G5 PowerBook 'a challenge'

[MacBytes]

Category: Apple Hardware
Link: G5 PowerBook 'a challenge' (http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/top_news_item.cfm?NewsID=6916)

Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)

Approved by arn

[Balin64]

Well, it is very true that pundits doubted a G4 processor in a laptop a few years back.. I am going to start saving now! Hopefully my new 12" PowerBook will serve me well while I await a G5 KevBook. Yup, Kevlar. Light, indestructable. Can't wait.

[hayesk]

Originally posted by Balin64
Well, it is very true that pundits doubted a G4 processor in a laptop a few years back.. I am going to start saving now! Hopefully my new 12" PowerBook will serve me well while I await a G5 KevBook. Yup, Kevlar. Light, indestructable. Can't wait.

Weren't the clamshell iBooks made of Kevlar?

I know the original iMacs were.

[G4scott]

Originally posted by Balin64
Well, it is very true that pundits doubted a G4 processor in a laptop a few years back.. I am going to start saving now! Hopefully my new 12" PowerBook will serve me well while I await a G5 KevBook. Yup, Kevlar. Light, indestructable. Can't wait.

Heh, I'm in the same position, with a 12" PowerBook. I like the design of the Aluminum PowerBooks, though. Of course, I like the TiBook design before these, so there's no telling what Apple will do. Just as long as it has a backlit keyboard...

So the G5 PowerBook is just a matter of making a lower power G5, and toning down the massive system controller of the current G5's.

I can't wait, but I'll have to :D :cool:

[FlamDrag]

Again, from an Apple marketing sense, there is still a lot of tread-life left in the aluminum PowerBook look - G4 or not. Based on recent history it is reasonable to assume that Apple will have a new enclosure for the G5 powerbooks.

[sharky2313]

There must be some big pressure to dump moto and get those G5s into a powerbook. I imagine that Apple will be able to scale back a g5 as the documentation alludes to by Feb. or the spring at the latest.

Moto has for the last time shown how incompetent they are. Apple makes its big bucks now on laptops and can ill afford to keep putting badly supplied g4's into powerbooks.

I find this quote as more postering than anything else. Trying to remain elusive and set the ground work for an amazing annoucement that Apple, against all odds, overcame technological hurdles to get the G5 into a powerbook. :rolleyes:

[mkaake]

eh, powerbook or not, what i noticed was

panther will support dolby 5.1 when used with the optical out

slick.

i was hoping that would be the case and it wasn't just super high quality stereo sound...

matt

[DonZorro]

Mac OS X (Intel Inside)!!

Talk about what really matters...

FreeBSD (look under OS X hood) already has excellent support PC hardware.

MS would be irrelevant

Wouldn't have to wait for my Dual G5.
Could choose P4 or G5...bring 'em on!

The world would be a much better place

[dho]

After working on a imac 500 for a long while, even a severely underclocked g5 PB (~.9-1.4) would do it for me.:)

It is too bad that they cant release the chips at high speeds in the pbs now, but it is much better than having no g5 at all.

Hopefully things will change when they shrink the chip.

The DHO is not pissed, but for sure not excited.

edit: clarification(90 minute web design period to kill)

[Keo]

So I'm thinkin about buyin a new 15" PB, would you wait for the G5? Will the G4 be obselete? I plan on keepin the computer 4 years.

[blizaine]

The world would be a much better place [/B]

I don't see the world being a better place when Apple files chapter 11... do you?

[MacIke]

What about all people saying that the G5 is cool enough running at 1.3 or so.

My new 15" G4 is in the mail

[gwuMACaddict]

:D

i'd LOOOOVE a powerbookG5

as soon as i buy some asbestos underwear to insulate my jewels from the heat and radiation...

[Blackcat]

Rubenstein appears to be saying "we just need low power G5s"! There was no "not yet", "the G4 has life left in it" or other spin.

IBM is releases 90nm G5s in November.

:)

[Photorun]

[edited]

[DonZorro]

quote:
I don't see the world being a better place when Apple files chapter 11... do you?
---

Well, OS X would then come head-to-head with WinXP, WinNT, Win****hitsthefan...

"Waiting" for the latest cpu, gpu, motherboard, box, etc. would be eliminated.

Wouldn't you buy OS X to put on Intel hardware?

I just switched (a year ago) to Mac, but I must admit that the hardware choices are a bit limited (even though very good quality).

I don't think it'll cost Apple much to "switch"?

Provide OS X on great hardware (G5 PBs, iMacs, etc.) and also Intel hardware (for those who want/need the flexibility).

THINK about it...don't get all defensive!

[Photorun]

Apple files chapter 11 because it goes to Intel? My god that's a stretch.

[Blackcat]

Originally posted by Photorun
Apple files chapter 11 because it goes to Intel? My god that's a stretch.

Not really.

Apple makes a huge percentage of its profit from hardware. MacOS X for x86 would get them lots more $129s but lots less $2000s.

"You do the math" as they say.

[Ouroboros]

This goes on and on and on about Intel hardware applied to OS X. Doesn't anyone ever remember what Apple has even stated? They already thought of using Intel chips and thought against it. They mentioned it being too hard on their customers during a long conversion process for the changes in softwares versions of everything. They've said this, they've already thought about it. So that's it. Please, every month or two someone brings this up and goes on and on about it without really thinking what it would do to Apple, it is a topic that is repeated over and over. Let's just move on....

[lmalave]

Originally posted by Photorun
Apple files chapter 11 because it goes to Intel? My god that's a stretch.

*sigh* This has only been discussed, like, on 500 different threads in these forums. Throwing technical issues completely aside, there are a plenty of sound business reasons for Apple to stay separate from the Wintel axis.

[greenstork]

Originally posted by DonZorro
quote:
I don't see the world being a better place when Apple files chapter 11... do you?
---

Well, OS X would then come head-to-head with WinXP, WinNT, Win****hitsthefan...

"Waiting" for the latest cpu, gpu, motherboard, box, etc. would be eliminated.

Wouldn't you buy OS X to put on Intel hardware?

I just switched (a year ago) to Mac, but I must admit that the hardware choices are a bit limited (even though very good quality).

I don't think it'll cost Apple much to "switch"?

Provide OS X on great hardware (G5 PBs, iMacs, etc.) and also Intel hardware (for those who want/need the flexibility).

THINK about it...don't get all defensive!

You need to think before you post.

<rant>Apple is a HARDWARE company. You know, highest profit margins in the industry. If they had to sell their hardware for much less money to compete with Wintel boxes, which they would absolutely have to do if they offered OS X for x86 because why would anyone pay $500-1000 for an Apple box when they could get the same speed cheaper. Not only would they have to lower their margins on hardware but they would face excruitiating competition from the likes of Dell, HP, etc. If they became a software company, then they face competition from Microsoft. How long do you think MS Office would stick around for OSX? If there's no MS Office, how long do you think people will stay with OSX? </rant>

edit: My apologies, this is way off topic I agree. I am super excited about G5 PB's. But will a ramped down G5 be faster than a G4? I'm not entirely convinced. I know about the bus speed, DDR utilization etc. but the G4 is a veteran chip, fully optimized and the G5 is the new kid. It seems like developers will have to catch up with G5 optimizations before a real speed performance is realized.

[Alte22a]

Originally posted by Balin64
Well, it is very true that pundits doubted a G4 processor in a laptop a few years back.. I am going to start saving now! Hopefully my new 12" PowerBook will serve me well while I await a G5 KevBook. Yup, Kevlar. Light, indestructable. Can't wait.

I would guess that there could be a some sort plastic casing over a magnesium skeleton. I mean the reserach on plastic is amazing. I heard they were developing next generation tanks with this stuff, Super tough and light. The day will come when we can really play starcraft on a battle field. In the mean time I can create burn DVDs on my Ti and thats fine... :D But for the future of the PB is an interesting one.....

[gotohamish]

Change the topic... to... oh, I don't know? THE THREAD.

Moderator-in-training on a little soapbox.

[Mr. MacPhisto]

Originally posted by Blackcat
Rubenstein appears to be saying "we just need low power G5s"! There was no "not yet", "the G4 has life left in it" or other spin.

IBM is releases 90nm G5s in November.

:)

Well, unless they truly are skipping to 60nm - and it seems to be that is the case with 60nm chips coming in early next summer. We'll probably see a bump in the PowerMacs to dual 2.5GHZ around January. I wouldn't be surprised if 60nm G5s are introduced across the line late next summer.

[primalman]

Originally posted by hayesk
Weren't the clamshell iBooks made of Kevlar?

I know the original iMacs were.

The iMacs were not made of Kevlar. Neither were the Ibooks of old or new.

The old iMac G3 and the iBooks are made of polycarbonate plastics, the same stuff in bulletproof glass and Lexan plastics [think Nalgene bottles]. Very tough, very light and pretty damn cheap.

[macnews]

Apple has to introduce the G5 into the powerbook line. Look how their sales suffered with no update in terms of cpu speed in less than 1 year. Now remember why the update took so long - moto being so slow to produce the higher chips in quantity. I should say I don't know this for fact but appears to be the most commonly accepted reason. If Moto is getting away from chips for computers and going to just chips for phones this will only get worse. Add on to that Apple is ordering chips from IBM - why should Moto supply Apple or worry about it?

Apple has to get the G5 in the powerbook. When is the magical question. I am hoping Apple learned a lot with this latest Moto boondoggle. They do need to update their chips more often than once every 7-10 months.

