PowerBook Rumors (17 and 15inch)

[porovaara]

Originally posted by locovaca

A dual processor laptop will output twice the wattage.

A dual processor will require twice as much current.

A dual processor laptop will not eliminate laptop's worse bottleneck, the hard drive.

A dual processor laptop will not go twice as fast.

And finally:

Two processors cost twice as much as one processor.

1) Simply not true. Dual procs will output twice the PEAK wattage.
2) Assumes both procs are enabled and being run at the same load.
3) The memory is probably a worse bottleneck on all current apple systems, since we are stuck with slow HDs for a while.
4) No but for well coded apps you will see significant improvement and with OS/X you will see a smoothness.
5) Economies of scale?

 

[edenwaith]

Re: 64 bit cui prodest ?

Originally posted by Pila
Remeber that macosx, like other Unices, put date and time in a 32 bit integer which counts seconds elapsed from 1.1.1970.
So everyone needs 64 bit before 2030 when the counter will reset on 32 bit architecture.

Actually, the end of the epoch is closer to 2038. Also the date that older Macs (if they miraculously still work then) will either roll over or die...or roll over and die. The epoch lasts around 68 years, I believe, so 1970 + 68 = 2038. So, that will be the next Y2K type bug, which will happen right around my retirement, so that might be some extra money I might be able to pull in before I retire.

 

[daedelgt]

If this thing is still running in 30 years, I don't think I'd care so much about the time being off.

 

[Mr. MacPhisto]

If the 970s are ahead of schedule, this doesn't really surprise me. A couple of friends at IBM expected the 970s to be shipping in mass quantities by June. This should give Apple plenty of time to get machines ready for July releases.

Not from an inside source, but just an educated guess here: Apple may introduce its whole new line at one time. I think they will all be 970s - the consumer end stuff only receiving single chips and the high end receiving two. For instance, and iBook with a 1.2 GHZ PPC970 versus and PB with 2. Only problem is that the iBook would have significantly more batt life, BUT with the low=powered 970 running the show, a dual 970 on a PB still could get 5 hours of batt life. The iBook could get 7-8 hours, giving Apple amazing superiority with the laptops. The Power lines would also probably have another improvements on the FSB, cache, etc to make them clearly more powerful.

Any introduction would probably come with heavy price cuts to move the last G4s out of the market. But the impact of introducing a whole line of PPC 970 64 bit chips would give Apple a lot of media attention - and could get the interest of the average joe and tech geeks. Not only that, but the PPC 970 will be cheaper at the get go than the G4 is now, making the Macs less expensive, more powerful, and superior to PCs in just about every way.

 

[claughery]

okay... one question... WHY WOULD YOU SAY A JULY RELEASE??? the WWDC is set for June. This means that if coming soon, it will be in June, not July...

 

[Snowy_River]

Originally posted by Mr. MacPhisto
Not from an inside source, but just an educated guess here: Apple may introduce its whole new line at one time. I think they will all be 970s - the consumer end stuff only receiving single chips and the high end receiving two. For instance, and iBook with a 1.2 GHZ PPC970 versus and PB with 2. Only problem is that the iBook would have significantly more batt life, BUT with the low=powered 970 running the show, a dual 970 on a PB still could get 5 hours of batt life. The iBook could get 7-8 hours, giving Apple amazing superiority with the laptops. The Power lines would also probably have another improvements on the FSB, cache, etc to make them clearly more powerful.

I don't see Apple moving all (or probably even any just yet) of the PowerBooks to dual configurations. If the were to move the entire line to 970 (which I'm dubious about), I'd see it far more likely that they'd do something like placing iBooks in the range of 800MHz-1GHz, PowerBooks at something like 1.2GHz-1.4GHz, iMac and eMac at 1.0GHz-1.2GHz, and, finally, the new PowerMacs at 1.4GHz-2.0GHz (probably all duals, with the possibility of the lowest end model as a single).

All of that said, I think that it's more likely that the iBooks will be moved to the G4, using the PB12" as the template, and the iMacs and eMacs will stay on the G4, for a while. The G4 is still regarded as an impressive chip, at least in the mobility arena, so having the lowest end Apple laptop using the G4 will still 'get the attention of the media.'

While I am optomistic and hopeful, I know that this is still all in the realm of rumors. It will be a little while yet before we really know.

 

[matznentosh]

Originally posted by claughery
okay... one question... WHY WOULD YOU SAY A JULY RELEASE??? the WWDC is set for June. This means that if coming soon, it will be in June, not July...

Past experience with Apple - who has received their 17 in Powerbook yet? - is that a brand new product is announced, available for pre-order, but ships 2 -3 months later. So a June announcement would mean product in September.

