New Powerbooks Next Week?

[eric_n_dfw]

Originally posted by iH8Quark
😱

http://www.dell.com/us/en/gen/topics/segtopic_inspiron8200.htm

The Inspiron 8200 gets you up and running with the fastest Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processors on the market today - up to 1.7 GHz - while the companion Intel 845MP chipset ratchets the Processor Support Bus (PSB) speed from its previous 133 MHz to a lightning 400 MHz. The system memory is Double Data Rate (DDR); the clock speed of the new memory modules is 266 MHz, twice the speed of the PC133 DIMMs used on earlier Inspiron platforms.


Not to mention the screen on the Dell is WAY higher in resolution.

Swing and a miss.

Yes - Dell misses.

I cannot run Final Cut Pro on that machine, or Mac OS X. So, it sucks.

Go away troll.

 

[cb911]

i've been waiting for the new TiBooks since the start of the year. now i'm just wondering if it is worth getting a 800MHz or the new 667MHz model. if the current 667MHz TiBooks are selling cheaper, this must mean that the new 667's are alot better. i'm guessing that they'll have a faster system bus and hopefully a 32MB video card.
i'm also not too sure if this update will only be a tempory thing until July. will Apple be releasing even faster TiBooks at MWNY?

 

[JD!]

OK...please....any or all of you....especially Dell boy. go to the Dell site. Configure to the same or close to TiBook configuration. see the diff here??? About 600 bucks more for a machine that is less stable and ugly as sin? If you max out the Ti, to the ultimate config, it's still less! Hello!?!? PC weenies!?!?! Please...stop comparing rotten fruit to Apples. Pun intended. Sheesh...will they ever learn 🙄

 

[Backtothemac]

Originally posted by Vilacr
If we only get a speed bump to 800 mhz we are far behind the peecee world. We get no graphics cards or ddr ram and still more than half behind in the mhz game. Apple needs to give us more. I am whinning for I truly know the TiPb 550 is about as fast as a PIII 650 mhz dell latitude in everyday tasks( not all of us do photoshop). So where does that leave a TiPb 800....far behind a peecee running at 1.7 ghz,64 meg graphics card and ddr ram.

..........Start Rant............
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO. Damn, how many times do we have to make the point to newbies. Look, the Ti 550 is a hell of a lot faster than the PIII 650. Rip a CD, or encode video on them, or do anything that is processor intensive and you will see a massive difference. Also, the Ti 800 would actually outrun the PIV 1.7. The reason. It's easy. The PIV really only has a 100 MHZ bus. It uses (according to Intel) a force multiplier. In other words. Has anyone ever wondered why a 1.6 GHZ Athlon will outrun a 2.4 GHZ PIV? The Athlon really has a 266 MHZ Bus. Now, that said. With Altivec, the G4 is far superior than the Pentium. Also don't give me the "nothing uses altivec" argument because it is not true. The vast majority of apps, including X itself is altivec aware.

Also, the biggest point, is I don't care if PC's were running 10 GHZ right now. That would mean what? They can open word in .3 seconds compared to 2 seconds? Big deal. I use Mac's because of what they don't do for me, and that is restrict me from doing the work that is vital to my financial survival. I am not blind, but I do understand math, and I do understand what is stable, efficient, attractive, and successful, and no I am not talking about Brooke Burke. It is OS X
............Stop Rant.........

 

[Vilacr]

Have you ever used a P4 1.7 ghz..now 1.8 ghz? If you have then you would know there is no way a G4 667 or the soon to be 800 mhz can out perform it. What about ddr ram and 64 meg graphics cards and the 400 mhz bus. Regardless of how the 400 mhz bus is achieved it is faster than the 133mhz apple is giving us. Ripping cd's isn't something I do but cad and design is...a pc rules in this area for there isn't much mac software here. I love my Tipb but apple needs to give us more. They are falling to far behind. Maybe not for a graphics artist but for the rest of us it is.

 

[cmoney]

A voice of reason!

