billpalmer.net

I want a 12" PowerBook. I want one now.

I want the new 12" PowerBook with SuperDrive. There, I said it. I've never wanted anything beyond my old friend, my clamshell iBook. I've often been tempted by the various newer models, mind you, but never to the point where I was ready to toss my Indigo-colored iBook aside like an old Performa.

My clamshell iBook is perfect for so many reasons. It has a built-in handle that often alleviates the need for a case. Its curvaceous design provides built-in wrist rests. Its trackpad is large and feels comfortable against my fingertip. Its rubber coating means that the occasional drop won't result in any tear drops. The fact that it’s nearly two inches thick, more than six pounds, and runs at about half the speed of Apple's slowest current laptop, all of that can be forgiven. It’s a sweet machine that runs MacOS X Jaguar just fine.

When Apple retired the clamshell iBook model in favor of the new and boxy "snow white" iBook last year, I lamented the loss of a champion. While the new iBook was a half-inch thinner, a pound lighter, a smidge faster, and could run at a higher screen resolution (1024x768) that was more suited to OS X's larger eye candy, it lacked a certain usability. The handle was gone, the wrist rests went with it, and the new trackpad had a rough metallic feel that my finger rejected out of hand. So when I had the opportunity to trade in my beloved clamshell iBook at work for a brand new snow iBook, I passed. It was a close call, but no dice. It just wasn’t tempting enough.

I never bothered to find out whether I could have traded up to a Titanium PowerBook. You’d think that a 15 inch screen, a slot-load optical drive, and a G4 processor fast enough to eat my old clamshell iBook for breakfast would have led me to try harder to get one. But again, I managed to rationalize my way into not wanting one. It was so thin and wide that it was probably too fragile for the kind of around-campus toting that I do every day. The trackpad felt like cold sandpaper. The lack of an integrated audio-video composite-out port would have made connecting it to a television set for presentations rather awkward. And having the connection ports on the back was just morally wrong. So again, I passed. Was it a wise move? Perhaps. But I was proud of it.

Right around 1:40 pm EST on January 7, 2003, the seventeen-inch Aluminum PowerBook was born. The birth of this beast of a machine served as the climax of what was one of the most powerful MacWorld Expo Keynotes in recent memory. The most amazing laptop ever conceived, this wooly mammoth did everything but the dishes. With a larger screen than most desktop computers, the 17" PowerBook immediately had my complete respect. But I certainly didn't want one. Most directly because it cost over $3000. But even beyond that, lugging around a laptop of that size would have been a nightmare. And the keyboard that lights up in the dark was just an insult to the rest of us who couldn’t afford it. So I viewed the seventeen incher the same way I view Adobe PhotoShop: it’s got my total respect, but I'll stick to the tools of mere mortals, thank you.

So by now it's around 1:45 pm, and having stunned the world yet again with the largest laptop in history, Steve Jobs is about to leave the stage when he turns back to the audience to announce that there is "one more thing": the seventeen-inch PowerBook has a twelve-inch cousin. A commercial featuring Yao Ming and Mini-me illustrates that the two laptops are large and small versions of the same product. But there's got to be a catch. A laptop that small can't have the same capabilities as one that large, can it? Well, let's see: does the tiny PowerBook have a G4 processor? Check. Does it have a full array of connection ports? Sure does. How about a slot-loading optical drive? Yep. So is it a DVD-burning SuperDrive? No. Aha! I knew there was a catch. But wait, you can get it built-to-order with a SuperDrive for only $200 more. Uh oh, I can’t seem to find anything wrong with this laptop. It's thinner and lighter than anything else Apple offers. What am I going be able to find wrong with this laptop so that I can cling to my trusty old clamshell iBook? This is starting to worry me.

A few weeks later, I spent some time in the Apple Store with the laptop that I was trying so hard to hate, and I found the newly-designed keyboard to be far more responsive than any Apple portable keyboard I've ever used. More disturbingly, this puppy is fast. I had always wondered what it was like to use MacOS X at full speed, and now I knew. Perhaps most offensively of all, the 12" PowerBook costs less than $2000, even with the SuperDrive. As I was looking at the pricing information sitting on the display counter, it was only then that I came upon the ultimate shocking revelation: the connection ports are on the side, not the back! At this point I was so stunned that the built-in Bluetooth receptor and 54 Mbps AirPort Extreme wireless capability eluded me entirely.

I want a 12" PowerBook. I want one right now, right here, sitting in front of me. Even my clamshell iBook is quietly whispering to me, "Go get one, you fool, and you can just use me for the occasional game of Snood!". Alas, now is not the time for new hardware. My trusty old iBook is doing just fine, it’s does everything I need it to, and I'll gladly stick with it for as long as I have to. But that’s quite a change from the days of my defiant refusal to move to a snow iBook, or my successful attempts to pretend that the Titanium PowerBook didn’t exist.

And if I’ve finally found a good reason to want to part with my older iBook, then no doubt so have many others. When the 12" and 17" cousins first arrived, I predicted that the little bugger would outsell its big brother by a nice margin. Considering that the 17" PowerBook still hasn’t shipped yet, I suppose I'm correct by default. But at this point, I think the 12" PowerBook could end up being one of Apple's most successful models ever.

In case you’re in the same situation as I am and you’re looking for an excuse not to want the new 12" PowerBook, let me give you a few: the keyboard doesn’t light up like on the 17" model, there’s no FireWire 800 port, you’ll have to buy a new kind of AirPort card, and it comes bundled with QuickBooks Pro but not AppleWorks 6, which is great if you're an accountant who’s never once needed a word processor. Plus, it's made of aluminum, the same metal used for soda cans.

Oh, who am I kidding? There's no legitimate reason not to buy one. Go get yourself one today. And then if you decide you don't like it, give it to me!