waffle

Today, I turn 20.

If you use and like my software (Nuevos or Gmail+Growl) and you appreciate it to the point of wanting to make a small donation, there’s no time like the present:

Exactly one year ago today, December 11th, at around 6PM, I unpacked, documented and started using my then brand new PowerBook G4 (15″). Others would at this point dedicate a paragraph or two to describe how it’s holding up, but I’ve been waiting to do an in-depth review just in time for its first birthday. Here it is.

(Differences with newer models of PowerBook, released in February of 2005 and forward, will be clearly marked in parenthetical italics, like this one. The review also documents personal reflections on the machine vs a 266MHz “Wallstreet” PowerBook G3 and a 2.6GHz Pentium 4 PC running Windows, with everything that entails, like operating system differences and applications. This is not a sole review of just the machine; however, few things are.)

First impressions - unpacking and first steps

Very few things can beat the first few minutes of owning this machine** - the experience of unpacking and installing it is simply stellar.

The machine comes thoroughly packaged. A thin shell of pap covers the actual box, which is equipped with a handle. The box folds open with ease once tape is removed, and you are greeted with a sea of manuals, warrantee descriptions, cables (S-Video to Composite Video (yellow), DVI to VGA, AC adapter, AC adapter plug prong, AC adapter long cord prong) and some CDs encased in a plastic foam molded form. There are two plastic foam parts, and the top part comes off to deliver an inner half with the computer (cased in a flimsy plastic, taped shut) itself in it.

The machine, when started - bong! - boots into the first-run assistant (also called Mac Buddy) which, like my previous experience with a second-gen Indigo iMac G3 a few years back, asks you to choose a language and also for the first of the system discs, labelled Install Disc. It installs a bunch of things for you - it is unclear how many of these are pack-ins or the OS and how much is already on the hard drive when shipped, but it takes about 10 minutes and will reboot when finished.

After the reboot, you find yourself in the actual assistant mode and will, after a short introductory movie, be guided through some steps in the language you chose earlier, which will from there on be your system language. A number of steps are taken that will guide you through optionally transferring settings from your old Mac via a Firewire cable and Target Disk mode***, setting up your first system user, keyboard layout, date and time (and time zone), network settings (including AirPort networks) and finally (and optionally****) registration. A cube transition shows up between the steps, sliding the new pane in from the right in a nice effect.

Overall, in terms of both finish and sheer configurability, Mac Buddy beats the Windows XP wizard, which was the first experience of this kind I’ve had under the Windows OS back during its public beta test in 2001. Not only doesn’t Mac Buddy ever ask you for an OS serial number or to ‘activate’ your copy, but you’ll enter the desktop with a better array of initial settings, nevermind having your wireless network already set up. However, it is nonobvious that you can skip the registration phase.

Once done with the assistant, the Mac OS X desktop appears, with the sole hard drive named the default “Macintosh HD” and the Dock - a shelf-like contraption half-used as a bastard child of the Windows Quick Launch task bar band and the Mac OS 9 Apple menu’s application part and half-used as an application launcher - is prepopulated with some of Apple’s bundled applications together with some OS utilities. Hidden away in the Applications folder are a mix of installable trials and full version pack-ins of third party software such as FileMaker and Microsoft Office (trials) and Art Directors Toolkit and OmniGraffle (full versions). The folder that holds the trial version installers also share their home with the Xcode Tools installer, which installs Apple’s free, full version developer tools.

After venturing into OS X country for a while Software Update (the system’s automated update facility - a direct parallel to Windows Update, if you will) starts up all of a sudden and begins checking for updates on Apple’s servers. Despite being manufactured in late summer, my machine only needed to download one minor OS upgrade, which may be the raison d’être of the comparatively tedious install-from-disc phase earlier - Apple can just bundle the newest version of the OS on these discs right before shipment and not have to worry about ’stale’ versions on HDs; at least not on machines shipping out of their own facilities.

Connectivity and basic design

The PowerBook is a very simple design - a rectangle with rounded corners, coated in aluminum alloy. On the top is a centered white Apple logo that’s illuminated by the display’s backlight; however, only under direct sunlight in a lit room do you ever see the logo “behind the screen”.

