[eScrib]

We all know the 15" TiBook needs an update. But the 12" and 17" were just rolled out with a new mobo, DDR RAM, AE extreme, etc.

Would apple put R&D into a mobo that is thought to be replaced soon by many here with a 970? Will the 970 PBs have a new mobo design??? Will the first 970 PBs be like of the Yikes desktops? A G4 chip that was running on the old G3 mobos???

Comments???

[dampeoples]

Why wouldn't they? If they didn't, it's wouldn't be much of 'the year of the laptop'

[djjava]

Originally posted by eScrib:
We all know the 15" TiBook needs an update. But the 12" and 17" were just rolled out with a new mobo, DDR RAM, AE extreme, etc.

Would apple put R&D into a mobo that is thought to be replaced soon by many here with a 970? Will the 970 PBs have a new mobo design??? Will the first 970 PBs be like of the Yikes desktops? A G4 chip that was running on the old G3 mobos???

Comments???

you'd think that most people (??) would be unaware of a new chip in production, or if they are aware, atleast skeptical about its release to the point where they would opt to buy the current magnificent PB17. So, let's say there 10,000 people in the market for a new laptop, and the announcement for the PB17 comes... if let's say 20% (a kind over-estimate I'm sure) of those people are willing to wait for a new chip/new revision--that means that unless the 80% (who can't resist temptation) are willing fork over another $4000+, Apple has lost that many sales on the next revision. I think it's too soon... it'd be in Apple's best interest to wait atleast 2.5 years to put out a significant revision to the PB17 if they expect it to be as successful in sales as the current model.

I'm sure most of us that bought the PB17 bought the AppleCare... me personally, I wouldn't think about purchasing a new laptop until the AppleCare expires. Make sense?

I will not be in the market for a new laptop until March 24, 2006, when my AppleCare expires. I'm sure the rest of you will be in the market "on or around" the same time.

[AssassyN]

Originally posted by djjava:
you'd think that most people (??) would be unaware of a new chip in production, or if they are aware, atleast skeptical about its release to the point where they would opt to buy the current magnificent PB17. So, let's say there 10,000 people in the market for a new laptop, and the announcement for the PB17 comes... if let's say 20% (a kind over-estimate I'm sure) of those people are willing to wait for a new chip/new revision--that means that unless the 80% (who can't resist temptation) are willing fork over another $4000+, Apple has lost that many sales on the next revision. I think it's too soon... it'd be in Apple's best interest to wait atleast 2.5 years to put out a significant revision to the PB17 if they expect it to be as successful in sales as the current model.

I'm sure most of us that bought the PB17 bought the AppleCare... me personally, I wouldn't think about purchasing a new laptop until the AppleCare expires. Make sense?

I will not be in the market for a new laptop until March 24, 2006, when my AppleCare expires. I'm sure the rest of you will be in the market "on or around" the same time.

I gotta agree here...it's stictly business. Apple can't release such a HUGE revision so soon after releasing 2 BRAND NEW product designs. In the next revision, expect a 1.25Ghz G4, not a "G5" or any next-gen processor.

[djjava]

Originally posted by AssassyN:
I gotta agree here...it's stictly business. Apple can't release such a HUGE revision so soon after releasing 2 BRAND NEW product designs. In the next revision, expect a 1.25Ghz G4, not a "G5" or any next-gen processor.

thank you for agreeing.... i'm no business expert, myself being in the pee-on stage of my career, but it truly would make no sense putting the 970-mobile chip in a new powerbook before a dual-G4, or even just a faster G4 as Assassyn says.

They would do an injustice to those of us that couldn't resist the PB17 G4 by introducing a PB17 G5 within months of the PB17 G4's release. I'd be pissed, but you know, I love my PB17, and nothing will change that!

