Price drop could mean new revisions coming?

[Charles Martin]

> From: Richard McKay <richard.mckay1 at virgin.net>
>
> Any thoughts about the price reductions to portables at the online 
> apple
> stores? Could mean new revisions...
>
Warning: I'm about to express a speculative opinion that probably won't 
be very popular on this list.

I think that Apple is getting ready to retire the iBook as we know it.

The price cuts on the 15" seem designed to help clear the remaining 
inventory in anticipation of a 15" with a new design to more closely 
match the 12" and 17" models.

The price cuts on the 12", it seems to me, are to spur people who would 
otherwise buy an iBook to go ahead and get the "real deal," ie a G4. 
For all intents and purposes, the 12" G4 Powerbook now IS the iBook.

The current iBook is the last Apple product to use the G3 chip, and 
even though that's been an impressive performer, it's just clearly not 
going in the direction (or at the speeds) Apple is.

I hope that perhaps the name "iBook" will live on for a class of solid, 
low-cost consumer/edu portables, but I have this feeling that the days 
of the G3 iBook as we currently know it are numbered.

Pure speculation on my part. Feel free to think I'm full of it on this, 
because I could be wrong. Indeed, I hope I am.

> Can't wait for the WWDC news...

I'm not sure that the WWDC will be as revelatory as some people expect. 
I'll be happy if we get a really good demo of Panther out of it. :)

> Any rumours about
> whether 'Panther' will be bringing more portable features (sys prefs) 
> or
> even better power consumption figures?

Sure would be nice. I don't know if they will or not, but I can tell 
you why it's taken so freakin' long.

UNIX has some fundamental architectural assumptions inherent to its 
structure. Most of the time, these assumptions are good and work well 
with the goals of OS X users. Sometimes, however, they are at odds with 
what many of us would call "normal use." For example, any UNIX system 
(including OS X) is always a multi-user environment. Always.

Another example: UNIX's housekeeping routines are set up with the 
assumption that the computer is always left on (not sleeping) 24/7. 
We've worked around that thanks to things like MacJanitor and Cocktail.

But when it comes to portable use, the architects of UNIX **never** 
imagined it being widely used on portables. So there isn't really *any* 
"infrastructure" in the core of OS X for power management. What's there 
now is what Apple's been able to bolt on to the kernel, and anybody 
who's run a laptop on OS 9 knows you still get 25-50% more battery life 
under it than under OS X. Hopefully that will change soon, but it's 
worth understanding why this is an area where improvement has seemed to 
go very slowly.

_Chas_

"To use the Mac is to be confronted, over and over, with the idea that 
the most mundane task can be done artfully and compassionately, 
beautifully and invitingly. " -- Glenn McDonald