Apple laptop gets jumbo screen
Published: 07 Jan 2003 20:51 GMT
On the two-year birthday of the high-end Titanium PowerBook, Apple on Tuesday upped the ante by introducing a model with a massive 17-inch display.
"We believe someday notebooks are even going to outsell desktops," Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said during his keynote speech at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. He predicted the sales ratio will climb to at least 50 percent in a few years.
"We want to replace even more desktops with notebooks," he said.
To achieve that goal, the company created a new PowerBook that is one inch thick, slightly thinner than its predecessor. It weighs 6.8 pounds, compared with 5.4 pounds for the 15-inch Titanium PowerBook. The new model replaces titanium with a form of anodised aluminium that is normally used for airplane hulls.
New features include built-in Bluetooth (a short-haul wireless technology), FireWire 2 and AirPort wireless networking. The long-anticipated FireWire 2 has a throughput of 800Mbps (megabits per second), about twice as fast as the previous version.
The 17-inch PowerBook, with a 1GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 512MB of RAM, a 60GB hard drive and a DVD recording drive, is priced at £2,599 inc. VAT and ships next month.
Apple also introduced a 12-inch PowerBook. "We decided to apply this technology to something a little smaller," Jobs said.
The smaller PowerBook costs £1,399 inc. VAT and includes an 867MHz G4 processor, a 40GB hard drive, Bluetooth and is 802.11g-ready. 802.11g is a wireless networking standard that boasts faster speeds and better security.
"This is the most affordable PowerBook ever, and we will be shipping them in about two weeks," Jobs said, touting the new 12-inch PowerBook as a portable digital media studio.
"This is clearly going to be the year of the notebook for Apple," he said.
The 12-inch PowerBook appears to be the new entertainment portable product that sources close to the company said would be unveiled at the show.
"It's a personal digital media station," said Michael Gartenberg, a Jupiter Research analyst. "The 12-inch (model) is going to fly off the shelves."
Apple also introduced a new version of its AirPort wireless base station, which supports 802.11g and can transfer data at 54Mbps. The most common wireless technology, 802.11b, operates at around 11Mbps.
New AirPort Extreme features include support for 50 users, bridging between base stations, and USB (universal serial bus) printer sharing. The new base station sells for £149 inc. VAT or £189 inc. VAT, depending on whether a modem is included, prices which are somewhat lower than that of the older 802.11b AirPort product.
Let the editors know what you think in the Mailroom.
Did you find this article useful?
40 out of 69 people found this useful
- Share this article:
