Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New PowerBook G3 & the iBook

Posted by Hemos on from the thinner-faster-better dept.

Krakus Irus wrote in with the alert that Apple has released the specs on the new Powerbook G3. Up to 400 mhz, USB, firewire, 20% thinner then the previous machines and two pounds lighter. 14.1 display-it looks nice. What we're waiting on is the news about the new consumer portable-that will be coming out today. Check the rumours about the new consumer book. Update: 07/21 03:19 by H : It's been announced. The new iBook-and it looks /really/ nice. Comes out in Sept. at 1599$US.

32 of 484 comments (clear)

  1. Be could easily do what Yellow Dog does by timur · · Score: 2
    Apple didn't get Yellow Dog any specs that Be doesn't already have. The people at Yellow Dog examined the hardware, probably reverse engineered some of it, and then wrote the code. Be's engineers are unwilling to do that. And they don't even have to! All they have to do is look at the source code to Yellow Dog Linux and port it to BeOS/PPC. But they won't.

    On the surface, the Be engineers appear like the good guys, being victimized by Microsoft and Apple. The truth, however, is that they're a bunch of pompous asses with quite an attitude. Witness their FAQ about installing on a logical partition: http://www-classic.be.c om/support/qandas/faqs/faq-0462.html. In it, they say that because only Linux and OS/2 support installation on an extended partition, that they don't need to support it because the only successful OS (Windows) doesn't support it. What they don't want to admit is that if they expect people to use BeOS along side other OS's, then you damn better support logical parititions otherwise some people might not be able to add BeOS.
    Timur Tabi
    Remove "nospam_" from email address

  2. Re:catering to the near sighted (pun intended) by binarybits · · Score: 2

    12.1 inch display? did apple just set back in time about 4 years? i beta tested laptops at dell last year, and 14.1 was the standard, with the 15 inch inspiron 7000 the premium.

    Two problems with this. First is the price. 12" is cheaper than 14". Apple's pro line has 14". They wanted this to be within the reach of the average consumer. A 14" monitor would've added to the price.

    More importantly, this is designed to be a small machine. They're promoting this as the machine you take with you on the schoolbus, up into the tree house, on the couch, etc. A bigger display means a heavier iBook. 12" is plenty big for what it needs to do.

    they also mention playing multiplayer games. no way you'll get openGL support for this box's hardware, so you better be into bridge.

    Nonsense. The iBook has a high-end ATI portable graphics chipset, and the MacOS has OpenGL support built in. At the keynote, Bungie showed a kick-ass new game called "Halo" that had some real-time animated OpenGL scenes that I thought were very impressive. This thing'll be able to run anything existing PowerMacs and iMacs can now, and that includes all the big games: Quake III, Starcraft (Brood Wars soon), Myth II, and others. Steve Jobs is making a big push for games on the Mac, and standardizing on OpenGL is a big piece of that push.

    Do some reading before you post on something you know nothing about.

  3. Re:*sigh* by bliss · · Score: 2

    That would be my complaint too. It seems like the OS is just a toy with no real complexity. It's nice to have a happy smily interface but it's extremely necessary to have something that can flick a switch to make it complex. The whole idea of the mac goes against my grain: just sit back and let the computer think for you. For example I have a problem with compiling the linux kernel (2.3.6) with the e2compr patch for it so that I can do compression. I have tried something it didn't work, so I tried something else, still didn't work. Did I go crying to mommy when it didn't work? nope.

    I think it just hides things and makes the problems just glazed over. I want to change anything about the hardware or the OS and if quality is lesser well than too bad. I would rather trade 10Mhz of speed for 2,100% better configurability.

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  4. Doesn't Have Firewire by variable · · Score: 2


    They are tricky on the main page of the description. The laptop "can" have FireWire via the PC Card slots, but it doesn't have it on the machine itself. Check out the specs link for a less spin-doctored listing.

    http://www.apple.com/powerbook/specifications.html

    --
    ........ "The faster I go, the behinder I get" - Lewis Carroll
  5. Re:Mis-design... by Eccles · · Score: 2

    >Don't complain, women know what big hands mean.

