Apple Updates PowerBooks

Tablespork writes "Apple this morning has updated the PowerBook G4. The new models feature 1.5 or 1.67 ghz processors, 8x superdrives, 512MB memory standard, Bluetooth 2.0, updated graphics cards, a sudden motion sensor, as well as a scrolling trackpad. Looks like we'll have to wait a little longer for the PowerBook G5."

Comments

Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[karmaflux]

Who still expected a G5 Powerbook any time this year. TOO MUCH HEAT, PEOPLE. I don't care how strong the Apple engineers' kung-fu is, there's just no way to cram the G5 into that small a form factor without melting the keyboard. Give it some time, and it'll happen. But not soon.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Every single time any CPU (x86, PowerPC, SPARC, whatever) gets faster, someone always asks the question, "Does anyone really need this?"

And the answer, ultimately, is always, "Yes."

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[daviddennis]

As someone who does heavy video editing, I can say that a 1ghz PowerBook G4 will perform flawlessly for any video editing task not involving heavy compositing. You'll see instant previews for everything that matters (dissolves, simple superimpositions, etc).

A G5+ processor is indispensible if you're converting from one video format to another (like when someone gives you a video screen capture that needs to be integrated) or when you're doing compositing (layering of images). In my experience, most of those are best done on the dual processor G5 in any event, and a dual processor G5 is unlikely to ever land in a laptop since the heat and power consumption problems are too difficult.

But the cold truth - in my opinion, anyway - is that few true Apple obsessives want to feel left out from the G5 revolution and so we are holding back from buying G4 PowerBooks because we just know it will be downright embarassing to have last year's model when the G5 PowerBook comes out.

In a sense this is very good because the flood of orders that will come when the new PowerBook G5 is introduced keep Apple in business. At the same time, it's a kind of sad testament to the power of ego in human life.

D

Re:Eh

[TheKidWho]

1.5ghz vs 1.2ghz
64mb geforce vs 32mb radeon
512ram vs 256ram
167bus vs 133 bus
5400rpm 60gb HD vs 30gb HD
DVI out vs mirror VGA
Having the powerplug on the same side as all the other ports vs the way the ibook has it which makes it slighlty uncomfortable to use on its side
motion sensing vs nothing

I dunno, these new 12" powerbooks look like a great deal to me, especially for $1400 with a student discount!

Re:Too bad...

[capmilk]

That's not bad at all. You really don't want to buy the first generation of an Apple product. Remember the first Powerbook G3? Or the first Powerbook G4?
See, you want something like those current Powerbooks which are thoroughly tested.

Two-finger scroll

[American AC in Paris]

Now there's a nifty little way to do one's scrolling with the trackpad--use one finger, it's a pointing device; two, and it behaves like a scroll wheel. If it works as advertised, it'll be a far cry better than the "scroll zone" trackpad hacks out there today...

Re:Worst Mod EVER

[geoffspear]

It's flamebait because the sole purpose of posting a comment about the mac's one button on slashdot is to generate a string of flaming replies. It's been discussed at great length, with everyone calling anyone on the other side either a brainwashed mac zealot or an idiot who can't figure out how to use a control key or plug in a different mouse, and nothing productive is going to come of the discussion.

Flamebait or troll is certainly the right moderation. Possibly offtopic, as the powerbook doesn't even come with a mouse.

Re:Whodunnit first?

[moonbender]

On a more positive note, at least Apple manages to describe the technology without resorting to buzzwords ("Active Protection System", "ThinkVantage Technology") or made-up statistics ("up to four times greater impact protection").

That said, the new Powerbooks do feature "PowerPC G4 processors with Velocity Engine".

Re:12" still crippled

[dcocos]

I'm with you on the back lit keyboard, but as for calling it crippled, I'm not so sure, I personally don't know of any people who use GB ethernet. For me the key Powerbook specs are the DVD burner on the 12inch and that that the PB can drive DVI out so I can use it with my projector. After carrying around a 12in for a while the 15in seems big and heavy.

Re:Unequal Articles under Slashdot

[jht]

Seriously? There's a couple of reasons. First off, Dell (or PC vendor X) does upgrades/updates differently from Apple. When Intel ships a newer, faster chip, Dell just slipstreams it into their existing models/lineups. Also, Dell offers so many different models that a change to one isn't really a news event. Besides, every other PC vendor offers something equivalent - Dell's only innovation is in the supply chain (and making it hyper-efficient). They don't actually make anything, they just package it into a cheap beige box.

Slashdot does cover all the new Intel and AMD announcements, which means that to run a feature when Dell puts it into a system would just really be covering the same story twice (not that Slashdot doesn't routinely cover things twice).

The difference is that Apple actually engineers their own products and OS. Also, they upgrade less often, and then when they do they upgrade a whole family of products simultaneously. That helps make it newsworthy. Yes, the speed improvement is a whopping 167 MHz per config (or only 1x on the multiplier), but when they revved the PowerBooks today they also added features (like dual-DVI support and the funky new scrollpad), changed video cards, and upgraded other stuff like Bluetooth.

Plus, Apple is Apple. Dell is just another PC vendor. If Dell is doing an upgrade, chances are all the other PC vendors are putting the same feature in their equivalent model at the exact same time. Like I said above, the news is when Intel or AMD introduce the upgrade that everybody then puts into their product lines, not when Dell does theirs.

Re:12" still crippled

[argent]

Really. I don't care much for either, after using the Thinkpad. I'd really like a laptop that invested an extra half inch of depth in a keyboard like the ones on the old Toshiba Satellites, with almost full travel keys. They were SO much better to type on than any laptop available today... most of which feel like I'm trying to type on the scales of a slightly putrified dead alligator.

Re:Too bad...

[waffleman]

Well, at this point, no one really knows anything except for what IBM, Apple, and Freescale have published. There are no benchmarks, reviews, etc. that I know of. So everything I've said is a guess; I meant it as such and said "supposedly outperforms". On the same note, however, you're also guessing that the new dual G4 is going to be hotter than what we've got now. Pretty easy to agree with, (and I generally do agree with you) but like me, you haven't pointed out any benchmarks, reviews, etc. Note that the dual core chip takes a little less than 15W while an iBook G4 draws about the same. So, it looks to me like the dual will probably be hotter than than the current G4s, but not nearly as hot as the G5 at 40W, or thereabout.

As far as the practicality of dual core vs. single core machines goes ... Without concurrency there's no boost; with concurrency usually there is some boost and it is possible, in fact, to have a dual core system be faster than single core at twice the speed. It's not common but it all depends on what you're doing.

Yes, I already read the concurrent programming article a while back, but I'm afraid I don't share your enthusiasm for it. I think the author blurs program performance and performance programming. The first is about raw speed, the second is about making your program run X percent faster than your competitors' do. As such the "free lunch" he describes never really existed for people who actually do performance programming. Concurrency is already used whenever possible since you never know when you might be runnning on an SMP machine. Abstract machines can be massively parallel regardless of the hardware underneath. For everybody who doesn't do performance programming, the problem usually comes down to decoupling the performance bottleneck from the rest of the application, then handing it off to a performance person. (They still have to make sure their code is reasonably fast and lean, but parallelism isn't a big issue)

Anyway, I'm getting OT. I think the bottom line is that for the types of tasks I do, the performance benefit of SMP in a laptop sounds a lot better than the benefit of a G5.