New Powerbooks!

[*DAMN Hazard]

New 12" and 17" Powerbooks. They look so awesome.

AND MINIME AND YAO MING COMMERCIAL

http://www.apple.com/hardware/video/powerbookg4bigandsmall.html

[jn.loudnotes]

Heh. . .I still like mine that I got a couple weeks ago. . . even if it cost more.  The 15" model didn't change very much, and they no longer have the price rebate on RAM (double it for $40).  So I don't feel too bad.

The 17" is cool. . .but a little big for me.  1280x854 is plenty resolution for me :-D

[*DAMN Mauti]

It's really sad that Apple needs a huge expensive MacWorld to present 2 new OLD powerbooks. Except the screens and minor new features like FireWire2 nothing is really new I would have prefered a speed bump and the release of the Radeon 9700 for the G4 towers. Wth needs so long??? The Radeon 9700 is out for the PC since almost 4 months...

Bye,

Mauti

[Jimmy]

Mauti, I think you missed some points.  Don't forget about the software released at MacWorld, it's always a big deal too.  But beyond that, there are many more new things about these powerbooks then you are giving them credit for.  

They aren't titanium anymore, but an aluminum allow (different heat, not painted so wont scratch as much, etc).  

Better graphics cards.

Bluetooth built in.  (huge inovation)

DDR RAM

Firewire 2

$1799 for the 12", that's cheap for a G4 with bluetooth and everything else you get.

New batteries.

Moved the airport antenna so that they work like an iBook.

and last of all, 802.11g

That's got to be the biggest announcement for hardware.  Not only is 802.11g backwards compatable with b, not only is it 54Mbs, but it can also support 50 users, not just 10 like the old airport.  Also, they are now making two models of the basestation, both do 802.11g, both have a USB connecter (big plus), both do automatic bridging (important for business), but one has a modem and remote antenna.  They also reduced the price on both of these from what the old airport basestation was.  Without the modem/antenna they are $199, that's $100 cheaper with more features.

So, dig the powerbooks as much as I do, the new Airport was even bigger news.

The towers with speedbumps (and the 9700) along with speedbumps on the iBook are supposed to be announced in about a month.  Apple just got in a shipment of 1GhZ G3's which can only be for the iBooks (unless there is something else new in the works).

[*DAMN Mauti]

Yes of course Jimmy you are right there is more as I posted but somehow I still feel unsatisfied with it hehe especially when I compare it with older MacWorlds...

[ShadowBox]

I think the new Powerbooks are awesome. And as far as this MacWorld expo, I think that it is one of the best in a few years. The anouncements on the software front alone were huge. Safari, iPhoto 2, iMovie 3, iDVD 3, Final Cut Express, and Keynote. Then you got the inovations in hardware, Airport extreme (802.11g), Firewire 800, and the 12" and 17" powerbooks were cool.

While it would have been nice to see faster towers with the new technologies, I'm fine right now knowing that they are coming really soon.

[Jimmy]

I know that the speed bumps by Apple have been small, but the MDD (mirror drive door) dual 1.25GhZ mac have only been shipping for a few months.  Do you really want to hear about updates at Macworld NY that wont be here for over a month.  Apple has done that enough in the past.  Hearing that a new tower that 1.6GhZ shipping in April today would have bothered me more then hearing it in a month or two.  Telling people early only hurts their own sales.  Look how many people are holding out for the IBM 970 chips, and Apple hasn't even announced that they will be using them.

For MacWorld Expo's, I look forward to hearing about inovation and changes, not just speed bumps.  The only announcement on the towers that I would have liked to hear today was news on the 970's (like that Apple was testing them or something), but that's not news that I expect Apple to tell unless they've made a decision.  Maybe we'll hear about them at MWSF.

[*DAMN Mauti]

Yeah Jimmy you are right again but at all I think new powerbooks and software is to less. It doesn't change anything on the fact that Apple is far behind the performance of a PC. The new powerbooks have firewire2 - cool but did Apple also present hardware that makes use of it!? It will follow I am sure however they could have added some nice external hds for the pb. Powerbooks have DDR RAM - cool but have they updated the front side bus so you notice a difference? - No they haven't grrr as you can see at the G4 towers they just give them DDR ram without to change the front site bus speed and other things so we can use it. Apple makes the same faults as the PC World. I can remember when all PC game magazines at the start of DDR Ram wrote that it doesn't make any difference. They solved it I expected from Apple they don't do the same fault err when the G4 came out I had to read the same over at http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/.  This sucks although Apple is leading in presenting new ideas - they have introduced FW, made video editing popular, always have wonderful designed computers that get copied again and again that's all nice but on the other side they make total bs like introducing DDR where no Mac can use it yet.They add ?BER loud vents to the towers. For this price they really could have added better and quieter vents grrr

For myself, Apple was always near perfect when they made something they made it wholeheartly but recently I am very unsatisfied with their policy. - Also the stupid .mac com thing. I really enjoyed my @mac.com but 100 dollars rofl. They could have really given us the address as present for being loyal Mac user(My Mac Classic 2 still owns).

