No PowerBook Updates Before 2005

[Benj]

Oh yes, the other question about a price drop would be, would it be like a revision - if you buy and they price drop shortly afterwards do you get a rebate (or something)?

 

[~Shard~]

True. I guess most people who are interested in the iPods and iTMS couldn't care less about high end hardware (or if I'm being cynical, Apple hardware...).

And vice versa, perhaps the people who are interested in iPod and iTMS didn't care at all when the new iBooks and PowerMac model were announced this past Tuesday.

 

[~Shard~]

Oh yes, the other question about a price drop would be, would it be like a revision - if you buy and they price drop shortly afterwards do you get a rebate (or something)?

I don't think it would work that way, but maybe someone else here can speak from experience...

 

[~Shard~]

I'm starting to think that is never coming. It makes me laugh that the "New eMac tomorrow?" thread has been knocking around for weeks.

Not as long as the "iTMS Canada Soon" threads...

 

[mypantsaretight]

Advice please. I have a G4 desktop at home but have to use a PC in my lab at work. I use PowerPoint a lot, sometimes having written the notes first with Keynote (Keynote problem: It's not easy to write scientific formulae with all the sub and super scripts -but that's another story!)

Question: Will the new iBook with its rather limited graphics capability run fairly detailed PowerPoint displays ( some of the pages may have embedded gif animations and flash)?

Thanks

Richard Stevens (UK)

Since the rest of the crowd is too busy pissing and moaning, I'll answer you. Yes it will. My older computer (a Pismo 500 MHz with 256 RAM) runs PowerPoint and what I feel are rather detailed presentations with absolutely ZERO difficulty.

By all means though test for yourself. Burn your presentation to a CD (or have someone do it for you) and take it to your nearest Apple retailer/reseller or friend who owns a Mac. Check how it runs and see if it is to your satisfaction. (FWIW, my 15" PB runs presentations as well as my G5 desktop.)

--- What follows is not directed toward the above poster. His comment/question was valid and in no way consituted whining. I do not include him in what follows.

The "limits" that the whiners are talking about in all of the posts since mine can be summarized in the following list:

1) I want to do full 3D-rendering at production desktop speeds on a laptop.

2) I want a full independent movie production studio in my $2500 laptop.

3) I am too cheap to buy an external DVD burner (despite the fact I shelled out 2.5k+ for my laptop) and I demand that a higher-end DVD R/W drive be put in my laptop so that I can mass-produce DVDs of my movies and 3D creations.

Notice that not one of these involves the day-to-day activities of 95%+ of the Apple laptop market.... but who cares. After all, it's not about what's true or real, it's about who can throw the biggest tantrum.

I will say it again. If the whiners and the five other people in the same boat honestly believe they can do better with a WinBlows laptop....then they should go buy one and move on with their lives. Join the dozens of others who are buying up those portable desktops from Alienware, et. al..

I don't care if faster WinBlows laptops exist. I don't care if they have more (insert technical spec here) than the current Macs. My Mac works fine for what I (and most of the Mac marketplace) want and I sleep well, end of story.

peace

 

[Maxx Power]

--- What follows is not directed toward the above poster. His comment/question was valid and in no way consituted whining. I do not include him in what follows.

The "limits" that the whiners are talking about in all of the posts since mine can be summarized in the following list:

1) I want to do full 3D-rendering at production desktop speeds on a laptop.

2) I want a full independent movie production studio in my $2500 laptop.

3) I am too cheap to buy an external DVD burner (despite the fact I shelled out 2.5k+ for my laptop) and I demand that a higher-end DVD R/W drive be put in my laptop so that I can mass-produce DVDs of my movies and 3D creations.

Notice that not one of these involves the day-to-day activities of 95%+ of the Apple laptop market.... but who cares. After all, it's not about what's true or real, it's about who can throw the biggest tantrum.

I will say it again. If the whiners and the five other people in the same boat honestly believe they can do better with a WinBlows laptop....then they should go buy one and move on with their lives. Join the dozens of others who are buying up those portable desktops from Alienware, et. al..

I don't care if faster WinBlows laptops exist. I don't care if they have more (insert technical spec here) than the current Macs. My Mac works fine for what I (and most of the Mac marketplace) want and I sleep well, end of story.

