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Dual G4 PowerBooks?

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Apr 12, 2001
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Appleinsider claims that dual G4 PowerBooks may "see the light of day" if the G5 is unable to be incorporated into the current PowerBook chassis in a reasonable timeframe.

According to the rumor site, Apple is working with Cooligy and is shooting for a May 2004 G5 PowerBook release.

PowerPage.org had made similar claims in September... that they expect Dual G4 PowerBooks to arrive before the G5 makes its way into the PowerBook.
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2003/11/17/dual-g4-powerbooks/
Time for G4 to get into a laptop

The PowerMac G4 was introduced in Fall of 1999, and the Powerbook G4 wasn't introduced until January of 2001. It took a good 15 months to get the G4 into a 1" laptop.

Maybe people shouldn't have such high expectations of getting the G5 in so soon. A dual G4 will do nicely :)
 
whoa...if they could pull this off without changing the size of the case...then whoa...

cause that means maybe eventually...we could have dual g5s in a powerbook...yikes!
 
Hum

For some reason I don't quite believe that, but for someone like me who doesn't need 5 hours of battery life this would be nice. (Although I guess you could disable the other CPU to save power...)
 
Re: Hum

Originally posted by mum
For some reason I don't quite believe that, but for someone like me who doesn't need 5 hours of battery life this would be nice. (Although I guess you could disable the other CPU to save power...)
Click to expand...

yeah i'd be curious as to how much this would effect battery life...almost seems like the 2nd processor would be useless when you computer isn't plugged in...but then how many people do cpu intensive taskes when there computer is plugged in?
 
DUAL COOL!

Dual great, It means, PB G5 until jan 05...maybe WWDC 05...I'm already thinking what to write in ebay for my PB 12"...:D
 
Yeah, I'd definitely be impressed if they could do either the Dual G4 or the G5 without making the PowerBook any larger. A G5 PowerBook would be a great if it could come out in the Spring, or maybe at the next WWDC.
 
the powerbook is great as it is. dual processors would add way too much heat (especially if they're like the processors that were in the old PM G4) and would make it alot thicker. before we go about demanding that we have dual processor laptops, we should demand single processor laptops that can be built without major flaws, such as screen splotchiness.
 
Interesting. So dual G4s might see the light of day (I predicted it wouldn't happen!). But i'll still wait for a G5 powerbook even though having a dual proc laptop is quite a feat. Imagine the battery life on reduced speed, one processor (for really long batt life), and dual processors for plugged in intensive encoding.

Meh, I'll still wait for a fast (2 GHz G5) laptop.

-O.A.
 
Originally posted by howard
whoa...if they could pull this off without changing the size of the case...then whoa...
Click to expand...
Has anyone seen the inside of a 17" book? How does it compare to the 15"? I'm guessing that a dual config, if such a thing does come out, will be limited to the 17". So we might see something like a 1.5 ghz G4 in the next 15" and possibly a dual 1.0 ghz in the 17".
 
I would be surprised to see a dual G4 in a laptop mainly because it would be a lot of expensive re-engineering for a small market for a short period of time. Battery life and heat issues would make it difficult and less useful, and a G5 Powerbook is inevitable.

Imagine if they created a dual-1.25 Ghz Powerbook and it wasn't much faster than Intel's 1.7Ghz Pentium M... that would really not look good, taking two chips to do what one does. Apple is already behind in laptop performance, and if they want to make a major performance offering they are going to have to wait for a way to build a G5 PB. They should just lay low with another performance step next year, then go to the G5. A dual G4 PB would be anticlamactic and not representative of the direction Apple is headed.
 
Originally posted by funkywhat2
the powerbook is great as it is. dual processors would add way too much heat (especially if they're like the processors that were in the old PM G4) and would make it alot thicker. before we go about demanding that we have dual processor laptops, we should demand single processor laptops that can be built without major flaws, such as screen splotchiness.
Click to expand...

The Motorola 7447 and 7457 which are the current G4's in all Powerbooks are *considerably* cooler than the processors in the G4 PM that I think you are referring to. My guess is that with the 7447 processors, a dual PB would probably be as hot as a TiBook, which is much hotter than my 1 GHz 12" PB. I do think battery life could be an issue.
 
Originally posted by dongmin
Has anyone seen the inside of a 17" book? How does it compare to the 15"? I'm guessing that a dual config, if such a thing does come out, will be limited to the 17". So we might see something like a 1.5 ghz G4 in the next 15" and possibly a dual 1.0 ghz in the 17".
Click to expand...

This could quite possibly be available only in LapZilla. Honestly I was rather disappointed with it in that all of the extra space wasn't used for more battery...

A second CPU would be nice.
 
given that dual-procs perform better than singles in video encoding and the like, even a dual G4 vs a single G5 (according to MacWorld testing), a dual G4 in the 17" would really sell it as the video pro's portable workstation.
 
Does anyone else think that the G5 PB is going to be a Rev A to stay away from? I get this feeling that with all of the heat and engineering issues that the Rev A is going to be as good as a beta model, rife with problems.
 
I'm surprised this isn't on Page 2. If they're going to be using cooligy technology, I'd imagine that they could do that with the G5... why waste the time on a G4?

If the G5 goes 90 nanometer then I can't imagine dual G4... crazy. :rolleyes:
 
i am still waiting on the that old-skool single processor 1.25 15" that Apple releases some weeks back.

Things are moving slowly in that department down under.

And I agree with an earlier post. I'd prefer to see well made machines now than some pipe dream machine in the future, get over it, one day we'll see quad G9 processor, in a wafer-thin case. The future is always latest and greatest but the real challenge is delivering in the now.

I hope my laptop arrives before its superseeded.
 
am I the only one underwhelmed by the idea of a dual processor laptop? It just seems like trying to make up for having a deficient processor in the first place. In desktops it makes more sense, but for laptops, being compact is the whole idea and putting in a 2nd proc. defeats the purpose. Just my .02 I guess
 
I would have thought that 2 G4's would give off more heat than 1 G5. Ah, well, I guess not.

greenstork: you're absolutely right...and that's the truth for every major laptop rev A. Hopefully we won't have the troubles we had way back when, was it with the pb 100?, with laptops catching on the fire and the like. I'm sure it won't be terrible, but apple definitely needs that second revision to get the bugs worked out.
 
they already said osx is able to run on intel and amd, why not go with one of those instead of trying to double up on crappy G4s?
 
Originally posted by JoE950
they already said osx is able to run on intel and amd, why not go with one of those instead of trying to double up on crappy G4s?
Click to expand...

WHO said that? It takes a lot to build an OS to run on an entirely different platform like that. It's not just like you recompile for x86 and viola! there it goes.

Anyway, it would be ridiculous on Apple's part to put an Intel or an AMD processor in its computers, from a marketing perspective. Apple has spend a great deal of time and money stating that the PowerPC architecture is inherently better than the x86 architecture (this is an argument that I would agree with, from various reading I've done about the two architectures). Apple's statement is one that has been gaining momentum with the great performance of the G5. To switch to an x86 for just the laptop line would be to indirectly state a preference of Intel/AMD over IBM processors. That would be a horrific move!

It's probably also not a good idea to diversify your line SO MUCH as to have different companies designing processors for your different lines.

Plus, Intel sucks. AMD's good, but in the long term, I'm a PPC fan, just based on its philosophy for architecture: Simplicity & efficiency.
 
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