When will we see a 15" Albook? - Page 3

I wonder if the next rev of the 15-in will keep the Titanium design but acquire all the new features the aluminum has (i.e.: airport extreme, firewire 800, etc.)?

I'd buy one before the online store finished loading.

I don't care if it's made of cardboard as long as it has the 970. On second thought, the cardboard may catch on fire! lol

whatever it is..make it

at least 15"

16by10 display ratio

airport extreme

one firewire800 ...but
2 firewire400 ports would be cool enough

scratch resistant..like aluminum would be cool

at least 1ghz g4

backlight keyboard

cheaper

newer better keyboard

2 usb ports

line in (24bit PLZ!!! >_<)

line out (24bit PLZ!!! >_<)

dvi port

2xdvd burning would be the greatest

now available

instant buy (actually ...instanterrrr..more instant...immeadietly)

steve...u can send me a bug which ****s up my current imac...but just let me buy a new 15" powerbook!!!

Ugh, I sure hope not! The aluminum models are, IMO, SO much nicer...rounded, smoother curves/edges. And that aluminum body just looks really snazzy.

But yes, I hope that the new 15" model is basically a shrunken 17" PowerBook (with all the specs/features/goodies that entails). It'll sell like CRAZY!!!

The wait is frustrating. I had considered other options but finally settled on getting a 15" PB. Now I just have to wait for Apple to cooperate and produce the darn thing.

Same here! But, if the new 15" ends up getting the 970 I'm having an all night party to celebrate. We can all get drunk and have a great time!!!!!! And while we're drunk we can all order top of the line Powermacs with 23" LCDs to go with them. lol Now what kind of beer do you guys want? Or maybe we should go with champagne? lol yea!!!

Oh and we can get some of governor William O'Neil's secreitaries to give us hand jobs!! lol

My dad was was in local Apple Mobile Office Days happening today. I asked about PowerBooks. 12" and 17" models were there. He didn't say anything about 15" models. Maybe we will see 15" PB update during the summer.

Oh.........
The wait and drooling is just part of the game.

Soon I hope.

I whole-hearted second that one!


--hengx

You know what'll be even worse is when they are introduced and we all buy one online. Then we have to watch the mail every day hoping that we'll get a box from Apple. That would really be frustrating.8) But I agree with you. I think one thing we can all say for certain is that Steve Jobs doesn't want to be on stage unless he has cool stuff to show people. With the 2 hour Keynote he's doing I imagine he'll do some intros. It would be even cooler if they were secretly stockpiling Power Books and Power Macs in warehouses in mass quantities so Steve could say that we'd get ours within a week. That would be intense.

Has anyone else scoped out Mac Mall recently? They have discounts on Power Macs and Power Books until 25 May. It may be nothing, but then again, it just may be something.

2 soon for apple to put in a 970. if they did that they would have to upgrade the 17 as i doubt that they will have the middle machine be more powerful. besides you will all by it anyway. it is only good business practice to leave room to improve. the public expects upgrade at regular intervals. I would guess that all of the powerbooks will be upgraded to 970s in december

Things are moving so fast...& here I am still using my Lc-475

just because you JUST bought a 17"er after buying a 15" GHz doesn't mean Apple will have pity for you

they have done it before and probably will again...

JC, I have to say I agree with brokenradio11 on this. We're not talking about an upgrade here. An upgrade is simply an improvement upon an established platform, thus the G4 power bumps we've seen. This is a platform change from the G4 to the 970, so prior power bump cycles do not apply in this situation. With the 970 technology in Apple's hands (and high quantities if IBM has anything to say about it - and they do) there will be a rapid migration. It does suck for those people who just bought new Power Macs and Power Books. But as in life, nothing is fair in the computer world. The PM and PB 15.4 will see the 970 first. The 15" is the Power Book. The other two are just getting started and have grand plans for the future, but the first change to the 970 won't be the 17, it'll be the 15. Apple knows that's where the sweet spot is and that's what'll get it first. The Power Mac will get them for the pro users who desperately need power to get their projects done quickly.

aquafire, so you're still using the Lc-475? How's it running these days? Plan on buying a 970 machine? Just curious.

