is this still the case with the newer 802.11g routers [linksys/dlink/apple base station]? (that it drops to 802/11b speeds if one device is present)
I remembered this was the case when 802.11g was first becoming available and was just wondering if that's still the case.
?
I have a wireless network at home - my iMac G3 is always on and is 11mbps but the PC connects at 36mbps, so it obviously slows down a bit or the range isn't very good.
The advantage of Dothan-based sonoma PC latops over these "Power"Books.
* 2MB L2 cache versus 512 KB L2 cache
* 2.13 GHz versus 1.67 GHz with 1.4-2x better performance than the G4, per clock. 90nm versus 130 nm technology.
* Advanced realtime clock/voltage throlling versus very primitive step-down throlling on the G4 (it's so pathetic, people have to say "set CPU performance to max in the ES control panel" when doing benchmarks)
* 533 MHz system bus (effective) versus 167 MHz
* DDR2-5400 memory versus un-utilized DDR2700 memory
* PCI Express graphics versus AGP graphics (Important for CoreImage/CoreVideo/DirectX9 shader applications, ie. using the GPU as a coprocessor)
* Express card slots versus regular PCMCIA cardbus slots (slow!!!)
I'm really amazed Apple even bothered updating the PowerBooks. They are beyond embarrassing.
This is at least partially straight out FUD. For a start numbers are by and large worthless particularly when they are as arbitrary as 90 nm process compared to a 130 nm process. Given Intel's fine 90 nm process I think personally I'd rather stick with a proven tech there but either way it is a meaningless number in the scheme of things. How something is made matters very little compared to what it can do.
The 1.4 - 2x speed per clock is pulled out of nowhere. By all means reference away if you care but the pentium-m processors, although very good, aren't that quick. I'm guessing you've never actually used one though.
As for DDR2-5400...well good luck explaining that given Dothan's FSB only reaches 4200.
Sonoma itself is arguably at the current time no step forward for the Centrino platform. For starters sonoma impacts battery life significantly, which is the primary concern of virtually any true mobile user.
It does offer some nice features but at the current time most aren't utilizable or potentially pointless.
Second for all the talk of how wonderful PCI Express graphics are there is to my knowledge not one card that yet utilises the upstream bandwidth it has brought about, which is what is really required for the GPU to take off as a coprocessor. Current generation cards still limit themselves in upstream communications. That is something that will change with the next generation but right now cards simply haven't been designed with return communication in mind, at least not as it can be.
Not saying Intel's Centrino isn't an excellent platform but you're making up crap and FUD.
Not saying Intel's Centrino isn't an excellent platform but you're making up crap and FUD.
ah, to those like me who didnot know before, wikipedia defines FUD as:
-----------------
"FUD was first defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company, Amdahl: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering Amdahl products." (quoted in [1])
Eric S. Raymond speaks more about this in [1]:
"The idea, of course, was to persuade buyers to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. After 1991 the term has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon."
Opponents of certain large computer corporations claim that the spreading of fear, uncertainty, and doubt is an unethical marketing technique that these corporations consciously employ.
By spreading questionable information about the drawbacks of less well-known products, an established company can discourage decision-makers from choosing those products over its wares, regardless of the relative technical merits. This is a recognised phenomenon, epitomised by the traditional axiom of purchasing agents that "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" equipment. The result is that many companies' IT departments buy software which they know to be technically inferior because upper management is more likely to recognize the brand."
The result is that many companies' IT departments buy software which they know to be technically inferior because upper management is more likely to recognize the brand."
I thought I would join in you started to be pissed at what apple had introduced then went well its ok bla bla bla.
It not OK the extras are nice the touch scroll and so on but come off it this is the minimum you would expect from apple with a refresh of the power book line. yes they are sort of still good if you don't have one at the moment but if you do then you can't justifies paying for this upgrade.
I am not saying as many are that it should have bean a G5 PowerBooks but what I am saying that apple could have got more speed out of it then that crappie amount of speed.
and apple have had prototypes of Motorola?s dual core CPU since October last year and, had full working models since January so why have they brought out such a half hearted attempt at boosting the power books?
I say ....IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH APPLE.
The only way that this would be is if there extending there rang I.E
APPLE IBOOK = LOW END
APPLE POWERBOOK = MID to HIGH END
APPLE G5 POWERBOOK = TOP END MOBILE WORK STATION
it is also the only product line that apple has that dose not have a minimum of three product solutions in.
