Apple's new PowerBook: Picture-perfect package

Ken Mingis   Today’s Top Stories   or  Other Macintosh OS Stories  

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November 30, 2005 (Computerworld) -- They heard me.

For a while now, I've railed about Apple Computer Inc.'s refusal to bump up the resolution of its PowerBook line -- especially in light of the higher-resolution screens widely available on Windows laptops.

Whenever I asked Apple officials about the issue, the standard answer was that the company wanted to keep its screens at about 100 pixels per inch for readability reasons. At high resolutions, they said, text can get tiny.

Well, it looks like tiny text is in.

Last month, Apple finally came through for me -- and for all of those high-res fans who've wanted the same thing. The company unveiled a tweaked 17-in. PowerBook boasting a screen resolution of 1,680 by 1,050 pixels, 36% more than before and essentially the same resolution as the company's popular 20-in. Cinema Displays. The 15-in.-model screen was also changed and now sports almost the same resolution as the old 17-in. one. (Both models now support Apple's 30-in. Cinema Display, in case you want even more screen real estate.)

In addition to using new screens, Apple boosted battery life in the midrange and top-end PowerBooks by about an hour, although battery life estimates are like gas mileage stickers on new cars. A lot depends on how you drive.

While the 12-in. PowerBook remains basically unchanged, Apple did make its SuperDrive standard and dropped the price on its entry-level model to $1,499. The 15-in. PowerBook now sells for $1,999, with the 17-in. iteration going for $2,499. All three include 802.11g wireless cards and Bluetooth 2.0, and on the pricier models, illuminated keyboards.

The upshot: In what may very well be the last of the G4 processor-based PowerBooks, Apple has created its best overall laptops yet. True, the processor speed is stuck at 1.67 GHz, something unlikely to change until the company moves to Intel processors over the next year or so. But no one buys a PowerBook expecting a speed demon. You buy it for Mac OS X, for the seamless integration of hardware and software, and for the elegance of Apple's industrial design.

For the past month or so, I've been using a new top-of-the-line PowerBook on loan from Apple. I also talked with Gail Nishimura, senior product manager for PowerBooks at Apple, about the changes to the lineup.

"This product line is all about higher-resolution displays, higher battery life and making the SuperDrives standard," Nishimura said. "We're very proud that we were able to give people the extra resolution and the battery life ... without having to change the size [of the PowerBook itself]. A lot of people really love that [screen] real estate."

Apple also announced that the new screens are as much as 46% brighter than older PowerBooks, something made possible by the use of prism light-guide panel screens and incremental changes to pixel design and the lamp refractor behind the screen, according to Nishimura. I can't tell you from personal use whether the new screen is actually that much brighter than the old screen. To my 44-year-old eyes, they look equally bright, depending on the viewing angle. (In fact, the new screen seems to have a bit more of a color shift than the older screen when you look at it from different angles.)

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