[nazariteguitar]

When the G5 eventually makes its way into the Powerbook line, does this mean the Powerbook will be a 64 bit notebook computer? And if so that would probably allow for more max memory, right?:D

[DonZorro]

Sorry Mod...my last post on this soapbox :-)

What do you prefer...

$2000 per box based on 5% market share

OR (certainly not _exclusive or_ )

$129 per box based on 30% (or maybe more, gasp!) market share

[dornball]

i don't know when the PBG5 will come out, though i hope its spring 2004.

i point i want to make is about motorola. after this current version of chips, the 1.25 & 1.33 G4 7457's, they have no where to go. there is no roadmap claiming that the 7457 (or some other variation) will push past the current lineup. so what will apple use. i thin they will "have" to make the G5's work in the next revision of PB's because there will be no more G4 options.

and with the 90nm G5 chips being tested in November, the possibility for them workingtheir way into PB by next spring seem evenmore likely.

what does everyone else think?

-dornball

[somecows]

When/if a G5 powerbook does come out, will it be in ALL the 15" powerbooks? What I mean is, will the low end machines have a G5 chip in them, or will they do something like only offer the G5 in the top of the line version of the 15" while keeping a G4 in the entry level model, at least for a little while?

[arn]

Originally posted by DonZorro
Sorry Mod...my last post on this soapbox :-)

What do you prefer...

$2000 per box based on 5% market share

OR (certainly not _exclusive or_ )

$129 per box based on 30% (or maybe more, gasp!) market share

Why don't you ask BeOS or OS/2 or NeXTStep?

arn

[giba]

Originally posted by DonZorro
Sorry Mod...my last post on this soapbox :-)

What do you prefer...

$2000 per box based on 5% market share

OR (certainly not _exclusive or_ )

$129 per box based on 30% (or maybe more, gasp!) market share

Um, for a market of 100 people :p .... the first would give me $10,000 the second would give me $3,870.... i think I rather take the first. And I do think it will be an exclusive or.

[themacolyte]

Originally posted by DonZorro
What do you prefer...

$2000 per box based on 5% market share

OR (certainly not _exclusive or_ )

$129 per box based on 30% (or maybe more, gasp!) market share


A mathematics comment... 5% to 30% is a six fold increase. Apple would be trading $2000 for (6 * $129) or $774. Not a good trade. Even with the higher profit margin on software, what would happen when Wallstreet sees Apple's overall revenue drop by two thirds?

Your comment doesn't help your argument.

Sorry, we all jumped on this one at once :)

[Rincewind42]

Originally posted by DonZorro
Sorry Mod...my last post on this soapbox :-)

What do you prefer...

$2000 per box based on 5% market share

OR (certainly not _exclusive or_ )

$129 per box based on 30% (or maybe more, gasp!) market share

It doesn't really matter. This issue was put to bed a few days ago. Apple will not be moving to Intel as long as IBM has anything to say about it.

http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/09/20030912124002.shtml

[Rincewind42]

Originally posted by Photorun
Hopefully they'll work it out or the 750 (aka G3 to Apple) IBM is working on with Altivec and die shrinking may take everything up a notch, it has that potential with possibly topping out over 3.0 GHz, MP aware, and much much cooler temps and energy efficiency then the current G5 immediate roadmap.

Where is this 3Ghz 750 w/Altivec coming from anyway? RIGHT NOW IBM doesn't produce a G3 faster than 1.1 Ghz, and it doesn't have Altivec. What makes anyone think that in 6-12 months IBM will put out a chip 3 times faster and with Altivec? In fact, I haven't heard any new G3 rumors putting it over 2Ghz.

I'm sorry, I'm not meaning to attack you, but this seems like a pipe dream. IBM is currently working on taking a 2 Ghz processor to 3 Ghz in 12 months. They may be good, but I don't think that they can do 1.1 Ghz to 3.0 Ghz and add a new functional unit in less time.

[sedarby]

Originally posted by sharky2313
There must be some big pressure to dump moto and get those G5s into a powerbook. I imagine that Apple will be able to scale back a g5 as the documentation alludes to by Feb. or the spring at the latest.

Moto has for the last time shown how incompetent they are. Apple makes its big bucks now on laptops and can ill afford to keep putting badly supplied g4's into powerbooks.

I find this quote as more postering than anything else. Trying to remain elusive and set the ground work for an amazing annoucement that Apple, against all odds, overcame technological hurdles to get the G5 into a powerbook. :rolleyes:

More like to lower expectations and give them time to do it right.

[sedarby]

Originally posted by DonZorro
quote:
I don't see the world being a better place when Apple files chapter 11... do you?
---

Well, OS X would then come head-to-head with WinXP, WinNT, Win****hitsthefan...

"Waiting" for the latest cpu, gpu, motherboard, box, etc. would be eliminated.

Wouldn't you buy OS X to put on Intel hardware?

I just switched (a year ago) to Mac, but I must admit that the hardware choices are a bit limited (even though very good quality).

I don't think it'll cost Apple much to "switch"?

Provide OS X on great hardware (G5 PBs, iMacs, etc.) and also Intel hardware (for those who want/need the flexibility).

THINK about it...don't get all defensive!

Very naive. Sure you'll have this great operating system (OSX) running on your garden variety hardware. Then what? Wait for all your software to be ported? If Apple moves to Intel it will be because they do not have any other choice.

Oh, BTW most serious applications will have to be recoded for Intel due to developers having a tendency to use optimized assembly for time critical sections.

This OSX on Intel needs to be shelved until Apple and IBM part ways and there are no other alternatives.

[gotohamish]

Originally posted by DonZorro
Sorry Mod...my last post on this soapbox :-)

What do you prefer...

$2000 per box based on 5% market share

OR (certainly not _exclusive or_ )

$129 per box based on 30% (or maybe more, gasp!) market share

Just... ssshhhhh.

[bignumbers]

Given this talk, I thought I'd go back in time a few years.

The PowerMac G4 was announced 9/1999. The PowerBook remained at a G3 until January of 2001. That's 16 months. The Pismo G3 wasn't even announced until seven months after the desktop G4, and it sold very well (and I'm still using mine).

While I'd love a PBG5, and Apple would sell tons of them, there's a reality that Apple won't ship a PBG5 for quite a while. And it won't be the end of the world.

(The corollary to this is the first desktop and laptop G3's came out the same month, 11/97, but the G3 wasn't nearly as drastic a chip change as the G4 or G5, based on the 603e, wow that was a long time ago, and this is one awful, run-on sentence, don't you think?)

[mrwalker]

Originally posted by DonZorro
Wouldn't you buy OS X to put on Intel hardware?


Eeeh, no.

[ddbean]

Originally posted by mkaake
eh, powerbook or not, what i noticed was

panther will support dolby 5.1 when used with the optical out

slick.



I'm looking forward to direct optical in/out with my Sony Minidisc recorder. (yes, a recordable iPod would be nice noo, hint hint Apple)

[nagromme]

Originally posted by Keo
So I'm thinkin about buyin a new 15" PB, would you wait for the G5? Will the G4 be obselete? I plan on keepin the computer 4 years.

My PowerBook G3 is 4 years old and going strong. It feels slow, believe me, but I can run my business on it, including Photoshop work in OS X.

Your G4 will last a long time and is a great machine. Buy it when you need it. If you don't really need one yet, may as well wait and see if a G5 comes out! I predict one will appear around February, but it's not a certainty.

Now... back to Intel vs. IBM...

[singletrack]

Originally posted by dornball

i point i want to make is about motorola. after this current version of chips, the 1.25 & 1.33 G4 7457's, they have no where to go. there is no roadmap claiming that the 7457 (or some other variation) will push past the current lineup.


Actually, there is.

http://e-www.motorola.com/collateral/SNDF2003_EUROPE_H1101.pdf


90nm process in early 2004
65nm in mid 2005 developed with Phillips and ST.

3+ Ghz and still a 10W goal.
RapidIO
Multi-core chips

'Classic' PPC up to 2Ghz and with DDR support. cost effective Multi-core packaging.

Of course, they've got to deliver on all of that yet.

[Rocketman]

Originally posted by gwuMACaddict
:D

i'd LOOOOVE a powerbookG5

as soon as i buy some asbestos underwear to insulate my jewels from the heat and radiation...

The statement that Apple is waiting for the lower power (smaller um) chips makes perfect sense. But what Apple is absolutely not used to is a chip supplier likely to actually meet the planned ship date of 12-03. To put that in perspective, that is only a bit over 3 months from right now.

Again with perspective, Apple needed the 7457 for powerbooks just short of a year ago and finally they have them now. Motorola sucks hard in terms of delivery. The tech is reasonable, if a bit behind on Ghz, but they deliver LOW POWER chips not HIGH PERFORMANCE chips.

IBM is working toward both, and at minimum will achieve an initial leap in technology as compared to what we are used to with Motorola.

I for onle look forward to the 90um G5 for PB's and wonder more than what speeds they will be, what bus the books will have? It would be a great example of culture shock for Apple customers to be able to buy this come January:

PB G5 1.6Ghz and 2.0 Ghz
800 mhz FSB
Radeon 9600 portable 64mb
8gb addressable memory but only 2 slots so higher capacity ram can be added as tech improves.
FW800/USB2/AX/BT/and a "legacy port" that splits to a dongle with:
Appletalk
Parallel
ADB
Serial (PC)
USB 1.1
ATAPI
Video that inlcudes a true VGA adapter
COMPOSITE video in and out w/audio (TV/VCR) w/digitization
BUILT-IN Cellmodem/phone/service

Optional "AirPower-tm" wireless power supply :)

Rocketman

[primalman]

Originally posted by Rocketman
The statement that Apple is waiting for the lower power (smaller um) chips makes perfect sense. But what Apple is absolutely not used to is a chip supplier likely to actually meet the planned ship date of 12-03. To put that in perspective, that is only a bit over 3 months from right now.