I am not saying as many are that it should have bean a G5 PowerBooks but what I am saying that apple could have got more speed out of it then that crappie amount of speed.
Are there any PPC processors right now in the market, appropriate for mobile applications and faster than the ones Apple used in this update? If you know something, you must tell S. Jobs NOW, and be sure that Apple will update again the Powerbooks in less than a week.
Quote:
and apple have had prototypes of Motorola?s dual core CPU since October last year and, had full working models since January...
...It not OK the extras are nice the touch scroll and so on but come off it this is the minimum you would expect from apple with a refresh of the power book line. yes they are sort of still good if you don't have one at the moment but if you do then you can't justifies paying for this upgrade.
I am not saying as many are that it should have bean a G5 PowerBooks but what I am saying that apple could have got more speed out of it then that crappie amount of speed.
and apple have had prototypes of Motorola?s dual core CPU since October last year and, had full working models since January so why have they brought out such a half hearted attempt at boosting the power books?
I say ....IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH APPLE.
Your complaints have nothing to do with Apple, so how can they sort them out?
The 1.6 Ghz 7447 G4 processor is being overclocked by upgrade manufacturers to 1.7. Freescale does not have a version of the 7447 out yet with speeds greater than 1.67 Ghz, so Apple cannot offer a computer faster than that. At the same time IBM has not delivered a 1.6 Ghz G5 chip that Apple can reliably get in a production model PB.
Quote:
and apple have had prototypes of Motorola?s dual core CPU since October last year and, had full working models since January so why have they brought out such a half hearted attempt at boosting the power books?
So what if they did, that does not mean that Freescale has them in production at a volume that Apple can use them in their production, or that the added heat of a dual core can be disapated in a production version of a powerbook using them.
So they are stuck at 1.67 Ghz G4 the same as you are, I'm sure that Steve would love to be shipping a 3Ghz G5 iBook for $999 but that is not to be, get over it.
They have added some value, and given their customers as much a speed increase as they can, we should be gratefull thet they didn't let the product stagnate for another 6 months. So a 1.67 Ghz PB isn't enough incentive to get you to upgrade from your 1.5, you probably are not the inteded customer for this PB.
But apple also has the chose of Intel, AMD, and, also designing an IBM laptop Processor in stead of trying to make the current one fit.
As many may say that Intel, and AMD aren?t fast enough or there is two little battery life, well I disagree the laptop by some of the manufacture are performing as decent desktop replacement. And no one has to take them laptops at face value I mean come on with all apple creativity they couldn?t over come power probs and the likes. I think they can, and there is also a report some were saying that most PC laptop manufactures don't use the new and up and coming CPU properly there is some kind of feature that puts some parts on sand by and other to sleep there for saving power and improving performance.
I don't now there is no real speed gain from an extra 1,700 MHz so that totally pointless yes new user intending to by a PowerBooks will enjoy it, but i don't think its much use upgrading if you have one already.
Yes I know your saying that what i am complaining about is not apple, but apple employed them and we all have know for a long time that Motorola has not bean up to the job.
They could have at least up two of them CPU's in there.
With a bit of smart technology, and software to go with it there is no reason why they couldn?t have dune that.
or just an idea beef up the graphics card with 256mb ram use NVIDIA?s Nforce go chip and brought out an a panther update with core image and video in? it and there for off loading some of the work from the CPU?
look I am not saying I now what went on, or have the answer but what I am saying that don't celebrate it just because it is new and now give you what you ahead as options before, as part of the package, as if it was really good leap forward.
But hay it?s just my opinion and that just how things work.
This doesn't matter to the general public, consumers or anyone buying the laptop. Speed Matters. The laptops come from Apple.com and the Apple store. Therefore anything wrong with it is there fault. That's how it works. Is it really just that Motorola and IBM need time? Or is it that they aren't throwing enough people at the projects? How is it Intel seems to struggle as much with ghz but continually smacks out faster processors? It's not better technology. It's more manpower, and more people working on the problem. Apple/IBM/Motorola could do something similar... I've personally watched fabbing process and some chip design.
Quote:
Originally posted by PB
Do you realize that these are x86 processors, meaning no OS X, no Apple software, no Macintosh software, don't you?
