New iBooks, Mac minis and iPod shuffles at MWSF 2006?

[steve_hill4]

No... no they don't realize, hence this thread may turn into a typical PB WhinerFest™.

Sorry to add to the whining, but I'm still banking on the intel PowerBooks beating the iBooks out of the gates, or at least pretty much the same time. What would be the point of having consumer notebooks outperforming the Pro line in many areas, (not all, remember the other specs are bound to be lower still).

I'm not too worried about MWSF, if they aren't announced then, rumours here should be pointing to when we will get them, (if indeed they are announced in the space of a few weeks after MWSF).

 

[aegisdesign]

On the topic of Yonah vs Celeron M, I may have misunderstood this because I don't follow these things religiously but isn't Yonah the official replacement for the Celeron M according to Intel?

No.

Intel are due to release a new Celeron M processor at the same time as the new Pentium M (Yonah).

It's based on the existing 90nm Dothan running up to 1.7Ghz with a 1MB cache. It looks identical to me spec wise as the current 1.7Ghz Pentium M. The Yonah based version of the Celeron M isn't due till 2nd half of 06 and by the sounds of it, since Merom is due then to replace the Yonah, I'd guess the Yonah based Celeron M is simply the Yonah Pentium M downgraded to Celeron naming. Maybe they'll drop the 2MB cache to 1MB but then there's not that much difference between the 90nm and 65nm parts.

 

[shyataroo]

What ever happend to the harvard arcatechture of a G4=2x as fast as a pentium of the same speed?

 

[elgruga]

Is it all really worth it?

I guess my interest in all this is very low.
I cannot see why Apple is bothering to change to Intel at all - the speed increases wont be very much and PowerPC is still moving along.

I have a 3.5 year old Powerbook G4 667 dvi, 10.4.3. When I test drove a new 17", it wasnt any better. Faster? Well, a bit, but as everything works well on what I have, why bother?

For a lot of Mac users, the new machines are irrrelevant until they HAVE to upgrade due to failure of the machine in some way.

And I thought everyone knew that a dual-core processor is NOT twice as fast.
Try putting two engines in a car - it wont be twice as fast.
Gain on these things is usually in the region of 10 - 25%.

There is a limit on speed for all things - and that limit is human speed. A 5 ghz machine would be fast, but I doubt that you will type that fast.
Store a million songs, but you can still only listen at the normal rate, one song at a time, through your ears.

The quality and use of software is much more important than speed, but this fact is lost on new users, marketing people, etc.
Its like the car that goes 200mph, but there is nowhere to run it.

I suppose that what this is about is Jobs/Apple wanting to get big market share. That will lead to lower quality and rushing buggy software to market.
Oh, wait. They are doing that already......

Why not spend some of the cash they have on a superb word processor and a superb Browser and an excellent eMail program? Thats all most of us need, and the rest is just desire - iPhoto, iTunes, etc. etc.

It isnt always good to give in to desire - it can turn you into a donkey.

 

[MacinDoc]

What ever happend to the harvard arcatechture of a G4=2x as fast as a pentium of the same speed?

That would be P4, not Pentium M, which by all accounts is at least equal to G4 per clock cycle.

 

[Morky]

I'll fill you in.

Ive only been a Mac user for a few short months, but im getting tired of these 'rumours' sites already. How long are they going to come out with this 'our sources...' bull? So far, weve been told by'our sources' that Macworld will display new Powerbooks, no Powerbooks, Mac Minis, iBooks, iWork, iPhoto with Aperture features, Cinema Displays, possibly a new entertainment hub, Front Row 2.0, thinner laptops (hilarious), Yonahs, dual core Yonahs, no dual core Yonahs til Summer, no Firewire, Firewire 800, increased Nano flash storage, new Shuffles etc

Is there anything these sites and 'our sources' have NOT suggested that will appear at Macworld? Its like, whatever IS announced they will be sure to post their obligatory 'as reported by us 6 months ago'. Common sense dictates that anything other than iMacs and Powermacs can appear at Macworld, so why do people still take these rumour sites so seriously?

Lets just sit quietly and look forward to what will be a landmark event.

It turns out that Think Secret is a very reliable source, especially close to an Apple event. They are about the only consistently correct source you'll find, so any prediction ol' Nick de Plume makes should be taken seriously.

 

[1984]

"Yonah's launch could mean that dual-core Yonah iBooks, at speeds of 1.5GHz, might be announced in January, while faster PowerBooks, packing the performance version of the processor, might arrive later in the quarter, although that remains pure speculation at this point."

Way to go out on a limb there ThinkSecret!

