<p>ibook is for like kids. the real mac laptop is the powerbook and it pwns any windows-using laptop piece of junk.</p>
<p>Within the year, the tides will turn. With Apple's switch to Intel processors, Macintosh's only benefit will be guaranteed compatiblity with Apple branded hardware. Mac with no longer dominate memory intensive fields. The end is nigh! Go Linux?</p>
<p>And where is the G5 laptop? Why couldn't IBM (the maker of the G5 chip) engineer a less power hungry and hot running mobile version for the PowerBook models? Why did Steve Jobs go with Intel? According to Jobs, Intel's mobile Pentium chips provide better peformance and less heat (on a per watt basis) and power consumption than the G5 was capable of. In the race for performace, battery life and cost, Jobs decided that Intel was the way to go. He knew that within the next year the G5 would be a "dead end" given IBM's reluctance to improve on a product line that represented only 2% of their East Fishkill, NY chip plant's capacity...</p>
<p>Projecting the peformace levels of Apple laptops against Wintel based machines, the future looked bleak given the delays from IBM which from 1999 to 2005 has barely broken even selling the G series chips to Apple. According to the NYT, Jobs demanded that IBM sell the G chips to Apple at steeper discounts. IBM decided not to sell at a loss and "politely declined" his offer. IBM stands to make more money selling versions of the G chips to Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo for their gaming consoles than to Apple. </p>
<p>After the annual Developers Meeting this past Monday, most Apple centric websites were adopting a wait and see attitude about how well the new Intel based machines would perform. This was especially true in the laptop market. This year already, laptops sales have surpassed desktops and this is the market that raised the biggest concerns at Apple. At the higher end of the laptop market where the PowerBooks reside, Jobs correctly analyzed that Wintel machines would start pulling away and put Apple at a competitive disadvantage despite the superiority of their OS X. </p>
<p>All of this raises some serious concerns for students in the market for laptops going into the fall 2005 term. The new and improved Apple Intel based machines are scheduled to go on sale in 2006 and the complete Apple line will finish moving to the Intel platform by 2007. Apple claims that neither the current PowerBooks or IBooks will be obsolete. And I believe that claim. But I also believe that Apple is renowned for it's inovation and styling. The new Apple Intel laptops will make a big splash when they're introduced. But will students buying an Apple laptop for the '05 fall term suffer from "buyers" remorse when the Intel systems hit the market in the spring of '06?</p>
<p>I use Mac OS X 10.4. It's just... better.</p>
<p>Mac OS X 10.3.9 -- it just works.</p>
<p>By the way, michuncle, that's really interesting; thanks for the info.</p>
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But will students buying an Apple laptop for the '05 fall term suffer from "buyers" remorse when the Intel systems hit the market in the spring of '06?
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<p>That is my feeling exactly. Now I am reluctant to purchase a Powerbook. Maybe I should buy an IBM brand and see how Apple plays this out.</p>
<p>^If the Powerbook is your first choice, couldn't you use a family computer or get a cheap used one until the new PBs are released?</p>
<p>I suppose so, but I think a laptop will be of greater use than a desktop in my case. I am thinking about getting a custom-made one now. It would be less expensive, and I could reserve the money for the new PBs if they perform well.</p>
<p>A good article from the NYT about Apple's move to Intel. Apparently, Apple laptops using Intel inside may not appear until early 2007.</p>
<p>That would buy students some more time, but the central quandary remains. Apple fans typically cite the fact that their machines are good for many years of use. Typical users look for at least two or more years before considering an upgrade. That time may be cut in half...</p>
<p>"Neither Jobs nor Otellini revealed which chips Apple was expected to use initially, nor in which computers they would first appear, though experts expect them to first show up in laptops.</p>
<p>Bill Davies, secretary of Mac-Nexus, the Sacramento-area Macintosh users group, said the Apple desktop G5 is a powerful machine, but he can't say the same for Apple's laptops.</p>
<p>"Mac laptops are underpowered, and as the trend is for people to expect 'desktop' performance from a laptop, Apple needs to fix that," he wrote in an e-mail."</p>
<p>It seems that "experts" aren't in agreement as to when the new Intel base Apple laptops will appear...</p>