[James L]

Originally posted by K107:
How many AL PB G4 updates have there been? It came out sept 2003 right. If this update comes out this will be number what? Can someone name the different updates speeds of each model. Maybe we can guess this next update speed.

I maybe new but a PB G5 coming out only 7 months after the G4 came out get real people. WAKE UP AND SHUT UP ABOUT THE G5

Hey K107,

First off, there won't be a G5 PB right now, and Apple has never said there would be (see my above post).

When the Al series came out (MWSF 2003) there was only the 12" and 17". If I remember correctly the 12 debuted at 867 MHZ, while the 17" came out at 1GHZ.

In September, the Reb B of the 12" put it up to its current 1GHZ, while the 17" made a nice jump up t0 1.33GHZ.

The current shipping 15" is the FIRST 15" in the Al series, so it is currently rev A... one rev behind the 12" and 17". It came out at the current shipping speeds... 1GHZ and 1.25 GHZ.

Cheers!

[K107]

Thanks for the info. It kind of hard to find the release dates of a Mac product. I try to find out when its a good time to buy. I was about to purchase a PB 15 then I was read rumors of an update. I hope this one holds ture. I want to own my first apple laptop. I hate waiting.

A PB G5 is a least a 1 and a half years away it just way to soon for that. I'm reading these post around the net about "When is a G5 coming out, I want a G5." Like about 4 months after the AL G4 came out. It just to soon.

[bimmerphile]

Originally posted by K107:
Thanks for the info. It kind of hard to find the release dates of a Mac product. I try to find out when its a good time to buy. I was about to purchase a PB 15 then I was read rumors of an update. I hope this one holds ture. I want to own my first apple laptop. I hate waiting.

A PB G5 is a least a 1 and a half years away it just way to soon for that. I'm reading these post around the net about "When is a G5 coming out, I want a G5." Like about 4 months after the AL G4 came out. It just to soon.

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com

^^ great to have if you want to buy a new mac!

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by mike one:
Eug, Seriously only having 1-1.5 windows open and doing work on them on a $2000 15" laptop is not cool. In fact OSX is more suiting to higher resolution than lower e.g. large 128x128 scalable icons, more widgets, more window options, more applications with obscene ammounts of menus, windows, tiles, etc. Almost all applications can be zoomed to account for a higher dpi if eyesight is a problem. more pixels = less pixelation in terms of photo viewing, blah blah blah, i'm a boring whiney bastard�

I find that for laptops the ideal resolution is about 100 pixels per inch. I find even the iBook 12" squint inducing at 106 dpi. It's no surprise the 14" iBook exists, despite being the same resolution.

[selowitch]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
I find that for laptops the ideal resolution is about 100 pixels per inch. I find even the iBook 12" squint inducing at 106 dpi. It's no surprise the 14" iBook exists, despite being the same resolution.

But ppi is not the same as dpi, right?

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by selowitch:
But ppi is not the same as dpi, right?

You know what I mean.

I like 100 ppi, but 106 ppi is a bit high for OS X IMO.

[selowitch]

I like 100 ppi, but 106 ppi is a bit high for OS X IMO.

So (if I hear you correctly) even though you're technically getting more data (and it's supposedly a "superior" technical specification) with the higher ppi count, you would prefer to get less because it's hard to see text that is so tiny? That's understandable.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by selowitch:
So (if I hear you correctly) even though you're technically getting more data (and it's supposedly a "superior" technical specification) with the higher ppi count, you would prefer to get less because it's hard to see text that is so tiny? That's understandable.

Yes. OS X is not properly built for high pixel densities. Too bad, too.

You can scale up fonts in certain apps, but the OS as a whole doesn't work that way. Ideally it seems that around 100 dpi IMO is best on a laptop, or perhaps lower for a desktop LCD.

By the way, I've checked out some of the 1600x1200 15" x86 laptops. It's TERRIBLE - makes my eyes bleed.

[RooneyX]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Yes. OS X is not properly built for high pixel densities. Too bad, too.

You can scale up fonts in certain apps, but the OS as a whole doesn't work that way. Ideally it seems that around 100 dpi IMO is best on a laptop, or perhaps lower for a desktop LCD.

By the way, I've checked out some of the 1600x1200 15" x86 laptops. It's TERRIBLE - makes my eyes bleed.

Hyperbole!