    Yeah, it means you wear big gloves. (As for that other thing, given the size of my shoes, I *wish* big feet meant that...)

    --
    Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
  6. Myddrin regularly scheduled rant. by Myddrin · · Score: 2

    Oddly, the only ones I could find with an AMD K6-III and a 14" screen were in the $1800 range, not the $1599 range apple was shooting for. But even granting you that point:

    With the Rage Mobility chip? With Wireless networking being only $100 option? With the neat design (no latch, it opens like a cell phone. Not the color, if I get one I'm painting it black and maybe put a Merciful Release symbol on it....) With a cool little built-in handle? I'm sorry, say what you want about the color but the no-latch design and the handle are things I'd _love_ to see in their pro series...

    Did you look at the full specs of all the laptops? To say that there are laptops out there with those screens in that price range is very misleading considering the other cool features this machine has.

    ---Warning: Impending Rant---
    I'm getting sick and tired of the minorities in the Linux, Windows, OS/2, Amiga, Purple-Assed Baboon, And Mac comunities that do a knee-jerk response of disliking anything outside their community. It's ridiculous.

    We are supposed to be intelligent, logical people the design and support (well some of us) software and hardware. Can't we look at this for what it is? Just like the iMac, this is supposed to be a laptop that your Mom will use. Not you, your Mom. Does your mom need the highest res and biggest (physically) screen? Mine doesn't. Do you reallly think, honestly and truely that Apple didn't do some market research about this? Come on, they've rested their entire bussiness future on the four product lines. Do you really think they are that dumb?

    I guess what I'm trying to say is that just because (for example) Amiga does something doesn't mean it's bad. It may be good for that community, or for even the larger geek community or it might be bad. Before going off half-cocked and lambasting it, check your facts. Make sure you understand the market it's in, etc.

    Sorry, that was my regularly scheduled rant.

    For the record, I don't consider myself part of any "community." I don't feel any one OS is good for everything. I've used Amigas considerably, use Windows for my job, have a Mac with Linux installed at home....

    Sorry for taking up so much time,
    RobK
    --
    Myddrin
  7. Awfully impressive email by Acy+James+Stapp · · Score: 2

    I love the "blazingly fast 300MHz PowerPC G3 processor--great for...sending and receiving email".

    I didn't know email was so CPU-intensive. Maybe it's just a crappy TCP/IP stack :)

    --
    -- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
  8. Call me Greedy, but 800x600? by BadlandZ · · Score: 2
    $1549 Student, $1599 Full Price, Direct from Apple, shipping Late September.

    I guess, for Apple, the price isn't THAT bad... But, maybe I am just a little to "real-estate" hungry to think that 12.1" and 800x600 resolution is enough to use now days. Well, maybe to use, but buying new, I would want more....

    1. Re:Call me Greedy, but 800x600? by BadlandZ · · Score: 2

      Yea, I know. But, if it had a bigger screen, I would probably go look at it as a toy for my wife to play with. :-)

  9. You're a geek by binarybits · · Score: 4

    Don't get me wrong, most Slashdotters are, including me. Being a geek isn't a bad thing. But most people are not geeks. And most non-geeks are happy to have a "toy" OS that gets the job done. They can do word processing, graphics, web browsing, email, and games, and that's about it. But that's all they are interested in doing. The computer is a tool. It's a very useful tool, but it's still just a tool.

    Even those of us who do like to tinker with out systems from time to time still want to be able to hide that complexity when they need to get other work done. When I am writing a paper, checking my email, or playing Starcraft, my "toy" Mac OS works just fine. The interface is much nicer, it's much simpler to set up and use, and it's generally more productive. When I want to tinker, I have an old Mac on which I install LinuxPPC, and then I can tinker to my heart's content.

    There's no reason non-geeks should learn to use vi, know a programming language, reformat a hard drive, or edit text-based configuration files. These tasks are not the least bit relevant to their lives, and are simply extra work. An oversimplified interface and glazing over of problems is a good thing for 90% of what people do with computers. If their computer crashes, it doesn't matter to them why it crashed. There's no point in giving them the gruesome details of what failed where and how. They'll just reboot and try again. If it continues failing, they switch apps and/or upgrade. They might run disk doctor occasionally, or ask a more knowledgable friend for help. But for the most part they just want the OS to do as it's told, even if they aren't using it as intended.