The display uses a 16:10 ratio factor and is closer to widescreen (technically 16:9) than conventional (4:3). Never having used a widescreen display before, I found the display very wide for the first week or two. However, after growing into it, conventional displays - especially those on other laptops - seem almost inconveniently tall. The display remains as evenly lit and colorful as it was when shipped, but has a tendency to show a slightly dimmer portion of the bottom right screen quadrant having woken up after left unused for in excess of 10 hours after being used for a long time before. The portion lights up in a matter of minutes, and it hasn’t proved to be a problem, but it’s something that may develop into one in the future, which isn’t good.

One of the very first things I tried with my PowerBook was to hook up my mobile phone - then and now a Nokia 6600 - via Bluetooth. Once paired, the iSync application would let me add it as a device to be periodically synced, and after the first sync my spectacularly ungroomed phone book end up in the OS-wide Address Book, which is heavily cross-referenced throughout the system and in applications like the email client Mail and the calendar utility iCal. Having at the time come directly from a fairly hefty Windows PC with just one Bluetooth stack installed (which otherwise is a common source of problems, much like TCP/IP-stacks in the old days) which had a tendency to completely forget both my Bluetooth mouse and keyboard between reboot, the PowerBook’s Bluetooth performance was encouraging, and its lack of amnesia towards pair devices remains to this day.

The PowerBook ships with AirPort Extreme (802.11g wireless networking at up to 54 Megabits per second) and manages a stable and relatively strong connection in most cases. While the immediate case of the machine is made of aluminum, the borders of the inside of the lid and bottom are made of plastic, and towards the top of the lid there exist two windows of this plastic, containing each one antenna. AirPort takes two antennas (where one always receives), with Bluetooth sharing one.

The machine features a nice array of most modern ports, all placed on the sides due to the unusual screen hinge - as wide as the keyboard, sinking the screen down in front of the PowerBook’s body. 56K modem, Gigabit Ethernet, line-in audio, a headphones port, S-Video out, DVI in, two powered USB 2.0 ports (one on each side), one Firewire 400 port and one seldom-used (but high-end) Firewire 800 port, both Firewire variations named for their Megabits per second transfer speed ceiling. (Newer models also feature optical audio inputs.) In addition, a Kensington lock slot adorns the right side, and a Cardbus/PC-Card slot the left side - only one slot, although the use of two slots on such a well-connected machine remains debatable. The Cardbus slot usually hosts a 3G cellular card for high-speed connections outside of wireless networks or a memory card reader.

A SuperDrive - Apple’s trade name for a combined DVD recorder and CD recorder - is present in my own PowerBook in a slot-in incarnation. The slit in which you insert the discs is covered by two small plastic strips (a “dust jacket”), hold to the case (and not the drive itself) with glue. One of the strips came off during a prolonged bout with DVD burning, but would probably have stayed on had the material dried and not been forced out by the ejected disc itself. During startup (either booting or resuming from sleep), the drive makes an audible mechanical noise while checking for a disc in the drive. Furthermore, the first time you try to insert a disc, you will almost certainly keep pushing it in bit by bit, being startled when it finally decides to pull in the rest of the disc by itself, swiftly. However, those are quirks of slot-load drives in general and not of the one in the PowerBook specifically, and the extra convenience and saved space of losing the fly-out tray is worth these very minor annoyances and slicker look.

A fairly standard trackpad is used for pointing and not a trackpoint or the now mostly long gone trackball. I was a dedicated trackpoint fan before getting the machine, but it only took me two weeks to get around effortlessly using the trackpad. However, I remain one of (apparently) few trackpad users not having the tap set to click - I find the point of trigger hard to make without tactile feedback, and experimentation has not enlightened me. The trackpad is accompanied with a single button, and not two or more, as is common on most other laptops. While I agree that two buttons are better, I find that I can acceptably get around most of not only Mac OS X but also plenty of third-party software using only one button and the inconvenient ctrl-click map for “right clicks”. (Later models of the PowerBook feature a trackpad with scrolling capabilities; use two fingers on the trackpad instead of one, and the movements will be translated into multi-axis scrolling. This feature is available to my model and older using the cleverly titled trackpad driver iScroll2, which works really well.)

