[Ti] future 'books: with WiMax cards ?

[Dennis Fazio]

--On Sunday, December 19, 2004 01:28:02 PM CST -0600 John Lyon 
<jelyon at mac.com> wrote:

> Some might argue that when Apple released the first Airport access points
> and cards, 802.11b was immature and not a mainstream product.
>
> Remember, before Intel's "Centrino," there was Apple's "Airport"!

Yes, but Apple released a complete user-friendly, full-operational, 
fully-self-contained system with base stations, workstation/laptop 
transceivers and all the interface software to make it work with a few 
clicks. The maturity in the technology and the market was not relevant. That 
is not possible with WiMax currently.

Intel designs and makes chips and can build what they want regardless of what 
the rest of the semiconductor market is doing. Apple does not and depends 
upon that market to have components available and working in quantity before 
it can introduce anything new.

WiMax Chipsets are being introduced now. Apple could move anytime, but there 
is not a critical mass of service providers in place yet.

This could be something more suited to the PCI bus card makers for now. When 
the mobility standards (802.16e) are in place, PowerBook availability might 
make sense. My speculation is that the next generation of PowerBook 
(PowerBook G5) will not have WiMax because the development cycle is too far 
along. The generation after that could, however.

-- 
Dennis Fazio
dfz at mac.com