Apple Announces New iBooks

vasqzr writes "Apple has announced new iBooks. New features include G4 processor up to 1.33GHz, built-in wireless networking capability, a DVD-burning SuperDrive and up to 1.25GB of memory. G5 PowerBooks can only be closer...They also show a single processor 1.8GHz G5 PowerMac desktop for $1,499"

Comments

Price Matching now?

[ack154]

I'm not sure if I'm the only one to notice this now, but I haven't seen it before. While I was browsing the store, I saw an Apple Price Matching ad... Apple is now going to Price Match all resellers on hardware and software.

Price Match details and FAQ

I usually only see the resellers selling for $3 or $4 less on most products though, so not sure how much this will help sales. Where Apple seems to maybe get bitten on this is when resellers are bundling printers and other items with big hardware purchases.

Re:Price Matching now?

[McKinney83]

Not for bundles.

From the price match faq:

"Bundled, used, refurbished, discontinued, demonstration or exhibit products, and products from other manufacturers are not eligible."

Re:Price Matching now?

[jxyama]

Price matching is usually for those who made the purchase right before an update like this. If you, for example, bought a stock 12" iBook three days ago for $1099 (now $999), Apple will match and give you $100 back or upgrade your machine to the newer one for free.

Re:Price Matching now?

[ack154]

Right... but it's not a price thing for that. People are buying from resellers BECAUSE OF the bundles. Not because of a lower price with bundles. So there is usually little price difference, it's just that resellers offer more with the purchase than Apple does.

Re:Price Matching now?

[FroBugg]

From the page linked by the earlier post: All competitive offers must be presented before you place your order with Apple.

So if you're like my brother and bought an iBook two weeks ago, you're screwed.

Re:Price Matching now?

[ack154]

This is different. As the person above me said - this is like a Office Depot sort of price matching. Like... you find a lower price and we'll match it before you buy. The model line changes are different beasts altogether.

Re:Price Matching now?

[jxyama]

my mistake. you (and the original post) are right.

but two weeks.. yeah, he may be out of luck. the unofficial cut off for apple's upgrade matching seems to be 10 business days, so it might be worth a try for him to ask.

Re:Price Matching now?

[Tim Macinta]

I usually only see the resellers selling for $3 or $4 less on most products though, so not sure how much this will help sales.

I bought an iBook from Small Dog Electronics a few months ago for several hundred dollars less than everywhere else was charging. I'm not sure why they were the only ones that seemed to be substantially cheaper than buying direct from Apple, but I was quite happy with the purchase.

Re:Price Matching now?

[vasqzr]

Do you know what you get from Dell at the $999 price point? (Inspiron 1150 or 1100)

90-day warranty on some models.
7lb, 2-inch thick 'portable'
1.5 hour battery life!
2.2 GHz Celeron processor (1100), or a 2.8GHz P4 (115)
No CD-RW (1150)
Integrated graphics adapter

Let me tell you what you don't get:

BlueTooth
Firewire
AirPort wireless networking
S-VIDEO/Composite output

You can't even get a 12.1" notebook from Dell unless you pay $1,159

Re:Price Matching now?

[fupeg]

Price matching is a classic price fixing mechanism. It is often done by stores like Best Buy. They make some ad like "Get a Blah Blah Blah for only $999, and if you find it cheaper anywhere, we'll match the price!" That tells all your compettitors what you are chargin and lets them know that there is no point in charging less because you will just match. As a reslt, everyone charges The Same High Price.

Re:Price Matching now?

[HeghmoH]

The hilarious thing is that Apple absolutely forbids its resellers from selling below the price they set. That's why you never see any resellers with big sales. They all have prices that are at most $3 or $4 less than Apple's official prices, because that's as low as Apple will allow them to go. So this "price matching" thing is just a feel-good thing that won't actually be used for anything.

Re:Price Matching now?

[ack154]

We're not talking Dell stuff here though... most of us realize the price is good here...

But this is talking about businesses authorized to resell Apple branded products.

Re:Price Matching now?

[Sharth]

you don't get bluetooth or airport with the ibook at $999 You will also ALWAYS get an integrated graphics adapter on a laptop. Where the hell else would they put it? Actually... damn. the airport is built in now. Just add 50 Dollars (half the education discount) and you've got bluetooth. I'd toss it for the ram or the hard-drive though.

Re:Price Matching now?

[vasqzr]

We're not talking Dell stuff here though... most of us realize the price is good here...

But this is talking about businesses authorized to resell Apple branded products.

I actually replied to the wrong post.

When I ordered my Powerbook, I didn't take the bunde deal the PC Mall offered. Well, actually I did take the 'double the memory to 512MB', where you really have to pay $29.99 for the installation, but I didn't take the cheap notebook bag, $59 inkjet printer, or the useless software bundle. It was all rebate/shippng-related anyway...

Re:Price Matching now?

[Jesus_666]

Yup. I ordered an 12" iBook a few days ago. Now I got a mail from Apple saying that they've upgraded my order to the new iBook with "similar or better" features. Which means that in my case the 60 GB HDD magically grew by 20 GB and I still pay almost 200 Euros less.

Up until this point my experiance with ordering from Apple has been pleasant. Now I'm absolutely positive that buying a Mac was a good idea.

Re:Price Matching now?

[nolife]

I am not getting into a battle of who can find the best deal at the Dell web site but you must have worked really hard to find and paraphrase the worst deal you could possible find there as a comparision.

They have an 1150 (that you referenced) with a CDR/DVD combo (as you referenced) and a P4 2.8 and a 1 year warranty for $799 with free shipping.
** I am not trying to compare this laptop to the Apple in any way, just that your attempted comparision was not very good.

Re:Price Matching now?

[BasilBrush]

I don't know. It's a damn fine way of getting customers to tell Apple about resellers that are undercharging. ;-)

Re:Price Matching now?

[iocat]

For $799? Where? I foolishly promised to purchase my gf a laptop and so far a shitty dell looks like what she is getting. Although, frankly, since she is a light user, I am tempted to get her an iBook. Do they still have the ability to run classic OS9 things?

Re:Price Matching now?

[MacGod]

I'd like to see Apple do better with RAM pricing on their online store. I think part of the "Macs are more expensive" flak comes because Apple only includes 256MB RAM in their machines and triple-charges for RAM. When people compare prices to (for example) Dell, they add on another 256 or 512 RAM to match Dell's specs. If done through a third-party, this wouldn't be a problem. But because the comparison is done through the Apple Store, it makes the Macs look even more expensive than they really are.

Of course, even worse is that half the people buying Macs through the Apple Store probably don't know enough to buy their RAM elsewhere and end up getting ripped off, rather than going to DealRAM and finding the best price.

Re:Price Matching now?

[jht]

They don't forbid selling below a price - that's illegal. What they do, though, is set a "minimum advertised price" for the product, and withhold advertising and co-op fund support if you break it.

Which is why resellers advertise bundles at the listed MAP - it gets them around the requirement and still lets them undersell in a way that passes Apple's muster.

Re:Price Matching now?

[Samus]

I just checked out the site and found this message when browsing the iBook listings:

Small Dog Electronics is an Authorized Apple Reseller and Service Provider. Due to contract limitations imposed by Apple, sales of New Apple Products on the internet is limited to current customers of Small Dog Electronics. If you aren't a current customer with a user name & log-on password, please visit our Waitsfield, Vermont location.

So the only way I can buy a new iBook from them is to drive 8+ hours to Vermont and register? Apple is definitely not reseller friendly and only consumer friendly if you buy from them. I'd like to own some Apple hardware one day but I can never justify the premium I'd have to pay when on a limited budget.

Re:Price Matching now?

[NatasRevol]

Wow, I just flashed back to, what..., 1985? Huey Lewis era?

It's been 20 years. Let it go...or seek counseling!

Re:Price Matching now?

[nolife]

They don't forbid selling below a price - that's illegal.

Are you sure about that? I thought that was the whole point of being "Authorized" as a dealer, the head company can set the terms of what you sell and for how much in a contract. If you abide by the contract terms, you remain authorized and will recieve more products in the future. Some contracts even include terms that if you plan to go out of business, the company will buy back their products so you can not dump them off. Of course that opens a gray market for merchandise from unauthorized dealers that was initially bought from authorized dealers at reduced prices. Search for a price for a Denon reciever and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Re:Price Matching now?

[aristotle-dude]

What the hell is it with 750 dollar rebates? Something smells fishy to me. Why can't they offer lower prices without rebates?

I suspect those are lose leaders to hook you as a customer and with the hope that they can get you to buy an extended warranty.

Re:Price Matching now?

[Hillie]

Yep. OS9 comes with OS X Panther, and the classic environment allows you to run classic apps.

Re:Price Matching now?

[SmittyTheBold]

OS9 itself may not boot in a stand-alone fashion (I'm not sure about the remaining G4 machines, but the desktop G5s cannot boot OS9) but the Classic environment still functions extremely well as a compatibility environment if you want to run older Mac OS apps.

Re:Price Matching now?

[SmittyTheBold]

You will also ALWAYS get an integrated graphics adapter on a laptop.
Your two definitions of "integrated" got confused. He was saying it's not integrated into the chipset as part of the northbridge, as many x86 machines are. You know the ones, where they have video memory "shared" with system RAM. On the iBook, the Radeon is separate from the system chipset. It has its own memory, and hence its own bandwidth. This is a better solution from a performance point of view, though a bit more expensive to produce since it makes the motherboard bigger, and requires extra memory.

Re:Price Matching now?

[Hillie]

Apple has a lot of catching up to do? .. Dual 2.5ghz 64-bit G5, *dual* 1.25ghz FSB.. FSB!!! one for each CPU... PCI-X.. SMP that all apps can take advantage of (OS X)

and on PC you HAVE to run Windows or forgo running the apps you need to run.

That right there is enough to make it suck ass even if you have a 25ghz P4. ..not to mention that you can basically compile most any Unix sourcecode and have it work natively on the OS.

that kind of spans into a MS vs. Apple thing but it's inevitable when comparing PC's to Macs.

and ESPECIALLY you can't compare some piss poor brand-name PCs. They almost always use the cheapest components available. Of course, when talking about laptops all you can do is buy one already made.

Re:Price Matching now?

[coolgeek]

Actually, you get the Airport Extreme on all new iBooks, even the $999 model.

Re:Price Matching now?

[Z4rd0Z]

Yes, now you do get airport with the $999 ibook, though still not bluetooth. They're going to need to upgrade that powerbook if they want to make it worthwhile to buy one over the ibook now.

Re:Price Matching now?

[Erik Hollensbe]

AMD64 Laptop? I apologize, but does that thing still drain the battery dead when it's running on AC?

There are more important things than processor speed and/or processing power when using a laptop.

Re:Price Matching now?

[CoughDropAddict]

You should always check the Mac buyers guide before buying a Mac, if you don't want the product cycle to get the best of you. In the iBook section, you would have seen that it was almost certain a new iBook would be released soon.

Re:Price Matching now?

[Juanvaldes]

tell him to call apple up and ask. Can't hurt and you might get someone cool.

Re:Price Matching now?

[Erik Hollensbe]

Sadly enough, I find the problem with most unix geeks that "hate the mac" is not that they hate it, they just know jack squat about it and will never admit it.

That said, the stats you rattle off are subjective at best, FSB speed doesn't account for much if the proc can't fill it, and 2.5ghz doesn't mean squat (low or high) in the processor world. PCI-X is about the only constant you have on there, and that's just an interface standard, which amounts to, you guessed it, almost nothing without driver support.

Then again, I don't use my mac because of its speed. I have a G4 1.25 Powerbook and it does more than what I need. When I need beef for practical projects I have servers, and when I need beef for games I have a nice x86 wintendo.

Re:Price Matching now?

[jht]

Absolutely (see the AC post for the legal part). The company that authorizes the dealer can give themselves the right to set MAP through a contract, but that's contract law basics. There's no criminal penalties involved in breaking the MAP rule - just the possible loss of authorization and (more likely) the loss of marketing funds.

If Apple said "thou shalt not sell the product for less than $$$", that would be illegal price fixing on their part - cases like this pop up in the news periodically. That's also one reason why prices in ads are sometimes left out and instead hyped as "TOO LOW TO MENTION!", because the actual price is below MAP.

(of course, usually they do that in ads just to hype the ad)

Ironically, gross margins on Apple products are so low for resellers that there's virtually no room to squeeze prices anyways on most of them.

And just to be straight-up on this: I don't sell any products in my business, let alone Apple ones. However, I am an ACN (Apple Consultants Network) member, and I do make a decent part of my living from supporting them.

Re:Price Matching now?

[Erik Hollensbe]

When I needed RAM, I first went to Cruical, but the RAM they gave me was crap. They took it back, but I wasn't going to wait for a cross-ship. I went down to Circuit City that day, nabbed a stick for about half the price of Crucial's, which was significantly less than Apple's.

That RAM is in this system and still works like a charm. The ram in Powerbooks at least is standard SDRAM. (although the small, Laptop version that I can't remember the acro for, but it's the same for most modern laptops)

Re:Price Matching now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely get her the $999 iBook (used to be $1099, and it just got faster and cheaper). Comes with everything most people need. Buy more RAM from a third party if you have the budget; 256MB standard is ok but could be better, and Apple factory-installed RAM is a little expensive.

Plus you will spend SO much less time fixing stuff, sending it back to Dell, etc. -- if you can find the extra $200 now it will pay you back tenfold in the future. Or find one on eBay that's a few months old.

The OS 9 emulation works well. As others said, the machine won't boot in OS 9; instead OS 9 runs as an OS X application/emulator. But she probably won't need it unless for a very specific app that has no X equivalent.

Re:Price Matching now?

[javaxman]

So the only way I can buy a new iBook from them is to drive 8+ hours to Vermont and register?

Actually, you can buy a refurbished or used or non-Apple product from Small Dog. Buy a third-party mouse or something. Then you'll be a customer. Then order whatever the heck you want. So, no driving to Vermont is not the only way.

In general, it's true that, excepting 'closeout special' offers and refurbs, you'll not get much of a better deal from Small Dog than Apple directly, excluding perhaps sales tax. That fact aside, Small Dog and several other small Apple Resellers do quite well by purchasing and selling the discontinued or soon-to-be discontinued stuff Apple has sitting around in warehouses, though that doesn't tend to happen often, thus 'small' businesses. And you can often get that stuff from them at a pretty decent discount.

And yea, I'm a happy Small Dog customer, glad to recommend these guys. Getting in on their offers is definitely worth buying something small and random before ordering new computer systems. Actually, I bought a refubished iMac... which was very like new, except several hundred dollars cheaper. With full warranty.

Yea, so Apple would rather have your business directly... I'm no fan of their reseller practices, but it's easy to work around and a hell of a lot more competition-friendly than Microsoft's ( or Dell's ) practices...

Re:Price Matching now?

[dtfinch]

They hope you forget to send in the rebate form, while still making the buy decision based on the after-rebate price, and have the money to pay the before-rebate price. And they have lots of restrictions to disqualify people, like only sending rebates to certain types of mailing addresses, requiring the rebate to be sent in by a certain date, and only sending one rebate per address for all time. Plus they can send you targetted advertisements and such.

Imagine buying two of those only to realize you can't get a rebate on the 2nd one, or you're otherwise disqualified from getting rebates altogether. Works great for them.

Re:Price Matching now?

[kalel666]

My understanding about this is that Apple keeps the RAM quantity intentionally low as an incentive for its resellers. In other words, because resellers can't compete on price for systems, they can make money through add ons like RAM. Which would also explain, perhaps, why RAM from Apple is so expensive.

Re:Price Matching now?

[kavi_3]

Keep in mind, those prices are including a rebate. Before the rebate the price is closer to $1000.

I recently went through the process of buying a laptop and found that Apple had very competively priced machines for what I wanted to do. I was in the $1500 price range and with an enducational discount my 12" PB was nicely priced against comparable systems from Dell, Toshiba and Sony.

Re:Price Matching now?

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

They have an 1150 (that you referenced) with a CDR/DVD combo (as you referenced) and a P4 2.8 and a 1 year warranty for $799 with free shipping.

I know you weren't trying to do a direct comparison, but the Dell you referenced is not really an equivalent machine:

$799 is only after a $150 mail-in rebate, which means you pay tax on the full $949 and your rebate check will take months to arrive.

Add $59 for the 802.11a/g wireless card to bring it into parity with the iBook - can you possibly imagine a portable computer without WiFi these days?

Add $39 for an upgrade to a normal battery - the one they bundle with the cheapo model is intentionally crippled.

And you're still stuck with integrated video, instead of what Apple gives you: ATI's Mobility Radeon 9200 graphics with 32MB of dedicated DDR memory and AGP 4X support! Not bad for a sub-$1000 laptop.

Finally, also note that Apple is selling the discontinued models for as low as $700, while supplies last.

Re:Price Matching now?

[Sancho]

On the other hand, I was pretty lucky. I had placed an order the week before and hadn't received the machine yet...they cancelled my order, reduced the price, and gave me two upgrades (mhz and hard drive) in the new order. Very spiffy. I like Apple already.

Re:Price Matching now?

[HeghmoH]

Ironically, gross margins on Apple products are so low for resellers that there's virtually no room to squeeze prices anyways on most of them.

It's actually not that ironic. As I understand it, Apple has this policy as a way to protect their independent dealers. When margins are already so thin, the independents would be quickly driven out of business by larger resellers, as the resellers would be able to cut their margins closer to the bone. Since the margins are so thin to begin with, the smaller dealers wouldn't survive.

Re:Price Matching now?

[mrchaotica]

G4s can run OS9, but Apple doesn't ship a copy of it with their new computers (and hasn't been for some time now -- my iBook from (now) 2 generations ago doesn't have it, and I bought it in March).

Re:Price Matching now?

[Spyritus]

Apple do SHIP Classic (its an installer on one of the Disks that came with the computer) but they don't INSTALL it anymore.

Re:Price Matching now?

[mrchaotica]

I just checked to make sure -- I did not get a copy of OS9 with my iBook. I have Software Restore discs 1 through 5, Mac OS X Install discs 1 through 3, Apple Hardware Test, World Book 2003, iLife '04 Install CD, and iLife '04 Install DVD.

My software restore CDs do say "Classic support," but that's just Classic environment, not OS9.

Oddly enough, I could have sworn I had a seperate Developer Tools CD, but I can't seem to find it -- I guess I must have downloaded it off the Internet.

Re:Price Matching now?

[dwightk]

Does that include the sales tax discrepancy? I'd never buy from the Apple store, because the sales tax adds 82.50 per thousand bucks in Texas, which is way more than shipping adds from the resellers, and you can usually get shipping knocked off.

Re:Price Matching now?

[aristotle-dude]

Ok, people that think it's a good deal should go for it if it's what they are looking for and it meets their needs.

You have to wonder though what quality this stuff is if they can afford to give such large rebates. If they are selling it at a lose, they are putting themselves in a precarious position if their higher margin goods/services start loosing marketshare. If they are not losing money on it, then they have been overcharging for this crap in it really is crappy quality (buyer beware).

Just a thought, no extended warranty can compensate for: lost work in progress, lost jobs/clients and lost time.

If Dell is not making money on these consumer sales, then you have to wonder what would happen to them if say Apple took away some of their profitable corporate niche marketshare. Would they end up in trouble like Gateway did?

Re:Price Matching now?

[danielsfca2]

When I worked at Apple, I got a sweet deal (25% off) my new 12" PowerBook. But instead of ordering it with plenty of RAM, I just ordered the minimum (256MB) then surfed over to Kingston and got an extra 512MB bringing it to 768MB for like $95, versus probably $200 (retail) to have it pre-installed.

The punch line here is that Kingston gives Apple employees a nice discount on RAM, so all the smart Apple employees always buy their RAM at Kingston.

So when my PB arrived, before I even turned it on, I just opened it up and dropped in the extra SO-DIMM. Made me happy to have lots of RAM and to know I got a good deal.

Holy tangent, Batman... sorry.

Re:Price Matching now?

[SmittyTheBold]

After installing Classic Support, can you choose to boot it stand-alone in the Startup Disk control panel?

Re:Price Matching now?

[mrchaotica]

Nope. I've got "Mac OS X, 10.3.5 on Macintosh HD" and "Network Startup" only.

Re:Price Matching now?

[palad1]

Here's a tip for you:

- Find a student in your entourage whom you can trust.
- Create an ADC student account for this person.
- Buy him/her an ADC Student select membership (99$).
- Wait a few days till the ADC select membership is confirmed by Apple.
- Note down the ADC membership ID
- Call the AppleStore, order your iBook as part of the 'ADC Student Membership', and make sure you do mention that this is a switch machine for a student.
- Enjoy your 20% rebate ;)

Be warned though this is a once in a lifetime kind of offer, ie. you can only make one purchase with this ADC account.

This is how my girlfriend bought 'her' maxed-out PowerBook ;)

AppleStore reps. are usually very nice people, at least in France, so don(t be affraid if there's areal human being on the other end of the line, they are very helpful :)

Re:Price Matching now?

[TheRaven64]

I was (unreliably, since it was in reply to a Slashdot post) informed that Mac-On-Linux (MOL) is likely to support OS X as a host environment soon. MOL is a virtualisation environment for PowerPC based machines, similar to VMWare on x86 systems. This will allow you to boot MacOS classic (or Linux or whatever) in a virtual environment inside OS X which, for most things, is a better solution than dual booting.

Re:Price Matching now?

[Spyritus]

Yes, that's what I said. they ship classic. This is NOT Mac OS 9 as the computers can't be run from it, but it IS all that is necessary for running Mac OS 9 applications inside the classic compatibility environment.

To explain this, the computers are not able to boot Mac OS 9, so there is a cut down version of the Mac OS 9 System folder installed that has all that is necessary for classic support, but a lot removed from it (things that are needed when using as an OS, but not when using for a compatibility environment).

Re:Price Matching now?

[mrchaotica]

here's a more reliable source:

(from http://www.maconlinux.org/news.html):

Arch separation (yes... mol will soon run under OS X)

Re:Price Matching now?

[duck_oil]

OS 9 will NOT boot on ANY new hardware. Apple continued to sell the 1.25 GHz G4 Tower after the introduction of the Power Mac G5 for those who needed to boot OS 9, but they've discontinued it.

Re:Price Matching now?

[duck_oil]

Once more point. As far as iBooks booting OS 9 goes, the previous G3 iBook models were the last machines Apple sold (except from the aforementioned G4 tower) to boot OS 9. It can't be done anymore. Apple hasn't crippled new hardware to stop you, they just stopped updating OS 9 except to make improvements in the Classic environment.

Re:Price Matching now?

[SmittyTheBold]

I'm not sure why it'd be required, though, because All Macs that run OS X can also run the Classic Environment inside it. I suppose for a few fringe compatibility isasues it'd be a blessing, but those are relatively few and far between.

Re:Price Matching now?

[Have Blue]

Click the giant SAVE in the Apple Store's right sidebar to go to the special deals area.

Re:Price Matching now?

[TheRaven64]

I believe Quark Express still doesn't run in the classic environment. I primarily use classic for playing old games, and it would be nice to be able to run some of the ones that require 256 colours and/or 640x480 without having to set my OS X display that low.

Re:Price Matching now?

[iocat]

Merci, Alas my entourage hasn't included students in several years...

Re:Price Matching now?

[Moofie]

Repeat after me:

Mail in rebates are a scam.

Mail in rebates are a scam.

Mail in rebates are a scam.

It's never not true.

Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[daveschroeder]

Apple has also introduced a new Xserve RAID, with storage up to 5.6TB with throughput up to 380MBps at a cost of just over US$2/GB. Apple also expanded the Xserve RAID compatibility certifications. See the press releases for more information.

Also, with the new 1.2GHz iBook with 256MB RAM, 30GB drive, and 802.11g wireless coming in at $899 (education), and the eMacs and iMac G5s coming in at $599 and $1099 (education), respectively, I fail to see how people continue to say Macs are too expensive. Even Walt Mossberg notes "If you tried to match the specs of the base iMac G5 in a traditional Dell tower, you'd also pay more. A Dell Dimension 4600, with the best processor, Windows XP Pro, the best 17-inch flat-panel monitor, a CD recorder and the same graphics card, costs $7 more than the 17-inch iMac. And it's much bulkier and uglier."

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Kogase]

Maybe because not everyone can get educational discounts?

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Rev Wally]

costs $7 more than the 17-inch iMac.

$7 is worth the increased upgradability, to me.

And it's much bulkier and uglier

Matter of oppinion.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[gl4ss]

imac g5's cpu is equivalent to 3.4ghz ht p4? yeah? surely?

education prices don't really compare.. with pc's 999$ laptops come with bigger hd and more memory.

of course one can't really compare attributes such as "bulky" and "ugly" or "pretty" and "shiny". but then again some people think ferraris are relatively cheap all things considered.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[gilesjuk]

Apple makes money on the hardware and so doesn't need to charge so much for the OS.

Plus they know they have to be competitive on pricing else they will never shift half as much as they do.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[the_2nd_coming]

umm, yeah, it is actually.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[DogDude]

First off, by using educational Apple prices vs. standard Dell retail, you're comparing, well, Apples and oranges

Secondly, from everything I've read, you in no way need to get the best Intel chip available to compare with Apple in terms of speed. Everything I've read says that you need Apple's top processor/memory packages to make OSX zippy.

Plus, I have no idea what you're looking at, but Dell's chapest PC is $469 with monitor, while Apple's seems to be $799 with that ridiculous monitor built in, plus with half as much RAM.

They're not even in the same ballpark!

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[mschaef]

"1.2GHz iBook ... coming in at $899 (education), ... eMacs and iMac G5s coming in at $599 and $1099 (education), ... I fail to see how people continue to say Macs are too expensive"

You'd have much more credibility if you quoted normal pricing rather than educational. I know education is (was?) a big part of Apple's market, but the vast majority of folks are paying the normal prices.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[DAldredge]

Doesn't apple charge 109 for each point upgrade and don't those upgrades come out every 12-14 months?

That is more than Windows costs.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[daveschroeder]

First off, by using educational Apple prices vs. standard Dell retail, you're comparing, well, Apples and oranges

I'm not. Walt Mossberg was comparing retail.

And as for the education prices, if you add $100, you get retail.

Secondly, from everything I've read, you in no way need to get the best Intel chip available to compare with Apple in terms of speed. Everything I've read says that you need Apple's top processor/memory packages to make OSX zippy.

Well, that's completely and totally wrong, since first, it's subjective, and second, you most certainly do not need the "top processor/memory packages" to make OS X "zippy".

Plus, I have no idea what you're looking at, but Dell's chapest PC is $469 with monitor, while Apple's seems to be $799 with that ridiculous monitor built in, plus with half as much RAM.

Take it up with Walt Mossberg. He's not even an "Apple guy". And someone will ALWAYS come up with some configuration of something else that's "cheaper" than some model of Mac. You can ALWAYS do this. Christ, if you think it's a rip off (it's not), don't buy one (and I imagine you won't).

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Herbmaster]

But I already have a perfectly good monitor.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Rude Turnip]

Depends upon what you call point upgrades. The naming scheme for OS X goes like this: major versions go 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 (with 10.4 coming out next year). Those you pay for because of major system updates (ie Expose, Quartz Extreme, etc.) Point upgrades are like 10.3.1, 10.3.2, etc. Those are free and are pulled in via the System Update app.

I've got OS X 10.3 and might pass on 10.4 because the new features coming up don't interest me. But going from 10.2 to 10.3 was a major step in terms of system performance and features. Our old Blue & White G3 400 actually got faster when we upgraded to 10.3.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Jord]

No one is forcing you to buy an Apple product. If you can find something cheaper somewhere else that does what you need it to do then do it. No one will tell you are wrong for doing it.

However, telling everyone that you think Mac's are a "very expensive doorstop" in a business setting just shows your lack of knowledge. I write code for a living and shudder at the thought of being forced back onto a Windows machine. Fortunately the companies I contract with don't care what operating system I use as long as the code works. There are many other people in my line of work who us Apple computers instead of Windows. Or perhaps we are all glorified graphic artists?

Apple computers have their place. I see people in every part of the corporate infrastructure using them day in and day out and very happy about it. Just because you don't feel they are a good deal does not make it so.

As for your price comparison, no one every said that Apple computers compete at the bottom of the price brackets. Never have, doubt they ever will. However, when you compare mid-range and high end systems, that is where the deal is to be made. Dell competes at the bottom, Apple competes at the top.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[cayenne8]

I've got an iBook G3 800Mhz laptop. My cousin who's much more of an mac expert than I...said I really wouldn't benefit from an upgrade to 10.3...that I couldn't use Quartz or something.

Can you elaborate what 10.3 has over 10.2 (which I have)? What did it do to speed up your laptop?

Thanx in advance...

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[twiddlingbits]

To buy the same Apple as my Compaq Laptop would cost $1799, I paid less than $1000 for my laptop on sale at a big box store. When you can get almost TWO Intel or AMD laptops for the price of one Apple thats the way most will spend the money. Now if you are after the coolness factor and will spend the extra then by all means buy the Apple. But if anything ever goes wrong, or you need upgrades, you better hope you have some money left as they are not cheap. The Apples used to be a bit more cutting edge technology but that isnt the case anymore.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[aristotle-dude]

That's because the "official" SPEC numbers use an optimized compile with the Intel compiler versus the GCC compiler on the PPC. GCC has very few PPC optimizations and the project seems unwilling to receive contributions regarding correction of this deficiency even though it already contains way more optimized code for the X86.

I'd like to see official SPEC numbers with code compiled on the IBM PPC compiler with full optimization turn on like they do for the X86 numbers.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[aristotle-dude]

One thing I've noticed about "official" benchmarks is they are not very "data heavy". When you run a test with a really large dataset, the G5 seems to outperform the competition by a wide margin even with poorly optimized GCC compiled code versus optimized Intel compiler code.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[aristotle-dude]

How much is the "retail price" of XP Pro upgrade?

Didn't MS charge for the point upgrade from 2000 Pro to XP Pro (5.0-5.1)? Version numbering is completely arbitrary and is not a way to measure whether a version is a major upgrade or not.

