Arg! iBooks must improve!

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
The latest iBook offering is definitely subpar. I am absolutely certain that either those chips are capable of running at 1 GHz or someone is sitting on a pile of G3s that do.

Even if the new G3 is IBM's Sahara - from what I've read on these forums, less power-hungry and a little faster per cycle - 700 MHz just DOES NOT CUT IT for an $1800 notebook! Never mind putting the memory up to where OS X is functional - that makes it $2000 minimum.



Arg! Apple has told us about the Megahertz yth again and again and agan... G3s have been in products, what... seven years now? G4s have been made for three. And the G4 is running at a faster speed than the G3! Why? I know the current G3 and G4 models are very different from eachother - divergent evolution with different teams working for different goals. I also know that the original G4 was a G3 with an AltiVec unit. So how can the G3 be so far behind? Are the chip companies not putting any effort into it? Perghaps IBM is, with the work on the Sahara... but why only 700 MHz?



I don't expecgt Apple to actually improve anything else - except for the case, the screen size, and the ports available, the iBooks have not significantly improved since when I bought my gerandmother a Blue Clamshell iBook.



I fully expect Apple to make a multi-product revision at MWNY

Never mind the 1.4 GHz PowerMacs with 200 MHz FSB and DDR

I just want a G3 notebook that runs at a modern speed! You say five hours battery, good, gimme a lithium polymer battery of the same weight as the Li-Ion and it'll do it! Jeez!
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 80
    Sadly, this won't happen until the Powerbooks improve. No way they're going to release a 933/133 ibook with the powerbook sitting at 800Mhz.
  • Reply 2 of 80
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    I think Apple is more or less buggered untill they can get faster (modern .13u, SIMD, higher clock) chips for ALL their product lines. There isn't one machine currently on sale that shouldn't be 25 to 33% faster or proportionally cheaper, right NOW, not at MWNY, not a MWSF, or some other show, RIGHT NOW! It may not be Apple's fault, but I don't care, they won't see a penny from me untill they rectify this situation.
  • Reply 3 of 80
    The whining around here is absolutely out of control... You honestly believe the iBook is no better than the original clamshell?
  • Reply 4 of 80
    powerdocpowerdoc Posts: 8,123member
    I am ready to bet that the ibook will be able to reach 1ghz at the end of the year or in the beginning of 2003 (with a 133 mhz bus). Excepting Altivec stuff, the sahara is faster than the G4.
  • Reply 5 of 80
    g-newsg-news Posts: 1,107member
    Dude 512KB L2 cache at FULL CPU speed is ****ing awesome, what do you want? Miracles?

    Then that's the wrong board here, dude. Go to <a href="http://www.jesusonline.com"; target="_blank">www.jesusonline.com</a> instead.



    G-News
  • Reply 6 of 80
    cdhostagecdhostage Posts: 1,038member
    I read the frontpage to that Jesus thing. Is it a gay site? "You've Got to See a Man to Be a Man" "Stouthearted Masculinity"



    [ 05-20-2002: Message edited by: cdhostage ]</p>
  • Reply 7 of 80
    powerdocpowerdoc Posts: 8,123member
    [quote]Originally posted by cdhostage:

    <strong>I read the frontpage to that Jesus thing. Is it a gay site? "You've Got to See a Man to Be a Man" "Stouthearted Masculinity"



    [ 05-20-2002: Message edited by: cdhostage ]</strong><hr></blockquote>



    <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
  • Reply 8 of 80
    lemon bon bonlemon bon bon Posts: 2,383member
    "I think Apple is more or less buggered untill they can get faster (modern .13u, SIMD, higher clock) chips for ALL their product lines. There isn't one machine currently on sale that shouldn't be 25 to 33% faster or proportionally cheaper, right NOW, not at MWNY, not a MWSF, or some other show, RIGHT NOW! It may not be Apple's fault, but I don't care, they won't see a penny from me untill they rectify this situation."



