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

Too bad...

[Thijs van As]

...no dual core G4 or a G5

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.

Re:Too bad...

[waffleman]

Yes and no. I agree that the speed bump isn't that much. Since the dual core freescale supposedly outperforms a G5 at same clock speed, I really would have liked to see the freescale in the new specs.

<wild speculation>

However, moving to freescale poses a bit of a problem because it's 32 bit. Since eventually all their machines will be 64 bit, the problem is that when making the move to G5, Apple would need to solve both the heat problem, and provide an increase in performance at some spec upgrade. It would be much easier to just solve the heat problem while moving from a slower CPU. If this is the case, it makes sense to keep the PB line as slow as possible, while still throwing the marketing dept some performance boost to work with. Hence, upgrade early, but not by much.

</wild speculation>

Of course, the imperitive to go 64 bit on a laptop is not really there yet. I would still like to see the dual core chip in the PB.

Re:Too bad...

[tgibbs]

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.

Re:Too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

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!).

Re:Too bad...

[kuwan]

Since the dual core freescale supposedly outperforms a G5 at same clock speed, I really would have liked to see the freescale in the new specs.

Not to flame, but I'm interested in where you're getting your information from (benchmarks, reviews, etc). I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a Dual Core G4 outperform a single core/CPU G5 when it comes to apps that are fully MP-aware (threaded properly). But I would be surprised to see a Dual Core G4 outperform a single core G5 on apps that are not threaded. I'd love to see some real world comparisons.

Remember just because it has 2 cores doesn't mean that it's twice as fast. It only means that there's the potential to do more at once if the software can take advantage of it through threading. Here's a great article that explains the problems/challenges software developers are going to face with multi-core CPUs.

Now I'd love to have a dual core CPU in my laptop and I'd love to program for it, but I image Apple would face some of the same challenges trying to get the dual core Freescale CPU into a laptop as they would in getting a G5 into a laptop, namely heat. A dual core G4 is going to be hotter and more power hungry than what they've got now. I'd love to see either the dual core G4 or a G5 in a laptop.

It works.
Free Flat Screens | Free Mini Mac

Re:Too bad...

[kuwan]

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.
Free Flat Screens | Free Mini Mac

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.

Dont forget

[TheKidWho]

the 15" and 17" can now drive 30" cinema displays!

And optical audio out on the 17"

Plus, brighter backlight, better prices and 5400rpm drives across the board.

Now where is my powerbook G5 damnit!

Re:Dont forget

[Ford Prefect]

Now where is my powerbook G5 damnit!

Tuesday, duh.... ;-)

Re:Dont forget

[Rosyna]

Tuesday, duh.... ;-)

Yeah, what's up with that? Today is Monday... Apple is supposed to do releases on Tuesday. Tomorrow is Tuesday.

Re:Dont forget

[TheKidWho]

Tomorrow is when the Powerbok G5 comes out!

Re:Dont forget

[beelsebob]

Maybe they were using a beta release of iCal - the current beta is pretty bad.

Re:Dont forget

[GFLPraxis]

8x DVD burners, a $100 price drop, speed boost, 512 MB of RAM (FINALLLLLY!!!!!!!!!), and dual link DVI. Nice job, Apple.

Re:Dont forget

[for_usenet]

You'll probably see a Freescale G4 CPU with an embedded memory controller before you see a G5 in one of these.

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 ... 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...

Re:Dont forget

[sg3000]

> Yeah, what's up with that? Today is Monday... Apple is
> supposed to do releases on Tuesday. Tomorrow is Tuesday.

It's because I bought my new PowerBook G4 13 days ago. If they waited until Tuesday to release it, I would have been slightly less disappointed.

Re:Dont forget

[rizzo420]

there seems to be more of a discount on the education side too. i have been thinking about getting a 17" powerbook for a while now and working in a college, i get the discount (although technically, i think anyone can get that discount since i don't think they verify that you work in a college or are a student if you buy it online). regardless... i'm pretty sure the discount was $200 off the 17", now it's $300. i could be wrong...

Re:Dont forget

[dirty]

Those only work if your video card supports component out. I know a number of ATI cards on the PC side do, I'm not certain about the Mac. There's nothing about having a dual-link DVI port that will give you component out though, it is a function of the analog output pins on the video card itself.

Re:Dont forget

[macmurph]

and optical line in!

and the ram is on a single chip on the 15" and 17" models

Re:Dont forget

[Ohreally_factor]

With the memes/bad jokes "In Soviet Russia", "In Korea, only old people", and "Except in Nebraska" saturating your consciousness, I think you forgot "In Japan!". That explains it. Apple releases new hardware on Tuesday . . . In Japan!!

Re:Dont forget

[TheRaven64]

The Freescale G4 due for release Real Soon Now(TM) has an on die memory controller capable of supporting DDR and DDR-2, and is dual core. This seems like a far more interesting chip than the PPC970 for use in a laptop. If Apple release one of these, I will have no hesitation in upgrading my PowerBook.

G5 PowerBook - Keep Waiting

[Matt Clare]

Not surprising that Apple would do this. They needed to keep the line fresh while they attempt the Herculean task of getting a super hot, server-oriented G5 chip into a PowerBook.

Re:G5 PowerBook - Keep Waiting

[Stephan Schulz]

They needed to keep the line fresh while they attempt the Herculean task of getting a super hot, server-oriented G5 chip into a PowerBook.

The super hot, server-oriented version of the G5 is called POWER4 and is used by IBM for real servers. The G5 is the PPC970 (various subversions by now), and is a PC/workstation chip. In typical situations it consumes 42 Watt, and it probably consumes 80 at max load. But that would be at 2.5 GHz - underclock it some, and it would not be too bad. It is certainly not super hot compared to most Intel or AMD chips - they need between 100 and 230 Watt for desktop processors.

I'll stick to my 1 GHz TiBook for the moment, although the new machines (and the new prices!) are tempting.

Re:G5 PowerBook - Keep Waiting

[Matt Clare]

Granted, the clock probably has more to do with the heat than the chip itself, but I don't foresee any plans for IBM to slow the clock speed of their products, they seem to be more worried about hitting the 3 GHz mark and the new 90 nM chip barrier. IBM and Apple will want to make a mobile G5 chip that is about 6 months behind the desktop speed, not two years. Also, Apple will not want to sell mobile G5s with serious reductions from the Power desktop line while the G4 is still viable at the same performance level. That said, this is all based on single core logic, double cores might mean a reduced G5 clock speed or equal clock speeds in a G4s.

All indications are that the 64bit G5 chip is denser than the G4, and yes, would run hotter than a G5. That said, this sounds like a great head-to-head: the original one CPU G5 Tower Vs. the new PB.

The G5's have more circits on each board than a G4 and are about to get even more. That means more heat in a smaller space, and this is why the G5 case is a big wind tunnel. At the moment a PowerBook has NO FANS spinning when not under load, the G5 graduation of fan speeds has no zero.

Also the current G4 is a very good low power chip and the Mac Mini just demonstrates how much more life Apple thinks they can get out it or that they want to ensure the demand for the G4 stays hi to help with further development.

Lastly, you really should have said "I think you're the one with too much hot air".

Re:G5 PowerBook - Keep Waiting

[evil0ne]

How about the bus speed? That is one huge reason to get rid of the G4. 167mhz on 1.67 ghz g4 vs. 800mhz on 1.6ghz g5.

Re:G5 PowerBook - Keep Waiting

[Ohreally_factor]

This is why some of us are placing our hopes on freescale (the motorola spin off company) to produce a dual core CPU that would overcome the limitation on bus speed.

Re:G5 PowerBook - Keep Waiting

[TheRaven64]

IBM have been producing 1.2GHz PPC970s since the initial launch, and these were the ones expected to go into laptops, since they were relatively low power. The problem is that in most cases they are out-performed by G4s. A better option for a laptop at the moment is the dual core Freescale chip due for release right about now which has an on die DDR-2 memory controller. This eliminates the memory bottleneck in the G4 (which is actually only really apparent when using the AltiVec unit a lot) and, of course, brings a second core to the machine. I can imagine Apple splitting their product lines into SMP for the pro machines and UP for the consumer machines (in the same way they used to use G4s and G3s). The iBook would have a G4, the PowerBook would have 2. The iMac would have a G5, the PowerMac would have 2 (or maybe 4).

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

[NicolaiBSD]

But.. but.. I heard from somebody who read some story on some website about some company having a 1x1 pixel placeholder jpg with "g5" in its title, so the G5 powerbook will be released very soon! ..Right?

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[LWATCDR]

The bigger questions is do anyone really need a G5 Powerbook? I guess for the few people that edit movies and Huge graphics files do but for the average person the shorter battery life and higher weight seems to be a bad trade off.
I have to wonder if Apple is going to use the new CELL cpu for the next generation of notebooks. Maybe duel CELL cpus since they should be cheap.

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

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The bigger questions is do anyone really need a G5 Powerbook? I guess for the few people that edit movies and Huge graphics files do

I thought they needed lots of ram. Don't they do just fine with the G4?

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[discordja]

This was said before we had a G4 power book as well.

And somehow .. it still got done. This is the sentiment that Jobs brought forth in his last keynote address, and that it will be accomplished. Soon? Probably not, but he believes that eventually the engineering ninjas can crack this nut.

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:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[ceeam]

Forget G5. Where is my Quad PIV Xeon notebook, dangit?! I imagine HL2 would r0xorz on that. (Or that's what I learned). Uhm... Why?

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[gunnk]

For some people, the fastest possible laptop (even at the expense of battery life) is desirable.

I'm one of those people. 99% of the time I run with my Powerbook plugged in. Once in a while I want to use it while traveling or away from my office nook. The portability is, for me, "icing on the cake". Having a small form factor that fits my office nook was more important. I also like to play occasional games (though not too often). SimCity IV, most first-person action games, and the upcoming Sims II all could use more power than my current 1GHz G4 can offer. The newer 1.67GHz models would help, but a G5 model would really get me the power I want.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[SethJohnson]

I agree. I do amateur video editing on my PB 15" 1.32ghz and it seems to suffice. I use iMovie and iDVD, so I'm not really implementing layers or masks, but I do add a lot of titles and transitions. I didn't want to spend the money to get a G5 tower, but I needed to upgrade from my 450mhz 1998 B/W G3. I also thought the mobility of a laptop would be good. So far as yet, it's proven to be a very capable replacement for a desktop video workstation.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[InvalidError]

How is dropping "all DOS support" going to make Longhorn any more native than any NT has ever been? WinNT has its roots in OS/2, not DOS.

The "DOS support" is only the DOS virtual machine. Virtual machines are just OS plug-ins to support alternative runtime environments (may include platform emulation) and executable formats, adding and removing VMs does not make the rest of the OS any more or less native. Dropping DOS support is simply a matter of dropping that VM, no big deal unless you use some peerless/irreplaceable DOS apps.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[swdunlop]

Right. And I still use a thermal pad for that one to avoid scalding my left wrist after a long work session in the field. They got it in there, but just barely.. ;)

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[LWATCDR]

But if you are running windows under a difference ISA than Intel dropping dos support makes it easier to emulate. If you just have to translate the calls to the OS instead of running the entire OS in emulation you it would tend to boost performance. Most Windows apps spend a large amount of time running Windows code vs their own code.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[Anonymous Writer]

I thought they needed lots of ram. Don't they do just fine with the G4?

I heard that Motion has significant rendering improvements on G5s specifically because of the processor. I've tried it out on a PowerBook G4 and it was a bit too sluggish in rendering more complex effects, whereas it was supposed to be unnoticeable on a G5. Maybe standard video editing doesn't need it, but for Motion special effects and maybe HD video editing, a G5 processor would have the processing speed required.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[LWATCDR]

"But the cold truth - in my opinion, anyway - is that few true Apple obsessives want to feel left out from the G5 revolution"
I thought that the G4 was a revolution?
Seriously I think more companies need to realize that a notebook is not a desktop replacement. You will never get notebooks that are as powerful as the best desktop. I have an A21 and frankly it is too heavy and puts out too much heat. The battery life on it sucks. My next notebook will be one of the super light weight.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[Garg]

Then of course there are cheap bastards like myself, who want the G5 to come out so I can buy your barely-used G4 cheap on eBay... :-)

Garg

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[catwh0re]

the real customer base that keep apple in business will not only will buy this powerbook, but the next one that comes along.
finnicky and frugle purchases aren't really the apple bottom line, for the most part because they buy once every 2-5 years.
it's the power users who have a lovely budget set out for these sorts of things that keep apple going.
they're also the ones that actually choose the secondary 30" display on the online store.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[ArbitraryConstant]

" 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.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[lullabud]

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 think you may be right, and you're not the only one to think that.

The Cell is part of the Power lineup from IBM, as is the G5, so technically the Cell and the G5 are in the same category, just different cores. The Power architecture is being touted as something that is scalable from Server hardware all the way down to Cell phones, so it really is just a matter of (hopefully not much) time until Apple releases a laptop based on G5 or the Cell.

As we now know [Recent Details] the PU is a 64bit "Power Architecture" processor. Power Architecture is a catch all term IBM have been using for a while to describe both PowerPC and POWER processors. Currently there's only 3 CPUs which fit this description: POWER5, POWER4 and the PowerPC 970 (aka G5) which itself is a derivation of the POWER4.

quoted from: http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell1.htm l

It would be sweet if they designed the G6 and did simultaneous releases of desktop and laptop, with the laptop CPU being just a scaled down version of the desktop version.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[ArbitraryConstant]

What? They don't emulate the whole OS on other architechtures. They have native ports to x86-64 and IA-64.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[daviddennis]

Well, it's hard to deny that a dual 2.5ghz PowerMac G5 with dual 30" displays is, indeed, the ultimate tool for the creative professional :-).

That being said, I don't think there are enough of those high-spending people to make a computer company thrive.

I'm somewhere in between - I have a 2ghz dual PowerMac G5, which I bought upon introduction, and a 23" Cinema Display. I plan to upgrade to a 30" later this year and keep the 23" as a second monitor.

I'll probably get a new G5 when the 3ghz comes out, and let my business partner, who is super-cheap, inherit the 2ghz.

I buy a new computer, either a desktop or laptop, about once a year - but not unless there's a radical improvement like the G5 or the 1ghz PowerBook vs the 400mhz.

I suspect I'm a somewhat more common customer type, and I don't think I do Apple's bottom line any harm :-).

D

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[dogzilla]

I've owned both a 15" 1ghz and a 17" 1ghz. The processor speed isn't hte limiting factor for just about anything I've tried. One machine had 1gb RAM and the 17" has only 512mb RAM. The most intensive app I've used (and I do print production, some video, audio and web development) has easily been GarageBand. GarageBand ran *mcuh* faster on my G5 with 2gb RAM than on the PowerBooks. Not sure whether this is a RAM issue or a G5 optimization issue.

I will say this: I'm not so interested in a G5, G6, or G-Googleplex. I *am* interested in running my apps as quickly as possible so they get out of my way and let me accomplish what I set out to do. Who really gives a shit about specs nowadays anyway? I'd say RAM is far more important than processor speed, but whatever it takes to make apps run faster I want.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[Val314]

I allways asumed that one of the reasons for that their .Net Framework was to go ISA independent.

maybe it wont happen with Longhorn, but maybe with the next one. (or maybe with an xbox2 running something else than games)

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[LWATCDR]

I tend to agree with you. I bet Microsoft was seeing the end of x86 when they started on .net. I wounder if they still feel that way with the x86-64. the IA-64 was going no where fast a few years ago and Microsoft had to be a little nervious being tied so closely to the x86 ISA. There attempt to got multiplatform with NT was a failure. If you wanted to run an Alpha why use NT instead of Unix or VMS? There was not a lot of Alpha/NT software you could use off the self. So .net is a chance to prevent the "If I have to get new software anyway why use Windows at all" issue.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[kristjansson]

Some of that has to do with the way Mac binaries are made, some of that has to do with the differences between G4 and G5.

First off, Motion probably runs as a "fat binary" -- when you click on the icon, it loads an executable compiled for your architecture, be it G4 or G5. It's one of the nicer innovations to come out of NeXT, although a NeXT fat binary could also target NeXT on x86 or any other architecture that could run NeXTStep natively. This is merely "kewl" until you think about the architectural differences between the G4 and G5...

The G5 can address 16 exabytes of space vs the G4's 4GB. It makes an enormous difference when dealing with insanely large data sets, like DV or complex GIS data, and directly manipulating them in addressable memory (granted, a lot of it is actually in swap, but at least you can address it directly from swap). The G4, dealing with more than 4GB of data, would have to write data to temporary files, load them (frequently into swap), and have easily three times the number of disk accesses of the 64-bit version of the same application. I won't even digress into the pipelining differences between the two, or the impact Altivec vs. non-Altivec code has on apps like this...

In any case, for the scientific, engineering, video, and graphics design markets where high processing power and portability are highly desirable, a G5 based laptop would be exceptional. Only problem is melting the aluminum chassis during heavy processor loads... ;)

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[ArbitraryConstant]

Funny you should say that. Back in the day, Windows NT ran on Alpha, MIPS, and PowerPC. Natively. They're bringing the PowerPC port back up to speed for XBox2 development (it'll run on PowerMac G5s).

The IA-64 and x86-64 ports of Windows both offer x86 binary compatability, but the kernel and libraries and core of the OS are fully native.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[snuf23]

"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?"

Anything like this is way to far out there in timescale. IBM and Sony are building the Cell. You won't see a Cell processor in an Xbox that's for sure. At least not anytime soon.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[LWATCDR]

That is why I picked those CPUs. Do you rember if it ever ran on the Sparc or ARM? I know that the CE runs on the ARM now but I can not remeber if NT did.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[blew_fantom]

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?

while this is a common analogy that people use... for the life of me, could someone explain why people spell "breaking" the way they do? is that a deliberate reference to something breaking down, or is it in reference to "braking"? this is not the first time i've seen this. any insight into this would be greatly appreciated... i know this is totally off topic but inquiring minds want to know!

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[ArbitraryConstant]

I think there might have been a SPARC port but don't quote me on that, I don't specifically remember.

I don't think there ever was an ARM port.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[drsmithy]

How is dropping "all DOS support" going to make Longhorn any more native than any NT has ever been? WinNT has its roots in OS/2, not DOS.

NT has no "roots" in OS/2, other than its original name (OS/2 NT). They have no architectural similarities whatsoever.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[drsmithy]

The bigger questions is do anyone really need a G5 Powerbook?

Since IME (and IMHO) there isn't a single processor G4 anywhere that can run OS X snappily, yes.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[LWATCDR]

Because it is an error that a spell check will not catch. Most people post on slashdot for fun and do not bother to proof read it like a term paper.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[toddestan]

I saw a laptop the other day that had an Intel Prescott 3.8Ghz desktop chip crammed into it. If you can put one of those into a laptop, you can put a G5 in one too.

Though I must admit, the laptop was far larger than anything Apple currently makes.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[InvalidError]

OS/2 2.0 was a joint project between Microsoft and IBM. When the two "divorced", IBM continued to use the OS/2 brand and Microsoft forked its side of things into what would become NT's starting point.

Having common origins does not mean one has to stick to the original's APIs, file systems and other implementation details. The current Linux kernel probably looks and behaves like it has no relation with the 1.0 code as well.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[LWATCDR]

I was not thinking of the Cell going into the XBox II so much as a version of the Cell for PCs running XP.
The Cell APUs are currently are optimized for things like physics models, graphics, and multimedia processing. Couldn't APUs optimized for decoding x86 instructions be added? It seems pretty clear now that Microsoft bought Virtual PC to gain the PowerPC x86 emulation technology so the XBoxII could run XBox games. Could we see a Cell version of Windows XP that uses VirtualPC and a special CELL cpu to run x86 code at full speed or at least close to it. What about CELL APUs that run .NET code faster than the x86?

The big question in my mind is, would IBM ever work closely with Microsoft after OS/2?

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[LWATCDR]

Actually NT was forked from OS/2 3.0.
Version 3 was going to be the platform independent microkernel version of OS/2. NT got it's HAL from that.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[Cmdr TECO]

WinNT has its roots in OS/2, not DOS.

WinNT has its roots in Mica, which was DEC's project to build a successor to VMS:

Amid suspicions of intellectual property theft, DEC eventually sued Microsoft, citing that Cutler and his Mica team had actually continued the same project within Microsoft, culminating in the birth of the Windows NT OS. After Microsoft settled the case with DEC for $150 million, inside sources alleged that large quantities of NT's code (and even most of the programmer's comments) were identical to Mica's.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[dreemkill]

"Though I must admit, the laptop was far larger than anything Apple currently makes."

Apple wont sacrifice design for innovation.. its got to be a mix of both. sure they could make a 3 foot wide, 6" thick powerbook w/ a G5 and a big cooling system in it.. but why?

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[klez23]

Do you always buy the fastest car? What about gas mileage, handling, breaking, or room?

I'm not a big fan of breaking either, but braking is pretty important to me...

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[Calroth]

...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.

Yeah.

The sad thing about this is, the PowerBook G5 has always supposedly been the next revision of the PowerBook. Ever since 2002, people have been convinced that the PowerBook G5 is right around the corner, and the current PowerBook G4 is the last iteration of the G4 series. So that's why these people can't bring themselves to buy one. Even though there have been heaps of iterations in the meantime. That's the tragedy.

If I had to speculate, I'd say that the PowerBook G5 is several revisions away. Maybe three, maybe four. We could see PowerBooks G4 models at 1.67GHz, 1.83GHz, and 2.0GHz before that happens. OK, it's speculation, but the point is, if you want a PowerBook, buy one now, use it, love it, and don't feel bad that you bought it.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[Guy Harris]

The X86-64 and to a lesser degree the IA-64 are "extensions" to the x86 ISA.

A much lesser degree, as in "the IA-64 'extension' to x86 is a completely separate instruction set which doesn't look anything like x86, unlike x86-64 which is clearly a descendant of x86".

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[drsmithy]

OS/2 2.0 was a joint project between Microsoft and IBM.

This part is correct.

When the two "divorced", IBM continued to use the OS/2 brand and Microsoft forked its side of things into what would become NT's starting point.

This part is not.

Windows NT (nee OS/2 NT) was a from scratch project run by Microsoft (and Microsoft alone - Dave Cutler's team). It was *going* to be OS/2 3.0, but after the (rather surprising) success of Windows 3.0, Microsoft gave IBM the finger and left. The version of OS/2 that IBM was working at the time was OS/2 *2.0*, which went on to become the OS/2 that was released.

They were two completely separate code bases, products and development teams. At the time Microsoft were doing OS/2 3.0 (that became NT) and IBM were doing OS/2 2.0 (that continued on as OS/2). OS/2 2.0 was going to be like the Windows 95 of OS/2 - the bridging product between the old OS/2 (1.x, 2.x) and the "New Technology) OS/2 (NT/3.0).

Having common origins does not mean one has to stick to the original's APIs, file systems and other implementation details. The current Linux kernel probably looks and behaves like it has no relation with the 1.0 code as well.