Apple is NOT a processor manufacturer and certainly NOT a manufacturer of IBM chips.
This doesn't matter to the general public, consumers or anyone buying the laptop. Speed Matters. The laptops come from Apple.com and the Apple store. Therefore anything wrong with it is there fault. That's how it works.
Now this sounds like an over-simplification.
Quote:
How is it Intel seems to struggle as much with ghz but continually smacks out faster processors? It's not better technology. It's more manpower, and more people working on the problem.
No biggie - moving to the Intel chips would not be a problem.
Sorry, but you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
I watched the transition to PowerPC as it happened. The transition to PowerPC was about as smooth as they go, and given that Apple and Motorola engineers were both involved in the effort to define PowerPC, they made sure to do what they could (within reason) to make the transition painless.
It still took years, cost a great deal of money and trouble, caused no end of despair over the possibility that it was a mistake and would fail, caused a lot of fussing over the fact that the first generation of PowerPC machines were slower than the ones they replaced (because they were running emulated code almost exclusively), etc. Even MacOS 9.2 shipped with 68k code running in emulation.
Ponder the reception that Transmeta's CPUs have had in the market.
It was a huge mess. And again, that was one of the smoothest transitions in the industry. SGI's transition from MIPS to x86 crippled the company. Intel and HP's decade-long attempt to move its customers from x86 to EPIC (Itanium), which cost untold billions of dollars, was an outright failure. Even their attempt to move to a 64-bit version of x86 was trumped by AMD's more backwards-compatible implementation.
Oh, and goodbye AltiVec, just as people were adopting it in earnest...
For better and for worse, Apple is wedded to the PowerPC well into the future.
If the 1.67GHz 7447B is the best CPU they can put in the machine, what do you want them to do? It's not like they're holding back on you.
Here's the problem that I have - if this were a recent thing, Motorola being worthless when it comes to pushing the G4, I'd be able to accept the current situation just fine. But this has been going on for YEARS now. I purchased my TiBook back in early 2002, when it ended up being replaced by a new line of TiBooks. Thus, my 550MHz TiBook, at that point, was already an old model. Three years later, the G4 has only gained just over 1GHz of speed.
I don't know exactly what Apple could have done, because I'm not in that business. But I have trouble believing that their ONLY option was to wait around for the processor that would become the G5. Is there no way that they could have worked with Motorola to at least improve some factors of the G4, such as the bus speed? There were also rumors about IBM taking what was the G3 and adding an AltiVec-type unit to it. How fast have the G3s now gotten up to?
If all else fails, and there really was no other hardware options out there, then Apple should at least price the PowerBooks properly, in my opinion. I think you are not getting the kind of hardware you should be getting for the money involved.
I watched the transition to PowerPC as it happened. The transition to PowerPC was about as smooth as they go, and given that Apple and Motorola engineers were both involved in the effort to define PowerPC, they made sure to do what they could (within reason) to make the transition painless.[/B]
I also watched it happen, and I had both a 68040 and a PPC apple at the same time. I didn't have any problems, and neither did anyone I know.
The whole transition was much easier than all the things windows users put up with on a daily basis.
But, I'll admit, things were a bit slow when you emulated 68040 on the PPC.
At the time I was using Photoshop, KPT, Bryce, word processors, and games. Maybe people doing video editing had a really hard time or something, because of the slowness of emulation?
Comments
Originally posted by e1618978
The great things about the router are better coverage with 11g, and it does not drop down to 11b if you have a single 11b computer using the network.
is this still the case with the newer 802.11g routers [linksys/dlink/apple base station]? (that it drops to 802/11b speeds if one device is present)
I remembered this was the case when 802.11g was first becoming available and was just wondering if that's still the case.
Originally posted by badtz
is this still the case with the newer 802.11g routers [linksys/dlink/apple base station]? (that it drops to 802/11b speeds if one device is present)
I remembered this was the case when 802.11g was first becoming available and was just wondering if that's still the case.
I have a wireless network at home - my iMac G3 is always on and is 11mbps but the PC connects at 36mbps, so it obviously slows down a bit or the range isn't very good.
Originally posted by Existence
The advantage of Dothan-based sonoma PC latops over these "Power"Books.
* 2MB L2 cache versus 512 KB L2 cache
* 2.13 GHz versus 1.67 GHz with 1.4-2x better performance than the G4, per clock. 90nm versus 130 nm technology.
