PowerBook to gain iSight, iBook to go widescreen in 2006 - Page 6

And how thick is that module? A half inch? five-eights? More?

This is entirely possible. Adobe is just looking for a reason to drop Photoshop for the Mac.


They could because Photoshop is the one and only. If you want to use it you'll do what they say.

This is not quite the same, but I know a billion dollar ad agency that was all Mac. They got a client that was all PC. That client insisted that all of the account reps use PC laptops not Macs. The agency complied in that one case. Then as time passed they changed ALL of the account reps over to PC laptops for compatibility with the PC centric business world. Big companies don't worry about "losing your business". If you won't do what they want they find somebody else.

Adobe could essentially pull the same trick with Mac Photoshop users: " Hey guys it's all Windows now! Thanks for building our company from the ground up with all yer Mac dollars, but we don't want them anymore!"


You're right people won't buy Macs to run windows, but again with big business all bets are off. If a business has a product for both Mac and PC and they see that Macs can now run windows why would they continue Mac development? They can kill their Mac Dev team and save a huge amount of money. Their logic is "If you really want to use our app you'll buy Windows". This is particularly true since the Mac market share is so tiny.

Apple should make MacIntels that CAN"T boot windows if they want to maintain total control.

Since Adobe is making more money on the mac market, I dont think so.

27% of PS sales are on the Mac platform. Those are from Adobe's last figures.

wow, and that with a marketshare of 2.5% for the mac platform.

so, less than 7% of the pc's sold...

i would think that as apps are pressured to leave the mac market apple could easily come up with software to fill the gaps. all are indevelopment including a ps type and office type software, gee it could make it a web based product. i bet apple feels responsible to it's mac users--don't you think

most that would use windows would be very limited, just like me. i have only one program i need windows, thats' about <5% of my use.

i would have a pirated version of Vista just for games.

you do realize that account service isn't the same as creative and print production? any agency that works with intel/microsoft requires that their non-creative departments use pc's. however, i spent many years as a creative director on the microsoft account and a year on the amd account and i used macs the whole time. our print production was done on macs. i've even shown work to redmond clients on my powerbook.

What you're saying contains a lot of truth. Sadly, even in creative departments, the use of the Mac declined. It used to be 90%, now it's closer to 70%.

Creative useage won't keep the Mac afloat. Look at some numbers.

PM sales used to be 500,00 a quarter. The estimate is that now it's closer to 125,000 a quarter. That isn't good!

While some pros are using iMacs, not much full time professional work is done on them. They mostly go to homes, and now schools.

The feeling within the industry is that Aperture will increase the use of PS and the CS suite on the Mac platform.

Wait.. are the intel chips going to be 64-bit or 32? It would make NO sense for apple to go backwards to 32 after all the hype they made for OS X and the 64-bit architecture

The chips for the portables and the Mini, if they come out in the first half of the year, will be 32 bit. JUST AS THEY ARE NOW!

Sorry for shouting, but isn't it known already that those are 32 bit?

The iMac's and the PM's will be 64 bit when they come out. Again (see above shout).

If the PB comes out middle to late 2nd half, then it too will likely be 64 bit with Merom.

Yes I DO realize that Mr. Snidely. It's understandable for Intel/MS to demand an agency use PC's. The client I was speaking of was an oil company. No harm was being done by the account folk using Macs. The clients IT people found out about the Macs and put out the word that Macs were not welcome there. They even tried to force the creatives to use PC's as well. That client has moved elsewhere and the agency was glad to see them go.

Unfortuantely the PC's stayed.

Interesting aside: recently every creative in the agency was given Final Cut and the other Apple programs. They are starting to do rough cuts and animatics themselves on their Powerbooks. One guy recently gave me a Motion file to use for a spot. I think Apples position in ad agencies is generally secure.

Wellllll.......

That needs some perspective:

1) PM sales could be down because of PB sales. Face it. A fair number of high end desktop Macs in the past went to Creative "Managers" (CD's, AD's etc.) with the corner office and a perk list that included constant upgrades to the latest and greatest Mac setup. In reality, A PowerBook, although a G4, is enough for many of them. True, some have BOTH a PM and an PB, but I'd be willing to bet that a fair number have become increasingly satisfied with a PB only solution. After all, many don't need the power of a PM to review material and then poop on it.