I agree that a new iBook ought to be released in August for incoming students. But Jobs has said before that the G4 has considerable life in it. I think it highly unlikely the iBook will get a 970.

Most likely: new 15 in powerbook, still with G4 released in May,

970 desktop announced in June, available in September

970 powerbooks in the fall or winter,

iBook going to G4 at that time, or perhaps simply abandoning the iBook and marketing the 12 G4 powerbook as its replacement.

 

[ktlx]

Originally posted by porovaara
4) No but for well coded apps you will see significant improvement and with OS/X you will see a smoothness.

I wish people would stop saying that well written apps automatically benefit from dual processors and AltiVec. Not all applications can benefit from dual processors and AltiVec.

Sometimes the problem space cannot easily be segmented to see much improvement with multiple processors. Of the many others than can be segmented, they require significant memory bandwidth which Apple PowerMacs simply don't provide. A lot of applications that benefit from multiple threads and/or vector processing also require significant memory bandwidth moving data in and out of the processor. An SDR 167Mhz shared bus can't cut the mustard for those applications and so you see little if any improvement because they are already saturating the FSB.

I am not saying that all Mac applications are well written because I know they aren't. I just wish people would stop staying that because some application does not benefit from two processors or AltiVec, by definition it is not well written.

I also wish people who do not have significant experience trying to develop multithreaded and/or vector applications would just shut up until they know what they are talking about. It is not trivial to make most applications benefit from multiple processors and/or vector processors. This is especially true with systems that have a poor memory I/O subsystem like the G4. It is rare to find an application like encryption/decryption that is pretty trivial to see benefits.

 

[Rincewind42]

Originally posted by ktlx
I wish people would stop saying that well written apps automatically benefit from dual processors and AltiVec. Not all applications can benefit from dual processors and AltiVec.

I can agree with that. I can definately agree that there are many well written apps for which explicit multithreading and altivec are simply not feasible, practical, or useful.

However, nearly all OS X applications are implicitly threaded and nearly as many of those implicitly make use of Altivec. Altivec does make those operations the OS uses it for faster, and multithreading does enhance the OS's ability to provide services while providing for speed improvements on MP systems. Well written or not you get these advantages.

Thus it leads to the conclusion that a PowerPC with Altivec is better than one without (for our purposes) and that two CPUs really are better than one in all situations under MacOS X. You say that the memory systems are anemic in the current crop of G4s - agreed. However, it is not so bad that two CPUs can't do more work than one in most situations. Not every task is memory i/o bound after all .

 

[twelve]

apple is dead until they release these chips and they know it which is why they are ahead of schedule because they know it is absurd to recommend an apple until they do. this board needs to update the products page to say DO NOT BUY on all products until the 970 is in the machines.

 

[porovaara]

Originally posted by ktlx
I wish people would stop saying that well written apps automatically benefit from dual processors and AltiVec.

Well written apps that are targetted for OSX will benefit because everything should be multithreaded. This is one of the reasons you choose a Mach kernel. Of course not every app on a mac will get extra performance from AltiVec but the bulk of the apps, since they are media based, would. Hell even a word-proc could get extra speed with some simple additions to things like presentation and image scaling/display; expand your thinking.

 

[Rincewind42]

Originally posted by porovaara
Well written apps that are targetted for OSX will benefit because everything should be multithreaded. This is one of the reasons you choose a Mach kernel. Of course not every app on a mac will get extra performance from AltiVec but the bulk of the apps, since they are media based, would. Hell even a word-proc could get extra speed with some simple additions to things like presentation and image scaling/display; expand your thinking.

Making everything multithreaded isn't as simple as choosing a kernel for the OS. There are dozens of other issues that can encourage or prevent you from being multithreaded.

As for a word processor using altivec, I'm sorry there is no point in writing that kind of code for that kind of application. 90+% of the time that a word processor is the front most application it is doing nothing. There is no reason to optimize the last <10% of the time that it uses. And since that program is using system services, I'm sure that image scaling & display is done by the system (why write all that code yourself for a word processor for christ sake??) and the system will, hopefully, use whatever optimizations are available at the time.

 

[locovaca]

Originally posted by porovaara
1) Simply not true. Dual procs will output twice the PEAK wattage.
2) Assumes both procs are enabled and being run at the same load.
3) The memory is probably a worse bottleneck on all current apple systems, since we are stuck with slow HDs for a while.
4) No but for well coded apps you will see significant improvement and with OS/X you will see a smoothness.
5) Economies of scale?

1. And they'll have about the same average output, especially because both processors are always used in a SMP aware OS.

2. Personally, if I had a dual cpu laptop, I would always run both. Again, with any SMP aware OS both CPU's are used. If anything I would rather have two highly clock throttled CPU's vs. one fast one.

