I just wanted to update all 600+ of you on the status of the G3
upgrades for the PowerBook 1400.
First off, one thing is clear to me and to the great people at Newer:
You people love your machines. I spent Monday and Tuesday of this
week at Newer Technology's headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, talking
with engineers, product managers, and sales staff about the 1400
issue (as well as other things), and we had some passionate debates
about further upgrades for your machines.
We all know the iBook will be an incredible seller for Apple, and
this (in my opinion) was one of the reasons Newer stopped producing
the NUpowr upgrades - in January of this year! For the first six or
seven months of 1999, thousands of these upgrades were sold at near
blow-out prices, so Newer wouldn't be stuck with inventory when the
iBook would be announced in March for $1099. Remember, in January, it
was widely anticipated the product would be announced in March at
that price. At the time, the 250Mhz G3 upgrade for the 1400 was going
for $589. As they say, hindsight is 20/20, but no manufacturer wants
to be stuck with "old" product when the new stuff rolls out.
As we know, the iBook announcement didn't really happen that way, or
at that price, and I've been able to convince the skeptics that more
NUpowr cards make sense - even if all of you bought an iBook, the new
owner of your 1400 would want an upgrade, right? So we've started the
process of getting costs together for the "new" build. At this time,
nothing's set in stone.
We have two routes we can take with this: rebuilding an existing card
with newer/cheaper parts, or designing and testing a brand "new"
card. If we go with an existing card - say, the NUpowr 250MHz with
1MB of backside cache - we may be able to build it out using a
lower-power version of the PowerPC G3. This could mean better battery
life, for starters, and maybe - MAYBE - a cheaper product. We also
wouldn't necessarily have to go through a long, stringent test cycle
before the product was actually produced. Newer Technology has some
of the best engineers in the business, and they don't like product to
ship before they're sure they've made it work right.
A new design, however, would need to go through some serious internal
and external testing before the engineering staff would commit to a
build, which can add significant cost and time to the production
schedule. I had mentioned a 333MHz upgrade - the maximum limit using
the new IBM PowerPC G3 processors - but it would have to be treated
as a brand new design. Typically, this sort of work, and the quality
assurance to go with it, can add anywhere from eight to 12 weeks to
the timeline.
At this point, then, it appears - and I can't stress that word enough
- that we may be going with an "original" design. Newer's
manufacturing partner for the NUpowr cards is IBM Japan - the
geniuses behind the PowerBook 2400, in case you didn't know - and I'm
anxiously awaiting more information from a product manager at Newer
who's interfacing directly with IBM-J on this issue. If - IF -
everything works out, and we determine a price, we could make it into
a very tight production schedule, and have a finished product by
Halloween. But I can't make any firm commitments on that yet!
I want to thank all of you for your patience and understanding on
this. Newer is working on this as much as they can; they've been
incredibly supportive and helpful, and I have gained a much better
understanding of what it actually takes to put together such a
project. I will do my best to keep you informed on further
developments - please don't call them up and ask them to hurry! - and
assume that NO news is GOOD news. As soon as I hear more, you will
too!
Things look bright for the future, we'll keep you updated!
