Good news for Mac OS X users or users-to-be today. Apple dropped the price of the 15″ Powerbooks $300 and the price of the 12″ Powerbook $200. Additionally, Silk 2.0 enables the Quartz text rendering and smoothing introduced in Mac OS X 10.1.5 in all Carbon applications. This means antialiased text in Internet Explorer, Eudora, and many others.
Anti-Alias Text in Carbon Apps; Price Drops On Powerbooks
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
With the rumors of faster processors circulating, I’m not sure that people will run out to buy the current Powerbook offerings regardless of the price-drop. We all know the new processors are coming, all signs point to it, so why not wait a little while longer? Sorry, Apple, but your best bet on boosting sales is to release a new Powerbook, iBook, iMac, etc with the new IBM processors.
The G4 processors are handling OSX as good as they supposed to. When and if new machines come out, they will be much more expensive. Therefore, the 12″ powerbook is a *great* buy at this price. I would never advocate people to get iBooks with G3s, but G4s are perfectly acceptable.
.. I’m sure of it
antialiased text in Internet Explorer
All of whom probably work in Redmond.
for a 12 in powerbook!!
that is iBook territory, so I assume that they are making the move to push out the iBook, replace it with the 12 in powerbook and have the highend stuff move over to the ppc970……
smart moves if that is what they do.
I wonder why the prices in Europe are so much more expensive than in the US. For the price of a european 12″ ibook(dvd/cdrw) you can get an american 12″ powerbook.. Doesn’t make any sense to me.
Because of the 17-18% additional tax that exists in European countries.
Have some respect. And rewrite your comment without the sarcasm.
But then again it is 2 yers old. It is a 600Mhz which I purchased when they were frist released.
But for most people, they are not using the Alti-vec so why not get a G3 ? They have plenty of features for most consumers. If price is an issue, the ibook is fine.
Before the price drop the iBook could have made sense.
i will try to write post that meets guidelines but do not mod me down for what i have to say.
dell inspiron 2GHz 128MB 20GB hard drive laptop w DVD drive or CD recorder is $674.
apple 867mhz 256MB 40GB hard drive laptop w DVD drive and CD recorder is $1600.
apple laptop is almost $1000 more! what do u get extra?
128MB ram
20gb hd
bluetooth
os x
what do u give up?
winxp
1.13ghz of processor power
now u can talk about mhz myth, but no matter how efficient g4 is it cannot make up for that extra 1.13ghz of processor. this computer will be slow. that’s how it goes. u are also losing the proven application base and hardware compatibility of winxp. when u buy digicam, will it work with os x? i dunno, who do u ask? what about some nifty adapter for complact flash or smartmedia.
i don’t see how os x justifies the extra $1000 in price. it seems like more of a pain to me
If you are using MacOSX you are using Altivec all the time. I would advise against getting an iBook given the recent price drops.
Most people in the market for a powerbook wouldn’t see giving up ‘winxp’ as a bad thing. <g>
I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t really think MHz matters anymore, at least for the things that I do on my machine. That is, light office-suite tasks, email, web, few games, some light development.
I don’t currently own an Apple, but looking at the features I think that the laptops are very competitive with the offerings from PC laptop vendors.
If you buy a Dell Laptop, you will realize what you are paying for. You can get a Kia with all the same options and features as a low-end Mercedes C Coupe, why is the Mercedes so much more even though it roughly the same options? One word, quality.
As an owner of 2 Dells, a laptop and a desktop (which we loving refer to as “mistakes”), I can tell you the low price is realized in the quality of the product. Our Dell’s are absolute junk.
