I guess it was April of last year that I purchased my 12" PowerBook G4, replacing my 15" Titanium G4 running at 400 MHz. It's hard
to believe that I've had the 12" for almost a year, but I guess
time goes by fast.
Now that I've had considerable experience using it, I've gotten
very used to it. I know its little quirks, how long before the
battery will start getting worn down, and when it's going to start
getting warm under the palm rests.
I don't expect that my comments here will improve my machine,
but perhaps they will help Apple when it comes to designing new
PowerBooks.
Since the G5 has been out for a while, people have been
speculating that Apple will start using those chips in PowerBooks
at some point - and they probably will. My question is, if my 12"
PowerBook G4 gets hot, how hot will the PowerBook G5 get? I'm not
sure if I even want to know. Apple better make it run fairly cool,
otherwise people will be returning the machines like mad, and then
word will get out and sales could drop significantly.
The next concern is battery life. I get roughly 3 hours from my
12" PowerBook, which is perfect for me. I can get through all of my
classes with it, and I usually still have about 45 minutes of
running time left after the end of a school day. This is absolutely
perfect for me, as I can go home, add any comments I need to add to
class notes, and then charge the computer's battery.
Unfortunately, for the one 17"
PowerBook user our school has, the battery only makes it
through about two classes before it dies. I would laugh about it -
him spending $3,000+ on a computer only that doesn't even last
through the day on battery power - but it's really not funny.
For what the 17" PowerBook costs, you'd expect at least a 3-hour
battery life, if not longer. I've still got the poster for the
original PowerBook G4: 1" thick, 5.3 pounds, DVD, 5 hour
batteryÖ. See, "5 hour battery."
Okay, so it doesn't actually last for 5 hours (mine lasted about
3.5), but it's certainly better than the current 17" PowerBook's
battery life.
How about the iBook? From what I hear, the G3 iBook's battery
life was fairly good, a little bit longer than my 12" PowerBook.
That's to be expected considering the lower power demands of the G3
processor. Since I haven't used and don't know anyone who uses a G4
iBook, I can't compare that.
Apple needs to make sure that its portables have good enough
battery life. If you spend $3,500, you don't want a 2-hour battery.
You can get two hours out of a PowerBook
540c; you'd expect something a bit better out of a modern
PowerBook, even though it does have a larger screen, a faster
processor, and an internal CD drive.
Little performance quirks are also an issue. After not playing
any sound for a while, my G4 PowerBook's audio system seems to go
to sleep. When you want to play an MP3 file, or, just before a
system alert would sound, the machine makes an annoyingly audible
"pop." This is a small issue, but it drives me insane, so much so
that I leave the sound muted at all times. It should be an option
in System Preferences whether you want the audio system to shut off
to save power, and I think Apple should address this on the newer
PowerBooks (if it hasn't already been done on the 1 GHz 12" PowerBook G4).
The machine also takes a very long time to open up the
Applications folder and display all of the files in that folder.
This shouldn't be an issue on an 867 MHz G4. Most likely this is an
OS issue, as I recall the listing of Applications being slightly
faster under Jaguar. Maybe the 10.3.3 update will fix this - one
can only hope.
The last issue is the hinge. For a while there were no issues:
It was completely silent. This past summer, however, it started
making creaking noises while opening and closing the screen. The
screen still stays open fine, stays closed fine, and works just as
well as it ever did, except for the slightly annoying noise. I
simply can't live without the computer long enough to have it
fixed, provided Apple would even fix this, which they might regard
as "cosmetic" since it doesn't affect the performance of the
machine.
Given that mine was one of the earlier production models, I
can't expect it to be as perfect as a later version. But when it
comes to designing a PowerBook G5, Apple should look back at the
annoyances that plagued users of previous models and make sure they
are eliminated in the new one.
After all, there are will probably be a whole new set of
annoyances present in the first G5 PowerBooks - to be eliminated in
the Rev. 2 models.