peace

I agree with what you said in a certain perspective, however to present a different angle of things, lets evaluate this differently. A few things you said are specious reasonings, in the perspective of another ficticious person (not pointing at anyone in particular). People don't spend thousands of dollars on a piece of equipment that doubles as a clone for performing duties their 6 year old computers can do, newer computers have to create or manufacturer a supposedly new and necessary function, or functions. We don't need a computer to type on, or to communicate, though people often justify their actions based on these things because it is more acceptable if you make the computer seem more like a need than a desire. Apple markets their laptop as being video production machines, and image crunching vector machines. We don't pay a huge premium just to have a nice looking computer, we pay a small premium for the good finish, etc, but we pay a lot of the premium portion of the price of a Mac for the marketed extra superiority over wintel machines, like how Powerbooks are supposedly faster while lighter and sturdier, and that how the G(insert 4, 5, or whatever here) are supposedly supercomputer like machines. Not that I buy any of that marketing mumbo jumbo. If they advertise their machines as being luxury machines, and sell the top of the line units like PB and PM at prices that resemble luxury machines, then they better be superior in something useful other than just looks, much like how BMW's are not only pleasant to look at but also much above average when driving. If Mac's are only there to serve people's 95% of the interests, and that is truly why people buy material things, then people would never buy SUV's or sports cars, not that I support doing such things, but as a generalization of the mindsets out there, Apple is not targeting nor are people looking for, a machine that performs just that 95% of the daily commons. We see that this is true in the video card market as well, who cares what ATI or Nvidia's midrange or low range cards perform like ? they compete for the top position to boost their PR image so that people buy midrange or whatever cards based on their perception of the companies respectively. I support your point fully, but for most other "normal" people, what good is it to buy a computer that costs a week of labour in the work place that can not satisfy the occasional hunger for more ? 95% of the times people are not having sex, but I bet living a virgin life isn't what we were born to do biologically or the way people want life to be.

 

[kingtj]

Why all the negativity?

As a fairly recent purchaser of a 17" Aluminum 1.5Ghz PB, I'm personally rather happy to hear Apple isn't rushing to make my "top end" Apple laptop obsolete.

For the kind of money I spent on it, I hoped it would remain the "top of the line" for at least a reasonable amount of time.

In fact, that's one big reason I took the plunge and bought it.... I realized it was silly to wait around for the G5 to be crammed into a portable, and it was obvious that when Motorola reached around the 1.2Ghz mark on the G4 CPU, it started becoming a struggle to squeeze much more out of it. When one of the incremental speed upgrades was from 1.42Ghz to 1.5Ghz, that told me they were really about at the upper limit of what they were gonna get out of this line of processor - so I could buy without fear they'd make my purchase look "lame" with another product refresh 3 or 6 months down the road.

And for all these people whining about iBook upgrades making the Powerbooks an unattractive option - whatever.... Buy your iBook and shut up then. Personally, the iBook was never a portable I'd consider. It's too "generic consumerish" for me. You can't get it in a decent screen size, and RAM upgrade options are more limited, not to mention it lacking many of the little "wow" features in the Powerbooks, like the backlit keyboard. On top of that, we just got through the little fiasco with bad logic boards on iBooks left and right.

Your are kidding yourself right? The notebooks out now are (speedwise) 6-10 times faster than what you are using, less if you just go by mhz. You're the user that will wait forever for the next best thing, while everyone else enjoys the current best thing.

At least they are saying flat out "THIS IS EVERYTHING WE HAVE" So buy now, or wait till next time. At least you don't have to second guess a purchase.

 

[Diatribe]

Ah, come on, 45 minutes burning time isn't _that_ bad - just let the disc burn over lunch hour, while you're getting ready for work in the morning, while you're making dinner at night, while you're reading or talking on the phone, while you're out picking up groceries... There are lots of times during the day when you could let one of those guys burn!

Again, no thanks. If I have to wait that long for burning stuff then I rather wait for the BlueRay drives to be put in. At least then I have massive storage and can backup my entire HD and leave it on overnight.

 

[Diatribe]

And why has the SuperDrive still not natively supporting DVD-RW. The drive is capable of it. I don't want a 3rd party hack. This is just lame on Apples part.

What are you talking about? Mine does burn DVD-RW flawlessly without a hack...

 

[Geetar]

I find some of the talk about "top of the line" portable stuff becoming obsolete/falling down the heirarchical ladder a bit curious. For a long time in the pro audio side of the Mac world, we've been expecting Apple to let us run clusters of Macs for recording/fx/video and we've just started to see this in Logic and 10.3.5. I suspect Windows will allow this in due course, so those that fail to find value in Apple's current line can hope it'll be as elegant and easy on their PC of choice Sometimes "value" lies in the way we are allowed to work and grow, rather than the size or speed of our CPUs and GPUs. Firewire and Gigabit Ethernet are the keys here.

I bought a PB 1.5 more or less knowing (okay, I was told quite a while ago, one of the ...er...priveleges of working on the "bleeding edge" ) that I can soon chain it to one or more G5s to lay off my fx processing, and use the laptop almost exclusively as a location recorder. So it'll pretty much keep working in this capacity until it dies. I doubt that audio is the only area that will benefit from this, and I suspect we'll see a lot more of this in Tiger for a whole bunch of different apps. This is not the moment in time to be agonizing over Apple's portable lineup. For semi-pro and up, we're pretty much good to go. The video guys should know this anyway, so anyone with heavy-duty needs hasn't much of an excuse not to buy now. Anyone at a lower needs/uses level can enjoy using the iBooks, which look like great value right now.

 

[~Shard~]

Again, no thanks. If I have to wait that long for burning stuff then I rather wait for the BlueRay drives to be put in. At least then I have massive storage and can backup my entire HD and leave it on overnight.

As I stated above, I was only being half-serious in my comment - for people who are used to burning media in a matter of minutes, 45 minutes is definitely a long period of time to wait. Of course, I remember when I purchased my first 2x CD-R drive, (back when blank CD-Rs were $5 each!), and I didn't seem to mind waiting half an hour for a 650 MB disc to be burned...