I’m getting a 15″ powerbook as soon as the new ones come out.
car analogy is so stupid. u call the dell a kia? okay, if kia’s top speed is 160mph and the mercedes has top speed of 80mph at which point the mercedes is hard to steer because it is so bogged down.
u see car analogy just doesn’t work. computers are computers, not cars.
have u used recent dell? there is no quality problem, they are rock solid well build machines and the dell even comes with second battery. the bays on front are nice, u can mix and match optical/floppy/hard drives with extra batteries. highly modular and upgradable, two things the apple laptops are NOT. hell u can replace video chipset of dell laptop. can you do that on apple laptop? didn’t think so.
really there is nothing that makes a dell laptop a “kia” and an apple laptop a “mercedes”. since dell laptop is faster it should be the sports car and the apple laptop should be a slow family sedan.
oh wait, car analogy does make sense in one respect, price.
are a fair shake away. The power requirements an’ heat of those processors is up there. There’s enough problems gettin’ ’em working in the desktops. With power draws of > 6Watts idling, that sucker ain’ goin’ in no laptop soon. Unless they’re going after AlienWare’s market
Oh, and OS X isn’t NEARLY as altivec-enhanced as people seem to think. Keep in mind that I have a coupla Mac lappys – love ’em – but yeah, the difference in raw os usage ain’t that much between the G3 an’ G4.
Peace,
‘Rithm
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?threadid=28294
Three good things are happening on the Apple front —
1. Apple is working on providing a headless low-end machine. If this ends up being a G4 box for $599 like the rumor suggests, it will be a homerun for Apple.
2. Apple is aggressively moving into PPC970 and PPC980 land. There will finally be performance in the land of Mac so that price/performance starts making big jumps.
3. Apple is negotiating with Amazon to bring the Apple Music Store to the Amazon website. This can only bring more customers to Apple making it more and more feasible to reduce prices on Apple computers.
All in all, Apple is listening. Even in server world where they offer a very reasonable fibre channel storage server.
are a fair shake away. The power requirements an’ heat of those processors is up there.
You seem to be greatly misinformed. The heat dissipation of the 1.2GHz PPC970 is 19W.
There’s enough problems gettin’ ’em working in the desktops. With power draws of > 6Watts idling, that sucker ain’ goin’ in no laptop soon.
The word on the street is the 1.2GHz PPC970-based 15.4″ Aluminum PowerBook will either be launched at WWDC in June or announced then and actual sales would begin in July.
Furthermore, I don’t see where you’re getting information regarding the idle power consumption of the PPC970, nor have you given a clock speed for which CPU that pertains to.
funny I run OS X n my ibook, runs photoshop and illustrator fine. biggest slow down is the HD. Yes I would like a G4 but for the quality of the ibook and 1000 price it is a good deal. 1500 for a powerbook is better 🙂
give up winblows xp and a more power hungry processor??
I don’t know about you, but I don’t compile applications or play video games off my laptop, it’s more for less-workstation-esque type tasks, such as word processing, e-mail, internet browsing, dvd watching, and sometimes connecting remotely to some server that does the real compilations.
Don’t get hung up on the mhz madness, it’s really overrated. A p3 600mhz is a great notebook and even cheaper than a new dell that was made with sweatshop labor. Who needs 1ghz for laptops–I don’t, 600mhz or even 450 would be fine for me.
And you can’t just go compare a p4 architecture to g4 with mhz, that’s like comparing gap khaki’s to victoria secrets thongs (the thongs can be taken off faster?)
The $1000 is justifiably a nice savings, but anytime you talk about money, it’s about opportunity cost, is $1000 worth it to you to own a different machine with different genetic makeup, or is your $1000 better spent somewhere else? That to me is rather relative, a guy that can buy a porsche 911 at $200k probably has a different opportunity cost from a student in high school or college. Apple does not target the sweatshop labor based, low-margin areas. Dell does a great job at it and would be tough to compete against, talk about putting yourself out of business! But just because it doesn’t, doesn’t mean you should be against them. For a high-tech company, in order to keep churning great products (hw and sw), it’s entirely necessary to maintain a steady profit and good revenues especially if you’re a fortune 500 public company. This paves the way for research and development dollars + venture capitalist funding which turns into better employees and better products in the future. Do you factor this into the equation when you try to re-shape Apple Computer Corp.’s business model? Lol, where does a consumer of products become the heir confident of strategy for a large multi-billion dollar cap company by relating his/her economical injustices?! Silly if you ask me.