3. But it won't be for the 970. 5400, 8 meg cache IBM drives will push 20 meg/sec sustained in any system, be it G4, 970, or X86.

4. I don't disagree, but for many apps I use that take the most advantage of a dual processor system I prefer to run on a desktop machine (more ram, faster hard drives)

5. I'd expect to see a starting price at $4000. For that much I'd rather just get a top of the line PM which will more than beat the specs on a laptop. Or even a mid level Xserve.

 

[Rincewind42]

Originally posted by locovaca
1. And they'll have about the same average output, especially because both processors are always used in a SMP aware OS.

More or less correct, but you also forget about the context of this conversation. If Apple were to put 2 PowerPC 970 chips at 1.2 Ghz, they'd together use about the same wattage as a single 1.25 Ghz 7455. So as far as power is concerned it's a non-issue.

2. Personally, if I had a dual cpu laptop, I would always run both. Again, with any SMP aware OS both CPU's are used. If anything I would rather have two highly clock throttled CPU's vs. one fast one.

There are reasons why you would want to shut one down completely - specifically to save power when on the battery. After all, if your just watching a DVD on a trans continental flight you really don't need 2 CPUs going full bore.

3. But it won't be for the 970. 5400, 8 meg cache IBM drives will push 20 meg/sec sustained in any system, be it G4, 970, or X86.

Hard drive speed isn't really all that big an issue. Anything that the system would really need on the HD will be cached in RAM anyway. And most operations in most programs just aren't bound by the speed of the hard disk, especially if you have lots of RAM, and when Apple does revise the PowerBook, I wouldn't expect anything other than the 12" to ship with less than 512 standard.

4. I don't disagree, but for many apps I use that take the most advantage of a dual processor system I prefer to run on a desktop machine (more ram, faster hard drives)

Some of us have just decided to make our PowerBooks our only computer .

5. I'd expect to see a starting price at $4000. For that much I'd rather just get a top of the line PM which will more than beat the specs on a laptop. Or even a mid level Xserve.

You have got to be nuts! A second processor isn't gonna tack on anywhere near $1K to the price, probably more like $300-$400, and Apple would sell such a laptop as their topend model anyway. So that would put the PowerBooks topping off at $3200 (15") or $3700 (17"). After all, a couple of years ago the price difference between a single & dual PowerMac was only $300 at the same CPU speed.

 

[xenotek]

when to buy...

so i'm thinking of purchasing one of those spiffy powerbooks for college. if i buy the 17inch one now, would it still be top of the line by september, or should i expect an update before then? if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, i would really appreciate it. thanks!

 

[daedelgt]

Re: when to buy...

Originally posted by xenotek
so i'm thinking of purchasing one of those spiffy powerbooks for college. if i buy the 17inch one now, would it still be top of the line by september, or should i expect an update before then? if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, i would really appreciate it. thanks!

I doubt we will see signifgant upgrades to the 17" until the very end of the year. By September you may see 1.1, 1.25 or 1.3 GHz G4s, but nothing else. Come December or January we could see some more signifigant upgrades like higher bus speed, bigger HDs etc. Not much until then though.

 

[Thanatoast]

ok, the one thing that gets me is the price. how can anyone be expected to drop $3700 on a daully laptop? how many people here are willing/able to do this? i mean, ouch! apparently this would be for only the professional jet set then, huh?

 

[daedelgt]

Originally posted by Thanatoast
ok, the one thing that gets me is the price. how can anyone be expected to drop $3700 on a daully laptop? how many people here are willing/able to do this? i mean, ouch! apparently this would be for only the professional jet set then, huh?

Thank you ADC discount

Z05M01M9W PBG4 17.0/1GHZ/1024/60G/SD/AP/BT/LL 1 2,879.00
With the following configuration:

Z05M_B_PROC 065-3719 1GHz PowerPC G4
Z05M_C_MEM 065-3723 1GB DDR RAM - 2 DIMMs
Z05M_D_HD 065-3716 60GB Hard Drive
Z05M_E_OD 065-3718 Super Drive
Z05M_F_KIT 065-3713 Country Kit/Airport
Z05M_G_OS 065-3712 Keyboard/Mac OS

 

[ewinemiller]

Originally posted by Thanatoast
ok, the one thing that gets me is the price. how can anyone be expected to drop $3700 on a daully laptop? how many people here are willing/able to do this? i mean, ouch! apparently this would be for only the professional jet set then, huh?

$3700 is a little high, but if it was a dual, I can get rid of a desktop. I need to keep a dual processor around for testing and debugging those nasty threading problems, I need a portable to keep working on the road. If I can satisfy both with a single purchase (and get that noisy quicksilver out from under my desk as a bonus) I would do so even at a premium over a normal laptop price.

I'd love to see a dual processor laptop where you could optionally shutdown a cpu when unplugged. I say optionally because there are some times when I'd swap battery life to get the extra cpu boost.

