“Will the first Intel PowerBooks be designed by a team of ex-Sony engineers? Could be. A reliable source tells us that Apple has been ‘having trouble playing catch up with the learning curve for designing using the Intel platform’ and that in order to have an Intel-based PowerBook out by next year they’ve been scrambling to recruit an engineering team with some experience building light and thin Intel-based laptops,” Peter Rojas reports for Engadget.
“It wouldn’t be the first time that Apple’s turned to Sony for assistance — you might recall that they had Sony help them design the very first PowerBook way back in 1991,” Rojas reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: In February, Mobile PC named the Apple PowerBook 100, which debuted in 1991, the “Number One Gadget of All Time.” LowEndMac writes, “Sony designed the 100 by starting with the Mac Portable and reducing the size and weight of components as much as possible.” Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Mobile PC names Apple PowerBook 100 the “Number One Gadget of All Time” – February 19, 2005
And if Apple had maintained relations with Sony after the 100, the whole lineup could have been smaller and lighter.
Just hope Sony mentality doesn’t srew up the PowerBooks.
Apple hired Intel laptop specialists. They also hired Windows software engineers. How about speculating on Apple designing laptops that work for Sony. Makes just as much sense as this bullshit, given the facts.
I like Sony laptops. I would never buy one, because they don’t run OSX, but as far as win/tel laptops go, they make a nice machine. I have recommended them to friends before.
If the intel powerbook comes with a memory stick and a 4pin firewire (sony iLink) port, then I’m freakin out.
And the only reason sony’s laptops are mini is because on their smallest models they hang the battery out the backside… really ugly.
Hot off the press, Apple is going to open another store in Tokyo on August 6. It is in Shibuya this time.
http://www.apple.com/jp/retail/
The title of this report is completely misleading.
Apple is looking to hire away current Sony engineers working on the Vaio line of laptops as well as ex-Sony engineers who worked on Vaio laptops.
Apple is NOT hiring Sony to design the Intel Powerbook.
Apple has been making thinner light weight powerbooks with hotter running processors, it does not make sense they would need help with a cooler running processor.
Cool Apple goes Intel, then wants Sony engineers to design its notebooks (current apple laptops too ugly and fat??? or was I thinking of your sister)….Apple has fully embraced the windows side of computers!!!
Hmmmmm–so much for the seamless switch to Intel line of spin. I keep thinking that Apple could have had a dual chip G4 in the lap tops
last year–or a G5 chip now–and certainly Apple could have had some interesting power configuration in lap tops by next summer if it had stayed with IBM. So Apple is on course , full speed ahead. switching
to inferior chips and designs created by Sony engineers. You know when I bought my apple powerbook I probably rejected designs created by these very engineers when I selected the powerbook. Im not saying that the Sony lap top isnt a nice lap top–Im merely saying I rejected these guys for Apple and if I didnt buy an Apple I would have bought an upper model think pad. I guess Im really saying–I dont understand the Apple rush to become just like everyone else–If Apple wanted to take from Sony it should have taken the CELL — If you had asked me 6 months ago I would have said that Apple is the leader in innovation –that its lap tops are better designed and more appealing–that its chips are certainly comparable if not much faster than the chips in 97% of the lap tops sold–probably faster than 97%–that the future for a 64 bit G5 were that much more rosey than for
anything in Intel’s imagination–that the powermac G5’s were more appealing than anything the competition including Sony was offering. I dont know maybe its me.
yah it’s you
“lisa”, please shut up. I am so sick of your paranoid, unpunctuated, barely-legible anti-Intel crap. Get the bug out of your ass. Maybe if you learned to write I’d take you seriously.
Our office purchased tens of Sony Vaio notebooks a couple of years ago and few here and there since. They have been nothing but trouble — huge quality problems. The only thing our staff like about them is the keyboard.
They are complete crap, especially compared to IBMs or PowerBooks.
So much so that we are throwing them out and replacing them with ThinkPads and PowerBooks.
As the article stated, if the story is true, then these are EX-Sony engineers we are talking about. Totally different from working directly with Sony to design a laptop.
As Apple has been continually been hiring people with non-Mac, Windows and/or Linux/Unix backgrounds in the past few years, there is nothing surprising about this.
The Vaio laptops do look nice. Very slim and attractive.
And yes, Apple’s stealing the Vaio people, not borrowing them.
Lisa may have problems with punctuation and run on sentances, but she’s right about this story. It absolutely increases the amount of question marks surrounding the Macintel project.
If its so tough to engineer an x86 based laptop that you have to ‘outsource’ for the expertise, then that definitely calls into question Apple’s claims of seamlessness, at the very least. It’s also yet another drain on resources, that otherwise could have gone into developing a G5 based PowerBook (with the added advantage of not requiring a software transition of any sort).
A possible silverlining here is that, if this hiring of Sony talent indicates an x86 PowerBook delay of any significance, then perhaps we’ll see a dual core G4 version after all. Development should be quicker, since the ability is still ‘in house’, and Apple could amortize the costs by moving the design down to the iBook line once the x86 PBs – finally – are ready for prime time.