MacWorld '06 Predictions?

[mr. sparkle]

What do you think Apple will come out with at MacWorld on Tuesday morning? Would love to hear your predictions for "The Steve's" big speech.

New iApps? Something even smaller than the Nano? iMac mini car accessories? iMac Mini Digital Hub? Intel PowerBooks?

[emperor]

theres talk of apple plasmas and ilife 06

according to todays stories we could see new mac-minis or just upgraded ones, dual-core lappies and/or lappies with NAND flash for the OS and apps.

anyway, i dont think ill need to put my ibook on ebay just yet

[cstaylor]

Intel Powerbooks.

[Kuang_Grade]

2 gig shuffles at $149

Front row now available beyond the imac

and one of the standard rumors (PVR mini, intel laptops, Asteroid, ect)

[IkemenTommy]

Intel Powerbooks.

[drpepper]

Doubtful outlook for the intel powerbooks though an ibook would be likely if the the mini goes intel as well.

An apple plasma?? Why?? Never heard that one before...

Asteroid is long overdue maybe steve junked it out of spite over the leak...

[cstaylor]

Doubtful outlook for the intel powerbooks though an ibook would be likely if the the mini goes intel as well.

Why do you think that its doubtful?

[emperor]

Doubtful outlook for the intel powerbooks though an ibook would be likely if the the mini goes intel as well.

Why do you think that its doubtful?

its more likely theyll do both ibook and powerbook at once;
if they just did ibook now, it would cannibalize powerbook sales and that could be for quite a time as powermacs arent due for the shift until may/june

[drpepper]

Why doubtful? Because the chips are not there yet for the 'higher' end powerbook. They could simply use the older intel chips at 1.4/1.6 in a new ibook but that is kind of a waste. The new chips are only 1.6 themselves (the yonah?), yes they go to 2.2 I think but not for the low powered ones which is what would go into a notebook. A 1.6 single core intel in a powerbook would not be faster than what is in them now really considering much of your apps would be running on emulation. Powerbooks are generally for power users and their apps are not ready, Adobe may not release Universal Binary versions of their software for at least 4 months or it may take as long as CS3 to realese them. Rosetta is sloooow, so in order for any big app to run decently they would need to be much faster than the chips out now. That is why I see the ibook as a maybe but not the powerbook. My guess is they could give a small boost to the g4 in the powerbook to compensate.. maybe 1.8? with a good graphic chip and this would be measurably faster than the 1.6 intel ibooks. When the M (forgot exact name) chip is ready to go I think the powerbooks will go intel and the ibooks would then go dual core. I know we all want much faster much sooner but I think we will have to wait til close to summer before we see any real progress.

I think the big news this time will be in video... so as an Adobe friend of mine said to me a few hours ago... "stay tuned"

[IkemenTommy]

Apple may offer new laptops at Macworld: analysts

[drpepper]

What a wonderfully vague and yet obvious article... I mean really duh... nothing new to read there.

[jim katta]

Speaking of rumor articles, EVERYONE in the mac fan world has been waiting for Think Secret to post their scoop article about what will be released. Today, they showed up with a limp dick in hand and offered no scoops and new information. On one level, I loved it, because I think they've been getting too cocky. But on another level, I really wanted some new info.

My guess is, either Apple has finally figured out how to plug leaks, or, there really isn't going to be an earth shattering announcement tomorrow. Heck, even the things being rumored aren't that exciting. Best case scenario: an Intel PowerBook, but as drpepper said, the machines wouldn't be significantly faster, and it would take at least a year for application developers to catch up and release redone apps for the new processor.

The whole plasma thing, whether true or not, doesn't excite me. Plasma TVs suck, get too hot, and leave burn-in images. A souped up mac mini media center doesn't excite me either. Really, the coolest Apple things already happened a couple of months ago: new iMac with iSight built-in, and iPod Video. I think even Steve Jobs will have a hard time topping those two really cool releases.

That said, I have a cache of money that I was supposed to use to buy a new Mac a month ago, and I've been holding on to it "just in case" until Tuesday before I make my purchase. So I'm "hoping" for something new and cool, but if it's an Intel iBook/mac mini, I won't be excited, and probably won't buy either of those machines. The best power-to-price buy with Apple right now is the iMac G5, and that's already available. If they lower prices on the iMac G5, THAT would be exciting, but don't hold your breath.

