Nice! But what happened to 12" and 17" MacBook Pros?

G

georgelien

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Steve sure surprised us with the new iMac and the new MacBook Pro.

Putting the brand new Intel dual core mobile processors into its consumer portables sure will cut into what is already pretty tight, low profit margins, so Apple surprised us with its consumer desktop and its professional portables

But, but what happened to 12" and 17" MacBook Pros?

What do you think?

Why did Apple only introduced a 15-incher instead of the entire pro portable line?
 
To compensate for when they introduced the 12" and 17" alubooks first and kept the 15" at Titanium for 9 months afterwards? ;) ... I guess it was just the first hardware actually _ready_ soon enough to warrant an introduction. (Besides the iMac, that is.) Also, it seems to share the whole motherboard with the iMac, so the projects could work together.
 
I think they put a rush on the thing. And since the 15 incher is the average workhorse of the group, they put that one out first. Don't worry. I'm sure the others are coming sometime soon.
 
Remeber when the Powerbooks first came out, it was the 15" first, then the 12 and 17" later on. That's what they are probably doing again. The TiBook came out, then the Al 12" and 17" books came out
 
fryke said:
To compensate for when they introduced the 12" and 17" alubooks first and kept the 15" at Titanium for 9 months afterwards? ;) ... I guess it was just the first hardware actually _ready_ soon enough to warrant an introduction. (Besides the iMac, that is.) Also, it seems to share the whole motherboard with the iMac, so the projects could work together.
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Hmm. . . A possible good point. Or maybe, because most people buy the 15-inch configuration when they get the PowerBook.

Any guess is a good guess.

Anyone, anyone?
 
fryke said:
Also, it seems to share the whole motherboard with the iMac, so the projects could work together.
Click to expand...
That's interesting. But if the motherboards are ready to go, and the cases are ready to go (same as the old models!), it makes me wonder why they're not shipping until February. I assumed there was a major difference in the design of the desktop and laptop systems.


I think a likely reason Apple only released one size immediately is that they're using a new kind of screen. Steve Jobs made a big deal about how they had desktop-quality screens. Maybe there are no 12" or 17" screens of equal quality yet, and they want to wait (hopefully not too long) until there are.
Just a guess, of course.

(Oh. I think I just answered my own question. The new screens could be keeping them from shipping before February!)
 
There's also still the rumour that the iBook would go 13.3" widescreen, which would make a 12" 4:3 screen MacBook Pro look a bid ridiculous, I guess. If that rumour comes true, either the 12" PB will not find an intel representative (or rather, the iBook's replacement will just take its place) or it'll be "something else entirely".
 
georgelien said:
...

Why did Apple only introduced a 15-incher instead of the entire pro portable line?
Click to expand...

The first systems out are probably their best sellers. Wouldn't make much sense to release a 12" or 17" model when they're more specialized customers than the bulk of the business. With the Intel based systems they have out now I think they're pretty much covered so Apple can concentrate on the towers, hopefully by summer or mid to late spring.
 
The 15" is their best seller, so that definitely has to have something (if only a minor role) to do with it. Supposedly they had more products to introduce, but the inability to get their hands on chips kept this from happening. That is probably the most likely reason behind the delay for the MacBooks, since they are using the 'lower power' variants which are going to be the highest in demand right now.

It wouldn't surprise me if they do "can" the 12" model in favor of a 13" widescreen version. It makes sense, particularly since they're expected to move the iBook replacement to a 13" version. Possibly they would drop the pro designation from the smaller model and offer an upgrade (say from a single core to dual core, better graphics card, etc.). This might be the case for the entire line. From a business standpoint it makes sense...if they use the same components, then they should be cheaper to manufacture.
 
Just in case I've missed something, is there any more basis for the rumours about a 13,3" inch ibook than before? Hasn't this rumour been around for about 2 years already?
 
Apple has recently shown a pattern of replacing or upgrading the best selling products first. It makes sense, especially if you offer a substantially better product (Nano), or if the buyers are holding back in anticipation of a better product/architecture shift (Mac).

Engineering may have been a part of it, but surely the allocation of engineering resources was based on economic projections and planning.
 
I thought about that, too, dduck, but the Mac mini can't really be such a slow seller, either...
 
It's possible Apple plans to use single-core processors, which are not yet available, in their low-end systems. I assume the single-core versions will be cheaper, and it would also help to differentiate the systems from their big brothers. That would explain the lack of new iBooks and Minis.

That goes against last-year's rumors that Apple would snub the single-core version altogether. But it sounds likely enough to me.
 
Well, there's also the Celerons based on Yonah. Those will also come out later, and it's not yet clear whether they'll be based on the Core Duo or Core Solo processor. Either way: I also guess Apple still wants it to be a transition, so that for a while, there are still PPC products out there.

It might also depend on how many 12" and 17" PPC PowerBooks they still have (and have coming), since they probably will have a harder time selling them once the replacements are announced.