I work in software development and sometimes version number increases are done for versioning reasons rather than by the amount of features.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[aristotle-dude]

Comparing against Dell pricing and calling it "retail" is equally ridiculous. Those prices you quote are their loss leaders to get people hooked on Dell. Dell also does not have resellers to contend with and they often have arbitrary "limited time offer" coupons to artificially lower the cost of their base machine.

Now if you actually started to configure that 469 deal with "firewire" and other features the mac includes and a decent gfx card to match, it ends up costing more. This is known as reeling people in with "bait". That monitor they include is a piece of crap and nobody in their right mind would used that on a daily basis with it's low refresh rates that make even the Emac monitor look bad.

Did you see the low end ibook price? Got anything bad to say about it?

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Jucius Maximus]

x86 is only cheaper than mac if your time has no value.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[DogDude]

x86 is only cheaper than mac if your time has no value.

All of the PC's that I've bought in the past 4 years or so I just plugged in and they worked. I've played with OS X and still don't really understand how it's going to help me get work done quicker or easier.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[spoonyfork]

Dell competes at the bottom, Apple competes at the top.

Spot on! I wish I had mod points today. You'd get a gold star.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[cloudturtle]

Actually, the $999 12in iBook is $949 education. The $899 iBook does not have 802.11g built in (it is wireless ready) and it comes with a CD ROM drive instead of the Combo burner.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[daviddennis]

He's correct that it would not use Quartz Extreme, which is a speedup feature that uses the video card to offload a lot of work from the CPU.

However, he's most likely wrong about it not speeding up your machine. I had a 400mhz PowerBook G4 when it was first introduced, and the menus were pretty sluggish. Quartz Extreme fixed this when I upgraded to the 1ghz model. But then I sold that and temporarily got a 400mhz PowerBook again with Panther.

It was much, much faster than my original 400mhz PowerBook. Menus and basic functions were almost as fast as the 1ghz model. Of course meaty processor-intensive functions were a lot slower, but the point I'm making is that the optimizations made even an old machine shine.

The other major advantage is that the Finder has really been smoothed up nicely. It works a lot better than in earlier versions because they noticed a lot of the usability bottlenecks and fixed them.

Of course at this point you might just want to wait until Tiger (you have maybe six months to go) unless you can get Panther cheap.

D

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Rude Turnip]

My laptop is an iBook G4 800 which already came with 10.3. My fiance's G3 400 Powermac went from 10.2 to 10.3 and got a speed boost.

If your iBook G3's video memory is below a certain amount (32 megs I think?), then you won't be able to take full advantage of the Quartz Extreme OpenGL rendering of the UI. Our G3 Powermac's video memory is below the amount and thus in the same boat. Although she isn't getting to enjoy Quartz Extreme, the system feels quicker.

In terms of other features, I would do a quick search on Google to see what changed in 10.2 vs. 10.3, but for me the biggest change was the addition of Expose.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[dirty]

Question, how useable is a pII-450 (or a pIII-450 if they existed)?

I have a g4-450 w/ 512mb ram at home with one upgrade (Radeon Mac Edition, vs the stock Rage 128 Pro, cost me about $35 on ebay). The thing is snappy and perfectly responsive with OS 10.3.5 (the latest publicly released version of Mac OS). Sure some things like Garage Band completely hose it (it is below the minimum specs for Garage Band). But for every day use it's wonderful.

Windows XP is sluggish on my p4 3ghz machine with a gig of ram.

The CPUs Apple uses are simply better than Intel CPUs. I feel perfectly comfortable saying a G5 1.8ghz would smoke a p4 3.4ghz. Not to mention the better OS you get. Mac OS X is, IMHO, what Linux wishes it could be. Solid UNIX core, with a very nice GUI built on top of it. It really makes me wonder why there aren't any OSS projects out there yet with the goal of ripping off the OS X gui.

Right now I'm just waiting until the PowerBook line gets upgraded so I can drop my IBM laptop. I'd buy an iBook, but the 1024z768 resolution is a deal breaker for me. Way too small.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Jucius Maximus]

"All of the PC's that I've bought in the past 4 years or so I just plugged in and they worked. I've played with OS X and still don't really understand how it's going to help me get work done quicker or easier."

"Playing" does not acclimatize you to the workings of the system. If you are good at using windows and not good at using OS X, then you will be faster on windows. If you are good at using both, then you will be faster on OS X due to time saved through a more efficient and better designed user environment combined with fewer maintenance needs. Other applications will not steal focus, exposé allows you to access your needed applications more quickly. I still find it astonishing that microsoft has not streamlined the entering and selection of multiple network configuration through a simple interface. Most people don't know how or want to create scripted netsh commands. And you don't waste your time worrying about patching and rebooting for worm avoidance, keeping your lusers out of IE for spyware avoidance, maintaining firewall rules, and keeping your antivirus up to date. Windows is becoming more and more annoying because you have to manage all kinds of little things in order to keep it safe, secure and working smoothly. You don't have to worry about any of this on a mac and so your time is spent doing your work instead of maintaining the system.

As to just plugging in and working, I hope that you are behind a router or firewall or a mac/linux box sharing the connection, because just plugging an XP box into a broadband connection ill get you owned by a worm in under an hour, even if you do absolutely nothing. This is of much safer with a mac (but of course not perfectly safe with a mac or linux or anything else.) If you want to do that with XP, you'll have to get hundreds of MB of updates (I hope you download faster than the trojans find you), and turn off your network messenger to avoid the popups, shut off your uPnP to avoid vulnerabilities, and probably get a firewall set up because it's next to impossbile to close all ports on a windows box.

And when you are done with the mac, you can sell it of course. My iBook is 20 months old now and on eBay it's still going for 40-45% of what I purchased it for. Can you sell an x86 box for 40-45% of its original purchase price after 20 months of use?

Don't get me wrong, I have windows, linux and mac machines. I use each one for what it's good at. And the mac is good for getting work done. And I have found that when it comes down to doing work, if you are good at using all systems, the mac is by far the least intrusive and just gets out of the way so you can do what you're doing.

Of course, you can indeed patch up your XP box to make it almost as safe as a mac, requiring plenty of time installing the patches and installing/configuring third party software. And this takes a lot of time. How many $/h is your time worth? What's the difference in price between a mac and PC (even though it is totally an apples and oranges comparison to begin with?)

x86 is only cheaper than mac if your time has no value.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[dirty]

What you've read is wrong. I have an old g4 450mhz machine at home w/ 512 megs of PC100 ram, a simple Radeon Mac Edition video card, and a UATA-66 20gig hard drive. It's quite zippy. The video card made a pretty big difference in terms of the feel of everything (it is the lowest end card that supports Quartz Extreme). I'm not sugesting I'd want to do any hard core work on it, but for running Firefox, AdiumX (aim client), and iTunes it's great.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[atriusofbricia]

I do have to point out that though your numbers are correct, there is going to be no comparison between that Dell at $469 and even the emac in terms of quality. Dells are built from the cheapest parts available with the cheapest labor available. They are not built to last by definition.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[pocomoonshiine]

Parallel ports rock! BTW, how long has it been since you came out of your bunker? I've got an old Wang monochrome (green) monitor and an OKIDATA dot matrix line printer in my attic, if you want them.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[dirty]

I know you can get USB devices for serial and ps/2 ports for PC. I'm assuming they'd probably work for a Mac, but I could be wrong. For most people these days those ports are quite useless. If 800x600 is fine for you, that's cool. For most of us it is not. Also, with Mac OS X you actually do get an overall speed improvement with a good video card. And it looks like the next version of OS X will bring even more improvements with CoreImage. It actually uses the hardware in the video card for more than just games.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[BasilBrush]

"Uglier" might be a matter of opinion, but bulkiness isn't. Bulk can be simply measures in cubic inches. No Dell desktop with monitor comes close to a G5 iMac. As a rough approximation I'd say the Dell on my desk is 5 or 6 times bulkier than an iMac.

Most computers are never upgraded. Those that are are upgraded seldom have anything other then more memory or bigger HD. Memory & HD are user upgradable on the iMac.

The only real disadvantage is not being able to upgrade the graphics card. But then few people except serious gamers ever upgrade video cards these daya. And serious gamers aren't in the iMac's target demographic.

$7 does buy a much nicer machine, with a very much nicer OS.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[BasilBrush]

VGA 800x600? Parallel and serial ports? Don't forget the floppy drive, Apple's don't have those either. Or turbo buttons that switch an LED number on the case to a different LED number.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[BasilBrush]

Lucky you. There's a brand new PowerMac out that you can use it with.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[milkman_matt]

x86 is only cheaper than mac if your time has no value.

I will be your case study for this comment. I've had a g3 powerbook since '99, used it, a windows desktop, and a gentoo server/desktop until about 3 months ago when it finally died. Luckily I still had my linux and windows desktops as well, but my productivity was shot straight to hell.

I ended up with a new 12" powerbook, and now I'm kickin' ass better than ever before.

I don't mind spending some cash on a mac because for me, it's 110% worth it. With the productivity boost I get out of it, it pays for itself.

That being said -- I saw this upgrade coming a mile away, I just got a new powerbook, so the G5s must be right around the corner ;)

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[cyfer2000]

None of the PCs in our office can not find the printers connected to the ethernet via HPJetDirect box, I have to configure them one by one by typing ips and port numbers.

All of the Macs find the printers automatically.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[cyfer2000]

Sorry, PCs can't. Macs can.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[bbuR_bbuB]

By your logic, a Volvo 240 should run just as quickly as Nissan 240. Hey, they've got the same number, that must mean they go the same speed and run exactly the same!

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[cayenne8]

"Of course at this point you might just want to wait until Tiger (you have maybe six months to go) unless you can get Panther cheap."

Thanks for the replies!

Hmm..Ok, I think I may indeed wait for Tiger to come out AND give it a little time to see how it does for older hardware. I imagine at some point, the newer versions of OSX will start to actually cease to improve the older hardware...or possibly decrease performace as that it will be optimized for newer hardware, and have parts and applications that are just too much for the older stuff to handle...

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Herbmaster]

But the original parent was comparing a Dell to a $1299 iMac G5, and finding that it costs $7 less than the Dell.
Now you're telling me I should consider the $1499 - as of today - PowerMac G5? I can only assume that Dell does not charge me $193 to drop the monitor from their configuration.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[kannibal_klown]

Doesn't apple charge 109 for each point upgrade and don't those upgrades come out every 12-14 months?

That is more than Windows costs.

As someone else mentioned, your "point" upgrade term is wrong.

OS X currently comes in different versions: 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, etc. They're all OS X at the core, but new versions. We're not talking about bug fixes, but new features and redesigns to certain aspects (new file browser, database-based file system soon, etc).

So, here you're paying for an enhanced version of the OS. Think Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Both are similar at the core, but 1 has more hardware compatibility and newer features. Maybe you don't want to upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, and I know a few people that chose to stay with OS x 10.2 and not take 10.3. It depends if you think the new features warrant shelling out $100 for a new OS. Sometimes the difference is really major.

The point release 10.3.1, 10.3.2, 10.3.3 are essentially service packs. They're a culminatation of bug fixes, new hardware support, and some new features. These are available for free using the OS update feature.

Think of Windows XP SP1 and SP2. You can download the service pack for free. With it, you'll get better security, bug fixes, and a some new features.

Yeh, staying completely current with OSX is slightly more expensive than staying current with Windows, but only slightly. The standard consumer price of OSX is less than the standard consumer price of XP.

You can buy the full version of OS X for $129 USD at the normal over-the-shelf price. A value pack for $199 USD lets you legally install the OS on up to 5 PC's! But a new version comes out more often.

Windows XP Pro FULL Install is about $320 USD, with the upgrade version around $226 USD. But a new MS OS comes out less fequently (2 years between Win2000 and Win2k).


OSX = $129 every 1-2 years (if you want)
or
MS Windows = $220 to $320 every 2-3 years (if you want)


NOTE: I'm not covering OEM or Student pricing.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[aristotle-dude]

So you've never seen a Firewire DV bridge, Firewire based Mini-DV Camera, External Firewire HD or an external DVD Writer with a Firewire interface?

If you are doing anything CPU intensive, USB based devices will have severely degraded performance compared to Firewire devices.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[nojomofo]

Other applications will not steal focus

Amen, brother. When I'm at work (using my XP laptop), I'm constantly annoyed by applications stealing focus, just because I told them to do something a little while ago, and they finished (or the application finally opened, and I was using a different application while the first opened). Then the wrong application gets my keystrokes, and whatnot.

Using my Mac at home, that never (and I mean never) happens. You give an application focus? That application keeps focus. I just don't understand what's so hard about that concept that Microsoft can't implement. I guess it goes along with their general concept of "we know what the user wants better than the user does", so they try to guess which application I want to be using (instead of trusting me to give the focus to the correct application).

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[David Rolfe]

Screw Walt Mossberg! I'm looking at the web sites right now, and the prices aren't even *close*! For the same price as a Mac, I can get a kick ass PC, with interchangeable parts, no vendor lock in, tons and tons of supported applications (more importantly, business applications). They'd be great for say, my grandmother, who would never need to upgrade, and who would never really need to install any apps, but in a business setting, unless you're in the graphics industry, they're pretty, very expensive doorstops.

Holy shit dude, are you kidding me? You throw 'no vendor lock in' at me IN THE SAME BREATH that you insinuate THAT I USE WINDOWS to get all those GREAT BUSINESS APPS??

(You can ignore this part if you are just after a flame: Any 'business software' that you could run on [open/free OS of choice] x86 (which I guess is the only non vendor lock-in on x86, so THAT MUST BE what you are talking about) could be or is ported to [open/free OS of choice] on PPC. So to conclude: If you are talking about Windows as less vendor lock-in than OS X you are misinformed.)

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[omahajim]

thread hijack alert (great, now Echelon has me pegged)

Now that 400GB SATA drives are offered as options in the XServe RAID, does that mean I can get those drives as BTO in a Powermac soon? I think the highest they offer the moment in the G5 is 2x250.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[TheNetAvenger]

VGA 800x600? Parallel and serial ports? Don't forget the floppy drive, Apple's don't have those either. Or turbo buttons that switch an LED number on the case to a different LED number.

Also on a Apple Laptop, you can't get a 1600x1200 display, Ultra ATA/133, True Subwoofer Sound System, Remote Control, Universal Flash Card reader.... oh wait, I'm comparing my Laptop I bought in Spring of 2002. (Which is also legacy free and has no serial or parallel ports only USB and firewire, and can power up from completely off to full network connectivy and desktop in less than 3 seconds.)

I actually should compare one of my new ones...
Also on a Apple Laptop you can't get a 7200 or 10000rpm HD, a 9800 ATI graphic controller with 256mb of Video RAM, a built in 10-key full size keyboard instead of wasting the space, a Duel Layer DVD Writer, 3.4ghz Processor with Hyper-threading, up to 4GB of RAM, Remote with built in TV and TIVO type recording system, PC3200 400mhz dual channel RAM...

Really do I need to go further? Now why don't you offer your explanations of why you wouldn't need any of these features, just as you were making fun of the post that stated why they didn't need any of the Mac features... I imagine you probably won't, because if you could get these features in your IBook or PowerBook, you would take them and think they are really neat and worth having.

Oh, and BTW, both of these laptops cost less than even the low end Mac models in their respective class when they were released, let alone the Models that come close to even matching these features.

And ironically features that PC users have taken for granted on laptops for years now still are 'unavailable' on any Mac Laptop. Just like back in the late 90s, I was horrified that the stylish and 'in' Apple notebooks didn't even have stereo speakers, what is Apple thinking sometimes?

(PS. I'm not trying to dismiss your post as one, because I am hitting on points you didn't even bring up, but this is more of a wake response to several posts in this thread that are just incredible.

Apple has great notebooks, but that doesn't mean they always have 'all' the latest and greatest features or they have the 'best' of anything, they are just great notebook computers, just like there are many great non-Apple notebooks out there with cool features and designs.)

So get over the bashing and playing whose notebook is better, OK?

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[BasilBrush]

So if the equivalent iMac is $7 cheaper and you don't need the extra power of a PowerMac, then buy the iMac, save $7 and sell your current monitor on Ebay for yet more savings. Problem solved. :-)

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[mosb1000]

"I was horrified that the stylish and 'in' Apple notebooks didn't even have stereo speakers, what is Apple thinking"

They were probably thinking something like "why would you want stereo speakers on something that sits directly in front of you and is only 12" wide?"

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[BasilBrush]

a built in 10-key full size keyboard

I think I've worked out why your new PC laptop was cheap...

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[herbman]

He's wrong. Quartz Extreme works on iBook G3 800's. I have one. It has a radeon 7500, which is supported by this acceleration.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[DAldredge]

$149 USD on sale and these come out about every 3 years while apples 109 USD upgrades have been coming out about once per year...

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[squiggleslash]

If you're serious and desperate for parallel and serial ports on an iBook, you can get third party units that'll happily plug into the USB port. There are also PS/2 to USB adapters, though the ones I've used weren't terribly reliable. Generally I'd recommend getting natively USB equipment (generic USB keyboards and pointing devices for the PC work fine on the Mac, I'm a big fan of IBM keyboards and trackpoints.)

Modern operating systems, especially OS X, really do need a bit more than 800x600. But you certainly do not lose anything by running it at a higher resolution.

If I were to complain about the 12" iBook, it'd come down to two points:

1. No trackpoint. (Apple is wedded to the trackpad, personally I think that device is a PITA and not well designed, but others disagree with me.)

2. 256Mb of RAM, with a max, IIRC, of 768Mb. An improvement on the old 640Mb limit, but not much of an improvement.

If Apple would fix those, I'd buy a 12" and consider it good value for money.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[RustyTaco]

I can't help you with your trackpoint fetish (I can't stand them myself, having used too many crappy worn out ones I guess) but the new iBooks top out at 1.25G (1G SODIMM, 256M soldered on).

I'm still waiting for some sort of solution to making the airport extremes work under Linux, then I'll upgrade my old 500Mhz G3.

- RustyTaco

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

Also on a Apple Laptop, you can't get a 1600x1200 display,

Don't need it. You can't see that. Pixels are too small.

Ultra ATA/133,

Don't need it.

True Subwoofer Sound System,

How "True" is it if it's on a laptop.

Remote Control,

You're sitting in front of it. No need for a remote.

Universal Flash Card reader....

Right, "Universal." I don't want eight more ports on my laptop just because some loser bought an xD card.

serial or parallel ports

Don't need 'em.

a 7200 or 10000rpm HD,

Don't need it. Too hot. Kills battery.

a 9800 ATI graphic controller with 256mb of Video RAM,

Too hot. Kills battery. Don't need.

a built in 10-key full size keyboard instead of wasting the space,

I'm assuming you mean "keypad." And no, I don't.

a Duel Layer DVD Writer,

In a *laptop*? You are joke.

3.4ghz Processor with Hyper-threading,

G4/1.33 GHz is faster.

up to 4GB of RAM,

Don't need it.

Remote with built in TV and TIVO type recording system,

Idiots watch TV and use Windows.

PC3200 400mhz dual channel RAM...

Don't need. Macs don't use "PC3200" RAM.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[JThundley]

What a troll! I hate to admit it, but my Windows box on an AMD 2100+ is pretty spunky, and my 1.25Ghz Emac seems very pokey. My Linux computers have always been somewhere in the middle and much more fun ;).

I find that most people that brag about "OS X's UNIX core" have no idea how to use anything Unix.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

" Question, how useable is a pII-450 (or a pIII-450 if they existed)?"

Very usable. I have a PIII-500 in my notebook ($300 on eBay) and a Celeron 300A in an old desktop I have.

Both run XP hreat.

"Windows XP is sluggish on my p4 3ghz machine with a gig of ram."

Perhaps you should scan for spyware. The 2.6GHz Northwoods around the office were extremely sluggish until we realized that spyware was stealing all of our memory and cracked down on software installation. Since then, everything is simply nto true.

"I feel perfectly comfortable saying a G5 1.8ghz would smoke a p4 3.4ghz"

You might feel comfortable, but it's simply not true. The G5 is a fast chip, but in the vast majority of applications it performs similarly, clock-for-clock, to the Athlon 64/Opteron. P4 2.6 (Northwood) or P4 2.8 (Prescott) would be a more accurate comparison.

That said, P4 Prescott sucks. It's just that simple. It is hot, expensive, and, compared with Northwood or Athlon 64, slow.

The fact is, PCs are cheaper at the low end. PC, 17" CRT, and printer - with XP pro - for $400 is not uncommon. Hell, there's a PC package at Best Buy right now with a Celeron D (the non-evil Celeron) 2.66GHz, 256M PC2700, DVD/CD-RW combo, 60GB disk, 17" Monitor, and Lexmark printer - for $370 (albeit after rebates).

The absolute cheapest eMac, on apple.com, is $800 - with a smaller disk and a slower processor. Only by purchasing refurbished and accepting a CD-ROM instead of a DVD/CD combo drive can you get the price within striking distance - but at $550 + shipping, it's still at least $180 more than the (better equipped) PC.

Notebooks are a better comparison - the iBook is probably Apple's best deal right now (I'd still rather get a $1300 Compal with a Radeon 9700 and an SXGA screen). Particularly when you compare them to Pentium-M notebooks (and, let's face it, Pentium 4-M absolutely blows), Apple's notebooks are quite competitive.

So, let's recap some facts:

- PC desktops (including the monitor) are still far cheaper than any new or refurbished Apple system
- The G5, fast as it may be, is usually no faster than the Opteron clock-for-clock
- Apple's products are sometimes an excellent value (iBook, Airport Express) but are generally more expensive than their non-Apple counterparts, although they compensate for this with style and polish (Apple keyboard/mouse, PowerMac G5, iPod, PowerBook G4, etc.)

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[mrklin]

Insightful? I think not.

Many Mac users, which I am one, will rationalize the performance of Macs to no end i.e. my G3 400 is so blazing faaaaast so that it smokes a a 3.2 ghz with hyperthreading!

Go to any Mac forums (Appleinsider, Macnn, etc) you will see how people write about how each OS point release makes their system feel "snappier" because OS X, while looking great with Quartz Extreme rendering, is GPU/CPU intensive.

So while G5 may be better than the standard offerings, G5 1.8ghz cannot beat 3.4ghz P4. Show me some benchmarks instead of this "I feel" stuff.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[silicon not in the v]

Windows XP is sluggish on my p4 3ghz machine with a gig of ram.

Guess what? You are slammed with spyware that's eating up your resources. If you tried a clean install without connecting the computer to the 'net so it didn't get owned, you would see how it flies on local apps.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Kiryat Malachi]

Also on a Apple Laptop, you can't get... True Subwoofer Sound System

You can't get a "true subwoofer" on any laptop. Physics says so, and you can't argue with physics.

And ironically features that PC users have taken for granted on laptops for years now still are 'unavailable' on any Mac Laptop. Just like back in the late 90s, I was horrified that the stylish and 'in' Apple notebooks didn't even have stereo speakers, what is Apple thinking sometimes?

I don't know. Maybe they were thinking "Hey! Headphones!"

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[TheNetAvenger]

a built in 10-key full size keyboard
I think I've worked out why your new PC laptop was cheap...

Yeah, kind of forgot the '&' sign in that line...

For all the people that couldn't figure it out for themselves =)

The line should have read...
'a built in 10-key & full size keyboard'

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Zhe Mappel]

All of the PC's that I've bought in the past 4 years or so I just plugged in and they worked. I've played with OS X and still don't really understand how it's going to help me get work done quicker or easier.

Short answer: maybe it won't.

I use Win XP and OS X. A decade of using Windoze products has given me a kind of survival instinct, if you will, for navigating their treacherous UIs. I can fly on Windoze. It's just ingrained pattern recognition.

But I prefer OS X, even if, after two years, I'm still not as fast on it. I prefer it for the simple reason that it looks and feels more intelligent; that goes a long way in reducing distraction. And it's not all surface aesthetics: file organization is easier to accomplish with the OS X Finder than the messy, if serviceable, Windoze Explorer.

Speed isn't everything. The experience of using OS X is a relief after years in the Microsoft world.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[TheNetAvenger]

You can't get a "true subwoofer" on any laptop. Physics says so, and you can't argue with physics.

Except if a laptop has a separate speaker that allows it to accurately reproduce sounds below the 100Hz level specifically, then most audiophiles would consider it a 'real' sub-woofer.

And if you have ever been in a hotel, or using your laptop to provide audio/video entertainment in any noisy environment, it is nice to be able to have rich sound from the laptop that is loud enough for guest to hear and have it sound like it was a mini-boom box and not have to worry about having extra speakers with you, kind of the whole 'laptop' concept.

I wouldn't trade my harman/kardon sound system in any of my laptops for regular laptop speakers, nor Apple laptop speakers.

Would you believe some people actually use their laptops for Audio & Video entertainment, since they have DVD players and can actually do 'multi-media' all in one unit.

Maybe you are used to...
Hey everybody, lets watch a movie or listen to music at the beach, I have brought 25 sets of headphones.

LOL

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Kiryat Malachi]

Small speakers *cannot* reproduce significant bass. It has to do with air mass movement and the physics of sound. Small radiators are only efficients with short wavelengths - the wavelength of bass-frequency waves is too long for a laptop-sized speaker to effectively reproduce it. Audiophiles are idiots, and quoting them is no ammo at all in any argument about sound. These are the same people who think a green marker improves the sound of their CDs.

I have, in fact, been in a hotel, and in noisy environments. However, laptop speakers do not fit my definition of "acceptable sounding when turned up as loud as they go", which is what's necessary in said loud environment, so I usually either bring headphones, a splitter cable, or speakers, depending on if I expect company (and how much). I can, however, honestly say that I have never encountered a situation where my laptop speakers weren't loud enough for the situation at hand - generally, if background noise is high enough to drown out laptop speakers, even fairly cheap ones, then I'm probably somewhere where I'm not interested in having the laptop out for a movie. I mean, seriously, where the hell is it so loud as to drown out the laptop, but you'd still want to have 25 friends sitting around a laptop watching a movie?

And if people want to listen to music at the beach, I bring an extension cord and the kilowatt PA. If they want to listen to music, listen to *music*. Don't try and bullshit it with crappy laptop speakers, as there are no other kind. You can have more crappy (Dell), medium crappy (Apple), or less crappy (actually, never found anything that I would accept as this category). There is no such thing as a GOOD laptop speaker.

And h/k is overpriced crap, for the most part. You probably have Bose speakers at home, too.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

"Windows XP is sluggish on my p4 3ghz machine with a gig of ram."

Perhaps you should scan for spyware. The 2.6GHz Northwoods around the office were extremely sluggish until we realized that spyware was stealing all of our memory and cracked down on software installation. Since then, everything is simply nto true.

I have noticed that even with Windows XP on brand-new hardware, running one computationally-intensive program in the background (for example, a compiler) slows down the responsiveness of the UI to the point where it is practically unusable. While with Mac OS X, even on a slow computer the multitasking is so good that responsiveness never goes down, even when lots of programs are busy. Unless you run out of RAM, of course - then any OS can get sluggish.

So for someone who does a lot of compiling, rendering, or calculating, and likes to do something else while that stuff is going on (surf the web, check email), Windows XP does feel amazingly sluggish compared to Mac OS X.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[GrahamCox]

Except that is does have stereo speakers, anyway.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[squiggleslash]

Well, that certainly solves one of my major issues.

I might be tempted anyway, though not right now. I usually use my PowerBook by balancing an IBM keyboard (w/trackpoint, it's a very thin, very flat thing, and it has three mouse buttons - yay!) on top of the thing. It's bigger than the laptop, but I can always decide which I want to use when I use it, depending on the application...

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[JamieF]

Hmm. You have a laptop that has:
- 4GB max RAM
- A 10000rpm ATA/133 hard drive

Most of the other stuff can be had from Dell or Alienware, just barely, for around $3200. I wasn't able to find a system that actually had the 3.4GHz CPU + that video card + that drive + the flash card slot but I'm not willing to spend hours and hours googling for it. I'll assume that it's out there and that I'm just not looking hard enough.

However, I have recently spent some time shopping for a new laptop hard disk. The 10000 rpm ATA/133 laptop drive is either bullshit, or the world's best kept secret. According to many many web sites that do hardware reviews, Hitachi's 7200rpm 7K60 is still the fastest laptop drive out there, and it's ATA/100. Perhaps they're wrong, or haven't gotten around to doing a review, but combine that with the fact that major hardware resellers don't have such a thing either, and this claim is very suspect.

So, let's see a link, and you can prove whether you're a very thorough shopper or just trolling.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

Your cousin is totally, totally wrong. All iBooks that are 700MHz and up have the necessary video card to support Quartz Extreme. Furthermore, Quartz Extreme was implemented in 10.2, not in 10.3, so it has nothing to do with the differences between 10.3 and 10.2.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

He's correct that it would not use Quartz Extreme, which is a speedup feature that uses the video card to offload a lot of work from the CPU.

No he isn't correct. Quartz Extreme is fully supported on the 800MHz iBook G3, and it has been from the day 10.2 (not 10.3) shipped.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[mesach]

Very, until about 2 months ago my main 2 machines(besides my gaming rig) were a PII 450 i used every day, and a Dual PIII 450 Server, I just got tired of having all that space taken up, and just went with my gaming rig which i upgraded AGAIN, but now im thinking of making that just a server and buying my friends 12" Powerbook using it with my 19" LCD and calling it a day.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[dirty]

I'm not saying it's blazing fast. I'm saying it's quite comfortable to use, and that just running basic apps I don't see the slow down that I get in XP when I have several things open. I think Windows just has this nasty habit of swapping everything to disk in an attempt to keep as much real memory free as possible.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[dirty]

No, it's not. I just do a lot with my computer. I frequently have many many apps open and do several things at once. Windows sucks for multi-tasking. I don't know if it's true or not, but it certainly seems like Windows XP will do it's best to keep as much memory free as possible by swapping everything that isn't being actively used out to disk, so when you switch between apps everything grinds to a halt as it reloads it into ram. And try moving a large amount of data around on the hard drive and see what happens. It falls apart.

