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Apple Businesses

Apple Announces Faster G4s, Upgraded Powerbooks 210

Posted by Hemos from the fun-with-new-machinery dept.
yuriwho writes, "Apple has announced several upgrades: an extra 50 MHz clockspeed for G4's, as well as an upgraded powerbook with extra MHz, firewire, RAM space and airport compatibility (tech specs/marketing here). There's also an iBook special edition. Check out hotnews for the info on the various product lines. Several minor improvements added together may make quite a bit of difference especially in the mobile market - unfortunately nothing stunning. "
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Apple Announces Faster G4s, Upgraded Powerbooks More

Apple Announces Faster G4s, Upgraded Powerbooks

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  • Apple doesn't have the coolest products on the market.

    Sorry, the origional poster is right. The notebook is pretty nice, but it's not anything stellar.

    For instance, how is Wireless and Firewire helpful if there are no compatable devices?

  • The URL's are missing.

    C.

  • I've run various servers, HTML, FTP, Hotline etc from a Mac and easily get months of uptime without a problem. There are a few appls that cause problems with Macs, Netscape is one huge example but one doesn't run those on a server.
    My home machine has been running for a couple of onths with the odd reboot to install system upgrades (and a new 128Mb DIMM) as the only downtime.

    On the other hand if I keep my PC laptop running for ore than a few days it gently grinds to a halt and needs a reboot anyway. Unless I'm running Linux of course.

    Personally I've never had real problems with macs in general - it can be a pain of you have a problem as they can be difficult to isolate but they don't go wrong that often. Just keeping a Windows PC running properly seems to take ages and for a bloke without a infinite amount of time to dedicate to Linux, keeping a linux box up to date is also somewhat time consuming (when it's a laptop anyway)

    I just wish people would stop the age-old "macs are only a toy" bollocks. They might look nicer than PC but you can get at least as much productive work (and usually more) done on one.

    Apple are also (often) technological leaders - with a huge R&D budget.

    Ok, MacOS 9 is fairly old, but it is a fully 32bit system, something Microsoft are only just getting the hang of and with MacOS X coming fairly soon, they will have the best of both worlds - a system that's piss easy to use but unix based so power users can compile their posix apps to their heart's content :)

    So how about we stop knocking Apple becuase their computers look nice and maybe spend some more time discussing their good points?

    Oh god, that's bound to invite the "What good points? can it pour grits down N. Portman's trousers?" brigade

    Hohum

    troc
  • I've got an early beta of MSIE 5.0 (b1). I have not checked it for RAM consumption; I have a 192MB G3 at home, so I'm not terribly concerned, and iCab [www.icab.de] is what I use in loRAM situations). What I am concerned with is rendering speed and quality. The new rendering engine is noticeably faster as an added bonus it renders nested discussions on slashdot correctly (a critical usability test).

    Most of the nifty new features (scrapbooks and auction manager) aren't really working yet, but promise to be useful. The new look is ... wierd. Most of the usual Mac rumors sites have screenshots up. It is, however, not as bad as it looks in a screenshot when actually used. And the nifty little touches, like easily rearranging the toolbar buttons are very nice.

    The darn thing is also more stable than any Netscape product (prior to 4.7) they've ever put on a Mac. I'll have to check the final version (March?) to see how cooperatively it multitasks (I had to turn 4.5's priority down so other apps would run properly with it in the background).

    At the very least, this particular version of IE does not suck.

    And as for RAM claims, Microsoft marketing and package design always claims the absolute minimum RAM partition in which the program will launch and display a blank document, this bears no resemblance whatsoever (often by an order of magnitude for intensive tasks) to what the program needs for useful work. Note especially that the default RAM allocations for all MS Office products on the Mac *will crash* the machine regularly, and must be increased (usually, IME, Apple bears the blame for this, they have had enough problems lately without being blamed for an MS mistake).

  • a friend needed help doing a mail-merge on his Mac... Holy-shit did I get my butt kicked by supposedly the easiest OS to use in the world

    Um... OK, you had a problem doing a certain action in a specific end-user application.

    QED the OS sucks.

    You know, I'm sorta having trouble following that logic. I could draw that conclusion about any operating system, given a significantly shitty application. It's like calling Linux an unstable operating system becuase one app crashes over and over. Just because the OS claims to be friendly, it doesn't ensure that every application on it is likewise.

    What application was this, anyhow?

  • You're right about Airport being 802.11 but Apple's airport card is not PCMCIA. There is a custom slot (more like IDE) inside the iBooks, G4s, iMac DVs, and now Powerbooks that takes the card.

    The card from Apple is $100. The PCMCIA version from Lucent is ~$200...

    --hunter
  • There <b>are</b> three classes of applications but they break down like this:

    1. Cocoa Apps - Cocoa is the evolution of OPENSTEP using Objectice C and/or Java. Fully OO framework for building new apps. These will only run on OS X.

    2. Carbon Apps - MacOS toolbox apps slightly reworked and linked against the Carbon libraries to allow running native in OS X and in OS 8.1 and above.

    3. Classic apps - These are MacOS toolbox apps that run in a compatibility mode (OS 9 within OS X).

    To answer the original question, Apple is not porting Cocoa or Carbon to LinuxPPC so I doubt you can get any binaries to run.

    OS X is based on FreeBSD so POSIX compatible utilites should compile. We'll see.

    --hunter

  • Back in the late 80s, a boring beige boxy Mac II series computer would set you back $5000 to $10,000. This is when PCs sold for $2500 at most.

    Apple doesn't have the software tech advantage anymore that could demand a price two to four times greater than their competitiors. As they proved up to about 1996, they don't even have the software tech to demand a price $500 greater than their competitors (for much faster machines). If style didn't sell they'd probably be out of business.

    Of course, when they were making the 75% margins, they invested a ton of money in to R+D projects that failed (QuickDrawGX, Taligent, Copeland, OpenDoc, etc.) So luck and good managment play into it too.


    --
  • www.lucent.com [lucent.com]

    No compatible devices? AirPort is fully 802.11 compliant.

    FireWire works with basically every digital camcorder out there.
  • Don't hold your breath for G4 powerbooks. They aren't going to happen.

    Take a look at the history. Back in the 68k days, powerbooks were using 68030s when the high end of the desktop had moved up to the 040. When powerbooks got around to using 040s, they used the crippled, FPU-less 68LC040. When they moved up to PowerPCs, they used 603s while the high-end desktops had 604s. Likewise, they had 603es when desktops had moved to the 604e.

    The G4 simple uses too much juice and puts out too much heat to be practical. Sure, that will come down in time, but there's likely to be a faster, cheaper, and lower-power PPC chip out by then that would be used.
  • I have no doubt that Apple's engineers are spoiled by the G3. The thing is, the PowerBook's battery life is a big deal! My iBook runs for 4.5 hours straight under heavy use, longer if I go easier on it. I would not have bought it if it didn't have that feature, and I suspect the same it true of many of Apple's portable customers. What full-featured PC notebook runs for so long on one charge?

    I'm sure Apple could make a decent portable with a G4. But they can't afford to be decent, they have to be exceptional.
  • I'm over here playing with my Mac.

    Had this G3 for 18 months, had one white knuck crash, but other than that, it's been fine, it's a beige box, no style, all substance. I will buy the graphite iBook, after I set up a recording studio around a G4 and Cubase. But macs are toys. Yeah right.

