Bye bye G3?

Bye bye G3?

Apple pretty much suprised everyone today by announcing new iBooks with the G4 processor! With this announcement, the G3 processor no longer features in any of Apple’s product lines..and is officially obsolete! Despite owning a G3-based iBook, I do welcome the move to G4: after all, sooo many of Apple’s own applications applications built into OS X run so much better with Altivec, so it doesn’t make sense to sell a “crippled” product.

While on the subject of “crippled”, it seems that Apple has FINALLY decided to equip every single one of its Macs, including its base models, with a combo DVD/CDRW drive instead of a pathetic CD-ROM drive. This means that “Burn” button in apps like iTunes and iPhoto will definitely be working in all Macs being sold from now on, Similarly, Apple seems to have finally acknowledged that OS X crawls with 128MB RAM, and has made 256MB minimum in all its machines (except for the new lowest end US$799 1GHz eMac – but heck, it’s so cheap that adding more RAM is a non-issue)

The only problem I forsee is that the iBook G4 is now such a great deal that a lot of people are wondering what reason anyone would go for the more expensive Powerbook line instead? Well, I can think of a couple: monitor spanning, DVI output, Superdrive option, smaller dimensions, lighter weight, more L2 cache on the processor and a more “professional look” (subjective, I know). Apple will need to make these differences really clear to users though, or they might risk the iBook cannibalizing sales of the Powerbook!

Now that the iBook has moved to G4, it’s also possible that we’re not very far away from seeing the G5 in the Powerbook. I guess we’ll know soon enough!