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Apple Thinks Big, and Small
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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.
You 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. |
