PowerBook & eMac EOL'd?

[beatle888]

I highly doubt it. They only announced the specs 4th quarter of '04. I could be totally wrong but even samples in 1st quarter of this year would be something like a new record.
To put it another way I'm betting cash Apple and IBM have been working on a mobile G5 longer then any Freescale chip has been a glint in the eye of Moto Engineer.

maybe not a glint of an eye but what about an urge in the pants

 

[TheSith]

Thank GOODNESS. I seriously want some update, as others have said, to come out - I don't care what it is.. just release one and let me buy one already!!!!!!!

 

[Ysean]

Kinda Sorta

Well, just for the sake of comparison, the current 2.2Ghz non-Sonoma Pentium M performs just as well as the 3.4Ghz P4, and in some areas where the huge amount of L2 cache comes in handy, even better.

Sonoma will make this crazy-fast with DDR2 and SATA. *drool*

This is partially true. It is only as fast as a 3-3.4Ghz P4 (which weren't a very good design to begin with) in integer math. It dies on floating point. So there is a give and take. Basically, the Pentium M (at least pre-Sonoma) doesn't make for a great number cruncher. Quite good for business apps and such though.

 

[Pringolian]

THE SINGLE CHIP DUAL CORE IS FURTHER OFF THAN THE G5!!!
It's been pointed out many times before, the single chip/dual core Freescale chip is not sampling until the 2nd half of 2005.

I think we will recieve lame G4 updates until the G5 which will definately happen this year because of Tiger and the 64-bit marketing hype. IBM and Apple have been working on the mobile G5 chip for a very long time too.

I still have a strange feeling about some unexpected release on 14th Feb! Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, that's all I heard at MWSF

 

[James_C]

What about the idea of a Dual G4 Powerbook? Someone at HomeTheaterMac.com thinks that is the next big announcement for the Powerbook.

I highly doubt it, it would cut the battery life in half and add a lot of heat. Perhaps the 17" has enough room maybe. The dual core processor from Freescale is a more likely option than two processors, but I still only think we are going to get a G4 speed bump, with improved graphics card and a price reduction.

 

[Zaty]

THE SINGLE CHIP DUAL CORE IS FURTHER OFF THAN THE G5!!!
It's been pointed out many times before, the single chip/dual core Freescale chip is not sampling until the 2nd half of 2005.

I think we will recieve lame G4 updates until the G5 which will definately happen this year because of Tiger and the 64-bit marketing hype. IBM and Apple have been working on the mobile G5 chip for a very long time too.

I still have a strange feeling about some unexpected release on 14th Feb! Love, Love, Love, Love, Love, that's all I heard at MWSF

One thing is for sure, we'll never see a 970FX in a PB. Apple and IBM certainly are working on a low-power variant of the 970 but we don't have any information if this chip already exists.

 

[ph0rk]

Why would Apple EOL the Powerbook for just a speed bump? Wouldn't they just start selling the high end model as the low end and make a new high end with a processor that's a little faster?

BT 2.0 across the line, per TS.


--ph0rk

 

[maya]

BT 2.0 across the line, per TS.


--ph0rk

Great another FireWire 800 repeat.

 

[Pringolian]

One thing is for sure, we'll never see a 970FX in a PB. Apple and IBM certainly are working on a low-power variant of the 970 but we don't have any information if this chip already exists.

Yeah true, but as noted in previous posts. IBM are just as secretive as Apple when it comes to their new chips. Plus they have a new/extended facility for creating G5 chips dont they? (Because of the existing/upcoming demands).

 

[Rootman]

New low-power dual-core G5.

 

[Spazmodius]

Look folks, for the last frickin' time:

There will be NO G5 Powerbook this time. I repeat, NO G5 POWERBOOK. Let it go, will you, for the love of Pete. Enough. When will the madness end?

It will be 1.5 and 1.67GHz G4s with some slightly better graphics. So deal. And, for the last time, **** about the G5 Powerbook. Please! It's 6 mo. to a year away, and it will be expensive as all heck, so keep your freakin' shorts on. It's like the forums are populated by hoards of starving, overeager Jack Russel terriers who each think Steve's got a bag full of Snausages slung over his shoulder. Chill out.

 

[oingoboingo]

Oh and in other news....

Intel pre-announces Centrino Sonoma *insert irked emocicon here*

Slightly off topic but pertainant to the mobile laptop discussion and the need for something new…

I would love to see actual benchmarks on the next gen Pentium M chips against the latest and greatest G4 laptops. I think every die-hard Mac fan would have to start polishing up the phrase "But it doesn't run OS X". Because frankly that is the only thing going for the PowerBook line these days.

Honestly at this point G4 Dual core, G5, G3, or G3.14159265~ I don't give a crap as long as it can at least get within a stride or two of AMD's and Intel's mobile chips.

