ThinkSecret predicts new Powerbooks & Specs

[Freyqq]

I'm personally in the market for a powerbook and I must say this wasn't worth the wait. I was mostly looking forward to a better 12" video card. To explain to everyone here how unbelieveably awful the fx 5200 is...here are the scores for it on a PC benchmarking untility named 3dmark03 (its relatively popular). On the four pcs i have in my house, one has a fx 5200, one has a 9600xt (mine ), one a 9600 se, and one has a geforce 3 ti200. These are all PC desktops by the way, but they should be the same for apple too....

Geforce 3 ti 200: 850
fx 5200: 450
radeon 9600 xt 4000
radeon 9600 se 1800


Another note.......all computers have relatively the same specs.

In summary, the fx 5200 does very badly in at least the PC world and I imagine equally as bad in the mac world. I understand that this is a benchmark, not a real-life situation test, but still you would expect more from a pro-line computer. I mean, the fx 5200 loses to a geforce 3! The geforce 3 came out a good couple years BEFORE the fx 5200. The fx 5200 is by no means new either.



Don't get me wrong...I'm happy apple isn't going to release an unfinished product...but they could at least up the graphic card....

 

[duffman9000]

And a huge size and heat boost...

At least memory got bumped to 128. No Geforce 6 options though and i doubt there will be until they unveil a PBG5. If there isn't a big price drop i don't see how even the biggest fanboy can defend apple now.

 

[hulugu]

If IBM and Freescale can't produce suitable laptop processors then its hardly apple's fault.

What do you want Apple to do? Manufacture its own processors? Go to x86 processors? Wave a magic wand?!

Someone tell Jobs to wave that damn wand already! For cripes sake, what's he waiting for, frickin' Harry Potter!

 

[TheMasin9]

OMG, I fu**ing hate apple sometimes. 9 months later for this. The G5 has been out for 2 years now. And the G4 has been out for something like 7. Don't you the hell tell me they could not put a G5 in the damn thing underclocked to at least get us away from the 133 mhz fsb.

All apple cares about now is thier damn iPod. Great, apple is turning into sony.

Do remember, apple just fit the g5 into a 2 inch thick frame (imac) and the processor was only 1.8 ghz top. i think they are gonna wait till they can fit at least a 2.0 ghz proc into the 1 inch thick pb frame, and heres another question, what does everyone think they will do with the next powerbooks appearance, i mean they have the sexiest laptop on the market, how can you improve on that.

 

[duffman9000]

I'm personally in the market for a powerbook and I must say this wasn't worth the wait. I was mostly looking forward to a better 12" video card. To explain to everyone here how unbelieveably aweful the fx 5200 is...here are the scores for it on a PC benchmarking untility named 3dmark03 (its relatively popular). On the four pcs i have in my house, one has a fx 5200, one has a 9600xt (mine ), one a 9600 se, and one has a geforce 3 ti200. These are all PC desktops by the way, but they should be the same for apple too....

Geforce 3 ti 200: 850
fx 5200: 450
radeon 9600 xt 4000
radeon 9600 se 1800


Another note.......all computers have relatively the same specs.

In summary, the fx 5200 does very badly in at least the PC world and I imagine equally as bad in the mac world. I understand that this is a benchmark, not a real-life situation test, but still you would expect more from a pro-line computer. I mean, the fx 5200 loses to a geforce 3! The geforce 3 came out a good couple years BEFORE the fx 5200. The fx 5200 is by no means new either.

Yes, they suck, and they suck pretty bad. It wouldn't be so bad if Apple at least gave users a choice. The FX line was beaten by ATI's 9000's series and i can't imagine buying anything with an FX gpu. Granted i did build a system for my sister a year ago with a 5200FX(got a deal), but that was a YEAR ago. Apple must have some deal with nvidia or the FX's used must be dirt cheap.
Damn it i want to buy another laptop, but Apple is making it hard to justify the expenditure.

 

[afields]

Meh!

