Macopinion

The Case For A 12” MacBook or MacBook Pro

Apple’s MacBook notebook computer is an extremely nice piece of work for a very reasonable price by historical Apple portable standards, and especially considering its impressive specification. However, a subnotebook it’s not. The MacBook is 7/10 of a pound heavier than the 12” PowerBook G4 it displaced, wider in footprint and depth) although slightly shallower in chord than a 12” iBook) and significantly thinner at a svelte 1.08 inches. Indeed, it’s nearly as big as the erstwhile full-sized Titanium PowerBook, and is indeed only .3 of a pound lighter that the current Core 2 Duo 15” MacBook Pro.

For serious road warriors, that extra pound is a significant issue, and even the 12” PowerBook was on the heavy side for subnotebooks, although the MacBook may fit more comfortably on aircraft seat trays thinks to its lower screen height.

It occurs to me is that there is now room - some might contend a gaping void - in Apple’s portable lineup that needs to be filled with true subnotebook in the size and weight class vacated by the 12” PowerBook and slightly bigger 12” dual USB iBook.

Widescreens are nice. I have one in my 17” PowerBook. However, while the extra real estate is a comfortable luxury, I really don’t find it a hardship going back to working on my 12” iBook and 14” Pismo PowerBook - both of which have 1024 X 768 resolution traditional aspect ratio displays, and I do appreciate the handier dimensions and lighter weight of the iBook especially when road-warrioring.

I haven’t (at least yet) gotten into watching movies on my laptops, and movies seem to me to be one of the more compelling arguments for the widescreen format. For the sort of stuff I do with computers, extra vertical resolution is much more useful than extra width, and it’s what I miss most switching from the 17” PowerBook’s 900 vertical pixels to the older machines’ 768. While a “portrait” orientation screen wouldn’t be practical in a notebook, the traditional aspect ratio screens are a good compromise.

Anyway, that’s a bit of a digression. Apple’s address and support of the subnotebook category has been frustratingly tentative and sporadic over the years. Interestingly, the first-ever PowerBook - the original 100 model that was engineered and built for Apple by Sony and released in 1991, was a “near-subnotebook” weighing in at a moderate 5.1 pounds (partly achieved by making the floppy drive and external module), and measuring 1.8” x 11” x 8.5”. The 100 had a tiny 20 MB hard drive and a 9” monochrome 640x400 passive-matrix screen, which amounted to a sort of “widescreen” aspect ratio that Apple stuck with until the release of the PowerBook 180c in 1993 which went to a “full resolution” 640 x 480 pixels.

The PowerBook 100, while it had its loyal fans, did not sell especially well, and was soon discontinued, to be replaced by Apple’s first serious kick at the subnotebook cat, the PowerBook Duo which was rolled out in October, 1992. But the Duo was more than just a smaller PowerBook.

I thought that the Duo was one of the coolest computer ideas ever when I first heard of it, and still do. The original concept was for the portable unit to function as a normal laptop while on the road, but when you returned home or to the office you could insert the closed Duo into a Duo-dock with a full-size CRT monitor, a full set of ports, a floppy drive, an internal hard drive, and two internal NuBus expansion slots and have it function as a no-compromise desktop computer. This was a particularly compelling concept in the days before large active-matrix color laptop monitors. There were also smaller, portable minidocks that could plug into the 152-pin connector providing a set of standard ports and a connector for an external floppy drive.

The Duo, while outlandishly expensive even in the context of the day, was actually one of Apple’s longest-running laptop models of the ‘90s, eventually being built with 68030, 68040, and 603e PowerPC chips. The ‘o30 Duos come with a 19-mm trackball that was much smaller than the trackballs in the PowerBook 100 series, bumped to 20 mm with the ‘040 models. The Power PC Duo 2300c had a trackpad. The Duo keyboard was slightly smaller (95%) than a standard PowerBook keyboard as well.

