One more G4 for the PowerBook?

PurdueGraphicsMan writes "Much as we'd love to see the next PowerBook revision include a processor evolution to the mighty G5, we know it's not that simple. The Register provides some sound reasoning (and boatloads of model numbers and voltage specs) as to why we'll probably see a 1.5GHz G4 PowerBook before any G5 PowerBooks materialize." I don't want a G5 on my lap anyway. It'd make me feel guilty, having that much power in a small package while other people can't even get it in a PC tower. Oh, and I don't want to burn my lap.

Go Motorla

[Goyuix]

Even though we all like to look at IBM as the hero of Linux and their cool chips... a little competition from Motorola can only be good for us consumers!

G5 in laptop prolly a little wait

[millahtime]

The G5 will prolly wait a little longer to be in a laptop as the heat and power issue. I am sure they will get that down with the new power management in the G5 but it might take a bit.

Give this a miss

[Alex Reynolds]

Apple: We need a G5 in the PowerBook line now, not six months from now.

The G4 is grossly underpowered in comparison with a Centrino -- many audio applications in particular that are run from a portable PC now run circles around the Apple equivalent.

We need a professional portable and the G4 has not cut it for at least a year now.

-Alex

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Go Motorla

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

My father in law works in a manufacturing plant for a parent company. They don't really do that much manufacturing. The parent company outsources over 95% of all their manufacturing needs. What they are really for is bargaining leverage. When the parent company negotitates, they have the ability to say "screw you, we'll do it ourselves." That alone drives costs down with all their partnering manufacturers.

The situation with Motorola is not the same. But Apple can always leverage the idea of using Motorola chips again to hedge any abuse by other chip manufacturers, although they hopefully won't need to.

Re:It'd make me feel guilty

[Anonymous Coward]

powerbooks are silver ya 'tard, and besides there's one use for apple laptops: cheaper than centrino 3hr+ laptops with 300-500 less (albeit the centrinos are prolly three to four times the processing power, but you try finding a damn centrino with a radeon 9200 mobility with dedicated memory for under 1200 bucks).

-- vranash

Heat

[charnov]

The 90nm G5s are already in the new Xserves. Anyone notice they had to remove one of the hard drive bays to allow for the extra airways?

Anyways, I'll put my Athlon 64 laptop against anything Apple can put in a laptop. Escpecially dollar for dollar. And no, I know what you are thinking, it barely gets warm.

Just think, the 35 watt Athlons 64s roll out in the next two months and it will get even better.

Re:Flamebait

[sammy baby]

As long as we're throwing cheap shots, as least we don't have to plug in an external device to get a second mouse button.

Whoa! Your PC has an integral mouse? How does that work?

Every PC I've ever used, I had to plug in an external device just to have a mouse at all, let alone a second mouse button!

Re:Give this a miss

[Jord]

Well this is a bunch of horseshit. The G4 runs applications perfectly well. I develop professional applications on my PowerBook all day long and there is no issue with its speed.

I know of several people a few of which are into professional video and audio editing and they have no issues with their PowerBooks either. Hell some of them are using models from a couple of years ago.

Comments like this are pure FUD. Yes the G5 is great, can't wait to get one in a PowerBook, but the G4 PowerBooks work very well.

Whoever modded this as interesting needs to be flogged.

REALLY?

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Anyways, I'll put my Athlon 64 laptop against anything Apple can put in a laptop.

OSX 10.3

Re:Another Article Troll from Pudge

[Aardpig]

nstead of a 32bit number it can do math with 64 bit numbers. Much larger numbers. On a 32 bit processor if it has to take a number larger than 32 bit and do computations on it then the number has to be broken up into parts and math done on them.

You couldn't be more wrong. The SSE2 instructions on Pentium 4 chipsets operate on double-precision (i.e., 64-bit) floating-point numbers (actually, they work internally with something like 80 bits, but that's more or less invisible). In no way, therefore, is a double-precision multiply "broken up into parts".

The reason why Pentium 4 systems are 32-bit is comes down to their memory addressing, and the size of their "default" integers. I think you'll find that integers are not used much in numerical modelling, apart from as array and loop indices. What was your point again?

