Macworld to Bring Updates to Laptop Lines?

An anonymous reader writes "Reuters is reporting on the breathless anticipation that leads up to Macworld every year. Many analysts are hedging their bets that this year will bring a long overdue update to the Mac laptop family. From the article: 'We think the iBook, PowerBook, Mac Mini, and potentially Xserve are areas that are going to move to Intel first,' said Shaw Wu, an analyst at American Technology Research."

Re:beating a dead horse?

[Nugget]

The keynote is on Tuesday, 10 January [macworldexpo.com], not Monday.

Re:No G4 laptops or desktops - that is my predicti

[richdun]

Actually, the article suggests they will update the current G4-based models... "Apple has said it will start selling Intel-based computers by the middle of this year. But many analysts have said for months they expect an earlier introduction of some Macintosh models, particularly ones using the older G4 processor."

Re:No G4 laptops or desktops - that is my predicti

[X]

I think you misunderstood. The article is suggesting that models that are currently G4-based will be updated to something other than a G4 processor (most likely Intel).

Re:Dual boot laptop

[mixmasta]

Yonah's not a "64 bit" chip. Although I hope they use EFI, it's not a given since all the demos and literature had an antique bios.

second gen Pentium M

[green pizza]

Back in those days it was Apple/Motorola slamming the first gen Pentium II versus their first gen Power PC 750 "G3".

The G3 in 233 and 266 MHz flavors was faster than the PII in its 233 and 266 MHz flavors. But eventually the PII was shipping at 450 MHz while Motorola was still churning out 350 MHz G3s. Apple slipped behind and had to use other tactics (more cache, wider busses, etc) to try to compete.

Today Intel has the Pentium M, more specifically, the second generation Pentium M, available with dual cores. Sure looks a lot better than the vaporware that Motorola/Freescale is advertising, or the big and hot IBM PowerPC 970 "G5" or the in-order (poor for multitasking) game console versions of the G5.

I think Apple made the right move, I just wish Intel had a better naming system for their CPUs.

Re:No G4 laptops or desktops - that is my predicti

[pokstad]

Even though there might not be any new G4 products, there is still a possiblity for G5 notebooks since IBM made an announcement [slashdot.org] that they had developed multicore and low-power consumption G5 chips, which came right after the announcement that Apple was switching to Intel. Even though we haven't seen the low-power consumption chips, we have seen the dual core chips in the newest power macs. Jobs did say that we would still see new PPC products before the complete switch to Intel.

No he didn't.

[Xenex]

Steve Jobs never said that. All that was 1) Intel-based products will be on the market by WWDC 2006, and 2) the migration will be completed by the end of 2007.

Check the keynote yourself [apple.com].

Re:XServe already uses Intel chips

[jrockway]

Xserve and Xserve RAIDs are totally different animals. An Xserve is a rack-mountable dual-processor server (G5s now). An Xserve RAID is a rack-mountable 3U fibrechannel drive enclosure. Now, they do work rather well together... but one is not like the other.

Re:Dual boot laptop

[level_headed_midwest]

Yonah is a 32-bit chip and Intel's last 32-bit consumer-computer chip. There will be a 64-bit mobile CPU late this year called Merom. It will be dual core as Yonah is but will have a 14-stage pipeline vs. a 12-stage one in Yonah. The L2 cache will be 2x2MB vs. 2x1MB and there will be more FPUs added to the cores to help out in math-heavy apps. It will be a 479-pin chip like Yonah as well as Dothan was, but the pinout will be different and it will probably use the 975 series chipset, not the 945 that ships with the Yonahs.

No...he didn't.

[Foerstner]

At no time did Steve or any other Apple representative suggest which models would be available with Intel processors first. Watch the Keynote.

There have been rumors to that effect, practically since the beginning. Obviously, the focus on "low power" suggests laptops and small-form-factor machines like the Mini, and the relative strength of the G5 compared to the G4 suggests G4-based models would be replaced first. But never have any public announcements or statements from Apple corroborated this.

Re:Doutful on X86 Xserves (for a while)

[tbo]

As another poster pointed out, AltiVec is great (although it's only single-precision, dammit), and there are some nice AltiVec libraries for BLAS and for stuff people in bioinformatics like to play with.

Another advantage is that the G5 is very similar to the processors used in DataStar [sdsc.edu], the biggest machine at the San Diego Supercomputing Center. This can be handy for doing small-scale testing and optimization before going to the big time.

Still another advantage is OS X--a really nice GUI with Unix goodness under the hood. Finally, there's the convenient 1U xserve enclosure, which is good for DIY small-scale clusters.

Re:Waiting for the big dissapointment...

[shawnce]

Apple never said "a year and a half". At WWDC 2005 they said that by WWDC 2006 that they would have some MacIntels shipping and that the full transition would take them into 2007 to complete.

