New Powerbook tech must-haves...
to be compelling as evolutionary, not merely an upgrade.
My suggestions for the BIG VISION, but feasable technologies to include. Caution, I'm not saying they should or could all be done at once for an ammount anywhere near affordable to buy ot profitable to make...yet. But remember Airport was WAY too expensive and forwrd thinking when Apple introduced it. Apple made USB a household name and requirement when everything was Parallel, SCSI and ADB ports.
My suggestions:
? Carbon Fiber Powerbook frames (lighter than steel and 10 times stronger) or at least laminates for increased durabiity at lighter weights, carbon fiber is also more resistant to high heat and is conductive to electricity.
? OLED (Organic Light Emmitting Diodes) Screens, in use now in cell phones and digital cameras, uses far less power than LCDs and are brighter.
? Airport antenna port, allowing users to boost their Airport signal with any number or commercially sold or homemade booster antennas, a big bragging right, increased functionality with low support cost, easy tio implement.
? Independent ability to play CDs and DVDs, WITHOUT having to boot up.
? New battery chemistry, more power/more PB life...move away from current PB batteries. Wil be more specific in later post on this thread.
? Faster Front Side Bus, memory controller and motherboard
? Sealed keyboard etc to prevent spills from causing damage, easy to clean.
? A Flash Drive or Magnetic Ram for Mac OS X anddiagnostics only to allow for instant on capeabiltiy and the abiltiy to run full diagnostics and repairsof the hard drive without external hardware.
My suggestions for the BIG VISION, but feasable technologies to include. Caution, I'm not saying they should or could all be done at once for an ammount anywhere near affordable to buy ot profitable to make...yet. But remember Airport was WAY too expensive and forwrd thinking when Apple introduced it. Apple made USB a household name and requirement when everything was Parallel, SCSI and ADB ports.
My suggestions:
? Carbon Fiber Powerbook frames (lighter than steel and 10 times stronger) or at least laminates for increased durabiity at lighter weights, carbon fiber is also more resistant to high heat and is conductive to electricity.
? OLED (Organic Light Emmitting Diodes) Screens, in use now in cell phones and digital cameras, uses far less power than LCDs and are brighter.
? Airport antenna port, allowing users to boost their Airport signal with any number or commercially sold or homemade booster antennas, a big bragging right, increased functionality with low support cost, easy tio implement.
? Independent ability to play CDs and DVDs, WITHOUT having to boot up.
? New battery chemistry, more power/more PB life...move away from current PB batteries. Wil be more specific in later post on this thread.
? Faster Front Side Bus, memory controller and motherboard
? Sealed keyboard etc to prevent spills from causing damage, easy to clean.
? A Flash Drive or Magnetic Ram for Mac OS X anddiagnostics only to allow for instant on capeabiltiy and the abiltiy to run full diagnostics and repairsof the hard drive without external hardware.
Comments
The blue OLED's do not currently last much more then 2 years. Too short for a laptop screen, but fine in a 18 month (or less in places like Hong Kong, SIngapore, Japan, South Korea, etc) turnover cellphone market. However lifetime is improving and a few years down the road should see OLED's everywhere.
Ruins the aesthetics of the computer. At least somewhat. Using something other then metal and possibly increasing the airport internal antenna length would probably be enough. However it could be nice in those low signal places. I'm torn on this one.
Yes. I would love that feature. As it is if I have the time I generally rip the DVD onto the hard drive and delete when I'm done because it uses way less battery power. WIthout the overhead of everything else that would be a good jump in battery life for watching DVDs.
Problem: Lithium-Ion batteries are basically the best possible substance to use for batteries. I have heard a few things about better batteries; but any improvement short of a fuel cell (which is not going to be any time soon) will be incremental.
The FSB and system controller along with the processor required for these improvements depends on Motorola and IBM, which are largely out of Apple's control. However if Apple continues to increase sales of machines that have G4 processors (Mac mini/iBooks/Powerbooks/eMacs) they could put enough pressure on Motorola for a custom variant of the e600 series chips with the accompanying FSB/Controller and speed improvements. The 7448 (1.8 GHz+, 200 MHz FSB) would be an ok stopgap solution.