Barefeats.com did some (very) limited benchmark testing of 1.3GHz and 1.6GHz Pentium M notebooks against 17" 1.33GHz and 15" 1.25GHz PowerBooks (http://barefeats.com/al15b.html). Even the 1.3GHz Pentium M system scored significantly faster than the 1.33GHz PowerBook on the Cinebench 2003 CPU Render Test (150 seconds for Pentium, 214 seconds for PowerBook). I would imagine the differences between a higher-end modern-day Pentium M system and current PowerBooks (which are now only 170MHz faster than the originally tested systems) would be even more disturbing.

Yeah...I don't care if the new PowerBooks have an overclocked PowerPC 601 in them...just as long as there's a good speed boost.

 

[babbage]

Superbowl ad ?

I would love to see [Superbowl ad] - but it would be a big stretch for Apple to pay for that ad, especially considering that their target audience is probably not going to be watching

But then, Apple had the iTunes store ad with Pepsi last year, so venturing into Superbowl ads wouldn't be a new thing for them. (For that matter, wasn't the 1984 ad during the Superbowl as well?).

I have no idea how likely it is, but it seems like a reasonable speculation to me...

 

[Snowy_River]

I doubt that we'll see any updates this coming Tuesday. I checked the delivery on all the current PB models, and they're all next day. Usually, before an update, especially a major new release, the delivery times stretch out to at least a week. So, while updates might be coming soon, I don't think we're quite down to the wire.

I'm another one that's anxiously awaiting the next major PB upgrade. Whether it be G5, G5M, 64-bit G4 that's called G5, or even dual core G4, I'll be getting it. I currently work on a 867 MHz 12" PB. It'll keep me happy for a while, but I feel its limitations quite regularly. (And for those nay-sayers who think that computing power is sufficient for everyone but the top end power users, I am regularly doing analysis on large blocks of data, 3D CAD modeling, and so on. So, I am one of those few people that can use the extra power.)

 

[Ysean]

Calm down

My T42P which is loaded with every option never gets under 5 hours of battery time, EVER. My PowerBook, lucky to get 4.

Very overpriced? Coming from a Mac forum? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Doubt they're going to sell a lot of them? Even funnier. You need to step out of the Apple bubble and in to reality. IBM has corporate clients that make Apple selling 100k Mac Minis look like a drop in the bucket. If you ever get a job in the professional business world you'll see that E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E with a company laptop has a T series IBM. Every employee that works at BP corporate has an IBM T40 (and I mean EVERY employee, even college accounting interns), every sales representitive for Allergan has an IBM T41.

Hahaha, yeah, I doubt they're going to sell many either.

Who would buy a Thinkpad.

Gahahahahaha

Edit:



HAHAHAHAHA

In the PC world, chipset technologies are passed from the original manufacturer, in this case, Intel, to the actual manufacturers. The 'hypothetical future' is slowed only by the time it takes for IBM, Dell, and all the other PC manufacturers to BUILD the computers based off motherboard reference designs provided by Intel.

Apple, on the other hand, handles everything in-house, and feels the need to keep everything top secret to scare away as many corporate buyers as possible.

Slow down there bucko... First, Intel is known for announcing chips that don't get seen in the market for 3-12 months. It's how they keep interest in their own tech as apposed to competitors. It's called marketing. Pretty much every company is guilty of it. And, just so you don't get too confused, most large OEM's actually have engineering samples they use to design their systems. This means motherboards as well. This actually reduces the time to market quite a bit. Don't go about insinuating someone is stupid when you haven't spent the effort to know the real deal either. BTW, IBM had been losing a lot of corporate market share (desktop and even laptop) to the likes of Dell and Fujitsu and HP. The only reason IBM made corporate computers as long as they had after cancelling their consumer products is because it got their Enterprise services in the door to make the truly profitable sales. IBM hadn't made a profit in 3 years on it's PC division. Why do you think they sold it and the division's $800m debt to lenovo?

 

[aussie_geek]

Did anyone notice that apparently only the SuperDrive configuration was EOL'ed. So, the Combo config is not yet EOL'ed. Isn't that weird? If it was the other way round, it would make more sense.

That was a good observation.

How about this - maybe we are all over reacting about this. Apple just may be putting faster Superdrives in their Macs including

 

[Rootman]

I checked the delivery on all the current PB models, and they're all next day. Usually, before an update, especially a major new release, the delivery times stretch out to at least a week.

I've been thinking about this and it doesn't sound true.

 

[KingArthur]

I highly doubt it, it would cut the battery life in half and add a lot of heat. Perhaps the 17" has enough room maybe. The dual core processor from Freescale is a more likely option than two processors, but I still only think we are going to get a G4 speed bump, with improved graphics card and a price reduction.

