You speak rather knowledgeably, MacPhisto -- Lets hope you're not making this up
Anyway, I'm not sure I quite follow you: if "mobile-tuned G5s" get "delivered to Apple in December or January" -- what's this about "MHz bump for the G4"? Do you think there will be another round of G4 PBs?
My bad - typo. I meant a MHZ bump on the G5 as compared with the current G4s. I'm not sure hoe much of a difference there will be, but I know there will be a performance enhancement.
what do you mean by mobile? like as in; 2 inch thick case, marginal speed improvement, crippled G5, runs hot, terrible battery life?
or something sexy like is out now?
No SJ doesnt like anything thicker than 1" so it has to be a cool enough G5. If the PB was going to get an updated G4, it would have been announced about now or shortly. This suggests something more major in store for MWSF, in any case there does not appear to be faster G4 available until early next year.
Yes the PB is great, but Pentium M (Dothan) is much faster than the G4 - is G5 class and goes in PC laptops - a real threat to apple's future portable sales.
As Mr McPhisto said - a low power G5 will be comparable in class to the Dothan. G4's are in the Pentium M (Banias) class, which is perfect for the ibook.
Apple will announce 2 PowerBook G5 models in January. Probably the 15 and 17 inch models. Not sure when they will ship though. Watch the inventory clear through Christmas. We knew as much since Mac OS X 10.3.5 with the PowerBook7,1 and PowerBook7,2 specs, so it should not come as a surprise to anyone unless you live in a bubble, or are truely that stubborn.
Glad to see Apple letting us know to "buy now, nothing new before Christmas". Of course, if I bought a PowerBook on Dec 24th and 19 days later on Jan 12th Apple released the PowerBook G5, I'd still be a little miffed, but it pays to do your homework. Maybe people buying PowerBooks for Christmas as presents should just give the recipient a smiley-face-ridden voucher for the PowerBook G5 announcing on Jan 12th.
I'm not sure why there's this fixation on uber-thin laptops. As long as it's not like those 8 lb. PC offerings, and you know under the guidance of Ive, it'll still look damn sexy.
Would you really mind a 1.1 or 1.2 inch thick Powerbook if it was smokin' (not literally) in every other regard?
Nah...my guess is probably another round of speedbumps to (1.8 Ghz?)or just toughing it out and do nothing until March/April when they will have a G5 Powerbook ready in conjuction with a Tiger rollout.
I don't think Apple is in a rush for a G5 laptop. While most of us here are constantly clamouring for more, I'm guessing sales are still pretty brisk.
PC laptops however do have some pretty slick screens, and perhaps that's what Apple can upgrade as well. But all in all, there's still nothing out there that competes aesthetically with Powerbook. There are faster ones, but none sexier.
I agree. Speed bumps in January and one final kick for the G4 in a PB.
Come Spetember, we will probably have a G5 powerbook at the 17 and 15 inch size and a fast G4 in the 12.
No, there is nothing out there that competes with the beauty of a PB (or an iBook). One of my Autocad junkie PC user friends (upon seeing my roommates 15 Al book and my girlfriend's 12 inch iBook) commented that Apple laptops are beautiful. That they are, esp when my girlfriend has one
The laptop market is less about blazing CPU speed than a well designed package. In an odd way, having airport extreme as a standard option is more important than an extra 100 MHz on your CPU. Apple makes the best laptops in the industry bar NONE because they design extremely usable systems even if the CPU could be a bit better.
Apple will announce 2 PowerBook G5 models in January. Probably the 15 and 17 inch models. Not sure when they will ship though. Watch the inventory clear through Christmas. We knew as much since Mac OS X 10.3.5 with the PowerBook7,1 and PowerBook7,2 specs, so it should not come as a surprise to anyone unless you live in a bubble, or are truely that stubborn.
Glad to see Apple letting us know to "buy now, nothing new before Christmas". Of course, if I bought a PowerBook on Dec 24th and 19 days later on Jan 12th Apple released the PowerBook G5, I'd still be a little miffed, but it pays to do your homework. Maybe people buying PowerBooks for Christmas as presents should just give the recipient a smiley-face-ridden voucher for the PowerBook G5 announcing on Jan 12th.