Originally posted by Vilacr
Have you ever used a P4 1.7 ghz..now 1.8 ghz? If you have then you would know there is no way a G4 667 or the soon to be 800 mhz can out perform it. What about ddr ram and 64 meg graphics cards and the 400 mhz bus. Regardless of how the 400 mhz bus is achieved it is faster than the 133mhz apple is giving us. Ripping cd's isn't something I do but cad and design is...a pc rules in this area for there isn't much mac software here. I love my Tipb but apple needs to give us more. They are falling to far behind. Maybe not for a graphics artist but for the rest of us it is.

I wholeheartedly agree. Apple has lost its performance edge. OS X has a lot to do with that. Under OS X, Macs feel like molasses. Either Apple needs to get 10.2 2x faster than 10.1 or they need to spread the GHz goodness around the 4 product quadrants.

After all, what happened to the argument that the G3/G4 ran faster while also consuming less power and thus producing less heat. Yeah, now we have sorry-ass G4 667 TiBooks that need the fan just as much as my 900 MHz Duron laptop. Motorola really is screwing Apple up. And Apple ain't helping people's perception of speed by making OS X slow.

 

[cmoney]

Originally posted by Backtothemac


..........Start Rant............
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO. Damn, how many times do we have to make the point to newbies. Look, the Ti 550 is a hell of a lot faster than the PIII 650. Rip a CD, or encode video on them, or do anything that is processor intensive and you will see a massive difference. Also, the Ti 800 would actually outrun the PIV 1.7. The reason. It's easy. The PIV really only has a 100 MHZ bus. It uses (according to Intel) a force multiplier. In other words. Has anyone ever wondered why a 1.6 GHZ Athlon will outrun a 2.4 GHZ PIV? The Athlon really has a 266 MHZ Bus. Now, that said. With Altivec, the G4 is far superior than the Pentium. Also don't give me the "nothing uses altivec" argument because it is not true. The vast majority of apps, including X itself is altivec aware.

Yeah and not everyone spends their whole day ripping CDs or encoding video. Me, I write web applications. I once thought that having JBuilder run on OS X would be incredible, instead, I've come to realize that it's way too slow to be usable on any of my Macs. It's not just JBuilder, it's basically all the tools I use on a daily basis. I tried LiveMotion on an 800MHz G4 and the interface is so gawd-awful slow that movies preview at about 2-5 frames/second.

For personal use, I once tried Ableton's cool Live sequencer and the interface couldn't keep up on my 500MHz G4 Cube which I use for music (since it's silent). And I've already switched to my PC for serious websurfing since OS X can't keep up with me anymore.

Sorry bud, Altivec is nice, but it's not a panacea to OS X's slow interface.

 

[Xapplimatic]

Originally posted by sjs
...
But that configuration will be $2499 if the rumor is right. That is a price increase!

So what is happening here is that this is the equivalent of the iMac price increase, but instead of an announcement its disguised as a "new" tiBook.

Come on guys, thanks for the speed bump, but lets don't call this a new machine or a price decrease.

Let's not get worked up yet.. it's just a RUMOR.. and like all rumors, doesn't have all the details. Nothing is mentioned about an improved screen, graphics chip, Firewire 2, faster bus, ADC port, or DDR, built in blue tooth, or any of these things.. yet we know Apple has been working on all of these and at least two of them are likely to be included in the new high-end 800 MHz model (assuming it is actually 800, which IS likely as well based on what Motorola has to offer right now).

 

[Xapplimatic]

Re: A voice of reason!

Originally posted by cmoney
...After all, what happened to the argument that the G3/G4 ran faster while also consuming less power and thus producing less heat. Yeah, now we have sorry-ass G4 667 TiBooks that need the fan just as much as my 900 MHz Duron laptop. Motorola really is screwing Apple up. And Apple ain't helping people's perception of speed by making OS X slow.

Nothing happened to the argument.. It's not an argument. It's a fact.. Let's see here...

