If Apple can make an iMac 2 inches thick...
...how far away is a 1 inch thick Powerbook?
They managed to cram in a G5, speakers, and a desktop quality display into that package, in addition to optical audio and a bunch of miscellaneous connectivity options. So if you stripped a couple components off, added more compact speakers and a more compact display, and you might be in business.
Cheers, now rip my analysis apart limb from limb.
They managed to cram in a G5, speakers, and a desktop quality display into that package, in addition to optical audio and a bunch of miscellaneous connectivity options. So if you stripped a couple components off, added more compact speakers and a more compact display, and you might be in business.
Cheers, now rip my analysis apart limb from limb.
Comments
Perhaps Apple will have piped-liquid-cooling equivalent for the Powerbook but... the word daunting keeps coming up in my mind.
Screed
Originally posted by Placebo
...how far away is a 1 inch thick Powerbook?
Not far away. They could have had a 1.5" thick Powerbook G5 in Q4 03 if they wanted. 1.5" thick is about the average thickness of an x86 laptop. A 3 tiered notebook lineup - iBook G4, Powerbook G4, and Powerbook G5 - would be perfectly doable.
Considering the price of the 1.6 GHz 17" iMac G5, what sort of margins is Apple making on its 17" Powerbook G4? 50%! That's a lot room for them to play with... but they choose not to.
Originally posted by monkeyastronaut
It could be done NOW if you don't mind a 2 inch thick PowerBook
with terrible battery life and burns your skin
new powerbook. A 7200rpm hardrive & an upgradeable graphics card would
be nice too!
The iMac looks like it dwarfs the PowerBook in overall volume. There are definitely some cues that the PowerBook G5 will take from the iMac, but I'd say that the Apple exec (Greg Jozwiak?) who said they were a ways away from putting a G5 in a PowerBook wasn't lying. The 17" iMac looks like it has 3 or 4 times the volume of the 17" PowerBook, easily.
The iMac looks like it dwarfs the PowerBook in overall volume. There are definitely some cues that the PowerBook G5 will take from the iMac, but I'd say that the Apple exec (Greg Jozwiak?) who said they were a ways away from putting a G5 in a PowerBook wasn't lying. The 17" iMac looks like it has 3 or 4 times the volume of the 17" PowerBook, easily.
I'm sure they could lop some of that volume off. For one, that's probably a desktop display, rather than a super-slim notebook display. Plus, is the iMac using all miniaturized notebook components, or are some of them full-sized desktop versions? And the power supply is inside the iMac... of course, the PowerBook would need to have a battery, so maybe that last point is moot.
A 17" G5 PowerBook might be possible, but a 15" or 12" is an extreme challenge.
Of course, I'd expect to see some advanced cooling and venting technologies to make it possible.
Do you want a thick or loud PowerBook? No. How often does your PowerBook's fan come on and how loud is it? My Ti 500's doesn't come on too often but when it does I surely notice it.
Cramming a G5 into such a tight space can be seen a step toward a G5 notebook, but Joswiak cautions that it would be tougher to build the current chip into a laptop than it was to get it in an all-in-one. "The challenges of cooling a G5 in a Powerbook design are significantly greater," Joswiak said, noting that a Powerbook is less than half as thick as the new iMac, leaving far less room for cooling tricks.
Long live the [dual core] G4!
Originally posted by TWinbrook46636
[B]Cramming a G5 into such a tight space can be seen a step toward a G5 notebook, but Joswiak cautions that it would be tougher to build the current chip into a laptop than it was to get it in an all-in-one.
Long live the [dual core] G4!
Well, I don't know about a powerbook, but I hope this means they'll be able to make a smaller Powermac.
Seriously, once the G5 laptop DOES come out, with liquid cooling and 2 inches thick, will it even compare that well to PC laptops running P4s or Centrinos?
Originally posted by the cool gut
Well, I don't know about a powerbook, but I hope this means they'll be able to make a smaller Powermac.
PowerMac9,1 is coming...
Originally posted by the cool gut
Well, I don't know about a powerbook, but I hope this means they'll be able to make a smaller Powermac.
Or a powermac the same size with room for 2 video cards, optical drives, and 4 hard drives.
Originally posted by Amorph
... with a wrist rest that a commercial jet could use for a landing strip.
The iMac looks like it dwarfs the PowerBook in overall volume. There are definitely some cues that the PowerBook G5 will take from the iMac, but I'd say that the Apple exec (Greg Jozwiak?) who said they were a ways away from putting a G5 in a PowerBook wasn't lying. The 17" iMac looks like it has 3 or 4 times the volume of the 17" PowerBook, easily.
Well the 17" PowerBook is 15.4" wide by 10.2" deep x 1" high. Volume=157.08 cubic inches.
iMac G5 is 16.8" wide by 12.9" high (guesstimate of 4" clearance underneath) by 2" deep. Volume=433.44 cubic inches.
So yeah, the volume is ~3x that of the 17" PowerBook. But the components are a LOT bigger in the iMac than the PowerBook versions.
I just don't see how we can come to any other conclusion than the PowerBook will see a G5 - soon....Apple has basically come out and said, a PowerBook G5 is in the making - the plugins are already in 10.3.5. With the iMac G5 bus frequency 1/3 of the CPU speed, Apple is showing that they can indeed modify this multiplier. Is this PowerTune? Apple hasn't stated anywhere I've read that 970fx-based systems utilize these modes; perhaps that technology is specifically designed for a laptop. Remember, PowerTune not only cuts CPU frequency, but also bus, I/O and memory controller frequency (plus voltage iterations) as well.