Either way: I don't think it's much of a problem, and we'll probably see more and more intel-based products in the coming months. I guess by June, when Apple will probably talk a _lot_ about Leopard and how well the intel processors perform, we'll be belly-deep in the transition.
 
celeborn said:
Just in case I've missed something, is there any more basis for the rumours about a 13,3" inch ibook than before? Hasn't this rumour been around for about 2 years already?
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There wasn't any basis to begin with -- the rumor sites were 100%, absitively, posolutely wrong this time around. They didn't predict a single thing right this year.

It wouldn't surprise me if a 13" widescreen iBook made a debut sometime soon, but if it does, the fact that the rumor mills have been talking about it and the fact that it was released would be pure coincidence.
 
Mikuro said:
I think a likely reason Apple only released one size immediately is that they're using a new kind of screen. Steve Jobs made a big deal about how they had desktop-quality screens. Maybe there are no 12" or 17" screens of equal quality yet, and they want to wait (hopefully not too long) until there are. . . The new screens could be keeping them from shipping before February!)
Click to expand...

The "new 15.4" 16:10 LCD display is nothing new to the PC industry. In fact they have been around for more than 2 years now. This is not to say that the one for the MacBook Pro did not come with the latest technologies. However, Apple picked this size display mainly because it had become the most efficiently made--hence, now the most popular--display size for mobile computers. 15.2-inch display with a 16:9 aspect ratio would cost Apple a premium.

I checked out the sample machines at the MacWorld Expo and discovered that the MacBook Pro uses a similar slim-type battery like the one you find in the 17-inch PowerBooks, that's how Apple made it thinner than the 15-inch Al-Books.

Maybe the engineers decided to use the slim-type battery for delivering a slimmer Apple notebook and to accommodate the new display. Either way, the new MacBook Pro still feel a little cold when compared to previous PowerBooks, not including the Al-Book of course.

Bye-bye PowerBooks.

What the hell is a MacBook?

The next iBook perhaps?
 
ElDiablo said: "There wasn't any basis to begin with -- the rumor sites were 100%, absitively, posolutely wrong this time around. They didn't predict a single thing right this year."

I just _have_ to answer this one. ;)

1.) "The rumour world", i.e. all rumour sites, were right about an earlier introduction of intel-based Macs. If later these rumours were repeated among more respected press articles, that doesn't mean the rumours were wrong.

2.) Appleinsider's original MWSF rumour about intel Macs was talking about PowerBooks, not iBooks. So they were _right_, actually. Similarly, early on macnews.net.tc (yes, that's me, but I can't take myself out of this here...) reported [ here: http://haligon.blogspot.com/2005/11/yonah-t2600-at-216-ghz-powerbook.html ] that the PowerBooks (albeit renamed later) would use the dual-core Yonah processor and would be ready in the first quarter (i.e. after MWSF). This also came out true, albeit that the other part of that rumour (that the iBooks would be ready in the same time-frame) could not be confirmed yet. Still: The sources that reported the PowerBooks and iBooks _insist_ that the iBooks _are_ ready at Apple, although maybe not ready for introduction, because intel can't/won't yet deliver the processors in quantities.

macnews.net.tc _also_ predicted early in the development process [ here: http://haligon.blogspot.com/2005/11/mac-os-x-1044-when.html ] that 10.4.4 was readied for MWSF and hardware that would then be released, (Right on, I'd say!) while other rumour sites were putting the release of 10.4.4 before Christmas, which surely was off indeed.

ThinkSecret has been off-the-mark for the past year completely with all their predictions that weren't made "the day before it happens" or just mirroring information from other rumour sites. They once _were_ quite good with their rumours, but that has been before Nick was sued. Maybe he's just part of Apple's desinformation network now? ;) ...

Either way: The rumour sites weren't all wrong. And it's nice that Apple can still surprise us with things like the iMac without us eating our hats.
 
Eh, I put about 0.5% faith in the rumor sites anyways... the only thing they seem to be good at is riling people up for some ridiculous products, which in turn just ends up creating a bunch of new, idiotic threads here entitled, "I'm SO disappointed in the Keynote this year!"

What happens at the keynote happens at the keynote. I really don't know why everyone (read: consumers of rumors, not the rumor mills themselves) makes such a big deal out of trying to figure out what Apple is going to introduce before they introduce it anyway. It just creates frustration and disappointment more often than not.
 
fryke said:
I thought about that, too, dduck, but the Mac mini can't really be such a slow seller, either...
Click to expand...

Well I guess that either people who buy the Mini don't care much about performance (value crowd), or that they have some other reason to keep it on the G4 for now.

<gaahhhHHHHH LUST FOR MBP MUST CONTAIN THE URGE TO BUYBUYBUY!!!!>

Ahem. Sorry. Don't know what came over me. Love my DP G5, yep I do! Yep!
 
Remember though, the 15" is supposed to ship february (1st Quarter) ater MWSF, i wouldn't be surprised if the "MacBook" makes an appearance during the month of Feb or March, along with the 12/13.3" and 17" MacBook Pros
 
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