I'd be greatly surprised to see Apple release G5 PBs this January. I think that Apple probably wanted to do so before IBM had problems with the 970, but I think that 970 heat and yeild issues are going to prevent Apple from doing so by January. Of course, I would like to be proven wrong
You seem to have good sources for your information. I do hope that Apple/IBM get their 970 / 90nm problems corrected. The lack of information from the horses mouth leads one to suspect that there are problems in 970 land. Almost as if IBM lost commitment ot the whole idea of manufacturing processors for outside consumption.
As to the laptop chips, are these eBus based chips or are they higher integration devices? Everything seems to point to a higher integration device, mostly due to memory system performance and power usage concerns. So what is it eBus or high integration?
Dave
Quote:
Originally posted by Mr. MacPhisto
My bad - typo. I meant a MHZ bump on the G5 as compared with the current G4s. I'm not sure hoe much of a difference there will be, but I know there will be a performance enhancement.
I need to purchase a system (preferably mobile) before the end of the year. If the new Powerbooks (assuming they are released at MWSF) were available immediately following the keynote or something like that, I could wait, but... we all know what the probability of that is: 0.
The new iBooks are nice, but I really need that 15.2" screen real-estate. If they had upped the resolution on the 14" iBook... Grr... Frustration.
Oh well... need always outweighs want, right? I'll probably wait until Thanksgiving or a little later and then order. Maybe we'll at least see a price drop? I agree with the poster who said they'd rather have the last G4 then a Rev. A G5. Since I use my machine constantly and need it to run very, very well, I tend to stay one release behind on everything. I'm still running Mac OS X 10.3.2 instead of 10.3.5 (I would be running Jaguar, but my 12" PB came with Panther), I still use Microsoft Office X (will be upgrading to 2004 version by the end of the year, though), etc. Just the way I run things.
Whatever I install at the beginning of 2005 will probably last me until... oh... 2009 or so. So, as much as I'd love to see Tiger at the beginning of the year... there's no guarantee I'd be using it anyway. 'Tis life, I guess.
You seem to have good sources for your information. I do hope that Apple/IBM get their 970 / 90nm problems corrected. The lack of information from the horses mouth leads one to suspect that there are problems in 970 land. Almost as if IBM lost commitment ot the whole idea of manufacturing processors for outside consumption.
As to the laptop chips, are these eBus based chips or are they higher integration devices? Everything seems to point to a higher integration device, mostly due to memory system performance and power usage concerns. So what is it eBus or high integration?
Dave
I honestly don't know. I don't get a ton of technical data on processors from IBM engineers because IBM is secretive regarding them (largely due to Apple's influence), but also because I'm far from being a chip guru. My contacts developed from relation between my specialty, OS/2, and IBM's POWER processors. I know there are some architectural changes for the mobile chip. I know there is a cache increase. I know that they are more confident about hitting the mark for production soon. I don't know any clockrates are much about how fast it will be able to access memory and hardware.
I'm not too terribly concerned about future G5 production. IBM and Apple have spent a lot fo time and money to work on that. Of course, I was pretty confident that Apple would have faster and more G5s lying around at this time than they do. The next G5 - to be based off POWER5 - should be in good shape, but you never know. I'm hoping they deliver as I have heard, because I desperately want a dual processor - dual core - SMT PowerMac, but there is always the possibility that something could go wrong with the fab. If we don't get any more than a speedbump from Apple in January then a snag will have been hit.
Since I bit the bullet and went to a 1.5 15" PB in April (replacing a 667) I can afford to relax a bit on the G5 PB. Actually I can't afford the G5 after the new G4.
My thinking is at a simple level - Apple is working hard to get a G5 PB right and they are not going to release it until they are happy with the line. Heat and battery life are going to be keys in my mind, but my mind is rather limited since I hit 60 . . .
The one thing that I think about often is what Ive design will be used for a G5 PB. My AL G4 is beautiful and I find it hard to believe it can be improved on. This is what I am waiting to see.
hrm, i don't think apple would miss the holiday season if the next powerbook update was just a g4 speedbump.
didn't apple say some time ago that they wanted to move away from mostly releasing products at large events (e.g. macworlds)? (which is kind of stupid anyways) so this sounds like an unexpected delay to me.
my (rather obvious) guess is that apple has the enclosure ready and is waiting for ibm to deliver low-power g5s in larger quantities.
steve doesn't want to announce a product and have it shipped like months after that.
imho they need tremendously faster powerbooks as soon as possible. the g4 may be a good mobile chip but it lacks performance compared to g5 desktops and to pc laptops.
