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Apple 8 Inch PowerBook

post #1 of 16
9/3/04 at 7:02am
Thread Starter 
Here are some specifications for an Apple 8 Inch PowerBook.

What do you reckon? Am I going to get lucky any time soon?

Cheers Daniel
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post #2 of 16
9/3/04 at 7:25am
Quote:
Originally posted by dahacouk
Here are some specifications for an Apple 8 Inch PowerBook.

What do you reckon? Am I going to get lucky any time soon?

Cheers Daniel

First off, the 12 inch is plenty small and if you need somehing smaller you can jsut use a piece of paper and your iPod. Secondly, those specs are ridiculous for something that small. What on earth could possibly make use of 1 gig of ram thats being displayed and run on an 8 inch screen?? moving on...
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post #3 of 16
9/3/04 at 7:35am
I like sub-notebooks because of their portability, but I think that 8" is way too small to be useful. I would like to see Apple make the current 12" a bit thinner and widescreen with a little higher resolution.
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post #4 of 16
9/3/04 at 7:50am
Quote:
Originally posted by iFoughtTheLaw
First off, the 12 inch is plenty small and if you need somehing smaller you can jsut use a piece of paper and your iPod. Secondly, those specs are ridiculous for something that small. What on earth could possibly make use of 1 gig of ram thats being displayed and run on an 8 inch screen?? moving on...

The old "I don't want one so no one does" response.

I would love to have something smaller then a 12", especially if it came with the fabled Home On iPod feature. That way I could access my data, presentations and pdfs on the road, then plug into a computer with a real keyboard and display when I am at home or in the office and ready to do serious "content creation." I have to agree with iFoughtTheLaw that for my purposes (and probably for feasibility) you are asking for some pretty impressive specs in such a little package. I would be very happy with 1024x768 graphics, no camera, a 750 MHz G3 processor. I don't want to edit video on the thing, just read ebooks, give presentations and show off pictures of my kids.
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post #5 of 16
9/3/04 at 8:50am
Quote:
Originally posted by dahacouk
Here are some specifications for an Apple 8 Inch PowerBook.

What do you reckon? Am I going to get lucky any time soon?

Cheers Daniel

Well, Daniel, one thing that jumps out at me is that some of your specs are mutually exclusive. The most obvious is that your 8" PowerBook cannot be self-contained. It needs an external optical drive, for one thing. You want this computer for your travels, but a lot of people use their computers to watch DVDs on the airplane. There are other problems such as the fact that it is 50% thicker than current Apple laptops. Oh, and this is a biggie, your stylus (again the opposite of self-contained) runs the danger of getting confiscated by airport security if it does get lost first.

Bottomline: Not a good idea.
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post #6 of 16
9/3/04 at 9:47am
A few problems with this.

First, the perception that these devices only sell well in Asia (Japan). I can see why some of you would want one. But if Apple is going smaller, it will be a 10 inch screen model. And even then, I find it hard Apple would make a 10-inch screen PB.

To me, when you get down to 8-inches it is no longer laptop territory. That's for tablets or really large PDAs or UPCs (check link below).

You might like to look into OQO's website (ultra personal computing).
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post #7 of 16
9/3/04 at 10:09am
Quote:
Originally posted by monkeyastronaut
A few problems with this.

First, the perception that these devices only sell well in Asia (Japan). I can see why some of you would want one. But if Apple is going smaller, it will be a 10 inch screen model. And even then, I find it hard Apple would make a 10-inch screen PB.

I agree, if Apple *was* to make a smaller Powerbook the 10" screen would be more sensible.


Quote:
Originally posted by monkeyastronaut
To me, when you get down to 8-inches it is no longer laptop territory. That's for tablets...

8" could make a nice tablet
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post #8 of 16
9/3/04 at 11:05am
A company I used to work for outfitted its sales reps with Mitsubishi Amity 8" subnotebooks. The idea was that they could carry the Amity and a projector together in a hard case for field presentations.

While the sales force liked the idea of a tiny laptop for travel, they hated the Amitys. An 8-inch screen makes regular text hard to read at normal distances (although it is OK for large PowerPoint slides), but the biggest complaint was with the tiny keyboard with its numerous shrunken half-keys for almost everything but the basic letters. These subnotebooks were just not practical for everyday "productivity" work, plus their tiny size made cooling an issue so they were slower than regular-sized laptops.

The Amitys ended up living in their travel cases and the company had to buy the sales reps conventional laptops for non-travel use. Within a couple of years, all the reps had standardized on conventional laptops.
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post #9 of 16
9/3/04 at 11:39pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by iFoughtTheLaw
First off, the 12 inch is plenty small and if you need somehing smaller you can jsut use a piece of paper and your iPod. Secondly, those specs are ridiculous for something that small. What on earth could possibly make use of 1 gig of ram thats being displayed and run on an 8 inch screen?? moving on...

