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From The Road Warrior Archive - PowerBooks And Subtlety

For this from The Archive selection I've chosen a real oldie - a musing on PowerBooks and subtlety published way back in June, 1999. At the time, the current PowerBook was the G3 Series Lombard (aka "Bronze Keyboard"), which was simultaneously the first Apple laptop with built-in USB and the last with an HDI-30 SCSI port before the changeover to FireWire that came with the PowerBook G3 Pismo in March, 2000.

This article also appeared just about a month before the original clamshell iBook was unveiled at Macworld Expo New York in July, 1999. In re-reading this piece nearly nine years later, I find that I'm mostly still of the same mind. I was mistaken about the iBook's form factor though. When it arrived it was bigger and heavier than the Lombard!

I got a particular kick out of revisiting the second-last paragraph with its list of my list of features for the "ideal PowerBook," and which pretty closely anticipated and described the dual USB iBook which was nearly two years in the future at the time, but which, when it arrived, did have about the footprint of a PowerBook 5300 or 1400, only thinner and with G3 (and eventually G4) processing power, did have a 12.1" TFT screen and a quiet, smooth CD-ROM drive although unfortunately not in a removable-device expansion bay and no iBook ever had CardBus PC Card slots. On the other hand, my calling for a 4 or 6 GB HD and 64MB standard RAM were excessively modest, there was no "advanced RAM Disk" feature, USB was prominently standard, although SCSI was superseded by FireWire. There was a modem but no WallStreet/Lombard keyboard, and all things considered it wasn't a bad call two years in advance.

CM

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From The Road Warrior Archive

PowerBooks And Subtlety - First Published June 11, 1999

Last week, my "View From The MacCave" column on the MacTimes Network was entitled "Lombard: Still The Mac To Have If You're Only Having One."

In the article, I re-asserted my theory, familiar to regular readers of "The Road Warrior," that PowerBooks are the logical Mac for most of us, providing that we can live with the higher cost of admission.

One of the points I cited in support of this argument went as follows:

"So, the PowerBook's obvious first advantage is it's small size and portability. Some people need, and others like me simply prefer, the small size of a laptop computer. You aren't rooted in one spot, and can even conveniently use the computer outdoors in nice weather if the mood strikes you. PowerBooks also don't dominate a room the way a desktop machine does. They are more SUBTLE, something that appeals to me greatly."

A Danish reader, who has a Lombard 400 MHz on order, sent me this interesting comment on the subtlety angle:

"Hi Charles,

"More about your article: "Lombard: Still The Mac To Have".

"Firstly, I can't get over that it is *exactly* the article I was looking for, for days. Should I buy a Lombard as my main computer, and why? Excellent work, thanks.

"Secondly, and more importantly, you wonder why more people don't buy PowerBooks as their main computers. I agree.

"Still I think the answer is in a word you use yourself. You say you like the small machines because its SUBTLETY appeals to you. Well there you have it. To the great bulk of homo sapiens, "subtlety" is some place in Russia, to use a Danish expression (I'm Danish).

"Look at some simple examples. People come into a common room where they're gonna work. It is too hot for them. They see the thermostat is set at 3. Now, do they turn it down to 2? No. They turn it down to Zero. And of course next day it is freezing in there.

"You see? For most people, even the difference between a setting of 3 and one of 2 is too subtle! It doesn't click anything in their minds. And forget about some kind of setting of 5.78 versus 5.76. Just is not real at all.

"When people use a zoom lens, they usually only use the extreme settings. They can't perceive the difference between 90mm and 120mm. They just turn it till it goes click against the end setting.

"This is not only the explanation to why there are so few really good artists, or programmers, it is also the explanation to why so few pay good money for Art, or for PowerBooks. You don't wanna pay good money for something you are not sure is real, do you?

"The only things that are real to normal homo sap. is bulk, and real numbers. Bigger is better. Bigger numbers are better. How can something smaller possibly be better? Anything in that direction is too subtle, to unreal.

"Well, sorry, you suddenly woke the philosopher in me. Not that he sleeps very tight ever "

Yours,

Eolake Stobblehouse

I think Eolake has hit several nails squarely on the head here. It is easy to get caught up by the "bigger-is-better" syndrome. PowerBooks - even the hefty 3400s and WallStreets, are relatively pretty small compared with even an iMac, let alone a Yosemite with a 21 inch monitor. The fact that they come at a substantially higher cost than desktop machines feature -for-feature doesn't help the perception unless you value subtlety and understatedness.