I'd be greatly surprised to see Apple release G5 PBs this January. I think that Apple probably wanted to do so before IBM had problems with the 970, but I think that 970 heat and yeild issues are going to prevent Apple from doing so by January. Of course, I would like to be proven wrong
I think you're right about not having G5s by January. Too soon, heat, power issues etc etc..
If there is to be an update, surely it's more likely that they would be dual core G4s..... If this was the case, any thoughts on what the performance would be like, compared to a G4 1.5Ghz? How much of a difference would this make?
It's far too soon to expect a dual core G4, Freescale said 2H 2005. The single core MPC7448 isn't even shipping yet and it won't for months. On the other hand the 970FX will be one year old in january. I would reasonably expect low-voltage 970FXs early next year.
It's far too soon to expect a dual core G4, Freescale said 2H 2005. The single core MPC7448 isn't even shipping yet and it won't for months.
Yeah, that's what Freescale said quite recently. By the way, for those interested, Freescale made public several details of the G4 processors, the MPC7448 included, here.
Yeah, that's what Freescale said quite recently. By the way, for those interested, Freescale made public several details of the G4 processors, the MPC7448 included, here.
I saw that. It implied to me that the 7448 was ready to go.
I don't know what Apple is going to do with the next powerbook upgrade, but what I do know is that the 1.5Ghz G4 is pretty fast. I was playing around with one at our campus bookstore the other day. It was hooked up to a 23" apple display and playing a movie on that display. However, despite the above the computer was quite responsive. It was noticeably faster at opening applications, especially big ones like iMovie and Soundtrack, than my 1Ghz Ti. I would have to say it opened soundtrack at least 40% faster than my computer and that was with playing a movie as well. If I try to play a DVD on mine and open up soundtrack it is slow as balls. Basically my point is that, although the powerbooks need an upgrade, a faster bus and faster G4 would be plenty and that a G5 is not really needed. If apple releases a 1.7Ghz G4 with a 200mhz bus I would place an order for sure. And... if moto could manage to put a DDR bus into the next G4 it would be beyond perfect for a laptop.
Apple will announce 2 PowerBook G5 models in January. Probably the 15 and 17 inch models. Not sure when they will ship though. Watch the inventory clear through Christmas. We knew as much since Mac OS X 10.3.5 with the PowerBook7,1 and PowerBook7,2 specs, so it should not come as a surprise to anyone unless you live in a bubble, or are truely that stubborn.
I've seen this observation several places seeming to confirm the inexistence of another G4 PB and just wondered how conclusive this find is...how sure we can be that this excludes any possibility of there being an intervening speedbump.
Can you explain a little what these specs are, what they're used for, etc.?
Comments
You speak rather knowledgeably, MacPhisto -- Lets hope you're not making this up
Anyway, I'm not sure I quite follow you: if "mobile-tuned G5s" get "delivered to Apple in December or January" -- what's this about "MHz bump for the G4"? Do you think there will be another round of G4 PBs?
My bad - typo. I meant a MHZ bump on the G5 as compared with the current G4s. I'm not sure hoe much of a difference there will be, but I know there will be a performance enhancement.
Originally posted by Mr. MacPhisto
but I know there will be a performance enhancement.
Well, quite frankly: anything else would be a bit of a disappointment really...
Originally posted by Peter North
what do you mean by mobile? like as in; 2 inch thick case, marginal speed improvement, crippled G5, runs hot, terrible battery life?
or something sexy like is out now?
No SJ doesnt like anything thicker than 1" so it has to be a cool enough G5. If the PB was going to get an updated G4, it would have been announced about now or shortly. This suggests something more major in store for MWSF, in any case there does not appear to be faster G4 available until early next year.
Yes the PB is great, but Pentium M (Dothan) is much faster than the G4 - is G5 class and goes in PC laptops - a real threat to apple's future portable sales.
As Mr McPhisto said - a low power G5 will be comparable in class to the Dothan. G4's are in the Pentium M (Banias) class, which is perfect for the ibook.
