New iBooks out now

OS 9 bootable?!

Yep! (you beat me to it!)

Seen the specs?
http://www.apple.com/ibook/specs.html

It seems they are still OS 9 bootable...
No airport extreme, or FW 800. Didn't expect the FW 800, though.
Still, every update is good!

 

Nice, you both beat me to it

 

yeah, it takes a revision of the motherboard to make them non-os9 bootable AND give 'em airport extreme. look at the line-up for other examples of this.

oh and meghop beat you by 3 minutes anyway =) 6:47 hehe

 

hmmm... no airport extreme? and still os9 bootable... apple could have gone further...

osX - os9 is not that clear transition like apple would like i guess. i even know people rather switching to pc than to osX, because they were ****ed up with printercompatibility (pro printers).

this ibook is here to stay another 150 days. do you think it'll get g4, fw800, apExtreme next time?
.a

 

At last!

I was waiting for this update. And I have to say that I'm very happy with it.

Have you guys noticed that the bottom line iBook now has 32MB of VRam? that is awesome

This now means I'll probably go and get myself an 800Mhz iBook. Since I wanted to use the display hack to use my external 19" CRT, the extra 16Mb will be handy. Previously, the 700mhz was out of the question, but now things are looking better. And since I don't need a CDRW as I already have one on my desktop anyway...

Only think I would have liked as well is bluetooth. Oh well, will have to get a USB dongle I suppose

ibook 800, here i come

Now, I would like to find out what the 60Gb HD is... do you guys think it's a 5k rpm? or the slower one?

Latino

 

and the 128mb in the basic config is rediculous!
have you ever tried to manage (only) 40 pics with 128mb ram in iphoto2?
A NIGHTMARE!!!
.a

 

Yeah, but RAM is easily upgradeable. VRam is not

 

didn't the previous iBooks have only 16MB Video RAM in both models?

anyway, now the iBooks have 32MB Video RAM, the same as the low-end PowerBooks. doesn't Apple usually keep the specs of the iBooks and the PowerBooks a bit apart? this looks like there might be a PowerBook update on the way...

 

Only the 700Mhz iBook had 16Mb of VRam. The 800Mhz had 32Mhz. Basically, they have taken the combo drive off the previous 12" 800Mhz ibook, and dropped the price by £250 (in the UK). That sounds great to me! I can buy a DVD-R and a firewire enclosure for that much!

But I really would have liked integrated bluetooth though. My t86i is itching for a mate to play with. It's getting kind of lonely.

 

confused

Has somebody got more accurate information, but it seems to me, that even 12" Combo model is now made of opaque white plastic insteed of crystal white plastic. At least apple online store lists extra battery as opaque white.
???

 

New Apple Store design too! (The main page says 'check out our new store design' with a badly drawn arrow, heh)

 

nice... perhaps i ll get one for my little bro...

 

Nice to see the iBook's are finally updated. Now we don't have to hear people whining about whether or not they should purchase one.

I'm a little surprised it didn't get a bigger graphic on Apple's homepage, but I guess they want FCP4, DVDSP2, and Shake 3 to be center stage.

Oh, and I like the new Apple Store design.

 

Re: confused

this is the way it was done last ibooks. the low end ibook was a white color, looked like the ipod and imac. the combo 12 and 14 inch ibook was in the darker gray enclousure like the ibooks have always been in. they have probably done the same this time too.

iJon

 

I find it rather strange that the iBook update was squeaked in under the radar today ... I mean, it's barely on their home page, there's no press release in the 'Hot News' section, and the new store design (which will certainly take some getting used to) completely overshadows any new hardware!!?

What's the score here?

 

Personally I feel the update doesn't do ****. It doesn't make me want to go out and buy my first apple. I expected alittle more out of apple on the new ibook line. This is the year of the laptop and apple has yet to prove it. The 17" pb is to big, and the 12" pb is to small for most people. I don't want to buy a 15" pb that is considered out of date when I pick it up.
I really hope apple gets it ass in gear this summer, because if thats not the case I will just find a win laptop that is probably identical to what the pb and ibooks are putting out for a lot cheaper.

 

a 900MHz G3 with 32MB RAM, a combo drive and a five-hour battery for $1299 is about as good as it gets.

...and you're not going to find everything that the 17" PowerBook offers for much less than $3,500.

 

the 12" PB is not too small. it's too BIG!

something half the weight of the 12" would be a dream. there are various variations of the sub-notebook in the pc market. especially the japanese pc market. i am particularly fond of the latest toshiba....

 

what about a 14" iBook?

 

Check out that thread here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24970&perpage=25&pagenumber=2

NEVERMIND.. :-(

 

Does anyone know how much of difference a 100mHz speed bump actually affects the speed of the computer in real terms?

when it was upgraded from 700 to 800 Apple said it was 30% increase in performace (i think). so does that mean another 30%?

 

If that's the way you feel you might check out Dynamism, they import Japanese sub-notebooks and translate everything to English for you. They seem to have some really nice systems, I just can't stand typing on a keyboard that small...

 

When Apple upgraded the 700Mhz iBook to the 800Mhz iBook, it was not just a mere speed bump. If I remember correctly, when the 700Mhz Ibook was the top iBook, they all had a mobility radeon graphics card, rather than the Radeon 7500. Moreover, I think they only had 16Mb of VRam, which I believe sucks with QE. So given that, they could probably claim up to 30% performance increase in selected tasks.

This time around, all that changes is the CPU speed. Given that it still subject to a 100Mhz bus, I very much doubt the performance of the 900Mhz part is much greater than that of the 800Mhz. May be, on CPU intensive tasks, such as itunes encoding and such, you'll get 10% increase, at most. Not sure if it will be even that.

This is just guesswork though, I have no benchmarks to support my claims. Anyone care to shed some light in this direction?

Cheers

Latino