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Apple Thought Carefully About First Intel Macs
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That makes no sense. It has been forever since the PowerBook has been updated so it gets updated unlike that iBook which hasn't been updated in forever so it doesn't need an update.
At least you could say "The Powerbook, which is the top of the line, flagship portable product, was updated first. Meanwhile, the consumer product, the iBook, will be updated later as it isn't as high profile."
--
andy j.
rograndom.com [rograndom.com]
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by
Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday January 11, @05:31AM (#104418)
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I don't think they could have done it any other way.
If they released an intel iBook, it almost certainly would have been faster than the G4 PowerBooks. Not something they could let happen.
Obviously, pro users need raw power and Rosetta isn't going to cut it, so they can't really release new towers.
Add to these factors the fact that pro laptop users are already used to the reduced performance of the PowerBooks vs. PowerMacs. They will be able to get along just with Rosetta just fine until Photoshop, Final Cut, etc. are made universal (especially on a "4x" faster machine).
The iMac and MacBook Pro were really the only choices for the intel launch.
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A bit of a no brainer. Think about it for a second.
Do you think that they could seriously sell an iBook that outperformed their flagship portable? The question we should all be asking is whether the next gen iBooks will be dual or single core to keep the prices down.
The powerbooks got the bump in order to keep the product lines coherent, and of course to milk the high end first :-)
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That the same people that told us the G5 was faster than Intels, now say the new Intels are faster than G5s?
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This was when? When the first dual G5s came out?
What happened since then? I remember the promise of 3GHz G5's within the year. How long ago was that? 2003? The G5's still aren't at 3GHz today.
So while the G5 stagnates, Intel keeps pushing out better chips and goes dual-core. A dual-core or dual processor G5 would give a single-core Pentium a good run, but the iMac G5's are single processor. Putting a dual-core Intel would give them a good performance boost.
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by
Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday January 11, @06:15AM (#104437)
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Errr, is it really inconsistent to claim that the last generation of single core pentiums were slower than the G5 but that new dual core Intel chips are faster? Not that I necessarily buy any of these claims, and they may be false. Still, it is a bit odd to see them as paradoxical.
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Funny... except that both statements are true.
- G5 is superior to Pentium4 at comparable clock speeds. But then P970 never made it to 3GHz like IBM promised, while Intel abandoned P4.
- Yonah is comparable to G5 core for core. But Yonah run 2 cores with lower wattage than a single G5, therefore 2x as good. And of course Yonah's FSB beats the stuffing out of G4.
Any questions?-F.
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by
Anonymous Coward
on Thursday January 12, @04:56AM (#104567)
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Do you really expect us to believe you're that obtuse?
In real-world application benchmarks the G5 can match a P4 with 30% higher clock. IBM's announced 3GHz G5 would have been like a 4GHz P4.
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if they came out with their cheapest models (Mini, iBook) first, all the people who were waiting for Intel Macs would snap up low ticket Macs. This way, they get all the people who would snap up any Intel desktop or portable to snap up a higher ticket item, and then sweep up the rest later with the cheaper releases. It's basically just a big upsell.
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by
Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday January 11, @06:38AM (#104442)
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One thing that is getting missed in all this is that these are the same machines under the case - Apple only had to develop for one hardware platform. Things like FireWire 800 and S-Video aren't part of typical Intel Chipsets, Apple will have to add and support these later on their own - they probably didn't have time to do it for the MacBook.
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Nothing personal Aaron, but you haven't thought it out too much . . .
Why did they choose the models that they did? Performace per dollar, plain and simple. The Duo is a new chip, so they couldn't put it on the ibook. If they did, how were they to justify the increased price of the Powerbook, or the Macbook when it came out?
What we'll see over the next year is the ramping up of clock speed for the Duo chip. When they get fast enough, you can be sure they'll announce an up-clocked Macbook, and simultaneously introduce the ibook and mac mini. The mini and ibook will have the duo chip that had, until then, been in the Macbook and imac. This will justify the purchase of newer machines, and allow for placement of the other models.
In some ways they did that with the ibook. They put yesterday's technology (the G3 then later the slower G4) into them when the powerbook had the latest and greatest. Right now there is no yesterday's technology, unless they want to throw a Pentium M or Celeron into them. Another possibility is that Apple is waiting on a budget version of the Duo to go into the lower end macs.
Why haven't I mentioned the PowerMac here? Because there will always be a high-end chip that costs $1000 per lot of 1000 to go in them, and Intel will be unleashing there latest and greatest sometime this year, a real dual core chip which might actually be competitive with the Athlon 64X2, and not some welded together kludge like their current offerings. Maybe.