Now at the risk of sounding like a troll

[FS1]

Lets take a reasonable fair look at both sides. I myself am slightly biased against macs because i don't seem to be compatible with them but that is another story. Many people are saying that the G5 "Rules" cause it is a 64 bit chip, and granted it is. There are also the AMD fanboys myself included that say, "hey we had the first desktop 64bit processor and ours kicks your G5 to the curb." Also there are the intel automatons that say, "man apple computers sucks man they can't touch the P4/XEON performace wise." Which depending on the facts given, any one of these could be seen as correct (most likely not the last one). Then there are those who say, "that apples are the best because we have a unix based OS that is sooo user friendly." The PC (L)users like myself say, "there are more applications and games written for our OS, you will be assimilated." Last but not least, there are the linux-geeks who say, "we have the best of both worlds we have a unix-like OS that is completely reconfigurable and runs some windows apps if we want it to and has a community of geeks behind it, so our OS is l337." Which there are major facts and opinions that support any of these claims, minus the assimilation part, and either way you look at there are tradeoffs for the OS you use. Then there are the benchmarkers who say, "Look at this G5/Opteron/P4 it totally outscores the others, in my totally unrealistic and unrepeatable and highly illogical benchmarking procedure." Also there are benchmarkers that listen to the whiners and try to compare the apples to oranges to watermelons to pear to peaches over and over again, and are flamed cause the G5/Opteron/P4 was the winner and it is against their "religion." The trouble with 64bit computering is you need 64bit everything in order to reap the maximum reward. Not every app on every platform has the exact same coding and drivers and hardware supporting it. There are going to be differences and they will vary widely. From what i have discerned from all this inane babble is that the G5 is indeed a worthly processor and people do like the OS that supports it (i do not). Also the opteron/Athlon 64 chip is indeed just as fast if not faster (code permitting) than the G5, the crown passing between the 2 based on what your running and how optomized it is. But that leaves us with the poor old P4/Xeon, which even though it has a 1-2Ghz lead on its competitors, is just competing with them. This is my opinion and i base it all the stuff i have read on the issues. Show me an unbiased review, ha you ain't going to find one, and i might change my mind. To sum this up people need to stop listening to what they are told, if they won't actually hear what people are saying.

Moto makes the G4 Apple uses

[johnpaul191]

IBM may make G4 chips, but the ones in Apple hardware are still Moto. IBM makes the G3s (not still used), and supposedly has an Altivec-enabled G3 out or coming....

There was a statement a few months back made by Phil Schiller (i think it was him?) that Apple still has a future with Moto processors for a while.

At some point Apple's hardware will eventually all go to G5/G6/whatever made by IBM, but it's going to be a while i think. In addition i think there are other Moto chips in Apple hardware besides the processor (sorry, don't feel like popping the case right now to check).

There are some good resources online explaining the relationship between Apple, IBM and Moto and the design and manufacturing of the PPC chips. I'm on crappy dialup, so i can't find them right now.
I know IBM was making the last G3s Apple used... which i guess were in the iBooks? I am 99.999% sure every Apple sold G4 chip was Mote, and IBM could sell them for other uses, including upgrades. the G4 upgrade in my G4 tower is a Moto chip though and i just got that a few months ago. actually offhand the people i asked with G4 upgrades all have Moto chips in them... so if IBM makes G4s that work in Mac hardware, i am not sure who uses it? I am not sure what YellowDog hardware was using for their G4s (could not run Mac OS 9 or OS X).

Re:Guaranteeing Apple speed/feature bumps

[kannibal_klown]

It's like that everywhere though. Hell, I bought a Dell Inspiron 3700 the moment it came out, and less than a month (or maybe 2 months) the 3800 came out to replace the 3700. The 3800 was faster, sturdier, and better.

Apple keeps their mouths shut about releases for a good reason; it keeps their sales constant. If they said "Next month we're releasing a 1.5 GHz PowerBook," then their powerbook sales would come to a screeching halt until then. But if they keep their mouths shut, then people will continue buying PowerBooks at the same rate.

Sure, it sucks for the consumers, but only if they let it bother them. I bought my PowerBook last week (my 1st mac ever) knowing full well that something better was on the horizon. But I don't care, as I'm more than content with my PowerBook (hell, I'm giddy).

In the tech world, it happens. You can either wait-and-wait-and-wait-and-wait, or you can buy it now and be happy with it.

Re:Need the G5

[drooling-dog]

This is sure to get modded down by this crowd, but...

This (usually baseless) need to have more and more power on a laptop - and to pay top dollar for it - has to be the marketing triumph of the century (well, maybe after bottled water). My old 400MHz IBM still does everything I ask of it, and if I had the choice I'd rather double the battery life than the processor speed.

