Originally posted by johnnyjibbs
A lot of people seem to be jumping the gun with this. I think Apple has got it right.
At first sight, I was a little worried that my new PB 12" was suddenly not as good anymore. But then I looked some more.
First off, if the rev A PB 12" 867 was apparently slower than the 900 G3 iBook on non-altivec tasks, then this new iBook 800 will be slower because it uses exactly the same processor as the old PowerBook. They probably capped it at 800MHz because of the heat problem, especially without a metal case to dissapte the heat. So the new iBook 800 is still worse performance-wise than the rev A PowerBook.
Meanwhile, the 14" is bigger so can cope with the increased heat. They can afford to increase its speed also because it is a different market to the 12". If you're thinking, where is the more powerful 12" iBook, I'll say this: I'm typing on one right now (i.e. the 12" PowerBook). A more powerful 12" iBook would cannibalise 12" PB sales, hence it is only the entry-level model now.
What is best is that these iBooks now have far more aggressive pricing, certainly in the UK, - you get a hell of a lot for £849 (base model).
Will PowerBooks go G5 soon? I probably think not, and I'm not just saying that in the hope that they don't. These iBooks are not that close to the PowerBooks in performance, even the 14"PB 1 GHz vs the 12" PB. Therefore there is no need for the PBs to jump to G5 yet. Also, if the G5 1.6 and even 1.8 are slower or roughly equal to dual 1.25 G4 on some tasks, then that just shows how powerful the G4 really is. It also appears that a G4 is more powerful clock for clock than a G5, so I'm glad I don't have a 1.2 GHz G5 in my PB. My computer is way fast enough - too many people play down the G4.
I think G5s will enter PowerBooks either in late Spring (the next update) but more realistically one year from now or more. Honestly, these are good notebooks (both iBooks and PowerBooks), if you want one, go get.