It's much more than that. *Everything* about NT and OS/2 is completely different. NT is multiuser, OS/2 is single user. NT is microkernel-ish, OS/2 is monolithic. NT has API "personalities" (like Mach), OS/2 does not. NT has a HAL, OS/2 does not. NT was designed to be portable, OS/2 was not. Etc.

OS/2 and NT are, and always were, completely different OSes. They have nothing in common other than a brief period of sharing the same name and, in earlier versions of NT, an API (one of NT's "personalities").

Even today's Linux kernels still have much the same basic architecture and design, even if the supporting code has been rewritten multiple times and optimisations made. OS/2 and NT literally have *nothing* architecturally similar about them.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[yuktar]

Think of cars. Do you always buy the fastest car? What about gas mileage, handling, breaking, or room?

Personally, I would want my car to have the least amount of breaking possible.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[drsmithy]

Actually NT was forked from OS/2 3.0. Version 3 was going to be the platform independent microkernel version of OS/2. NT got it's HAL from that.

There was no fork. NT *was* OS/2 3.0. The product that was later released as OS/2 3.0 was developed from OS/2 2.0, whereas [OS/2] NT was a completely new, from-scratch product.

There is no "NT legacy" in OS/2 and no "OS/2 legacy" in NT.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[fafaforza]

The bigger questions is do anyone really need a G5 Powerbook? I guess for the few people that edit movies and Huge graphics files do but for the average person the shorter battery life and higher weight seems to be a bad trade off.
I have to wonder if Apple is going to use the new CELL cpu for the next generation of notebooks. Maybe duel CELL cpus since they should be cheap.
--------------

Clearly your current CPU cannot keep with your typing to be able to correct your bad grammar, capitalization, and spelling, so there's at least one average user that needs a faster CPU.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[Sam Ritchie]

> Do you always buy the fastest car?

Professional laptops, particularly Apple professional laptops, are more analogous to sports cars. So yes, you do always buy the fastest sports car. You know you'll barely use a fraction of its potential on public roads, but when you burn some old shitbox off at the lights, you'll have a smirk on your face that almost makes up for the impotence.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[dea9]

I would disagree with this for the vast majority of business users, and most developers too.

All the marketing/sales/management tools in every office I've worked in have been well served by average laptops. Just to be swank everyone here just got the IBM X40 line, which is 12" size, and connects to the monitor, keyboard, mouse, already on the desk. Definitely good for people who basically run word and outlook for their job, and easy to carry to the conference room or the client's site.

I'm a little more on the development side, so I need to run a zillion ram and processor intensive apps at the same time (Flash IDE, Actionscript editor, Dreamweaver, Coldfusion, MySQL, XML Socket Server, Flash Communication Server, XML editor, Fireworks) and I found the X40 a bit anemic.

So I went and got myself an X31 with a Pentium M 1.6, a gig of ram, 16mb Mobility Radeon, a 5400rpm HD, and it frickin' hauls. This is in the same form factor as the X40s, it's a 12" and weighs 3.6 pounds (super light). Basically I wanted a mobile dev box/server and it totally works, but when you unplug it it will run for about 4 hours at variable processor speed. If you like the cli^H^H^H "Trackpoint" and a resolution of 1024x768 on the built in LCD this will do you nice as is, otherwise, close the lid and hook it up to the components on your desk. The proc is supposed to be about as fast as a 2.8 P4. I don't do any 'real' compiling (just Flash) so I don't know what happens when you load it down, but I'm convinced.

Basically, my point is that you can get a desktop replacement in a tiny notebook as long as an internal optical drive isn't a requirement (just use a usb one). Also, if you go on the IBM site, or call them, and say that you are a student or a developer then you can get about $400 bucks off one of these.

Mostly, because it is so small and light, but can still run all the apps I need for a long time on the battery I've found a greater sense of freedom about work. I can work for hours in a cafe, the park, in bed, on the can, I even took it to the gym yesterday and wrote a small webapp while riding the exercise bike (using the bookstand thing).

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[prototypical]

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.

I guess it's a good thing that Freescale isn't using the traditional MPC74xx processors - AKA the "G4" - in their next generation. There will be a successor to the current line that will be pin-compatible with the older generation and bringing a slightly bumped frontside bus (200mhz instead of 167mhz) and clockspeed upwards of 1.8ghz on roughly 14 watts. Then, it starts getting interesting.

Back when Motorola spun off their chips division and Freescale was formed, they outlined a new product spread. There would be three new cores (the e300, e500, e700) and a modified 74xx (the e600) that would take over their current and future needs. So far, the e300 and e500 are shipping to embedded processor customers under the PowerQUIC trade name, with a number of variants that share many features. More interesting to the mac community, though, is the recently announced e600 core that's being listed under the MPC8641 part number.

What is it?

Well, for starters, it's binary-compatible with the 74xx and carries some enhanced instructions to do with the system on chip design. Gone is the traditional frontside bus, replaced with an on-die DDR and DDR2 memory controller (667mhz maximum), a PCI-e bridge, a RapidIO bridge, four hardware gigabit NICs with encryption acceleration, SATA and (it's rumored) SATA2 controllers, and some pretty snazzy other tricks. It comes in two flavors - single and dual core - and weighs in under 25 watts in either one, running at 1.5-1.6ghz per core. Each core has 1MB of L2 cache running at core frequency, linked and shared with branch prediction and other logics that allow the whole thing to basically act as 2MB of L2 for both chips if that would be beneficial. There's also the minor (ha!) inclusion of twin dual-precision 128-bit AltiVec units, which has traditionally been something Motorola/Freescale has done far, far better than IBM.

Oh, and to really make the nerds drool, the MPC8641D (for dual core) can boot a separate operating system on each core. In that mode, it would run as single processors independently executing for the system assigned to it.

So... How is the Centrino better, again?

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[ArbitraryConstant]

"So... How is the Centrino better, again?"

Better than 74xx. I don't think there's any denying that.

I know 86xxx will rock. Impossible to compare one unreleased platform to another, but I imagine 86xxx and Centrino II will be more or less comparable. Then Apple can win on style and features again.

To me, the question is whether 86xxx will be used before the IBM PPC970s or some derivative. No doubt Apple would prefer to use G5s, but that may not be possible given the situation with current PowerBooks.

Re:Tablespork, you must have been the only one

[LWATCDR]

Thank you now go stand in line for the third grade teaching position that you seem to want. This is Slashdot. If you what you say can not be said in hex, it is not worth saying.
Commas are only used in function calls;
And every line should end in a ;

don't forget the dual link DVI port

[PSXer]

Woohoo! Now I can lug a 30" display wherever I go!
They probably intended it for people who want to leave a big display at home, but what'd be the fun in that?

Re:don't forget the dual link DVI port

[capmilk]

You're right! Why get a 30" stationary display when you can have a 30" Powerbook?

Re:don't forget the dual link DVI port

[PSXer]

That keyboard's just way too close to the display. Who has arms that long?

Re:don't forget the dual link DVI port

[Ford Prefect]

You're forgetting the whole Ultra-Top-Secret Mac Designs Site that's on this new-fangled interweb thingy...

Re:don't forget the dual link DVI port

[Torulf]

The most impressive part of that laptop is the CD drive. I mean, look at it. It's large enough to use old vinyl LPs! Maybe we have another Apple breakthrough here. Picture yourself ripping vinyls to iTunes with that machine.

Re:don't forget the dual link DVI port

[PSXer]

http://www.danamania.com/glgallery/vhacks/quadra_p ounder/

Quatra Pounder with Cheese?

I wish I had taken the blue pill.

Re:don't forget the dual link DVI port

[Amiga Lover]

You're right! Why get a 30" stationary display when you can have a 30" Powerbook?

You might like to know that picture was drawn by danamania the same insane amiga owner who got OS X running on a 68k. Or maybe it's still booting.

Re:don't forget the dual link DVI port

[Anonymous Writer]

Who has arms that long?

E... T... pho-o-o-one... ho-o-o-o-ome...

Re:don't forget the dual link DVI port

[Hawthorne01]

Quatra Pounder with Cheese?

In France, they call it the Mac Royale.

Re:don't forget the dual link DVI port

[rhesuspieces00]

It was the 4 drive RAID and 8 processors that impressed me.

Re:don't forget the dual link DVI port

[Ohreally_factor]

Yeah, but they slather their peripherals with mayonnaise! Ewwww!

Re:don't forget the dual link DVI port

[drsmithy]

The funniest thing about that photoshop job is that even if there were such a thing, Apple would probably leave in that same tiny keyboard :).

Re:don't forget the dual link DVI port

[capmilk]

I do know that the picture is from danamania. But come on, she is running her web server on a PowerMac 6360 - although that box is a lot more responsive than the Quadra 605 she used to run it on, we still should look for mirrors before linking to her site. :-)

Re:don't forget the dual link DVI port

[TheRaven64]

Don't be silly. It's clearly a laserdisc drive...

Re:Hmm

[TheKidWho]

You can scroll with the trackpad now in an ipod esque manner. Of course many PC laptops have had scrolling built into the trackpad, this new feature on the powerbooks might prove to be interesting.

Ohh and it is different from other features by the fact that first of all, it requires both fingers on the track pad, secondly you can either scroll up or down, left or right, or you can scroll in a circle.

I dunno, but on the portables I dont find ctrl+clicking to be that bad mainly because one of my hands is already in that general area ontop of the ctrl key, and the other hand on the trackpad.

The Quanta Powerbook G5

[delire]

.. and when it does come, i wonder if we can get it unbadged ;)

Can't wait for ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, can't wait for the article about some guy trying to stuff a pc laptops guts into the 12" PB and claiming success even though you have to use an external optical drive and use two little wires to connect the battery that will no longer fit, but it works damnit!

Re:Can't wait for ....

[pmc]

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....

Re:Can't wait for ....

[Mochatsubo]

Yes but the 12inch PB has a CDROM/DVD drive. None on the X40.

-w

Sudden Motion Sensor

[SlashCrunchPop]

Now every PowerBook G4 is equipped with Apple's Sudden Motion Sensor to help protect your most valuable asset: your data. The Sudden Motion Sensor senses change in axis position and accelerated movement. In the event of a drop or fall, the Sudden Motion Sensor instantly parks the hard drive heads so they wont scratch the disks on impact, lessening the risk of damage and improving your chances of retrieving valuable data. When the Sudden Motion Sensor senses your PowerBook is once again level, it unlocks the hard drive heads automatically.

This sounds like a cool feature, can anyone confirm from personal experience that it really works?

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[Timo_UK]

...and it invalidates the warranty instantly. Now they have proof that you have dropped it!

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[frankthechicken]

Indeed I have. Today I experimented by dropping PowerBook G4's (PB G4) from various heights, hammering a nail into a piece of maple with the PB G4, and finally attempting to bat against the Australian bowling attack using the PB G4.

From these test, I can only conclude that Apple is falsely advertising the merits of the Sudden Motion Sensor, in each and every case, not only was the data corrupted, the PB G4 broken beyond all recognition, but the most staggering result being the complete destruction of my bank account.

Please take these experimental results as a note of severe caution when purchasing your next computer.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[jxyama]

>can anyone confirm from personal experience that it really works?

sure thing, just let me get hold of the new $1499 12" PB and when i let it drop from the second floor, i'll get back to you. :P

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[haluness]

Thinkpads (T42p, don't know about the others) also have this thing. Certainly neat stuff

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[haluness]

It works on an IBM thinkpad

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[4r0g]

I have a ThinkPad T41 which has a motion sensor. Works OK I guess, the UI keeps locking up for a second if I move when sitting on the couch with my T41 on my lap ;)

The sensitivity is configurable, so it can be disabled too. ThinkPads have a history of breaking HDDs so that must be why it's been deployed back then.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[strelitsa]

Count your lucky stars that Windows is NOT the OS here.

(annoying popup)

"Hi! I'm Clippy the official Microsoft paper fastener mascot! It looks like you are trying to use your computer while in a vehicle that is in motion. Are you:"

- Wardriving? Unauthorized use of a wireless connection is a federal offense, buster. Just so ya know.

- Operating your computer while talking on a cell phone, using an electric razor, applying chapstick, and drinking a latte? Get a friggin' chauffeur.

- About to throw up? Turn your head - its not easy to get used penne pasta alfredo out of a laptop keyboard.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[jrcamp]

If you bought insurance (what do they call it, "Complete Care" or something?) then that would fall under accidental. "Oops, I accidentally droped it" "Oops the dog knocked it off the table."

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[NetJunkie]

It works. My Thinkpad T42P has it. If you move it too much you'll see the icon in the tasktray change and sometimes hear the drive park the heads. It is configurable so you can turn it off. If you more it a lot, say when I grab it off the coffee table quickly, some things slow down. Video will skip if it's not buffered enough, etc.

It also adjusts to constant steady motion, like a car or train. It's pretty neat and I think a very worthwhile feature. I use my PB around the office going from place to place in the data center a lot. I'd like it on that.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[m_evanchik]

How do you get this covereage? Is it under your home insurance?

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[eric2hill]

This sounds like a cool feature, can anyone confirm from personal experience that it really works?

We have a few of the IBM X40 notebooks and they have this little tool that displays the laptops orientation with respect to "level", and a directional accelleration indicator. You can shake the laptop and the on-screen tool shows you what's happening to it... It definitely tracks gravity realtime, so if gravity suddenly drops to zero, it will park the drive. We haven't had the need to drop a $2000 laptop to test it, but it sure does look like it will work.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[willisachimp]

I remember someone saying that some IBM thinkpads that have this feature. He told me about a friend that had one - unfortunately, through many years of (ab)use and cycling to work with it every day, the motion sensor broke, and became *far* too sensitive. Now, he has to use his laptop is on a completely flat surface - if you so much as knock the table it's on, it powers down the harddrive. Oops :)

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[sjwrick]

Is this one of those don't try this at home stories?

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[nuggetman]

apple care doesn't cover accidental insurance

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[Novajo]

It also adjusts to constant steady motion, like a car or train. It's pretty neat and I think a very worthwhile feature.


Just as a curiosity, how does that work? There is no way of knowing whether you are going at constant speed or not moving at all (as long as you don't accelerate).

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[ltbarcly]

It does NOT adjust to constant steady motion. Constant steady motion IS EXACTLY THE SAME as sitting still. It is acceleration that it detects. Sudden acceleration (like the several hundred G's it would experience for a short time when it hits the ground after you drop it) is what causes the heads to smack the platters on the disk, causing damage and data loss.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[Niten]

One of my roommate's professors was talking a little while ago about a similar motion-detecting feature in the IBM Thinkpads which was supposed to protect the hard drive in the event of a fall. According to whatever studies or experiments this professor cited, between the time it takes for the sensor to realize the computer had been dropped and the time it takes to park the hard drive, these things simply weren't effective for falls of under five feet or so.

Does anybody have any (slightly more informed) comments on this claim? If true, might this apply to the PowerBook's system as well?

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[tricorn]

State Farm offers this as a separate policy.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[colin8651]

I would like to say apple is the best at coming up with new ideas but IBM came up with it first (YUCK). In case you didn't get it I hate IBM they suck

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[Warpedcow]

A similar system is in all IBM Thinkpads made in the past six months or so (called "Active Protection"). Yes, it works. There's a little app the shows its status in real-time.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[Anonymous Writer]

I'd also like to see the Sudden Motion Sensor be used to password-protect and lock up the Powerbook in case it is moved. This would be a deterrent against theft, if it locks up if someone tries to nab it from you.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[NetJunkie]

I mis-typed. Rythmic motion. Like in a train or subway. Clunk..clunk..clunk... Or on a joined section of highway...that sort of thing.

It knows about this so it doesn't keep parking the heads on the disk your whole trip.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[painandgreed]

This sounds like a cool feature, can anyone confirm from personal experience that it really works?

Somewhat unrelated story. Back in the day when I was in college, they had computer fairs where companies would hawk their new products. A freind of mine was looking for a laptop and went to all of them. He was sold on the Apple after the presentation went something like this:

Guy comes in. He boots up the Apple laptop. introduces it as the new DuoDock and then shuts it down. Then he threw it against the wall and let it hit the ground. After picking it up and confidently pressed the on button with the reasuring startup *bong*, he asked "Any questions?"

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[misterpies]

Alternatively you could get an iBook. I dropped mine a few months back - well, actually I tripped on the power cable while it was on my desk; in any case it hit the ground pretty hard.

The result? Not a scratch, everything (so far) working fine. (Though I spent a fair penny having an engineer check it out and tell me so.) The power adapter was trashed, though. Maybe they should work on that.

By comparison, when my sister dropped her 12" powerbook last year, she ended up with a bent case and several broken parts. Moral: metal cases may look cool, but plastic does a better job.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[notthe9]

I don't know about experiences, but I think Toshiba has been doing this inside their notebook drives for a while now.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[notthe9]

Damnit, IBM. And already said. I thought that end of replies to first child was end of replies to parent.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[bdcrazy]

Changes in velocity cause problems. Especially large changes in velocity. If the hard drive and the heads are moving at the same speed, the heads will hover above the platters. A large change in velocity could cause the head to impact on the platter possibly causing data loss or platter damage.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[ldspartan]

I believe that's true, but more like 3' or so. The thing is, laptop disks are very beefy - they can usually handle many many (30+) G of shock while operating. The system doesn't protect against short drops, because they don't develop enough force to hurt the disk.

--
lds

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[Moofie]

It's an accelerometer, and I'm sure it can read "Oh, I'm in free fall...better park the heads". I bet it will also park the heads if it reads a jolt (like a car coming to a sudden stop).

Since parking the heads can happen so fast, I suspect that nobody would be the wiser if it parked 'em and unparked 'em over the course of a second or so. Yeah, if you're burning a DVD, you might have a problem, but for the majority of user tasks they'd never notice.

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[martijn-s]

It also adjusts to constant steady motion, like a car or train Adding to the other replies, that is called relativity theory, mister :-)

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[Tim Browse]

"Does it run MS-DOS?"

Re:Sudden Motion Sensor

[Mark of THE CITY]

Too bad they didn't have this a decade ago, when a consultant of my acquaintance took an early laptop out to an aircraft carrier via a small cargo plane (C-2 Greyhound). It worked on the boat but failed the next time it was booted up. Apparently the G-force ate the disk.

When are they going to update the Mac mini?!

[SamSeaborn]

I've been waiting forever for them to update the Mac mini.

Come one! Get to it Apple people!

;-)

Sam

Re:When are they going to update the Mac mini?!

[CrazyBusError]

Although, in all seriousness, these things have 5400rpm drives. Wonder if that'll get shifted across to the mini?

Re:When are they going to update the Mac mini?!

[dhuff]

At least some of the minis do have 5400 rpm drives. A "take apart" article on the mini I read recently had the author identifying the hard drive as a Toshiba model which runs at that speed.

Re:Hmm

[AwaxSlashdot]

You mean "one button touchpad"

Scrolling trackpad

[kingLatency]

I think this is a great feature to have. For those interested in such a feature on an older PowerBook (which I was), check out SideTrack, software that will allow you to set the edge of your trackpad to be a scrolling area. Good on Apple to include this standard, and the two-finger idea seems neat.

Re:Scrolling trackpad

[Serff]

SideTrack rocks. I'd recommend it as well. You can do more than just set the side to a scroll area. you can also set the corners to act as buttons when you tap them. I have one corner set up as a right mouse button so now I don't care so much that I only have a one button mouse on my powerbook. ;)

Re:Scrolling trackpad

[TheRaven64]

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).

Re:Scrolling trackpad

[waynelorentz]

Agreed. I thought Sidetrack was a neat idea, but unfortunately, it proved too unstable for continued use. I wonder if the Apple implementation is software or hardware, and if those of us with older machines will be able to take advantage of it in some future update, or Tiger.

Re:Scrolling trackpad

[confu2000]

I'm fairly certain it's a hardware difference. As far as I'm aware, standard touchpads use a voltage differential and so are unable to tell if there are multiple fingers on the surface. I believe they appear to the pad as the midpoint between the contacts.

This actually makes me wonder if they are licensing http://www.fingerworks.com technology which was specifically designed to register multiple contact points.

Re:Scrolling trackpad

[TomorrowPlusX]

SideTrack 1.0 was rock-stable for me on my 3rd gen PB 12".

That said, I've had *three* kernel panics since installing SideTrack 1.1 -- that's three more than I've had since purchasing this powerbook in august. SideTrack is *excellent*, and frankly indispensable for me, but I think 1.1 is rough about the edges. I'm going to downgrade to 1.0, and wait for a bugfix release.

Re:Scrolling trackpad

[notthe9]

The two-finger thing is pretty slick. I would say comparable to the controls on an iPod: creative, functional, and not apt to be super-annoying.

Re:Scrolling trackpad

[mr100percent]

The maker of Sidetrack has a link on his site to what he deems "Prior art," but it isn't by him. He also said he will not be offering two-finger scrolling, and I don't recall it being offered beforehand.

Re:Scrolling Trackpad

[mr100percent]

Sidetrack's author said he's not going to offer it, at least for the time being. Only the hardware in Aluminum Powerbooks can recognize two fingers, and he's also concerned that Apple perhaps patented the idea.

Re:Scrolling trackpad

[Queer Boy]

Sidetrack never worked right for me and it also replaces Apple's driver with a buggy one. I LOVE uControl. When you hold down the Fn key you can scroll with the trackpad. Much more elegant and predictable solution.

Will come after a macworld

[millahtime]

A G5 Powerbook would not come until it is announced at a Mac World. We will have to wait at least until after the next one which is later this year.

Re:Will come after a macworld

[TheKidWho]

Or WWDC in july.

Re:Will come after a macworld

[soft_guy]

They have annouced pro products at WWDC before. Year before last, they annouced the G5 at WWDC. There was another year where they announced new PowerBooks at WWDC.

Optical digital audio I/O, too.

[neuroklinik]

Optical audio I/O, and dual-link DVI on the 17" PowerBook to drive the 30" display, too.

This is more than just a speed bump. These new features are nice.

Re:Optical digital audio I/O, too.

[TheKidWho]

There is dual link on the 15" too if you upgrade to the 128mb Radeon.

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!

price drop

[jxyama]

prices dropped as well, by $100, i believe.

12" used to be $1599, now it's $1499.

Re:price drop

[AKnightCowboy]

Wow, I was going to buy a Powerbook last night but I was too lazy to go get my wallet to get my credit card. Now I can get a 15" machine with a 1.67 Ghz processor, 100GB 5400RPM disk drive and 1GB of RAM for $2400 (Federal Employee Purchase Plan price) which is less than the price I would've paid yesterday for a 1.5GHz powerbook with 80GB drive and 512MB of ram. Woohoo.

Re:price drop

[FHMyles]

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.

Re:price drop

[rhesuspieces00]

why not take the Powerbook and ditch the PC all together. Plug in a monitor/mouse/keyboard at home and not worry about which file and software are on which computer.

and honestly, I dont do much with video, but i do need the G4, not to mention higher screen resolution in the smaller package. with any combination of MatLab, Mathematica, Photoshop, iTunes, web browser(s), chat clients, various X11 apps, etc...i'll fork over the couple hundred bucks extra for the bells and whistles.

