The PowerBook Doesn't Need A Name Change - Plus PowerBook Mystique Mailbag
by Charles W. Moore
I hold Jason D. O'Grady in high esteem. He is one of the pioneers of Mac Website journalism, and was one of the very first — if not THE first — to focus particularly on Apple portable products. O'Grady's PowerPage has been one of my regular surfing stops since I first got online back in the '90s, Jason's contribution to the Mac portable community has been enormous.
However, with the greatest of respect, I have to say that O'Grady's proposal to launch a movement calling for Apple to change the PowerBook brand name is, well, misguided.
In a commentary entitled "Time to Dump the Term 'PowerBook'?", O'Grady says:
"The venerable PowerBook has been with us since 1991 when Apple released the PowerBook 100 (with the help of Sony) and Xerox PARC veteran and long-time Apple Fellow Alan Kay coined the term. Apple trademarked "PowerBook" shortly thereafter further solidifying the term in the modern technical vernacular. Apple launched their consumer notebook in 1999 and called it the "iBook" to differentiate it from its more expensive brother, the PowerBook.
"As the iBook gained in "power" over the years Cupertino had a difficult time differentiating between their entry-level iBook and professional PowerBook offerings causing a lot of hand-wringing inside Apple's marketing department. What exactly is the difference between an iBook and a PowerBook these days anyway? Monitor spanning? Puh-lease..."
But why in the world would Apple one to give up on one of the best-known and most respected brand names in the entire computer industry? Not only that, it is one of the best names on its own merit, synergizing the term notebook with computing power. It is s a much more appropriate moniker than IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad, and in another dimension entirely than hokey, made-up marketing names like Inspiron or Vaio. Indeed, if Apple didn't already have the PowerBook nameplate, it would be something they might be justified in considering switching to, not from.
Some might suggest that Apple's recently announced switch to Intel from Power PC processors is a logical cue to drop the "Power"Book nomenclature. However, there were PowerBooks on the market for four years before the first Power PC model arrived. At the beginning, the name applied to a machine with an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 processor. It was just coincidence that both designations contain the word "power," but it's not difficult to understand the overlap. "Power" is a concept with unambiguously positive connotations when applied to a product like computers. Heck, it's even part of the name on Jason O'Grady's Website!
For automobiles too. DaimlerChrysler's Dodge truck division has recently re- released the "Power Wagon" name, which first appeared on heavy-duty four wheel drive vehicles in the 1940s, for their baddest, toughest, 4WD pick-up line. Even during the years when the Power Wagon name plate was a hiatus, Dodge trucks became "Power Rams."
"Power" has also been a popular element of automatic transmission brand names, notably General Motors' venerable and tough two-speed Powerglide of the 50s and 60s, and a likewise very strong contemporary Chrysler gearbox called the Powerflite made from 1954 to 1961.
Getting back to the laptop computer context, just at the point when Apple laptops are going to have the most powerful processors in portable Mac history would be a particularly inappropriate time to jettison the PowerBook name. But, I hasten to add, raw processor power is only one of many elements that make a PowerBook such a powerful and delightful tool. The real, practical power of a PowerBook is that it packs the capability of a desktop computer into an astonishingly compact and portable form factor. Not the full equivalent of a contemporary high-end desktop of course, but usually in the ballpark of a two or three-year old high-end desktop, which is plenty enough for most of us.
It is this astonishing power and functionality in a minuscule form factor that I've always found so awesome and compelling about Mac laptops, the quality that I have dubbed the "PowerBook Mystique," from whence derived the name of this column series on PowerBook Central.
Indeed, if I have a beef about Apple's laptop naming conventions, it is more in regard to things like over using the "PowerBook G3" nameplate on four separate and otherwise confusingly designated models -- the original PowerBook G3 (aka Kanga, 3500), the PowerBook G3 series (aka WallStreet, MainStreet, PDQ), the PowerBook G3 Bronze (aka Lombard), and the PowerBook G3 FireWire (aka Pismo). The four successive generations of Titanium PowerBooks are even more easily distinguished, and the current aluminum models only slightly less confusing. Even the old designations numerical PowerBook model designations (e.g.: PowerBook 540; PowerBook 1400), while not ideal, made things easier to sort out.
And I suppose those examples are one reason why we should be thankful that the iBook is distinctively branded, although I have always wished that it carried the PowerBook nameplate as well, perhaps something like "PowerBook Light," or "PowerBook II". iBook is not a bad brand name, but it is borderline cutesy, and doesn't carry the gravitas of "PowerBook." At least it includes the designation "Book," which unambiguously references PowerBook, and enables us to refer to Apple portables generically as "Books," rather than more cumbersome mouthfuls like "Apple laptop computers," or "Macintosh notebooks" or some10percentsuch.