The current e600s are nice, but not quite suited for Apple. They might use them anyway if they have no other choice.
Apple's current motherboards do need work; they still use separate cards for airport and bluetooth rather then putting them on the motherboard like Centrino does with wireless. Plus they lack PCI express and DDR 2 memory. Nothing I expect to be fixed before the e600/G5 though.
I would absolutely love a sealed keyboard as long as it remained as nice as the current Powerbook keyboards for feel.
Interesting. If it would inexpensive/easy to do I could see something along these lines.
I'd add a couple.
Move the 12" Powerbook to a 13" screen to allow parity (with the extra room the hotter GPU/CPUs should be able to squeezed in) with the 15"/17" models. Maybe standardize on the 16x10 aspect ratio rather then have slightly different ratio widescreens as it exists not with the 15" and 17" models.
Add a 10" or 11" Powerbook sans optical drive along the lines of some of Sony's offerings. This would do great in Japan, quite possibly enough to justify it's existence even with low sales elsewhere.
Move the iBooks to 10"/11" and 13.3" widescreens in order to reduce component costs.
Upgrade the screens. Personally I like Sony's Xbrite and something like that (only with a matte finish rather then a glossy one) would be nice.
Carbon fiber can't be used as its too brittle. It will break if bent even slightly (albeit it needs to be under far greater pressure to bend). Titanium yes though.
Dobby.
Originally posted by ChilliMac
? OLED (Organic Light Emmitting Diodes) Screens, in use now in cell phones and digital cameras, uses far less power than LCDs and are brighter.
Too bad large OLEDs do not exist.
? Airport antenna port, allowing users to boost their Airport signal with any number or commercially sold or homemade booster antennas, a big bragging right, increased functionality with low support cost, easy tio implement.
But it would require Apple to admit that the built-in antennas are not adequate, which they won't do.
? Independent ability to play CDs and DVDs, WITHOUT having to boot up.
Waking from sleep takes 1 second; what more could you want?
? New battery chemistry, more power/more PB life...move away from current PB batteries. Wil be more specific in later post on this thread.
Once again, more advanced batteries do not exist.
Not functional really, but that'd be really cool
Originally posted by wmf
Too bad large OLEDs do not exist.
17"? 40"?
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/05/1...id=137&tid=196
Originally posted by wmf
Waking from sleep takes 1 second; what more could you want?
Being able to watch music, without having the entire system running. Lost of things draw power, especially the screen!
Longhorn has this a feature, now the hardware makers only need to support this fully..
Personally, I'd just like to see a faster FSB and a longer batterytime.
Originally posted by ChillMac
My suggestions:
? Carbon Fiber Powerbook frames
? OLED (Organic Light Emmitting Diodes) Screens
? Airport antenna port
? Independent ability to play CDs and DVDs, WITHOUT having to boot up.
? New battery chemistry, more power/more PB life...
? Faster Front Side Bus, memory controller and motherboard
? Sealed keyboard etc to prevent spills from causing damage, easy to clean.
? A Flash Drive or Magnetic Ram for Mac OS X . . .
I am going to build on your ideas.
1. Carbon Fiber is brittle, and shatters into sharp pieces. bad. It's also not stronger than steel in most regards. I say build it out of Torlon composite, which is way more exotic
2. OLED still has a long way to go before it will be in a large size screen with accurate color representation.
3. If Apple makes a really killer internal antenna, there's no need for an external one.
4. There's no much out there beyond LiIon. LiPoly is not actually any better, it's just a new substrate technology that allows some more exotic form factors (thin). As I have suggested many times, the new powerbooks should have non-removable batteries, and lots of them. That way the cells can be crammed wherever there's space.
5. Thinkpads used to have the stand alone CD player. No one ever used it. Apple wants you to get an iPod to listen to music.
Personally, I think big improvements can be made on battery life, heat dissipation, and thinness. I think it's certainly possible to have a cooler running, 1" thick 15" powerbook with 6 hours of real world battery life. Apple is great at squeezing components into the iPod. I think the powerbook will be the next product that starts to get miniturized by better packing.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
I think the powerbook will be the next product that starts to get miniturized by better packing.
