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PowerBook to gain iSight, iBook to go widescreen in 2006
- Thread starter runninmac
- Start date
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runninmac said:2006 seems like its gonna be a long rumor season!
With the Powerbooks going before iBooks I belive that becuase from many of the tests the Pentium M arictecture kills the G4s. (or at least I pretty sure correct me if im wrong)
You're wrong.....It nukes the G4 from orbit, grounds up the ashes, mixes it into a fine red wine, and toasts to its decimation.
Sorry just got done with a round of Civ IV....kicked the crap out of the Germans..still kinda in a come get some mood.
sethypoo said:Cool!
Wow, I need to start saving.
Some of us have been for 3 years. Hell I'm going to be able to buy the top of the line PowerBook outright with 2GB of RAM...probably have enough left over for aperture.
What an exciting time to be a Mac user! The new PowerBooks sound sweet, especially with an iSight built-in. It'd be the perfect portable system. Not having to bring your iSight on the go separately would be a very nice feature to have. I would definitely make use of it. As for the 12-inch PowerBook... meh, not a huge deal. If I was to get a 12" notebook, I'd go for the iBook for its white stylized look. And plus the reason you would get a PowerBook is for a desktop-like machine on the go... and with great power comes a nice large display. Working with apps like Photoshop in 1024x768 doesn't sound like fun. I have the 17-inch model and love it.
As for the iBooks being redesigned, I really hope Apple keeps the all-white look. I am all for design change to see what Apple can do, but I really do hope they don't move away from the all-white look. I don't know about you, but I think the iBook is a wonderful looking machine. and doesn't need to be changed too much. It's a great portable computer that stands out from the crowd. Heck, I want an iBook 12-inch sometimes just to have around. My 17-inch PB isn't really that portable... but it works. I mainly work on my desk anyway.
Wow, I really went off topic with that. Oh well, most of it was somewhat related.
The new PowerBooks sound sweet, especially with an iSight built-in. It'd be the perfect portable system. Not having to bring your iSight on the go separately would be a very nice feature to have. I would definitely make use of it. As for the 12-inch PowerBook... meh, not a huge deal. If I was to get a 12" notebook, I'd go for the iBook for its white stylized look. And plus the reason you would get a PowerBook is for a desktop-like machine on the go... and with great power comes a nice large display. Working with apps like Photoshop in 1024x768 doesn't sound like fun. I have the 17-inch model and love it.As for the iBooks being redesigned, I really hope Apple keeps the all-white look. I am all for design change to see what Apple can do, but I really do hope they don't move away from the all-white look. I don't know about you, but I think the iBook is a wonderful looking machine. and doesn't need to be changed too much. It's a great portable computer that stands out from the crowd. Heck, I want an iBook 12-inch sometimes just to have around. My 17-inch PB isn't really that portable... but it works. I mainly work on my desk anyway.
Wow, I really went off topic with that.
Oh well, most of it was somewhat related.So the PowerBooks look set for MacWorld hey,
uumm, let me think
That would explain the crappy last update.
I reckon announce at MWSF to be shipped by end of Jan early Feb
13" 15" 17"
13" 2.26GHZ 1GBDDR2 80GB Superdrive 128mb X600
15" 2.4GHZ 1GBDDR2 100GB Superdrive 128mb x600 w/256 option
17" 2.4GHZ 1GBDDR2 120GB Superdrive 256mb
-All w/ iSight option
-All w/ 6GB flash drive for Mac OSX and fast booting
-Same price points
-All in Al finish with option of Black
-All armed and equipped to make 2006 the new 1984
ALSO NEW WIRELESS RELEASED
In March we will see a special event - new iBooks and Mac mini's
12" and 14" NON WIDESCREEEN
12" 1.73GHZ 512mb DDR2 40GB Superdrive 64mb 6200
14" 1.86GHZ 512mb DDR2 80GB Superdrive 64mb 6200
-All with iSight as an option
-Same price points
-In white or Black
Mac mini
1.73GHZ 512mb DDR2 40GB Combo 64mb 6200 $449
1.86GHZ 512mb DDR2 80GB Superdrive 64mb 6200 $599
1.86GHZ 512mb DDR2 160GB Superdrive TV Tuner 64mb 6600 $799
The WWDC will arrive:
Nothing major hardware side
- the world will be engulfed in PowerBook fever
maybe slight updates -
new Final Cut
Adobe will release new Series made for intel
Paris Expo
-Intel iMac's
Hey i can dream
uumm, let me think
That would explain the crappy last update.
