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Will nobody stand up?

Everytime a thread about PowerBooks starts, people start slagging the poor little 12" PB..

I'm a relative Mac neophyte. Bought my first Mac just over a year ago now, a 600 mhz iBook. What a great laptop that was. So great, ended up adding on an iPod, then an iBook for my GF, then an iPod for her. We were hooked.

When my position changed to need less travel, I sold off the iBook and bought a (brand spanking new at the time) 1Ghz iMac in February.

Now I'm again headed on the road for 3 months to write, and I've sold my iMac and bought a 12" PowerBook. This little machine is nothing short of amazing!

I can hook up a second monitor and work on my documents on a nice big screen when I'm at the office, and when I'm on the train or on the road, it's just as powerful as my iMac was, yet it fits comfortably on my lap. And yes, it even warms me up while it's there.

It's lighter than the iBook, more powerful, and a much sexier machine. To call it an Aluminum iBook just isn't fair. Can your iBook batch-resize all your photos for web-publishing, then burn those images to disk, all in the background while playing Warcraft III (yes, it's serious work!)??

Mine couldn't, but my 12" PowerBook can. It's a little trooper of a machine, and I hope it stays in the line-up for a long time. For those of us really on the go, it's a much better fit than the 15" or 17" machines.

Sorry, just had to step up and defend the little guy. ;)
 
Originally posted by SpeedRacr26
sorry to break it to you guys but today the roosevelt field apple store just recieved shipments of 12, 15, and 17 in powerbooks!...and im proud to announce i have finally made the switch while typin this on my 17in dream machine

I was overly convinced of tuesday's update until reading this thread. Can anyone validate or console me with a possible explanation?
 
Re: Will nobody stand up?

Originally posted by paulie
Mine couldn't, but my 12" PowerBook can. It's a little trooper of a machine, and I hope it stays in the line-up for a long time. For those of us really on the go, it's a much better fit than the 15" or 17" machines.

Sorry, just had to step up and defend the little guy. ;)

Oh, I love the 12" PB too. That's why I ordered one. :)

I'll just be very unhappy if my week (at least) delay is for no reason. I've got rumors of new PBs on the 19th and I've got a PB order delayed to the 19th. 1 + 1 BETTER = 2! :D
 
Hehe, I definitely agree w/you there. I'd be thrilled if a diff. 12.1" pb config shows up at my door. I'm hoping that 1+1=2, but I'm getting worried about that talk of the one store getting new pb shipments.

Updates seem a relevant reason for the delay, but also the Best Buy sucking all the SD pb's into their stores seems like it could be a relevant reason for the delay too. As has been said plenty of times before, I guess it's just wait and see.
 
Originally posted by Lori
Hehe, I definitely agree w/you there. I'd be thrilled if a diff. 12.1" pb config shows up at my door. I'm hoping that 1+1=2, but I'm getting worried about that talk of the one store getting new pb shipments.

Ehh, I don't think that report is particularly damning. If anything, it makes me wonder more. There IS stock of 12" PBs left, but they're not shipping it to us, the customers that ordered them.

It may very well be the plan to sell off current 12" PB stock at a lower price, come Tuesday on forward. That has been suggested a lot around here, although I don't think any of the "official" rumors state as such. Still, it's a very logical move.

Updates seem a relevant reason for the delay, but also the Best Buy sucking all the SD pb's into their stores seems like it could be a relevant reason for the delay too.

That is a valid point.
I will note, though, that the rumors of new PowerBooks are coming from so-called "credible" sources, and are NOT a product of these shipment delays. If we were basing this ONLY on the shipment delays, then I would wonder. But it's the combination of the two.

If new PBs are NOT released on Tuesday, then it will mean both that the "credible" rumors were wrong, AND that our shipment delays were due to other stock shortages. So that's two unrelated "hints" that will have to prove wrong. It's still VERY possible that that's true - make no mistake. But to me, it seems at least equally likely to go either way.
 
As has been said before the rumors could have been triggered by the shortages so the two wouldn't be unrelated...
 
Originally posted by vrapan
As has been said before the rumors could have been triggered by the shortages so the two wouldn't be unrelated...

Gee, I would hope that a "credible" source would be something more substantial than a mere stock shortage!

But, it's true that, since we don't KNOW for sure, it could be true.
 
Why can't Apple have a BTO with both Nvidia and ATI cards for their laptops? Its annoying because you cannot properly choose on the one you want unless its a different model.

Let the customers choose which card they want, i would prefer the ATI 9600 but if the Nvidia 440 is still on spec i'm not going to be happy.
 
Re: Will nobody stand up?

Originally posted by paulie
Sorry, just had to step up and defend the little guy. ;)

Oh, I don't even travel much and I've seriously considered a 12" PB for the basic convenience of moving around with a truly notebook-sized computer with G4 features. Ideally, it would have DVI so I could use it with my Apple Studio flat panel or even a Cinema Display, but I could manage without since I have a desktop Mac.

