Equality is not possible when the competition is clearly superior. That's the point. Pentium-M laptops compared to PowerBooks run faster even under battery operation, have greater total battery life (for equal battery capacities), more than 4 times the L2 cache, 400MHz (effective) bus speeds and are clock-for-clock faster than the G5 (that's right, G5) on many tasks.
PowerBooks are feature-rich, but all of these except for FW800 are available on the PC. It comes down to the system architecture.
More like, it comes down to the right combination of features in a single laptop.
The G4 sucks, but it doesn't follow that Windows laptops are "clearly superior". A laptop is not just a feature list (technology X, technology Y...). You have to consider everything, feel, dimensions, weight, battery consumption, screen quality.
What *specific* laptops do you consider to be the Powerbooks' foremost competitors?
Come on now let us not hold "Battlefront" up as the paragon of debate. The zealotry is equally bad on both sides.
Agreed. if you want to see how well the new Centrino does check out this comparison.
I think that most of us agree that 1.5GHz G4 is cannot be considered a high speed CPU (even among portables), and we know that Apple will replace it with something more powerful when the chips become available.
The overall design of the powerbooks are very nice for a slim-line model, a little underpowered, but not to shabby.
Of course, I would like to see a nonslim-line model that had a 2GHz G5 and a couple of expansion bays, but I doubt we will ever get a desktop replacement model from Apple like my old wallstreet G3 was... *sigh*
What *specific* laptops do you consider to be the Powerbooks' foremost competitors?
The market doesn't work that way. You name a platform-agnostic task or need (eg. scientific computing, or long battery life) and I'll find you a PC notebook that outmatches the PowerBook. We're, of course, talking about compute-intensive needs (hence PowerBook). The only task you could name that you would have me hard-pressed to find a competitor would be something like RC72 or BLAST.
The fact is there are hundreds of PC manufacturers and every imaginable configuration. This is why Apple has feature-rich laptops. But the G4 is a serious flaw. Drop the G4 and get a G5 at 2 GHz+ and we have a competitive machine.
the powerbooks are being outclassed in many counts. Powerbook screens have fallen seriously behind (see fujitsu and sony for ultra crisp and sharp notebook screens). Centrino kicks but in terms of battery life, and there are many full-featured light laptops out there. So although they have a top of the line graphics cards, there are many things that have fallen behind the competiton. I just can't forsee spending my hard earned cash on a slow for the price powerbook. But they are still well designed. On the other hand ibooks are very comparably with pc notebooks, if you factor in weight and battery life, but many people in the intended market don't care that much...but people looking for a lighter notebook with good battery life are well served with an ibook, and the sales reflect this. But the flagships need some improvement.
Whatever. There is plenty of objective data in the dozens of benchmarking threads over there that clearly show the G4 is pathetic.
Anyone who thinks G4 is even in the same league as P4 or AMD's 64 bit athlon are mistaking. G4 is pathetic and was pathetic 2 years ago..... as far as 2004 it has been a suck butt year. still struggling to get rid of G4,still struggling to make powermac equal to the pcs,struggling to get out xserve,struggling to get out a new iMac,struggled to get out mini iPod. I have stated this many times but the hardware division is a mess and allways has been a mess at least since 1990. Great Software with so so Hardware. whats new? If Apple could ever clean up its hardware line up they could go somewhere but Jobs isnt going to have any of that. my 2 cents of watching as the Apple turns.
I guess thats why they are still in Powermac and Xserve perhaps you are right they do come with a 167 bus in fact you must be right because the do use half of DDR I know you are right because they are now clocked way up to almost half of a 3.6 P4 well almost half
i get 4 more hours of battery life than any of my friends (who have vaio's and dells).
i've edited hours of video on even slower macs with no problems
the fan is ungodly quiet on my book
any non-mac laptop that is used for video is running windows--nuff said.
my powerbook is sexy, as compared to any other portable.
gosh what else.... no viruses, crashes, etc....
and finally, if you use games as a benchmark, just freakin buy a pc and stop complaining. i was under the impression that macs were used for REAL work--not video games. you can keep whining about 'books not running halo fast enough while I go edit some video and make money.
PC don't crash that much...as long as they have XP.
That is a load of crap. My Dell which is a brand new 1.6 Centrino laptop with 1 Gig a RAM running XP Pro. It crashes all the damn time. Windows XP and 2000 are 100% better than Win98. Of course 100% better than shit is ???????
I have to reboot my Dell sereral times a week including shutting down everyday. My Powerbook has not been shut down in 2 months.
Great Software with so so Hardware. whats new? If Apple could ever clean up its hardware line up they could go somewhere but Jobs isnt going to have any of that. my 2 cents of watching as the Apple turns.
