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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.' "
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
Apple's core home-user base only really use the built-in apps and things like MS Office, all of which will be available for years on PPC. It's not like a Windows machne where the ending of support leaves you virus-prone and vulnerable. You can be sure that OSS projects like Firefox and OpenOffice will be available ad infinitum too.
I'm on the point of buying a used G4 powermac as my main machine,although I considered and rejected a Mac Mini (due to the lack of expansibility)
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Anyone that needs a new iBook.
Although the intel switch will be monumental for sure, there will certainly be a market for PPC macs for a while. regardless of whats coming a year from now, or even two years, people still need to upgrade. Of course it will suck when the new machines come out and blow these away but thats the way computers work.
I needed a laptop, and last month I bought a refurb iBook from Last rev (2 revs now). I know the intel machines are coming out, but when? Some people simply can't wait.
Even aside from that, I'm sure plenty of people will be clinging to PPC for a while, just like they do classic. Thats why apple kept one Classic bootable machine around for so long. People wanted and in some cases needed it, and it sold fairly well. And when the last PPC machine disappears from Apples site, it will make news on Slashdot just as the last Classic bootable Mac did.
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.
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.
Although the intel switch will be monumental for sure,
The only thing monumental in the Intel switch is the feeling of disbelief and the gaping mouths of the most devout Mac fanbois who can't get used to the idea.
All it involves is: new motherboard (if not just more or less new CPU), recompile OSX, test, ship.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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
Actually, now is a perfect time to buy. Many Mac users own their computers for 3+ years before even considering upgrading. Generally speaking, if you play the "wait and see" game with Apple hardware... you'll NEVER upgrade.
The pricing is very competitive. With the CPU bump, graphics card bump, RAM bump, Bluetooth bump, $999 is an amazing deal... for a Mac.
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.
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.
Not for me. It's going to be at least 5 years before the intels get any kind of a foothold, and at least 8 before they get anywhere near the market share of the PPCs. 8 years for a $399 computer is a great buy.
What are you talking about? 5 years before Intel gets a foothold? Within a year *most* new Macs will be Intel based. Most folks upgrade every 3 years; so within 3 years you will see mostly Intel Macs.
I am not even sure what "8 years for a $399 computer is a great buy." even means. There aren't any $399 Macs that I know of.
How are people leaping to the conclusion that when the x86 Macs come out that everything that's come before will all-of-a-sudden become obsolete?
You buy an iBook today, you can use it for years until the thing is too old to keep going...then you go out and buy a new one.
You know...just like any other computer out there. Software won't be a problem with Apple's developers plan with being able to compile both PPC and x86 into the same build.
Come on...
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
[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?
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.
Apple did _NOT_ leave OS 9 users in the dust. That is a complete fabrication.
OS X had the classic environment, which you can still use in 10.4. Also OS X installs on just about any Mac sold in the last 5 years or so.
Maybe you consider only supporting people for 8 years after they bought their computer leaving them out in the cold, but I don't.
Me, for one. I just did - the $599 model.
And the upcoming x86 switch is exactly why I choose the mini. Before the x86 announcement, I had been planning to get a 20" iMac, but I decided that I didn't want to drop $2000 on and end-of-line product. The $600 I spent on the mini, however, is low enough for me to accept as a temporary system.
Maybe in a few years I'll get a more powerful x86 Mac and turn the mini into a media jukebox or some such thing. I'm sure I'll be able to find some use for it, if only to give away to a relative on a tighter budget. A few years of use is plenty for $600.
Actually, I'm waiting for it because although I need about 40 Mac Mini units, I really need to run FreeBSD on them instead of OSX (no, they aren't identical, I have reasons...), and having a split architecture isn't going to cut it, as when I build a binary once I need it to run on all 40+ units identically, not emulated. That means tons of extra work for me.
:(
So I wait.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
It's such an incremental upgrade that you'd have to be a spec-pert to have any idea what's changed.
This weekend we get to buy everything without sales tax in Georgia. (Actually that may only be good for school-related items, I think clothes, computers, school supplies, etc) My sister's starting at georgia tech next month, and I convinced her to get an ibook. We've been looking at them for a month or so...the upgrade is actually very pleasing. For the same price the ram is upgraded, bigger hard drives, better optical drives, bluetooth built in, better video card, faster processor, the powerbook tilt sensor, and a new trackpad that scrolls when you use 2 fingers. It may be incremental, but if you were stewing about whether or not to buy bluetooth, or whether to pay apple's outrageous prices for ram or go buy a stick and put it in yourself...the upgrade is very welcome.
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 think he means that in eight years Macs will be $399?
If it holds true as some people have said that the Intel move is good econonomics and will make the chips cheaper, then we should eventually see a $399 Mini.
