Apple CEO Steve Jobs naturally had “one more thing” to announce during his keynote speech today at Macworld San Francisco. The thing was the PowerBook G4 Titanium, which combines “power and sex” in a form thinner than a Sony Vaio subnotebook, Jobs said.
The new PowerBook, totally redesigned from the ground up, is made of titanium “like the spy planes,” said Jobs.
“Real, commercial grade titanium. It’s stronger than steel and lighter than aluminum.”
The titanium PowerBook also has a G4 processor with Velocity Engine, 1 MB L2 cache, a Rage Mobility 182 chip; 8MB of graphics memory; 15.2 inch “megawide” screen; a built-in, slot-loading DVD drive; and five-hour battery life. And the new portable, which comes in two flavors, is only an inch thick and weighs only 5.3 pounds.
In praising the megawide screen, Jobs pointed out that it was leaner than his finger with a border so thin that it looks as if the cursor will fly off its edge. Compared to the Sony Vaio Z5050, the Titanium PowerBook has a larger screen (15.2 inches compared to 12.1), is thinner (1.0 inches compared to 1.15), tougher (titanium compared to magnesium), offers longer battery life (five hours compared to two), and a better optical drive (a DVD-ROM compared to, well, none).
The new portable has built-in 10/100 Ethernet, USB, FireWire, VGA and S-video output; and is AirPort ready with integrated antennas. The new PowerBook line will be available in January through The Apple Store and Apple Authorized Resellers in two standard configurations:
Additional build-to-order options include: a 30 GB hard drive; up to 1GB of SDRAM; and the AirPort Base Station and AirPort Card; and the AppleCare Protection Plan.