Apple Rolls Out New 500 MHz & 600 MHz iBooks

by , 11:00 AM EDT, October 16th, 2001

Apple has refreshed the iBook line today, rolling out new models that include bigger hard drives, and a faster bus speed and faster processors on the medium and high end models. The new lineup includes the same 500 MHz G3/66 MHz system bus model with a CD-ROM drive at the low end, with the DVD mid-range model and DVD/CD-RW high-end model coming with a 600 MHz processor and a 100 MHz system bus. The CD-ROM and DVD-ROM models come with a 15 GB drive, while the combo-drive model comes with a 20 GB drive. All three models feature 128 MB of RAM. Pricing remains the same for the low-end and mid-range models, while the high-end model has been dropped by US$100. From Apple:

Apple® today enhanced its popular iBook® line of consumer and education notebooks with faster PowerPC G3 processors up to 600 MHz, a new system bus running up to 100 MHz, larger hard drives up to 20GB and now 128MB of RAM standard across the line. The new iBooks are priced starting at $1,299, and the popular top-of-the-line model featuring a DVD-ROM/CD-RW "Combo" drive is now priced $100 lower at $1,699. The new iBooks now include both the new Mac® OS X version 10.1 and Mac OS 9.2.1 pre-installed.

Powered by a fast 500 MHz or 600 MHz PowerPC G3 processor, all iBook models now offer 128MB of SDRAM. For additional performance, the 600 MHz iBook includes a 100 MHz system bus. Featuring either a 15GB or 20GB hard drive, iBook customers can choose from a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM or DVD-ROM/CD-RW "Combo" drive for both burning CDs and watching movies on DVDs.

The iBook line offers an impressive set of features in every model, including:

Pricing and Availability
The new iBook is available immediately from The Apple Store, Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers and in three standard configurations:

Special education pricing can be found at www.apple.com/education/store.

* Depending on configuration.

You can find the specs for the new units at Apple's iBook Spec page.

The Mac Observer Spin:

This is a fairly mild revision of the product line, which make sense if you consider how well the units were already reported to be selling. It should help the company, however, as we slip into the holiday buying season. Despite that, prepare for the complaints from the Mac Web to issue forth in a banshee howl not seen since the MACWORLD New York keynote failed to produce the long-looked for flat panel iMacs. For our money, this is safe revision timed for the holidays that leaves open the likelihood of an additional update early in 2002. All in all, the iBooks just became a better buy than they were, especially the mid-range and high-end models.