Dr. Dastardly
macrumors 65816
Well I took one for the team and just bought a new 15 in PB. Hope you all enjoy your new upgraded Powerbooks when they come out next week. 
New PowerBooks (up to 1.8 GHz G4) in October?!
- Thread starter Zaty
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chynaxdawl
macrumors newbie
hmm what to do??
i'm new to macs and macrumors so bear with me (sorry if this is in the wrong thread). so how accurateis this rumor of an upgraded powerbook in october? i feel conflicted...i don't know whether i should wait for the upgrade or do the cram & jam promotion now.
also, anyone know when the dual-core powerbooks or the g5 powerbooks are coming out?
help...
i'm new to macs and macrumors so bear with me (sorry if this is in the wrong thread). so how accurateis this rumor of an upgraded powerbook in october? i feel conflicted...i don't know whether i should wait for the upgrade or do the cram & jam promotion now.
also, anyone know when the dual-core powerbooks or the g5 powerbooks are coming out?
help...
James_C
macrumors 68030
chynaxdawl said:i'm new to macs and macrumors so bear with me (sorry if this is in the wrong thread). so how accurateis this rumor of an upgraded powerbook in october? i feel conflicted...i don't know whether i should wait for the upgrade or do the cram & jam promotion now.
also, anyone know when the dual-core powerbooks or the g5 powerbooks are coming out?
help...
I rumor is just that, many rumors are speculated on and never happen, and apart from a few select people at Apple, no-one knows, Apple have a policy of not talking about future products (The iMac G5 being the only recent exception).
However in my opinion we will see speed-bumped notebooks in the next month, but only an educated guess, nothing more. I don't believe we will see G5 Powerbooks this year, Apple have been saying for some time now that they are working on G5 Powerbooks, but no time soon. Most recently at the introduction of the iMac G5, when they indicated that just because the put a G5 in the iMac does not mean that they could put one in the Powerbook. I don't believe that we will see the G5 Powerbook any earlier than Mid year next year.
The reason that people are expecting an update in October is that it does fall within the normal product life-cycle for notebook updates and I am sure Apple wants to have a new product in time for the very important (from a sales point of view) Holiday buying season.
Chip NoVaMac
macrumors G3
James Craner said:
Very well said. The iMac G5 can not alone lead the sales in the Q4 of the calendar year for Apple. People expect new and exciting (even if minor) to drive their buying. Apple would probably love to offer just one revision per a year.
Apple's notebooks sell pretty well as their competively priced, espcially the iBooks. Secondly, 53% (if memory serves) of all Macs sold in the last fiscal quarter were portables. So Apple has to keep up with the demand as well as to make sure the 'books don't fall behind to much in terms of performance as many portables are sold to first time buyers of Macs (i.e. Switchers). That's why Apple will throw in whatever they have to improve sales further during the holiday season. A 1.8 GHz G4 PB would be a great machine for the needs of most users. The same applies to 1.5/1.6 GHz 12" PB.
Zaty said:
With this kind of sales percentage, I can't imagine why IBM and/or Motorola would not design a CPU specifically for laptop/low-power implementations. I'm not talking about what they are currently doing to the G4 for current laptops. I mean a complete redesign such as the Pentium M. Think about how cool it would be to have a 64-bit dual core CPU with battery life similar to the Pentium M.
solvs said:
I could be wrong but I don't think the Mobility 9800 would be considered low power unless you are comparing it to desktop boards. Both chips are manufactured on a .13 micron low-k process. So even though the 9800m is running at a slightly lower clock speed, I think the doubling of pipelines as well as it being based on the X800 would mean it would be much more power hungry. I think the Dell laptop that has this chip support my assumption. The only laptop that the 9800m can be included on starts at 9 lbs!
This is not to say Apple could not include it in their laptops. If they scale down the clock speed, I think they should be able to include it.
