Two separate reviews of the new PowerBook G4 recently made the Hot News page of Apple’s Web site. Journalists from both Business Week and the Mercury News have written glowing reviews of new titanium-clad PowerBook.
Mercury News writer Jon Fortt called the PowerBook G4 “a landmark achievement,” and said it’s the laptop that Mac fans have been waiting for.
Fortt said that he’d like to see a DVD/CD-RW combo available, similar to what PC laptop manufacturers have announced, and he thought the 128MB of RAM included in the PowerBook G4 was a tad skimpy as well. Still, said Fortt, the PowerBook blew him away.
Despite the PowerBook G4’s size (only an inch thick) and weight (5.3 pounds), Fortt called the PowerBook “a wrestler not a waif, and it doesn’t sacrifice capabilities that ultralights do.”
Business Week writer Stephen H. Wildstrom, meanwhile, said that Apple could reshape the laptop with some of the innovations introduced with the PowerBook G4.
The PowerBook G4 “offers brains, beauty, and brawn in a slick package,” wrote Wildstrom. “Until now, if you wanted a very thin notebook, you had to make an important sacrifice: There was no room inside the box for a removable media drive, such as a CD-ROM, or DVD. That means adding an external drive, which I find so clumsy on the road that the benefits of a thin, light notebook aren’t worth it.”
Wildstrom said the comparatively huge screen of the titanium PowerBook G4 makes sense, considering the key audience for the new laptop is Web page designers and other professionals in graphics and visual arts. “It’s almost like working with two monitors, as is commonly done in studios,” wrote Wildstrom.
Wildstrom notes some shortcomings, such as the PowerBook’s heat dissipation, lack of CD-RW support, and a keyboard that “could also stand some stiffening,” he wrote, “But these are quibbles.”
“Once again, Apple is forcing a useful rethinking of some badly outdated assumptions,” said Wildstrom.
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