* Advanced realtime clock/voltage throlling versus very primitive step-down throlling on the G4 (it's so pathetic, people have to say "set CPU performance to max in the ES control panel" when doing benchmarks)
* 533 MHz system bus (effective) versus 167 MHz
* DDR2-5400 memory versus un-utilized DDR2700 memory
* PCI Express graphics versus AGP graphics (Important for CoreImage/CoreVideo/DirectX9 shader applications, ie. using the GPU as a coprocessor)
* Express card slots versus regular PCMCIA cardbus slots (slow!!!)
I'm really amazed Apple even bothered updating the PowerBooks. They are beyond embarrassing.
This is at least partially straight out FUD. For a start numbers are by and large worthless particularly when they are as arbitrary as 90 nm process compared to a 130 nm process. Given Intel's fine 90 nm process I think personally I'd rather stick with a proven tech there but either way it is a meaningless number in the scheme of things. How something is made matters very little compared to what it can do.
The 1.4 - 2x speed per clock is pulled out of nowhere. By all means reference away if you care but the pentium-m processors, although very good, aren't that quick. I'm guessing you've never actually used one though.
As for DDR2-5400...well good luck explaining that given Dothan's FSB only reaches 4200.
Sonoma itself is arguably at the current time no step forward for the Centrino platform. For starters sonoma impacts battery life significantly, which is the primary concern of virtually any true mobile user.
It does offer some nice features but at the current time most aren't utilizable or potentially pointless.
Second for all the talk of how wonderful PCI Express graphics are there is to my knowledge not one card that yet utilises the upstream bandwidth it has brought about, which is what is really required for the GPU to take off as a coprocessor. Current generation cards still limit themselves in upstream communications. That is something that will change with the next generation but right now cards simply haven't been designed with return communication in mind, at least not as it can be.
Not saying Intel's Centrino isn't an excellent platform but you're making up crap and FUD.
Originally posted by Telomar
This is at least partially straight out FUD.
*snip*
Not saying Intel's Centrino isn't an excellent platform but you're making up crap and FUD.
ah, to those like me who didnot know before, wikipedia defines FUD as:
-----------------
"FUD was first defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company, Amdahl: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering Amdahl products." (quoted in [1])
Eric S. Raymond speaks more about this in [1]:
"The idea, of course, was to persuade buyers to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. After 1991 the term has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon."
Opponents of certain large computer corporations claim that the spreading of fear, uncertainty, and doubt is an unethical marketing technique that these corporations consciously employ.
By spreading questionable information about the drawbacks of less well-known products, an established company can discourage decision-makers from choosing those products over its wares, regardless of the relative technical merits. This is a recognised phenomenon, epitomised by the traditional axiom of purchasing agents that "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" equipment. The result is that many companies' IT departments buy software which they know to be technically inferior because upper management is more likely to recognize the brand."
-----------------------
Originally posted by sunilraman
...
The result is that many companies' IT departments buy software which they know to be technically inferior because upper management is more likely to recognize the brand."
-----------------------
thank you for that definition - very cool
Originally posted by MacCrazy
thank you for that definition - very cool
**
Originally posted by Dave J
Having read each post in this lengthy thread I ask myself:
How much of the 'gosh, I'm really impressed' posts are nothing more than justification for folks who cannot resist new toys.
(Emphasis on the toys.)
Exactly - but what is wrong with that?
It is middle aged men who want toys that, for the most part, drive this industry and many others (audio, photography, sports cars etc).
I thought I would join in you started to be pissed at what apple had introduced then went well its ok bla bla bla.
It not OK the extras are nice the touch scroll and so on but come off it this is the minimum you would expect from apple with a refresh of the power book line. yes they are sort of still good if you don't have one at the moment but if you do then you can't justifies paying for this upgrade.
I am not saying as many are that it should have bean a G5 PowerBooks but what I am saying that apple could have got more speed out of it then that crappie amount of speed.
and apple have had prototypes of Motorola?s dual core CPU since October last year and, had full working models since January so why have they brought out such a half hearted attempt at boosting the power books?
I say ....IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH APPLE.
The only way that this would be is if there extending there rang I.E
APPLE IBOOK = LOW END
APPLE POWERBOOK = MID to HIGH END
APPLE G5 POWERBOOK = TOP END MOBILE WORK STATION
it is also the only product line that apple has that dose not have a minimum of three product solutions in.
