Ten Years of Apple PowerBooks

ckd writes: "The PowerBook Zone has a short interview with Bruce Gee talking about the evolution of the PowerBook design since the first PowerBooks. (Bruce was the PowerBook Product Manager back then.) Hearken back to the days when 20MB was a good-sized drive in a portable machine! Yes, the PowerBook 100 was not the first 'portable Mac' -- but it was the first to bear the name PowerBook." And of all the (handful) of portables I've owned, I have to admit that I've had the fewest problems with and most affection for the PowerBooks (and now an iBook).

Comments

I LOVED my PB145 (1992)...

[sulli]

and my Mom still uses it to this day! Now I must note that it has required a new:

- motherboard
- daughterboard (twice)
- hard drive (twice)
- floppy drive
- power adapter

But it has done awfully well for itself, all things considered. I'm typing this now on my third PowerBook (G3 Bronze, preceded by the awful 5300) and this has been the most reliable yet!

Re:I LOVED my PB145 (1992)...

[Megane]

My first Powerbook was a 145. I had this handle strap that I got at a MacWorld Expo

Re:I LOVED my PB145 (1992)...

[Megane]

My first Powerbook was a 145. I had this handle strap that I got at a MacWorld Expo, that attched with the top screw holes. Well, one day I got confused as to which hand held it, and dropped it. Scratch one 80 meg hard drive. But I got a 500 to replace it. It also broke lots of internal screw posts. But a few months ago I found a junker 145 (which had a dead CPU) and just swapped everything in.

The biggest problem with that model was the floppy drives kept dying. Even the junker I found had dead floppy drives.

And I'm typing this now on my second PowerBook, a G3 Pismo. Fortunately I didn't have money to waste on those awful intermediate models with their hinges that would break.

Re:I LOVED my PB145 (1992)...

[iso]

Fortunately I didn't have money to waste on those awful intermediate models with their hinges that would break.


The Pismo has the same hinges as the Wallstreet and Lombard, so you're not completely safe. I had the hinges replaced on my Wallstreet; it was a pain in the ass, but it was cheap ($100CAN). I suggest that you never open and close your Pismo by pulling on only one side at a time or you'll exacerbate the problem.

- j

PowerBook 100

[Gogo Dodo]

My first Mac at work was one of those PowerBook 100s. 8MB of RAM (huge at that time) and a 20MB hard drive. Tiny little black and white screen, sub-notebook size. The only thing that drove me nuts about it was that the trackball was get dirty and stick after awhile. That was back in 1992/1993 or so. Funny thing is that we recently sold off that PowerBook 100 and the thing was still working just fine.

Long lasting laptops...

[VDM]

A friend of mine used a PB100 until some month ago, when the hard disk started to fail. But even with such a slow processor, and few memory, it remained "usable" because she didn' make too much software upgrades (e.g., still using Word 4/5).
In fact, old software was less resource-hog, and thus you can have a good apparent performance even with clearly surpassed hardware. This is true mainly for Macintosh, as the operating system was nice and usable even more than ten years ago (no comparison with Win less than 95).
I had a couple of another extremely interesting Powerbooks: Duo 230 and 270c then upgraded to 2300. Very small, less than 2kg, really portable, I miss them even writing from my PB G3/500. Now only Sony is making a Vaio of such size (although the new iBook is sufficiently small).

My 0.02 euro...

open-schmopen

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple did right to kill the clone market since MacOS machines would be plagues by same non-compatibility and bad quality issues as the x86 world is today.

Macs just work and that's it. And if they don't you know who to blame - not the "it's the mobo, no the gfx card, no the ethernet card!" stuff you have with x86.

Re:open-schmopen

[bowb]

That's what standards are for, such as CHRP and PPCP.

Apple couldn't compete with the clone makers who were releasing cheaper and superior hardware -- that's why the clones were killed.

Apple may have made the right business decision at the time; they were in bad shape and might not have survived. It's a pity though, I know I'd be using a PPC machine today (with a licensed copy of MacOS), instead of an Athlon machine, if they hadn't been killed.

Re:open-schmopen

[jimbolaya]

I know I'd be using a PPC machine today (with a licensed copy of MacOS)

No, you wouldn't, because if Apple hadn't killed the clones, Apple itself would likely be dead, and there'd be no licensed copy of Mac OS to find. Mac OS market share was not growing; people were buying Power Computing, UMAX, Motorola, etc. machines instead of Apple, not instead of PC clones.

And the clones were not superior, as anybody who owned a Motorola or UMAX clone would tell you.

Re:open-schmopen

[MaxVlast]

There was a lot more to it. Apple expected that the clone makers would bolster the low end (where Apple had had trouble for years.) Instead, the clones occupied the space that Apple intended to keep for itself, and hardware sales suffered. Remember -- Apple is a hardware company. It has cool software, but that's there to see the hardware.

And, IMO, the only clone maker that was successful (Power Computing) produced the most uninteresting, lackluster product possible. It's products were the most generic possible approach to Macintosh hardware, and the price benefit was minimal. There were some cool clones (the Daystar 4 processor job and the Radius VideoVision workstation come to mind), but they were expensive, and not enough to carry day.

If I was getting a low end Mac, I'd rather have an iMac or a new iBook than a beige steel box with a generic PC monitor sitting on top (as used by the Power Computing boxes).