Speaking personally, one of my less rational reasons for buying a PowerBook can rather than an iBook would be the name. To me, "PowerBook" connotes the top of the heap in portable computing; the most prestigious brand-name in the category. To change the name be like rebranding Rolls-Royce or Cadillac. Happily, I'm pretty confident that Apple will not be taking Jason O'Grady's advice on this matter, and that there will be Power\Books for many years to come. Let the PowerBook Mystique continue!
PowerBook Mystique Mailbag
Powerbook G3 Pismo Upgrade
Core Image uses in Tiger
Panasonic CW8124B CD Burner
From Mark
Dear Mr. Moore,
I just finished reading your "IS IT SENSIBLE TO UPGRADE YOUR OLDER POWERBOOK? article. Thank you so much! Your very insightful article answered so many questions better than any technician I recently spoke to.
I've had my Powerbook G3 Pismo (400MHz processor, 512MB RAM) since 2000 and it's been a great workhorse and currently running a MAC OS X 10.2.8 Jaguar. It's slow time to time but not too bad for the most part. I'm having a real hard time letting go of this beloved Powerbook and I'm thinking about upgrading the processor to a G4 550Mhz from Fastmac, as you mentioned in your article. Now, my question is, can I run the new MAC OS X 10.4 Tiger?
I would greatly appreciate your response. And again, thank you for your excellent informative article.
very best,
Mark
Hi Mark;
Tiger runs great on my G4 550Mhz upgraded Pismo, and indeed you would find that even a stock Pismo will perform significantly better with either Panther or Tiger than with Jaguar.
Glad you enjoyed the article.
Charles
From Antoine Hébert
Hi Charles,
First just a note to tell you that you have a great site and I've been enjoying reading your articles :)
But, I'm a little sad because many people reading your article "What's The Ideal Mac OS Version For Your 'Book?" will get the impression that Tiger is not for their Macs, and miss all it's advantages.
You overestimated the usage of Core Image in Tiger. It's only used by those (currently rare) applications that call these API's, unlike Quartz Extreme which is used all the time, system-wide to draw windows and graphics.
So far in a standard Tiger install, it's used in the ripple effect in Dashboard, which turns itself off on unsupported video cards, by Preview's and iPhoto's real-time image controls like contrast, hue etc that falls back to the CPU when needed. It's also used to a little extent in some of the newer iApps. Quartz Composer based screen savers like the RSS feed use Core Image to a bigger extent, and those .qtz files require a supported video-card to work, and won't even use the CPU like most other Core Image application mentioned.
Speaking of which, Core Image can only make a processor hot while doing some very intensive tasks that people won't encounter in Tiger unless they run some new specialized image/video effect program that taps into Core Image and Core Video, but any of these kind of app can make a processor hot anyway... Maybe a slew of newer apps may use Core Image and Core Video in the future, but these won't run in Panther anyway.
I've installed Tiger on a 350mhz G3 based Kiehi iMac, which is the last iMac not to have FireWire, and so far it's faster overall than Panther for me, though it requires a little more RAM (I'm now at 320 megs). The most "apparent" speed ups for me was the Finder and Safari being much faster, the Dock now only rarely dropping frames when animated, Exposé transitions are smoother , system preferences panels switch faster. The only slowness I found was from a specific issue in Spotlight, which could lock my search field for a long time while I was typing stuff, and live preview of color changes in Preview on a large image. Both now seem to work better 10.4.2, and Spotlight is still much faster than Panther's find tool.
Hi Antoine;
I have Tiger installed on both my Pismo and my G3 iBook, neither of which comes close to supporting Core Image.
With OS 10.4.2, I would agree that Tiger is faster than Panther.
My beef about the lack of Core Image support in some low end new Macs (now remedied with the new iBooks) is more a matter of principle than a practical concern; it goes against the grain for Apple to be selling new machines that don't support all features of the current Mac OS, however esoteric, particularly with an eye to the future. I tend to keep my Macs a long time.
Spotlight has its virtues, but I still miss Panther's Find function.
Charles
From Justin Taylor
Im interested in buying a Panasonic CW8124B CD Burner. Can you tell me if this unit can be fitted in to an Apple Mac G3 Pismo Powerbook (2000) using the original Apple drive caddy.
I know for sure the Panasonic UJ845B DVD Burner can be fitted and they look exactly the same.
Thanks
Hi Justin;
I can't gve you an authoritative answer, but my guess is that if the drive is physically similar to another model that you know is compatible, it will likely work.
Charles