What? A three month life span on the new PBG4? Your crazed.

Originally posted by Rocketman
Again with perspective, Apple needed the 7457 for powerbooks just short of a year ago and finally they have them now. Motorola sucks hard in terms of delivery. The tech is reasonable, if a bit behind on Ghz, but they deliver LOW POWER chips not HIGH PERFORMANCE chips.

Late summer/early fall 03 seems pretty much in line with what I have been hearing all along in regards to the 7557/47. That does not seem late to me.

Originally posted by Rocketman
IBM is working toward both, and at minimum will achieve an initial leap in technology as compared to what we are used to with Motorola.

I for onle look forward to the 90um G5 for PB's and wonder more than what speeds they will be, what bus the books will have? It would be a great example of culture shock for Apple customers to be able to buy this come January:

PB G5 1.6Ghz and 2.0 Ghz
800 mhz FSB
Radeon 9600 portable 64mb
8gb addressable memory but only 2 slots so higher capacity ram can be added as tech improves.
FW800/USB2/AX/BT/and a "legacy port" that splits to a dongle with:
Appletalk
Parallel
ADB
Serial (PC)
USB 1.1
ATAPI
Video that inlcudes a true VGA adapter
COMPOSITE video in and out w/audio (TV/VCR) w/digitization
BUILT-IN Cellmodem/phone/service

Optional "AirPower-tm" wireless power supply :)

Rocketman

AppleTalk is built into the Ehternet now, it's called EtherTalk and it is designed to provide AppleTalk support transparent to the network. Apple will be dropping support for the original Appletalk within 5 years.

Are you actually thinking that there is a need for parallel ports on a Mac? WTF? At this point there is no need for these legacy ports. And for your USB 1.1 idea, did you know that USB 2 is backward compatible with 1.1? No? There is no need for a second type of connector. And PBs come with a VGA adapter, and video out via S-Video, with an adapter to RCA Video. And a built in A/D converter? How big do you want this thing to be?

Insane drivel.

[dongmin]

Originally posted by singletrack
Actually, there is.

http://e-www.motorola.com/collateral/SNDF2003_EUROPE_H1101.pdf


90nm process in early 2004
65nm in mid 2005 developed with Phillips and ST.

3+ Ghz and still a 10W goal.
RapidIO
Multi-core chips

'Classic' PPC up to 2Ghz and with DDR support. cost effective Multi-core packaging.

Of course, they've got to deliver on all of that yet.

Does anyone realisticly believe that Moto will get even close to this goal. It's taken them 4 years to go from 500 mhz to 1333 mhz. So they're suddenly gonna get their act together and jump to 3 ghz in a year? Ha. What comedy.

Moto is dead, as far as Apple is concerend. And with Apple moving away from the G4, Moto has zero incentive to develop processors for personal computers. Game over. End of story.

Originally posted by Blackcat
IBM is releases 90nm G5s in November.

:) Do you have anything remotely resembling fact to back this up? I've heard first quarter 2004 as best case scenario. It's possible that IBM will be sampling these in November, but shipping in volume is a whole another matter.

[JoeRadar]

I would hate for Apple to announce a G5-based laptop anytime soon. They cannot keep up with the current order of G5 products, and throwing another product into the mix would bog things down even more.

My guess: the next G5 product will be the Xserve.

My second guess: the new Apple laptops will be based on IBM's POWER5 chip. From the earliest words from IBM, the POWER5 was designed to scale to smaller devices. So I think it would be premature to rush the current POWER4-derived G5 into a laptop when a POWER5 chip, which is both better suited for laptops and much faster, is right around the corner.

And unlike Power4, Power5 will be designed not only for high-end servers but also for lower-end systems. article (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-984808.html)

[Phil Of Mac]

Originally posted by somecows
When/if a G5 powerbook does come out, will it be in ALL the 15" powerbooks? What I mean is, will the low end machines have a G5 chip in them, or will they do something like only offer the G5 in the top of the line version of the 15" while keeping a G4 in the entry level model, at least for a little while?

It'll switch all at once if past history is any indication.

Originally posted by Rincewind42
Where is this 3Ghz 750 w/Altivec coming from anyway? RIGHT NOW IBM doesn't produce a G3 faster than 1.1 Ghz, and it doesn't have Altivec. What makes anyone think that in 6-12 months IBM will put out a chip 3 times faster and with Altivec? In fact, I haven't heard any new G3 rumors putting it over 2Ghz.

The Altivec-G3 will never exist. The effort it would take to create it could be invested in the G5 to make it cool and small enough to use across the entire product line. And we'd end up with a better processor, too.

[rhialto]

Originally posted by Blackcat
Not really.

Apple makes a huge percentage of its profit from hardware. MacOS X for x86 would get them lots more $129s but lots less $2000s.

"You do the math" as they say.

Except, apple is building a software suite they could sell separately from the OS on Intel; all the iLife stuff and professional apps. Just sell the OS like MS does and sell all the iLife stuff for $399 (or so) and there is your profit. Heck, they could even promote the 10.3 on intel for developers and have the iLife stuff for sale so they don't confuse joe average.

[dornball]

Originally posted by singletrack
Actually, there is.

http://e-www.motorola.com/collateral/SNDF2003_EUROPE_H1101.pdf


90nm process in early 2004
65nm in mid 2005 developed with Phillips and ST.

3+ Ghz and still a 10W goal.
RapidIO
Multi-core chips

'Classic' PPC up to 2Ghz and with DDR support. cost effective Multi-core packaging.

Of course, they've got to deliver on all of that yet.

i guess i wasn't clear earlier. what i was trying to say, was that motorola will not have anything for apple to use in thier PB's by the time the next revision is due. look at thier history in regards to delivery. they are not going to "all of a sudden" get their act together and put out consistently competitive chips on a regular cycle. moto is a the kid who was always late to class.

-dornball

[Phil Of Mac]

Originally posted by rhialto
Except, apple is building a software suite they could sell separately from the OS on Intel; all the iLife stuff and professional apps. Just sell the OS like MS does and sell all the iLife stuff for $399 (or so) and there is your profit. Heck, they could even promote the 10.3 on intel for developers and have the iLife stuff for sale so they don't confuse joe average.

iLife is not worth $400. And Joe Average is not confused when one company sells two different products.

[greenstork]

Originally posted by dongmin
Does anyone realisticly believe that Moto will get even close to this goal. It's taken them 4 years to go from 500 mhz to 1333 mhz. So they're suddenly gonna get their act together and jump to 3 ghz in a year? Ha. What comedy.

Moto is dead, as far as Apple is concerend. And with Apple moving away from the G4, Moto has zero incentive to develop processors for personal computers. Game over. End of story.


You might be interested to know that the magazine Fast company has a big article on the worst, most overpaid CEO's in the U.S. Near the top is Motorola's CEO. During his tenure, the stock has plummeted like 70% and they cite that he has ruined their semiconductor unit. It made me chuckle how sad and pathetic they have become. I guess I only could chuckle because Apple is moving on to IBM, thank goodness.

[Snowy_River]

Originally posted by Photorun
Challenge? No kidding! That's why all the G5 posters pre Paris Expo were so friggin' clueless and aggrivating with their heads up their arse posting their folly in these forums! Idiots.

Clueless? Idiots? Given the information that was available, it was not unreasonable to think that there was a strong possibility that the G5 could be placed into the PowerBook line very quickly, perhaps even immediately, as the G3 was. Did this mean that it was a given? No, and no one I saw posting said it was.

Indeed, from what I've read, the reason that the G5 can't be put into a PowerBook (at, say, 1.2 GHz or so) has nothing to do with the chip, but rather has to do with the System Controller. Was there any information about the System Controller available before the G5 towers were released?

The simple fact is that we don't know how Apple is distributing their resources. If they had wanted to (though it would have been a foolish mistake) they could have invested all of their R&D in making the PowerBook their first G5 product. All we are all doing is guessing about what Apple's priorities might be. Guessing wrong does not make someone clueless or an idiot. So, please refrain from such insulting comments.

[greenstork]

Originally posted by Phil Of Mac

The Altivec-G3 will never exist. The effort it would take to create it could be invested in the G5 to make it cool and small enough to use across the entire product line. And we'd end up with a better processor, too.

You're making a number of assumptions here that could be wrong (could be right too). First, you're assuming that this type of G3 research is not already underway. Second, you're assuming that the performance of a G3 w/Altivec is inferior. Third, you're assuming that the G5 was always intended to be mobile processor.

In my opinion, I think all of these assumptions are wrong. I think research on a velocity engine for the G3 is and has been going on. Second, I think the G3 can be a very fast (faster than current G5 2.0 Ghz), cool, portable chip. Third, I think the G5, as a derivative of a Power 4 server chip was originally deisgned for a desktop. That said, the cost of research for a mobile G5 could be far more than for a G3 from this date onwards.

Either way, neither one of us has a clue that can provide enough certainty for you to make such a sweeping statement as it "will never exist". As a matter of fact, many rumors and documentation contradict that entirely.

[Analog Kid]

...the possibility of a G5 PowerBook was simply “an issue of good, solid engineering”

I was so happy to hear this!

I translate this to mean that the Apple hardware team doesn't give a damn about people in forums saying "the Powerbook is finished if they don't put a G5 in"-- they're keeping their focus on designing good products.

