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Light-weight Stylish Mac Laptops in 2006?

wow... that comment absolutely disgusts me. i feel ill... it's people like you that i hate seeing in my job.
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What is your job??

Maybe he has a valid point, depending on what he does. If you are a .NET programmer, I can imagine needing Vista/XP. If that were me, I would like to have the choice of using OS X as much as I can, but with also the possibility of using Vista/XP when I need to for work.
 
Super Dave said:
Ok. I promise I'm not trolling. This is a SERIOUS (not sarcastic) question. Why is this page 1? What makes an item page 1 or 2? Does anyone know? I'm genuinely curious.

David :cool:
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How valid and realistic the piece of news/rumor is
 
mad jew said:
Well, the rumours are that Apple will discontinue the 12 inch PowerBook. 12 inch iBooks look like they'll stay though. :)
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I wish they would make them all Widescreen. Maybe bump them all up to 13". After all, wasn't it Apple that first popularized widescreen for computers?
 
Well, I like the current rumours of a regular 12 inch iBook and a larger widescreen one (13 inches). It gives us the choice of two. If this happens in January, I'll order a widescreen one immediately, irrespective of its weight. :)
 
This was to be expected. Notebooks get lighter and lighter as they evolve, so this really isn't a suprise to me, along with many others I'm sure. But hey, it's always good to actually read about it and hype it up.

I want more rumors about an Intel Mac mini!!!! :)
 
nagromme said:
Sounds like just speculation, but I hope some of this is true. (LoopRumors a while ago mentioned a supposed sub-$500 iBook, too. Really stripped down. I can see it happening.)



.
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$500 !

This kind of move would help apple address competition issues with Dell. Offering a version of their machine with fewer prremium options will attract a flock of the curious- and if they want email and web browsing, they should be very happy with OS X.

The down side for the user is they will miss out on what I found when I bought my first Mac - the premium features that make it an enjoyable and flexible experience- UNLIKE the dull Dell machines that do as little as possible (no FW - junky OS - weak graphics cards, junky OS, etc). I'm talking about Dell's $500 to $600 models here. When I got my first mac- a lot of the features were beyond me - but once I had a great environment to work in- I wanted those features.... Perhaps users of this stripped down machine will see value in upgrading. Who knows...

And yeah- laptops and other stuff keeps gettin' lighter. Cool.
 
buryyourbrideau said:
...what I love about Apple...WHITE!
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YES!!!

NEVER underestimate the POWER of WHITE! Afterall, if it ain't WHITE it ain't RIGHT!

WHITE POWER!!!

[There. That should convey my message of love for Apple's white colored products...I don't see how anyone could misinterpret this, my finest post ever...]
 
joeboy_45101 said:
I don't know what material they will use in the next generation of PowerBooks but I sure hope that it is LiquidMetal http://liquidmetal.com/.
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Wow, I just checked out their website and that stuff sounds cool. You're right, PowerBooks would be perfect for that stuff.

On a completely unrelated note, I wonder when they'll be using Flash Memory instead of hard drives. 10GB would probably be enough for a light user and would really slim down the form factor and increase battery life. Not to mention the advantages of an always-on computer. That thing would be fast.

If they can put 4GB in a nano, 10GB or more in a laptop wouldn't be much of a stretch. I never thought I'd say this, but if anyone could make it up on volume, it's Apple.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
...get me a lightweight mac laptop that I can install Vista on...
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Yeah. One day I wanna buy a Bentley and have it be fueled by methane gas or even excrement. That would be the same as putting a MicrapSoft OS on Apple hardware.

What a waste. You want a Mac laptop to run WinBlows XP SP3... I mean Blowhorn/Blista?!

Although, if you mean you have to run m$ junk simultaneously with the Mac OS and not instead of, then I understand.
 
Apple's computers = stylish... since when?

I would sure hope they look good. I don't know weather id like to see a iBook that looks like a iPod mini.
 
MacQuest said:
YES!!!

NEVER underestimate the POWER of WHITE! Afterall, if it ain't WHITE it ain't RIGHT!

WHITE POWER!!!

[There. That should convey my message of love for Apple's white colored products...I don't see how anyone could misinterpret this, my finest post ever...]
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If anyone does misinterpret your post any way then I'll eat my hat.;)
 
Macrumors said:


Taipei Times reports on research analyst predictions that Apple will be introducing "light-weight [notebooks] with a stylish design aimed at luring female users."

The new models are expected come in at the following specs:

12-inch notebooks at 1.5kg (3.3lbs)
14-inch notebooks below 2kg (4.4lbs)

Apple's current iBook comes in at 2.2kg (4.9lbs) for the 12" and 2.7kg (5.9lbs) for the 14" model. Meanwhile, Apple's PowerBook weighs 2.1kg (4.6lbs) for the 12" and 2.5kg (5.6lbs) 15" model.

The article/analyst does not specify whether or not these notebooks represent revised PowerBook or iBook models. One early report did claim that the upcoming Intel PowerBook would see a 20-25% thinner design when it was introduced as early as February. Meanwhile, iBook rumors point to a January release, but expectations of a 13.3" model rather than a 14" model.

