iBook updates around the corner?

verlorenengel

verlorenengel

Geek Stink Breath
Hi all,

A friend has just purchased a new iBook and Apple are claiming they are out of stock and are awaiting new shipments (Australia); the story seems to change each day however with it being lost in couriers, missing, held up in secure storage, etc.
It's now been two weeks since ordering it on the apple store online and I am beginning to wonder if there is an iBook update around the corner and this is perhaps the cause of the shipping problems etc?

I see the normal update cycle for iBooks is April / Sept each year (based on the past three years); however with the PowerBook update just happening I wonder if the iBook update is scheduled to happen sometime in the next couple of weeks?

Thoughts?
 
ibook G5? um.. the powerbook JUST got updated and it still uses a G4 so do you really think the ibook is getting a G5?

put down the crack pipe
 
Well a new iBook is not all that likely since they were updated in October (by the macrumors buying guide). On the other hand a G5 notebook mid year (late June through early August) is not completely out of line for Apple's historic release schedule.
 
The Powerbooks weren't updated when the iBooks were last October. The update to the Powerbooks are much needed for them to be sufficiently differentiated from the iBooks to warrant the higher prices.
 
Viro said:
The Powerbooks weren't updated when the iBooks were last October. The update to the Powerbooks are much needed for them to be sufficiently differentiated from the iBooks to warrant the higher prices.
Click to expand...

True, perhaps I should have explained better. iBooks and PowerBooks seem to have about a 6-9 month lifecycle. This last update for the PowerBook was on the ouside of that range at 9 months. I would not expect an iBook update before April based on this. If an iBook meets it's normal release cycle (April) though I would figure it to be a speed bump in the G4 range. If it does not get an update in April though this would lend a little credence to a G5 version of both PowerBook and iBook in the July-August range.

I would think it more likely that:
1) iBook get a boost in April
2) PowerBooks get a boost in the July-August range. G5 if they are ready G4 if not.
3) iBooks get boost in Oct-Dec range.

EDIT: From what I have read a dual core G4 seems to be the more logical way to go on the laptop side of things. It would seem to me a dual core with the ability to shut down sections, or even a whole cpu would be better for a laptop market. You are not going to have gobs of memory in a laptop and the laptop hardrive would also act as a throttle on a G5 more than it would a dual G4. Even if you go single core, if you can improve memory bandwidth and have enough headroom to push the processor into the 2.2-2.5 GHZ range by end of 2006 there is not really a need to a G5 in the laptop market for a while. There are some who would find it extremely useful, especially if you can shoehorn in 4GB of RAM. But by and large a fast G4 would be just as useful when you consider the bottleneck of the hard drive and the lack of applications where the 64bit architecture makes a large difference. The main disadvantage would be marketing.
 
It would be quite funny if that happened :) That would be the first time that the consumer line-up has better hardware than the professional line.

Apple would be shooting themselves in the foot.
 
Yeah, and the name, it would be funny.

It's like, Powerbook, you'd expect it to be more powerful than iBook. In this case, if it wasn't that'd be so funny.
 
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