 

[Piarco]

I'm not even going to go to the PB place. Because I'm yet another whiney PB owner wanting a dual-core Yonah yesterday.

But I am excited by the new Mac Mini. I've been after something to act as a home media station and if this goes the way of the may rumours, it'll be my next Mac purchase...

Although I'd rather it be a new PB!!! Dang it, I couldn't keep that in...

 

[aristobrat]

2GB Shuffle with a screen = 2GB Nano.

A shuffle with a small (26x11mm?) screen = a shuffle that actually has a chance to compete with its competition.

Google "DELL DJ DITTY" to see what the shuffle is up against.

 

[MacinDoc]

I guess my interest in all this is very low.
I cannot see why Apple is bothering to change to Intel at all - the speed increases wont be very much and PowerPC is still moving along.

Although other chip makers are showing some interest in developing the PPC 970MP, IBM has made it clear that it does not plan to further develop this technology for PCs, at least not without a lot of financial input from a potential client. So, to keep this technology current, Apple would have to put a lot of money into a company that has not demonstrated that it can bring its desktop products out in a predictable timeline and in sufficient quantity. Some people have suggested that Apple should have contracted to buy 970MPs from a start-up chip maker that's picked up this chip for future production, but this may only worsen the supply and quality control issues.

Furthermore, Steve Jobs has said that the primary reason for the shift was that Intel had a good roadmap for low-power processors, which would be ideal for laptops, iMacs, Mac Minis and Power Macs (in quad-core configuration). No current PPC970 offerings are suitable for the Mini or the laptop lines, which is why they still use G4 processors.

 

[Zigster]

Whew. Good thing I just dumped my imac on ebay.

I'll take a dual-boot 12" ibook, please!

 

[BlizzardBomb]

It turns out that Think Secret is a very reliable source, especially close to an Apple event. They are about the only consistently correct source you'll find, so any prediction ol' Nick de Plume makes should be taken seriously.

Well they did mess up when it came to the Video iPod, and I doubt that a dual-core in a consumer line would happen so close to when the chip is released.

 

[infecti0n]

Regarding the new Intel Macs due out next year, will users be able to install Windows on a separate partition? If so, will there be any Windows performance issues running on the Apple hardware?

 

[Hydra]

That would be P4, not Pentium M, which by all accounts is at least equal to G4 per clock cycle.

Pentium M is by far faster than ancient G4 clock per clock.

 

[1984]

It turns out that Think Secret is a very reliable source, especially close to an Apple event. They are about the only consistently correct source you'll find, so any prediction ol' Nick de Plume makes should be taken seriously.

The only thing consistent about ThinkSecret is how often they change their story. By the time something is actually announced they have done a 180 on their original prediction. They used to be a reliable source once upon a time but Appleinsider has since surpassed them. The tables have turned.

 

[aristobrat]

Have there always been this many whiny PB owners, or is this as result of the increasing number of "switchers"?

As pointed out before, what's the point of releasing Intel PBs before Intel iBooks when some of the biggest software that PB professionals use can't run natively on Intel yet?

 

[slb]

Really? Guess you must have missed the huge update to the iMac product line a couple short months ago...

I meant in terms of Intel rumors for January. Last rumor I heard, Intel iMacs were coming, and the new iMac shell was designed to allow an Intel motherboard to be dropped right in. But since then, rumors have shifted to a Mac mini DVR and updated iBooks, so I guess Intel iMacs will not be coming at MacWorld.

I'm wanting one so I can replace my dual Mac mini and PC setup as soon as possible. I want to try installing Windows and dual-booting (as I'm sure many others do). If the iMac shell rumor is true, maybe Apple will silently replace the iMac G5 on their online store with an Intel-based one without making a big deal of it, since it would look just the same. All speculation, of course. Can't wait until MacWorld.

 

[Stella]

I for one, I'm looking forward to the Intel Inside sticker in a prominent position on my Apple...

:-D

( and which will also run windows ( serious now ) ).

 

[SiliconAddict]

Where do you dream that crap up? Yonah was about matching Athlons 64 with less power. Single AMD Athlon 64s match up very well to dual G5s and slaughter them in gaming. G5 at the same clock will be HAMMERED by a Yonah. Prepare yourself for this.

Not for content creation benchmarks. Yonah got game. Its just not got it in FP intensive apps.

 

[pbrennen]

I guess my interest in all this is very low.
I cannot see why Apple is bothering to change to Intel at all - the speed increases wont be very much and PowerPC is still moving along.

I have a 3.5 year old Powerbook G4 667 dvi, 10.4.3. When I test drove a new 17", it wasnt any better. Faster? Well, a bit, but as everything works well on what I have, why bother?