Dell schmell. Sweatshop labor. MIchael dell is a shrewd business man, he’ll squeeze every penny out of his suppliers to make 200 pennies in return. A good commodity, wholesale business model, but not the same as a technology company. Apple writes software, dell gets 12 year olds to put together computers for 50 cents a week. Apple co-creates standards such as xml, web services and hardware architectures, dell gets 12 year olds to put together computers for 50 cents a week. You can’t compare apples to dells.
I like my apple, someone likes their dell, the world turns, the sun sets, and life goes on.
Who are you fooling? Does anybody care about comparing apples to oranges? I’d much rather spend my time going to the beach than listen to all of you desperado fanatics drone on about your ill-conceived, biased analysis of multi-billion dollar company business models, you guys probably haven’t even scored in economics! Newbies!
Go back to your monkey can-do, servile coding, leave the analytical tasks to the smart people, muhahahaha!
rowel this is not Mac VS PC land. If I want a PC I’ll buy one. If I want a Mac I’ll buy one.
hey before you go lying about stuff the $699 Dell gets you:
128MB SHARED memory 512Mb max, max on the PowerBook is 640MB, video memory is not shared.
20GB HD on Dell, PowerBook is 40GB
24X CDROM for the Dell, Combo Drive on the PowerBook
no BlueTooth for the Dell
32MB dedicated video on the PowerBook
1.18″ thick for the PowerBook I am sure the Dell is thinner…whatever.
5hrs of battery life I am sure the Dell gets 20hrs.
Mobile Celeron processor for the Dell, be sure to tell all your friends.
4.6 lbs for the PowerBook…don’t tell me size and portability are not important for portable.
nice plastic for the Dell, adonized aluminum for the PowerBook. I know its not as stylish and cool as plastic.
with the Dell you get XP Home, you can’t even get on an NT domain like you can on the PowerBook. Add $79 extra
IF you have serial, parallel or PS/2 devices you need a port replicator for the Dell.
Movie editing software on the Mac is free, $100 extra on the Dell.
On the PowerBook you get iTunes and iTMS, no match for Dell’s offering of MusciMatch jukebox which has been getting everyone and the music industry’s attention. Sheesh…
Photo editing software on the PC is $20 extra. I am sure its better than iPhoto…yeah
Redo the numbers and max out the PC but still runs XP regardless.
You forgot a few things:
Firewire,
BOTH DVD and CDRW (why should you have to choose one?)
And just add 200.00 or a DVD-R, slot-loading, show me that option on the Dell, would you?
Slot-loading Combo drive (yes, it matters)
Aluminum case (yes, it matters)
Built in wireless, both a AND g (yes, it matters)
Video out (yes, it matters)
NVidia GForce Go 32Mb Video (yes, it matters)
And so on, and so on.
Hey, if you want to buy the Dell, buy the freakin’ Dell, but don’t bust other people’s chops because they place value on what Apple has to offer.
Wow, I’ve never heard of Silk before. Now I can use Microsoft Office and AppleWorks without the font rendering in documents looking horrible(on the screen). As far as Altivec in OS X goes, 10.2 works fine on my 600MHz G3 iMac. The thing you really need is RAM, and the hard drive is a bit slow.
Over at macwhispers.com today, they have rumor info that the 970 costs 20-30 percent LESS than Motorola’s G4. Apple is plain tired of Motorola-level price/performance, the market share hasn’t budged, the economy still stinks, the 970 costs less. I don’t think that adds up to a price increase, but we’ll see.
I just can’t understand why some people are always refering to those mac rumor sites since these have proven in multiple occasions that they know NOTHING about Apple’s plan.
motos fab sucked, so did their R&D, ibm can fab a chip cheaper en masse, so from logistics alone I can understand why 970s will be cheaper than g4s to fab.
Though… they had to put a good deal of money into NEW R&D for the 970, so who knows what the initial cost will be.
http://news.com.com/2100-1010_3-1012045.html?tag=fd_top
DALLAS–Microsoft on Monday will try to convince businesses to spend more money on server software, as the company readies new product releases for later this year.
—
With Microsoft, the price is always going up. Sure the hardware is cheap — and this is VERY important — but the software is getting more and more expensive, a side effect of the Microsoft monopoly.
