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the heat is on!

The threat of bugs in newer-model computers the schools would have to purchase later in the year also made Greene County Schools move early to refresh laptops

It appears to me that they have instead locked in what may be the last of the current iBooks rather than the first of the new (?) iBooks. Which makes sense - I know I won't be rushing to buy Intel Macs until I hear how the well Rosetta works with older software. Tt's called not being caught on the bleeding edge.

Ooopa! I didnt read MDN's take quite closely enough. Sorry!

FWIW, it appears they value the used iBooks at just over $220. It's not clear which older iBook models they will be trading in, but the least expensive used iBook offered by PowerMax (a MDN advertiser) is $379 for a white G3 iBook (? their description). Granted that's retail & certified, but this school district could probably get more than $220.

Just so they don't repeat the Henrico disaster!

I'm holding off buying an Intel Mac until AT LEAST the third revision.

By then, all the creases will be ironed out.

MDN does not know jack. Stick with iPod news cause you idiots are better at it.

Well I for one am happy to see any school get Apple's computers, iMacs, PowerBooks, iBooks, PowerMacs. The schools that I know that have them, love their Apples; they're trouble free if set up properly and schools spend a lot of money sometimes to fix things that "Goober Tech Support" can't fix or messed up.
Maintenance at the schools by school personnel are not very good for the most part.
Apple should go WAY out of their way to give all schools great deals on hardware and support.
I suppose that there will be some teething problems with the shift in the chip architecture, but that's to be expected with such a big change.
Once you work with the hardware and software on the front-line support, you see that Apple has got it's act together.
That's been my experience anyway.

Stevie-Poo said Intel Macs would be shipping by the middle of the year. The school officials and sales reps could just be taking that comment at face value and acting on it. Six months from now is the middle of the year.

Do you really think sales knows every little thing that's going on in R&D? From everything we've heard before, it sounds like the sales force knows about new announcements as late as possible...sometimes not until they're actually announced.

iDon't--

ExLax. Seriously.

The other advantage to Apple in this move is to clear that many G4 iBooks out of the pipeline in order to get the inventory down prior to the Intel iBook release. That's where the big discount comes from that allowed Greene County to score the big savings. That's probably the main reason that Apple would risk even mentioning the potential for bugs in the new machines (and I'm sure Apple didn't figure on Greene County being so open about their reasoning).

The downside is that if there are decreases in new made-for-Intel software behavior (iLife '06?) on the old G4 chips in the next 2-3 years, Greene County will be stuck with legacy performance. None of us yet knows how much of a performance hit Rosetta will create in older machines.

MDN,

Thanks for the present. Merry Christmas to you too.

MaWo: 'class'. As in, "When the Greene County students have to go back to theirs, they'll be met with brand-spankin' new iBooks."

iDon't's mother knows me. She stuck with my iPod.

How does this constitute confirmation?

Confirmation can only come from Apple. Not from a customer who could possibly be getting their info here from MDN or from ThinkSecret and use that info to convince their parents not to switch to Dell.

The quote is, "The threat of bugs in newer-model computers the schools would have to purchase later in the year also made Greene County Schools move early to refresh laptops."

This strongly implies they are NOT going to go with Intel based computers. It clearly states that if they waited until the traditional school buying period they would be buying "newer-model computers" which carry a "threat of bugs".

This would strongly imply to me that either
1) MWSF will see the introduction of the very last PPC base iBooks, or
2) the school is going with the current version and not waiting until late spring/summer to get the first Intel based systems.
It's more likely 1) than 2).

Shadowself,

"The school system will sell its 2,041 existing laptops [prior] to Macworld before the company announces its new product lines Jan. 9, 2006. The threat of bugs in newer-model computers the schools would have to purchase later in the year also made Greene County Schools move early to refresh laptops."

If the Macworld iBooks are to be the last of the PowerPC iBooks, then why wouldn't Greene County buy them? Why do they have to buy before Apple's announcement of "new product lines" at Macworld?

Between this deal and the firesales lately at Amazon on current iBooks, there is little doubt that new Intel iBooks will be announced at MWSF next month.

Speed-bumped iBook G4's are not "new product lines" that require early action by entire Mac-based school systems. If the "new" iBooks are to be the last of the PowerPC-based iBooks, why wouldn't Greene buy those instead of buying the current iBook model? After all, they're going to have these iBooks for 3 years - they'd want the latest PowerPC models they can get.