Re:Just imagine where we would be now

[onion2k]

Open standards always win

That depends on the business you're in. Apple thought they were in the hardware business, so releasing specs would have been plain daft. Would Ferrari do better if they released the exact building specs of their cars? No. There'd be cheaper, identical machines. Had Apple realised they were actually in the software business, and had released the specs, then things would be very different. Not necessarily better tho'. (Apple vs PC would have been a hard fought war.. likely PC would have won.. Apples are nice due to the closed source GUI stuff, closed source compiler tools and so on..)

Re:Just imagine where we would be now

[TheMMaster]

yeah, that guy was Tim Paterson and worked at Seattle Computing if I recall correctly...

Apple has always been a good notebook supplier...

[wizbit]

...and when they've faltered, they've made up for it in spades with programs like an excellent trade-in opportunity for owners of the ill-fated 5300- and 190-series powerbooks, or defective power adaptors. I had one of these beasts fail on me and I've got to say, the Apple rep I talked to was just amazing. I got a free adaptor, I got about $500 off a new Wallstreet PB, and traded THAT in again for a new iBook.

The iBooks are spectacular. They are thin, light, and the benefits provided by the PowerBook G4 (speed, screen size) pale in comparison to the fact that the iBook won't scorch your lap(!) - and besides, the speed hit is minimal even under OS X, especially now that 10.1 is out. For $1199, you get an extremely respectable G3 machine with all the bells and whistles appreciated by myself and other Apple fans that have kept us coming back again and again.

Re:Just imagine where we would be now

[Lars T.]

IBM didn't open the specs to their hardware either, they just made a blunder by making it with off-the-shelve parts and easily re-engineerable.

friendly memories of my powerbook

[darkonc]

The mac was the original Plug and Play box. I started with a PB140 which I later sold and replaced with a 165... The 165 served me well. I carried it almost everywhere and essentially beat it to death in the space of about 3 years. I'm impressed that it survived the beatings that I subjected it to.

Taking about 3 seconds to go from sleep mode to active was one of the best features... That's part of the reason why I carried it everywhere. It was my 6 pound palm pilot. It was my address book my notepad and my communication system.

After the powerbook died, I ended up with windows laptops that I got from work. They were nowhere near as carefree to use as my powerbook Even with a processor 10 times as fast, it still took more than 5 times as long to come out of sleep mode (presuming that it even survived being put to sleep, but that's another story). In the time it took my (1999) thinkpad to wake up, I could wake my (1993) powerbook, take a quick note, and put it back to sleep. It's usability wasn't really replicated for me until I got a Palm Pilot (interestingly enough -- also a 68000 family processor).

My powerbook was also very stable... The only recurring problem I had was putting it to sleep with Microsoft word in the foreground (Microsoft strikes again). I quickly learned to simply not do that.

A shelf-full of 'Books

[C A S S I E L]

Since laptops depreciate in value so quickly, there's no point in selling them on. Accordingly, I have a shelf of old PowerBooks. I first bought a PB140 early in 1992 (for around $4000 here in the UK), primarily as a realtime MIDI processing engine for electronic composition. There was a known problem with the serial port hardware rendering the MIDI support buggy, but I was assured that Apple were "working on a fix."

Apple never delivered this fix (partly because Apple Corps. forced them to drop MIDI driver development), but by this time it became known that the PowerBook 100 would work fine for MIDI (different hardware design), and could also be fitted with a second serial port, making it the most MIDI-capable PowerBook around.

(Let us pause to remember the Outbound Portable, a third-party Mac laptop with a Mac Plus ROM and a funny rolling trackbar, predating the Apple machines by at least a year. At one stage Outbound were very interested in tackling the professional music market because their machine could do MIDI and the 140/170 could not; but the company folded soon after.)

I spent a while doing electronic music gigs with the PB100 and PB140 running in parallel, Opcode having fudged round the MIDI problems in the 140. I even had the 140 upgraded with a 170 processor board for higher speed. (I never wanted a 170; too many people were screaming at Apple over broken pixels in the active-matrix screen.)

It was a while before I moved on, buying a 520 Blackbird sometime around 1997 - my MIDI processing needs were growing, and I needed that 68040 performance! Greyscale was cool, too. Having to tighten the display hinges every six months was a small price to pay. But by this time, more and more Mac software required colour, and neither my SE/30 nor any of my three PowerBooks delivered it, so early in 2000 I bought a 540c for around $200, and I still use it for legacy MIDI applications (mostly those with copy-protection which can't be moved).

I was finally forced into the PowerPC world by a need to do realtime audio synthesis for the Frankfurt Ballett; at this stage the TiBook G4 had just come out, so I went straight to eBay and nailed a Pismo G3, deciding to let other Apple customers beta-test the TiBook hardware. I use the Pismo and 540c in tandem; the 100, 140 and 520 are mostly gathering dust but also serve as backup machines. The batteries in the 100 and 140 are dead; those in the 520 and 540c are dying.

Of course, the PPC PowerBook is pretty much part of the uniform for electronic sound and media performance. Our Frankfurt team has one each (a Wallstreet, a Lombard and a Pismo), and a recent arts/software conference at the Royal Opera House looked like an Apple product placement: a 50-50 mix of G3's and G4's. Almost all electronic music gigs will have a G3 or G4 onstage somewhere (listen out for those reboot chimes during the set...); Wallstreets are popular because they have serial ports, which still beat USB for MIDI applications.