Frankly that's all I can ask for.

People in these forums talk like the very talented folks in Apple R&D don't think about these things before they make decisions.

If IBM is willing to source two chip families, and the talk of Altivec'd G3's implies they might be, then it may just turn out that we see the portables based on one family and the desktops based on another for quite some time.

That would be a Good Thing, folks. It means no compromises. Let us not forget so quickly the compromises of the G4 desktops. We'd have a rocket of a desktop and slick portables.

...rather than reasonably slick portables and reasonably slick portables in a desktop case.

There's also a (albiet slim) chance that Mot comes out of it's coma and releases that dual-core G4.

The G5 doesn't have to obsolete earlier generations. I've been running a G3 iMac for 4 years and Altivec didn't kill it like my Wintel experience led me to fear. Apple has done a great job keeping these viable with OS X.

In the Wintel world, MS doesn't care if people are unhappy with their recently bought Intel boxes as long as they can say their OS has such-n-such. In the Apple world, Apple doesn't want to alienate their hardware buyers by needlessly limiting the lifespan of their purchases.

It looks like the primary benefit of the 64bit architecture right now is deeper memory and Panther looks to address that by allowing more memory on G5s while staying G3/G4 compatible.

While there are niche buyers who might want 8GB in a laptop, I don't think that's going to render a 2-4GB laptop obsolete.

Even Intel maintains that 32 bits is enough. I think some of that is defensive, but it does indicate that the highest volume processors will stay 32bit for a while.

And going to 90nm doesn't necessarily mean lower power... The 90nm Intel Prescott is rumored at 103W!

So tying this all together, based on that little comment in the article, I'd say that Apple hasn't lost their heads-- they're worried about making good products. Maybe that's a G5, maybe it's something else. Either way I wouldn't be dissapointed...

[Snowy_River]

Originally posted by DonZorro

Provide OS X on great hardware (G5 PBs, iMacs, etc.) and also Intel hardware (for those who want/need the flexibility).

THINK about it...don't get all defensive!

I think the problem with this is that they would more than double their development cost if they were trying to maintain OS X on both platforms. That wouldn't be a desirable situation for them.

Not only that, but there would be very little software available for OS X on x86. Think about how hard it's been to get developers to update their software to run on OS X rather than OS 9. Now you want them to make the changes and recompile to support another platform? It just wouldn't happen.

So, Apple's only real choice would be for Apple to move completely to x86, and abandon the PPC architecture. Again, this would be an extremely painful transition, far more difficult than the transition to OS X has been. It could easily be a fatal mistake for Apple.

No, I think that leaving Marklar behind closed doors is the only smart move at the moment.

[Snowy_River]

Originally posted by bignumbers
Given this talk, I thought I'd go back in time a few years.

The PowerMac G4 was announced 9/1999. The PowerBook remained at a G3 until January of 2001. That's 16 months. The Pismo G3 wasn't even announced until seven months after the desktop G4, and it sold very well (and I'm still using mine).

But, on the other hand, the performance gap wasn't that big between the G3 and G4. So, there wasn't anywhere near as much incentive for Apple to get the G4 out. Even now, the performance of the iBooks rival that of the PowerBooks except in Altivec intensive tasks.

The difference between the G4 and the G5, by contrast, is far more dramatic. And Apple's laptops are falling behind in overall performance, when compared to the rest of the market. So Apple has an increasing impetous to get the G5 into their PowerBooks, just to keep the performance up. (Indeed, the G3 kept scaling and scaling, whereas the G4 has shown itself to have ongoing trouble scaling.)

[seamuskrat]

I know I am not popular with my statements that G5's in powerbooks won't happen soon, but le tme reiterate my logic.
Its not just the G5 chip, running cool enough, using less watts. Comparisons about watts, speeds, and power and heat is meaningless when looking at JUST the CPU chip. The G5 desktop line includes the G5 CPU but is also a combination of other controller chips, ram chips, etc. It is this entire PACKAGE that provides siginificant boosts to the overall performance.
Its unrealistic to think that merely placing a cool running low power G5 into a slightly modified laptop would produce results any better or siginificantly better than exisiting models. All of the other accessory technologies need to be scaled and converted to a laptop modality.
Even today, the g4 line up of powerbooks can hold their own. But they are still very weak when compared with any desktop. That is the price you pay (at this time) for portability. As technology progresses, battery life enhanced, chip size reduced, heat reduced, we will have G5 powerbooks. But in all realistic looks at the technology, we are looking at January 2005 for such a move. At that time look for 2 gig G5 in laptps while the desktop line crusies about 3+. HOPEFULLY there willbe chip speed parity for a laptop. As the chip itself is not the total bottleneck, but the whole MOBO design.
Take a look at the benchmarks with the G5 vs others. The G5 is not a linear performance increase based on MHZ over dual G4 systems. So, that means either the OS needs more help with optimization, etc. Probably true. But all that fast RAM FSB, etc. is contributing to the performance increase. According to the technical discussions I have read, the G5 per clock cycle is WORSE than the G4 is some cases. All new chip evolutions have quirks like this. But the whole package of memory controllers and I/O controllers makes theG5 have the BIG performance boost we see.

Merely cramming the G5 into exisiting architectures would not be a huge performance increase.

I think this will be illustrated if any upgrade manufactures do invest in getting G5 for older machines. Just having a faster chip should help, but with the supporting architecture being the bottleneck, there is only so much that can be done.

I would love to see faster, better Macintosh computers as much as anyone. But we set ourselves up for major dissappointment as well as look bad with rumors and industry relations by stating thatt G5 laptops are around the corner, etc. Look how many (lousy reporting) major sources picked up on rumors like this. This COULD influence purchasing for all sorts of schools, business, and individuals. The bottom line is this: The day you buy a computer its obsolete. Period. Apple USED to be 2 generations ahead when they released a new computer. With Moore's law they cannot be uite that well planned to the future, but you can bet that the day those AlBooks hit the expo floor, test models with faster,(?) G4, dual proc(?) or some such are in production. Look at the capabilities of the machine and your needs.
If you have needs that can only be done by a dual G5, then buy that or get the fastest Powerbook and know it will take longer. But you can always paly the what next waiting game. Something WILL ALWAYS be better around the corner.
Again, knowing Apple, enginnering issues, and markets its very likely that we will see at least 2 more AlBook G4 issues. Possibly with 2 processors, especially if the iBook goes G4, which is by no means a certainty.
I think a more important question is when the consumer line will go G5. A whole other thread, but again I will say no SOONER than July 2004 but more likley Jan 2005. Why? Parity for one with pro line. Cost. And life. The iMac can still have some nice performance boosts. Eek some more from the moto chip, add the new L2 cache, add a L3 (if needed) cache and faster speeds, and you have at least one more iteration.
I am guessing, but i think Apple purchases options on large quantities of chips from IBM or MOTO. That means that Apple may be under obligation for a certain quantity of G4. It does not make sense to eat the losess, and for many a 800 mhzG3 iBook is all the machine they need just as the celerons and crap work for PC users. Remember, users of forums liek these are in the 'elite' of computing. They seek out new ideas, knowledge and rumors. The 'masses' Mac users included need a computer for simple tasks and even the meager iBooks (a great machine BTW) do just fine.
But I ramble. Flame away.

[Rincewind42]

Originally posted by greenstork
You're making a number of assumptions here that could be wrong (could be right too). First, you're assuming that this type of G3 research is not already underway. Second, you're assuming that the performance of a G3 w/Altivec is inferior. Third, you're assuming that the G5 was always intended to be mobile processor.

The question of if G3+Altivec is being researched is academic until we see one. I don't think that IBM would make it a priority, when they already have an Altivec product in the G5. And given the G5 is 64-bit and the G3 isn't, I would think that if anything Apple would use a G3+Altivec for iMac/eMacs/iBooks rather than the PowerMac/PowerBook line. And no, I don't think that IBM would re-engineer the G3 to be 64-bit - they already have a 64-bit chip in the G5. I don't think that he implied that a G3+Altivec could be a lesser performer than the G5 - but they are very different chips any way you look at it, so it'd be very hard to figure out which would do better. And finally, the current implementation of the G5 may or may not have been meant to be a mobile processor, but I think that Apple will eventually use it anyway. One of Apple's major selling points is that they don't have to use a different chip for desktop/laptop because the PowerPC is so efficient (which even the G5 is coming in around 50w @ 2Ghz vs the 3.2 P4 at around 90). I think a centrino-like seperation would be bad PR for Apple.

In my opinion, I think all of these assumptions are wrong. I think research on a velocity engine for the G3 is and has been going on. Second, I think the G3 can be a very fast (faster than current G5 2.0 Ghz), cool, portable chip. Third, I think the G5, as a derivative of a Power 4 server chip was originally deisgned for a desktop. That said, the cost of research for a mobile G5 could be far more than for a G3 from this date onwards.

The cost for a mobile G5 could be more than a G3, but the G5 will head in that direction anyway. IBM is planning on moving to 90nm by the end of the year, and to 65 after that. These chips will be cool enough for a laptop at the speeds Apple is currently using them in a desktop. And again, the G3 is a very different chip from the G5. The G5 is a data machine, you can't argue that the G3 will suddenly get a 2:1 bus ratio without some serious engineering going into it. And finally, the G5 is decended from the Power4, but it is not a Power4. It uses far less power than the Power4 and is far smaller too. It's also single core and with less cache. Both of these allow it's power usage to approach portable levels. No, they aren't as cheap as the G3, but neither is the G4 and the G5 is currently within 50% of the G4's power usage (at similar clock speeds). Finally, notice that the new PowerBooks have the same clock slewing technology as the PowerMac G5s do.This alone would make the G5 use similar amounts of power as a G4 going all out.[/b][/quote]

Either way, neither one of us has a clue that can provide enough certainty for you to make such a sweeping statement as it "will never exist". As a matter of fact, many rumors and documentation contradict that entirely.