    A good analogy is a car. For most of us, it's much nicer to have a simple dashboard that gives us a sumarry of what our car is doing than a window that let's us look and the engine and take measurements manually. The mechanically inclined might like rebuilding their engines, but for the rest of us, we are happy to think of our cars as a black box that needs oil changes, fillups, and the rest gets taken care of by the mechanic. Most peoples' lives do not revolve around their computers, any more than around their cars.

    1. Re:You're a geek by binarybits · · Score: 3

      The biggest one is that computers are powerful because they are programmable. Not because microsoft has programmed something for them, not because I hacked out something for them, but because anyone can program them.

      If I were among the 90% of computer users who are not geeks, I would be bewildered by this attitude. For those people, a computer is no differenct from a toaster. You turn it on and get a job done with it. That's it. Learning to program takes a large investment of time, and I can think of very few jobs that home-written, amateur programs can do better than professional apps. I'd be interested in some examples of things that Joe Sixpack will want to program. I can't think of any.

      You seem to have no comprehension of the time and effort it takes to learn to program effectively. Becoming a competent programmer takes more than just learning the syntax of a language. It requires thinking about your computer in a whole new way. For most users, the computer just presents them with a menu of options, and you pick one. How the computer does what it does is irrelevant. You just point and click and the computer does as it's told. Programming, on the other hand, requires systematic and careful thought about precisely how a task should be carried out in a step-by-step fashion. It is non-interactive, and computers are not the least bit helpful when something goes wrong. I shudder at the prospect of teaching my grandfather, my mother, or my sister to program. All of them are plenty smart, but they simply do not have the interest or the patience to learn programming skills.

      Learning to program may be required for getting "the most out of your computer." But learning to rebuild your cars engine is likewise necessary for getting "the most out of your car." That does not mean that everyone should learn to rebuild engines any more than we should all learn to rebuild kernals.

      Let me repeat myself: not everyone's life revolves around computers. Most people don't care if they are getting the most out of their systems. They want to take advantages of the things that computers are most useful for, and do it as quickly and painlessly as possible. For non-geeks, that means a simple GUI like the Mac OS, and using apps like email and word processing. Getting more out of their computers requires more effort than they are willing to invest. This does not make them stupid, lazy, or ignorant. It simply means that their priorities are different than yours. For most people, email, web browsing, word processing, and games are the only things worth taking the time to learn.

      A basic principle of economics is involved here: the division of labor. One of the reason we are so productive is that each person specializes on a specific task and gets really good at it. We geeks are good at making computers go. Other people become good at other things. To expect everyone to learn to program is as silly as expecting everyone to learn to be plumbers or doctors or carpenters. The whole point of having programmers is so *they* can do the programming, and the rest of the population can concentrate on other tasks. I don't plan to learn the ins and out of other peoples' profession, and I don't expect others to learn how to do my job. If someone has a computer problem they can't solve, they should hire a geek to solve it, not try to become a geek themselves.

  10. As many Hubs in a room as you want.... by i_lusiphur · · Score: 2

    yes, since apparently each hub has a specific name (Steve typed in something like Paul.apple.something, almost sounded IP ish) you should be able to x amount in each room.

    neato, huh?

    go apple.

    --
    In /dev/null no one can hear you scream.
  11. FireWire? by leandrod · · Score: 2

    It seems to me that FireWire is not buit-in, but must be separately purchased as a PC Card... this is to me the biggest fault of Apple feature-wise, that it is dumping SCSI from iMacs and PowerBooks without replacing it with FireWire.

    --
    Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
    DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
    GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
  12. Re:This is new? by CaveMan@wetcoast.ca · · Score: 2

    he really needs to ask consumers what they want. Selling crippled machines with little or no chance of upgradability is one track; the rest of the world is headed along a different one.

