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New iBooks 'Any Day Now'
teewurstmann writes "Thinksecret reports that 'sources have confirmed that Apple's consumer laptop will receive a long overdue refresh very soon, possibly as early as this week.' They speculate that the new iBooks might have a widescreen display.
I sure hope they are right! I've been waiting to buy one of those suckers for half a year now!"
But will they have the new fast, low-power chips that IBM recently announced?
Can they make any significant CPU-upgrade at all? The iBooks are already close to the PowerBook, and if they dont upgrade the PowerBooks the difference will be insignificant.
I hope for more RAM and lower price. The current CPUs are fast enough, and I dont want any more heat/less battery time.
The iBook will have to wait another year for the Intel CPUs - they are probably the last ones (along with the eMac) to switch from G4.
I agree.
I think Apple's screen quality is surrounded in a lot of hype. I'm a real Mac die-hard these days, but I don't think the screens live up to what I've heard. I remember people claiming the iBook and PowerBook screens were amazingly "bright and crisp". Okay, the color accuracy is amazing, but bright? My iBook is not particularly bright at full brightness, and neither are any of the PowerBooks I've looked after or worked on. Put it this way, my father's Acer (avoid with a barge pole) has a much brighter and crisper screen than any Apple notebook I've seen. Even better are those Sony glare-free "coated" TFTs, which have insanely bright and vivid colors.
Don't get me wrong, I love it when Apple announces a product update.
But with Widescreens, there's now even less difference between the iBook and PowerBook.
Both already have G4 CPUs
Both have Superdrives
Both have DVI out
I know there are some minor arch differences, but they're getting a little too close for comfort.
"Prosumers." You know, people who think they have to spend $600 more to get features like dual-monitor support that Apple cripples out of the iBook*.
(Posted from a 12" PowerBook)
* Apparently you have to hack an iBook to get its graphics card to do something it was built to do.
For more information, click here.
The "article" talks about revisions to the 14" line, and possibly a new 15" line. I really hope the 12" line doesn't go though. A lot of us bought iBooks because they're a lot smaller and cheaper than comparable PCs at that size. 12" is ideal for flights, carrying around like a book, and just throwing in your bag wherever you want to go. By all means, increase the res of the 12" (1024x768 is a let down), but don't ditch the line, because its compactness makes it useful. Whereas the 14"? It has the same res.. so a waste of money.
I'd assume that the build cycle on laptops is pretty long - you're designing the whole enclosure and all of its parts to work tightly together, pun intended.
If the holdup was a chipset, it's likely that they've been sitting on the final design for a long time now. To scrap it at this point would cost a ton of money, especially since it's been what, ten months since the last ibooks came out?
And finally, When are the Intel-based Macs due? 2006? 2007? It's not worth delaying a product launch that long just to wait for the new architecture, especially since nobody's heard anything about Intel-based *books yet.
Yep, but the hack isn't hard and sometimes I wonder if it was disabled for another reason. It seems that people who used the hack had more frequent issues with the logic board.
i really hope you're not talking about those shiny, glare prone, xbrite screens? those things are awful.
- tristan
Yes, Thinksecret has gotten stuff right in the past, they've also blown it a couple times.
Importantly, they have blown it pretty consistently since they got sued for misappropriating trade secrets.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
I would have bought an iBook instead of my Powerbook, for instance, had Apple offered a widescreen display.
Yep. Someone at Apple still cries themselves to sleep at night over that lost iBook sale. Wait a sec, you bought a Powerbook. What did Apple lose on this deal?
The iBook, as well as Apple's whole consumer line, has to straddle the price point of being only slightly more expensive than cheapo PCs and not being too much less than the lucrative Power*** line.
Apple really would much rather have all of their customers purchase high margin Powerbooks. The consumer systems cannot be allowed to cut into that too deeply.
I can see the new iBooks shipping with a slight processor speed upgrade (1.42GHz) and 512MB RAM standard. There could also be a HDD size upgrade (40GB and 80GB). Widescreen isn't out of the question but probably won't happen. I can't see a video upgrade from the ATi 9200 while some PBs are still shipping with the crappy Go5600.
My 12" Powerbook G4 (purchased in September), is completely unusable if there is sunlight within my field of vision - I literally can't even see if there's something on the screen unless I shade my eyes. If I am using it, it has to be indoors and out of the sun (which sucks because my desk faces my window to avoid glare on the screen).
Fantastic machine, mediocre LCD.
Apple sells their displays at a premium because fanboys will buy them and people will pay for the brand. It's good business.
I was almost stupid enough to purchase the 20" Apple display with my Mini a couple months ago. Then... in a moment of clarity... I pulled my head out of my ass and did a bit of research and ended up getting a Samsung 21.3" screen with a MUCH better resolution (1600 x 1200) and brightness for like $200 cheaper.
Seriously, the only reason I was even considering the Apple display is so everything would "match." Again, I pulled my head out and remembered I was going to use my Logitech mouse and unmatching speakers. For a moment though, it was like my computer was making me go all "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."
Anyway, I'm not really defending Apple except to say that their reasons are fiscally sound for them. I love my Mac, but I also have no illusions about the fact that Apple is a business.