Yes, we have rumors of a G3+Altivec. I don't know of any documentation (be happy to be proven wrong) that would point to this however. I'm certain there is another G3 update in the works, but even if it is 'VX' or whatever that won't mean it has Altivec. I think you just have to think Occam's Razor. Would it make more sense for IBM to create a G3+Altivec and split their Altivec holdings between two competing processors, or devote all Altivec resources to one chip (the G5) that probably has higher margins and make it best in class?

[usersince86]

The truth is, I don't know what I'm talking about, BUT if a G3 "Altivec"-compatible processor, made by IBM, were available at faster speeds than a G4, wouldn't that be another choice?

I've been using Macs since 1986 (512enhanced) and wouldn't mind dumping Motorola altogether.

Obviously Apple wouldn't mind either...

Who would have guessed in 1984 that the rider on the white horse that might save Apple would be wearing a Big Blue Suit (with a Microsoft Office X t-shirt underneath)?

:-)

[Rincewind42]

Originally posted by seamuskrat
Its not just the G5 chip, running cool enough, using less watts. Comparisons about watts, speeds, and power and heat is meaningless when looking at JUST the CPU chip. The G5 desktop line includes the G5 CPU but is also a combination of other controller chips, ram chips, etc. It is this entire PACKAGE that provides siginificant boosts to the overall performance.
Its unrealistic to think that merely placing a cool running low power G5 into a slightly modified laptop would produce results any better or siginificantly better than exisiting models. All of the other accessory technologies need to be scaled and converted to a laptop modality.
Even today, the g4 line up of powerbooks can hold their own. But they are still very weak when compared with any desktop. That is the price you pay (at this time) for portability. As technology progresses, battery life enhanced, chip size reduced, heat reduced, we will have G5 powerbooks. But in all realistic looks at the technology, we are looking at January 2005 for such a move. At that time look for 2 gig G5 in laptps while the desktop line crusies about 3+. HOPEFULLY there willbe chip speed parity for a laptop. As the chip itself is not the total bottleneck, but the whole MOBO design.
Take a look at the benchmarks with the G5 vs others. The G5 is not a linear performance increase based on MHZ over dual G4 systems. So, that means either the OS needs more help with optimization, etc. Probably true. But all that fast RAM FSB, etc. is contributing to the performance increase. According to the technical discussions I have read, the G5 per clock cycle is WORSE than the G4 is some cases. All new chip evolutions have quirks like this. But the whole package of memory controllers and I/O controllers makes theG5 have the BIG performance boost we see.

Merely cramming the G5 into exisiting architectures would not be a huge performance increase.


No flames, just a little counter logic. There are really only two things holding the G5 back from a PowerBook. CPU power usage, and System controller power usage. What will it take to reduce both? They can do it with process shrinks (90 nm due by end of the year, prolly see both chips hitting machines by march) or speed drops. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple implemented both to get a G5 in the PowerBooks by summer 2004. A 1.6Ghz G5 running on a 533Mhz system controller would accept DDR 333 ram without the need to dual channel (the G5 running on a 533 Mhz FSB would only be able to shuffle about 2100 MB/s in either direction, 600 MB/s less than DDR 333 can do). Similarly a 2Ghz G5 running on a 667 controller would push 2700 MB/s in either direction. We already have DDR 333, so that's not new to PowerBooks. I would further expect them to implement an 8-bit hyper transport bus to link the rest of the systems to the controller. Unlike the PowerMac, the PowerBook doesn't have PCI slots to feed, so the 16-bit hyper transport+slots go away. I don't know the power usage statistics on Hypertransport, but I doubt that they are a deal breaker. And it wouldn't surprising that the PowerBook would use a slower FSB than the PowerMac - they traditionally have had a 1 generation behind FSB anyway. Finally, with the PowerBooks not using dual cpus and having fewer system resources to use bandwidth on the motherboard, they can do away with a lot of the power consumers and bandwidth requirements that the PowerMac has. No, they won't be as fast as the desktops, but they will be faster than what we have today.

[Steven1621]

there are definitely power and cooling issues that seriously need to be addressed. give it a year. my bet is apple's engineers will figure it out by then.

[bentoon]

Re: 7200 RPM IBM/Hitachi


quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Code101
I ordered the 17"
My only problem with it is the HDD. I can't believe Apple didn't put the IBM/Hitachi 7K60 as an option. After I get my 17" Powerbook, I'm going to have to put the 7K60 drive in it. This drive is the only Laptop drive that's 7200 RPM and 8MB cache. Twice as fast as any of the 5400RPM drives.
------------------------------------------------------------------------




Very Interesting.
My problem exactly...

1) If you can put this Hitachi HD in the 17" (it's 60 GB) can you then put the original 17"PB HD in and enclosure and use it with a firewire? Something like this:
http://store.yahoo.com/insidecomput...enclosure1.html

2) Second, Honestly, on these machines is the extra RAM going to make a huge difference or is it more a panacea? If I load up on 1.5 or 2 G's of RAM, is the machine really built to be able to take advantage of this? Will I really be able to feel it?

I know that the G5's will be coming soon, and perhaps it's foolish to purchase PB's now,
Yet, these are Fine Machines at a fine price.
Plus my powerbook G3 (Lombard) While it has been with me for 5 years is being held together now by a rubberband. So I Want.
(I may add that 5 years ago I went through mental anguish about dishing out the cash for this G3PB but it has been one of the best investments)

Finally, my Compliments to this site and tremendous information.
After reading steadily for months, I have become compleatly addicted to the enless cycle of craving and grasping.
What will I do now? (I hear there is a 12 step group for MRA's like myself)

[Kanada]

re:(I hear there is a 12 step group for MRA's like myself)







lol,



sorry first post (2nd actually)
but i think I could use the 12 step program too:)

[Snowy_River]

Originally posted by Rincewind42
Yes, we have rumors of a G3+Altivec. I don't know of any documentation (be happy to be proven wrong) that would point to this however. I'm certain there is another G3 update in the works, but even if it is 'VX' or whatever that won't mean it has Altivec. I think you just have to think Occam's Razor. Would it make more sense for IBM to create a G3+Altivec and split their Altivec holdings between two competing processors, or devote all Altivec resources to one chip (the G5) that probably has higher margins and make it best in class?

If Apple wants a chip that is essentially a G4 but not produced by Moto for the 'i' line, and if IBM could (without too much expense) develop the 750VX with Altivec, wouldn't this be a desirable thing?

As you said, it's academic until we see one, but I don't think it's appropriate to dismiss it out of hand. There are some reasonable arguments in favor of it.

[Phil Of Mac]

Originally posted by Snowy_River
If Apple wants a chip that is essentially a G4 but not produced by Moto for the 'i' line, and if IBM could (without too much expense) develop the 750VX with Altivec, wouldn't this be a desirable thing?

Only if it would be incredibly easy. I think as soon as you can get G5's into PowerBooks any justification for a G4 evaporates, however. I highly doubt it, unless it can be shown to be extremely easy.

Let's face it. The 750 is a 6 year old design.

I don't rule it out entirely, but I'm highly skeptical. Has a G3-Altivec ever been mentioned anywhere except speculation?

[WM.]

Originally posted by Alte22a
I would guess that there could be a some sort plastic casing over a magnesium skeleton.
That's what the iBook has been made of for over two years now...

WM

[myrdred23]

Originally posted by bignumbers

(The corollary to this is the first desktop and laptop G3's came out the same month, 11/97, but the G3 wasn't nearly as drastic a chip change as the G4 or G5, based on the 603e, wow that was a long time ago, and this is one awful, run-on sentence, don't you think?)

On the contrary, I would argue that the change to G3 was a much more drastic chip change than g3->g4, and even g4->g5. The performance increase over the previous models of processors was enormous, much more than the other two transitions. Granted, G4 added a new AltiVec unit, and the G5 is 64bit, which are both great improvements, but in terms of pure performance increase, I would say the G3 takes the gold here, as it literally crushed all the previous chips in terms of speed.

[Phil Of Mac]

Originally posted by myrdred23
On the contrary, I would argue that the change to G3 was a much more drastic chip change than g3->g4, and even g4->g5. The performance increase over the previous models of processors was enormous, much more than the other two transitions. Granted, G4 added a new AltiVec unit, and the G5 is 64bit, which are both great improvements, but in terms of pure performance increase, I would say the G3 takes the gold here, as it literally crushed all the previous chips in terms of speed.

The G5 has a complete change in system architecture though. That can't be easy to implement.

I agree that the G3 was truly revolutionary, moreso than the G4. Perhaps it was more than the G5. The G5 seems as revolutionary to us as the G3, but only because Motorola hasn't been keeping up.

Also remember that the G3 came about along with the Jobs Revolution. What glorious days those were.

[seamuskrat]

Originally posted by Rincewind42
No flames, just a little counter logic. There are really only two things holding the G5 back from a PowerBook. CPU power usage, and System controller power usage.
True. But is the system controller getting a die change? I know these chips do evolve, but IBM can use the 970 in more than one application. The Apple system controller may not be as widely profitable for them to expend research dollars on.
But your logic is valid. Hopefully by summer 04 as you say we could see this machine.

