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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."
This sounds like a cool feature, can anyone confirm from personal experience that it really works?
The 17" machine is wide enought to fit a full-sized keyboard, but it still comes with the same cramped minature one as the 12" machine has. I'd be far more likely to buy one if Apple fixed this.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Given how expensive new macs are, is there any resources for getting decently new ones used at a good price? I don't mean ebay, either (I've had too many bad experiences with them).
Looking at the 17" model, it specifies the screen as having 1440x900. My Dell i8600 with WSXGA has a 15.4" screen (same display aspect ratio too) with 1680x1050. The 15" model has a 15.2" screen with 1280x854, if you want to compare as closely as possible. Is it just me or does Apple not seem to have the best deal here? Apple has been known as the machine to do graphics on but it doesn't lead the class as far as display resolution in a given area?
I'm not trying to Troll or Flamebait here but it just doesn't sound like the best deal out there to me.
I was thinking in terms of a notebook. Just like everything else CPUs should not be judged on just one features. Think of cars. Do you always buy the fastest car? What about gas mileage, handling, breaking, or room? In a notebook and now even in PCs other things such as heat/power and cost are factors. For a notebook a G5 maybe a bad trade off. The G4 for most people is a better trade off. As I posted I wonder if Apple might jump right over the G5 in notebooks to something based on the CELL cpu that IBM is developing.
I was thinking. Since Microsoft is moving the XBox to the PowerPC is there a chance that we will see a special version of the CELL? Maybe even a CELL that is modified to emulate the x86 at very high speed to act as a bridge away from x86? Frankly now that Longhorn is going to drop all DOS support this seems like a good time to make the move. With windows running in native mode the emulation speed could be very good.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I thought the same, that is pretty cool. I wonder if you could get Sidetrack or something to do something similar, I would assume this is a software sort of deal rather than something special about the PB's touchpad.
Parent has been modded down to -1 troll, but he does have a point here. I don't ever recall seeing a post about a new Dell Latitude or Inspiron that runs 0.2 GHz faster than the previous model. I could see posting for an entirely new model, or at least one with a new generation of processor, but why make such a big deal about a minor upgrade?
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Look at the AdBlock elements: one of the links on the page: http://switch.atdmt.com/action/apple_g5_powerbook
Yup. Remember this thing about how there was going to be a new G5 Powerbook? Hehe.
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Don't get your hopes up. The touchpad needs to be able to handle two simultaneous pressure points. Most don't.
...with an estimated ship date of 02-18-05. This morning after the announcement from the order status page.
PBG4 15.2/1.5/512/80/COMBO/APX-USA
Open Est. Ship 02/09/2005
W00T!
I've ordered system before on the verge of an announcement of new Apple systems. When the order arrived, it was the newer announced system, with slight upgrades from the original order.
Looking forward to some PowerBook G4 goodness!
Way freakin' cool!
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I bought an aluminum G4 PowerBook 15" to replace my TiBook, mostly for the faster processor, backlit keyboard, and acceptable WiFi reception. But I still use the old unit sometimes, and whenever I do I'm immediately struck with how beautifully made it is. It's slightly smaller, the keyboard and trackpad feel nicer...it's really a design masterpiece. It just makes me happy to be using it. The new enclosure gets the job done but Jonathan Ives really took a step back with it.
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
I'd be careful of installing SideTrack. It's a kernel extension, and I found it to have a seriously detrimental effect on system stability (I needed to reinstall to fix it). Of the two other PowerBook users I know, one experienced the same thing (the other uses SideTrack and swears by it).
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What I am missing for Apple notebooks is a viable dockingstation. There are bookends but they are not integrated into OS X and you still have wear and tear on the onboard connectors. It would be nice to have the onboard port still free. Why should I use a 30' Cinema-Display when I have to connect at least 2 cables ervery time I want to use it. I think most people will have to connect 4 cables (keyboard&mouse, power, network and Video) plus optional sound, scanner/camera, external drives &c.
It is not possible to use technology to solve social problems
Should Apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 10 calendar days of shipment, you may contact Apple Sales Support at 1-800-676-2775 to request a refund or credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the current selling price. To receive the refund or credit you must contact Apple within 14 business days of shipment.
