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Price dropped on PBooks, But will 15" still be upgraded soon?

Rezet

Rezet

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 21, 2003
973
0
Connecticut, United States of America
Hey again,

I heard alot of people assumed that 15" powerbooks were supposed to get upgraded in may or in a very near future, yet all apple did - lowered price on 12" and 15" notebooks.
I'm not interested in 17" nor 12" much. But I do need to get 15" powerbook by the end of summer. I do not, however, want to buy this already outdated machine that is currently available.
It uses SDRAM still, for pete's sake.

So my question is, DO you guys think that 15" will get upgraded regardless of price drop? Or did apple simply decided to drop the price rather than making any changes? Will it get upgraded near time soon? When?
I know nobody really knows, so educated guesses, conclusions based on info you have, or simply personal opinions would be much appreciated.

Thanx,

-DIM
 
A price drop is usually a sign of an upcoming project revision. It's Apple trying to clear out excess stock.

The PowerPC 970 is a 64-bit (instead of 32-bit) processor being produced by IBM. While there's been no official announcement that Apple will use it, we all know Steve Jobs is going to talk about a Powermac 970 at the World Wide Developers Conference Keynote speech on June 23.

Depending on who you talk to, you'll get many, many different opinions about the 970 in a Powerbook. I believe that Apple will announce a Powerbook 970 with a 970 Powermac at the WWDC Keynote, although there are quite a few people who disagree. The reality is that, no matter what happens with Powerbooks at WWDC, the 970 will eventually make its way into Powerbooks.

Hope this explains things for you.
-Pyro
 
rezet, you should be happy that the new PowerBooks will be released (hopefully) this month some time. they should definitely have DDR RAM, but i'm not sure about the 970... in the last two weeks i have been hopeful of a 970 in the PowerBooks, but now... i say about a 30% chance of the 970 in PB's (PowerBooks) at WWDC.
 
Originally posted by cb911
rezet, you should be happy that the new PowerBooks will be released (hopefully) this month some time. they should definitely have DDR RAM, but i'm not sure about the 970... in the last two weeks i have been hopeful of a 970 in the PowerBooks, but now... i say about a 30% chance of the 970 in PB's (PowerBooks) at WWDC.
Click to expand...
Why the drop in confidence?
I'm curious as to why you're so cautious, because all the latest rumors (not to mention some of the lack thereof) have just reinforced my belief that Apple's got a Powerbook 970 or three up its sleeve for WWDC.

Just as a for instance: If Apple was going to update the Powerbooks any time before WWDC, they would have done the price drop last month. Instead we see it exactly three weeks before. Sounds like the right timing to me...
 
Da 970 be da shizzy

</ghetto>

The 970 is the production name of a new processor coming out from IBM, if it hasn't come out already. This processor is supoosedly going to be used by Apple, but for what, we don't know. It's going to be a 64 bit processor, and good stuff like that, so basically it'll be a kickass processor. Some people on the boards think that the next revision of the powerbooks and/or power macs and/or xServes will be rockin' the 970. Look in the news archives, there's a lot of info... ArsDigita had a nice little (term used very loosely) writeup of the processor. I personally think that the 970 is going to be introduced in the xServes first... it doesn't seem like the desktop market needs 64 bit computing, but if Apple wants to lead the way, let them do it.

And yes, I think that Apple will upgrade the entire lineup of PowerBooks. It's about time, espicially for the 15"er, which was last upgraded 6 months ago. It's probably coming in June, be it mid June or late June, I don't know, but I know that it won't be in the next week or so because the Apple Store itself is stocked full of every flavor of PowerBook. I've noticed that whenever Apple releases something new, it will be out of stock of that item for about a week or so. Well hey, maybe this is just a stock-clearing technique, we'll see.

As for what, I think I'll go like this-

* 1.3/1.12 GHz G4 (Maybe the new .13 u SOI G4's)

* DDR RAM

* Firewire 800

* Aluminum enclosure

* Maybe a bump in HD size

* ATI 9xxx Series graphics, 64 MB memory

I don't think the 970 will make it to the next revision of the PowerBooks, but Apple has always surprised us, eh? I think, though, that the next revision will bump speeds for all the laptops, and have the 15" play catch-up with it's aluminum counterparts.
 
Originally posted by beefstu01
I personally think that the 970 is going to be introduced in the xServes first... it doesn't seem like the desktop market needs 64 bit computing, but if Apple wants to lead the way, let them do it.
Click to expand...
But it's not about the 970 being 64-bit, it's about the G4 being weak.
Apple's desktop machines (and even the portables) are becoming increasingly weak compared to PC counterparts (I know, that's really a load of BS, but anyway). Apple needs to add power to its machines, and the 970 is the only way to do it.