I also believe that Apple does not want to put existing-in-2005 Intels into their computers because they don't want head-to-head comparisons with current Wintel offerings. It would compare poorly if Apple was selling a $1200 iBook with the same power as a $800 Dell, regardless of the OS. The MaximumPC readers out there would snub them right out of the gate. Further, they want to have a bit of flash when they introduce them, so that they do seem new, and not some rehashed technology. I figure Jobs is timing his releases with Intel's announcements so that he can create a bigger bang.
So people who said it was so the iBook wouldn't upstage the Powerbook are partially correct, but it seems to go deeper than that.
Just my 2 kopeks.
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by
Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday January 11, @08:19AM (#104457)
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It could also be because the supply of Intel chips is limited. Most people think Intel can just instantly make up several thousand more parts, but it's more like they're a car manufacturer and can only churn out so many per day.
Whatever system got updated, there would be lots of buyers for a limited supply. Why not use them in the most expensive system they could sell?
Dell, Gateway, and the like already have their Intel Core Duos on the market today. There have been several posts already about comparisons with their machines.
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"Dell, Gateway, and the like already have their Intel Core Duos on the market today. There have been several posts already about comparisons with their machines."
This is wrong. Dell is quoting 2/17/2006 and Gateway is quoting 2/2/2006.
If someone has these machines they didn't get them through normal retail channels.
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"I also believe that Apple does not want to put existing-in-2005 Intels into their computers because they don't want head-to-head comparisons with current Wintel offerings."
At best, they've delayed the comparison a few weeks. Other OEMs will get the same dual-core chips.
"Another possibility is that Apple is waiting on a budget version of the Duo to go into the lower end macs."
Intel's Yonah launch lineup was rather sparse. I suspect they're waiting for some of the next round of chips to be released in Q2. This includes ultra-low voltage chips, and better single-core ones (they've only got one at the moment, and it's a 1.66 ghz full voltage model... not very compelling).
"So people who said it was so the iBook wouldn't upstage the Powerbook are partially correct, but it seems to go deeper than that."
Even if the "no upstaging" explaination was incomplete, it was sufficient.
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The iBook has been more recently updated. iBooks are the Low End Laptops, like the MacMini's use the G4 Chip also. Lately there hasn't been any huge advange of having a Powerbook over an iBook. Without expansion you get a simular system. The Powerbook now MacBook Pros will probably be a generation ahead of the iBook -> MacBook std.Wow I have a Blog! [blogspot.com] Whoo De Doo!
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by
Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday January 11, @08:43AM (#104464)
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Aaron has a wife? The way he writes articles I figured he was some teenage punk. Or maybe he still is but just married young?
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by
Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday January 11, @09:05AM (#104472)
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I think it's pretty simple-- the iMac and the Power Book are the core of the Mac lineup. Jobs wanted to make the strongest start possible for the Intel Macs, and he did. In retrospect, all the other rumors, e.g., start the Intel switch with the mini or the iBook, were half-measures.
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by
Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday January 11, @11:48AM (#104512)
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Now that the iMac can drive a secondary DVI (or ADC) monitor makes it an acceptable replacement for my PowerMac G4.
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Given that Apple is ahead of the scheduled release date for Intel macs by six whole months, I really can't feel too disappointed with selections until the full amount of time has come to pass.
Probably the lower end macs that people expected to start with sill come within that timeframe - and I have to say the current announcements were pretty smart from a marketing move, and a "pump up the base" move. Apple needed something to show people what the next generation of Powerbook was going to be like - I know it gave me a shot in the arm. My desktop is a G5 but my laptop is still a 667Mhz G4 - I have not really seen that compelling a reason to upgrade until I saw the MacBook Pro.
The iMac was a smart move because it's just the kind of computer a bleeding-edge sort of switcher would go after. I expect a Mini shortly because it's just the kind of bleeding-edge second mac a lot of current Mac owners would buy to dip a toe in the stream of Intel.
--> Kendall (proper spelling in this post brought to you by Safari [if I remembered to turn it on])
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by
Anonymous Coward
on Thursday January 12, @09:18AM (#104588)
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I find their current pricing policy a bit puzzling and it will be interesting to see how sales of current iMac G5s and Powerbooks G4s pan out over the next six months. If one were to go on the "my next Mac survey" here, then Apple would wind up with a backlog of unsold stock. Then again, the fact that they deliberately kept to the old designs means that resellers will be able to offload the old G4s and G5s to an unsuspecting public. The question is will Apple have to start discounting the old machines, fairly soon?
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