    OK, correct me If i'm wrong, but wasn't that one of the reasons that everyone said the iMac wasn't going to sell? (Including myself, I will admit...)

    People who're bitching about lack of this and that and the other thing need to remember a couple of things:

    1) No Firewire: So far Firewire is only in use for high end stuff. For everything else you've got USB and (I assume) IDE. Firewire is a sweet technology, but most consumers don't need stupidly fast Hard Discs, RAID arrays, nor High-End digital cameras.

    2) 12.1 inch display: Yeah, I admit I'd like more screen space, but that would jack up the $$. You still get a decent quality screen though.

    3) Colours/looks: Guess what, People have different tastes. Just because you don't happen to like how it looks, or you think a particular colour is ugly, dosen't mean everyone else in the world does. Ever looked in a women/teen magazine? Some of the stuff in there is absolutely hideous (IMHO), yet it sells.

    4) Upgradeability: People seem to keep losing sight of the fact that this is a consumer portable. Most of the people who're going to buy this don't want to have to upgrade it. I know many people who're still hammering away on their old Classics,SE/30's,[34]86's. Just for the simple fact that it does everything they need it to. In a couple of years when they finally have to do something more, they'll go out an buy another computer, which they'll use for another 8 years. They don't really care (or even know) whether their machine has the latest video card, or has more than X amount of RAM, or supports {insert latest gizmo, gadget or doohicky here}.


    To be honest, this consumer portable is a very well, and nice, but what caught my eye and sent my technosterone flowing was the AirPort networking. This was a complete surprise to me, and I've been keeping an eye on things. When they get the wrinkles sorted out of it, this will probably be the most important new Tech to come out of this MacWorld. I know that wireless networks are nothing new, I've been hearing about them since the first PowerBooks came out (remember the 100, 140 and 170?). However, AFAIK this is the first time a computer manufacturer has specifically included support for them (yeah, I know it's $100 for a card, and ~$300 for the hub, so what? $500 for a wireless network? That ain't that bad. Especially since the price is only going to come down. Since it's based on an IE^3 standard, it shouldn't be that hard for 3rd party products to be developed. (If Apple makes it hard, they're only shooting themselves in the foot)

    All in all Apple's lined up a pretty spiffy Quartet of products. Lets just hope they can keep it up.

    Anyways, I'd better get back to work....

    CaveMan

  13. No, but neither do PeeCees... by Darth+Binks · · Score: 2

    Linux? -EASILY-?

    Bwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaah-hahahahahahahahahahaha!

    Brother, Linux don't run "easily" on a netwinder, and the sumbitch was -desinged- to run Linux...lord knows it don't run "easily" on the morass of incompatible standards known as the "peecee".

    Is linux:
    Powerful? Yes.
    Extensible? Yes.
    Hackable? Yes.
    Free? Yes.
    Easy? What color is the sky in -your- world?

    "Using the force to score chicks"

    Darth JarJar

  14. *sigh* by EXpunk · · Score: 4

    I used to be a die hard Mac person. I mean, right down to knowing every little detail about every machine Apple had sold since 1980. Someone need to know what kind of PRAM battery a IIFX used? I'd be yer guy. (2x 3.6v lith). So I really do like seeing these articles on /. and in the news.


    But prices and the OS just really caused me to drift away. 7.5x was an absolute nightmare and 7.6 no real help. Bash 98 to your hearts content, I'll join you, but if I saw "An error of type 11 has just occurred" or "The application "unknown" has unexpectedly quit" one more time I'd have eaten my own spleen. From what I have seen this was around the time Apple really began to lose many of it's more loyal user base.


    These new powerbooks look spiffy, certainly, and I really do hope that Apple gains a bit more of a foothold over M$. But with this snooty attitude that no matter what, people will continue to buy their product (not that M$ doesn't take the same 'tude) IMO they will never regain more than cult status. If the new consumer model has even a small amount of upgrade-ability (meaning more than just RAM) and if users will have more than just one OS as an option for them I would consider buying one for my niece.