[ssvonsimon]

I'm not so sure putting the 970 in the PBs soon makes no sense. Apple is way behind (hardware-wise) and that's not helping getting people to switch or existing mac users to stay. The new Centrinos from Intel have been getting rave reviews. If anything, this has been Intel's "year of the notebook" more than it has been Apple's. Putting the 970 asap in the PowerBooks (and the PowerMacs) is crucial to Apple's market share, and stock value for that matter. I'm sure the number of new sales they'll make from introducing 970 based products will by *far* outstrip the numer of pissed off 12" and 17" PB owners.

Besides, most of them will probably upgrade anyhow.

Just my 2 cents.

Simon

[katorga]

Personally, I think single and dual 970 powerbooks are necessary as soon as possible just to remain competitive. The laptop market is one area where Apple can really entice new customers to "switch". Everyone can see your laptop and no one makes a better looking, more functional, or elegant laptop than Apple. But the performance has to be there.

A 1.0-1.2Ghz G4 could probably match a centrino P3-M for performance, but the Intel chip still gets better battery life. The G4 can't hold a candle to the 2.5Ghz + P4-M systems out there in terms of performance. So, 970's are vital to get a performance advantage and to provide some more "switch" ammunition.

FWIW, what exactly is so darn impressive about centrino systems? The battery life is really nice, but other than that its just a P3 processor with a marginal built in wifi solution. Am I missing something?

[ssvonsimon]

Originally posted by katorga:
FWIW, what exactly is so darn impressive about centrino systems? The battery life is really nice, but other than that its just a P3 processor with a marginal built in wifi solution. Am I missing something?

Actually, it isn't that close to a P3 processor and the performance is more on par with a P4. Check out this article if you want more info:

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/show...i=1800&p=1

Simon

[NightEyes]

While I think Apple definitely needs a chip based on a .13 micron process, it isn't going to happen anytime soon, at least in the PowerBook line. The PPC 970 mobile chip doesn't exist yet, so buy now if you need a new machine.

[xylon]

The two arguements made (1. Apple won't release 970 because it will overwhelm new laptops or 2. Apple will release 970 to bring processors up to date and solidify their standing in the laptop market) are both extremely heavy. Apple I believe realizes that it has a lot of die hard users, users that would be very unhappy if they were shafted because they just bought a 17" or 12" right before Apple released a new processor. On the other hand, Apple has stated that it wants to increase it's market share (what company doesn't?).

I would have argued before that Apple wouldn't release the 970. I used to believe that Apple's first priority was to it's loyal users. While that belief still holds, it has been slightly lessened. Everything I've been reading has been suggesting that Apple is seriously considering making it's move on the personal computing market at the cost of losing some of its loyal users.

So, I'm still uncertain, but if my life depended on it, I'd have to say that Apple is looking to release it's new 970 relatively soon. I guess my faith in Apple has been slightly jilted, but not enough where I'll be buying a peecee anytime soon.

[todrain]

Apple will NEVER put a chip in the PowerBooks before they upgrade the desktops. If Macworld (or CREATE) in NY this July has new PowerMacs with the Chip, we may see PowerBooks with them at MWSF in Jan 2004. No sooner than that.

[MacNStein]

Apple would lose $millions and $millions in R&D if they scrapped the G4 based PBs any time in the next 24 months, it just ain't going to happen.

And as for the G4 being the same as the P4, this couldn't be farther from the truth. In fact, the P3 is faster than the P4 if you look at it on the basis of MHz for MHz performance (the 1GHz P3 was faster than the 1.2GHz P4 in almost every way). Performance-wise, this is how it usually breaks down in similar apps.

G4 vs P4 = 1 to 1.8
G4 vs Celeron = 1 to 2.2
G4 vs P3 = 1 to 1.6
G4 vs Athlon = 1 to 1.5

So, a 1GHz G4 PB would be roughly equivilant to a 1.8GHz P4 notebook, now there are some exceptions (ala, Adobe products for Mac, and MS Office apps for PC), but for the most part I feel this is pretty accurate after working with both platforms extensively. So no, Apple isn't really that far behind at all, even with the venerable G4.