And just for the record I switched to an Apple two years ago from using pcs since the 286 all my life and I wonder why I waited so long. If your thinking about switching, do it. OS X really is that great. The only thing that I can honestly say PCs have going for them that is better is the game selection, but all the really good ones do come out for the mac (but it takes a few months usually). But that's why I have a ps2 and a Gamecube.
Well, they could do that I suppose, but the Apple case is rather big so it would rattle about. An IBM X40 is 10.5 X 8.3 X 0.95 against 10.9 X 8.6 X 1.18 for the 12in power book. It is also lighter. The X40 has a smaller volume than the Mac Mini - and includes a Screen, Keyboard, Touchpad and Trackpoint.
Trying to fit an Apple 12" G4 powerbookin a X40 case would be tricky....
Eh, I wouldn't be too sure about that. I've got a budget laptop (Averatec), and it supports three pressure points. Only in Linux, though, the Windows driver doesn't seem to make use of it. Anyway, if my cheap laptop has that kind of a touchpad I figure most current models do.
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I used to own a NeXT, and used the old Xerox machines, which believe it or not existed before the Mac. The nice thing about pulldown menus is that they appear wherever your mouse already is - click the right button, get a menu. On the NeXT all the apps could generate a menu anywhere with the right button, this meant you could avoid going to the screen menu and made life much faster.
I just wish there were a second *hardware* button on the machine, bound to the same action, and an OS preference to activate it to generate the pulldown menu which is still buried somewhere in the Mac OS if I remember rightly. That way noone gets confused, and power users get the second button.
This is not a troll, if Apple is not made aware that their target audience want improvements to the already excellent machines, the machines won't get better. Ah, yes, I also would like better battery life.
This is not a signature.
I'd probably prefer a dual-core G4 to a G5. In my experience, dual processor Macs just feel really snappier than single processor models, even when the clock speed is significantly lower.
I help my coworkers and we all got Thinkpad T41s recently and they do 1600x1400 or something of that nature.
90% of them immediately after getting their new laptop were upset/couldn't read/needed help fixing and then weren't happy with how it looked.
Adjusting it down to 1024x768 or whatever they were comfortable with was fuzzy and looked like trash.
reading 1600x1400 on a 14 - 15" screen is hard for them older folk, you know, people over 25 - 30.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
You'll probably see a Freescale G4 CPU with an embedded memory controller before you see a G5 in one of these.
... However, if Freescale can harness this benefit (an on-die memory controller) without a lot of the other power-hungry features of the G5, we'd probably have not only a neat laptop CPU, but probably a chip that plays the same role against the G5 that the Pentium-M does against the Pentium-4. I'd really like to see the outcome of this... I thought I read somewhere that this was one option Freescale was looking into for the G4 line...
One of the primary advantages of the G5 over the G4 was the memory bus speed, and also also the reason that most Pentium and Athlon chips were kicking the G4's ass
As well they should. Unlike some other operating systems *cough cough*, Mac OS X is dual-processor ready out of the box to an extreme degree. Programs don't even need to be written to take advantage of it -- Mac OS X will automatically balance threads and applications across both processors to keep the system responsive and avoid pegging.
It's a freakin' dream to use (and even better to program for. Dual-processor aware with zero effort! Woohoo!).
I forgot to add that the Mac platform is probably the best place to have a dual core CPU or even a dual CPU machine. Mac OS X already has excellent dual CPU support and already balances the workload very well among available CPUs. And since Apple has been shipping Dual CPU machines for years application developers have already done a lot to take advantage of Dual CPUs. As a result we, the users, benefit.
--
It works.
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(Goes back to using antiquated Inspiron 4100)
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That's what I was hoping for too, but it still doesn't justify a PowerBook for me. I'm quite happy with my combination of big, rugged x86 desktop with small, light but still quite peppy Apple laptop (I've got a 12" iBook from the most recent generation, 1.2GHz G4 with 512MB of RAM) because I never really *need* to do any really demanding stuff while mobile. I find PDAs aren't enough, but this lil number is plenty powerful enough for e-mail, IRC, web browsing and a bit of light gaming with plenty of battery time. (I can get about 4.5 hours while using 802.11g networks and I can play a solid two hours of World of WarCraft off the battery, with all graphical options turned way down but completely playable framerates). And I got all this for a little more than $1400 CDN. (bought Kingston RAM, not Apple branded)
For many people I know, especially students like me, the G4 iBook is perfect alongside our homebuilt PC desktops. The only guys I know who can justify PowerBooks are my friend who works at a video production shop and need to work while moving around (12" PBG4) and another who's a music student and uses his as his only computer and for taking around for recording, mixing and editing at gigs. (17" PBG4) The PowerBooks are wonderful for those kind of people, but for us less-demanding (and less financially able) folks, we're fine with our iBooks, thanks, and we'll take battery life over bleeding-edge power any day.