However, for me, desktop computers, as wonderful as many of them are, just seem spatially inefficient compared with PowerBooks, and a big contributor to this inefficiency is the CRT monitor. Ergo, flat screen desktop display's go a long way toward mitigating my objections to desktop computers. Unhappily, flat screen desktop monitors are obscenely expensive (and getting more so), which erases much or all of the desktop price advantage.

On the other hand, the ingenious way that engineers are able to pack so much power and performance into the svelte laptop form factor gives me a great sense of satisfaction. Those who disparage the PowerBook's traditionally slightly lower performance compared with contemporary desktop Macs are missing the point. Obviously, if you need lots of slots and expandability, the desktop machine is for you. But how many Mac-users fill those slots and take advantage of internal expansion options?

For me, the PowerBook is the most perfect manifestation of the Macintosh's salutary virtue of transparency - its happy quality of letting you get on with your work without the machine getting in the way.

There is a quiet peacefulness about working with a PowerBook that is just not part of the picture with a 50 or 60 pound behemoth grinding away, fan whirring and CRT glaring in your face. As author and columnist Ron Rosenbaum notes in an article I reviewed in this week's Miscellaneous Ramblings, laptops are much preferable to desktop gargantuans that turn one's study or apartment "into a Dilbert cubicle." "Why switch from my elegant, compact, graceful typewriter," he asks. "which was heavy but still portable, to tie myself to some toxic behemoth monitor."

I remember when I got my first PowerBook -- a 5300. I was simply blown away by how such a tiny thing could pack so much more power than my desktop machine - an '030 LC 520. It spoke to my appreciation of subtle efficiency. Still does.

In that context, I would have to observe that the later, bigger PowerBooks, wonderful as they are, have been something of a regression (the 2400 is an exception to this) in the subtle efficiency department, although Lombard's trip to the fat farm has reversed the trend, and the eagerly awaited "iBook" and "eBook," or whatever they are ultimately called will be a further improvement, form-factor wise. Right now, ultra-thin PCs like the Sony Vaio and Mitsubishi Pedion have the edge subtle efficiency-wise, albeit in form-factor only.

There are other improvements I would like to see. For about a year, back when my 5300 was not connected to the Internet, I ran it mainly off a RAM disk, and often went all day without spinning up the hard drive. (I know, I know -- I was skating on thin ice not regularly saving my work to the HD, but the skeleton system I was running on the RAM Disk was extremely stable, and I can only recall losing a small amount of data once in a crash). The quietness was delightful -- even better than running my old Mac Plus off a floppy with the HD not turned on.

It would be great if Apple could concentrate some engineering effort on making RAM Disk technology really work conveniently and dependably. Having no hard drive whirring away in the background (or constantly cycling up) increases the subtlety quotient tremendously.

And while I'm at it, can't something be done about the raucous PowerBook CD-ROM drives, which are about as subtle as a chainsaw? I LOVE the old Sony 2x CD-ROM unit in my LC 520 - cumbersome CD-caddy and all. It is dead silent and smooth as silk. I appreciate that higher speed comes at a price, but would it not be possible to have a user-selectable multi-speed option so that one could choose silence over speed when appropriate? Just asking.

A PowerBook I would like to own would have about the footprint of a 5300 or 1400, but thinner and with G3 (or G4?) processing power, an 11.3" or 12.1" TFT screen, a quiet, smooth CD-ROM expansion bay drive (speed not the central factor), a small, quick, version of the Mac OS optimized for PowerBook use (but support for the full Mac OS as well if desired), a 4 or 6 GB HD and 64MB standard RAM, incorporating my advanced RAM Disk idea outlined above, USB and SCSI support onboard, two CardBus PC Card slots for adding other features, including a modem, and the WallStreet/Lombard keyboard, selling for about the price of the current iMac. In other words, a machine with ample power to do the stuff I do with computers most of the time -- word processing, email, Web surfing, and a bit of image editing -- but not a lot of frills.

Meanwhile, PowerBooks of all sorts are proof that good things come in small packages.


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Charles W. Moore

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