I'm sure if you did nothing but web browsing, or running a compiler, or any one app XP can cut it just fine. But for those of us who use our computers to do more than one thing at a time, it sucks.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[ndpatel]

Hey everybody, lets watch a movie or listen to music at the beach, I have brought 25 sets of headphones.

if you really think it's possible to use a laptop lcd screen at a beach, or that you won't destroy that thing in .23 seconds by getting sand in it, you have never been to a beach in your life.

you should check it out, they have these things called 'girls' there. also you can get a 'tan'.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[gdbjr]

It is pretty easy to get the edu discount on apple.com. Just pick a school and take the discount. No verification is required.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[TheNetAvenger]

Most of the other stuff can be had from Dell or Alienware, just barely, for around $3200. I wasn't able to find a system that actually had the 3.4GHz CPU + that video card + that drive + the flash card slot but I'm not willing to spend hours and hours googling for it. I'll assume that it's out there and that I'm just not looking hard enough.

However, I have recently spent some time shopping for a new laptop hard disk. The 10000 rpm ATA/133 laptop drive is either bullshit, or the world's best kept secret. According to many many web sites that do hardware reviews, Hitachi's 7200rpm 7K60 is still the fastest laptop drive out there, and it's ATA/100.

First the 10000rpm HDs are new, Seagate is the first to a have a shipping model. However, the performance of the Hitachi 7200rpm drives are showing that even a 7200rpm drive in notebooks can offer almost TWICE the performance of other 5400rpm notebook Hard Drives. It is too bad that Apple only offers the slower 5400rpm drives in their notebooks.

--Toshiba 5105-S608
This is the old Laptop I was referring to, Manufactured in Spring of 2002. We bought several at the time for one of our graphics departments, the 1600x1200 display is kind of a nice luxury for Graphic Designers - I guess Apple doesn't go for the Graphic Designer Market anymore. =) You can go look up the specs on it yourself, even for being over two years old, it has features that Mac Notebooks are just now getting or still don't have.

The newer Laptop I was referring to we just got in for some of our executives that work out of the office.

They are the Sager NP 8790 - although some of the ones we ordered we customized differently, a couple of executives wanted the 3.4ghz EE for example instead of the non EE 3.4ghz.

And I did mis-mention two of the specs on this model, it only supports 2GB of RAM and has the ATI 9700 with 256mb of RAM, the ATI 9800 is an upcoming option that our IT department decided not to wait for.

And yes they came standard with the 7200 Hitachi Hard Drives, and yes have Dual Layer DVD writers, and yes were under $2700 delivered.

http://www.sagernotebook.com/pages/notebooks/pro du ct2.cfm?ProductType=8790&SubType=S

Also if you check the specifications on this laptop, you will see it has all the 'touted' Mac features, and also several other features I didn't mention that are not available on ANY Mac Laptop. Like Built in Web Cams, and optional RAID 0,1 slot for second hard drives just to name a couple.

But these are not the ONLY brand of laptops like this, nor are they rare. We chose Sager because of a strong reputation we have had with them in the past.

Do your own searches, they are many out there from ASUS and many other manufacturers...

BTW, the 64bit AMD Laptops we have are the ones with the 4GB RAM limit.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[TheNetAvenger]

Good answers, just because your laptop has crappy sound, you are going to try and knock other laptops with higher level sound systems.

I don't have to take external speakers with my Laptops, and yes they are loud enough speakers with quality, I have even used one of the laptops by itself in a Dance Hall one night for a party.

As for your mass movement of air argument, you either are forgetting or are not bright enough to understand chamber porting to increase throw and air movement from smaller speakers.

And BTW I do have BOSE speakers at home.

The BOSE speakers in my house are a 'actively' monitored variation of the newer 802 series, and can each handle output in the 1000s of Watts. They are in my theater room, and could literally break glass in my house.

Go poo poo Bose technology to someone that doesn't have a clue. The low end Bose technology is good for what it is, but their high end systems are still highly regarded in the music and theater industry.

Oh, and BTW, the Bose 802 speakers that can do 20Hz with 1000watts are each a series of 4inch cones using an active monitor 'collaborative' system to reproduce deep levels of bass with a very short throw distance.

But again, you poo poo audiophiles and people that actually know a little bit about this technology.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[TheNetAvenger]

if you really think it's possible to use a laptop lcd screen at a beach, or that you won't destroy that thing in .23 seconds by getting sand in it, you have never been to a beach in your life.

I live a block from the beach in San Diego, I would bet I spend more time on the beach with my laptop than most people probably use them in normal environments.

And yes the Verizon 3G wireless internet on the Beach here makes working from the beach quite nice as well (although we have had rain the past few days).

you should check it out, they have these things called 'girls' there. also you can get a 'tan'.

Well, some of us already have 'girls', and often like to spend time at the beach with friends listening to music, watching a movie at night, you know, doing social things.

I'm sorry that you are going to the beach by yourself.

Oh, as for the screen being readable, even my 2002 Toshiba screen is PLENTY visible on the beach, I have been using it there for over two years now. =)

(But it is one of the first Theater high contrast screens released in notebooks, so again, it already has the display quality some of the other brands and Apples are just now getting)

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[TheNetAvenger]

I can't help but notice in all of your posts that you have steadfastly avoided mentioning exactly what laptop this is, or how you get such hardware cheaper than, say, a powerbook. I think you're full of shit. No, scratch that, I *know* you're full of shit.

I think you don't have a clue about what technology is out there, or maybe even a clue about technology. And here, I can prove that your *thinking* is full of shit...

--Toshiba 5105-S608
This is the old Laptop I was referring to, Manufactured in Spring of 2002. We bought several at the time for one of our graphics departments, the 1600x1200 display is kind of a nice luxury for Graphic Designers - I guess Apple doesn't go for the Graphic Designer Market anymore. =) You can go look up the specs on it yourself, even for being over two years old, it has features that Mac Notebooks are just now getting or still don't have.

The newer Laptop I was referring to we just got in for some of our executives that work out of the office.

They are the Sager NP 8790 - although some of the ones we ordered we customized differently, a couple of executives wanted the 3.4ghz EE for example instead of the non EE 3.4ghz.

And I did mis-mention two of the specs on this model, it only supports 2GB of RAM and has the ATI 9700 with 256mb of RAM, the ATI 9800 is an upcoming option that our IT department decided not to wait for.

And yes they came standard with the 7200 Hitachi Hard Drives, and yes have Dual Layer DVD writers, and yes were under $2700 delivered.

http://www.sagernotebook.com/pages/notebooks/pro du ct2.cfm?ProductType=8790&SubType=S

Also if you check the specifications on this laptop, you will see it has all the 'touted' Mac features, and also several other features I didn't mention that are not available on ANY Mac Laptop. Like Built in Web Cams, and optional RAID 0,1 slot for second hard drives just to name a couple.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[mrchaotica]

On the contrary, his very point is that the 450Mhz G4 (Nissan) is faster than a 450Mhz P3 (Volvo).

He was saying that his G4 is still usable, but a P3 wouldn't be (I don't quite agree; my 500Mhz Athlon runs Gentoo pretty well -- not quite as well as my 800Mhz G4 runs OSX, but still usable).

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[mrchaotica]

Well, if you like ports or portage (what's pkgsrc?), there is DarwinPorts and Gentoo/MacOS, you know.

And if you really want to you can run KDE apps and Aqua at the same time (can't imagine why you'd want KWM or Kicker, though)

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[mrchaotica]

I have a 2100+ also (running Gentoo Linux) and an 800Mhz iBook. You know what? I use the iBook more!

Linux is definately fun, but OSX is more convenient, even on slower hardware.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[mrchaotica]

Well, thanks for at least admitting that iBooks are a good value -- most PC fanboys (not saying you are one) can't.

By the way, regarding desktop prices: comparing an iMac G5 to a Dell + LCD is probably closer than comparing an eMac to an eMachines.

And finally, regarding CPU speeds: I realize that my 800Mhz G4 iBook is (possibly much) slower than my Athlon XP 2100+ desktop. However, I don't care! Why? Because it's Fast Enough(TM) and OS X is nicer to use than Linux (and Windows for that matter, but that's no longer even competition at this point).

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Kiryat Malachi]

Unfortunately, my copy of Kinsler and Frey is at work, so I don't have equations close at hand for this.

Porting (aka bandpass enclosures) can't make small speakers reproduce significant amounts of bass. It doesn't work like that - porting simply changes the response. In fact, the real problem with porting is the fact that it adds a tuned resonance to the chamber - sure, the chamber is resonant so at that one frequency (and depending on resonance Q, which is not exactly driver Q, at frequencies surrounding resonance for some distance, but the more boost you tune for, the narrower that band) that you get a decent amount of bass at that frequency, but the entire bass range suffers. It's a tradeoff.

Also, porting requires a sealed enclosure (with a port out of the sealed area, of course) and a specific air volume, and preferably a wide port, to work properly. Not a whole lot of laptops out there with any of those characteristics.

Porting cannot change the fact that you can only move so much air with a small driver. It makes use of the backwave off of the driver, meaning that at best you can achieve a doubling of air mass movement (3dB) across all frequencies - higher efficiency increases obey the principle of conservation of dirt, as my professor called it - increases in efficiency in one location are compensated by decreases in efficiency in other locations. Proper porting design can place the increases in frequencies of interest and the decreases in unused frequency, but nonetheless there are limits on what you can gain through porting.

Which 802s do you have? None of the ones that actually, you know, EXIST, fit your description. You're completely wrong, which is unsurprising. I've worked with 802s. They're okay. They're ported, of course, which I generally don't like the sound of. However, their driver efficiency in the bass range (55-300 Hz) is quite a bit lower (~91dB) than their main range efficiency (~99dB), which means they require roughly 6 times the input power to produce the same acoustic output when comparing bass frequencies to midrange. They're also not 20-20 - the rated 3db corner on the acoustics is 55 Hz, which is not subwoofer class, and the upper 3dB is 16kHz. Even better, they're not even close to kilowatt speakers, they're rated for 240 watts each (per speaker, not per driver). And that's not even getting into the fact that they're ported designs for PA use, which means they're intended to operate in wave mode and ignore the pressure mode considerations that you have to consider if you use them in small (e.g. home theater) spaces. Even better, the 802s are really designed to provide good dispersion characteristics - the quasi-array design is used for that exact reason, not for any extension/power handling reasons. And let's not forget that Bose recommends using a seperate bass module with the 802s as well (the MB4, in this case).

"Active monitor collaborative system"? Are you listening to yourself? With speakers, if it sounds like bullshit it 95% of the time is, and with Bose about 99.999% of the time. The Panaray controller you're referring to is by no means an active feedback system, as it lacks a method of feedback to 'close the loop'. All it is is an active EQ, with some delay functions built in for system alignment. Which is a great thing to have, but it isn't magical - essentially, they're using DSP to partially compensate for their speaker's flaws. Which again, is fine, but it isn't magic.

Their high end systems are not particularly well regarded in any portion of the music or theater industry I've worked with. Big touring bands don't use Bose setups. Most venues don't. Theaters definitely don't. The real pro vendors? EAW, Tannoy, EV, Altec-Lansing's pro line (well, their older stuff - I haven't seen their newer stuff much), Turbosound, Yamaha. Bose is regarded as a second-class citizen, and is usually ignored in favor of better and better bang for buck solutions.

Basically, go read Kinsler and Frey's "Fundamentals of Acoustics", then come back when you have a clue. Stop reading Bose marketing material. Please.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[HuguesT]

Personally I found that SPEC numbers don't reflect the level of performance of the machine when I'm using it. You need to run your own benchmark.

Speaking of the IBM compiler it doesn't improve things as much as could be hoped vs. GCC. The Apple version of GCC is actually quite good. It has improved tremendously since the 10.1 days, by at least 20%

On some of my own benchmarks it matches the IBM compiler.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[TheRaven64]

OS X is not very CPU intensive. While my PowerBook was in for repairs, I borrowed an old 867MHz G4 to use. With the exception of compiling or video editing, the CPU usage never went about about 20%. On the other hand, it is incredibly RAM intensive. I would not consider 10.3 usable on anything less than 512MB (subjectively, a 1.5GHz G4 with 256MB feels a lot slower than an 867MHz G4 with 512MB).

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Kogase]

Hey, good job. You're a sleazy, dishonest, lying son of a bitch.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[mdwh2]

No one is forcing the original poster to buy a Dell PC, but he makes the claim that they are more expensive, bulkier and uglier.

Of course people are free to use whatever platform they wish, but if someone makes the claim that X is better or cheaper than Y, it's fair game to counter that argument.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[silicon not in the v]

Then that is a problem with Windows multi-tasking, rather than the P4 3GHz being a slow processor. I didn't want to suggest switching your operating system because that's drastic and not a realistic option for most people, but I'll bet most Linux distros would handle that kind of multi-tasking very well with a 3GHz P4.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[aristotle-dude]

Really? Tell that to COLSA and VT then. They used the IBM PPC compilers for their cluster software.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[TheNetAvenger]

Ok, for the people that think might be deceived into believing that the person that wrote the previous post actually knows what he is talking about, I will respond for clarification.

Bose 802 speakers are based on one of Bose's original speaker designs that made the BOSE name.

The later models of the 802 series of speakers are 'actively' monitored, the above poster can cite this term using whatever words he wants, but the system levels the sound distribution throughout the array to ensure that fidelity is preserved and distortion is almost impossible, even when producing high levels of output.

What the above poster fails to realize or mention when disputing the output ratings and design of the 802 speakers is that they can be chained, so in theory you could have several 802 stacked on each channel of your sound system, virtually giving you an infinite level of wattage.

So stacking two Mono configured Bose 802 speakers would give you 960W of output PER channel, and stacking 4 Bose 802 speakers would give you 1920W of output per channel.

Additionally the above poster tries to be misleading by stating that they are a ported design. They have enclosure porting, but do not have chamber porting, which is what the term porting is often referred to by people in the sound industry.

The Array technology is one of things that is somewhat unique about the Bose 802 and 901 in home speakers. This is what made the early BOSE technology unique and also allows the speakers to produce 'clearer' sound throughout the audible frequency range because it can distribute sound frequencies to all the speakers instead of one cone trying to reproduce all frequencies in a time multiplexed fashion.

This is why if you were to drive a 1985-1990 Corvette with a Bose sound system, you would be surprised to realize that it only has four 4inch speakers in the car, but can produce bass levels under 50Hz at 100 Watts. This is because each channel in the Corvette is isolated for mid and upper end frequencies, since they are direction, but lower end frequencies are distributed equally to all four speakers at once, giving a greater frequency range, and the ability to produce heart stopping bass comparable to having a 10-12in dedicated sub woofer in the car.

These years of Corvettes used the Bose array technology speaker technology, and quite well. In fact so well, that they had to constrain the bass response in the 1991 and newer Corvettes because the 1985-1990 models produced so much low level Bass that the largest demographic for GM Corvette buyer (45-55 Men) complained of the sound system having too much bass, even with the bass control turned all the way down on the system. (If you have doubt, talk to a Corvette enthusiast that owned Corvettes in these years like myself.)

Now as the poster incorrectly assumed, I did not, nor imply that the 802 speakers produced below 55Hz sound levels, nor can they reproduce above 16,000Hz either. That is why can add a low level 'sub woofer' or series of low level speakers to the system, in addition to tweeter level speakers for full range reproduction. The 802 speakers are designed for high dB in the middle spectrum, although 55Hz is a fairly low level of bass for most people that use these speakers, considering most home speakers cannot accurately reproduce sound below 75Hz without distortion at HIGH dB levels.

As for the fact that my speakers could shatter glass, it is true; my home theater has the wattage output of some concert venues.

Now, why the above poster's attack of the Bose technology has ANYTHING to do with the fact that Mac Laptops have crappy sounding speakers is beyond me.

There are PC laptops out there, and in fact in my hands right now that can produce small boom box levels of sound, and in most circumstances carrying extra speakers with you to watch a DVD or do a presentation is simply not necessary.

If people could only hear the difference between some of JBL or Harman/kardon designed speaker systems

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[Kiryat Malachi]

The later models of the 802 series of speakers are 'actively' monitored, the above poster can cite this term using whatever words he wants, but the system levels the sound distribution throughout the array to ensure that fidelity is preserved and distortion is almost impossible, even when producing high levels of output.

They use active EQ, not active monitoring. Monitoring requires that there's some method of feedback to close the loop, in order to affect the input based on the output. I encourage you to learn the difference between actively monitored and actively equalized systems - active EQ is nice, but can't even come close to achieving what active monitoring can in terms of elimination of room moding.


What the above poster fails to realize or mention when disputing the output ratings and design of the 802 speakers is that they can be chained, so in theory you could have several 802 stacked on each channel of your sound system, virtually giving you an infinite level of wattage.

Any speaker (well, I should note: any professional speaker) can be run in parallel. This doesn't make a set of 4 802s a kilowatt speaker - it gives you a kilowatt system. I don't have kilowatt class speakers in my PA - I use multiple speakers. If you meant the usage of multiple speakers, well, I apologize for jumping on it, but you should have been clearer. Your original statement:


The BOSE speakers in my house are a 'actively' monitored variation of the newer 802 series, and can each handle output in the 1000s of Watts. They are in my theater room, and could literally break glass in my house.

Certainly makes it sound like you're claiming kilowatts per speaker, not per set of speakers.

Additionally the above poster tries to be misleading by stating that they are a ported design. They have enclosure porting, but do not have chamber porting, which is what the term porting is often referred to by people in the sound industry.

Enclosure porting is equivalent to chamber porting for single-driver configurations. Although most speakers are multi-driver, since the porting is designed to be effective in the bass range, it can effectively be considered to be a single driver (woofer only) system. Thus, for most speakers the use of the term "porting" is only necessary, as there's no chambering used in most speakers. Further, porting is porting - the point is to use the rear wave to reinforce the front wave. Enclosure vs. chamber is a detail, not some fundamental difference as you imply, and can only do so much to increase output. Without detailed drawings of the 802s, and never having dissected one, I have to assume this, but if there's no connection from chamber to enclosure, then the ports on the 802s would be useless. As such, I assume there is acoustic connection, and the problem is equivalent.

The Array technology is one of things that is somewhat unique about the Bose 802 and 901 in home speakers. This is what made the early BOSE technology unique and also allows the speakers to produce 'clearer' sound throughout the audible frequency range because it can distribute sound frequencies to all the speakers instead of one cone trying to reproduce all frequencies in a time multiplexed fashion.

The 802s really aren't designed as "home" speakers - Bose advertises them as professional product, and they're really designed to be used in stage and sound uses. The array structure only emphasizes this - arrays are primarily used to achieve improved dispersion characteristics. Kinsler in fact does cover arrays, which you'd know if you'd read it, as a discrete case of the generalized line source. See, this is why math is good - it allows you to actually understand that vertical and horizontal arrays are just attempts to imitate the (difficult to produce) line source of sound, which has a far improved dispersion over the (cone-modeled) point source.

Your second idea, about "time-multiplexing" is a bunch of crap. Fou

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[JamieF]

I looked on Seagate's web site and according to it, their fastest notebook drive is 5400RPM:
http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/inde x/1,,,00.html
Not even 7200 RPM. So, it looks like you were just making that up.

>It is too bad that Apple only offers the slower 5400rpm drives in their notebooks.

I agree. I got the Hitachi 7200RPM drive last week and the performance difference is noticeable, though not really twice as fast - more like 50% faster than the 8MB 4200RPM dog that I had before. (Yes, I used benchmarks that were relevant to what I use it for, which is software development.)

The 1600x1200 screen point is perfectly valid. Apple seems to be more interested in widescreen displays than high resolution; even the 17" doesn't have 1600x1200 resolution. This might be because of the pixel size issue (how to fit 1600x1200 in a small form factor) but that shouldn't be a problem with software scaling (96 dpi vs. 72 dpi vs 150 dpi or whatever). You'd see the same amount of content on the screen but it'd be at a higher resolution, and scaled/smoothed in OS software if the individual application wasn't smart enough to adjust itself accordingly.

>And I did mis-mention two of the specs on this model

OK so that's three features you happened to "mis-mention". That kind of undermines your argument when you're trying to explain how behind the leading edge Apple is... your own best example doesn't have those features either.

I did search for about a half hour before posting the grandparent post. I think I would stick with Dell or Alienware personally because I don't mind spending a bit more for support and some assurance of quality from a known vendor. I'm also surprised that IBM, who once carried the torch of very expensive but also very full-featured laptops, doesn't appear to have anything in this class. Oh well.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"I have noticed that even with Windows XP on brand-new hardware, running one computationally-intensive program in the background (for example, a compiler) slows down the responsiveness of the UI to the point where it is practically unusable."

CPU usage doesn't seem to hurt my XP system. I/O usage, however, does kill the performance of a Windows system. This is a known problem.

"Windows XP does feel amazingly sluggish compared to Mac OS X."

That's amazing, because I have found XP to be more responsive than *any* other OS. Perhaps that's because Firefox launches 2x as fast on my desktop than it does on the dual 2GHz G5s at my workplace. Or, perhaps it's because Word starts up almost instantly.

XP does sometimes feel sluggish when the CPU is swamped, but that's because explorer runs some processes (autocomplete is an example) at the lowest priority.

Also remember that some processes on XP set themselves to highest priority automatically.

You might also try a system with Hyperthreading. It really helps out when the CPU is swamped.

Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing

[TheNetAvenger]

OK so that's three features you happened to "mis-mention". That kind of undermines your argument when you're trying to explain how behind the leading edge Apple is... your own best example doesn't have those features either.

I did search for about a half hour before posting the grandparent post. I think I would stick with Dell or Alienware personally because I don't mind spending a bit more for support and some assurance of quality from a known vendor. I'm also surprised that IBM, who once carried the torch of very expensive but also very full-featured laptops, doesn't appear to have anything in this class. Oh well.

The Seagate drive is very real, maybe you need to learn how to search a little better. There are already announce products for in not only in notebooks, but also in small footprint RAID network file server solutions, and this isn't even NEW news.

As for implying that I intentionally fabricated something by quoting the specs from two different systems together, is either really silly or just reaching to substantiate your point. The point remains that the SPECS I stated were real, just not on the unit I stated they were from. This invalidates what? Apple still doesn't have either of these features or comperable features...

As for the name brands, Sager is a larger NAME brand than Alienware, and has been around for a long time.

Ironically Sager is the brand we chose because of dealing with them for several years, there are TONS of other BRAND names that you might not have heard of either, that also have comperable model Computers.

Even HP has the ZD7000 series which is somewhat in this class, although not quite as feature rich as the Sager, but still a leap ahead of the Apple 17" Powerbook. Is HP brand name enough for you?

You are admiting you know very little about the subject if you STILL can't find reference to ANY laptop size 10,000 rpm drive, let alone the Seagate, and that you have no idea even who Sager is, nor realize that tons of PC laptop companies have comperable models to the one I stated, even HP.

So remind me, if you know so little, why did you even bother to post in the first place?

However, I shouldn't be so harsh, as you at least realized that 1600x1200 for graphic designers is a good thing, even in a 15" form factor. - Especially if it were implemented with the Apple GUI that is less bitmap rendered and would scale wonderfully on the higher resolution display, I truly wish Apple would get their head out of the sand and instead of trying to impress us with 17", they would impress us with 17" with more pixels per inch than the average notebook.

sadness is i

[scribblez]

A month after my girlfriend gets hers.. darn.

Price point

[DavidLeblond]

I'm sure by the time I hit submit there will be 500 posts saying the same thing but...

Priced too high! For the same price you can get an iMac that comes with a built in display for the same price!

And for shame Apple on crippling the FSB.

Ok so I'm a little miffed that I paid the same price for my 933MHz iBook that would have gotten me a 1.33GHz iBook with a Superdrive today...

Re:Price point

[Octos]

Boo hoo. For what I paid for my 486 I could have gotten a dual G5. What a rip-off!

Welcome to the world of technology where it's obsolete the moment you buy it.

Re:Price point

[repetty]

>> Welcome to the world of technology where it's obsolete the moment you buy it.

That's funny and all but I really hate the word "obsolete" being used like that.

When my younger brother was born, I was not rendered obsolete. I continued to function just as before.

My G3/300 with Jaguar... still not obsolete. Still works as it always has. Word processing, spreadsheets, email, web browsing, programming.

My daughter runs Panther on her G3/500 PowerBook and I run it on my upgraded Lombard. Neither are obsolete until they fail.

You quip was humorous, but too many people will take it at face.

--Richard

Bus speed nitpick...

[Power Everywhere]

These new G4 chips have support for 200 MHz busses. Why does Apple not let those of us still browsing back in the G4 section have that little bitmore performance? iBooks and PowerBooks should have 200 MHz busses all thw way across the board.

Re:Bus speed nitpick...

[Anonymous Coward]

I might be mistaken, but I don't think there is 200mhz laptop memory yet. The PB already have 166mhz, if the iBook got upgraded they would canibalize PB sales even more.

Re:Bus speed nitpick...

[Power Everywhere]

You have a point there, though you missed that I said both iBooks and PowerBooks should get the bus boost across the board. Processor speeds would be enough to differntiate the two lines. I would settle, however, for 166 MHz iBook busses and 200 MHz PowerBook busses.

Re:Bus speed nitpick...

[prototypical]

Actually, unless I missed a press release somewhere, the 200mhz bus isn't a factor until Freescale rolls out the MPC7448 chip sometime in the near future. That's the one that's ridiculously low power (Freescale claims 10 watts at 1.8ghz), with pin-compatibility to the older parts and the upgraded bus. These are likely MPC7445 or MPC7447A parts, which are slower, hotter, and not manufactured at 90nm like the new offerings will be.

I expect to see the 7448 as an incremental update to the PowerBooks, until apple can stick the MPC8461D dual-cores in their place later next year. Apple is, as usual, playing their cards close to their chest, but anyone that's been paying attention to Freescale's moves knows that Crolles2 is online and rolling out parts from the production lines. They've got functional 90nm production, the last I heard, and are working on tooling for samples at 65nm in 2005.

Powerbook soon to follow

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet a revision of the PB line can't be far off: the 12" PB now looks way overpriced next to the 12" iBook.

Re:Powerbook soon to follow

[Ohreally_factor]

It looks like the iBook has a more capable graphic card as well, although they disabled DVI output (of course). In fact, that seems to be the only thing that sets the 12" PB ahead of the iBooks!

Oh, wait. Says here that the 12" iBook's processor is 1.2 Ghz, while the 12" PB is 1.33 Ghz.

Re:Powerbook soon to follow

[Echnin]

The PB has 64 MB of VRAM, which is needed for Core Image, a new fancy thingie that Tiger (OS X 10.4) is supposed to have.

Re:Powerbook soon to follow

[robbieduncan]

Not True!

From the Apple website

The performance gains and features supported by Core Image ultimately depend on the graphics card. Graphics cards capable of pixel-level programming deliver the best performance. But Core Image automatically scales as appropriate for systems with older graphics cards, for compatibility with any Tiger-compatible Mac.
Supported graphics cards:

* ATI Radeon 9800 XT
* ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
* ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
* ATI Radeon 9600 XT
* ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
* ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
* ATI Mobility Radeon 9600
* NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra
* NVIDIA GeForceFX Go 5200
* NVIDIA GeForceFX 5200 Ultra

These cards are available in today's PowerBooks, Power Mac G5s and both the 17-inch and 20-inch iMac.

Note that there is no reference to 64Mb being required.

Re:Powerbook soon to follow

[clarkcox3]

And I really thing they should dump that mini DVI and go with a full sized one

The 17" and 15" PBs do have full-sized DVI ports, and there's no room for one on the 12".

Re:Powerbook soon to follow

[Echnin]

Note that all of those cards listed have 64 MB of VRAM. It says right there that only the PBs, PMs and iMacs support it. Though I don't remember where I read it first, I recall it as being a problem with the VRAM. In either case, Core Image is only supported by graphics cards that have 64 MB of VRAM or more. No graphics cards with 32 MB of VRAM are supported. Current iBooks and eMacs will not support Core Image, as they have Radeon 9200s with 32 MB of VRAM.

Re:Powerbook soon to follow

[Ohreally_factor]

I'm probably dreaming here, but I so want a 12" PB with a radeon 9700 mobility in it. A max of 2 GB RAM would be nice too. And since I'm just wishing, how about a backlit keyboard and FW 800? Just because I want a small laptop doesn't mean I want less features, unless it's physically impossible to fit them in.

Re:Powerbook soon to follow

[ian mills]

It has nothing todo with RAM. All those cards listed are DX9 level cards. While OS X doesn't support DX9, they do support the same features in openGL, and that's whats needed in CoreImage. The radeon 9200 is not a DX9 level card (dispite the 9 in the name, its just a rebadged 8500).

Re:Powerbook soon to follow

[mrchaotica]

Yeah, I do too. Unfortunately, Apple won't actually do it just like they won't make a headless eMac. : (

So?

[daveschroeder]

The iBook is only $100 more otherwise.

sofa king sick of naysayers

[spoonyfork]

Apple: going out of business since 1984.

Even though...

[Killjoy_NL]

Even though I'm more of a PC guy, I have always liked Apple computers, since I don't know a LOT about them (I only fixed them now and then at a dutch apple reseller), I find them to be generally userfriendly and appealing to the eye (Except for the first I-Mac design).

From what I've seen, Apple is not really afraid to take risks (hence the IMac design, 2nd IMac design and the latest IMac, OSX). I've also been quite impressed by their network/server solutions, they do seem to have a lot of horsepower for their intended job.

Even though I'm not buying one (I'm more of a PC gamer/tech than an Apple one), I hope they will do well in the future :)

Re:Even though...

[AvantLegion]

>> Even though I'm not buying one (I'm more of a PC gamer/tech than an Apple one), I hope they will do well in the future :)

See, for me, it's PC desktop, Mac laptop.

PC desktop for games and endless fun with new Linux distros. Mac laptop for a laptop that will Always Just Work (tm), and be nice and easy to use.

Re:Even though...

[mrchaotica]

I wouldn't discount the "tech" abilities of a Mac. I am very happy programming on mine, and I still have a bash terminal any time I want it.

No relation to ibook and g5 PB

[rollthelosindice]

This is awesome news about the strength of the G4 iBook. Really continuing to be a strong product, and exceeding what many thought the limitations of the G4 in a notebook would be.

