“Apple Computer is believed to be prepping one final update to its PowerPC-based PowerBook G4 product line that could be unveiled at the end of next month, AppleInsider has learned,” Kasper Jade and Katie Marsal report for AppleInsider. “Reliable sources say the PowerBook update is slated for an introduction during the third week of September at Apple Expo Paris, but has recently fallen into a rut that could force a delay or even cause the company to scrap the revision entirely.”
Jade and Marsal report that the new PowerBooks are expected to gain a 300MHz speed boost that would put the 17-inch model at or near 2GHz [currently, Apple PowerBooks top out at 1.67GHz] and that at least one of the two new models will also gain a higher resolution (1920 x 1200 pixels) WUXGA display.
[UPDATE: 8/12, 11:15am ET: AppleInsider has revised their original report without noting the revision to state, “At the high-end, the new PowerBooks are expected to gain a mere 30MHz speed boost that would put the 15-inch and 17-inch models at 1.7GHz.”]
AppleInsider also reports that Apple may be planning to abandon its 12-inch PowerBook offering.
More details in the full report here.
MacDailyNews Note: There has been no official announcement from either Apple Computer or Apple Expo that Apple CEO Steve Jobs will be the keynote speaker. No keynote speaker has yet been named.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Analyst: Apple CEO Jobs to make ‘significant announcement’ during September 20 Aple Expo keynote – August 09, 2005
Steve Jobs to keynote Apple Expo Paris 2005 on September 20 – August 04, 2005
Add me to the list of people that love their 12″ powerbook. My favorite ever. For me the perfect computer.
5 of the 6 Mac laptop owners in my lab use the 12′. Three of those were bought within the past 7 months. I’d be very sad if Apple got rid of it, but I’m guessing there profit margins aren’t nearly as high as the bigger ones. I’ve always thought that the price difference was not justified with the bigger screens.
The 12″ PowerBook. 1024*768 resolution. LOL
I am adding my support to the other posts re the 12″ PowerBook, and if Apple drops it there will be a hell of a stink. The reason is that the size of the monitor is irrelevant because what really counts is connectivity to a large deskbound monitor plus portability. So what size is my 12″ PowerBook monitor? 12″ + 19″ (CRT, haven’t sprung for a 20″ Apple one yet), giving me 31″, almost twice as much as a 17″. However, I can lift the 12″ with one hand, just like a book.
Given the declining price of projectors, I can buy an Epson with VGA input to-day here in Ottawa and project onto a big screen….cost is $C 1149, a bit more than a 20″ monitor…but to watch a movie, I think I’ll go with the big screen approach and forget about monitors. 5.5 pounds, 1600 lumens
What is the advantage of the larger PowerBook? No advantage at all. My daughter’s HP desktop crapped out on account of worms, viruses, or whatever so she borrowed my 12″ PowerBook to go to university, and now she is in Thailand with it teaching English…so I had to buy another PowerBook. I moved up to the latest generation, with an 80 gig HD + SuperDrive, and I paid for it by selling my 20″ G5 iMac to a client.
What Apple needs to do is bring out a 12″ powerbook with no screen, just a built in projector and a VGA or DVI connector to connect to a monitor….I want one now. Or build a mini mac with the projector built in.
So from a business perspective based on what the customer wants, it would be insane to drop the 12″ PowerBook. Knowing Apple, that is precisely what I expect them to do.
Last year for school, I got a huge Toshiba 15.4″ widescreen laptop. The thing was the size of a Buick, and it never, ever left my desk (9 pounds with charger, to fuel the 2 hour battery life) so when it crapped out on account of a shoddy DVD burner, and NIC card, I gave it to my dad, and got a 12″ PB this summer. I couldn’t be happier. Studying photojournalism, I work in photoshop a lot — which if you guys know takes up an amazing ammount of screen real estate. Though things are a bit squeezed in when I’m doing some heavy editing, I barely notice the size difference. If price was no option, I would still choose my 12″ over the 17″ powerbook because like many college students, I find portability more practical as opposed to a large desktop replacement (though I do admit the 17″ PB is just as sexy as my own!).
The 12″ PB makes no sense in light of the nearly identicle (and much cheaper) 12″ iBook. I too think Apple should keep a smaller laptop in the PowerBook lone, but a 13″ widescreen makes much more sense than a standard 12″ screen version, and I think that’s what they wil eventually offer – probably when th Intel versions debut.
What I want to know is why is Apple not availing themselves of the dual core G4s that Freescale has ready to go? I mean, come on – if the new Intel CPUs are such a ‘quantum leap’ beyond PPC interms of performance, then what’s to fear about giving the public the last, best performing G4 laptop possible?
Answer: Intel x86 ain’t gonna be ‘all that’. It’s becoming clearer by the day; we – the general buying public and the Apple faithful alike – will have DRM chips out the wazoo thanks to this x86 transition. But we won’t have the best computers Apple could have made, because those computers would have been based on PPC.
We’ve all been had.