I have to disagree. Software is the primary differentiator between the Mac and its competition. People who do something with their computers other than gaming care about applications and what it takes to do a task. Bus speed doesn't create anything. CPU speed doesn't change a user interface. Software does. That's why the iLife apps, FCP, OS X itself, etc. are vitally important to Apple.
Sure, everyone wants a faster Mac. But frankly, aside from video rendering, most consumer applications on current Macs (with sufficient RAM) are faster than the user or close enough that any perceived speed problems are at the annoyance level, not at the productivity-reducing level.
Comparing hardware specs without real-life applications is like buying a car based on horsepower alone, without considering the size and shape of the car, the number of seats, and how well it turns, stops, and rides.
Some people use cars as falsies for fleshing out baggy jockstraps. Some people use their computers for the same purpose. Maybe Apple needs a new slogan: "For computer users secure in their masculinity, there's Macintosh."
I have to disagree. Software is the primary differentiator between the Mac and its competition. People who do something with their computers other than gaming care about applications and what it takes to do a task. Bus speed doesn't create anything. CPU speed doesn't change a user interface. Software does. That's why the iLife apps, FCP, OS X itself, etc. are vitally important to Apple.
Sure, everyone wants a faster Mac. But frankly, aside from video rendering, most consumer applications on current Macs (with sufficient RAM) are faster than the user or close enough that any perceived speed problems are at the annoyance level, not at the productivity-reducing level.
Comparing hardware specs without real-life applications is like buying a car based on horsepower alone, without considering the size and shape of the car, the number of seats, and how well it turns, stops, and rides.
Some people use cars as falsies for fleshing out baggy jockstraps. Some people use their computers for the same purpose. Maybe Apple needs a new slogan: "For computer users secure in their masculinity, there's Macintosh."
I'm sure that'd bode well with the 98% of the market.
There's no doubt Apple's got the software down, they just need competitive hardware with the rest of the industry if they want to see any growth. Or at least see their marketshare stop shrinking. OS X is no doubt much better than Windows, and I'm sure there are lots of PC users that think that. Mac hardware is just seriously holding Apple back in the consumer space.
Comments
Dear god, you *are* delusional, aren't you??
Originally posted by Kickaha
...
Dear god, you *are* delusional, aren't you??
You might want to take your PowerBook argument and see if it withstands The Battlefront. You might find out which one of us is actually delusional.
Apple really needed a PowerBook G5 when Dothan debuted.
Originally posted by Existence
You might want to take your PowerBook argument and see if it withstands The Battlefront.
Haha. Yeah, that's a good test.
Originally posted by hmurchison
Come on now let us not hold "Battlefront" up as the paragon of debate. The zealotry is equally bad on both sides.
Whatever. There is plenty of objective data in the dozens of benchmarking threads over there that clearly show the G4 is pathetic.
Objective?
*snort*
Lies, damned lies, and benchmarking. Those are the three modern versions.
Originally posted by Existence
Equality is not possible when the competition is clearly superior. That's the point. Pentium-M laptops compared to PowerBooks run faster even under battery operation, have greater total battery life (for equal battery capacities), more than 4 times the L2 cache, 400MHz (effective) bus speeds and are clock-for-clock faster than the G5 (that's right, G5) on many tasks.
PowerBooks are feature-rich, but all of these except for FW800 are available on the PC. It comes down to the system architecture.
More like, it comes down to the right combination of features in a single laptop.
The G4 sucks, but it doesn't follow that Windows laptops are "clearly superior". A laptop is not just a feature list (technology X, technology Y...). You have to consider everything, feel, dimensions, weight, battery consumption, screen quality.
What *specific* laptops do you consider to be the Powerbooks' foremost competitors?
Originally posted by hmurchison
Come on now let us not hold "Battlefront" up as the paragon of debate. The zealotry is equally bad on both sides.
Agreed. if you want to see how well the new Centrino does check out this comparison.
I think that most of us agree that 1.5GHz G4 is cannot be considered a high speed CPU (even among portables), and we know that Apple will replace it with something more powerful when the chips become available.
The overall design of the powerbooks are very nice for a slim-line model, a little underpowered, but not to shabby.
Of course, I would like to see a nonslim-line model that had a 2GHz G5 and a couple of expansion bays, but I doubt we will ever get a desktop replacement model from Apple like my old wallstreet G3 was... *sigh*
Originally posted by Gon
What *specific* laptops do you consider to be the Powerbooks' foremost competitors?
The market doesn't work that way. You name a platform-agnostic task or need (eg. scientific computing, or long battery life) and I'll find you a PC notebook that outmatches the PowerBook. We're, of course, talking about compute-intensive needs (hence PowerBook). The only task you could name that you would have me hard-pressed to find a competitor would be something like RC72 or BLAST.