 

[Diatribe]

As I stated above, I was only being half-serious in my comment - for people who are used to burning media in a matter of minutes, 45 minutes is definitely a long period of time to wait. Of course, I remember when I purchased my first 2x CD-R drive, (back when blank CD-Rs were $5 each!), and I didn't seem to mind waiting half an hour for a 650 MB disc to be burned...

I know back then....
But still, I'd be ok with waiting a while if I could actually get a 100GB on a disc. That would be worthwhile. I don't think dual layer DVDs are here to stay anyway, so why adopt them?

 

[~Shard~]

I know back then....
But still, I'd be ok with waiting a while if I could actually get a 100GB on a disc. That would be worthwhile. I don't think dual layer DVDs are here to stay anyway, so why adopt them?

I think DL DVDs will find a little niche for themselves, but I agree, I don't think they will be here to stay, at least not in a major role.

 

[Dalriada]

Was just wondering whether Thanksgiving could be the holidays to which Moody was referring to last week and then updates could still arrive before MWSF Guess wishful thinking

 

[Benj]

Was just wondering whether Thanksgiving could be the holidays to which Moody was referring to last week and then updates could still arrive before MWSF Guess wishful thinking

I really hope not. I had just about decided not to bother waiting! I think (hope) Apple would not run the risk of irritating people who buy now with that kind of trickery.

 

[panda]

no worries

I really hope not. I had just about decided not to bother waiting! I think (hope) Apple would not run the risk of irritating people who buy now with that kind of trickery.

i don't think you should have to worry about that. 'the holidays' mean christmas and new years. thanksgiving is different i believe.

i am hoping for an update soon, but do not believe it will be now, particularly after his comment. mwsf would be nice though, and even nicer if it is big revision.

 

[ashon3611]

i don't think you should have to worry about that. 'the holidays' mean christmas and new years. thanksgiving is different i believe.

i am hoping for an update soon, but do not believe it will be now, particularly after his comment. mwsf would be nice though, and even nicer if it is big revision.

yes I agree but then again the "holiday season" is already starting. At Gap we're getting our holiday collection by Wedensday. Crazy how there is going to be Christmas decorations before even Holloween.

 

[panda]

thank you

yes I agree but then again the "holiday season" is already starting. At Gap we're getting our holiday collection by Wedensday. Crazy how there is going to be Christmas decorations before even Holloween.

thank you ashton3611 for putting me right.

and you are quite right too that christmas in october is mad. imagine, soon it will be in august. i guess its all about this... buy, buy, buy.

i keep hoping that the longer the wait for the next pb revision, the better the machine.

better screen, better performance... please please

 

[Giantred]

HIgher Res!?!

Hey everyone!

First of all I would like to say that being sick and reading all of your posts is quite fun !

Anyways

I'm In the market for a 12" portable (iBook or PowerBook) and I have been making frequent trips to my local apple store to look at both of them. I have decied to put back my purchase for a while, atleast until I attend MWSF to touch the new Powerbooks (I hope.) I'm really curious about the low resolution of the 12" pwbk. My 14 year-old eyes can barley read the screens. How could apple make a better resolution screen with out the need of a microscope?

Corey The boy who looks like this ---->

P.S. I do agree that the screens could be brighter. It even seemed that the pwbk was inferior to the iBook.

 

[djkny]

Moody said the current PB line will stay that away through the holidays. "Current line" can be interpreted in any number of ways. He could be referring to the current G4 line, in which case, a speed bump (though minor) might be in order. Either that, or current "design" line, from which we can infer the same thing. Of course, G5 PB's (or dual cores for that matter) would be out of the question until after MWSF. But who's to say that a minor speed bump wouldn't occur between now and Dec?

 

[Benj]

Re the Christmas getting earlier; last year in the supermarket I saw a christmas display of chocolate oranges. In August. Maddening.

They won't do anything to the powerbooks until the new year. Apple would be killed in the media if they did a speed bump having said "no new powerbooks". They like to keep secrets but they aren't going to start telling lies or deliberately deceiving their customers.

My two pence.

Back to the gin.

 

[~Shard~]

First of all I would like to say that being sick and reading all of your posts is quite fun !

For a second there I thought you said you were "sick of reading all of our posts" - which would have probably made sense as well...

 

[Giantred]

For a second there I thought you said you were "sick of reading all of our posts" - which would have probably made sense as well...

Maybe its just your posts Shard!

Corey

 

[~Shard~]

Maybe its just your posts Shard!

Corey

God knows it wouldn't have been the first time... Sometimes I even shake my head at what I post...

 

[panda]

i'd love this....

wouldn't i be great if...

mwsf2005. we're jan and steve finally makes a keynote he can totally get into, after being away from paris and having had a very weak product line to show at mwsf2004.

-he shows the 3ghz pmac. (polite clapping -at last it is here)

-maybe an ipod

-anounces a tiger date (with an auto update for all new hardware buyers)

-and one more thing... pbG4 dual core 15" and 17" and 12" single core 1.5ghz, all with better screen resolutions.

please please please, blow us away!