Not just is the 970 a heluva a lot more powerful than the G4, but its got faster clock speeds. The low-end speeds (around 1.2 GHz) are actually less power-consuming than the G4.

Apple needs the 970. Now.
 
They don't need a 970. Hell, we don't even know how the 970 is going to work in real life, all we've got are some half-invented benchmarks from a half-reliable rumor site. Apple just needs a faster processor- it just might be the 970, or it might be a G4 with a pumped bus and clock. But anyway, I do hope the 970 comes in full force, however, about it sipping less juice, I think I remember reading somewhere around here that it drank a tad more than the G4. Does someone have the numbers?

<edit>And yes, Apple machines are beginning to lose their edge on x86 machines. Nobody cares if a G4 could equate to a P4 running at twice the clock (even though in many respects it can't) if the P4 is running at more than that (what's it at now, 3.2 GHz?). I realize that speed isn't everything, hell, when I do math stuff I run matlab on my dad's 500 MHz Ultra Sparc III, but it's getting to the point that the raw speed of the x86 processors start to outperform the PowerPC varients, and x86 computers are arguably cheaper than Apple's hardware. </edit>
 
Originally posted by beefstu01
They don't need a 970. Hell, we don't even know how the 970 is going to work in real life, all we've got are some half-invented benchmarks from a half-reliable rumor site. Apple just needs a faster processor- it just might be the 970, or it might be a G4 with a pumped bus and clock. But anyway, I do hope the 970 comes in full force, however, about it sipping less juice, I think I remember reading somewhere around here that it drank a tad more than the G4. Does someone have the numbers?
Click to expand...
A faster G4 just can't be done. If Motorola's shown us anything, it's that they're completely incapable of just about anything. The G5 is years behind schedule in development (and by that I mean to say that it's probably not being developed at all)

And the 970 will work. It's based off a fully functional processor. Hell, IBM has already moved on to developing the even more impressive PowerPC 980.


EDIT: As for the energy issue, I've heard that the 1.2 GHz processor uses less power. I've even seen speculation showing that the 1.2 GHz may have been specially designed for Apple. It's not a standard speed on the chip the 970 is a derivative from, and it doesn't seem to be a real logical Powermac speed.
 
Price drop in the 15s! Oh why didn't I wait! Oh well, I hope that the 15" design won't change much so I can gut it and put in a 970.
 
Originally posted by Schiffi
Price drop in the 15s! Oh why didn't I wait! Oh well, I hope that the 15" design won't change much so I can gut it and put in a 970.
Click to expand...
The new Powerbook will have a new Aluminum casing (al la the other new Powerbooks) and a bigger screen. It's more than just a little different...
 
Well, now, I'm even more confused. For somre odd reason, I always thought that G3 was 64 bits and G4 was 128 bits. Was I thinking of something else? It sux to be ignorant on the topic, but I guess the only way to find out is to ask :)
 
Originally posted by Rezet
Well, now, I'm even more confused. For somre odd reason, I always thought that G3 was 64 bits and G4 was 128 bits. Was I thinking of something else? It sux to be ignorant on the topic, but I guess the only way to find out is to ask :)
Click to expand...
Both the G3 and the G4 are 32-bit. As are the Pentiums 1 through 4, and consumer AMDs.
Apple would be the first major computer company to adopt a 64-bit processor, which would be a huge deal. Intel's 64-bit processor is still stuck in development, and Microsoft hasn't made any moves toward 64-bit.
 
So what does this mean:

"The Velocity Engine
Behind the PowerPC G4’s phenomenal performance is its aptly named Velocity Engine. The perfect workhorse for computing tasks that choke traditional processors, the Velocity Engine processes data in huge 128-bit chunks, instead of the smaller 32-bit or 64-bit chunks used in traditional processors (it’s the 128-bit vector processing technology used in scientific supercomputers — except that we’ve added 162 new instructions to speed up computations even further). In addition, the PowerPC G4 can perform four (in some cases eight) 32-bit floating-point calculations in a single cycle — two to four times faster than processors found in PCs."

-Apple.com
 
The Velocity Engine is the G4's AltiVec unit. The G4 itself is a 32-bit processor.

The 970 actually has its own AltiVec unit built into it. Although the 970 is 64-bit.
 
I'm betting the 15" AluPowerBook will be coming out by end of June. I sure hope so...we've got the budget to buy myself one (upgrading from my trusty first generation TiPowerBook) and we have to encumber the money by July 1st...come on Apple, make me happy!:(
 
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