I still have a soft spot for the 140. Ergonomically it comes out pretty much on top: the ruby-mount trackball beats any touchpad, and the machine itself is built like a tank: it was happy being strapped into a flightcase with piano wire for live gigs. But the Pismo (with an external Logitech Marble Mouse) is cool as well, especially since MacOS 9.1 is remarkably free from clutter and feature-creep compared to System 7.

My next PowerBook will probably be a second-hand G5 (the transparent one that glows in the dark).

why the new powerbooks restored my faith in Apple

[motherhead]

I never thought I would be using Apple products this late in the game. It used to be overpriced and sometimes underpowered. It was a pain in the ass most times. But what it did it did well. I loved them, but it was hard to do. The company was run by both jagoffs and hippy jagoffs, and it seemed like all they were good for was creating great technology and never supporting it, backing it or implementing it to any practical degree (if you remember the features added and removed between system 7.1 and say... 8.1 you will know exactly what I am talking about) and everything was too expensive. Though since one of the hats I wore was the art/publishing director for a friend's wee company. I also always had at least one up and running.

Then I was gifted with a 500Mhz Ti PowerBook (long story, yes i am a lucky bastard)

Imagine my surprise that it's 2001 and I actually spending more time on my PowerBook then any of my other boxes, yes including my beloved Mandrake rocketbox which has all my terabytes (sarcasm) of of mp3s (and pr0n).

Out of the box since last May and running OS 9.1 this little gem had single handedly replaced the beige G3 I was running and I get to take it and work home with me. Yeah I wound up replacing some SCSI hardware with firewire, but it wasn't like I had huge raid cabinet running, just the odd scanner and oddball peripheri (anyone interested in a couple of SyQuest 44 and 88s?).

That alone is enough for me to give Apple the big nod. But ever since I installed OS 10.1 I have actually felt giddy about an OS in a way I have not felt since I first installed Red Hat on a whim back in 1995. I am having fun again... it is cool to hack on this little bastard. I really never messed with or concerned myself with BSD before, honestly, but shit it's like talking to a Canadian, it's not all that hard. I installed MySql today on it tonight, you wanna know why? Cause I could. I wanted to mess around with it on the train tomorrow. When was the last time you felt like that? I never feel that way with Linux anymore (it's just a good solid tool now, I take it for granted). I hardly ever boot the Win2K box, (I find it is more "secure" that way) unless I want to play Arcanum or something MS specific. But who needs games when you have grep?

This wee little PowerBook along with OS 10.1 really kicks my ass. Now I find myself doing the unthinkable and looking into G4 towers, but I think I am going to wait for the G5 since Apple seems to be pumping out new models every six to eight months. Get one of them DVD burners and transfer all my pr0n (I mean MP3s) off the drives.

And to think...

[Voidhobo]

...that I drooled over the PB 100 when it first came out... funny. I still drool at the PBs, and I just might laugh at that in another ten years.

I just don't understand why they were called PowerBooks back when they still ran with m68k processors and not the 601 etc. PowerPC processors...

This is worth a look-see for sure... pre-PB Macportables. Who'd've thought...

Re:And to think...

[Rura Penthe]

The term "book" was already taken. ;)

I don't see it

[mj6798]

The current PowerBooks (iBook, G4) look pretty nice and quite competitive with Intel-based laptops. But the sheer variety of Intel-based laptops seems to put the PowerBooks to shame. You can get tiny Sony laptops with cameras or FireWire, you can get really powerful IBM laptops with trackpoint and 1600x1200 screens, or you can get sub-$1000 Toshibas with DVD and 3D graphics chips. With PowerBooks, you get a choice of two form factors and exactly one pointing device, take it or leave it. Tough luck if you can't stand the pointing device or if the form factor is too big.

Laptops, much more so than desktops, seem a place where Apple should invite third party hardware. Just imagine what Sony could do in terms of portable hardware.

Re:I don't see it

[geomcbay]

Why does it matter that they only offer one pointing device? Most PC manufacturers do the same. If you dont like manufacturer X's trackpad, then you are out of luck as well, unless you go with manufacturer Y's product.

That was exactly the original poster's point..In the PC market, you have different vendors, each of which offers different options..But they all run the same software...If you want to run OS X you have two basic laptop choices and very little in they way of input variety at all, because Apple is the only vendor.

Re:why the new powerbooks restored my faith in App

[NDPTAL85]

You like 10.1? You used to use Red Hat? You sound like you like package management! Check out Fink at http://fink.sourceforge.net. Its a package manager for OS X and uses some debian tools like apt-get.

Interesting hints

[biglig2]

that there is some big secret apple product announcement this week.

Hmm. Sounds like some sort of home CD/MP3 Player device.

Many PowerBooks, happy birthday!

[i1984]

Apple's PowerBooks have been (for the most part) excellent computers from day one. They've typically been sturdy, generally comparable in speed to desktop Mac's of the same era, have great screens, are reliable, and have forced few tradeoffs versus desktops. These days they're hardly more expensive than desktop Macs, once you consider the cost of the built in LCD, and leave few reasons (other than slots) to buy a desktop Mac. Now with the new iBooks they're even affordable!