Glad to see Apple letting us know to "buy now, nothing new before Christmas". Of course, if I bought a PowerBook on Dec 24th and 19 days later on Jan 12th Apple released the PowerBook G5, I'd still be a little miffed, but it pays to do your homework. Maybe people buying PowerBooks for Christmas as presents should just give the recipient a smiley-face-ridden voucher for the PowerBook G5 announcing on Jan 12th.
Would you really mind a 1.1 or 1.2 inch thick Powerbook if it was smokin' (not literally) in every other regard?
Originally posted by satchmo
Nah...my guess is probably another round of speedbumps to (1.8 Ghz?)or just toughing it out and do nothing until March/April when they will have a G5 Powerbook ready in conjuction with a Tiger rollout.
I don't think Apple is in a rush for a G5 laptop. While most of us here are constantly clamouring for more, I'm guessing sales are still pretty brisk.
PC laptops however do have some pretty slick screens, and perhaps that's what Apple can upgrade as well. But all in all, there's still nothing out there that competes aesthetically with Powerbook. There are faster ones, but none sexier.
I agree. Speed bumps in January and one final kick for the G4 in a PB.
Come Spetember, we will probably have a G5 powerbook at the 17 and 15 inch size and a fast G4 in the 12.
No, there is nothing out there that competes with the beauty of a PB (or an iBook). One of my Autocad junkie PC user friends (upon seeing my roommates 15 Al book and my girlfriend's 12 inch iBook) commented that Apple laptops are beautiful. That they are, esp when my girlfriend has one
The laptop market is less about blazing CPU speed than a well designed package. In an odd way, having airport extreme as a standard option is more important than an extra 100 MHz on your CPU. Apple makes the best laptops in the industry bar NONE because they design extremely usable systems even if the CPU could be a bit better.
Originally posted by Rhumgod
Apple will announce 2 PowerBook G5 models in January. Probably the 15 and 17 inch models. Not sure when they will ship though. Watch the inventory clear through Christmas. We knew as much since Mac OS X 10.3.5 with the PowerBook7,1 and PowerBook7,2 specs, so it should not come as a surprise to anyone unless you live in a bubble, or are truely that stubborn.
Glad to see Apple letting us know to "buy now, nothing new before Christmas". Of course, if I bought a PowerBook on Dec 24th and 19 days later on Jan 12th Apple released the PowerBook G5, I'd still be a little miffed, but it pays to do your homework. Maybe people buying PowerBooks for Christmas as presents should just give the recipient a smiley-face-ridden voucher for the PowerBook G5 announcing on Jan 12th.
I'd be greatly surprised to see Apple release G5 PBs this January. I think that Apple probably wanted to do so before IBM had problems with the 970, but I think that 970 heat and yeild issues are going to prevent Apple from doing so by January. Of course, I would like to be proven wrong
Although, it is safe to say that a change will occur at MWSF.
You seem to have good sources for your information. I do hope that Apple/IBM get their 970 / 90nm problems corrected. The lack of information from the horses mouth leads one to suspect that there are problems in 970 land. Almost as if IBM lost commitment ot the whole idea of manufacturing processors for outside consumption.
As to the laptop chips, are these eBus based chips or are they higher integration devices? Everything seems to point to a higher integration device, mostly due to memory system performance and power usage concerns. So what is it eBus or high integration?
Dave
Originally posted by Mr. MacPhisto
My bad - typo. I meant a MHZ bump on the G5 as compared with the current G4s. I'm not sure hoe much of a difference there will be, but I know there will be a performance enhancement.
I need to purchase a system (preferably mobile) before the end of the year. If the new Powerbooks (assuming they are released at MWSF) were available immediately following the keynote or something like that, I could wait, but... we all know what the probability of that is: 0.
The new iBooks are nice, but I really need that 15.2" screen real-estate. If they had upped the resolution on the 14" iBook... Grr... Frustration.
Oh well... need always outweighs want, right? I'll probably wait until Thanksgiving or a little later and then order. Maybe we'll at least see a price drop? I agree with the poster who said they'd rather have the last G4 then a Rev. A G5. Since I use my machine constantly and need it to run very, very well, I tend to stay one release behind on everything. I'm still running Mac OS X 10.3.2 instead of 10.3.5 (I would be running Jaguar, but my 12" PB came with Panther), I still use Microsoft Office X (will be upgrading to 2004 version by the end of the year, though), etc. Just the way I run things.
