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January 1st through 7th Archives
Tuesday, January 7th 2003 10:58 CST
PBZone Keynote Gallery Posted
Our first gallery of the keynote has been posted here. Enjoy!
New Apple Ads Posted
Right here is the Verne Troyer (Mini Me) and Yao Ming (7'+ NBA Star) PowerBook ad and right here is the "cosmos" ad. The PowerBook "introduction" video can be found here.
Keyboard Illumination in Action
Check out this QuickTime movie to see the keyboard illumination in the new PowerBook G4 17".
Site Notes
We'd like readers to send in their "first impressions" the new PowerBooks and the Macworld keynote as a whole in to us today. Send them to info@pbzone.com.
Also, if you see any details about the new machines that we missed and you think are worth noting, please send them our way as well.
We'll have a full photo gallery posted later in the day, so stay tuned for that. There'll be plenty of close up images of the 12 and 17" PowerBooks.
Innovative Burton "Amp" iPod Jacket Available Now at Apple Store
The specially-designed Burton skiing/snowboard jacket designed for the Apple iPod can be seen here. It includes a special pocket for the iPod and soft-touch switches on the sleeves for switching songs. It's available exclusively through the Apple Store online, but can be tried on at all the company's retail stores. "Select" Burton dealers will also carry the jacket:
Little-Known New PowerBook Facts
Here are some hard-to-find interesting details about the new PowerBooks:
Apple Introduces To-Die-For 17" PowerBook and 12" Subnotebook-Sized PowerBook at Macworld San Francisco
Today Apple reinvigorated the PowerBook G4 line with a landmark upgrade to a industry-first 17" display with built-in bluetooth and a backlit keyboard. If 17" is too big for your style, the company also introduced a subnotebook sized machine with at 12" display that's smaller and lighter than the iBook, while retaining gigahertz speed and PowerBook-level connectivity with AirPort and Bluetooth. The 17" machine is priced at $3299 with a GeForce 4 graphics chip and SuperDrive, while the 12" machine is $1799 with a Combo Drive, $1999 with a SuperDrive, built to order at the Apple Store. The 17" machine is available "next month," according to Apple, with its little brother shipping in just two weeks.
PowerBook G4 17" Display
PowerBook G4 12" Display
Live Updating Keynote Coverage
Reload this page...it'll be updated as the keynote progresses. We've heard from a source that no rumor website reported several of the announcements today, so we'll have a few surprises today, the first time in a couple of years that a majority of the keynote was a surprise.
50,000 Streams, 130 countries, and "two Macworlds worth of announcements." First an update on the Switchers campaign. Lots of applause for Ellen Feiss. Over 7.8 million visitors to the switchers campaign site. 68% are using Windows to visit that site.
51 total Apple Retail Stores. 85 million Americans live within 15 miles of an Apple Store. $148 million sold at the Retail Stores in the quarter ending in December. 50% of sales are to "switchers." 1.4 million visitors to the Apple stores in December alone.
"Ten for Teachers" is a program to give free Mac OS X to teachers. 290,000 copies have been sent out. They've extended the program to the end of this quarter.
iSync and iCal have been updated this week. 250,000 people have paid for .mac. 600,000 iPods shipped total in 14 months. That's one per minute since they were introduced. #1 MP3 player in the US and Japan. 42% share in Japan.
Apple has worked with Burton to make a jacket with an iPod pocket and built-in switches in it for $499.
5 million active users of Mac OS X. 3.8 million users added in 2002. Predict 9-10 million active users in 2003. Mac Office $199 offer has been extended to April 7. QuickBooks Pro 5 is now shipping for the Mac. And DigiDesign's ProTools will be shipping this month!
Final Cut Pro is the #1 video app in the world. But for everyone that doesn't need the top-end features of Final Cut, but needs more than iMovie, Apple is announcing Final Cut Express. It basically has all the big features a consumer who needs more than iMovie needs from FCP for $299.
New Macs will only boot into Mac OS X.
There are tons of "integration" features among the iApps. Steve then shows the improvements in iMovie 3, and iPhoto 2, and iTunes. All are downloadable free, and available with iDVD fo $49 at retail in a suite called "iLife."
Apple's introducing "Safari," an Apple-brand browser. It's fast, minimal user-interface, integrated Google features. It's got great bookmarking features too. Pretty neat, overall. It's based on an open source rendering engine, KHTML. It's available as a beta for free starting today.