This report certainly does seem to confirm Intel-based iBooks will be announced at Macworld.

MDN MW: "ten" - as in, "Mac OS X"

The last PowerPC iBooks are the ones currently available. New Intel-based widescreen "ViiV" iBooks will debut at Macworld with immediate availability. And it won't be just Intel-based iBooks, either.

Waiting for the third or later incarnations of Macs with Intel chips sounds overly cautious to me....a belt and braces accountant's approach to life?

I'll want to be trying these babies as soon as they are on the shelves.. it's far too exciting to miss! These computers will be the future of personal computing... and anyway, in my experience Apple first offerings are the equivalent of MS product version 2.0+.

Or they could just be making the decision that if they planned to upgrade at any time in, say, the next year then with the possibility of intel's at some point they would rather use tried and tested powerpc models. That in combination with the attractive re-sale price of their current machines, means now is as good a time as any to upgrade.

MDN... you guys are starting to analyze like Enderle.

Grrrilla wrote:
> The downside is that if there are decreases in new made-for-Intel
> software behavior (iLife '06?) on the old G4 chips in the next 2-3 years,
> Greene County will be stuck with legacy performance. None of us yet
> knows how much of a performance hit Rosetta will create in older
> machines.

Rosetta won't have any performance hit in older machines, because Rosetta will only run on Intel Macs. Software in the next 2-3 years will be made for both Intel and PPC (like the fat binaries of yore), meaning that *new* software will run natively on both Intel and PPC Macs, but *old* software will have to run in a PPC emulator (Rosetta) on the new machines.

Don't worry MDN, this is rock solid analysis. I'm sure that schoolboards like this have some insider information.

I bet no new iBooks at MacWorld. I dont have anything to base my assertion on except that I subscribe to the law of contrary public opnion. If everyone says one thing, I say bet the other way.

Hammer-- like when everyone was talking about a new, headless mini Mac? That was the buzz this time last year. That proved out. Or am I being contrary?

Great bit of info - good job MDN!

The school district was encouraged to go with the last-best PPC iBook because of 'possible bugs' with the new model, but I wouldn't take that to mean a total wreck for a Macintel iBook product launch. I suspect the potential for problems lies with Rossetta. Academia will be stuck using PPC versions of OSX apps for longer than most. Their purchasing cycles are longer, the money they have to spend is tight (so, no wholesale transition is likely in any event), plus the software they use is generally developed for textbooks, and the book publishing houses are notorious for not upgrading the specs for their apps. Couple those factors with any possible glitches with Rossetta (and there will certainly be some) multiplied by hundreds of students, and its no wonder Apple would encourage them to hold off on x86 if they can. They'd have a lot of P.O.'d institutional buyers otherwise.

Re: Rosetta doesn't affect G4's

You're correct, I misspoke. What I should have said is that we don't know how much of a performance decrease there will be when new software has to support 2 possible architectures, or how many (and how soon) developers will start producing Intel-only applications.

Fred Mertz:

Have you never done a deal for an as yet unanounced product? Happens more often than you would think.

The first such deal I did was with HP back in the late 70s. The first significant deal I worked on was actively negotiating with Sun Microsystems for about a million dollars of workstations and servers that would not be officially announced for a couple months yet. This was back in the mid 80s [back when Sun sold Apple LaserWriters as their own with a Sun logo glued over the Apple logo]. Another deal was with Tektronix for workstations/monitors. Another was with Data General. Most recently was with IBM (within the last 5 years). Times have not changed. These types of deals continue to this day.

They could still be announcing PPC based iBooks at MWSF and the deal, in principle, already be done for those -- as yet unanounced -- iBooks.

Will Apple announce PPC or Intel based iBooks at MWSF? Who knows? The statement in the article COULD be read to mean that the last generation (speed bump?) of PPC iBooks will be announced in January. But then, English is NOT the most definitive of languages.

Who here remembers the transition to PPC architecture? Was it smooth? Were there a few glitches before it stabalized? Just curious.

If anything, Apple has the advantage of having gone through this kind of switch before.

Don't believe a word of it until you see the goods.

