blue light for the 12" powerbook

does anyone have an idea when a bluelight would be added to the 12" powerbook g4, or when the 12" powerbook g5 would be coming out? thanks!

 

Do you mean a Blu-ray drive? Or do you mean an actual Blue LED?
Don't think there's anything in the cards in that regard;

As far as G5's go, I think you'll find that most people seem to agree they're still too damn hot...

Probably will find a dual G4 before a G5 is released.

In short, I wouldn't hold your breath; No one really knows.

-S.

 

As far as Blu-Ray hi-def DVD is concerned, it's safe to expect early to mid-2006. Maybe late 2005 if we're lucky, seeing as how Apple has always be at the vanguard of "next new thing". They did it w/ Firewire , USB, and DVD-writeable. Apple will most likely switch all Combo Drives to Blu-Ray readable while the Super Drive becomes Blu-Ray writeable.

I'm confident we will probably never see a G5 CPU in the PowerBook and iBook, as long as G5 is ever based on IBM's PowerPC970 architecture. That chip is simply too damn hot, both thermally and electrically. Its wattage thoroughput is not fit for battery longevity. The PowerPC970 is the equivalent of Intel's Pentium 4 and AMD's Athlon64/Opteron. The Pentium 4 met the twilight of its days amongst laptops w/ the Northwood revision, when the Pentium-M debuted, and the Athlon64-M will soon be phased from mobile usage now that AMD is releasing their mobile-specific 64-bit Turion processor.

The Pentium-M and the G4 have similar wattage consumption although the P-M has much better self-management, w/ clock throttling, etc..

Freescale's e600-based dual-core G4 chips start sampling late-2005 so I'd look to early-2006 for a dual-core PowerBook and mid-2006 for e600-based iBook, probably only single-core. The key hindrance to transition into dual-core capable e600 core G4 chips is the 90 nm die fabrication process. Jumping the roadblock from 130 nm down to 90 nm has been a major challenge that even IBM had trouble overcoming. Once Freescale makes the jump to 90 nm for PowerPC, they'll be able to tune down power consumption.

Another indicator the Freescale e600 PowerPC chip is the PowerBook's best bet--the 8641 variant of the chip will have extensively integrated on-die I/O controllers, from high speed memory to gigabit ethernet. That means less power is needed to feed separate controller chips across the laptop motherboard, optimizing battery life. The big boost to performance and efficiency should go a long way to distinguish the professional-oriented PowerBook from student-oriented iBook. When this happens, the new 8641D G4 will require the PowerBook to get a complete hardware revision and Apple has almost always accompanied these with visual design revisions.

Meanwhile, Apple will probably hold back the iBook's transition to dual-core for another cycle or two by using the 7448-variant of the e600-based G4. The 7448 is socket-compatible w/ current the current PowerBook/iBook motherboards and also does not include the high frontside bus speeds or integrated controllers of the PowerBook's 8641. The precedent for this is when the Titanium PowerBook made the transition to G4, yet the new iBook2 (the white one, post-fruity colors) stayed with G3 for a good while before the iBook G4 came about.

 

wow thank you so much! i was referring to both..i should have been more specific, but thanks again! man..it'd be really neat to have the blue backlight in the 12" g4 powerbook. do you know when they might update the g4 since the g5 isn't working?

 

[sigh]

I've already given you the answer to the possible revision timetable. Just pay more attention to that ponderous, stentorian tract of prose.

But I will clarify--

Dual-core PowerBooks: Early 2006. (Mac Expo, February) We had our PowerBook revision w/ the Sudden Motion Sensor and touchpad scrolling this February, I believe. W/ the e600 core sampling in late 2005, early 2005 is our best shot. The San Francisco Mac Expo. Steve Jobs declared 2005 to be The Year of High Definition Video, NOT the laptop. Next year's Mac Expo could more than likely usher in a new generation of high performance Apple laptops.

W/ respect to iBooks, I expect e600 iBooks to be at least half a year or more behind the PowerBooks. I point you to the end of my previous post for why that might be.

Okay, now for this blue backlight. That's just a pipedream of your own, pure and simple. You probably just saw it on the iPod screen and it drew you in, right? Well, if you want blue LEDs on a laptop, you can always get the HP DV1000. But a blue LED will conflict the entire color scheme of the current line of Apple computers. The softly glowing power-indicator light is a uniform off-white/light-green glow in every computer, from the Mac Mini to the iBook to the Apple Cinema Displays. And you know what? That works. Apple chose the off-white glow color because it's unobtrusive yet distinctive.

Blue LEDs are bright and piercing and you would NOT want to have them on a laptop if you're working in a dark room or watching a movie w/ the lights off. This problem is present in the HP DV1000 laptop, the Logitech computer speakers, the Shuttle small form factor XPC cases, and Best Buy's short-lived yet popular VPR Matrix laptops. (the ones designed by F.A. Porsche) I have one of those Logitech speaker sets w/ the blue LED. I have to cover the darn thing with electrical tape whenever I turn out the lights for a movie. It's that piercing. When living in my dorm, I sometimes left my speakers on under my bunk at night and it lights up my bedroom like an Indiglo nightlight. With Steve Jobs at the helm, Apple's design philosophy has always been one of both exquisite aesthetics and forthright practicality. They have a uniform theme of color and form that covers their entire range of computers. They're not going to switch to blue LEDs because it's the latest fad in the industry.

On the other hand, if you're talking about a blue backlight for the Apple logo on the PowerBook/iBook lid, that's also not going to happen. The light you see through there is simply the backlighting bulb for the LCD screen. LCD in computer screens do not emit light by themselves. They can form color and image, but for the image to be visible, it needs to have light projected through it. That's why there's a backlight. The glowing Apple logo is simply a clever byproduct of the necessity for LCD-backlighting. If Dell or Compaq wanted a backlit laptop lid, all they'd have to do is embed a translucent logo on their laptops lids. Bottom line--that backlight is a white light. It has to be so for the LCD display. The neutral white and off-white tones work for Apple. Don't look for them to change anytime soon.

 

yea, sorry about that, i had to read it again and noticed after i sent the post.
thank you for the reply. that does make sense now.
i doubt they'd put a blue backlit keyboard in the 12" powerbook anytime too soon too. oh well. it's a great notebook computer, so a little light behind a keyboard won't change that. thanks again, you've helped clear things up!

 

Ohhhhhhhhh! You meant the backlit keyboard! I'm sorry, I totally blanked on that!

I don't know anyone yet who has the backlit keyboard. (college students mostly buy the 12'' model) But on THAT subject, it's a distinct possibility. For a long while, the 12" PowerBook is closer in hardware origins to the iBook than the other PowerBooks. It doesn't even have the gigabit ethernet that the normal 15'' and 17'' models do. With the next major redesign, it's an entirely realistic expectation for Apple to further distinguish PowerBooks from iBooks.

 

okay thank you so much! i really want to get the 12" 1.5 GHz powerbook g4, but a blue backlit keyboard would really put the icing on the cake..but i'm not sure that i can wait until the next major redesign. thanks again though!

 

Nice info guys... didn't realize the next pb's were so far out still. Prob gonna pick up a 15" myself.. ooh how I've been waiting

Thanks TSX for the recaps [8D]

HP ZX5000, P4 2.4M, 9600M, 512MG