If Apple can move closer to the PC in terms of hardware costs, there will be no good reason to own a PC except to run Linux.
Every time there is a Mac article, someone trots out the lowest price Dull machine, and compares it to a mid to high end Mac and declares that Macs cost x times as much.
If you go to both sites and compare an Inspiron 1100 to an iBook with equal specs both cost about $1500 USD. (you get a $150.00 rebate with Dell for the next couple of days, but you can also get better deals from an Apple retailer).
The only difference between the two systems were a 2Ghz Celeron compared to a 900 Mhz G3 and the integrated graphics on the Dell. Performace-wise, these systems aren’t that far apart.
Too expensive for older technology. No HT in G4s. Slow FSB(133MHz & 167MHz!!!) Built-to-order Video card prices are a sham(selling the Gf4 same prices has a Ati9700!) It’s probably the best computers out there but no one can afford THEM!!!
Nice to know I’ll be carrying around a target a la red and white circles with a dot in the middle for a lightning bolt. I would hope the engineers took into consideration static resistence for the PBook chasis.
That’s idiotic. Don’t stand on the roof waving your powerbook around in a lightning storm and you’ll be fine.
Dumbest. Apple bashing. Ever.
<You seem to be greatly misinformed. The heat dissipation <of the 1.2GHz PPC970 is 19W.
Notice the word power in the sentence I was referrin’ to, B?
Idlin’ power of over six watts – even talk about it later – an’ you’ve seen *how* many PPC970 procs bein’ thermally tested after use?
< The word on the street is the 1.2GHz PPC970-based 15.4″
< Aluminum PowerBook will either be launched at WWDC in
< June
< or announced then and actual sales would begin in July.
The word on the street was that we’d have iWalks in our pockets long ago, buddy. I know whereof I speak. I’m not trying to convince anybody of anything – just watch an’ see if I’m not right.
< Furthermore, I don’t see where you’re getting information < regarding the idle power consumption of the PPC970, nor < have you given a clock speed for which CPU that pertains < to.
I’ve spoken w/folks on the teams workin’ with ’em. Giving specific details would be bad (I don’ like spoiling surprises) but there are only going to be two speeds referenced at launch, most likely – you’ll have the data in your hands soon enough anyway. An’ they *all* have high power consumption an’ crappy heat dissipation – thus the lack of a specificly clocked chip.
No HT in G4s
Symmetric MultiThreading on a traditional single core processor is relatively useless as very few CPU cycles are wasted by branch mispredictions and the execution units are usually kept busy. The P4 wastes a percentage of time clearing and refilling pipelines about equal to the percentage of branch instructions in the code it’s executing. Because of this, its execution units sit largely idle. For this reason Intel was the first to introduce SMT on a single core processor.
It seems quite likely the Power5-derived PPC970 successor will have multiple cores and support SMT.
Slow FSB(133MHz & 167MHz!!!)
The PPC970’s bus will be “800MHz” (or rather, 400MHz DDR)
This will most likely allow the PPC970’s chipset to contain a HyperTransport bridge, used to easily link multiple 970s together much in the same way as the Opteron. However, since the CPU itself uses a synchronous bus, complex logic isn’t needed for a HyperTransport bridge to other synchronous bus architectures, such as AGP/PCI.
All things aside, like MHz and all that stuff, I can testify that the 12″ PB is a great machine. This $200 price drop is great. If you want a Mac PowerBook, get this one!
Notice the word power in the sentence I was referrin’ to, B? Idlin’ power of over six watts
I haven’t seen any numbers regarding the PPC970’s power draw. Once again I ask you for a source regarding the six watts number.
even talk about it later – an’ you’ve seen *how* many PPC970 procs bein’ thermally tested after use?
No. I have only seen pictures of PPC970s in prototype systems without a fan on the heat sink.
The word on the street was that we’d have iWalks in our pockets long ago, buddy. I know whereof I speak. I’m not trying to convince anybody of anything – just watch an’ see if I’m not right.