But thanks, anyway, for creating a plentiful secondary market for nice laptops. That's how I got mine...

Re:Flamebait

[Espectr0]

Just THINK for a minute.

What is easier and more intuitive? To RIGHT CLICK using a mouse, or to right click using a KEYBOARD?

Clicking belongs to the mouse. Using the keyboard makes it all more confusing.

Face it, a two button mouse will always be better than one button mouse.

Having said that, i switched my laptop to a powerbook just to have OSX, and i love it. But the one button mouse is a joke

Re:Give this a miss

[pHDNgell]

My two powerbooks have 60GB of disk each. That's more than enough space for editing a couple of hours of video in Final Cut Pro 4 using OfflineRT.

That's more of a hobby for me, though. I'm a software developer by trade. I do mostly large server work (I'm a UNIX guy), but I develop desktop apps as well. Then again, the desktop apps are mostly hobby work as well...stuff like video delivery systems and monitoring apps.

I realize the post I'm responding to is a troll who can't even be bothered to see that the smallest hard drive Apple even sells in a powerbook is 40GB, and that's only in a 12" where nobody does video editing anyway.

Re:Flamebait

[Elwood P Dowd]

Every laptop PC I've ever seen has had a second mouse button that is completely broken by design.

It is impossible to conveniently use the second mouse button on a trackpad. There is no good way to do it. With a mouse, obviously, you can put your index finger on the left button and your middle finger on the right button, and it's totally effortless to click, or click and drag with either finger. I cannot defend Apple's regular mice except to say that they look cooler. And that they are forced to use them because of their OS's focus on laptops.

But advocating a PC trackpad? Are you kidding? I'd *rather* be forced to use it with two hands (like with the control key), but unfortunately two handed operation is also impossible. I usually have to use my ring finger if I want to right-click-drag.

Re:Need the G5

[PurdueGraphicsMan]

Actually, I already use Linux and Free BSD at work, and like me, my bosses don't put nerd pride above common sense. OS X is better because they've spent the time on making it easy to use. Once someone spends that same time on any of the Open Source OSes then they can be considered good. But until then it doesn't matter how powerful they are if only select people know how to use it. They aren't hard to use, but it doesn't make any sense to spend time learning an OS if there's one that's just as good (if not better) that's much easier to use.

Just my $0.02

Re:Heat

[OmniVector]

and will your athlon64 laptop be 1" thick or less? probably not.

Re:Need the G5

[The Almighty Dave]

What do you mean by inferior?

Runs on less platforms?
Doesn't run as many applications?

Any OS requires learning. More to the point, the applications that run on the OS have to be learned. Just because you are familiar with the system doesn't mean everyone is. You can pretend that Macs are intuitive, easy to use, whatever. In reality, anyone with no computer knowledge or someone coming from another system will have to learn how do things on a Mac.

There is no "right out of the box and use it without learning".

Underpowered?

[Amigori]

I see alot of posts here saying that the iBook and Powerbooks are underpowered. I guess it all depends on what you use it for. Last fall, I bought the new 12" PB 1Ghz/512Mb/AirportExtreme/Bluetooth/DVD-R, and there wasn't anything close from Dell or Gateway in terms of size, performance, and features. Anyways...

The people yelling "Underpowered!" are probably game freaks with lots of disposable income who completely rebuild their PC every 6-9 months. I'm not sorry that school is taking all of my money and I can only afford to upgrade every 2-3 years. Besides, 30 fps gains when your already above 200 fps really isn't necessary. The new UT2004 Demo runs just fine on my PB. I'm sure if you tried the PC version on a similarly spec'd PC (1Ghz AMD/512Mb/32Mb nVidia 5200FX) it wouldn't run near as fast. And I'm sure those playing on a Centrino laptop will find that UT2004 will definitely drain your battery in less than 4 hours. Probably closer to 1-1.5 hours and a much lower framerate due to the integrated Intel Graphics on many of those laptops.

People, its all about selecting the best product for your needs. Apple's laptops primary target market is NOT gamers, overclockers, or anyone whose on a Ghz rulz powertrip. Its much closer to people who just want their computer to work extremely well and are simple to use and not have to f* around with drivers for 2 hours just to get the damned thing to boot right.

I'm not even sure I should bother with this argument because everytime we get an thread on Apple hardware, I see the same "Underpowered!" and "Too expensive!" posts. And the people who make these arguments just don't understand what Apple, as a business, is trying to do. Make a profit, and build a computer that's easy to use.

