August 25, 1995: Apple releases the PowerBook 5300, the Mac laptop that will save the world from alien invaders in the 1996 blockbuster movie Independence Day.
The computer will make many more big-screen appearances, too. See some of the laptop’s most high-profile Hollywood cameos below.
August 16, 1993: Apple ships the PowerBook 165, a lower-cost, grayscale version of the PowerBook 165c, which was the company’s first laptop to offer a color display.
The new model lacks the most attention-grabbing feature of the 165c, but it also brings its own claim to fame. The PowerBook 165 is Apple’s most affordable laptop yet.
June 7, 1993: Apple debuts the PowerBook 180c, a solid upgrade that brings a world of dazzling colors to the company’s laptop line.
The 180c’s big improvement over the grayscale PowerBook 180, which launched the previous October, is its active-matrix, 256-color screen. Such a screen is something of a novelty for laptops in the early 1990s.
May 10, 1999: The third-generation PowerBook G3 comes in 20% slimmer and 2 pounds lighter than its predecessor, but most people remember the laptop for its “bronze” keyboard.
Although it doesn’t get a new name to distinguish it from previous laptops in the lineup, fans call it “Lombard” after Apple’s internal code name (or simply the “PowerBook G3 Bronze Keyboard”).
May 8, 1997: Apple launches the PowerBook 2400c laptop, a 4.4-pound “subnotebook” that’s the MacBook Air of its day.
The PowerBook 2400c predicts the rise of speedy, lightweight notebooks, while also paying tribute to Apple’s past. Its design echoes the original PowerBook 100. Even years later, it remains a cult favorite among many Mac users.
Any list of the most revolutionary Apple products includes the original Mac, iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Too often overlooked is the PowerBook 100 series, Apple’s first laptops.
On the anniversary of the launch, I can explain why the series was groundbreaking. I had a PowerBook 140, and it’s as important to Apple history as the original iPhone.
Surely you already know that the newly redesigned MacBook Air is super thin. But you might not have realized just how very sleek it is. It’s actually slimmer than the original iPhone.
In fact, the macOS laptop is much, much thinner than a lot of other classic and recent Apple devices.
A couple of news outlets are flipping their lid over the news that Apple has filed a new worldwide trademark for the word “PowerBook,” the name of Apple’s pre-MacBook laptop series, which ran from 1991 until 2006.
The suggestion is that this could mean that Apple’s bringing back its iconic laptop brand name, either as a replacement for, or to run alongside, the MacBook series. We’re not so sure!
Many of us have old MacBooks and PowerBooks collecting cobwebs and dust bunnies in the back of our closets. It seems an ignominous end to a computer that we not only loved, but probably spent a lot of money on. Did we waste our cash on something little better than a dust collector?
That’s what TNW co-founder Patrick de Laive wanted to know, so he ended up asking himself what would have happened if he’d bought Aple stock back in 2003 instead of spending $3,299 for the 17-inch PowerBook G4 back in April of 2003. The answer is that today, he could buy a starter home with the money he’d have earned on AAPL, while a PowerBook G4 on eBay can be had for under $50. Woof.
Source: The Next Web
When you open up your MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro, the glowing Apple logo on its hood sits upright so that everyone in Starbucks knows that you’re using a Mac. However, it hasn’t always been that way. There was a time when Apple logos were upside down on the lid of Apple notebooks, until Steve Jobs realized his mistake.
Smoking Apples has published a lovely post extolling the virtues of an ancient iBook G4, which given a little TLC and a wipe-and-install has been reborn as a perfectly functional household computer.
Things got a little heated in a London marketing firm when an Apple laptop (a PowerBook G4?*) started smoking, then burst into flames.
“When I got there, much of the smoke has dissipated and nothing much was happening. I picked up the notebook to investigate, and turned it over. Soon after I put it down again, it basically exploded. Flames were flying six feet high in the air, and sparks,” an unnamed IT manager told the Inquirer.
The fire is thought to have started in the battery, the IT manager said the computer was three-to-four years old.
“We are aware that there was a battery recall several years ago, it is entirely possible that the battery was one of those subject to that recall, but we can’t tell now as the battery is now just slag.”
The pics — melted keyboard, smoke, battery fused like a modern art sculpture — are worth a gander.
(*The story first identified the flaming computer as a MacBook, then Powerbook).
Via bit-tech
Canadian-born, Hong-Kong based actor and singer Edison Chen is in court against a computer technician after explicit nude photos of him and several starlets were posted on the Internet.
Chen says some 1,300 sex pics, including about a dozen celebrities, were illegally copied from a custom pink PowerBook that he brought in for repairs in 2006.
He’s testifying in a criminal case against Sze Ho-chun, a computer technician charged with obtaining access to Chen’s computer for dishonest gain.
Chen believed he had erased the files by putting them into the trash before the machine was handed over for repairs.
“I did not know about encrypted data or securing the trash. In my opinion, when you deleted a file and put it in the trash bin, it was deleted,” he said, adding that he later found out that files deleted from the trash could be recovered in some cases. Chen went on voluntary hiatus career after the scandal broke in early 2008, media reports that it halted careers of several of the women involved.
No matter if you have nude starlets or bad poetry or bank info on your Mac, this is about as nightmare as it gets.
To clean out an old MacBook to give to a friend recently, I tried out permanent eraser and (until the Internet proves me wrong) it seemed to do the trick…
Aside from remembering to take out the trash after binning it, what’s your preferred method of erasing data?
Via Globe & Mail, Guardian, AFP
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