I wasn’t aware that anyone was questioning the 15.4″ PowerBook launch. I suppose all I can say is we’ll see who’s right come WWDC.
I’ve spoken w/folks on the teams workin’ with ’em. Giving specific details would be bad (I don’ like spoiling surprises) but there are only going to be two speeds referenced at launch, most likely – you’ll have the data in your hands soon enough anyway.
And… 1.2GHz for portables and 1.8GHz for desktops doesn’t fit into this description how?
The 1.2GHz processor is obviously designed as the mobile one given its relatively low power consumption/heat dissipation compared to the 1.8GHz model.
An’ they *all* have high power consumption an’ crappy heat dissipation – thus the lack of a specificly clocked chip.
Mobile Athlons have 25-45W heat dissipation. The Pentium 4 M’s are 30W. 19W is relatively low in comparison.
There is absolutely no issue regarding the use of the PPC970 as a mobile processor.
@Bascule
Symmetric MultiThreading on a traditional single core processor is relatively useless as very few CPU cycles are wasted by branch mispredictions and the execution units are usually kept busy. The P4 wastes a percentage of time clearing and refilling pipelines about equal to the percentage of branch instructions in the code it’s executing. Because of this, its execution units sit largely idle. For this reason Intel was the first to introduce SMT on a single core processor.
It seems quite likely the Power5-derived PPC970 successor will have multiple cores and support SMT.
I have seen this puppy(H.-T.) in action and I hope the PPC970 will have them. They really speed up processing.
The PPC970’s bus will be “800MHz” (or rather, 400MHz DDR)
This will most likely allow the PPC970’s chipset to contain a HyperTransport bridge, used to easily link multiple 970s together much in the same way as the Opteron. However, since the CPU itself uses a synchronous bus, complex logic isn’t needed for a HyperTransport bridge to other synchronous bus architectures, such as AGP/PCI.
It’s just too bad Apple’s G4s still haven’t reached 200MHz. The only up side I see are the 64-Bit PCI slots. Though they still need to slash 500$ cad off their PMG4s.
First of all, i’m a cs student. I use my computer to write code (java, haskell, c++ etc), to write articles in latex and just to have fun
Until recently I owned a dell inspiron 5000, p3-600 which costed me around 3000 euros back then. The machine was heavy, build quality so-so (cracks in the frame where the lcd screen connects to the base), squeky and creaky, a loud fan and worst of all the power managment never worked right. Close the lid and 2 out of 5 times it wouldn’t switch on again. It ran xp and debian/redhat-linux but I could never bring it to uni because it was too darn heavy. It was a powerfull machine for it’s days though.
Recently I bought a 12″ powerbook. It costed around 2300 euros. It’s small, quite light and the build quality is superb (the keyboard is truly fantastic). Power managment works great, in sleep mode it takes about 2 seconds to bring the system up. It allways works. I bring it to uni every day. No, it isn’t as fast as my desktop athlon-1800xp, but it’s more than fast enough. I can get all my work done quickly. JBuilder runs great. It’s by far the best computer i’ve ever had.
As a sidenote, about a year ago my dad bought a dell inspiron 8200 (or something like that). Dell certainly improved their build quality over the years, but still it’s a plastique box. The machine is in one word *huge* (I think it has more volume than 3 powerbooks), and when the fans (it has 2!) go on you’d think it wants to lift-off!
What i’m trying to say is that you cannot compare an apple to a dell, the latter simply aren’t as well engineered and thought out. But I guess you have to own both of them to really appreciate the difference. Also speed isn’t everything, most of the time you don’t even notice the difference, even if you’re running quite heavy java apps such as JBuilder.
Strange how the PowerMacs don’t seem to be being reduced though. It may just be that Apple is seriously low on revenue this quarter as everyone (including me) is holding out for the fabled 970 based machines. After the recent stock rise, the last thing they need is a loss on the balance sheet.