That's not to say there weren't problems. I was working as a service technician when the 5300 series machines were released. We literally had people bringing the computers to us in bags to keep all the parts together...it really was ugly. More people swore to me that they'd never buy another Mac again because of their experience with PowerBook 5300 than because of anything else Apple ever did -- except for maybe some of the Performas...

The first time I used wireless ethernet was on a PowerBook back in 1995 or 1996. The device had an enormous Motorola 68040 processor in it, the same processor as in the PowerBook it was connected to.

Here are my nominations for notable PowerBooks:

Best Screens: PowerBook 170 (incredible 1-bit active matrix display -- yeah, only 1-bit but it was still incredible.) PowerBook G4 for its ultrathin widescreen.

Best Performance: PowerBook G4, PowerBook G3 series, and PowerBook 3400c/240. The G4 and G3 paralleled performance of the reigning Mac desktops when they were released. The 3400 had a fast processor, but also had fast video for the first time in a PowerBook.

Best Size: iBook, Duo series. The first of the Duo series weighed just 4.2 pounds back in 1994(?).

Best Battery: PowerBook 170. You could turn off the backlight and run the thing literally all day.

Most Versatile: PowerBook G3 series. They had expansion bays, PC card slots with CardBus, SCSI, serial, infrared, stereo sound in/out, VGA out, analog video out, serial, built in microphone, ADB, ethernet, upgradeable processor, two RAM slots, built in modem, optional DVD, and even third party PCI expansion chassis. Later models switched to FireWire and USB over SCSI serial and ADB.

Worst PowerBook Ever: 5300 series. Parts (including the entire screen) would snap off randomly, numerous other hardware defects, slow, prone to crashing, no ethernet, spartan set of features, and expensive at any price! I think thousands of them were finally just ground up -- they were sent back to Apple and never reappeared.

Heaviest PowerBook: Macintosh Portable. Yeah, I know it's not a PowerBook, but it was so heavy I have to include it somewhere. It used enormous lead acid batteries! It also had funky rhombal shaped 3MB memory upgrade cards.

Best PowerBook ever: ??? suggestions ???

I've owned at least the following PowerBooks over the years: 140, (three) 170s, (three) Duo 210, Duo 2300, (two) 165c,(two) 180c, 520c, (two) G3 Wallstreet, 3400/240, iBook 2001 -- but I could be forgetting a few. The 170s and G3s were my favorites.

It's been a fascinating ten years.

Re:Many PowerBooks, happy birthday!

[phillymjs]

Best PowerBook ever: ??? suggestions ???

I went from a Duo 210, to a 5300, to an iBook 2001.

I loved my Duo, though it was slow and the screen was passive-matrix grayscale, it still rocked. The Duo idea IMHO is one of the most innovative things Apple has ever done, I was sad to see them just drop the product line. There was a very good market for people who needed laptops, preferred to work on desktops when possible, but didn't want to spend big bucks for both. Apple took the simple concept of docking a laptop and ran with it.

My 5300 was okay, it had a nice color screen and was pretty speedy compared to the Duo it replaced. I managed to have few problems with it but took it in for preventive service whenever I read about widespread hardware problems instead of waiting to get hit myself. I bear no ill will towards Apple for it-- thanks to their 7-year Repair Extension Program, I managed to sell the 5300 in 1997, bundled with a RENO CD-ROM drive for over $1100. Most of the proceeds of the sale bought me a Newton 2000, which still runs like a champ.

But I have to give props to the iBook 2001 as Best.... PowerBook.... Ever! Sure, the TiG4 looks cool and the screen is nice. But I'm an integration consultant, so along with something that looked cool, I needed something that was small and built tough. The iBook fits perfectly in my backpack, even nestled in its padded sleeve case (the vertical model sold by these guys, I highly recommend it). Between the iBook's speed and its full complement of ports, I can connect to damn near anything with the right software and occasional USB-to-whatever adapter. Even my Windows-bigot co-workers are impressed with its versatility.

~Philly

You know, I dont understand it.

[Anton Anatopopov]

Apple have been producing well-designed awesome machines for years and years, and yet the general public still prefer their nightmare of PCs with all the baggage that go with it. (Windows Blue Screen of death, IRQ conflicts, windows.ini problems etc etc).

How is it that the consumer continues to buy PCs ? I mean, when the US auto industry produced crap products it didn't take us long to switch to the superior Japanese product. And now the US auto manufactures have raised their game to compete.

So what is it that makes PCs so different ? I used to think it was the software, but Word and IE are available for Macs. There must be some other reason. I cannot for the life of me work out what that reason is.

The world would be a better place if we switched to macs (or even Linux at least that doesn't crash every five minutes like Windoze!)

Re:You know, I dont understand it.

[Fatal0E]

I think your question has 2 answers.

1) You can partly blame Intel like AMD is doing. The average person who reads techextreme.com and considers themselves informed still says, "The Mac is only 500 Mhz, that PC is already runnin at 1400 Mhz. It must be 3 times faster.

note: bad math done on purpose

2) Prices! Macs might be easier to use, I even suspect that the above techextreme reader knows that but they are also expensive. He gets junk mail from Dell saying that he can buy a P4 or P3 for $899 while his daily newspapaper tells him an iMac is about $300 more. The price delta between high end machines is at least $1000, and that's that bottom of the high-end scale.

Re:You know, I dont understand it.

[geomcbay]

It is without a doubt due to the software.

