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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
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.
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?
One thing that a lot of PC laptop users might understand is that smaller pixels is not always better. Apple sells to a lot of graphics and design professionals that are used to 100 dpi resolution, and that is the nice thing about Apple displays. They always maintain 100 dpi resolution across the board, no matter what size you buy. It's very important to note that a lot of applications (especially in Windows) don't scale fonts properly so viewing some things on a 14" screen that is 1600x1200 can be painful sometimes. I've marvelled at some of the Dell laptops that have very high resolution LCDs, but I don't think I'd want to work on one for an extended period of time. I think it would hurt my eyes after a while.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
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.
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.
(Goes back to using antiquated Inspiron 4100)
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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.