Re:price drop

[WiseWeasel]

Just wanted to note that the iBook uses a G4 as well, and with a firmware hack, can do monitor spanning as the PowerBook does, though albeit without being able to drive the same resolution levels, as the video card is significantly weaker.

Release Dates

[Alias777]

Usually when Apple released a new Gx to the marker in the forum of a regular computer, in the past, itsbeen about a year and a half until it is compacted into a laptop. As for these babies, why the sudden motion sensor? Is it for the screensaver, if it detects motion it turns it off? If so, smart idea, because it uses no human interaction. How long until G6? :-P

Re:Release Dates

[colin8651]

This should be a funny post; except he serious.

Scrolling Trackpad

[Matt Clare]

The Scrolling Trackpad looks just like my scrolling track pad. Hmmm, I wonder if I can get my Side Track style scrolling back via Software Upadte? .....Nope, Nothing there. I don't want to pay $15 for the feture rich Side Track application just to scroll with my track pad, and Windows track pad can do that. That said, it is a good App. I'll give Apple a week.

Re:Hmm

[rxmd]

Still only one mouse button though...?

Yes, and one is enough. Seeing that they added two-finger scrolling functionality to the Trackpad, the #1 reason for using SideTrack or an external mouse is gone. You simply don't need the right button. And if you do, well, the Command key is right next to it.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.

Follow your .sig's advice and stop posting crap.

Heat?

[.Spyder78.]

We know that the PowerMac G5 needs elaborate cooling, so I wonder if the Apple engineers had problems working a G5 into the powerbooks because of heat?

Re:Hmm

[JanneM]

Hmm, I can scroll up-down, left-right and in a circle (emulates the mouse wheel) on my Panasonic, and their models have had that feature for years. The touchpad is even circular, so all you need to do is to drag your finger along the edge. Wouldn't want to have a computer without it today.

Re:Hmm

[AlphaJoe]

Well, not that I am a mac lover by any means, but you can use standard (i.e. useful) PC mice on the mac's.

Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[Andy_R]

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.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[Anonymous Coward]

The powerbook is neither small nor cramped. I prefer the keyboard on my powerbook to any desktop keyboard I've used.

The PowerBook has the best keyboard on any laptop.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[elbobo]

I don't know what you're talking about. I've got a 12" Powerbook and the keyboard is Just Right(tm). I have reasonably average sized hands.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[jxyama]

all PBs come with a "full sized" keyboard. have you even used one? almost all the keys are the same size as the standard keyboard. (the only exception is, afaik, is the return key on the 12" which is a bit shorter.) if you are talking about separate inverted-T arrow/home/end/pg up+down keys and/or numeric pad, then that's different.

i think apple would like its user to be oriented at the center in relative to the monitor. that's why those extra keys aren't offered. but even 12" do not have "minature" (sic) keyboard.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[frankie]

Um... the keyboard is NOT tiny. Hold a standard keyboard up against an AlBook, you'll see that the main keys are exactly the same width.

Yes, I suppose on the 17" they could have gone wild and put in full-height arrow keys, maybe even a number pad. But the keyboard is already normal size.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[Andy_R]

While the point about not sitting centrally is definitely valid, take a look at this picture of the 15" machine and compare it to the standard Apple keyboard. The inverted T is half-height, the function keys are half height (and not all 15 are there), there is no numeric pad, no pageup/down/home/end/help/del block, the return is single height not double, the control alt, space and apple keys are smaller than usual, there is an extra key to the left of the spacebar and the gaps betwen all the blocks that I'm used to on my desktop mac keyboard (which, incidentally measures 17" across) have gone.

I can see why they have had to compromise like this on the 12" machine, but the 17" could have been far closer to the desktop layout, if not identical. Learning the new layout is certainly possible, and after a bit of use I'm sure it would feel 'just right', but why do I need to relearn when the extra space is there?

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[CandyMan]

Yes, I completely agree, the PowerBook has the best keyboard on any laptop that does not have a 'del' key. Otherwise, I am very happy with my Toshiba 3500's), whose "end" and "del" keys are slightly weirdly placed but very sensibly *not left out* or *consigned to shift-chords.

The enter key on powerbooks is also a bit on the smallish side, but I guess that is something one can get used to (I don't own one, I just occasionally use one). But yes, keeping a 12" keyboard on the 15" and the 17" is borderline-retarded IMNSHO too.

And since I am at it, the Powerbook and iBook also share the best touchpad (the scrolling with two fingers idea is very nifty, really!) on any laptop from a manufacturer that thinks "one button should be enough". The usual "two-button mice for Mac OS have been available for yonks" comments will probably and conveniently fail to realise that many laptop users actually like using their touchpads instead of external mice.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[jxyama]

have you actually used one? or are you judging by the looks of it? go and try the keyboard - if anything, it will make the deal for you to buy a PB instead of breaking it.

i have the 12". it took me practically no time to get used to the keyboard - the only major difference is the 'fn' key next to the left 'crtl' key - which is a standard for many laptops.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Their displays are only 100dpi anyway. My 14" laptop with a 125dpi screen has about as many pixels as a 17" Powerbook. If you don't like smaller text (I don't), then scale up the size a bit. Having a higher dpi makes for smoother looking fonts. Some laptops are available with 150dpi screens for a modest extra fee, and they look very nice.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[Have Blue]

The 17 inches are measured diagonally across the screen; the straight width of the case is smaller (15.4 inches).

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[dhuff]

I'm all for this. The otherwise rather poor quality Dell that I use at work has a gorgeous 125 dpi screen. Bright, decent colors, etc...

So when is Apple gonna upgrade the dim, washed-out, and kinda "soft" looking LCDs on the iBooks and 12" Powerbooks ? Hell, it's an embarrassment - esp. in comparison to even some cheap, crappy Dell...

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[KillerDeathRobot]

My wife has a 15" and I find it fairly annoying to type on that keyboard.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw some full size keyboards on 17" laptops and I don't like it. Instead of having your hands front and center of the monitor you are slightly off to the left because of the numeric keypad on the right. This might not botter you or others but it bothers me and others enough.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[Andy_R]

Yes, I have tried it, and I hated it :-)

Everyone's experience is different, but I'm sure Apple wouldn't lose any sales by using the extra space the 17" 'machine has to offer.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[adrenalinerush]

You must have an interesting definition of 'cramped.' I've got a 15" PB, and the only keys that are smaller than regular are the arrow and function keys. Once I got used to the arrow keys, I don't feel that it's cramped at all.

In fact, the regular keys are not only full-sized, but the top surfaces are larger than any desktop keyboard that I've used. I find that I prefer the PB keyboard to my desktop PC's keyboard.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[BaseSequence]

I have the 17" PowerBook, and the keyboard is its only flaw (and a big one at that). The half-height function and cursor keys are awkward, and you have to hold down the "fn" key for such rare combinations as "home" and "page down". Furthermore, most function keys by default are used for feature management (e.g. speaker volume and brightness) so you also need to hold down "fn" to access the raw function key mapping. I tried an extension to reverse the function key "fn" requirement, but it resets whenever you (gasp) unsleep your portable. All this makes accessing keyboard combinations in a dev environment unworkable. A rare instance of bad design from Apple. (BTW, first post! [for me at least])

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[jpatters]

The point is, they could have the same key pitch and have a numeric keypad and full sized function keys and arrow keys on the 17 inch powerbook, but they don't.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[jo_ham]

Cost.

The keyboards are interchangable between the different models (although not by the user like they are on the iBook, it's pretty trivial to get the top case off on the powerbook and remove the keyboard's thirteen screws).

This makes the production cost of the whole line lower

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[DiscoOnTheSide]

I find that the default color callibration settings Apple uses makes it looks soft. After tweaking a few settings, I have yet to see that "dim", "washed out" or "soft" display... the only time I have a problem is when I'm sitting in a poorly lit classroom (UNIX lab) the ambient light sensors take it upon themselves to dim the screen and light up the keyboard... This on a 15" Powerbook G4 1.25Ghz, and while being slightly disappointing in it's low res my original 550Mhz Titanium G4's screen is still nice and bright.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[MoneyT]

Because then the keyboard would be off center. I don't know about you, but I hate typing on a laptop where the keybord and trackpad aren't cetnered on the screen. Hell, just look at most desktop users, they shift the keyboard over to the right so that the main keys are centered where they are.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[Eil]

This has been a big thing holding me back from the 17" powerbook. There's plenty of room for a full-sized keyboard and whenever I stand back and look at the machine, all I can think of is damn that's a lot of wasted space. There are 17" HPs and Compaqs that just look far better than the 17" powerbook... such a shame, especially since it's Apple we're talking about here. I'll be an Apple customer the very second they update the 17" powerbook to look less ugly and throw in an actual numberpad.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[MoneyT]

I suggest you try the Apple trackpads. I don't know if it's the accelleration that they use or what, but I've found Apple tackpads to be more comfortable than most PC trackpads.

Then again, I also hate trackpoints.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[darco]

The keyboard is the only flaw...?

*cough* one mouse button *cough*

It's kinda sad when you go over to a windows laptop and you find yourself trying to Ctrl-Click on stuff. Although I do admit that the new scroll feature on the track-pad is wicked cool.

At least the keyboard lights up all cool and stuff.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[Andy_R]

This seems a bit penny-pinching, given that the 17" is aiming to be the ultimate money-no-object portable, and Apple are famous for selling machines that are at the high quality/high cost end of the market.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[Lproven]

Yes, it's the same size as other Powerbooks. We know that. It's probably the same unit, to save costs.

The points are, though, that:

#1 - the Powerbook keyboard is /already/ reduced in size. Small cursor keys, small function keys, some functions overloaded onto existing keys with Fn and so on.

#2 - with all the spare real estate on the 17" PB, there's room not only to expand all those keys to full desktop size and add in the missing ones, there's room for a separate editing/cursor cluster and a numeric keypad.

Even if it were just a BTO option so that the weirdos who can't cope with off-centre keyboards can still have their cramped one.

Most 17" laptops do this and the Powerbook is not only slightly functionally impaired, it looks silly without it, too.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[nottsp1]

They keyboards on the 12 thru 17 models are all the same size, purely for cost efficiency. They are, in fact, 'full size' keyboards, although the minor keys (arrows, directions, some modifiers) are smaller. What is interesting is the area of the trackpads... Apple seems to maintain proportions between screen size and trackpad surface area.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[Onan]

Two reasons, really. The first is that one can move between using all variants of macs and 'books with minimal change in keyboard layout; needing to readjust every time you switched between, say, your albook at work and ibook at home would understandably drive everyone batty.

The second is that that extra space on the surface of the 15" and 17" isn't wasted; it's used by speakers, and to very good effect. The 17" has absurdly good speakers for the realm of laptops. It's not ridiculous to watch a movie on it without anything external.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[the pickle]

You don't need an extension for that.

Go to the Keyboard control panel. Check the checkbox in the Keyboard tab.

You're done.

p

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[v1]

I work on macs every day, and I get to open up a powerbook several times a week. Trust me, there's no room in there to fit a wider keyboard. There are components under the speaker grille on both sides. Apple builds them very tight, and you have to be very careful that all the cables are routed correctly or they'll get pinched by the top case when it's reinstalled.

To get the keyboard wider on the 17, they'd need to ditch the speakers and the keyboard backlight, and I think I'd rather have those than a wider keyboard.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[jpatters]

So put the numeric keypad on the right hand side and the arrow keys and navigation keys on the left.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[Queer Boy]

I tried an extension to reverse the function key "fn" requirement, but it resets whenever you (gasp) unsleep your portable.

I don't know what version of Mac OS you're using, but on my iBook using Panther in the keyboard preference pane there's an option to use the FKeys as Function keys and you use the Fn key to use the hardware key features.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[MoneyT]

So wait a minute, instead of having an off center keyboard, now we're going to have a nonstandard kayboard? This is a better solution how?

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[eldepeche]

Look closer, the return key on a standard Apple keyboard is single-height.

Re:Why use a tiny keyboard on the 17"?

[eldepeche]

This crappy screenshot is from the Keyboard tab of the Mouse & Keyboard system preference pane: http://www.reed.edu/~warde/fkeys.png

You forget something

[kanweg]

Bluetooth 2.0+EDR 1 Gbit Ethernet on top models Firewire 800 Airport extreme (802.11g) is built in (no additional cost) My (2) employees have iBooks. Next time I buy them PowerBooks. Bert

Re:You forget something

[willy_me]

Both computers have built in wireless as standard components. But another plus for the Powerbook is that the keyboard is much nicer to type on - at least from my experience.

Re:Hmm - One Mouse Button

[malcomvetter]

All those artsy "mac-only" people have a hard time with their left's and right's ... so in the interest of a simple UI we have the reft mouse button, er, the light mouse button ... I mean ... the mouse button.

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:Two-finger scroll

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Two-finger scroll

[illumin8]

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...

But the damn trackpad still only has one button!!! :-) [/sarcasm]

Re:Two-finger scroll

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get your hopes up. The touchpad needs to be able to handle two simultaneous pressure points. Most don't.

Re:Two-finger scroll

[kawaichan]

For those of us who don't have the $$$/limb/child for a new PBook, you can download a very nifty app called the SideTrack, it does side scrolls, mapping corners for functions such as expose.

Re:Two-finger scroll

[rokzy]

use SideTrack to make it 6 buttons + 2 scrolls - "...ought to be enough"

Re:Two-finger scroll

[SilentChris]

Um, I don't know where you've been, but Synaptics touchpad drivers (used on just about every notebook I've ever seen) has had this for years.

One finger can be used for pointing or scrolling. Two fingers is used specifically for scrolling quickly (e.g. tap the upper right corner of the pad, then the bottom right to get to the bottom of a page). It pretty much looks like Apple copied Synaptics software (or, in the case they're actually using Synaptics pads, simply had the software ported over).

Re:Two-finger scroll

[moonbender]

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.

Re:Two-finger scroll

[nuggetman]

Two fingers is used specifically for scrolling quickly (e.g. tap the upper right corner of the pad, then the bottom right to get to the bottom of a page)

This is slightly different
Dragging one finger across the pad acts as a normal movement moition of the pointer
Dragging two fingers up/down or left/right will drag the scroll bar

Re:Two-finger scroll

[JHromadka]

Apple: one button to click, two fingers to scroll PC: two buttons to click, one finger to scroll :)

Re:Two-finger scroll

[the_2nd_coming]

hmm... that is odd since my HP laptop doe snot have that function.

Re:Two-finger scroll

[juhaz]

I wouldn't be so sure about that, I think "scroll zone" "hacks" make much more sense than trying to cram in more functions based on different pressure points or amount of area covered.

Of course it's impossible to say for certain without trying, but aside from lack of support in some apps (openoffice), scroll zones are very nice to work with and work very well.

Re:Two-finger scroll

[darco]

The key difference here is that you can scroll in two dimensions--ie: you can scroll left-right as easily as you can scroll up-down.

You can even use it as a track-wheel by making a circular motion with two fingers.

Just try it on a table to see how it feels. Just keep your fingers right next to each other, no need to spread them out. Feels pretty natural to me, much more natural than "scroll zone" stuff (which I loathe).

Re:Two-finger scroll

[tupps]

When the powerbooks first got touchpads they had the feature of being able to skip across the screen like that. Have a look at the details page for the powerbook and there is a little animation.

It is more like mouse gestures for your trackpad.

Re:Two-finger scroll

[kc0re]

www.fingerworks.com -- I've had one for awhile. Pretty sweet.

Re:Two-finger scroll

[juhaz]

The key difference here is that you can scroll in two dimensions--ie: you can scroll left-right as easily as you can scroll up-down.

Err, "down" side works as left/right and right side as up/down, been implemented for quite a while by synaptics drivers for example. So yes, I can scroll in two dimensions, nothing new here. Just a different way to do the same.

Just try it on a table to see how it feels. Just keep your fingers right next to each other, no need to spread them out.

Table? I don't have a touchpad size of a table, those things tend to be quite small, multiple fingers are clumsy there.

Feels pretty natural to me, much more natural than "scroll zone" stuff (which I loathe).

IMHO neither of these ways has much anything at all whatsoever to do with "natural", nor is both are 100% learned behaviour. You don't scroll text by dragging your fingers in nature, but if you do take it that far, grabbing the edges of paper and moving it is closer to scroll zones than two-finger drag.

However, when you take software into account and try to make them closer to something already learned, scrollbars are always right & bottom, so from a GUI viewpoint it makes perfect sense to make the same sides "physical scrollbars" on controller as well.

Nothing beats the trusty old wheel mouse, though. But to each his own...

Potentially off-topic question

[RLiegh]

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).

Re:Potentially off-topic question

[derrith]

I used Small Dog Electronics to get my last powerbook. I picked up a used 1ghz Titanium with airport, combo drive, 512mb ram, and a 60gb for under $1300 shipped overnight. I had an issue with the combo drive when it arrived, so I called smalldog and they shipped me a replacement that day. Really great people to work with and I'm totally pleased with their service.

Re:Potentially off-topic question

[Otter]

You can try Small Dog. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you own one) Macs do tend to hold considerable resale value.

Re:Potentially off-topic question

[zaren]

Apple's online store has a "Special Deals" section where they sell refurbs. You can also try Smalldog - they're a pretty reputable reseller of older / refurb gear.

Re:Potentially off-topic question

[waynelorentz]

If you work for a large company, you might be able to get a deal. My company (which will remain nameless) has its own section of the Apple Store online where employees get discounts on personal purchases. And if I can't wait 1-3 days for free shipping, I can always go into a local Apple store and flash my employee ID and get the discount. (I do this all the time now, even for small purchases just to see what the discount is).

The reason I bring this up is that it's often not well publicised within companies. I dropped $4,000 on my 17" Powerbook and accompanying software. Three months later I was transfered to another office in another state where they were more with-it and knew about the discount, but it was too late for me. I could have saved like $600 if I had known about it at my last office.

Re:Potentially off-topic question

[__aafutm5472]

Check out dealmac.com in thier systems page. Some pretty good deals in there.

Re:Potentially off-topic question

[ThousandStars]

I also visit the Ars Technica Agora Classified forum, where members semi-regularly sell Apple stuff. I think there actually are a few PowerBooks in there today.

Craigslist is also fairly popular, and if you have one in your city you can arrange a pickup.

Re:Potentially off-topic question

[Onan]

The problem with this approach is that used macs hold their value absurdly well. And I do mean absurdly: it's not uncommon to see years-old machines selling for almost exactly the same price as much-updated brand new ones.

This is really bad for people looking into getting a mac for the first time; there's not much of a cheap trial version available. But it's good news for anyone who already has a mac, as upgrades can often be accomplished at very little net cost. And if you're willing to absorb some temporary cost, it can also work well for someone who's unsure whether they want a mac and wish to try it out. If you decide that it's not for you, you can most likely resell it for a very large fraction of what you paid.

Re:Potentially off-topic question

[commodoresloat]

You can also try Smalldog - they're a pretty reputable reseller of older / refurb gear.

Plus they send you cute little plastic dogs with every purchase. woof!

Re:Potentially off-topic question

[Ohreally_factor]

The suggestions of Small Dog and the Apple Special Deals page are good ones. Allow me to add Expercom.com.

I try to buy refurbished hardware that is FACTORY refurbished, rather than reseller refurbished. This usually allows me to add the extended Applecare warranty, which is important, at least for laptops.

Keep checking the Apple Special Deals page if you are on the hunt. I've seen deals go quite quickly. Also, sometimes you luck out (like I did with my 2nd G iPod a couple of years back) and get a brand new product in retail packaging instead of a refurb.

Sudden Motion Sensor

[mrpuffypants]

Handled with Care

Now the 17-inch PowerBook G4 is equipped with Apple's Sudden Motion Sensor to protect your most valuable asset: your data. The Sudden Motion Sensor senses change in axis position and accelerated movement. In the event of a drop or fall, the Sudden Motion Sensor instantly parks the hard drive heads so they won't scratch the disks on impact, lessening the risk of damage and improving your chances of retrieving valuable data. When the Sudden Motion Sensor senses your PowerBook is once again level, it unlocks the hard drive heads automatically.

See, now that's just cool.

ibook g5

[blackomegax]

"Asustek will also start shipping iBook G5 notebooks to Apple in the second quarter of this year" /different article

Re:ibook g5

[delire]

it looks like asus are also making the iPod now.. Asus do make great laptops (at least their current range); a little lighter, cooler and quieter than the apple books. i guess this will reflect in the next round of shipments.

The Screens?

[LighthouseJ]

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.

Re:The Screens?

[TheKidWho]

First of all, Apple tries to mantain the same amount of pixel density on all of their displays, having a 1680x1050 display on the 15" screen makes things seem rather tiny.

Plus, the quality of the powerbooks display is amazing, my friend has a 17" Dell Ultrasharp LCD and I swear, the 15" powerbook has a nicer display. The viewing angle on the powerbook is perfect, and looks clear and sharp from almost any angle.

Re:The Screens?

[StarsAreAlsoFire]

I haven't followed laptops for a while, and surprised to see that resoltions aren't improving.

They won't improve until you see vector graphics and fonts in the primary OS.

Guess who we should be lighting the fire under?

(god I love euphemisms that can be taken literally)

Re:The Screens?

[The Salamander]

I agree. My Fujitsu P7010 has a 10" widescreen at 1280x768 and that seems about right. I can't imagine using basically the same res at 15.2"

And how come there's no 10"-wide powerbook? That was one reason apple lost our on my latest laptop purchase...

Re:The Screens?

[mikrorechner]

Personally, I never understood what those huge display resolutions on notebook screens are good for.

I've seen one of those Dell displays, and you can barely read the window titles and start menu entry in the default Windows font size. Sure, you can set a bigger font size, but then you would not have needed the higher resolution in the first place. I don't have a very good eye sight, but a mouse pointer that's only 2.5mm doesn't seem terribly ergonomic to me.

I know a high resolution is needed by people doing DTP and similar things for full size page previews, but who does this on a laptop, and not a calibrated big screen on their desks?

So, tell me what am I missing?

Re:The Screens?

[slamb]

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 think this is a deliberate choice. Apple seems to have the idea of an ideal DPI - see this page, which says "After years of experience, Apple engineers have discovered the ideal resolution to display both sharp text and graphics -- a pixel density of about 100 pixels per inch (ppi)." If my trig is correct, a 1680x1050 screen with a diagonal width of 17" has a horizontal width of arccos(tan(900/1440)) * 17" ~= 13", and a DPI of 1440/13" ~= 110, so this PowerBook is already over their ideal.

In the long run, Apple is clearly wrong - if you have high-resolution images and can scale them any way you like, there's no reason not to display that detail. But for now, scaling probably isn't a good idea. In addition to having to change all the software for it, you'd probably be upscaling slightly, at odd ratios. It would make the images look worse. And having more resolution but not rescaling just means that the icons are smaller and harder to see. I think Apple made the right choice for the short term.