[Phil Of Mac]

Originally posted by seamuskrat
True. But is the system controller getting a die change? I know these chips do evolve, but IBM can use the 970 in more than one application. The Apple system controller may not be as widely profitable for them to expend research dollars on.

IBM doesn't spend research dollars on the Apple system controller, Apple does. It's an Apple design. All IBM does is manufacture it.

[AidenShaw]

Originally posted by bentoon
can you then put the original 17"PB HD in and enclosure and use it with a firewire?


Certainly - any bare enclosure for a 2.5" by 9.5mm drive should work.

We've done this with a number of drives from upgraded systems - although we use a case that's 1394+USB2.0 so that it's truly universal.

[primalman]

Originally posted by AidenShaw

__________________
-as

1973 Ford Pinto hatchback (vinyl roof)
Packard Bell 6510A 133MHz Pentium (64 MiB), 14.4 Kbps modem
Digital HiNote - 10" 640x480, 50 MHz 486
Sony Walkman (rewind broken)

LOL on your sig

[DakotaGuy]

Originally posted by Rincewind42
The question of if G3+Altivec is being researched is academic until we see one. I don't think that IBM would make it a priority, when they already have an Altivec product in the G5. And given the G5 is 64-bit and the G3 isn't, I would think that if anything Apple would use a G3+Altivec for iMac/eMacs/iBooks rather than the PowerMac/PowerBook line.

I don't even think the iMac/eMac will be using a G3+ Altivec for some time. My guess is the next revs. will use the 7457 from Motorola. Right now the 7457 is going up to 1.33Ghz in a Powerbook. There are less heat and power concerns in a desktop and since the 7455 was able to scale as high as 1.42Ghz, I think with the better fab in a desktop situation the 7457 will easily see 1.8 to 2Ghz before it is "scaled out." I would not count Moto out just yet, even if you hate them, as far as the iMac and eMac are concerned.

[Phil Of Mac]

Next rev. of iMac should be 6 months from now. By then, it should be reasonable to put a low-GHz G5 in there. eMac might stay G4, though.

[tizza]

Just got my new 15" PB shipped - can't WAIT to open it tonight !!!!!!! :D :D

As much as I would have loved to have held out for a G5, just couldn't wait any longer :(

[Phinius]

Originally posted by dongmin
Does anyone realisticly believe that Moto will get even close to this goal. It's taken them 4 years to go from 500 mhz to 1333 mhz. So they're suddenly gonna get their act together and jump to 3 ghz in a year? Ha. What comedy.

No, if you would bother to even read the Motorola pdf posted above, you might notice that the G4 is scheduled to top out at 2Ghz+. Motorola has intentions of making a host PowerPC processor that goes to 3Ghz after that. A Motorola representative recently stated that they intend to double the frequency of the G4 about every 18 months or so.

Moto is dead, as far as Apple is concerend. And with Apple moving away from the G4, Moto has zero incentive to develop processors for personal computers. Game over. End of story.

Again, look at the pdf. Motorola states that there were 2 million G4 SOI processors sold in the year and a half since it was introduced in January 2002 (most of those were used by Apple). In another 18 months Motorola intends to have shipped 8-10 million G4 SOI units. That strongly indicates that Motorola still intends to sell a great deal of processors to Apple up until at least 2005.

[Phinius]

Originally posted by Rincewind42
The question of if G3+Altivec is being researched is academic One of Apple's major selling points is that they don't have to use a different chip for desktop/laptop because the PowerPC is so efficient (which even the G5 is coming in around 50w @ 2Ghz vs the 3.2 P4 at around 90).

IBM has given the estimated average power use of a 1.8 GHz 970 at 42 watts. Intel only states the maximum power use of the 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 at 90 watts or so. A Microprocessor Report article stated that the maximujm power use of the 2 GHz 970 is 90 watts. So there is little power use advantage in the PowerPC 970 design over the Pentium 4.

[Phinius]

Originally posted by Snowy_River
Even now, the performance of the iBooks rival that of the PowerBooks except in Altivec intensive tasks.

Baloney. The G4 is now up to 1.3 GHz and the G3 is stuck at a top speed of 900 Mhz. IBM and Motorola topend speed tests for their respective chips clearly shows that the G4 is quite a bit faster than the G3 on the same process size.

(Indeed, the G3 kept scaling and scaling, whereas the G4 has shown itself to have ongoing trouble scaling.)

The Pentium 4 was introduced at 1.5 GHz and is now at 3.2 GHz. That's about a 215% increase.

Motorola's G4 started out at 400 Mhz in August of 1999 and its now at 1.3 GHz. That's a frequency increase of about 333% in four years. Contrast that with the G3 which is stuck at 900Mhz and IBM has recently announced a next version that will top out at 1.1 GHz. The G4 is obviously scaling much better than the G3.

[PeteyKohut]

Though I eagerly await a PBG5 and will probably buy one, remember when the original TiBooks came out....the Pismo 500 was running faster in many cases than the 400 Mhz Ti. So.....the first PBG5's may be just a little faster or on par with the current G4s, but in the long run, we will see much faster machines. Although, if IBM came out with an "alitvec" aware G3 like processor, I might have to spring for a book using that. Nice and cool, fast yet cheap! GO IBM!

[Phil Of Mac]

Originally posted by Phinius
Again, look at the pdf. Motorola states that there were 2 million G4 SOI processors sold in the year and a half since it was introduced in January 2002 (most of those were used by Apple). In another 18 months Motorola intends to have shipped 8-10 million G4 SOI units. That strongly indicates that Motorola still intends to sell a great deal of processors to Apple up until at least 2005.

You again? The Motorola apologist?

If Motorola intends to sell a great deal of processors to Apple up to the year 2005, they're as delusional as they are worthless at chip design and manufacture.

[SiliconAddict]

Anyone care to hazard a guess as to when we can expect the first G5 PowerBooks? Please say 1st-2nd quarter because if its next fall I'm going to die. I can't wait that long...but I have to...but I can't...but...ARRGH! ;) :(

Hey Apple! Lets do a deal. You give me my G5 17" PowerBook and I'll gladly hand over 3 grand and lick Jobs's shoes. Call me we'll work out the details ;) :D

[greenstork]

Originally posted by Phinius
Baloney. The G4 is now up to 1.3 GHz and the G3 is stuck at a top speed of 900 Mhz. IBM and Motorola topend speed tests for their respective chips clearly shows that the G4 is quite a bit faster than the G3 on the same process size.



I'd venture to guess that he was saying that the G3 is roughly the same speed as the G4 at the same processor speed. Pound for pound, A 800 Mhz G4 and 800 Mhz G3 are about the same, except altivec intensive tasks.

That said, I have more faith IBM's ability to enhance the G3 than Motorola's ability to enhance the G4.

Wave your PDF around all day for all I care. Motorola has not followed through and nothing at all leads me to believe that they can. They have failed as semicondictor producers except in their embedded market, which is mediocre at best.

IBM however is surely developing some sort of mobile chipset to rival Centrino, be it G3 with altivec or G5, or both. I could see either as a possibility since mobile development is on a different level than desktop development, albeit related through derivative development. It's unique in that different processor features are valued for mobile technology, e.g. efficiency, size, cooling, and then power. So just because the G5 screams, doesn't mean that's the most important mobile feature on which to base future development. Now granted, it does run relatively cool and use little power at lower clock speeds but obviously the million $$ question for the future is, can IBM scale this chip up to faster speeds while still keeping it viable for mobile power consumption. At 130 um, probably not. For this specific reason, this is why I see a possibility of G3 w/Altivec development.

I'm not saying it's likely because there are some obvious marketing advantages of going with the G5, I'm just saying that from a technical perspective (to meet the needs of mobile computing), G3 development might be better, as was the case for the Centrino (pentium M). If Intel is designing processors specifically for laptops, I could very easily see IBM doing the same thing instead of shoehorning a desktop chip. No doubt if it is a G5 for the PB's, that it will be a significantly different variety than it's desktop brethren.

[Analog Kid]

Originally posted by bentoon
Re: 7200 RPM IBM/Hitachi



2) Second, Honestly, on these machines is the extra RAM going to make a huge difference or is it more a panacea? If I load up on 1.5 or 2 G's of RAM, is the machine really built to be able to take advantage of this? Will I really be able to feel it?


Totally depends on what you do with it. I see a huge difference with 1GB over 512MB, but I rarely use the full GB unless I'm running big Octave simulations.

If you want to know, install MenuMeters which gives you a nice pie chart of your memory usage and shows your page outs. If the pie is full, and you're seeing pageouts, you'll benefit from more memory.

Generally, if you keep a lot of apps active, or you do memory intensive things like Photoshop on large images, Matlab or Octave, or video, you'll benefit from more memory...

If you surf the web and use Word, you'll probably not notice. OS X is pretty good with it's memory usage.

[Analog Kid]

Originally posted by Phil Of Mac
Only if it would be incredibly easy. I think as soon as you can get G5's into PowerBooks any justification for a G4 evaporates, however. I highly doubt it, unless it can be shown to be extremely easy.

Not sure if I would say it's "extremely easy", but they did bolt an Altivec unit onto the Power4 core for the 970, they could probably use the same unit for the G3 with some tweaks to the interface...

IBM, from what I remember, uses automated layout processes with very little hand tuning work. If that's true, their designs are probably pretty modular.

That said, they did have to tweak the G5 pipelines to incorporate the Altivec into it, which is why I balk at using "extremely"...

[Analog Kid]

Originally posted by seamuskrat
True. But is the system controller getting a die change? I know these chips do evolve, but IBM can use the 970 in more than one application. The Apple system controller may not be as widely profitable for them to expend research dollars on.
But your logic is valid. Hopefully by summer 04 as you say we could see this machine.