    I'm sorry though, but I just want to kick Mr. Black-turtle-neck-tofu-munchin'-sandle-wearing Steve Jobs right in the kiwis. I saw an interview with him and his wife and they talked about their being healthy vegetable-aryans, and his kid had done something really really good so as a treat Steve gave him a cup of fruit flavored tea. Tea? You're a billionaire, you cheap git, buy the kid a fucking bike ferchrissakes :-?.

    --
    Killing spammers is too good for them.
  15. Re: the iBook by Arkham · · Score: 2

    Steve announced the specs:

    12.1" TFT Display - 800x600@24bit
    Rage Mobility graphics, 4MB VRAM
    300MHz G3 w/512k backside cache
    24x CDROM
    32MB RAM, upgradable to 150MB
    3.2 GB hard drive
    56k modem
    USB
    10/100 Ethernet
    full-sized keyboard
    battery life: 6 hours!
    Colors; Tangerine and BlueBerry
    Price: $1599, available in September


    Oh, and get this:

    AirPort WIRELESS NETWORKING!!!!!!!!!!!

    The stats on this:
    Wireless LAN
    11 MBps
    Based on 802.11 wireless networking
    40-bit encrypted transfers

    It has a baseStation with modem and ethernet.

    How cool is that!

    --
    - Vincit qui patitur.
  16. iBook Specs. by Maktoo · · Score: 3

    Here are the specs from the presentation at MacWorld...

    "iBook"
    the
    "iMac to go"

    -- 12.1" full TFT
    -- 800*600/millions color.. ATI RAGE Mobility
    -- 300MHz G3
    -- built-in 24 CD
    -- 32MB.. expandable 264MB RAM
    -- 56K, USB, 10/100 Ethernet
    -- full keyboard
    -- 6 hours battery life]
    -- iMac plastics and rubber coating
    -- handle, opens like a cell phone (no latch needed)

    $1599-- available "this September" in volume

    accepting pre-orders today

    wireless networking... "AirPort wireless"? 802.11 11Mb/s... working with Lucent
    Airport base station... 56K/10-100 can accept an "AirPort" card... iBook has built-in antennas... 10 iBooks can share one base station

    150 feet away

  17. Re:I must have missed something. by binarybits · · Score: 2

    As I recall this was the rumor before Apple made the NeXT purchase. Macworld had a big spread about how Be might be the next Mac OS. There apperantly were talks, but Be demanded too much money. The plan was to build Mac complaitibility environment on top of Be the way they did with NeXTStep.

    This could've been very cool, although OS X is gonna be very cool as well. OS X is basically a seriously hacked copy of the NeXT OS with a Mac compatibility box ("Classic") to allow Mac apps to run without modification and a stripped-down sub set of the Mac OS API's that allow Mac apps to work under a modern OS environment with only minor alteration. ("Carbon") However, the future of the platform is planned to be the third "box" ("Cocoa"), which is basically the OpenStep API's. So in a sense, Next is the future of the Mac OS. The same thing could have been done with Be's OS-- build a compatinility box for old apps, and develop new apps in Be's native environment.

  18. No... by binarybits · · Score: 2

    I'm pretty sure they reverse engineered the G3's.

    But in any event, LinuxPPC is an open source product, and given the way open source operates, it's unlikely that Apple could keep details given to LinuxPPC secret if they wanted to. If Be wants to know how the G3 works, they can just look at LinuxPPC's source, or even simpler, ask the LPPC developers. I don't know what the exact problem the Be team had is, but I suspect that they're just lazy and see larger market share on the Wintel side to expend the effort to figure it out. As others have suggested, Intel money can't have hurt either.

  19. I don't think it runs Linux yet... by Millennium · · Score: 2

    However, considering that the kernel now supports the iMac and the Blue G3's, I'd imagine iBook support won't be terribly difficult to do (remember that Apple's working on unifying the architecture so that all the models will eventually share one motherboard). My guess is that it'll support the iBook in a few weeks.

    The biggest problem will be adding PPC AGP support to the kernel (needed for the video); that's never been done before. Existing x86 AGP code will help, but there are issues to overcome...

