Good for Apple. Waiting until they can make a G5 Powerbook that's GOOD as opposed to just sticking a G5 in a laptop and saying "done!"

Anyone who wants a G5 powerbook right NOW should look at the iMac because that's probably very close to what it would look like. I'm not so sure a Powerbook that thick would sell too well.

I, for one, am happy to wait until they can get it right.

Anyway, the computer world has ALWAYS been divided into 'Portable' or 'Powerful' computers. You have to decide what you want. It's always been that way, and it always will be.

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Small White Car wrote:
Anyone who wants a G5 powerbook right NOW should look at the iMac because that's probably very close to what it would look like.

Actually, if they could do just that with a smaller, touchscreen monitor (say 10" or 12"), you'd have a very nice tablet. I really wouldn't mind something like that to replace my PB.

Yes, the iMac G5 cuts the *thickness* down to 2", but even if they could manage 1", there's still two other *vital* issues--heat and battery life. The iMac draws power off of an outlet/power supply (instead of a battery), has ample ventilation to spew its' heat out (instead of scalding someone's lap), and weighs 19 lbs.

Getting it from 2" to 1", 19 lbs down to 5-7 (depending on the PBook size), able to get a reasonable battery life out of it (3-4 hours at least), all without sterilizing the user will be a monumental task!

Unless you are doing heavy lifting works, current PowerBook configuration should suffice. Common mobile needs are presentation, drafting reports, messaging, surfing, listening to music and watching movies, even an iBook can handle. PowerBooks are for power users who want to do occasional programming and web/graphics designing. This leads to this question:

"Can we use clustering technology to boost the performance of PowerBook?" Assuming I have a couple of Mac minis at home, I can tap the spare CPU power of these Mac minis. Each Mac mini is configured for a specific purpose like home automation, file/print server, media centre and game console.

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Mace wrote:
Unless you are doing heavy lifting works, current PowerBook configuration should suffice....PowerBooks are for power users who want to do occasional programming and web/graphics designing.

Agreed. The PB 1.5GHz I use has more than enough power for Adobe's graphic and web design apps, and it handles all other tasks (email, MS Office, surfing the web) with ease. Yeah, more is always more, and G5s will always have more power than G4s, but present-day PowerBooks are more than up to just about any task that's thrown at them.

That all said, I remember running Quark and Illustrator on a 9" B&W Mac Classic (System 6) with 2 megs of RAM, so anything out there today's going to have me spoiled.

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Mace wrote:
PowerBooks are for power users who want to do occasional programming and web/graphics designing.

I think this is the best part. Honestly, my 1.5GHz 17" PB is waaaay more than I'd ever need for web/graphics. With a 128 gfx card, it handles games well too. The only time my computer poops-out is when GarageBand has a ton of real-audio tracks going and I'm constantly changing their effects in real time for experimentation purposes (which is more of a ram issue anyway).

I think that some people just get power hungry for the G5 w/o a really good reason. For the vast majority, the G4 will continue to work great (you want more performance? Buy some more ram in the meantime).

There are portables in the PC world that have a P4 3.4GHz, and a high end video card. Unfortunately, they weigh about 15 pounds, have 2 hours (at best) of battery life, and cost almost $9,000.

I think the 'Book is plenty good enough for uber heavy lifting. I use it plenty for FCP-HD with no problems.

Why do you all try to defend Apple on performance by saying that no one should need anymore power. For many, that is a ridiculous argument. Sure, for home users, browsing ther iPhoto library faster may not be a big deal, but for the professionals and power users that PowerBooks are targeted at it does make a huge difference. An economic difference.

When the alternate platforms continue to increase performance at a rate significantly faster than Apple, we professional users are put into the situation of continuing to pay more for slow hardware or jumping ship. And I'm not making this up, the new Centrino's continue to increase performance, something that has Apple stuck in the mud for about the past 18 months.

I don't blame Apple, their ability to influence chip makers only reaches as far as their market share can buy them. But the reality is there and those of us living in the real world can only hope for miracles.

I've used my PB to replace my lab computer. Probably the heaviest workout it gets is running some intensive MatLab code, but it performs much better than my Dull. I would still love a G5, though, because it means that I can do some serious data analysis at the coffee house of my choice.

The combination of the PB and OS X have caused many people in my department to switch, but these are also the sort of people who need a good chip to withstand some steep number crunching requirements. I understand the difficulty of placing a G5 in a small enclosure, but I really hope that Apple can speed up their systems, even if it's with a dual-core G4 on a faster bus.

One great feature of Mac OS X Tiger is that graphics would be fully rendered via GPU. This greatly reduce the load of CPU. Hence, performance should increase by just replacing Panther with Tiger.

I don't agree that Apple is lagging behind compared with the Centrino chipset. Sure they are at 2GHz but that's not a great increase. I own a 1.5GHz 15" PB and work supplies me with a 1.5GHz Centrino Toshiba Tecra S1. There is no discernible difference other than the PB boots up and shuts down seconds faster and applications such as Lotus Notes quit about 5 seconds faster than the Toshiba. I often have both of them at work side by side (I am the National IT Manager for an organisation of about 1000 employees) and everyone oohs and aahs at the PB with the question "when are we getting these".

I also read today in APC magazine "Moore's Law hits the wall" where in the past 12 months Intel has only managed to increase its P4 from 3.4Ghz to 3.46Ghz! - a meagre 66Mhz increase. They have managed to increase FSB to 1066MHz up from 800MHz. However the review claims that Intel's quoted 33% system performance boost is actually only about 3% in real life. This is not a Macworld article but a PC mag. Further Intel says its not focusing on processor performance any more (because it has hit a wall) but instead the overall system performance. What a crock RC!