Combine that with OS X being the slickest/best consumer OS on the planet (even with it's relatively few small qwirks), and you can see that Apple has an awesome platform. In fact, the only people who seem to gripe about Apple are the PC "weenies" who only look at raw MHz/GHz speeds, enjoy the jumbled mess that is XP, and that buy into popular media hype instead of actually getting work done.

[naknek]

Would Apple put a 970 in the PBs so soon? I think they would if they could, and they will as soon as they can.

Historically, they have done what they wanted without worrying about angering their recent purchasers. Just look at January's huge price slash on the 23-inch Cinema displays ($3500 -> $2000 with no warning whatsoever), or think back to the G4 introduction, when they replaced the Yikes motherboard with the Sawtooth (AGP graphics, etc.) after only three months.

The current 15-inchers have been out for almost 6 months now. If we don't see a new 15" PB in May, look for a 970 in all the PBs this summer, and G4s in the iBooks. (Otherwise, there would be no reason for them to delay the release of an aluminum 15" so long.) Sounds too good to be true? Maybe, maybe not; but we're way overdue for a G4 replacement, and Apple will make it happen ASAP.

[schmoe]

I am hoping that Apple releases a 970 based 15" PowerBook before my ThinkPad T40p is delivered or the 30 day return period expires. I was quite sad to box my TiG4 667 and ship it to the eBay winner, it was my first Mac and I really loved it. When Apple manages to jump back into competition I will definitely switch back again.

The main reason I switched, aside from PC only software like VMWare, is how slow OS X felt in every day use. Perhaps the 667mhz just didn't cut it, or maybe I didn't have enough vram. Whatever it was I felt more comfortable using my 1.2ghz Dell peice of crap for every day computing.

The new Pentium-M is indeed proof of the 'megahertz myth', as the previously posted review (and the ones elsewhere like tomshardware.com) shows, the 1.6ghz chip equals or beats a 2.2-2.4ghz Pentium4 on all but P4 optimized tasks.

However I did side-by-side benchmarks of such things as compilation, encryption, etc and my TiG4 667 consistently scored about half as well as the 1.2ghz P3-M based Dell. Except for vector optimized tasks (and battery life), I don't think the G4 is any fast than a P3-M. That would make the Pentium-M far better than either.

Yeah, yeah, thats raw performance and even taking into consideration the slower 'feel' of the G4, OS X is a better operating system. I really miss the beauty (that Apple is slowly destroying with Brushed Metal) of the OS. I miss having a full Unix prompt and sane keyboard shortcuts, CMD-* is way nicer than the split of ctrl and alt in Windows. However I use the same or similar apps on both platforms and can't say that OS X is really any more productive in day to day tasks. And I had far more OS X crashes than XP crashes, including complete loss of my drive once.

So Apple really needs something big to stay in the game. Or maybe they'll just release a new 1.1ghz Aluminum PowerBook G4...

[mcs37]

Originally posted by katorga:
Personally, I think single and dual 970 powerbooks are necessary as soon as possible just to remain competitive. The laptop market is one area where Apple can really entice new customers to "switch". Everyone can see your laptop and no one makes a better looking, more functional, or elegant laptop than Apple. But the performance has to be there.

Agreed. I don't think it would necessarily kill the sales of the 12.1" or 17" PB with a 15.4" PB with a 970 PPC. The PowerPC 64-bit ISA is downwardly compatible with the 32-bit PPC, so everything would run well and all, so people won't get pissed. But Apple knows as well as anyone else that the 64-bit desktop/laptop is on the horizon, what with reports from all over the net of the Opteron, the 970, and the (barf) Itanium 2.

The question is: why wouldn't Apple want the most powerful laptop system on the market? For the "year of the laptop," a (single|dual) 64-bit laptop would most certainly justify the name.