I reckon announce at MWSF to be shipped by end of Jan early Feb
13" 15" 17"
13" 2.26GHZ 1GBDDR2 80GB Superdrive 128mb X600
15" 2.4GHZ 1GBDDR2 100GB Superdrive 128mb x600 w/256 option
17" 2.4GHZ 1GBDDR2 120GB Superdrive 256mb
-All w/ iSight option
-All w/ 6GB flash drive for Mac OSX and fast booting
-Same price points
-All in Al finish with option of Black
-All armed and equipped to make 2006 the new 1984
ALSO NEW WIRELESS RELEASED
In March we will see a special event - new iBooks and Mac mini's
12" and 14" NON WIDESCREEEN
12" 1.73GHZ 512mb DDR2 40GB Superdrive 64mb 6200
14" 1.86GHZ 512mb DDR2 80GB Superdrive 64mb 6200
-All with iSight as an option
-Same price points
-In white or Black
Mac mini
1.73GHZ 512mb DDR2 40GB Combo 64mb 6200 $449
1.86GHZ 512mb DDR2 80GB Superdrive 64mb 6200 $599
1.86GHZ 512mb DDR2 160GB Superdrive TV Tuner 64mb 6600 $799
The WWDC will arrive:
Nothing major hardware side
- the world will be engulfed in PowerBook fever
maybe slight updates -
new Final Cut
Adobe will release new Series made for intel
Paris Expo
-Intel iMac's
Hey i can dream
Powerbook iSight???
I don't believe the PowerBook iSight thing? I mean, do pros really need a built-in camera? For what? To chat with their mothers? That seems more like a consumer option to me. Especially when regarding Apple's PhotoBooth software, which I doubt would excite a single pro user .
I don't believe the PowerBook iSight thing? I mean, do pros really need a built-in camera? For what? To chat with their mothers? That seems more like a consumer option to me. Especially when regarding Apple's PhotoBooth software, which I doubt would excite a single pro user
.zelet said:
Smokes in what? Gaming? I am talking about real-life performance, and the software overhead in PCs just kills any (small) advantage of their processors...besides, multitasking/virtual memory in Windows is CRAP, to say the least...I can do a thousand things on my Mac without feeling any HD activity...try that on a "powerful" Centrino or P4 PC.
BRLawyer said:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. That's rich. Hold onto your fantasies for a few more months. That's about all you have left....months and fantasies. Fist off there is no Centrino processor which you are suggesting in your post which goes to show how much you know. Secondly Windows XP handles multitasking perfectly fine. Just as OS X does as long as you have a fair amount of RAM. I leave my desktop PC open for months on end with its apps open. No problems. But we aren't talking about software. We are talking HARDWARE here and the simple fact is the G4 should have gone out the window when the G5 PowerMacs came on the scene. Its 2003 hardware that has been stretched so thin that its pathetic.
Engineers To The Rescue...
I seem to recall that a few years back some PhD students at Cambridge were developing Iris tracking techniques.
May be the screen of the RevA is one BIG Iris tracking system / iSight combined???