Word and IE are great and widely used, but there's a lot of other software in use by millions of people each day. By and large this software is on PCs. The PC platform is so dominant now that its very unlikely Apple will ever catch up in terms of third party developer support.

The real question is, why did the PC get the developers in the first place (which created the apps, which brought the users...) and that is mostly Apple's fault. If you talk to any Apple-platform developers (outside of Apple) that have been around more than a couple years almost every single one will tell you horror stories of how Apple has treated developers over the years, almost to the point of being openly hostile...Microsoft on the other hand, has been very good to developers in terms of APIs and great documentation (yes, I said it, MSDN is a great source of documentation)..Of course Microsoft might look a bit less rosy if you create Apps that compete with their's (Netscape, Real, or whatever) but for the average developer their support has been, historically, top notch.

Re:You know, I dont understand it.

[maggard]

As for the software, try using IE 5 on a PC and then using IE 4.5 for the mac and note the difference. SPEED. Microsoft software ported to the mac is extremely slow, and generally makes more sense in the windows version.

Er, bad choice. IE 4.5 is Mac from the ground up, has no common code with Wintel IE. Furthermore while it is indeed somewhat slower it was until recently far more standards compliant. With IE 6 Wintel is back in the game but then it's as slow as Mac 4.5 is for most folks.

MS Office applications like Word & Excel are cross-ported (you are aware they began as Mac applications, right?) and have often taken a performance hit though that seems fairly resolved at this point. There were some justly loathed versions but 98 is fine, runs well on any Mac sold in the past 2 or 3 years (remember that Macs stay on desktops far longer then PCs) and the X versions are shaping up very nicely.

As the mail clients are all unique and un-ported there's no comparison except to say that the MS Outlook for the Mac developers deserve being made to use their own products. On the other hand Entourage has some really good qualities and with it's support for AppleScript lots of features can be added in.

Oh, and as to Blue Screen of Death / SadMac Bombs - MacOS X is incredibly stable.

The new device

[PatSmarty]

I know this is a little offtopic, but other big news are: Today, Apple will bring out a new device that is not a Mac and that it calls "ground-braking". Every Mac Newssite is talking about it: MacOSRumors, Go2Mac, MacEdition, MacNN.

I would be very interested what Slashdot readers' guesses would be what it is.

Re:Just imagine where we would be now

[mjpaci]

What the hell is a "bus fucker"? Are we talking Grumman? PCI? School?

--Mike

Re:Just imagine where we would be now

[werdna]

Open standards always win.

Yeah, just look at IBM's market share today.

Re:Just imagine where we would be now

[q-soe]

I agree that apple should have open sourced the platform but the biggger success for them would have come if they had licensed (open source wasnt much of a movement in the mid 80's) the OS and ported it to the iBM - Apple even did this as a project (called Star Trek in fact) with IBM long before the disaster known as Taligent-Pink. Bill Gates himself begged the Apple Board to license the OS and open it up (yeah its hard to believe but true) and they ignored him and everyone else, and the final nail in the open source of mac hardware was made by none other than Jean Louis Gasse (he of Be fame).

this is all information in the many apple histories, the fact is that by the time apple could have grown by licensing the company had become a madhouse.

I have loved macs for years and wouold love a powerbook - i fondly remember my black monster ihad for work some 2 years ago - they have always made great gear.

Oh and the bit about MS and QDos is wrong - its an innacurate and aprocyphal bit of information that has made its way around the web for years - MS bought out a company called Seattle Computer Products (it was really a one man band) when IBM contracted them to provide a DOS - they paid $50,000 for it and employed the guy as well - they didn't buy exclusive rights - they bought the company thus they had all rights as anyone who buys a company does-MS has done enought factual things wong without making stuff up.

If you really want to find out the truth about this and much of the other incorrect crap on the web read a book or 2 - i may suggest Fire in the Valley as a start www.fireinthevalley.com - considered the best history of Silicon Valley

Well, most of the time.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

I'm reading plenty of people bashing the 5300, and rightfully so. But, IMHO, Apple also blew it with the initial release of the 1400.

When the 1400 first hit the streets I was working selling Macs, and many shoppers had lost faith in Apple products after the 5300 and the release of the monstrosity that was MacOS 7.5 ("An error of Type 11 has just occurred. Please reboot, scream, and curl up under your desk in the fetal position"). The place I worked in sold both WinTel and Mac products, and the Mac area was and still is a major portion of the store and does brisk business. But it made being a "Fruit Head" that much harder when you had a new version of the OS that sucked, and laptops that were rumored to catch fire (though I never actually saw that one had burst into flames, I do remember seeing one seriously melted on the bottom of the case).

Yes, the 1400 looked great, it was light (compared to the 5300) and it had a newer 603e chip. But there was short supply, and they shipped with comparatively little as far as hardware and software. I mean, lets face it, even back then shipping a laptop with only 8 megabytes of RAM was a mistake. Also, I don't think it was wise of Apple to have one model which shipped without the level 2 cache (1400cs). What I saw happening was people simply buying the lesser expensive model (I don't remember the exact MSRP but it was sub US$2000) not understanding what an L2 Cache would do for them as far as performance, and then getting fed up with it and returning it for a WinTel model. As a matter of fact, there was a major sale made in which a large Vulture Capitalist firm had purchased 60 or so 1400cs's from some on line vendor, found them to be painfully slow and crashed often (MacOS 7.5.3, I believe... also painful) and returned the lot. They then came into our store and bought all we had of a WinTel model.

