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New iBook and Apple mini
shintaro writes "ThinkSecret reports that 'Apple delivers iBook, Mac mini updates July 26 - Apple updated its iBook and Mac mini lines Tuesday, increasing standard RAM across the board to 512MB and improving other specs. Missing from the iBook update was the long-rumored move to a widescreen model which unconfirmed reports had suggested might arrive with the revision.' "
When x86 mac is coming... it'd feel obsolete very soon.
\u262D = \u5350
The $599 Mac Mini is a great bargain. For just $100 more than the base unit, you get double the HD space, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a faster processor, but you give up the 56K modem (not a problem for most people). The $699 upgrade only adds a DVD±RW/CD-RW SuperDrive instead of the Combo drive (DVD/CD-RW) if you need to burn DVDs.
At last, 512Mb RAM in the Mac Mini - far and away the largest complaint about the happy little box. Apple may now have just invented a license to print money.
"I think everyone is an agnostic but just doesn't know" - Frazz
nothing to see here.
sigs are for fools and trolls. no signature is *always* appropriate. you should turn them off in your preferences.
The higher end Mac Mini looks much better now. Adding in Bluetooth and Airport makes $599 look more reasonable, and $699 for a Superdrive model makes a good deal of sense.
:-(
It should have been this way from day 1.
Tim
I've also seen this rumor on another site ...
That's nice, but why link to ThinkSecret when Apple's iBook page has much more detailed information?
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
The new gear's been on Apple's site for half a day now!
It's such an incremental upgrade that you'd have to be a spec-pert to have any idea what's changed.
From the article...
"The displays of both iBooks continue to feature native 1024x768 resolutions and are driven by an ATI Mobility Radeon 9550 with 32MB of video memory, not enough to take advantage of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger's new Core Image technologies."
Why don't they start revising hardware so that it can actually use all the features of their great software?
Not new? It came out today, about an hour or so ago.
Oh, just woke up and found a drool puddle oozing out of my keyboard...
The Mini is a great little machine. Worth the money.
The iBook is a dead horse. OK, it's not horrible for $1000.00 but they could do better.
In fact their entire (oh! all six?) portable line is stale and going nowhere fast. Where are the innovations? The better screens? The tablet? (they practically led the way with HWR and it's in OSX as Ink). What about the built-in media reader? I like that feature on my M-In_Law's HP book.
On another topic but closely related, I can't wait to see how the Intel transition plays out and what new growth engines they'll introduce. I'd hate to think that Apple will continue to play so conservatively with their computer (designs, features, specs) because as it stands that's where they are.
As predicted by a fellow poster.
my blog
The iBook and Mac mini were the ones updated, and it's not so much a new Mac mini as a revision of the line. They're no quicker, just the higher end one loses its superdrive and gains airport+bluetooth as standard, and a newer more expensive higher-end one gets the superdrive back again, along with the 512MB default across the board.
The Mac minis are still 1.25GHz and 1.42GHz models.
the iBook 14 looks to be a better gain in value than others. It gets the powerbook scroller trackpad, powerbook motion sensor, new graphics card (as do all the others), 512MB RAM and bluetooth/airport as standard while also getting a decent price DROP.
Still, whether or not it's enough of a gain in value to keep the competing PC laptops away given their speed advantages now is something else entirely. Guess that comes down to how much OS X and iBook design is worth to a particular buyer.
Bluetooth and Airport become standard. 14" model gets a superdrive, both models get more RAM.
It's a substantial improvement all around.
Strangely with the update, it doesn't look like either line can take advantage of the Core Image/Core Video functions of Tiger, at least I don't see the video cards listed on Tiger's CI/CV compatibility list.
I still do not understand the lack of more video RAM - this sucks because you can't take advantage of the 'Quartz Extreme', which whil it is some annyoning marketing, is *much* more reponsive on a PowerMac. That, plus the lack of screen Res of 1280x keeps me with my 2 year old 12.1" iBook - until I find a Thinkpad to run Linux.
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
I just love how apple is coming out with updated computers while microsoft works to restrict updates (as they should). What's up with all the updates and restricitons, I think people want something a little more revolutionary and a little less restrictionary!
Here today, gone tomorrow.
My 14" NEC laptop had a conventional format an in an economy seat it couldnt be opened up because the top banged against the seat in front and if the guy pushed his seat back too fast... crunch, end of laptop hinge.
My 15" powerbook on the other hand fits with an inch to spare, which is much more convenient. At least for us young guys who get screwed when the company does it's travel budget allocation for the year.
Beep beep.
or something like that [grin] ...
But seriously, looks like a nice upgrade, although one wonders how long the lifespan will be, due to the chip switch to Intel/AMD.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This is clearly targeted for the students buying new computers in August and September.
It's all about dumping the last G4/G5 and gaining market share.
That's my prediction
Quartz Extreme will work on these iBooks. That needs a 16Mb or greater AGP graphics adaptor, which the iBooks and Mac minis have. You're thinking of Core Image/Core Video.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
...Or, you can get the equivalent Windows PC with a monitor, mouse and keyboard for the same price.
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0507ibookmacmini.h tml (not that you need a ThinkSecret article to tell you that there actually are updates...)
Also, the /. article summary fails to mention some important details--for example, there are now only two iBooks: 1.33GHz/Combo/30GB and 1.42GHz/Super/60GB. Additionally, there are now three Mac Minis with the same specs except 512 MB RAM standard, and AirPort+Bluetooth included on all but the $499 low-end model. Additionally, the 56k modem is actually not included on the two upper models unless you ask for it (add $29)! The ability to add a SuperDrive to a ComboDrive-standard model is also gone, but the new higher-end model helps; BetaNews reports this configuration, $699, would have cost $800 before.