I'm using a 17" PowerBook right now, and for what it's worth, I'm fairly happy with the resolution.

Re:The Screens?

[zaren]

Just having a bigger resolution isn't nessicarily a good thing. IMHO, Apple has a tendency to design an application interface around a screen resolution. Video apps like Final Cut Pro and Motion (based on my experience) have a particular interface that fits perfectly into a screen resolution that's just so. If you go for a much higher resoution, you might not be able to read some of the details in the interface, and with a lower resolution, it just won't fit on the screen (and in fact, may tell you that it just won't run at that setting).

Re:The Screens?

[illumin8]

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.

Re:The Screens?

[Smokin Goat McGruff]

It probably has something to do with those high resolutions beind totally unusable for reading, and LCDs look like crap in non-native resolution. If I want high resolution, I want a larger screen.

Re:The Screens?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tiger will have DPI scaling so that text is still readable with a gigantic resolution.

Re:The Screens?

[extra88]

Looking at the specs for current Dell UltraSharp LCDs (link may expire), viewing angle is the *only* thing Apple's LCDs have over the UltraSharps. I know earlier UltraSharp models were not as good as the current ones but were still better than Apple's. The brightness and contrast ratio of the UltraSharps are superior to Apple's LCDs and I think for most people those are more important values than viewing angle.

I'm comparing them to Apple Cinema Displays because I haven't found good information about the 'Book LCDs but I believe they're comparable. I think folks would have a cow if the screen on a new PowerBook was noticably superior to a new Cinema Display.

Re:The Screens?

[Chucker23N]

You could have actually received this very info without any NDAs - the "Tiger Tech Overview" PDF has it.

Re:The Screens?

[cnj]

It depends what you consider "the best deal", obviously. I know some people who bought an IBM laptop that had a 15" screen and an incredibly high resolution (I think somewhere between the one quoted for the 17" and the Dell 15.4") and complained because everything was too small (even after making lots of adjustments, some programs just won't display things larger). If you have to make everything bigger, you're not getting much benefit from the extra resolution. If you're running at a lower than native resolution, it will look like junk on the laptop display.

The PowerBook displays look nice. It's not the size of the max resolution, but how it looks given the screen. With that in mind, I'd rather have the appropriately sized PowerBook screens/resolutions than the Dell. Higher numbers aren't always better.

Re:The Screens?

[alanh]

Sounds like you're missing good vision. I really like the UXGA 1600x1200 on my 15" Dell. It lets me have the small fonts that I prefer, but with enough resolution to render and antialias them without making them blurry and difficult to read. I also have a 15" SXGA+ 1400x1050 on Thinkpad, and find that I have to increase the font size to avoid the jaggies or making them unreadably blurry. (The thinkpad was bought by my work, so I didn't get a choice of screen resolution.)

Re:The Screens?

[karakal]

I use a (now over three year old) Dell 8100 with a 15" display with 1600x1200. I think, it is exact the right resolution for this size of a display (I tried to buy anything similar for my desktop, but failed. Noone has anything near in stock) I do very much programming on my notebook (especially when I am abroad) and you can never have enough space on your display *g*

Re:The Screens?

[cyngus]

Yes, you could scale everything up, but why, why why!?!? Its just a nuisance. This is particularly a problem for documents that "remember" their zoom level, Word documents for example. So when you take them your your UXZWGA 2800x2100 laptop screen to a desktop LCD with a normal pixel density you just have to change zoom again, and then back. Its useless and its stupid. If you really need that much resolution I find it hard to believe you are doing a ton of work on the road. More likely you do most of your work with your powerbook attached to a 30" Cinema display. Resolution for the sake of resolution is useless.

Re:The Screens?

[meekjt]

I'm trying to figure out what the DPI would be for a 1280 X 1024 17'' LCD monitor using your formula. It does not seam to be working out for me. I wish manufactures would just put this in their monitor specs. I'm looking for a monitor with about 100 DPI so the fonts are big enough. But I'm afraid 1280 X 1024 17'' is going to be to high.

Re:The Screens?

[colin8651]

Lighthouse have you turned your resolution on your dell down to a lower one? You great screen only works at one resolution if you try the others it gets very fuzzy. dell rocks but Apple is better

Re:The Screens?

[the_2nd_coming]

that will be NICE!!!

Re:The Screens?

[megas]

You can always calculate it yourself:
You have the dots (pixels) for the horizontal
and vertical, and the diagonal in inches, so:

If a^2+b^2 = c^2

then:
sqrt(x^2 + y^2 ) / inches equals the DPI for that resolution and size.

In your case:
sqrt(1280^2 + 1024^2 ) / 17
aprox. 96 DPI.

Hope this helps!

Re:The Screens?

[cjsnell]

The actual panel may be the same but the overall experience is not. I've been using my Dell 21" UltraSharp on my G4 for several months. Last week, my boss took me to CompUSA to get a new G5 (I know, lucky me). He offered to take my Dell LCD for himself and buy me the 23" Apple display but I politely declined. The Dell screen is noticeably brighter and crisper. My guess is that it is a matter of time before Dell comes out with a 30" model; they're probably waiting on dual-link DVI capable cards and drivers.

Chris

Re:The Screens?

[tricorn]

Umm, I think you mean cos(arctan(900/1440)) * 17", which yields about 14.4" or a DPI of just about 100. An easier way to think of it is sqrt(1440^2 + 900^2)/17 for DPI. Then divide 1440 and 900 each by DPI to get the dimensions (14.4 x 9).

Re:The Screens?

[WillAdams]

Agreed. It's mystifying why Mac OS X set so that if one sets a 1" line and views it at 100% in a graphics program 72 pixels are used to display it?

The really egregious thing is the Mac display system being hard-wired for 72 dpi means that Mac apps ported to Windows _won't_ take advantage of Windows' facility to allow a user to set their on-screen ``logical'' dpi.

Go Corporation's PenPoint had flexible screen dpi settings ~15 years ago.... why can't anyone else get this consistently?

William

Re:The Screens?

[Gob Blesh It]

Wait a minute, are you sure that's right? Won't your formula give you the pixels per diagonal inch?

Re:The Screens?

[Gob Blesh It]

Whoops, no, you're right, sorry.

Re:The Screens?

[slamb]

Umm, I think you mean cos(arctan(900/1440)) * 17", which yields about 14.4" or a DPI of just about 100. An easier way to think of it is sqrt(1440^2 + 900^2)/17 for DPI. Then divide 1440 and 900 each by DPI to get the dimensions (14.4 x 9).

Ooh, you're right, thanks. I shouldn't do trig in the morning.

Re:The Screens?

[slamb]

Wait a minute, are you sure that's right? Won't your formula give you the pixels per diagonal inch?

Yeah, that's what the Pythagorean Theorem bit there does. Then you divide by the diagonal length (which you are given by the manufacturer), yielding the DPI. It should be the same in any dimension, since LCD pixels are square.

Re:The Screens?

[Hortensia Patel]

"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."

Yeah, I bought one of these (15.4" widescreen @ 1920x1200) and really regret it. Eyestrain per se isn't an issue because I jacked up the screen's DPI setting to the correct value, but a lot of stuff breaks - specifically, just about anything that was built with a point-and-click absolute-position-based GUI builder instead of a layout manager. Moz was fine. Firefox is fine. Eclipse is fine. Anything written in VB is hosed, but hey, that's not much of a loss.

Re:The Screens?

[Cmdr TECO]

There have been reports that Apple is moving toward resolution-independent display.

Re:The Screens?

[Sir Holo]

...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 did.

I think it would hurt my eyes after a while.

It does.

Text was either too small or too large.

Re:The Screens?

[Dr. Sigmund Freud]

Digitimes had an interesting article about visual acuity and pixel density. This issue was further thrashed out over at ArsTechnica a while ago (I don't have a link - search there if you want to read the original discussion), but here are some of the salient points:

Digitimes claims that 0.23 mm is about the lower end of the sweet spot for pixel pitch and the upper end is about 0.28 mm for the average person. The ideal pixel pitch is about 0.25 mm for most people and current OSes. 200 ppi is the limit of visual acuity for most people at average working distances. 110 ppi is the upper limit that most people like, (BTW this value is increasing with time.) Although people do gravitate to higher pixel densities when looking at a spec sheet, the industry agrees that most would probably be happier (or as happy at least) with 110ish ppi and not higher.

1600x1200 on a 15" laptop works out to 133 ppi which is far too high for most people (0.196 mm pixel pitch)
1600x1200 on a 14.1" screen works out to 142 ppi which is just insane (0.179 mm pixel pitch)
1680x1050 for a 17" screen, may still be just a little too high for most folks at 117 ppi (0.217 mm pixel pitch)

Apple's current laptop offerings tend to be between 0.24 and 0.254 mm pixel pitch (which is within the limits or the Digitime numbers of 0.23 and 0.28):

12.1: 1024x768 (106 ppi) or (0.24 mm pixel pitch)

14.1: 1152x864 (102 ppi) or (0.249 mm pixel pitch)

15.0: 1280x800 (101 ppi widescreen) or (0.251 mm pixel pitch)

15.2: 1280x854 (101 ppi widescreen) or (0.251 mm pixel pitch)

15.4: 1366x768 (102 ppi widescreen) or (0.249 mm pixel pitch)

17.0: 1400x900 (100 ppi widescreen) or (0.254 mm pixel pitch)

YMMV with what you like (young eyes, glasses, work environment, work applications {graphics, spreadsheat, text} ...)

Re:The Screens?

[tricorn]

Any such statement would have to include a distance from the .01" dots...my monitor is 100 DPI, and I can certainly see single dots, the difference between 2 dots next to each other and 2 dots separated by one pixel, or offset diagonally, from about 3 feet away.

The human eye has a resolution of about .3-.35 arc-minutes (2 dots have to be more than that apart to be distinguishable as separate points), according to this interesting page. Based on that, at 3 feet you'd be able to see between 272-318 dpi. That page doesn't say anything about it, but color vision has less resolution (blue being particularly bad).

On a 33" 16:9 screen (which is the same height as a 27" 4:3 screen), sitting 8 feet away, you'd need about 120 dpi, or about 3450x1940 pixels. A 100 degree wide angle of view is about 20000 pixels for full resolution (although you don't really get full resolution except in a fairly small portion of your field of view - but a monitor would need to have full resolution wherever you might look). Vertical field of view is somewhat less then horizontal, so you could get by with only 16000 pixels vertically, for a total of about 320 mega-pixels for the ultimate display. Well, OK, not ultimate, you'd really want a full 360 degree spherical view for that...which would take about 825 mega-pixels (though you could get by with much less with a head-mounted display and head-tracking).

Re:The Screens?

[tricorn]

What's really aggravating is that Apple had a system global value for dots-per-inch from the very first version of MacOS. Nothing ever used it, though, because nothing ever set it to anything but 72. Running Wish on MacOSX, it thinks there are 72 dpi, although it is easy enough to fix that:

set dpi 90
tk scaling [expr {[tk scaling] * $dpi / [winfo fpixels . 1i]}]

which then makes unit-based coordinates work correctly, e.g.

canvas .d
.d create rectangle {1i 1i 2i 2i}
pack .d

will create a 1 inch rectangle.

Re:The Screens?

[tricorn]

That's ok, in two or three years at that resolution, you'll be "stupid" too...

Re:The Screens?

[Ohreally_factor]

I'll believe it when Apple Insider is served. =)

Re:The Screens?

[tricorn]

Yes, what if? You wear glasses. Primary change as we age is that there is less ability to change focus. Visual acuity itself shouldn't change much unless there are other problems (cataracts, diabetes) until around age 65, at which point Age-Related Macular Degeneration can become a problem for some people.

Re:The Screens?

[Chucker23N]

Yes, and the Tiger Tech Overview mentions that, whilst 10.4 will already have resolution-independent technology, 10.5 will actually expose it to the user.

Re:The Screens?

[skiflyer]

Does this translate to what I should set my DPI setting to in my window manager for ideal resolution? I have an IBM T41 running at 1400x1050 (14.1 inch screen) which by your formula works out to approximately 124 DPI I tend to run at 90ish DPI in Gnome to keep things the size I like... would I be better off upping it to 124 and downing font sizes and the like?

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.

G4 PowerBooks are already fine

[kurt555gs]

I have a 12" PowerBook, I love it. I was just on Groklaw and PJ admited she uses a PowerBook.

I would love a G5 laptop except for 2 things.

1: Battery life. All that heat has to come from an energy source, so unless you have jumper cables hooked to a huge Cat Battery, the G5 oven will not last long.

2: Heat. I have a Dual G5 PowerMac, and when CPU usage starts to go up, I hear all 6? 7? fans spooling up like some scene for the old movie "Strategic Air Command" getting a 50's SAC bomber ready for take off. This is not what I want in a lappy.

Besides, how fast does a lappy need to be. I love my PowerBook, and I'll bet everyone that has a PowerBook will say the same thing. It is a product that is just right, it really is.

Cheers

Re:G4 PowerBooks are already fine

[davez0r]

1: Battery life. All that heat has to come from an energy source, so unless you have jumper cables hooked to a huge Cat Battery, the G5 oven will not last long.

Is that the thing where you butter a cat and it spins by itself?

Re:G4 PowerBooks are already fine

[fermion]

The most annoying thing to me between the TiPB and the current PB is the battery life. While the TiPB approached 5 hours of battery life, the current ones have a hard time getting to three.

A portable is a compromise. It must be small and power concious. One mistake of many portable makers is to ignore the power requirement. Apple is having to do so to compete. I wish we could go back to the days when a PB would last long enough to be really useful.

Re:G4 PowerBooks are already fine

[uujjj]

Besides, how fast does a lappy need to be. I love my PowerBook, and I'll bet everyone that has a PowerBook will say the same thing. It is a product that is just right, it really is.

1.5GHz ought to be enough for everyone

Re:G4 PowerBooks are already fine

[EatingPie]

"1.5GHz ought to be enough for everyone"

You mean 1.5Mhz.

There is no such thing as too fast, no matter what form factor you're talking about.

Besides, just type "ls" in the Terminal and you will see a noticable (though slight) delay. We can argue about the source (CPU, HDD, VidOut, etc.), but this just illustrates the point.

-Pie

Re:Is G5 that much hotter than P4 ?

[TheKidWho]

Heat Hah!

I was sitting next to my friends compaq p4 laptop, and I swear, the thing is a mini heater, I had to take off my sweater because that thing was spewing so much damned heat!

Warning: P4 may cook your balls!

Re:A sudden motion sensor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the same thing they have had in the IBM thinkpads for a while, where if it senses sudden motion (dropping, throwing, etc) it goes into a safer mode (park hard disk mainly). Won't do much to protect the screen unless there is an airbag involved somehow...

not "insightful"

[jxyama]

was the PB impressive to you at any time? you do realize both PB and iBooks get better specs over time, and this PB update is part of that cycle? if you think iBook offers better value, then PB will probably never be "impressive." even if PB came with a G5, it will be priced accordingly and you'll probably think it's not "impressive" for the price, compared to the iBook.

I need the 2nd Button!

[Ironsides]

You don't need a right mouse button. Of course, you can use a mouse that has a right mouse button and a mouse wheel, and they all will be supported by Mac OS X, but you don't really need them (at least the right mouse button).

Dude, of course you need a right mouse button. And a scroll wheel. How else are you going to change weapons and use the alt-fire in Unreal and other FPSs?

Re:I need the 2nd Button!

[jargoone]

Dude, of course you need a right mouse button. And a scroll wheel. How else are you going to change weapons and use the alt-fire in Unreal and other FPSs?

Simple: buy a PC laptop, and dual boot to your choice of Linux.

Re:I need the 2nd Button!

[thryllkill]

Or, since that is a pain in the ass, and no Windows/Linux/Intel/AMD whatever laptop has as sleek and effective sleep mode as Apple laptops do you could simply do as the Grandparent suggested and buy a $20 mouse with all the wheels and buttons you need. FPS example, you only need two buttons and one wheel. Of course if you feel you need more buttons and wheels you can drop a few extra dollars on whatever monstrosity you feel fills your needs.

Of course, I don't know why this is an issue since I can not say that I know anyone who uses the track pad on their laptop to play FPS. (Yes, I know, there is some obscure weirdo who will chime that they do, but they are probably lying just to be a fuckwit).

Whodunnit first?

[gandell]

Didn't IBM introduce this feature on their laptops a few months ago?

Re:Whodunnit first?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

IBM Active Protection System

IBM Active Protection System is available on many ThinkPad X, T and R Series models and features an integrated motion sensor that continuously monitors movement of the ThinkPad notebook. Like an airbag's sensor, it can detect sudden changes in motion and temporarily stop the hard drive to protect your valuable data from some crashes due to everyday notebook accidents. This ThinkVantage Technology provides up to four times greater impact protection than systems without this feature, thereby helping to decrease employee down-time and reduce support cost.

It is a sad day when the 'innovators' at Apple have to resort to imitation of the PC world.

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:Whodunnit first?

[TheRaven64]

Yes. Which makes me slightly suspicious of Apple's claim in the press release that it is patent pending. Although it may come under some kind of cross-licensing deal IBM and Apple have - if so, I don't know whether it will transfer to the new owners of the ThinkPad brand.

Re:Whodunnit first?

[ltbarcly]

It is a sad day when the 'innovators' at Apple have to resort to imitation of the PC world.

What a load of crap. And I notice you didn't give your source credit for the preceding paragraph.

Do you mean like when the lisa came out and it had a monitor? And a keyboard? Why would they imitate technology that already exists and is the best there is when they could have done something new, original, and totally pointlessly bad?

Re:Whodunnit first?

[gandell]

Good point. And on the coolness factor, I like the way OS X switches MUCH better than XP. Plus, it seems to be much faster.

Re:Whodunnit first?

[jo_ham]

I've never been able to decide whether I like "Velocity Engine" or "Altivec" better as a name.

I think Altivec is a trademark of Motorola, hence the backup name, since both IBM and Motorola make chips with altivec capability.

Re:Whodunnit first?

[Have Blue]

It's pretty much what the parent said- marketing. "AltiVec" is the technical name for the feature, "Velocity Engine" is what makes it sound cool and attractive to people who don't know or care what vector processing or SIMD is. Apple doesn't sell Power Macintosh 970FX towers either.

Re:Whodunnit first?

[ldspartan]

When "a few" is 18 or so. I believe it was first on the T40s, and mine is around 18 months old. As I recall, it's more than just an accelerometer - the drives are able to park the heads way faster than normal.

The newer thinkpads do have a really neat display that shows you the orientation of the laptop as you shake it about. Not useful, but a very neat trick.

--
lds

Re:Whodunnit first?

[Lars T.]

Apple aims to patent fall-detecting iPod

The patent:

An improved media player anda method for operating a portable computing device(e.g., media player) are disclosed. According to one aspect, a portable computing device is able to protect its disk drive when being subjected to undesired levels of acceleration . The portable computing device protects its disk drive by monitoring for such accelerations and operating to avoid usage of the disk drive during periods of acceleration. Through such protection, the likelihood of damage to the disk drive or loss of data stored on the disk drive is able to be substantially reduced. According to another aspect, a user of a portable computing device can be alerted when the portable computing device is being subjected to undesirable levels of acceleration.

Filed: June 16, 2003

Re:Whodunnit first?

[klez23]

It is a sad day when the 'innovators' at Apple have to resort to imitation of the PC world.

Yeah, Apple should never do anything someone else did first. Just proves they're not innovative.

Fingering the Trackpad

[NaughtyNimitz]

Oh my god, i am still looking for that G5-spot while using my two fingers...

Re:Fingering the Trackpad

[MasonMcD]

I see by your number you come relatively late to /.

Perhaps this is some new breed of geek?

No, what am I thinking. It wasn't some sort of not-so-subtle analogy - it was an accurate description.

Please clean the keyboard after use.

Re:Fingering the Trackpad

[plj]

Yeah, for Slashdotters a PowerBook is probably the slickest thing they can ever imagine to have sex with. =)

Re:Fingering the Trackpad

[NaughtyNimitz]

Late to /., but got an early start with my Apple //e back in 1983.

As a non-native-english speaker, slashdot was a welcome addition to my bookmarks.
Fairly late, i admit.

Re:Fingering the Trackpad

[akf2000]

genuine laugh out loud, damn!

second generation AlBook

[frankie]

Right. Last year's AlBooks, even though they are great and I do not regret buying mine, did suffer from random quality problems (bad PMUs, the screen blobs, etc) because they were a significant redesign. This new model is clearly AlBook 1.5

Also new...

[daveschroeder]

- Optical digital 5.1 audio in/out on the 17"
- Dual link DVI on the 17" (for 2560x1600 30" display support)
- A new era: 512MB RAM stock on all models

Re:Also new...

[for_usenet]

Wouldn't you also get the increased video size if you got the 15-in model with the upgraded video card ?

Though I have to admit, the optical audio I/O is pretty neat !

Re:Also new...

[daveschroeder]

Wouldn't you also get the increased video size if you got the 15-in model with the upgraded video card?

Yep, optional on the 15".

Re:A sudden motion sensor?

[Andy_R]

Like the MacMini, it ships WITHOUT a mouse. If you want one with 2 or more buttons, just plug one in, Apple have supported multi-button mice since OS8. Before you do, you might want to take a look at the following list of Mac software that requires multiple mouse buttons:

Powerbook LCDs

[log0n]

Apple needs to increase the pixel density of the LCDs in the laptops. Make the 17" a 1600x1024 or something.

I had the 17" (1440x900) for about a year and it was quite nice, but even that resolution felt constricting using the apps Apple markets around that PB (Final Cut Pro/Exp, DVDSP, Shake, etc).

Incremental upgrades for the system, incrementally upgrade the display as well.

Re:Powerbook LCDs

[ivan256]

Don't count on that happening any time soon.

Apple still tries to appeal to the publishing and photo industries. They make a big deal about keeping their screens at 100 dpi no matter what the size or model.

Re:Powerbook LCDs

[kuwan]

An earlier post proved the following link:

Best Resolution for Images and Words

The quality of the pixels you see impacts how you use your computer. After years of experience, Apple engineers have discovered the ideal resolution to display both sharp text and graphics -- a pixel density of about 100 pixels per inch (ppi). Other vendors may offer a larger monitor, but with less resolution, so you end up with fewer pixels, or a smaller monitor with a high resolution that causes eyestrain and headaches. Apple's balanced 100 pixels per inch format is optimized for images, yet allows you to easily work with text in email, Safari and sophisticated type treatments in layouts.

So that would be the reason why they don't make higher resolution displays.

--
It works.
Free Flat Screens | Free Mini Mac

Re:Powerbook LCDs

[HeghmoH]

It's also total bullshit. If they made a 200 ppi screen but just made everything twice as large in pixel dimensions, it would be even more sharp and wouldn't cause any eyestrain.

Re:Powerbook LCDs

[Dr. Sigmund Freud]

See this post.

Of course

[lexarius]

I can explain why this speedbump occured when it did: I just bought one of the previous models this month. They're just doing it to spite me.