And there's another new app called "Keynote," based on the application built for Steve Jobs' keynote. It's basically Apple-brand PowerPoint. It fully supports tons of image standards and has a lot of tools to create sharp-looking presentations. It comes with 100 images. It even has a built in spreadsheet so you can create charts and graphs easily without using another application. There are 12 custom themes built in. It imports and exports PowerPoint and also exports as QuickTime and PDF format. It's an open file format--based on XML. It costs $99. Available starting today.
Woooooo. Time for new PowerBooks. 17" PowerBook G4. Still only 1" thick, a bit thinner than the current PowerBook. The thinnest PowerBook ever. It uses the LCD from the 17" iMac. 1440x900 pixel display. The keyboard is backlit, an industry first. It has ambient light sensors to automatically turn the keyboard backlighting on and off. 6.8 pounds with the 17" display. It's made out of anodized aluminum alloy, so it's not painted. SuperDrive, 1 GHz, SuperDrive, GeForce4 440 Go 64MB VRAM, and FireWire 800, which uses a new port. It has USB on both sides of the PowerBook. Ports are on both sides of the machine. Bluetooth is built in. Of course AirPort built in, but it's "Airport Extreme" at 54 Mbps, based on the 802.11g standard, which is backwards compatible with 802.11b. New antenna placement in the PowerBook, which should improve reception. The new 17" PowerBook is equal to the iBook in reception.
The new basestation handles 50 people now, and it supports wireless bridging, i.e. swapping from base station to station as you walk through an area. And the basestation now supports USB printing among all the wireless customers. The base station is $199.
Lithium Prismatic battery technology goes into the PowerBook 17". It still gets 4.5 hours of battery life. Comes with 512MB DDR memory. 1 MB L1 cache. Gigabit ethernet. All the usual video out methods.
It costs $3299. Get your credit card out now, children.
And then there's more. 12" PowerBook, smaller than the iBook with a slot load optical drive. It has a 1 GHz and 867 MHz G4 options, GeForce4 32MB VRAM, slotload combo drive and bluetooth built in and ready for 802.11g AirPort. 5 hour battery life. 256 MB DDR RAM for $1799 and is available in 2 weeks. You can get a SuperDrive with Built-to-Order, which puts the total at $1999.
Monday, January 6th 2003 00:16 CST
MWSF Notes
The day before Macworld is always the slowest news day of the year. Apple's busy preparing its surprises and all the rest of the newsmakers are on their way to the show.
We plan to have full coverage of this Macworld including several detailed photo galleries for those that aren't able to make it to the show.
Also, we're always looking for additional reporters in the field to send reports to augment our team in San Francisco. If you're interested in emailing what you see at the show, drop us a note at info@pbzone.com.
Any breaking news today will be posted, but otherwise, be sure to tune in bright and early tomorrow morning for our keynote coverage.
Friday, January 3rd 2003 10:56 CST
PowerBooks Out of Stock
A quick check of the Apple Store online will show you that both 14" iBooks and all models of PowerBooks are listed at 3-5 day wait for shipping, which puts them healthily over the margin of the beginning of Macworld San Francisco. In the past, low supplies have meant that Apple has held over orders for the older models when new models are introduced, and upgraded those orders to the new units.
But Apple has just upgraded the PowerBook G4 line, so it will be interesting to see if they'll do a product feature bump so soon after introducing an update. As you'll recall, in 2001, the company updated the PowerBooks in January (the release), October (new processors), and then December (Combo drives added.) Then there were no updates until April of 2002 and then later in November of 2002. So it's truly a mystery so far as to what Apple will unveil in just 4 short days.
Apple to Charge for iApps
Used to free iApps? Love iPhoto but don't love it enough to pay for it? According to some people we've talked with Apple is preparing to bolster its bottom line by charging for upgrades to its "digital hub" applications that were previously free. This News.com confirms what we've been hearing ever since iTools was converted to .Mac.
Following the relative success of .Mac (180,000 paid customers at $50 a year--some even paid $100--is more than $9 million dollars), Apple cannot let development costs sunk into these products go unrecovered.
Thus, while there will be new, exciting product announcements at MWSF, expect the announcement of paid upgrades to garner some groans from the attendees at the show and the audience tuning in on the worldwide webcast.
