Intel Powerbook and iMac in January?

[Baenshu]

It makes sense, simply because: the "pro" user is dead.

Apple is not interested in selling PBs to pro users anymore, that's right, all you winos, bearded movie director and photographers can take it and shove it up your a$$.. Steve doesn't give two hoots about you.

Wow, are you serious!? I think that is probably the most far fetched thing I have heard since... well since the rumor that PowerBooks were going to be updated in January.

Signed Bearded Photographer/Director

 

[JohnEZ]

Baloney. Apple isn't going to boost the Powerbook before the iBook, especially after the last upgrade. The iBook, being the lower end machine, would be due for an upgrade before the Powerbook, not to mention the Powerbook was just upgraded.

Actually, Apple can fit in one more G4 iBook upgrade before Intel. The PB, however, has undergone what many believe to be the final revision. If that's so, the PB will get Intel before the iBook.

 

[iEdd]

Pb has to be first. If they go and update iBook before pb, then I shall buy a bloody vaio and hack it.
Anyway, I think it's likely for them to release two intel macs at the same time to get intel truly out there. One desktop, one laptop makes sense. Powerbooks need it badly. As for desktop, maybe the mac mini, as G4s need the switch more than G5s.

 

[syklee26]

Powerbook Update In Jan/feb Will Happen

why do you guys think that prosumer products will not be the first update? no mactel software?

why don't you guys consider the fact that many of the prosumer mac users also use apple softwares such as logic, Final Cut, Shake and Motion? and, add to that, Aperture is coming soon too. Apple is in position to gain even more software sales by releasing mactels earlier than anticipated, especially in the prosumer market.

also, when you consider the fact that powerbook is the best selling mac along with imac, it totally makes sense.

Apple has so much to gain from this early adoption move.

 

[Baenshu]

many of the prosumer mac users also use apple softwares such as logic, Final Cut, Shake and Motion? and, add to that, Aperture is coming soon too. Apple is in position to gain even more software sales by releasing mactels earlier than anticipated, especially in the prosumer market.

True. and I hope it is true, but I highly doubt it unless more 3rd party software is ready. In a lot of ways consumer machines ( like the mini, iBook and NOT the iMac) would make more sense. I can see March/April maybe but January just dosn't seem feesable. If the iLife package and Office is ready I can see them going with the iBook first and probly thowin the mini in there cause thats a machine they have been using to try and seduce Windows people anyway.

 

[Plymouthbreezer]

So do I still get an iMac G5 for Christmas?

 

[schatten]

Hurry Hurry!

Egad, I'm struggling to get the cash together to buy a new PowerPC laptop & Desktop before the Intel transition. I would much rather have the IBM processors during this big change-over rather than the new rev-A stuff! Especially considering the potential bumpy ride...

 

[Rend It]

You heard it here first

In response to the guy who says that Intel is the "last place chip vendor", IBM "gave Apple the boot", and AMD can't even supply Apple's relatively small quantity demands, I predict:

In late 2007, Apple will surprise us all again with the announcement that OS X has actually had a triple life: not only will it run on PowerPCs or x86 processors, but after OS 10.5, it was given artificial intelligence and has secretly been evolving, developing new features by itself, AND the ability to run on any processor, be it the one in your cell phone, the quantum computer at NIST, or your own brain! Apple's mission of complete world dominance will be complete.

Oh, and in a media event a few weeks later, Apple will introduce its own Apple-branded cell phone, and call it the iControlU.

For you investors: No, Apple's stock will not plummet after the ubiquitous processor announcement.

-Rending It

 

[Stridder44]

ok, so i have the new imac on its way right now...

what should i do? i tend to not trust first releases of anything made by apple. so perhaps this falls under that category.

does anyone think it's worth returning the imac for? i mean is it really going to make a huge difference at this point.

you think it's wise to wait and see how this whole intell thing works out?

Im really wanting to get a new iMac to replace my current iMac G4, and was considering waiting for the Intel iMacs to come out...but then I remembered that Rev. A models usually aren't that great (this is true yes? I've heard lots of people complain about this). That, and the current top end iMac is effing fast.

 

[mpw]

Apologies if I'm going over old ground but I've not gone over all of the previous 8pages.

