New iBooks are going to be announced on Monday or Tuesday of next week. According to PowerPage sources, specs will be:
- iBook G3 600 MHz, 128 MB, 20GB, 12″, CD-ROM – US$1199
- iBook G3 700 MHz, 128 MB, 20GB, 12″, CD-RW/DVD – US$1499
- iBook G3 700 MHz, 256 MB, 30GB, 14″, CD-RW/DVD – US$1799
Still no word on the video subsystem, whether it will be the same 8 MB ATI Rage 128 Mobility or whether it will be something more powerful that will support Quartz Extreme (QE) in Mac OS 10.2 (Jaguar).
Quartz Extreme
Jaguar dramatically improves the performance of Mac OS X with Quartz Extreme hardware-based graphics acceleration. Quartz Extreme takes advantage of the OpenGL 3D graphics engine to make the entire desktop a fully accelerated OpenGL scene. A supported* video card can then render the drawing of the desktop, just like it would a 3D game. The main CPU chip(s) can then focus on application-specific needs, making the whole system faster and more responsive.
That means your shadows will drop quickly, your genies will appear slicker and your transparencies will layer faster ? and Mac OS X can do more processing in the background while you move the foreground.
*nVidia: GeForce2MX, GeForce3, GeForce4 Ti, GeForce4 or GeForce4MX. ATI: any AGP Radeon card. 32MB VRAM recommended for optimum performance.
Replaced are the 500 and 600 MHz models with 15 and 20 GB HDDs. Little (if any) domestic national inventory remains on the current 500 and 600 MHz iBooks although the Apple store is still taking orders.
