The PowerBook G5 is the mythical release of Apple's PowerBook range utilising IBM's G5 processor, otherwise known as the PowerPC 970.
Ever since the Power Mac G5 was released in mid-2003, at speeds greatly above what the G4-based machines -- laptops and desktops alike -- were running at, Mac users were anxiously awaiting a portable version of the G5 processor for use in a PowerBook.
With the G4 not scaling as well as initially hoped, and with the release of Intel's Pentium-M processor (a low-power, high-performance processor based originally on the Pentium III), the PowerBook's performance began to look down-right anaemic next to the competition from the x86 side of the fence, especially considering the PowerBooks were top-of-the-range computers, the most powerful Apple laptops available.
Rumours abounded of a low-power version of the G5, and the fact that the G4 chip appeared in a laptop a year and a half after it was introduced in the Power Mac gave Mac users hope... they knew it wouldn't be an easy task, squeezing the hot and power-hungry G5 chip into a laptop-sized package, but it would come eventually. The PowerBook G5 was always "just around the corner", or "at the next Macworld!"
Indeed, IBM announced a low-power version of the G5 at a forum in Japan in early August of 2005, running at 1.4GHz to 1.6GHz. It was too little too late, however... Steve Jobs had already dropped the bombshell two months earlier at the World Wide Developer's Conference in San Francisco, California: Apple is jumping ship to Intel, and would be shipping machines with Intel processors in them by the middle of 2006.
The first Intel-based machines were announced at Macworld San Francisco in January of 2006... the iMac, and the MacBook Pro-nee-PowerBook, both using Intel's Core Duo processors, and Steve Jobs announced that the entire transition would be finished by the end of 2006.
Another nodeshell rescued.