Re:Burn baby Burn

[natd]

How do you figure that? What have 'PCs' won exactly?

The PC Vs Mac thing is really Windows Vs Mac OS X.

It's not Linux on a PC Vs Mac, it's not Mac OS on Intel Vs Windows. The PC Vc Mac argument is [these days] a straight out OS grudge - not even relevant to this thread about CPUs.

Re:Intel Yonah 32bit? What happens to the 64bit??

[HuguesT]

Specifically, nearly all of OS/X applications, the kernel and the GUI are all 32-bit on all Macs. There are only two versions of OS/X, one for servers, and one for laptops/desktops. Since there are G4 versions of either, necessarily all software has to be 32-bit only. This is why when Tiger (10.4) came out all the benchmarks in magazine showed no speed difference between "32-bit" 10.3 and "64-bit" 10.4.

However, OS/X 10.4.x is able to run 64-bit apps that can access more than 4GB of memory, but those don't have access to the GUI directly. Console apps only! If you need a GUI in front of that 64-bit app, prepare to handle the joys of ICP (inter-process communications).

Re:Intel Yonah 32bit? What happens to the 64bit??

[JackAxe]

Just to be more specific, OS X still uses a 32-Bit Gui, so as to ensure compatibility with the thousands of existing apps. Not everything needs 64-bit support and moving to a 64-bit GUI would put OS X in the same boat as Win64, which still lags way behind the WinXP in support. 64-bit addressing can be slower than 32-bit if it's not needed.

"All" applictions under Tiger have access to 64-bit memory addressing and have had access to 64-bit computations since Panther. 64-bit support for OS X is not limited by any means, it's just practical.

Also Windows 64 uses a 32-bit long. Microsoft actually made up their own standard of LL64. OS X uses 64-bit long pointers just like Linux and is based on the industry standard LP64. MS of course chose this direction to maintain compatibily and make it easier for developers to port their legacy code.

Re:No G4 laptops or desktops - that is my predicti

[dr.badass]

my question is whether there will be any barriers to running Linux and Windows

According to Phil Shiller, Apple's VP of Marketing, no, they won't be doing anything to prevent you from running Windows (Fool that ye may be!). That doesn't mean it will be easy or practical or supported or anything, but it's at least been stated that Apple isn't going to intentionally get in your way.

iBook upgrades...

[ElectroBot]

- CPU will most likely be upgraded to Intel Yonah Single Core CPU
- FSB will be upgraded (142MHz to ?)
- Default RAM will stay at 512MB
- 802.11G and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR will remain
-Optional HD upgrade might go from 100GB max to 120GB max
- don't know about displays (widescreen ?, 13.3 ?)
- Video RAM BETTER be upgraded to 64MB (32MB isn't enough for games or full Core Image functionality and the iBook has had 32MB for 5 or 6 updates (3 or 4 years!)
- Firewire 400 WILL continue to be on the iBook (lots of people with Digital Video Cameras and iMovie would be useless otherwise)
- Battery life might go from theoretical 6 hours to theoretical 5 hours
- LCDs might be upgraded the same way Powerbook LCDs were, BUT resolution might not change
- Hopefully the iBook will gain an internal iSight like the iMac G5
- The iBook won't get a remote (people would lose it too easily) but it might get a few function keys added/changed to allow easier FrontRow control
- The iBook P4 will look somewhat different just like the iBook changed when the CPU changed from G3 to G4


That would be an iBook that I would be willing to trade up for (I have an early 2004 iBook G4 14" 1GHz)

Re:Earth shattering announcement....

[jht]

Actually, FIleMaker was a NIH Apple product. It was originally developed by Nashoba Systems, and marketed by Forethought - the same folks who gave the world PowerPoint.

Even AppleWorks/ClarisWorks got it's start outside Apple - ClarisWorks was developed by a couple of developers who had originally created what became AppleWorks/GS (the GUI version for the Apple IIgs), left Claris to write what then became ClarisWorks for the Mac, and were re-acquired into the fold after building the product. One of those nice, incestuous Valley tales. The idea with Claris was to set up a wholly owned, but independent company to produce great Mac software at a time when a lot of 3rd party developers were shying away. It was also supposed to sell Windows software when appropriate - there was even a Windows version of ClarisWorks that was fairly popular.

There have been things developed entirely in-house, though - notably QuickTime, the defunct HyperCard, and the new iWork apps.

Re:Dual boot laptop

[Carthag]

We're not all idiots over here in the Mac camp. Please don't generalize so much.

Just buy what you like and enjoy it.

Re:so iBook Powerbook?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple was selling Powerbooks before they moved to the PPC cpus - so I can't see any reason why they would need to stop using the name just because they are moving to a 3rd CPU architecture.

Cheers, Liam