Originally posted by ABassCube
OK, I agree that the PowerBooks should have been upgraded a LONG time ago, but...
Steve Jobs did mean that this would be the "Year of the Laptop" in terms of sales, and even if he did mean in terms of features and upgrades, the 12" and 17" were a pretty damn good start...
Well, if Steve had been more clear, this debate wouldn't exist.
And without Steve himself jumping in to provide clarifiation, we're going to have to accept the fact that people have interpreted the statement at least two different ways:
1) Its "The Year" in which laptop sales become a big % of total sales, if for no other reason than the desktop MHz/GHz lagging was so bad that it wasn't worth buying a desktop...
-or-
2) Its "The Year" because so many awesome new laptop designs and features are (to be) released that blows everyone away, which means that they're obviously worth buying on their own merit...
Hope you can see what I mean by both statements. And with the release of the 12" and 17" PB, interpretation #2 did seem viable...for awhile.
FWIW, I almost bought a 12"PB because of disappointment on the PowerMac end of the desktops (ed, interpretation #1), even though it was a pretty neat product (interpretation #2): IMO, both factors have probably played strongly into a lot of buyer's final decisions.
Now while Apple has expanded their laptop product line from 3 to 5 platforms with the 12" and 17" PB's, it makes you want to go dig up the data to find out what % of total laptop sales they represent. Afterall, the rest of the line is pretty uninspiringly Vanilla:
12.1" iBook design: introduced 2.3 years ago
14" iBook design: introduced 1.5 years ago
15" TiBook design: introduced 2.5 years ago,
Granted, they've gotten speedbumps and the like along the way, but the biggest update was probably TiBook's Superdrive. Not only was this anticipated, it's also now 0.8 year old, old news.
-hh