Apple lost quite a bit of the mobile computing market with the 5300 series, sure, and it has come a long way. But I don't think the 1400 series helped.

[additional: Yes yes yes, I know it was upgradable and I know it could even be upped to a G3 :-) But while it was new, all that wasn't exactly advertised by Apple and most consumers didn't know all that.]

Re:Well, most of the time.

[phillymjs]

[additional: Yes yes yes, I know it was upgradable and I know it could even be upped to a G3 :-) But while it was new, all that wasn't exactly advertised by Apple and most consumers didn't know all that.]

Well, after the "Ready for PowerPC upgrade" sticker debacle with the 500 series, I can see why Apple would not vigorously promote processor-upgradability anymore.

~Philly

Re:Well, most of the time.

[Spruitje]

Well, after the "Ready for PowerPC upgrade" sticker debacle with the 500 series, I can see why Apple would not vigorously promote processor-upgradability anymore.


I have a Pb520 with an 603ev 167 Mhz. upgrade.
It plays MP3's perfect and due to the fact that is has built-in ethernet I took it to work everyday and used it constantly.
3 years ago I bought a WS1 which I still use almost constantly at home and at work.
I've upgraded it with a bluechip upgrade.
It now runs at 466 Mhz and has 384 Mb of memory.
I also replaced the original 2 Gb drive with an 20 Gb drive.
It has everything you need for daily use and even MacOS X runs on it.
With two batteries it runs for almost 6 hours.
If i'm going to buy a new Powerbook it will be the iBook.
After 3,5 years it still is a modern and up-to-date machine compared with most PC-laptops.
Yes, I can view DVD's on it and with a Orinoco wireless card also support IEEE 802.11b wireless.
But the main thing is, that it also has standard SCSI, serial, video out (VGA and Svhs) and IrDA support.
The only difference with an iBook is that it doesn't have USB and Firewire.
But if I need USB I pop in an USB PC-card and use USB periphals.
O yeah, of course without restarting!!

Re:Apple has always been a good notebook supplier.

[u2zoo]

Having just made the switch from a new iBook 500 (640mb of ram) to a G4 500 with 384 of ram . . I can tell you that the speed difference OS X is nothing short of amazing. (under 10.1 - build 5L14).

While the iBook's screen is brighter . . the fact that it doesn't have dual monitor support was pretty depressing. (the powerbook's dual monitor shit is great . . effortless even - just plug in a monitor and go, no extra setup required.)

And having used powerbook for about a week now . . I must say that that it is just as sturdy . . and doesn't seem to weigh anymore (my feel for it) than my iBook.

The iBook is a wonderful machine . . don't get me wrong . . but the speed difference is VERY apparent.

Re:Just imagine where we would be now

[sreilly]

Had Apple realised they were actually in the software business...

Guess what? Apple isn't in the hardware or software business. They are in the business of making computers, which means the whole deal: CPU, cases, operating system, applications, etc. In order to make all of the parts work nicely together, you have to have a very strict interface between all of the components. The PC world has a fairly loose interface between all components and look at all the problems that arise... buggy drivers, operating systems that don't take advantage of new hardware features, etc. If Apple were to open up their specs to the clone makers you would get the same types of problems: crappy hardware or buggy drivers bring down the rest of the system, sleep mode doesn't work half the time. If Apple's hardware was more "open" then we would still be using serial ports and configuring COM/IRQ settings for every device (but not more than two!) that we hooked up to it. Thanks to the Apple and their "whole computer" philosophy, we now have USB and tons of USB devices which are truly plug-and-play.

One of the biggest benefits of Apple computers is that everything fits together perfectly and provides a very functional computer. All system configuration is in one place, sleep mode works perfectly, wireless ethernet is built-in, etc.

Using a Mac (at least one of the more recent ones) is like owning a BMW rather than a home-made frankenstein car. With the frankenstein car the engine(CPU), body(computer), and dashboard(OS) are all created by different companies and none of them fit very well with the other. The engine has extra features that aren't used or enabled by the rest of the car. The dashboard has buttons that don't do anything because that feature isn't supported by the engine yet. Meanwhile, the whole frankenstein car looks like crap compared to the BMW because everything is cobbled together with whatever parts they had lying around.

Re:Just imagine where we would be now

[Spruitje]

Open standards always win.

Yeah, just look at IBM's market share today.


Well, actually.. when IBM switched from manufacturering Wintel machines (on which they lost lots of money) to RS6000, AS/400 and S/390 machines they saved themself.
Don't forget that IBM nowadays is the biggest software seller (bigger than MS).
And that they are the largest consultancy firm in the world and also make huge profits, then you must conclude that dropping Wintel computers was a very good start.
Don't forget that IBM sells RS6000, AS/400 and S/390 systems like hot cakes.
And they all can run Linux.
There are many larger company's switching from SUN and Digital to IBM.
Don't forget that almost all Wintel company's lost money last year.
The only two company's which made a profit where IBM and Apple.