2) Look at how the PM's have stagnated when it comes to upping the power in subsequent revs. I've got a couple of dual 2 Ghz G5's well equipped and I'm not hurting for more power. Lots of people pretend that that 5-10% increase in clock speed is SO freaking essential to their work, but they're caught up in the "gotta have it" game.

3) Do we really know how many PM's are sold in a quarter? What's the source of this data?

The raw PM numbers alone don't tell the story IMO.

gc

1. I don't agree with that because many of the uses we have for the PM's are not able to be duplicated with PB's. They don't have the expandability needed in many pro settings. They simply don't take the place of a far more powerful PM. I know guys who use them for preliminary field work, but they do the real work back at the shop on the PM.

A lot of these "creative managers" as you call them, get iMacs for their desks.

I had 12 PM's in my company at the time we sold it. We had one PB.

2. Stagnation is one reason that sales have gone down. It remains to be seen whether or not the new models out now will change those numbers much. I'm hoping the Quad sells well. I'm getting one for myself in January.
The Mactel PM's won't be out for a while, so we can't speak about those sales yet.

3. Sure we do. While Apple doesn't release separate figures for all of their machines, it's known that they sold a bit more than 600 thousand desktops last quarter. The companies whose jobs it is to track these things, visit the manufacturing plants, speak to the distributors, take surveys of customers, etc. The numbers they come up with are pretty accurate. You notice that as a quarter goes on, their estimates become more in line with actual sales. After the quarter is over they can pinpoint these numbers pretty well from their work and from the numbers Apple puts out. They also get more information from their questions during the conference call.

You can find this information all over the place. You just have to look. Even here at insider. Several Mac sites will give these numbers along with which company puts them out. NPR is one large company that does this tracking.

eWeek, Forbes, BusinessWeek, and others have articles about this as well.

The quarterly report I get from Apple has a lot of information, that, if you follow this closely, will give you an idea as to what is selling.

well if you realized it then your post was somewhat misleading. people outside of the industry may not know that "account reps" are a completely separate field than the creative departments of an advertising agency. your post specifically mentions account reps. it would be of no surprise to me if some clients required account service departments to use pc's because the interoperability of office is still better between windows versions than windows and mac. plus, outlook exchange is still a redheaded stepchild on the mac. i was just saying that even in shops (big ones) that have EVERY reason to switch to pc's to appease their client's requests, the creative departments are going to stay mac. this isn't new. when i worked at ibm's agency all the art directors and production people used macs and the account people and copywriters used thinkpads. this was back in '93.

This is just in from LoopRumors:

Interesting.

Wow I had not known that Loop Rumors had a resurrection.

I was thinking that ACD in 2006 would likely have the iSight as well. It really is going to be a standard feature in a few years. It's the only way to ensure video conferencing takes off.

Same here. I often have to leave my phone at the security desk when I visit a client. How can I make my cool Keynote presentation if I have to leave the PowerBook at the front desk? Integrated cameras are a really bad idea.

Besides, I think the lid would be much thinner without a camera. I also like the flexibility of a separate camera that can be aimed independent of the computer.

If Apple wants to push iChat usage they should just bundle an iSight with every computer. No need to build it in.

What are the real chances for an Intel PowerBook in the January time frame?

isn't that the ballgame--yea when can we start planning
can someone estimate the speed increase over present pb/ibooks?

Well, lets assume they use the Yonah Pentium-M processor at maximum speed of 2.16 Ghz for the new powerbooks:

The Pentium-M is roughly equivalent to the G5 in speed, Ghz for Ghz. Maybe a little bit slower (check out: http://www.systemshootouts.org/processors.html). With the new optimizations Intel are sure to have built into the Yonah, it will probably close that gap a bit more.

My prediction/speculation: The new Powerbooks will be just a little bit slower than the Power Mac G5 Dual 2 Ghz. The Power Mac will have a faster front-side bus, slightly faster processor and hard-drive. The Powerbooks will however slightly outperform the current top-of-the-line iMac, especially in multi-tasking benchmarks, where the Yonah can flex it's dual-core advantage.

