Ode to the Clamshell iBook G3 – a.k.a. “The Toiletseat”
lunduke.substack.com
lunduke.substack.com
This allowed for third party keyboards to be installed - https://web.archive.org/web/20060216223326/http://www.finger...
I get that they removed this feature to facilitate a unibody design later (weight/thinness), but I sorta wish they brought it back so one could possibly 'detach' the keyboard for desk / laptop stand use.
Beyond the ability to swap in an alternate keyboard the ability to pull out the keyboard and clean it well was amazing. The amount of junk which came out of that keyboard when you removed it and tapped it on the table was equal parts fascinating and disgusting.
Overall I don't lament the old laptops too much. While they made it easier to clean, the newer laptops seem to catch far less stuff.
Plus, the power cable on that generation of computer was... Awful. This was pre-magsafe and the center pin of the cable, which looked like a headphone connector, would break off INSIDE the computer. It was a huge hassle resulting in multiple returns until someone from the apple store figured out a trick with a toothpick and some super glue.
https://techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/everything-you-need-to-kno...
These had pretty fun power adapters too - they were round and the laptop-side cord looped around the adapter itself. I miss the days of Apple adapters having built-in storage for the laptop-side cord - they seem to have dropped this functionality with the switch to USB-C.
The keyboards on every generation of Apple computer with under-keyboard memory were atrocious though - like truly amongst the worst keyboards of all time.
Of course, there's always the risk of tripping on a cable and sending a laptop or phone flying, which MagSafe mitigated. But the USB-C cable also disconnects at both ends which helps a bit. And I think we spend less time charging in general now days. Laptop batteries were pretty terrible back in 1999 compared to the all-day battery life of our modern M1 Macs :)
Great feedback, spring-like feel and good travel.
When the "iceBook" replacement finally shipped in 2001, the new rectangular, lighter and thinner design was universally praised as much better:
https://lowendmac.com/2001/12-500-mhz-ibook-g3-dual-usb-mid-...
I remember this 2001 iBook was the first Mac for a lot of people who wouldn't have considered buying an Apple product previously. The Titanium PowerBook G4 with Mac OS X had started creating some interest in the new Apple, but it was way too expensive. The $1,299 iBook was a much more reasonable entry into the world of Unix Mac.
The later G3 and G4 iBooks were well timed, however.
https://twitter.com/mattl/status/1432507439929303042?s=20
Working optical drives in these older machines is an issue.
He never bothered to explain why he thinks so. Apple fans are a little too fond of describing their favored products using this word. Counterpoint: like most other technology, they actually work (or fail to work) according to laws which are known, and do so in comprehensible (in principle) ways. Enough with the "magical", already.
It's not simply a placeholder, but refers to a very specific Apple-ness which most are insufficiently articulate to describe in detail.
You know it when you see it, even in non-Apple products (like DJI, for example).
It must be a combination of the delight when I used them, a quirkiness which means I don't experience it anymore, and nostalgia. But I think I know what Lunduke means when he says magical, so I'm ok with that.
Learned programming in an Apple IIc, and I still remember how much I liked the Apple's and Macintosh computers. Anyway my second computer was an IBM PC, because I wanted to keep up to date with tech. Never liked the colorful clamshell, the lamp, or the fish bowl. But looking at the pixaleted rainbow apple logo in the UI brings the magic back.
How fast we moved from a world of computers are our friends, to computers want to spy and take money from us.
The only bad part of the design was in the power chord, which like many of those era's cables, suffered from fraying at the point of connection.
It was particularly great to be able to save school work to an FTP server (or run one yourself from the iBook) and then print from the network computers in the lab. No floppy, no problem
(crowd goes wild)
I do miss the colourful, cutesy but extremely capable Mac's of the G3/G4 era. I'm sure it's rose tinted glasses on my part, but computing seemed much more fun and positive back then :/
The new M1 iMacs bring that back a bit. Wouldn’t be surprised to see it spread to the MacBook Air.
It blows my mind a little that I can plug it right into my network and access my modern synology NAS without any special configuration on either side.
It was the first device I owned that had WiFi but I never used it back then and sold the airport pcmcia card. The screen resolution was decent for the time, and it was as expandable as PC laptops.
They were incredibly robust, the claim was that they were made out of the same plastic as crash helmets. I don't know how true that actually was, but they did seem to be able to withstand knocks pretty well.
A great laptop for people who actually travelled around with them rather than using them as desktop replacements.
Four hours later, I came back home, and the thing was still running.
You could argue that it was just sitting at the folder-question-mark icon and doing nothing useful, but I'm assuming that it also meant no power saving features were enabled by the kernel (at least, that's how it works in the PC world - I was quickly disparaged of the notion that running DOS instead of Windows 98 just for my text editor would give me better battery life).