I am in the market for a new laptop. I would only consider buying this anemic upgrade if there was a SIGNIFICANT price drop- at least $200. Theres really no way to spin it, this upgrade is craptastic. Yes, I know- it's not all apples fault, third party suppliers, excessive heat, blah, blah, blah.

 

[ebunton]

Although this was hardly unexpected, it's a real disappointment if Apple offer this pitiful bump (I'm not going to honour it by calling this bump an "upgrade").

I can see that their core value for customers is not offering the fastest processors, but in fact the "Apple Experience" accompanied with using one of their products. However, it must be said that they should at least keep up with the competition. In that way, if they matched the competition on those dimensions, and also offered this amazing Apple Experience, that there would be so much more of the reason for people to switch.

If they don't keep up with the competition with specs, they will be offering people the choice of an "experience" versus a "young" (as opposed to ageing) laptop... I want both!

EDIT:
Price-drop or not, that won't make this sad offering any sweeter since I don't believe for a second that the majority of people who purchase Apple products are as price sensitive as those who purchase Wintel systems.

 

[duffman9000]

Do remember, apple just fit the g5 into a 2 inch thick frame (imac) and the processor was only 1.8 ghz top. i think they are gonna wait till they can fit at least a 2.0 ghz proc into the 1 inch thick pb frame, and heres another question, what does everyone think they will do with the next powerbooks appearance, i mean they have the sexiest laptop on the market, how can you improve on that.

Jobs has it in his head that the PB should remain about 1 inch thick. I bet if it was just a little thicker (pun not intended!) Apple engineers could bring it to market sooner. A question Jobs should ask himself is how can Apple attract more PC users? Having the "sexiest" laptops don't mean squat when the primary concern is performance.

 

[maya]

Bluetooth 2.0 doesn't explain the keyboard and mouse price drops. If you read about what Bluetooth 2.0 is you'd see the benefit of the newer Bluetooth is 3x faster file transfers. That does not apply to the keyboard and mouse because the bandwidth required for their signals doesn't test the limits of BT 1.1. BT 2.0 is backwards compatible so the wireless keyboard and mouse from Apple won't need to be revised. If you have a lot of BT devices, BT 2.0 will make a difference.

Granted that BT 2.0 is backwards compatible however how many devices make use of it as of current. This is the same thing that Apple pulled with FW800. How many devices do you see on the market that use FW800 when compared to USB 2.0.

BT 2.0 is going to be another FW800 for quite sometime.


The PB just look sad, really sad if this rumour is true.

 

[h'biki]

Are you forgetting about the FSB and Ram speed.

G5 has an advantage over the G4 in that regard. I thought that was obvious.

But not in vector processing. The G4 implementation of Altivec is, afaik, better than the G5s. Which is why clock-for-clock the G4 performs pretty nicely against the G5 in applications like Final Cut Pro:

http://www.barefeats.com/fcp4.html

 

[mai]

OMG, I fu**ing hate apple sometimes. 9 months later for this. The G5 has been out for 2 years now. And the G4 has been out for something like 7. Don't you the hell tell me they could not put a G5 in the damn thing underclocked to at least get us away from the 133 mhz fsb.

All apple cares about now is thier damn iPod. Great, apple is turning into sony.

exactly, u say it man,
i'm also very disappointed, if this happens

 

[rinseout]

Price cuts doubtful

Non-US stores recently recalibrated the prices of products including computers in the mobile line; if there was to be a price cut for PBs in the offing, then they probably would have held off on doing this recalibration before MWSF.

 

[maya]

Jobs has it in his head that the PB should remain about 1 inch thick. I bet if it was just a little thicker (pun not intended!) Apple engineers could bring it to market sooner. A question Jobs should ask himself is how can Apple attract more PC users? Having the "sexiest" laptops don't mean squat when the primary concern is performance.

Apple has the entire notion that "one never looks back", meaning they will never have a 17" PB thicker than 1" only thinner. The 15 and 12" have some way to reach 1" thickness.