  20. Re:Mac Suxxx by Millennium · · Score: 2

    Closed software? Yeah, to some degree. However, take a look at the direction they're headed in. THey've already Open-Sourced Darwin and QuickTime Server; my guess is that thty're testing the waters. If we don't give them a reason to regret this decision, it's likely they'll Open-Source more.

    (Then again, there are so many anti-Apple zealots in the OSS community that my guess is that we'll be giving Apple plenty of reason to regret it, jugding from all the Apple-bashing I hear here).

    Closed hardware: Again, to some degree. But again, look at the direction they're moving in. They went from NuBus to PCI, a more open standard. ADB to USB. SCSI to FireWire (well, there's a step back, but consider the steps forward). a proprietary ROM to OpenFirmware and no ROM (they're still cleaning out the last vestiges of the ROM, but it should be noted that the versions on the Blue G3's, iBooks, and the latest iMacs contain no OS-level code at all.) Couple this with an Open-Source operating sytstem made by Apple which lets you get the system specs easily.

    Over-priced? You're one of those "something for nothing" freaks, I guess; you want a machine which beats the pants off of any comparably-priced PC for the same price as a PC. You're dreaming. It's better, and it deserves a higher price (notice also that the prices have come down; can you imagine what an iBook would have cost three years ago, switching its current specs for equivalent ones of the time?)

    And unreliable: compared to Linux, yes. But it's by no means the worst on the market. A properly-maintained Mac will outdo NT in terms of stability and performance (then again, I suppose that isn't saying much).

    And you know what, I'd say the emperor really isn't wearing any clothes, Your Imperial Majesty.

  21. Wrong wrong wrong wrong and wrong by the+red+pen · · Score: 3
    • The biggest one is that computers are powerful because they are programmable. ... If you are really going to get the full use out of a computer, you aren't going to do it by just surfing the web, by just using some wordprocessing program to type up a paper.... I am saying that to really be able to use a computer, programs other people have written are not going to perfectly suit your needs.
    This is just techie elitism.

    People don't need to program their computers. In fact, you program very few of the computers you use.

    Other people wrote the programs that run my VCR, my microwave oven and my car engine. Maybe I could think of some reason to reprogram them, but I don't want to and I certain don't want to be required to know how these things work in order to use them. The computer that runs slashdot was programmed by other people and I can't do a damn thing about it. (I'd have used Java Servlets, which are much more efficient than Perl CGI.)

    For the record, I'm perfectly capable of programming the computers I own. I've done assembly programming for microcontrollers in embedded environments. I can debug with a (real) ICE. This makes me considerably more 31337 than computer literacy evangelists like you. Still, embedded programming is a headache and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

    Back in 1980, an MIT grad student friend of mine told me that there would eventually be two kinds of computers:

    1. The "appliance" that you would just turn on an use with little ability to program or configure. This would be the computer for the "Masses."
    2. The "workstation". This would be like Linux or OS/2. It would be a powerful system that was open to programming (or, in the case of Linux, anything).
    In reality, we got three kinds. The third is the common "Office Workstation." This is clunky, broken piece of shit that tries to simultaniously provide a robust progrmaming environment yet be simple to use for the non-technical. This is what Windows is. This is what OS/2 became. This is what Linux is evolving into now (Gnome + E? Yikes!).

    I think we should follow my friend's vision. Rather than trying to make Linux easy to use, in general, we should have "Home Linux" and "Office Linux" distros, which are much too rigid for you and me, but simple for people like my uncle Bob.

    Sigh... something to do in my "spare" time. Ha!

  22. It should by binarybits · · Score: 2

    The LinuxPPC people will probably take a few weeks after introduction to get it to run. If Steve was really serious about the OpenSource movement, he'd give them advance access to one so it'd run Linux on release day. The power consumption probably won't be as good. 8.6 had some dramatic battery life improvements. But there's no reason it wouldn't run eventually. Both the iMac and the PB G3's run Linux just fine.

  23. Then don't get one. by webslacker · · Score: 2

    No need to get into conniptions if you don't like it.