Anyone else think that Apple may lose the PowerBook and iBook names in favor of a new range of portable when they introduce the first Mactels?

I thought they might introduce something to replace the PB at the top of the range in January, drop the iBook and lower the current PB price points until an even greater Mactel comes along later in the year to take its place at the top of the range and drop the current PB to leave a two tier Mactel range.

 

[JereIC]

Powerbook Yonah?

I'm sort of curious about how Apple is going to name these things. They might adopt a page from their Mac OS X playbook and name the computer after the Intel codename for the chip that goes in them. It keeps the <family> <processor> naming convention, differentiates Macs from each other and rest of the world, and keeps the icky Pentium name out of the Mac vocabulary.

Powerbook Yonah?

 

[Baenshu]

About the naming... dunno. I brought up this very question earlier today. Same goes for the G5... what will they call the pro towers... G6 just doesn't seem to fit. Would think they would go with a whole new name and design accross the board.

 

[generik]

Actually, Apple can fit in one more G4 iBook upgrade before Intel. The PB, however, has undergone what many believe to be the final revision. If that's so, the PB will get Intel before the iBook.

I believe it is possible for the PBs to go 7448 first before Intel, but of course.. what point there is in that is a good question, since the 7448s are still single core.

 

[generik]

Powerbook Yonah?

Why Yonah?

Intel won't even be marketing them as Yonah or Merom.. they are just internal code names. Apple will probably just come up with something snazzy, who knows, like yBook.

 

[Seasought]

All these rumors...

I'm still getting one in December.

 

[BlizzardBomb]

That, and the current top end iMac is effing fast.

Actually, the Rev. C 20-incher only scored 190 on Speedmark 4 vs. the Rev. B's 174. So not that big a difference.

That and it only pumped out an extra 8fps on Macworld's UT2004 test. Then again they test it with 512MB RAM but still.

 

[RobHague]

The new line will be called 'Intelli' IntelliMac Splendido, IntelliMac Nano and the IntelliMac Jr.

IntelliMac Slendido (Coming Q? 2008)
Quad-Core Pentium (4.2ghz and 3.8Ghz) with 8Mb of CACHE (2MB x4)
(Uses a new form of cooling -- You move to alaska when you buy one)
1GB of DDR2 (Max 16GB)
400GB HDD
GeForce 6800 GS (Optional GeForce 7800 GT or Quadro 4500)
SUPPORTS SLI with 2x PCI-E 16x slots.

IntelliMac Jr. (Coming Q3 2006)
Dual-Cores at 3Ghz+ (Two Versions, 3.4Ghz and 3.8gz)
1Gb of DDR2 (Max 8GB)
250Gb HDD
GeForce 6600 (Optional upgrade to GT Edition for faster clocks)

IntelliMac Nano (Coming Q2 2006)
Single-Core upto 3.2Ghz (Three versions! 2.5, 2.7 and 3.2Ghz)
1Gb of DDR2 (Max 4GB)
160GB HDD
Nvidia GeForce 6200

Oh, as for iBooks and PowerBooks -- They will be renamed too to the 'iTrend' range.

There you go! Think it will make it onto Apple Insider and all the other rumors sites?

 

[oskar]

For the consumer lineup (everything that starts with an "i") the names could probably stay the same. They could just drop the part of the name that says what processor the computer has. Like the iMac G5 could simply be an iMac and the iBook G4 go back to being called iBook. The problem is with the "Power" lineup, because I would believe they are called that way because of the Power PC architecture.

Or... how about this: Consumer macs will have something related to "Express" and the professional lineup have something with "Pro" in them (like Final Cut Express and Logic Express; Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro).

 

[mdavey]

Or... how about this: Consumer macs will have something related to "Express" and the professional lineup have something with "Pro" in them (like Final Cut Express and Logic Express; Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro).

ExpressBook, ExpressMac. Hmm. xBook, xMac

 

[shawnce]

Running Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro, Motion 2, DVD Studio, Aperture, Logic Pro, Shake, all of iLife and iWork natively. With Rosetta apps running at 90% performance of the G4 PowerBook?

I don't think the Apple's PRO apps will be ready in 1Q06 and I don't think you want to use those in Rosetta (likely not even possible as I outline below). Even 2Q06 would be pushing it IMHO but Apple may surprise us...