Too bad I just bought an iMac. :)
R.Mo
The 1024x768 screens, while certainly nothing to look down on, really need to be upgraded. Is it 96 pixels per inch now? Would increasing that be too expensive? (Not rhetorical; I'd like to know.)
Microsoft's font smoothing works only in the horizontal dimension and makes even small text look smooth and pleasing to the eye. Apple, on the other hand, tries to smooth things both vertically and horizontally. This looks fantastic at really big sizes, but at a normal size such as 12 point, horizontal bars (such as in "H" and "E" become gray and cause eyestrain.
I love Macs and hate to see Gates trumping them in something. But a higher-resolution, or better-smoothed, portable (iBook/PowerBook)screen would do wonders for readability.
Underwhelming.
No update on the graphics card. No extra VRAM.
No FW800. No decent HTPC output.
I don't know what it is with Apple and the VRAM. Every machine ships with about half of what you need to get any decent performance out of it. You're not going to be able to play many current games on them, much less any coming out in the next year. That has to be a disappointing experience to many people who are switching. When I ordered my 15" PowerBook earlier this year, I had to spend $300 just to upgrade it to the 128 MB video card. I really wish the VRAM was seperate a BTO option.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
After a wait this long (9 months?), and with the upcoming switch to intel, Apple really needed to make the iBook look like it is going to last 5 years if ordered today.
That resolution of 1024x768 (which was cool in 1997), and the non-CoreImage graphics card makes the thing look old at the day of introduction!
Did they not notice how other premium laptops (like sony and ibm) suddenly offer twice the punch at the same price? OS X alone will not sell iBooks, especially with some features not available at all.
"But I just bought an iBook two months ago! This just isn't fair!"
Because my ad-blocker filtered it. It filters about 50% of slashdot these days.
Even though the processors are unchanged (I think), I would have liked to have seen an upgrade on the hard drive RPM's. They're a sweet little system and that would have been a great addition.
The thing is though, I can't see how people would buy one now with this pending switch to Intel. I was going to buy a mini for my parents about a week before the switch and there weren't any in stock. Now with the news of the intel switch, I can't bring myself to get one. It will be very interesting to see what happens as the date draws nearer to the release of the intel mini's, since we could probably suspect a big sell off of PowerPC models. Just my $0.02.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
[sarcasm]
Too bad they're going out of business any day now....
[/sarcasm]
True story:
"You know that Apple's going to be bought out by Microsoft eventually," my father told me.
I raised an eyebrow. "Oh? How do you figure that?"
"Well, they've only got 3% of the market, and now they've got a problem with iPod inventories building up. People just aren't buying enough iPods."
"Oh. Well, I know I'm getting Emily a 512 MB iPod Shuffle for Christmas, since she's started listening to her own music."
"I have one of those." He pulled into the parking lot at Best Buy. The task was to find a set of 801.11g XR transmitters. It seems that my sister was sucking down all of the bandwidth in the house with her stuff, so he wanted to keep her on the g (54 Mbps) while he coasted at g XR (108 Mbps), so he'd have priority on the downloads.
"Yeah, I remember." My father had received a free 512 MB iPod Shuffle for appearing at a CIO convention or something like that.
"I really like it, but I had to upgrade to the 1 GB Shuffle for more space."
I looked down at the dashboard, where his 60 GB iPod Photo sat in its iPod charger/radio transmitter. "This one's to hold more of my music," he said, changing the tracks from country to blues.
We went into Best Buy. It turned out they didn't have the router, but they did have iPods, of which he bought a 30 GB iPod Photo for my sister. "I got Deby one, and once I had Dejah use iTunes she bought some music, but it doesn't work on her Rio, so I had to get her one. I got Amber a Shuffle too not to long ago." Amber was my niece, his granddaughter.
Once we were home, he went into the back room for a bit and came out with his old iPod shuffle in a purple protector case. "Here - this is for Emily. I don't need it any more."
Emily, of course, was so excited and gave her Grandpa all the thanks in the world. Along with the shuffle came another two protector cases, a set of iPod socks made by Apple, then the dock adapter we had to get so it could be charged away from a computer.
"Gee, too bad that Apple's going out of business because they're not selling enough iPods," I mused.
"Well, Microsoft will just buy them out." Dad started inserted CD's into his laptop, ripping his entire collection to his hard drive to take with him on his portable music player. "Want to help your sister figure out her playlists in iTunes?"
"Ah - sure."
And that is how Emily got an iPod. And I learned that Apple may go out of business in the next bit - but odds are, my family alone will keep them floating for quite some time.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
One of the great things about Macs is that they hold their value so well, historically. They just keep on performing as the years go by. I've sold three Macs (Quadra 650, PPC 7500 and B/W G3 (Yosemite)), all when they were about three years old, all for $500-$600, or about 1/3 of the price I paid for them, making it easier to move up to the new models.
I'm thinking about moving from my G4/867 to a G5 (not sure I want to wait until the MacTel boxen come out), and I was thinking about the sales prospects when I realized that nobody in their right mind would spend $600.00 on a 3-year old G4 when they could have a mini which is almost twice as fast for the same cost.
So they've really changed the whole profile of the Mac economy, if there is such a thing. If it's harder to sell them, will it make a big difference to those thinking about buying them? I know it does to me. I wonder if the advantages associated with getting into that market for Apple outweigh the disadvantages of the "upsell" market for people like me, who are interested in hopping to near the top of the scale every 3 or so years.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Missing even more is a G5 processor. Yeah I know Power Book is their expensive -- excuse me, high performance -- line, but iBook is what's coming out now, not Power Books.