  24. It's a LOT cheaper than that. by binarybits · · Score: 2

    Um... $300 for the hub, 100 for the card. $400 total. And you can use up to 10 iBooks with each hub. That means that you can wire a home wireless network for under $1000, even if you have half a dozen computers. Pretty spiffy.

    And it is 11 Mbps.

  25. Re:consumer portable by TrentC · · Score: 2

    only two: blueberry and tangerine?
    i'm disappointed; i was hoping for a gray. too bad.

    According to the AppleInsider link in the original article, Apple rushed a batch of them out so they'd have a model to show at this week's MacWorld expo.

    It's possible that the blueberry and tangerine ones are the only ones they made in this run; the AppleInsider article says they've been seen "in all five flavors of the iMac, [as well as] in a mysterious smoke gray flavor (totaling 6)".

    At least, I hope this is the case; otherwise, I'm getting a blueberry one...

    Jay (=
    (Who has been waiting for months for this machine to be released -- well, that and geting my credit card paid off...)

  26. Re:Drive by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    It doesn't come with a disk drive, but if you want a USB one they are $99 (powered through the USB port).

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  27. Did anyone else notice... by Wakko+Warner · · Score: 2
    ...the iBook kinda looks like a little toilet seat?

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

    --
    "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
  28. Re:Airport == 802.11 wireless by tgd · · Score: 2

    Unless the card is a standard PC-Card... then it may not matter what system its plugged into, particularly once Linux drivers are around for it, since the drivers can be ported to other architectures...

  29. MWNY Expo - New S*it/Answers by GatorMan · · Score: 2

    Yeah, this version of the PowerBook [333 and 400MHz models] have been out since may. The 333 model has 512K L2 backside cache, the 400 has 1MB L2 backside [both on-chip]. The iBook is new and has a 300MHz G3 [actually a 333, reduced for power savings], will come in all 5 iMac colors, ready for 11Mb/sec wireless networking [Apple/Lucent] and does include a 24X CD-ROM, contrary to popular belief. Rumor has it that Apple will soon [this week] introduce 433 and 450MHz models of the PowerBook, and after the initial introduction of this iBook, they may have a faster model with more base RAM [which is upgradeable to 160MB]. And yes, the PowerBooks run LinuxPPC R5 1999 very well. From what I understand, much of the development was done on a PowerBook.

    Also, for the guy that mentioned he had no configuration options w/ a new PowerBook...Apple will soon have customizable configurations on the Apple Store. BYOPB man.

  30. Colours and the High Priesthood by Master+of+Kode+Fu · · Score: 2

    How is it a culture that prides itself on non-conventional piercings, extremely casual clothing (or even no clothing, if you read Po Bronson's book) and non-traditional offices decides to get all conservative when it comes to industrial design? If possible, technology should look good and not always look so "serious". The machine will probably not appeal to those who use tech as penis extenders, but that's not necessarily a bad thing -- the drive to making machines look serious and initimidating is probably a good chunk of what keeps women out of the field (women do have the ability to hack, many just have little time for this macho nonsense).

    I do cross-platform development on reasonably inexpensive laptops (my own little company, with fairly sizable clients) and I figure I'll be doing my REALBasic, Director/Flash and CodeWarrior stuff on a new iBook soon.

    As for id10ts -- yes, it's for id10ts, but realise that they're your moms. Your dads. Your brothers and sisters, boyfriends, girlfriends, and everyone else who isn't a developer or doesn't know their greps from their seds from their awks (and really shouldn't have to). My mom may fall under the category of id10t, but only because she's not a hacker and sometimes finds Windows confusing. However, she's also the Chief of Cardiology at a major hospital in Toronto, and given the sedentary lifestyle of many hackers, may save a geek or two from the bug dev/null in the sky. Strange id10cy, that.

    These id10ts are our users. They're the people for whom we write software, and who will hopefully pay us the big bucks. There are a lot of dumb ones out there, but there are also a lot of smart ones, who couldn't give a rat's ass about processes, threads, piping commands, and all the switches for ls or dir, and good for them. If we develop software they can't understand, it's our own fault. Let's ditch this user-hating "high priesthood" mentality, shall we?