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MacBook Announcement Expected on Tuesday
wwhsgrad2002 writes "Both ThinkSecret and Apple Insider are reporting that Apple could hold a press conference as early as Tuesday, May 9th, to announce their new line of MacBooks. The laptop will be the Intel-based successor to the company's popular iBook line. The 13.3-inch widescreen MacBook is expected to sport Core Duo processors from Intel Corp and pack novelties such as a completely magnetic latching system, built in iSight video camera, and MagSafe power adapter. Additionally, each MacBook is expected to come bundled with Apple's Front Row and PhotoBooth software applications. A coding glitch with Apple's Web site has all but confirmed the MacBook moniker for the new consumer laptop."
Cheers,
Ian
Please, don't put some toilet video card in the macbook. I'm looking at you Intel Integrated.
If you're going after the college kids market AT ALL, the macbook has to be able to game at least most of the time.
--- Do you believe in the day?
It would be nice if Apple was less focused on the US car driving market and considered releasing a sub-notebook (<0.9kg) for those of us that walk, fly, and/or use public transit, and need to always carry around a computer. I have desktop computers with large displays at home and work, so I don't need to lug around a monstrosity, when I need a computer during commute and when traveling, just something small that easily fits in my purse.
As a frequent business traveler, I have been buying and using small Intel based Japanese sub-notebooks for 8 years, and would love to buy a Apple notebook that can run MacOSX, especially now that I can use bootcamp to multiboot other OS's as well. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Maybe Apple should licence an OQO or similar sized device and port their OS to it, if they aren't interested in building a sub-notebook from scratch.
... then we don't have to guess.
First, Apple needs to get schools looking at these models for next year. If the company waits much later, schools are already going to make plans based on existing models.
Second, I doubt Apple thinks it will be upstaged in ANY way by Nintendo -- and I think that judgment will be correct. Many gamers and geeks will be paying attention to Nintendo's announcement, but an Apple announcement will greatly upstage it in terms of media attention, IMO.
David
Nintendo's game console is going to get a lot of attention, but in the whole scheme of things, getting the MacBooks out this week rather than next week could mean millions of dollars in additional revenue.
By virtue of its name the MacBook is a low-end version of the Pro. Fair enough, but the specs are pretty much going to be identical to the Pro version I guess, except with a lower end GFX card, less storage, smaller screen, slower CPU. I've suddenly stopped finding Apple hardware releases interesting.
... is a Hardware fetishist. The specs of the MacBook Pro vs the lower end MacBook will not be all that much different than those of the G4 PowerBook were when compared to the old iBook line. The MacBook [Pro] still holds it's own when compared to the vast majority of PC laptops available on the market today in terms of innovative design. With a handful of exceptions the competitors still look like bricks by comparison which was already true when they were compared to the G4 PowerBooks three years ago. Not that the Hardware is the most attractive part of Apple computers anyway it's the OS, it's ease of use and the various specialist applications that the Macintosh platform excels at... and lets not forget the complete absence (so far) of malware.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I have an old G3 iBook, and it's too big. To get me to buy another portable they need to offer something comparable to a Sony VAIO 505 in form factor. Or preferably, a tablet Mac, but I doubt Steve's biases will let that happen.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Cause the PC laptop offerings have heads spinning? Please.
Or because there's no tablet (hint- they won't do it until they get it right - after two PC stumbles, who can blame them)?
Or because the Apple market has held its own and continues to build eas of use and value? Count me in.
Case in point. My wife just bought the latest Acer which has the touted features of:
- brightview screen (a shiny piece of plastic that produces glare and fingerprints at an astounding rate)
- constant light for the bluetooth status (thanks - eats batteries)
- constant light for the wifi status (ditto batteries)
- constant light for the battery, num lock, cap lock (all of which are mirrored in the taskbar anyway)
- three USB ports Woohoo! One more than an iBook!
- a four cell battery which is an eight cell battery with four cells torn out. Honestly, you can squeeze the case and feel where the missing cells are supposed to be.
- 2.5 hour battery life if you spring for the 8 cell battery separately.
- Speed. It's a 2.something, if I turn off all the fancy XP graphics under system performance, it can almost keep up with my 1.33 iBook for general use with a few apps open.
- software. none. after loading her up with picasa and itunes, whenever something mildly novel comes up, she shuts the lid and asks me to do it on the iBook. And she knows how to work a PC - she does it all day at her job. She's a wiz at office + access, but for real world stuff, the integration just isn't there - they made this point in one of the new apple ads - and it's about time.
I'd rather spend my time getting the work done than figuring out the workaround or forking over the license fee for getting it done on a PC.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It is in fact a great example of name: as one stated elsewhere, one of the issues Apple had in the past was that upon reaching the Apple Store website people would see Powerbooks and their extremely high prices, and not necessarily notice the ibooks. Here, when the potential customer sees Macbook Pro for $2k, either he goes "great, i'll take 5" or he sees the Pro, considers that he is not one and deduces by himself that there may be a non-pro line more fit to his wallet.
Customer Confusion? Not a snowball's chance in hell, and "Pro" suffixes are extremely common and well understood by the public: it's better, more powerful, more featured, but it's also much more expensive.
And nowadays you only need 3 letters to say all that.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
"Pro" does not mean "bigger screen." I want a 12" or 13" laptop (actually, I'd take a 10" or 11" laptop if it was superhighrez), but I also want non-integrated graphics, backlit keyboard, gigabit ethernet, lots of video out options, and so on.
The most important feature in a laptop is portability. I don't want a fucking iBook. I want the smallest fully-featured PowerBook imaginable, and, ideally, I want it to have 1600x1200 even on a 12" screen (OK, perhaps that's hyperbole. But 1280x1024 at minimum. Fuck 1024x768.)
Why can't Apple just make it happen? I don't want to lug around a 15" machine just to get all the real features.
Um, Apple always outsourced their CPUs. Motorola/Freescale made the G3s and 4s, and IBM made the G5s. Before that Motorola made the 680x0s. Apple was a member of the PowerPC alliance and got some input that way, but Motorola and IBM made the chips. The extent of Apple's pull was revealed when IBM didn't produce a notebook G5 or even keep up with Steve's processor speed promises, and Motorola stagnated on the G4.
You seem to think that the processor makes a Mac. It doesn't. Apple may well keep up with Intel speed bumps but that doesn't mean they have to make a big product announcement every time. Apple commonly tweaks their product lines with little or no fanfare and their real innovation has always been outside the processor.
Rosetta chip? What?