Just two months after Apple boosted the 15″ Titanium PowerBook to 1 GHz, they surprised a lot of people by rolling out both the largest and the smallest PowerBooks ever, including this 17-incher. The 17″ PowerBook G4 is Apple’s first portable with a 17″ display. It’s also the first PowerBook with a fiber optic LED-backlit keyboard and two FireWire ports, including one FireWire 800 port. New features include built-in Bluetooth and support for “five times faster” 802.11g AirPort Extreme.

Along with the 12″ PowerBook G4, it is the first Apple portable to ship with Nvidia GeForce 4 440 Go graphics, as well as DDR SDRAM. The newest PowerBooks also use aluminum cases, rather than titanium, which helps with AirPort range. Battery life is rated at 4.5 hours, down from 5 hours on the 15″ TiBook. Not a bad compromise for a huge display.

Setting the Bar

This 17″ PowerBook G4 (and later the 15″ from September 2003) set the groundwork for Apple’s notebook design all the way through the Early 2008 MacBook Pro. The last Apple notebooks which carried the design of this PowerBook G4 were sold all the way through October 14th, 2008, giving this design a 2,111 day run. Many people still look back at this design and hold it in high regard.

Closed Lid Mode

All PowerBook G4s support “lid closed” (or clamshell) mode, which leaves the built-in display off and dedicates all video RAM to an external display.

To used closed lid mode, your ‘Book must be plugged into the AC adapter and connected to an external display and a USB or Bluetooth mouse and keyboard (you might also want to consider external speakers). Power up your ‘Book until the desktop appears on the external display and then close the lid. Your ‘Book will go to sleep, but you can wake it by moving the mouse or using the keyboard. The built-in display will remain off, and the external monitor will become your only display. Since all video RAM is now dedicated to the external monitor, you may have more colors available at higher resolutions.

The PowerBook G4 is designed to run safely in closed lid mode, but if yours runs hot (perhaps due to overclocking or high ambient temperatures), you may want to open the lid when in closed lid mode: The screen will remain off and the computer will more easily vent heat from the CPU.

To resume use of the internal display, you need to disconnect the external display, put the computer to sleep, and then open the lid. This will wake up your ‘Book and restore use of the built-in display.

What You Need to Know

• This PowerBook G4 17″ has the ATA/100 standard, so it is not limited to the 128GB drive limitation of earlier models.
• The bootable drive size limit for this model is 2.19 TB, via the Apple Partition Map. This ‘Book can read and write (but cannot boot) from any size GUID partition table drive.

Details

• Announced January 7th, 2003
• Apple model number: A1013 (EMC N/A)
• Model ID: PowerBook5,1
• Order Number: M8793LL/A
• Nickname: Big AlBook
• Discontinued on September 16th, 2003

How it stacks up in Geekbench

• Version 2.4.3: 576 (1 Ghz) / 918 (1.6 SP G5)

Unsupported Mac OS 9/ Mac OS X

• Although it is not officially supported, the 17″ PowerBook G4 1 Ghz can run Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard using a MacRumors community developed build. It is currently still in development based off the Darwin 10.8.0 kernel compiled from source. See LEM Article.
• It is also possible to install Mac OS 9 “unofficially” using the “Mac OS 9 Lives!” disk image.

Mac OS X

• Requires Mac OS X 10.2.4 Jaguar through Mac OS X 10.5.8.

Core System

This PowerBook G4 shipped with a PowerPC G4 Motorola 7455 180nm CPU. System Bus is 167 MHz, and the CPU is soldiered (not on any card or socket).

• ($3299): 1 Ghz, 1 Processor, 1 Core, 1 Thread, 1 Core Per-CPU
  21.3W TDP, 64KB L1, 256KB L2, 1MB DDR SDRAM backside L3, 33M Transistors
  CPU Instructions: Altivec Velocity Engine, VMX, VMX128, AND, XOR, OR
  .
• ROM: 1 MB NewWorld ROM, other instructions loaded into RAM.