How are they going to upgrade the new model? Apple is stuck at 1GHZ for portables until either the 970 qualifies as cool enough, or the 7457 is released by Moto. The 970 will probably see daylight before the 7457.

Current G4 chips in PowerMac (the 1.25 and 1.42) are running at a higher core voltage and therefore too hot to put into portables.

There will be no upgrades until a new chip shows.

I think there will be as much 970 in the new powerbooks as there will be sex in the champagn room.

cowerd, you're right. The new PB's won't have the G4 in them. They run too hot.8) As for der Kopf's comment, may I ask just how much sex is going on in the champagn room?

You've obviously never been to Mons Venus

LOL, Producer, good one. Got me there. Now der Kopf's reference makes sense. Got a question for you all though. here we are obviously lusting after the 970. We all want it in the Power Book. What about the graphics card? We all know that Quartz Extreme uses the graphics card to free up CPU usage. Any idea on what Apple will be dropping into the 15.4"? Nvidia says they are going to have a new card out soon that will go into the new XBox. Will Apple use the ATI 9600 or will we get the lesser performing Nvidia card? Just figured I'd ask. The discussion should include everything inside the 15 Albook, not just the 970. 8)

I'm thinking the later we go w/o seeing an update to the mid-range PowerBook only increases the liklihood it will indeed have 970 in it upon the next revision.

I keep beating this drum too. My suspicion is that the 1GHz iMac uses the same low-power chip variant as the PowerBooks, and that the faster chips are just too hot.

But here's a thought. If the 970 debuted in the PowerBooks at a comparable clock speed -- 1GHz or 1.2, tops -- would it be so bad if the 15 had that chip until the 17 is revised? What I mean is, for the majority of consumers, would a 1GHz G4 and a 1.25GHz 970 mean that much? To us, yes, but remember, most people (I mean potential switchers as well as less-in-the-know Mac customers) are still looking at speed. Peecee folks, most of them, anyway, don't know the difference between PIII and PIV, except for the general feeling that 4 must be better than 3 because it's one more, and are clueless about the difference between Celerons, Athlons and so on. Might that confusion work to Apple's advantage in this changeover, assuming of course that the speeds are not a huge leap over what's shipping now?

I ask this for purely selfish reasons as I want to upgrade my 667MHz PowerBook and I really feel I should wait, which is driving me crazy.

The new 15 will have the MR9600 I think. It is better than the G05600 coming out, and I personally want it more than the nvidia!

Tony

According to this Digitimes article, ATi began shipping in volume its new mobile Radeon 9600 Pro on Friday. If indeed a Radeon 9600 is to be used in the new 15-inch PowerBook G4 as has been rumored, then it shouldn't be long until we see the new 15.4-inch G4 PowerBook.

Once again, what chip and what speeds?

The article doesn't mention the mobile chip. The Pro is a desktop chip.

Awww, crap.

[SPECULATION]

Moto was supposed to deliver the 7447/7457 in time for the 12"/17" Al PBs for their introduction, and the PB 15" Al also was to be introduced at the same time. Moto fell on their face again. So since the 7447/57 is pin compatiblie with the 7455, the 12"/17" are introduced on schedule with hotter more power hungry chips. The 17" is more affected then Apple thought, so the production was delayed. Apple holds back the 15" Al - nothing particularly to gain since the processor is the same. Instead, focus is put on the PPC970 in the PBs - all models. The 12"/15"/17" will all be updated with the PPC970 at the same time, which will also include the introduction of the 15" Al.

Diverging path:

iBooks/eMacs will receive the IBM G3+, the iMac lower speed PPC970. PM higher speed/dual PPC970. Moto is bye-bye.

-or-

iBooks receive IBM G3+. eMacs/iMacs receive 7457s. Moto is a second supplier.

[/SPECULATION]

That is what I am secretly hoping for. The added cost of a 12-inch PowerBook compared to a 12" iBook would be much easier to justify if it came with a PPC 970 (and 1GB RAM and DVI-out).

Escher

There's a possibility that there may not even be enough PPC970 to plug all the PM slots. This is still a heretofore untested product going into it's FIRST application, and FIRST volume production run. Remember what happened with speed dropped G4's? It may pass that even the low-end tower remains a dual G4 (and probably dual boot) affair for a few months even when the first 64 bit pMacs arrive. Yes yes, it's IBM, not moto, that means nothing, mac heads are building IBM into something they're not, a proven alternative, a guarantee. Moto is a hude chip maker, and they had problems, IBM also has a lot on their plate besides PPC's. Don't expect an immediate bounty of chips.

