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Re: Apple laptops ahead of the pack

Originally posted by Sol
Apple are getting their just rewards and it shows in their laptop sales. Certain people (who mis-quote the Soup Nazi) may point to benchmarks where Windows laptops supposedly beat PowerBooks but these facts have little relevance in practice. Apple has created a laptop thinner than any other with all the built-in features you could need. By comparison, the bleeding edge PC laptops run hot, have very short battery times and are too bulky to be considered trully portable.

Someone seems to have let a post in from a year ago? Before the Pentium-M.
 
Faster G4s?

Has anyone heard anything about the possibility of faster G4s - over a year is a long time to wait for a speed bump.

Is the 7457 at the end of its life at current speeds or could it be pushed a little further?

Perhaps a G3 with Altivec :D
 
Originally posted by Phil Of Mac
Just an addendum:

As far as liquid cooling, antifreeze is both a better coolant and more safe to use in sub-32 degree temperatures. Here at WSU I am VERY aware of this :D


Antifreeze is used to stop the water from freezing or boiling. It's not as good as water at carrying heat away. Otherwise we'd be running pure antifreeze in our cars instead of mostly water.
 
Re: Faster G4s?

Originally posted by Darren
Has anyone heard anything about the possibility of faster G4s - over a year is a long time to wait for a speed bump.

Is the 7457 at the end of its life at current speeds or could it be pushed a little further?

Perhaps a G3 with Altivec :D

Motorola roadmaps have them going up to 2Ghz and still with a 10W goal and they are talking about Dual Core and Rapid-IO.

http://e-www.motorola.com/files/sndf/doc/reports_presentations/SNDF2003_EUROPE_H1101.pdf

If they pull that off it'll be a very good laptop CPU but the question to ask is 'Are they going to deliver'?
 
Originally posted by Phil Of Mac
It may not be hard to get a G5 into a PowerBook. However, it probably is hard to get a G5 that's appreciably faster than a G4 into a PowerBook.

Steve said "by the end of 2004". Early summer 2004 would be a 9 month product cycle, which sounds only reasonable. And, when Steve says "by the end of" a given year, he's overshooting. Panther and iTMS Windows were both "by the end of 2003" for instance.

I think he is just shooting. He doesn't know but likes to give approx. dates. Which is fine with me. Much better than the silence that Apple usually gives.

It will be here when it comes, and unless it is at an obvious time, like WWDC or MWSF we probably won't guess it. Apple is ahead of the rumors crowd at the moment.
 
Originally posted by Phil Of Mac:

It may not be hard to get a G5 into a PowerBook. However, it probably is hard to get a G5 that's appreciably faster than a G4 into a PowerBook .

Think 980 chip with faster bus, 7200rpm hard drive and 64 bit processing power.
 
a g5 is faster at the same clock as a g4 make no mistake, all they are waiting for is the smaller process. this has been talked about a bunch of times, next summer, and by then they should have all kinds of apps that know how to use that G5.
 
Re: Apple laptops ahead of the pack

Originally posted by Sol
Apple are getting their just rewards and it shows in their laptop sales. Certain people (who mis-quote the Soup Nazi) may point to benchmarks where Windows laptops supposedly beat PowerBooks but these facts have little relevance in practice. Apple has created a laptop thinner than any other with all the built-in features you could need. By comparison, the bleeding edge PC laptops run hot, have very short battery times and are too bulky to be considered trully portable.
Oh, come on. The Mac laptops are nice, esp. the new iBooks (for the money), but guess what? Windows machines are getting pretty nice too these days.

Even a cheapie Dell (I picked up a 1.4ghz Inspiron for $1300 for work) can outmuscle the current G4s at a lot of tasks (compiling, database work, et cetera is much faster). The PM (Centrino) processors only put out around 22W of power (and have power-saving features to drop that down most of the time) - hardly running hot and pulling the battery down. It gets around 3.5-4 hours real-world battery life (without minimal screen brightness) and

Is it perfect? No, not even close. But when it comes to battery life, and heat, the modern Windows laptops are at least the equals of the Macs. They weren't when the G4 powerBooks first came out, but that was quite some time ago, remember? The PM chip is about as fast (specInt/Fp) as the G5, clock-for-clock (its a far better design than the P4, or worse, the P4M) and is already shipping at 1.7ghz with around 22W consumption.

Just because Motorola didn't do any work to make the G4 better for years, don't assume that intel hasn't done anything on its lines either.