Video

Mac includes DVI-to-VGA adapter, and an S-Video to Composite adapter in box.

• ($3299): GeForce4 440 Go, 64 MB DDR SDRAM @~6.4 GB/s, Celcius, 128-Bit Bus
  • 29 Million Transistors, 150 nm process size, AGP 4x @ 1066 MB/s,
  • 220 MHz GPU clock, 220 MHz Memory clock (440 Mb/s effective), ~7-15W TDP
  • 2 Pixel Shaders, 4 TMUs, 2 ROPs, DX7, OpenGL 1.5, Pixel 1.1 Vertex 1.1
    .
• Built-In 17″ Active Matrix, TFT (Thin Film Transistor), CCFL-Backlit LCD Display with a native resolution at 1440 x 900.
  • “Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 24-Bit, millions of colors and a Dual/Mirror display setup with a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536″

Memory

• 512 MB 333 MHz PC-2700 DDR SDRAM ~2.666 GB/s
  • Configurable to 1 GB through Apple, unofficially can use 2 GB.
• Note: Although the 17″ PowerBook G4 supports up to 2 GB of RAM, Mac OS 9 is only able to recognize up to 1.5 GB of RAM (if you plan on installing Mac OS 9 Lives!)

Drives

• 60 GB 4200 rpm ATA/100 IDE (ATA-6)
• 2X SuperDrive (Write: DVD-R 2x, CD-R 8x, CD-RW 4x)
  • (Read: DVD 6x, CD-ROM 24x)

Expansion/Misc

• 2x USB 1.1 ports
• 1x FW 400 port
• 1x FW 800 port
• Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45 style connector)
• 56k v.92 Modem (RJ-11 style connector)
• WiFi: IEEE 802.11g AirPort Extreme (Wifi 3, 54 Mb/s)
• Fiber Optic LED-Backlit keyboard with Ambient Light Sensor
• Bluetooth 1.1
• 1x PCMCIA slot: supports Type II cards only
• Singular Internal Microphone
• Stereo Speakers
• S-Video Port
• 3.5 mm Headphone Jack
• 3.5 mm Microphone Jack
• Kensington Security Lock
• Apple barrel jack style power plug

Battery

• 55.5 Watt-Hour Lithium-Ion Battery (Est. 5400 mAh)
  • Estimated by Apple to last 4.5 hours under “normal conditions”

Included In Box

• 1 GHz 17″ PowerBook G4
• “Square” style 65 Watt Power Brick
• Power Brick extension cord
• Power Brick 2-Prong wall socket adapter
• “Designed by Apple in California” sheet
• DVI to VGA adapter
• S-Video to Composite adapter
• Modem Cable (RJ-11 style connector)
• iLife Packet may be included
• 17″ PowerBook G4 software restore CDs (Mac OS X Jaguar 10.2.4)
• Documentation includes quite a few things:
  • A User’s guide, Apple stickers, Warranty Information, AppleCare, Software License Agreement, Mac OS X Jaguar Documentation, Coupons, Product Registration info, Airport Information, Information Transfer Guide, and a Bluetooth Guide.

Physical

• Size:H/W/D 1.0 x 15.4 x 10.2 in/2.6 x 39.2 x 25.9 cm
• Weight: 6.8 lb./3.1 kg

LEM Mail lists

• Got a G4 PowerBook or iBook? Join our G4 ‘Books Group or PowerBooks and iBooks Forum.
• Got a PowerBook G4? Join the Titanium G4 email list.
• Our Mac OS 9 Group is for those using Mac OS 9, either natively or in Classic Mode.
• Our Jaguar Group is for those using Mac OS X 10.2.
• Our Panther Group is for those using Mac OS X 10.3.
• Our Tiger Group is for those using Mac OS X 10.4.
• Our Leopard Group is for those using Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6.

Online Resources

• Full list of online resources for the 17″ PowerBook G4 (Early 2003) on a separate page.

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