 

[luke_s]

its funny that people complain about $3700 being to high for a dual cpu notebook. in germany you pay over $4000 for the single cpu 17" in the apple store.........
btw if apple ever brings out the 970 at 1.2ghz in a powerbook the intel centrino will be @2ghz and be for times as fast, so they better do it quick.....

 

[cubist]

Originally posted by Mr. MacPhisto
... Not from an inside source, but just an educated guess here: Apple may introduce its whole new line at one time. ...

Since Apple outsources all manufacturing, they can't change the whole line at once. It's a real strain to release more than two or three models at a time.

Also, I don't expect iBooks to get G4s because of the heat issue, unless 7457's come out.

Here's my guestimated schedule, YMMV:
6/03 - PowerMac 970 tower, single/dual processors. (Not called G5; it would make G3's look too old.)
8/03 - iMac 970 (single processor).
8/03 - iBook 1GHz G3.
1/04 - PowerBook 970 in all three sizes.
3/04 - iBook 1.2GHz G3, or 7457 if they are available.
3/04 - eMac gets 7457 if available, or is discontinued.

 

[Snowy_River]

Re: when to buy...

Originally posted by xenotek
so i'm thinking of purchasing one of those spiffy powerbooks for college. if i buy the 17inch one now, would it still be top of the line by september, or should i expect an update before then? if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, i would really appreciate it. thanks!

Personally, I would strongly recommend waiting for the moment. Everyone can give you advice about what they think is going to happen, but know one really knows.

It seems very, very likely that there is a new chip about to be released, and it may or may not be released in the PowerBook line along side the PowerMac line. If you buy a PowerBook now, and the 970s are released in next generation PowerBooks in a couple of months, you know that you'll be kicking yourself.

As I said, I'd strongly recommend waiting at least until the WWDC.

 

[eph310]

1. Aluminum housing/better design.
2. Airport Extreme
3. Bluetooth built-in
4. Better Ram
5. 4200/100 Hard drive not 4200/66
6. BACKLIT KEYBOARD (coolness factor)
7. Two firewire ports (400/400 or 800/400), one for camera and one for external drive
8. Remains the same price as it is in Titanium!!!!

What do you think the new specs will be on the 15"? Will they be identical to the 17" specs (minus the screen size)? What is likely to be left off the list? And supposing the changes are made, what will distinguish it from the 17" other than the screen? Will this bring the 17" down in price? AND...

When will the 15" be updated?

 

[D*I*S_Frontman]

Laptop vs Desktop

Before I make my comments, I would like to declare my underlying assumptions:

1) a 970 dual AlBook would also have improved FSB speed and could address 2 GB RAM minimum

2) in real-world testing, the 970 AlBook dualie would outperform the current 1.42 DP tower in every conceivable speed test and render video like a champ

3) Panther as 64bit native and taylor made for the 970's (future app compatability)


All that assumed, I would suggest:

Is $3700 an insane price for a laptop? Perhaps not...

A dual processor 970 17" AlBook would be a true "desktop replacement." With a FW800 RAID array of external drives (easily set up in OS X) a video editor could use the unit as his post studio machine and be productive--then unplug and go to make his final presentation (If he's flying home from a shoot, he captures his video in an offline format and has a scratch version edited and ready before the plane even lands).

If you need actual PCI card space for some tasks, just get a Magma chassis--You can have an entire TOWER of cards hooked up to your AlBook (Mac RT, ProTools, MOTU stuff, etc) through the CardBus slot.

You could spend $4k on a well config'd tower + 20" display AND buy a cheaper laptop for $2K more (for presentations, etc),

or

Buy the laptop for $4k and use the remaining $2k for your Magma chassis and related peripherals.

The benefit of two separate systems would be the ability to work on two separate projects at once, I suppose. But if you are ONE PERSON working on a system, that may not afford you much of an advantage. Having all of your applications in exactly the perfect configuration with you at all times is a blessing.

I have used my meek little Pismo 400 as my one and only system for two years now. Being able to unplug it from my peripherals and jam it into a bag and go--man, that is a dream. No second system to keep sync'ed with the first... all my emails, applications, and documents travelling with me... the WORLD being my "home office" environment. Those kind of simple conveniences add up to make portable computing EXREMELY appealing, no matter the price or performance hit.

For home users who want to surf the net and play Quake, it doesn't make any sense, but to the independent or corporate businessman it may be a perfectly logical choice. How much PRODUCTIVE WORK (i.e., what your clients PAY you to do) you can get accomplished is more important than raw ghz to $ ratios. Paying an extra $1-2k for complete portability might seem foolhardy--but if the result nets you even ONE additional client per YEAR, you have more than made up the difference.