The 5 Best -- and 5 Worst -- Apple Laptops of All Time, Ever!

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The 5 Best -- and 5 Worst -- Apple Laptops of All Time, Ever!

Posted 11/11/2008 at 6:03:00am | by Michael Simon

laptops

For all the criticism over FireWire, 3G, matte screens and Blu-ray, the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros represent the culmination of two decades of hits and misses, starts and stops, leaps and stumbles for Apple notebooks, all wrapped in packages that never fail to turn heads. From multi-colored handles to upside-down logos, slide-in docks and illuminated keyboards, Apple’s portables have been nothing less than an evolution of blood, sweat, tears (and a few blueberries).

And we’ve sifted through them all to bring you the best and worst of the lot:

best laptops

Titanium PowerBook
Though Apple had already used its “Pro. Go. Woah.” teaser to ramp interest in the 1998 event to unveil the iMac, it easily could have recycled the slogan three years later when it took the wraps off the Titanium PowerBook G4. A release that’s just as stunning today as it was in 2001, the Titanium PowerBook G4 was unlike any portable the industry had ever seen -- all wrapped around a 15.2-inch mega-wide display, speedy chip and an inch-think body that weighed just five pounds. The cherry on top? Steve finally got the logo right.

IceBook
If it looked juvenile before, the super-sleek Titanium PowerBook G4 made the Blueberry iBook look downright foolish. So when, on May 1, 2001, Steve invited the media masses to a special event, an iBook redressing was widely anticipated -- but few were prepared for what Steve pulled out of his hat. As radical a departure from the fruit-flavored offerings as OS X or the sunflower iMac, the IceBook, as it quickly came to be known, marked a serious shift in Apple’s consumer strategy and ushered in the clean, crisp, white lines that would soon be synonymous with the In Crowd.

Pismo
A fitting sendoff to the PowerBook G3, the Pismo looked a lot like the Lombard it replaced, but closer inspection revealed a host of improvements that left the former model in its dust. With cues from the iBook, Pismo implemented the cost-saving, streamlined unified motherboard architecture, with a 400 or 500MHz processor and 100MHz front-side bus. FireWire? Check. AGP graphics? Check. Airport? Check. Expansion bay? Check. Still cool 10 years later? Check.

eMate 300
Better known as the PDA That Never Stood a Chance, the eMate was a stripped-down, retooled Newton built exclusively for students and teachers. With a near-30-hour battery; 480x320 resolution, backlit, touch-screen display; serial and IrDA ports; full-sized keyboard; and Newton OS 2.1, all housed in a tough, translucent-blue clamshell case with an $800 price tag, the eMate was a revelation that came at precisely the wrong time -- about four months before Steve Jobs regained his position as Supreme Ruler.

PowerBook Duo
Did somebody say subnotebook? Smaller than a sheet of looseleaf paper, and lighter than any MacBook, iBook, PowerBook or MacBook Pro (save the Air, which bests it by about a pound), the PowerBook Duo lasted for seven revisions (210, 230, 250, 270c, 280, 280c, and 2300c) and was just slightly ahead of its time. It wasn’t easy to to create a laptop in 1992 that can barely be replicated in 2008, so Apple was forced to sacrifice some in the Duo: the trackball’s diameter was reduced, the keyboard was trimmed by about 10 percent, and expansion (much like the Air) was dwindled down to a sole serial port and an optional 14.4k Express Modem. Unfortunately, the bezel around the screen was a bit too 1985, but the real charm of the Duo was its docking station, a full-sized sleeve with its own floppy drive, hard drive, expansion bays and L2 cache, and a body sturdy enough to support a full-sized CRT display. Now imagine if you could slide your MacBook into the side of your Cinema Display...

Next, the five worst Laptops to emerge from Cupertino.

COMMENTS: 27

TAGS: notebook

COMMENTS

Fruity iBooks still popular!
Submitted by tedbragg on Tue, 2008-11-11 09:33

Take a look on eBay or Craigslist -- the colorful laptops are still fetching upwards of $400 or more. There has never been a laptop as cool, nor will there ever be again. Wish I had one.

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Powerbook 160
Submitted by stevescherer on Tue, 2008-11-11 09:53

My first computer was a PowerBook 160. I loved this computer. With 12 Megs of RAM, an internal 14.4 modem and a 120 Meg hardrive, this was a graet computer. Don't forget the grayscale screen!