Would anyone have been willing to pay more for a lowest speed, low power G5 iBook, or is keeping iBook prices as low as possible paramount instead?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
So the Mini has a Radeon 9200, whereas the iBook has a 9550? Does that mean the iBook has a better video card? I'd look it up, but video cards are such a jungle I figured it's easier to just ask.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I predict. The reason Apple didn't launch wide screen iBooks is because it would have been wasted investment. Power users who watch DVDs (in aircraft etc) use Powerbooks, not iBooks. And parents probably want their kids to use their iBooks to study, not be entertained. Anyway, if Sony can produce such amazingly compact yet feature laden portables as their current mini-laptop range, am sure Apple's next portable will be an ultra thin (Intel inside?) tablet with a very cleverly designed swivel touch screen and inkwell technologies. This will make it possible to use the machine in just about any configuration. PDA, office machine, artist's easel, data capture etc. Either way, I want an Apple PowerPad!
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Slashdot news has taken a huge dip in quality recently. At this point I have decided I am going to start giving my girl these magical pills. that turns her on rather then read this crap anymore.
Get a slut for a girlfriend
The other thing I noticed is that clock speeds seem pretty much the same, which makes me think : hey, aren't these the same class of machines that are supposed to be switched to Intel first ? Need anyone wonder why ?
Apple's HQ are in California when you read that on their site:
"Surf the Web, chat with friends, do homework, play games, even burn DVDs and CDs to create your own video or musical masterpiece. In your favorite café. At 2 a.m."
So, yes, create your masterpiece in a café at 2 a.m. but please do it quickly because they are closing now.
interesting modding you got.. considering your sig! take your own advice a$$hat!
Slashdot is an "advertising portal" site these days. Linking to 2 year old articles with tons of banner ads all over them instead of the readily available printer friendly versions is becoming commonplace.
I had expected to see G4s going for under $500 very soon after the Mac mini came out, but it didn't happen. The price of G4s stayed steady, dropping no faster than they had been, until the Intel announcement.
Then they dropped like a bomb. I've been offered a dual G4/550 for $350, or a stripped G4/400 for $150. I wish the Mini had had that effect, because I was trying to get a cheap G4 a couple of months back and finally went for the Mini instead.
But your G4/867 (MDD, I assume)? It's got a faster hard drive than the Mini, it supports twice the RAM, it supports Core Graphics in the GPU with a Radeon 9600 or better video card. You can upgrade it (thanks to Sonnet and their pals) all the way to a dual 2 GHz G4. Depending on how you have it actually loaded, it could be quite comparable to a $600 Mini.
But not until the aftershocks of the Intel bomb settle down, I suspect.
But then I saw that Apple updated everything but the graphics chip. The Radeon 9200 isn't capable of doing the core graphics that requires a GPU and they left it in there. The mini is the only machine in their whole line (that I can see) that's incapable of doing core graphics. So sad because that was my tipping point for getting one.
Where is the Freescale MPC7448?
What in the hell have they been doing?
What took so long?
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
all of apple's computers need to support the core graphics technology, or at least equip the ibooks and mac minis with 64 MB video cards. for some reason apple has half the video memory of everyone else. the imac G5 has a 64 MB 9600 PRO, seriously can you even buy a 9600 PRO with that little memory? same goes with the 9200 and 9550. these GPUs have been updated to have 128MB of memory, not 32
Can you even afford to fill a 60GB drive with music -- whether ripping your own @ $17/CD, or from iTunes @ .99/track?
Does 60GB of compressed music worth listening to even exist in the entire history of the recorded music of the world?
Will Sony give you payola to load JLo's "Get Right" on your iPod? Is it enough to make you listen to it too?
In the rest of your life will you be able to listen to all 60GB of music even once all the way through?
Enquiring minds blah blah blah...
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Bhwhaahahahahaha. No. It's Apple's core model with students, among others. If it is such a dead horse, why does it retain its market value rather well used? The only problem with iBooks was that whole effing logic board thing.
In fact their entire (oh! all six?) portable line is stale and going nowhere fast.
Is that why sales were up 75% overall, 35% on Macintosh systems (which are something like 2/3rds laptop computers) from last year?
Please help metamoderate.
of a new product has a suspect track record. To wait for the Intel line - and a stable Intel line - could be a wait of a year or more.
THAT'S stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The other interesting bit in the Mac Mini announcements is this: you can configure a 1.4ghz PowerPC server (that runs Debian just fine, thank you) with 1 Gig of RAM for about US$740.00 And you can fit at least three in a 1U rack space, WITH power supplies. Previously, Apple had premium'ed that 1 GIG of RAM by almost 100%, so you were looking at about $950 for that same box.
The 60GB is for those of us who prefer to load up with Apple Lossless. And photos. And use it as a portable Mac-only hard drive.
not sure I want to wait until the MacTel boxen come out
In English, the plural form of box is "boxes," you sad, sad man.
I am still waiting for Apple to come out with a ~10", ultra portable, 3 lb, Powerbook "Mini". I will purchase one the first day it becomes available. What I do not want though is an Apple tablet PC. Something like the Fujitsu P Series or the Sony TR series would get my $$ tomorrow.
meh, karma be damned but i have to say this
God damn you suck
all you are, is all you are, i'm so sorry for you.
There you go again, assuming that Apple purchasers are in their right mind. Just put it up on eBay and see what you're offered.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
widescreen isn't for dvds.
I have a Mac Mini, and the first thing I did after getting it was to crack it open and replace the 256MB DIMM with a 1GB DIMM. 1GB gives plenty of head room.
On my PowerBook, it came with 512MB, and it was sufficient for basic operation. But, if I had a few large apps open, things would slow down. Adding a 256MB DIMM to go to 768MB gave me much better performance.
If they got rid of the 1.25 and made the 1.42 across the board, and...
