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PowerBooks Still Delayed

Heat issues

This is what I wrote a few weeks ago. If anyone has more or alternates, please feel free to chime in.
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Here is my quick overview (from that other discussion) so it is easy to find. I don't think it will happen (I'd love it to), but from my reading, the problem is not that the G5 runs to hot, doesn't have any power management etc. It is time to put that rumor to rest unless it can be backed up with facts:

Summary: the 970 has got doze/nap/sleep mode, which were on previous PowerPCs. It can turn off some parts of the processor when things are quiet--under OS control. For thermal management, it has a diode on chip for monitoring temperature with leads that go off chip allowing external control.

I keep seeing things like "The G5 needs 8 [or 9] fans to keep it cool." But the point of the 8 fans was to use more at a lower speeds to decrease the sound, not because 1 fan couldn't handle it. Plus the clock-rates involved are high. Likewise, as was quoted here again, since the G5 doesn't need a L3 cache, the power usage could be *less* than for a PB G4 at, say, 1.2Ghz.

Although I'd *love* to see it happen soon, but am skeptical that it will. I think the things like the "needs 8 fans" become conventional wisdom without facts to back them up.


(G5:
http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/techlib/...7256C5200611780

7457:
http://e-www.motorola.com/files/32b...t/MPC7457EC.pdf

G5 power management:
http://www.arstechnica.com/cpu/03q2...nterview-2.html
)
 
Re: A prediciton......

Originally posted by Peej
I had a dream last night that the 15" powerbooks were finally realeased with intel-based architecture.

MAKE IT STOP!!!!!
MAKE IT STOP!!!!!


peej
🙁
Click to expand...
Were it availible, would you buy it??
 
Re: Re: A prediciton......

Originally posted by Bruja
Were it availible, would you buy it??
Click to expand...

I would! And I'd say its "x86 based", not "intel based", just to make myself feel better.
 
slow chips

What happens to the G5 chips that are lower grade than 1.6 gh but run at 1.0/1.2 ok ...... put them in the G5 PB

Is their a high or low % of these chips

Do you think apple would design a powerbook G5 at the same time as a G5 DT .......... I think so.

Have they had time to get these ready for Paris.🙂 🙂
 
2 cents worth

Here's my two cents.

If the iBook team truely came up with the 12" PowerBook. One can only think that Apple has been working on putting a g4 into the iBook.

Which would mean that a g5 PowerBook, must be in the works and ready for release. You can't release a g5 PowerBook, when all the g5 tower orders haven't been filled yet.

Push the PowerBook g5 back, (even though it's more than likely ready) until every one who ordered a g5 tower gets them.

Makes perfect since to me, Apple.

if for some reason the upgrade is minor, there's going to be many sad faces and I'll be one of them.
 
Moto Rampage: Steve's Revenge

Apple should release a new first person shooter game titled-
Moto Rampage: Steve's Revenge

One of the weapons would be the buzzsaw shooter like in Unreal but instead of blades it would shoot flying Apple logo’s. They can take voice samples from Steve and use it in the game. And some of the more unique locations is the Moto Fab plants, their corp HQ, and a final battle between Steve and the CEO of Moto at the rim of an active volcano. The irony would be that the CEO would be tossing PPC7457’s shuriken style at Steve.

I think at this point there isn't anyone around who can’t agree that this is beyond pathetic. *sighs* I'm a patient person but usually I at least have a set date to put on my calendar for an event so I can count the days. Can’t even do that with the next series of PowerBooks. Then again the odds favor that it won’t be a G5 so it doesn’t really matter that much to me.
But for those who are waiting, bring on Moto Rampage.
 
People, stop blaming Motorola. If designing/fabricating microprocessors was something you could do in your basement, we would all have supercomputers in our homes. I love how nobody knows what is keeping the powerbooks, but they don't want to blame Apple so they find a scapegoat. How do you know Apple wasn't planning to have G5 powerbooks from the start, and the real problem is that IBM can't fabricate them well/fast enough. Lets all curse IBM now.

Or maybe some of you could try being level headed and see that no matter what the supply issues are, Apple and only Apple is responsible to the consumer for their lack of updates.

That being said, I'm buying the next powerbook even if its a fission reactor with a chalkboard for a screen. And yes I also wait impatiently. I just don't like people bashing Motorola without knowing all the facts.
 
All the G5 orders will be filled within the next 2-4 weeks. Apple can start shipping a PB G5 starting at 1.3GHz in October along with Panther. I believe Panther is the key to the G5 Powerbook timeline, since performance is tuned for the G5 in addition to the G4. For the most part, Jaguar, even 10.2.7, has not been optimized for the G5 processor. The G5's higher clock rate mask this a bit, but with Panther, G5 systems will see an order of magnitude performance increase.