Remember that the majority of Apple's sales come in from their laptop line since the desktop systems alone still can't compete with high-end PC machines. Apple should most definitely continue to focus on the Powerbook line. Imagine the geek factor of a dual 64-bit procesosr in your laptop! There is definitely more to 64-bits than the name and millions of terabytes of memory (in theory): a RISC ISA that's 64-bits wide can eat up tasks involving large numbers, so your photo/video editing can certainly take advantage of the extra power. Plus let's not forget that the 1.2 GHz PPC 970 supposedly emits less heat and draws less power than a 1 GHz G4. Throw in the fact that the 17" PB has a LOT of extra area within its case to easily support an extra processor.

Apple is desperately trying to win the attention of switchers. So far they've done it with a UNIX-based OS with a great GUI, ease-of-use, and a sexy look. They haven't been able to win over the majority of people yet in terms of performance since most people don't understand the megahertz myth, and when John Q. America reads that he can get a 3.06 GHz PC with a flat panel monitor, 120 GB hard drive space and 512 RAM for $2,000, he is much more likely to purchase that over a laptop with a 1 GHz processor. The megahertz myth is killer to the non-technically inclined folks, which are, I am afraid to say, the majority of users.

There is hope though. I intend to throw down my hard-earned cash for a 17" PB with dual 970 processors the day they announce it. Maybe throw in a tiny HDTV tuner as well, Apple, and perhaps whatever the next version of Bluetooth might be (2.0?) if there even is such a thing (aside: the idea of transferring MP3's and images from my MP3 player and camera wirelessly is great; however the idea of transferring gigabytes of data at a measily 764 kbps or whatever is not so great).

[mcs37]

Originally posted by NightEyes:
While I think Apple definitely needs a chip based on a .13 micron process, it isn't going to happen anytime soon, at least in the PowerBook line. The PPC 970 mobile chip doesn't exist yet, so buy now if you need a new machine.

Yes it does exist. We (IBM) are producing it right now in East Fishkill, NY.

[mcs37]

Originally posted by xylon:
I guess my faith in Apple has been slightly jilted, but not enough where I'll be buying a peecee anytime soon.

Exactly their strategy! You see, Apple has a track record of screwing its loyal users over (rejections for returns on laptops, of which I've heard of many personally; no OS 9 on the new Powerbooks, although God knows why you would want OS 9; etc.). They do this with the intent of making bigger and better things and winning PC users over, which they've done a great job of so far. I know dozens of switchers who are on these forums and elsewhere awaiting the next big thing from Apple. It's become an obsession of mine to check my favorite forums for the latest gossip, even though it's mostly speculation, although educational. I don't even own a Mac yet, but over the past few months I've paid $100 to join the student ADC and I am entertaining an offer at Apple this summer (internship). Again, I don't even own a Mac yet.

We switchers are frustrated with Windows, and pure Unix (esp. Linux) is just not user-friendly enough yet. I am frustrated beyond belief when I have to go out and follow a tree of finding/downloading/installing dependencies on my Linux box to install one damn RPM that has a dozen components not previously installed. As for Windows, I hate the shitty OS that slows the fastest PCs to a crawl after 6 months and requires reinstallations (never had to reformat on my Linux box except when I seriously ****ed the system up myself!). Apple is the best solution for many. UNIX kernel for us nerds who understand how great the command line is, how fast emacs/vi is if you know what you're doing, and how stable BSD is. Additionally we get the layer of support that Mac users have always enjoyed, albeit at a higher price: i.e., the "it just works" philosophy. I don't have to hunt down stupid drivers when Windows doesn't automatically install them! It's great.

Anyway I'm drifting off course here. The point is that you Apple fans are loyal users who love your systems and will do whatever Apple says, if you think about it. How many of you defend Apple's moves no matter how much they anger objective PC users, or even yourselves? (no USB 2.0, e.g.; no L3 cache in the 12.1" PB nor a 1 GHz processor; a poor consumer care policy?) I see it all the time. But you, the loyalists, continue to pay high prices for all products from Apple. And I am with you (or will be once I buy my 12" PB). Why? Because it's cool, you get nicer features for the added cost, it's UNIX (i.e. stable), and it WORKS.