OK, Apple are good, but not that good (yet! - Challenge Ive ) - I hope this psychology works! If it does, finger print recognition please too. Oh, and also a birthday reminder tool that actually works. iCal - OK, but you can turn it off! I'm fed up of getting shouted at by my mum for forgetting family birthdays! Maybe a H/W link to iCal that sends out a shock through the case, or fo persistant offenders, an Intel Inside logo appears on the Powerbook until you acknowledge the birthday!
losingground said:
I seem to recall that a few years back some PhD students at Cambridge were developing Iris tracking techniques.
May be the screen of the RevA is one BIG Iris tracking system / iSight combined???
OK, Apple are good, but not that good (yet! - Challenge Ive
) - I hope this psychology works! If it does, finger print recognition please too. Oh, and also a birthday reminder tool that actually works. iCal - OK, but you can turn it off! I'm fed up of getting shouted at by my mum for forgetting family birthdays! Maybe a H/W link to iCal that sends out a shock through the case, or fo persistant offenders, an Intel Inside logo appears on the Powerbook until you acknowledge the birthday!
SiliconAddict said:Some of us have been for 3 years. Hell I'm going to be able to buy the top of the line PowerBook outright with 2GB of RAM...probably have enough left over for aperture.
Given this information (reliable or not) I'm glad that my wife put her foot down about not buying another computer until the end of next year. Yeah, that news hurt at the time but I'm now hoping that we'll see revision B PowerBooks late next year/early 2007, ideally with the Merom processor. The saving for a 17" version is going well and I might even have enough to get one of those iPod-thingies since I seem to be banned from them now that they are all USB 2.0. I'm also not planning on updating any major software next year so that I can update it once the Universal Binary versions appear. Overall, the timing of this is looking pretty reasonable but I still hate that I have to wait at least another 12-months.
irmongoose said:
A workaround is to get farther back from the camera. It seems to fix that problem.
nagromme said:I think very FEW people would like 1920x1080+ on a 13" screen, if they actually sat down and tried to use such a thing.
If the OS you are running is resolution independent then it makes no odds what the DPI of the screen is. It's only because OS X has so far been resolution dependent that Apple have been unable to increase the DPI of their screens. Hopefully this issue will be addressed with 10.5 - if not sooner.
Cheers Daniel
New PowerBook...
I vote for a new widescreen PowerBook with the same full size keyboard as the current 12", 15" and 17" models BUT it has a 16:9 or 16:10 screen.
The current 12" display is 9.68" in width. Now at 16:9 the diagonal size of the display would be 11.11" and at 16:10 the diagonal would be 11.42".
Take a look at the specs of Sony VAIO TX1XP and you'll see what I mean:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/artic...6&page=4436
Just beautiful!
Just putting it out there...
Cheers Daniel
I vote for a new widescreen PowerBook with the same full size keyboard as the current 12", 15" and 17" models BUT it has a 16:9 or 16:10 screen.
The current 12" display is 9.68" in width. Now at 16:9 the diagonal size of the display would be 11.11" and at 16:10 the diagonal would be 11.42".
Take a look at the specs of Sony VAIO TX1XP and you'll see what I mean:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/artic...6&page=4436
Just beautiful!
Just putting it out there...
Cheers Daniel
MontyZ said:
Yeah, I realize that, but I always found video conferencing to be something more for the consumer market, to chat with relatives and friends in style. As I'm a student, I really don't know much about the pro-market, but I had always assumed that audio and video chat weren't really common in the professional area, as it is difficult to review what has been said (as opposed to email).
Anyway, I'm waiting for an Intel iBook with iSight, ...hopefully it won't take too long, my iBook G3 500MHz is starting to grow old...
joebells said:Unfortunately thats not true, look at comments from developers using the first intel machines. If I remember correctly they said that the machines were really fast, faster than the dual processor powermacs they had been using and the intel box runs only one processor and the first x86 version of osx couldn't of been that optimized. So I think we'll have some really fast machines coming
So, then have a look at these benchmarks and tell me who is faster:
http://www.macnews.de/news/71814
The Pentium is even faster than the AMD Opteron chips (clock for clock). That means that when we run PPC apps on one of the new Intel PowerBooks, they shouldn't run that much slower than on the current PPC Powerbooks.runninmac said:2006 seems like its gonna be a long rumor season!