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5300
Submitted by Roberto Baldwin on Tue, 2008-11-11 09:56

I still have the 5300 and I'm still afraid it'll burst into flames and kill me when I'm not paying attention. I keep it in a fireproof safe, just in case.
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Notify me when you get around to giving me my floppy disks!
Submitted by LeftClicker on Fri, 2009-03-20 18:16

Nice, Robbie. Remember, it'll be while your Twittering.

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PowerBook G4
Submitted by hesshaus on Tue, 2008-11-11 14:27

hesshaus It's nice to know that the powerBook G4 that I purchased on E-bay is considered to be one of the best computers Apple has produced. Still learning, I am impressed with what it can do, and it's many features.

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Nerd!
Submitted by Ray Aguilera on Tue, 2008-11-11 14:37

The nerds I work with convinced me to buy an eMate off eBay during this week's podcast. Place your bets now to see how long it takes Mac|Life's geeks to get the thing browsing YouTube. Ha! -- Ray Aguilera Reviews Editor, Mac|Life
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La, la, la... I can't hear you...
Submitted by muttdog on Tue, 2008-11-11 14:51

I call my lime green Clamshell "Barbie's First Mac" and I always get lots of attention when I haul it out at my neighborhood Starbucks. Say what you will -- if I ever get around to writing that bestselling novel it will be hammered out on that old laptop.

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How difficult is it to get
Submitted by Ray Aguilera on Tue, 2008-11-11 21:12

How difficult is it to get text off the eMate and into OSX? Tips greatly appreciated.
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The 540c Rocked!!!
Submitted by honemastert on Wed, 2008-11-12 04:05

The last of the M68K machines. 68040, with dual smart batteries on either side. Open close the lid, for automatic standby, the thing could run in sleep mode like this with occasional use for a couple
of weeks!
Yes, I also had a 5300c. It went back for repairs at least 5 times. It was the straw that broke the proverbial 'camels back' at my company and turned us into a Windows.. (yuck) shop.

1400c was what this machine *should* have been! To this day, Macs of any shape/form are verbotten at my workplace.

Fortunately, no one can tell me what to use at home, where there is not a Windows machine in sight :-)

http://www.timschneider.org

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PowerBook Duo ++
Submitted by frankly on Wed, 2008-11-12 10:02

I still have my PowerBook Duo 230 in a closet at home. I did recently throw away the dock though because it had been sitting in a shed for years so who knows what was living inside of it ;-) I loved that computer and still think it was one of the best designs Apple ever made. You are absolutely right to include it on the top 5 list. The small dimensions and low weight of the Duo can not be emphasized enough. I did not hesitate to carry that thing with me to class or wherever when I had it. I also added the internal modem to mine, which required taking it completely apart. I bought the modem from someone on CompuServe at the time. Man, I miss CompuServe.

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Graphite iBook
Submitted by vicomposer on Wed, 2008-11-12 11:02

I liked the Tangerine and Blueberry ones, but didn't like the Indigo and Key Lime.However, I adored my Graphite iBook SE. I remember shelling the extra 200 clams for the color, the tv commercial was really cool too. I don't plan on ever getting rid of that machine, have great memories of that one (my MacBook's pretty nice too!)....and the handle was great, really convenient!

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12" PowerBook
Submitted by asiafish on Wed, 2008-11-12 12:09

"Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl, but she doesn't have a lot to say." - 1969 The Beatles

While the Titanium was the future, the little 12" PowerBook was Future Perfected. The new aluminum MacBook comes close to matching the magic balance that the 12" PowerBook struck back in 2003.

I still have my Rev B 1.0 GHz model, and while I also have a 15" MacBook Pro, the 12" remains the machine I grab for short trips. It is still in daily use, and remains an entirely pleasant and capable machine even today. It runs Leopard, Office 2008 and Acrobat Professional 8 just fine, and the only real performance issue is slow application launching.

It even still looks the part. I had it at the Apple Store to buy a new battery, which they actually had in stock, and customers asked me if it was "the new model".