The fact is there are hundreds of PC manufacturers and every imaginable configuration. This is why Apple has feature-rich laptops. But the G4 is a serious flaw. Drop the G4 and get a G5 at 2 GHz+ and we have a competitive machine.
Originally posted by GreggWSmith
I wonder if the batteries in the Centrno laptops would last even longer if they didn't have to reboot so much?
PC don't crash that much...as long as they have XP.
Originally posted by Existence
Whatever. There is plenty of objective data in the dozens of benchmarking threads over there that clearly show the G4 is pathetic.
Anyone who thinks G4 is even in the same league as P4 or AMD's 64 bit athlon are mistaking. G4 is pathetic and was pathetic 2 years ago..... as far as 2004 it has been a suck butt year. still struggling to get rid of G4,still struggling to make powermac equal to the pcs,struggling to get out xserve,struggling to get out a new iMac,struggled to get out mini iPod. I have stated this many times but the hardware division is a mess and allways has been a mess at least since 1990. Great Software with so so Hardware. whats new? If Apple could ever clean up its hardware line up they could go somewhere but Jobs isnt going to have any of that. my 2 cents of watching as the Apple turns.
Originally posted by NittanyLionTosh
Ridiculous, the G4 is a fast machine.
I guess thats why they are still in Powermac and Xserve
with my rev c 12" pbook at 1.33 Ghz,
i get 4 more hours of battery life than any of my friends (who have vaio's and dells).
i've edited hours of video on even slower macs with no problems
the fan is ungodly quiet on my book
any non-mac laptop that is used for video is running windows--nuff said.
my powerbook is sexy, as compared to any other portable.
gosh what else.... no viruses, crashes, etc....
and finally, if you use games as a benchmark, just freakin buy a pc and stop complaining. i was under the impression that macs were used for REAL work--not video games. you can keep whining about 'books not running halo fast enough while I go edit some video and make money.
Originally posted by ast3r3x
PC don't crash that much...as long as they have XP.
That is a load of crap. My Dell which is a brand new 1.6 Centrino laptop with 1 Gig a RAM running XP Pro. It crashes all the damn time. Windows XP and 2000 are 100% better than Win98. Of course 100% better than shit is ???????
I have to reboot my Dell sereral times a week including shutting down everyday. My Powerbook has not been shut down in 2 months.
Originally posted by Aurora
Great Software with so so Hardware. whats new? If Apple could ever clean up its hardware line up they could go somewhere but Jobs isnt going to have any of that. my 2 cents of watching as the Apple turns.
I have to disagree. Software is the primary differentiator between the Mac and its competition. People who do something with their computers other than gaming care about applications and what it takes to do a task. Bus speed doesn't create anything. CPU speed doesn't change a user interface. Software does. That's why the iLife apps, FCP, OS X itself, etc. are vitally important to Apple.
Sure, everyone wants a faster Mac. But frankly, aside from video rendering, most consumer applications on current Macs (with sufficient RAM) are faster than the user or close enough that any perceived speed problems are at the annoyance level, not at the productivity-reducing level.
Comparing hardware specs without real-life applications is like buying a car based on horsepower alone, without considering the size and shape of the car, the number of seats, and how well it turns, stops, and rides.
Some people use cars as falsies for fleshing out baggy jockstraps. Some people use their computers for the same purpose. Maybe Apple needs a new slogan: "For computer users secure in their masculinity, there's Macintosh."
Originally posted by Voxapps
I have to disagree. Software is the primary differentiator between the Mac and its competition. People who do something with their computers other than gaming care about applications and what it takes to do a task. Bus speed doesn't create anything. CPU speed doesn't change a user interface. Software does. That's why the iLife apps, FCP, OS X itself, etc. are vitally important to Apple.
Sure, everyone wants a faster Mac. But frankly, aside from video rendering, most consumer applications on current Macs (with sufficient RAM) are faster than the user or close enough that any perceived speed problems are at the annoyance level, not at the productivity-reducing level.
Comparing hardware specs without real-life applications is like buying a car based on horsepower alone, without considering the size and shape of the car, the number of seats, and how well it turns, stops, and rides.
Some people use cars as falsies for fleshing out baggy jockstraps. Some people use their computers for the same purpose. Maybe Apple needs a new slogan: "For computer users secure in their masculinity, there's Macintosh."
I'm sure that'd bode well with the 98% of the market.
There's no doubt Apple's got the software down, they just need competitive hardware with the rest of the industry if they want to see any growth. Or at least see their marketshare stop shrinking. OS X is no doubt much better than Windows, and I'm sure there are lots of PC users that think that. Mac hardware is just seriously holding Apple back in the consumer space.