The built-in keyboard is one of the best ones I’ve ever used. The lettering and keys are both bigger than usual, making for very pleasant typing, and the keys bottom out at a good depth. The lettering is actually done through holes in the grey paint on the transparent keys, which aside from helping prevent wearout also allows for the lovely built-in backlighting. The ambient light sensors in the speaker grilles flanking the full height of the keyboard continually takes a first stab at adjusting not only the strength of the backlighting but also the brightness of the display. However, both these things and other things like display mirroring/extension and volume can be controlled manually through function keys on the keyboard. The hardware-aspects of these keys take precedence over acting as shortcuts or performing any normal action, but they are used as normally when used in conjunction with the “fn” modifier key. (This setting can also be reversed in System Preferences, as I have, which places hardware functions instead needing the “fn” modifier.) Num Lock and Caps Lock both carry green status lights right below their keys instead of being outsourced somewhere.

The only built-in expansion on the machine is that of memory. The two SO-DIMM PC2700 DDR 333 RAM slots is accessible below a screwed-shut plate on the bottom of the machine. Space is snug, as is the fit of the Phillips 00 screws - one is still loose from my last upgrade to 1.5GB, 0.5GB below the max.

Sleep, batteries, wear and tear, and power management

The official word from Apple on the battery life of this PowerBook is “up to 4.5 hours” (5+ hours on newer models) but as always, you should take official claims of battery life with a veritable salt mine. I can count the number of times I’ve experienced a 3.5 hour session on one severed hand, and average sessions during my first months normally net between 2.5 and 3 hours. After a year of heavy use, the battery is down to fluctuating between 1.7 and 2.1 hours, which I guess is well done.

Your battery status is visible through a “menu extra”, positioned in the far right of the menu bar, next to AirPort status and the current time, and can be shown as an icon, optionally with the percentage or remaining battery time in text. The icon’s charge bar turns up red when around 25 minutes is left, and when the AC adapter charge cord is plugged in, a cord is shown in place of the bar, with no way to see the charge progress unless you also show any of the text. As a nice touch, the ring on the charge plug lights up amber when the computer is charging and green on full battery, which aside from serving as an amateur battery meter also shows very clearly if the cord is plugged in or not. Five LEDs on the battery acts as a simple load indicator on the battery - they will light up green when a button is pressed, and if the load is between steps, the “highest” LED will blink instead of staying lit.

Mac OS X offers about the same power management features as Windows XP. You can adjust automatic computer or display sleep, let the display dim when approaching automatic display sleep, let the display dim slightly when using battery or AC, allow the system to wake up on modem ringing or usage of Bluetooth keyboards or mice, and as a nice touch reduce the processor speed to conserve battery - or choose to run on full throttle at all times. These settings can be saved as optimization schemes and the battery and AC can each have their own optimization schemes. Furthermore, the automatic startup/resume and shutdown or sleep can be scheduled on a regular basis - however, only one rule each is allowed, and the day selection only consists of weekdays, weekend days, all days or a single day of the week, so anything vaguely esoteric is not allowed.

(The very newest PowerBook model also features ‘Safe Sleep’, a feature mirroring that of Hibernation in Windows in what it does, but not in how it’s activated. Safe Sleep takes over when your battery is at absolute zero and no other power is available and saves everything to disk with the help of an extra internal battery. When starting up the PowerBook again, the state is restored to what you had when you last closed the lid. Hacks are available for activating it on earlier models, but have reportedly also temporarily disabled fans and cooling. )

Battery aside, the PowerBook has held up remarkably well for a year of fairly intensive use. No actual scratches or scuffs are to be found, but a small portion of the bottom right (near the bottom edge but in line with the arrow keys on the keyboard) has lost a small web-like system of paint, allowing the true dark gray color of the inside body to shine through. The aluminum body looks its best when cleaned about once every third month with a damp cloth, and quickly accumulates small blotches of dirt or occasionally sweat. It’s also (unsurprisingly) cold when unused for many hours, which may lead you to dropping it by reflex if you’re not prepared.

It’s also almost a crime to not mention the nicely designed AC adapter - a small square with rounded corners. In one corner is a place to plug in any of the two prongs that are supplied with the machine (one with a long cord and one with the plug immediately on the prong) or any other international prongs (available from the Apple Store as a “traveller’s kit”). In the two corners surrounding the cord to the computer, two hooks fold out, onto which you can wind the cord when not in use. If there’s a case to be made for the PowerBook being well-designed, the AC adapter cements it.

Performance

Let’s make this clear up front: You do not buy a PowerBook G4 because of performance. The only possible exception is if you were using, say, a PowerBook G3 before, which I was.

