D3v1L80Y said:
By the very definition of the word, regardless of whether it comes to fruition or not.....a rumor is never true, since it cannot be verified.
:black:
The current G4 used in the PowerBooks is the Freescale (erstwhile Motorola) 7447, which tops out at 1.67GHz and is suitable for small enclosures such as a notebook. There is a new variant known as the 7448 which apparently has a 2GHz upper limit and is suitable for small enclosures.
However whether Apple 'bothers' is another matter. One thing I am quite sure of is Apple upgrading the base memory on the 12" PowerBooks inline with the iBook, instead of 256, moving up to 512MB.
Other changes may be limited to higher screen resolutions on the 15 and 17" models is possible, but again - I cannot see it happening. The Superdrives may have their speeds boosted. Essentially any upgrade will be small.
As for moving to Intel, going by what happened in 1994 with move from Motorola 680x0 to IBM/Motorola PowerPC, it was the consumer machines, the Performas that received the PPC 601 first before the Quadras were placed with the Power Macintosh series - these machines holding the flagship now held by the PowerMac G5. One reason likely is that Apple preferred consumer machines to have teething issues opposed to professional machines which are more 'mission critical'.
In terms of PowerBooks, if the PowerBook 5300* was anything to go by - might be worth hanging on for the PowerBooks with Intel to mature
Therefore, I expect the Mac mini's will be one of the first to jump over, with the eMacs possibly. The iMac I am not sure, but will likely follow a few months later. The iBook and PowerBook will probably follow soon thereafter, but this is hard to judge because in 1994 there wasn't a specific consumer notebook from Apple (bar the 145/150 series, the latter coming along in 1995) like there is now. As much as the PowerBook will look better spec wise for a speed bump, it depends on how confident Apple is with OS X's stability on Intel, and if they are erring on the side of caution - the iBook will probably get the revision first. It is most likely IMO that the PowerMac will be the last to jump.
Of course not of this is official but my own speculation based on the previous CPU change. Of course some of my colleagues here at the AppleCentre I work in disagree with me. But until end of May 2006, we won't know for definite! :flower:
Vicky
* The 5300 was a great laptop on paper but very unstable in its early days being one of the first PowerPC 601 based PowerBooks released by Apple.