G4 Apollo 800.. 15 Watts.
AMD Athlon ..... 55 Watts!

Does that even sound comparable? Nah.. do any windows laptops get the battery life of a TiBook? The vast majority aren't even close. Why? Cause their stupid processors suck more than twice the power! Pentium and AMD power sucking is outpacing the increases in battery tech. "Polymer" batteries can hack it you say? Nobody uses it in laptops yet. Too expensive. And even so, nomatter what the same level of batter will still go that much farther lifewise on a G4 than a P4.

 

[Grokgod]

MOther of god, this is madness!

This new speed bump, if its true, is a slap in the face to the entire Mac community!

800 from 667 with a price increase, i can only reply F@#$ you, jobs~!

These units run like molasses on a cold day.
Jesus, my screen redraws on my imac are NOT slow, they dont happen at all!

Yes , that reads NOT at all, untill I force a scroll or close and reopen a window.

Any one that is comparing the speed of a 800 powerbook to a wintel machine and is saying that they equal in speed is completey DAFT!

Of course no one wants to use the freakin Wintel OS garbage.

There has got to be something really weird going on inthe Apple camp.

I can see them all huddled around a picture of Jobs thinking about what to do next.

First guy " Mmmm what can we do to really screw this whole situation up"
Second Witless bastard "I know lets ship the iMacs late and lose all those potential sales to PCee users"
First " Nah, we already did that!"
Second " Lets raise prices, on all the iMacs that we havent sold, that will piss them off "
First " Did that!"
Second " Lets stall on improving the tech on all our units till they look like pretty stones "
First " Well they ARE already pretty. But lets add insult to injury by moving along at a snails pace and increase prices anyway, just to add to the confusion.
Second " yea, that will really freak them out, should we wake Jobs up?"
First " Nah, let him sleep, he's so cute that way. We can wake him when its time to oust him again!

 

[mmmdreg]

How about we get these speedbumped TiBooks next week just to keep us happy..then at MWNY, we see both laptops with integrated bluetooth and such, with the TiBook done over...Maybe the Powermacs boosted a bit...the at MWSF, we see the G5 and a fatter iMac...sound oright?

 

[fallt]

If I could just get a working 667 I'd be happy...

Dear All,

Reading the posts with interest. If they do speed-bump I'll be one very unhappy long-time Apple user.

I bought a Ti 667 in November, it had a faulty logic board so needed to be returned to be fixed. The fixed Ti returned and promptly crashed again. I phoned Apple to find out if they knew what the original fault was and they, "weren't sure". Apple offered a replacement. Great I thought...

The replacement Ti arrived three weeks later. Yippee. I opened it and... the screen was faulty, everything that should have been white was, wait for it, magenta.

!@#$

I phoned Apple right away and, embarrassed, they apologised and organised another replacement. Great I thought...

The replacement to replace the replacement to replace the original machine (confused yet?) arrived two weeks later. Yippee. I opened it and... the CD/DVD Combo Drive was faulty. I couldn't even install the System software as the drive crashed when the first CD went in.

!@#$ x2

I phoned Apple right away and, slightly more embarrassed, they apologised and organised another replacement. Great I thought...

The replacement to replace the replacement to replace the replacement to replace the original machine (now I'm confused, and I'm living it) arrived two weeks later. Yippee. I opened it and... the modem port was faulty. Every time the modem cable is unplugged the machine crashes spectacularly.

!@#$ x3

Does this sound bizarre? Does this sound like problematic Quality Assurance? Does this sound like I just made this whole story up? I didn't, everything's available online to look at including movie clips of the spectacular crashing modem port which, as a designer, I have to say produces some wonderful looking screens.

Click here for details:

http://www.fallt.com/gallery/

Best,

Christopher @ Fallt | chris@fallt.com

 

[Matthé]

ADC

am I the only one missing an ADC output besides the faster bus and ddr ram?