A dual processor design would not effectively cut battery life in half. The processor is only one of several energy consuming components. Screen/HD/graphics/optical drive are all large power drawers when intensively used (aside from screen which will draw power depending on how bright you make it). You may see an hour cut off of battery time (unless they were to get a larger battery), but that's probably it. Depending on how they set up power management for a design like that, I'm guessing they would enable massive processor voltage scale-backs when idle. I'm not saying a design would be remotely appealing for apple to impliment, but that's just my food for thought.

 

[Snowy_River]

Look folks, for the last frickin' time:

There will be NO G5 Powerbook this time. I repeat, NO G5 POWERBOOK. Let it go, will you, for the love of Pete. Enough. When will the madness end?

It will be 1.5 and 1.67GHz G4s with some slightly better graphics. So deal. And, for the last time, **** about the G5 Powerbook. Please! It's 6 mo. to a year away, and it will be expensive as all heck, so keep your freakin' shorts on. It's like the forums are populated by hoards of starving, overeager Jack Russel terriers who each think Steve's got a bag full of Snausages slung over his shoulder. Chill out.

You know, I don't think that a G5 PB is likely, but I think that no one here knows, yourself included, definitely whether or not there will be one and when. Okay, I'll modify that to say that anyone who does know is quite likely not to say a word about it.

Hmm... maybe you're just an Apple rep on a mission to throw us all off so we'll buy the current model rather than waiting for the new G5 PB...

No, I don't really believe that, either. But you could take some of your own advice and chill out. People are going to be talking about the G5 PB until it comes, whether that's tomorrow, next month, or next year. If you have such a problem with that, then don't read the threads that are talking about it.

There will be NO G5 Powerbook this time

Unless you work for Apple and know this for a fact, I'd ask that you not offer your opinion as fact. Just good practice...

 

[Ysean]

heh

To be fair since IBM has sold off their PC line, which includes the ThinkPads, to a Chinese company I think you are going to see a serious dip in the number of corp accounts that pick up this system. I'm not allowed to tell you what company I work for but we are totally migrating away from IBM for this one reason alone. We are moving to...*chokes on the word* I can't say it. Lets just say. Dude! You are going to Hell!

IBM wasn't actually manufacturing the laptops anyway. Think along the lines of Compal. I don't remember which company was actually building the systems. IBM just designed them.

 

[ASP272]

It'll probably just be a speed bump to the G4's, but you could keep your wishful thinking. This soon after Macworld and early for Tiger, I doubt it's the G5 update.

 

[Snowy_River]

I've been thinking about this and it doesn't sound true.

I believe Apple's policy is that products that are upgraded within a week (or is it ten days?) of purchase can be traded in for the newer product. The Apple Online Store usually gets around this by extending the delivery time to match this window, so when the new product is released Apple can simply offer the new product or a price break to the consumer.

 

[James_C]

A dual processor design would not effectively cut battery life in half. The processor is only one of several energy consuming components. Screen/HD/graphics/optical drive are all large power drawers when intensively used (aside from screen which will draw power depending on how bright you make it). You may see an hour cut off of battery time (unless they were to get a larger battery), but that's probably it. Depending on how they set up power management for a design like that, I'm guessing they would enable massive processor voltage scale-backs when idle. I'm not saying a design would be remotely appealing for apple to impliment, but that's just my food for thought.

Agreed, I was being a bit flippant about the reduction in battery life, but I think we can agree that a second processor would result in an unacceptable reduction in battery life, unless Apple could do something dramatic to the battery capacity. The battery life on the current Powerbooks is exactly stunning at the moment. Plus you would have a lot more heat to deal with and they already generate a reasonable amount of heat now.

 

[bryng]

I doubt that we'll see any updates this coming Tuesday. I checked the delivery on all the current PB models, and they're all next day. Usually, before an update, especially a major new release, the delivery times stretch out to at least a week. So, while updates might be coming soon, I don't think we're quite down to the wire.

I'm another one that's anxiously awaiting the next major PB upgrade. Whether it be G5, G5M, 64-bit G4 that's called G5, or even dual core G4, I'll be getting it. I currently work on a 867 MHz 12" PB. It'll keep me happy for a while, but I feel its limitations quite regularly. (And for those nay-sayers who think that computing power is sufficient for everyone but the top end power users, I am regularly doing analysis on large blocks of data, 3D CAD modeling, and so on. So, I am one of those few people that can use the extra power.)

That's now only true of the US Apple Online Store. And try adding so much as 256mb of extra RAM to watch the shipping time to up to 7-10 days ...

That shows a real intention to sell you a PB only if they can get it out the door the same day.

This does point to an update of the PBs in the works.

 

[chelseasian]

Oh well... i am planning to go get a PB when Tiger rolls out versus buying one now and then spending another $129 on the OS. Hmmm... maybe i should wait till g5 PB as well... though i like the idea on an iBook more than a PB since i have a PM at home;.