Have an iBook already ordered and in the process of shipping? Cancel it now and reorder!
Apple today upgraded their iBook line of portable notebooks to speeds up to 900MHz. iBooks modles now feature G3’s running at 800MHz and 900MHz with 30GB or 40GB hard drives along with a 60GB option. The Combo drive is now faster: 24x10x24x. Prices are $999 for the 12.1″/CD-ROM/800MHz/30GB/128MB version, $1299 for the 12.1″/Combo/900MHz/40GB/128MB version. The 14.1″ model is $1,499 with a 40GB drive, 256MB of RAM, and a Combo drive.
More information about the new iBooks here.
and $100 cheaper across the board if you’re Canadian due to the rising Canadian dollar
The fact that these speed bumped iBooks won’t boot into OS 9 severely devalues them I.M.H.O.. For instance, my wife uses VPC to run a proprietary Windows business app. It runs faster on her 600mhz iBook in OS9 than it does on my 800mhz PowerBook G4 in OS X 10.2.5. With no OS 9 booting the speed increase will be neglible. The extra VRAM will help in OS X, but G3 processors struggle with the demands of Jaguar.
Actually, it seems these new iBooks might still boot into Mac OS 9. The specifications page still says that Mac OS 9 is a supported operating system.
Yeah, I checked on the specs page as well and then, to double check, I called the Apple Store and specifically asked-No booting. I’d buy a new one in a New York minute if they could boot into 9. Personally, I never use anything but X, but these iBooks really fly in OS9, and for that reason I can’t get my wife converted to Jaguar. They’re practically indestructible as well. I’m sad?
Apparently the Apple Store got the info about OS 9 booting wrong. The just released developer notes for the revised iBook states – The iBook computer comes with Mac OS X v. 10.2.4 installed as the default system and is bootable into Mac OS 9.