Of course, +1 Funny would be a good mod too. But that would only work if you had a sense of humor about the issue.
Possibly irrelevant story to follow:
I went to military journalist school about 15 years ago. One of the interesting aspects of the school is that it wasn't just an Army school (my branch of service), but, in fact, trained military journalists from all branches of service. This was my first interactions with significant numbers of Air Force, Navy and Marine personnel.
One of the things I found out is that the different branches have very different core cultures. One of the way this was exhibited was in the status they gave to their branch.
Army people will bitch incestantly about the Army. They may be slightly annoyed when others do it, but they won't give them too hard a time because they all had such a good time cutting it down themselves.
Air Force people really do look at their service like a job. If you were to cut down the Air Force to them they'd just shrug and not pay much attention.
Navy people seem to have all joined on a dare. They don't complain too much about the navy and they have a lot of pride in it, but they're not going to get into fisticuffs unless the offence is very bad.
Then there were the Marines. If you made fun of the Corp in front of a Marine, you'd get an extremely stern, "that's not funny" at best. Yes, even things that every other human being on the planet would find funny, the Marines would most certainly NOT find humourus if it even slightly disparaged the Corp. Of course, they had no problem at all making fun of every other service.
How is this relevant to the matter at hand? It's become my opinion over the last couple of days that The Mac Faithful (TMF from now on) are just like the Marines. They are proud and they have some good reasons to be proud, but they are completely incapable of finding fault with themselves or seeing humor in that fault.
Since I started this line of thinking, I'll have to compare a couple of other OSs too.
Windows users are definately the Army. They have the largest numbers and don't hesitate to crack on their own platform. Others don't hesitate either and for the most part no one gets too worked up about it.
Unix users are mostly the Air Force (Some of them show Marine tendencies though). They pretty much do their jobs and shrug it off if someone cracks on their OS.
Linux users are the Navy. They joined on a dare, but are pretty proud of their OS and wont hesitate to defend it.
Yeah I've stretched a bit with the other OSs, but I think I hit it dead on with TMF. The Few, the Proud, the Macs! pretty accurately describes their level of attachment. The thing is.... they should really lighten up.
TW
" I was thinking in terms of a notebook. Just like everything else CPUs should not be judged on just one features. Think of cars. Do you always buy the fastest car? What about gas mileage, handling, breaking, or room? In a notebook and now even in PCs other things such as heat/power and cost are factors. For a notebook a G5 maybe a bad trade off. The G4 for most people is a better trade off."
The G5 is a bad tradeoff at the moment, but the G4 is bad as well. I agree G4s may be appropriate for iBooks, but these are PowerBooks, and the slow bus simply precludes their use in many applications. The Centrino platform from Intel has lower power usage and dramatically better performance (particularly with the FSB), and it's only going to get worse with Centrino II.
Apple needs upgraded PowerBooks. Very soon.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Your being facetious and missing the point at the same time.
The point the original poster was making was not that Apple should include these features because the competition is. The point is that Apple should make small powerful notebooks because their customers want them and are willing to pay for it.
Some people want huge 17" screens and others want small screens and more portability. My 15" PowerBook was $3500 and I would love to have spent that money on a smaller PowerBook with all the features the 15" has. Unfortunately no such beast exists.
The whole Mac/Marines analogy is very accurate..
;-)
Back when things seemed very grim for Apple (about 1997 or so), there was a webring/mailing list called MacMarines, specifically geared towards getting the positive word out about Macs. (The slogan was "Fighting back for the Mac!")
Yes, I was a member, and yes, I've mellowed a lot since then.
Does anyone know if the Scrolling Trackpad is the result of a hardware mod, or just some clever changes to Mac OS X? I know that today's tap-click-trackpads use a button-like mechanism to accomplish the clicking. Portables with trackpads from the early 90s, like the PowerBook 500 series, did not have this button and thus cannot tap-click, regardless of OS. It seems like it would be easy to do two-finger scrolling in software, however.
I ask because I'm curious if older portable Macs could support this with a software update.