-Richard
 
nyaa, nyaa, told ya!

the last time people were arguing the G5 powerbook arrival time, i offered up a friendly bet that they would not see the light of day until AT LEAST Fall 2004. i mentioned that dissenters should keep my post and if i am wrong berate me heartily and i will accept my error in estimation like a man.
i stand by my call.
with that being said, i am VERY tempted to offer a friendly bet that we see a G5 powerbook before we see a 2.0 ghz G4, w/ a dual core, rapid i/o and 10w power consumption.
in case anyone forgot, when motorola spun off their processor unit, they said they were going to focus more on embedded chip production (this largely leaves apple as an afterthought [like usual]).
i have the Rev. A. 12" powerbook and i love it. do i wish i had a dvi out? yes. do i wish i could get more RAM into it? yes. does that stop me from running a ton of apps at once and being productive? no.
from the perspective of an early adopter (original 15" rev. a. powerbook G4 and now rev. a. 12" powerbook) if you need a laptop that is truly portable RIGHT NOW, get the 12" powerbook. if you can get by for a year. wait it out for the G5.
if you want to say you have the "fastest" chip in your "laptop" (read "laptop" as hulking mass of ugly plastic, with a windows "operating system") then get yourself a machine with a Pentium M and go hang out on the pc rumor sites where you can talk about the next "innovations" from Monopolosoft while we talk about the "next big thing."

j
 
Motorola roadmaps have them going up to 2Ghz and still with a 10W goal and they are talking about Dual Core and Rapid-IO.

http://e-www.motorola.com/files/snd...UROPE_H1101.pdf

If they pull that off it'll be a very good laptop CPU but the question to ask is 'Are they going to deliver'?

Well, that roadmap does say 25W for the 1.5 GHz/dual core; at that point Apple could just use a G5. Although they talk about keeping power under 10W, they are very thin on info about exactly what they're going to deliver, and when.

As always, as you point out, the problem is whether Motorola can execute in a reasonable time frame. If they could keep up a good pace of acceleration of the G4 (and make no mistake, that dual-core chip sounds pretty nifty) then it would be an OK placeholder until the G5 is ready for portability. But the pace of PowerBook performance increase relative to other platforms (PowerMac, PC notebooks) has been very slow, and it's hard to see how Motorola is suddenly going to get its butt in gear.
 
G4 coulda been somebody, instead of a chump...

Originally posted by neilw
If [Motorola] could keep up a good pace of acceleration of the G4 (and make no mistake, that dual-core chip sounds pretty nifty) then it would be an OK placeholder until the G5 is ready for portability.

This dual-core G4 sounds like something that should have come after Apple started offering dual-processor PowerMacs. If dual-core G4s come out next year I would not get too excited over them. The G5s have the fastest motherboard and by that time the processors will be fabricated at 90 nm with GHz ratings around 3. Having said that, iBook and eMac buyers would benefit the most from next-gen G4s.
 
hmm...i hope Powerbook G5 doesn't come out any time sooon, as i just got my sweet 15" Al-book at 1.25GHz....it's more than i'd ever need as a college student....

And for SiliconAddict: i feel sorry for u that u have ONLY $3000 to spend on a notebook running all your pro apps....as for apple vs. PC....who buys a Bentley cuz it has the fastest and technologically-advanced engines???:eek:
 
200 mhz FSB? 90nm?

I read someplace that Motorola´s 90nm process is going to be nearing completion toward the end of 2003, and ready for production in early 2004. Any confirmation of this?

Apple can pull an AMD-like move and push the FSB of the G4 to 200 mhz and add DDR400 memory without too much trouble. I don´t suspect the gain will be that great, but I dunno. A couple hundred more mhz are sure to be had at least after the 90nm move, swap the Pro version of ATi´s 9600 into the laptop, and the faster RAM and FSB... that´s a significant boost while staying on the same CPU. But it´s no G5...

-Kevin
 
why are people talking about placeholders until the G5? most if not all of you are guessing a year or less, what they have now is a fine untill then, all they need is just a small update sometime early next year, which even motorola can probably deliver.
 
Re: Re: Faster G4s?

Originally posted by singletrack
Motorola roadmaps have them going up to 2Ghz and still with a 10W goal and they are talking about Dual Core and Rapid-IO.

http://e-www.motorola.com/files/sndf/doc/reports_presentations/SNDF2003_EUROPE_H1101.pdf

If they pull that off it'll be a very good laptop CPU but the question to ask is 'Are they going to deliver'?
if you believe anything Moto has to say about the future of G4, well I have a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge for ya.

