Your Book, My Book, iBook<< Whose Music System is Closed, Anyway? | Main | Living in Longhorn’s Shadow >> Joe Wilcox | October 22, 2003, 08:33 PM Today, Apple upgraded iBook and eMac. Most significant: Retiring the PowerPC G3 and replacing it with the G4. Moving the iBook to the G4 makes the notebook more competitive with comparable PC portables. The souped-up iBook--with USB 2.0 and support for Bluetooth and 802.11g wireless networking--now better fills an important niche at the low-end of Apple's product line. The $1,299 model particularly impresses me. I may buy one for my fourth grader. The iBook G4 is a much-needed upgrade, considering how weak Apple's consumer portables sales were compared to PowerBook during the most recent quarter. Unit sales of iBook fell 25 percent year over year during Apple’s fourth quarter. During the same period, PowerBook unit sales surged 203 percent. Still, bringing the iBook to G4 blurs the differences between the entry-level model and the 12-inch PowerBook. Apple needs to carefully communicate the other differences, such as processor cache size, dual-display support or hard drive capacity, that could justify the $500 difference between the two notebooks |
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