SO APPLE SORT IT OUT.
Originally posted by Black Dragon
I am not saying as many are that it should have bean a G5 PowerBooks but what I am saying that apple could have got more speed out of it then that crappie amount of speed.
Are there any PPC processors right now in the market, appropriate for mobile applications and faster than the ones Apple used in this update? If you know something, you must tell S. Jobs NOW, and be sure that Apple will update again the Powerbooks in less than a week.
and apple have had prototypes of Motorola?s dual core CPU since October last year and, had full working models since January...
Now where this comes from?
Originally posted by Black Dragon
...It not OK the extras are nice the touch scroll and so on but come off it this is the minimum you would expect from apple with a refresh of the power book line. yes they are sort of still good if you don't have one at the moment but if you do then you can't justifies paying for this upgrade.
I am not saying as many are that it should have bean a G5 PowerBooks but what I am saying that apple could have got more speed out of it then that crappie amount of speed.
and apple have had prototypes of Motorola?s dual core CPU since October last year and, had full working models since January so why have they brought out such a half hearted attempt at boosting the power books?
I say ....IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH APPLE.
Your complaints have nothing to do with Apple, so how can they sort them out?
The 1.6 Ghz 7447 G4 processor is being overclocked by upgrade manufacturers to 1.7. Freescale does not have a version of the 7447 out yet with speeds greater than 1.67 Ghz, so Apple cannot offer a computer faster than that. At the same time IBM has not delivered a 1.6 Ghz G5 chip that Apple can reliably get in a production model PB.
and apple have had prototypes of Motorola?s dual core CPU since October last year and, had full working models since January so why have they brought out such a half hearted attempt at boosting the power books?
So what if they did, that does not mean that Freescale has them in production at a volume that Apple can use them in their production, or that the added heat of a dual core can be disapated in a production version of a powerbook using them.
So they are stuck at 1.67 Ghz G4 the same as you are, I'm sure that Steve would love to be shipping a 3Ghz G5 iBook for $999 but that is not to be, get over it.
They have added some value, and given their customers as much a speed increase as they can, we should be gratefull thet they didn't let the product stagnate for another 6 months. So a 1.67 Ghz PB isn't enough incentive to get you to upgrade from your 1.5, you probably are not the inteded customer for this PB.
Chill out you guy's I can see what your saying.
But apple also has the chose of Intel, AMD, and, also designing an IBM laptop Processor in stead of trying to make the current one fit.
As many may say that Intel, and AMD aren?t fast enough or there is two little battery life, well I disagree the laptop by some of the manufacture are performing as decent desktop replacement. And no one has to take them laptops at face value I mean come on with all apple creativity they couldn?t over come power probs and the likes. I think they can, and there is also a report some were saying that most PC laptop manufactures don't use the new and up and coming CPU properly there is some kind of feature that puts some parts on sand by and other to sleep there for saving power and improving performance.
I don't now there is no real speed gain from an extra 1,700 MHz so that totally pointless yes new user intending to by a PowerBooks will enjoy it, but i don't think its much use upgrading if you have one already.
Yes I know your saying that what i am complaining about is not apple, but apple employed them and we all have know for a long time that Motorola has not bean up to the job.
They could have at least up two of them CPU's in there.
With a bit of smart technology, and software to go with it there is no reason why they couldn?t have dune that.
or just an idea beef up the graphics card with 256mb ram use NVIDIA?s Nforce go chip and brought out an a panther update with core image and video in? it and there for off loading some of the work from the CPU?
look I am not saying I now what went on, or have the answer but what I am saying that don't celebrate it just because it is new and now give you what you ahead as options before, as part of the package, as if it was really good leap forward.
But hay it?s just my opinion and that just how things work.
Originally posted by Black Dragon
But apple also has the chose of Intel, AMD...
Do you realize that these are x86 processors, meaning no OS X, no Apple software, no Macintosh software, don't you?
...also designing an IBM laptop Processor in stead of trying to make the current one fit.
Apple is NOT a processor manufacturer and certainly NOT a manufacturer of IBM chips.
Originally posted by PB
Do you realize that these are x86 processors, meaning no OS X, no Apple software, no Macintosh software, don't you?
