Wondering If Apple Will Bring The G5 To The PowerBook Or iMac? BusinessWeek Says To Chill

B usinessWeekis Byte of the Apple column for this week looks at the issues facing Apple in putting the G5 into other Mac models. Penned by Alex Salkever, the article says that some in the Mac community are tense because Apple hasnit announced G5 PowerBooks and iMacs, but Mr. Salkever (correctly) points out that there are a myriad of technical reasons for this. From the article:

Some Apple aficionados take a dark view of Jobs spurning laptops a mere eight months after the master marketer dubbed 2003 "The Year of the Laptop" at the MacWorld exposition in January. By splitting the high-end computer product line between two chips, some skeptics mutter, Jobs could well kneecap sales of iMacs and Powerbooks.

A conspiracy? Not really. Appleis strategy of a fragmented product launch makes perfect sense. Sure, he could have put the new IBM-made ( IBM ) G5 chips into laptops and iMacs. But Jobs wants to bide his time -- and with good reason.

I donit doubt that design specs for a G5 that would work well in laptops, and iMacs are already sitting on the hard drives of Big Blueis chip designers. But they would have to be slower versions of the G5 due to the current physical limitations of the new chips. The 1.8 gigahertz version -- only the second-fastest -- of the PowerMac G5 microchip processor series sucks up a huge amount of power and puts out enough heat to burn toast. The power is not an issue when you can plug your machine into a wall. But to cool down the G5 box, Apple resorted to an anodized aluminum chassis and space-age cooling system using nine -- count iem, nine -- different fans to keep the machine copacetic.

Thereis more in the full article from BusinessWeek, which we found to be an interesting read.