However, There really is no correlation between improved iBooks and the problems that apple face in getting the G5 to stay cool enough for use in the powerbook design. It's just wishful thinking.

Re:No relation to ibook and g5 PB

[DenDave]

well then maybe I will jsut buy one of these and run SuSE PPC or Yellow Dog ..

I was sorta half waiting for a g-5 but then I guess for a 12 incher it doesn't make that big a difference. Probably better off with a G4 and more ram, 256 is a little on the anemic side..

Re:No relation to ibook and g5 PB

[Yrd]

Just don't buy the RAM from Apple, they overcharge horrendously for it.

Can't wait for a G5 Powerbook, but it's going to be a while I think. I think we'll see another revision of the G4 Powerbooks first.

It might be interesting if they went dual-core on the Powerbooks actually. Probably similar heat problems though.

Re:No relation to ibook and g5 PB

[shotfeel]

Can't wait for a G5 Powerbook

Question is, will you get that before or after I get the G6 desktop I can't wait for?

Is it just me...

[khrtt]

...or is this machine really seem like the thing from last year? Now I'm a PC person, never used a mac before for anything serious. So now I'm looking at these there specs and I see 1.3GHz clock, 133MHz FSB, 256MB RAM, 512 MB cache. New PC laptops with these specs were hot, what, at least 2 years ago. So what's the deal? Are the PowerPC cpus that much faster clock per clock? Is memory used that much more efficiently?

Re:Is it just me...

[10Ghz]

These are "low-end" consumer laptops. Equivalent x86-machines would have something like 2GHz Celeron in them. And I assume I don't have to tell you how much Celerons suck? And what about the size of the laptop? Battery-life? I think iBook would beat that lowly Celeron-laptop quite easily in those things.

So, smaller laptop with longer battery-life, AND better CPU (Pentium-M is good, but those aren't usually in low-end machines)? Sounds like a good deal to me!

Re:Is it just me...

[killbill!]

Since you're unlikely to use your iBook to play resource-intensive games or do any serious 3D rendering anyway, what use would you have for it?

Sustainable heat (it's called a LAPtop FFS!), massive battery life and very low weight matter much more to me, as far as laptops are concerned. Areas in which the iBook truly shines.

That said I would have loved a RAM and HD bump, 256MB is indeed a tad low for OSX.

Re:Is it just me...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Mac users have been complaining about the 256MB stock memory for a while now, OS X is supposedly a memory hog that performs noticably better with 512MB. I thought there should be ways to turn off unneeded services though.

Re:Is it just me...

[NecoX]

Come here... Im going to tell you a little secret about us macusers... closer... closer... Usability first (that is, run OSX and asorted apps in a timely fashion), e-penis-extension somewhere down the line. And for those who can't understand me, people buy Macs to use OSX to create/work with, not sit on and crunch dnetc (altho it kicks ass at that too) or play CS:S or HL2 or D3. Or.

Re:Is it just me...

[the_2nd_coming]

umm, yes. windows has this thing with trying NOT to use memory..how does that benefit anything? unused memory is just unused.

OS X and many Unix type OSs USE memory as much as possible to minimize swapping.

Re:Is it just me...

[fimbulvetr]

No, you seem to be mixing facts up.
Celerons go in low end machines.
Pentium Ms go in mid and high end machines. The pentium M is significantly faster than a P4 or celeron. It also has much more battery life.

A Latitude D800/Wide Aspect/Centrino (starting at ~$1400) for $2000 would wipe the floor with this thing. Not to mention equivilant battery life. Just put some gentoo on to eliminate the winblowz problems.

Re:Is it just me...

[EulerX07]

A comparable spec PC can probably be built for less then 700$US. Just a quick look at some current prices got me 115$CAN for an Asus FX5200 card, and 207$CAN for an Athlon 64 3000+.

Some people always see more expensive as being better no matter what you'll say. Kinda like picking an Intel CPU over an AMD CPU.

P.S: If we start talking benchmarks, let's use Doom 3, not Photoshop.

Re:Is it just me...

[gl4ss]

Mobile Intel Celeron M is what's in the current low end energy conservative pc laptops.

except that even pc laptops seem to usually ship now with 512mb and 40gb+.

but in pc laptops there's so much more _choice_, if you want a luggable desktop then you can buy that. if you just want a small lappy you can get that. if you want something in the middle you can get that too. you want a 64bit desktop laptop? hell, you can have that too today.

though, what I'd like would be one of these . i'm sure when apple does this the fans will tout apple for innovativity though..

Re:Is it just me...

[the_2nd_coming]

services are not what is hogging memory, it is the fact that OS X memory management focuses on minimizing swapping.

Re:Is it just me...

[bhtooefr]

Well, this IS a low end box, meant to compete with stuff like this (1666.67MHz), 512KB cache, 266MHz (doubled, though) FSB and stuff like the 2.3GHz 128KB cache craptops that Dell is pushing out.

Also, the PPC does clock a LOT better than stuff like the Celery, or even the P4. Compare to something like the Pentium M, which isn't a budget processor, or the 512KB cache Celeron M.

Re:Is it just me...

[Bricklets]

You are ignoring the most important part of the computer: the software. There are people who buy Macs solely because of Mac OS X. Battery life is also a huge plus for iBooks (I always get at the very least 4 hours and can push that up to 5.5 hours if I have to).

But in terms of hardware, System Shootout lists a 1.33GHz G4 as the same 1.5Ghz Pentium-M. They're two different architectures, so as always take any such comparisons with a grain a salt.

Re:Is it just me...

[HeghmoH]

So, you're saying a $2000 PC laptop would wipe the floor with a $1000 Mac laptop? Color me surprised.

Re:Is it just me...

[Bricklets]

While I agree with you that Macs simply RULE in regards to usability and software, patronizing Windows users is not the ideal strategy if you wish to make a possible switcher out of them.

Re:Is it just me...

[sootman]

Plus you won't get pwn3d in your first five minutes online. What more could you want? :-)

Re:Is it just me...

[leinhos]

but in pc laptops there's so much more _choice_, if you want a luggable desktop then you can buy that. if you just want a small lappy you can get that. if you want something in the middle you can get that too. you want a 64bit desktop laptop? hell, you can have that too today.

Ok, you're right, Apple doesn't sell a 64-bit laptop (yet).

Re:Is it just me...

[khrtt]

Plus you won't get pwn3d in your first five minutes online.

Heard of linux? "PC" doesn't necessarily equal "Windows".

Re:Is it just me...

[NardofDoom]

Let's not forget the port complement: two USB 2.0, Firewire, video out (mirroring), 10/100BaseT Ethernet, Modem, and built-in 802.11g.

All in a super-sleek and rugged design with wicked battery performance (6 hours!) and the best OS there is. This is a sweet notebook.

Re:Is it just me...

[sootman]

Please, let's not pedantically split hairs here. (Oops, forgot where I was.) We're talking about "What 99.5% of the buying public will walk into Circuit City, buy, turn on, and use." Jeez.

I'd also like to point out that if you're smart enough to know what Linux is, you're smart enough to keep your Windows box from getting owned as well. But, like I said, we're talking about the world a large, not slashdot readers.

Back to "pedantic", I only wish I'd though of the "PC != X86" line before our friendly neighborhood AC did. Pedant, meet your match.

Re:Is it just me...

[khrtt]

You are ignoring the most important part of the computer: the software.

Exactly. Thats the idea. I want to compare hardware only.

Re:Is it just me...

[nmk]

Well I can't give you any empirical data (though I'm sure it exists) but I can speak from my own experience. I currently own a Powerbook which runs at 1.5 Ghz. About six months ago I bought a 1.6 Ghz Pentium M laptop for my mother. The speed difference between the Pentium M and the Powerbook is huge. The Powerbook is simply MUCH faster than the Pentium M laptop in everyday use.

I was really under the impression that the new Pentium M chips are fast, but its performance was really quite poor compared to my powerbook. I haven't done any application benchmarking, but I can tell you for sure that the Powerbook feels much faster.

The G4 and Pentium certainly can't be compared clock for clock. You would get people equating a 1.5 G4 with anything between a 1.8-2.5 Ghz Pentium 4. All I can tell you is that the Powerbook feels very responsive, much more so than any Pentium M or Pentium 4 laptop I've used (I haven't yet used the psycho Alienware type laptops).

Re:Is it just me...

[NecoX]

For all the bullshit "they" have spewed in my face over the years... FUCK them. Oh, and to comply with the trolls-standards, I use a windows box, for games.

Re:Is it just me...

[khrtt]

I call BS. Usability is usability and speed is part of it. You can't always replace speed with convinient menus and nifty icons. The only thing I care about while waiting for photoshop to run a filter over a 200MB graphics file is how long it's going to take. Seriously - a computer is not a palm pilot, and "the zen of palm" doesn't apply.

Re:Is it just me...

[raju1kabir]

umm, yes. windows has this thing with trying NOT to use memory..how does that benefit anything? unused memory is just unused.

Resale value. Nobody wants memory with a lot of mileage on it. If you can say "and check this out: 256 megabytes of this baby just sat in the allocation pool the whole time" you've added hundreds to its value.

Re:Is it just me...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

umm, yes. windows has this thing with trying NOT to use memory..how does that benefit anything? unused memory is just unused.

Uh... My copy of Windows is using about 530MB as cache. I routinely put the system to sleep, and even the apps that aren't open stay in the cache and many programs pop up almost immediately.

The pro-Linux and pro-Mac crowds could stand to learn how not to spread FUD-like statements. Making untrue claims about competing systems often serve only to undercut your own arguments.

Re:Is it just me...

[khrtt]

Check out any recent IBM thinkpad. They also have a full port complement, and nice battery life. The thing is, you just can't get a thinkpad with the same specs, as this iBook. Even the low-end thinkpads are are much more powerfull (and more expensive). You'd have to find a 2-yr-old used one to get a machine with the same specs, and it would cost you $700 or so. So, what's the deal?

Re:Is it just me...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Some people always see higher speed as being better no matter what, even if you have to use a harder-to-use OS like Linux or one that is the least secure, like Windows.

Re:Is it just me...

[radish]

My Fujitsu notebook has 3.x USB2, 1x Firewire, Video Out (VGA/Svideo, dual head), EThernet, Modem, built in wireless G. It also has a PCMCIA slot, a SD card slot, and an optical drive. The screen is 13" not 12", and goes to a higher res. Battery life is reasonable at 4.5-5 hours, and it's a 1.6ghz Pentium M. Oh and it's about 1" thick (thinner than an iBook) and weighs under 4lbs.

Re:Is it just me...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I'm a laptop snob. When work bought me x86 laptops I insisted on Sony Viaos. The equipment replacement fairy only comes once every three years, so my trusty R-505 was replaced this year with an iBook.

Having used a low-end Mac and a high-end Viao, the Mac is a much more complete package. You aren't running an OS with Laptop drivers bolted into it. You are running an OS that was designed for your Laptop and vice versa.

Software upgrades on PC laptops are horrible. My 505 came with Windows ME. I had so much fun trying to upgrade the puppy to XP that I finally reformatted the thing and ran Linux. (First RedHat, then Gentoo.) Apple stuff tends to upgrade very well, assuming you have enough RAM and horsepower. It's easy to find an 8 year old Mac serving files.

An 8 year old x86 would have been thrown out by now. A top of the line box would have been a 200Mhz Pentium Classic then. My cutoff date for a salvageble PC is a PII 450, Circa 1998.

Re:Is it just me...

[the_2nd_coming]

wow!!! and while your programs pop up fast giving you system the appearance of speed, your programs that you are actually USING are swapping data in and out. that is really nice. how stupid of me.

Re:Is it just me...

[EulerX07]

Some people will alway want a easy-to-use secure OS, and if they're lucky the game that's out right now for PC will be out in a year for their OS.

And some will pay half, get a secure OS for free, and dual-boot into the "insecure" OS and play 100% of the cutting edge games.

Re:Is it just me...

[NardofDoom]

Hey, the iBook has an optical drive, too. (Combo Drive)

And how much did this Fujitsu cost ya? The closest I can find costs $500 more than the 12" iBook and $200 more than the 14"

And can yours run Mac OS X?

Re:Is it just me...

[GarfBond]

While I agree with your main point, I want to nitpick with your statement about the Pentium-M, because obviously you aren't fully aware of those.

Pentium M chips are Intel's new flagship processors on the mobile side. While Pentium 4s are still around, those are simply desktop chips bolted into a mobile form factor (and THOSE are the ones that are usually cheaper, because desktop chips are always cheaper than mobile equivalents), unless you get the special P4-M derivative (all but gone nowadays).

You'll find Pentium-M (or Centrino brand) processors in a variety of machines, typically no cheaper than $1200 and up to $2500 beasts (for the insane gamers). There are, of course, P-M based Celeron derivatives, which don't sound all that bad on paper (on paper, they almost sound like the same as the original P-Ms).

As for G4 vs P-M, that brings the whole completely different architecture argument again. I'd say both are excellent processors, and both excel at low-power environments.

Re:Is it just me...

[pocomoonshiine]

and with a simple firmware tweak video mirroring becomes true dual monitor capability. Apple doesn't want you to know that, though.

Re:Is it just me...

[radish]

I got it for $1300, so it is more expensive, but I was just pointing out that Apple's claims of thinnest/lightest are somewhat strange, and that they don't have a monopoly on well designed & featured machines.

Re:Is it just me...

[jmcmurry]

Laptop snobs insist on ThinkPads, at least for PC laptops. I've dealt with a few Vaios, and they always seemed heavy on gimmicks and light on solid functionality.

In my experience, ThinkPads are heavy on functionality and light on gimmicks. YMMV.

Re:Is it just me...

[DarKnyht]

Not entirely true. I used my old 8088 for roughly 11 years until the HDD decided that it had enough and collapsed on itself. Granted for the last 4 years I had to open the HDD casing and give the drive a light spin to help it get started, but that thing just kept on tickin'.

It was great for doing word processing and playing classics like the original Prince of Persia and Quest for Glory (although it was Hero's Quest back then).

Re:Is it just me...

[Bricklets]

Sorry to hear that. But with all that pent up anger, perhaps it would be better if maybe you just didn't respond to Window users then? Anyway, hope the latter part of today is more cheerful for you.

Re:Is it just me...

[MoneyT]

Why yes, yes they do

Re:Is it just me...

[NecoX]

It's not so much pent up anger, a combination of instant anger and pent up perhaps. You see, when I see or hear a Windows-only (and the only Mac he has ever touched was an LC back in highschool 10 years ago) user talk shit about Macs is how they are so smug about it, the only argument is marketshare basically, but the single most annoying flaw is that they have no real experience in it. How does that logic work?... "X sucks in all possible ways, I've never used X, but it sucks because Y which I use, has a bigger marketshare"

Re:Is it just me...

[Bricklets]

Exactly. Thats the idea. I want to compare hardware only.

Software and hardware are in many ways interchangeable. Pretty much anything implemented in software can be implemented in hardware (and vice versa). A computer without software is uesless. To ignore the software of a computer is to not evaulate the entire computer.

Re:Is it just me...

[Doppler00]

I've owned a Sony Viao and I can't say they are of any better quality then Dell, Gateway, or Toshiba. The right hinge of my unit simply broke off from normal use (I didn't drop it or anything). Since it was well out of warranty, the cost to repair it would be about $300 so I decided to purchase a new one from Dell.

The one thing Apple has going for it is their software and operating system. Sure they may (just may) have slower hardware, but their software is generally much, much easier to use.

PC Manufactures, in contrast, seem to develop their own inhouse utilities and programs like media players, custom system utilities, which only seem to be clunky and thrown together.

Don't even bother with OS upgrades on laptops. Manufactures usually don't support new OS's very well so you are better off either leaving the current OS on it, or buying a new laptop.

Re:Is it just me...

[10Ghz]

No, you seem to be mixing facts up.

Celerons go in low end machines.

How am I "mixing facts up"? I said these are low-end machines (and around $1000, they are), and I said equivalent x86-machines would have a Celeron in them. You then say that "You mix facts up, Celerons go to low-end machines". Huh? Isn't that what I just said??

A Latitude D800/Wide Aspect/Centrino (starting at ~$1400) for $2000 would wipe the floor with this thing. Not to mention equivilant battery life.

So, a x86-laptop that is twice as expensive, would "wipe the floor with the iBook"? Uh-huh. I sure hope it would, since it's TWICE AS EXPENSIVE! And D800's wieght starts a 7 lbs, whereas iBook weights 5.9 pounds (the 14" model). So it's heavier. And looking at their measurements, it's bulkiers as well (D800 is thicker, wider and deeper). And, AFAIK, iBook has better vid-card (Radeon 9200 vs. GeForce FX Go 5200). And the Dell ships wuith a frigging CD-ROM as standard, you have to pay extra for DVD! Not to mention that the Dell looks cheap.

So what the hell are you blathering about?

Re:Is it just me...

[10Ghz]

While I agree with your main point, I want to nitpick with your statement about the Pentium-M, because obviously you aren't fully aware of those.

Huh? I said that Pentium-M is a good chip, but you don't usually find those in low-end machines. You then spend your entire post telling the exact same thing I said in my original post! So how exactly am I "not aware of [Pentium-M]". Well, I didn't mention Pentium-M's Celeron-variant, but it too (naturally) is not as good as real Pentium-M is.

To re-iterate my point: Pentium-M is a good chip. But you usually can't find one in $1000 laptop (if you can, they hace skimped on something else). Those $1000 x86-machines usually have Celeron's in them (until recently the P4-variant, in the future Pentium-M variant). And Celerons (espesially the P4-variants) are not that good.

Is this really that difficult to understand?

Re:Is it just me...

[mrchaotica]

I agree with you, but watch out about your video card argument -- presumably, the GeForce is better since it's in the 12" Powerbook.

Re:Is it just me...

[mrchaotica]

Darn, and all this time I've been wishing they'd make a convertable tablet Actius MM20 -- and now it seems that they have!

Too bad it doesn't run OS X. : P

[I bought an iBook because I couldn't find a MM10 at the time, and now I'm spoiled]

Re:Is it just me...

[mrchaotica]

So you want to miss the point entirely so that you can pretend you've won the argument?

Here's the deal: Depending on the model, Macs range from cheaper than an equivalent PC (12" ibook vs. 5lb Centrino) to somewhat more expensive than "cheap" brands (iMac G5 vs. Dell desktop with an LCD). But, once you consider OS X any Mac is a better value than a hardware-spec equivalent PC.

Re:Is it just me...

[Bricklets]

Your "friend" is arguing by making an appeal to emotion (argument ad populum). It's a very common fallacy. You can tell him that.

Re:Is it just me...

[fimbulvetr]

Well, I didn't rtfa, my bad. $1200? Still no problem.

Try an IBM ThinkPad R Series R51, $1299; 14 inch display. Comes with CDRW and DVD player. Weighs 5.7-6.0lbs. Yeah, with the cdrom, would you believe it?

Yeah, I was correct. The equivilant is NOT a celeron. If you want an 800 dollar laptop, you get a celeron.

Looks are opinions, you and I will probably never come to an agreement on that.

I wasn't blathering, it was just your zealot apple mind garbling the english.

Re:Is it just me...

[khrtt]

So you want to miss the point entirely so that you can pretend you've won the argument?

No. I want to miss the argument entirely. I want a different argument - hardware comparison only. So take that OSX and stuff it (preferably with the X side facing up:-) I don't care. I know it's "better". I just don't give a flying fuck.

Re:Is it just me...

[10Ghz]

Try an IBM ThinkPad R Series R51, $1299; 14 inch display. Comes with CDRW and DVD player. Weighs 5.7-6.0lbs. Yeah, with the cdrom, would you believe it?

it has crappy integrated vid-card, nowhere near the Radeon 9200 iBook has. Hell, the hi-end version of the R-series has Radeon 7500, which still isn't anywhere near the vid-card the iBook has (but is still alot better than the Intel Extreme Graphics 2 found on the model you quoted).

Hell, that vid-card spanked by GeForce 4MX, and MX is alot crappier than the 9200 is! I wouldn't be surprised if the vid-card on the iBook is order of magnitude more powerful than the one in the R-series is!

So, comparing the $1.299 iBook to thew $1.299 R-series, we can see that the iBook has ALOT more powerful vid-card, twice as much HD-space (60GB vs. 30GB) and a FireWire-port. iBook IS a kick-ass machine for the amount of money you pay for it!

I wasn't blathering, it was just your zealot apple mind garbling the english.

Apple-zealot? Funny, considering that I don't own any Apple hardware. I don't care that much for Mac OS X (I have used it for total of about 10 minutes) and I have been arguing with Apple-fans on Slashdot on numerous occasions (IIRC last time was when I said "Apple-quality" is not what it's made out to be)

Re:Is it just me...

[WuphonsReach]

Yeah, I've looked at the Vaios about once a year and have never been impressed. All of the ultralightweight / ultrathin laptops are mostly marketing, designed for executives who do very little grunt work (as in mostly meetings / phone calls / e-mails).

IBM ThinkPads have always been solidly built when I've handled them. Compaq used to have a good line (used more then a few back in the mid-90s).

However, I've been using Toshiba Tecras for about 5 years now and have had very good luck with them. Definitely not lightweight since they're designed as desktop replacement machines, but the keyboard and screen (1400x1050) are good enough that I don't use external devices. I've had two problems with this unit in two years (hard drive failed, CPU fan started making noise and finally stopped working).

Re:Is it just me...

[fimbulvetr]

it has crappy integrated vid-card...

Yeah, I see that. I don't really want to get any farther into this, because you're gonna make me start looking on compusa.com or something. The only thing I _want_ to stress is that the Pentium M is available on more laptops that what you had said. Don't get me wrong, we can have price wars if you'd like, I just don't really feel like bickering over such things.

Apple-zealot? Funny, considering...

I'll take your word on this one. The next time I try to pick on the apple guys, I'll be sure to:
a. RTFA, or at least the price.
b. find a comprable comparison, as opposed to picking one on my whim.
c. Be cautious in throwing out the "z" word.

I was ill-prepared this time, and I'm not doing much better today.

Re:Is it just me...

[Bricklets]

Let me repeat. Hardware and software are interchangable. One can be implemented by the other (hardware implementation offers better performance. software implementation is much easier to do). computer development is all about the trade offs between the two. To skip over the software of a computer is to not evalute the entire machine. If you want to do an only hardware to hardware comparison, then you're just cherry picking what you want to compare.

If you're ok with that, then good for you. I'm just pointing out that the results of any such comparison is pretty much useless.

That being said: off the top of my head it looks like the G4 is a bit faster than the Pentium M at the same clock speed (make your own judgement on that). Battery life is quite excellent. Few PC laptops can match iBooks battery life (this may have more to do with software???). Memory management (RAM) is much better on an iBook, but this is again related to software. The built-in wifi card is 802.11g whereas intel centrino is 802.11b. I don't even think there's a fan in an iBook, but if there is one I must be deaf because I can't hear it at all! It's near silent. It's a little under 5 pounds with battery included. Etc, etc, etc. You can check out the specs here. One negative is that the video card is only a Mobile Radeon 9200.

Comparable?

[daveschroeder]

Very doubtful.

If you had said $1000, I might believe you. Apparently you've not seen a Power Mac G5 before, nor taken a good look at its specs.

Re:Comparable?

[BoomerSooner]

Apparently you didn't notice the stripped down 1.8GHz single processor system. Since you cannot read here you go:

1.8GHz G5
512K Cache
600MHz Bus (should be 900MHz but it's slowed to degrade performance)
256MB RAM (Wow what is that like $17)
Geforce FX 5200 64MB ($51 on NewEgg)
80GB SATA Hard Drive
DVD-R (Notice no -RW, +R or +RW)
OS X 10.3 & Shiny Case

Like I said I can build a comparable Athlon64 for 1/3 the price.
Remember there is no monitor included.

Re:Comparable?

[smcavoy]

Like I said I can build a comparable Athlon64 for 1/3 the price.
Will it run OS X 10.3? No.
Will it be a mac? No.
Will it be comparable to a Mac G5? Only if you have never owned one before.

Re:Comparable?

[arodland]

By "about 40" you mean "less than 30", right? And by "$70 before shipping" you mean "$60 with free shipping", right?

As for 7200RPM 80GB SATA hard drives, how about $67 with free shipping for one from Western Digital with 8MB buffer?

The first two are really barrel-scrapers, but you were pretending that such prices don't exist even at the cheapest places. Wise up. That's certainly not "crackpot". Oh, and learn to spell crackpot.

Re:1499 is too much

[jxyama]

>Hell for $1499 just buy an iMac instead, at least you get a 17" screen. Stupid overpricing.

i'm sure apple is happy either way, as long as you drop that $1500 on them... expandability is something PowerMac offers but iMac doesn't.

whenever apple updates the iMac, half the complaints are "but in a few years, I will have to throw away a perfectly functional monitor!!" here's apple's answer - if you want to keep the monitor, but this low end G5 PowerMac instead.

this is a perfect machine for small businesses, wanting to upgrade their older G4 PowerMacs for relatively cheap.

2 speed bumps in 9 moths

[the_2nd_coming]

GAH...and AE built in!!! well, I bought my iBook 2 moths before the 1 GHz model was released, I was not mad then, can't get made now since it is almost a year since I bought my machine.

Re:2 speed bumps in 9 moths

[jcostantino]

You could always sell it and buy a new one. The best (and worst) factor to Apple computers is the high resale value. It's easy to recover more of your investment when you sell in a year or two but at the same time it's hard to buy a year old Apple because it's only usually $400 cheaper than a brand new unit with current specs that sells (usually) for a lower sticker than the older unit did.

Re:2 speed bumps in 9 moths

[Ohreally_factor]

One of my buying strategies has been to wait for a refresh, then buy a factory refurb of the previous model. That way I qualify for Applecare for the full three years.

Another thing I've done is sign up for a course at one of the nearby junior colleges so that I qualify for the edu discount. I take these classes anyway, from time to time, for personal enrichment. (And yes, for the cynical amongst us, hundreds of dollars in discounts is very enriching.)

only the 14" ibook is g4 1.33ghz

[Numeric]

12" is 1.2ghz

http://www.apple.com/ibook/specs.html

No "Combo Drive", thanks.

[nijk]

Even on the cheapest new iBook, they don't give me an option to choose a cheaper drive than the CD-burning Combo Drive. What if I fucking don't want to burn CDs on my laptop and just want a lower pricetag?

That said, these new iBooks look beautiful. :^)

Re:No "Combo Drive", thanks.

[generic-man]

Have you priced out combo drives recently? The difference at retail between a DVD-ROM and DVD-ROM/CD-RW is negligible. I'm sure Apple gets even lower pricing, making the difference insignificant compared with the benefit of saying "you can burn CDs."

That said, I have a Powerbook 12" with a combo drive. I've burned maybe one CD on it since I got it.

Re:No "Combo Drive", thanks.

[Large Green Mallard]

By lower price tag, you're really only talking $15, and loosing a lot of functionality. Apple uses these combo drives through all their portables, which means they wouldn't actually be any cheaper for apple, since most people get combos.

Also, like Longhorn, 10.4 will apparently require a DVD drive.

In other words, don't be so shortsighted :)

Re:No "Combo Drive", thanks.

[jridley]

And save what, maybe $3?
hmmm, newegg.com... laptop 8x DVD-ROM drives, $56 for OEM. Same thing in a combo drive, $66. So that's a MAXIMUM $10 difference, and that's assuming that Apple doesn't close that gap a bit by buying more than ONE, and that it doesn't cost them and every retailer all the way up and down the chain any extra for stocking two different kinds of equipment.

Re:No "Combo Drive", thanks.

[AvantLegion]

>> By lower price tag, you're really only talking $15

Probably not a lower price tag at all. Since the drives are built into the machines, it would mean that Apple would have to produce a third version of each iBook, and one that would be in very low demand.

We're talking HIGHER price tag for that, not lower. Cost of a product is a lot more than just the sum of the values/costs of the parts.

Re:No "Combo Drive", thanks.

[volsung]

If you are a eligible for the academic discount, they offer a version of 12" iBook with a plain-old CD-ROM drive and no Airport Extreme for $900.

The normal 12" model with Combo drive and built in Airport Extreme is $950 with the student discount. So if you plan to add WiFi to the CD-ROM only model, you've negative the cost savings.

Re:No "Combo Drive", thanks.

[hai.uchida]

Even on the cheapest new iBook, they don't give me an option to choose a cheaper drive than the CD-burning Combo Drive. What if I fucking don't want to burn CDs on my laptop and just want a lower pricetag?

I opted for a plain CD-ROM instead of a combo drive in my iBook a year or so ago. thinking since I already have a Superdrive on my desktop I wouldn't need it. I saved about a hundred dollars and have regretted it ever since. I can't tell you how many times I could've saved a lot of hassle by burning a CD on the fly to give someone some files, and not having a DVD has been a PITA on many occasions-- especially installing software.

Get the combo drive. Don't be cheap.

Re:No "Combo Drive", thanks.

[LC II]

OS 10.4 comes on a DVD

Re:No "Combo Drive", thanks.

[Large Green Mallard]

Though, see also slot-loading CRT iMacs of 2000.. Apple produced a CD-RW only version which in many cases was just a DVD-ROM/CD-RW flashed to nerf the DVD functionality ;)

Re:No "Combo Drive", thanks.

[mrchaotica]

Did they change the design? I know that the old iBooks had a CD-ROM-only option for the 12" in the education store, and it was $50 cheaper -- I would think that different optical drives would be interchangable, especially since Apple doesn't charge extra for build-to-order anyway

Re:No "Combo Drive", thanks.

[snolan]

I want a Combo Drive or Super Drive, but I do not want it inside my laptop. I want to it connect via USB2 or Firewire.
I want this for two reasons:

• I see no reason to haul around any optical drive when I am traveling - and frankly, I could always use more battery time.
• The most likely thing to fail in a laptop is the optical drive, which has lots of moving parts. An outboard optical drive would be vastly easier to replace in case of failure.

I'd be willing to pay more for this feature, perhaps $150 more than the current offering - assuming that the laptop without the drive weighed in at, say, 4.2 pounds (remember the PB2400?).