Powerbook staple- amazingly useful Location Manger

[call -151]

I must say I am amazed that the unbelievably useful "Location Manager" which has been around for years on MacOS hasn't been more widely adopted in other operating systems. For those not familiar with LM, it is a way of changing wholesale system preferences (notably TCP/IP) so you have have your "home" location, "office" , "travelling", "Stanford DHCP", whatever, so wherever you are, it quickly puts the appropriately-remembered IP info into use. Maybe it is buried in Windows somewhere, but I know too many people who use Windows who type in their IP address, DNS servers, etc by hand when they are visiting another building or whatnot for it to be in common use. Under Linux, there is some facility under netcfg to remember different locations but it is primitive compared to what has been in MacOS since 7.something. And the OS X implementation "Network" system info panel is a nice evolution of the location manager. I've been using LM on Powerbooks since my Duo 230 (which was a long time ago) and can't imagine life without it- I think I got up to more than 35 locations on my original Powerbook G3.

and most of them . . .

[hawk]

are still running. Can you get one? No. Most of us thaat own them put them in the "cold, dead fingers" category.

Occasionally I still pull it out. Iteven still has a couple of files I need (Including the recipe for the best stout I've ever tasted [and the same goes for the judges at that contest :)]). It's reliable, it's fixable, and it runs forever. If only I could get the power socket to stay soldered into the board, I'd use it more often . . .

hawk

sort of

[hawk]

> Apple couldn't compete with the clone makers who were releasing
> cheaper and superior hardware -- that's why the clones were killed.

The problem went deeper than that. Apple was doing all the R&D, and the clone makers got a free ride. Their royalties were based on the low end machines, yet they were shipping the higher end machines that paid for the R&D. Apple didn't so much kill the clones as inform the manufacturors that the royalties were going to start reflecting the costs involved--which made making the clones unattractive.

hawk

useless?

[hawk]

That was critical! I had a 180 which went through three of those wretched IBM 80M adrives, and then you couldn't get scsi drives anymore!

I had a seven disk boot set. The first disk was a mofified Norton (symantec?) resuce disck which loaded a dearchiver, put a system onto the ram disk, and installed word 4 and excel 3.

Fortunately, I had 14mb of ram n that thing.

Now it sits in my attic in pieces. I should have taken the $400 I was offered for it; I never did put it back togeather . . .

hawk

Re:Powerbook staple- amazingly useful Location Man

[phillymjs]

I heartily agree with this. Since I got my iBook 2001, I take it around to all my client sites and pop on their respective networks within minutes of walking in the door. It's also handy at home and in the office, when I switch back and forth from my wired connections to AirPort. The only thing I have to do manually is power on/off the AirPort card. Someone did try making a Location Manager module to automate that as well, but it gave me problems.

Perhaps the nicest thing about Location Manager, though, were the reactions I got while demonstrating it to my Windows-using co-workers: "That's it, you just pick it from the menu and you're done? You mean you don't even need to reboot? And this was included free with the OS?"

Maybe one day Bill will learn to bundle USEFUL stuff with his OSes, instead of welding in [cough, cough] "killer apps" like instant messaging. :-)

~Philly

It's worth noting...

[oranjdisc]

According to the latest sales figures from Apple (released in their quarterly financial results last week) notebook sales now represent close to 40% of their hardware sales. Think about that -- 40% -- that's a BIG chunk compared to what it was just a few years ago. There are lots of laptops out there, but only one PowerBook -- I can't count how many times I see people with old, beat up PowerBooks in cafes, parks, etc. People love those machines, and with good reason. I recently picked up a dual-usb iBook, and couldn't be more pleased. It's one hell of a fun machine. I loaded up 10.1, PHP, MySQL, and use it as a test / play machine for my web development work. And when I'm not using it, my wife is playing M.A.M.E. Ahhh.... the bliss. :)

The PowerBook Revolution

[Sandor at the Zoo]

Here's an often overlooked feature that Apple pioneered that every single laptop has now: palm rests.

Remember how laptops had the keyboard flush with the front of the laptop, until the Powerbook was released?

Everyone said "Duh! That makes so much sense!"-- it was a much better design to have a place to rest your hands while typing, but it took Apple to see it.

That's the kind of engineering detail that keeps Apple ahead of the game. Let's hope they can keep it up!

Re:Powerbook staple- amazingly useful Location Man

[hearingaid]

In one case, Location Manager does require a reboot- when you associate Extensions Manager profiles with different locations; but not otherwise, you can swap all your TCP/IP settings, date/time and other crap without bothering.

Re:why the new powerbooks restored my faith in App

[maggard]

i>I really never messed with or concerned myself with BSD before, honestly, but shit it's like talking to a Canadian, it's not all that hard.

Parlez-Vous Français? (Quebecois)

go to sleep, powerbook

[sulli]

Yes, sleep mode is one of the huge benefits of Mac to this day. My Win98 (okay, okay, not even updated Windows, much less Linux, shoot me) Toshiba crashes on sleep 75% of the time. When it doesn't crash it takes forever to wake up. Mac wakeups are nice and fast.

BUT...

Mac reboots are still slow as molasses. As bad as or worse than win. Maybe OS X.1 fixes this?

Re:go to sleep, powerbook

[Stephen Samuel]

About the only time I rebooted my powerbook was when the batteries died...
Part of my laptop kit was an extension cord, and a statpower 50 -- (car to 110V inverter).

Re:Just imagine where we would be now

[q-soe]

i should have clarified the dates on that as youre right about the timings but the basic point was that apples was not very farsighted in many ways - they talked to many companies before Intel true - they also talked merger with man including Apollo, Sun and even Compaq before pulling out at the last minute every time.