So Apple could release the 15" PB with PPC 970 at the WWDC this summer, and some of you would bitch and moan how you wasted $3,000 on the 17" PB when six months later your machine's processing power gets shaftd. But you'll say "oh well, I love my powerbook" and keep on computing. As you should!

Does anyone see my point? I'm very sick right now so I have no idea what I just wrote about...it has to do with devotion to Apple which I admit I have myself, happily.... it's like devotion to Catholicism. I'm also very angry that news.com released an article today about a hand-gesture control system that I was working on in my spare time....bastards with millions of dollars of R&D took my idea...although I took it from minority report...but I took away the gloves at least! It was a cool idea... Anyone read that cool article about how PC's are like the protestants and Macs are like Catholics? I liked it. Since I'm Catholic. (read that article here).

Cheers everyone. Keep on computing!

[chrisutley]

I'm guessing the new 12 and 17 case will ship with 970's in them within 6-months of the desktop 970 introduction.

[PoisonTooth]

Originally posted by dampeoples:
Why wouldn't they? If they didn't, it's wouldn't be much of 'the year of the laptop'

If you're counting on a PPC970 in a PowerBook to make your "year of the laptop" complete, you're going to be mighty disappointed.

[PoisonTooth]

Originally posted by mcs37:
As for Windows, I hate the shitty OS that slows the fastest PCs to a crawl after 6 months and requires reinstallations

You were doing so well until you got trite and cliche with this sort of thing. It's too bad, really. You were almost credible.

[Eug]

Originally posted by MacNStein:

G4 vs P4 = 1 to 1.8
G4 vs Celeron = 1 to 2.2
G4 vs P3 = 1 to 1.6
G4 vs Athlon = 1 to 1.5

So, a 1GHz G4 PB would be roughly equivilant to a 1.8GHz P4 notebook, now there are some exceptions (ala, Adobe products for Mac, and MS Office apps for PC), but for the most part I feel this is pretty accurate after working with both platforms extensively. So no, Apple isn't really that far behind at all, even with the venerable G4.

IMHO, those estimates are far too optimistic for the G4, in real-world use.

[mcs37]

Originally posted by PoisonTooth:
You were doing so well until you got trite and cliche with this sort of thing. It's too bad, really. You were almost credible.

Ummm..... OK. Well as my post says I was incredibly sick, tired, and dizzy yesterday as I wrote that article. And I don't see how cliche'd my mention of Windows is. I have been using Windows since 3.1 and I know how shitty it is. Since you don't understand how Windows works, I will explain it to you: on a brand-new Windows PC (2.5 GHz, let's say) with 128 MB RAM, the system is too slow for the user to be productive. Bump it up to 512 MB RAM and you can work. But even then, after about six months or so of continuous use, the system gets so trashed with tiny installations and changes that it gets slower in a linear fashion, O(n). It is still useable since the processor keeps cooking fast as does the RAM, but the problem with the hard drives persist. Then you need to defrag your drive at this point to gain a small performance increase. But it doesn't matter if your drive is defragged; there are still dozens of little programs installed that you didn't even know about (off the net) that begin to eat up more resources as their populations increase. The best solution, then, is to reformat and reinstall Windows.

Compare this to a solid OS such as Red Hat Linux, and you'll notice that linux boxes go for years without any noticeable performance hit. My box has an uptime of 400 days right now and it's still as fast as it was to begin with. Why? Cuz the OS is amazing. The Windows/DOS OS is still a piece of crap.

As for your Mac OS X, I do not yet know how well it performs in this scenario. Does it require reinstall after six months? Does it slow as the months pass? Not sure. But it has the BSD kernel, so at least it has a great start. I know that OS X crashes almost as frequently as XP--although few like to admit it--because of its GUI. Running GNOME/KDE under Red Hat will crash the user interface, although the OS will continue to keep trucking. In conclusion, Linux is the superior OS of the three, with Mac OS X coming in second (most likely). However Mac OS X has the superior interface and look.