I hope they come back and as you said I am also waiting for the 64bit processors and maybe this will start a new mac era where we don't have to daily observe  that a 600dollar cheap PC owns every Mac when it comes to games...

Mauti

[kami]

Well I heard this would be a boring MacWorld and that there was just going to be a package of updated iApps that would cost $50, this totally blew me away with the new powerbooks and the new features in the iApps, totally unexpected! Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised though, Apple never stops to amaze me! Good going Apple!

[Mr. Lothario]

     I guess the key is, write Apple and tell them something like "You produced a flawed implementation of DDR RAM, and it is useless. I am a gamer and I want performance. I was going to buy a new high-end Mac this month, but now I'm going to wait until some performance upgrades are introduced, such as a much faster bus speed. I look forward to purchasing another Macintosh, once the performance equals the price." I would guess that Apple doesn't hear from their gamer customers very much. Let 'em know.

[BTs_Colin]

You guys need to learn how to read news sites.

From IMG:
Possibly even more interesting to Mac gamers is the fact that a number of demo machines in the Macworld gaming arena were running the Radeon 9700. According to ATI, this beefy 128MB card has made significant progress over the last six months in terms of OS X drivers. This is proved by the amazing stability of the machines demonstrated at Macworld.

Not to mention first time a Geforce chip has been used in a Mac laptop.

However a couple things bother me. The graphics accelerator in the 12in PB is only a 64-bit Geforce 4 Go. Why must Apple insist on ruining all the low end graphics (like having a specially made 32 MB Geforce 4 MX fot the dual 867- READ WASTE OF R&D).

Also the middle Powerbooks are crap. No one in their right might would buy one, knowing that they have no DDR RAM or ATA/100 drives. It makes no sense to have the lower end model better then the mid-range. I bet the 12 inch outperforms the 15.2 despite the level 3 cache. Well that was a bit of a ramble but I just think they should update the whole line. If I spent 4500 CDN on the 1ghz 15.2in PB I would be pissed about getting 5 year old RAM and HD technology.

Other things happen yesterday though. Powerlogix and Sonnet released new upgrades. I'm considering getting the G3/800Mhz for my B&W.

[jn.loudnotes]

I'll agree with everyone except Colin.  Since I'm sitting here typing on a 15inch Powerbook, which is essentially the same as the new one. . .I can tell you that it doesn't suck at all.

In fact, if you're leaning to the high end, it's far more reasonable than the 17".  The 12" is a nice innovation, but the 15.2 is still the ideal configuration.

As was mentioned, most of the 17" features are useless now, and will be for quite sometime.  Do you have or plan on having any devices that use Firewire 800?  Have any even been made yet?  The DDR RAM is pointless at this point.  And 1gb of normal RAM is plenty fast enough for 99% of anything you're going to do.  You don't need 512mb of DDR.  Plus, while Bluetooth, Airport extreme, etc are really cool features, you CAN'T DO ANYTHING WITH THEM!

Lol. . .these updates really were pointless at this point.  Do you have a need to put 50 users on your Airport network with your laptop??

Only real improvement - graphics card on the 17".  But the 15" is more than adequate.. .GhR runs like a charm.

Btw. . .17" is a great innovation. . .but who wants a laptop that big? I'm proud of how light and small my laptop is.  I think the 12" will thus be a big hit.  17" won't even fit in standard laptop cases, meaning you'll have to fork over a lot for an Apple one.

[*DAMN Mauti]

Look at this http://barefeats.com/pb17.html

Maybe now you understand my concern about apple's policy. Also the fact that the new NVIDIA Apple pb chips are weaker than the old ATI 9000 Radeon Mobility chips scares me.  -> The Apple Go chips base on the GForce 4MX models contrary to the PC where the top Go chips base on the GForce 4 Ti. Apple I really get pissed if I read this - I should pay  more than for an equal PC laptop and then I even get worse graphic chips bah. If Apple continues this bs...

