Shaddup about G5 PowerBooks already!

[padishahemperor]

Originally Posted by MBHockey

Haha. I'm extremely content with my 1.5 year old 1 GHz TiPB. I don't plan on getting a new Mac until after grad school (another 4-5 years or so)...

...and what a great day that will be

mmh, my last Mac was in 97, I don't know if things have changed but one thing that always struck me about Mac users was the lack of the constant upgrade mentality which is prevalent in the PC world. When my Mac comes, short of a disaster (like with my old Mac) I won't be upgrading for a long time.

[Lt Major Burns]

i saw a sony vaio in dixons the other day. it was truly tine, half the size of a 12" pBook. i thought - laughable little pda! but no. instead of an even smaller desktop space than the stupid 12" pBook (1024x768 is impossible for pro apps these days, it's useless as a promachine - if you want to show clients work, print it out! don't spend £1500) it had a bigger deskspace nearly, than the 15" pBook

10" display, 1280x768 screen res. that was bloody impressive.

for the next powerbooks they need to get this into commission. imagine if you will:
the 16" (17 really is too big to carry around :P) HD Powerbook

as for G5: no. it is the time now for desktop and notebook processors to go seperate ways - a powerhouse on your desk, a portable on your lap - look at the intel centrino technology and also mobile graphics. wintel have seen that low energy consumption and optimised-for-wi-fi are of far greater importance than sheer clock speed now. apple should see this too. the IBM PowerPC 'M'5 chip? mobile mac chips.

pc laptops now are making the powerbooks look a bit silly. they're not the smallest anymore, nor the fastest, not even the sexiest anymore in some cases. just... apple, now

[chornbe]

If the WinTel world would chop back on the "let's cram everything onto this portable multimedia workhorse" so the current flavor of notebooks didn't look so crazy, the power and usefulness of the Centrino would really shine. right now it's kind of blurred under a layer of digital bling that really makes a lot of current WinTel notebooks look like stupid overkill. It's the main reason I bought my iBook. It's simple, clean and has a very basic look and feel - exactly what I was looking for. The battery life is kicking butt and it's plenty fast enough for everything I run.

$.02

[texanpenguin]

The reason that most people are so anxious for G5 PowerBooks is that they know that it's only a matter of time before Apple releases a G5 in a laptop form-factor, and they don't want to go out and buy a really high-end G4 PowerBook that, in two or three months time is completely out of date. I have a G3 PowerBook. It is the weakest system in my house in OS X - there'll be an OS revision in the not TOO distant future (I'm thinking 10.7) that will be fully 64-bit, in which case the G4 PowerBooks will again be useless.

It's perfectly understandable to want for a G5 PowerBook; they're supposed to be Powerful machines. Now they're just iBooks with shorter battery life, better screens and slightly faster clock-speed.

[Randman]

I think people just hear G5 PowerBook and assume it'll be a massive difference in computing, which it won't. Dual-core G4 might hit 2.0Ghz before a single-core G5 in a PB.
If a G5 came out, it'll be about 1.8Ghz. The hard drives are already 100GB and the video card got any upgrade with the rev ds. Plus, it'll be only for the 17s and maybe the 15s. Even if they conquered the heat and power issues, I think the iMac will need to get a performance bump first.

[chornbe]

Oh, no argument that they're desired and people are anxious for them. But, for me, the questions of necessity and price/power trade off come in to play. For what you can spend on a top end notebook of major power, you can alternately get yourself a decent iBook or low-end powerbook, *and* a sweet G5 iMac. I would venture to say it's the rare person who *needs* the power of a major dual G5 PowerMac *and* a top end PowerBook or the portability it offers.

Apple would be really ill advised to rush a niche product to market before it's really ready. Pentium/4 top end notebooks are an abysmal failure because of... wait for it... power consumption and heat... You won't hear much about it but Toshiba just recalled *another* 889 b'zillion batteries or system-boards for charging systems, or some crap like that, and Intel is secretly/quietly admonishing notebook makers for building machines out of spec (Intel does not officially recommend any P4, non "m" class, for portable use). Behind the scenes, to which I'm partially privy due to some friends I've made over the years in various companies, it's a pretty hectic time to be in the computer manufacturing biz.

Anyway, the Centrinos are kicking butt (again, if you can stomache the rediculous case designs and over-engineered plethora of pointless buttons) because they were made from the git-go to address problems particular to the mobile market.

$.02

Originally Posted by texanpenguin

The reason that most people are so anxious for G5 PowerBooks is that they know that it's only a matter of time before Apple releases a G5 in a laptop form-factor, and they don't want to go out and buy a really high-end G4 PowerBook that, in two or three months time is completely out of date. I have a G3 PowerBook. It is the weakest system in my house in OS X - there'll be an OS revision in the not TOO distant future (I'm thinking 10.7) that will be fully 64-bit, in which case the G4 PowerBooks will again be useless.

It's perfectly understandable to want for a G5 PowerBook; they're supposed to be Powerful machines. Now they're just iBooks with shorter battery life, better screens and slightly faster clock-speed.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

No computer ever released was outdated in two or three months. That's a big exaggeration. If I purchased a 1.67GHz G4 PowerBook now, I'd rest assured that it would not be outdated for at least a year or two -- even with the presence of G5 PowerBooks.

[texanpenguin]

I don't mean useless.
I mean out of date. Not new anymore.

People who spend a whole lot of money for something that is the ABSOLUTE top of the line don't want to have something that's not even in the same GENERATION as the next best thing two months later.