More than just a die change, I'd say. As Rincewind pointed out, there's a lot of baggage in the desktop system chip that could go, and certainly would for a mobile chipset.

In addition to his comments, I'd add that the desktop controller is set up for dual CPUs (probably even in the single CPU systems) and has logic to allow sharing of L2 cache data. Useless baggage in a laptop.

The $1-2 million necessary to revamp the system controller is just part of the development costs and I really doubt it would be a hurdle for Apple...

[NicoMan]

Originally posted by Phil Of Mac
You again? The Motorola apologist?

If Motorola intends to sell a great deal of processors to Apple up to the year 2005, they're as delusional as they are worthless at chip design and manufacture.
As much as I hate Moto for having failed Apple these couple of years, I don't think it's the end of the game yet for them. Even if they don't have the R&D resources to match IBM (I'm not sure there is a company in a world that can), their recent alliance with ST and I-can't-remember-who is probably a good thing, as far as manufacturing processes and R&D costs are concerned. Even if they are focusing their energy onto different markets (mobile phone chips or whatever), they still need to improve their manufacturing process to keep pace with the competition on miniaturization and some other bollocks.

What I very much doubt is the possibility of ever seeing an iteration of the 7457 with full DDR support.

[Analog Kid]

Originally posted by Rincewind42
No flames, just a little counter logic. There are really only two things holding the G5 back from a PowerBook. CPU power usage, and System controller power usage.

What will it take to reduce both? They can do it with process shrinks (90 nm due by end of the year, prolly see both chips hitting machines by march) or speed drops.

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple implemented both to get a G5 in the PowerBooks by summer 2004.

A 1.6Ghz G5 running on a 533Mhz system controller would accept DDR 333 ram without the need to dual channel (the G5 running on a 533 Mhz FSB would only be able to shuffle about 2100 MB/s in either direction, 600 MB/s less than DDR 333 can do).

Similarly a 2Ghz G5 running on a 667 controller would push 2700 MB/s in either direction. We already have DDR 333, so that's not new to PowerBooks.

I would further expect them to implement an 8-bit hyper transport bus to link the rest of the systems to the controller. Unlike the PowerMac, the PowerBook doesn't have PCI slots to feed, so the 16-bit hyper transport+slots go away. I don't know the power usage statistics on Hypertransport, but I doubt that they are a deal breaker.

And it wouldn't surprising that the PowerBook would use a slower FSB than the PowerMac - they traditionally have had a 1 generation behind FSB anyway.

Finally, with the PowerBooks not using dual cpus and having fewer system resources to use bandwidth on the motherboard, they can do away with a lot of the power consumers and bandwidth requirements that the PowerMac has. No, they won't be as fast as the desktops, but they will be faster than what we have today.

Hey, good to see your posts again!

One minor and one major comment...

Minor: the PBs have DDR333, but even though Apple keeps talking about reading data on both edges, I think they're only using one stroke of the data and certainly not running them full speed through the slower G4 bus...

So the memory in the current PBs will pull less power than if it was running full tilt with a G5.

Major: I still can't judge how the G5 will perform if you throttle it's bus... Your suggestions would reduce the front side bus speed, then go to single channel DDR so you can't hide the memory latencies any more.

Granted, going to 90nm would almost certainly include increasing the L2 cache size to probably 1MB, but I don't know if that's enough.

The new G4s have 512KB, which seems to be enough to do without the L3, at least on some benchmarks, but the G5 design would be built expecting a main memory bus between 4 and 10 times as fast...

I'm growing increasingly enamored with the idea of maintaining two processor families-- one for desktops and one for portables. That way IBM could stay focused on optimizing the 970 for high speed desktops and their own servers, and a portable chip could be optimized for performance per mW...

At this point, I guess I don't care much. It doesn't look like Apple is going to do anything rash, so whatever they choose to do should be well designed...

[Analog Kid]

Originally posted by Phinius
A Motorola representative recently stated that they intend to double the frequency of the G4 about every 18 months or so.


I'd discard this statement from Motorola out of hand... Of course they're going to claim to keep pace with Moore's "Law"-- anything different would show them to have given up.

[Analog Kid]

Originally posted by Phil Of Mac
You again? The Motorola apologist?


Uncalled for, Phil...

[mvc]

Originally posted by Analog Kid
Uncalled for, Phil...

But a nice turn of phrase. Still, we are all used to being Mac Apologists.

;)

[Rincewind42]

Originally posted by Phinius
IBM has given the estimated average power use of a 1.8 GHz 970 at 42 watts. Intel only states the maximum power use of the 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 at 90 watts or so. A Microprocessor Report article stated that the maximujm power use of the 2 GHz 970 is 90 watts. So there is little power use advantage in the PowerPC 970 design over the Pentium 4.

Yes, the 970 uses an average of 42 watts at 1.8 Ghz. Slightly higher at 2.0 Ghz (but the average is still under 50 watts). Could you post a link to that Microprocessor Forum document? I also recall always seeing Intel power quotes as average as well, not max.

[Rincewind42]

Originally posted by Analog Kid
Hey, good to see your posts again!

Cool to see someone actually notices =). Spent way too much time running around over the summer and am finally settling into talking about whatever I see in the rumors news again =)

Minor: the PBs have DDR333, but even though Apple keeps talking about reading data on both edges, I think they're only using one stroke of the data and certainly not running them full speed through the slower G4 bus...

So the memory in the current PBs will pull less power than if it was running full tilt with a G5.

I'm not certain it quite works that way, after all if they clocked it down and read on both edges, then they would have never needed to go past DDR 266. I think that they are just (generally) using the DDR to reduce the transmit time rather than to increase bandwidth, and even then the reduction is only between memory and the system controller. But it does allow DMA activity (such as AGP activity) to act more parallel to the CPU.

Major: I still can't judge how the G5 will perform if you throttle it's bus... Your suggestions would reduce the front side bus speed, then go to single channel DDR so you can't hide the memory latencies any more.

Granted, going to 90nm would almost certainly include increasing the L2 cache size to probably 1MB, but I don't know if that's enough.

The new G4s have 512KB, which seems to be enough to do without the L3, at least on some benchmarks, but the G5 design would be built expecting a main memory bus between 4 and 10 times as fast...

Neither can I, I only really know what the specs are and am doing a little guess work based on past designs from Apple and the rest of the industry. I'm betting that Apple won't put Dual Channel into a PowerBook because they won't want to have to engineer more RAM slots (a given on most dual channel systems like the G5). And given that the PMG5 1.6 also uses DDR333 I'm betting they won't feel it as a technical issue either (although admittedly they are running that on an 800 Mhz bus). From a marketting standpoint, only the top end Intel laptops have 800 Mhz FSBs (and I think most of those are desk-laptops that'd put a hole in your thigh if you did put it on your lap), and even then Apple has never really marketed it's laptops based on raw technical numbers. Technically what I said is possible, and I think it'd give you a 1.6 laptop that is at last competitive with it's desktop equivalent (only trails by seconds). And we all pretty much assume that to be the price we pay for portability.

I'm growing increasingly enamored with the idea of maintaining two processor families-- one for desktops and one for portables. That way IBM could stay focused on optimizing the 970 for high speed desktops and their own servers, and a portable chip could be optimized for performance per mW...

At this point, I guess I don't care much. It doesn't look like Apple is going to do anything rash, so whatever they choose to do should be well designed...

I don't think Apple will want to deal with seperate mobile & desktop chip families, if only because using the same chip gives them both marketing and inventory advantages. I think that with a process shrink and some elbow grease, the 970 can be taken down from its current level of power usage. IBM has also been heard to have said that they want their Power5 generation to use much less power for it's speed, so I think there is even more hope on that front.

It's too bad that most of the documentation for this stuff won't show up until June 2004 (other's have requested this info and been told that is when it will be publically available). It'd really answer a lot of nit-picky questions.

[lord_flash]

Originally posted by giba
Um, for a market of 100 people :p .... the first would give me $10,000 the second would give me $3,870.... i think I rather take the first. And I do think it will be an exclusive or.

But isn't Apple's (wildy optimistic) 5% estimate based on $ earned, rather than units sold. You cna get 2 or 3 PCs for the price of a Mac.

If you were selling OS X to be installed over/alongside Windows, it'd be a play for the power that MS have. Which would mean Apple would have to produce it's own fully compatible yet still somehow better office suite as MS certainly wouldn't be keen to help Apple take them on.

It'd be an insane risk for Apple to take. risking what seems to be a nearly-sustainable user base for a gamble at one that will probably still stick with Windows.

So, in short, I'd say that there is a lot more to be gained than the cost of the OS, even if you gave up making hardware. (Who's bigger, MS or Apple?) BUT the chances are Apple (as so many) couldn't pull it off.

And a Mac wouldn't be trendy any more, and people would write loads of viruses for them, and Apple would be seen as the evil organisation bent on world domination...

It's not worth it, kids.

[singletrack]

There's some doubt being cast here that IBM would be developing a 750 with Altivec. I'd counter that by restating 'Go look at the Motorola PPC PDF posted earlier'.

Moto have the goal of producing sub-10W G4 processors for the embedded market and are bigging up the use of Altivec for networking as it's showing 4x speedups over non-Altivec network code. They've won the best in class embedded processor awards 2 years in a row.

