How the PowerBook was Born

Sabah Arif writes "Apple had no presence in the portables market prior to 1992. Its attempt at creating a laptop Macintosh, the Macintosh Portable, weighed almost 15 lbs and failed to sell. On the personal behest of John Sculley, Apple contracted with Sony to create Asahi, a smaller Portable. Apple developed two high end models in company. After 1992 and until the disastrous 5300, Apple was the leading notebook maker."

Comments

I think PowerBooks are pretty nice

[ReformedExCon]

I just wish they'd use a better screen. Comparing Mac laptops to Windows laptops is like night and day, literally. The Mac laptops have such dim screens compared to the laptops that are available for Windows.

I suppose it keeps the cost down, but if there is one area that really ought not be skimped on (especially for machines meant to be used by graphic designers), the LCD monitor is it, in my opinion.

Re:I think PowerBooks are pretty nice

[Anonymous Coward]

1997 LCD screen just looks bad

The Mac laptop looks like my old 8lbs Toshiba Satellite from years back.

Err..... maybe that's because 1997 was 8 years ago? Ya think?

Re:I think PowerBooks are pretty nice

[KlaymenDK]

It's a problem because it needs that extra finger. I know it sounds like a small thing, but are you aware of the number of mouse clicks that go into an average work week? A lot.

For instance, when I read an online article, being able to load links in background tabs is a godsend. I do that using a middle click. Or, I highlight the occasional word and right click to call up a dictionary.

Had I only one mouse button, your argument is that I could simply use one extra finger to hit Command or Option. But that finger has got to be attached to the hand not holding the mouse, and thus it's more inconvenient.

Now that Apple have introduced multi-button support in their OS, we can use them. But on the laptop itself we still have only one button (and as far as I have experienced in shops, the pointer surface doesn't even have hotspots for scrolling - but I could (hopefully) be wrong). I guess if someone would give me an Apple laptop, I'd install some form of mouse gesture utility.

DISCLAIMER: In the olden days I was a Mac guy, I've had everything from the original Mac to a Colour Classic. After that, Windows (and more recently, KDE) has spoiled me.

Re:I think PowerBooks are pretty nice

[penguin-collective]

So does my Powerbook. Those are pretty standard specs these days--nothing to write home about. And in terms of software, many laptops come at least with as much software included as Powerbooks

And in some areas the Powerbooks fall short, most notably CPU performance and battery life. And while a Mac-only user might not notice it, the pointing device and keyboard are pretty mediocre designs (and, worse yet, you don't get a choice--if you want a Powerbook, you are stuck with Apple's design).

As I was saying: the Powerbooks are great looking and they are, overall, capable, well-designed laptops at reasonable prices. I do recommend them. But they are not cutting-edge or particularly innovative. In fact, until Apple starts shipping x86-based laptops, they simply won't be able to match the performance of other laptops.

Re:I think PowerBooks are pretty nice

[TheRaven64]

We are talking about laptops here, and for the most part you use your thumb to operate both (or all three) buttons on a trackpad/point. This means you have to feel your way to the correct one, or even look (I use a PowerBook and a ThinkPad, by the way, so I am familiar with both). In contrast, you have a finger near the control key all of the time you are using the keyboard. The only time when a multi-button trackpad is preferable is if you are left-handed, and that is because of a brain-dead decision by Apple to have a single control key on the left hand side, making it inaccessible if you are using the trackpad with your left hand.

what a wordsmith

[JeffSh]

"After 1992 and until the disastrous 5300, Apple was the leading notebook maker."

Man this guy is really good at confusing things. He sounds like a political writer. It would have been easier to say "For 2 years, 1993 and 1994, until the Apple Powerbook 5300 was released, Apple was the leading seller of portable computers"

2 years? 2 years. Seriously. I had to do research to find that the powerbook 5300 was released in 1995. Taken at face value, without knowing what the 5300 is, someone could interpret Apple's position to actually have been "dominant", where it wasn't.

Gosh. 1992. Man. The internet was barely even around! that's like stonage.

Trackball Position?

[evilviper]

The most striking difference between the PowerBooks and the PC portables was the presence of a built-in trackball and its position on the case. Other manufacturers included trackballs (or other pointing devices), but they were often placed in awkward positions.

I'll call BS on that!