"6 in 1" Media Reader Perfect for Traveling PowerBook Users
Reader Mike Rhode pointed us to the FMI brand "six in one" media card reader. It reads Compact Flash, IBM Microdrive, SmartMedia, MultiMedia Card (MMC), Secure Digital, and Memory Sticks. While a few of these types of portable media are similar to each other, they are still quite distinct in that they need a specialized reader for each.
The best part? The price is only $39.99 at CompUSA online. With space at a premium in anyone's PowerBook bag, having only one reader for all types of media in a simple USB device is a great solution. Here's what Mike said about his:
It works directly with OS X (OS 9 needs USB drivers installed) and lets
cards mount on the desktop like hard drives, comes with a hidden integrated
short USB cable (it can be hidden away behind a special battery-like door)
and a 4' cable adapter for more permanent use. Site Notes
We apologize for that extended hiatus over the last week and a half. However, we're back strong ready to prepare for Macworld San Francisco!
Today we have two extended feedback reports from users of Mac OS X 10.2.3 (the results don't look promising, but usually only those with problems take the time to write in) and using infrared on IR-port-less PowerBooks. If you don't care about either of these things, perhaps it's wise to come back on Monday...
Mac OS X 10.2.3 on PowerBooks
Well, they had almost two weeks to report, so report they did! We have a metric ton of reader experiences with Mac OS X 10.2.3 to share:
Basically, I tried installing it yesterday with the Software Update.
Everything went smoothly, but upon restart I got the ³you need to turn off
your machine and restart it² screen drawn in grey. I thought it might have
something to do with being connected to the network, so I disconnected the
Ethernet cable.
When I got home I connected it to a power supply to see if it was this that
had upset it. No change. I checked out the machine from the Jaguar Install
disk, running Disk Utility, which reported that ³my machine appears to be
ok.²
As I could not find either a problem to fix or a way of starting up in X I
elected to backup, wipe the X partition and reinstall from scratch. Needless
to say I won't be rushing to update to 10.2.3. The only thing running on my
machine that I thought might cause a problem is a MySQL server. However I¹ve
managed to update from 10.2 to 10.2.2 without trouble.
Other than that, I am very happy with the new OS.
PowerBook G4 Ti 500
On an aside, Virtual PC 6 does run faster and better. I use Win
2000[without updates, since these seem to have slowed my Pismo when I
ran VPC 5]. It runs faster on my G4, then on all of the networked
Windoze machines at work. Definitely a worthwhile upgrade.
I haven't burned any DVD's yet, but CD burning is effortless, albeit
somewhat slow.
Running a TiBook 800. Have both Palm and Handspring USB cradles
attached to USB ports. Apple System Profiler doesn't see them, though
it does see everything else attached. (Tried "direct" connections and
hub connections; same results.) Apple says "call Palm." Palm is
befuddled, but says for a $25 fee, they'll work with me on it.
I've done reinstalls of 10.2.3, permissions fixes via Disk Utility,
uninstalls and reinstalls of Palm and Handspring versions of Palm
Desktop, but the non-results are consistent.
I upgraded to 10.2.3 a few days ago, and all seems well. I use a few
FireWire, USB and PCMCIA peripherals, but no SCSI. Resizing windows
in the Finder seems to be improved, though still not what I'd expect
from a flagship Mac. Apple's own apps like iPhoto and iCal are still
inexplicably slow at certain tasks. But Return To Castle Wolfenstein
(Quake 3 engine) seems to be slightly happier.
All in all, I've had no problems with software or hardware in 10.2.3.
Powerbook G4 667 (DVI) - sudden crash last night, then problems
restarting. It would chime then start to boot then shutdown and chime
again. I reset PRAM and all seems ok for now.
Lombard - I don't know exactly when it does this but at some stage It
shuts down (actually more like a seudo sleep). The machine basically
looks dead. Power button does nothing, No flashing sleep light. Have to
do a three fingered salute to reboot. It will work fine, so I leave it.
When I come back a few hours later it has done the same thing.????
Wallstreet - Recent problem with OSX partition not being recognized as
a boot disk. Wallstreet boots into OS9 and asks if I want to format the
OSX partition. Restarted again and all seems fine now.
All this has only recently happened since upgrading to 10.2.3.
Infrared on IR-Less PowerBooks
Readers also wrote in on this topic:
I am using Virtual PC/OS 9 with a Keyspan USB/Serial adapter connected
to the infrared serial interface unit.
