Where's my G5 PowerBook?

Hadley Stern, who runs the AppleMatters blog and has published an iPod and iTunes book, said aesthetics are important.

While he would be interested in a more powerful PowerBook, "if the G5 PowerBook is quite a bit larger than the present form-factor, I may pass," he said. "I use my 12-inch PowerBook mostly for writing and checking email and Web surfing. The G4 processor does just fine by me, and whenever I need to design, I hop on my (dual processor) G5."

Chris Holland, another well-known Mac blogger, said those drooling the most over the prospect of a G5 PowerBook are Mac fans who skipped on the G4.

"While the Mac community seems very much hungry for it, I would rationalise it as your typical cautious lust for greater bang for the buck, as many are looking to replace their G3-based systems," Holland said.

The saviour of the G5 in a PowerBook could be a new chip manufacturing technique being used by IBM, whose chip group is expected to introduce a low-power PowerPC 970 later this year, Krewell said.

One procedure involves a new twist on strained silicon, a manufacturing technique that boosts performance by speeding up the transistors. That can lead to better chip performance and lower power consumption.

Halfway there?
Krewell said he expects IBM is actively trying to put strained silicon into production as fast as it can in order to get the 970 into a notebook. "It might be reasonable that they could get something by midyear," he said. "I think it's going to be a challenge to get that part into the 40-watt rage. Even at that (range) it's going to be hard to fit into the Apple aesthetics -- weight power and battery life. That's what's keeping the G5 out of the PowerBooks right now."

In some respects Apple is already about halfway down the road to a G5 PowerBook, as it was able to fit the chip into its 2-inch thick iMac G5. However, Apple executives cautioned that the next inch will be a tough one in terms of chassis engineering. The iMac G5, which came out last August, is still twice as thick as the 17-inch PowerBook, Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of hardware marketing noted at the time.

"The challenges of cooling a G5 in a PowerBook design are significantly greater," he said.

Thus, while it's widely believed Apple could come out with a G5 PowerBook sometime later this year, some think it might take longer. Michael Gartenberg, an analyst for Jupiter Research, said he would be surprised to see G5 portables in 2005.

"A G5 PowerBook is going to happen, but not as soon as a lot of people would like," Gartenberg said. "Apple is concerned about preserving the entire mobile experience, as opposed to just putting a G5 in a box and sticking a handle on it."

"At the end of the day," Gartenberg said, "Apple is much more focused on driving a complete user experience, rather than coming up with a stopgap solution."