iBook and PowerBook updates, re: what I would do if I was God.

1. The much-rumoured Apple portables update is here, with a special bonus — big price cuts! For $1695 you can pick up a 12in iBook running at 1ghz, or for $2599 you can get a 12in PowerBook running at 1.33ghz, with Airport Extreme built in. Yum. Makes me itch all over again.

2. Having been lurking around a bunch of forums about the updates I was surprised by the number of people pooh-poohing these updates, calling them insignificant. I disagree. Firstly we’re now looking at a whole range of laptops that can compete with the Wintel competition — on features, on speed, and very importantly on price. With Airport Extreme built in to the whole range of PowerBooks, Apple is obviously taking solid aim at Intel’s Centrino, and one-upping them by using the faster 802.11g standard. It has all the features you’d expect from a laptop — modem, ethernet, 2xUSB, Firewire, plus a 5 hour battery life (my Rev.A 12in Powerbook usually gives me a good 3.5 to 4hr battery time, and while it’s not quite 5hrs, its still very good) and drop dead sexy looks. Performance is difficult to gauge, but unless you are using your laptop to process video or really big graphics files, I’d doubt you’d be able to tell the difference in speed between a similar priced PowerBook and Wintel portable. At a guess, I’d say a 1.6ghz Pentium-M system would smack the 1.5ghz G4 all around the ring, but the G4 would hold it’s ground.

3. But I’d take the slower Mac any day.

4. While I can’t say I’m disappointed, I was quietly hoping for the rumored 13in widescreen PowerBook. I love the 12in format, so very portable (why would you bother otherwise?) and quite frankly if I was offered any of the PowerBook formats I’d still take the 12in. But I do sometimes wish the screen was a little bigger, it’s hard to work with multi palette apps and not run out of screen space, especially on a 12in screen. I’m thinking Flash in particular, but then I don’t think Macromedia has any idea what a well designed, well coded application UI should look and feel like (although they’re not as bad as Quark. shudder). Quick hint for them — check out Photoshop.

5. But I digress. The more I think about it, the more I want a 13in Powerbook. You’d get a bit of extra screen space, a bit more room to play with under the hood, maybe space for a 2nd RAM slot, or a PCMCIA slot, or maybe a few more USB ports. It might even be a tad thinner! There’d be a bit more space for air to flow through, helping to alleviate the heat problem, all without greatly increasing the size of the machine. Then Apple can boast about having the thinnest, sexiest full featured widescreen portables on the market, all at competitive prices, and the iBook range can retain it’s signature 12/14in format and be Apple’s non-widescreen portables. There’ll be a portable for everyone’s budget, and Apple will sell billions, make a shitload, regain another 20 points of marketshare (putting them at 25%) all the while giving Wall Street analysts and Rob Glaser the finger. Microsoft will again release software for Mac first, Windows dominance will weaken, and hardcore linux freaks (as opposed to sensible linux users) along with the rest of the world will realise just how good Mac OS (X? XI?) really is.

6. Meanwhile, Microsoft is thinking, “finally, we won’t have to spend so much money fixing the shitty OS that we have tied around our necks, and we can put that money into writing kickarse apps that make a shitload more money than Windows ever did, and sell them to the Mac market who don’t mind paying a bit extra for good quality shit.” The competition between the Windows team and the MacOS team heats up, since they are on a fairly equal footing (Apple marketshare has risen to 45% by this time) they both race to have the most stable, user friendly and feature packed OS they can think of. Wars will cease, people will love each other, I’ll marry Heather Graham, and All Shall Be Right With The World.

7. Well, why the hell not? That could be what’s happening now if it wasn’t for 15 years of mismanagement at Apple. Well, it’s unlikely I’ll ever meet Heather Graham, let alone marry her, but a boy could dream, right?

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