    Much of the independent recording done in Nashville is being done on Macs. Screw the big studios, a basement, a Mac some weed and a weekend and you're rolling. I have had demos from the best studios, and demos done on the mac. The studio time costs more that a base G4. the product you get from the Mac and Cubase is as good if not better than the stuff out of the traditional studios.

    Call the Mac a toy, toys are fun.

    Use windows at work. the expensive custom database I have to work with was made by an idiot. He should be flogged!!!
  • Didn't Win 98 come out at the same time as the iMac?

    If so, then I think Win 98 was a large reason for the sudden glut of USB devices.

    Simply because Win98 was the first x86 os that, AFIAK, had passable USB support.
  • airport is simply regular 802.11, so i'm sure you could find a cheaper pcmcia card from another manufacteror
  • It's just my bad sense of humor (one that gets me marked down as troll from time to time) slipping through. I like what Jobs has done for the company, but it's all about his ego sometimes. :) Anyways, they are doing surprisingly well for a company in the dumper 3 years ago. kudos!
  • Its the PC world which is touting this "MHz" thing as a true benchmark.

    And also, it's pretty obvious that it's the PC world that determines things that are the official, percieved and unofficial benchmarks. I agree that the only thing that matters is performance. However, the perception of 500mhz v. 800 mhz makes people think that newest dell or compaq is better than a Macintosh.

    However, the processing bandwidth, you'll be sure to agree, is way higher on a G4 than on an intel chip. they have 500 mhz chip with up to 1 meg backside cache running at 250mhz. While the system bus is still 100 mhz and can only pump 800MB/s, it is still powerful. I do make the following off the wall prediction:

    • Apple will release a system with 200mhz bus, using the clock up/down method that athlon uses on the ev6 bus. This would make the system run at 1.6GB/s something els to put inder its belt.
    • Apple will work to get some of those nifty 200 (or more) dpi flatscreens in their line. Apple known for nifty.
    • They will one day cave and put an appropriately shaped mouse and keyboard on those things. (ok, so it's more of a nit)
    Anyways, they still have a few chances to make announcements, so this may be their best year ever!
  • do a bit of research before you make a blanket
    statement like "$50-$100". here are the latest
    cpu prices:

    http://sharkyextreme.com/hardware/weekly_cpu/

    note the price difference between the top and
    top-1 cpus.

  • The original question was "does/will LinuxPPC support the airport". This does not answer the question. I don't give a rat's ass about MacOS apps.
    --
  • $200 for a 66 Mhz speed bump? I think Apple expects a lot of people to pay more for a color they wouldn't be embarrassed by.
  • Ignoring big time enterprise needs and such, I would say a low-load server is almost certainly going to be more stable than a desktop machine. of course a Mac can run various servers. My friend's mac crashed because it ran Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design, ImageStyler, and Animation Master. Besides, heralded by many, Internet Explorer for the Mac is a *beast*. Doing absolutely nothing, hands off the keyboard and mouse, a static page in IE in the foreground will seriously interrupt a quicktime movie playing in the background. That's just silly.
  • These are differences between the old ibook and the new ibook. The price difference of $200 is between the new ibook and the new ibook special edition. The only technical difference there is the clockspeed.
  • Regardless of whether the speed increase is worth the price increase or not, I think Apple plans on some number of people actually paying more money specifically for the other color. When in reality the color of the case is totally independent of the hardware inside, it seems kind of slimy to me to force customers to upgrade in order to get something they could give them for the same price.
  • You're comparing the very top of the market with the notch below--that's dangerous. A 50MHz speed difference on a dell laptop, for example, is $50-$100.
  • I always thought Mac OS was more reliable than Windows until I moved in with a mac lover. For a year and a half I watched a new imac, and then a new G3, and then a new G4, crash four or five times a day, while my windows (admittedly not used nearly as often as my linux machine) would crash every three or four days.

    Admittedly, the newer versions are much more stable. 8.6 showed a big jump in reliability and 9 looks better, but still crashes more than Windows. I used to spend 6 hours a day on a mac plus...now those things never crashed on me!

    But, to be positive, as long as Mac OS X's fancy animations don't bring the cpu to a grinding halt, I'm sure the BSD-based kernel will lend quite a bit of stability to the system (unless Linus's warnings about putting graphics in the kernel come to haunt them!)
  • Compare equal boxes, dude:

    Ok, ok, there's a pretty big diffrence between those two boxes, but not three thousand dolars worth. 128mb ram == $150.. 27gig HD == $180, and a 16mb video card (TNT2) is about $100... so about another $400, that still leaves a total of $2400 diffrence.

    ...doesn't count AltiVec. Checked RC5 lately for processor benchmarks?

    About the only real use for this stuff by the average person is games, and PCs are better for games then macs (TNT2 || GeForce Vs ATI). If all you really wanted to do was crack keys, you could just get seven of those athlon boxes (The amount of ram dosn't really effect Keycracking speed :).

    [ c h a d o k e r e ] [dhs.org]
  • do the video-editing tools that ship with the iMac DV. Apple is just trying to bring the sort of power that's traditionally been in the hands of professional video editors to the general public. This is a Good Thing.

    The kinds of things that the DV iMac is capable of have been in the hands of the general public -- through add on cards -- for years, recently for as little as $50 - $200 (For firewire + MPEG). Add that to our hypothetic Athlon 500 box, and it's still only $700. $500 less then even the cost of a DV iMac.

    Now, I haven't looked specifically, but I bet some enterprising individual has hacked together a Mac driver for the GeForce. And you're forgetting Voodoo3 (which is supposed to be damn good)

    The V3's OK, but not better then a GeForce. And I really doubt anyones written an OpenGL driver for the GeForce on the mac. It took months for the G200 - G400 open source teams to write drivers for Linux with specs, the most a Mac User would be able to use wold have Nvidia's Badly obvuscated code (That's much slower then the windows version). And code like that won't cross compile. There are no specs on the GeForce available (Infact I'm not even sure that there's any Linux source drivers out there at all, right now)

    Now, I haven't looked specifically, but I bet some enterprising individual has hacked together a Mac driver for the GeForce. And you're forgetting Voodoo3 (which is supposed to be damn good)

    Well, I wouldn't be caught dead using an iBook. Diffrent people like diffrent things, and I've found apple-lovers seem to love everything that apple comes out with

    [ c h a d o k e r e ] [dhs.org]
  • The PPC will outperform an Intel chip by 15% to 30+%, on a clock for clock basis: the PIII 600 is eyeball to eyeball with the G3 500 or the G4 450,

    Clock for clock An Athlon is 15-30%+ faster then a pIII as well. Of course, a Mac with a 500mhz g4 costs $3,499 on the apple store, whereas pricewatch lists the cheapest 500mhz Athlon at $599. that's $2900 less. (800mhz costs $1300).

    The G4e due out this fall ought to leave Intel permanently in the dust, and pull only a fraction of the power.

    Hrm... They might beat a pIII, but by then, we'll all be using 1.2gighz Athlons... Really, it's been months and apple has just barely gotten to 500mhz. Face it, your behind.

    [ c h a d o k e r e ] [dhs.org]
  • Sorry, there is no PC-equivalent to iMovie. You can pretend, but making a movie on a PC is not easy.

    Do you know what Adobe Premere is? (I assume iMovie a software program)

    Formac video card with 3D glasses and *real* 3D.

    PC's have had this forever. PC's are better game platforms, period. Just ask john carmack, not much has happend since he made those comments.

    I'm sorry you feel insecure enough that the color of your computer matters.