If they included the wireless keyboard and mouse, and...
made the upgrade to 1GB ram $99 or less...
Add 5400 and 7200 rpm drives to the mix.
Price differential to then be determined by HD space/rpm, presence of superdrive and top end having 1GB ram.
If I remember right, the pricing used to be $899 for the low-end ibook model. Now it's $949. The mac mini pricing appears to be the same $20 off it was before.
Oh, and if you're going to use edu pricing on the minis, consider paying Apple for the 1GB ram upgrade, instead of doing it yourself. The premium looks to be about $30 over buying the memory from someone like Crucial, and you won't have a stick left over, but you won't have to crack the case and it'll all be under the same Apple warranty.
(What would you do with the leftover stick, anyway? I have a 256MB stick from my revA mini that I need to sell or find a use for, now. It's faster than the gig of DDR266 memory in my XP box, but if I stick it in the third slot, it will slow down even further, because this particular Nvidia chipset works fastest splitting the memory between two slots, not 1 or 3. And I haven't really seen that I run out of memory w/1GB in XP, anyway.)
I think you can still get quite a bite for it on Ebay. I've been shopping for a new/used powerbook and it amazes me to see how much people are paying for used powerbooks (Which makes it hard to get a good value!)
This is not an upgrade, its merely bundled discounts. The boxed configs for the original Mini's were impractical for normal people. It was either 499, 599, or 899(for the top end one). The two cheaper models did not have enough ram but the top end model had everything. Honestly, I'm glad they did not upgrade the video card on the mini. I just bought one 2 weeks ago(right outside of the 14-day return window) and I did not want to have to fight the apple store to take my mini back.
Note that with the 1.25 G4 you can add the Superdrive as a BTO option for $100. Otherwise you have to jack all the way up to the $699 to get one; though the modem is an option on the 1.42's, the drive you get isn't.
;^)
More to the point, the *only* difference between the $599 and $699 is the Superdrive. They've changed a $100 BTO html SELECT box into a new level o' Mac.
Now if I can just get someone to let me upgrade their new Mini to a gig of RAM. I can save them about $100 and keep their Mini's 512 for my Athlon system... Any takers?
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
I've been planning to buy one as soon as this update was made. However, they don't seem to be available in Canada yet.
$17? Sounds like you need to shop around more for your CDs.
Even ignoring used CD stores ($5-$10), you can do a lot better than $17.
(Also, some of us have been buying CDs since the 1980s...if you buy one every couple of weeks for 20 years, that adds up.)
i too was wondering where those were. there has been a question if they were still too hot for a laptop. the fact is that there will not be a G5 ibook before a powerbook. at this point i doubt we will see a G5 portable at all, there are also some interesting new G4 chips coming that will tide things over. the theory is that the portables will be among the first to go Intel since they have been lagging the most. that thinking means they should be out in less than a year. maybe 1 more powerbook revision till then? possibly 2? i would guess those newer chips will be in the next powerbook revision.
the new G5 chips would maybe go into Xserves and iMacs where there is still some heat issues (though i doubt we will see a dual-processor imac soon). the towers could make nice use of them too, the fans are variable so the cooler the chips the quieter the machine.
"Will Sony give you payola to load JLo's "Get Right" on your iPod? Is it enough to make you listen to it too?"
So I'm not the only one who thinks "Get Right" is the worst piece of garbage since UB40's "Red, Red, Wine?" It took 15+ years to knock that song off my most hated song list but JLo managed to do it.
God, that song is f*cking irritating! Sony would have to pay me A LOT indeed! It's the kind of song that, years from now, will still have a novelty following... Like "Ice, Ice, Baby"... Unfortunately.
"Word to your mother"
Condoms!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
More like a shot in the mouth. Very ho-hum.
Why bother.
An IBM spokesman was unable to comment on the availability of the new chips
Clear, Dark Skies
Well, according to iTunes, it would take me 29.4 days to listen to my 10,510 songs, taking up 54.92GB space on disk. Figure 8 hour days, and that's still only three months.
Just phoned the Seattle Apple store, which claims to be the largest in the north west US, and they don't have the new iBooks in stock and don't know when they will. This is pretty much how the iPod releases have happened, nothing in stock and you have to keep phoning if you want to find out when.
it will still be a pos. What I want in my apple ibook: something that doesn't: melt, have a broken logic board, use thoughs god awful broadcom cards, For the love of god can somone "fix" them so that they actually---you know don't look like yet another PC clone, or oooh I don't know run like model-t ford with the 'default' ram. Oh and who's going to buy them with the far better x86's? I meen hardware that works with tons of software and doesn't feel like a oven on my member, or one that's a nutroaster?
You might want to consider installing Linux. FreeType has a very configurable font smoothing system integrated into X (but X is teh suck! blah blah blah -- not anymore).
From the KDE Control Center, you can, with a few clicks, indicate what kind of font smoothing you want.
Go to Control Center -> Fonts. Check the "Use anti-aliasing for fonts" box. The "Configure..." button becomes active. Click it.
You have the following options:
[ ] Exclude range [8.0pt] to [15.0pt] (if you want it to behave like (IIRC) Win2K, which only smoothes large fonts)
[ ] Use sub-pixel hinting (This is the ClearType-like feature) -> it has a combo where you can specify how are the subpixels of your LCD laid out -- just do some trial and error and see what looks best for you.
Hinting style: [None/Slight/Medium/Full] -> here you can adjust how "aggressive" you want font smoothing to be.
Easy, powerful and free!
The filesystem is the package manager
I really want to tie a Mac mini into my truck for iTunes+GPS+Road maps+802.11b .. partly for the geek factor (it's been awhile since I did something like this) and partly for it's usability (a large amount of racetracks I go to provide free 802.11b access to the Internet). But I have never seen a good GPS+Roadmap package for the Mac. Anyone have any recommendation?