With the Powerbooks going before iBooks I belive that becuase from many of the tests the Pentium M arictecture kills the G4s. (or at least I pretty sure correct me if im wrong)
JRM PowerPod said:
The X600 is basically the same as the graphics in the current PowerBooks, so I expect they will use something better than that. I am expecting something like the mobility X800M or G7600Go (I doubt they will use the G7800Go because that will probably mean they need to make the Powerbook quite a bit thicker).
Although I would really like a graphics chip based off the X1800 series (which can encoder video at 5x realtime) plus they also support hardware H.264 decoding.
Cinch said:How about making a practical and beautiful laptop out of the 12" or 13" models. I would like one with 6+ hours of real life use, and I think it is totally possible w/ today's technology. We can eliminate the CD/DVD drive which will free up lots of space for a larger battery. Lets also eliminate the modem port, I mean who uses this anymore. While we are at it, eliminate the ethernet port. There are so many hotspots now, I can't imagine needing one. We can also elimnate firewire ports and just have two or three USB2 ports. That is it; just three USB2 and a video out port. That is all we need.
I like to use a laptop like a cell phone i.e. I don't want to plug it in during the day. I guess I just hate see Dell's laptop at meetings where the owner says, "oops, I have to plug my laptop in before it runs out of juice." Yeah 10 minute into the meeting
I don't need the speed to do number crunching simulation. All I need is a snappy OSX that will run Office and Safari well.
Back to you,
Cinch
No internal optical drive means no using it as a portable DVD player, which is (believe it or not) a big seller in the education and home markets, and means that you'd need to connect an external drive to install software (not going to fly with some users) or even use some software (games, mainly). The dock solutions are all awkward.
No FireWire means no video input from FireWire or iLink compatible cameras, which isn't going to fly with video professionals (you'd be surprised how big a market there is for the 17" PB with Final Cut Pro among video professionals).
If you travel enough, you'll find a lot of places without WiFi, even hotels with neither WiFi nor ethernet networking, so yeah, there are folks who travel on business who still need to use a modem. I wouldn't kill the ethernet port, either.
I don't know about Dells, but my iBook gets 4 hours unless I'm playing a DVD - not bad for a 4 year old computer (albeit one with a new battery). I've worked with a nice little Sony VAIO (about 10" widescreen, I think) that gets at least 3 hours, and it's a couple of years old. So the folks whose battery runs out at meetings aren't charging it when they get the opportunity, but only when they have to.
Video conferences are very common in large organisations, but tend to be 90s style special purpose (read expensive) gear in meeting rooms, with the video stream running over multiple ISDN links. PC based video conferencing is becoming more common, but can be awkward when in open plan offices, because it can be distracting for those sitting nearby, and limits the amount of sensitive material that can be discussed. (Headset/mic helps here but is still not as good as being in a closed room).Marvy said:Yeah, I realize that, but I always found video conferencing to be something more for the consumer market, to chat with relatives and friends in style. As I'm a student, I really don't know much about the pro-market, but I had always assumed that audio and video chat weren't really common in the professional area, as it is difficult to review what has been said (as opposed to email).
Anyway, I'm waiting for an Intel iBook with iSight, ...hopefully it won't take too long, my iBook G3 500MHz is starting to grow old...
zelet said:
Even so you are claiming that your 1GHz PowerBooks sucks "for what is essentially 3 year old hardware" ... however it is three year old hardware! Apple hasn't sold a 1GHz PowerBook for 2 years! The G4 isn't a great general purpose processor - the Athlon 64 and the Pentium M are, however where the G4 excels (vector mathematics) these other two can't compete. That's why my iBook can rip music faster than my (significantly faster, albeit old) PC. That's why some people find Photoshop faster than their fast PC. It isn't going to help your web browsing experience.
