time to time:), throw all benchmark out of the window. You the user, is the "slowest" part of computer usage. Any thing that speeds that part up should be given top consideration. And as far as the overall user experience on a computer is concerned, and there is nothing that comes even close to OS X.
cheers- raga
Actually, it has been some time since the laptops got any sort of speedbump. There have been wild rumors of poor chip availibility, cooling problems, power consumption problems, alien death rays, etc. I think it is newsworthy that apple has managed to overcome these obsticles.
OTOH, only the most rabid mac geeks care.
That is, except for Intel's latest round of P4 3.4's...
umm not that little sony has about 5-6 hours battery life, the ibook has about 5 hours battery life, the centrino is a nice chip..
Wow - people sure do love to sling around the term "monopoly" without a full realization of what the word means....
Apple really isn't a monopoly in the true sense of the word, because that would imply you couldn't buy a computer or software for it without going through them to do so. Obviously, that's not the case.
With your logic, Ford is a monopoly too - because there's no other dealer I can buy a Mustang or an Explorer from.
Aren't speed bumps the things they use to slow cars down?
Speed bumps don't slow cars down. Brakes do.
Heh, gotta love the informative mod.
Random is the New Order.
Ok, here's a real world benchmark for ya:
I run Warcraft III on both my older PC and my almost new iBook G4.
It runs sluggish and slow on the iBook, I have to disable a lot of features to make it just bareable to play. On the PC it runs smoothly, with all features turned on.
I don't know if the PowerPC is superior to x86 processors by design, but it sure does look like Blizzard dosen't take any advantage of that.
PC Specs:
800MHz Intel Celeron(100MHz FSB, 128Kb 2rd cache)
BX Chipset on ASUS P2B-F Motherboard
512MB 100MHz SDRAM
Nvidia GeForce 2 GTS 32MB (2xAGP)
Windows 2000 Professional SP4
iBook Specs:
800MHz G4 PowerPC(133MHz FSB, 256Kb 2rd cache)
640MB 266MHz PC2100 RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 32MB
OS X 10.3.3
-H
I bought a PowerMac 800MHz G4 for around $1500, I used it for about 6 - 8 months and sold it for $1000 in 3 hours on ebay with Buyit now. Try to do that with PC hardware.. good luck!
There is no tech support for underwear. Every call from a customer cost you money. The cheaper the computer the stupider the questions.
Graphics are nominally better, but the nVidia 5200 isn't so hot, is it?
s /a ti_vs_nvidia/9200_geforcefx/001.htm
Yes, the nVidia 5200 sucks. In fact, here is a comparison of the Radeon Mobility 9200 (which the iBook uses) and the nVidia GeForce FX5200 Go (which the PB 12" uses).
http://www.gamers-depot.com/hardware/video_card
Why would Apple use the crappy nVidia graphics hardware in the pro line? Is it better at 2D stuff (can anyone comment on that)? Is it that the iBook is targeted more at people who might play basic 3D games?
They will.
Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need, not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
Apple provides a technical note on how to remap the keyboard, but provides no solution to the hardware problems caused by the design of the ADB keyboard. This tech note helps foreign language users, but does nothing for the CapsLock/Ctrl problem.
Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 13 years. I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)
Apple has now lost three opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.
Actually, this is not quite true. For example, MCE offers internal optical drive upgrades for PowerBooks and iBooks.
Processor upgrades are harder to come by, but Other World Computing offers many different accelerator choices for Macs. I believe the most recent PowerBook you can accelerate is the G3 Pismo which originally came in 400MHz and 500MHz varieties. For $279, you can upgrade it to a 500MHz G4 chip - not too bad. If you happen to have a PowerBook (not an iBook), then you can also upgrade to things like USB 2 via the PCMCIA card slot. So, yes, they're not as upgradeable as desktops. But I'll bet they're more upgradeable than PC laptops - never seen an accelerator for one of those!