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Now all I need is a wife.
It's called slang, homie.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Does 60GB of compressed music worth listening to even exist in the entire history of the recorded music of the world?
Compression - that's the key. 60GB of uncompressed music is a mere 100 hours of stereo uncompressed music... and I've got more than 100 CDs. Quite a bit more, and I suspect most people do too, at this point.
(whether you want all of those hundred hours is a different story, but maybe 1/5 of the tracks are good, and you've got 500 albums... whatever)
As storage space gets larger, there's no need to compress down to your crappy-sounding 128kbps MP3s - put everything in ALE, or even WAV, and you've got plenty of music, sounding perfect, at your fingertips.
-T
These are nice updates all around. I just bought the new iBook 12".
.
:))
Not only does it get 512 MB soldered onto the mobo (with one free RAM slot), it also gets that motion sensor for the HD, trackpad scrolling, and most importantly a fully Core Image compliant GPU, the Radeon 9550
Furthermore, since I'm an education customer, I get a free iPod mini. (They rebate the cost of an iPod mini if you buy a Mac at the same time, but you can buy either the iPod or the iPod mini. Note however, the Mac has to be on the same bill, and neither the Mac mini nor the eMac qualify for this killer deal. Luckily the iBook fully qualifies though.
This should last me quite nicely until the Intel 'Books come out. I'm hoping for either a widescreen 13" dual-core Pentium M Yonah PowerBook, or a 4:3 12" single-core Celeron M Yonah iBook, in the first half of 2006. Actually, the current G4 iBooks are so nice, I may just wait until version B of the Intel Macs come out. By that time the x86 binaries will be more common (and more mature), and Apple will have had time to work some of the hardware transition kinks out too.
The catch, of course, is whether or not anyone would really want to listen to all of that. I'll rip an entire album, but there's always those albums that you really just want 2-3 songs off of and will never listen to the rest.
Incidentally, so that I didn't get too close to filling up my iPod, all of my 90's "alternative" stuff I re-encoded down to 128 AAC to save about 2 gigs of space. About 30 albumsworth of stuff, I'd say.
So yes, it's quite easy for anyone who's into music and has been buying CDs for a while to fill up an iPod. My iPod will only provide about 10 straight days of music. Do you listen to more than 240hrs of music in a given, say, month?
According to Apple's website:
Core Image-capable graphics cards include:
* ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
* ATI Radeon 9600, 9600 XT, 9650, 9800 XT, X800 XT
* nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200
* nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
* nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, 6800 GT DDL
So how is that a fully Core Image compliant GPU on the new iBook?
The only thing that stopped the Mac Mini from being the perfect living room machine was that it didn't have digital audio out. It already has full screen DVD playback through DVI; with the addition of digital audio out people could have a Mac Mini instead of a DVD player and not need to make any compromises and not have to mess around with third party solutions. It's a great pity that Apple have not rectified this glaring omission.
Having said that, close inspection of the new machines reveals that they don't seem to have changed the main board at all; it's the same processors and same video RAM as before. Still, it would be very nice if they would add the digital audio some day.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
So for what is now the middle model, Apple have added 256MB RAM, and replaced the internal modem with AirPort and Bluetooth. Sounds like a good, but not particularly exciting, upgrade considering it has been out for nearly 6 months.
It really starts to look crap though, when you realise that they have increased the price from £359 to £429 - you could have configured the old mac mini to the new specs for about that price!
In a portable? Taking up space, and adding a few ounces more to the total weight?
Sure, if I was a pro photographer. Or even a dedicated amateur. Or, heck, maybe if I even if I used my digital camera more than once a month.
As it is, I'd rather leave that at home.
Now, a third USB port...that I could use....
The last weekend in July is back to school tax free shopping in Georgia. Last year, I bought an eMac and the Apple store was crammed. People come from all over the South to save 7%.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Wait, things are much more responsive on their proffesional desktop line than their consumer laptops???!!!
Pass the joint, steve.
The key is to get something light, compact, cool running, good battery life, and yet still have good enough performance to be acceptable for most things. The goal is not by any means to have the fastest computer out there. Remember, if you really need the ultimate performance, you can always by a desktop. Or you could have just bought one of the current model PowerBooks instead of an iBook (though it's still not in the same ballpark as a high-end desktop). If you think about it, a 1.4GHz G4 with 3D acceleration standard, well, that's a pretty good machine for most things. Thinking back a few years, I developed commercial 3D games with desktops that were much lower powered than that. (For a real laugh, go back and look at what John Carmack used to develop Quake, remembering that Quake 1 was initially software rendering only.)
Realistically, the iBook is not a hardcore gaming machine. You're not going to find many PCs in the same price range that can play DOOM 3 with all the bells and whistles turned on either. And I'd argue that this is okay. High-end 3D games like this are a niche.
In terms of CoreImage, I think many people don't understand what it is. It is not QuartzExtreme. All 2D graphics are going through OpenGL on the iBook, so things will be snappy and take advantage of the GPU. CoreImage is about what are essentially Photoshop filters and special effects, not fundamental rendering. And being a fairly new OS X technology, it's not clear how much CoreImage is actually being used right now, or if it will come into its own in the future.
from the online Apple Store.
The other question that comes to mind is: amidst the various updates have they finally fixed the ibook logic board issues?
I code in Windows all day at work and just today I had to type in some accented characters and am seriously appalled that the basic Windows method has not changed literally since the PS/2 era in the 80's when I was in high school. The old alt-xxxx-release combo.
That said, there is now an easier way in Windows to do this, but it seems a bit like a hack, because it affects how you type in regular quote characters. Thus I still feel the Apple way is nicer.
