I have came to found throughout my years as an apple user that ibooks suck. iBooks have all of the problems. Many iBooks have bad logic boards. iBook always get the short end of the stick when upgrades come out, they haven't gotten a video ram upgrade since 2002. The powerbooks get all of the good stuff and seem to have no poblems. Powerbooks a larger and faster hard drives, better video ram more video ram, bigger screens and much more.

Please add your opinion on this subject.

iBooks ARE consumer laptops...but, then again, so is the iMac, and look at it now

The iMac went intel which makes it bad now. intel macs aren't really as much faster as the are advertised. The PPCs are 64 bit except the g4s but the intels aren't.

How does the switch to intel "make it bad now"? The intel transition made sense. Staying with the G5 would be pure idiocy. Big Blue is dead in the water with Apple.


Question: have you even used an intel Mac yet? I mean, in real world use? I'm sorry, but there is no comparison. The new iMac blows my iMac G5 Rev B out of the water. Seriously. Virtually all head to head comparisons rate the Duo superior, despite the lack of 64 bit; while much touted, the 64 bit isn't used by the average consumer. Regardless, in a year you'll get the 64 bit back and much more.

As for the iBook, it's a consumer line. It's going to be inferior to the high end models.
Hopefully I'll be getting one at the end of the year, when intel releases its newer processors. I can't afford a Pro.

That is because the Core Duo is usually compared with the single core G5 which is an older chip. Quite a bit older. The dual core G5s usually beat the Core Duos across the board.
Apple are doing a hell of a job of spinning the transition by claiming the 'vast' superiority of the Intel chips.
Truth is the AMD dual cores are way ahead of Intels. The reasons for the switch are supplies and supposedly price. All the Intel Macs have gone up in price from their predecessors so far though. Rumour has it that they are about to shave a couple hundred bucks off the cost price Core Duo based Macs in the near future due to Intel cutting prices on the chips themselves. Wonder if we'll see anything off the retail price when that happens. Doubt it.

Apple have had OS X running on x86 since it was first created. And they kept that secret until recently. Lets hope they have the sense to maintain build on future PowerPC chips in case they ever want to switch back again.

What tests are you looking at, War? I'm not claiming that the statements made by Apple are 100% accurate, but the speed difference is still enormous. In a word, "vast" is appropriate in many cases. Check out Barefeats. Even the DC G5 still gets a run for its money.

Keep in mind that the comparison is also between the G4, a chip from the stone age. My mailman runs faster than the highend G4.

In regard to the comparable G5, you're not factoring in efficiency, such as heat, etc. The dual core G5 had/has no future in desktops and absolutely none in portables. You're forgetting that Jobs invested in intel primarilly for future use, even though the current line is still desirable.

Again, PowerPC chips are dead in the water. Any argument beyond that is FUD.

AMD has the lead for now, but comparable lineups show that in the near future the lead will be closed if not reversed.

As for price differences, we're in agreement. But I never heard a promise of cheaper computers on the commercial side from anybody from Apple. I could be wrong.

It's a fact that intel is investing much more money than ibm in their consumer chips, I just wish ibm and motorola took the ppc a little more seriously to keep it in the cuutting edge; they didn't so apple switched...
My first iBook died due to condensation on the mobo, just yesterday we had a very humid day and my new ibook g4 got covered in moisture, i'm worried....

well so long as the pro apps are still emulated under rosetta. i will not seriously use a intel mac for anything but using the internet and word proccesing. it may be good emulation but it's still emulation, and i'll stick with my QUAD.

macDeviant

Too right. The Quad still nukes practically anything else on the market.

In response to the argument about the G5 heat and power issues, I guess not everyone remembers the day after Apple announced the switch, IBM announced low power, dual core G5s with very similar heat and power figures to the Intel ones Steve was quoting. Sadly neither you nor I, nor anyone outside of Cupertino will ever get to see how quick they could run in a Mac.

I'm not saying the Core Duos are inferior to the PPCs used in previous Macs, but none of us gets to see how they compare to PPCs that would be in Macs if the switch hadn't occurred. AMD chips present and future, are held by many to be better than Intels, because the dual core variants are designed to be multi core from the ground up. The Intel ones are single core bolted together. Inter-core traffic on the Intels goes one way at a time via the FSB, the AMDs have a direct two way link. Maybe AMD would have charged more than Intel for their kit, or maybe its the chipsets and iPod chips which could also come from Intel which make the difference. I suspect bootcamp is the reason for the switch to x86, given the prices are yet to drop.

I know exactly what you mean by the speed differences. We have tested Intel Vs G5 iMacs on simple tasks like video encoding. The Intel was almost three times quicker. But it had faster RAM and an extra core, so hardly a fair test. Its also a much newer chip (and without double-checking my facts, is based on a newer architecture and a smaller manufacturing process). It should be obvious that the top end G5 is still superior to Intel offerings at the moment by the fact that Apple have yet to update the PowerMac. Traditionally, it has had all the newest, most powerful chips before all the other Macs get them.
The 970MP is also based on the larger 90nm process, but like I say they hold their own or beat the Core Duos in the real world.

http://applexnet.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1772

I have always thought that Windows has a much snappier UI than OS X in day to day usage. Its probably the one thing I have considered superior to X. Though I do like Minesweeper.

The G4 is getting very long in the tooth now though. But you still have to give respect to the Altivec unit. Great work indeed.

Maybe what we need is a multi-core CPU with one PPC core and one x86!

You would be insane not to. Frankly, I can't wait for a decade to pass when it becomes cheap enough for me to buy one and tinker with it. Bwahahaha...


Until then, I am teh broke