 

[Falleron]

Just a quick note. Intel has increased their mobile processors up to 1.8Ghz. Come on Apple, get thos TiBooks up to 1Ghz!

 

[emdezet]

If it wasn't so sad, I would almost have laughed my ass off about the replacement-replacement story. I experienced a similar case with an iMac 350 indigo which had its analog-board replaced three times. When the last one turned out to be defective as well, Apple started offering refurbished 500MHz iMacs. When two of them showed the exact same problem as the original unit upon arrival, my friend got REALLY MAD WITH Apple on the phone and got.... an iBook500CD, which he is happy as a clam with.

So I'll say:
Make a good PowerBook with whatever friggin clockspeed, give it a nice GPU, 30/48GB instead of pissy 20, Bluetooth, Airport4 etc. but keep the price down. That machine I will buy and sell my iBook500DVD.
However, if Apple should really pull the stunt to release the next PowerBook with major improvements in summer - ƒ¨ç∆ ¥ø¨!!!!

 

[mcrain]

I'll just keep waiting patiently until I see a powerbook with a faster bus, ddr ram, faster processor, built in bluetooth, firewire 2, (maybe I'd even want usb2?), possibly a graphics card?, Apollos, and a fast hard drive standard.

If I can get 3 or 4 of those in the next revision, I'm plunking my money down because the machines as is are pretty fast, very stable, and awfully nice.

As OSX is better optimized, that can only get better, rather than worse. In addition, as battery tech improves, and the Apollos require less energy, the useful life should improve.

I don't put much weight on the rumor, but I can always hope. To everyone who is bashing the mac in this thread, all I can say is I'm typing this on a PC that crashed twice this morning already. The first time on bootup. How the hell can a computer crash on bootup? I mean, there's nothing on, why would it crash?

I'll trade a little performance for stability and user interface, but I agree with all of you, I'd prefer more performance so I don't have to make that trade-off.

 

[mcrain]

You know, my only beef with apple is their problem with stocking stores, and having stores in the first place.

The solution to the replacement, replacement, replacement story is to have lots of stores that offer apple products that have apples on hand to sell you. Then, you open up your box and have the onsite techs turn it on and give it a whirl. If it doesn't work, grab another box. Simple.

Mail order is so painfully slow. I want instant gratification. I want to walk in empty handed, and walk out with the computer I just creamed my pants over.

 

[mcrain]

First, sorry for the multiple posts, but I'm waiting to buy a powerbook, so I'm hot under the coller.

Anyway, would everyone still be all worked up and angry about only a bump to 800 mhz if the chip that was running at that speed was a G5?

Just curious.

 

[mmmdreg]

Well making it a G5 should give it the capabilities of having a higher Mhz rating right? I'll be happy as long as our processors are not less than half the speed of Intels, which means powerbooks at at least 900mhz...but anyway, we're losing the race badly right now, with speeds going further back every few moments...Apple needs to do something big andto do that, we can only hope that Motorola can meet our demands...

 

[TyleRomeo]

ok people do you remember last summer's macworld when the 867 G4 Quicksilvers came out. at the time Intel's fastest P4 was at 1.7-1.8. We had the whole issue over the MHZ myth (7 stage pipeline compared to Wintel's 20, blah blah blah) so we could agree that the quicksilver's were faster then the 1.7 P4's.

Now this spring we have the same senario, but in labtops. If this 800MHZ powerbook comes out it will be matched up with a 1.7-1.8 PC labtop. Once again Apple has not lost a step. and not to mention that the chip inside the PC labtops is a less powerful chip then the desktop one.

867MHZ G4 Desktop 800MHZ G4 Labtop
________________ = _______________

1.7 GHZ P4 Desktop 1.7 GHZ P4 M Labtop

Any questions?

 

[Backtothemac]

Originally posted by cmoney


Yeah and not everyone spends their whole day ripping CDs or encoding video. Me, I write web applications. I once thought that having JBuilder run on OS X would be incredible, instead, I've come to realize that it's way too slow to be usable on any of my Macs. It's not just JBuilder, it's basically all the tools I use on a daily basis. I tried LiveMotion on an 800MHz G4 and the interface is so gawd-awful slow that movies preview at about 2-5 frames/second.

