Apple discontinues 15" PowerBook

Hear hear for the 12" !

The best form factor of the lot. The 17" is the size (and appearance) of an aircraft carrier. I already have a monster desktop setup, so when I move about I want something truly portable.

The 12" has the best compromise between sleek portability and usability - 1024x768 may be a smallish screen resolution, but still perfectly usable if you have good window management discipline and know how to use Expos頨ot corners to advantage.

Some rumors have it that the 12" will get a 13.3" widescreen aspect ratio. That would okay I guess.

Anyway, I won't be getting a MacBook Pro until the small form factor is available.

While not surprising, it's too bad. IMHO, the G4 is much better than the MacBook for non-Pro users. DL DVD burner, FW 800 and full size PC card slot are all great features that I regularly use, and would miss if I upgraded. The display resolution is also *slightly* better on the G4. The speed bump is something I can do without for now, and other than the Mag Safe power adapter none of the other features (I don't video chat, so the camera doesn't excite me) are that interesting.

Agreed, "even under Rosetta I imagine Photoshop on the MacBook Pro is faster than on the PowerBook G4" is a completely foolish remark.

And to the commentor(s) that believe getting a Universal Binary of Photoshop will solve all the speed problems go back to the drawing board. If you have a plugin that is not universal binary and you want to use it on your Intel mac you'll have to set that universal binary Photoshop to run under Rosetta in PowerPC mode so your plugin loads. ALL THAT SPEED AND YOU CAN'T USE IT.

Don't believe me? Go run Flash or RealMedia in Safari on an Intel Mac - doesn't work until you run Safari in PowerPC mode and unless Transitive and Apple can get that going your Universal Binary Applications will still be hindered by any PowerPC plugins for that application.

"Photoshop on Intel? Sadly nowhere near the old native G4 version... see more here."

If those benchmarks were the first time they had Photoshop perform those tasks on Intel, the time may not be representative of actual use - Rosetta should cache the translated code for future use, so future runs should be faster.

If you're going to be using Photoshop or similar apps under Rosetta, I'd suggest first opening up a very small file and running through as many filters and Photoshop functions as you can think of, to get as much of Photoshop's code translated and cached as possible before you start doing your real work on full-sized documents.

It would be a public service if someone put together a script that would do this.

Tis a sad day.

Photoshop on Intel? Sadly nowhere near the old native G4 version... see more here.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=104

Test 1- Kaleidoscope

PBG4 1.5GHz -> 0:29:59 (0 min, 29 sec)
MBP 2.0GHz -> 0:42:87
TiBook 1GHz -> 1:08:00

Test 2 - Bali Girl

PBG4 1.5GHz -> 2:16:00 (2 min, 16 sec)
MBP 2.0GHz -> 4:03:00
TiBook 1GHz -> 6:45:00

to #2 - i suppose when all of us have switched to our lovely shiny new intel macs you'll still be going goo goo over your slow as can be ppc box right? :)

not that thats bad... i wish you people would just admit it please

FYI...

15-inch PowerBooks are still available from Apple's certified-products site at:

http://www.Apple-Discounts.com

LOL... "even under Rosetta I imagine Photoshop on the MacBook Pro is faster than on the PowerBook G4.".... HAHA... keep on imagining. What a silly comment.

"....under Rosetta I imagine Photoshop on the MacBook Pro is faster than on the PowerBook G4" -- well this could very well be apple's pro apps strategy for the imac and the powerbook. the big question is Conroe/Woodcrest Mac Pros (ex.PowerMac) ... well, bye bye PowerBook.