But for those that want more info on the original Greene deal with Apple can look here:

http://www.apple.com/education/profiles/greene/

Interesting, though, that at the time Greene actually got the original iBooks, they stated "The equipment will be replaced after four years." That was in July 2003. See:

http://www.kinston.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=12432&Section=Local

In Oct 2003, Greene said that "About 1,700 of the Apple iBooks eventually will be distributed to every middle and high school student in Greene County." So I wonder how many have died since then of being dropped, etc (ie, no warranty).

http://www.kinston.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=15231&Section=Local

Thinking about the price, if Henrico is anything to go by, Greene will sell these things below the sort-of "eBay completed auction" average price, I'm sure. But they are hoping to sell all of these _before_ Macworld 2006? Yea, right. No way. Right there makes me suspicious of this whole thing.

It'll be fun to keep track of this story.

BTW, I couldn't find the specs on these iBooks (in the 10 mins I spent looking), but I do know they have "wireless". Viz:

http://www.kinston.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=18120&Section=Local

The PPC transition was long and drawn out; the first PPCS macs were clearly transitional models.

That said, this should be a much simpler transition than the PPC one; mainly because they've been working on it all along.

I'm going to bet that the first Intel macs out of the gate are going to be pretty good; don't forget they're likely partnering with Intel on the design, and Intel's got a wee bit of experience...

If you're going to wait for the third-gen of Intel Macs, be prepared for a long wait, though. The FIRST gen isn't going to be out on all model lines until sometime in 2007.

“"Our test scores are up and more kids are staying in school," Mazingo said. "Now, we're looked at with respect – because of 21st-century teaching and learning."”

Can you image if they had bought Dells with Windoze?…

Our test scores are down and kids are dropping out of school left and right. We’re the laughing stock of the education community because we’re using crappy computer technology and a rip-off OS from a second-rate stone-age software company.

Dell announces first Yonah based (just like what Apple will use) laptops:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28454

"DELL IS GOING to launch Yonah based notebooks in early February. It will launch a full range of models, Precision M90, Lattitude D620 and D820. The documents seen by the Inquirer are using the 'old new' Intel naming scheme, but since they are both awful enough to be ignored, you can just use the numbers. They are as follows:

PWS M90 - Intel Yonah 756 (1.66GHz/2MB L2 cache/667MHz FSB)
PWS M90 - Intel Core T1300 (1.66GHz/2MB L2 cache/667MHz FSB)
PWS M90 - Intel Core T1400 (1.83GHz/2MB L2 cache/667MHz FSB)
PWS M90 - Intel Core T1500 (2.00GHz/2MB L2 cache/667MHz FSB)
PWS M90 - Intel Core T1600 (2.16GHz/2MB L2 cache/667MHz FSB)"

Who is buying these ibooks? I want a piece of the action, because if you calculate it out, they are selling for $220.48 each. Used or not, if they run at all I'd say that's a steal!

I really really hope there is more Intel stuff announced than just the iBook. Mac fans need something MAC for a change. iPods play music and video on tiny screens and not much more. It's time we get over it and focus on the future of Macs. Seen any Mac ads lately? I haven't seen anything since the "World's fastest computer" commercials from a couple years ago. Sheesh!

On an unrelated note, I rewatched the Ballmer Monkey Boy Stage-bouncing tirade video thingee yesterday and am now traumatized for the holidays. I'm not sure why I did it, but I suppose it had something to do with proving it wasn't just a bad dream. There is something not right with that guy. I wish someone would have stopped me. Please be kind whilest I recover.

So if the school is going to sell its iBook prior to MWSF, do they expect a new supply instantly? I don't think so.

I think the school has decided to stay with the G4 and buying those in the summer instead of the Intel-based iBooks which SJ suggested might arrive in June. They probably got a good price clearing out Apple's excess inventory.

How does this confirm, or hint at, Intel anything? There could certainly be new iBooks to come, but I don't see any Intel suggestions anywhere.

Streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetch

Actually interpretation of the article is that there won't be ibooks at MacWorld. "The threat of bugs in newer-model computers the schools would have to purchase later in the year also made Greene County Schools move early to refresh laptops" sounds more like well after MacWorld.

just my take

hmm, yeah this article is all over the rumor sites, this person writing the article seems to have a flakey writing style that contradicts itself. The article also says about refreshing their product line on Jan. 9th. Means nothing really, but I'm hoping Steve pulls a new Powerbook out of his pants. I won't buy that one, but maybe one like it