Re:Of course

[papasui]

Just in case someone did actually purchase one in the last 10 days Apple does have a policy to trade it back in for the new model.

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.

Re:Of course

[lexarius]

My PB was shipped on the 5th, well outside of the grace period. Fortunately it (and all of my other macs) run splendidly and I have no complaints about them. But missing a speed/feature bump by 26 days makes me a little sad.

Re:Of course

[AragornSonOfArathorn]

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.

To clarify, that is NOT a trade-in policy, it is a price-matching policy. You can't return something unless it is defective without paying a restocking fee.

I tried to do this with my 15gb iPod, which I purchased right before the current model came out. I tried to exchange it for a 20GB model that was selling at the same price as my 15gb was the week before. They wouldn't let me return it without paying a restocking fee, but they did give me about $50 back to match the markdown they gave to the remaining stock of 15GB ipods.

G5 laptop holdup? AMD's been doing it already!

[Geek_3.3]

I wonder what the actual hold up on the G5 laptop is? IIRC, the G5 proc has approximately the same sort of heat issues like an AMD64 chip, yet we have had AMD64 notebooks for over a year now. Now, admittedly, my laptop is big, bulky and basically the antithesis of what I would imagine a Powerbook laptop would look like, but it WORKS, and it is FAST. I would figure that Apple, given a year or so since it was shown as economically and technically feasible to cram something that hot and powerful into a laptop chassis (albeit a desktop replacement at ~7.5 lbs), would have been able to come up with SOMETHING chic and cool like they always do. Seems to me that they are going to delay it by another 3-4 months minimum, which is a shame.

Personally, I can't wait to see what the G5 laptop will look like! ;-)

Re:G5 laptop holdup? AMD's been doing it already!

[catdevnull]

It's not so much Apple as it is IBM--even if they conquered the heat problem, the real issue is having enough of the chips ready for a large product line. They're just having a tough time delivering.

I predict, however, that when they do ship the G5 laptops that they will have some sort of mini liquid cooling system. (Sorry, I was channelling Cringely).

Re:G5 laptop holdup? AMD's been doing it already!

[Geek_3.3]

Hmm... good point, good point. It'd be interesting to see the comparisons between IBM's capabilities to crank out chips at their Fabs compared to AMD or Intel.

Re:G5 laptop holdup? AMD's been doing it already!

[FunWithHeadlines]

"Now, admittedly, my laptop is big, bulky and basically the antithesis of what I would imagine a Powerbook laptop would look like"

And there's your answer, frankly.

Re:G5 laptop holdup? AMD's been doing it already!

[the_2nd_coming]

well he figured wrong.

Re:G5 laptop holdup? AMD's been doing it already!

[jaoswald]

I am getting so tired of everyone thinking the G5 is just a magic wand to make things fast.

The whole reason the G5 is fast is because it supports a fast memory subsystem for dual processors; on the desktop, this requires a big heat-generating memory controller, fast memory, and high-bandwidth memory busses.

Do you people not notice the difference between the 1.25 GHz front-side bus on a desktop G5 and the 167 MHz memory busses for the laptops?

There is no point in putting a G5 into a laptop if you use the same memory architecture that supports a G4. It will perform about the same as the G4.

Re:G5 laptop holdup? AMD's been doing it already!

[drsmithy]

Do you people not notice the difference between the 1.25 GHz front-side bus on a desktop G5 and the 167 MHz memory busses for the laptops?

Yes. We also know this is the crippling legacy of the G4 and that PC laptop makes have managed to get Centrino laptops woth 400Mhz (and soon 533Mhz) FSBs.

Welcome to 2005.

[Anonymous Coward]

The G5 heat problem has been solved with the latest rev.

Its just an industrial design problem at this point to make the case look nice.

Stop making excuses for Apple. These PB's you see will be the last with a G4. The PB line is just old and creaky at this point. You would only buy one right now if there is some reason where you *HAVE* to have a PB (i.e. you use one for work and your current PB is stolen).

But if you can wait 6 months, it would intelligent to wait, because you'll get something that doesn't sport a 3 year old design.

Re:Welcome to 2005.

[Ohreally_factor]

When it became clear that a G5 PB was not around the corner, I decided to hold off on upgrading my Ti 800 Mhz until Apple could at least double my CPU speed. Now that time has come, I'm still not going to be buying a new laptop. Maybe it's mostly psychological, but because laptops are far less upgradeable than desktops, you're stuck with what you purchase for the most part.

I wonder if others feel the same way? If they're going to plop down $2k + on a new system, they want a system that has better chance to take advantage of future optimisations and innovations. The current G4 architecture, cpu speed not withstanding, leaves a good deal to be desired. If this speed boost had also offered faster FSB, for instance, I'd feel much more comfortable about shelling out that much cash for new kit.

And bottom line, I'm getting along fine with the current kit for now. If I absolutely needed better, I'd buy now. It would make economic sense. What has made economic sense was to put $500 of upgrades into my old G4 tower to handle compositing and rendering. Now I wish I had spent more and gotten a better CPU upgrade! However, at the time it was a stop gap measure, and I wanted to hedge my bets by not spending to much. If Steve had announced a G5 PB at MWSF (or today), I would have been able to say, "No biggie. I only put $500 into it." Meanwhile, my productivity has improved; my (very) rough guess is that I'll have made back the investment this summer.

Re:Welcome to 2005.

[Scudsucker]

I wonder if others feel the same way?

The thing I'm waiting for is for a dual layer dvd-r on the Powerbooks...Apple doesn't even seem to have them in the desktops yet. Hmph. Doesn't matter much if the PB line still has G4's at the time, although it would be nice if Apple would h4xor a point-to-point bus onto the G4's motherboard.

Finally got the RAM right

[frankie]

I'm more glad they finally installed the right amount of RAM: 512MB on a single stick. First off, no Mac should ship with 256MB, especially not a "pro" machine. Second, last year's high-end models came with 2x256MB sticks, which means you lose half of it when you upgrade. Adding a 512MB stick (for 768 total) was severely value-deficient, and unfortunately 1GB SO-DIMMs are still at a nasty price premium.

Re:Finally got the RAM right

[squarefish]

actually, if you look at the store, they are not a single stick- it's 256 built-in with a 256 stick, but you can upgrade to a 512 stick (768 total) for just $75.

Re:Finally got the RAM right

[TheKidWho]

Only on the 12" and that is because the 12" has 256mb RAM soldered onto the logic board.

The 15" and 17" come with 512mb ram on one stick.

Re:Finally got the RAM right

[Alan Partridge]

They don't give you a desk with it either. How are you supposed to use a desktop PC without a desk?

Apple are just taking the piss!

Re:Finally got the RAM right

[ThousandStars]

That's true of the 12", but the larger PowerBooks have a single 512MB stick, which will make upgrading with non-Apple RAM much easier and much less expensive.

When I bought my PowerBook last summer, I had to pay extra money to get the single 512MB stick instead of two 256 sticks, so that I could buy an extra $95 stick from Crucial.

Re:Finally got the RAM right

[Randy Wang]

Actually, running OS X with 256Mb is more like... well, running OS X with 256Mb. There's no other way to describe it.

There's a reason for that - In OS X, the more RAM you add, the faster the machine will become. Sure, there'll be diminishing returns, but it'll become a little faster with every megabyte you throw at it, because of OS X's use of RAM as a superfast cache. Windows, however, uses the disk far more than OS X, regardless of the total RAM installed, which means that it'll run faster on machines with less memory. It's just a design difference.

The upshot, however, is that running with 256Mb in an OS X machine can only really be described as like running OS X with 256Mb of RAM. Sorry, there's no way around it.

Re:Finally got the RAM right

[Maserati]

And depending on the machine, 256MB might be ok, at least until the package from Crucial shows up. I've gotten a machine running 10.2 to play two mp3s simultaneously, without skipping, and in only 64MB RAM. Closer to the point, I've set up an iMac G5 that arrived before its memory did, and after doing application installs and configurations I honestly had to check to see if we didn't waste money on Apple RAM. Nope, the thing was pretty slick with just 256MB. A mini, running a slower G4 on a slower hard drive won't as slick with just 256, but should be usable for web and email.

All of this is for a Panther system, 256MB on Jaguar should still suck for daily work.

Re:Finally got the RAM right

[Randy Wang]

Oh, you'll find that no Mac (particularly, no G5) will feel very "slow", as such, on 256Mb RAM... until you do something like fire up Photoshop. On my older iMac, with 320Mb RAM, it takes more than a minute for PS-CS to load in ideal conditions, and while I know it's not the most scientific of tests, my iBook with 512Mb RAM will load it in less than half the time - even with a laptop's hard disk. Case in point.

So, depending on your standards, it might never feel really "slow", as such... it's just that your machine will become so much faster by doubling the RAM to 512Mb. My iMac G5 has a gig of RAM available, and it screams, baby.

Re:Finally got the RAM right

[Maserati]

Good point. 256MB might not suck per se, but 512MB would fully rock.

Re:Finally got the RAM right

[Randy Wang]

Well, relatively speaking... :P

Re:Finally got the RAM right

[tod_miller]

I've gotten a machine running 10.2 to play two mp3s simultaneously, without skipping, and in only 64MB RAM.

Lets say they are both 10mb mp2's, decoded into a raw audio (stereo) stream on the fly.

All that is working is the processor, ram is running the stream, and the buffered bits, and the skin on the mp3 player.

Playing two 48kbps a second mp3's aint that much harder than playing one 96kbps stream (both of those are low bitrates for music really).

I might be wrong, cos I dont know how your mp3 player works, but that is how I would write one.

Re:Finally got the RAM right

[dwightk]

looks like the 12" still comes with a 256MB Stick built in... 256 removable...

That's better than my 12"... came with 128MB built in... I have 640 MB of RAM now...

Looking at getting that 15"er... It would double (or more) almost every spec on my 1st Gen 12" aluminum

32MB VRAM->128MB
60GB HD->100GB
867MHz->1.67GHz
640MB RAM->1GB
FW400->FW800
USB1.1->USB2.0
Nonbacklit keyboard->Backlit Keyboard
1x SuperDrive ->8x Superdrive
1024x768->1280x854
12"->15"
4.5 lbs ->5.6lbs
100baseT->1000baseT ...all in less than 2 years... (anyone want to overpay for a "classic" Al Powerbook 12" ?)

Re:Fix the mini first, Apple

[TheKidWho]

you should upgrade to 512mb RAM.

Ohh and that is odd, you might have a problem with your mac mini. I have an older ibook that only has a 4200rpm drive, and it takes me no where near 20 minutes to copy a 17meg file, in fact it takes on average 3 seconds to copy a 17meg file.

Re:Unequal Articles under Slashdot

[bmalnad]

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?

Dammit!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just purchased a Mac mini and 23" monitor. I wanted the 30", but didn't want the bulky monster that the G5 tower is (the only machine that could drive one as of a few hours ago). It wasn't so much a price issue (duh... the 30" is still over $3000) but the size of the machine itself. Grrrrrrrrrr. Oh well, I'll wait for the Mac mini G5 that will probably be released by the end of the year (yeah right) and give my wife the 23" and current Mac mini. ;-)

This is the g5

[darkmeridian]

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.

Re:This is the g5

[Dark Paladin]

Maybe it stands for "generation 5" or some such.

Re:Fix the mini first, Apple

[PSXer]

Whew.

I was scared there for like, ten seconds.

Finally

[Espectr0]

512MB standard. Finally someone was thinking.

I love my 12" powerbook but 256MB is not enough, especially if you run java applications.

Re:A sudden motion sensor?

[JonBob]

Your list needs to include Shake, which is software from Apple itself that requires a three-button mouse. A travesty, I tell you!

The SMS

[Illserve]

Nice idea and I hope it works.

But it's the kind of gadgety feature I can imagine going bonkers and effectively shutting down your computer until you send it in for a refit.

Re:PB bus speed

[extra88]

Right from the specs page

333MHz is the RAM speed, 167MHz is the system bus speed.

What I really needed instead...

[jfw25]

An "approaching wave of hot cocoa sensor" that would snap the lid shut before the keyboard gets soaked...

(OK, that happened to an iBook which wouldn't be likely to get the fancy extra features anyway... But I can dream, can't I?)

Re:ibook g5 Re:ibook g5 made by Asus

[delire]

errm, here's the link with the taiwanese companies that make the apple range.

Ordered my PBG4 last week as a 1.33Ghz...

[r0d3nt]

...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!

Not Too Bad for me

[evolutionaryLawyer]

I had put in an order for a 15" powerbook, on friday, (I didn't believe in a G5book) and checking my order status today, apple upgraded everything in the order, and dropped the price. they even dropped about a week off the ship date. Pretty happy with them right now.

Re:Not Too Bad for me

[jcostantino]

Same here, I ordered a 15" PB and two 17" PBs (sadly, none for myself) and called my rep who assured me that not only would we get the newer machines but the lead time was shortened to 1-3 days. Bonus!

(Goes back to using antiquated Inspiron 4100)

Guess I'll have more money for vacation now

[dalamarian]

I said a year ago that I wasn't going to purchase a new powerbook till it was either a dual core or a G5. Looks like I'll still be waiting. And there are many more just like me.

Re:Guess I'll have more money for vacation now

[cmodcmodcmod]

And probably even more people not like you, rushing out and enjoying these new machines. ;-)

Still not as nice as the TiBooks

[corporatemutantninja]

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.

Re:Still not as nice as the TiBooks

[dusanv]

Not so in my opinion. I have a TiBook and use by buddy's 12 AlBook frequently. The AlBook is a superior machine. I had a bunch of trouble with my hinges (too tight, I broke them once), the bezel (hairline cracks and paint chipping), the keyboard (acting weird - it was dying) and the LCD (keymarks on the LCD) with the TiBook. It was in the Apple repair centre twice already. The AlBook is *much* better built. He had no problems with it at all. I also like the styling of the AlBooks better. The keyboard is also better IMHO. Can you guess I'm looking to upgrade?

G5 PowerBook - Let us never speak of this again

[Matt Clare]

Are there any other big time Mac heads out there that are tired of their Mac-curious fridends asking when the G5 PB will come out? Or saying not to buy now because the G5 PB is just around the corner.

Knowing that the number five comes after four is not a major insight into Apple's product cycle. Anyway, to summarize my trolling on my own post: I feel vindicated.

The nicest keyboard I've ever used

[lavar78]

The keyboard is so nice on my 15" PowerBook that I bought the Macally IceKey, which has similar keys. I can't recommend it enough.

Still TOO expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Even with the new features, the 15" is starting to show its age agsinst the competition regarding price. A year and four months ago, Apple and Dell were nearly side-by-side on price (PB 15" vs Inspiron 8600). Now the PowerBook is the same price ($2000) when the Dell can be had for $1400 (or less, that's being conservative!). A year and a half without a price reduction is just plain dumb...especially considering that the 12" PB is getting eaten by the iBook G4. There is no compelling ~$1500 Apple professional solution; however in the PC World no one in their right mind pays over $1600 (for a laptop with similar limited features: ie- lowest resolution 15" lcd, moderate HD size/performance, DVD-CDRW combo, marginal processor performance, limited support options)

Apple needs to learn that price PLUS performance are key. Just because they can't figure out how to product place the 12" PowerBook doesn't mean that the price for the 15" PowerBook just HAS to be jacked up! I thought the Mac mini was an omen of better decision making...guess not.

Re:Still TOO expensive

[sicrow]

problem is, with the Dell, you then have to pay for virus protection as well as spyware after the purchase. and no matter what speed they say the dvd burner is, no cd can spin faster than a speed of 24x otherwise it will shatter! 52x aka great marketting scam.. go apple or linux -screw winblows.

Re:Still TOO expensive

[ScooterComputer]

No faster than 24x? Smoke another brand. Myth Busters is smarter than you...

Re:Still TOO expensive

[sicrow]

xactly!

It's got some nice enhancements

[digitalgimpus]

Things that I noted:

• 5400 RPM Drives with "Sudden Motion Sensor" standard
• 802.11g and Bluetooth 2.0 standard
• Scrolling Trackpad standard
• 512 MB RAM standard

With the top model running $2,399.00 with the educational discount... not a bad rig for a college student. perfect for on campus use, good battery life, wireless, Mac OS X! you can start at $1,499.

IMHO it's a pretty good machine. It's all pretty good hardware. Not many laptops ship with 512 MB from the factory, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a 5400 RPM HD. Lately it seems 4200 RPM drives have been making a comeback thanks to their low power consumption and price. It's a good place for a manufacturer to cut corners. Most customers don't realize. Heck when I bought my laptop most sales people didn't even know what was shipping. I got forwarded around several times when I called most companies... and never got an answer.

Apple's pretty good about quality hardware.

12" still crippled

[Johnny Mozzarella]

Apple still is crippling the 12 " PB by not including
- Gigabit Ethernet
- FireWire 800
- backlit keyboard

OK the backlit keyboard just looks cool but why can't they at least make these optional?

I have a 15" but would have liked to have gotten the 12" if it had better specs. The only real advantage the 12" PowerBook has over an iBook is the dual screen capabilities. Even that can be hacked into the iBook.

Re:12" still crippled

[BurntNickel]

While it would be nice to have the backlit keyboard, what in the world are you going to do with gigabit on a laptop?

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:12" still crippled

[The Salamander]

When will apple learn that we want to buy the 12" (or even a 10"), not because we're cheap, but because we want the smaller size?!

The crippling of the 12" Powerbook is one of the reasons that prevented me from buying an apple.

Re:12" still crippled

[Snowspinner]

Well, that and, you know, it's a 12" laptop that weighs less than five pounds.

Which is a pretty damn big advantage when you get right down to it.

Re:12" still crippled

[the_2nd_coming]

because gigabit ethernet and FW800 are everywhere on the PC laptops of the same size.

Re:12" still crippled

[argent]

The only real advantage the 12" PowerBook has over an iBook is the dual screen capabilities.

Doesn't it have a PCMCIA slot? Also, the keyboard doesn't seem to suck as much as the iBook's (though none of Apple's laptops really have a enough keyboard joy for me).

Re:12" still crippled

[MoneyT]

Connect two laptops together with a CAT 6 patch cable and do some highspeed file transfers. Gigabit is wonderful when trying to transfer 10 - 15 GB of data over a network.

Re:12" still crippled

[rizawbone]

what in the world are you going to do with gigabit on a laptop?

in the network troubleshooting world, it is handy to be able to sniff gigabit connections.

Re:12" still crippled

[benmhall]

> The only real advantage the 12" PowerBook has over an iBook is the dual screen capabilities. Even that can be hacked into the iBook.

You know, I was thinking that too, but it's just not the case. Here are the diffs:

- Faster (1.2GHz to 1.5GHz on the 12")
- Faster buss speed (100MHz vs 167, IIRC)
- Faster, bigger HD (iBook's are only 4200RPM)
- Better Video (32MB ATI9200 vs 64MB GeForce 5200 on the 12"PB)
- Supported split-screen
- Audio in
- Better keyboard

All told, these differences are worth the ~400CDN difference to me.

Re:12" still crippled

[mbbac]

The Ibook doesn't have:

1.5GHz PowerPC G4
512MB PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 with 64MB of DDR SDRAM
60GB Ultra ATA/100; 5400 rpm
8x SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW) [optional]
built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
GraphicConverter, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, QuickBooks for Mac New User Edition
Mini-DVI to DVI adapter

I bolded what I believe are the key advantages of the PowerBook.

Re:12" still crippled

[antifoidulus]

Actually, the bus on the iBooks is 133, so not much of a difference there. Which brings me to my question, is the bus speed the achilles heel of the g4?
IANACA(I'm not a computer architect) but doesn't the bus speed mean a lot when you are working with memory intensive apps? Even Dell is offering 533MHz buses on it's low end crap.

Re:12" still crippled

[catwh0re]

firewire 800 is still not in mainstream use, and the same goes for gigabit ethernet.

Actual users of the 12" will note that it's more of a small portable aesthetically pleasing computer rather than a serious power users machine. This is particularly high lighted in the poorer display used (it's view angle is not only limited and high on the colour shift, but the screen's resolution is probably a little too small)

What they are though are great for having enough panache to do things that the desktops can do, but with the size advantage. Such as burn DVDs, or (something I've been seeing alot recently) use it for DJing. I find they are a great laptop for those that want a little more than the iBooks, but still want something that is rather consumable. (I know plenty of people that don't use their larger powerbooks to their full potential.) Ultimately at the end of the day they are apple's smallest laptop, that alone attracts it's own market base.

Re:12" still crippled

[slackoff]

To me, I liked the iBook keyboard better than the Powerbook, and seeing as I was going to be using it mainly to type notes, papers etc I ended up going for the iBook and have had no problems using its keyboard.

Re:12" still crippled

[Johnny Mozzarella]

The 12" PowerBook weighs 4.6lbs
The 12" iBook weighs 4.9lbs

Not much of an improvement.
The 12" PB needs more to justify the premium you pay above the cost of a similar iBook.

Re:12" still crippled

[aarku]

A big difference is the graphics card that supports ARB_fragment_shader on the PowerBook. (Read: supports fast CoreImage)

Re:12" still crippled

[Leo McGarry]

Conspicuously omitted as well are a Fibre Channel adapter, a 30" LCD panel and 64 G5 processors running at 10 GHz each.

I don't think your understanding of the word "crippled" is very good.

Re:12" still crippled

[Johnny Mozzarella]

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.

Re:12" still crippled

[the_2nd_coming]

what part of:

"The crippling of the 12" Powerbook is one of the reasons that prevented me from buying an apple."

makes you think that this guy has been or ever was an apple customer? he makes a point to say that he is prevented from buying apple because the 12 inch is missing FW800 and Gb Ethernet. what other 12 inch model laptop has either of those? so I assume the same crippling features prevents him from buying ANY laptop (since he obviously excludes larger laptops given his blanket inability to buy anything apple because of the 12 inch "crippling").

Re:12" still crippled

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 12 inch powerbook, but have used the 15 inch models with a backlit keyboard. I believe the reason the backlit keyboard is not in the 12 inch is because there is nowhere to put the light sensors. The sensors for the 15 inch and 17 inch models are in the speaker grilles on either side of the keyboard. The only place to put it on a 12 inch powerbook would be on the palmrest, which may not even be possible because it would be directly over the battery or the hard drive. would mean the backlight would be on whenever you are using it, and the backlight being on in a brightly lit room actually does make the letters hard to see. The keys on the 12 inch keyboard have the transluscent letters that would allow the fiberoptic backing to come through. As for FW800, there really isn't room for that either, not without losing a usb port. Most people would probably rather have 2 usb ports. I don't have any FW800 peripherals but I have had both usb ports in use at one time before.

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:12" still crippled

[Johnny Mozzarella]

Point well taken. I stand corrected.
My apologies.

Re:12" still crippled

[jo_ham]

Gigabit is very useful for me and my 15" PB, since all the footage I work with in Motion and FCP is stored on a network drive.

Fast ethernet just isn't fast enough for full frame video playback.

Re:12" still crippled

[dn15]

No, the 12" PowerBook does not have PCMCIA.

