Apple Officially Considers PowerBooks (and Other Macs) 'Dead'
| by Joe Leo, Columnist | January 17, 2007 |
continued... from: previous page
After all that talk before this, I've asked myself, what was I thinking when I bought my younger sibling a MacBook? Not because it's a Mac, but the fact that it's--at least at the time it was purchased--a "rev A" model of the product! I don't know. I just didn't think of it at the time. And as luck would have it, she's had some of the minor problems associated with exactly that: random shutdowns, easy-to-scratch casing, etc.
All things considered, those minor problems can't even begin to match the trouble she had with the HP laptop running Windows that she was using before that!
I ridiculed her four years ago for choosing an HP laptop, but who could blame her? They used PCs at her college. There was no Boot Camp or Parallels software in existence. She finally said last June that her HP laptop had given her nothing but problems all through college. (Ha ha ha ha ha). And she was asking advice on a new Mac laptop purchase, so I saved her the trouble and just got it for her. And of course, I felt bad again because since then, a newer "rev B" MacBook has come out.
I can hear Steve Jobs, uh, Fred Armisen as Jobs, in the back of my head. "Ridiculous. Obsolete."
Did I mention on the day the MacBook came out, I was at the Apple Store, ready to buy that black MacBook? It reminded me so much of my old PowerBook--the original black Mac--that I just had to have it. The funny thing about was this one lady in the store at the time. She took on good look at the black MacBook and said out loud "Apple makes laptops in black?"
Call me vintage and obsolete, but it wasn't that long ago when black was Apple's cool color, long before silver and white became Steve Jobs's hair color, I mean, Apple's color scheme of choice. White for consumers and silver for pros.
And then there was the time I attended a technology meeting for the "school district" (or in my case, the Diocese) and everyone there primarily had white G3 iBooks, and a few of them Titanium PowerBook G4s. Among the sea of silver and white, I was the only one in the room whose PowerBook stood out because it was sleek and black. (Part of it may have been that smart upside-down Apple logo).
Is technology really moving that fast these days? Yes. Consider the PowerBook G4 I just bought in September. After being officially declared end-of-life in May just three months before, now, not even a year later, it's being declared vintage? Give me a break. It used to take years before a computer became vintage. Peace of mind comes from, however, from the fact that there are still units floating around as "new" Apple Refurbs. Hardly vintage or obsolete.
It's kind of like fellow columnist Noah Kravitz who said just the other day in his article. "Don't get me wrong - advancements are great, and increased computing power means time and money to a lot of professionals out there... And while it'd be nice to be able to edit video faster, sort through photos in less time... the truth is that none of these things are really that critical to my work."
Though, for me, I was in dire need of those advancements, and it was critical to my work. But instead of following everyone else by going with the new Intel-powered Mac notebooks, I chose to think different and get a big speed bump from this tiny little 'book, which has been so useful and even more of a workhorse than my first PowerBook (sorry "blackie"-- as Antonio Banderas's Zorro called his horse). I also ended up saving a lot of money on car insurance in the end.
Plus, who knew that Apple was going to bury their little big machine just months after its official retirement? No one would have ever seen that coming.
Is the PowerBook dead? I think not. Vintage and obsolete? I'm fine with it being labeled vintage but don't call it obsolete. And what if a part should fail along this road now taken? Well, sweet... since I live in sunny, though currently frosty, California.
Was going with a retro Mac a good choice over a new one? I think so. All things considered with all the various factors involved. This 12" PowerBook G4 that I'm sitting at right now isn't going to show any signs of aging any time soon, and it's only a baby at five months old under my watch. And for being a display unit too, which I don't think it was because it's flawless! (I think it was an open box unit that got hidden somewhere in the storeroom).
Don't forget too, that I only shelled out $749.98 for this baby, and I have the receipt to prove it! (If I wanted to, I could also go the same route and spend some cash on upgrading this PowerBook-- from a bigger hard drive, to a faster processor, to, get this... a glossy and brighter screen! And the total cost would still be less than the notebook's original price of $1699 when it was new!).
"...and that has made all the difference." (Thanks to poet Robert Frost for the inspiration).