Re:1499 is too much

[dema]

Could there be a more obvious troll? These posts get modded up far too often.

I love X. But it's just sooooo unfair for X to do this. Y does it so much better, I just can't believe it!

PS - I'm a huge fan of X, so what I'm saying MUST be true!

Re:Not News

[adam mcmaster]

They didn't just redesign the site, they're now offering different products - I ordered an iBook a few weeks ago and they have changed my order to reflect this change, which is nice since I'm now getting a faster processor and a bigger hard drive for the same price.

yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[JimBobJoe]

I'm actually helping a close friend purchase a new 12" apple laptop...we had more or less settled on the powerbook (she's a new college student studying film, the thinking being that the powerbook's more robust bus would help with video editing, if she decided to do that) but now I wonder again...what should one know in comparing the ibook to the powerbook, now that the ibook has the new speed increases?

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[BenNovack]

You basically *need* a PowerBook for video work. The video-card and bus difference is too big to contemplate using an iBook, even this updated one, for video editing. Go with the PowerBook.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[pkhuong]

Lighter, more professional looking*, better FSB, possibility to go and haggle for a lower price due to the new ibook being so close in perf?
More built-ins: 802.11g, BT, larger HD. More video RAM, which i guess is more important with Quartz. Better case (aluminium > plastic :). Oh, and the PB is slightly smaller in every dimension. Note that i only made the comparison for the 12.1" models, some points may not apply on larger ones.

*That was actually important for my Corpo sister. She can't go on a board meeting with a shiny, cutesy iBook.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[Spytap]

a a recently graduated film student, I can attest that the Powerbook is the way to go. Much faster, more robust, larger screen area, and the ability to have monitor spanning really make the Powerbook the way to go. I've seen and used both in action, and while the iBook functions for stuff like iMovie, When you get into Final Cut Pro, Motion, After Effects, and Photoshop (all needed in film school) the Powerbook really is the only useable solution. Editing a movie on Final Cut Pro on an iBook is an exercise in tedium and patience.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[Greedo]

You can do monitor spanning on the iBooks, despite what Apple or resellers may say. It just requires a (simple) firmware hack to enable it.

I've got it enabled on my iBook (the first model, G3/800, in the white plastic design).

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[d_p]

The gap between the iBook and 12" powerbook is not very large right now. The main difference is the video hardware. The iBook has the ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 with 32MB. The Powerbook has a NVIDIA GeForce FX with 64MB (128MB on the 15" and 17"). The Powerbook supposedly has a better quality display than the iBook. Also, the superdrive (DVD-R) is an option on the 12" powerbook while it is not on the 12" ibook. Otherwise, they are very similar. The 15" and 17" Powerbooks are still quite a jump above the 14" iBook.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[Ohreally_factor]

The main thing stopping me from running out and buying one of these iBooks is that they still don't support a DVI monitor, as does my 15" PB. The 15" screen is just barely passable for editing; when I really want to work, I connect my cinema display.

I really want a 12" though! I've been eyeing the refurb 12" PBs on Apple's special deals page for quite a while now.

With this refresh of the iBook line, however, I think I can wait a bit longer and see what they do with the PBs in the next few months. I'd be shocked to see G5 PBs, but there's a lot they could do to make the PB line more appealing, better graphics being one.

Anyway, if they haven't released or announced anything by MWSF, I might just settle.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[Speed Whiplash]

The iBook and Powerbook use the same processor with the same bus speed. The G4 has a relatively slow bus speed, but it is quite up to the task of student video editing. I wouldn't use that as a limiting factor. Just about any computer with a dedicated video card is more than up to the task. Essentially the difference comes down to video card. The PowerBook has a wonderful ability to span the video to an external monitor or composite monitor/TV. The native 1024x768 12" iBook/Powerbook screen is the bare minimum usable realestate. An external monitor will be bigger and brighter and much easier to use when doing graphics. I use a 12" 876MHz Powerbook with a 21" CRT monitor and it works wonderfully. Add a full-size keyboard and mouse and this little laptop is a wonderful workstation. The iBook is better at two things in my experience. They seem to have a better battery life which might be attributed to a lesser video card, and they feel cooler to the touch. The little 12" Powerbook gets pretty hot and mine collects sweat marks in the summer. The iBook has a wider plastic shell that insulates the exterior from interior heat. The Powerbook uses the shell itself to shed heat. The Powerbooks are a bit thinner. My aluminum-skinned Powerbook looks old compared to the shiney iBook. Both are very elegant an obvious next to Windows laptops and are both made of high-quality materials. I take my Powerbook to work every day and throw it around everywhere. It has a hard and strong shell. The iBook probably wouldn't fare quite as well since it has such a highly-polished shell. The Powerbook is wonderfully portable and worry-free. If I had an iBook I would probably worry more about keeping it polished. Really the only working difference though is that video card. The iBook can output to an external video monitor, but again, it's only going to mirror to it. A video editor will appreciate being able to edit video while keeping a full-screen preview and review on an external monitor; or inversely edit on an external monitor and preview/review on the notebook's screen. Good luck!

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[buckhead_buddy]

I live near a big college campus. The coffee houses are packed with Apple gear both iBook and PowerBooks of all varieties. I'm actually guessing that the two factors that help the sales here are the popularity of the iPod and the ease of hookup to a wireless network. The current styles of white 14" iBook and 12" PowerBooks are the most popular. Maybe because of price, maybe because of portability (the 17" PowerBooks are great but they are bulky).

While I haven't looked in a while, I recall some points about the PowerBook seemed better than the iBook for video uses. The ability to plug in a second monitor at home was one (Final Cut loves screen space).

Powerbooks have their downside though. The metal case on mine has become very scratched and ugly (definitely get a case designed for a PowerBook to carry it in if you get a PB). The thin DVD drive right below the palm rest seems succeptible to skipping when I have my hand on the rest and typing away. The metal case does seem to offer slightly worse WiFi reception that the iBook (not by much, but it is noticable). And the plastic feet just never, ever stay on (which probably leads to more scratches on its bottom). None of these are horrible defects, but that tough, shiny motorcycle plastic body on the iBook is actually a very good thing if your machine is constantly on the move.

Honestly, I think either iBook or PowerBook will work well for college tasks of writing papers and so forth. I think the iBook is better constructed for the rough college life, but the PowerBook has a bit more oomf and video versatility that may make video editing more comfortable. Both seem quite fashionable on my campus though.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[Echnin]

The new iBooks have 802.11g built in. The additional VRAM will be important with Tiger, as Core Image only works with 64 or more, which you don't get on the iBooks. The iBooks supposedly take more abuse than the PBs. Just some points that you should also consider.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[gobbo]

You basically *need* a PowerBook for video work.

Yes. Wait, No.

"Need" is one of those funny bendable words. I just helped someone who's fairly broke get a low-end iBook in order to finish postproduction on a major project (12 one-hour training videos). It's working fine, just a little slow switching in and out of Photoshop and FCP (needs more RAM and hasn't started the dual monitor hack yet).

I have friends who are getting short (20+ mins.) films into major festivals using souped-up G3 450's, and I'm busy (ahem, /. aside) running a 1hr. feature through a dual 450. Yes, faster machines make for better render times, but you need to take a break anyway (and need to respect your deadlines well). The real speed comes with knowing what you're doing, and that's wetware not hardware.

Don't believe the hype. Rendering speed is only a major issue when you have to cycle stuff out the door quickly to make the bucks. Otherwise, the interface is responsive enough, and I generally get just as much done on the G4 dual450 as I do on the spanky fast dualG5, if it's basic editing.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[Ohreally_factor]

The bus on the iBooks and the 12" PBs are 133 Mhz. The PB does have twice the VRAM, and from a quick search, the Nvidia card is the better performer as well. (I made that mistake in a different post. I figured that that the 9200 was 4000 better than the 5200! =)

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[smcavoy]

yes, but if you're getting a new system, you should be 100% sure that using that hack won't void the warranty.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[jmichaelg]

Editing a movie on Final Cut Pro on an iBook is an exercise in tedium and patience.

This will probably be modded down as a troll but I stopped using a Mac altogether when I felt that using it was an exercise in tedium and patience. My brother still has one and watching him wait and wait for what takes me but a second to do the same thing makes me admire his patience but in no way makes me want to emulate him by reverting to a Mac.

Perhaps I drink too much caffeine.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[raju1kabir]

The PowerBook has a wonderful ability to span the video to an external monitor or composite monitor/TV. The native 1024x768 12" iBook/Powerbook screen is the bare minimum usable realestate.... The iBook can output to an external video monitor, but again, it's only going to mirror to it.

You can screen-span with the iBook too. If it weren't possible; I wouldn't have bought the iBook, as connecting a large external monitor is absolutely essential for me when I'm at home.

I take my Powerbook to work every day and throw it around everywhere. It has a hard and strong shell. The iBook probably wouldn't fare quite as well since it has such a highly-polished shell.

Agreed with you here. My iBook has been around the block a bit in its year of life (running around Iraq, rainstorms in Kathmandu, a bad case of sand infestation in Mexico) and it's definitely showing some wear on the shell. I take it as a badge of honor though. The white really shows dirt, by the way, especially on the touchpad.

Also, the ink has worn off many of the keycaps (NSTRL and all the vowels); not sure if that means I type too much or that my fingertips are particularly abrasive. Either way, I don't notice it much, but whenever someone else uses it, they get very confused.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[Refrag]

Yes, but the PowerBooks have DVI ports.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[k_187]

Well, I've got the same model ibook as the grandparent, and have also enabled this hack. About a year ago I got bit by the motherboard issue that the ibooks had and had to send it back to apple. It was still under the factory warranty and they didn't ask any questions so I'd imagine that its ok. Hell, that was the second time I had to send mine off and both times I didn't have any problems, other than the fact that I didn't have my main computer for a week each time.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[mehgul]

The first white iBook was the 12" G3/500 MHz with a 66MHz bus (released in 2001). The G3/800 was released sometime in the second half of 2002, if my memory doesn't fail. (I have a G3/600 from Febr. 2002)

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[Speed Whiplash]

I found the screen spanning tricks to be unreliable on the 14" 933MHz iBook. I will not recommend it to non-pro users. Sometimes it requires the external monitor cable to be reseated or manual monitor detection. In clamshell-mode it had major issues when waking from sleep.

Sounds like you have put your iBook through some very hazardous environments. It's great to hear that it survived. I think your fingers are particularly abrasive. :)

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[l4m3z0r]

Having done my internship at a school that was predominately Mac and pushed portability on its students and faculty I've seen and worked on many iBooks and powerbooks. For me its very hard to choose between the two, the performance boost of the PB is very very noticable. However, the iBook is much more resistant to damage. Yes thats right, I've seen iBooks dropped, knocked off tables, and dragged through all kinds of other abuse and the most of the time the worst you get is a little scuff on the plastic. The PB however, you set that thing down too hard and you get dents, ugly dents that sometimes result in mangling internals. Also reception differences are very noticable, ibook is much better at picking up wireless signals.

My feeling is that if you think this computer is going to be dragged through hell and back used and abused on a daily basis go iBook, UNLESS you absolutely need the extra performance. I want an apple laptop but to be honest I cant make a decision knowing what I do about them. They are both excellent products but honestly for video editing you wont notice too much of a difference as long as you make sure to load them things up with RAM, in my experience RAM is the single most important factor in Mac performance.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[RustyTaco]

Hey! Don't knock the polycarbonate, it's indistructable and takes a lot of abuse. My 3 year old iBook has never seen the inside of a case, I carry it around by itself. I don't even both with the power brick most of the time. Sure, it's scuffed and scratched all to hell and it's not as while as it used to be but everything works flawlessly.
The 12" PowerBooks are noticably smaller too, I just got one for work. It doesn't look that much smaller but as soon as you pick it up and carry it around you instantly appreciate the little bit of extra thinness that the aluminum allows.

- Rustytaco

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[LC II]

I run Photoshop CS and OS 10.3.5 on a 333mhz iMac with 160megs of RAM and a 3gb HD. I'm POSITIVE you can run Photoshop.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[mrchaotica]

Aluminum > plastic, but polycarbonate >= aluminum ; )

Also, these new iBooks have built-in 802.11g too.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[TheRaven64]

Speaking as someone who is bored of hitting command-r in Final Cut and having to wait 15 minutes for it to render the effects on a 30 second clip, I think it's fair to say that for video work you need at least an 8-way 2.5GHz G5 laptop. And asbestos underwear.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[easter1916]

The iBook and Powerbook use the same processor with the same bus speed.

Per Apple's site, the bus speed on these new iBooks is still 133MHz, and the bus speed on my late-2003 model G4 Powerbook 1GHz 17" is 167MHz.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[Speed Whiplash]

I stand corrected. The iBook has a slower bus speed (133MHz) compared to the Powerbook's 167MHz.

This might explain the percieved battery life difference. The iBook can still do the job, but the Powerbook is better equipped.

People talk about Firmware updates to allow screen-spanning. They work. I have had mixed results. I wouldn't rely on this "hack" for someone who isn't computer-savy however, since it can cause unexpected side-effects like green hues, switching unexpected back to mirroring and forgetting what kind of external monitor you are using. This has been my own personal experience. It worked, yes, but I had to fiddle with it and every time I woke the computer from sleep I had the suspense of wondering if I'd had to rediscover the monitor or reseat the cable.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[Speed Whiplash]

Thank you. I confirmed the correction and let the original poster know of my mistake.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[Have Blue]

VRAM is not what prevents the iBooks from using Core Image/Video. The Radeon 9200 is not a DX9 chip and doesn't have the features CI/V require.

Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook

[snolan]

Biggest single difference by far: The PowerBook supports two monitors displaying different things out of the box. The iBook only supports "video mirroring" unless you are willing to hack at it a bit.

On the other hand, the iBooks and iMacs typically come with more bundled software (AppleWorks - which is good enough to replace MS-Office in my opinion - though may not be for others), typically a cheap Encyclopedia, and a game... Not sure that matters much, but the AppleWorks is something I'd buy and that $69 (list) is saved in the iBook.

Re:1499 is too much

[the_2nd_coming]

your nuts. you can build a machine with the same footprint as iMac for 500 bucks and a 17 inch wide screen flat panel?

Re:1499 is too much

[supabeast!]

I have to agree. If Apple is going to sell a single-CPU G5 box for $1499 with no monitor, how about selling it with the fastest G5 available instead of the slowest? Of course, then they wouldn't be able to sell many dual systems since even a lot of professionals really don't need the tiny speed boost one gets from using a dual CPU machine if a fast single CPU machine is available.

Re:1499 is too much

[Anonymous Coward]

you are a moron. check the specs.

I would still go with the PowerMac

[koi88]

I would still go with the PowerMac because it's upgradeable.

In one year, I will want a new video card. In 1 1/2 years a second hard disk, one year later a third.

Maybe, in a few years, processor upgrade cards become available.

My current Mac used to be a Powermac G4 running at 400Mhz, a 20 gig HD and a really slow ATI video card.

Now it's a Dual-1Ghz (Powerlogix), 1.5 GB RAM, 3 Harddisks and a ATI Radeon 8500 (I also need video-out for watching films o the TV). Considering I bought the system more than four years ago, it still runs new games pretty well.

Re:I would still go with the PowerMac

[DavidLeblond]

Yeah, I'd probably go with the PowerMac too... an iMac with an nonupgradable 5200 just rubs me the wrong way.

Re:I would still go with the PowerMac

[FortranDragon]

I can definitely understand going with the PowerMac for the possible video card/processor upgrade. However, hard drive expandability wouldn't be a differentiator since external Firewire drives give you good performance and you can daisy-chain them.

(If someone says they need, say, 15K RPM SCSI or 10K SATA RAID then a consumer machine wouldn't have been an option in the first place. ;-))

Re:I would still go with the PowerMac

[Ohreally_factor]

I've become soft or corrupted. I used to feel the same way about my macs, and while I liked the look of the PBs, I couldn't imagine not being able to upgrade CPUs and graphics cards. Then I got a Ti book as a second computer. I almost never use the G4 tower now. It hasn't been on in months!

Now the iMac is starting to look very appealing to me. =)

Let this be a warning, my fellow mac upgraders! Stay away from the powerbooks!

Re:I would still go with the PowerMac

[mrchaotica]

Heh, I feel the same way about my Athlon XP 2100+ after getting an iBook!

Re:1499 is too much

[mmkkbb]

I can build a comparable Athlon64 for about $500.

How long would it take (including the time spent shopping for parts), and how much would you expect to be paid to do it?

Make sure you spend a lot of money on the case, too.

Also Xserve RAID

[sometwo]

Apple also updated its Xserve RAID system, which starts at $5999, "to deliver a massive 5.6 terabytes (TB) of storage capacity at the industry's most aggressive price for storage of just over $2 per GB. Apple has also expanded support for heterogeneous environments with certification from Cisco and SUSE Linux and optimized the system to work with its Xsan Storage Area Network file system."

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/sep/19raid.ht ml

Trackpoint anyone? Or maybe Slower processor?

[zepi]

I just wonder what happened to battery life. I wouldn't sacrifice a minute of battery life for few hudred MHz's... Hopefully they were able to lower operation voltage of the processor. Well, maybe it's still ok. If Apple would add IBM style trackpoint pointing devices to their laptops I wouldn't even have to consider buying a PC laptop... They could leave the touchpad attached so it would please everyone. I'd easily pay 20$ or more for trackpoint...

Re:Trackpoint anyone? Or maybe Slower processor?

[MoneyT]

I'm curious if you've toyed with the touchpads on mac laptops. I know it sounds horribly biased, but I swear there is a difference between them, and I can't stand PC touchpads but love the touchpad on my powerbook.

Then again, I can't stand the trackpoints in general either.

Re:Trackpoint anyone? Or maybe Slower processor?

[HeghmoH]

There is no reason for Apple to spend the tens of thousands of dollars it would take to engineer an optional trackpoint into the iBook just so they could offer it as a $20 option to the three people on the planet who actually prefer them to trackpads.

Re:Trackpoint anyone? Or maybe Slower processor?

[jridley]

There's even a difference between touchpads on different PCs. I now have a Dell with both touchpad and trackpoint. I really don't like the touchpad, and use the trackpoint all the time.

Previously, I had a compaq, and quite liked the touchpad on that. Shame the rest of the computer was crap.

Re:Trackpoint anyone? Or maybe Slower processor?

[John Harrison]

While I do prefer a well implemented Trackpoint (read that as an IBM one not a Dell) to a Trackpad, I think IBM has got it right, with the Ultra-Nav, offering both. That way eveybody gets the same thing, and everybody is happy.

Apple would sooner ship a laptop with two mouse buttons than offer one with two pointing devices. In other words, it will happen over Steve's dead body.

Your reasoning about "tens of thousands of dollars" looks pretty silly when you consider that they have $4 billion in the bank. They spend a lot of money on design and adding another pointing device would be a drop in the bucket. Cost is NOT why they don't do this.

Re:Trackpoint anyone? Or maybe Slower processor?

[prockcore]

I'm curious if you've toyed with the touchpads on mac laptops. I know it sounds horribly biased, but I swear there is a difference between them, and I can't stand PC touchpads but love the touchpad on my powerbook.

It's not the hardware. The touchpads on mac laptops are the same as the touchpads in PC laptops. They're all made by Synaptics, often the exact same models.

Then again, the acceleration could be what you're seeing. There's a huge difference in the touchpad acceleration under PPC Linux than under OSX on the exact same laptop (linux acceleration is much faster, OSX is sluggish even when maxed).

Re:Trackpoint anyone? Or maybe Slower processor?

[HeghmoH]

That is ridiculous reasoning. Assume some feature costs X dollars, and will earn the company Y dollars in extra profits. If X is greater than Y, the feature will not be implemented. It doesn't matter how insignificant X is compared to the company's total profits, revenue, or available cash.

Most people absolutely hate trackpoints. There appear to be a couple of slashdot readers who prefer them, but I would be shocked if the cost of adding them to the iBook would be made up by the number of people who would switch because of it.

Offering both is not a solution. For one, it would raise the price of the product. While it may only be a few dollars, take a few dollars, multiply by hundreds of thousands of units shipped per quarter, and you need to have a very nice justification for that move. For another, it would annoy a lot of people, probably more people than it would attract; that little nub won't just go away if you ignore it. Lastly, it would play havoc with the laptop's design; there's already basically zero space between the keys and the screen. Having a trackpoint nub sticking up above the keys is only going to make things worse in the thickness department.

Re:Trackpoint anyone? Or maybe Slower processor?

[toddestan]

the trackpoint is by FAR the most inaccurate and flakey piece of crap ever invented.

Spoken by someone who has obviously never used a touchpad. Even the trackball found on ancient 486 laptops are better.

Re:Trackpoint anyone? Or maybe Slower processor?

[John Harrison]

I don't need an econ lesson from you. I took econ from this guy and I think he taught me pretty well. And yes, I know the definition of profit.

I have stated reasons why Apple won't add a trackpoint, so we on the what, just not the why.

I might be biased, but nearly everyone that I have seen that has had a chance to use a trackpoint for a while prefers it. Some have even bought a keyboard with a trackpoint for their desktops. There are several advantages. One is that your fingers don't have to move from the typing position. Another is that you don't have to do the "lift and drag again" thing to move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other. You are free to disagree, but for an x86 laptop giving the consumer both the trackpoint and the pad is a great idea. The cost is insignificant, possibly less than offering the choice, and you please everyone.

Re:Trackpoint anyone? Or maybe Slower processor?

[mbbac]

This is reasonable. Macs have a logarithmic acceleration curve for the pointer and Windows has linear acceleration.

Re:Trackpoint anyone? Or maybe Slower processor?

[HeghmoH]

I don't need an econ lesson from you. I took econ from this guy and I think he taught me pretty well. And yes, I know the definition of profit.

If you took economics from a Presidential advisor, why are you making statements like, "Your reasoning about 'tens of thousands of dollars' looks pretty silly when you consider that they have $4 billion in the bank. They spend a lot of money on design and adding another pointing device would be a drop in the bucket."?

Regarding the usability of trackpoints, I don't personally know anyone who likes them. I'm far from a laptop hardware expert, but when I look at them in stores, the trackpoints seem to be relegated to the craptastic bottom-of-the-barrel models. A trackpoint is basically a really tiny joystick; moving a cursor around the screen with a joystick went out of style in the 80s.

Again, pleasing everyone is irrelevant when you can please "everyone - 3" and save a dollar per machine in the process.

Re:Trackpoint anyone? Or maybe Slower processor?

[John Harrison]

If you had spent a day using (and learning how to use) a good trackpoint you would never make statements like this:

Regarding the usability of trackpoints, I don't personally know anyone who likes them. I'm far from a laptop hardware expert, but when I look at them in stores, the trackpoints seem to be relegated to the craptastic bottom-of-the-barrel models. A trackpoint is basically a really tiny joystick; moving a cursor around the screen with a joystick went out of style in the 80s.

I am sorry if you have only been exposed to cheapo trackpoints. Find someone with the sense to buy a Thinkpad and ask the what they think. Your method of wandering around CompUSA (or Walmart) and noticing that you don't like Toshibas is neither rigorous or impressive.

Example

[daveschroeder]

$150 - Reasonable Athlon64 processor
$100 - Motherboard
$100 - Radeon 9600-class video card
$50 - Case and power supply
$60 - 80GB SATA drive
$30 - 256MB RAM
-----
$490

So you're telling me that this machine is *comparable* to a Power Mac G5? If you don't care about quality assurance, support, dealing with a single vendor, survey-proven reliability, industrial design, or anything else relating to Apple hardware and specifically the Power Mac G5, great...build your own box. But if you CARE about any of those things, you're automatically talking about someone like Dell, and any Dell machine under $1000 is most certainly nowhere near in the same class of construction as a Power Mac G5.

And perhaps you missed Walt Mossberg's recent column (http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20040923.html) where he says:

"If you tried to match the specs of the base iMac G5 in a traditional Dell tower, you'd also pay more. A Dell Dimension 4600, with the best processor, Windows XP Pro, the best 17-inch flat-panel monitor, a CD recorder and the same graphics card, costs $7 more than the 17-inch iMac. And it's much bulkier and uglier."

Of course, you can change a million different options and everything is up for debate, but this idea that "Macs are so expensive" - especially in an institutional setting when TCO is considered - is very, very tired.

Re:Example

[DAldredge]

Then explain all the problems that Apple has been having with logic boards, power supplies, batteries and lcd's over the past few years.

Apple products are made in some of the same third party factories that dells are made in. And the excuse that MAJOR PC MANUFACTURE has the same problems doesn't work as Apple is a premium brand and they market themself as better.

Re:Example

[MvD_Moscow]

Macs are more expensive! If this wasn't the case, then everyone would start buying Macs. Afterall, software/hardware support for Macs is quite decent (certainly better than Linux) and the whole "no need to upgrade, buy a new one" thing should appeal to more users. But that is not the case.

Re:Example

[fimbulvetr]

Sorry buddy, you fail it.

See, some of us are capable of assuring our own quality.
* Choosing vendors we like (asus, amd, mushkin)
Additionally, some of us don't *need or want* support, because we are competent.
*Self explanatory.
Dealing with a single vendor.
*Keep your cliche. I prefer competition driving better quality.
Survey-proven?
*You are joking right?
Industrial Design?
*Are you kidding? Ever Dropped an Imac? Powerbook? PCs and Apples both have b0rked drives after you drop them. No amount of *industrial design* has fixed that.
Anything else?
*Oh yeah, plenty!
What about Apples fiasco with the power buttons on the 2000 Imac?
How about the Powerbooks LCD screen with bad pixels? I have several friends who constantly complain about this.

Walt? Sorry bud, I don't get my tech insight from the WSJ. No offense, of course.

Re:Example

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to a car dealer the other day and looked at Ford Focus, at $15,000 for the low end, that's a little expensive for me. I can build my own far cheaper purchasing the parts from a local junk yard.

$100 - Frame/chassis
$2000 - New Motor
$2000 - Pimp daddy wheels
$350 - Lawn mower sound effect muffler
$299 - Piece-o-shit Dell MP3 player
$4.99- Fuzzy dice

I am well below the 15k price for the Focus, and this car will get me to work just as fast every day, maybe faster if I supercharge it. It may not be as safe, but look how much cheaper it is.

Just remember, you get what you pay for. I bet most slashdot readers do not drive a Kia, or Hundai, yet for some reason they say Apple is overpriced. I have found Apple to be very competitive when it comes to price, I am a program manager for a technical team and order the hardware and software our engineers need to do their job. At my company, all the windows guys download their patches from macs to install on their infected pcs, the mac users seem to never be down. I think I am going to make the switch.

Re:Example

[SilentChris]

I build my own machines. I support them myself. They never crash. They rarely ever break down (I think I've had to replace one individual part in the last 5 years). And I can do stuff like RAID for cheaper, which saves my TCO. What's your argument for getting an Apple or Dell versus me?

Re:Example

[danila]

There is a third option. Build your own PC, but spend 1500$ on it. Then you would have a decent case, top-of-the-line video and audio cards, decent 5.1 or 7.1 speakers, enough HDD space to store 0.1 LOC, DVD-burner, a decent monitor and all peripherals you can think of (wireless keyboard/mouse/headset). You don't need to pay Dell for a decent PC setup, you can easily build it yourself. You can use the same parts (that were tested by Dell for compatibility/quality), but the end result will still be much cheaper.

Re:Example

[meta-monkey]

Agreed. Last night I was talking to a friend who is not particularly computer savvy. However, he's a small business owner, very busy, and his time is valuable. Anyway, he was complaining about his PC, that he had gotten some kind of IE takeover spyware, and he couldn't get it back. His computer was clogged with all kinds of junk, and he'd already spent several hours trying to get rid of this thing, and was now just going to wipe his hard drive and re-install everything...essentially an evening-long process.

I said, "that's why I use a Mac." He told me he wanted a Mac, but they were $200-$300 more expensive! I just can't understand that mindset. Sure, but just think of the time savings. My Macs never break. They never get viruses. I don't have to worry about virus scanners and spyware and all the rest of that garbage. I'll crash maybe once every two months. How is all that time saved not worth a few hundred bucks, especially when a computer is vital to your business?

Re:Example

[RustyTaco]

2) Businesses DO care about big, bulky ugly crap, especially small businesses. Office space if a very valuable comodity. The less space the equipment sucks up the more room you have to work, or to shove other people into the space. At this office I have room for two 19" monitors and still have room to work on systems. At my other office I have a single 21" monitor (God I love 2048x1536) that doesn't leave me much room to do more than shuffle a few papers on my desk. Same for everyone else in the office, good screens but it makes finding room to work on systems challenging and we spend too much time shifting things around to find room.

4) I don't want that crappy printer ;)
5-7) Repeat after me, a Dimension or Optiplex is not in the same class as a G5 Tower. The Dell Precisions are in that "workstation" class, with tons of RAM capacity and fat IO capabilities, but the Dimensions & Optiplexes are "desktops" made for light work like Word and pr0n browsing. Granted they are excessive for most tasks, but it's still not a heavy workstation. The iMacs & eMacs are closer to the "desktop" space, but still off to the side a bit.

- RustyTaco

Re:Example

[JamieF]

>What's your argument for getting an Apple or Dell versus me?

I have a job. My TCO includes my time.

>They never crash.
Modern OSs hardly ever crash. "Never" is just denial on your part. Admit it, at least one of your computers has crashed at least once.

Re:Example

[SilentChris]

"I have a job. My TCO includes my time."

So do I. However, since building machines directly increases my knowledge (and hence my time's cost at my job) I think it's a very fair trade-off.

"Modern OSs hardly ever crash. "Never" is just denial on your part."

Actually, no. Mine don't crash. Ever. I'll get the occasional GUI going out of whack, but I haven't rebooted my machines for the past couple years (outside of updates).

Re:Example

[twiddlingbits]

I have worked at dozens of firms as an employee/consultant and always had plenty of room. Space is NOT an issue, now that all the work has been outsourced empty office BUILDINGS abound. Crappy printer? I have no idea. I don't buy Dell, I build my own PCs and stick with name brand printers like Canon or HP. Apple positions the G5 against the Dells. I have seen many Optiplexs and Dimensions turned into servers, but never a G5. If I want a "lightweight desktop" machine I'll go buy two $700 beige boxes, then the daughter and I don't have to fight over one machine.