For a lot of Mac users, the new machines are irrrelevant until they HAVE to upgrade due to failure of the machine in some way.

And I thought everyone knew that a dual-core processor is NOT twice as fast.
Try putting two engines in a car - it wont be twice as fast.
Gain on these things is usually in the region of 10 - 25%.

There is a limit on speed for all things - and that limit is human speed. A 5 ghz machine would be fast, but I doubt that you will type that fast.
Store a million songs, but you can still only listen at the normal rate, one song at a time, through your ears.

The quality and use of software is much more important than speed, but this fact is lost on new users, marketing people, etc.
Its like the car that goes 200mph, but there is nowhere to run it.

I suppose that what this is about is Jobs/Apple wanting to get big market share. That will lead to lower quality and rushing buggy software to market.
Oh, wait. They are doing that already......

Why not spend some of the cash they have on a superb word processor and a superb Browser and an excellent eMail program? Thats all most of us need, and the rest is just desire - iPhoto, iTunes, etc. etc.

It isnt always good to give in to desire - it can turn you into a donkey.

I'm all for more speed, all the time. Apps don't open fast enough, archives don't compress and extract fast enough, mp3s don't encode fast enough, giant picture files don't open fast enough, etc. more performance is good. the (my) user experience is often affected by these sorts of lags, even though the actual interface taking place (typing, listening to mp3s) has almost no latency.

there are lots of bottlenecks, most concerning of which are hard drives and optical drives. I guess solid state is the future here. I'd say a 4x increase in CPU clock makes for noticable improvement. 200 mhz laptop -> 800 mhz desktop feels different. 800 mhz desktop from 4 years ago -> 3.2 ghz desktop feels different.

i'll maybe be satisfied when i can walk into a room, say "on" and have the computer instantly on, and have every app open instantly (not one second later) when i say its name. yea, voice recognition takes a little bit of cpu too.

so, you're right, most people today will scratch their heads and wonder why safari is taking so long to open up and think that this is as good as it gets, but hopefully progress will continue at a breakneck pace. so forth marketing dorks, and continue to market faster as better, because it will always benefit me.

 

[ziwi]

So a dual core mini before the iMac...interesting. I think the 1GB shuffles are probably out of stock to force people to the 2GB Nano and boost those sales...tricky stuff - never undrestimate the power of profit

 

[aegisdesign]

Pentium M is by far faster than ancient G4 clock per clock.

Only at integer operations and anything that has to go off chip to retrieve data across the slow FSB on the G4. Plus the 1MB cache in a Pentium M helps over the 512KB cache in the 7447A although not as much as you think as the Pentium M needs a larger cache to get it's speed.

G4 toasts it at FP and vector code, clock for clock.

The point is, there's 2.16Ghz Pentium Ms already and only 1.67Ghz G4s and Yonah adds another core and increases the cache to 2MB so clock for clock comparisons are a bit silly.

 

[aegisdesign]

Not for content creation benchmarks. Yonah got game. Its just not got it in FP intensive apps.

And that's got very little to do with the CPU anyway. It's Apple's slow OpenGL implementation and poor ports that make it lose on the games front.

Unless Apple's OpenGL implementation improves on MacIntel then we'll still get beat in game benchmarks.

 

[aegisdesign]

So a dual core mini before the iMac...interesting. I think the 1GB shuffles are probably out of stock to force people to the 2GB Nano and boost those sales...tricky stuff - never undrestimate the power of profit

Right, they're going to stick a $400 CPU into the $499 Mac Mini.

Someone said *I* was dreaming.

 

[Frobozz]

C'mon now, guys. THINK! Do you honestly believe that Apple is going to release an Intel PB when the pros that they are designed for have no pro-level apps to run natively?

Yes.

A dual Core Yonah at 2.16 GHz, for example, will monkey stomp a single G4 at 1.67. Rosetta will provide 80% of the native speed. Let's run some speculative, but fairly realistic numbers.

Assume the following performance: 1.67 G4 / 167 MHz Bus is roughly half the speed of a dual core 2.16 Yonah / 667 Bus. This is a ballpark figure but Yonah could actually be much faster.

200% raw power x 80% rosetta speed for PPC apps will yield roughly 160%, or 1.6x the speed of an existing PowerBook. In other words, the speed boost to unconverted apps is still 60%.

Even if you change these numbers to be significantly less impressive for Yonah, you still end up with speed boosts for unaltered PPC code over a normal PPC model revision. Normal revision cycles, for Apple, have traditionally yielded somewhere from 12% to 25% speed increases.