Windows allows you to adjust the DPI for fonts with a few clicks (Display properties>Advanced). In both OSes we can adjust font sizes. There's no excuse for lo resolutions for power computing. The more the better.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by RooneyX:
Hyperbole!

Windows allows you to adjust the DPI for fonts with a few clicks (Display properties>Advanced). In both OSes we can adjust font sizes. There's no excuse for lo resolutions for power computing. The more the better.

Windows XP (which I run for my desktop) goes all wonky with very high pixel densities.

Similarly, contrary to popular myth, OS X was not built to be properly scalable for pixel density (which is a shame). OS X is built to use much higher pixel density than OS 9, but OS 9 is an anachronism - looks best with very low pixel densities.

[teknik]

Originally posted by Link:
He does take on a really nasty little tone when on his vandetta, however.

Do you even know what vendetta means? All of your statements seem to be composed of that of a 10 year old.

That being said, I believe we will see:

12' 1.2ghz
15' 1.3&1.4ghz
17' 1.5ghz

[onaujee]

tg i returned that pos refurbished and got my money back. i will be buying this if it comes out next week.

[RooneyX]

We want G5s. We're not getting it. Some say Apple should have moved to x86 and we'd have Pentium-Ms by now. But it's too late for that. If Apple was going to do that they should have done it with the introduction of OSX then developers would have had all the apps written by now.

Personally I'd like to see a revolutionary new CPU that kills the Power PC/x86 argument and is so good that all operating systems will move to it. But that's probably years away.

But I'm not going to buy a new 17" Powerbook unless it is a proper desktop replacement with 128MB VRAM, over 2Ghz and 100GBs HD too.

[Commodus]

I've posted predicted specs here before, but I'll throw my hat in the ring one more time based on what I've heard and what I think likely:

iBook

12-inch: 1 GHz, 32 MB Mobility Radeon 9200 or 9600, 30 GB hard drive

14-inch #1: same specs as 12-inch except for 40 GB hard drive

14-inch #2: 1.25 GHz, 60 GB hard drive

PowerBook

12-inch: 1.25 GHz, 64 MB GeForce FX 5600 (or 5650) Go, 40 GB hard drive

15-inch #1: 1.25 GHz, 128 MB Mobility Radeon 9700, 60 GB hard drive

15-inch #2: 1.42 GHz, 128 MB Mobility Radeon 9700, 80 GB hard drive

17-inch: 1.5 GHz, 128 MB Mobility Radeon 9700, 80 GB hard drive


In short, nothing too dramatic (except maybe the 128 MB video chipset) but enough to keep people buying. I have a feeling that Apple will announce PowerBook G5s at Apple Expo in September, even if they only end up shipping in October.

[chrisutley]

Originally posted by SEkker:
This sounds like yet another audible by Jobs, buying time. The new G5 processors are behind production because IBM has been spending its time wooing Microsoft for the Xbox than building G5s for a customer they already won.

Yes, I'm sure that's why they are behind on G5 production for Apple.

[Drakino]

The R9700 mobility, at least from what I've seen, has simply made it into desktop replacement portables, making it LIKELY to happen in the 17" powerbook, and depending on the cooling system, perhaps even plausible for the 15".

Actually, the 9700 Mobility is highly likely. It's a chip that can scale well, so it can be cranked up to 446mHz in machines that can deal with the cooling requirements, or slowed down a tad and still deliver decent preformance. Apple has never released how thei clock their mobile graphics chips, so it's hard to say how they run the 9600's compared to their max spec.

The 9700 is actually an evolution of the 9600 line (as far as laptops). It's pin compatible, and actually puts out less heat then the last chip for the preformance it puts out. The 9700 chips have been done for long enough that Apple would have enough time to make the necessary changes to get them running. Being that the physical chip is the same, only ROM changes and OS X changes would be needed.

[runejoha]

They will make fools of them selves with this stupid upgrades. The next PB will be a G5, and yes they will upgrade the Powermacs before the PBs, so around xmas we might see a PB, or January 2005 (probably). I believed before that the PB G5s are here before, if so they will be nothing but G5s. Be realistic, buy the PB now if u want one!

[K107]

Originally posted by bimmerphile:
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com

^^ great to have if you want to buy a new mac!

Thanks for the link very helpful.