It actually sorta makes sense. Apple dumped the dp867 for an sp 1ghz machine. If the LOW END pMac were bumped back to a faster DP machine, say dp1.25 for 1500, it wouldn't be too bad, not great, but not horrible either, especially for the multitude of pro customers who still NEED OS9. The top two configs move up to fast 970's, duals on top.

Maybe it's out of hope, but I really do believe that something is going on here. Why did apple update the 15" one month before introducing the 12" and 17" yet not give the 15" the same features? Then there was that huge delay with the 17", and the 12" was late out too. Why would apple choose to do something like this, unless something went wrong. Also why not give the 17" a faster CPU than the 15". As well, why has apple left the 15", there most popular model, out to rot for 5 months. I would guess that few are buying the 15" models knowing that they don't have airport extreme and DDR etc like the other newer models do. How hard would it have been to do a silent update and add the missing features to the 15"? Somethins is up...

IIRC, Apple sold nearly as many 15-inch PowerBooks in the most recent quarter as 12-inchers - 70,000 vs. 80,000, or something like that. Year-to-year, I don't think sales of the 15 were off as much as the iMac or Power Mac, and a lot of sales were probably cannibalized by the new 12 and 17.

word. i agree with algol, something be up.

i waited and waited and waited for my 1ghz superdrive to be released - almost f-ing up by ordering a ti800 on nov. 1 after I couldn't take another false rumor (I cancelled a few days later, luckily it hadn't shipped, and ordered the 1ghz ti on the 6th).

after all that, the alBooks came out the next month. I couldn't believe it. But I still would have gotten the 15" anyway - Perhaps it's apple trying to be intentionally unpredictable with their hardware releases, as this one was a wtf.

IBM claims that Fishkill is running at 1/3rd capacity, and ramping up quickly.

Fishkill is a big fab, so my guess is that they're already making enough for PowerMacs. The trick is to make enough for Apple and IBM, since there are certain factions within IBM who want to use the 970 to blow the Itanium off the market.


And you're turning them into something they aren't, which is a fab as plagued with production issues as Motorola SPS is. Nobody else in that industry is having as much trouble as Mot SPS.

Even with the G4, when Motorola was unable to supply the 7400 in sufficient quantities for Apple, IBM stepped in and picked up the slack (and, reportedly, soaked Motorola for the privilege). They don't get to charge the highest fees of any contract fab in the world by being half-assed and unreliable. Sure, IBM Semiconductor is staffed by humans, and saddled with IBM's infamous bureaucracy, but their only misfire to date (missing out on SIMD) was a strategic error, not a fabrication problem.


If the reports from IBM to the media are any indication, Fishkill is currently exceeding IBM's expectations. IBM's expectations were high, because Fishkill burned a rather large hole in their budget in order to serve a depressed market, so a lot is hinging on its ability to pay for itself. Sofar, again if the scant accounts published sofar are to be believed, it's not disappointing.


Apple's probably hoping that after this summer there will be no - or precious few - customers who need OS 9. If the next version of FCP doesn't crash constantly under X, the only real holdouts among Apple's professional customers will be Quark users.

Amorph, Yah, I just said it was a possibility, and it still is. The PB12 and PB17, and the iMac FP before that have all been half way between paper launches and real launches. Apple needs to show something, but when you can't ship it (or the full lineup) for 6-12 weeks after launch, that can only be a supply problem somewhere. I doubt it was with PPC's in these cases (plenty available at the speeds used in these products, just saying.)

I think it's also a possibility that we'll see ALL pMacs and the 17" PB updated to 970's (because they're all high margin) and there may be enough for that. But there may not be, and people shouldn't be too surprised if there aren't. I'm sure supply will be ample sometime AFTER Apple finally announces and starts shipping their first machines. That's just been the pattern to date.

ug prediction for next week is the 15" Al PB with the same features as the 17", but with a new screen. (I was hoping/wishing for a PPC970 15"...)\