There is also a USB infrared interface unit available from Polar, but I
have not been able to get it to work. I have not been able to get the
Polar software to work in Virtual PC under OX 10. There seems to be a
lag causing the interface to time out. (This still occurs with Virtual
PC 6.0 and OSX 10.23).
I don't know if the Polar interface can be used as an IrDA receiver,
but the Polar software has an option to use built in IrDA as one of the
interface options.
I used to use it on a 5300cs to share files with a friend, who had a 1400.
For small text and image files, it worked pretty well.
The adapter is also available from Taiwan's Winic Corporation
http://www.winic.com/ and Australian distributor Fosh
http://www.fosh.com.au/Fosh/Products/dt/uir/dt-uir.htm , which lists the
brand as Datech.
I bought one from Winic a few months back but, having only just purchased a
PowerBook, haven't had a chance to try it myself. I will in the next few
days and report in.
A handy resource for Mac mobile phone scripts is at
http://www.taniwha.org.uk/
From my limited searching of the Web I've found that it may require
tinkering with the PortNames.strings file, but being Unix-illiterate
I'm not sure how to proceed. Any advice from readers would be
appreciated.
The breakthrough Amp jacket steps up the tech to unprecedented levels offering snowboarders a jacket that controls an Apple iPod through the touch of a sleeve no more fumbling with zippers, gloves and pockets to change songs. By collaborating with SOFTswitch, an innovative company that makes fabrics touch sensitive and interactive, we were able integrate a textile data strip directly into the fabric of the jacket sleeve. The arm keypad controls the iPod in the chest pocket, eliminating the need for unruly, tangled wires. Just touch the control pad on the jacket sleeve to change songs or volume levels and you¹re off and running.
It's silver, really small and thin (around the size and thickness of a Palm
V), cost $40 (though I bought it on sale for $30) and can read 6 different
types of media: Compact Flash, IBM Microdrive, SmartMedia, Multimedia Card,
Secure Digital, and Memory Stick.
I e-mailed earlier mentioning high horse power now need for printing
and slow system response when printing. I have just found another
glitch that has me pretty upset. After clicking "print" in the dialog
box, if you proceed to do something else, the print will never come
out. However, if you just sit there and wait for Print Center to close,
then go to work, all is fine. What is a the purpose of background
printing if you cannot do anything while it is in the background.
That's the lot of them. We didn't want to pick and choose so as to give an accurate representation of what we received.
Since the upgrade I have had a lot of problems with my PC card slots on
a Wallstreet with the Powerlogix Bluetooth upgrade to 500 mhz. I have
both a firewire and a USB 2.0 card and have tried to get them to work,
but no luck so far. So my printer, sonica sound adapter, MS optical
wheel mouse, fuji finepix USB digital camera, firewire hard drive and
my Sony camcorder are all currently not working reliably, if at all.
The problem is that the two cards position seems to effect the ability
to get beyond the revolving gear icon at boot up -- it stops revolving
and then I have to attempt to jiggle or remove and reinsert the cards,
and the few times it does boot, the USB card doesn't appear as such and
the firewire card also doesn't work although acknowledge by the system.
Help!
I have had a problem with OS X 10.2.3
A serious one that I couldn¹t fix.
After installing I hadn't noticed any problems until a few weeks later. I'm
noticing more than usually Internet Explorer 5.2.2 freezes; AOL 10.2.1
freezes and will quite on its own. If I quit AOL, at time I receive a
message telling me it has unexpectedly quit. I am also seeing the Rainbow
Ball far more often than before also. My PowerBook also seems to take
longer to shutdown.
I've had no trouble during or after the upgrade to OS X 10.2.3 so far
for the following computers:
PowerBook G4 Ti 800
PowerMac G4 Dual 500
iMac G4 15" Flat Panel
iMac G4 17" Flat Panel
I updated from 10.1 to Jag and it's a bit slower on some things. I have
512 megs of ram, but I am going to call applecare to ask why. My
printer works better now!
Quicker start-up and shut-down.
What more can we ask for !!
I recently purchased a 1Ghz G4 Laptop, with Mac OS 10.2.1 installed.
When I updated to 10.2.2, the laptop ran fabulously. After upgrading to
10.2.3, there seemed to be significant slowdown [despite published
comments to the contrary]. After running permissions, still no speedup.
I then ran DiskWarrior and Plus Optimizer...now everything seems to
run quite well...