The PC users must rofl! And I agree with Barefoot the 12'' powerbook should also have the same graphic card and speed as the 17''. However I would never buy me a 17'' notebook. 15'' is the allrounder(and should be upgraded as well) and my uncle's 12'' iBook is what I can call mobile computer. I would love to see a top notch G4 pb with 12'' but with the current G4 12'' I can only suggest to buy an equal powerful iBook.

Bye,

Mauti
ps shouldn't be the new firewire 800 port compatible with the older FW as USB 2.0 is with USB 1.0?  - so I can plug my old FW stuff to a new one!?(Of course I could only use the slower bandwidth.)

[Jimmy]

Mauti, I think you may be jumping the gun a little.  As far as I can see, the actual specs on the new powerbooks aren't published yet.  So when someone commented that DDR RAM doesn't help on the same bus, they were being premature.  I'm not questioning the writers findings, but I would point out that these are prototypes that he played with.  Not the best testing conditions, and I'm sure not the conditions the 15" or iBook was tested under.  So I reserve judgement until production models are out there being tested.

I also want to see tests on the video cards before making a judgement on the 440 Go.  The performance numbers from this one test could be as much driver related as hardware.  

Yes, the 17" is too big.  Yes, the 12" should have all the features of the 17".  Yes the 15" needs to get the new case, with the new antenia and airport card.  

Between the 12" iBook and Powerbook, it's $500 for airport extreme, bluetooth, an aluminum case and slightly better everything else.  Tough call.  My phone is bluetooth and so is my Palm, it'd be nice to sync them to the computer with bluetooth.

The new firewire 800 port is compatable to firewire 400 devices.  All that's needed is an adaptor to mate the different plugs.

One last thing.  Windows laptop users are not rofl.  The Dells are using a weaker Go 440 video card with only 32 megs of memory.  And if you price out a top of the line Dell laptop, it's over $3000 and doesn't have all the features of a top end Powerbook.  The top end Dell may have a 2ghz processor, but it has nothing else on the Powerbook.  It's bigger, heavier, doesn't have as nice of display.  I really don't think that there is a contest between Windows laptops and Powerbooks.

As for loudnotes implication about all these new technologies not meaning anything, I have to say he's completely off base.  Something has to break the ice in the new technologies, and the computer is the right place.  Nobody is going to start making Firewire 2 devices when no computer has it yet.  Bluetooth has huge possabilities.  802.11g is HUGE.  I mean like Marlon Brando huge.  Like the fat guy on Nero Wolf huge.  And don't think that it will be that long before it trickles down to the iBooks and iMacs.

[kami]

The new powerbooks truly are the best laptops out there, there's nothing windows based out there to even come close to them.


Jimmy, XBox huge?

[jn.loudnotes]

Jimmy you misinterpreted me.  New technologies are always great, and one of the nicest things about Apple has been their innovation.  Frequently they pioneer the latest and greatest.  If only their marketing could keep ahold of things. . .

However, to purchase a 17" Powerbook right now would be, in my humble opinion, ludicrously stupid.  I meant to refute Colin's claim that the 15" is overrated.  Because it's not. . .right now it is the best choice available.  

To have the features of a 17" model will be nice at which time as they trickle down to become popular.  But right now, they are useless for the most part.  And as you noted with the test models/production, the first of anything is rarely the best.

It would be wisest not to consider a 17" powerbook for quite some time, until its features are viable and all kinks worked out.

[Brain]

a little off topic, but i'd like to invite jimmy to regester with the forums(if he isnt already, but i dont see why  he would be posting under an assumed name if he was)

it's always nice to have another person with a well constructed argument around

[BTs_Colin]

loudnotes,

i didn't suggest that it was overrated.

i just mean you buy a higher model and you get worse RAM and HD. How does that work?

i probably shouldn't have been so long winded.

[KoS PY.nq.ict]

Agreed loudnotes


I bought my 500mhz tibook when it was a new idea at Apple. Since then the tibook's been improved numerous times with 1ghz processor, better graphics card, etc. Let Apple work the bugs out of the new machines and then consider buying one.

[|MP|Nomad]

As much as I think the new laptops are beautiful, I would still buy a tower over the laptops, b/c they are always expandable where as (from what I know) laptops are not.  Just my 2cnts