    Style matters, And the iBook looks like a bathtoy.

    [ c h a d o k e r e ] [dhs.org]
  • Hrm

    I didn't have to much trouble learning premiere in my highschool media-art class... but then again I'm someone who would consider seting up a DNS server in UNIX to be 'moderatly difficult'. My 4d art teacher was still telling people to make every frame in photoshop, and then import them, when I was doing all kinds of crazy stuff.

    I've never seen or used iMovie, but for anyone with a decent level of computer skills, Premiere is not that hard to pick up and use. Sure, some super-geek might be able to program a lisp based AI in Emacs, but it's not that hard to learn a few basic keystrokes and use it to write text files. Same with premiere, or any other decently designed App.

    [ c h a d o k e r e ] [dhs.org]
  • As far as I know the PC with it's VGA and BIOS wont handle multiple displays and cards plug and play. I relly love the way my PPC with OpenFirmware works. The advantages with the mac is the RISC processor and the lack of old outdated BIOS madness
  • Back in the mid-80s, Apple made a big deal about spending a bundle having Frog Design (responsible for the Sony Walkman) do the case for the Apple //c. The expense of the mouldings for the original Macintosh was bandied about as well.

    Apple started off as a "home" computer company, right?

  • Re:Specs (Score:1)

    by znu ( 31198 )
    No, you couldn't. Try comparing prices. Apple appears to be selling Airport hardware at cost to encourage Mac sales. This is true of the $4000 Cinema Display as well; that's why Apple won't sell you one except bundled with a G4.

    --
  • <i>I think the $16k PC to do what you're doing on a $4k Mac is a bit extreme</i>

    Not as extreme as you think, although we experienced something closer to $5k-to-$10k in the Ad Agency I worked at previous to the New Year.

    The iMac (and, indeed, the G4's) can indeed be thin clients, netbooting from a properly equipped Mac OS X Server machine.
  • All things considered... Gnome and company may have these things as projected *goals*, but exactly how far along the path are they? Apple, on the other hand, has an almost completely finished product that will give that ease of use WITH a Unix system (OS X).

    Goals are good things... but they don't pay the bills. I tried installing Window Maker on my SUSE box at home (*sigh*) and, to be frank, I still don't have it quite working right. I'm busy tracking down the right versions of half a dozen required packages and fudging with Makefile's where some things are too anal about version numbers. Gnome installed (relatively) painlessly, and KDE just plain sucks.

    On another note, re: your off topic note... OS X is supposed to be almost completely POSIX compliant, so it reasons a guess that your standard /usr/bin/ping and such will work fine after recompiling... if they aren't installed by default.
  • The short answer is... MHz isn't a fair measure of a processor's speed when look across multiple platforms. I don't have bench marks to flaunt or anything, but up until last month I worked at an Advertising agency that used mostly macs, but had a few PCs laying around. We wrote up a scripted action for Photoshop 5.5 and ran it on a G4 @ 450MHz with 512mb of RAM, and then on a Pentium III 600MHz with 512mb of RAM. The G4 finished in a little less than half the time as the Pentium III.

    It seems, <i>to me</i> that the G4 pretty much kicked the "faster" Pentium III's ass doing gaussian blurs, renderings, etc.

    What this means in benchmarks and the "what's faster" war I don't really know. Nor do I care. It's all about having the right tool for the job.
  • Apple has a PR page [apple.com] listing many of the new products as well as specifications for them.

    Mobile-dog has various pictures [mobile-dog.com] taken from the MW Tokyo.

    It's nice to see that apple is updating the iBook and Powerbook, moving up to 500mhz in their Lombard line. Once again they using desktop processors in those portables unlike those "mobile" intel chips. Plus the iBook is the coolest linux portable you'll ever find :)

  • I saw your post and was compelled to reply to it rather than meta-moderate it. What a bunch of hooey! I cannot stand zealotous behaviour unless it is my own zealotous behavior, so here it is:

    The multiple suites of design, illustration, photo-manipulation, layout and print management are all Mac-based, and the people who use them are all mac users

    This stone age idea was okay about 3 years ago, but I have yet to see a mainstream graphics app that hasn't been ported to NT. I worked in a hybrid Mac/NT environment for a year and a half and watched the Macs get displaced during that time. I have to say that my users were not thrilled to see their Macs go, but they wouldn't take them back now.

    Show me a PC that can handle 3 different size monitors of different resolutions and refresh rates for an illustration who uses a mouse, tablet, and trackball.

    I dare you to give me a real explanation for this nonsense. Are you so strapped for cash that you cannot buy real equipment? Obviously not, because you are buying Macs. Don't cry that the PC's are more expensive either. There's a reason for spending $16K on a PC. It's called DUAL PROCESSING. Your fancy G4 isn't going to stand a chance against a dual PIII 733Mhz workstation. I don't give a damn what app you're running.

    You know, here's another one for you: Does Kinetix make 3D Studio Max for the Macintosh? Last I checked, no. What's been the hottest 3D animation suite going for the last year or so? 3DSMAX. Nuff said.

    If you're going to defend your platform, come up with better defense. I can show you a PC that'll not only match your Mac, but it'll take it to school on how to run Photoshop. And then I show you an entire design department that switched to i386 because the Mac just wasn't up to the job...

  • My point is more that in order to make something look nice in Premiere, you need to really grok it. I suppose the emacs analogy sucked. How about this - iMovie is cheap and easy and does the work for you, more like the MacOS, and Premiere (which, ironicly, I've only used on a Mac) takes more effort to get a nice looking end result? Eh, whatever. My total lack of artistic ability may have something to do with this as well....

    itachi

  • The 500MHz G4 isn't new at all -- it's what the G4 was supposed to be from the beginning, if only Motorola's chip factory hadn't screwed things up.1

    Uhh it wasn't Motorola's fabs screwing things up. Apple KNEW that Motorola couldn't get them enough 500MHz parts in time. But due to Steve Job's reality distortion field, they decided to announce it anyway. Apple KNEW they wouldn't be able to ship the 500's, but the PR department decided that they should put it out, doing so without thinking about the consequences of what would happen when the 99% chance of not getting enough chips became real.
  • A beak-shaped yellow sticker would be a good match. I'm staring at (well, actually, staring *past*) an ice cream scooper colored and shaped to look like a penguin. I think I got it at Walmart, maybe target. Ridiculously expensive ($12?), but it's a good shape -- that is, it's a good scooper, and right now it's standing up as a little penguin sculpture next to my computer.

    If I wasn't the laziest man alive, I would take a photo and link to it. But I am, so I don't.

    Now what I need is an ice-cream scoop with a USB port.

    Sorry, my mind is mush.

    timothy
  • In a sense, i can agree. Apple's edge has dulled. My question is why is that surprising?

    They have been roasted for years on end for being propietary and non-compatible. A good example of this is Nubus. For its time, it was awesome. The only company that supported it though was Apple and companies that depended on Apple to stay alive (monopolies suck) such as audio pros. Buying Nubus products was an expensive proposition.

    So, Apple has taken out some of the whackier things and the powerpc is becoming more of a pc. But, don't forget to look ahead to what Apple is doing either. The advent of MacOS X should make Win2k look like the turkey that it is. And for another example of a recent Apple innovation, Firewire. Which from everything that i have read, blows away USB.

    IMHO Apple is choosing better which areas to innovate in. They haven't stopped innovating.
  • Differences in total are

    Colour - Graphite instead of schoolchild
    64Mb Ram - the old iMac had 32Mb
    Larger Hard drive - 6Gb in place of 4
    Better Memory expandability - you can now add 256 more.