[im_noahselby]

Here are my predictions:

iBook G4
12" - 1 Ghz
14" - 1 Ghz
14" - 1.25 Ghz

- A small visual change to the case will be made.
- Apple might drop the low end price of the iBook from $1099 to $999 to compete better in the market.
- We will see no new graphics cards inside the iBooks. So don't hold your breath!

PowerBook G4
12" - 1.25 Ghz
12" - 1.25 Ghz
15" - 1.25 Ghz
15" - 1.33 Ghz
17" - 1.5 Ghz

- New NVIDEA graphics cards. Nothing spectacular
- Changes are coming to the 12" PowerBook...
- Overall, while it will be nice to see new PB's, I have a feeling that everyone waiting for 15" or 17" models, will be asking themselves tomorrow why they ever waited..

Noah

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by im_noahselby:
Here are my predictions:

iBook G4
12" - 1 Ghz
14" - 1 Ghz
14" - 1.25 Ghz

- A small visual change to the case will be made.
- Apple might drop the low end price of the iBook from $1099 to $999 to compete better in the market.
- We will see no new graphics cards inside the iBooks. So don't hold your breath!

PowerBook G4
12" - 1.25 Ghz
12" - 1.25 Ghz
15" - 1.25 Ghz
15" - 1.33 Ghz
17" - 1.5 Ghz

- New NVIDEA graphics cards. Nothing spectacular

Again, 1250/133.3 = 9.375. Unless you're thinking the iBooks will go with a 167 MHz bus, the 1.25 GHz iBook doesn't make mathematical sense.

Also, the 15" should be much closer to the 17". 1.42 GHz probably for the 15" SuperDrive, if the 17" is 1.5 GHz.

Also, I expect the PowerBooks will go with new ATI GPUs since ATI has better power management built into the higher end GPUs compared to nVidia.

[im_noahselby]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Also, I expect the PowerBooks will go with new ATI GPUs since ATI has better power management built into the higher end GPUs compared to nVidia.

I sure hope Apple adopts ATI GPUs. I just have a feeling that they will dissapoint with this round. Can't wait to see how it all ends up...

Noah

[onaujee]

WHen will the new ones be at the apple stores?

[im_noahselby]

AppleInsider predicts:

iBook G4
12" - 1 Ghz
14" - 1 Ghz
14" - 1.2 Ghz

PowerBook G4
12" - 1.33 Ghz
12" - 1.33 Ghz
15" - 1.33 Ghz
15" - 1.5 Ghz
17" - 1.5 Ghz

Check it out: http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=428

Noah

[miksu]

For everyone who is whining, "how terrible g4 is", think about those Centrino laptops. Pentium M is old Pentium Pro, it's just slightly tweaked for performance and lower power consumption, since Pentium Pro was desktop processor with huge thermal power. All PII/PIII processors were basically based on same Pentium Pro (P6) core. Intel is abandoning it's P4 (Netburst) architecture in favor of Pentium M. Currently, fastest Penitum M runs at 1.7GHz it's NOT as fast as G4 would be at same clock rate. Pentium Pro was introduced in -94 or -95, for G4 it was -99. G4 consumes power something like 1W or 2W, depending on version (mostly, L2-cachesize). It's based on very soli technology, copper-interconnects, SOI, etc.

Beside, many consumer and pro pc-laptops use integrated intel graphics, since otherwise, it's not Centrino It's called Extreme Grahics or something, only extreme being it's unbelievably poor performance. Of course, it's UMA design (Unified Memory Architecture), because it's cheap to implement. Apple has learned something about Performa x200/x300-series, which used UMA and had few other cost-cutting tweaks. Apple hasn't used UMA since -95 or -96, even cheapest iBook has proper ATI/nVidia graphic accelerator with separate memory. Equally priced PC may have or may not,likely not, if it's real brand (IBM, Toshiba, whatever).

Current line is rather good, new will be better. The "Other side" is actually going back to -95, at least we have something newer

[Link]

The sad part, if what you're saying is true, is that the entire P4 architecture was a waste. No surprise there.

Having the entire apple line above 1ghz would be terrific, and a 1.5ghz 15"? SWEET!

[Lateralus]

The 12" 1.33GHz seems like a fantastic machine. If I were in search of a notebook, it would most certainly be my choice.

Way to go Apple. Good update over all.