See here for details on the methods in both OS'es.
Why would I spend >600 USD when in a few months I can buy an XBox 360 that does everything the Mini does, includes controllers, works with the HDTV I already own, costs half as much, and actually has fun games available? With the money I save I can splurge on wireless keyboards, XBox Live subscription, sweet honey-baked ham, etc etc etc. . . .
This was an interesting machine, until I got to the video out port. Not only do they not include a VGA or DVI port on the back, but they make you buy a dongle if you want video out to a monitor! That is really the only bad thing I have to say about this, as it will run Ubuntu! http://ubuntu.com/
That is because the Apple Store is a dynamically generated web service. It is served up via WebObjects and is linked directly to your current personal shopping session. There is a way to send pages, but you really can't use the links in your browser's URL field.
Viewing a DVD is a power-user requirement now? C'mon...
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
In fact their entire (oh! all six?) portable line is stale and going nowhere fast.
Big reason for the intel switch, yes? Remember the whole "per watt" part of the keynote? Remember how Jobs specifically said the first intel chips would be in Mini-level consumer boxes and portables?
Personally I'm maybe going to consider an iBook as an interim measure and utility box to carry around. They aren't meant to be workhorse professional machines; they're consumer laptops, tons of kids have them for school. Argue the price point, okay, but people who're wanting wide screen models and so on just don't "get" the market niche. It's a computer for the counter space in your chem lab, and for handy digital media collections.
The trick Apple faces here is that when they bump iBooks up at all, the have to stay clear of the PowerBooks. The PB line isn't going to be seeing that big G5 moment now.
So you're right about the stale quality. It's all pretty reminiscent of the debacle back in the early 90s, when Apple lost what was a dominant position in laptops. They left the whole line to languish for a couple of years, and when they finally came out with a PPC portable it was the execrable, shoddy PB5300. It'd amaze me if Jobs didn't have that disaster in the front of his mind right now.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
On the mini. Bah. Come on Apple, even the Airport Express has such a thing (a combo jack).
This is a real killer for those wanting to use the Mini in their entertainment center.
Even if I wanted to switch to Mac's laptops, I will never do it until they make it with full keyboard, like I have now on my HP ZD8000 - I mean with normal numpad. I can't live with it... The curious point is, that there are only few 17" laptop models with normal numpad, although size of the laptop allows it easily. I think designers just don't want to work too much and simply copy&paste keyboard layout from 15" models :)
32MB of DDR ram costs them what? $5 to add to the cost of the machine?
About the time the mini Mac came out I was looking at going the Mac route. But then I noticed that most the games required 64MB of video RAM to even play. Not talking all the bells and whistles. Just play.
At the time, none of the lower end models came with 64MB of RAM. It's not like you can add 32MB to the mini's GPU at a later date.
Ends up I decided to go with an AMD clone. That is a very bad point to an otherwise good low end piece of hardware.
It's German. Some kind of zeitgeist uber-grammar.
audio/visual people are still a big market for the g4s... While the g5s are great systems, they are still quite expensive... In the world of audio recording/editing, expandability can be more important than speed... Having room for more than one hard disc, pci soundcards, and lots of ram can be more important than a small form factor (the slow HD on the mini is the real bottleneck for audio/visual work)... So there will always be a market for g4 power macs...
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
* Radeon 9600 graphics chip with a minimum of 64MB or anything that drives Quartz Extreme
I think this price range is possible
For those folks who want to pay extra for an elegant and intergrated PVR solution and not the more expensive EyeTV. An ATI Theater 550 Pro video processor with H.264 hardware encoding.
http://www.ati.com/products/theater550/index.html
With a new iLife software solution to easily record TV shows (TiVo) and does post processing of these recordings to a small H.264 file to build content for a future video iPod and for video podcasting (a.k.a vodcasting).
I meant Core Video/Image not Quartz Extreme. The 9200 already drives QE.
havent read the previous posts but drop in prices was inevitable.. they had to dispose the powerpc pieces to get themselves ready for intel.. well this might not be the case with mac lovers where they might cherish the last of the powerpc but economically speaking...
I'm kinda curious after the whole ThinkSecret leak earlier this year... is it possible that the rumor about the widescreen iBook was actually a spread internally by Apple, in the hopes of starting to identify the source of their leaks?
(Just because I'm paranoid, it doesn't mean there aren't forces aligning against me.)
--- -a- "I'd love to change the world, but it'd be easier if the universe exposed its API."
My friend just bough two Mac Mini's yesterday with the 512MB ram upgrade for $600 each. Today they are $100 cheaper. Gesh.
The above is not worth reading.
---k--
</stupid>
Yeah, there's definitely a new buying dymanic with the mini.
We expected mini sales to pick up when Tiger shipped given that it represents as much as 20% of the price of the total system if you bought a mini+Jag and then upgraded to Tiger later. While it's still the same $129 as it was 3 years ago for the OS upgrade, somehow the cost as a percentage of the system price seems to have an impact.
It works in reverse as well. If you had an old G4 and were thinking about getting iLife + Tiger, for not *that* much more you could just get a mini, so it should add to the unit churn for Apple. The mini isn't so much of a product that is expected to upsell to an iMac, rather it *is* the upsell from iLife+Tiger - more of an impulse move. I see a lot of users buying a mini every year to get the newest OS + bundled software, and handing down their old system to their spouse, kids, etc.
The other effect on the economy is that vendors are beginning to see the mini as the foundation for vertical solutions. We've already seen some medical office software ($2K range) bundle with a mini, and I expect you'll see more of this - prepackaged appliances. At only 3lbs with physically small packaging, it's not a stretch to see vendors preload and configure their vertical apps on the mini, repackage them, and resell to users - just plug it in and go. Smart vendors might even include a USB flash drive that the software saves configuration info on so that the mini can be hot-swapped as part of a service call.