But I'm still firmly on the fence. Even more so since the driver's side power window on my wife's car went out and we can only guess how much that will cost to repair.
 
Originally posted by vniow
Nope, I really like this little Sony sub-portable, 10.6" widescreen with 1280x768 resolution, a built-in optical drive (very rare among true subportables) all weighing just 3.11lbs, too bad it doesn't run OSX...

I'd like to see the 12" become the world's smallest full-featured notebook again. I guess it wouldn't be 12 inches then. ;) I think there's a huge market for something that small.

Squire
 
Why can't Apple have a BTO with both Nvidia and ATI cards for their laptops? Its annoying because you cannot properly choose on the one you want unless its a different model.

Let the customers choose which card they want, i would prefer the ATI 9600 but if the Nvidia 440 is still on spec i'm not going to be happy.

Well I guess the reason for not having two different options there is cause if I understand it well a GPU from a different company would require a bit of reengineering of the the laptop mobo. In the desktops it is no problem. But in a laptop they tend to be integrated on the motherboard so providing an option between two different graphic chips might not worth the trouble and the price. So I guess they just pick one for a model and that is it. I do hope they pick a better one though for the new models cause the Go chips from Nvidia are underpowered.
 
I was actually just in Circuit City today buying the camcorder to accompany my new mac. Of course, I couldn't help but take a look around at the PC computers (while also telling the Circuit City guy that they should be an Apple Reseller). The computer that really caught my eye just happened to be that tiny Sony. It was amazing...not as great looking as the PB, but the features, wow. I came to the same conclusion vniow came to, though...it's missing one thing--OSX.

If Apple went as small as a 10.6," yeah, there'd definitely be ppl buying them up. But seeing as there's so many heat problems w/the pb 12" as it is, I doubt they'd ever consider it at this moment. (Which must make one also wonder what's up w/that Sony notebook? Is it gonna get crazy hot too?) (even though the pb's hotness hasn't phased me at all in buying it...i just shrugged my shoulders and said, eh, that's what happens when it's in alluminum casing)
 
Personally...

I'd rather not see an update next week. For a meager 1.3 GHz--thanks, but no thanks. You won't notice much performance difference from the laptops we have now. I'd much rather see a price drop on the existing lineup next week, if anything. I don't know about anyone else, but I certainly don't have any FW800 devices. And AE, you should be able to just replace the card in your existing laptop line. No need for a redesign for that.

Instead of Apple working so hard on a redesigned lineup for a weak 1.3 G4, they should have been spending their resources designing a G5 laptop with faster memory. Then they can drop the existing lineup (excepting the 17, of course) to the iBook range. Perhaps this is in fact what they have been doing.
 
Well, according to Apple's site, my delayed laptop has gone ahead and shipped. Due to arrive on the 19th. If Apple does in fact update the PBs on the 19th, this sucker's going right back. :) But it definitely doesn't look quite as good to me now.
 
Originally posted by soggywulf
Personally...

I'd rather not see an update next week. For a meager 1.3 GHz--thanks, but no thanks... No need for a redesign for that.

Instead of Apple working so hard on a redesigned lineup for a weak 1.3 G4, they should have been spending their resources designing a G5 laptop with faster memory. Then they can drop the existing lineup (excepting the 17, of course) to the iBook range. Perhaps this is in fact what they have been doing.

For you that might be a good plan, but there are several features that the PB line could use to keep sales up. The "redesign" for an update to the 12" and 17" should be easy. If they just up the CPU speed, your talking about swapping a few chips. If they do some other things like add USB 2.0 its still limited to some minor chip swapping.

I can see avoiding adding major things like FW 800, but even that would be a relatively minor change to a motherboard. One option you didn't consider is that Appe could use an update to verify some of the design and manufacturing factors for a G5 laptop.
 
the G5 might or might not be ready. I dont think Apple can wait to launch an updated line up after the mobile G5 is ready. It does not make sense unless of course the mobile G5 is due in a few weeks/months and then it does not make sense to create a short lived G4 updated line up but I am don't think that a mobile G5 is anywhere near the horizon. I think the current line up is fine for most users but it does feel "old" compared to the latest PCs. A 300MHz speed increase is an extra 30% extra processor power and if a better graphics card is included and or more L3 cache and more HD i think it is worth the update. As far your decrease in prices the current line up will fall in price even if that means you might have to buy one at eBay.
 
Wow, can you really ship back BTO ones? (I thought this was a "you build it, you buy it" sort of thing w/no returns)

I think that is correct... A BTO is not returnable.
 
Originally posted by LegionCSUF
Well, according to Apple's site, my delayed laptop has gone ahead and shipped. Due to arrive on the 19th. If Apple does in fact update the PBs on the 19th, this sucker's going right back. :) But it definitely doesn't look quite as good to me now.

Mine still hasn't shipped, there's still hope!
The only update I did was to a 60gb drive, does that qualify as a BTO?
 
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