  • Less power? Maybe a little less, but I swear that I can hear the power supply fan in my G4/400 slow down whenever the CPU is bogged down doing something. Either the CPU is consuming a lot of power or the power supply just plain sucks. The G4 CPU will never outperform P3s and Athlons so long as it has to run that pathetic excuse for an operating system called MacOS 9. My P3/533 running Linux runs circles around my Mac. I also have an ancient Pentium Pro box running Win 2K. Given the choice between using it or the Mac, I'll pick the Win box. It is *FAR* more reliable, and wow - it can even MULTITASK! ooooh!
  • So, um...where are the REAL links?
  • Well, if you consider a machine with completely open-source reference OS implementation (Darwin) to be closed-spec, I don't really see what would be open..
  • Wasn't this promised (and even available for ordering) several months ago?

    This was a major 'oops' a while back. Apple originally had their 400/450/500 lineup when the G4's came out, but quickly discovered Motorola couldn't make enough 500 Mhz G4's to keep up at any reasonable pace, so they had to scale back to a 350/400/450 lineup... but kept the price the same. 'Oops' again. They quickly recanted and lowered the prices respectively. Now, we finally have the 400/450/500 lineup again... at the lower price. Woohoo! :) Unfortunately, I just bought an iMac, so I can't afford a nice G4... ah well.
    ____________________
    Tension, apprehension
    And dissension have begun

  • I've been using the same Mac since 1997, and probably will be for the next 5 years (my wife won't let me buy a new computer). When I purchased it, it was a ppc 604e 200mhz with 32 megs of ram, 2 gb hard drive. Now, it's a G3 400mhz with 192 megs of ram, and 10gb of total storage space. Some Mac's, like some PC's, can be gradually upgraded. In the worst case you need to buy a new one. However, in the PC "worst case," along with that motherboard and cpu, you probably have to buy new ram, etc. It's rarely as simple or cheap as you make it sound. Incidentally, in my non upgradable Mac I could put a zif g4 into my zif carrier card, i have 2 free pci slots (used one for my rage 128 vr board - 2 monitors!), there are 10 unused scsi IDs (hard drive, cd rom, jaz drive, and cdr are the 4 in use), and I've got 2 free ram slots (I've used 6).
  • I for one am glad to see these new releases, considering they don't co-incide with a major Apple conference.

    Actually, Macworld Tokyo is underway as we speak. The announcements came on the web a few hours or so after Steve Jobs' keynote (which was, unfortunately, not webcast).

    iBook: I got to mess with the original for a bit, the keyboard didn't seem shoddy (but I've bothered with very few notebooks, so it's hard to compare). As for "delicate" hardware, I wish all notebooks had casings as strong. These things can take a serious beating (which is why all that extra plastic is there... shock absorber).

    G4: This is more a symbolic release than anything. Remember when the G4s came out, they were to go to 500MHz, but Motorola found a bug that caused them to be unreliable at that and higher speeds. This says "Hey, we fixed that bug, more goodies on the way". I'd expect a highspeed chip coming out by Macworld NY.

    Pismo (Powerbook): Late due to some unforseen problems with Minuet (OS9.0.1), which is needed to run the hardware. And so what if it's a month late? As you've pointed out, this thing has a definite drool-factor to it :)

  • I wish they could have invented FireDock mode.

    Well, they call it FireWire Target Disk Mode [apple.com] instead. But it's in there!

  • That's great. it must be nice to have such a light notebook. However, the base-model 400MHz G3 will smack a watered down notebook PII silly. Ethernet is also standardon the PowerBook, and, perhaps more importantly, the PowerBook can play Quake 3 just fine with its Rage128 board (which may be lackluster in the desktop arena, but is unparalleled for notebooks.).
  • > People always compare macs to PC's running
    > windows. To me, the real comparison is macs to
    > SGI's. Both are visual/audio orientated OS's,
    > which Windows (and linux) are decidedly not.

    But people generally run a lot of the same software on Windows and Macintosh, though. Before I switched to a blue G3 (when they first came out), I ran Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop, Flash, Director and Cubase on a Windows box. Now I run them all on my Mac (and they run shockingly better, I was really, really surprised). You can't run Cubase (and many other multimedia apps) on NT, though. Maybe Windows 2000, but not NT. And you don't run all these things on an SGI, of course.

  • Re:Hmm. (Score:1)

    by gig ( 78408 )
    I don't think there will be an Athlon or Willemette portable. Those are big, hot, hungry chips. The G3 is closer in size to a 486 and is only warm to the touch after being on all day.
  • What's important is what API's you have. The BSD layer is there as well as the Classic, Carbon and Cocoa (updated OpenStep) API's. Mozilla for OS X is a Carbon UI, but the guts are BSD.

    You also have Java 2 there. Lots of choices.

    Classic apps (regular Mac OS =9 apps) don't run in a box or anything. They just don't look like the truly native apps (they look pretty much the same as they do on OS 9). The idea is that the system loads up the old Finder in the background at boot time or else waits until the first time you launch a Classic app, according to your preference.

    Apple proposed some sort of standard for Linux/OS X binaries so that there'd be some interoperability. Don't know what the result was, though.
  • > Yep, great innovation there... And look who's
    > using it. Apple, and... (Well, sony uses i.link,
    > witch is based on the same spec, and a few PC's
    > have IEEE.1394) And apple didn't develop
    > Firewire themselves, several companies did,
    > including Intel. Another product killed by
    > apple's braindead licensing terms... (Well, not
    > killed but severly slowed down)

    You managed to be wrong on every point. I think you got all of your FireWire info from Slashdot posts.

    Apple developed what became IEEE 1394. Their brand name for their implementation is "FireWire". If you want to use the name "FireWire" you pay them a licensing fee, because you benefit from their advertising. Sony's brand name for their implementation of 1394 is i.Link, but it's still the same tech. Sony just took out the power, so it uses a 4-pin instead of 6-pin connector. Not such a big deal because cables are really cheap, and you can get a 4-pin to 6-pin 10 meter cable for about $5. FireWire cables are all cheap and can be very long, one of the main advantages over SCSI, which uses parallel cables and connectors that are very expensive.

    Besides being on all Macs (except the iBook) and on many Sony and Compaq PC's, 1394 is on EVERY digital camcorder and VCR, all of the hard disk based set-top boxes and on a range of peripherals including hard drives, CD-RW's, DAT's, etc. ... anything that you'd normally use SCSI for. The 800mbs version is already ratified, and somebody has a wireless version now, but I can't remember who.

    Intel's involvement is that they said they would support the standard, and then pulled out and offered the forever-forthcoming USB 2.

    It's a truly great technology. I've had to screw around with USB devices before, unplugging and plugging once in a while, and of course you need a really good hub in order to add more devices. I've never had a problem with FireWire, and you just plug the next one into the last one, up to 63 on a "branch", no hub needed. FireWire devices just have two FireWire ports on the back and sometimes a power connector and that's it. It's a dream for audio/video people to plug-and-play so many devices and add storage so easily.

    Oh, yeah, FireWire support is in the 2.4 Linux kernel. A year from now Slashdot will declare FireWire un-dead and truly amazing.

  • oh my god you are completely ignorant and still posting. There is nothing as upgradable as a Mac. Their are two or three companies that pretty much only sell Mac CPU upgrades of every description.