I'll admit it is somewhat a matter of personal preference, but I liked having a trackball on the right-side of the unit much more than in the center of the unit. Being near the edge of the unit allows you to bend your hand around it, making it almost feel like a normal thumb-operated trackball.

The center-mounted trackball necessitated the same terrible hand contortions you're familiar with due to notebook touchpads. I can certainly imagine it was a real pain for left-handed users, but you can't always make everything ambidexterous, and comfortable.

I'd pay thousands of dollars if I could get a modern notebook with a fairly normal keyboard and side-mounted trackball, like I had on my old 20MHz Compaq notebook.

Sometimes progress, isn't... :-(

Re:Trackball Position?

[torpedobird]

...unless you were left handed

Re:Just gotta say it

[ElectroBot]

If you can't make the switch to Mac or don't want to support both OSes in your shop then you should wait until Intel iBooks or Powerbooks come out. You'll have a laptop with great battery life (for a regular-sized laptop - ultra portables aren't really laptops), great design and you'll be able to run Windows, Mac OS X and Linux on one machine.

Re:It was smaller

[aclarke]

There are all sorts of portable computers available in the world because there are all sorts of people. Different people have different needs. I'm typing this on a 12" powerbook but I'm in the process of buying a 15" or 17" to replace it. How much do you travel? Is your computer mostly plugged into an external monitor on a desk, or do you use it on an airplane? How tall/strong are you? Do you need features like a PCMCIA slot? How much computing power do you need?

As for me, I'm usually just taking my computer between my home office and my clients' offices. 80% of the time I have it plugged into an external monitor. I only need to use it on an airplane every 3-4 months but I need all the power I can get. The 12" doesn't have a PCMCIA slot, and mine's maxed out at 640MB of RAM and I need at least a gigabyte. I'm about 6'4 so carrying a larger laptop is less of a deal for me than if I was 5'4.

What kind of computer you buy depends on what you want it for, which is why Apple makes 5 different models. And why there's more than one manufacturer.

Re:It was smaller

[plumby]

Now most people are buying these big computers again. It's stupid! I'd much rather have my 12 inch iBook. If you want a big computer with more power, get a desktop for less that would have much better specs.

I always find this kind of comment amusing. "I personally have no use for one, so how could anyone else need one".

I've got a 17" laptop and 95% of its use is while sat on the sofa at home watching TV. A desktop (which I have as well) would be absolutely useless for this - the monitor would keep falling off my lap for one thing!

The other 5% is either sat in the conservatory or out in the garden - although in both instances it's on a table, I really wouldn't fancy lugging my entire desktop PC to the bottom of the garden.

I can understand that other people may not use their portables this way, and may be far better off with a tiny 12" one (my wife used to have one of the really small Sony Vaios, and it was great because she used to work on the train with it, so being small was pretty important), but there are many people who want to use a high spec PC with a big screen, but that they can also carry around the house with them.

Re:Just gotta say it

[ThaFooz]

I was at a conference, a week ago, where the presenters were using powerbooks. I think you can tell a lot about a product by how people use it. These things looked really smooth and after all my fits with a WinXP laptop, I desperately want one. Problem is we're a Windoze shop. :p

Well, you might be suprised at how well the integrate with Windows. There is an OSX version of MS Office, a Mac Remote Desktop client, Virtual PC for emulating the Windows environment, and AFAIK they can join Windows domains. I mean, unless you're on Visual Studio 24/7, you could probably get away with a switch. Or just wait 8 months for Intel Powerbooks and dual boot :)

Re:Just gotta say it

[toddestan]

The only problem with that is that it will be damn near impossible to use Windows with one mouse button. Might as well just get a ThinkPad.

Re:Autonomy Necessary for Creativity?

[TheRaven64]

I think this is the worst example imaginable for two reasons:

1. There was nothing innovative about the IBM PC. It was built using off-the-shelf components from the lowest bidder. The project wasn't about making a good PC, it was about making a quick-to-market PC because everyone is buying these PC things and IBM only had minicomputers and mainframes to sell them. The only reason people bought them was that 'no one ever got fired for buying IBM' - they were inferior to most of their current competition.
2. The PC lost the market for IBM. If they had produced something internally, then they could have used the same marketting to make everyone buy the thing, built it to a strong market position, and prevented clone makers getting in on the act. They would almost certainly have written the OS in-house (they did for everything else).

The IBM PC was the product of IBM management getting caught with their pants down, not some stunning innovation.