However, a few advantages over the iBook are: DVI out instead of VGA, 32 MB of video memory, faster processors, built-in Bluetooth (though it's an option on the iBook), and audio line-in.

Re:12" still crippled

[nazzdeq]

yeah, i love my 12" iBook, but the case scratches too much, so I'd like to buy the 12" Powerbook.

I fly all the time for business and there's nothing better than a 12" laptop. I would really like the backlit keyboard on the 12" and was hoping Apple could do this, but apparently not.

When are they going to get some graphics cards that can do some serious screen resolutions? I've heard all of the 100dpi crap, but leave the decision to the end user as to what display mode to use. Even the crappiest Dell Inspirion 8600 can do 1920 x 1200 pixels resolution and has a graphics card w/ 128 MB of RAM.

I love Apple, but these are not "pro" laptops.

Skipping another round of laptop upgrades...

-Nazz

Re:12" still crippled

[the_2nd_coming]

and for a 1.2 GHz pentium M you pay 2000+ dollars.

Re:12" still crippled

[easter1916]

Try hauling a 17" around on multi-leg flights from the Midwest to the southwest of Ireland... my chiropracter just *loves* Apple! I bought the 17" for the extra screen resolution (I'm a developer) but man I wish I could have lived with a 15".

Re:12" still crippled

[JohnsonWax]

Hmm. I just use firewire for that. Set up a TCP over Firewire network set and go. FW 800 is pretty much just as fast as the gigabit and I tend to find FW cables more readily than ethernet these days.

Re:12" still crippled

[MoneyT]

Just the opposite here, we have more ethernet than firewire cables.

Re:12" still crippled

[benmhall]

That _is_ the best video ever.

Re:12" still crippled

[dodgy_knickers]

Except that you'll never get data off the hard disk fast enough to saturate a 100Mb Ethernet connection, so 1Gb doesn't buy you anything.

-kev

Re:12" still crippled

[NilObject]

I too wanted a backlit keyboard, but I bought the 12" anyways, because I've been planning to for quite awhile. Imagine my surprise when I got the following line in the order confirmation e-mail:

Keyboard/Mac OS Language 065-5393 BkLit Keyboard/Mac OS

Schwing! Score one for me!

But it's still FireWire 400 and 10/100 ethernet. But I don't need the faster versions of those anyways.

Re:12" still crippled

[freerangegeek]

Could it be perhaps that they can't fit gigabit ethernet and firewire 800 on a motherboard that's smaller? The 12" model has 93 sq inches of board space. The 15" model has 130 sq inches. (Based on outer dimensions of the case.) That almost 40" sq inches more space to lay out components and dissapate heat over.

Re:12" still crippled

[Ohreally_factor]

You still made an excellent point, and I agree with you whole heartedly. I would prefer the smaller PB, but I don't like the tradeoffs.

some specs...

[Geek_3.3]

sorry for my lack of html skillz, but note:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInfor ma tion/0,,30_118_10220_10221^11030,00.html

Summary: the small/low power version of the AMD64 has a heat dissipation of 35W... not too bad, actually!

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInfor ma tion/0,,30_118_10220_10221^10269,00.html

(i.e. the proc I have)

Summary: heat dissipation of 65W. Still doable, since my laptop hasn't burned my lap yet... (though it DOES get hot at times.)

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/print/power pc -g5.html

Summary: PowerPC970 processor at 1.8Ghz = 42W. (apparently, the JUST the processor itself)

I might be mistaken, so please someone pipe up if they see something wrong with my comparisons here. Seems like IBM/Apple would have themselves a winner for a laptop proc.

PowerBook G4 HD upgrade..

[Savage-Rabbit]

Wonder how much cache those 80GB and 100GB drives have. Most 5400RPM laptop HDs these days come with 8MB of cache, but there are 16MB versions too which really remedies the problem of slower performance of laptop HDs. I put a 60GB 16MB cache 5400RPM Toshiba drive in an IBM T21 and the performance difference compared to the previous HD (4200RPM, barely any cache) was simply amazing. Although, the only problem was that the drive was too hot for the poor T21 and RAM was located above the HD slot, so things got really unstable after about 10 minutes of operation.


From what I hear putting a 5400rpm drive in a PowerBook G4 really livens it up. A coworker of mine installed one for his father and the performance is noticably better, especially when opening large files in PS etc.... but I haven't had any feedback on heat issues. Has anybody else tried upgrading the PowerBook to 5400rpm? I'd be interested in hearing your experiences.

Re:PowerBook G4 HD upgrade..

[easter1916]

I have one of those, ordered it the same day as the PB 17" it's in... it made a very noticeable speed increase. Little bit noisier though, and the fans run more frequently since I installed it. Well worth it for the performance increase though!

But But But...

[matthoh]

But Um Apple it's Monday... You guys create awesome machines but have you heard of iCal? You don't put out new stuff till tuesday... Maybe you should set a recurring alarm or something.

Re:Its good enough for me!

[SilentChris]

"Apple explained it was the right size, and that's good enough for me."

"The childlike voices in my head told me to kill people. That's good enough for me!"

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in the same position as you when I threw caution to the wind and bought a 500mhz TiBook a few years ago..

I too thought that as a longtime user of OS's other than MacOS I wanted two mouse buttons...

and after six months with the powerbook I realised I wasn't using those OS's with the powerbook, I was using OS X, and the one button thing just clicked (pun slightly intended :) and honestly I could use either on it now. One, two, scrolly.

I'd never have accepted that as possible before I got one though.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Eh

[TheKidWho]

underpowered? show me how it is underpowered?

In fact, show me similiar 12" laptops in the PC world... Ohh thats right, you can't find any that compete that well with the powerbook or ibook, WOOPS!

Dockingstation

[ga53n]

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.

Re:Dockingstation

[papasui]

I agree with you on the docking station. But if you actually have a 30' cinema display then:

1.) You can afford a desktop machine to have it hooked up to.
2.) Your obviously better off than at least 90% of the slashdot crowd so stop bitching.

Re:Dockingstation

[mcg1969]

Agreed---the lack of a docking station is the single biggest shortcoming of the Powerbook IMO. My wife has a Bookendz docking station, and because it is a kludge we're always having to jimmy it to make sure it's fully docked and all the ports are connected. But now that they're putting so many ports on the sides of the computer, it's going to be pretty hard for the Bookendz folks to come through. In contrast I plop my Thinkpad down on a port replicator and suddenly I'm connected to a USB hub with several devices, a display, Ethernet, speakers, etc.

Re:Dockingstation

[NRP128]

Hmmm...built in Bluetooth 2.0 + Apple Bluetooth keyboard + Logitech MX900 = Wireless keyboard mouse. so you'd plug in the 1 cable, unless you need firewire for an ipod, ext harddrive, etc.

Re:Dockingstation

[JoshMKiV]

This is a huge concern for me. I have ordered a 12" PB as a test - hoping to offer the 12" PB as an alternative to the TP X42 for some executives who travel often. No docking station is going to be a huge entry barrier =(

Re:Dockingstation

[Jahz]

I have had a PB 15" for over a year now. I agree that a docking station would be nice to have... but it will not be happening anytime soon.

Docking stations legitamize clutter (keep reading). Apple is about pure simplicity and eliminating the rats nest of wires found around most PC's. Anyone remember the TV spot Apple released when the G5 was unveiled about getting rid of wires?

So Apple will never help you create a wire nest, even if it is easier for many. Instead you have the Apple solution to wires: dont use them. In other words, the Apple solution includes a Bluetooth keyboard, mouse (optional BT cell phone) and an Airport extreme internet/intranet gateway. You can even use an Airport Express so that you dont have to plus in an Audio cable.

Of course External HD's (including the iPod) will be wired for a few more years due to bandwith limitations. Same goes for the external display. Therefore, you should ideally have to plug in 1-3 devices, which isnt really a hassle. If you have 50 USB devices, just use a hub! Also note, Apple will also do everything it can to protect the sleek finish of the PowerBook, including adding additional holes beyond what is needed.

Re:Dockingstation

[arturov]

I agree with you on the docking station. But if you actually have a 30' cinema display then:

1.) You can afford a desktop machine to have it hooked up to.
2.) Your obviously better off than at least 90% of the slashdot crowd so stop bitching.


I'll say! How much are those 30 foot cinemas going for nowadays?

scrolling... hard or software?

[nuggetman]

two finger scrolling ability... hardware or software? hardware may prove difficult, but software should be portable/hackable to a rev C, B, or A, no?

Answer: ergonomics

[MachineShedFred]

The only laptops I have seen a 10-key built onto are those massive "Desktop Replacement" ones that you can't put on your lap without fear of burning... something valuable.

These are meant to actually be portable, and useable on the go. As such, Apple would have about 40 million carpal-tunnel-in-the-right-wrist lawsuits if they were to offset the keyboard to the left to accomodate a 10-key.

Also, think of the market that Apple sells the most PowerBooks to: Audio, Video, and prepress people. They don't care about a 10-key...

Re:Hmm

[MoneyT]

While it's not exactly what you want, you could get SideTrack, an alternative driver for the trackpad that allows for scrolling (on trackpads without it) and allows you to assign seperate functions to the button, a tap on the trackpad, and the corners of the trackpad as well.

DVD Player mode

[revscat]

One thing that I hope Apple winds up incorporating into their laptops is something that a friend of mine has on his Dell. It's a special "DVD only" mode where it switches over from being a general purpose computer to a DVD player only, and the battery life is increased substantially thereby.

This seems to be a good idea. We use our PB as a DVD player frequently at night in bed*, and a power cord is annoying. Having this would be just another nice touch, and I couldn't imagine it would be that hard to engineer.

* And to head off the juveniles: Yes, sometimes we do watch porn.

Re:DVD Player mode

[HeghmoH]

I don't understand the point of a DVD mode. What would the system shut down? The graphics card and CPU need to be used anyway. The optical drive obviously has to stay running. The hard disk will spin down if it's not being used anyway. The screen is going to be running as usual.

My PowerBook can easily play a full normal-length movie (no LotR, though) off its battery, can't yours?

Re:DVD Player mode

[revscat]

My PowerBook can easily play a full normal-length movie (no LotR, though) off its battery, can't yours?

Yes. But the option would be nice were I to want to watch LotR on a laptop. Whether I would want to or not is another matter entirely...

Re:DVD Player mode

[HeghmoH]

Yes, but the rest of my message questions how DVD player mode would give you that ability in the first place. Since I can't find anything for a DVD player mode to actually shut down, why would you be able to watch LotR with it when you can't watch it in normal mode?

Re:WWDC

[TheRaven64]

Personally, I'd rather have a dual-core G4 than a G5 in a PowerBook (especially if the up the FSB speed a bit). Very little I do on my PowerBook would benefit from being 64-bit, and everything CPU intensive can be easily parallelised (rendering in FCE and large builds).

Re:Hmm

[MachineShedFred]

Ok, can we stop feeding the trolls? Seriously...

Totally bonkers

[Schwarzchild]

I can't believe you people like the PowerBook keyboard. They are much the same as other notebooks and that's the problem - cramped! I would probably buy one if the made the keyboard more like a standard one and replaced the trackpad gizmo with something that actually works well.

Re:Totally bonkers

[MoneyT]

Except for the function keys and the arrow keys, nothing about the powerbook feels cramped at all. All the typing keys are full sized, and perfectly distanced. Having used a powerbook for so long, I can't stand typing on desktop keyboards at all. They have too much space between keys.

Re:Totally bonkers

[kannibal_klown]

I can't believe you people like the PowerBook keyboard. They are much the same as other notebooks and that's the problem - cramped! I would probably buy one if the made the keyboard more like a standard one and replaced the trackpad gizmo with something that actually works well.

Sounds like a troll, but I'll bite.

I own a 15" PowerBook (my first Mac ever). I have large fingers, and have no problem with the keyboard. It's quite comfortable.

The keys on it are as large (area-wise) as my main keyboards. The only exceptions are the arrow keys and function keys. Sure, they're shallow (ie, not tall keys), but that shouldn't matter.

I've owned PC laptops in the past, and the keys on them have been small, sometimes uncomfortably so. In any case, my experience (1 dell and 1 cheapo-brand) the keys were smaller.

As for the touchpad, I works well enough. I awlays bring a travel USB mouse with me anyway since it's a pain to code and design forms with a TouchPad (no matter how nice it is). But even when I do use the TouchPad (basic computre use) I don't have a problem with it.

My timing's bad.

[Stick_Fig]

Wow, they brought down the lowest end by $100. Nice.. I could actually afford one now if I hadn't bought that Mac Mini first.

OFFTOPIC: UK users / Mac Minis?

[dj_paulgibbs]

I know this will probably end up off topic, but everyone will be reading this Apple thread and not the others.

My Mac Mini was due to be shipped last Friday - 28/1/5 - and the status is still "open". The Irish girls on the phone say they've requested Manufacturing to explain why it hasn't been dispatched/built (for it was BTO) but don't know anything else; which is fair enough.

Am I the only one who ordered a BTO Mac Mini as soon as Jobs' keynote speech was done (*after the Apple web store came back up) who hasn't recieved it yet? Anyone else with similar experiances?

Cheers for any comments.

Re:OFFTOPIC: UK users / Mac Minis?

[LemonYellow]

Mine was shipped on 28th and arrived half an hour ago. Woo hoo!

Apple's tracking page seems to have been down all day, which is painful if you're expecting a delivery.

Re:OFFTOPIC: UK users / Mac Minis?

[dj_paulgibbs]

1.25ghz, yes. And to the other poster about the tracking page, yes it's annoying. I've rang Apple Europe a lot over the last few days and keep getting the same girl - it's like "Hello again Mr. Gibbs." :)

Re:OFFTOPIC: UK users / Mac Minis?

[easter1916]

My mate is the manager of EMEA telesales at Apple in Cork (I live in the USA now though). Give me your order number and I'll email him and see if he can't hurry it up.

Right Button is useful !

[ehack]

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.

Re:Right Button is useful !

[tricorn]

You mean, the Control key? Control-left (or only)-click does the exact same thing as right-click in almost everything (the application can distinguish them and do different things, but the application could make you type with your fingers all off by one letter - if it is a reasonable program, it will make right-click and control-click be equivalent.

Re:Right Button is useful !

[bmxbandit]

Next existed before Mac? Strange I thought it was released in 1988, a full 4 years after. Regarding the 2nd mouse button, the idea of the Mac OS is that anybody with half a brain can figure out what things do with NO prior knowledge of the system. Of course this was much more of an issue when the Mac was released as people really hadn't seen anything like it before (except of course for people with imaginary Next systems). In order to include a right mouse button you have to know what each button does. This introduces a 'mode', and as we all know modes are bad.

Re:Right Button is useful !

[ehack]

The Xerox machines existed well before the Mac - Xerox is where the original research on mice and windowed interfaces was done, and it was, I agree pretty confusing - depending on which third of the title bar of a window you clicked in, with which mouse chord, you'd get a different effect. This was before the time when you could patent cold water, so Apple and Microsoft ripped off the basic research on windows, blitting, MVC, the mouse, bitmapped fonts etc, and made the Lisa and Windows 1.0 fairly contemporaneously.

Apple deserves a lot of the credit for cleaning up the interface concepts, but not for inventing them. The original Xerox machines had more ideas; for instance any screen could be turned from Landscape Portrait depending how the user wanted to work. The screen was HUGE from the outset, allowing fullpage text layout. The keyboard had cut, paste, copy keys. Apple dumped a lot of these useful ideas when they made the Mac (rotating displays would be useful to this day). The multi-buttoned mouse was one of the unwarranted casualties of this simplification, as well as the tiny screen which though an economical necessity changed the character of the whole interface.

When Jobs went off to found NeXT he fixed many of the Mac's problems - instability of the base OS, lack of easy development tools, excessively small screen. And he put the second mouse button back.

I hope this is enough clarification.

Re:Right Button is useful !

[bmxbandit]

As far as I'm aware the Xerox machines they developed at PARC were never available to buy (apparently the parts cost $10,000 without assembly!) although the Star machines where used internally by Xerox staff. As well as the innovations you quite rightly point to (although you are wrong about the mouse, it was invented well before PARC) they also pretty much invented LAN/Ethernet and the basis of a PDL to drive laser printers. It is also worth noting that when Apple decided to go with the Mac, several key boffins left PARC to join Apple and to form Adobe, realising that the design of the Mac would finally provide the power to drive a Laser printer from a desktop PC. I also think it's important to distinguish between the Lisa and Windows 1.0. The Lisa was an overambitious engineering disaster (it didn't really work properly!), but it did provide users with what was essencially a modern GUI in 1983 (those who could afford $9.999 for the pleasure!!!). Windows 1.0 on the other hand was a laughable attempt to create a GUI on very basic hardware. Anyone who's had the pleasure of using dosshellG or the Dos editor will be familiar with just how archaic this was. Windows 1.0 and several further version relases were simply Dos applications designed to make the OS look graphical. Also the issue you raised with Portrait screen is not quite true, as Apple did offer these screens (monochrome only portrait) during the eighties, though they were not (as far as I am aware), able to rotate. Your point relating to the small screen of the original Mac is partly true. Though it was quite possible to connect a 20" display to a mac via a NuBus card pretty much from the start, these tended to be used by print and publishing companies and were very expensive. It wasn't until 86/87 until the MacII with separate screen (and colour) was released. I'ts worth noting that Dos4 wasn't released until 1988.

Re:Right Button is useful !

[ehack]

You raise many valid points; however, the point I was trying to make is that the original Xerox machines, and their successors (Xerox Documenter) had a richer variety of interface options (special cut paste keyboard buttons, rotatatble displays, multiple mouse keys) as standard *on every machine* not as buy-time options . Apple chose to simplify, and their choices make sense for the time, and made sense for a beginner's small-screen machine. When Jobs made NeXt he brought back the big screen, and the second non-modal mouse button. It is non-modal in the NeXT because *it does exactly the same thing at any time as the main menu*. You just get there bly click, rather than move to top and click. It is modal in Smalltalk, because it invokes a context menu. This is an improtant difference, as the Smalltalk three button model is a nightmare.

Actually, I spoke with one of the Xerox founders. He explained to me that he founded Adobe when he cracked the problem of displaying the fonts with a decent "look", a rasterisation trick which I forget. As we all know, the Xerox machines already came with Interpress (was that the name ?) as a page definition language, but the page quality was not that great. In fact as the writer of a laser driver in those days, I can certify that the display was often yucky when viewed up close.

As to the actual availability of the Xerox machines, I simply don't know how it went. We had a lab full of them in Cambridge, UK, and obviously there must have been people in the US who had them. My feeling is that anyone in CS at the time who was somebody (not the millions who are around today!) had seen them, played with them, and integrated some of their features into whatever they were doing. A good example is Wirth with Lilith, Turbo Pascal in its later incarnations, the Acorn Arm system, the Lisp machines of Weinreb and Moon, X, etc. All of these people got some features right, improved some stuff and made some "improvements" that should best be forgotten. And yes, I know it sounds wierd but Windows 1.0 actually beat the Mac to market. And, yes, I saw it run and it was worse than pitiable.

Aussie Prices Down!

[nighty5]

Great to see!

PB 15" w/ superdrive was $AUS 3,999 NOW $3,649.

Falls in line with US's weakened green back and now makes it attractive not to buy the PB in the US

Woohoo!

hahaha you fell for the cut-and-paste troll

[MachineShedFred]

This guy posts in every Apple hardware thread with the exact same bullcrap. Just ignore it, and he'll go away.

Re:PB bus speed

[Jeremy Erwin]

Pity they don't list the CPU's model number. I think it's a 7447a, which freescale lists as having a maximum clock of 1420 MHz. Perhaps Apple has a separate, exclusive supply line. From the looks of things, the 7447a can't really take advantage of DDR memory, either.

Freescale does produce a Dual Core G4, but those chips also have 1MB of L2-- a feature that Apple would be sure to trumpet. They're 32 bit, though, so Apple is unlikely to use them in a "Powerbook G5"

Well crap!

[Nastard]

I just bought a 12" PB two weeks ago. According to my receipt, I'm two days over my return window. Anyone have experience with the Apple return policy? How likely are they to cut me a break?

Re:Well crap!

[the_2nd_coming]

go to the apple store and see... you might get lucky... but don't get ticked if you don't get lucky.

Re:Well crap!

[k_187]

I don't know but you might be able to get the hundred dollars or what ever the price change was back. I think its 30 days after you buy one if they drop the price, they'll give you your money back. Couldn't hurt to call them up and ask at least.

Re:Well crap!

[Nastard]

In case anyone is still reading, I talked to the Apple store where I bought my PB, and they agreed to swap it out, so long as I pay the restock fee. After the price adjustment between what I paid and the new price, the restock fee will only be about $70. Not bad for a faster CPU, more RAM, Bluetooth 2.0, faster SuperDrive, and bigger hard drive.

I heart Apple.

Re:Fix the mini first, Apple

[allgood2]

Maybe because your experience isn't the norm. I'd say, if it took over 20 minutes to transfer a 17MB file, most Mac users wouldn't be so in love with their computers. I routinely transfer files over 100MB and up to 5GB, from folder to folder, from folder to secondary hard drive, from folder to server, from folder to remote location using FTP, SSH or Timbuktu or even Apple's Finder. And with the exception of GB files to remote location have never spent 20 minutes on the job. As a test, it just took ~5 sec for my computer to duplicate a 65MB file.

It doesn't happen that often, but it sounds like your Finder is frozen. This can either mean a bad OS install or you could just need more memory. When the Finder is damaged lots of routine tasks can take forever, plus other inconsistencies abound. I've seen brand new systems that just need the OS hosed and re-installed. It happens! Mac and/or PC.

But also memory makes a huge difference. I've seen some people use 256MB RAM with no issues. But I personally can't tolerate OS X with anything less than 512MB. Background tasks can eat up all of your 256MB RAM, leaving you to rely on the hard drive for virtual memory. With the hard drive speed in the Mac mini, I'd say your not doing yourself any favors if that's what your relying on. Sure if you were using Mac OS 8.5 or Mac OS 9, you'd probably be fine, but Mac OS X is a different beast, and has stronger memory requirements.

Try putting Windows 2000 or Windows XP on your wife's old Athlon with 96MB RAM, and see how fast it runs. I'm not even certain if XP would even complete the install process. It helps to make comparisons with comparable items. Running Windows 95 or Win98 on 96MB RAM isn't comparable to running Mac OS X on 256MB RAM. Running Windows 2000 or WinXP is far closer to this.

Practically every venue, I've read about the Mac mini mentions the fact that you should upgrade the RAM to 512MB. I can't think of a single article in exception. Which leads me to believe you deliberately decided not to upgrade (assuming your a regular Slashdot reader, and a tech geek or at least tech addicted). It's silly to shoot yourself in the foot, then complain about the pain. But even still, its probably resolvable by just purchasing a memory upgrade.

Hey, come on, this is Slashdot!

[artemis67]

If you want a faster Mac laptop, just kill Aqua and use the command line!

That means...