"A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving." -Lao Tzu
"Here is a link [popularmechanics.com] which I bookmarked from an Apple thread on /. a few days ago. PopMech had trouble running the benchmarks that Apple used to promote the G5, but they did do some of their own. Their conclusions, based on
(a) HP dual 3.2-GHz processors, 2GB of RAM
(b) Apple dual 2-GHz G5 processors, 2GB of RAM
is provided below:
Not being able to run SPEC tests, we turned to BLAST and HMMer, which are DNA and genome-sequence matching tests, as well as to Bibble, a batch image-processing application. The problem is that these tests do not run on Windows XP. In frustration, after running the SPEC tests on the HP xw6000 workstation, we installed Linux on the HP, which allowed us to run the new tests. And we were surprised. The G5 was 59.5 percent faster than the HP at processing 85 high-resolution color photographs totaling 684.6MB of data. In the HMMer tests (61.3MB of data), Apple was 67 percent faster than the PC and under BLAST (32.8MB), Apple was 85.9 percent faster. These results are in line with those now published on Apple's Web site.
However, unless you plan to do extensive number crunching (a practice I indulge in from time to time:), throw all benchmark out of the window. You the user, is the "slowest" part of computer usage. Any thing that speeds that part up should be given top consideration. And as far as the overall user experience on a computer is concerned, and there is nothing that comes even close to OS X."
Take the giant intel dick out of your mouth for a second and check the facts. How does this shit taste mudface.
Appple is rediculous, if they ixpect us to by a G4 laptop. I would have bot a G5, but now I'm getting a Dell, dude. The G4 tottally suxx!
Also, in protest of Appple's fasist policy of not sending me $100 every month, I'm chopping off my thumb!
Take that, CRAPPLE!
Granted, the Ctrl key is located in a pretty sucky place on the Powerbook, but I've yet to see a laptop keyboard that didn't suck in some way or another. However, I think the real culprit here is the computer industry in general, which for no reason anyone can fathom insists on locating Caps Lock, the least used and most annoying key ever, in a very prominent position on the keyboard instead of where it belongs--in a distant city on another continent.
My favorite possession of all time. I love it more than words can describe and do everything with it. From development in XCode, to Dreamweaver, to manage my music, surf via export extreme at no performance hit, to create music and now (with Final Cut Pro) edit video...check email, play games, and the list goes on and on. It is sexy and it is a work of art, both functional and aesthetic. I have a hard time believing that I could love a car this much...
-Tru
As much as I love anything praising Apple, that is a G5 Benchmark which probably won't help anyone looking for how well G4 machines compare.
Rather surprised that nobody's pointed out that the 9700 Mobility is just a speed-bumped 9600 Mobility. It only has four pixel pipelines to work with and is still limited by the 128-bit memory bus. There's no eight-pipe 256-bit bus width card here, folks....
You are not the UNIX market! Apple is doing fine without you! They always will! Show some intelligence: LET IT GO!
I would not consider 3 hours good. It's like this: the reason you want a laptop is that it's mobile, right? So you can take it to work or classes, and you can travel with it. Now, with 2 to 3 hours of battery life, you can take it along, but not actually use it. With the 5 to 6 hours that current Apple notebooks give you, you can definitely use it while traveling, and you can survive a few classes. For a full working day, you'll need an outlet or a second battery, but it's obviously a lot better than most PC laptops.
:-)
The battery lives mentioned above are advertised battery lives, but it is my experience that Apple machines really live up to 5 hours of normal use, and even survive watching a full DVD. My experience with PC laptops is limited to very few models, running Linux instead of the Windows that shipped with them, but I found that they come close to the advertised life only whe new and with very aggressive power management settings. Generally, I think you should assume somewhere around an hour and a half of actual use, and get new batteries every year, or even 6 months.
Since I travel a lot and also like to use my computer wherever I go, Apple is almost the only choice for me. I know Dell has made laptops with 8 hour batteries, and there was an IBM Thinkpad with a truly impressive 11 hours of battery life, but those are exceptional and expensive. And they don't run OS X.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I just bought a Powerbook 17" a week-and-a-half ago and love it.