    My Mac is a blue G3 from early 1999 and I can unplug the 350MHz processor from its ZIF socket and put in any other G3 up to 800MHz whenever I want to. The 600's are around the corner and IBM says the 800's will be out early next year. Whatever the fastest G3 is at any time, it's always about $300.

    I just put a new HD in the thing and it took me no time at all. The whole side of the machine unlatches to upgrade it, and the mobo is on the door and you can get to everything really easily, including the CPU. I copied the old drive to an external FireWire drive, put in the new drive, booted from a CD, ran Drive Setup (took a couple of minutes to partition and initialize the new drive) and then copied everything back from the FireWire drive and rebooted from the new drive. No need to reinstall the OS or screw with anything.

    The thing will take a gig of RAM in four slots and has space for four hard drives and two removable drives (DVD and Zip in there). Three PCI slots (added one card) and USB (got seven devices on there now) and FireWire (four more). This thing is expandable out the wazoo. Plus, there's a G4 upgrade for it if I want to get that, and I could get a great price for it if I sold it because they retain their value so well. But I won't, because the thing is incredibly fast and beautiful and runs Mac OS X really well.

    I also defy you to replace a mobo and CPU in a PC in 20 minutes. I defy you to even massage Windows into working reliably on the new mobo in 20 minutes (rebooting three or four times in a row and then once into Safe Mode usually gets all the new devices).

    Man, you have to get a clue before you spout all this old, old FUD. Most Mac users have also used PC's, while the reverse is not true, so ask a Mac user about it before you make blanket statements.
  • Intel notebooks use heavily, heavily modified and stripped down versions of the desktop chips, and they even use a different scale in their published benchmarks that makes comparing desktop to notebook very difficult. (Desktops are rated in numbers while the notebook chips assign a 1 to the slowest chip and a 1.3, 1.4, etc. to the faster ones.) The original poster was saying the current G4 won't go in a notebook, and that's probably true, given that it was never designed to. Compare a mobile Intel chip and a G3 and a G4 and you'll see that the G4 is the odd one out.
  • A PIII at 1.5GHz? You are an idiot. The 1.5GHz number is the chip that comes AFTER the iTanium, which is not even out yet, itself. They demoed a 1GHz PIII at a trade show, where IBM has been demoing 1GHz PowerPC chips for two years. In other words, that has nothing to do with what you can go out and buy.

    There are miserably few 700MHz PIII's available now. So what? Bus speeds are almost always 100MHz, RAM is running around 100MHz. You're better off getting a 400 or 500 with twice the RAM, which is why Apple's desktops can take up to 2 gig of RAM.
  • another story on slashdot about a speedbump and some new colors, yet whenever apple does something interesting (like things with OS X, Darwin, new features in OS9, etc) it gets no mention here on slashdot. i offer up my services to be the official Mac-editor here so we can run the stroies that matter and ignore the marketing speak and the minor product upgrades. i love macs but i sure wouldn't want to read about "Dell announces 50mhz speed increase and wonderful new internet keyboard" or whatever accounts for exciting new products on the wintel side.

    raz

    ------------
    DJ Raz
    raz@wfnk.com [mailto]
  • There are lots of companies that shipped NuBus cards, too... they didn't catch on, either.

    FireWire has some nice features, but in the end, it's still a lot slower than SCSI and more expensive than the IDE stuff.

    Now, I agree that USB is inappropriate for lots of things it's used for (esp. scanners and drives). And maybe firewire will succeed.

    But, I'm not holding my breath.

  • I use Linux (Red Hat 5.2, 6.1, 6.2 and COL) at home and I use OS X Server at work on a couple of boxes, and I agree - it's going to be OS X that puts a *NIX on my three Macs, my mothers iMac, my cousins iMac, G4 and iBook. It's going to be OS X that puts a *NIX on the desk of my grandmother...not Red Hat. It's going to be OS X that puts a *NIX on the desk of my boss...not SUSE that he ditched.

    I screwed around with Yellow Dog PPC Linux this summer...but just wanted my old Mac OS functionality back. Now OS 9 on my five boxes is pretty danged stable...I have a couple of issues with Adobe products...but otherwise it just works. I can't wait for OS X.

    I'm sure we're gonna get flames for this...but hey.
  • It seems to me that a year or so ago, apple suggested that the same binaries
    would run on MacOs X and on ppc mac. I don't know if they meant it,
    or if they still due, but it would suggest that there's at least
    a possibility . . .

    Then again, if I can run standard X applications at the same time,
    I just may ask for a Mac wherever I land next fall . . .

    But there's no way I'm giving up LyX . . .

  • Re:Specs (Score:2)

    by X ( 1235 )
    Actually, Dell will sell you the Lucent version for $140.

    The Apple card is also nice because it uses the laptop's built in antenna, so you don't have an ugly attena sticking out of your pcmcia card. That's got to be an easy thing to break.

  • Re:Specs (Score:2)

    by X ( 1235 )
    Yeah, but for $170 you still have an external attenna to worry about.
  • Maybe it's not so much that they're focused on case design now as that they were ignoring it before (and most still are). Making computers in your living room as natural as your TV takes more than higher clock-speeds and better operating systems - although that's part of it.

    Apple's not breaking ground as quickly as it could be, but they need to be able to pay for all that R&D. If millions of iMacs being sold subsidizes work done on OSX, I'm all for it.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • Yes, I know it shouldn't matter on a properly written foundation (which I admit OS9 doesn't really have), but I'd look toward your room-mate. A properly configured Mac can have well over a month or two of solid uptime (in my case, as a dedicated soft-router and occasional work machine).

    Windows (not so much NT, but 9X), on the other hand, just kind of falls apart in my experience. On the Mac you may get crashes, but they're extremely easy to isolate and fix.

    I'm hoping that, plus a halfway modern foundation, will come along with OSX. We'll see I guess.


    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • Buy an upgrade. Pop a new G3 or G4 in there, and there you go.

    What do you have?

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • ---
    Looks like a nice bunch from Apple again. Hopefully they can deflate Steve's ego enough to get him out the door..
    ---

    Why? Apple would be dead right now without him in charge.

    Hell, just yesterday, the stock price topped out at its highest level ever, and they're rumored to be splitting Real Soon Now.



    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • Heh, you don't have to tell me. I've got a PBG3 'Lombard' here in front of me and I wouldn't trade it for anything (except, maybe, one of those 500 Mhz ones just announced).

    But I will agree, most of the Mac bashing is done:

    1. By those who rarely use them.
    2. By those who use very poorly treated Macs.

    It's not the highlight in stability, but it beats the hell out of the alternative in other ways.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • I assume he was dragging and dropping icons in the Finder in order to open up a document. The same should have been accomplished by using the 'Open' menu item under the File menu.

    Even the MacOS has some interface quirks, though. Someone who has never used a computer, or even worse one who is used to another kind, has to (re)train for some things...

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • I was never a fan of the iBox colours

    I have to agree. Although I like the iMac's sleek and colorful design, it just doesn't seem sexy with the iBooks. Just the opposite, they look like something that, upon opening, will reveal colorful stickers of Big Bird or Barney, or might play barnyard sounds. Maybe it's just the bright colors, but they look too much like my kids' toys. The graphite SE, though, looks like something I might could carry. (I guess I'm just not a colorful guy; when I bought my Dell Inspiron 3700 last year, I chose the boring gray over the cheesy blue. YMMV)

    --Jim
  • The multiple suites of design, illustration, photo-manipulation, layout and print management are all Mac-based, and the people who use them are all mac users. I previously worked at a company where the vunderkin new-hire in the design department was a PC guy, and he needed a new fully loaded PC instead of the standard Design Mac that everyone else with his role had. $16,000 later, his machine was ready, and he went to work....