Yes, the PowerBook is overpriced, I won't argue there! Hence I have an iBook. The iBook is pretty decent value in my opinion - maybe $100 overpriced for what it is, but hey, Mac OS X is worth that.
And the current PowerBooks do have better screens (yes, Apple were late with them, but they'd have been late with them regardless of processor. The same goes for the graphics chips, the hard drive, the amount of memory ...).
Indeed. Ignoring AMD as Apple don't think they exist, a dual dual-core Xeon right now would SUCK in terms of performance, increase your power bill considerably and perform like a dual dual-core G5 1.5GHz or so.EricNau said:I don't know. I'm thinking it would be pretty hard to beat the Quad though.
However a dual Opteron 280 would beat the G5 in many, if not most, areas.
I get quite annoyed with some people in the Mac community. The G4 is not 'crap' simply because Apple are moving to Intel. It isn't great, and it doesn't have a future that competes with Intel's roadmap (this is what I'm really worried about actually, Intel have not performed well in the past couple of years regarding their roadmap). But currently it is okay-to-good. What really lets it down is the FSB, I bet with a 400MHz FSB, or an on-die memory controller, it would perform on par with an equivalently-clock Pentium M. If the G4 could compete at the same clock with a 133MHz FSB PIII, then it can compete with a Pentium M given a similar revamp. Apple are merely switching because Intel have a long-term roapmap that beats any PowerPC manufacturer's in terms of grunt and grunt/Watt.
But yes, Freescale clearly inherited all the Motorola managers that were holding Motorola back. Since they split off, Motorola really have started getting going again. If Freescale had invested in the long-term future of their PowerPC product instead of taking ages to make a chip that isn't yet in mass production that ekes the bus up by 20% and adds more L2 cache, whilst promising for several years now chips using Rapid/IO and similar that haven't emerged. Rapid/IO was once a competitor to HyperTransport before it got released. That's how old it is. Freescale are useless, and if they want to limit themselves to the low-performance embedded PowerPC market then so be it. They'll have to compete against PA Semi's new processor that'll be much more enticing than a dual-core G4.
Marvy said:I don't believe the PowerBook iSight thing? I mean, do pros really need a built-in camera? For what? To chat with their mothers? That seems more like a consumer option to me. Especially when regarding Apple's PhotoBooth software, which I doubt would excite a single pro user
Ever heard of video conferences? Tele-commuting? It would be a huge boon to pro user who travel if they could video conference from their hotel room rather than having to schelp to Kinkos or some place set up to to video conferencing.
SiliconAddict said:
He said "Centrino PC", not "Centrino Processor". Centrino PCs (i.e., most Pentium M based laptops) do exist.
Ah, another 'G4 is pathetic' post. If Apple hadn't announced a switch to Intel you'd be expousing next year's dual-core G4, or IBM's low-power G5, or PA Semi's upcoming PowerPC processor.
Is the G4 pathetic? No. Technology wise it has gone through plenty of revisions - the current G4 is a different beast to the original G4. The Pentium M is a different beast to the Pentium 2, but that is it's ancestry. The issue is the G4's front side bus. If Motorola/Freescale had got off their collective backsides a couple of years ago and simply stuck a memory controller on the processor, and possibly some of the northbridge too, we'd have a pretty damn good processor right now. However we are still waiting for them to release something a year from now that does that. Useless company. Apple didn't switch because of current processors, they switched because there was no future in general purpose PowerPC chips.
Moving to Yonah and Merom will be good for performance for Mac users. I'm not anti-switch! Think about if Apple had switched to Intel 3 years ago though - we'd have HORRIBLE underperforming dual-core Pentium D chips in our macs, and PowerMacs would maybe have the just released dual-core Xeon which sucks even more. Seriously, the G4 and G5 were the right chips up until the switch next year.