With Panther, a 1.3GHz PB G5 will rock, whereas if they released it with Jaguar, users expectations will not be met. IMO, the new 7457's were earmarked for the new iBooks, not the Powerbooks. Heat and battery life being the main issue when replacing the G3 processor's with G4's, something the 7457's were supposed to solve. The PB G5's will be able to go to 1.8 GHz without the heat issues everyone is afraid of, especially since most of the time the processor steps down to 1.3GHz.
 
Originally posted by joeyjojoe
I just don't like people bashing Motorola without knowing all the facts.
Click to expand...

Ugh... you are way too sensitive dude...

I don't like Motorola because they failed to deliver the real g5.. for that reason, (and the small matter of the v60 cell phone), i hate them. This g4 thing, yeh.. its total crap and yeh, the other side of the fence are getting a bit worked up over a processor that isnt state of the art when released.. but oh well... the point is that Motorola is a big boy, he doesnt need you to fend off his critics. 🙂
 
What happens to the G5 chips that are lower grade than 1.6 gh but run at 1.0/1.2 ok ...... put them in the G5 PB

Is their a high or low % of these chips
Click to expand...

The "low speed" G5's that would go into a PowerBook are not the cast-offs of the high-speed production line. The portable G5's would need to run at a lower voltage than the desktop machines, and that would require, for lack of a better term, "higher quality" chips, even though they're running slower. So the 1.2GHz low-voltage G5's might correspond to the 1.8 GHz higher-voltage chips used in PowerMacs (I don't know the exact correllation, just using that as an example.)

As for your question, my guess would be that there is fairly small percentage that won't make 1.6 GHz, else it would suggest poor yields in the process.
 
Do you think Steve Jobs reads these Powerbook rumor boards. It would be interesting to be a fly on the brush metal effect walls of his office watching him as he reads this thread and sips on Apple juice and champagne mixed with the sweat of G5 and Panther developers. He´s muttering, "Hmmmm, warm; warmer; phew miles off and they´re all falling for it; wow thats close you Aussie smart ass; hmm that´s an angle I never thought of Ill make a note of that; JEEEZ wait till I get my hands on the fri****ing developer who let THAT BIT out the bag.......
 
Originally posted by Cless
I was talking to an Apple Distinguished Educator at my college (real high-up guy in video/TV production) about PowerBook updates, since I've been waiting for them to buy one. He looked at me knowingly and said something about September 18th, winked, and walked off. Could he be yanking my chain? You bet, but he does have connections at Apple and is a big proponant of their stuff. Who knows. Just adding more fuel to the fire I guess.

--Cless
Click to expand...

I like these kinds of posts 😀
 
Originally posted by joeyjojoe
People, stop blaming Motorola. If designing/fabricating microprocessors was something you could do in your basement, we would all have supercomputers in our homes.
Click to expand...

Funny, but I think I could not ship 7457s out of my basement as well as Mot isn't...

Mot's a disaster in general and a disaster for Apple-- Apple has been shipping overclocked laptop processors in desktops for well into a year now because Mot can't get their process together or put their heads around a roadmap. Apple takes some blame for believing that they'd actually complete their own G5 (which they did for embedded customers, btw), or for not just abandoning them earlier, but that doesn't eliminate the fact that Mot is horribly mismanaged in all of their market segments.

I've worked with them-- this isn't just a problem for Apple, it's across the board.

Cell phones and network routers went to their heads and they lost all perspective. They tried to do everything at once, forgot where their core competences were, and wound up doing nothing instead.

And it's a shame because Mot used to be a premier company... Watching the dot-coms collapse because they were trying to catch a wave in a new market and didn't have the experience to build a real buisness plan doesn't bother me, but to see a venerable company like Mot go through this is just hard to watch...

They could have easily come out of this as well as TI if they'd stopped to think for a little while.

Sorry for the rant... It just depresses me to see a good technology company fall apart.
 
Originally posted by neilw
The portable G5's would need to run at a lower voltage than the desktop machines, and that would require, for lack of a better term, "higher quality" chips, even though they're running slower. So the 1.2GHz low-voltage G5's might correspond to the 1.8 GHz higher-voltage chips used in PowerMacs (I don't know the exact correllation, just using that as an example.)
Click to expand...

Beat me to it while I was busy ranting about Mot... 🙂
 
Forget about the fans, folks, that's not an indication of heat. 9 fans doesn't mean the system is hot, and the fact that they're slow to limit noise doesn't mean it's cool.

Forget about the G5 chip itself. That's only one chip in the system.

Think about wider busses running on copper traces at 800-1000MHz to the system controller, the system controller itself, and then the wider, faster busses to the memory sitting in sockets.

Yes, it's possible to slow a G5 down and cripple the memory bandwidth and bring the power down, but the point is whether that makes a better laptop than a G4 and I don't think it would.