[iomatic]

Ordered. Muhaaaa! ...spent the extra $ on the 5400rpm drive w00t!

what dy'all think about the 64mb vs. 32mb on a geforce 5200 though?
any real-world tests on this (on the *cough* other platforms?)

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
The 12" 1.33GHz seems like a fantastic machine. If I were in search of a notebook, it would most certainly be my choice.

Way to go Apple. Good update over all.

[Drakino]

what dy'all think about the 64mb vs. 32mb on a geforce 5200 though?
any real-world tests on this (on the *cough* other platforms?)

Not much preformance will be noticed, due to the fact that the memory doesn't do a ton to effect it. Less swapping between main system memory and the video card will occur in games, but again, nothing noticible. Games are designed around minimum requirements, so they do other tricks to avoid the user from seeing the swapouts.

Where it will help more is every day use. If you use the LCD on the laptop and an external monitor, they system now has 32MB to dedicate to each display.

The 128mb upgrade in the 15 and 17 inch models will be noticed even less.

Benchmarks usually don't show the full difference, since in many cases, the card with less memory is sold as a cheeper card, thus they also put slower memory on it. Though this has been backwards in the past. The Radeon 8500 with 64mb ram usually outpreformed the later 128mb models of the card just due to slower memory being put on the 128mb model. It wasn't much of a difference, but it was there.

The upgrade on the 9700 memory is probably an extra memory socket near the video chip. The 9700 supports 64mb on the same chip, then allows an expansion port to be wired in to go to 128. What is hard to say is if it will allow an upgrade after shipping from the factory. Only the service docs can say for sure on this one.

[Drakino]

Originally posted by miksu:
For everyone who is whining, "how terrible g4 is", think about those Centrino laptops. Pentium M is old Pentium Pro, it's just slightly tweaked for performance and lower power consumption, since Pentium Pro was desktop processor with huge thermal power. All PII/PIII processors were basically based on same Pentium Pro (P6) core. Intel is abandoning it's P4 (Netburst) architecture in favor of Pentium M. Currently, fastest Penitum M runs at 1.7GHz it's NOT as fast as G4 would be at same clock rate. Pentium Pro was introduced in -94 or -95, for G4 it was -99. G4 consumes power something like 1W or 2W, depending on version (mostly, L2-cachesize). It's based on very soli technology, copper-interconnects, SOI, etc.

Well, this is stretching it a bit. Saying the Pentium M is a tweaked Pentium Pro is like saying the G4 shipping today is a tweaked PowerPC 601. Or maybe at least a tweaked G3 core. The Pentium Pro had horrible 16 bit issues that were corrected in the PII lines. The PII and III lines also continued to add instructions similar to the Altivec stuff added to the G4. The Pentium M adds even more such instructions, SSE 2 from the P4, and here soon SSE 3 from the newer P4s.

The Pentium M is actually a pretty cool chip. It takes the best parts of the P4 and the P3, and basicially makes a P3.5 chip. Going by cores (P5 for Pentium, P6 for PPro-PIII, P7 for P4), then the Pentium M is more of a P6.5. It lacks the massive pipelines the P4 has, but still has pipelines larger then the P3. Internal cache is at 1MB (on die), and much of the chip was designed around having so much high speed memory right there. It is a hybrid chip, one specificially built for mobile applications.

The Pentium M does represent a change in thought from Intel. It's not selling well because of their marketing. So many consumers think that higher clock speed is better, so the P4 laptops outsell the PM laptops by quite a bit. Thats why Intel is going to model numbers here soon for all their desktop chips instead of clock speeds.

A Pentium M 1.6 is about the same as a P4 2.4ghz performance wise in a laptop. In other words, about a 1.5x increase in performance per clock cycle.

[iomatic]

Well, that's not bad; I'm only going to be using this for simple comps, the occasional video cut, etc. Not high-end editing, just having something simple and portable. Oh, and a few games. Alas, Halo, which I got for my previous 15" Al is probably going to choke it. I hope Battlefield plays well -- that's all I really care about as far as gaming.

Originally posted by Drakino:
Not much preformance will be noticed, due to the fact that the memory doesn't do a ton to effect it. Less swapping between main system memory and the video card will occur in games, but again, nothing noticible. Games are designed around minimum requirements, so they do other tricks to avoid the user from seeing the swapouts.
...
Where it will help more is every day use. If you use the LCD on the laptop and an external monitor, they system now has 32MB to dedicate to each display.