Re:1499 is too much

[the_2nd_coming]

umm. upi can open up a G5 iMac and add stuff to it very easily.

Still mirrored video

[hatless]

Nowadays all but the absolute lowest-end PC laptops have dual-headed display support with separate "screens" on the built-in display and the video out port. It's in the $1000 Compaq/HPs, the eMachines and Medions and so on. About the only major-brand PC laptop you can now buy withour dual-head support is Dell's 1100-series Celeron laptop.

Apple still cripples the iBook with mirrored-only video. No desktop spanning. The Radeon chipsets they use do support it, but Apple reserves that feature for the Powerbooks.

Should $1800 really be the cost of entry for a dual-head capable laptop in 2004? And if Apple really wants to make Bluetooth ubiquitous it's probably time to make it standard equipment on every machine like they did with USB and 1394.

Re:Still mirrored video

[DavidLeblond]

If you really want an iBook to span monitors its really really not that hard to use google and hack it.

Re:Still mirrored video

[BMonger]

Unless you do this:

http://www.rutemoeller.com/mp/ibook/ibook_e.html

This works well, is incredibly easy to do, and can be reverted at any time.

Re:Still mirrored video

[Ford Prefect]

Apple still cripples the iBook with mirrored-only video. No desktop spanning. The Radeon chipsets they use do support it, but Apple reserves that feature for the Powerbooks.

I've no idea why they continue do it, but it's easily worked around. :-)

Re:Still mirrored video

[GreatDrok]

Apple still cripples the iBook with mirrored-only video. No desktop spanning. The Radeon chipsets they use do support it, but Apple reserves that feature for the Powerbooks.

You can update the flash memory on the iBook to allow dual screen support. I was torn between a powerbook and my iBook but in the end I decided that the difference in price for the dual screen capability wasn't worth it. Then I found you could patch the iBook to support the feature and I have been extremely happy as a result.

My iBook is one of the first G4s (933Mhz 14") which I upgraded to 640MB RAM and airport extreme. The new ones look like a great deal but I would still recommend more memory, 256 is simply not enough. A non Apple upgrade is available and does the job for half the price. Battery life is excellent and the build quality destroys equivalent PC laptops

Re:Still mirrored video

[redherring22]

yes, this is intentional on apple's behalf to keep the ibook from cutting into the PB's bottom end... but it's also easily worked around- you can do VGA monitor spanning (PBs let you have DVI) by mucking around in the open firmware or by downloading this nifty utility:
http://www.rutemoeller.com/mp/ibook/ibook_e.html
that even lets you do monitor spanning on the new imacs!

Re:Still mirrored video

[dJOEK]

This might help you, kind sir.

Re:Still mirrored video

[gobbo]

Apple still cripples the iBook with mirrored-only video..

I've no idea why they continue do it, but..

Because they're a money-grubbing corporation, like they're supposed to be, and they need reasons for you to go for the larger-margin FryingPan, er PowerBook. Damn you Apple! :-P Try editing video in 1024x768--yuck. They definitely position these as iMovie machines.

That said, the Open Firmware hack to get monitor spanning works well when it works, and is a disaster when things (rarely) go wrong. It also works on some eMacs, too.

Re:Still mirrored video

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

"Nowadays all but the absolute lowest-end PC laptops have dual-headed display support with separate "screens" on the built-in display and the video out port."

Plenty of people have pointed out the firmware hack that will allow ibooks to do monitor spanning as well as mirroring. However, I take issue with your assertion that most PC laptops come with this feature. I know that the IBM thinkpads we get at work don't have it. From a quick glance at their web page, it looks like only their top-end X series, 1 of four product lines, offers monitor spanning rather than mirroring. As near as I can tell Dell offers it as an option on the top half of their product line. I think you are greatly mistaken if you think low-end consumer laptops, or even middle priced laptops provide monitor spanning.

Re:Still mirrored video

[mihalis]

Try editing video in 1024x768--yuck.

I've produced 7 or 8 DVDs (mostly concert movies) on my 12" Powerbook 12" (867Mhz, 640MB, 60GB) at that resolution. It works fine for me working alone.

After all, 1024x768 is similar or better resolution to NTSC, right? If you are putting fine detail in a video that you need a big screen to see properly, will it really come over well on the typical system?

However, when I did a "showing" for a band so we could chop one of their gigs down to a three-live-track promo, I switched to the external VGA adapter and showed it at 1280x1024 on my external LCD monitor.

So I guess it depends how serious your video work is.

Re:Still mirrored video

[gobbo]

it depends how serious your video work is.

Yes, which is my point about these being positioned as iMovie machines. Most 'serious' video apps want to display two video screens (clip and timeline, e.g.), a timeline, and a file browser of some kind. Same issue with iDVD and DVD Studio Pro. Pro apps assume a large display area, because you have a lot of information to manage; the iLife apps manage that information for you, by removing options. Not that they don't work just fine for most of what you would want to do. And, I know people using pro apps on those dinky 12" displays, and they still have all their hair.

After all, 1024x768 is similar or better resolution to NTSC, right?

Well, sorta. NTSC is 525 lines of resolution on a tv monitor, 30 frames per sec, and aspect ratio is 4:3. Well, it's actually 60 fps, since it's interlaced to equal 30. 720x480 and 640x480 or 320x240 are converted to NTSC by your analog video connections. NTSC standard resolution is 648x486. Any details that won't show up at that resolution are lost.

Re:Still mirrored video

[Jeff DeMaagd]

NTSC standard resolution is 648x486.

NTSC has 480 active image scan lines, 525 total scan lines, 45 scan lines don't have image signal, it is used on CRTs to sweep the electron beam to the top of the screen again. The typical active image area of an NTSC signal is 720x480, like an NTSC DVD.

Re:Still mirrored video

[Ohreally_factor]

After all, 1024x768 is similar or better resolution to NTSC, right?

It's a matter of having a nice wide area for your timeline, ample space for both the canvas and playback windows, and space for your bins.

I can work OK on my Ti 800's 15" screen, and often do, but it's so much nicer to hook up my cinema display, and really be able to see what I'm working on.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with your work habits, just that I find it much more productive to work with a bigger screen when I can.

Re:Still mirrored video

[mihalis]

It's a matter of having a nice wide area for your timeline, ample space for both the canvas and playback windows, and space for your bins.

I can work OK on my Ti 800's 15" screen, and often do, but it's so much nicer to hook up my cinema display, and really be able to see what I'm working on.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with your work habits, just that I find it much more productive to work with a bigger screen when I can.

Yeah, it would be better with a bigger screen, possibly multiple. I was only trying to point out that it really is doable on the smallest Apple Powerbook - at least with iMovie and iDVD.

I hook up my mini-DV camera. Work for a bit with my laptop on my lap. Fling in a blank DVD-R and some time later out comes a DVD that works on the living room player. It still feels impressive to me!

Re:Still mirrored video

[mihalis]

Yes, which is my point about these being positioned as iMovie machines. Most 'serious' video apps want to display two video screens (clip and timeline, e.g.), a timeline, and a file browser of some kind. Same issue with iDVD and DVD Studio Pro.

I agree - in case it's not clear, my video work is not that serious, and so far I have only used iMovie/iDVD. Nevertheless it's been great, and one of my DVDs has gone to an indie label as -the- demo for a friends band.

Pro apps assume a large display area, because you have a lot of information to manage; the iLife apps manage that information for you, by removing options. Not that they don't work just fine for most of what you would want to do. And, I know people using pro apps on those dinky 12" displays, and they still have all their hair.

I don't use pro apps, but no longer have all my hair. Should I worry? :)

Re:Still mirrored video

[BMonger]

The same warning that's effectively in every EULA that you've agreed to when installing software?

Re:Still mirrored video

[Smurf]

Should $1800 really be the cost of entry for a dual-head capable laptop in 2004?

Apart from the hacks for the iBooks that everyone and their mother mentioned, allow me to nitpick by saying that the 12" Powerbook starts at $1600, not $1800.

Re:Still mirrored video

[neosake]

I'm wondering if anyone out there has any experience with corsair and the ibook 12" (I'm considering, because so far it's the least expensive brand name option I've come across).

Re:Still mirrored video

[hatless]

The Dell Inspiron 5100 is in the top half of the product line? Only the 1100 series is lower end than that, and my 5100 spans like a champ.

Walk into your local CompUSA or Best Buy or whatever and open up the Display control panel on the cheapest laptop you can find, like an $1100 eMachines or an 8-pound Compaq or HP. Betcha it spans.

Re:Still mirrored video

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Looking at Dell.com, the only 5100 series they offer is the 5160, which is $1500 after a 10% discount and two mail in rebates. I'm not sure that qualifies as low-end. Also, their website does not seem to give any specs on the video card, or it's capabilities. I'll tell you what I have sitting on my desk right now. An IBM T30 thinkpad and an Apple 12" powerbook. They cost about the same amount, but the powerbook is the only one that can use the CRT and it's own LCD to display parts of the desktop.

If you think buying the crap that Dell sells is the way to go though, hey good luck. Say "hi" to Rashid for me when you call with a problem.

While it may be ...

[Savage-Rabbit]

...possible to build an El Cheapo $500 AMD/Intel boxen to match or even ouperform G5 Apple boxen, the trouble with such a box is still that IT WOULD NOT RUN OS.X. It would probably not be as stable as a Mac either.

Re:While it may be ...

[DavidLeblond]

You could install CherryOS and get 80% of the speed though!

(Whoa now, mods... I'm just kidding!)

Re:While it may be ...

[Lars T.]

80% the speed of an equivalent Mac. Or so the CherryOS dude said a week ago.

Re:While it may be ...

[Savage-Rabbit]

Sure I also have an XP boxen that gives me as little trouble as my Mac. But that is because I went out and bougth a high-end PC system from a manufacturer that properly tests every piece of hardware that goes into the box. I also have several friends who went for the "ceaper must be better principle". They built their WinTel boxen them selves from individual parts bought off the shelf at a local electronics shop . Both my Mac and my high-end PC are considerably more stable than these homebuilt systems. You can get a PC system that is just as stable as a Mac you can probably also scratch build your own PC system that is as stable as a Mac but either of those PC systems will end up costing you considerably more than the $500 the above poster suggested. I don't care whether we are talking PC or Mac computers, quality costs.

Re:While it may be ...

[kavi_3]

And my high end Dell workstation with XP Pro at work went through a period of crashing at least once a week. I actually had a day where the comupter Blue Screen 7 times in one day. Now, this was due to a bad Logitech mouse driver that finally got fixed, but still, the mouse should have stopped working, not crashed the whole computer.

Oh Boy!

[blueZhift]

The built in wireless is definitely a plus for me. Then I could code in the living room while watching Adult Swim! Alas, the budget just won't allow it right now... Eventually I'll probably pick one of these up simply because I'm sick of Windows but I don't really want to wrestle with Linux on a laptop. If Apple could get the prices down to be a bit more competitive with Windows laptop pricing they might be able to pick up even more disaffected Windows users like myself. This isn't a complaint, just speculation. Hey! How about a laptop trade in program? Bring in your old laptop and get $100 off a new iBook. Hmmm....

Re:1499 is too much

[mod_critical]

Actually, I have had experience with both single and dual processor G4 and G5 machines, and the speed boost is no small deal

I was skeptical at first too, given that on Windows machines I am used to an intensive application sucking up all of one processor and just letting the other take care of mouse clicks in the GUI. However, with Apple software, and actaully a lot of non-apple software I have found that it thread very, very well, and utilizes both processors to their maximum almost all of the time during an intensive process.

Just a FYI that I have noticed working with these in the past

Re:1499 is too much

[jm92956n]

It's important to note, too, that if one has no need for a modem, and is willing to forgo the super-drive in favor of a combo-drive, the price will be US $130 less.

Of course, after one adds the obligatory 512 MB memory stick, the price is back up to US $1500.

Knoppix-like Linux for iBook?

[timothy]

I like my iBook's hardware; it's survived enough abuse over the past 3 (or is it 4?) years to make replacing the expensive battery earlier this year worth it, rather than the sort of reluctant decision that it would be if I ever decided to replace the battery in my Toshiba, in which the PCMCIA slots have grown flaky ... and Yes, I know my iBook doesn't even have PCMCIA slots to *go* flaky ;)

When I travel, I prefer the iBook because it's small/light, has a better keyboard than most laptops (though nothing like an IBM's, sadly), and gets good battery life.

However, when I'm near an outlet at least, I prefer my Toshiba laptop or other intel-type machine just because I like the gigantic rafts of software that come with a typical Linux distro, I like auto-raise windows (is there any way to do this with OS X?) and virtual desktops (again -- maybe they exist for OS X, but I don't see built-in to the OS ...), and I happen to like blackbox/fluxbox, WindowMaker, Gnome and KDE a lot, and I use all of them as my mood dictates. (Others, too.) OS X is nice, and familiarity is nice, but since there's change going on in different directions aesthetically and in supposedly well-reasoned user-interface decisions, I like to switch around and see what's up in the free-GUI world.

Also, though I understand it to be a nice application, I don't use iTunes (though I have used it) and don't at this date own an iPod (though I might one day). I am not a big fan of the iTunes interface -- many people like it, and I'll call it better than most interfaces but just not my thing. When I pop in a CD, it used to annoy me that iTunes would load rather than a simpler CD player app. So I'm perhaps not the typical OS X users :)

So:

Is there any current live Linux CD that will a) work spiffily - wireless, sound, sleep, keyboard controls for brightness and sound - on all current macs, or even all G3/G4 current macs? and b) serve as an easy installer, the way Knoppix or Mepis (or a bunch of others) will on x86?

Something that comes with OpenOffice (with good fonts), AbiWord, The GIMP, XMMS, mplayer / vlc / firefox / gaim / several window managers would be good. Yes, I know some if not all of these are available for OS X, but only piecemeal afaik.

I'm not knocking OS X: it's a very nice OS. I like it. However, I'd rather have a Linux desktop in general (I like the underlying software as well as the application software to be Free, for one thing, and for another thing, there's no accounting for taste), and I'm lazy. I've tried -- last year sometime -- the Gentoo PPC live CD, which was slow and IMO buggy on my iBook, and took googling just to find out how to reach X. There's been a PPC knoppix version, but I don't see any versions newer than July 2003. (Which might be OK, I have not yet tried that on my iBook.)

Since the iBook hardware (and Apple hardware in general) is pretty stable (not to say "limited" :)), I'd think it would be easier to find a good Live CD-installer than it is, esp. considering how very well Mepis/Knoppix work.

timothy

p.s. Really, I've read the flames on this topic before, so you can just say "FLAME" if you want; I'll get your meaning, and you'll save your wrists. I like OS X and do not demand that Live CD-Installers exist, but I am hopeful and curious.

Re:Knoppix-like Linux for iBook?

[justMichael]

Here are a few places to look.

The only one that appears to be current is Gentoo and that's not an "easy" install but it should give you a feel for how well it works on the 'book. I provided a link to it in a previous post. There still doesn't appear to be a 2004.2 LiveCD yet.

Re:Knoppix-like Linux for iBook?

[mbaudis]

1. yes, there are linux distros, even knoppix (have to look up...) don't know about gento (had tried it back then...) 2. using fink.sourceforge.net, you can get the whole (nearly) lot of "linux" software in a debian style system, to run on top of os x or full screen (rootless) or with x11 as primary windowing system. X11 window behavior is determined through your config (KDE, Gnome, blackbox...) so you are able to have a complete KDE system on top of OS X aqua, and use both at the same time; and if you are a strange person (or need to do it...), you can also have windows under virtual pc etc.

Re:Knoppix-like Linux for iBook?

[foniksonik]

is there any way to do this with OS X?

Yes. Try out CodeTek Virtual Desktop... not only will it give you virtual desktops, more than you can shake a stick at... but it also gives you the option of 'Focus-Follows-Mouse'... check it out here:

http://codetek.com/ctvd/

Re:Knoppix-like Linux for iBook?

[MoneyT]

Don't know about live CDs, maybe the folks at yellow dog have cooked one up, or LinuxPPC, but I can help you with making OS X look and feel a bit more like your linux stuff.

I can't find anything on getting auto raise windows. However, there are plenty of virtual desktop items, there are a couple here

You should also be able to install and run KDE and verious other window environments, here's some some information You can google for more. The downside to this is that while under KDE or other environments, you won't be able to run Aqua applications.

OpenOffice is availible for OS X in Fink (which I highly recomend you consider installing and using) and as NeoOfficeJ.

AbiWord is availible as either an X11 app or as a beta native app

The GIMP is availible as an X11 app via fink, but if you don't do a lot of heavy work, can I suggest looking into an application called PhotoLine

XMMS, well there's iTunes and various other players, unless XMMS does something in particular you need.

mplayer and vlc are both availible for OS X as native apps as is firefox.

As for GAIM, I hear a lot of recomendations for Adium.

Re:Knoppix-like Linux for iBook?

[Spyky]

Why not just run ALL of the software you want ("OpenOffice (with good fonts), AbiWord, The GIMP, XMMS, mplayer / vlc / firefox / gaim / several window managers") in OS X itself?

Install the X11 server from apple. Then go to fink.sourceforge.net. Install fink.

Then type things like "fink install bundle-gnome", "fink install gimp". "fink install windowmaker". OpenOffice distributes a binary for OSX www.openoffice.org

In X11 preferences menu, set to Full Screen. Now you can run any window manager you like, full screen, command-option-A will swap you back to your normal OS X desktop. Set your xinitrc files to load the wm you want, and/or start gnome, etc...

Another handy hint: add the line "export DISPLAY=:0.0" to your .bashrc so you can start X apps from the Apple Terminal application.

Best of both worlds!

-Spyky

Re:Knoppix-like Linux for iBook?

[RAMMS EIN]

It's not a live CD like KNOPPIX, but I recommend Debian. It's easy to install with the new installer, and with the Radeon driver issues worked out, the system works very well. The only thing that doesn't work for me is suspend to disk, but there seems to be a patch for that, so support is coming soon.

Debian is a solid distro, with easy package management and the largest collection of packages of any distro I know. If you need help, just contact me. Good luck!

Re:Knoppix-like Linux for iBook?

[dracvl]

Try Ubuntu - not a live CD, but excellent Mac support, both for iBooks and PowerBooks.

Re:Knoppix-like Linux for iBook?

[timothy]

Thanks! I actually have some Ubuntu CDs on the way, including for PPC, so I plan to soon give this a shot. Live CDs are so nice though, they've spoiled me on the x86 for trying things out non-destructively. And I mean even things that never *should* be destructive, but can be: when I put Gnome on my laptop running Mepis, while Gnome worked fine, from that very moment my KDE menus became oddly colored (and hard to read). A bizarre problem, I know, and not an ultra-serious one, but annoyance nonetheless.

btw, have you actually run Ubuntu on iBooks and Powerbooks? When it comes to installable distros, I have seen FC2 running on a powerbook, very nice, it all worked (wireless, sleep, all extra buttons, etc).

Cheers,

timothy

Re:Knoppix-like Linux for iBook?

[uncitizen]

Sleep is kind of hit or miss on everything, so I won't even try to make a suggestion. Other than that, the only thing that is iffy is the airport extreme--broadcom isn't coming forward with documentation and etc to get that to work correctly. May be yellow dog linux supports it now, http://www.yellowdoglinux.com.

As far as the underlying apps/GUI, might I suggest checking out apples X11 app and run it in full screen mode? doing that, you can treat Aqua and X11 as different machines and switch between your Mac (Aqua) and you UNIX (X11) box with a keystroke and use whatever Window Manager/Desktop enviroment you want. The apps themselves can be gotten via fink or darwinports. Each can get you whatever UNIX tool you need. Fink is faster, being mostly binary based, but a little behind the times. (Panther support was lacking last I checked) Darwin ports is more up to date, but you'll be complining everything. nmap isn't so bad, but KDE....not so much ;-)

Re:Knoppix-like Linux for iBook?

[toganet]

Other than that, the only thing that is iffy is the airport extreme--broadcom isn't coming forward with documentation and etc to get that to work correctly

We need something like ndiswrapper for PPC, that would let you use OSX drivers under PPC Linux.

Re:Knoppix-like Linux for iBook?

[Phroggy]

When I pop in a CD, it used to annoy me that iTunes would load rather than a simpler CD player app.

I hope "used to" means you've changed the default behavior so it doesn't annoy you anymore. If not:

Open System Preferences. Under Hardware, click "CDs & DVDs". In the menu labeled "When you insert a music CD:" the options should be:

Open iTunes
Open other application...
Run script...
Ignore

Re:1499 is too much

[jxyama]

"add" stuff to it? no. replace them? perhaps. "very easily"? highly doubtful, except for the memory. iMac mobo has the graphics card soldered on - can you replace that "easily"?

you can also open up a laptop and do the same thing by your logic?

Heh

[daveschroeder]

I'm well aware of the specs, thank you.

Apparently all you're interested in is just the raw numbers of the specifications. Sure; look at my other post here:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=126226&cid=105 64863

And you're calling a home-built Athlon64 with the cheapest parts you can get "comparable" to a Power Mac G5?

To each his own, I guess...

Re:Heh

[BoomerSooner]

Do you actually work on a computer? The 1499 Apple HAS the cheapest specs.

Re:Heh

[daveschroeder]

What the hell are you talking about?

You're going to tell me that every part in the bottom-of-the-barrel crap case, motherboard, etc., you're going to buy for your build-it-yourself Athlon64 are just as good as what Apple is using in the Power Mac G5? And NO, I'm not talking about things that are predictable and/or identical no matter where you buy them, like the video card and processor...I'm talking about the power supply, case, the RAM you select, the sound capability (Power Mac G5 has optical in and out, etc., so you have to take that into account), no single vendor support (some people actually care about this), no #1 Consumer Reports ranking for tech support, quality, need for repairs, etc. (some people actually care about this), no fantastic industrial design of the case in general (some people actually care about this).

Look, if you want a whitebox homebuilt, that's your business. And YOU might personally consider it "comparable", but it's not.

Re:Heh

[prockcore]

You're going to tell me that every part in the bottom-of-the-barrel crap case, motherboard, etc., you're going to buy for your build-it-yourself Athlon64 are just as good as what Apple is using in the Power Mac G5?

Actually, the ASUS boards out there are top of the line.

Look at the K8VSE,
Hypertransport (that's an 800mhz bus).
Up to 3 gigs of PC3200
Built in wifi
2 SATA RAID
gigabit ethernet
2 firewire
6 USB 2.0
digital audio out

All for $120.

But even better than that, you can actually get an AMD64 in a notebook, unlike the G5.

Look at HP zv5270us,
AMD64 3400
15.4" widescreen
512megs of ram
80 gig drive
DVD+RW
802.11g
GeForce4 440go
3 USB 2.0 ports
1 firewire port

For $1650 on newegg.
Plus I think it looks very sexy

Re:Heh

[Zhe Mappel]

While no thoughtful person would sneer at the impressive Power Mac G5, it's a fairly common myth among those who prefer to have corporations assemble their machines overseas that "homebuilt" is somehow inferior. For years, non-technophobes have been building the fastest, most well-tuned boxes around. At home. With great mobos. Great power supplies. Great RAM. And the very same hard drives that appear in Apple boxes. Until very recently, in fact, those boxes ran laps around the G4 line; today they are competitive, at least, with G5s.

And not without attention to aesthetics, mind you. It is not merely the Apple customer who is interested in the question of "fantastic industrial design of the case," you're apparently unaware of companies like Liam Li. Apple is far from being the only company that can make a great looking case.

Re:Not News

[aallan]

I ordered an iBook a few weeks ago and they have changed my order to reflect this change, which is nice since I'm now getting a faster processor and a bigger hard drive for the same price.

Yup, they seem to be good about such things. The same thing happend to me when they introduced the new PowerBooks a week or so after I placed my order for the older model.

Al.

I read about this yesterday

[Jucius Maximus]

Think secret was right again, even down to predicting the date of the announcement.

Apple hates it's resellers

[DAldredge]

All this is is apple trying to drive the rest of it's resellers out of business.

Re:Apple hates it's resellers

[BasilBrush]

Why would Apple hate it's resellers? They are just becoming increasingly redundant, as Apple's own stores increase in number. And getting the sale through an Apple Store rather than a reseller is obviously better for the bottom line.

Re:Apple hates it's resellers

[sparklehackery]

Why would Apple hate it's resellers?...And getting the sale through an Apple Store rather than a reseller is obviously better for the bottom line.

Sure looks like you answered your own question there...

Re:Apple hates it's resellers

[BasilBrush]

Huh? How does Apple competing for sales with resellers equate to hate?

Re:Apple hates it's resellers

[jellomizer]

The same mistake that Sun made. Back in the late 90s when Sun was on top of its game they started screwing over their Resellers. It was good for Sun for a short while. But then the resellers started to switch focus either on Refurbished Sun Hardware and/or PC solutions. Now the customers of these resellers will often follow the same direction of the reseller because they often have years of good experiences with the smaller reseller and buy because they trust the reseller more then the actual equiptment. The same can hold true for Apple. If the other resellers are no longer making profit they will switch to an other method of making profit (Perhaps selling Windows PCs)and when their customers will go to what the reseller have to offer. Many time the smaller buisness offers a Lot better quality of support then the big guys and once a person finds a good small buisness they like to stick to them because of the quality of the support. Resellers are like profitable marketing because they do all the work in advertising your product and apple still gets the sales from the hardware sold.

Re:Apple hates it's resellers

[mrchaotica]

Of course, there are a few differences with Apple:

1. Apple now has its own stores
2. People buy Macs because they're Macs, not because the retailer support is good.

Re:Apple hates it's resellers

[jellomizer]

Well you could buy Sun Products directly from Sun. You don't normally go to a store to buy Sun Workstations, or servers.

Some people buy Macs because they are Macs some people buy Sun because it is Sun. But there is a lot of people will only buy computers that they know that there is someone to help them out.

Re:Apple hates it's resellers

[mrchaotica]

Well, in my opinion people buy Macs more for the first reason (because they are Macs), and people buy Sun more for the second reason (to get support).

Re:1499 is too much

[the_2nd_coming]

with the prices of Graphics cards on Macs, upgrades are non existent.

and on a laptop, upgrading the hard drive, or optical drive voids the warranty. you can upgrade both on a new iMac with out doing so, same will go for the Processor when the 3rd party makers start selling G5 upgrades (when the G5s are made in sufficient quantities for IBM to sell to 3rd parties)

Lexus slower than Ferrari

[bill_mcgonigle]

So now I'm looking at these there specs and I see 1.3GHz clock, 133MHz FSB, 256MB RAM, 512 MB cache. New PC laptops with these specs were hot, what, at least 2 years ago. So what's the deal? Are the PowerPC cpus that much faster clock per clock? Is memory used that much more efficiently?

So the specs that were hot two years ago are now in the consumer laptop. Seems reasonable.

The specs happen to be just fine to run Mac OS X well. And that's "the deal".

We're not throwing as many resources as possible at Windows to get it to run reasonably - we're running a solid unix-based user-friendly OS on hardware that's up to the task.

So yeah, the PPC are faster per clock, but it doesn't really matter. Noone's going to build a render cluster of these, that's for certain, but if you want a reliable laptop with a very high build quality, it's hard to go wrong with an iBook.

1.25 Gb max

[Dracolytch]

Is it just me, or does the RAM limit seem a bit on the low side. Sure, it's enough for now, but in 2 or 3 years, having a ceiling that low would prove to be a headache.

~D

Re:1.25 Gb max

[NardofDoom]

My Power Mac G4/400 runs OS 10.3 spiffily with only 640MB of PC100 RAM. I still use it as a file/print/test web server, as well as Civ III and email/web/IM for both my wife and me. I fully expect it to perform well in this capacity for the next few years. Besides, if you *need* more power, switch up to the Powerbook or an iMac. Or that sa-weet new G5 they just put out.

Re:1.25 Gb max

[jcostantino]

I didn't check the new specs but typically the iBook has 128 mb solidered (I suspect now it's finally 256 solidered) and one SO-DIMM slot. That is one of the differentiating points between it and the PowerBook series. AFAIK - 1gb is the largest SODIMM but I'd suspect (maybe) that a piece beyond 1gb would be supported.

1.25gb is plenty for a consumer level machine... OSX works good with 512 and really hums with 1gb or more. Most people seem to just put an extra 512 in if money is tight. I recall that the single slot was a huge upsell point for memory since we (old company) didn't want you to have to re-buy memory, upsell! upsell! $200 profit! (cough) company ran aground, i was a service tech, not sales (cough)

Re:1.25 Gb max

[jnd3]

The RAM limit on the older iBooks (we bought an 800 MHz G4 12.1" about a year back) is only 640 MB (128 MB soldered-in + 1 slot that can handle up to 512 MB). It might seem low, but it's twice what it was only a year ago, and it should be enough for most consumer-level apps. I know with our laptops (iBook/800 MHz G4/640 MB and PowerBook/1.33 GHz G4/ 768 MB) the extra RAM makes a world of difference.

Re:1.25 Gb max

[Large Green Mallard]

Since the 1ghz G4 iBook it's now 256MB soldered

Yes!!!

[NardofDoom]

For under $2,500 I can get my wife off my Powerbook AND a new G5!

Off Topic Apple Question

[Luscious868]

I know this is OT, but I feel like Slashdot is the right place to ask. I've been a very happy iTunes / iPod user for almost a year now and I've finally decided to try out an Apple system. I don't want to spend a boat load of cash on a brand new system because I'm not sure if I can or will ultimately make the switch. I've decided to go with a used system and I'd like to know what kind of hardware people would recommend that I buy so that I can get a good feel for OS X? I just need something that I can use for the web, e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets and Apple's iLife applications (minus Garage Band because I doubt I'd use it). I don't plan on using it for any high end video or graphics editing, or anything like that. I just want to get a system with enough power to get a basic feel for what it's like to use a Mac with OS X.

