September 18, 2002: MacRumors.com PowerBook Rumor Summary

The PowerBook line has received a lot of attention from a rumors/speculation standpoint during the past few months, primarily due to the fact that it is the oldest product in Apple's current product line... with an introduction date of April 2002.

April 29, 2002 brought us a top end Powerbook at 800MHz, pushing down the previous top-end configuration of 667 to become the low-end model. Before April, the previous two Powerbooks updates occured at 9 and 6 months intervals, respectively.

Following previous patterns, Powerbooks can be expected to be updated between October and January... which, conveniently corresponds to rumors circulating in the community.

PowerPage originally reported that new Powerbooks were not to be expected until MacWorld SF in January... with speed bumps and the addition of Bluetooth as a standard feature.

Astute readers, however, noted educational discounts for the Powerbooks that end on September 25th. This coupled with repeated reports of low supplies of reseller Powerbooks have added fuel to the fire.

MacOS Rumors and Spymac.com supply hints that Powerbooks will be coming prior to MWSF, but are unable to provide concrete dates. These hints are correlated by our own sources.

Kodawarisan provides the most definitive date, reporting that the 3rd week of October will bring us 800MHz/1GHz Powerbooks with an external Superdrive option.

The PowerBook is most certainly the next line from Apple to get an update. Based on the information available, pay attention to the coming weeks.