The Best And Worst Apple Laptops Ever?
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
by Charles W. Moore
Ten best or ten worst lists or subspecies thereof are always a judgment call. I've made them myself from time to time, and they're usually effective discussion-generators. MacLife's Michael Simon last week posted a hybrid list entitled "The 5 Best - and 5 Worst - Apple Laptops of All Time, Ever!," noting that "For all the criticism over FireWire, 3G, matte screens and Blu-ray, the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros represent the culmination of two decades of hits and misses, starts and stops, leaps and stumbles for Apple notebooks, all wrapped in packages that never fail to turn heads."
Simon opens with his “five best” picks, and parted company from me with his very first choice, the Titanium PowerBook. I can’t agree. Notwithstanding that I was blown away with its revolutionary looks when it was unveiled in January, 2001, just about everyone I know who bought on had problems with it, and an advisor who operates a well-known shop specializing in older Apple laptop hardware tells me this impression is borne out by the number of hulk TiBooks in his boneyard. I appreciate that many users love their TiBooks, but they were a troublesome and often dismayingly fragile beastie, certainly not one of the best Apple laptops ever. In its place I would nominate the 12” aluminum PowerBook.
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The dual-USB iBook or IceBook is Simon’s second best five pick, and again I’m constrained to disagree. I’ve owned a G3 example of these since January, 2003, and it’s been reliable with no problems requiring servicing, but my experience has been exceptional. The 600 MHz through 900 MHz G3 iBooks may well be the most trouble-prone laptops Apple ever built, and my daughter didn’t have nearly as good fortune with her late 2004 G4 model. Nearly everyone I know who bought a G4 iBook experienced serious reliability problems. The dual-USB iBook is certainly one of the more significant Apple laptops of all time, it’s long production run (longest of any Apple notebook ever at five years) and large number sold qualify it for that, but relatively speaking, it’s not one of Apple’s best efforts due to its very spotty reliability record.
Simon’s third pick for best does get my enthusiastic endorsement, and probably my vote for best Apple laptop ever, period. I’ve owned three of them, and they’ve been just fantastic machines. I’m typing this article on one right now. As Michael notes, the Pismo implemented the cost-saving, streamlined unified “New World” motherboard architecture, with a 400 or 500MHz processor and 100MHz front-side bus. FireWire? Check. AGP graphics? Check. Airport? Check. Expansion bay? Check. Still cool 10 years later? Check.” Well, it’s actually only been nine years, but nonetheless very impressive. What he didn’t mention is the Pismo’s greatest strong point besides its reliability and pleasant-to-use factor, which is its expansion headroom. My Pismo’s have all been upgraded to 550 MHz G4 processors and have DVD-burning Superdrives in their expansion bays. Changing a hard drive is simple and takes about 10 minutes if you’ve done it before, and the PC CardBus slot offers even more expansion possibilities. I have a WiFi Card (works perfectly with Airport) and a FireWire 800 adapter for mine.
Simon’s number four choice, the eMate 300, isn’t actually a Mac at all, but rather a Newton, and runs on Newton software rather than the Mac OS. I’ll concur with its milestone significance in the Apple notebook saga, not as a five best Mac laptop candidate. If Apple does build a netbook, which I hope they will, the eMate essentially pioneered the concept way back in the late ‘90s - a revolution before its time.
As for the PowerBook Duo, which rounds out Simon’s top five, I’ll go along with that choice. The Duo was a solid pioneer of the subnotebook category that lasted thorough seven revisions (210, 230, 250, 270c, 280, 280c, and 2300c) spanning the 68k and PowerPC eras. It was absurdly expensive, even by the standards of the day, but it was a very cool little machine.
Turning to Simon’s “five worst” hall of shame, first up is the Macintosh Portable. Can’t agree. Within its context, the Portable was a pretty good machine, amazing really in the context of the time. It had a nice display (in amenable lighting conditions), very decent battery life. It was far from perfect and astronomically expensive, but a way-paver for what was coming.
15-inch Aluminum PowerBook? Again I can’t agree. I consider the 17” PowerBook G4 to be one of the best Apple laptops ever (I own one). The 15” aluminum PowerBook is, IMHO, the least desirable and successful, and objectively the most trouble-prone of the AlBook trio of PowerBook models, and it got off to a rough start in 2003 with the “white spots” display issue, plus some models were plagued by defective RAM slots, but I would rank it a middle-of-the-roader, and definitely a superior machine to the Titanium PowerBook that preceded it.
The PowerBook 5300 makes pretty well every worst Apple ‘Book list. I bought one new in 2006. I still have it and it still works, and it served me for several years as a reasonably reliable workhorse. It did require a case replacement under Apple’s extended service program for the 5300, but that at least didn’t cost me anything. I really liked the compact size (about the same as a 12” dual USB iBook) and trim styling and still do, but it was dog-slow, and had no CD-ROM drive, which were handicaps. Unfortunately Michael dredges up the urban legend about PowerBook 5300s having “a nasty habit of bursting into flames.” Not true. The lithium ion battery of a very early 5300 did spontaneously combust in an Apple lab. Apple immediately recalled all machines in the distribution channels and replaced the LiIon batteries with Nickel Metal Hydride units that were completely safe and reliable.
As for the PowerBook 150, the last of Apple’s Motorola 68030, 100 series ‘Books, yeah, it was not one of Cupertino’s better efforts. It was reliable enough, but n,,,ot very expandable or easy to work on, had an oddball IDE hard drive, no video out, and a poverty of I/O ports plus a poky passive matrix display.
But the original clamshell iBook? No way it belongs on any “worst” list. For one thing, it’s possible to build a statistical case for the clamshell as Apple’s most robust and reliable Apple notebook ever. I wasn’t initially taken with its radical styling when it debuted in 1999, but it grew on me, and I think has weathered the decade well, still not looking antiquated or un-stylish. Its styling influence is obvious in bespoke luxury automaker Bentley Motors Ltd.’s $19,800 “Ego for Bentley” laptop-computer-as-automotive accessory introduced this fall (regrettably a Windows PC and not a MAc) Its greatest shortcomings were a poverty of connectivity and a too-small hard drive on the first generation, and its mediocre 12.1” 800 x 600 display, which has never been really adequate for Internet use. However, the clamshell owns a spot on my 10 best Apple laptops list, and possibly on the 5 best as well.
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