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[adzoox]

Go to the Apple Special Deals section and get a refurb eMac - best bang for your buck. Look for a week - you should be able to find an eMac 1Ghz or better for less than $600

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[zaren]

Go to theApple Store and buy a refurbished 1 Ghz G4 iBook for $700 from their "Special Deals" section.

You really don't want to get a G3 these days; even though OSX will run on it, it's going to run dead-slow.

And buy more ram. No matter what Apple says, you need more ram.

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[Rude Turnip]

Get a used, low-end G4 system. There's a guy in the Arstechnica Openforum selling a G4 Cube + Apple LCD combo right now actually. (No, it's not me, someone else).

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[XxtraLarGe]

Why not get the basic eMac then? It's the least expensive Mac you can buy. Apple has refurbed 1.25 GHz w/Combo Drive models for $699 (go to the Apple Store and click on the red "Save" tag on the right hand side.), or you can go to DealMac and they usually have something cheap listed. The great thing about Macs is that they will hold their value for a long time, so if you don't like it, just sell it on eBay and get at least 75% of your money back.

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[$criptah]

Hey, I was in your shoes two years ago. I did switch and... I am still using the system that I bought. Here is what I got:

1. PowerMac G4 867MHz.
2. 768MB of RAM.
3. No monitor.

I bought the box from a local retailer, SmallDog Electronics (Vermont) and used my old monitor with it. So far, it has been great. If you do not want to shell out mad cash, get a used system. If I were you, I'd get something with a CPU 1+ MHz and spend extra bucks on memory. I do Java development, surfing and video editing from time to time; no complaints so far.

If you know how to use UNIX (at least the basics) you will find that OS X is very useful because it offers the best of both worlds. Stability is solid .

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[mblase]

I've decided to go with a used system and I'd like to know what kind of hardware people would recommend that I buy so that I can get a good feel for OS X?

I'm typing this on a 533MHz G4, souped up with a total of 640MB of RAM. While I don't have Panther yet (even though I'm told it would actually be faster than the Jaguar OS I'm running), it's fast enough for me to use iPhoto and iMovie on a regular basis.

I've used a 1.8GHz G5 for the same tasks, and while it's unquestionably faster, my G4 is far from slow. The difference between a three-second wait and a one-second wait for an application to boot up really isn't that important. You can safely buy a 1GHz+ G4 used and get an excellent OS X experience, or a 500MHz+ G4 and get a very good one.

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[Sea Monkey]

I highly recommend getting either the refurb ibook or just one of these new ibooks. I was in a similar position (in terms of what I needed a computer for) 2 years ago. I bought one of the 12" G3 ibooks and added an airport card and 256MB of RAM for a total of 384. Contrary to what another poster says does not run OSX too slow on a G3 provided you have enough RAM.

After an initial 2 months which was _very_ frustrating as I was relearning everything I finally got used to it and now I love it. Even though I live in a 400sqft. appartment the getting the airport card was the best thing I could've done. It totally changed how I use a computer (had a desktop previously).

BTW don't get a refurb G3 iBook. They have a problem with a mainboard that flexes when the ibook is picked up with one hand and the video eventually goes out. They fixed it in the G4 revisions.

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[phillymjs]

If you're looking at used Macs on eBay, any desktop with dual G4 processors would be fine for running OS X, though you'd probably want to stuff it full of RAM if it doesn't come that way. Make sure the onboard video card has at least (IIRC) 16MB of RAM so you'll get the benefits of Quartz Extreme. If you go for a 15" CRT-based iMac, make sure it's a slot-loader with at least a 500MHz G3, and try to find one with enough VRAM for Quartz Extreme.

Check prices for completed auctions of machines that meet the above specs to get a feel for the price you're likely to pay. Used Macs hold their value extremely well and auction prices tend to be high. For what you'll be paying for a used machine, plus shipping, it might be worth it to just get a brand-new eMac at your local Apple Store, which will be much faster and have a full warranty.

~Philly

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[scottking]

you're walking talking proof that apple needs to rekindle the "take a mac home trial" of yesteryear. they built the retail stores to help that cause, but there is something to be said for a company if they are willing to let the customer use the machine for ten days at home before buying. apple charges a premium for their machines, and i agree with them that they should. but if they truly believe their machines are the best, then they shouldn't be afraid to let people really get into them over a period of time. it has been a long time since many users have had a mac they could use regularly, and i think a program like this will allow a lot of people a no risk way to get reacquainted.

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[Ohreally_factor]

Small Dog is a great company. Most of their refurbed stuff is factory refurbed, so it will qualify for Applecare, should you feel the need to buy it. I've found their customer service to be excellent, as well.

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[the_2nd_coming]

I have a 400 MHz G4 Powermac with 512 MBs of RAM and a GeFroce 3 Ti in it (the GFX card was flashed). OS X works fine, though I will be upgrading to 1 GHz sonnet G4 CPU and a Dual layer DVD burner so that I can start using iDVD.

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[bedouin]

You really don't want to get a G3 these days; even though OSX will run on it, it's going to run dead-slow

It's not so much G3 vs. G4 as it is megahertz ratings. Sure a G3/300 is going to be slow, but I don't notice a huge difference between my G4 800mhz PowerMac and my G3 800mhz iBook. The speed differences between the two are due mainly to the iBook's less superior video card and slower hard drive, not the CPU.

If you're not doing anything altivec intensive, a G3 will probably perform just as well as a similarly clocked G4. So if all you can afford is a refurbed G3 iBook go for it; as long as the clock speed is reasonable it will perform fine -- certainly not 'dead-slow.' When running OS X what you really want is a nice chunk of RAM (512 or more) and a video card that can support Quartz Extreme; if those two things are in place your experience should be a good one.

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[LC II]

An 800mhz iMac g4 should do it, but make sure it has 10.3

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[EXrider]

I use an old 500MHz Power Mac G4 at work with 512MB of RAM and a Radeon 9000 Pro, it's plenty spunky for what I do, mostly net admin stuff. I always have iTunes, Mail, TextEdit, iCal, Activity Monitor, Terminal, Safari/or Firefox, VNC, and Terminal Services Client running. OSX does an amazing job of memory managment, you can have all your apps that you frequently use open at startup. I also occasionally do some work in iMovie getting movie trailers in VHS or DVD format ready for sales dept.'s presentations.

My home machine is a 450MHz Power Mac G4 with 640MB of RAM, and a self installed SuperDrive, I still have the original Rage Pro 128 in there though, which makes the work machine w/the radeon doing quartz extreme way more responsive. I do mostly iMovie and iDVD home movie stuff, which surprisingly isn't too bad on this machine; and the usual browsing, email, iTunes, remote admin from home stuff.

The most important thing is at least 512MB RAM, then a Quartz Extreme capable video card, and OS 10.3 is much snappier than 10.2. I wouldn't buy a machine slower than a 733MHz G4, or a refurb'd emac wouldn't be a bad idea either.

Re:Off Topic Apple Question

[EXrider]

I also want to add that I have a 1GHz PIII system at work with 512MB of RAM running win2k which is a turd, I rarely use this machine anymore because my mac covers almost everything I need to do my job, the only thing I keep the PC for is the occasional use of 3Com's network management tools, and software testing.

Desktop Spanning w/ iBook firmware hack

[MooseByte]

"Apple still cripples the iBook with mirrored-only video. No desktop spanning. The Radeon chipsets they use do support it, but Apple reserves that feature for the Powerbooks"

Actually my G4 iBook (800MHz vintage) does dual display spanning just fine - 1280x1024 on the external, 1024x768 on the iBook's own screen. But I had to void my warranty to do it.

There's a firmware hack that unlocks this. Note that it can be RISKY (read article), but it's been working great for me for nearly a year.

Fantastic little laptop, by the way. I crammed 640MB of RAM into it though. A laptop with less than 512MB RAM (from any vendor) is not seeing its full potential.

Re:1499 is too much

[BorgDrone]

How long would it take

Aprox 10 minutes to drive to the store, a collegue of mine just bought himself a brand new athlon64 for Eur. 599,- off the shelf (ok, more than $500 but still way cheaper than the 1.8 Ghz G5, plus the g5 is more expensive in .eu too), he went out on lunch break and was back an hour later with a big smile on his face as he had the machine up and running at home, he even installed the 64 bit version of SuSE in that time.

Here's the site of the store that sells it: athlon64 (dutch)

Specs:
Athlon64 3000+
Geforce FX 5500, 128MB (G-FX5200, 64MB in the G5)
512MB DDR (256MB in the G5)
120GB 8MB cache HD (80GB in the G5)
8x DVD+RW (8x DVD-RW in the G5)

Sure, the G5 has a better design and it has SATA, but you can buy almost three of these babies for the price of 1 G5. (g5 1.8Ghz is Eur. 1659,0)

I'd love to run OS X as much as the next guy, but with prices like this ?

I'd love a cheap Boring Grey Box apple, doesn't need to have the latest and greatest technology, and please no integrated monitor.

I don't have to

[daveschroeder]

Explain Apple's consistent #1 ranking, year after year after year, by Consumer Reports for technical support, incidence of repairs, and overall quality, eclipsing all other computer manufacturers by a pretty wide margin.

EVERY SINGLE Consumer Reports report that comes out on this, every year, for many years now, has Apple at #1. And it's not just for tech support: it's for quality and incidence of repairs. No one else comes close.

Moderators!

[gamgee5273]

For what reason is this guy down to a -1? He was making an observation that his girlfriend just got an iBook last month and it kinda sucks that the new one was released today.

At the very least it was a throwaway comment that doesn't need any moderation... but a -1?

I've got to meta-moderate more...

Re:1499 is too much

[jxyama]

you said "add" in the orig. reply. now you say "upgrade."

make up your mind, will you?

Re:1499 is too much

[BoomerSooner]

What is your point? I am a fan of OS X but when the only difference between a Mac and a PC based on components is the case and the OS I cannot see spending $1000 on a case and BSD. Hell I have a networked printer that works like a fucking champ from my windows and linux boxes (isn't cups in OS X) but try printing from OS X and it just doesn't work. I've got AppleTalk enabled and IP Printing enabled on the print server and unlike most Apple stuff it Just Doesn't Work. I bought an iBook for my wife to use in grad school and here are the problems:

SPSS Grad Pack doesn't run on 10.3 so I had to install 10.2 (yes I understand this isn't apple's fault but SPSS works fine on my PC)

Cannot print to networked my networked printers.

Try explaining to someone you're trying to convert to using a Mac that printing isn't necessary or doing your statistical analysis should take several times longer.

I use mac's exclusively for my tech support at my company because we offer a web based product. Fortunately I don't have printing issues there as well.

My post couldn't be farther from a troll but you seem to have that market cornered.

You are NOT the normal consumer

[daveschroeder]

...and you know it. If you don't care about support/repair/single vendor/etc. then of COURSE almost none of what I said matters to you.

But you represent a ridiculously small portion of the marketplace, and your group will ALWAYS be able to say "lol, I can build a machine for ten times cheaper than any Mac"...if that's your desire, great. As I said in another post, "to each his own".

Re:1499 is too much

[the_2nd_coming]

sorry I interchange the terms often when I talk about putting in new devices to my computers.

eMac still $749 education

[chocolatetrumpet]

eMac still $749 education for most of us...

just saying. That $599 that you listed made my eyes pop... maybe your school has a special deal with apple?

But alas, I'm not willing to part with winamp (text matching through internet radio), google desktop search, native gaim, and whatever the newest toy is...

Re:eMac still $749 education

[austad]

The reason is that some Universities have their own Apple store prices which are significantly less than the normal edu discount. University of Minnesota is one of these. My first iBook was through the U of MN store, and it was $100 less than the normal discount, I got like $300 off of it.

Re:eMac still $749 education

[shotfeel]

I was thinking maybe he was referring to the drive-less eMacs that can be ordered along with an XServe for netbooting. Don't know if other parts, like modems, were left out of those as well or not. IIRC they're not sold through the "normal" Apple store and are usually purchased in pallets of 20 or so to set up a lab.

Re:1499 is too much

[Gr8Apes]

Honestly - go to Pricewatch.com. Look up prices for the parts you want. (I'd have to spend about the same amount of time researching Apple options as I would for Opteron parts, although I am more familiar with Opterons.) Here's a quick rundown on what I consider comparable:

• dual Numa Motherboard: $250
• 1 244 (1.8GHz) Opteron processor: $326
• 256!! MB RAM: $42
• Antec Case/PS: $100 (estimated)
• Seagate SATA 80GB drive: $63
• Plextor 8X DVD+-RW drive: $86
• NVidia 5200 FX w/ TV out and 128MB: $54
• 56K internal modem: $5

Total: $926 Personally, I'd go do the following adds:

• dual 242s: +$100
• 2GB RAM: +$254
• Seagate 160GB SATA drive +$25
• Plextor 12X 712A -$4!!

Total: $1301.

That leaves $198 to upgrade that $54 video card to something better, like an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro/All in wonder or Geforce 6800 (ok, that last one raises the cost just $20, but look at the performance improvement!)

You could also ditch the dual 242s for a single 246 2GHz processor, but that would run an additional $40.

Last, but not least, buy a single 1 series processor for that motherboard, and next year buy a couple of dual core processors, each one of which would smoke that dual unicore setup.

Basically, if money were the issue, the opteron smokes apple's cost. However, Apple's OS X doesn't run on an opteron, and OS X definitely has some pluses.

Today's Theme: Enterprise

[njfuzzy]

Apple made three releases today.

1.) They released a new iBook, at a lower price point, with more included than before. A fully useful Mac laptop is now $999.

2.) They released a new XServe RAID. They are competing at $2 a gig. This is much more aggressive pricing than their competitors, allowing them to edge into the enterprise based both on price and performance.

3.) They now offer a single processor low-end G5. This lowers the price of entry into their pro-range. It helps keep up with demand, given that supply of G5 processors is an issue.

What is this all about? Well, it lowers the price of entry for the platform. That is good for average consumers, and wooing people to the platform.

However, look at which units these are. The low-end G5 is a great office machine. This is the computer you put under your desk. The iBook is a great laptop for someone who already has a desktop. The XServe RAID gets Macs into the server room. This is all about the Enterprise. Go for the solid midrange, and they will come.

Re:Today's Theme: Enterprise

[eldrich]

Yeah but to get started with us we need something that can compete with Linux on AMD. What we really want (are you listening Apple) is a headless eMac type machine with dual ethernet. A vga socket is great but one of that mini-vga sockets you use with an adapter is also fine. Something like this would make a great group lightweight server. Install samba, ldap, cups, dhcpd, bind etc etc and support up to 30 ish people.

Take a US$ 799 1.25Ghz eMac, strip off the monitor, upgrade the disk to 80Gb, memory to 512Mb, slap in a 2nd ethernet card and sell it for US$ 750 and I'll order on no problem.

Re:Today's Theme: Enterprise

[SilentChris]

Actually, most enterprise people (like myself) are looking for something a little more economical. We like to spend in the range of $1500 per desktop. The tower is $1500 alone, without a monitor, and with only 256 MB of RAM. If they shipped with at least a monitor at that price, we'd talk.

Re:Today's Theme: Enterprise

[njfuzzy]

I didn't say they were giving everyone what they want. Apple works on margins, and stays out of the low-end or even the mid-low-end. All I mean is that this feels like a move in that direction.

Re:Today's Theme: Enterprise

[Bombcar]

Get the 17" iMac G5 - it has a 1.8 GHz processor and included monitor. And at $1499 it is the same price as the single G5.

Re:Today's Theme: Enterprise

[ArbitraryConstant]

"They now offer a single processor low-end G5. This lowers the price of entry into their pro-range. It helps keep up with demand, given that supply of G5 processors is an issue."

The dual-only PowerMacs were the thing keeping Apple from being a consideration for me. I'm glad I waited. I can only assume G5 availability from IBM was not good enough to start selling a lower margin machine.

I'll tell you what though, a thousand frenzied Apple fans chanting "Sure it costs more, but it's still worth it!" is about the most annoying thing I've ever seen on Slashdot. That argument is so intellectually bankrupt that I didn't even get modded down yelling at them. It was a lot more money without greater utility, because the second CPU does nothing unless you're CPU-bound. Some of us just want a computer that we can upgrade in a few years.

Now that there's a machine that does what people like me need, it can be truthfully said they have a well rounded lineup. It will be a little while for me, but I think I will recommend a single-1.8 for my parents. I have no desire to get dragged back there for tech support, no matter how good my mothers cooking is.

Re:Today's Theme: Enterprise

[David Rolfe]

I guess 'cept cups that all of those goodies are stock installed. What I would want to see is some of the great OS X Server (gui) utils available for download/purchase (so you could administer your upgraded cube, or shiny g4 powermac just like an xserve) to 'home'/'small office' users.

You know if there was a cheap Xserve Jr. I'd want to enjoy the niceities of OS X Server without the cost.

Re:Today's Theme: Enterprise

[SilentChris]

But little expandibility. We have machines we've extended by 1-2 years through upgrades.

Re:Today's Theme: Enterprise

[Phroggy]

Even the regular non-server version of OSX comes with CUPS, with a nice GUI to set it up.

Re:Today's Theme: Enterprise

[_|()|\|]

We like to spend in the range of $1500 per desktop.

For some reason, our company has more or less standardized on Dell laptops. I'm due for an upgrade, and I think I can talk my manager into a 20" iMac, instead. I considered the PowerMac, but I'd like a monitor, too, and the iMac's looks pretty good. It's funny, I wouldn't buy the iMac for home use, mainly because I want a better video card for games. It seems like a terrific fit for work, though.

I grew up in a house that was evenly split between PCs and Macs. I always bought PCs, because they were a better value. Now, after having bought an iPod and an iBook, I'm looking at an iMac.

Re:Today's Theme: Enterprise

[mbbac]

And he doesn't have to worry about managing two assets (computer & monitor), they can simplify things by managing one asset that they're able to automatically discover.

Re:Today's Theme: Enterprise

[WuphonsReach]

About the only upgrade we've done on any machines in the office are memory upgrades (in fact, we just finished doubling the RAM in machines that aren't scheduled to be replaced now for another 2-3 years).

For general office work, I'd rather save money on the CPU and spend it on RAM and a second monitor. Especially if the person does a lot of document editing.

Shock and disriupt?

[Savage-Rabbit]

Not really, the people who shock and disrupt my reality are the ones who are in love with Windows. I like OS.X as a desktop OS because unlike Linux, everything works out of the box practically all of the time and unlike Windows I don't spend half my time pruning the massive field fortifications needed to keep out trojans, worms and viruses. I suppose one can probably get Linux to a mostly similar quality level as OS.X in the desktop role but it just takes to much time for my taste.

STILL 256MB

[Espectr0]

I wonder when apple will join the 21st century and start shipping with 512mb RAM as default. 256 is NOT enough, unless you only have mail and safari opened. Try running a small java desktop application and watch the beachball come to play

Re:STILL 256MB

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Buy crazy-cheap (but still branded RAM) from 3rd party.

2) Install RAM. Caution: May take anything up to 3 minutes

3) Enjoy, and quit bitching.

Re:STILL 256MB

[EvilTwinSkippy]

They will also sell you an X-Raid without a battery backed-up cache. (Bad idea.) The Apple reps basically explained it that you can always add stuff to an order, or upgrade later. In some situations, the parties can barely afford the unit, so the offer a model that is stripped down.

Those that can afford extra RAM generally buy it pre-installed. Those that can't can at least buy the machine and upgrade it later. $100 bucks isn't that much to me, but to a starving art major they can live without the performance.

Re:STILL 256MB

[kalidasa]

A lot of mac users buy their memory third-party because Apple's memory prices skew high. That might be part of the reason - they may not sell as well.

Re:STILL 256MB

[Jesus_666]

4) ???

5) Profit!

Re:STILL 256MB

[Espectr0]

Those that can afford extra RAM generally buy it pre-installed. Those that can't can at least buy the machine and upgrade it later. $100 bucks isn't that much to me, but to a starving art major they can live without the performance.


The sad part is that after paying for my 12" pb last december, i saw an ad in the paper that had the same price and they included a 512mb stick for free.

Re:STILL 256MB

[Blakey Rat]

All the computer makers do this. I think it's a disservice to their customers, but, hey, Dell can sell a PC for $450 if they don't care about how well it runs.

Re:I'm curious...

[cayenne8]

This page mentioned that airport extreme card not included on entry level boxes. What I'm curious about...can a REGULAR non 'extreme' airport card work on these? Right now, if you want to dual boot the iBook...Linux can't work too well with the airport extreme card. As I understand it, it is because the manufacturer won't release info on the drivers. But, the older airport cards work just fine...

Can you run a regular airport card on these new iBooks?

Still Radeon 9200 Mobility?

[aarku]

This graphics card is soon very obsolete by Apple's standards, because it won't support the upcoming Core Image technology which is part of 10.4 Tiger, scheduled to be out pretty soon as far as the lifetime of the iBook is concerned. Core Image is damn cool, and this little puppy will be left in the dust.

Re:Still Radeon 9200 Mobility?

[prototypical]

As has been pointed out numerous times, Core Image will support any machine that has even a remotely modern GPU. It will turn off the prettier eye candy so that it will still run, but the system won't at all be made unusable.

Core Image, like Core Audio, is an optional toolset for people who feel like adding on to their programs. It's not at all a requirement to use the enhancements in Tiger. Hell, if Apple keeps up their delivery on performance, Tiger will probably be even faster than previous iterations, depending on how they handle Spotlight and the other new features.

Re:Still Radeon 9200 Mobility?

[prototypical]

Could you point me to a major manufacturer's sub-$1000 notebook with a card that does support pixel shaders, perhaps? It'd look especially good if you could do it with a processor that remotely compares to the G4 in power consumption and a setup that mirrors the feature set.

Thanks in advance.

Re:Still Radeon 9200 Mobility?

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally wrong. The 9200 Mobile supports pixel and vertex shaders in DirectX and OpenGL:

http://www.ati.com/products/mobilityradeon9200/f ea tures.html

Re:Still Radeon 9200 Mobility?

[aarku]

Via the craptastic ATI_text_fragment_shader extension, but not by ARB_fragment_program

Re:Still Radeon 9200 Mobility?

[aarku]

Does Not Exist. I am simply pointing out that the Radeon 9200 Mobility doesn't allow you to fully use a big feature of Tiger. There's nothing wrong with the iBook! I'm typing on one!

Re:Still Radeon 9200 Mobility?

[Graymalkin]

Core[Image|Video] shaders are written in OGSL and compiled as needed for individual GPUs. It is entirely possible that the shipping version of the framework will include "good enough" translators to compile the OGSL into chip-spacific shader programs. While the 9200 wouldn't be able to have 100% CI/CV functionality it might be able to have enough functionality for a majority of programs to function fine.

Re:1499 is too much

[Dot.Com.CEO]

Macs can print on all cups printers. If you have a secure network, try the following in your cupsd.conf:

MaxLogSize 0
MaxJobs 10
Browsing On
BrowseProtocols cups
BrowseAddress @LOCAL
BrowseAllow from All
Listen 631
<Location />
Allow from All
AuthType None
</Location>
<Location /admin>
AuthType Basic
AuthClass System
</Location>

Surprise! Your networked printer appears (already configured) in the printer configuration box. Cups is also not officially supported in Macos, but it works. You can of course try to manually configure it but why bother? Just let everyone on your subnet see your printer and manage cupsd properties.

Re:1499 is too much

[fyonn]

really? an extra ethernet card? sata raid card? fibre channel? scsi? a couple more disks (admittedly this is pushing it with the pm g5 with its grand total of 2 internal disk slots :)

I'd love an imac g5 (though I have a pm g5 now) but it's not really user upgradeable (past mem, new hd and an AE card). it's user fixable perhaps, but not really upgradeable to a major extent.

dave

Is there an adapter for s-video to normal video?

[LordJezo]

It has an s-video port on there which is worthless since no tv's I own (or anyone else I know of) have an s-video jack on them.

Is ther anyway to convert s-video to a standard rca video in?

1024?

[famebait]

Even the 14-inch has only 1024, which is simply below par IMO. Apart from that it looks like a very nice contender in the low-end portable market, but that screen would probably make me avoid it if I were shopping today. Shame; I do like that iPod-look.

Re:1024?

[Blakey Rat]

OS X doesn't have scalable font sizes. 1024x768 is a blessing in disguise. But it's not like Windows where, if your fonts are too tiny to read, you can just bump up the font zoom... OS X doesn't have that feature.

I assume that's why they don't have super-high-res screens in them, because they'll just get complaints that you can't read any of the text on the screen. Hell, on my 14" iBook, I already have to turn my minimum font size in web browsers up to 14 before I can read most of them comfortably.

Re:1024?

[jcbphi]

Of the handful of people I know who bought the 14", the lower resolution was a positive deciding factor. It seems that for older people with poorer vision, having bigger pixels is just wonderful.

What's the use of more pixels if you can't see any of them?

Re:1024?

[WuphonsReach]

I'd rather have twice as many pixels but keep the text size the same or larger. Makes everything a good bit crisper and easier on the eyes.

(I have a 14" 1400x1050 display on my Toshiba Tecra. That's around 127ppi instead of 96ppi. It's *almost* good enough, but 150ppi or 200ppi is probably the sweet spot. Text looks very crisp on this display.)

Re:1499 is too much

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Dual CPUs are much different in OSX, than in Windows. They actually both do things...really. My older dual 533 G4 has no problem playing UT2003 or Warcraft3 while still functioning as my web server, MP3 server, and PVR. Try playing a CPU intensive game on a dual CPU windows box, while also using it to record and encode a TV show. Now try it on a 4 year old windows box. I dare you.

Re:Is there an adapter for s-video to normal video

[Chucker23N]

The iBook video adapter that has the s-video port also has an rca port. Note that this adapter is an additional purchase, at least it was for the iBook G3.

Re:1499 is too much

[AusG4]

Are you on drugs?

$500 for a comparable Athlon? I don't know where you buy your kit dude, but here in chinatown (the cheapest hardware I can find), a comparable Athlon64 machine would cost me around $1300-$1600 once you factor in all the ports (firewire 800, etc) and the license for Windows XP.

That said, if you want to argue that "with the PC, you don't have to buy a license" than keep it to yourself. I don't want to have to smack you with this trout.

Re:eMac is $799 *retail* now

[aristotle-dude]

Then, look at the "online" apple education store then.

Get Screen Spanning Doctor

[bill_mcgonigle]

Apple still cripples the iBook with mirrored-only video. No desktop spanning. The Radeon chipsets they use do support it, but Apple reserves that feature for the Powerbooks.

Get Screen Spanning Doctor.

Ebay Upgrade

[bill_mcgonigle]

I would still go with the PowerMac because it's upgradeable.

In one year, I will want a new video card. In 1 1/2 years a second hard disk, one year later a third.

Don't underestimate the power of the Ebay Upgrade. Apple gear holds its value beyond reason.

If you're talking about additional capability via PCI cards, PowerMac makes sense, but if you just want more of the same (RAM, HD, Video), it may not.

Re:Ebay Upgrade

[vasqzr]

Good point. You could upgrade from a G3 laptop from 1998 to a new iBook for $500. Those things keep their value very, very well.

Sucks for those of us who would like to buy older Macintosh hardware, but it's great for repeat Apple customers.

Re:I'm curious...

[Matey-O]

I fail to see why you'd WANT to dual boot OS X...run the developer Environment .pkg, open a terminal, and you've got a FULL BSD U*ix implementation. Gcc works, X works, port works...

It was pretty cool compiling libpcap and snort and just having it work.

I bought my 12" ibook about two weeks ago ($999 refurb)...I've gotta say I don't feel too put out that I had to pay for the airport extreme card ($70 refurb) as the only real difference was the .2 Ghz bump in proc.

I've had 6 or 7 really intensive things going on (compile, wget, convert shorten to mp3, etc.) and the little ibook just soaks it up and runs with it. I'm loving this thing to DEATH.

all I have is a G3 iBook

[microcars]

my only 'puter is a 12" G3 iBook 700 and I use it for all the things your mentioned plus:
video editing with iMovie
Photoshop
Illustrator
InDesign
GoLive

I usually have 3 browsers open plus iTunes going, plus several other things going on.

all on 640mb of RAM and OS 10.2.8, once I move to Panther (10.3) I expect a bit more performance.

so basically, anything you buy will be better than what I have and what I have is fine for what you want.

Re:Is there an adapter for s-video to normal video

[jridley]

That's unusual, I bought my last TV 3 years ago, and most TVs at the time (except the REALLY cheap stuff) had s-video)

Anyway, yes, you can get cheap adaptors starting at $10, or you can wire your own. Here are some (google, 10 seconds)
http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/svideo 2cvideo.ht ml
http://www.cablestogo.com/product_list.asp?cat _id= 2012

Re:I'm curious...

[sammy baby]

Unfortunately, the pinouts on the Airport and Airport Extreme cards aren't the same. If you have a newer iBook or Powerbook, you can't use the old Airport cards, and vice-versa with the older systems and the new Airport Extreme cards.

doh - almost forgot.

[sammy baby]

Doh - I forgot to mention: Apple doesn't talk it up much, but a few standard PCMCIA wireless cards work just dandy with OS X. The makers of Kismac, a wireless stumbler for Mac OS (Kismac? Kismet? Get it?), maintains a list of 3rd party cards which work with their software.

Re:doh - almost forgot.

[SD_92104]

I forgot to mention: Apple doesn't talk it up much, but a few standard PCMCIA wireless cards work just dandy with OS X

Well, that would require for the iBook to actually have a PCCard slot... You will need a PowerBook for that

Virtual Desktop Manager for OS X

[prell]

You should check out Desktop Manager for OS X. It will even use those neat user-switching animations to switch desktops (e.g. the cube, etc.). I used it briefly, and it's cool, but I ditched the idea completely, simply because it's so easy to just do "Command+h" to hide the current application. Also, I do use Expose, and that helps.

Re:1499 is too much

[nmk]

>>Of course, then they wouldn't be able to sell many dual systems since even a lot of professionals really don't need the tiny speed boost one gets from using a dual CPU machine if a fast single CPU machine is available.

Notice the tiny speed boost that the dual 1.8 gets over the single 1.8, particularly in the Cinebench test.

Re:Is there an adapter for s-video to normal video

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Yes. I have several adapter that take S-video in and output RCA.

