Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Paul Huang · May 2, 2005, 11:21 AM

How about the following specifications for the next PowerBook. Who cares if it is a G4 or G5.

1920x1200
256 MB VRAM
120 GB 7,200 RPM/8MB cache Serial ATA HD
1 GB (of course, it should be 2 GB) RAM
Serial ATA
built-in iSight

osxisfun · May 2, 2005, 11:23 AM

we could leave the isight out...

btw. do they make pb HD size in SATA form? don't know never bother checking...

i would say a screen rez bump will be there too.

lewisyu · May 2, 2005, 12:30 PM

1920x1200 display on PowerBook?

After watched the 1080p trailers on my PB17-1.67G, I really doubt how can the CPU/GPU in my $3000 ($4000 if added asso.) Powerbook can handle this resolution.

Please, give the dual-core PB (and PM as well, sorry for OT).

DylanG · May 2, 2005, 12:38 PM

I'd be very surprised if Apple violated their 100 DPI rule on panel sizes. Apple has always been specific about pixel counts in their UI guidelines. Pixel counts are only consistent across displays if the DPI is consistent. Now Tiger lays the groundwork for a resolution independent UI. I don't know how long it will be until apps support this and it is exposed in the UI. But until then I expect Apple to stick with 100 DPI.

Or I could be completely wrong.

Commodus · May 2, 2005, 12:49 PM

Remember, the manual for the current 17" said (in early runs) that 'depending on how your PowerBook is configured, your display will have a native resolution of either 1440x900 or 1920x1200.' This could just be a strange typo, but I suspect that Apple considers HD worth the effort of breaking with tradition and just didn't mean to put that blurb in the manual so soon. You'll probably only see higher-res screens become an option when there are G5s (or much faster G4s) powering the systems.

sworthy · May 2, 2005, 01:25 PM

I just saw today that SATA notebook drives were shipping in quantity. 40-80 GB I think. I really wish notebook HD's were growing at the same rate as desktops.

SEkker · May 2, 2005, 10:29 PM

Hard drives have hit a local plateau. There is a significant diminishing return currently on capacity over new R&D because of some basics limits in the physics.

Whether they can continue to give us such cheap storage expansion in the future is very much in question, and that's one of the reasons Seagate has started to emphasize quality (and their extended warranty) over just quantity.

All of this hype about 10x greater capacity is just that -- hype. I don't think we're going to see any of that kind of technology for 10 more years or later. The distance between the reader and the platter is 10 nanometers in those prototype devices -- not exactly something that will work in a mobile laptop, the rattle from typing on the keyboard would lead to a 'needle bounce' on the platter at that distance.

As for 1920 x 1200, would this really be better without a decent scalable font in the OS? Smaller text that is harder to read -- I know some members of this forum would like it, I personally would not. Sometimes the 100 dpi in this machine is too small for my taste.

Filburt · May 3, 2005, 03:57 PM

As for 1920 x 1200, would this really be better without a decent scalable font in the OS? Smaller text that is harder to read -- I know some members of this forum would like it, I personally would not. Sometimes the 100 dpi in this machine is too small for my taste.

If you don't mind fuzzy bitmaps scaled up high, Tiger's new resolution independent UI can help (you will need to install Quartz Debug, part of xCode 2.0 installation. (Click the following to see bigger version.)