Just a few thoughts...
Amigori

Re:Laptop performance

[Orien]

You're joking right? Your problem is that you keep buying iBooks! The iBook is the LOW-END model. If you are looking for performance increases you should buy a Powerbook. That's what they are for. The G4 in the iBooks is basically a G3 anyway, and is seriously crippled compared to the G4 in the Powerbook. Especially when you compare all the bus/architeture enhancements. This is simmilar to the Pentium vs. Celeron issues.

Go to any major PC vendor and you will see that they do the same thing with all comptuers, laptops included. If you browse through Dell's laptops for excample, you will see a line that are cheap, has Celeron processors and yesterdays parts, and won't give you a whole lot of performance difference than models a few years ago. OR you can go for the high end models that have bleeding-edge parts and major performance increases. You are buying an item that you are not the target market for and then complaining that it doesn't meet your needs. You might argue that the powerbook is too expensive, but that is an entirely different problem and has nothing to do with performance increases.

You're right. Absolutely

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apple's laptops primary target market is NOT gamers, "

How could it be? There aren't any cutting edge games on the Mac. Hasn't been in over a decade.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I *am* a long-time Mac user.

Re:Watercool

[Slack3r78]

Somebody please mod this disinformation down. There are no 'heat dissipation issues' with regards to the G5. Yes, Apple does use a heatsink that's about 5" tall and a ton of fans in the G5 tower, but that's done to keep noise down, but because it's running scorchingly hot. I got to thoroughly check out a Dual 2.0GHz G5 at a LAN party last weekend, and the machine is near silent under normal use. I can't say that about my Athlon or the P4's I use at school.

If you're still not satisfied that's the reason, pull the side cover off a G5, then pull off the plastic panel that seperates the different airflow compartments - the computer will sense that the panel's been removed, thus disrupting the airflow and kick all the fans into high speed. You'll suddenly have the machine go from being near silent to about as loud as you'd expect a PC to be.

The G5 towers are amazingly well engineered machines, and it's really getting tiring to hear people mistake Apple's emphasis on quiet computing (extremely well executed) be mistaken for a non-existant heat problem.

Re:I hear ya...

[PurdueGraphicsMan]

There's something that people are missing about the PowerMac G5. They didn't just put a faster processor in the machine and release it, they totally redesigned everything in the computer. For the x86 world to catch up there are going to have to be some changes.

Re:Heat

[badasscat]

laptops are meant to be portable. your average 8-9 pound 1 hour battery life monster isn't portable. it's a portable desktop. apple doesn't make portable desktops, it makes laptops.

Ummmm. [techtv.com]

I'll grant you that Apple's laptops are thin and light vs. their screen sizes, but the 17" PB is a definite desktop replacement, not a laptop.

And besides, Apple is not the only company out there making small laptops [techtv.com]. There are so many laptops to choose from that it's honestly unfair to Apple to compare their lineup to the entirety of what's available. They make exactly two styles of laptops, both of which are cosmetically quite similar when you get down to it (one line has a different material for the case and is slightly smaller), so if you're going to play Apple vs. everybody else almost anybody could come up with examples of other brands doing either exactly what Apple's doing hardware-wise at least as well as they are, or alternatives that may take a different approach and one that some people might prefer.

Mac Reviewers...

[letdownjournals]

I don't want a G5 on my lap anyway. It'd make me feel guilty, having that much power in a small package while other people can't even get it in a PC tower.

I'm a Mac user. I love Macs. But I have to ask, why does the Mac press have to be so &$#% smug? Come on, guys, you're giving the rest of us a bad name.

Re:Need the G5

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what to make of this.

Pudge is a little new, so his methods are more transparent than the older slashdot posters (I refuse to call them editors until they actually do their job - they are an insult to anyone who paid for a subscription)

That comment was a thinly-veiled (on the nanometer scale) troll to start a flamewar. For every user entering into an IBM vs Apple argument, Slashdot can pretty much bank on around 5-20 ad viewings, and nothing gets people (mostly teenagers) all riled up more than PC vs Mac. On top of that, it encourages a good number of platform-agnostic post-teens to post diatribes on "Use the machine that's best for your needs".

Add ads.osdn.com and ads.slashdot.org to your hosts file to fight this trolling in slashdot articles. The posters have simply gotten too fat and lazy from ad revenue, and show little to no respect for us, their users.

If I had a subscription, I'd be cancelling it.