Wow, I had no idea either. I haven't been there in forever.

Does anyone know when they started back up?

Pretty low.

It's not that simple. Compare it to a 7457. Even then it's not that easy.

The "M" goes up to 2.33GHz.

I don't know, but I haven't found it to be all that impressive.

Very simplistic analysis, and a lot of pure guessing.

Whoa. WAY to much ego in the creative corner offices for mere iMacs. Other posts in this thread have been about ad agencies. If we're talking about the head creatives at major ad firms, iMacs ain't gonna cut it.

But let's forget such a narrow customer scope. Let's just look at PM's in general. For years now, it's become conventional wisdom that PB's have seriously eaten in the PM sales. No?

BINGO!


Previously, you said: PM sales used to be 500,00 a quarter. The estimate is that now it's closer to 125,000 a quarter.

Huh? Do "desktops" = "PM's"? Apparently not. Clarity is needed here in order to digest these numbers.

My point is: there are a number of things that contribute to lowered sales of PM's. I just want the larger view to be recognized.

gc

Creative managers are not all head honchos. Don't think that they look down upon the iMac's either. The new flat iMacs have been very popular for the same reasons that LCD monitors have been. Many people in AD agencies consider them to be a statement on how forward looking they are, as well as saving space.

Apple's PM's used to be a much larger percentage of desktop sales then they are now. Just a short time ago, portable sales were also a much smaller percentage of total sales. A few years ago laptops were less than 20% of sales. That 80% remaining was more evenly divided between PM's and consumer machines. Actually biased toward the pro line. Apple used to sell as many as 2 million PM's a year.

Remember that PM's went for as little as $1,500 at one time, at the low end.

I came across a very interesting mockup. It's a mockup for the P'book G5, but could of course also become the Pintelbook!
http://www.yumlum.com/articles/99/1/
Someone put quite some thought into this. Interesting concept to say the least!

FAKE! Doesn't pass the structural smell test, the two support arms to the flat panel must, of course, have a connecting rod between them at the lower hinge point. This is a requirement, otherwise the screen doesn't even rotate as one unit. So maybe you make the display armature out of let's say T6 Titanium (you could of course use T19 (or any higher strength grade titanium, but your costs go up significantly)), that might work, for the armiture, then the weak point is the pins into the display frame and/or the frame material itself (in the vacinity of the hinge). Even given this requirement, the display and the multiple hinges throughout, on something that size, wouldn't make a very durable lappy. If it's hit or dropped in any kind of open state, game over. I certinly wouldn't place this anywhere near children.

In addition, the display electronics must run through the armature? The armature doesn't even go to the center of gravity of the display (the preferred balance point). All hinges would have to lock for several of those photos. And finally, where do you put the guts of the lappy (CPU, HD, DVD, etcetera), or is this some kind of goofy thin client?

No they don't get much more FAKE than this one, someone wasted their time (and that website for that matter).

PS - The armature IS interesting (to me), as I'm in the preliminary stages of just such a design, except it's motorized, must lift 10,000 lbs, has 10 ft arms and a 20 ft (hollow) axle.

Even if it could work, the concept is way too complicated.

Okay, okay, fake it is. Cool fake though

I think it's too late in the game to hope for a Powerbook G5, IBM's mobile chip is too little, too late. That mockup is a nifty design, though too complex from a durability and cost standpoint.

And old one. I remember have seen it again quite some time back, perhaps past year. Anyway, I can hardly see such a desing make some sense.

The whole reason for using Intel chips is because Apple felt that they offered a far better cycles/power ratio that do IBM's PPC procs, based on Apple's viewing the respective road maps.

Making smaller laptops had nothing to do with it.

Comes with wheels and a pull-handle that folds into the screen behind the Video CamCorder!:

Yeah, but just try putting it under your airline seat.

This must be only part of the truth. The numbers quoted by S. Jobs seem a little exaggerated today, perhaps not tomorrow. We will see. But I think there are other things too in the deal.

Not cycles/power... performance/power. Clock rate is not likely to be the discriminating factor. I also don't expect to see all that much of a difference until we move beyond 65nm.

This Guy gets his own airline seat! He suely earns it!