That said I really had to look around for a TV with an S-Video jack. My wife thought I was nuts, but my PS/2 plugged into the S-Video jack has a much crisper picture. Of course you also have to invest in the S-Video cable for the PS/2.

That said, I think my PS/2 has played more hours of Baby Einstein videos than console games.

But what about the RAM?

[cosmo_the_third]

But can they RAM match? 256 barely runs a toaster with OS X.

From the Apple Webpage:
"To maximize its speed, Apple engineers pair the G4 processor with a fast 133MHz system bus and 256MB of onboard memory to accelerate calculations and make your applications scream."

(hint for Apple: fire those engineers)

Most resellers throw in an extra 256 for free, saving me far more than a 3 or 4 dollar price match difference. Plus I'll be able to run Mail and Safari at the same time without having to watch the rainbow pinwheel for 15 seconds every time I try to switch between them.

-Cosmo

Re:Yeah but will they

[iocat]

No, you didn't. The Apple //c came with 128K of RAM and had a MSRP of $1295, although in practice it usually sold for a $999 street price. (I paid ~$800 at Rainbow Computer in Rochester, MI, but that was part of package deal that included the monitor, monitor stand, and a Scribe printer.)

And yes, I do understand that you were trying to be funny, but common, this is a site for nerds. You have to expect some nerdly correction...

Re:You know...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I'm an IT professional and a Laptop snob. I've been working off a laptop for the better part of 5 years. My previous laptop was a Viao running Gentoo linux. (It came with ME, and XP just wasn't happy on it.) I'm currently on a 12" iBook.

I find that Apple has really done it's homework designing the OS for the hardware, and the hardware for the OS. My PC laptops, even the Sonys (designed from the ground up as a consumer electronic) to be Windows with laptop features bolted on. Macs on the other hand are an integrated package. You just turn the thing on, and it works. You plug in peripherals and they simply work. (I did have to buy a piece of shareware for OS X to talk to my Sony Clie, though.)

The other nifty thing about the units is that they come with all the software you need to make them useful. Work would happily buy me a copy of Office for X, but I find that AppleWorks does everything I need it to do.

Now what do I do on this thing? I run a 200 person network. My "killer app" is a package called Fink that lets me compile Unix applications under OSX. I have all of my Linux tools (even our in-house intranet application) ported over to run natively on my iBook.

When it comes time to upgrade, most of the time the new OS will happily install on your old hardware. I came into OS/X late, but many people have reported that 10.3 actually run better on older machines than 10.2. We have original iMacs that are still in operation, and running the latest OS. That's a computer from 1998. Try running Windows XP on a PII 400. Even if a PII/400 was powerful enough, I've tried to upgrade a laptop. Tracking down the right drivers is a royal pain in the neck.

So yes, an iBook is a bit more expensive than an x86 PC. But you can be sure that it will be actively supported for years beyond what is possible for an x86 PC.

(On a sidenote, I did luck out with this particular model of Sony though. The line lasted from 1999 until 2002. Later varients were bundled with 2000 and XP, so drivers were available for my old one. Then again, a Viao isn't exactly cheap either.)

Re:Yeah, with Crolles2, the 7448 and the MPC7448

[prototypical]

Then let me break it down for you, since this is apparently so difficult.

The processors that Apple dubbed the "G4" are various iterations of the Motorola 74xx core. Targetted at the embedded and low-power draw computing markets, originally, the highly efficient design was very competitive with anything else in the same price bracket for a while.

When Motorla spun off their semiconductor division, it took the name Freescale and began to ally itself with other technology firms. Right now, Freescale, Phillips, and STMicroelectronics are sharing fabrication space in a facility they built in France. This site, known as Crolles2, is intended to be a next-generation workhorse and research lab, where they can apply the lessons learned from the failing and lagging Motorola line. They'd had successfuly 90nm test runs as early as 2003, with engineering samples being produces in 2004, and a plan to start the sampling process for 65nm in 2005.

The product line for Freescale is one of legacy - older Motorla cores like the 74xx series, the 603e, and others - and some new designs. Among the new designs are the e300 and e500 embedded systems chips (shipping now), and the e600 and e700 designs. The first appearance of the once-e600 will be the MPC9461D, which is a dual-core enhanced 74xx chip that will have two 128-bit AltiVec SIMD units, 1 MB of L2 cache per processor, on-die memory control and access to DDR2 (up to 667mhz), four on-die MACs for networking, encryption protocol support on the chip, and the ability to scale past 1.5ghz (the current high-end for 74xx cores).

As a stepping stone between the present and the future, Freescale is revising the existing MPC7447A processor. Breaking from the traditional upper limit of 167mhz on the MPX system bus, they're offering it at 200mhz on the bus, with a jump in core frequency to 1.8ghz. This compares to the previous high-end chips, the MPC7447A and older 7445/7455, with higher clocks and system access ability but lower power draw.

There... Just as geeky, but now more informative.

Out of Context Quote of the Day

[BadMrMojo]

"For under $2,500 I can get my wife off... AND a new G5!"

Sorry, had to do it.

Re:Out of Context Quote of the Day

[Drakonian]

That's how I read it too! I was wondering why it wasn't modded up yet. Gold.

You must be talking about the iServe

[Johnny Mozzarella]

The XServe's little brother.

its basically one of the new iMac G5's without the screen.

Re:Is there an adapter for s-video to normal video

[Colol]

The iBook does not come with an S-Video adapter, only VGA. TV output, both S-Video and standard RCA, is added with a $19 adapter.

Re:Customers love to get screwed by Apple

[null etc.]

I'm guess there's probably a difference between advertising a product before its design, and advertising a product two months before its release.

Re:You know...

[radish]

Thanks for your well thought out response :) I think the moderation on my original comment (-1 Flaimbait, -1 Troll) just goes to show what I mean! Sad really, for a site (and community) which prides itself on independent thought and freedom of speech.

Anyway, I don't disagree that Apples are well designed. But I don't have any problems with my XP laptop, in general things just work on there too. Software wise there's no much in it for me. I have spare licenses of most of the common Windows packages, so anything I have to buy for OSX is a greater expense.

The issue of lifespan is an interesting one though, you're right that the smaller variation in hardware leads to better long term support. I'm not sure how relevant that will be....I have a feeling we won't still have this machine in 6 years time.

I'll probably end up with the iBook, mainly because it's what she has her heart set on (the advertising plus the "all my friends have one" factor). I guess it's not a bad machine...

Re:Graphics chips and Apple

[Ohreally_factor]

The Radeon 9700 Mobility with 128 MB VRAM is a BTO option on the 15" and the 17" Powerbooks (sadly, it's not an option on the 12" PB). Are 9700 Radeon Mobility graphics standard on consumer level laptops that are comparable to the iBook?

Re:1499 is too much

[Ohreally_factor]

Upgrading the HD on a powerbook does NOT void the warranty.

Focus-Follows-Mouse

[Anonymous Coward]

it also gives you the option of 'Focus-Follows-Mouse'

I've been dying to have FFM on MacOS X since it came out, but I don't want or need anything else in this heavyweight desktop manager - are there any other options to get FFM? Thanks.

What I like about trackpoints...

[Junta]

They are in the right place, I don't have to move my hand to move the damn pointer, and regardless of the improvements with respect to distinguishing wrist from intended use, it still frequently misregisters if I rest my wrist.

Also, it isn't like it is an expensive mechanism or is particular intrusive if you have both and want to ignore one or the other, it is pretty easy.

Re:What I like about trackpoints...

[mrchaotica]

That depends on the size and shape of the laptop, and the position of the touchpad. On my 12" iBook, the placement is just right -- my wrists are just to either side, so I don't get stray mouse movement, and I can move my hands 2 inches straight down to use the pad and mouse button (with my right hand) and control, option, and command (with my left).

Re:What I like about trackpoints...

[Junta]

That is two inches too much ;) Moving the pointer in a trackpoint means no more motion than reaching for a key, and the mouse buttons are within thumb reach (right beneath space). For laziness, trackpoint is just perfect. And the control with a trackpad is atrocious, or at least doesn't feel right. A mouse is worth moving my hand for (by far better than the other two options mentioned, and personally I never took to a trackball, though I tried), a trackpad isn't.

Re:Graphics chips and Apple

[adewolf]

They are now and the PCI-Express based laptops with ATI X800 or NVIDIA 6800 chips are coming out any day now. Check out:
http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/acer-aspire- 1800-p ci-express-laptop-021091.php
Sager is releasing the NP9860 with either and ATI or
NVIDIA 250 MB VRAM PCI-Express chipset:
http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php ?p=441274# post441274

Alex

big difference in screen

[rickward]

I have been comparison shopping recently, and believe me when I say there's a big difference in the viewability of the 12" iBook and the 12" PowerBook. The PB has much more contrast and can be viewed from a wider angle.

Re:big difference in screen

[dcstimm]

I work for apple, they use the same screen.

No G5 powerbook

[ICECommander]

There probably won't be a G5 powerbook. It is very unlikely that with the power consumption and space requirements of the G5, it could be fit into a powerbook size and weight. There might be a low voltage, scaled down version of the G5 developed that allows the processor to be more manageable and use less energy.

WARNING! Gentoo zealot detected...

[SoTuA]

Quoth the parent post: "Just put some gentoo on to eliminate the winblowz problems."

As for a US$2000 laptop wiping the floor with a US$1000 laptop? It damn better, otherwise it isn't worth US$2000.

Re:1499 is too much

[the_2nd_coming]

did you have to open the case? if so, it voids it.

Re:Graphics chips and Apple

[prototypical]

The Sager notebook you linked to is a Pentium 4 (hence a battery hog), and looks like it's going to be their replacement for the Sager NP8790 high-end. If you check their website, it seems that you're paying at least twice what you'd pay for an iBook.

The PowerBook, on the other hand, offers 128MB Radeon 9700 graphics as a BTO option for, as I recall, $50 to upgrade. Oh, and it gets more than an hours of battery life, what with drawing 12 watts instead of 105 for the processor. Perhaps a more fair comparison is the Sager NP1280, with a lower screen size, a Pentium M for battery consumption, and (gasps of shock, all around) shared-memory Intel Extreme 2 graphics. At least it's only $400 more than the iBook, right?

whoa, slow down cowboy!

[Trepidity]

We're still working on two mouse buttons here. Two pointing devices is right out.

(And before anyone flames me, I actually like one mouse button for a laptop, due to the hand positions.)

Stop spreading FUD

[billybob]

I'm no fan of dell but the figures you just listed are pure crap.

My girlfriend has an 1100. Now it is a bit bulky and the warranty is totally gay. However, most of your other points are just wrong.

* The battery life is around 3 hours, whic his better than any mac laptop I've ever owned/used.
* It has a radeon 9200.
* It has a CD-RW/DVD combo drive.
* It has svideo out.
* It has firewire.
* It has a PCMCIA slot for a wireless card, which she has. (All mac laptops come with airport built in these days, but that's a very recent change, it used to be only the high end ones, otherwise you had to spend 99 dollars for a card, which is a total rip off. Wireless cards for PC's are 30-40 dollars which is a negligible price difference).

So let's see... that's 6 points that you were totally wrong about. Good job.

Re:Stop spreading FUD

[Erik Hollensbe]

What's sad is that fact-twisters like the GP ruin both Mac advocacy. The Mac is a good system - sadly people that think it's some kind of religious crusade ruin it for a lot of other people with less drive to try it. It kept me away for a long time.

If you're interested in doing day to day things better, the Mac might be something that you find a good idea. It is quite different and takes adjustment, but after a few weeks to a month, it fits like a glove. The killer isn't in the hardware, but the software that controls it. The hardware just makes it easier for Apple to make the software that much easier to deal with (think drivers).

Re:Stop spreading FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting comment about battery life. My iBook easily gets four or five hours, and if I'm just listening to music, I can get almost eight.

I scoff at your "three hours." ;)

Re:Stop spreading FUD

[Dorothy 86]

I just purchased a Powerbook and I get c. 3.5-4 hours battery life... I don't know what problems you were having with the macs you tried...

Re:Stop spreading FUD

[kavi_3]

I have a 12" PB and my battery life is well over 3 hours. 3 hours is not bad but unless you have a Centrino processor you PC laptops are going to have much less than 3 hours.

Re:Stop spreading FUD

[mrchaotica]

My 12" 800Mhz iBook G4 (which I'm using right now, by the way) gets at least 4 hours of battery life.

Re:Stop spreading FUD

[jerde]

> and the warranty is totally gay

You do know that using "gay" as a negative adjective is offensive, right?

Please be considerate.

Re:Stop spreading FUD

[Dorothy 86]

It may be because it's brand spankin new... but I "use" mine and get 3.5-4 hours..... *shrug* that is of course I'm adding files to my iPod without it plugged in... but that's some extreme batter usage...

Re:Stop spreading FUD

[man2525]

Yes. 96 Watt Hour batteries tend to run longer than 50 Watt Hour batteries. The Dell's default BIOS settings also cut the screen brightness by half when its unplugged. I agree that specs are not the iBook's strong point. Its a nice little package. An Inspiron could have even better specs for the same price if Dell somehow wired the parts together without a case. I wouldn't call that progress, though. Some would...

Re:Stop spreading FUD

[mrbrown1602]

Must have tried the Macintosh Portable from 1985...

Re:Stop spreading FUD

[pyrros]

Something is wrong with your and your friend's batteries. Seriously. My 12" G3/700 gets around 3.5 hours.

Re:1499 is too much

[azmatsci]

Coward gets modded up and I get modded down for flaming apple. BS.

Re:Yeah but will they

[Erik Hollensbe]

I do understand that you were trying to spell 'come on', but come on, this is a site for nerds. You have to expect some nerdly correction.... :)

OS X "zippy" on much slower computers

[SuperKendall]

Actually I have experience with OS X on a G5 1.8 (dual), a 667Mhz Powerbook, and an older 400Mhz G4 tower.

OS X is actually pretty zippy on all of them - they all have a decent amount of RAM (more than 512MB each) and the G4 I did replace the video card with a bit newer model, which makes a large difference in UI smoothness. Using the OS feels pretty similar across all of them.

Some apps feel slower than others, just using Photoshop feels pretty simialr across the computers but doing anything computer intensive is of course much slower on the older platforms than the G5.

For browsing, document editing, or many other things even older computers still are quite "zippy". The old G4 tower is still at work creating newsletters for print with InDesign and scanning a PhotoShop work.

Not to mention that computers in general are more "zippy" when they need no anti-virus software running.

Re:Customers love to get screwed by Apple

[z-kungfu]

Hey jackass new product does not equal obsolete. Apple products have a much longer lifespan period.
But I guess an asshat like yourself just wants to bitch, go back to your XP box and leave us alone.

it's in your head

[levl289]

The iBook 12", and the PowerBook 12" use the same exact LCD - Google it if you don't trust me ;)

Re:Broadcom

[Wesley Felter]

Apple chose Broadcom wireless chips because those were the first pre-802.11g chips available, and Apple stays with the same wireless chip vendor for an entire generation. Maybe when Apple moves to pre-802.11n they'll choose a more open vendor (assuming such a thing still exists).

Apple should decide whether they want Linux users using their hardware (and the resulting money) or whether having total control of their platform and product is more important to them. They can't have it both ways.

That is correct; Apple doesn't care about Linux. How much clearer do you want them to be?

The number of PowerBook Linux users is so small that you discredit yourself by threatening to switch to another platform.

Meh. I can build the equivilent pc for...

[Gilmoure]

$54.00. It'll run GeOS, which everyone knows is just as good as OSX. It'll be cool.

Rest assured...

[Xenex]

...that I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world.

Here's a little maths for you:

A 17-inch 1.8GHz iMac is $US1,499, or $AU2,499.
A 1.8GHz Power Mac is $US1,499, or $AU2,699.

So, why the $200?

Re:Rest assured...

[lord_ashaman]

FW800, Optical Line in, Crappy Little Speaker, The "Ability" to install up to 4G of RAM, PCI Slots, Extra Internal HD Bay.

But I agree with you, I'd rather the iMac over the PMG5 1.8 Single any given Sunday.

Re:Rest assured...

[mrchaotica]

Shipping cost to Australia due to weight difference?

Re:Customers love to get screwed by Apple

[null etc.]

Hey jackass new product does not equal obsolete. Apple products have a much longer lifespan period. But I guess an asshat like yourself just wants to bitch, go back to your XP box and leave us alone.

Are you a Windows user in disguise, trying to give Apple users a bad name? If not, return to your master, Apple drone.

It's not as much about obsolescence as it is about Apple making choices on behalf of the consumer, by withholding information about their products. Tell me QuickTime 5.2 wasn't obsolete the day QuickTime 6 upgraded itself onto my computer, and continually flashed "Why upgrade?" ads on my computer whenever I watched a QuickTime movie.

Re:Yeah, with Crolles2, the 7448 and the MPC7448

[Kiryat Malachi]

If you think the e500 is shipping now, well...

Sure. If you don't like having working flash in your processor. Last time I worked on a e500-cored processor (Copperhead/MPC5554, Augustish), they were having some pretty serious yield problems - lots of good logic cores, but very few with working flash. I haven't heard anything to suggest an improvement since August.

Wireless built-in or not

[wwwillem]

All mac laptops come with airport built in these days, but that's a very recent change...

Apple confuses me totally. If I look in the tech spec it says: "Built-in antennas and expansion slot for optional 54 Mbps AirPort Extreme Card; (compliant with 802.11g standard; Wi-Fi Certified for 802.11g and 802.11b interoperability)". But if you look at the list of possible options, a WiFi card is not listed. So, which if the two is true???

Re:Wireless built-in or not

[thebagel]

I don't believe it lists it as "a WiFi card." It's called an AirPort card, and last time I checked, it's an option.

Re:Wireless built-in or not

[PudriK]

The antennas are built into the machine, but you often have to purchase the AirPort card as an option for it to have WiFi access. The higher priced versions sometimes have it already included. Unlike add-on cards for PC laptops, which are PC Cards often with small antennas, the AirPort card is plugged in under the keyboard, and connects to the built-in antenna.

Re:Wireless built-in or not

[PudriK]

Follow-up: The new iBooks all have the AirPort extreme card included, not as an add-on option.

Re:Wireless built-in or not

[wwwillem]

So, Apple should update the tech-specs on their web site.

Re:Is there an adapter for s-video to normal video

[Kiryat Malachi]

Try it over component. The difference from composite to s-video is much more noticeable than the difference from s-video to component, but its still a noticeable difference.

Mmm. PS2 games over component on HDTV set. So nice. Must play Katamari Damacy. So nice.

FSB short-change on the PowerMac?

[bdipert]

Anyone else notice that the Front Side Bus frequency on the new 1.8 GHz G5 PowerMac is 600 MHz.....1/3 of the CPU's core frequency? On the single-CPU 1.6 GHz G5 PowerMac, it was 800 MHz (1/2 the core), as is the case with all the dual-proc versions. I assume this was done to maximize CPU and core logic chipset yields, but it'll clobber performance in apps that aren't cache-friendly. Comments?

Re:You know...

[Graymalkin]

Every group is going to have the fanboys, have you ever read through a Gentoo lovefest on Slashdot? Geez.

You're making assumptions about the value of the iBook without giving any sort of idea what you think provides good value which is why I would guess you got moderated down. You're also saying you're paying a lot for just an Apple logo as if the iBook costs $6,000 and requires you to kick a puppy when you buy it.

For most people iBooks are excellent laptops. They're faster than the specifications might lead you to believe and are very stable machines. They also have ridiculously long battery life, I got an iBook from work that routinely gets 5+ hours on the battery while using Airport (802.11g) while my 12" Powerbook only gets a little over four hours doing the same work. OSX itself is a very stable OS and is markedly more secure than Windows XP even if you've taken the many hours required to lock it down.

These are all things I would consider to add value to the purchase. For a thousand bucks you're getting a laptop with built-in WiFi, really long battery life, a stable OS, and an all around good design. You're also getting a laptop that weighs in at less than five pounds which makes it far easier to carry around than larger and heavier laptops.

Re:Broadcom

[Large Green Mallard]

the number of PowerBook Linux users is so small

Yes, because Airport Extreme doesn't work with Linux but Airport did, so everyone who DID use Linux on their ibooks and powerbooks now can't upgrade them and has been forced to move away from the Apple platform.

Linux kernel hacker Rusty Russell used to have one of the most banged up Powerbooks I'd ever seen.

And once again, to the GGP post, it's not Apple or Broadcom's damn fault that Airport Extreme doesn't work with Linux. 802.11g radios are much more "dangerous" than 802.11b in terms of how they can be used and controlled by software. Very very few (if any?) 802.11g cards have open source drivers for any platforms. Everyone I know which 802.11g cards under Linux uses NDISwrapper and the DOS NDIS drivers to use them.

Re:"the computer for the rest of us"

[Anonymous Coward]

The rest of us can spend the 20 minutes to learn what to do, 30 minutes to install Firefox/Thunderbird, and the 10 minutes a week it takes to run Windows Update, and save our $500.

I don't know what little dream world YOU'RE living in, bub, but the world I live in is chock full of people who are absolutely not interested in learning how to maintain their Windows boxes, are completely ignorant of superior alternatives to IE, and don't even take the time to turn on Automatic Updates much less spend ten minutes per week manually running Windows Update. They just go on using a broken machine until it becomes intolerably crashy or slow, then they either blow several days wiping it and reinstalling everything, or they throw it out and buy a new one because the Dell tech is too lazy or incompetent or just plain not allowed to teach them about Ad-Aware, CoolWebShredder, and SpybotSD.

If you'd rather save $500 than get a computer that will be significantly more reliable *and* last you one or two years longer than the average Windows box, then go right ahead and keep wallowing in your pool of cognitive dissonance-- but don't lump in the majority of Windows users with you, because they simply don't know any better.

Laptop RAM is "SODIMM" (nt)

[mrchaotica]

nt

Re:I'm curious...

[tf23]

Yeah, I bought the 12" 1GHz $949 refurb 4.5 weeks ago. Sigh. I don't feel the love nearly as much as you seem to. $150 is quite a bit difference in just a little over a month.

Re:Customers love to get screwed by Apple

[z-kungfu]

Hey numnuts it's a common business practice. Apple is no the only company that keeps the next product under wraps until the time is right. Maybe you need to look at marketing campaigns for everything from cars to bicycles to stereo equipment. Or I guess "null" is what you got going on in your head...

Re:I'm curious...

[Matey-O]

Don't think of it that way....instead think of all the two and three year old iBooks on eBay that are STILL worth $550-$700!

I can't find the 1100 Dell's web site but I found

[dusanv]

four versions of the 1150. The low end one kind of matches what the guy in the parent thread said (I don't know what kind of 1100 your girlfriend has):
-No S Video
-No Radeon 9200 (i.e. integrated shit video)
-No combo drive for the $999 one
-No firewire
-No PCMCIA

FYI, wireless was debuted by Apple in an *iBook*. That's right, the first machine shipped by Apple to have AirPort was an iBook so no it's not a recent change. I am yet to see more than an hour and a half hours of life from any PC non-Centrino laptop (the bricks with two batteries not counted). Your girlfriend has one hell of a laptop there for $999.

Mod parent up... maybe

[Nermal6693]

Hmm, it says 'Score:0, Informative' but it changed to Score:2 when I pressed reply. Going back to the main page and reloading (not from cache!) it says Score:0 again. /me is confused.

But...

[Xenex]

Why the $200 more in Australia, when the prices are identical in the US?

Re:But...

[lord_ashaman]

The Box is bigger and Scarier.

Well...

[Xenex]

Yes, yes it is.

But is it two hundred dollars scarier?

iBook Linux

[ChunderDownunder]

while you're at it, please lobby ATi/Nvidia to release 3D drivers and ensure that the modem is supported.

But seriously, why would you want to run Linux on a laptop without support for a second or third button on the built-in pointing device? :)

that's not the keyboard

[commodoresloat]

it's the mouse.

Thank god I have a Mac. I wouldn't know what to do with all those extra buttons.

AE built in??

[commodoresloat]

AppleEvents?

Re:AE built in??

[mrchaotica]

Airport Extreme, aka 802.11g

Re:I'm curious...

[HuguesT]

The bump in speed is only 0.13 GHz, you'll find that your "1GHz" 12" iBook has in fact a 1.07GHz CPU. The difference in speed is insignificant. What is significant is the price drop and the included Airport express.

Re:Apple seem intent in being non-existent in the

[mrchaotica]

Yes, because we all know that a 10lb paving brick with a desktop processor and less than 1 hour battery life is SO much more portable than a 5lb thin-and-light with a much more efficient processor for 5 hour battery life and a better OS to boot!

Maybe you haven't met a Mac owner because they don't hang out in crack houses?

Re:Broadcom

[mrchaotica]

I bought an iBook specifically for the purpose of using OSX. It's UNIX, all my Free Software apps run, so why would I particularly care?

If I wanted to run Linux I would have gotten an x86 (or, ideally, Transmeta).

Re:"the computer for the rest of us"

[mrchaotica]

Please stop spreading that myth -- it's no longer true. At least it wasn't when I bought my iBook in March:

12" 800Mhz iBook G4 with Mobile Radeon 9200: $1099

Gateway 200X: 1.5Ghz PM, Centrino, integrated Intel Graphics, otherwise comparable to iBook (including size/weight, battery life, hard drive, etc.): ~$1300

The iBook was cheaper!

Re:1499 is too much

[mrchaotica]

No, you don't have to open the case on a PowerBook. There's a panel for the hard drive that you can unscrew.

iBooks, however, are a different story (which is why I build-to-ordered the biggest hard drive possible on mine).

Re:"the computer for the rest of us"

[jridley]

Thanks, that's interesting. I'll keep it in mind if I ever buy a laptop again, but at this point my laptop just sits in the closet, while my desktops run 24/7. The desktops do still seem to fetch a premium, though as I pointed out, only against commodity machines, not against the top-of-the-line machines, which I don't need.

Re:"the computer for the rest of us"

[jridley]

Right, and those people are going to buy Macs exactly 0.0001% of the time (there's got to be one guy out there).

I dunno about the lifetime arguments. I'm currently throwing away 200 MHz PC machines, but still using 400 MHz ones. That's a pretty long life, probably equivalent to Mac users just now starting to throw away the last pre-PPC units.

The folks that I know that are throwing away newer machines than that are mainly gamers looking for hot machines, which has a negligible overlap with the interests of Mac users (who do not tend to be gamers if Macs are all they own).

Re:Customers love to get screwed by Apple

[alikat]

You can also do some research before you buy Apple products, too. Just because Apple doesn't make announcements about products coming up doesn't mean you can't turn to other sources. One source I have found helpful is the MacRumors Buyer's Guide (http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/). They track the release cycles of hardware, and take into account the rumors that float about new releases; based on that information, they give the various Apple hardware ratings from "Don't Buy - updates soon" to "Buy now - just updated"). I think it's a pretty cool system myself. Not foolproof, obviously, but you can at least make a slightly more informed purchase when it comes to hardware.
As I mentioned, this site is for hw only, so it wouldn't help with a sw purchase, but it's a nice resource to have anyway.

Re:"the computer for the rest of us"

[mrchaotica]

but at this point my laptop just sits in the closet, while my desktops run 24/7

I've got a fast desktop sitting right next to me, but I'm using the iBook -- go figure.

Re:I can't find the 1100 Dell's web site but I fou

[Have Blue]

The iBook has always had integrated wireless support. That meant the actual wireless card was an additional $80 hidden cost. There were always some models that came with free wireless cards, and some that didn't, but with this rev Apple is putting cards in all computers sold.

DISCLAIMER

[vasqzr]

Here's a little disclaimer. On at least 2 of the laptop models (700M, 9100), they shut the $750 rebate off in a matter of hours

The deal on any of the laptops was only good until 6:00am the next morning anyway. That's a very small window of time to be informed, and then order something like this.

On the other hand, Apple sells $999 iBooks every day.

I was talking about built in, ready to go, airport

[billybob]

That's right, the first machine shipped by Apple to have AirPort was an iBook so no it's not a recent change.

iBooks have had SUPPORT for airport for a long time - only very recently do all of them actually come with a card though. That's what I was talking about.

I have a hard time believing that...

[billybob]

Sorry, but I jsut dont believe that at all, from my experience. 4-5 hours.. ok, does that include actually using it? eg browsing the web, moving files around, etc? I've never seen any laptop last longer than ~3 hours.

I can maybe believe that 8 hours when youre jus tlistening to music.. but this is probably because the screen shuts off after 5 minutes and that's easily half the power drain.

Meanwhile, here in Brazil...

[Stormwatch]

...insane import taxes make Mac prices go sky high. Just a few examples:

- Power Mac G5 (Dual 2.5 GHz G5/512MB/160GB/SuperDrive)
in USA: U$ 2999.00
in Brazil: U$ 6096.09

- eMac (1.25GHzG4/256MB/40GB/Combo/Modem)
in USA: U$ 799.00
in Brazil: U$ 1867.50

- iPod 40GB
in USA: U$ 399.00
in BRazil: U$ 1274.91

- iBook (14.1"TFT/1.2GHz G4/256MB/60GB/CD-RW Combo drive/VGA-out/Enet/56K)
in USA: U$ 999.00
in Brazil: U$ 3567.85

(full price list:
www.latinamerica.apple.com/pricelist/br/)

I wanted one of these new machines, even a low-end one. But I'm sticking to this old G3/500, because, other than some extra RAM or a bigger HD, there's nothing else I can afford! Damn my country's government - primitive, protectionist, anti-free-trade, left wing zealots. Hell, there was a time, not too long ago, when it was ILLEGAL to import a computer without authorization from the government!

This country sucks, I should save some money and move...

I'm getting the same thing

[hotspotbloc]

From the Apple online store. I wonder if the $599 is just for a school's inhouse use only and not an individual's purchase. Someone mentioned that the $599 price can only be had at an on campus computer store.

Re:1499 is too much

[supabeast!]

Ok, ok, I stand corrected on this one... The last time I looked into dual-CPU Macs the only well-optimized programs were Photoshop and some of the OS functions. If I hadn't just lost my job this morning I'd be changing my plans to get a single-CPU G5 to a dual...