For personal use, I once tried Ableton's cool Live sequencer and the interface couldn't keep up on my 500MHz G4 Cube which I use for music (since it's silent). And I've already switched to my PC for serious websurfing since OS X can't keep up with me anymore.

Sorry bud, Altivec is nice, but it's not a panacea to OS X's slow interface.

.....Zipper sound on a flame retardant suit.
OK. Total specs please. What 128 megs of ram on each. Await, I am sorry, 64 mb on the cube right. Also to your post before this. I don't know what you really do work on (probably an iMac 233), but OS X is not God awful slow on anything that is "modern". That is to say that an iBook 600, iMac G3 600 and up procs. I have an iMac 600 SE with a gig of ram, and it will blow the doors off of every PC I have a work. You see at work we have PC, and my iBook 600 with 384 megs of ram that will outperform the 1GHZ PIII's when doing photoshop. The PIII isn't a PIV you say? Well, my boss has a nice new IBM 1.6GHZ PIV with 256 megs of ram. He is anti Mac. Brought my iMac up here for a little photoshop bakeoff.... Yea, I have 768megs of more memory but he has 1,000 MHZ on me. His pride and joy, just did beat my little iMac. I mean just by a bit to. So, dont tell me that the dual 1GHZ won't stomp the A$$ off of a PIV. I am not stupid. I look at real world. And you know what? If the Mac doesn't do what you want, then go hug a PC like any other clone.

I don't give a crap about GHZ at all. Would you rather have a V-12 motor that pushes your car from 0-60 in 6.5 seconds, or a V-6 motor that will get it there in 5.3? Same logic hear. Bigger is not always better.

Also, you fail to address one point. IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT SPEED THEY HAVE, THEY STILL RUN $HITDOZE!

 

[barkmonster]

Some very interesting info on the motorola site.

If you look at the New Motorola CPU Chart you'll see that they have retested all thier CPUs with the Dhrystone 2.1.

When the 1Ghz G4 tower came out it had MIPS rating in various standards so the new PPC 7455 was rated at 2.28 Instructions Per Clock Cycle, compared with the 1.83 Instructions Per Clock Cycle of the older PPC 7450, 7400 & PPC 750 (G3). It gave the impression that the new G4s were a lot faster on a per MHZ basis than the older models. Also they had a low powered CPU @ 800Mhz that could have been used in a TiBook, something I mentioned in my post yesturday.

Now I've looked at the cpu table again and it seems the low powered line of G4s is at the same speed as the desktop CPUs so we could expect to see 1Ghz TiBooks. The PPC7455 in the desktop G4s uses 20.3 watts minimum and 30 watts maximum, compared to that the PPC7445 uses only 10.3 watts minimum and a very impressive 14.5 watts maximum. We should be looking at higher battery life, less fan noise and less heat on TiBooks with these new chips. We also know we have 1Ghz TiBooks to look forward to for definate.

The only negative thing I've seen is that they've now retested all their CPUs with new Dhystone 2.1 test, The PPC7445 and 7455 handle 2.31 Instructions Per Clock Cycle while the older chips can handle 2.42 Instructions Per Clock Cycle. I can't see how such a small decrease in speed is going to effect anything but if you'd read their info before they updated the test results, you would have thought the new G4s were over 24% faster than the old model in realworld terms.

 

[Rocketman]

Re: And how long have apple being sitting on this ??

Originally posted by barkmonster
When the 1Ghz G4 came out there way a low powered version available at exactly the same time from motorola, rated at up to 800Mhz, it didn't take inside knowledge to know at the time, just a quick look on the PPC page on the motorola site. why it's taken this long to release new TiBooks with the faster CPUs is beyond me, unless they wanted to clear most of their remaining stocks of the current models at full price before new models appeared.