All applications run and launch properly. The Print Center recognizes
my Epson 880 at work, and both my Photo 870 and networked 740 at home.
No problems.
No problems with me everything works. Have a non hacked non modified in
nothing system with no utilities of whatsoever kind running. A basic clean
system. Have upgraded from 10.1 to now 10.2.3 without problems (except the
HP driver problem with 10.2.).
I have a 400 mhz Pismo with the Powerlogix G4 500 Upgrade. 768mb RAM, IBM
40GNX 40gig 5400 rpm hard drive and it works great. iphoto seems faster and
Timbuktu to another OSX machine works better also.
I'm writing to report a problem I am having since upgrading to 10.2.3.
The software update application used by OS X to update Apple software
keeps telling me I need to update iTunes to version 3.0.1, even though
that is the version I am currently running. I tried to download that
so-called update and install it, but the software update application
keeps telling me I need to update iTunes anyway, even after having the
update installed.
here's my issue... as soon as I updated to 10.2.3 0n my pb lombard 333,
os x will no longer read burnt cd's in the cd drive. It did in 10.2.2,
and when I boot in OS9 it reads cd's fine... anyone else having this
issue? i haven't tried retail cd's, it may be that the with 10.2.3 it
will not read any cd's at all... HELP!
not an issue, but since upgrading to 10.2.3, my tibook 400 is back to its
old instant-sleep, instant-wake mode, which i'd somehow lost with 10.2.2
(under which i had to wait for as long as 30 seconds for the tibook to go to
sleep once i'd shut the lid or chosen the sleep command). if only for this,
it's well worth the 50MB download!
Luckily I backed up 10.2.3 and all my files as I am back using 10.2.3 after
a complete meltdown on my power book 800mhz 1Gram 60GBHD.
The problems began when Palm desktop could not open, then Microsoft office
then a complete slowdown of my system. I did not wait around I just went
back to 10.2.3.
Oooh mama, amI having issues, and as near as I can tell from several
Apple forums, I'm not the only one with a PowerBook having these
problems...though it may also be happening to desktop people; not sure.
My 1GHz TiBook finally arrived! The shipping method was mysteriously
upgraded right after the PBZone story on lagging orders. :) It came
with OS X 10.2.1, as shown in a new "it's here" gallery at the URL in
my sig, causing Software Update to advise downloading 44 MB on first
startup. Glad I have broadband.
i'm using a powerbook (pismo) and am very pleased with the
responsiveness of os 10.2.3. I've found the start-up time to be
significantly less.
I recently installed 10.2.3 on a G3/Pismo (Powerlogix G4/500, 1 gig
RAM, and QTSS so it isn't a supported install) and 2 Mac desktops.
Both Desktops went well but the PB refuses to see my cable ISP (Cox
CableOne).
I have all three of these machines and since I upgraded them all to
10.2.3 I have experienced problems on all 3 machines.
My Polar S610 heart rate monitor uses infrared to communicate with the
windows software that comes with the watch (Polar Precision Performance
2.1).
Clearly it's possible to add infrared to a Macintosh that didn't ship with that capability for the minority that do find technology useful. Here's hoping for Bluetooth across the Mac spectrum at MWSF!
Check out the report at http://www.macintouch.com/pbg4irda.html seems
there is a Belkin adaptor that works with OS X.
You asked if any of us have used the infrared on older PowerBooks for uses
other than cell phones, synching, and printing.
many gsm phones, even the cheap ones, have ir. gsm phones are used with
roaming in about 120 countries, including ALL of western and central
europe,which means a lot of travellers use them with their laptops for
email. Non gsm phones are confined to US japan and corea, with some in
China. However, all newer top-of-the line gsm phones now coming on the
market are bluetooth compatible.
There's only one USB-to-IrDA adapter I know of that's claimed to work with
Mac OS X, and apparently it requires no additional drivers. It's the
W-USB-180 (not sure of the manufacturer). Details here (translated from
German via Google):
[Later, from the same reader]
Further to my recommendation of a USB-IrDA adapter, I've attempted to
get it working but don't know how to make it show up under the Network
preferences. There are infrared drivers under the "Internal Modem"
settings, but I'm not sure if/how these relate to a USB adapter.
[And from an employee of Madsonline.com]
We have USB - IrDA adapters for PowerBooks. MacNN had an article on it
here.
Publishing headquarters is located in Santa Cruz, California. Index version 1.1.2