[Simon]

Originally posted by mcs37:
I know that OS X crashes almost as frequently as XP--although few like to admit it--because of its GUI. Running GNOME/KDE under Red Hat will crash the user interface, although the OS will continue to keep trucking.

Baloney.

I have never had OS X crash (because of the GUI - as you say) without me being able to just do a remote ssh session and kill the user login session. That way the session was lost, but the machine was still running and I could log in again.

That's exactly the same way it works on my RedHat machine running Gnome. It can hang - because of the Gnome GUI and what I have to do is a remote ssh login, kill the Xsession and all is fine. So RedHat/Gnome is exactly as stable or unstable as OS X is.

XP is a whole other ball game. There is no UNIX underdspinning and sshd I could login to remotely and kill the XP GUI session. Once XP freezes, the box is gone. That's the difference.

The only crash on a Mac or Linux machine that could come close to that is a KP and neither on OS X nor on RedHat/Gnome have I ever had one.

I agree with you that a box running pure Linux without any X11 stuff (as a server could for instance) may be more stable than OS X, but any Linux running X11 with Gnome or KDE or something like that is no more stable than OS X.

[mcs37]

Originally posted by Simon:
I agree with you that a box running pure Linux without any X11 stuff (as a server could for instance) may be more stable than OS X, but any Linux running X11 with Gnome or KDE or something like that is no more stable than OS X.

I agree with you. The only difference is I don't know how easy it is to ssh into a mac osx box and kill the GUI and restart it. I am simply ignorant of the command to start the GUI again.

My point is that the OS X GUI will crash the interface as often as Gnome/KDE. Additionally Jaguar is much more stable than 10.1 which, I am told, crashed more often than an XP box.

You're preaching to the converted! Anyway the original point of this thread was to argue if Apple would put the 970 into the PBs soon. I was arguing they would if they had the chance without worrying about offending their loyal users because they know you will remain loyal to them since going to the PC world is an option you would never consider. So they will piss you off temporarily but you will continue to buy Apple products; simultaneously, Apple will win over millions of switchers with the promise of single|dual 64-bit laptops with a beautiful GUI and strong OS. Apple would then continue to make more money on its laptop line which is its primary source of revenue now. Hook, line, and sinker.

[ebolla]

" I have never had OS X crash (because of the GUI - as you say) without me being able to just do a remote ssh session and kill the user login session. That way the session was lost, but the machine was still running and I could log in again."

can you tell me how to go about that? - i regularly get finder issues and would love to just be able to kill the login from my other mac in the house rather than deal w/ a force restart

[Simon]

Originally posted by mcs37:
I agree with you. The only difference is I don't know how easy it is to ssh into a mac osx box and kill the GUI and restart it. I am simply ignorant of the command to start the GUI again.

Originally posted by ebolla:
can you tell me how to go about that? - i regularly get finder issues and would love to just be able to kill the login from my other mac in the house rather than deal w/ a force restart

It's been quite a while since, and I'm not in front of my Mac now, but there is process called loginwindow or systemuiserver or something like that. I got its PID and did a kill -9. That's all.

Originally posted by mcs37:
You're preaching to the converted!

Ah no, it's not that bad. I just got the impression that you were advocating higher Linux GUI stability vs. OS X stability which I thought made no sense.

[mcs37]

Originally posted by Simon:
Ah no, it's not that bad. I just got the impression that you were advocating higher Linux GUI stability vs. OS X stability which I thought made no sense.

Nah I would say they are on the same level with each other. In my personal experience I've only had a Linux GUI crash a few times, which I could always kill and restart no problem. I'm sure Apple is working hard with Panther to make its GUI much more stable since it relies on it for the interface, whereas I almost never fire up X on my Linux box. I always just SSH in remotely.