Whatever I install at the beginning of 2005 will probably last me until... oh... 2009 or so.
Grr... Frustration... Grr...
Originally posted by wizard69
Hello MacPhisto;
You seem to have good sources for your information. I do hope that Apple/IBM get their 970 / 90nm problems corrected. The lack of information from the horses mouth leads one to suspect that there are problems in 970 land. Almost as if IBM lost commitment ot the whole idea of manufacturing processors for outside consumption.
As to the laptop chips, are these eBus based chips or are they higher integration devices? Everything seems to point to a higher integration device, mostly due to memory system performance and power usage concerns. So what is it eBus or high integration?
Dave
I honestly don't know. I don't get a ton of technical data on processors from IBM engineers because IBM is secretive regarding them (largely due to Apple's influence), but also because I'm far from being a chip guru. My contacts developed from relation between my specialty, OS/2, and IBM's POWER processors. I know there are some architectural changes for the mobile chip. I know there is a cache increase. I know that they are more confident about hitting the mark for production soon. I don't know any clockrates are much about how fast it will be able to access memory and hardware.
I'm not too terribly concerned about future G5 production. IBM and Apple have spent a lot fo time and money to work on that. Of course, I was pretty confident that Apple would have faster and more G5s lying around at this time than they do. The next G5 - to be based off POWER5 - should be in good shape, but you never know. I'm hoping they deliver as I have heard, because I desperately want a dual processor - dual core - SMT PowerMac, but there is always the possibility that something could go wrong with the fab. If we don't get any more than a speedbump from Apple in January then a snag will have been hit.
My thinking is at a simple level - Apple is working hard to get a G5 PB right and they are not going to release it until they are happy with the line. Heat and battery life are going to be keys in my mind, but my mind is rather limited since I hit 60 . . .
The one thing that I think about often is what Ive design will be used for a G5 PB. My AL G4 is beautiful and I find it hard to believe it can be improved on. This is what I am waiting to see.
didn't apple say some time ago that they wanted to move away from mostly releasing products at large events (e.g. macworlds)? (which is kind of stupid anyways) so this sounds like an unexpected delay to me.
my (rather obvious) guess is that apple has the enclosure ready and is waiting for ibm to deliver low-power g5s in larger quantities.
steve doesn't want to announce a product and have it shipped like months after that.
imho they need tremendously faster powerbooks as soon as possible. the g4 may be a good mobile chip but it lacks performance compared to g5 desktops and to pc laptops.
Originally posted by Yevgeny
I'd be greatly surprised to see Apple release G5 PBs this January. I think that Apple probably wanted to do so before IBM had problems with the 970, but I think that 970 heat and yeild issues are going to prevent Apple from doing so by January. Of course, I would like to be proven wrong
I think you're right about not having G5s by January. Too soon, heat, power issues etc etc..
If there is to be an update, surely it's more likely that they would be dual core G4s..... If this was the case, any thoughts on what the performance would be like, compared to a G4 1.5Ghz? How much of a difference would this make?
Cheers
Andrew
Will it be as different as the first Titanium PowerBook G4 was to the PowerBook G3 Pismo?
Originally posted by Gyroscope
It's far too soon to expect a dual core G4, Freescale said 2H 2005. The single core MPC7448 isn't even shipping yet and it won't for months.
Yeah, that's what Freescale said quite recently. By the way, for those interested, Freescale made public several details of the G4 processors, the MPC7448 included, here.
Originally posted by PB
Yeah, that's what Freescale said quite recently. By the way, for those interested, Freescale made public several details of the G4 processors, the MPC7448 included, here.
I saw that. It implied to me that the 7448 was ready to go.
Originally posted by Rhumgod
Apple will announce 2 PowerBook G5 models in January. Probably the 15 and 17 inch models. Not sure when they will ship though. Watch the inventory clear through Christmas. We knew as much since Mac OS X 10.3.5 with the PowerBook7,1 and PowerBook7,2 specs, so it should not come as a surprise to anyone unless you live in a bubble, or are truely that stubborn.
I've seen this observation several places seeming to confirm the inexistence of another G4 PB and just wondered how conclusive this find is...how sure we can be that this excludes any possibility of there being an intervening speedbump.
Can you explain a little what these specs are, what they're used for, etc.?
--B