If only the Bus speed on the G4 was improved, this would not really be a hugh discussion.

Look on the bright side you can now have 4Gigs of ram in a notebook.

 

[mpw]

Anyone know anything about BT 2.0? It sounds like it's a hardware change to the specification...no hope that existing BT 1.1 devices can be upgraded, is there? Hint, hint?

I doubt that it would be worth upgrading older devices. As far as what it can do over 1.1 BT2.0 should be fast enough to allow wireless stereo sound if I remember correctly from a launch article I read last summer. This would allow Apple to produce a decent set of DJ style headphone with wireless connection to your next-gen iPod with BT.

 

[ipodmann]

According to the Apple Rep at the CompUSA store, Tiger will speed up the powerbooks considerably. If Steve can demonstrate a 40% increase in speed without upgrading the chips, we wil seel many new powerbooks fly off the shelves. I don't see the G5 in the powerbooks for another 18 months. Apple made it clear sometime ago that it will be a long while before they can get those hot chips into such small places.

 

[KrysBaz]

I wasn't expecting much so i'm not disappointed. I keep waiting for Apple to make a laptop that will appeal to the masses, but it's been a waste of time. An eight month wait for this? There are other things that Apple should at least address, but i know they will not. Can we at least start with better batteries? These do not last as long as other laptop batteries. I've seen other makes take way more abuse than my Powerbook G4's. At least give us something semi-rugged and powerful. It's been so long since i've checked, but do PB's have (quickly) removable hard drives yet? At least give us a color option of black so we don't have to carry our laptops around like they were made out of gold. Yes i know black plastic is old-tech and heavy, but how old is your PB and how many scratches do you have on it? If it were made out of plastic it may be cheaper also.

Ok so I'm not a power user, I have a rev A PBG4 12". Not the fastest laptop on the planet granted but more than sufficent for most of my needs, when portable, I can get 2 1/2 to 3 hours out of my machine, again not a huge amount of battery life, but it's a lot better than the battery life from the dell brick I use for work or my mum's siemens laptop, where you'd be really pushing it to get 1 1/2 - 2 hours out of it, doing basically the same stuff (report writing, excel, basic photoshoping for presentations)
Sure I hae to turn off the Bluetooth, the airport extreeme and reduce screen brightness a little, but that's fine when working on a train.

 

[ext]

Here's why the Powerbook increases suck! Apple needs to keep up. You would have thought they learned that when the G4 towers became a joke compared to Wintel competition. Here we go again on the laptop side:

http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/000409.html

Upstairs in a more private demo area of its booth, Intel showed off a number of notebooks running the new notebook platform from makers such as Toshiba, Gateway, and many more. The new platform brings a number ofimprovements: a front side bus at 533MHz, up from 400MHz in current systems; support for fast dual-channel DDR2 memory at 400MHz and 533MHz; support for PCI Express (both on the motherboard and via add-in cards); 802.11 WiFi in a, b, and g flavors; high-def audio; and improved integrated graphics.

 

[mcgarry]

Well, I'm cool with it. Would I have been happier to see more? sure, but this isn't the end of the world. The whole laptop line is, not surprisingly, behind the whole desktop line. That's not ideal for us laptop fans, but it's typical given a long view of Apple's history, and not catastrophic.

There is now more daylight between the iBs and PBs, too. Maybe not as much as everyone wants, but more is still more. In terms of graphics cards, for example, I will be first to admit that the 5200 is nothing to write home about, but if the PBs' graphics cards are so pathetic, what's that make the iBs'? 128MB standard (in the 15" and 17") is pretty nice in any laptop. Marketing terms like 'consumer-level' and 'pro-level' have to be taken relatively, within the context of the Apple-verse, and in that context I'm fine with this.

 

[ASP272]

How unfortunate. Though I can't afford a new PB right now, it would have been nice if they got the ball rolling on the G5 version. By the time I could afford one, it would have a 2ghz G5 in it! Now I can only hope for a 1.6 or less. Still, I am glad to think they are going to bump up the video memory.