Note that Rosetta cannot translate applications that use AltiVec directly, I would image that many of pro-apps make use or AltiVec directly in various ways (ideally they all use the Accelerate framework, etc. but...). All Rosetta can translate are applications that run on a G3 and they will run in G3 "mode" losing AltiVec among other G4/G5 tuning that may have been done. So not only will they be translated but translated as if they are running on a G3.

What Can Be Translated?

 

[afields]

Why is everybody complaining? This is great news! I'll be first in line for a shiny powerbook....

 

[firsttube]

No Way...

I don't think these announcements are going to be as soon as AppleInsider says. Perhaps new Powerbooks in March or somewhere around there, but I'm not sure it'd be much sooner than that. If Apple released these newfangled powerbooks after all those Christmas buyers just bought them, I'd imagine the customers would be really pissed off. I think the powerbook is going to be first, because the iMac is a killer computer right now and really doesn't need an update. I think AI might just be slippin at it's old age.


-Phil

 

[ksz]

Intel has a long history of schedule delays, cancellations, and general promise breaking. For starters, just look those poor suckers (HP, SGI) who bet their futures on Itanium.

Intel has a long and successful history of delivering processor upgrades and transitioning quickly to new process generations.

Unfortunately, the Pentium 4's design was a marketing-driven mistake to win the megahertz race, but Intel managed to drive it aggressively ever since its debut in 2000 on a 180nm process:

• From single core to hyperthreaded core to dual core.
• From 180nm to 130nm in less than a year, then to 90nm (Prescott) and 65nm (Cedar Mill).
• From 400MHz front-side bus (at a time when Pentium 3 was only doing 166MHz) to 1066MHZ.
• From MMX to SSE to SSE2 to SSE3 in Prescott. See Technical Summary.
• From 1.x GHz to 3.8 GHz.

With Pentium M, Intel has learned a lesson about the perils of marketing-driven designs. As good as the Pentium M is, Intel's dual-core technology still lags behind AMD because of the lack of a core-side bus. Such as bus will be added soon, but not in Yonah or Merom. Meanwhile we can look forward to IVT (Vanderpool or Intel Virtualization Technology). IVT will be available in dual-core versions of mobile and desktop processors. It's not clear whether dual-core Yonah will get IVT (despite the Express Computer Online article referenced below), but it's much more likely to appear in the dual-core Merom which is the mobile version of the Conroe platform. Among other enhancements, Merom will be 64-bit and will double the L2 cache from 2MB (Yonah) to 4MB. (These caches are shared between the cores.)

Virtualization technology allows a single server to be virtually partitioned into multiple computers, each of which can be running a different OS at the same time. Those wanting to run Windows and Mac OS simultaneously in independent virtual machines will theoretically be able to do so (OS support for IVT needed).

From http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20050926/technology01.shtml
The technology is designed to enable users run multiple operating systems and applications in separate partitions on a single processor. Like the general virtualisation software, this will enable customers to create several virtual systems on a single physical system.

Linux Xen 3.0: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps3q05-20050191-Abels.pdf

Virtualization is the next logical step in the evolution of multi-core processors.

 

[Eastend]

Hey, I'll be fair to AI, they are probably just reporting what their sources told them. So look at the real side of things, first they were going to make the mac mini intel, next it was iMacs or powerbooks or whatever. Face it, the rumor sites do not know and maybe even Apple is not sure yet, this is just a rumor and probably not a very good rumor, yet. Personally I go along with what a few others have said in this thread, about G4's needing something better than G4's.

 

[xsnightclub]

Amongst all the discussion about this topic I have seen many a post about the native OSX softwarethat will be available (IE iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, iTunes etc...)

I highly doubt that Apple is so desperate to release the new Mactels that they would release a bare-bones version of OSX. That would make no sense whatsoever.

Imagine this: "Today apple released their new line of computers powered by Intel Processors today. Incorporating the new Yonah processors by Intel, the new machines are setting record speeds on all levels. But unfortunatley you can't do a single thing on these computers because every piece of software is still a year away. Word processing, photo editing, even their trademark movie player "Quicktime" has not yet been ported! But does that really matter becase you will at least have a great machine!"

Seriously... Maybe I am just dumb though

Yes. You make yourself appear so.