Truth be told, though, most current intel vendors aren't putting out much for $399. Dell's $399 box isn't likely to do much for very long, if they're anything like the Dell's I've used. You can get a computer at Walmart for less than $400, but I wouldn't expect the average consumer to do much with it right out of the box. A mac, on the other hand, comes with enough software to do everything most people would want to- I do more with my Mac than i ever did with my PC, and I haven't bought a single piece of software. (Yeah, I downloaded some free stuff, and it all beats the crap out of the Windows versions I used to use.)
Even with the Intel macs around the corner, though, I'll probably be buying my girlfriend a mac mini or an ibook in August. Why? Because I want her to have a good machine for the fall semester, and I think that the G4 is still a big enough improvement over what she has now, and yeah, I expect it to be useful for years down the line even if we later buy a newer one.
I guess if I really loved her i'd buy her an iMac now and a Centrino powerbook next year... i think she'd rather have a ring.
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
expansibility
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
And don't forget the "free ipod mini after rebate" deal tacked on. I don't remember if that made the slashdot "headline", since it's a student only deal, but between that and the bump, it's definitely a good time, if not the best time, (at least for college students) to jump and buy an ibook.
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 newest PowerPC from Freescale, the MPC7448, is supposed to reach full production in October, so these machines are still reusing once more the MPC7447.
If I remember properly this chip was first introduced in October... 2003... rounding nicely two years for Freescale to port the design from 130nm to 90nm. Apple has had to live with the same CPU for over two years (minis, powerbooks, ibooks, emacs... a large bit of its product line!!)
And people still wonder why Apple is switching to Intel.
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?
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
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.
Heh, that's funny -- I just got a 20" iMac because I know it won't be obsolete nearly as soon as the Mac Mini will be. Due to the x86 announcement, I wouldn't even consider buying a G4, but since the G5s are so much faster (and getting replaced last), they've still got a lot of life left in them.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The idea is simple; Apple is competing for your money. If they see you looking at an iBook, they can only, accurately guess, that you've also looked at a Powerbook, which means you're interested in buying an Apple laptop. If you've declined on the Powerbook, it's probably because it's out of your price range, as it's an amazing deal. But at this point, you are probably still shopping with Apple, so you take a look at the iBooks. iBooks offer a lot of the same things their Power brothers offer, but use cheaper displays and graphics cards (because you really don't need them, especially if you're pinching pennies, at least in Apple's eyes).
;).
You can't look at Apple like any other PC manufacturer. When you evaluate Apple computers, it's not like buying a new car, where you shop around and try to find your best value, try to get all the discounts, etc. That's what Dell is there for. When you're buying an Apple computer, it's like buying a luxury car (best I can come up with), where you are sure of what you want, but don't nessicarily have all of the money in the world.
Don't take this as a "oh no apple are elitest!!one", it's simply a fact; Apple users tend to be more enthusiastic about their machines, and their operating system. So they buy what they can. Those who really enjoy Apple will move up the ranks to the Power products, regardless if they actually need that power. Those who are new to Apple buy for the cuteness factor, and get sucked into the Reality Distortion Field. Apple just isn't your ordinary computer company.
So, in this crowd, everyone bags on Apple every time they release any product, saying how it could be better, but let's understand it folks; the people who are going to Apple have a reason for crossing the line. Whether it is a fad and they're doing it because the machine looks good, whether it's a status symbol, whether it is the best computer for the money isn't nessicarily the reason. So, if you want a machine with a better graphics card, fine, go out and buy a Dell, and make sure they're using a desktop board and CPU and a 19" flatpanel, and come back and brag to us about how you paid the same amount for it as some guy's 17" Powerbook. But, I can assure you that the Powerbook user's back will have the last laugh
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
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.
* 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).
An old car can still drive on the same roads as a new one.
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.
What are you talking about? 5 years before Intel gets a foothold? Within a year *most* new Macs will be Intel based. Most folks upgrade every 3 years; so within 3 years you will see mostly Intel Macs.
You mean most geeks...or maybe most companies. Most home users shoot for more like 5 years, if that. My stepdad just replaced a Pentium this last year. It was still doing everything he needed it to do. My mom also upgraded hers, but only because she was starting to do professional photography, and needed somthing with a little more muscle in Photoshop. I bought her her old computer in 1999. In my own house, my wife currently uses a computer bought in 1999, with only a memory upgrade (to 512MB) and a hard drive upgrade (40 gig, to hold music) under its belt. Generally, unless you're using them for gaming, you can easily squeeze 5-6 years of good usability out of a computer, with only minor upgrades. And plenty of people do.
So who's going to buy Macs right now? Probably me...I'll probably get my wife a new mini to celebrate landing her first "real" job. And I fully expect she'll be using it to browse the web, read email, and edit office documents for about 5 or 6 years. The only other option I'm really considering is picking up a cheap used G4 PowerMac of similar specs, for better upgradability.
To summarize: most home users are on longer upgrade cycles than geeks and corps. And from what I've heard (I'm new to the group), most Mac users are on even longer ones.