Filed under: Hardware, Rumors, iBook
Intel iBooks at MWSF in January 2006?
Mac rumor site ThinkSecret is reporting that sources close to Apple have told them to expect Apple to announce iBooks with Intel processors at the MacWorld Expo conference in January of 2006. The iBooks would be the first of Apple's product line to sport Intel chips since their announcement in June 2005 that the company would be moving their product lines to Intel processors.This actually makes a bit of sense. Apple wants people to switch in big numbers and introducing an inexpensive iBook may help those people sitting on the fence decide to move to Apple. If Apple can price them aggressively enough, Intel iBooks could compete quite well with the low-end PC notebooks on the market. And since professional users tend to use Powerbooks and G5 towers, by moving the consumer line to Intel first, it gives the larger software manufacturers like Adobe and Macromedia time to finish rewriting their applications to run natively on the Intel processors (instead of emulated in Rosetta).
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mike said 12:39PM on 11-17-2005
I'd love to see this happen, but won't believe it until I see it.
BTW, any reason why there's a 12" Powerbook pictured instead of a 12" iBook?
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Mike said 1:32PM on 11-17-2005
Well, there was anyway - it's quickly been changed to an iBook. :-)
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Damien Barrett said 1:40PM on 11-17-2005
Yeah, I uploaded the wrong image and the post went live before I realized the mistake. Thx for the headsup.
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David said 2:10PM on 11-17-2005
Since Apple finally admitted that people have fingers (Mighty Mouse) and this is targetting PC users, could they please put two buttons under the touchpad?!?!?!
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David said 2:43PM on 11-17-2005
Since Apple finally admitted that people have fingers (Mighty Mouse) and this is targetting PC users, could they please put two buttons under the touchpad?!?!?!
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Splashman said 6:22PM on 11-17-2005
Geez, David, next you'll be wanting a high-resolution screen! It's almost like you want a useful laptop or something! Get over yourself!
/sarcasm
Are people going to buy a laptop that runs all 3rd-party software in emulation? Even forgetting the pro software, we're unlikely to see MS Office for Intel any time soon. And I'll bet not even all the included Apple apps (Calendar, Mail, etc.) won't be Intel-ready by January. Apple has only so many engineers.
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Nik Fletcher said 6:41PM on 11-17-2005
I agree it's probably gonna be a while before anything is forthcoming from MS for Macintels.
But, Splashman, they've had 5 years of compiling OS X for Intel systems, so I doubt this will be a problem - the Apple apps have probably been running on Intel for almost as long as OS X has!
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TK said 7:00PM on 11-17-2005
Something big *must* happen to the iBook line considering that it is still in the same shape & form since May 1, 2001. My bet is on black iBook.
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mrtotes said 7:38PM on 11-17-2005
Surely this could be a disaster... New 'switchers' coming across to a shiny new iBook with now native software and a potentially lousy emulation performance. What will they think of the new platform. Although I guess as long as iWorks, iLife and a handful of other games etc are bundled then Apple could be on for a winner. Does anyone think this will be the last major platform re-development? I've gone from 68k to PPC and then to OS X and even as one of the faithful it does start to wear me down. Casual home users don't have the company budget to order a new machine each year or two or to upgrade software packages all the time.
I do actually think an iBook nano could well feature at the bottom for the line up with a 12" display and then standar iBooks with 13.3 and 15.4 wide screen on the top two. iSight would seem only logical for all models and I would love to think a Digital TV tuner/Front Row/Apple remote would make this an absolute must product of students etc etc who want an all-in one solution. If my 1GHz Ti broke today I would be seriously considering a Qosimo over any Apple offering - they are basically the same as my three year old Ti.
I agree that the choice of black or white is likely and a two button plus scroll will be a must to encourage switchers.
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Genuis Bartender said 10:55AM on 11-18-2005
No way this would happen on its own. Think about it. A moderate improvement in the performance of the iBook would result in the iBook being faster than the PowerBook. Which means, they'd need to update the PowerBook line at the same time.
I think the more likely scenario is that they kill the PPC iBooks and introduce some Intel PowerBooks whilst retaining a few PPC ones to run all the pro software that hasn't been converted to Intel.
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