The reliability of this information is uncertain.
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Wow !! you may put whatever rumor as you like on top of this statement, I love it! :D
 
I totally agree about the flash drives. Sony has this laptop that must have a solid state hard drive because the base is literally as thin as the screen. (with this big cylindrical hinge for the psu) I have a 70gb one in my laptop now and I don't know what to do with all of it. I wouldn't mind having a 10gb solid state hard drive especially since os x system only takes up like 2 gb and all my applications are like 5gb. Any other stuff would mostly be taken up by pictures, movies, or songs which I can just have stored on an external hard drive and plug it in when I'm stationary, since that's the only time I'd use that stuff anyway. I agree with an other post that I wouldn't mind having an external CD drive. The only time that I use the drive is when I'm installing something, ripping a cd, or playing a movie and that takes up such a minimal aspect of my time that I wouldn't mind just plugging in my external when I need to use it. Finally, I know this wasn't mentioned but I definitely would go for a mac of this type with a writable screen. It would make class notes and writing papers in cramped corners much easier, as long as it included a keyboard. (Yeah I know...I have to plug it in case an apple person is looking ;) )
 
Josh396 said:
If anyone does misinterpret your post any way then I'll eat my hat.;)
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Just as long as it's not a white hat. Those are the only one's worth saving...

ALRIGHT, THAT'S ENOUGH!!!

Even I found that to be in poor taste [Stewie Griffin].

I'm NOT caucasian btw. I'm latino, and I really do like Apple's white colored products, just as much as all their other colors though.

Kumbaya My Lord, Kumbaya...
 
Looks like captain obvious has finished his journalism degree and is working with the Taipei Times.

Those weights are pretty amazing if true though. Would have a nice knock-on to the powerbooks.
 
toughboy said:
what I dont understand is that this trend is done to "lure female users"..

Which stupid marketing manager think that males love to carry around heavy bulky and ugly things? :)

Last time I saw something that possibly aimed to lure females was clamshell iBooks.. And they didnt sell well...
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Actually, according to Wikipedia, the clamshell iBook was a "sales success", assuming the sources are correct. They didn't seem to be targeted at females. It seems that students and children were among the target users though.

And yes, I completely share your confusion over why light and stylish are somehow supposed to appeal only to females.
 
Of course, you're all wrong!

The Intel iBook will certainly steal the stage -- for the first part of the keynote. It'll be black, have a 4:3 "XBRITEXTREEEM!" screen, removable floppy/combodrive slot, and a BONUS DVD-RW/+RW drive if you order within the first 30 minutes!

The PowerBook, however, will really steal the show. It'll be a 2 tone plastic machine with vents that make the bottom of a Dell XPS laptop look very plain. It'll be the ULTIMATE desktop replacement complete with an alien head somewhere on it, interchangable graphics "card", a socketed processor, 2 drive bays, a gigantic battery, and burned lap lawsuits.

Then there will be a new one. The PowerBook X Series, ya know just like every other notebook manufacturers' x-series.. it has to be thin, lightweight, a really lousy video chip, and no built in optical drive.

For just $200 above the $1999 price tag, you can have that optical drive to reinstall the OS!

All machines will no longer come with Firewire, Steve Jobs will have a presentation with how USB2 is 10 times faster than Firewire, and results on Barefeats will confirm this. Of course, it'll be a necessary move on like the x86 switch was.

The new machines will also have metal "Intel Inside" stickers and "Designed for Microsoft Windows XP" on them. They'll be on there with super glue, and while easily removable, for some reason you'll just keep them there to "have better resale value"..

They'll also be the first Apple laptops EVER to have those annoying bright LEDs on the edge by the hinges indicating HDD activity and everything else you never needed to know.

Oh yeah, and no more Apple Chime (even if it's 100% possible with Phoenix BIOS, which I know it is). No, the new Intel Macs (they won't be called Apple Macs, but Intel Macs), will just have a resounding..

*press power button*

*niiiiiiiiT!*


:D

sorry guys, just had to pull your legs pretty harshly here!
 
two days ago I wouldn't have said this, but...

a laptop with Airport Extreme, Bluetooth and a 20 GB hard drive would be all I'd need. most of the time.

two days ago I went on my sister's iBook, connected to my Power Mac's hard drive across our Computer-to-Computer Airport network (see here for more on the mixed wonders of that) and played Unreal Tournament 2004 from my hard drive without installing it on the iBook. it was laggy from time to time but pretty playable nonetheless. if I can get that kind of performance across a network, then I don't need all that junk on my laptop's hard drive - just what I want to be using on the go. if I want to run FCP on the laptop I'd need an external drive anyway since normal laptop drives don't have near enough space for a lot of video storage.

the catch is, of course, that I want 1 GB RAM expandible to 2 GB, good graphics, 20 hour battery life, FW800 and 2 USB ports. optical drive is optional, though by excluding it Apple would be eating their words mocking competitors for shipping laptops "without so much as an optical drive." (I notice they've taken that down now...) if they did exclude the optical drive though I'd expect better support for mounting another computer's drive across a network, like allowing iTunes to rip a CD in another computer's drive.

the talk of making it more appealing to women brought to mind this article I read a while back. and as it points out, I imagine there's a higher percentage of female Apple users than among the general computer using population. maybe they just have more sense that way.

http://www.maccreator.com/articles/feminine.html
 
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