And the French are reporting that European Apple Stores are likely to discount from tomorrow morning. Although I think the heavy rumoured discounts on iBooks are a little unlikely.
here in sweden the apple machine is relly expensive.
if i would buy plane tickets to and frome usa and stay at
a cheap hotell for 4 days and pay all the customs epenses
it would still be a couple of hundred bucks cheaper to buy
the 17″ powerbook in the us than buing it in sweden.
there is actuly some people that are going to the us now
to save some money buying a powerbook
I’m just sick of windows XP(what im running now), I’m going back to OS X.
you know, i’m not a huge fan of dell, _some_ of their higher end stuff is not bad at all.
i wouldn’t mind a inspiron 8500 with the geforce 4200 go.
but this incessant comparison of Dell’s throw away bottom end stuff is getting on my nerves. it’s just junk and lying to other people about that fact puts you on the short list of disingenuous punks.
rowel, you obviously don’t have the first clue as to what you are talking about.
i’m part of a support crew who handles 3000 workstations and about 300 laptops. everything is dell, or apple(we have an art department) the laptops are a range of inspirion, latitude, mobile precision workstation, ibooks and powerbooks.
i’ve also personally had to live with different models of dell laptops as well as the occasional ibook/powerbook.
dell’s medium to lower range is just junk. loose parts, cracks, shorts, dead displays, speaker oddities, dead nics, touchpad problems too numerous to count…the list goes on.
Personally I’d rather try Sony, Toshiba or someone else, if I went with an x86 laptop. I don’t know if they are any better, I don’t have any experience with them, but I have to HOPE that they are better then the Dell lower end laptops. I do like the mobile precision workstations, but for that money, i’d rather get me a powerbook.
Hell we even give the Dell technician a good ribbing about just grabbing a cube and a sleeping bag, because he practically lives here. He’s mostly working on the laptops.
Rowel, I find your comments comparing a powerbook to a celeron powered inspiron 1100 the biggest joke i’ve seen on these forums in a long time.
let it go dude.
if you don’t want an apple, don’t buy one.
Well, I’ve been wanting to replace my current laptop and I’ve been saying that I would pick up a 12″ powerbook the next rev. A $200 price drop is almost as good.
My question, for those that own one, is how the performace compares to (say) a 600MHz Pentium III laptop like mine (seems that Zeno above said he (she?) made that kind of switch).
I’d like to do some coding on it. I’m mostly in Java, I’ve heard that the Apple JVM is steller. Has anyone run IntelliJ on it? How does it run?
What kind of performance change should I expect switching from my Sony? And last, is 640Mb gonna be enough?
Thanks a bunch,
t
JLS: “If you buy a Dell Laptop, you will realize what you are paying for. You can get a Kia with all the same options and features as a low-end Mercedes C Coupe, why is the Mercedes so much more even though it roughly the same options? One word, quality.”
Since Apples are made in Taiwan and China by Quanta and Hon Hai (the same people making Dell, HP, etc) I guess you just prefer the logo.
http://www.pbzone.com/production.shtml
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/detail.asp?onNews=1&GRP=A&id=19265
Apple quality is at least $600 better than Dells. We have had 2 Dell’s at my office, they have not been exceptionally high quality. I have owned 4 Mac’s and all have run flawlessly for years. My oldest still runs surprisingly well for 15 years. We have not had a PC last more than a year and a half without magor component failure – Dell’s included. The only advantage that PC’s have are a disposable price – A component breaks, then buy a new one.
My old Sony Laptop (We have never owned a Dell laptop) costed $1900 – Needed two repairs in the first year (thankfully in warrenty) leaving me without the computer for nearly a month.
I have 2.5 years on my iBook and 1.5 on my PowerMac and both are still very usable – My PC was about $800 (with monitor) two years ago, and I have upgraded it twice (Just to make programs run adequatly) at least another $400-500. Right back in the ballpark of the 12″ G4 price. Don’t forget to price in the upgrade to WinXP professional to get an adequate OS – assuming you work in a networked office – XP Home is gimped in this area).
My 867MHz G4 runs on par with my 2 GHz P4 for performance, so that should be no big deal. Of course, I do not experance slowdowns on my Mac even after years of adding programs. But after a short time (6 months or so) I begin to notice major slowdowns on the Windows machine, Defrag helps some, but only a reformat will recover the lost performance. OS X is well worth paying more for it (If only apple would release an Intel OS X – then the hardware would be usable – dual boot to windows to run C++ Builder (and games).