2 ghz ... sure
dual core ... ok
10w ... uh huh
 
Apple has a very valid reason to hold off on putting the G5 in the powerbook - it have to get rid of all the old parts which they and their suppliers still have in stock. Why release a G5 powerbook when in all probability there are a few hundred thousand Motorola G4's acquired at fire sale prices taking up shelf space in the warehouse.

Also, there are still lots of G4 motherboards still in the pipeline, and being cranked out by the factory. It will take awhile to ramp up G5 motherboard production.

So why rush and announce a G5 powerbook, other than to pull an Osborne, and announce something to the effect of, "You think this powerbook is great, wait until you see the one we are releasing next year." Anyone remember what happened to Osborne Computer after that move?

Additionally, Apple can't put the G5 on the G4 motherboard, like they did when they used G3 motherboards in the first G4's (the Apple 386sx move).

I need a new laptop, but I'm not buying yesterday's technology at inflated prices - especially considering it will in all probability go unsupported in the not-to-distant future when Apple converts entirely to G5 and 64 bit apps. If I get real desperate for a new laptop I'll pick up a Dull or Goatway for half the G4 price, and treat it as a throw-away machine in two years, just like the G4 will be.

This isn't meant to be a flame or criticism, just an observation based on 30-plus years of computer use.
 
Originally posted by lha72
I need a new laptop, but I'm not buying yesterday's technology at inflated prices - especially considering it will in all probability go unsupported in the not-to-distant future when Apple converts entirely to G5 and 64 bit apps. If I get real desperate for a new laptop I'll pick up a Dull or Goatway for half the G4 price, and treat it as a throw-away machine in two years, just like the G4 will be.

You crush me Iha72. Just when I was starting to warm up to the idea of parting with some cash -and had a gloriously flimsy rationalization in full bloom- you strike it down with no mercy. ugh ...
 
Fine for PowerBooks - what about iBooks?

Originally posted by plinkoman
why are people talking about placeholders until the G5? most if not all of you are guessing a year or less, what they have now is a fine untill then, all they need is just a small update sometime early next year, which even motorola can probably deliver.

Where have the iBooks got to move? It will be a long time before we see a G5 iBook!

iBooks are not far behind Powerbooks now - if there is not much movement from Moto, will we still have the same iBooks in two years time?
 
Originally posted by Phil Of Mac
G5 iBook should be in late 2004 or early 2005.

Even assuming end of 2004 for G5 Powerbooks means October 2004 (like iTunes Win & Panther), this means the iBooks would change processor within a few months of the Powerbooks.

Is this realistic? Has it happened before?
 
Originally posted by Darren
Even assuming end of 2004 for G5 Powerbooks means October 2004 (like iTunes Win & Panther),

I'm betting earily summer.

Originally posted by Darren
this means the iBooks would change processor within a few months of the Powerbooks.

Is this realistic? Has it happened before?

Original iBook was released in September 1999. Lombard was released in May.
 
Originally posted by 1macker1
How about fixing the new 15" G4's before they start working on the new G5's.

Good point. Maybe the holdup for G5 PowerBooks is because Apple is figuring how to make spot-free displays and latches that latch. :)
 
Re: Fine for PowerBooks - what about iBooks?

Originally posted by Darren
Where have the iBooks got to move? It will be a long time before we see a G5 iBook!

iBooks are not far behind Powerbooks now - if there is not much movement from Moto, will we still have the same iBooks in two years time?

i was refering only to powerbooks, but either way, the G4's in the pb's now, up to 1.33GHz and twice the cache as the ibooks would certainly be more then acceptable in an ibook a year from now, they could probably squeeze that until early to mid 2005. and they will probably have to move the ibooks up to G5 quicker then the G4 move because eventually 64bit will be the standard and a 32bit machine will be useless. so in reality, i don't think any placeholders are neccesary.
 
Re: Re: Fine for PowerBooks - what about iBooks?

Originally posted by plinkoman
i was refering only to powerbooks, but either way, the G4's in the pb's now, up to 1.33GHz and twice the cache as the ibooks would certainly be more then acceptable in an ibook a year from now, they could probably squeeze that until early to mid 2005. and they will probably have to move the ibooks up to G5 quicker then the G4 move because eventually 64bit will be the standard and a 32bit machine will be useless. so in reality, i don't think any placeholders are neccesary.

I agree, but not for the same reason.

THe G4 you could say the same thing for regarding AltiVec. But the G4 switchover took forever. Why? Low quantities. The G5 switchover will be quicker. Why? IBM needs more volume from Fishkill, and more G5's would be great for that. Also, a one-processor product lineup and quick G5 migration across the line--not for 64-bitness alone, but because the chip is so pimp--will be advantageous for Apple.
 
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