While I agree that most people probably don't require more power, I also think that it is pointless to seek to defend Apple's failure to produce significantly more powerful laptops in the last couple of years.

There are many Mac users, especially in Video and Music applications, where the ability to harness serious power on the road could and would be extremely useful. A cluster of G5 powermacs rendering overnights on a weekend location shoot would be great for someone shooting DV out of the studio, for example.

I also agree that portability always come at a premium in terms of power (and cost!) but that's not a reason to neglect the improvement of laptop processors and system buses.

Sometimes it would be nice for someone to post a comment against the grain and not be attacked with self-defeating pro-Apple rhetoric; whether Intel have ceased to increase CPU performance on their desktop line is frankly of no relevance whatsoever to Apple's laptop development.

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A cluster of G5 powermacs rendering overnights on a weekend location shoot would be great for someone shooting DV out of the studio, for example

Can you expand on that a bit? I routinely use computers located hundreds of kilometres away (and have used them from thousands). I have never even seen them, and have no desire to do so either.

It's just amazing, everyone wants faster, faster, faster. I understand the need for a system that is able to run modern applications, but a lot of this is pure speed lust. I have nearly 30 Macs, ranging from a Macintosh Classic to an eMac. They ALL still are useful machines, depending on the tasks for which they are used. A PowerPC G4 is still a very powerful processor, with more than enough capabities for all but the most demanding of users. Most who are clamoring for a PowerBook G5 are not these people. A PowerBook G5 will happen, and soon enough for everyone.
Heather Anne Peel

Why don't they just do a dual processor 1.25 GHz G4 if they want to boost performance significantly at a reasonable cost.

2 1.25 GHz chips should have the same power requirements as the 1.67 that they are now offering and it would have better performance.

They could even get this using the new frescale (formerly Motorolla) dual core G4 chip that came out late last year.

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Anonymous wrote:
It's just amazing, everyone wants faster, faster, faster. I understand the need for a system that is able to run modern applications, but a lot of this is pure speed lust. I have nearly 30 Macs, ranging from a Macintosh Classic to an eMac. They ALL still are useful machines, depending on the tasks for which they are used. A PowerPC G4 is still a very powerful processor, with more than enough capabities for all but the most demanding of users. Most who are clamoring for a PowerBook G5 are not these people. A PowerBook G5 will happen, and soon enough for everyone.
Heather Anne Peel

Thank you, Guest. Please register and join our forum family. I'll add to your comments by saying many of the people calling for a G5 PowerBook won't be in the market to buy one when they do arrive.

Apple released a refresh of the PowerBook to satisfy the needs of buyers, not the needs of people simply clamoring for Apple to provide a product that is still in development.

There are people (including myself) who will buy a new PowerBook when the G5s arrive. But until that point my current G4 PowerBook more than meets my needs. The new PowerBooks more than meet the needs of most users in the market for a pro-level Apple laptop today.

If I needed a new laptop today the latest G4 models would be suitable for all of my tasks.

If there's one thing I've learned from Apple in the past year, it's that you really shouldn't take any stock in their comments on potential products. I wouldn't be surprised if the PBG5 is just one rev away. As I recall, someone from Apple said an iMac G5 wasn't anywhere near in the works, but mere weeks later -- "new iMac coming soon"! You just can't tell with Apple -- which makes it fun.

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Mav wrote:
If there's one thing I've learned from Apple in the past year, it's that you really shouldn't take any stock in their comments on potential products. I wouldn't be surprised if the PBG5 is just one rev away. As I recall, someone from Apple said an iMac G5 wasn't anywhere near in the works, but mere weeks later -- "new iMac coming soon"! You just can't tell with Apple -- which makes it fun.

They will be released when they are ready.

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Anonymous wrote:
Why don't they just do a dual processor 1.25 GHz G4 if they want to boost performance significantly at a reasonable cost.

2 1.25 GHz chips should have the same power requirements as the 1.67 that they are now offering and it would have better performance.

They could even get this using the new frescale (formerly Motorolla) dual core G4 chip that came out late last year.

Going to dual-processor G4 or dual-core G4 would present Apple with an interesting conundrum.

Perception is that G5 is the more powerful chip. However, dual G4 or dual core G4 should be able to trounce any low-power G5 they can put into a laptop in the near term. So what happens when they do put a G5 in? They run into the problem of losing performance (remember the P4 vs P3 debate?).

Just a thought. Maybe I am wrong.

The reason why i need a faster PB is that i absolutely like Apple laptops and nonetheless i need it to be able to run windows at least three times faster than m current 1.5Ghz PB does. With all due respect to apple's hardware i have to admit that the software side of apple does suck alot, for example:
1.iPhoto (a litteral nightmare!) anyone who have ever had a chance to work with such windows based programs as ACDSee will understand what i mean.
2. No suitable FTP client in the freaking existance! (tried using IE5 and Safari, but have nearly gone insane!)
3.The only (widelt accessible)web design software is Macromedia Dreamwaver - which i, as a hand typing web designer - simply can not stand...

These three form the core of my daily computing rutine, and while i enjoy the smooth curves and bright vision of my PB i have to equally suffer for not able to use the right software for the right things!

So i would restrain from the statements like a plane "Speed Lust"!

Best regards, Anton.

I'm not extremely familiar with the Apple line up. IN fact I'm the quintessential "Joe Blow". Of computers. However I have noticed that processor speeds on high end powerbooks appears to be stuck at rougly 1.67Ghz. That's not very impressive- and yes I'm aware of the fact that Macs get more done per clock cycle in comparison to it's competitors however........ It's been stuck there for several months and I can't help but think that may no longer be sufficient. After all apple has released increasingly more advanced software- while the hardware has remained in stasis....... That doesn't bode very well for Joe