[drpepper]

Personally I find the idea of a mac DVR device w/ software to stream video content to my tv very exciting, living here in the land of the rising sun I um,.. aquire my TV fix via the internet (won't go into details...) so I spend alot of time watching TV on my lowly 23" cinema display but if I could stream that content to the other room and watch it in 5.1 on the my main TV, while sitting in my recliner eating ice cream well... that's just cool. :P

[cstaylor]

Dr. Pepper... eat your words. MacBook baby!

I guess I can read through the RDF since I'm originally from Cupertino.

[drpepper]

Yes and no... it is a new portable but not a powerbook

Interesting to note that it is virtually the same as the new imac so I guess it was easier just to do one thing and split it into 2 still 2 days later and now word on battery life. Also the whole 4-5x faster is bull. Most of that speed is from a faster bus, better graphic card and for multithreaded applications, expect to see nearly no increase or very little increase in speed in things like photoshop and of course the apple pro apps don't run on it at all... not much use in the "power" department I'd say...

[cstaylor]

Yes, anything with Altivec is going to run like it's on a G3 under Rosetta.

[Charles]

Yes, anything with Altivec is going to run like it's on a G3 under Rosetta.

No. Apple added Altivec emulation support to Rosetta. It wasn't there in the first developer release, but it was added a while ago and is in the current Intel OS X release. Sure it won't run at G4 speeds, but close. The only thing currently not supported are specific optimizations for G5, which is fairly rare.

In any case, Apple said they would ship their pro apps like FCP as native Intel apps in March. This makes me suspect that Intel pro desktops are also due in March.

[drpepper]

Of course emulation support for alti-vec exists... if it didn't craploads of programs would not run but since alti-vec processing was a seperate process on the G4/G5 chip that is just more garbage that must run under emulation and thus run even slower on a intel chip. So ya basically it will be like running on a g3 (granted a way faster g3).

The Quad g5 is still way fast and pretty much as fast as anything we can get on intel so I doubt we will see those so soon, at least not until 80% of apps have gone universal. But who knows they may just continue to offer 2 lines for a while yet.

[Nice Guy Jin]

The iMac G5 inside:



The Intel iMac inside:


(not taken from behind)

[cstaylor]

The Quad g5 is still way fast and pretty much as fast as anything we can get on intel so I doubt we will see those so soon, at least not until 80% of apps have gone universal. But who knows they may just continue to offer 2 lines for a while yet.

I agree with Dr. Pepper. Intel PowerMacs probably won't ship this year IMHO.

Good to know about Altivec... my information was entirely based on the first developer's release.

[Charles]

The iMac G5 inside:



The Intel iMac inside:


(not taken from behind)

Holy crap! I can't believe that lower pic is an Apple product. You're not playing a joke on us, are you?

There are rumors that Intel did the circuit design for the new Macs, and it must be true because nobody inside Apple would produce anything that ugly, even if it is sealed inside an iMac where nobody ever sees it.

[Nice Guy Jin]

I hope it's a joke... Anyway, the Intel iMac is thinner, right? That might be an explanation.

More details:



Don't try to find the ports, that's not the back of the computer.

I guess the next iMac will be designed for the Intel chip and won't look that ugly...

[IkemenTommy]

Any specs on that thing?

[Nice Guy Jin]

iMac Core Duo

[mr. sparkle]

[quote="cstaylor"]I guess I can read through the RDF since I'm originally from Cupertino. ]
Dude,
I'm from 'Tino too. Where did you go to high school? Homestead? 'Tino? Monta Vista? Lynbrook? Mitty?

BTW, I went to MacWorld. They should call it iPod world now. A large amount of vendors were selling products for the iPod.

Nary a ProApps demo in sight. Nothing but pap really. Got blasted at a couple of the parties though.

[IkemenTommy]

Intel Macs may boot XP after all

It's only a pre-speculation though..

[keirnna]

That intel iMac sure doesn't look like it has the normal apple quality.

[cstaylor]

Dude,
I'm from 'Tino too. Where did you go to high school? Homestead? 'Tino? Monta Vista? Lynbrook? Mitty?

Parents moved us to Saratoga from Sunnyvale so we could go to Saratoga High, then moved to Cupertino afterwards.

Northern California was a great place to grow up. It's changed a lot since then (so many silicon implants these days, calling the city "Frisco"), but you can still see its beauty driving over the mountain on Hwy 17.

[IkemenTommy]

I agree with Dr. Pepper. Intel PowerMacs probably won't ship this year IMHO.

You can bet on that.
34 Design Flaws Discovered in the Intel Core Duo