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Centrino iBook

Does anyone know when Apple will implement the Centrino into their laptops? These will surely be the ultimate machines for just about every road warrior on the planet.

Oh, to have money to invest in Apple Computers...
 
Maybe in a year's time we will begin to see some usage of the P-M in Apple laptops. No one knows for sure exactly when, though.
 
They are scheduled to begin the transition around June 2006, as long as they don't run into any major gotchas in the process of converting to Intel chips. I'd say they are probably waiting for the dual core Yonah Pentium M chips to become available. With those inside and running at 2GHz+, the Powerbooks would once again truly be powerful. The iBooks and Minis will likely wind up with the single core Celeron M version of Yonah. No one knows the exact date, but the current timetable is to have ALL the Mac lineup changed over to Intel by June 2007. Based on this info, coupled with Intel's published roadmaps which show the Yonah mobile chips launching in early 2006 followed by next gen desktop based parts toward the end of 2006, most people excpect the laptops will launch first next summer, followed by the Minis, and then Intel-based Powermacs and iMacs will arrive in 2007 once Intel has a non-Netbust desktop chip ready.

Once neat bit about the Yonahs is that are supposed to feature this new Vanderpool virtualization technology which will let a computer run two operating systems at full native speed at once (one core handling each OS in the dual core chips). This means that you may not only be able to install Windows on the new Macs, but you might even be able to run both OSes at the same time and be able to switch from one to the other like we switch apps now. Who knows how they will implement it, maybe OS X will be the primary OS with XP running in a window on the desktop with little speed degrataion besides the bottlenecks that are likely to occur from the two OSes trying access the same memory and stroage at the same time - but some of the newer tech like NCQ might migitate some of these slowdowns. It all looks to be quite cool, though.
 
I don't think Apple will use Centrino. Airport is a pretty good wireless card, and I think it's got plenty of life left.
 
Originally posted by: hopejr
I don't think Apple will use Centrino. Airport is a pretty good wireless card, and I think it's got plenty of life left.

If Intel gives them the wireless chips for free or almost free with the P-M processors and the mobile chipsets (which they do for their current Centrino customers), then Apple will definitely go with the Centrino package. The WiFi is built into the new iBook and Powerbooks now anyways, so all that would really change would be a swap of the wireless chipset.

Airport is just a fancy name brand anyway - under the hood it is all the same 802.11g that anyone else uses. By 2006-07, everyone will probably be transitioning to the 802.11n tech anyway, so the current Airport chipset will have to be upgraded anyway. Apple might even keep the name, only it will change to Airport Ultra Extreme featuring Intel Centino Mobile Technology, or something like that.
 
Apple is going to adopt Intel processors but it's not sure if they will use WLAN hardware and chipsets from Intel, too. They designed their own WLAN cards and motherboarts until now (and the Intel WLAN card plus the chipset are part of the Centrino specification). However even if an iBook or Powerbook would fully meet the specification I highly doubt that Apple would market their computers as Centrino compliant. Foreign labels on an Apple package are unlikely because Apple wants their customers to expect that things just work (and are coming out of the same hand). There are no stickers like "Designed for Windows XP" and "Plays for sure" on the Apple side of the river.
 
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