[siskbc]

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?

Sure, but the faster the G5's come out, the faster the, ahem, "public beta testing" is over, and the sooner it's safe to buy one! So it would still be great if the thing came out. Of course, I got my powerbook a year ago, so I'm in no hurry.

Not Everyone Can Deal with that.

[OS24Ever]

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.

Re:Not Everyone Can Deal with that.

[NutscrapeSucks]

You know, unlike OS X, you can change the DPI setting in Windows to 120dpi or more (this used to be called "Large Font" mode). That's right, Windows has always been psuedo-resolution independant. Although a small number of apps can have problems.

[Speaking of OS24Ever, OS/2 v2 had some bizarre resolution independant dialogs -- running @ 1280 caused some stuff to appear in huge ~30pt font.]

Re:Not Everyone Can Deal with that.

[OS24Ever]

yeah that's how I fixed it but at the same time that level of resolution in a day to day environment isn't needed either. Kinda like hard drives almost, the size of some of them has gotten to the point of diminishing returns because the actual application of them doesn't require the level of stuff they provide.

Re:Fix the mini first, Apple

[bockelboy]

This is an old, old troll.

Check out
http://www.kottke.org/98/11/my-mac-sucks
to see the same post from 1998, but with a 8600/300mhz with 64 mb of RAM, instead of a Mac Mini.

Do not mod

[lysium]

This fellow is whoring himself in the hopes that his mini-mac referral gets modded up into general display. Do not fall for it.

Speculation on the processor

[anishm]

Quoting the Reg - As yet the new machines' processors are not known, beyond the generic G4 classification. Previous models used the Freescale MPC7447A, clocked at up to 1.5GHz. It would be nice to think the new machines may use that chip's successor, the MPC7448, Freescale's first 90nm G4. However, Apple's specs point to 512KB of L2 cache, as per the 7447A, not the 7448's 1MB.

Re:Eh

[DenDave]

Well I can't speak for the rest of the world but I got the Ibook because of a (december 2004) 800 euro price difference that I simply could not excuse . Now they have taken the price diffrence down to 500 Euro and the hardware upgrade to the p-book means it makes sense. This was a necessary upgrade to the P-book and it is now worth the extra dosh. This being said, for 999 the Ibook is hard to beat.

Two Fingers on the Scrolling Trackpad

[Compulawyer]

Using a second finger changes the functionality of the trackpad. Does this mean people will FINALLY stop complaining about Apple shipping machines with a single button mouse, even though it has a good excuse?

12" is still nVidia only...

[This is outrageous!]

...which has no linux support AFAIK. Sigh...

Looks more and more like the nice way to run Linux apps on those (and no, Fink hasn't ported *everything*) would be Linux-on-Mac -- does this exist yet?

Re:12" is still nVidia only...

[blackomegax]

just so you know, nvidia has linux drivers on their webpage. and they're FAR better than ati at doing linux drivers, for now. ati's excuse is that there is not enough demand to put much effort into it

Re:12" is still nVidia only...

[This is outrageous!]

just so you know, nvidia has linux drivers on their webpage

Not for ppc, do they? (That would be great news.)

Misinformative

[frankie]

The 12" PB comes with 256 on-board + 256 SO-DIMM, upgradeable to 256 + 512 for $75 (or 256 + 1024 for absurd $$$).

The 15" & 17" come with 1x 512 SO-DIMM, upgradeable at outrageous prices. Buy the extra RAM 3rd party; the point is that you don't have to waste the original 512 (unless you really need 2GB).

Re:Misinformative

[TheKidWho]

It was previously outrageous because Apple had not updated their RAM prices for a year, but for the new powerbooks RAM prices arent that bad from Apple.

Maybe Steve is Lurking

[justin12345]

Has anyone else noticed how Apple seems to almost be responding directly to the complaints of /.res lately? They just need to give a 2 button mouse option to confirm my theory...

96 dpi, always

[Dink Paisy]

Apple sells all of their LCD displays at 96 dpi. They claim it is the optimum resolution. Clearly bogus, since I hold my laptop a lot closer to my face than my desktop, but whatever. I find 96 dpi uncomfortably large, and really like my 145 dpi pc laptop. Other people have noted the small fonts, though.

One thing you can do with Windows is adjust the resolution. Windows XP calls 96 dpi standard resolution and 120 dpi high resolution. If you change the DPI setting under display properties->advanced->general->DPI setting, Windows will scale text and graphics to fit your new resolution. It looks pretty ugly, though, since most icons are small raster graphics that look really bad when scaled. Windows Longhorn is supposed to ship with vector graphics to fix that... I just leave it at the default setting, since I like small fonts, even if it means 1 cm on my screen doesn't correspond exactly to 1 cm on paper.

But...

[MachineShedFred]

But these go to eleven...

Airport Extreme card included with the 12-inch

[PrettyBoy_75]

You had to purchase this separately before...

Re:Airport Extreme card included with the 12-inch

[jnd3]

The previous revision (1.33 GHz 12" PowerBook) came with Airport Extreme installed. I think it was the iBooks that lacked AE in their previous generations.

Re:Hmm

[David Rolfe]

If anyone is interested in the noteook my sibling poster is talking about (circular scroll)--

Panasonic W2 ToughBook
http://www.superwarehouse.com/p.cfm?p=404027&CMP=K A18442
http://www.google.com/search?q=panasonic+w2+toughb ook

A little lighter, smaller and slower than a PowerBook, but cost competititive, I guess. Synaptics trackpads can be found on many Wintel portables and can all use the circular scroll.

If weight isn't an issue, I'd say the PowerBook is a better deal.

Re:Eh

[wankledot]

Actually both sides of the powerbook are covered in ports.

Re:Unequal Articles under Slashdot

[MoneyT]

because no one actualy gives a shit about Dell computers, and thus no one bothered to submit the story?

stop the presses--Steve J. has sneezed!!!

[codguy]

Jeez, it seems like every single hardware/software update that Apple produces gets a Slashdot posting. I know Apple is cool, but there are also plenty of other things happening in the techsphere/geeksphere...

Are story submissions to Slashdot so poor that we must resort to this??? Wait, wait--maybe I really don't want to know the answer to this question...

Re:stop the presses--Steve J. has sneezed!!!

[WMD_88]

Apple doesn't update their hardware very often. That's why.

No, it's really not

[System.out.println()]

This is something I've never seen before, actually. Apple's new trackpad works differently than other scrolling trackpads, which set aside an area to be used to scroll. The Powerbook scroller detects that you are pressing two fingers rather than one, and uses that to decide whether to scroll.

Re:No, it's really not

[nottsp1]

Is this something that can be implemented in software alone? ie: whacking the new trackpad drivers into the old albooks? Or is the underlying structure of the trackpad different? Anybody?

Re:No, it's really not

[klui]

Definitely. This feature is another perfect example of Apple doing things through software rather than making things complicated/limited using hardware--invoking a "gee, why didn't I think of that?". All the PC drivers that set aside an area of the trackpad for scrolling capability (and HP's physical reserved area) look like kludges after checking out Apple's implementation. Of course, if you only have one finger and one hand, you're SOL and can't use it.

Re:No, it's really not

[System.out.println()]

Of course, if you only have one finger and one hand, you're SOL and can't use it.

At least you won't have any trouble with a one-button mouse. :-)

On a side note... do you think this is implemented wholly in software? Will I be able to retrofit my Titanium PBook with it? :)

Re:No, it's really not

[mr100percent]

Recent PowerBook models (most Aluminum case models) have had "W-Enhanced" pads that can detect two-fingers on the pad simultaneously. One driver expert suspects that this is what Apple is using. If this is the case there is a chance that Apple will be able to offer this feature on most Aluminum models.

Re:No, it's really not

[mr100percent]

Note my cousin post, it apparently will only be availible for the Aluminum 'books as they have the new trackpad hardware.

Re:No, it's really not

[klui]

On the software comment, it was only speculation. Sorry.

Not for me.

[cjsnell]

I'm a two-toed sloth, you insensitive clod!

Still a slow bus

[eadint]

I was about to purchase one until i looked at the bus specs. i love powerbooks im writing this on one now. but you could have a 1thz processor and still have a slow computer. when i do spend the money i want a PB with at least a 500Mhz bus, that would really allow you to use the computer and the graphics card. otherwize you are stuck with a slow computer no matter how you slice it.

Re:Hmm

[TheRaven64]

Command is not the key that simulates a right button click, control is. And there is only one control key - on the left hand side of the keyboard. This makes it quite difficult for left-handed people to control-click - they either need to use their right hand on the trackpad, or cross their hands. I'm quite surprised no one at Apple has picked up on this.

Monday?

[mbbac]

The odd thing about this is that the new notebooks weren't released on a Tuesday.

forget the G5, but give us dual-proc G4's ..

[torpor]

.. in a nice little portable that runs at 2ghz or so ..

there's still *PLENTY* of room in the G4, folks. 64-bit computing is fine and all, but you only need 64-bit if you need it, and very few people actually really do.

i love my current pbg4 setup (17"/2G RAM/100G HD/OSX+linux dualboot) and i have to say i'm extremely happy to have a 'workstation-class' laptop, finally, after 20 years. 2gigs of RAM, nice fancy graphics, y'know .. it wasn't so long ago that this was a 'SGI or Sun[Dec,Alpha*etc] -only' kind of spec.

a *loooooooooooooooot* of good software can still run just fine, on 32-bit CPU's like the G4 (Altivec is lovely, thanks!), with a lot of RAM, in a tight package like the pb's lovely flatness/completeness represents.

someone, please, show me a laptop thats as nice and comfy and 'lifestyle'-integrating as a powerbook, with a processor in it other than x86-blah, and i'll switch. but until then, there just isn't anything on the market as hacking-friendly as the pbg4's are ..

and while i say "2gigs is still a lot, buckwheat" yes .. i've been saying 'x'-k is 'a lot' since 6k was a 'lot', so i think i'm qualified to have an opinion at least.. i've spent an awful lot of money on RAM in my lifetime, and i'm not still using all of it, darn it ..

just, Apple, Mr. Jobs, please .. give us a dual-proc G4 powerbook in the next release, at least, same lovely form-factor, maybe better batteries, try to ignore the "always have more"-zealots, pay some attention to us 'just have refined goodity that is -not- x86'-dudes, like you always do:

my current computer is a powerbook, my next computer will probably be a powerbook, my last one was as well, so there you go ...

[tho i'm definitely -not- an apple zealot! os9, ack-spit blech! pre-G4 hardware, raooulpH! spit!]

Re:forget the G5, but give us dual-proc G4's ..

[Milton Waddams]

Amen to that!

AFAIK, the G5 generates less heat than the P4 so Apple could put out a G5 laptop tomorrow if they wanted but would mean a hotter, louder and bigger laptop which is not Apple's game.

The dual G4 processors would be really nice in the Mac mini, eMac and PB lines.

My iBook's running with a 933MHz G4 and it's hunky dory except for video encoding (which it really isn't made for).

Re:forget the G5, but give us dual-proc G4's ..

[Nexum]

The G4 is fine, but that's not the problem, it's the anemic 167Mhz bus which is the bottleneck with the G4s.

Re:Dude, it was a joke

[pmc]

It was a joke? Wow - I wish I had your sense of humour.

Do you do Bar Mitzvahs too?

Re:They'll know anyway.

[Gob Blesh It]

If you've got a heart of steel, you can do what I did: pound it back into shape with the blunt end of a screwdriver. Don't forget to turn it off first. :)

Re:Eh

[RackinFrackin]

Not the 12 inch. All ports on the 12 inch are on the left.

How is this news worthy?

[Compenguin]

I know that all the mac zealots have been hanging here since apple.slashdot.org opened up, but how is this news worthy? Or at least how is this front page worthy? Would it be a front page story if dell updated their laptop line? It probably wouldn't make the site at all. So how is this different?

Re:How is this news worthy?

[NatasRevol]

How would you know, among the 4765 different deals, when Dell updated their laptop line?

Re:How is this news worthy?

[Hadlock]

Because mac owners, unlike the majority of Dell owners, have brand loyalty. If you're a 50 year old male with a mid-life crisis, and own a 1999 Corvette (C5), you're probably very curious about the 2005 model (C6), as you're likely to consider trading in the old model for the new. Same goes for the Apple owners. Or harley davidson owners, etc. You'll note that most of the replies indicate current or previous ownership of specifically the Powerbook line. I own a powerbook, and read this thread. I don't read the iBook or powermac update threads, as I don't own one, nor do I plan on buying one.

I respectfully disagree.

[Johnny Mozzarella]

Design flaws of the Ti Book:
-cracking hinges(fixed with a single wide hinge)
-chipping Ti paint(Aluminum doesn't need painting)
-Slot loading drives jammed more often (none so far)
-keyboard marks up the screen when closed (so far so good with Al PowerBook)

The Al PowerBooks feel much better to me.

Re:I respectfully disagree.

[Glendale2x]

I've had the case on my TiBook replaced three times under AppleCare because of the cracking issue - each time they explained that "normal wear and tear or abuse is not covered" to which I responded "you mean I can't open to cover?" They would take it back with the catch that if they determined it was abused, they'd charge me. However, every time they replaced the entire case (body, bottom case, screen) for free. This also fixed the paint chipping issue.

The case design on the TiBook is not very robust. Otherwise, it's been a good machine. And every year, it looks like it's brand new.

Re:I respectfully disagree.

[Johnny Mozzarella]

I've heard rumors the PowerBook G5(code name Inferno) has a self-healing case. I think its done using nanobots that mend the carbon-fiber shell. ;^)

Re:I respectfully disagree.

[HeghmoH]

I dropped my TiBook and it cracked like crazy. This eventually lead to its untimely demise, as the cracks lead to structural failure and eventually (a year and a half later) destroyed the motherboard.

I haven't had the occasion to drop its aluminum replacement, but the thing is built like a tank. (But a really light tank.) I think it would take a three foot drop to the floor much better than my poor old TiBook did.

Re:I respectfully disagree.

[corporatemutantninja]

I think this thread is probably dead, but I'll clarify anyway that I wasn't talking about the engineering of the TiBook (I had the same paint chipping problem) but the design/aesthetics/feel of the thing. I wish they could have fixed the engineering flaws without modifying the dimensions/layout/design.

Finally a Superdrive update

[saha]

I'm glad they finally updated their 'Superdrive'. It was getting embarrassingly outdated, when competitors from the PC laptop realm had DVD±RW with DVD-RAM drive drives. I have a Powerbook 15" with the old DVD-R Superdrive and had to admit I was a bit envious that a professor who's new Toshiba laptop had DVD±RW and DVD-RAM drive capabilities. Although, I still feel my Powerbook is better form factor, thinner and enjoy running OS X better than running a Toshiba with XP. I can't figure out why Apple can't offer a DVD-RAM solution as well, like the Toshiba or MCE., being a member of the DVD consortium. I'd be willing to pay an extra $80-$50 to get DVD-RAM capabilities in my next machine. Better than paying MCE $249 for their replacement drive. MCE new drive doesn't have DVD-RAM support but offers DVD-R double layer instead, which makes it a little better than Apple's new Superdrive offering.

Re:Finally a Superdrive update

[blackmonday]

Well, maybe they don't include DVD-RAM because no one cares about it?

My powerbook came with a combo drive but I bought a Panasonic drive (UJ series) from Newegg for 100 bucks, and installed it as a "superdrive". The installation was painless, but you need some tiny screwdrivers. I needed a downloaded (free) driver update to get it working, though. The Panasonic drive supports DVD-RAM and even included a free 4.7GB disc. Why use it when DVD-R is 15 cents a pop now?

Re:Finally a Superdrive update

[harlows_monkeys]

I'm glad they finally updated their 'Superdrive'. It was getting embarrassingly outdated, when competitors from the PC laptop realm had DVD±RW with DVD-RAM drive drives. I have a Powerbook 15" with the old DVD-R Superdrive and had to admit I was a bit envious that a professor who's new Toshiba laptop had DVD±RW and DVD-RAM drive capabilities

Check your drive...it might actually be +/-RW. Apple has included these for quite a while--they just didn't officially support it. My PowerBook from around last Thanksgiving is +/-RW.

You can check with "drutil" in a terminal window.

And if your does not include -RW or +/-RW, note its model number and Google for it, because some of the older drives Apple used can be updated via a third-party firmware update for -RW or +/-RW.

Re:Finally a Superdrive update

[easter1916]

Very cool! That drutil utility is very handy. Thanks!

How much faster than a 15" 1 Ghz?

[antdude]

I have an old 15" 1 Ghz with 512 MB of RAM and Mac OS X 10.2.8 from a few years ago. How much faster is this 1.67 Ghz compared to mine? 10% faster?

Re:How much faster than a 15" 1 Ghz?

[tomcio.s]

Ok, I'll byte.

(1.67-1.00)/1.00 ~ .67, or 67%

So, while your pbook is still quite adequate, much like my TiBook G4 800Mhz is too, the new machine is roughly 67% faster than your machine.
and roughly 108% faster than mine.

Keep in mind the new video cards, faster ram and faster hdd (yours would be 4200rpm, while this is 5400rpm part afaik).

Should you upgrade? No. Wait till next revision with either dual core G4s or G5s.

Re:How much faster than a 15" 1 Ghz?

[antdude]

Wow, that's a lot of speed improvements. Yeah, I wasn't sure to wait for the next generation (e.g., G5) or hold onto my G4. G4 is still fine so far. I am not gaming, etc. Just basic stuff (Web surfing, e-mails, ssh, X11, OpenOffice, etc.).

Re:How much faster than a 15" 1 Ghz?

[tomcio.s]

Then you have plenty of power for years to come. I'd wait until the 2nd or 3rd generation G5 Pbooks come out.

I do photgraphy (along with coding, and some light gaming) my my ti pbook 800mhz and I will be waiting that long.

its super!

[dougnaka]

How can you fall for a name like "superdrives". How does Apple, arguably one of the better marketers in the computer world, come up with, and actually use a name like "superdrive"?

Re:its super!

[phillymjs]

They not only came up with it, they've used it twice for two completely different things.

Once back in the late 80s for their floppy drive that could read and write 800MB and 1.44MB Mac-formatted floppies as well as 720K and 1.44MB DOS-formatted floppies, and again for the drives that can read and write CD and DVD media.

~Philly

Re:its super!

[Computerguy5]

You mean 800 kilobyte, right? =P

but the rumors said...

[sootman]

"Looks like we'll have to wait a little longer for the PowerBook G5."

But, but... but what about the clear .gif? THERE WAS A CLEAR .GIF, DAMMIT!!! From an AD AGENCY! Doesn't that mean ANYTHING?!?!? Arrgh!

Re:Worst Mod EVER

[catwh0re]

It does come with one track pad button though :)
And they're off to troll again about buttons and UIs.

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.

Reasons the Powerbook 12" bests the iBook

[glennrrr]

I've owned 2 iBooks, and think them a great value, but I carry a Powerbook G4 12" now, and the model announced today will be my next primary machine. Why?

• The anodized aluminum shell is much harder to scratch. My white iBook was hideously scratched; my Powerbook barely at all.
• DVI out.
• Spanning video out versus mirroring. Although you can probably hack an iBook's firmware to allow spanning.
• The Keyboard. A Powerbook's keyboard is firm and durable. An iBook's keyboard is squishy and cheap.
• Opening it up. Opening a Powerbook is not fun, but it's mainly a matter of unscrewing screws. An iBook is held together with easily broken and hard to release snaps. I upgraded my hard drive Saturday to a 100GB Momentus, and it was only mildly stressful.
• The clincher. A DVD burning Superdrive as an option. I've put together several DVDs on my 12", and this is the main reason I went with the Powerbook.

Again. I think the iBook is a great little box; but if you have the means, I highly recommend the Powerbook 12".

Re:Reasons the Powerbook 12" bests the iBook

[emilymildew]

Yes, you can hack the firmware.

On a Monday?

[painandgreed]

Apple updated things on a Monday? We knew it was coming quickly because they End Of lifed the earlier models a week and a half ago, but they usually only update on Tuesday.

PRICE drops are what gets me!

[NRP128]

The new features are all well and good, but i just priced a loaded 15" Powerbook with everything i want (add 128 Graphics, subtract DVD-R) for less than $2100 (with student discount) This similar setup on prior models ran me almost $2800.

THAT to me is the selling point. Add on my bluetooth apple keyboard, and ordering another 512MB of memory plus a logitech MX900 from Newegg and i'm friggin set. I have my fully featured powerbook ready to take o nthe world for less tahn 2300, 2400 if i grab an extra battery which i probably will when i order.

now all i have to do is come up with $2400...anybody willing to help a poor college kid live the dream of OSX?

Re:PRICE drops are what gets me!

[Ohreally_factor]

now all i have to do is come up with $2400...anybody willing to help a poor college kid live the dream of OSX?

Well, I'll do my part to help you out. You can knock of about $20, if you buy a 3rd party spare battery. Slightly greater capacity on the Al batteries. More dramatic increases on the Ti and iBook batteries.

Re:PRICE drops are what gets me!

[NRP128]

Thanks for the advice! I was thinking monetary donations but i'll take waht i can get ;)

I knew something was up...

[piecewise]

I knew something was going on. I called Apple yesterday saying I was interested in buying a new PowerBook to replace my 1GHz 12". The guy at Apple assured me that there would be no new PowerBooks until later in the year --- but also offered me a PB with a free SuperDrive upgrade and free hard drive upgrade, plus free shipping. Obviously those deals are not available today.

Nice hardware, but...

[Long-EZ]

The hardware looks nice, but as usual the cost is about 30% higher than a comparable PC. For many people, the Apple ease of use and panache are worth the cost delta.

However, I wish Apple would restrain their marketing department. They often make obviously incorrect statements. In their exuberance to push their products, the Apple marketing weasels continue to lie. One example from the Apple link provided in the original /. article:

Based on the 802.11g standard, AirPort Extreme delivers -- at 54Mbps -- the fastest wireless connection available.

The fastest available, unless you want to count the Netgear WGT624 I'm using or the comparable offering from Linksys, both of which run at 108 Mbps, twice as fast as the Airport Extreme. And Belkin is currently selling pre-802.11n hardware that *really* pumps up the bandwidth.

Remember when Apple claimed the title of fastest processor and got their ass handed to them for telling such a blatant lie? Apple hardware is very nice, and their products are friendly and innovative. Do they need to lie through their teeth to sell their stuff?

Re:Nice hardware, but...

[bgoss]

"The hardware looks nice, but as usual the cost is about 30% higher than a comparable PC." And as usual, the PC crowd chimes in about a HUGE Apple price difference, throws out some incredible percentage, then offers zero proof to back up their claim. Perhaps, Long-EZ, you'd like to rectify your post by including some evidence of comparable laptop hardware from a major PC manufacturer that is 30% less than Apples prices. I'm sure you don't want to be compared with Apple's marketing department.

Re:Nice hardware, but...

[Long-EZ]

And as usual, the PC crowd chimes in about a HUGE Apple price difference, throws out some incredible percentage, then offers zero proof to back up their claim. Perhaps, Long-EZ, you'd like to rectify your post by including some evidence of comparable laptop hardware from a major PC manufacturer that is 30% less than Apples prices.

Sorry, I didn't think documentation was required. I thought everyone, PC and Mac alike, would have agreed that Mac systems are about 30% higher than comparable PC systems.

I won't waste a lot of time trying to find a PC with exactly the same configuration as the 15" PowerBook.

Go to www.shopping.hp.com. Click on the $799 Weekly Special notebook. Click on the Customize button and tweak it to be as close to the 15" PowerBook as possible. Here's what I produced:

Operating System: Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Home Edition with SP2 (OK, that's definitely inferior, but we are talking PCs. I put Linux on mine.)
Processor: AMD Athlon(TM) 64 3000+ 1.80 GHz
Display: 15.4" WXGA Widescreen (1280x800), slightly nicer than the PowerBook
Graphics Card: 64MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(TM) 4 440 Go + 1394
Memory: 512MB DDR SDRAM (2x256MB)
Hard Drive: 80 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
Primary CD/DVD Drive: 8X DVD +/- RW/R & CD-RW Combo Drive
Networking: 54g(TM) Integ. Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN & Bluetooth
Price: $1,299.00 (as low as $37/mo+)

At $1300, the comparable HP is 35% cheaper, so you're right. My 30% estimate wasn't completely correct.

I think you went off a bit on a knee jerk reaction to my Mac comments. Sort of like me when people start defending Microsoft.

I like Macs. I talked my brother into getting one several years ago, and the next two were completely his idea. Macs have loyal customers for a good reason.

The new Mac Mini looks pretty cool, but then again, I liked the Power Cube and those weren't a very successful Mac product. I think the Mac Mini will be a success though, partially because it offers Mac ease of use and reliability at a more competitive price for a change. I'm glad to see Apple courting the lower end market. Hopefully, that'll win them some entry level customers, which would be good considering the loyalty that Macs engender.

Keep repeating to yourself... "It's a computer, not a religion."
:^)

Re:Worst Mod EVER

[Total_Wimp]

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

Sensor and warranty issues

[friendscallmelenny]

Anyone else think the acceleration sensor may play a role in warranty claims?

Mac user Jeff S.> Dude, my mac has stopped working...
Apple tech> I see you have had two acceleration events in the last week, abuse is not covered...

Re:Hmm

[Hadlock]

uhhh.. what? I'm right handed, use the trackpad with my left hand, it only takes a second to tap the ctrl key with my ring finger and the button with my thumb. Once you right click, the contextual menu should stay open. I may have larger hands than you, but I think they're pretty average.

New trackpad, or just new trackpad driver?

[harlows_monkeys]

The Synaptics trackpad Apple uses supports scrolling, but Apple's software uses it in a mode that doesn't enable that.

So I wonder if they actually have a new trackpad, or if they have simply updated their software?

BTW, you can get third party drivers to enable the features that Apple isn't using, and more. For example, SideTrack gives you vertical and horizontal scrolling, corner taps for more buttons, and more.

Re:New trackpad, or just new trackpad driver?

[aventius]

I've used Sidetrack for over a year now. I love it. Now I can't stand using a Powerbook without it installed. You can also set up certain corners as specific buttons. For instance, I can set up the top left corner to act as a right-click button.

Re:New trackpad, or just new trackpad driver?

[dreamer-of-rules]

Amen to Sidetrack!

I use the vertical scroll along the right, Expose mapped to the top corners, and middle click to the bottom left. A normal tap is the left click, and the physical button is the right click. Combined with a dvorak/querty layout, it also means that friends and family quickly learn to leave my laptop alone. :)

Oops, Didn't grab the whole quote

[lullabud]

In my parent post I meant to quote the next paragraph as well, so here's the whole quote:

As we now know [Recent Details] the PU is a 64bit "Power Architecture" processor. Power Architecture is a catch all term IBM have been using for a while to describe both PowerPC and POWER processors. Currently there's only 3 CPUs which fit this description: POWER5, POWER4 and the PowerPC 970 (aka G5) which itself is a derivation of the POWER4.

The IBM press release indicates the Cell processor is "Multi-thread, multi-core" but since the APUs are almost certainly not multi-threaded it looks like the PU may be based on a POWER5 core - the very same core I expect to turn up in Apple machines in the form of the G6 [G6] in the not too distant future, IBM have acknowledged such a chip is in development but as if to confuse us call it a "next generation 970".

Price Drop

[harlows_monkeys]

Looks like they also dropped prices. The base 17" model is now 2699, where it used to be 2799. Furthermore, a 5400 RPM drive is now standard, and that used to be a $100 upgrade, and 128 MB VRAM is now standard, and that also was a $100 upgrade. Configure the new PowerBook with an 80 gig drive to match what the old one had, and that's $100 off, so basically it is now $2599 for the new vs. $2999 for the old.

Re:A sudden motion sensor?

[daquake]

It doesn't require a three button mouse. I use a two button and it's fine. I can even use a one button (as they use to teach on the learning DVDs) and I can get by quite quickly.

iBelieve

[simpl3x]

You have shown yourself to be untrue to the iFaith...

Build to order questions

[yet another coward]

Are there any problems with choosing build to order (BTO) options in terms of quality or warranty? I am considering buying a 15" PowerBook. 512 MB is too little memory. Should I get 1 GB through BTO? Should I buy a 512 MB stick elsewhere and install myself?

The video memory upgrade looks tempting, too. Is the difference noticeable?

The upgrade to a 100 GB hard drive seems way overpriced.

Finally, are there any adapters or accessories that are so useful that I might as well buy them with the laptop?

Re:Build to order questions

[easter1916]

Buy a second 512MB stick and install it yourself -- it's very easy, and likely cheaper than purchasing direct from Apple.

I've ordered two BTO Apple laptops, an iBook G3/600 and a PowerBook G4 17" 1GHz, and haven't had quality issues with either (apart from the motherboard problem with the iBook).

The hard drives are easy enough to replace too. I put an Hitachi 7200RPM 60GB drive in my PB, there was a noticeable speed bump from the 4200RPM stock drive.

My personal recommendation on "killer" accessories -- get a Logitech MX900 Bluetooth mouse... many programmable buttons, better resolution and response than the Apple wireless mouse, looks better, very comfortable to use. I programmed mine to activate Expose, very handy.

I'm underwhelmed by these updated PBs... the only things they have that my PB doesn't have is .67GHz extra processor cycles, 64MB extra video RAM (presumably a faster video card overall, but I am not a gamer so who cares?) and the IBM-inspired motion detector to park drive heads if it's dropped. The PBs are *awesome* laptops, I was just hoping for more... not a G5, just... more!

Hope this helps.

Re:Build to order questions

[yet another coward]

Thank you for your reply. Is it easy to get to the memory slots? I imagine so. I'm just checking. Do you know whether there are any warranty problems? Apple seems like a fair company in honoring their warranties unless I actually cause the problem with my upgrade attempt.

The new PBs have 5400 rpm drives. My current Intel based laptop has a 5400 rpm drive, and it's passable.

I agree that the changes are underwhelming. I think I am ready to switch for two reasons. First, I doubt the line will see any big changes for a few months. I'm unlikely to get caught just before the great new product appears. Second, the prices dropped a little.

Re:Build to order questions

[easter1916]

Yes, it's very easy to get to the memory slots -- in the 17", remove the battery, unscrew a couple of small screws to remove a small metal plate and there are the RAM slots. No warranty issues that I am aware of -- they actually supply memory installation instructions with the PB.

I can say, without a doubt, that the PB is the coolest machine I've ever used, in terms of performance, user experience, design, sheer good looks, etc...

Re:Unequal Articles under Slashdot

[MoneyT]

Plenty of reason to give a shit about a speed bump. There are always articles about new processors from the various processor vendors. Hell there was an article about overclocking reaching a new limit.

Re:Eh

[notthe9]

I don't know if I'd call these laptops underpowered, but Averatec makes x86 laptops which go for around $900 that are slightly thinner and lighter with pretty comparable tech specs (XP-M 2200+, 512MiB, 60GiB, CD-RW/DVD, 11g) that I would say seems fairly comparable to the 12" powerbook.

Different in several ways, but certainly competitive.

PowerBooks are not mainstream computers

[Johnny Mozzarella]

>firewire 800 is still not in mainstream use, and the same goes for gigabit ethernet.

PowerBooks are not mainstream computers. They are "Power" Books. They are designed for professionals who need powerful computers. All PowerMacs and PowerBooks have GigE and FW800 except the 12" PB. I think these are both important to professionals.

Prove it

[e2ka]

Quite a few comments (usually modded troll) commenting how the powerbooks are overpriced, underpowered laptops. I'm curiious what x86 laptop they'd reccomend for the same price that would have so much more power. However, I'm not interested in a 2" thick 10 lb. "desktop replacement", thanks.

but what about iHeatSink

[EccentricAnomaly]

Who still expected a G5 Powerbook any time this year. TOO MUCH HEAT, PEOPLE.

But what about those pictures taken in the French elevator of the aluminum backpack and hose connected to that laptop... clearly this is the new prototype G5..

Correction: 64 MB

[dn15]

Oops! I meant that the iBook has 32 MB of video memory while the PowerBook has 64.

This is why I like my old T20

[aquarian]

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.

This is why I like my old T20. It has a 14" screen with a *native* 1024x768 resolution. Most websites are designed to this. Even then some of the fonts they use are ridiculously small, in an attempt to be arty.

BTW I'm 40 but my eyes haven't changed at all since my 20s. I watch younger people at their high resolution screens, faces all screwed up, squinting. They'll have wrinkles for sure when they're my age, as well as bad eyes.

Join the ADC for a discount

[Rayooz]

FYI -- If you're planning to buy, consider getting a Select ADC membership. It costs $500 and you'll get discounts on one hardware purchase.

I just saved $700 (net $200 after membership) on a 17" PB with 2GB RAM.

Plus, you get access to Tiger betas & all the fun stuff that comes with.

Re:A sudden motion sensor?

[kristjansson]

Don't forget Maya, Lightwave, and pretty much all other 3d modellers on the market for the mac...

Apple patent

[Thu25245]

Apple Patent article

IBM began including a similar feature on its ThinkPad notebook line in October 2003. Apple's patent application was filed in June 2003, but it wasn't published until last week.

I doubt Apple would actually try to sue IBM for infringment, even if it does get the patent. Apple needs its G5 chips too badly.

Bluetooth 2.0?

[generationxyu]

Does this mean you can get bluesnarfed at higher speeds and longer range?

Re:Still got the RAM wrong

[netringer]

I sincerely hope the Mac mini falls flat on its ass after people start realizing how slow it is with only 256 MB and a 42000 rpm disk for swap. Maybe then Apple will learn their lesson. OS X is awesome, but not in 256 or less RAM. In that case, it is absolute hell.

I went to the Apple Store yesterday with the GF and bought her 20" iMac G5. We went for single 512MB DIMM. I decided the $75 was worth me not having to chase RAM from an outside source and opening the case right away to install it.

I wandered over to drive the Mac mini and thought it performed perfectly OK. Then I checked the system. It was the upscale 1.4GHz CPU version and had 512MB RAM. Even Apple doesn't want you to see how the base version performs on 256MB, which I think proves my instincts about the Mac Mini were right.

Very accurate...

[Paisley Phrog]

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. ;-)

paneers for powerbooks?

[gimpboy]

This is great. I've been waiting for this for a while. My primary mode of transportation is a bicycle, and I've been pretty happy with my paneers from jandd. However the 15" powerbook doesnt really fit inside of the paneers I currently have. Now that I'm getting a powerbook, I was wondering if anyone could suggest any paneers suitable? In case the question comes up, I'm not interested in a messenger bag.

Re:paneers for powerbooks?

[easter1916]

Yes, that's what he means... I'm guessing he's Dutch, what with the bicycle talk, and the misspelling of pannier looks like a Dutch word. Of course, I don't speak Dutch, so this is probably completely wrong.

Re:paneers for powerbooks?

[gimpboy]

Sorry. Yes you are correct, I ment panniers.

Re:small difference for the price

[glennrrr]

If you look at the header of the model table you will see one listed as:
12-inch Combo Drive 1.5GHz
and the other listed as:
12-inch SuperDrive 1.5GHz

So the major difference is the more expensive one can burn DVDs. Plus it comes with a slightly larger hard drive.

Re:Overpriced feature

[a7244270]

Surely a "two by four" is any length of timber that is 2 INCHES by 4 INCHES in section.

Actually two by fours are not two by four, as I learned the hard way the first time I tried building a custom cage for my pet snake.

Re:Still got the RAM wrong

[azpenguin]

Doesn't prove a thing. I went to the local Apple store, and they had two Minis running. So I checked the systems - both had the 1.25GHz CPU and 256MB RAM. They ran beautifully.

Re:Still got the RAM wrong

[TheKidWho]

I dunno, but I don't think OS X runs like absolute hell with 256ram. I was running a g3 ibook with OS x.2 and 128mb ram and it was ok, when I jumped up to 256ram it ran very very well. With X.3 and 256ram on my 700mhz G3, OS X runs decently well, true it starts to bog down when I have 7 Camino tabs open and iTunes playing, and adium open, and texedit running, and my terminal running, and xcode + IDE builder running. But it works, and its not exactly absolute hell. Im sure though with 512mb ram this ibook would run even better, but its not absolute hell right now.

Re:Unequal Articles under Slashdot

[Pascal Sartoretti]

What about articles about new HP or Dell notebooks?

Next time that HP upgrades its notebooks, I propose that Slashdot runs a story about it; so that we can see if it generates 600+ comments in a few hours...

Steve Jobs said

[melted]

That other companies make LCD displays using panels that didn't meet the Apple quality standard. Reading about QC issues with Dell monitors on all kinds of forums, I think he wasn't lying.

Plus, Dell monitors look like ass.

Phew!

[indianropeburn]

Thank goodness they haven't updated the PowerMac G5 line yet. I would hate having my drool glands start again after having just purchased a dual 2GHz a month ago.

Re:iMac G5?

[Mr. No Skills]

The probably need to slim it down more than slightly. That iMac is thicker than it seems, especially when compared to a lap top. It's got a lot of fans and heat sinks in it too.

That being said - very slick design.

Re:Still got the RAM wrong

[netringer]

Doesn't prove a thing. I went to the local Apple store, and they had two Minis running. So I checked the systems - both had the 1.25GHz CPU and 256MB RAM. They ran beautifully.

Point taken. It was an erroneous assumption on my part on partial evidence.

Maybe it proves the staff at the Woodfield (IL) Apple Store thought the base model Mac Mini wouldn't perform well enough to demonstrate. I guess I should have the checked the systems on other floor demo Mac Minis in that store to see if any were base configs.

Re:Worst Mod EVER

[IronicCheese]

....and finally, Amiga users are the Coast Guard.

They keep to themselves, are cool in their own way, but they suffer from being a little defensive and overly senstive because everyone always forgets about them.

Re:Answer: ergonomics

[mrchaotica]

Instead of offsetting the keyboard, what if they just left it in the center and stuck the numeric keypad next to it? I think there's almost enough space...

It'd look weird and asymmetric, but it would still be ergonomic.

Ever heard of Ucontrol?

[redwoodtree]

UControl Mapping control to caps lock since you were in diapers.... .... well, not really, but you get the idea.

Scrolling Trackpad for older Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Online Store Bug?

[SpottedKuh]

I just tried customizing an order for one of the new 15" Powerbooks. I'm not sure if I encountered a bug in Apple's Online Store, or if I have a misunderstanding about what VRAM is.

If you customize the high-end 15" Powerbook (the 1.67 GHz one) and choose to upgrade the Video Memory to 128M, you get the following printout for what your custom order will be:

- 512MB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 SO-DIMM
- 80GB Ultra ATA drive @ 5400 rpm
- 8x SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
- 1.67GHz PowerPC G4 w/128MB VRAM dual
- AirPort Extreme Card
- Backlit Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
- 1.67GHz PowerPC G4
- ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (64MB DDR)
- 15.2-inch TFT Display

But aren't the two lines saying "128MB VRAM" and "Radeon...64MB" contradictory?

Rarely _next_ Tuesday

[Ohreally_factor]

No, that would be s specific tuesday. Apple releases new kit on a more abstract generalized Platonic ideal Tuesday.

I'm afraid we'll have to wait until MWSF. (Note: I didn't say which MWSF!)

Re: No... WWDC

[EatingPie]

Apple has NO presence at MacWorld Boston. Jobs now uses the WWDC to make major mid-year announcements.

Though in this case, the timing may be dictated more by technology than marketing...

It's all guesswork at this point, though I will be HUGELY surpried/disapointed if the G5 PB misses a summer release.

-Pie

Re:Overpriced feature

[Ohreally_factor]

Welcome to the wonder world of of nominal dimensions of dressed lumber. =)

Re:Hmm

[tricorn]

Hey, how'd I get logged out? Anyway, responding to my own post, Shift-scrollwheel DOES do horizontal scrolling! Wow, I should have played around more with it before posting!

Re:Fix the mini first, Apple

[tricorn]

Mac G5 (dual 1.8) with a couple Maxtor 250-300GB SATA drives - transferring files between them I get easily over 10MB/sec (which is rather startling when I consider that my first computer, a Lisa, had a total of 10MB of disk space).

Re:Moderators on crack

[ScooterComputer]

Learn how to properly compare prices. First off, you bundled Office with the Dell. AppleWorks isn't MS Office. -$339.

Plus that price includes three years onsite warrant. bzzzzzt. Can't get that with Apple...not without AppleCare. And Apple's idea of "on site" is where you put your computer in the cardboard box that they send.

Heap on the Dell coupons that any Google monkey can find on the web and take another couple of hundred bucks off.

Finally, I'll preemptively dismiss the "you need to add Windows XP Pro" argument. Windows XP Home doesn't work on an Active Directory network. Neither does 10.3 very well. So it is wash...XP Pro = $79. ADmit Mac ~$79.

Re:Worst Mod EVER

[Ohreally_factor]

That's the funniest and fairly apt set of comparisons I've seen, especially wrt us Mac Zealots.

I would like to point out that there are certain Windows users that could be compared to lifers. (Both in the sense of being careerists and to the life sentence).

Also, there is a subset of Linux (excuse me, I mean GNU/Linux) users that are perhaps even more wild eyed and extreme than your worst Mac Zealot. If we were comparing OSes to religions, they'd be jihadists for certain. (I'm sure some Mac Zealots could qualify for this as well.)

Anyway, thanks for cracking me up.

Re:+1 flaimbate!

[kikta]

Actually, it's called pride. Not something I'd expect someone who can't be bothered to spellcheck when talking trash to understand.

Re:"Does anyone really need this?"

[evolutionaryLawyer]

Hmm... There is alot to be said for the idea that alot of the processor power is taken up by bloated code. They can get away with it because Intel and AMD keep making faster chips. CPU manufacturers aren't making faster chips so you can run better software, they are making faster chips so you feel a need to replace the one you already got. They are like GE, they don't wanna make the proverbial lightbulb that never goes out...

As a Marine...

[kikta]

I must say that you've come up with a pretty apt description. I've never realised it before, but Mac users are very much like Marines when it comes to defending the honor of their beloved Corps... uh, Computer.

Now I finally know just how annoying we are. ;-)

SideTrack vs. uControl

[kingLatency]

I tried both and I ended up preferring SideTrack. I wanted a solution that was equivalent to what I'd seen on PC notebooks and this was it. I haven't had stability problems.

Dual link DVI

[drsmithy]

Does nyone know if this would allow running two LCD panels off a single DVI port, as some regular video cards allow, or do they use some other technological trickery ?

Re:Answer: ergonomics

[mrchaotica]

Above the keyboard, like on the 12"?

Re:Hmm

[aceadean]

If I were the guy who wrote this... http://www.ragingmenace.com/ I would be pissed Adam

Try full-size SUVs in the suburbs?

[ianscot]

At the same time, it's a kind of sad testament to the power of ego in human life.

How does that rank next to buying a new video card to get better frame rates in the latest shooter that you can already run?

We can think of around a bajillion worse testaments to ego. People are driving around in cars that cost them several grand more than what they needed for no reason, paying huge insurance premiums, and getting godawful mileage. White supremacists are out there thinking the "whole problem with this country today" has to do with treating anyone else like a human being with rights. People are installing hideous pop songs as ring tones on their Palm Phones, which they don't actually use to store much of anything but phone numbers. Oh, the humanity!

Don't be too hard on yourself, kid.

Re:Try full-size SUVs in the suburbs?

[daviddennis]

Oh, I'm not putting myself down. I just think it's funny.

But I did buy a fancy new video card to get better frame rates on Apple Motion, the fancy new compositing application. This is something I'm making a living with, so I was willing to pay more than the cost of a Mac Mini for it.

Sadly, frame rates have barely budged. Turns out Motion just doesn't handle large amounts of on-screen text gracefully. There's an improvement, but it's not the huge one I thought it would be for my $595 (Nvidia Ultra DDL).

But I suppose I do have bragging rights.

Not much good since I don't play (or like) computer games.

D

Re:Great, but they still need to fix it

[Stu Charlton]

1. Sure, more bus speed good.
2. Pentium M's are only now approaching 2 GHz
3. Eh, what competition might that be? The best all around competitor to the PB lineup, imho, is the Dell D600 and D800, in terms of performance, screen, weight, etc. My D800 lasts around 3 hours. My powerbook 17-inch 1.33 usually lasted about the same for the first year of its life, but now due to use it's down to a bit over 2 hours.
4. Don't be petty.

A contrast of two laptops:

My PB runs Oracle 10g and J2EE app servers at similar speeds to my D800. I find it handles full memory situations much more gracefully, yet my PB has only 1 gb ram vs. my D800's 2 gb.

On the other hand, Eclipse is faster on my D800 due to Windows SWT optimizations. And my D800 has a faster hard drive (7200 rpm), which is definitely noticable.

On the video front, the Powerbook's Radeon 9600 w/ 64 MB seems to play World of Warcraft faster than the GeForce FX 5200Go w/ 32 MB in my D800. Given the new powerbooks have a full ATI 9700 w/ 128 megs, I'd say the new one would play games even better.

Is the PBG4 "f'ing slow"? Not at all. It's not a dual G5, by any means, but I get as much done with it as my D800, and more, because I truly miss the interface when I'm in XP.

huh?

[Scudsucker]

When are they going to get some graphics cards that can do some serious screen resolutions? I've heard all of the 100dpi crap, but leave the decision to the end user as to what display mode to use. Even the crappiest Dell Inspirion 8600 can do 1920 x 1200 pixels resolution and has a graphics card w/ 128 MB of RAM.

Where'd you get that from? From Apple's Powerbook specs page:

• Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports up to 1024 x 768 pixels on the built-in display and
• up to 2048 x 1536 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors

And that's for the 12" model. The 17" supports 2560 x 1600.

Anyone seen any reviews?

[alschmid]

has anyone seen any reviews as to concerning the rapid motion sensoring or the scroll function?