    Was his computer made of solid gold? I just set up a digital video editing suite, including expensive DVMaster w/hardware codec and software for $6K. $16K? this sounds little too anecdotal to be truth. Show me the parts list!

    I know for a fact, that he kept having to hand projects back to the Mac people, because his machine couldn't match the work that they produced, and in many cases, tools existed on the Mac that had no counterparts on the PC platform.

    Yet another anecdote form the big pile of Mac FUD. What tools are these that don't perform as well on PC as do on Mac? What are these tools that don't exist on the PC. Names, please, and manufacturers.

    I have used Macs as firewalls,

    How did you multi-home with the mac? That's a task that I've needed to accomplish on several occasions.

    Please respond with no malice, otherwise you'll be ignored.

  • Graphic Design and Print Production are where the Mac's (improper use of apostrophe) rule, and they rule with an iron fist...trying to mimic the Mac's capabilities...tools existed on the Mac that had no counterparts on the PC platform.
    • I think you're confusing the OS and the third party software available for it. From what I can tell, none of the advantages the Mac supposedly holds amount to more than the existence of a handful of good third party graphic design apps.

    Show me a PC that can handle 3 different size monitors of different resolutions and refresh rates for an illustration who uses a mouse, tablet, and trackball...
    • OK. Any of the commercial X Servers can and (don't flame) Win2k can as well IIRC. So, what advantages are there to the Mac (besides a couple of good design packages)? Any?

    ...his machine couldn't match the work that they produced...
    • His machine? I think not.
  • Ok. You've pointed us to a whole lot of Apple propaganda telling us how kick-ass their stuff is. I might point you to Microsoft [microsoft.com] to let them pontificate on how great Windows [microsoft.com] is, but I won't. To make a long story short however, I think a fair synopsis of the links you provided would be "there are a lot of really cool third party graphic design and printing apps for the Mac" which was my previous point. Would you agree? Are there actually any architectural (not ergonomic, although I agree that usability is important) advantages? Oh, and Colorsync is available for the PC as well, it's just called ICC and Win2K is "available" as of tomorrow (Feb 17). In fact every one of the "State-of-the-art technologies including Sherlock 2, AppleScript, QuickTime, ColorSync, Macintosh Runtime for Java and Speech [which] raise Mac OS to a whole new level of intelligence" or their equivalents are/have been available for the PC, other than Sherlock 2, whatever that is :)

    By the way, I actually don't like Windows. I'm really just playing Devil's advocate. Mac was a better platform a while back but now is just as bad as Wintel if not far worse. Linux is on its merry way to becoming a viable desktop but, for me at least, isn't quite there yet.
    (Rant mode on.) I'm actually quite dissatisfied with the state of computers today, both hardware and software. Intel's giving the consumer shit with their whole Rambus thing, AMD can't seem to get VIA to put out a decent chipset (the KX133 isn't all it's cracked up to be and furthermore it isn't even here yet), Microsoft has been sucking along for years, BeOS might be a viable alternative but that has yet to be shown, Mozilla is limping along topped only in slowness by GNOME, KDE, XF86 etc. To put it mildly, things are bad now and I see no prospect of immediate change for the better. (Rant off.) Sorry for that.
  • The Lombard (Bronze Keyboard) 333 and 400s also had dual display with video mirroring. I've used it several times, like the time I hooked it up to the 56" TV in the dorm at my friend's school.
  • was looking at the powerbook specs, and i found something interesting:

    One of the hottest graphics chips ever invented, the ATI RAGE Mobility 128 graphics controller has an advanced architecture that delivers spectacular 3D graphics performance in millions of colors.

    Whoa!!! now is that the best way they could have possibly worded it?? :) if it's among the "hottest" graphics chips ever invented, i really don't see why they'd be putting it in a laptop, do you?? Who wrote that description and what were they thinking..?

    somebody in Apple Engineering, quick, go over to Apple Marketing and PR and explain to them what heat is, and why it isn't a good thing in laptops, and why computers have fans in them.. -_-
    btw, while you're over there, can you go and beat the shit out of whoever it was who designed the imac keyboard that came with my G4..? thanks.
  • This would be the case no matter what you buy. If you're posting on Slashdot, one would hope you have a clue about how the industry works. Two words: Moore's Law. Same for PC or Mac. Quit complaining about it.

  • We've been waiting for this for more than 2 years now.

    Canada finally has its own Apple Store. Yippee!!!!!

    http://store.apple.com /1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/canadastore [apple.com]

  • Um... what do you want to see, then?

    Apple pushed USB to the forefront by not including a floppy and adding the USB port to their iMacs.

    Was this only a year ago? Two years? Before then, good luck finding USB peripherals, I don't know that it was such a big thing on PCs. and only *now* are Compaq(iPaq), IBM(EON devices), etc. pushing USB and dropping a bunch of the older legacy devices.

    Think the same, but now insert FireWire. A year from now, I expect FireWire to be everywhere for the high speed devices.

    And look at what they're doing with IEEE 802.11, aka AirPort, WaveLan, whatever.

    You question how Apple is producing products which define personal computing; the answer is that with wireless, our portables are truly portable while being connected to the network. With USB and FireWire, our devices gain the PnP capabilities that is traditionally associated with SCSI, but without such a price or complexity hit since both are serial standards(less complex cabling, IDs, connectors, and chaining).

    What else is Apple going to do that will redefine personal computing? Adopting BSD/NeXT in MacOS X, giving the common man the power and reliablitity of Un*x, with the svelte and suave dress of the Mac UI.

    I actually can't think of many other companies trying to do similar. Sony, for one, with their Memory Sticks, FireWire, camcorders, etc.

    Palm, perhaps, with their PDAs and stuff.

    So perhaps Apple isn't as exciting(to you), but they haven't stopped 'innovating'.

    -AS
  • isn't the revamped Powerbook or the notched up iBook, its the great support of the Japanese language by the Mac OS. Before, you apparantly would've had to spend $10,000 per machine for software that would provide the same functionality.

    As this expo is in Tokyo, you can see why it would be a big deal.
  • IE is a notorious RAM and resource hog. That's why i never run it except to check my HTML coding to make sure it works.
    I hate to see what 5.0 will do. More MS propaganda: they claim it runs in 5 Megs of RAM, yet it will automagically suck up any free RAM it can find while running. When will people learn? :)

    Pope
  • If I got a PowerBook and put LinuxPPC on it (I'll never use MacOS, so that's out), could I do some cool wireless networking tricks?
    --
  • Your point is moot [arstechnica.com] And don't even bother responding if unless you read the artical

    [ c h a d o k e r e ] [dhs.org]
  • No, dude. The difference between Premiere and iMovie is like the difference between emacs and your average word processor. iMovie is so that I can make a movie using an iMac and a video camera and it'll look halfway decent, maybe even pretty good if the lighting was good. Premiere is so someone with artistic vision, a lot of patience, and a lot of experience with Premiere can make something really beautiful. Premiere has a lot of capability, and it is really powerful, and it has a learning curve like you can't believe. In order to use Premiere to actually end up with a nice finished product, you have to know what you're doing. iMovie is like Premiere for the rest of us.

    itachi

  • Hm.. it seems they missed out the = in the link tags.

