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Apple Announces New iBooks

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the still-want-the-30-inch-lcd dept.

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"

22 of 678 comments (clear)

  1. Price Matching now? by ack154 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Price Matching now? by jxyama · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Price Matching now? by vasqzr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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

    3. Re:Price Matching now? by Jesus_666 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    4. Re:Price Matching now? by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    5. Re:Price Matching now? by jht · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      -- Josh Turiel
      "2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
  2. Also new Xserve RAID; pricing by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Informative
    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."

    1. Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing by Jord · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

      --
      seSales, Point of Sale software for OS X.
    2. Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing by Jucius+Maximus · · Score: 5, Insightful
      "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.

    3. Re:Also new Xserve RAID; pricing by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

  3. Bus speed nitpick... by Power+Everywhere · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --

    BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.

    1. Re:Bus speed nitpick... by prototypical · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -Arthur C. Clarke
  4. Powerbook soon to follow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. sofa king sick of naysayers by spoonyfork · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apple: going out of business since 1984.

    --
    Speak truth to power.
  6. Re:Price point by Octos · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --

    "I am not a number! I am a free man!"-- The Prisoner

  7. Re:1499 is too much by dema · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

  8. Example by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Interesting

    $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.

  9. Knoppix-like Linux for iBook? by timothy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
    1. Re:Knoppix-like Linux for iBook? by Spyky · · Score: 5, Informative

      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

  10. Re:yet more confusion between ibook and powerbook by Spytap · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  11. Today's Theme: Enterprise by njfuzzy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --
    My Photography - http://ian-x.com
    The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
  12. Re:Yeah, with Crolles2, the 7448 and the MPC7448 by prototypical · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -Arthur C. Clarke