The PowerBook G4 is, even today, two revisions newer, dog-slow when compared to PC laptops in the same price range (and the equivalent equipment), or even iMacs that retail for around half the price. The frontside bus is clocked at 167MHz, and virtually the same G4 chip that debuted several years ago with the original Titanum PowerBook G4 is still in, only clocked 1GHz higher.

However, perceived performance is not as bad as it sounds. Mac OS X demands a lot of memory but can get buy with a relatively slow CPU. Mac OS X is, on all counts, about as fast as Windows XP. If you use way more resources than the computer has, the same thing happens on both OS X and on XP - swapping and lagging performance. This should not come as a raging shock to anyone.

OS X is all about the bling-bling, so to speak - to start with, windows have an irregular shape (the title bar has rounded corners) and a shadow instead of actual borders (resizing, as you may know, is performed by the handle in the bottom right). Every window that has a system-standard toolbar also has a white pill-shaped button in the top right corner - clicking it pulls up (or down) the toolbar between the title bar and the rest of the window, animated of course. Right-clicking on the toolbar and choosing customize slots down a sheet - an OS X invention for attaching window-modal dialogs to their windows - and you can drag in new items. When you drag an item on or around the toolbar, the other items slide into place, and when you drag it outside the toolbar and drop it, it disappears in a puff of smoke (as does icons in the Dock when you drag them off). This is not your father’s Office Customize dialog.

With polish and items swooshing around like this, it’s not hard to understand why OS X feels just a little lagging. When you resize complex windows, they resize in real time, but can’t keep up with the mouse. There’s a price of all this animation, and it’s a small performance hit. However, every (major) upgrade to Mac OS X has sped up and optimized the window system (along with the rest of the OS), and I guess Moore’s law will solve the rest of the equation in due time. In the meantime, added memory will aid you greatly. If you can afford to get a PowerBook, skimping on the memory positively degrades the whole experience.

To sum up, performance is almost never unbearable. Only when juggling several thousands photos in iPhoto, rendering transitions with iMovie on high-resolution DV or carry lots of web browser tabs does the machine go beyond quivering and significantly drop. But the fact remains that this isn’t your Mac if you’re looking for performance, and it is only the fourth fastest Mac in Apple’s current catalogue*****.

About Intel

When I got my PowerBook G4 late 2004, the general opinion was that a PowerBook using the 64-bit G5 processor (by then used in all desktop offerings) would finally come out in the first half of 2005. It is impossible to not draw parallels to the current situation, where speculation runs rampant that the new Intel-based Macs will start come out already in early 2006 instead of June 2006 as previously reported, and where the fact remains that Apple’s laptops are in desperate need of a better architecture and faster performance.

My only advice to those finding themselves in the buy-now-or-not situation, much like I did, is that if you really do need it, you’ll buy it now. If you desperately need a new laptop but will want to get the Intel PowerBooks as soon as they come out, I suggest getting an iBook - Apple’s lower-end laptop, which is cheaper and actually have better AirPort reception, and then wait out the early bugs of the Intel PowerBooks when they arrive. (Apple had a hardware exchange program when they last upgraded their Macs, with which you could exchange the Mac you ordered within 14 days of the announcement for a newer one if you ordered on the online Apple Store - however, the site is now gone, and the program seems unlikely to return.)

Summary

The PowerBook G4 is a competent, well-designed computer. It is certainly the cleanest laptop on the market today, but it fights some performance problems. Much the same thing can be said about the Mac OS X operating system.

Tons of software is now available for OS X. In the vast majority of cases, there will be an alternative to your previous OS 9, Windows or *nix software, and there are ways of continuing to run it on your new Mac if needed.

Above all, I do not in the least regret getting a PowerBook, and switching the majority of my personal computing tasks (email, instant messaging, feed reading and development) to it. And that’s something I honestly didn’t expect when I got it.

** Resources are needed in order to perform a comparative review with PowerMac G5 Quad models. Please send me your funds if you’re interested in such a thing. {Back to the article}

*** Target Disk mode is a feature of most modern Macs with which you can hold down the key T at startup to make the Mac’s HD act as a native Firewire HD. Some earlier, pre-Firewire models featured a SCSI-based Target Disk mode. {Back to the article}

**** While you can safely press Command-Q (the Mac OS Quit shortcut) to quit the assistant at this point as most of the configuration has already been done, it’s also be possible to simply press Next and skip sending this data to Apple. {Back to the article}

***** Following Power Mac G5, Xserve G5 and iMac G5. {Back to the article}