Businessweek: PowerBook G5 - Don't Hold Your Breath


Reports that Apple may unveil a PowerBook G5 as early as February or March appear to have been greatly exaggerated. That's the take Alex Salkever has on the still-mythical PB G5 in his Byte of the Apple column at Businessweek.

Salkever argues that we won't see a G5 PowerBook until 6-10 months after Macworld - which puts the portable G5 squarely in the third or fourth quarter.

Instead, the article says, the key to the PB G5 is IBM's PPC-based Blade server, which Big Blue is slated to intro in March 2004. The PPC970-based Blade is a lower-octane processor, which means it produces less heat in the Blade's thin enclosure.

Analysis: This is the most likely scenario. One of the reasons the XServe G5 has been delayed has been the heat generated by the 970, which would smoke the 1U enclosure's innards. This has led to rumors that Apple intends to move to a 3U set-up. Presumably, a low-power G5 would be equally usable in PowerBooks and XServes, although this might mean enterprise customers would baulk at a 1U with 'portable' performance.

For we Mac road warriors, I hope Salkever's wrong; I didn't buy an Alum PB-15 because the iBook G4s suggested the PB G5s were around the corner. March I can hold out 'til. July? November? Think I might need to invest in a good stop-gap Ti. For everyone else, stomaching a diet of 'Tonka Toy' Moto chips until then is going to be hard (yes, yes, I'm just kidding; I know a 1.25/1.33GHz G4 is perfectly adequate).