1. Take a look at http://www.dynamism.com/notebooks.shtml and see that there is a market for small kit.

2. Please be specific on ridiculous specs (you only quote one but hint at more than one). Please be specific.

3. An 8 inch screen at 200 DPI gives us a total pixel count same as a 17 inch screen at 100 DPI (the current iMac). RAM needed for music apps as mentioned.

Cheers Daniel
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post #10 of 16
9/3/04 at 11:44pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by s_sarinana
I like sub-notebooks because of their portability, but I think that 8" is way too small to be useful. I would like to see Apple make the current 12" a bit thinner and widescreen with a little higher resolution.

12 inches is just a bit too big for my needs. But looking at the posts here it could be that 10 inches is a way to go.

My main criteria is weight and volume.

Agree on need for higher resolution screen.

Cheers Daniel
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post #11 of 16
9/3/04 at 11:52pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by Mr. Me
Well, Daniel, one thing that jumps out at me is that some of your specs are mutually exclusive. The most obvious is that your 8" PowerBook cannot be self-contained. It needs an external optical drive, for one thing. You want this computer for your travels, but a lot of people use their computers to watch DVDs on the airplane. There are other problems such as the fact that it is 50% thicker than current Apple laptops. Oh, and this is a biggie, your stylus (again the opposite of self-contained) runs the danger of getting confiscated by airport security if it does get lost first.

Bottomline: Not a good idea.

Self-contained: Yes, you're right there. My thinking is that before I set off on my epic tour of the world I would rip my DVDs to hard disk and leave the external DVD drive at home.

Thickness: It's OK if it's thick just as long as it's lighter overall.

Confiscated by airport security: Nah! You can take metal pens on a plane so I don't reckon that's a real issue here.

Cheers Daniel
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post #12 of 16
9/4/04 at 12:52am
Quote:
Originally posted by s_sarinana
I like sub-notebooks because of their portability, but I think that 8" is way too small to be useful. I would like to see Apple make the current 12" a bit thinner and widescreen with a little higher resolution.

My dick is bigger than this and yes, it is to small to be useful

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post #13 of 16
9/4/04 at 9:18am
Quote:
Originally posted by dahacouk
1. Take a look at http://www.dynamism.com/notebooks.shtml and see that there is a market for small kit.

2. Please be specific on ridiculous specs (you only quote one but hint at more than one). Please be specific.

3. An 8 inch screen at 200 DPI gives us a total pixel count same as a 17 inch screen at 100 DPI (the current iMac). RAM needed for music apps as mentioned.

Cheers Daniel

The fact that you have to get kit imported from Japan with a hefty markup sort of indicates that the market you mention is niche at best.

I do agree though. The machines available through Dynamism are interesting in their own way.
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post #14 of 16
9/4/04 at 8:33pm
I've wanted something smaller than the 12" for a while now.

I would be happy with 8" or 10" screen.
No optical drive of course - I'm not going to take all my DVD's with me on holiday
Use a 60GB 1.8" drive from Toshiba
Touch screen yes definatley
Maybe less ports. 2 USB, 1 FW400, mini DVI or HDMI, audio out, audio in, and ethernet (modem probably not necessary, especially if it has GPS, though not sure about this or just use your phone to connect to the internet through bluetooth or wi-fi hotspots).
I would want Airport Extreme and Bluetooth EDR
And to suppose Home on the iPod as mentioned before. It should sync with my main machine not betoo independant from it.
I would want to listen to music, type emails, letters/notes, edit contacts, update my calendar, surf the internet, play some basic games, instant messaging, view my photo's and download from my digital camera, update my iPod etc. Many of these I can do now with my phone, but not all that well.

So I hope Apple does bring out a more conpact or more portable laptop or "handtop" - though I hate that name.
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post #15 of 16
9/5/04 at 7:35pm
Quote:
Here are some specifications for an Apple 8 Inch PowerBook

your specs are a little bit extreme. the amount of RAM you put it was too much, because you couldn't fit it in the space. and your 100 GB 7200 rpm hard drive isn't likely or even possible. it would eat up battery life and if you've noticed, there are no 100 GB hard drives in laptops; they're too big. the digital camera is possible, but not likely. the processor would also run too hot for the size of the enclosure
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post #16 of 16
9/5/04 at 8:06pm
I saw the Sony U70 at a shop yesterday, and I couldn't believe they fit 800x600 in this screen:




The dot pitch is so small. It's really atrractive for those of us with very sharp eyesight (I'm farsighted and I find that I can see the tiniest details with my naked eye. I can read headlines on a microfiche without a magnifier.

The U70 beats the U101 hands down because a foldable full-size keyboard is way better than a non-foldable tinytiny keyboard.

Apple will never release anything like this, ever. Outside of Japan there's no market whatsoever. There's almost no market even here in Hong Kong. Importers like dynamism.com are enough to serve whatever market exists in the US. As a shareholder I'd be pissed off if Apple entered this tiny niche.

That said, I think the 12" PowerBook is beautiful. But I wouldn't mind tiny dots. maybe a 1440x900 pixel widescreen 12" PowerBook would be perfect for me...
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