Still it's good to see Apple are slowly bringing the portable line up to speed with the entry level desktop models.

It takes MONTHS to buy and test enough chips for a production run. It only takes a couple of weeks to assemble them into finished products. So be aware they need to make THOUSANDS of these things.

This is a welcome speed bump for a fine machine which sadly might not have as long a life as iMac#1.

In December 01 the G5 was sampling. Therefore we MIGHT see a G5 CPU as early as Sep 02.

Rocketman

 

[Geert]

Re: If I could just get a working 667 I'd be happy...

Originally posted by fallt
Dear All,

Reading the posts with interest. If they do speed-bump I'll be one very unhappy long-time Apple user.

I bought a Ti 667 in November, it had a faulty logic board so needed to be returned to be fixed. The fixed Ti returned and promptly crashed again. I phoned Apple to find out if they knew what the original fault was and they, "weren't sure". Apple offered a replacement. Great I thought...

The replacement Ti arrived three weeks later. Yippee. I opened it and... the screen was faulty, everything that should have been white was, wait for it, magenta.

!@#$

I phoned Apple right away and, embarrassed, they apologised and organised another replacement. Great I thought...

The replacement to replace the replacement to replace the original machine (confused yet?) arrived two weeks later. Yippee. I opened it and... the CD/DVD Combo Drive was faulty. I couldn't even install the System software as the drive crashed when the first CD went in.

!@#$ x2

I phoned Apple right away and, slightly more embarrassed, they apologised and organised another replacement. Great I thought...

The replacement to replace the replacement to replace the replacement to replace the original machine (now I'm confused, and I'm living it) arrived two weeks later. Yippee. I opened it and... the modem port was faulty. Every time the modem cable is unplugged the machine crashes spectacularly.

!@#$ x3

Does this sound bizarre? Does this sound like problematic Quality Assurance? Does this sound like I just made this whole story up? I didn't, everything's available online to look at including movie clips of the spectacular crashing modem port which, as a designer, I have to say produces some wonderful looking screens.

Click here for details:

http://www.fallt.com/gallery/

Best,

Christopher @ Fallt | chris@fallt.com

I think that you're an excpetion fallt.
Sorry to say that, but I think this is really an exception, and sorry it had to happen with you.
Maybe you did something to piss them off😛
I know, I should not be laughing, but best to see it positive.
did you already received a new Tibook? Then I would go for the 800 for the price of the one you bought😉

 

[buffsldr]

Originally posted by Vilacr
If we only get a speed bump to 800 mhz we are far behind the peecee world. We get no graphics cards or ddr ram and still more than half behind in the mhz game. Apple needs to give us more. I am whinning for I truly know the TiPb 550 is about as fast as a PIII 650 mhz dell latitude in everyday tasks( not all of us do photoshop). So where does that leave a TiPb 800....far behind a peecee running at 1.7 ghz,64 meg graphics card and ddr ram.

Please explain. What do you mean "far behind". I wonder why you choose specs as a measure of success.

My brother in law races drag cars as an amateur. His car has a 615 Cubic Inch Big Block Chevrolet ,Aluminum Merlin block, and Big Chief Heads. All told he puts out about 1100 horsepower.

I guess he just leaves import sedan far behind in just about every measureable category. Oh wait, he also spends 10-20 hours a week between races fixing his car.

I have to chuckle when peeps start getting all excited about being left behind. Apple is making a profit, the iApps rock, the iPod is the best MP3 player (in my opinion), and there are competetive (not the best, but competetive) products in both consumer and professional arenas. If you work/study in a field where Apple really cant keep up, then I guess you are not their target market, and you better get a different computer.

Many of us like to sell our peers on macs, and yes on paper macs suck so that is an obstacle....for about 5seconds. There are plenty of people out there that are looking for a better computing experience than what wintel has given them. They upgrade every 1-2 years hoping this time things will be different. Show them an apple, not a spreadsheet comparing specs.