Apple is NOT a processor manufacturer and certainly NOT a manufacturer of IBM chips.
Originally posted by PB
Do you realize that these are x86 processors, meaning no OS X, no Apple software, no Macintosh software, don't you?
Apple is NOT a processor manufacturer and certainly NOT a manufacturer of IBM chips.
No biggie - moving to the Intel chips would not be a problem. They did it before when they moved from 68040 to PowerPC. All you need to do is:
1. Include an emulator of the old instruction set
2. Package things as fat files that include both binaries
3. Phase out the old hardware from support after a few years.
Originally posted by e1618978
No biggie - moving to the Intel chips would not be a problem. They did it before when they moved from 68040 to PowerPC. All you need to do is:
1. Include an emulator of the old instruction set
2. Package things as fat files that include both binaries
3. Phase out the old hardware from support after a few years.
This has been beaten in the past to death in these boards. Anyone willing to shoot again this dead horse in the head
Originally posted by webmail
This doesn't matter to the general public, consumers or anyone buying the laptop. Speed Matters. The laptops come from Apple.com and the Apple store. Therefore anything wrong with it is there fault. That's how it works.
Now this sounds like an over-simplification.
How is it Intel seems to struggle as much with ghz but continually smacks out faster processors? It's not better technology. It's more manpower, and more people working on the problem.
Quite possible.
Apple/IBM/Motorola could do something similar...
This one, I don't know.
Originally posted by e1618978
No biggie - moving to the Intel chips would not be a problem.
Sorry, but you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
I watched the transition to PowerPC as it happened. The transition to PowerPC was about as smooth as they go, and given that Apple and Motorola engineers were both involved in the effort to define PowerPC, they made sure to do what they could (within reason) to make the transition painless.
It still took years, cost a great deal of money and trouble, caused no end of despair over the possibility that it was a mistake and would fail, caused a lot of fussing over the fact that the first generation of PowerPC machines were slower than the ones they replaced (because they were running emulated code almost exclusively), etc. Even MacOS 9.2 shipped with 68k code running in emulation.
Ponder the reception that Transmeta's CPUs have had in the market.
It was a huge mess. And again, that was one of the smoothest transitions in the industry. SGI's transition from MIPS to x86 crippled the company. Intel and HP's decade-long attempt to move its customers from x86 to EPIC (Itanium), which cost untold billions of dollars, was an outright failure. Even their attempt to move to a 64-bit version of x86 was trumped by AMD's more backwards-compatible implementation.
Oh, and goodbye AltiVec, just as people were adopting it in earnest...
For better and for worse, Apple is wedded to the PowerPC well into the future.
Originally posted by Amorph
If the 1.67GHz 7447B is the best CPU they can put in the machine, what do you want them to do? It's not like they're holding back on you.
Here's the problem that I have - if this were a recent thing, Motorola being worthless when it comes to pushing the G4, I'd be able to accept the current situation just fine. But this has been going on for YEARS now. I purchased my TiBook back in early 2002, when it ended up being replaced by a new line of TiBooks. Thus, my 550MHz TiBook, at that point, was already an old model. Three years later, the G4 has only gained just over 1GHz of speed.
I don't know exactly what Apple could have done, because I'm not in that business. But I have trouble believing that their ONLY option was to wait around for the processor that would become the G5. Is there no way that they could have worked with Motorola to at least improve some factors of the G4, such as the bus speed? There were also rumors about IBM taking what was the G3 and adding an AltiVec-type unit to it. How fast have the G3s now gotten up to?
If all else fails, and there really was no other hardware options out there, then Apple should at least price the PowerBooks properly, in my opinion. I think you are not getting the kind of hardware you should be getting for the money involved.
I watched the transition to PowerPC as it happened. The transition to PowerPC was about as smooth as they go, and given that Apple and Motorola engineers were both involved in the effort to define PowerPC, they made sure to do what they could (within reason) to make the transition painless.[/B]
I also watched it happen, and I had both a 68040 and a PPC apple at the same time. I didn't have any problems, and neither did anyone I know.
The whole transition was much easier than all the things windows users put up with on a daily basis.
But, I'll admit, things were a bit slow when you emulated 68040 on the PPC.
At the time I was using Photoshop, KPT, Bryce, word processors, and games. Maybe people doing video editing had a really hard time or something, because of the slowness of emulation?