    Here are the amended links for Hot News [apple.com] and the one for Marketing [apple.com] speak one.
    --

  • About the only real use for this stuff by the average person is games, and PCs are better for games then macs (TNT2 || GeForce Vs ATI)

    Now, I haven't looked specifically, but I bet some enterprising individual has hacked together a Mac driver for the GeForce. And you're forgetting Voodoo3 (which is supposed to be damn good). Now, as for the only real use of AltiVec being games... well, Photoshop, for example, uses vector processing heavily. So do the video-editing tools that ship with the iMac DV. Apple is just trying to bring the sort of power that's traditionally been in the hands of professional video editors to the general public. This is a Good Thing.

    Plus, this is maybe going to sound like flamebait, but I, personally, wouldn't be caught dead running Windows, and I'm not yet comfortable running exclusively Linux. Maybe things will change, maybe not. But the point is, some people are willing to pay the premium for an OS that just feels really slick. Count me among them!
    --

  • There are probably a lot of mutterings among the market that Macs "aren't as fast" as PCs, given the staggering rise in MHz lately in the PC market (AMD and Intel are both shipping 800+ MHz versions, and planning to ship faster in the near future). Crusoe is going to debut at 700 MHz in the mobile market, isn't it? If so, then yes, I'd say that the speed is a factor here.

    Let's just put this into perspective: the average computer user (I'm not talking about the average slashdot reader, here) doesn't know where the line can be drawn when it comes to MHz. The media preys on these people; "bigger is better" is what they tout, otherwise they wouldn't bother advertising the MHz number like they do (with phrases like "This system features a super-fast 750MHz Intel Pentium III processor"). They're hoping to catch people in the craze of buying the latest and greatest.

    So, Apple raising the performance (and speed) bar on their chips will certainly help them say "Look, we can compete with their super-fast chips, by using our New Super-Duper-Fast Chips ". A lot of would-be Mac buyers will listen to this.

    meisenst
  • No they're not. They are in the source, but they forgot the = before the href. Here they are:

    http://www.apple.com/powerboo k/pdf/PowerBook_DS-a.pdf [apple.com]
    http://www.apple.com/hotnews/ [apple.com]


  • > Clock for clock An Athlon is 15-30%+ faster then a pIII as well.

    And consumes 5x the power, and requires a die 4x the size. And the 15-30% premium of a G4 doesn't count AltiVec. Checked RC5 lately for processor benchmarks?

    >Of course, a Mac with a 500mhz g4 costs $3,499 on the apple store, whereas pricewatch lists the cheapest 500mhz Athlon at $599. that's $2900 less. (800mhz costs $1300).

    Compare equal boxes, dude:
    128Mb vs. 32Mb RAM
    27Gb vs. 4.2Gb HD
    16Mb ATI Rage PRO vs. 4Mb no-name card
    A better case than a PC can dream of (check out the door)!
    The components overall are of higher quality. Checked the DOA rate of those dirt-cheap PCs lately?

    Throw in economies of scale, Apple's R&D cost, plus the 'fastest of the fastest' premium (checked the price/Mhz of the most EXPENSIVE Athlon?) and of COURSE it's triple the price.

    Don't get me wrong - Athlons are great processors - IMO they are the x86 equals to G4s, and when I buy a PC it will be an Athlon. Just don't let all the other considerations skew your opinions.
  • First, Apple had the Apple II. With Visicalc, they had a product to kill for.

    Ok, the Lisa was a bit of an expensive turkey, but in the Macintosh, they produced a product to kill for.

    Now they have a box with a number of components which wouldn't be out of place in your PC. They have a proprietary OS which is nothing out of the ordinary. And they have monitor cases to kill for (if you shop at IKEA).

    Somehow, I feel slightly underwhelmed. Instead of producing products which define what personal computing is about, they are making machines which don't break any ground, but will match your interior decor.

    I really hope they return to form soon, and produce something more innovative and exciting than a patented case design.
  • It's called "innovation" my friend... Apple has consistently shown that it is willing to release new technologies to the (consumer) marketplace.

    With any new technology, there is an adoption curve that has to take place. Look at the GUI that Apple brought to consumers... At first, there was nothing like it. Today, it seems absurd to release a consumer product with only a CLI.

    Look at USB. Apple brought USB to the marketplace. Now everybody is jumping on the USB bandwagon. USB (IMHO) is a wonderful technology for PnP devices.

    Wireless and Firewire have the potential to follow the same path... or they may die out with a legacy like Betamax, NuBus, or MCA.

    The fact remains that Apple, unlike other companies, have taken the jump to release these new technologies.

    I will grant you that the MacOS in its current incarnation is not exactly the most robust thing on the market... (I know, I support a Production environment with a dozen Sun boxes and about 50 MacOS servers) But with OSX, it'll be Apple that brings *nix to the desktop, not Linux... I'm sorry, but linux doesn't have consumer appeal. I run LinuxPPC on my Lombard here at work, I've run it at home on my x86 boxes. There just isn't that consumer appeal that Apple seems to have. Its robably related to Jobs' reality distortion field..

    Ok kids... Flame away!
  • Wasn't this promised (and even available for ordering) several months ago?

  • Specs (Score:3)

    by Wyatt Earp ( 1029 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @03:57AM (#1269325)
    Actually...

    The iBookSE is the only Graphite one, the Blueberry and Tangerine are still out. But the SE is the 366MHz one. They all come with 64MB of RAM now and they all come with 6BG HDs...but the old ones only had a 3.2.

    I think it's pretty sweet that every Macintosh model now has Airport capability, and 3 out of 4 models have Firewire.

    Of course you could add an Airport compatible card to the PCMCIA slot of the old Powerbook...but it was $299 where the Airport card is $99 and you still have your PCMICA slots free since it goes under the keyboard.

  • Re:Apple are closed -spec (Score:3)

    by Darchmare ( 5387 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @04:37AM (#1269326)
    ---
    Apple still keeping thier hardware specs to themselves? Well, I won't be buying a mac anytime soon then.
    ---

    Hrm.

    http://www.publicsource.apple.com/
    http://www.totalimpact.com/
    http://www.linuxppc.com/
    http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/
    http://www.suse.com/ppc/
    http://www.mklinux.org/

    ...perhaps you forgot the previous links? Note that in some of these cases, Apple has commited actual developers to producing open-sourced code.

    Also note that Mac hardware has moved towards industry standard parts (NuBus to PCI, ADB to USB, etc), and has worked to detangle their OS from the hardware (ROM in RAM architecture, etc).

    Then again, you probably weren't going to buy a Mac anyhow - this was just a good place to troll. Perhaps you were even drinking a little Be kool-aid...?

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])

  • Bigger and better (Score:3)

    by angelo ( 21182 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @04:12AM (#1269327) Homepage
    I for one am glad to see these new releases, considering they don't co-incide with a major Apple conference. Anyways, on to the hardware:

    The newer iBook:

    I have to admit it is nice. It has a nice new graphite color and some internal improvements. I wonder if they have fixed that flimsy-feely keyboard. It made me think my hands weigh 10 pounds each. Very delicate hardware, and somewhat tiny keys. They doubled the ram and hdd which is of course a good thing.

    It is interesting to note that it is one of the more expandable laptops I've seen recently, with a maximum 320 megs of ram. 366 is a decent speed for a portable device, especially when combined with RISC hardware. Unfortunately, you probably won't see much of an improvement until you run OSX client to take advantage of the chipset.