In May 1997 the PowerBook 2400c was introduced as the Duo 2300’s replacement, and it began shipping in August of that year for $3,499. Built for Apple by IBM Japan, the 2400c was based on the PowerBook 3400c/180’s PPC 603e motherboard with 256k L2 cache, and also had the 3400’s video sub-system with a built-in VGA connector port. It was small, sleek, and lightweight (at 4.4 pounds, nearly half a pound lighter than the Duo 2300 and the lightest Apple portable ever). It was designed with much smaller than standard sized (87%) keyboard - even smaller than the Duo’s. The good news was that small it may have been, but the 2400’s scissors-action keyboard is smooth as silk, and Apple used the same technology for the superb G3 Series keyboards. Most users reported that they got used to the 2400c’s smaller keyboard quickly.

The 2400 was only sold in the Asian and US markets, which meant that for the rest of the world, Apple had abandoned the subnotebook category. I am mystified as to why Apple did not keep the 2400 in production, and even upgrade it to G3 status, since that would have been dirt-simple to do, given that its processor was mounted on a removable daughtercard, and third-party vendors did offer G3 upgrades for this much-loved machine, which unfortunately went out of production in 1998.

There was considerable speculation that the “P1” Apple consumer-oriented laptop would fill the Apple subnotebook void, but those hopes were dashed when the original clamshell iBook debuted in July, 1999. The iBook had many virtues, but light weight and compact dimensions were not among them. The iBook was both bigger and heavier than the contemporaneous full-size Lombard PowerBooks.

It would be nearly two years before Apple would again have a credible player in the subnotebook (or at least small notebook) category - the now familiar and ubiquitous white dual-USB 12” iBook that remained in production for more than five years in various G3 and G4 models.

In January, 2003, Apple followed up with the aluminum 12” PowerBook, whose engineering owed much to the dual-USB iBook, but was a bit smaller, thinner, and lighter, and included some, although not all traditional PowerBook accouterments, most of which were eventually added to the 12” iBook as well. Advantages the PowerBook retained throughout were a (much) better keyboard and more powerful video support and connectivity. Both machines used the same 12” 1024 x 768 display. Both 12” ‘Books were partly engineered and are built in the same a Asustech facility in Taiwan.

In terms of size and weight, here’s how they stacked up:

iBook with 12.1-inch display
Height: 1.35 inches (3.4 cm)
Width: 11.2 inches (28.5 cm)
Depth: 9.06 inches (23.0 cm)
Weight: 4.9 pounds (2.2 kg)

12” PowerBook
Height: 1.18 inches (3.0 cm)
Width: 10.9 inches (27.7 cm)
Depth: 8.6 inches (21.9 cm)
Weight: 4.6 pounds (2.1 kg)

By comparison, here are the MacBook’s vital statistics:
Height: 1.08 inches (2.75 cm)
Width: 12.78 inches (32.5 cm)
Depth: 8.92 inches (22.7 cm)
Weight: 5.2 pounds (2.36 kg)

So is there a case for a smaller MacBook or MacBook Pro? I would say an emphatic yes. There is a reason why Apple Certified Refurbished 12” PowerBooks are selling for $200 more than ACR MacBooks, just as PowerBook 2400c’s resale value stayed significantly higher than usual for years until the dual-USB iBook and 12” PowerBook came along.

There are an awful lot of notebook users who don’t have a whole lot of interest in watching movies on their road warrioring machines, and widescreens don’t really offer any compelling advantage for Web surfing, email, word processing, and most graphics work (other than the obvious luxury of some extra space that is nice to have, but not worth the trade-off in form factor bulk).

Smaller displays also impose lower power demand, which conserves battery charge life, and when you carry a notebook around all day, every ounce of weight saved is much appreciated.

There are rumors afoot that Apple has a tablet computer in the works, and if so, that would certainly help fill the gap, so long as it can fill the role of a workhorse computer. That remains to be seen. In the meantime, a MacBook Pro in the PowerBook 12” form factor or updated facsimile thereof would be one sweet little package - at least provided they could keep it reasonably cool.

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Postscript: Just after I put the finishing touches on this column, I ran across scuttlebutt on the Web about a 12” widescreen ultra-thin MacBook Pro purportedly in the works. I don’t usually reference product rumors, but this one dovetails somewhat closely with my ruminative specualtion foregoing, so I’ll make an exception. I would prefer that they didn’t go widescreen in a display as small as 12”, but otherwise, if such a machine really is coming, it sounds like a winner. You can read more about it at Ars Technica:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/12/4/6162

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*** Charles W. Moore

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