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I've owned many of these...
Submitted by ckilner on Wed, 2008-11-12 12:42

The Powerbook 150 was my first Mac - I bought it for law school for $799 (edu discount) and its passive matrix screen helped it go all evening without plugging in (unlike PC users). A 33.6 modem was all the connectivity I needed back in the day (and I still have it today, but don't use it). I think it gets a bad rap - it could take lots of memory, cheap IDE HDs, and had great battery life... for 1/2 the price of other laptops. It was a great email and word processing laptop for its day (think netbook circa 1994). The Indigo (Firewire) iBook was my second Mac ($799 refurb). It is a classic and my daughter still uses it. It is hobbled by its 800x600 screen and impossible to access HD. The 800mhz G3 iceBook was my third Mac ($799 refurb... mmm I see a pattern here) and I still use it as my backup/travel mac. It is hobbled by its G3 chip not being Leopard-compatible, but runs Tiger great. I found a Mac Portable and a Duo 280c and enjoyed the Portable more (but not on the lap!). The Portable was blazingly fast with System 6.0.8 and had tons of pro apps on its Conner HD (Word 4, Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, Filemaker, etc.). It was sold (~$200) to a museum and the Duo was given to a friend for a photo frame project after it started falling apart (it had been set up with games for the kids). The 040 chip didn't seem any faster than the 030 chip in the PB150, but the 640x400 screen was noticably smaller than the 640x480 on the PB150, the battery ran out faster, and the keyboard/trackball were much harder to use.

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0 for 3
Submitted by MacSince87 on Thu, 2008-11-13 12:59

Not only did I purchase one of the worst iPods of all time, the 4G (see http://www.maclife.com/article/feature/5_best_and_5_worst_ipods_all_time_ever_0), I apparently bought two of the worst Apple laptops of all time; the Graphite iBook and the 15 inch PowerBook G4.

Say what you will, all three of these purchases have served me well (my wife still uses the iBook, originally purchased in 2000).

I'd still rather buy some of Apple's worst products than some of Microsoft's best.

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hesshausCurious. I'm the
Submitted by hesshaus on Mon, 2008-11-24 19:42

hesshausCurious. I'm the guy that recently purchased a 15" Titanium POWERBOOK G4 on E-bay. This is my first Mac, and so far I am very satisfied with it. In the article on the Best and Worst Macs produced, which has caused all of these comments, I understood the article to say that that the G4 was one of the best, not one of the worst. Did I misread something?

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No love for the PB 1400?
Submitted by Adam Berenstain on Thu, 2008-11-13 13:59

The 1400 had a a great keyboard and was E-Z to upgrade. It was boxy in a good, "Volvo" way, too. Nice to see the Duo getting its...er...due, though. That was a fun little machine. I had a 2300c for a while. No old-fashioned trackball on that model: it employed the latest in "track-pad" technology. Ahh, those were the days when "notebooks" were things made out of paper and all laptops were made out of plastic.
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Myths and Legends
Submitted by Falstaff46 on Thu, 2008-11-13 18:14

Nice to see so many are keeping the PB 5300 battery myth alive. Too bad it was only in two pre-production machines, never any actual production machines. Also interesting no one ever blames Sony as they manufactured the defective battery in question. So you can take your unit out of the fire proof safe. It won't flame out on you as the issue was corrected before the PB was released.
I have to agree that the PB 1400 was an incredible machine and is still preferred by many road warriors for it's great keyboard.
An emate is more pda than laptop. you must have needed to find that 5th real bad. Good luck getting it to browse YouTube, as in "aint gonna happen".
The Duo''s were cute but had awful keyboards that did not work half the time, at least not until the rev F versions.
The Duo that should be on the list is the 2400, though never sold in the US it still has a huge following, especially in Japan.
I have to agree with the comments on the 12inch Alum PB. Mine is a workhorse and the small size makes i easy to lug around and it always delivers. And with enough ram, runs Leopard respectably, at least mine does.
All for now fellow Ludites.

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Paris ibook
Submitted by oldmacguy on Mon, 2008-11-17 17:29

Well, I dunno. My wife had been wanting a notebook, and when she saw the lime green iBook, she said "That's the one!" We just relegated it to secondary status to her Macbook Air. The old iBook still chugs along with 584 mb of (that's the max it will hold) RAM and the last version of Tiger, although OS X on the 800x600 screen is a little problematic (lots of scrolling back and forth). She loved the color and the carrying handle. Not everyone who owns a computer is a geek.