The truth is, given the longer life and lower maintenance, I would venture a guess that the $1600 Mac is cheaper than the $647 Dell.
Of course we still use PC’s at the office, I hope that Virtual PC/RealPC will run well enough on 970 macs to eliminate them.
If you can use a Mac (The apps you need are available), I recomment you buy the Mac and save some money!
I would say my 700mhz 640mb g3 ibook (16mb vram) is on par with my 1000mhz 320mb ram p3 desktop (32mb tnt2 m64) for desktop, work, etc use. Gaming, not so much (though rtcw runs well on it, and max payne should aswell).
Difference is that os x likes ram, and win2k liked good drivers.
Checkout the 1 time developer discount via the apple store online, search for developer discount on the mac os x section of the site.
so you are saying that everything coming out of the same manufacturer is of the same quality?
riggggggght.
whatever you say.
hint: any one of the four or so companies that actually manufacturers laptops can make a total throw away piece of crap, at the request of Dell, Toshiba, Apple. Alternatively, they could make the most solid machines with exotic materials ever. It’s all about money, price points, volume and design.
Your comment is irrelevant. Quanta makes laptops for a lot of companies, some suck, some don’t.
You got anything else?
the people who slap the parts together do not matter…what matters is the quality of the parts and the QA done before shipping.
Apple makes sure their products have high grade parts (the Nvidia Go for instance) and the QA is much better than Dell.
is there is diffrnce between the worker who puts a kia together and the worker who puts a mercedece together? no, there is not. the diffrence is tha parts and the QA.
I had a first generation PB G4 and I can attest that the quality of Apple products can be as shitty as anyone else.
First they used pure titanium to build the thing. Pure titanium isn’t a particularly strong metal and has the nasty habit of chemically bonding to itself. It’s saving grace is its heat conductivity which is necessary to keep the G4 from burning your lap when you use it.
Instead of mixing titanium with aluminum, vanadium, etc., to create the color they wanted not to mention increase its strength by up to 8x, they had the nerve to paint it. Not only that, but they used some cheap paint that couldn’t withstand the temperature of the G4 or at least bonded extremely poorly to the titanium.
Everyone I knew with a first generation PBG4 had paint chips coming off near the hinges and upper edge of the laptop because of the heat. Quite a few developed a crack straight down where the power jack was (or was it the audio jack?). I had the top dent on me and the damn bottom of the casing warp so it never fit correctly back on.
The battery never quite fit correctly in the bottom of the case and in fact I would regularly trip the battery release while carrying it (quite annoying). This also happened to a number of my friends even with the second generation.
The slot loading dvd drive was a complete nightmare in the first generation. Not only would it not pull in CDs without a helping push, sometimes pressure would push against the bottom of the case and cause the cdrom drive to contact the CD causing a rather loud and nasty noise. The loading mechanism itself was horribly loud and failed far too much for my taste.
Everyone has bad products and design flaws. Apple is no exception. Of all, IBM probably has the best build quality and industrial design, but admittedly poorest aesthetics. Then again, they also have the best support I know of (guy came to my house, popped out a bad LCD panel in 5 minutes and left without a hassle after I called them the day before).
you are mixing design mistakes with build quality.
they designed it with titanium and made the mistake of not thinking of the poor qualities of it…they fixed that by changing to aluminum. now they have no problems.
My brother in-law works quality control for Quanta. I’ve worked here in Taiwan on the manufacturing side of the IT industry for 20 years. I suggest you come over here and put in some time in a factory before you spout off. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
You people are so good at staying on topic, I haven’t seen anyone mention anything but what the news story was about.
Please tell me how why Linux would not have this problem, supporting AA in older compiled applications.
Yeah, I used design mistakes and build quality interchangably in this case because the end result is still the same. A machine that ends up breaking far quicker than it should.
As far as I know, Apple doesn’t make any of the parts for their laptops themselves, nor do most of the other laptop makers, so the concept of build quality being higher at Apple is silly.