    The G4:

    I suppose Motorola caught up. Still upgrading the processor to 500mhz doesn't help much in a world full of 800 mhz PIIIs and Athlons. Should add a boost for professional video and photoshop folks out there.

    The powerbook:

    Late again. This was expected last month, but at least they put some polish on it. A 500mhz laptop is something to look at twice, regardless of the operating system it runs. Couple that with a max 512mb of RAM, and you have a nice little lapwarmer. I was fully expecting a G4 in this puppy, but I suppose I'll need to wait. 1 meg of backside cache is also a bonus. Oh yeah, it also has firewire ports. Nifty. One more thing: it only comes in one color. Thank the goddes for that one.

    Looks like a nice bunch from Apple again. Hopefully they can deflate Steve's ego enough to get him out the door..

  • Penguin-coloured iBook - perfect for Linux! (Score:3)

    by WSSA ( 27914 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @06:27AM (#1269328)
    I like the black and white colour scheme, it would
    be great to run Linux on it - the colours are
    Tux-like! I wonder if you could put a yellow
    beak on it or something to make it even more like
    a Tux?

  • Re:well - mostly, anyway (Score:3)

    by rabidMacBigot() ( 33310 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @11:08AM (#1269329)
    Those iMac and iBook designs are practically made for people to whom style is everything ans substance nothing.
    Style: toilet seat shape
    Substance: the shape of the case is such that if you drop it, the shock is spread out over the rest of the polycarbonate shell, instead of being concentrated on a corner and shattering it.

    Style: integral handle
    Substance: keeps you from dropping it. The handle looks very flimsy - it's not. try it out sometime; it will easily support a few times the iBook's weight.

    Style: colored case
    Substance: indifferent. for one thing, I'm not so insecure as to be embarrassed to be carrying a candy toilet seat. what do I have to prove? besides, it's not like they had to neuter the processor to make it candy-colored. There's still a dope machine inside.

    I'm to lazy to elaborate on the six-hour battery life (from my experience, not a sales brochure), integrated Airport antenna, the finest trackpad I've used, integrated modem/Ethernet, fast battery charger, and any of the other things that you won't understand unless you use the machine before you mock it. Imagine that.

    Silly troll.

  • Re:(stifled yawn)................ (Score:4)

    by Wyatt Earp ( 1029 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @04:54AM (#1269330)
    Compatable Devices?

    Lets see...VST is shipping a buttload of Firewire devices.
    http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000215/vst_techno_2.html

    The little 2.5 inch VST Firewire drives are sweet, small, fast and don't need an external power supply. They also have larger 3.5 inch Firewire drives. Sony and LaCie are shipping Firewire CD-R and CD-RW drives. All those digital video cameras, scanners all kinds of goodies.

    Firewire is going to replace SCSI for things like scanners, USB scanners just don't cut it after you've used a SCSI or Firewire scanner.

    Airport is completly IEEE 802.11 compliant, it's from Lucent.

    While the old "Apple ain't compatible - look at Nubus" just isn't an arguement anymore. PCI, AGP, Airport, USB and Firewire...doesn't look propitary to me.

  • Re:1 (Score:4)

    by DoenerMord ( 21821 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @03:57AM (#1269331)
    Ok, I'll bite.

    Uh. Hmm. I'd agree that the iMacs and iBooks aren't for everyone. But can you really call that Powerbook a toy? Does Sony's Vaio have a Rage 128 chip in it? I mean, I'd take one if given to me, but can it even do 3D? Is it interesting to anyone else how a toy company can affect so much of the industry? Besides the color thing, there's USB adoption, Firewire, and Mac OS X around the corner. I don't see Fisher Price supporting opensource projects like Darwin, do you? Man, buy the thing and throw LinuxPPC 2000 on it, if you want. Apple is far from perfect. I've had to work with them, so believe me, I know. But it's just amazing to me how old, unfounded grudges don't die.

    Ah well.

    -doenermord
    Don't blame the games. It takes a village to screw up a child.

  • Links (Score:4)

    by matthew.thompson ( 44814 ) <{ku.oc.ytilautca} {ta} {ttam}> on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @03:36AM (#1269332) Journal
    New iBook [apple.com] and New 500Mhz G4 [apple.com]

    Nice to see the iBook in the Graphite though - I was never a fan of the iBoox colours - they seemed to suit the iMac more than theiBook.

  • Re: Apple as a toy company. (Score:5)

    by digitalmuse ( 147154 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2000 @06:50AM (#1269333)
    OK, someone just said something that I just have to flame back against... but bear with me.

    A lot of PC users snicker at the Mac as a toy and say that it can't do any real work. Well, get off your high horse and face reality... I am a tech-consultant / system technician, and my area of expertise is the Mac, over a decade of use and 6 years of the techical side.

    I've worked with just about everything out there, SGI, Alpha, Data General, *nix, Linux, BeOS, Amigia... you name it, I've been called on to fix it, and by far, I prefer the Mac. Admittedly, the PC market has the larger footprint in the business world, but look at the markets where Macintosh is the de-facto standard. Graphic Design and Print Production are where the Mac's rule, and they rule with an iron fist.

    I'm presently working at Putnam Financial Investments, and we have an enclave here of 140 Mac users... the only ones in the entire company, and they are here to stay. Periodically, someone in management makes some noise about standardizing on the PC's for the entire company and switching out the Macs here.
    They talk about standardizing, repurposing assets and other PHB-speak, but they get squashed like a bug when word gets out to the people who manage and work the design department.

    The multiple suites of design, illustration, photo-manipulation, layout and print management are all Mac-based, and the people who use them are all mac users. I previously worked at a company where the vunderkin new-hire in the design department was a PC guy, and he needed a new fully loaded PC instead of the standard Design Mac that everyone else with his role had. $16,000 later, his machine was ready, and he went to work....
    I know for a fact, that he kept having to hand projects back to the Mac people, because his machine couldn't match the work that they produced, and in many cases, tools existed on the Mac that had no counterparts on the PC platform. All that work, and non-recoverably investment, was hampered by the fact that he was trying to mimic the Mac's capabilities, a sobering thought when you consider that when he leaves, his machine will be given to the CFO's assistant because none of the other designers want to touch the damn thing.

    Admitedly, I'm ranting about a specialized segement of the computer-using population, but understand this. The Macintosh has not survived this long, and kept it's integrity as a cutting edge machine for creative and design work, by being second best. The Mac you see on the market today is the product of selective breeding, the machine that has evolved to fill the needs of people in high-production environments and creative positons.

    The Mac was not built as and Enterprise server.
    It was not made as a thin-client.
    It was not made to be a gaming platform (yet!)

    And people still insist on pushing it into those roles and judging it's performance against systems that are built for those tasks. I have used Macs as firewalls, servers, kiosks, data-aquisition clients, and remote access terminals. I have found the most efficient ways to use the Mac in these roles, and dealt with the issues that arise. The Macinosh isn't perfect. But don't compare Apples to Oranges and then ridicule the Mac when it isn't all things to all people... Compare the Apple to the competitors that want to take it's market share. Show me a PC that can fill the shoes of a Design Mac in a high-flow Advertising Agency. Show me a PC that can handle 3 different size monitors of different resolutions and refresh rates for an illustration who uses a mouse, tablet, and trackball. Show me a PC that matches my Mac, and I'll be impressed. but untill I see designers with Intel Inside on their desks, I'm going to keep my Mac...

    "If I can't take my Mac with me to heaven when I die, I'm not going."
    - Anonymous Mac-Marine

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