So is "gesundheit", but people still use it as slang for "bless you". Language, as a means of expression, is more like a waterfall and less like a statue. Changes come and changes go, and while you might not like all of them, you need not castigate others for using them. Even if the changes sound like language up with which you will not put, all due respect to Churchill.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Spend an extra $100 for this and get digital out. What, you think they should charge everybody extra money for something only 1% of their customers will ever use?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I've gotten a few emails about my last comment on saving $100 on Mac Mini RAM and upgrading Athlon systems.
2 E16820141198
;^D
There's a review or two at newegg that someone was able to use a plain jane, one gig stick of DDR 400 memory in a Mac mini:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N8
If you grab that gig stick for $89 and it works as the reviews state, you've got the old 512 stick to donate to, say, me (since the mini no longer has the space for it, and Apple unfortunately won't let you order without), your Mini has a gig of RAM, and you saved about $85 over ordering BTO from Apple.
Please note that I got a busted version of that RAM (for my Athlon box) that didn't pass memtest86 which Newegg took back and refunded and I haven't done the research to ensure that's what the Mini takes, esp. the new version, but I am fairly confident "off-brand" RAM that matches PC3200 Athlon systems will work in Minis.
Now I am NOT a Mac representative; install at your own risk. But if you do, and you're happy you saved $80-90, send them 'useless' 512 sticks my way. http://www.slashdot.org/~mactari
This is probably redundant. Compare specs between mid range Powerbook and the high end iBook.
iBook-> 1.42 GHZ, 60 GB HD, 512 RAM, 14.1" screen w/ 32 MB 9550 ATI, Super Drive, Full wireless, 6 hours battery life all for $1299
Powerbook- 1.5Ghz, 80 GB hard-drive, 512 MB RAM, 15.2" screen w/ 64 MB 9700 ATI, Combo Drive, Full wireless, 4.5 hours of battery all for $1,999
Does anyone else see a problem with these numbers? I think Apple should really start dropping these prices.
Why not? I know people who've collected hundreds of CDs over the years.
Just buy a new mac from Amazon.com. Always tax free, year round.
What is stupid is Apple not updating that tech specs page to remove the single-CPU PowerMac model. Maybe they still have it there because you can buy them refurbished? You sure can't buy them new, check the store. Only 3 models, no single-CPU model. I think that happened a while ago, is the really stupid thing.
The tech spec page does say the dual-CPU PowerMacs come with 512 MB, though.
Have they improved them? I've read many posts lamenting their poor performance? I did a search and saw different speeds, 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm? Either is better than 4200. Anyone know?
If you follow Cringely, you'll note that built-in wireless is a required piece of the puzzle needed to turn the mini into an inexpensive home computer/DVR/"iMovie" base station, broadcasting to AV-enabled AirPorts.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Why the hell is ThinkSecret linked, instead of Apple? With their (ThinkSecret's) reputation as of late, I assumed this was just another doubtful article, until I hit up Apple's homepage and saw the iBook banner.
"boxen" is not an example of living language. It's a pathetic attempt to sound cool. Creative distortions of vocabulary are only funny when done spontaneously---not when parroted by thousands of pubescents.
Check out http://www.apple.com/ibook/specs.html for the actual specs of the new iBooks including a 142MHz on the 14". The 12" remains at 133MHz. Another unreported option (by ThinkSecret and Slashdot) is the ability to BTO both iBook models with a 4200RPM 100GB HD (Sweet!).
I understand that Apple is having problems with G4 production and am okay with 1.42GHz CPU/142MHz BUS. I really like the standard Superdrive, 100GB HD (BTO), Airport Extreme, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, standard 512MB RAM, Scrolling Trackpad and Sudden Motion Sensor. I am quite disappointed at the lack of 64MB VRAM upgrade. I've got a 1GHz 14" iBook G4 with 32MB (early 2004 model) and was planning on exchanging (new + ebay old) this iBook for a new one but with 32MB VRAM i can't play games like DOOM 3, Desert Storm, and use full CoreImage functionality. There's no reason for me go through with it. I understand that 32MB VRAM is decent for Mac OS X/Windows/Linux to run more than properly but a laptop thats supposed to last at least 3 years (Applecare) should be outfitted with enough options to use/play most games/applications on the market currently. Mac OS X with CoreImage was released 3 months ago!
Guess I'm sticking with this laptop until the next release (possibly last before Intel switch).
Why not maximise the use of that storeage space?
.wav rip and a .wav converted to an MP3 using lame's "--preset standard" BR encoding?
I agree, 128kbps MP3s are rather pointless these days, but can you honestly tell me you can hear a difference between a pure
That's how I rip all my MP3s and I've done some (very unscientific) tests with a few people to see if they can tell the difference. No one can.
Now, lets not even get started on the better formats that are available (of course there is) because like it or not, MP3 is the defacto compressed audio standard.
I'd rather have my music compressed on my iPod, that way I can use the extra space for storing backups of my personal files.
Am I the only one who wishes they made their laptops in black?
I was waiting for this update hoping that the iBook would get a bigger screen. My existing iBook is a venerable 600MHz model, and while it is actually really usable and is my workhorse, I need a bigger screen for occasional coding work.
I feel a bit let down since this to my mind is the main drawback of the iBook. Surely a bit more screen resolution is not unreasonable?
Well, not me. But anyway, I think, "slang" is the wrong word for it, as not every foreign word is automatically slang. Besides that, I am afraid you didn't realize, that my comment was just a joke.
"You" seems to be wrong, as you probably don't address me with these words but another poster.
