Macworld to Bring Updates to Laptop Lines?

An anonymous reader writes "Reuters is reporting on the breathless anticipation that leads up to Macworld every year. Many analysts are hedging their bets that this year will bring a long overdue update to the Mac laptop family. From the article: 'We think the iBook, PowerBook, Mac Mini, and potentially Xserve are areas that are going to move to Intel first,' said Shaw Wu, an analyst at American Technology Research."

Comments

Doutful on X86 Xserves (for a while)

[csoto]

First, they don't move that platform very quickly. Secondly, their real cluster sales go towards SciViz, which have a particular fondness for the G5 platform.

second gen Pentium M

[green pizza]

Back in those days it was Apple/Motorola slamming the first gen Pentium II versus their first gen Power PC 750 "G3".

The G3 in 233 and 266 MHz flavors was faster than the PII in its 233 and 266 MHz flavors. But eventually the PII was shipping at 450 MHz while Motorola was still churning out 350 MHz G3s. Apple slipped behind and had to use other tactics (more cache, wider busses, etc) to try to compete.

Today Intel has the Pentium M, more specifically, the second generation Pentium M, available with dual cores. Sure looks a lot better than the vaporware that Motorola/Freescale is advertising, or the big and hot IBM PowerPC 970 "G5" or the in-order (poor for multitasking) game console versions of the G5.

I think Apple made the right move, I just wish Intel had a better naming system for their CPUs.

Re:second gen Pentium M

[Cadallin]

I understand the argument there, but I'm inclined to think that the game consoles stealing IBM's attention is a bit of a red herring. I think the real reasons are:

1. Marketing (Most people won't look any further than a CPU's clockspeed to evaluate it's "performance," even though this is often a weak indicator at best)

2. Steve's ego, and his anger at IBM for failing to deliver as promised. (Even though EVERYONE had a disasterous time with the 90nm transition. Nobody was really prepared to deal with the immense increase in heat dissipation, and if you'll remember, even Intel stalled during this period)

3. I think it's very like Intel made Apple "an offer they couldn't refuse," (especially keeping in mind point 2) The PC platform is stagnating really badly, and there aren't any Apps really driving the sale of higher performance desktops, Intel NEEDED Apple, as they are the only ones pushing in this direction. I think Apple probably got some OBSCENE discounts for agreeing to become an Intel shop.

Re:Burn baby Burn

[goombah99]

Clueless comment. If you watched the last Apple meeting they played they commerical before they brought in the intel speakers. It was their humble pie. In a way it was a compliment to intel too. Intel did have a heat problem and look at all the new processors: low power.

Now lets look at the CES show with it's tepid announcements. Google-pak? well okay make it easy for the unwashed to have a standard set of apps all the technorati have. Of course those or better have always come on apples so we can forgive all the apple owners with the WTF look on their faces. And some TV show downloads? hmmm whoopeee. What are they going to play them on, an Achos pocket brick? And then there's a flock of dull over prices ipod wanabees, that got scooped by the Nano and cant even compete on price.

In any case tommorrow all apple has to do to blow the pants off everyone is to announce, feature length movies available .mac starting tommorrow, and the intel processors availabel in march on ibooks and mac minis. For the pro-crowd they just need to stretch their pro-video and maybe throw in some eye candy like 32 inch displays or intel plasma display. Maybe announce a toshiba SED by august (probably not though). Apple wont announce much other pro stuff since that usually comes at the developers conf later in the year.

This year CES made it easy. everything at CES is so far behind the curve and unintegrated apple hardly has to do more than what people already expect and everyone will be happy. This is the first year there's no breathless anticipation. (though I'm mighty curious about the intels, since I'm a pro-user I'm not expecting anything for me this go-around).

I predict....

[Anonymous Coward]

..that Steve Jobs will be wearing a rather tight black shirt of some kind.