Before buying I went to an Apple Store and tested the 1GHz 15" against my Thinkpad T40p and the Powerbook outperformed it. Except on UT2004. I just looked at the things I do daily, and I'm not interested in film editing or Photoshop filters.
For more have a look at my switch
Most of all, Apple's are just another nice computer, just like from Toshiba, IBM, Sony.... buy what you like and enjoy!
NetNewsWire into Yojimbo!
From dictionary.com:
monopoly 1. Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service
Apple is a monopoly. It uses its exclusive control as the sole manufacturer of OSX compatible hardware to sell products at an inflated price. It uses the same power to design the hardware in such a way that customers must return to Apple for upgrades.
For example, I want to upgrade my iBook to 802.11g, but I can't because of design decisions (flaws?) in the original Airport card specifications. It is a standard PC Card slot that has been crippled to ensure that only Apple's Airport card can be used.
What can the purpose of that be other than to charge customers an inflated price, still almost $80, for aging technology? I don't believe this but, if Apple is NOT a monopoly then these limitations suggest that Apple engineers are incompetent.
Why does Apple never drop the price of current hardware instead?
they do
Like anyone can even know that
From one AC to another:
Checked a mirror lately and not screamed in horror? I find Twirlip's posts entertaining and helpful which makes you a liar. I know I've seen you on the road tailgating, cutting across six lanes without a signal and flipping people off. Try decaf.
The 15 and 17 inch PowerBooks have the slots:
One PC Card/CardBus slot supporting one Type I or Type II card (15-inch and 17-inch models)
(near the bottom of the page, on the left, under "Expansion")
You are absolutely right. Companies should be forced to tell customers exactly what products they'll be coming out with for an indefinate time period. Full disclosure for everything that doesn't yet exist!
I'm going to buy a new PowerBook tomorrow.. 12" with a SuperDrive... knowing full well that *possibly*... *maybe*.... there may one day be a better product out there replacing it.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I should really clarify here. I'm not knocking Celeron machines and older Pentium/clones like yours for uses like that...I found a discarded Compaq Celeron-500-based machine in a "toaster" formfactor in my basement...and it is an awesome server!
Right now I'm looking into getting an old, old laptop with AC adapter for use as a server because they're quiet and i can hide it in the bottom drawer of my dresser and have a mailserver without leaving on that wind-tunnel of a PC (my Athlon box) all night, etc.
I think everything can be put to use, as you clearly appreciate too.
Dear Mac user:
There is a post on Slashdot that urges laptop buyers to pick a laptop that is appropriate for their needs, instead of encouraging people to stuff the laptop full of the exact set of features that come in a mac laptop.
Please mod it down at your earliest convenience. Stevie needs our help.
Love,
David K Every
All things being equal, or even somewhat unequal, we'd rather drive Macs than WinPCs. We think they are a better value, we think they are a better machine, we think they look better than even most case mods and we think they run the superior OS. It will take pretty damn earthshaking evidence to the contrary to change my mind. It does what I want to do better than a WinPC and I like it so much better. Stop arguing with us.
Yeah, I guess I'm funny like that.
I wish a computer from the future would fall out of a time warp or something.
Just limit your app usage to stuff made 10 years ago...
However, I think the real culprit here is the computer industry in general, which for no reason anyone can fathom insists on locating Caps Lock, the least used and most annoying key ever, in a very prominent position on the keyboard instead of where it belongs--in a distant city on another continent. ACTUALLY, I USE THE CAPS LOCK EVERY DAY WHEN I WRITE EMAILS AND POST MESSAGES. I FIND PEOPLE PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU SAY WHEN IT READS LIKE YOU'RE SHOUTING.
Thanks for proving my point. The ass I wear on my head is actually quite attractive. As for begging, there are beggars in major cities known for making five figure annual incomes tax-free. Good luck with your new boyfriend in prison.
Apple computers don't constitute their own commodity or service. They are a brand not an industry.