    There's probably no other poster who more closely resembles my thoughts on Apple's current offerings.



    Matsu, I concur.



    Too expensive and too old tech'.



    Rarely more typified than by both the ibook and 'power'Mac lines.



    Apple have had years to sort out the cpu problem out and obviously need years more considering the 'flux' of getting 'X' up and running and given the dispersing nature of the AIM 'alliance'.



    Apple could offer cheaper prices to offset the problem. They don't have to go bargain basement but they must have made a packet by selling those early ibooks on 66mhz buses and 8 meg 'rage' cards and 500mhz processors which had been out years.



    The 'power'mac line would be semi-decent if it was 'dual processor' across the board. It isn't.



    Yet, it looks so painfully out of date to all but the most die-hard apple advocate.



    Lemon Bon Bon



    [ 05-20-2002: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</p>
  • Reply 9 of 80
    You've all heard this before, but quit bitching out apple. If you want a lot of bang for your buck, then go wintel. If you don't then too bad. Your complaining isn't going to make Motorola's RD go faster, or apples.
  • Reply 10 of 80
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    Apple offers the best bang for my buck.

    I wish Apple could bring back CPU MHz parity.

    It's not that big a deal, though.

    I'd rather Apple find different ways to better the user experience.

    The last iBook price reconfiguration was in January.

    The new ones offer a 100 MHz speed bump, double the L2 cache and much better graphics...and the 14.1 inch models have 50% more HDD space.

    I think they are as good a deal as the new iBooks were when they first came out.
  • Reply 11 of 80
    markmark Posts: 143member
    [quote]Originally posted by Eugene:

    <strong>Apple offers the best bang for my buck.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Ditto here.



    [quote]<strong>I wish Apple could bring back CPU MHz parity.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Ditto again.



    [quote]<strong>It's not that big a deal, though.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    ...ditto...



    [quote]<strong>I'd rather Apple find different ways to better the user experience.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    And...uh, ditto.



    [quote]<strong>I think they are as good a deal as the new iBooks were when they first came out.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Ah, Eugene...good head on your shoulders...





    Cheers,



    Mark.



    [ 05-20-2002: Message edited by: Mark ]</p>
  • Reply 12 of 80
    serranoserrano Posts: 1,806member
    enough.



    get excited about software, os x, and unix, unless you're a developer what do you care if you're running a 750FX or a flux capacitator?



    <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />



    ...and nevermind that your bitching about apple's current offerings makes this current hardware, not future.







    [ 05-20-2002: Message edited by: janitor ]</p>
  • Reply 13 of 80
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    [quote]Originally posted by Mark:

    <strong>



    Ah, Eugene...good head on your shoulders...





    Cheers,



    Mark.



    [ 05-20-2002: Message edited by: Mark ]</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I concur. People don't seem to remember the elegance of the Apple (laptop) user experience... head and shoulders above all other (PC) offerings. Of course, there's room for improvement, but they are certainly on the right track.



    Remember also that the iBooks aren't competing with the highest-end P4 PC laptops, but rather the low-cost, cheap video card, 8 lb cost-cutters. When analyzed in this context, these new offerings are VERY good. Very good.



    Of course we'd all like Apple to offer an 800 mhz G4 iBook for 1199... but, frankly, it just

    isn't possible. So, given the circumstances, it's a heck of an update.
  • Reply 14 of 80
    detahdetah Posts: 57member
    "Thank you. Hi, I'm Norm Macdonald and this is 'The Fake News'."



    "It was revealed today that O.J. Simpson told police that Nicole Brown Simpson used to beat him up. He also claimed that she and Ron Goldman killed him."



    "this once again proves my time tested theory: Apple sells *slow* computers."
  • Reply 15 of 80
    trumptmantrumptman Posts: 16,464member
    I can't believe all this whining. Does no one care about user experience anymore? Let me tell you that it is ALL I care about. Why would I live in a house that had great specs, but was in a crappy neighborhood with bad schools? Sames for cars, or any other analogy I care to think about.