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Pismo
Submitted by photolab on Mon, 2008-11-17 18:14

If Apple really wanted to offer the "professional" power book user a real note book computer, they would produce another “Pismo” style power book incorporating internal dual batteries, interchangeable Blue Ray dual layer DVD super drive, 6-8 gigs of ram, 2.5 mhz intel processor, 500 MB hard drive, built in wifi, blue tooth and fire wire in 15 and 17” matt or glossy screen. Now that’s a real “POWER BOOK”

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Powerbook 180
Submitted by Steve Hagberg on Mon, 2008-11-17 19:00

I remember the Powerbook 180, not the 150, was the last Powerbook with a Trackball, The 180 was my first of four Powerbooks. It was a very polished workhorse. My wife sold her 140 after using mine and bought a 180. I replaced it with a 540C which was awesome except for the poor keyboard. I loved being able to plug in another monitor and have one spreadsheet on that monitor and a different spreadsheet (or even the window of a different application) on the main monitor. I have missed that capability in every laptop since. The 540 had it's problems, but it was very advanced for it's time. Since then I have owned a Wallstreet which was replaced by the Powerbook G4 15" with a graphics card for the 17" screen, which is my current "dialy driver". At almost three years old, it has lots of life left in it, until it eventually gets overwhelmed by software updates, which is the common demise of Apple laptops. But don't get me wrong, I love being able to scroll by dragging two fingers down the trackpad as well as all the other improvements!
Now, when is the Powerbook/MacBook coming out with the iPhone-like touch screen? HP has a touch screen computer out..... It seems that it should be an Apple.
The above four Powerbooks represent my entire professional and personal needs for computers since 1992. I feel that Apple has earned my patronage.
Steve

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UGH
Submitted by privateice on Mon, 2008-11-17 20:07

1) It is SO lame to judge an iBook by its design. The G1 iBooks lacked some caching or other that made them slow as gin. THAT's a great reason to say the G1 iBooks were lame.

2) The gray iBook SE was not a G1 iBook. It was a G2 iBook. And I owned one, IT ROCKED. God, I loved the carrying handle. The additional cache made it speedy. I wore that old iBook out. And unlike the Icebook, it didn't scuff or discolor around the hand rest.

So let's see, the analysis was superficial and the iBook picture is wrong. Y'all can do better.

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keylime 466
Submitted by macs4me on Mon, 2008-11-17 22:47

I happen to own the keylime ibook that still works perfect. I was so excited back in the day when it actually was THE high end macbook. Firewire! Yeah! I made my first imovie with my digital camcorder. The deign might not have been for everyone but I tell you what it sparked a lot of conversation where ever I took it. Especially in the airports where I was able to watch DVDs to pass the time. What a machine my "Mean Green"

Ron

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Aluminum PowerBook 17"
Submitted by pjonesCET on Tue, 2008-11-18 09:01

I disagree with the assessment that the aluminum Powerbook was the
worse. I have the 17" version and have been well satisfied with it.
My only disappointment is That I bought it just before they went to
intel versions. There was talk and rumors of it being released. But It
was released just few months after my purchase. But I allways end up
getting next to the newest Technology. always have since I bought my
first Mac. Life member: VPEA, NESDA, ISCET, ETA-I, Who's Who."If it's fixed, don't break it."http://www.phillipmjones.net

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Wow.
Submitted by maxman69 on Sat, 2008-12-13 10:48

Haven't been here in years. I came to this site to get a review on an older digital camera, but no archived reviews (that I can find). There is so much flash that it takes like a minute for each page to load. Then, for grins, I click on the best/worst features. I am posting this from a 1.25 PBG4, my main computer, that I LOVE. You seriously dogged this as one of the worst ever because of when it was released? Lame. My everyday ipod is an iPod Photo, which I really, REALLY prefer as an iPod to my iPhone, (I can get all my shownotes, chapter info, I can operate it without looking, and I don't care if I drop it.) and the first Mac I ever bought new was a Key Lime SE. I ordered it about 2 hours after the keynote at which Steve announced it, and finally sold it on eBay in 2006 for $750. It was my first OSX machine. As a charter subscriber to MacAddict, all I have to say about this place today is "BLECH!"

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Ti-books and such
Submitted by porqpine on Tue, 2008-12-16 20:10

From the first day I saw a titantium powerbook, I knew I had to have one. Sleek, sexy and only 5 pounds with a 15" screen, this was laptop nirvana. I finally scored a Gigabit Ethernet Powerbook and I haven't looked back since. After 7 years, I wouldn't trade this 'book for love or money: in fact I continue to lug my trust Ti-book back and forth to work despite the brand-new Dell Windoze laptop my employer just bought me. All because of the ease that Mac OS X inspires and the almost mind-reading capabilities of my 'book. And even though the new Macbooks are sweet to look at, Apple really got it right with the Ti-book line. And one last thing: didja ever notice how the Windoze laptops always turn out copies of the latest Apple offering? That should tell you something.

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omega watches
Submitted by benet (not verified) on Tue, 2009-11-10 18:42

Every little chat Salon 1000 ah!replica watchYou are my best's buddy
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