Yes, Macs *do* have "modern" games available to them. But I keep my PC around because I play older games, more often. Looking around, I have:
Wolfenstein: Enemy territory
Grand Theft Auto (the first one,DOS)
Quake 3 demo (which I've had problems with, on the mac)
UT2k4 demo
Meteor 1.2
Desert strike(DOS)
Deus Ex
Cannon fodder 1 & 2
In boxes around me, I have:
Descent 1
Myst
Riven
Half-life
Fighter Duel(DOS)
MOH:AA
How many of those games are out for OSX? Some, to be sure. But the vast majority..not. My PC lets me play old, fun dos games. Macs don't. What could I do on a mac, that my PC doesn't let me do?
Stability, you say? My (new,homebuilt) windows XP pro PC has "soft crashed" twice in the 3 months i've had it.
When I want to experiment with 'nix, I fire up 'nix box, over to my right.
And thats all.
"The most looniest, zaniest, spontaneous, sporadic Impulsive thinker, compulsive drinker, addict"
You've taken a valid problem that only affects a very small number of users, and blown it way out of proportion.
>Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
It's a fairly safe argument that current Apple laptops are the among the most usable laptops ever made. Many, many articles have been written and awards given praising their excellent usability and design. They were specifically designed to run Apple's own Unix which ships preinstalled.
As far as I know there are no non-Unix operating systems that will run on directly on the hardware of current Apple laptops. (I'm lumping Linux in with Unix here.) I'm not 100% sure that somebody hasn't gotten AmigaOS or Be or something like that to run on current PB or iBook hardware, but even if they have, I doubt that there is even a single user in the whole wide world who uses anything like that as the primary OS on a current Apple laptop. It would be shocking indeed to find that they sold 157,000 PowerBooks and 217,000 iBooks last quarter if your claim that they were "effectively unusable" for all of their users were true.
>Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part.
No, it's a misunderstanding on your part, apparently reinforced by a single Apple employee who is either spreading incorrect information or whom you misunderstood. For Apple to ignore all Unix users would be to ignore all of their Mac OS X users.
>Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 13 years.
Well, they must have ignored their A/UX users (I believe A/UX was discontinued about 9 years ago, which was when the AWS 95 was discontinued), and their Apple Network Server users as well (the ANS line was discontinued just over 7 years ago, and ran AIX), if your figure of 13 years is to be believed. I do agree that Apple is probably not paying a lot of attention to A/UX and Apple Network Server users lately.
In fact, all that your "more than 13 years" link shows is that there was somebody 13 years ago who wanted to remap his Mac's keyboard and didn't know how.
You make a huge leap in assuming that the majority of Unix users want their Ctrl and Caps Lock keys in the same place that you do, and that Apple's failure to reimplement their keyboard hardware interface proves that they are ignoring Unix users as a whole. The fact is, uControl fills this need for Mac OS X users.
If you have a genuine need to run OpenBSD or NetBSD on an Apple laptop, you could run it inside Bochs/WinTel or VirtualPC. I don't know of any good non-emulator virtualization layers for Mac OS X that are comparable to VMWare on x86; that is, ones that can run PPC on PPC without the overhead of emulation. (Panther has a Linux API compatibility layer, so it may be possible to compile User Mode Linux (which has been ported to PPC) so that you could run LinuxPPC on top of Mac OS X without emulation, but that doesn't get you OpenBSD or NetBSD.) However, since Mac OS X is Unix already, there isn't much need to run another PPC *nix on top of it, so I can understand why there don't seem to be any projects that provide this functionality. Likewise, I can see how Apple could be aware of the requirement that some users prefer that keyboard layout tweak, and could be satisfied with uControl + Mac OS X as the solution for that requirement. I'd like to hear what an Apple systems engineer or Apple Store "Genius" would have to say in response to your demand ("I want to run OpenBSD/NetBSD on one of your laptops instead of Mac OS X, so you have to re-engineer your keyboards to not use ADB anymore"). It would be pretty funny watching them try to be diplomatic in the face of such a request.
>How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X prog