Posted on 12-1-2003

Apple Thinks Big, and Small
By DAVID POGUE, NYT, 10 Jan02

SAN FRANCISCO -- The number 128 is important in personal computing. Because
it's a tidy power of two, it often defines quantities of things like
megabytes, megahertz and megawatts. But for Apple at the annual Macworld
Expo trade show, 128 was a more important number. It was the number of
times the audience interrupted Steve Jobs's keynote speech with applause.

Part of that reaction, to be sure, had to do with Mr. Jobs's legendary
onstage charisma. Part of it, however, was also that his company had a lot
of products to unveil.

The parade began with gracefully improved versions of Apple's flagship
multimedia programs: iPhoto 2 (for organizing and exhibiting digital
photos), iMovie 3 (for editing camcorder video) and iDVD 3 (for turning
those finished videos into Blockbuster-style DVD's), all to reach the
market on Jan. 25. There were new programs, too, like Final Cut Express, a
$300 junior version of the $1,000 Final Cut Pro editing software beloved by
professional video and film editors. Then Mr. Jobs dropped a pair of
software bombshells sure to thrill Mac fans, and infuriate Microsoft.

First, he introduced a Web browser called Safari (a free download at
www.apple.com, for Mac OS X only). Its three most important features are
speed, speed and speed, loading Web pages in a third the time of
Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Next, he introduced Keynote, a presentation
program like - or, rather, unlike - Microsoft's PowerPoint. The new Apple
program is a graphics powerhouse, not as full-featured as PowerPoint but
with far superior typographical and visual effects.

These programs may make life even easier for Mac fans, but may not persuade
many Windows users to leave what, at this trade show, is known as the Dark
Side. Yet Apple did show off something that might: two new laptops that lay
claim to superlatives like "biggest," "smallest" and "first."

Over the last year, Windows laptop makers have introduced models with
16-inch screens (measured diagonally). These behemoths, weighing up to 10
pounds and going dark after only two hours of battery life, are too
unwieldy to use on airplane tray tables - or even, paradoxically, on laps.
Their makers (like Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba and Sony) call them "desktop
replacements," implying that these babies have all the power of a standard
PC, with just enough portability to move occasionally to another location.

Anything they can do, Apple figures it can do better. In early March, Apple
will begin selling the first laptop with a 17-inch screen - 1,440 by 900
pixels, or enough to view two side-by-side Web pages with room to spare.
According to Apple, it's the same screen used on its best-selling desktop
model, the 17-inch iMac.

This 17-inch PowerBook G4 is a beauty, clad in unpainted, finely textured
aluminum alloy, rounded at the edges and completely flat (and very hot)
underneath. At 15.4 by 10.2 inches and only one inch thick when closed,
it's gorgeous and shockingly big, like a sterling-silver cafeteria tray
from Tiffany's.

Apple's engineers no doubt had a field day dreaming up cutting-edge
technologies to cram inside; you've never seen such a long laptop feature
list. In addition to the usual PowerBook amenities (Ethernet, S-video,
modem, two U.S.B. jacks, a PC card slot, and a drive that plays and burns
both CD's and DVD's), the new PowerBook offers several technologies that
are not only firsts for Apple, but, in some cases, for the computer
industry as well.

First, a Bluetooth transmitter is built in, so that the PowerBook can
communicate wirelessly with a similarly equipped Palm organizer or
cellphone (for an Internet connection). Second, one of its two FireWire
jacks can connect to a new breed of hard drives with so-called FireWire 800
connections, which can transfer data about twice as fast as regular
FireWire (and U.S.B. 2.0).

Third, the new PowerBook introduces 802.11g, a new version of the Wi-Fi
wireless networking technology that has become popular among laptop lovers
in coffee shops and airports. (Apple, understandably, gave it a less
user-hostile name: AirPort Extreme.)

The beauty of this new standard is that it is compatible with all existing
wireless "hot spots" - but if you buy Apple's new, $200 AirPort Extreme
base station, you can transfer files five times as fast.

Apart from its Montana-size screen, the new PowerBook's most glamorous
feature is its hidden light sensor. When it detects that you are working
in, say, a darkened movie theater, the screen automatically dims slightly
to save power. Then, amazingly, a fiber-optic light glows beneath the
keyboard. The light spills out around the keys and, in fact, through the
transparent letters on the keys themselves.

Frankly, the whole thing is a little silly; finding your way around the
keyboard just isn't much of an issue when a 17-inch floodlight is towering
above you. Still, the effect is undeniably spectacular. PowerBook owners
will soon be dragging loved ones into dark closets and basements for demos.

ou should also know four important statistics about this machine. It weighs
6.8 pounds, it contains a 1-gigahertz G4 processor, it manages 4.5 hours of
battery power per charge (according to Apple), and it costs $3,300.

Apple points out that no Windows "desktop replacement" laptop has a bigger
screen, lighter weight, better battery or slimmer profile - and that's all
true. But if you don't need state-of-the-art features like Bluetooth,
FireWire 800, and 802.11g wireless, some rivals come relatively close.
Sony's Vaio GRX600, for example, is thicker and heavier (eight pounds), and
the battery life isn't as good. But when equipped like the PowerBook
(60-gigabyte hard drive, 512 megabytes of memory, CD-DVD burner), it costs
$600 less. And don't tell Apple, but its 16-inch screen actually reveals
more of your spreadsheets and Web pages, because it has more pixels (1,600
by 1,200) packed into that space.

The other new PowerBook is another story. This time, Apple outdid itself in
the opposite direction. Apple calls its 12-inch PowerBook G4 the smallest
laptop it has ever made - and the smallest, lightest full-featured laptop
on earth. ("Full-featured" means that the CD burner and a full complement
of jacks are built in.)

The keyboard is identical to the one on its 17-inch counterpart. So how
could a full-size keyboard fit on a mini-notebook? Simple: Ingeniously,
Apple let it run all the way across, edge to edge. Without a millimeter of
margin, the keyboard just fits in the laptop's 10.9-inch width. (The other
dimensions: 8.6 inches deep and 1.2 inches thick.)

As it turns out, the little PowerBook inherits only some of the 17-incher's
hot new features: the aluminum case, 802.11g wireless transmitter (this
time, a $100 option), and built-in Bluetooth. It lacks the FireWire 800
jack, PC card slot, and the light-up keyboard. On the Internet some are
already calling it the "G4 iBook," as though it's just a faster, slightly
smaller and lighter version of Apple's inexpensive, ice-white iBook (which
runs on a slower, G3 chip) rather than a true sibling to the original,
15-inch wide-screen PowerBook G4 (which is still available).

But that's not fair; this little powerhouse is in a class by itself. You
can pick it up with one hand - it weighs only 4.6 pounds - and hide it from
jealous co-workers under a sheet of typing paper. Best of all, it costs
only $1,800. (For $200 more, you can get a CD-DVD burner instead of the CD
burner-DVD player.)

As Apple's latest big-and-small experiments illustrate, designing laptops
is no picnic. The trouble is that the world's wish list contains two
mutually incompatible kinds of specs. On one hand, everyone says that the
perfect laptop should be small, light and inexpensive; on the other hand,
it should also be rugged and powerful, with a big screen and full-size
keyboard.

Most people will probably find that the new 17-inch PowerBook grants plenty
of wishes in the second category at the expense of the wishes in the first.
But in the 12-inch PowerBook, Apple has found a sweet spot bigger than a
sugar plantation. It's worth 128 rounds of applause all by itself.