But the hard drives are 4200, what's so hot about that?
Sure, the Mini isn't a big FPS frame rate monster, but 128MB of video RAM would at least make World of Warcraft, and other 3rd-person perspective 3D games I guess, run a little more smoothly. I'd probably buy one just for WoW if it didn't have the Frames Per Second of a 3-year old laptop.
Nothing .. thats the whole point of a slow rpm drive in a portable....
Right now I have a 40GB HD. 4GB is dedicated to a Debian Linux partition, around 512 to swap, and the rest ~32GB (after the 40GB =! 40GB thing) goes to Mac OS X.
- Tiger takes around 3GB,
- iLife another 2.5GB,
- MS Office X
.345GB,
- Xcode over 2GB,
- Route 66 (Canada & US) 2.4GB,
- a bit over 11GB so far
- any recent game Splinter Cell, Sims, etc. over 1GB, usually over 2GB.
- my legal MP3 collection 3.1GB
- 2 or 3 movies in 2CD XviD-AC3 format
- one DVD image
- and my 32GB partition is almost full
if it wasn't so damn hard (you have to almost take apart the whole laptop) and voiding your warranty, I'd upgrade to a 100GB ASAP.That thing can still boot OS 9, right? I'm sure you'll still find demand. Going price on eBay seems to be at about $600.
Oh well... guess we can't have it all. Is this another incentive to get the 12" PowerBook because, to be honest, with this upgrade I can't think of too many other reasons to shell out the extra $500 or so for one. Sure, the 12" has a better video card, but most people are going to need a lot more screen territory to make that worth it.
It looks like Apple's made choosing my next laptop a lot easier on me. I guess the only problem I'll have is telling my future iBook apart from my wife's.
Macintoshes hold their value so well because of the traditional macintosh market, not because they perform better longer. I had a fruit iMac and I currently have a B/W G3. Running OS X on the iMac was a torturous experience over all, and even on the B/W overclocked at 450Mhz, the iLife suite and iCal in particular is slow enough to be unusable.
I tried to "switch" to OS X a long time ago by buying used, but all that happened was I paid way too much for a crappy computer. Since then I have purchased a Mac Mini and the B/W is a Linux server, and it's working out great.
The fact that a mac mini sells new for only moderately more than a slowass G3 would deter most people, but I do wonder if it would deter a typical mac buyer, who is simply willing to pay more for less. On the other hand, they would still be buying a mac, so I could see what you say to be completely true.
Maybe it will bring used prices on ebay down to sane levels. People are bidding things to insane prices, and used newer Apples up to and over retail.
Seriously. Because that's what the mini is, an entry-level machine. I doubt you'd be seeing impressive frame rates on what the Windows PC vendors consider their "entry-level" boxes, either. If the mini's video doesn't do it for you, buy a used Power Mac G4 on eBay and put in whatever high-powered Mac video card you'd like.
The Mac Mini is quite expandable.
It's just that it's expandable via 1394 and USB 2.0. There are several companion boxes designed to go below it now as hubs/ external hard disks.
The graphics are fixed, and you can only fit so much memory. But it is a bargain machine.
My old G4 has a wonderful case that opens easily. It's far easier to install a new card, more memory or an extra hard drive. I wish the PCs I have used had such an easy case to open. Those cases I have to open. On the other hand I only had to open my G4 case twice in over three years.
Um, I have somewhere around 140GB of music, most of it 192kbps MP3. That's only been controlled by lack of effort most of the time, being unable to access Soulseek at school, and disk space. And I haven't had the chance to get to a library with music CDs and go to town on their collection since I bought a new hard drive.
Yeah, I listen to all of it, at least a few times, and I like to have it all available in case I want to listen to it again out of the blue (which happens frequently).
I work on and own both PC's and Mac's. A real price comparison of machines with similiar capabilities shows that Macs are no more expensive. The 299 dell is cheaper than any Mac because Apple doesn't make a machine that low end. You do get what you pay for. Compare these: Dell Dimension 3000 Pentium 4/winxppro/512mb/40gb/cdrw-dvd/no monitor/integrated audio/firewire/no speakers/usb keyboard & mouse/no wifi/no bluetooth = $687.00 Mac Mini ppc 1.25/osx tiger/512mb/40gb/cdrw-dvd/no monitor/integrated audio/firewire/no speakers/usb keyboard & mouse/no wifi/no bluetooth = $557.00 Gee wiz, the Mac is over $100 cheaper! So you can get a cheaper PC, but apples to apples (ugh) the Mac is actually less expensive. A few notes. having used G4,P4, and Celeron you must compare the G4 to the P4. The Celeron D is a pig I would not wish on anyone. I have a G4 1.5 and it performs equal to my P4 2.8HT. I also included xp Pro to compare to OSX. XP home is not the equal of OSX (frankly, neither is XP Pro but it comes closer).
Yup, boxen is German - for boxing. What's that got to do with it?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I bought a 12" iBook a year ago, it had a 1.07GHz CPU, but other than that was nearly identical to the brand new model. Mind you I'm glad my little notebook is not obsolete and that I have nothing to drool over, but how can this be good for Apple's bottom line?
What is wrong with Apple? a 25% increase in speed in 12 month (far less if you think of the 1.2GHz CPU of the following October) is simply pitiful. No increase in VRAM, no increase in pixel count even for the 14" model, 25% more in HD space doesn't make for a sexy machine. There is *still* no option for a DVD writer on the 12" model. That bluetooth is included by default now is good, but still this is not enough.
Very disappointing, especially after the rumours of a widescreen design.
I don't want a G5 in my Mac mini. Too hot, too little work-per-clock. I want a Freescale MPC8641.
Agree on the core-image capable GPU. The 9550 in the new iBook would do.