Re:Powerbook staple- amazingly useful Location Man

[hearingaid]

Two NICs? Nope.

However, I consider that to be really only a server/gateway router issue. Any Mac servers with multiple network segments these days I would expect to be running OS X, which has the same routing as other BSDs do. And I'd never waste a Mac on a gateway router.

Re:why the new powerbooks restored my faith in App

[motherhead]

True and thanks for the heads up. but again check out my link and get support for 10.1, explanations on the differences between Apple's Included Apache and PHP modules and other builds, as well as support for upgrading from 10.0.x. For OS 10.1 fans that are a bit iffy with BSD, this guy is a geek deity.

Re:Powerbook staple- amazingly useful Location Man

[hearingaid]

Both AirPort and Location Manager have AppleScript support. Write an AppleScript. Hell, compile it & save it in your Speakable Items folder, and switch by talking, forget the mouse... ;)

AppleScript

[hearingaid]

AppleScript is incredibly easy. If you can learn Perl in a week, you can learn AppleScript in... well, five minutes. :)

These are your basic references, in order:

1. Apple's site. Place to start for novices; I find myself going back there sometimes now, but I usually hit the more advanced stuff really quick.
2. AppleScript Sourcebook.The site for AppleScript references; it has a lot of information itself, but its real strength is in the links: nobody has so many great links.
3. OSAXen. OSAXen are compiled extensions to AppleScript, similar in some ways to Perl modules. This is the best source of them.

AppleScript isn't as powerful as Perl in some ways, but it's vastly easier to use & it integrates into the GUI much, much better.

You need a program called the Script Editor. It might not be on your HD yet, but it will be on your MacOS install disks.

I'll even give you some sample code. Here ya go, this is what AS looks like; you can even cut and paste this into Script Editor, it should work. I give you this one because it's one of the few I have that doesn't use any OSAXen; it's all done through the scriptable Finder, so all you need is OS 9.

to ProcessFile(fileRef)
tell application "Finder"
set currentName to the name of fileRef
set extension to the last text item of currentName
if extension is "html" or extension is "htm" then
set creator type of fileRef to "DmWr"
set file type of fileRef to "TEXT"
else if extension is "smil" then
set creator type of fileRef to "TVOD"
set file type of fileRef to ".SMI"
else if extension is "gif" then
set creator type of fileRef to "ogle"
set file type of fileRef to "GIFf"
else if extension is "jpg" then
set creator type of fileRef to "ogle"
set file type of fileRef to "JPEG"
else if extension is "c" or extension is "h" or extension is "cpp" then
set creator type of fileRef to "MPS "
set file type of fileRef to "TEXT"
end if
end tell
end ProcessFile

to ProcessFolder(folderRef)
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "."
tell application "Finder"
if (count of items of folderRef) is greater than 0 then
set fileNo to count of files of folderRef
set speechString to "Processing " & (fileNo) & " file"
if fileNo is not equal to 1 then
set speechString to speechString & "s"
end if
set folderNo to count of folders of folderRef
if folderNo is not equal to 0 then
set speechString to speechString & " and " & (folderNo) & " folder"
if folderNo is not equal to 1 then
set speechString to speechString & "s"
end if
end if
set speechString to speechString & " in folder " & name of folderRef
say speechString
set x to 1
repeat while x is less than or equal to the (count of folders of folderRef)
my ProcessFolder(folder x of folderRef)
say "Returning to " & name of folderRef
set x to x + 1
end repeat
set x to 1
repeat while x is less than or equal to the (count of files of folderRef)
set currentFile to file x of folderRef
my ProcessFile(currentFile)
set x to x + 1
end repeat
else
say "Skipping empty folder " & name of folderRef
end if
end tell
end ProcessFolder

set x to 1
set currentSelection to selection of application "Finder"
if (count of items of currentSelection) is 0 then
say "I have nothing to clean up."
else
repeat while x is less than or equal to the (count of items of currentSelection)
set currentItem to item x of currentSelection
if folder of (info for currentItem) then
ProcessFolder(currentItem)
else
ProcessFile(currentItem)
end if
set x to x + 1
end repeat
say "Cleanup file types done."
end if

What the previous batch of code does is ask Finder for its currently selected items, and then, for each of them, if it's a folder, it recursively processes every item in the folder, and checks its unix-style file extension. If the file extension matches one item in a list, then it changes the file's creator and document type codes. Specifically, it hands over all html files to DreamWeaver, C source to Macintosh Programmer's Workshop, and SMIL, GIF, and JPEG files to QuickTime. It executes rather slowly, but I don't need to run it very often. I compiled it to an applet, and have it in my Speakable Items folder.

It's a little buggy. It doesn't seem to work right when the currently selected items are files (well, it doesn't do anything at all). I don't know why, I haven't cared enough to fix it. :)

Most of my AppleScript links either to MacAST or to the QuickTime Player. Unfortunately, AppleScript has to be implemented at the application end, unlike Perl which can interface through pipes to most anything text-based. However, this makes it more powerful in some ways: AppleScript works exclusively by sending events, so it can do things that normally would require the user to click buttons, hard to do in Perl (although I think there's an AppleEvents module in MacPerl, which would be more flexible than AppleScript; all my Perl work I do on my *nix box so I don't know :)