IBM sells the 750 into the embedded market as well. If they've not got an answer to Moto's 7447/7457 for the embedded market then they'll lose in that market. You can bet your house they are building a 750VX as an answer to Moto and if it's due in the summer it'll be right up there against the predicted (by Moto - yeah, I know) faster 90nm process G4, both coming in at around the 10W power mark.

I'd be very surprised if IBM can get the 970 down in power to embedded processor power requirements (ie. >10W) and that follows for iBook power requirements as it's a cheap laptop with no fans. The 970 is not an embedded processor and pro laptop requirements are diverging now from the embedded sphere.

My guess - G5 powerbooks in Summer 2004 at say 1.8/2.0Ghz. I don't think we'll see them much before then. iBook goes G4 1.4Ghz then or uses 750VX at 1.4Ghz if it doesn't get a 750GX rev in January AND the powerbooks don't get a speed bump. That depends on Moto.

IBM's goal seems to be to get the 970 up to 3Ghz at 90nm, not reducing the power requirements and for the desktop market, that's much more important as Apple will haemorrhage Pro users again if the speed gap appears again. That's definitely a Ghz before Power market.

[Rocketman]

Originally posted by primalman
What? A three month life span on the new PBG4? Your crazed.
Late summer/early fall 03 seems pretty much in line with what I have been hearing all along in regards to the 7557/47. That does not seem late to me.

Are you actually thinking that there is a need for parallel ports on a Mac?

adapter, and video out via S-Video, with an adapter to RCA Video. And a built in A/D converter? How big do you want this thing to be?

Insane drivel.

Of course it is insane drivel. This is a rumor site with wacky posters.

Steve has said releases are happening "when available" now instead on a forced schedule. There seem to be a few exceptions to that (G5 PM announcement) but whether the PBG5 is released in January as I said or June as you said or October as many fear, it is coming.

Many if not MOST printers use parallel ports. Utilities like Powerprint have existed for macs for years and I have used them regularly. The clone macs had paralel ports.

I strongly suggest Mac adopt a means to support existing paralel printers, preferably with existing drivers if at all practical (micro-VPC)

The mac needs analog audio and video i/o with digitizing. Tons of people have VCR's, TV's, etc and lots of content on them to deal with. Make it trivial.

3/4" thick and toss in a RAID too :)

I was an early adopter for TiPB, 17Al and I will be for PBG5.

I can wish. I GOT my wishes with the TiG4 and PB17. I may be in a minority of people that want and need those features, but for those of us, it is sooo sweet. My predictions on the recent PB releases were basicly right on.

I wish.

Rocketman

[cbonz]

Originally posted by Keo
So I'm thinkin about buyin a new 15" PB, would you wait for the G5? Will the G4 be obselete? I plan on keepin the computer 4 years.

I'm in the same dilemma. I want a laptop but need it to last me 4 years. I feel like the G4 is obsolete to "pro" users with the G5 in the powermac, but really hope there's a G5 powerbook by next summer or I'll be eating my boots. I got another six-eight months with my current computer.

[kristianm]

Originally posted by cbonz
I'm in the same dilemma. I want a laptop but need it to last me 4 years. I feel like the G4 is obsolete to "pro" users with the G5 in the powermac, but really hope there's a G5 powerbook by next summer or I'll be eating my boots. I got another six-eight months with my current computer.

I am quite sure that it is still a great time to buy powerbooks. The new 15" looks great. You will never know what is 4 years down the lane in computing. Laptops barely last 4 years these days anyway.

[revenuee]

sorry guys, i may have missed this in thread when i was reading it through, but where does it say that the G5 PB will be made of Kevlar?

it's not in that article which, in my opinion, doesn't say anything more then the rest of us figured out for ourselves

[Rincewind42]

Originally posted by Rocketman
Many if not MOST printers use parallel ports. Utilities like Powerprint have existed for macs for years and I have used them regularly. The clone macs had paralel ports.

I strongly suggest Mac adopt a means to support existing paralel printers, preferably with existing drivers if at all practical (micro-VPC)

Most printers today have either USB (for home printers) or Ethernet (for network printers) as their primary/preferred interface. The only people actively using a parallel interface as those who are stuck with legacy printers, or legacy machines. It really is a challenge to find a printer you want that doesn't have either USB or Ethernet on it.

[Rincewind42]

Originally posted by singletrack
There's some doubt being cast here that IBM would be developing a 750 with Altivec. I'd counter that by restating 'Go look at the Motorola PPC PDF posted earlier'.

IBM sells the 750 into the embedded market as well. If they've not got an answer to Moto's 7447/7457 for the embedded market then they'll lose in that market. You can bet your house they are building a 750VX as an answer to Moto and if it's due in the summer it'll be right up there against the predicted (by Moto - yeah, I know) faster 90nm process G4, both coming in at around the 10W power mark.

I'd be very surprised if IBM can get the 970 down in power to embedded processor power requirements (ie. >10W) and that follows for iBook power requirements as it's a cheap laptop with no fans. The 970 is not an embedded processor and pro laptop requirements are diverging now from the embedded sphere.

But your forgetting that you can always clock down a CPU. Read the 15"/17" PowerBook technotes and you'll see that they both can clock down to 612/765/815 Mhz (from 1/1.25/1.33Ghz) to save battery power, and the savings are excellent because it's a voltage reduction. Remember that IBM had estimated the 970 @ 1.2 Ghz running at 1.1v at 19 watts - half way to embedded and faster than what Motorola had for the embedded market in the same power range (the 1.06Ghz 7455 went as low as 15 watts iirc). So IBM is a process shrink away from the possibility of being more power efficient than the 7455 (although possibly not as efficient as the 7457). And if the rumor about IBM jumping directly to 60 nm instead of to 90 nm first, then they have the market, period (although I doubt this rumor is true).

[DakotaGuy]

Originally posted by Phinius
Motorola's G4 started out at 400 Mhz in August of 1999 and its now at 1.3 GHz. That's a frequency increase of about 333% in four years. Contrast that with the G3 which is stuck at 900Mhz and IBM has recently announced a next version that will top out at 1.1 GHz. The G4 is obviously scaling much better than the G3.

I would have to agree with this statement. If you look at chip design including the longer pipelines of the G4 you can see the reason it is easier to scale. The new .13 process that Moto is using will help to reach that goal. If the .18 7455 reached 1.42Ghz in a desktop, the .13 7457 will go much higher. It might be a little warm to cool it at 2Ghz in a laptop, but something like an eMac would be fine. I don't think without a complete redesign IBM is going to see 2Ghz with the G3.

[lord_flash]

Originally posted by kristianm
I am quite sure that it is still a great time to buy powerbooks. The new 15" looks great. You will never know what is 4 years down the lane in computing. Laptops barely last 4 years these days anyway.

I want to hear more of this sort of thing - I'm thinking of going shopping this weekend (always assuming they've made it to the Tottenham Court Road by now).

I mean, nuts to it, the G5 powerbook will be later than spring, won't it? Everyone here is always wildly optimistic in their predictions.

[NicoMan]

Originally posted by lord_flash
I want to hear more of this sort of thing - I'm thinking of going shopping this weekend (always assuming they've made it to the Tottenham Court Road by now).

I mean, nuts to it, the G5 powerbook will be later than spring, won't it? Everyone here is always wildly optimistic in their predictions.

I think the most optimistic in those forums are expecting the G5 PBs in Q2 2004 maybe? Even then, you have to be wary of the usual Rev.A syndrome, don't you think?
Nah. I don't think I'll be getting a PBG5 before Q4 2004. The latest PBs will suit me fine at least until then.

[FlamDrag]

Nowhere in any article did Kevlar® appear in connection to the Powerbooks. This was simply a thought from one of the users on this board about a possible enclosure material for the still fictional PBG5.

Of course they'll happen, but I think it will be right around November of '04.

Buy a computer when you need a computer. If you don't need it - wait. If you do need it - buy now. There's not really a better computer purchasing strategy than that.

[lord_flash]

Of course they'll happen, but I think it will be right around November of '04.
That's what I want to hear before I go down the shops... :)

Buy a computer when you need a computer. If you don't need it - wait. If you do need it - buy now. There's not really a better computer purchasing strategy than that.

Hmmm... but need is a difficult word, isn't it. My 700MHz Vaio is more than capable of running Photoshop and the like, and Windows 2000 Pro is a very stable OS (whatever you guys say).So I don't need a new machine at all. I want one. Is that good enough?

[MadMan]

Originally posted by lord_flash
That's what I want to hear before I go down the shops... :)


Hmmm... but need is a difficult word, isn't it. My 700MHz Vaio is more than capable of running Photoshop and the like, and Windows 2000 Pro is a very stable OS (whatever you guys say).So I don't need a new machine at all. I want one. Is that good enough?

Feed the itch :)

For instance, my TiBook 500 still is running like a charm and is capable of doing most of what I need in a fairly reasonable timeframe. But I wanted one of the new 17's tricked out, so I fed my want ;)

Seriously, it is MUCH faster than my TiBook and I will get more done, be able to use programs and games I can only dream about on the TiBook with it's 8MB video card. (like PhotoShop!)

So, if you can afford to do it, do it

:cool:

MM

[Phil Of Mac]

Originally posted by Rocketman
Of course it is insane drivel. This is a rumor site with wacky posters.

LOL! Can I use that for my sig?

[lord_flash]

Originally posted by MadMan
Feed the itch :)

I tried but they had -5 in stock according to the sales lad and his computer.

I think that means the next 5 they get have been bagsied*.

Either that or there is a black hole in the stock room...


[SIZE=1]*Note for Americans & other aliens: Bagsied means reserved, as in 'bagsie I the front seat' and the like.