Doctor Q said:
Apple should go back to the drawing board and come up with a cutting edge ultraportable to replace the 12" models. Start with studying the Thinkpad X41 and Sony's ultraportables.
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12inch iBook End-of-Life'd?
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Apple should go back to the drawing board and come up with a cutting edge ultraportable to replace the 12" models. Start with studying the Thinkpad X41 and Sony's ultraportables.
First hit on A9 turned up http://www.digg.com/users/lacero
That must be the same person, into Macs and transformers
That must be the same person, into Macs and transformers
12 inches enough for anyone?
My wife's 10.6 inch Vaio (TR1) has a superb display 1280x800. The problem
with the Apple iBook's so far has been a rather poor display. The size as such isn't that important.
Having said that, my wife chose the Vaio over the 12" iBook because she didn't like the keyboard on the iBook. The 12" G4 PowerBook was uncomfortably hot where you rest your palms. The display on the Vaio clinched the deal.
I'm certainly hoping that I'll be able to pursuade my job to let me have a MacBook Pro.... however, it's got to run Windows... that's another story!
Lacero said:My thoughts exactly.
12" is a tad small, unless they can pump the screen resolution up to 1280x960; anything is better than 1024x768.
My wife's 10.6 inch Vaio (TR1) has a superb display 1280x800. The problem
with the Apple iBook's so far has been a rather poor display. The size as such isn't that important.
Having said that, my wife chose the Vaio over the 12" iBook because she didn't like the keyboard on the iBook. The 12" G4 PowerBook was uncomfortably hot where you rest your palms. The display on the Vaio clinched the deal.
I'm certainly hoping that I'll be able to pursuade my job to let me have a MacBook Pro.... however, it's got to run Windows... that's another story!
Soulivar said:
I just want to take the opportunity to point out that Apple has a long way to go in the Ultraportable segment. Compared to other ultraportable notebooks, the 12" Powerbook is a porker.
The 12" Powerbook is 1.18 inches thick and weighs 4.6 pounds.
The IBM Thinkpad X41 is 0.8 inches thick and weighs 2.7 pounds.
The Sony Vaio TX is 0.83 inches thick and weighs 2.76 pounds.
I would like to see Apple get into this ballpark and push the design even further. But other companies have been excelling in the ultraportable niche for years.
Just replace it with something better
The IT group I manage has been using 12" G4 iBooks since last spring, as well as various others that require remote access. They've been virtually trouble-free for us, aside from some bugs in 3rd party software (Cisco VPN client -- cough, yes it's better now). Malware infestations have dropped greatly as a result, since we no longer have Windoze laptops going home to get pummeled and pwn3d, then coming back to the corporate office to spew the crap back out.
We like the size, and the screen is adequate for what we do. More pixels will be welcome, particularly if Apple gets the resolution independent GUI whipped into shape. We're not going to be in the market for these probably til spring 2007 so will have the opportunity to see what shakes out.
I think there is room in the market for both a budget system and an expensive ultra portable in the smaller form factor segment. I know my company wouldn't have bought 12" PBs, they're just too expensive for our usage scenarios (remote network/system administration. We need MS Remote Desktop, VNC, and SSH clients). We don't do Photoshop compositing here.
The IT group I manage has been using 12" G4 iBooks since last spring, as well as various others that require remote access. They've been virtually trouble-free for us, aside from some bugs in 3rd party software (Cisco VPN client -- cough, yes it's better now). Malware infestations have dropped greatly as a result, since we no longer have Windoze laptops going home to get pummeled and pwn3d, then coming back to the corporate office to spew the crap back out.
We like the size, and the screen is adequate for what we do. More pixels will be welcome, particularly if Apple gets the resolution independent GUI whipped into shape. We're not going to be in the market for these probably til spring 2007 so will have the opportunity to see what shakes out.
I think there is room in the market for both a budget system and an expensive ultra portable in the smaller form factor segment. I know my company wouldn't have bought 12" PBs, they're just too expensive for our usage scenarios (remote network/system administration. We need MS Remote Desktop, VNC, and SSH clients). We don't do Photoshop compositing here.