Design quality and the choice of who they outsource for build quality does. I would assume any real quality outfit would have told Apple their design was flawed. I guess that’s what you get when you work with a company across the globe and lack a method of communication.
And people wonder why products don’t last anymore… sigh.
At least at the danish apple online store, the price dropped on all powerbook models, especially on the 15″ powerbook with what would be about a $615 USD price drop, but also about $350 on the 12″ powerbook.
But the ibooks was lowered with $150 USD as well.
I think the reason the drop is more dramatic here is partly that each time apple lowers the price with $1, the price will actually drop $1.25 due to sales tax. Another reason could very well be the fact that the dollar is quite weak at the moment. (but if this is the case, then why was it only the laptops that got new prices?)
The cheapest powerbook is still $2230 though, so we are still being ripped off 🙂 ($1780 if you remove sales tax)
//the economy still stinks//
Really? Is that why Nasdaq/NYSE has had positive gains for the last 3 consecutive months? For the first time since 2000?
Stick to ‘puters, sonny.
Aargh is right.
We need to put a Dell vs Apple laptop FAQ somewhere on the net.
The cheap Dell laptops people always compare Apples to
1) are heavy
2) have no battery life
Now if these factors are not important to you, that’s fine. But to ask, “what do you get extra?” just shows that you did not do enough research.
apple picks the internals…they pick the more expensive makes for their mobos, hard drives, gfx cards etc. you get a better quality out of those than you do out of Dell.
and you cannot mix design mistakes with build quality…..the quality of the build was very good on those first gen pb but the design mistake resulted in the pb breaking…..did any of the internal parts fail on you?
btw…my brother has one and is in the marines…he takes it everywhere with him and it has no broken….so I don’t know what the hell you did to yours….
The economy is much more than a stock market index. As the giant number of criminal investigations demonstrates, the stock market is mostly run by insiders anyway. So using a stock index as a benchmark of overall economic health is foolish.
And if you check your facts, you’ll see the NASDAQ is no better off than it was a year ago.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^IXIC&d=c&k=c1&a=v&p=s&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q…
And the DOW is down 10% from where it was a year ago.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^DJI&d=c&t=1y&l=on&z=b&q=l
The plain truth of the matter is that the US economy is in horrible shape and there is nothing on the radar that will drive a recovery. With all the tech jobs and many service jobs being offshored as rapidly as possible, the economy will be shaky for a long time to come.
and you cannot mix design mistakes with build quality…..the quality of the build was very good on those first gen pb but the design mistake resulted in the pb breaking…..did any of the internal parts fail on you?
Yes actually. The first Airport card I got for it was a dud (wouldn’t initalize), the battery died after 3 months (wouldn’t charge), the hard drive failed (constant re-reading of an area) about 6 months in, one of the hinges connecting the monitor to the laptop snap about 6.5 months in, and about 13 months in a red vertical line appeared one third from the right on the display. All were “known issues” when I went in to get it fixed.
Apple does not use some mythical higher quality hard drives, memory or batteries. They get them from the same place most everyone else gets them. To claim Dell uses inferior parts… especially hard drives which are all low speed and low cache size in Apples is silly.
If I had to rank manufacturers I’ve used for first gen products, I would go:
5. Sony
4. Apple
3. Dell
2. HP
1. IBM
For third gen products (where Apple finally figures out that the hinges on their laptops shouldn’t break from simple opening and closing):
5. Sony
4. Dell
3. HP
2. Apple
1. IBM
http://www.consumerreports.org/main/detailv3.jsp?WebLogicSession=Pt…
It doesn’t go:
4. Apple
3. Dell
2. HP
1. IBM
It goes:
1. Apple
2. Dell
3. HP
4. IBM
And yes, I’ll give much more creed to Consumer Reports than Jordan, whoever the hell he/she is.
//The plain truth of the matter is that the US economy is in horrible shape and there is nothing on the radar that will drive a recovery. //
Check these facts yourself:
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BC7379E43%…
Is the glass half-empty, or half-full? I can come up with just as many ‘positive’ links as you can ‘negative.’
Suit yourself, though.