Fuck that. I would rather have the PowerBook the same thickness and fully user-servicable like the iMac G5 has become than thinner and more shit glommed in there.
Originally posted by ibook911
Why can't you use carbon fiber? No user is ever going to put enough force on it to break. I just don't see that happening. They make carbon fiber briefcases, mugs, etc.
We had 2 carbon fiber mugs fracture when we were toasting to a successful software releases. Hit the edge at the wrong angle with an alumunium coffee mug and cracks appeared in the carbon fiber one.
They could have been just crap tho but the company who makes them supplies Giant with carbon fiber frames so they should have been okay.
Dobby.
As far as the case is concerned, I think the ibooks are more rugged than the powerbooks, and so the powerbooks ought to go to a plastic case. What could be an advantage is make the case easily replaceable. Have an outer, clear shell which can be easily taken off by the end user. Third parties could make "skins" you could put inside, or compatible outer cases of more exotic materials like wood, leather or fur.
I also think it'd be better if the battery was removed from the palm rest, rather than from the bottom. I've seen them nearly fall out a couple of times. And I'd like a door over the ports to keep them from being damaged; and, in case they do, they should be on a little inexpensive-to-replace daughtercard.
Originally posted by DHagan4755
Fuck that. I would rather have the PowerBook the same thickness and fully user-servicable like the iMac G5 has become than thinner and more shit glommed in there.
The question obviously is: how many times have you removed your powerbook's battery for reasons not related to replacing it? Next, the topic is servicibility itself. If you do much beyond changing the RAM in your iMac, you void the warranty. It's not too much to expect 3rd parties to sell replacement batteries that are user installable, but void the warranty through installation. Given that the machine is out of warranty by the time the battery degrades anyway, I don't see a problem with this.
What's more interesting, though, is by omitting the battery packaging, a 3rd party battery replacement kit can be sold for a low price, which when added to a $50 service fee from your authorized technician is still less than what you pay for a replacement battery pack today.
A small internal battery that is only used when the computer is sleeping. Then, you turn over the computer, take out the main battery and put in a new one. This allows you to use several batteries without rebooting. Would be very useful and can't imagine the sleep mode consumes that much power, so the internal battery would be fine for the lifetime of the computer (or could be serviced anyway.) Make this a powerbook-only option, and you have a simple but very handy feature for pros who work in the outdoors, oil rigs, geographers, very long flights etc...
Change the color of the case to match Tiger: make it black. Use either the same plastic as the iBooks (but thinner) or black aluminium. Keyboard, trackpad, powercharger, everything else goes black. Perhaps with red LEDs, a bit like the U2 iPod. Keep iBooks white to contrast.
Wireless AV. Like AirTunes, but video and sound, perhaps working with something like Airport Express.
digital audio in/out standard, not just on 17"
BTO transponder. Would go well with other security measures in OS X, like FileVault, although it might not be for average users. Integrate with anti-theft program. Along those lines, BTO fingerprint reader, which already exists on some laptop PCs. Again only for cool factor or security needs.
Superdrive should burn Dual Layer DVDs and BluRay.
All this, out with G5 processor, second half of 2006.
Originally posted by Issandr El Amrani
My suggestions for new features:
A small internal battery that is only used when the computer is sleeping. Then, you turn over the computer, take out the main battery and put in a new one. This allows you to use several batteries without rebooting. Would be very useful and can't imagine the sleep mode consumes that much power, so the internal battery would be fine for the lifetime of the computer (or could be serviced anyway.) Make this a powerbook-only option, and you have a simple but very handy feature for pros who work in the outdoors, oil rigs, geographers, very long flights etc...
I believe this is already a feature in PowerBooks today..
Hold on: just downloaded the manual, here's the money quote:
"If your battery runs low while you are working, you can put your PowerBook to sleep and replace the battery with a charged one. The internal backup battery provides enough power to maintain the contents of RAM for up to three minutes while you change the battery. "
WOW! Very cool. Can't wait to try that. Sorry again for uninformed post.
dont know if its true, but i think i've read it somewhere