 

[Rod Rod]

Granted that BT 2.0 is backwards compatible however how many devices make use of it as of current. This is the same thing that Apple pulled with FW800. How many devices do you see on the market that use FW800 when compared to USB 2.0.

I'd compare BT 2.0 with 802.11g rather than FW800 (wireless vs. wired).

I'll go back a little bit on my earlier comment to say that an Apple wireless keyboard and mouse updated for BT 2.0 could make sense - not for the bandwidth advantage but for the lower power requirement and therefore better battery life.

BT 2.0 will be great for when wireless data plans (from Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon etc.) give faster connections than BT 1.1 can transmit (maybe they do now but I don't keep up with that). As a previous poster mentioned, BT 2.0 will be pretty handy for digital cameras too.

 

[hcuar]

Well, all I can say is I don't feel too bad about buying my 12" PB in September. I realized that a true update might have occurred at MWSF, however I wanted a new PB at that time. I've had 4 months of using my PB, and I was able to use it during my relocation from Phoenix to Iowa.

The updates for the 15/17" PB seem like a better value than the 12" updates. I don't use BT and the HD speed increase wouldn't benefit me that much.

As to the people whining about the lack of a G5... this isn't news! We knew that we wouldn't be seeing the G5 anytime soon. If speed is that important, would you rather see a Centrino processor in a PB? I think not!

 

[greenstork]

What a bunch of whiners.

If Apple sucks so bad, why not switch? I didn't think so....

Speedbumps are better than nothing and I'm sure if it was possible to fit a G5 into a Powerbook, they would. It probably uses too much battery power or runs to hot, or is simply too big for Apple's nice slim cases.

Normally I hate Apple apologists but it's clearly obvious that Apple is working on getting a G5 into a Powerbook. I'm sure they're dedicating significant resources to making this happen, they're just not there yet, be patient.

Laptops are about portability first and foremost. Apple does that better than any other computer makers out there. If you want power, get a desktop. I'd hate to see a G5 in a Powerbook if they sacrificed battery life, size, or weight -- imagine the bitching then.

 

[SeaFox]

Wow! Powerbook updates, too. This is turning into like the biggest Macworld ever!

Happy to hear they are upgrapding the Powerbooks, I've been waiting for a 1.5 GHz 12", but I wanted a video upgrade, too. I hope drops the price given this lousy update.

The 12" iBook is looking more and more like the laptop to buy.

 

[Maxx Power]

Well, all I can say is I don't feel too bad about buying my 12" PB in September. I realized that a true update might have occurred at MWSF, however I wanted a new PB at that time. I've had 4 months of using my PB, and I was able to use it during my relocation from Phoenix to Iowa.

The updates for the 15/17" PB seem like a better value than the 12" updates. I don't use BT and the HD speed increase wouldn't benefit me that much.

As to the people whining about the lack of a G5... this isn't news! We knew that we wouldn't be seeing the G5 anytime soon. If speed is that important, would you rather see a Centrino processor in a PB? I think not!

Actually, if a Pentium M, the processor of the Centrino marketing brand name made it into the Powerbook somehow and runs any os you wish, it would be the best that ever happened to the PB till now. Read some reviews of this processor and you'll know it's the fastest in Intel camp right now, including their flagship prescott. I have a centrino based laptop, and it is pretty impressive to watch two consecutive DVD's of 2 and a half hours each.

 

[Stella]

Do remember, apple just fit the g5 into a 2 inch thick frame (imac) and the processor was only 1.8 ghz top. i think they are gonna wait till they can fit at least a 2.0 ghz proc into the 1 inch thick pb frame, and heres another question, what does everyone think they will do with the next powerbooks appearance, i mean they have the sexiest laptop on the market, how can you improve on that.

You forget something: the iMac can have large fans, heat sinks and can get fairly hot. A PB cannot get as hot as a desktop machine and cannot accommodate large cooling components.