Especially not better than an improved smaller faster G4 which should be possible.

Unless, of course, there was no G4 to ship in which case they don't have a choice.

In the last PB delay thread I made the mistake of reading I commented that it might take 4-6 months to spin a system controller chip for a laptop if they got backed into a corner and put it on the fast track. That would line up with the rumor that started this thread-- early 2004.

I think Apple would prefer to wait for a die shrink for both the 970 and the system controller, and to maybe put the memory controller on the 970 die to eliminate one of the busses and grow the on chip cache to balance the slower memory bus, but they may cut their losses and go with what they've got.

The G5 label would make a splash. First 64 bit consumer laptop (there's SPARC laptops out there already...) would make a good headline. I'm sure they'd bake a benchmark to show that it was an advance, but I don't think it's what they want to do.

If they did this, I still wouldn't buy one until those changes happened though. I think the 1GHz TiBook would still be the better machine unless you needed the connectivity options.

In short, despite quoted power for the G5 chip in isolation, and talk of prototypes, I don't think it's ready for production laptops, but supply issues and marketing might force Apple's hand.

Just rumor mongoring with the rest...
 
Apple Announcements

With the whole Powerbook fiasco and Powermac delay problem, I do begin to wonder whether Aplle might lose less money because of the problems if they stood up in Paris and published a rough roadmap -- it need not be detailed, but just saying 'Look there will/will not be anymore PBG4, the PBG5 won't be out untill March at least...'

At the moment I think they would gain as many quick sales as they'd loose, and in the long term probably gain more -- if only by stopping people from being let in to temptation (by bloody Viaos).

Ah.. Sony Viao, the single best proof that Sony wishes it were Apple but isn't. They keep trying to make a good PC but compatibility/standards prevent them. And being a Sony it's completly incompatible anyway 'cus half of it uses proprietary stuff and the rest has so much copy protection that you can't use it!
 
PB G5

Yea Great and Mighty Powers That Be
Enthroned in liquid air:
When d'ya think that we might see
The end of our despair?
We want a powerbook G5,
Lord knows we want it now;
We're shedding tears from bloodshot eyes
And getting by somehow.
Your eyes see all, but we must guess
The source of sinful shame;
The crooked Moto is favored best
To wear the tag of blame.
If Steve is up there, hear us now!
The time is up already!
Stop humping semi-sacred cows
And send us something steady!
So thus we grieve, and thus we cry,
Growing worse with each new rumor
Did I hear Februry, did I hear March?
We want something much sooner!
So cut the prices, hell, who cares?
One gig is fine for me
Just so long as something's there
In the G5 category
Oh great yea powers, hear me now
Thy solemn, musing poet:
Your laptops stink! They're out of date!
And everybody knows it!
And when the sun down yonder hill should stroll
And wild rose bequeath the night
No backlit keyboard shall light me home
As I stumble in my plight.
So thus we moan, and thus we grieve
With no hope for the morrow;
The pot of gold is make believe;
We cease our song of sorrow.
 
Re: Re: A prediciton......

Originally posted by Bruja
Were it availible, would you buy it??
Click to expand...


In a heartbeat. I've become punch-drunk and stupid from waiting so long.

peej
 
Re: G4/G5 and VirtualPC

Originally posted by Hugin777
If you need VirtualPC you need a G4 (for the time being).

Especially on a portable it's nice to have access to a virtual PC when you need it.
Click to expand...

try this:

http://www.openosx.com/wintel/index.html

It is much faster than VPC on dual G4, will be interested to see how it flies when i get the Dual G5

I'm surprised this is not on the front page!!!
 
it is all apple's fault

if you feel disappointed with the pb, it isn't motorola's fault.

the reason why there is so much uncertainty is because steve doesn't make forward or release announcements.

if you are unhappy with the performance side, apple is the one who decided to go with moto, and are the one, based on past experience, who don't have a better contingency plan.

apple's management makes the decision, they are expected to manage risk or suppliers' mistakes. and they will (hopefully) be the ones taking to heart the lesson learned with motorola.

that said, i'm disappointed, but i want an pb. so i have to take the bad (waiting, waiting, and waiting) with the good (a kickrear product).
 
Re: read carefully what you are writing

Originally posted by eric67
i they say now Feb 2004; if it is true then they are pretty good.... so let see in January 2004 Apple announcement
Click to expand...

There was a rumor a while back about Apple talking with a marketing firm about a Super Bowl commercial. Sounds like G5 Powerbooks to me.
 
Super Bowl

As a Yank I know I should know..(and admiting not knowing is nigh on treason) .. when is the game this year?

How reliable was the roumer, and does anyone else think the G5 'You'll 100x as much on repairs' ad is well ... not their best?
 
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