    Here is an example of why specs don't matter to me. I took some video of my trip to Baja. It was about 30 minutes and I wanted to cut it into something about 4 minutes long and enjoyable to watch.



    I did NOT want to use a Mac. I have an iBook from work but my own tower mac (6500) is obviously not up to snuff. I also have built and kept around decent PC which I wanted to successfully edit the video with because the parts are just so much cheaper. In other words the Mac had the deck significantly stacked against it.



    I bought and used a Western Digital firewire card which uses the Microsoft DV codec with WindowsXP professional. That is where the nightmare began. I wanted to try out several different prosumer packages to avoid having to buy a new Mac and use iMovie.



    Seems that Microsoft's DV codec sucks and to make it even worse every program makes a few tweaks to it via the registry to try to get some decent use out of it. The result was that some programs could import, but couldn't export, some would crash rendering even short clips, etc.



    You ask oh, stupid newbie, if you had such problems, why didn't you just use the XP rollback feature to remove any and all conflicts or possible problems? I did and it still didn't work. There were programs from Pinnicle, Ulead, etc.



    I got so frustated trying to even get some video in, detect the clips, and just put together some short clips that I decided to say screw it and just use my iBook. So I sat down and imported all 30 minutes of video with perfect detection and absolutely no drop outs or hiccups. I then began trimming, cutting, adding dozens of transitions, titles, mp3's, you name it.



    Finally I ran into one issue that put a little cramp in my style...what was it you ask?



    I got a reserve battery notice. See I had forgotten to plug in the iBook before I started doing all this stuff. (A bad habit related to the 5+ hour battery life I enjoy) So I had imported the entire video, edited it, and everything else all on battery power with no manuels, problems, in fact with nothing but pure enjoyment.



    My PC is a home-built Celeron 850 with 512 megs of RAM, 40 gig HD, Geforce2mx card with 32 megs of ram, etc... in otherwords it could kick the hell out of the iBook in specs....



    Guess which is being sold and which is being bought?



    Nicholas Kelly
  • Reply 16 of 80
    [quote]Originally posted by MicrosoftOsXp:

    <strong>You've all heard this before, but quit bitching out apple. If you want a lot of bang for your buck, then go wintel. If you don't then too bad. Your complaining isn't going to make Motorola's RD go faster, or apples.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    just out of curiousity, specifically which wintel machine/s do you think one should consider? (laptops please)
  • Reply 17 of 80
    very cool response. i appreciate hearing others true-to-life experiences vs would-be-speculations. it's a nice twist here.
  • Reply 18 of 80
    emaneman Posts: 7,204member
    Of course the specs could be better. That's always the case with computers, especiially Macs. All I know is that sometime I bitch about specs and prices but when it comes down to using the computer, a Mac is just so much better. I couldn't be happier with my 500MHz iBook in OS X. Yeah, it could be faster but it's definately fine.
  • Reply 19 of 80
    [quote]Too expensive and too old tech'<hr></blockquote>



    PowerPC 750FX with SOI, SiLK, and 512KB level 2 on-chip cache is old tech? This ain't "old tech". What does the G4 have over it besides Altivec, which few of the apps I use regularly accomodate. Did anyone expect Apple to put in a better graphics chipset than what's in the Powerbook? Even still, a 16 MB DDR RAM GPU is sweet indeed. Expensive? There isn't a PC laptop at the same price points I would even consider.
  • Reply 20 of 80
    serranoserrano Posts: 1,806member
    [quote]Originally posted by sleepy monkie:

    <strong>



    just out of curiousity, specifically which wintel machine/s do you think one should consider? (laptops please) </strong><hr></blockquote>



    toshiba, sony



    for the love of god stay away from compaqs/dells/gateways and docking stations
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