The 12-inch PowerBook G4
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- Опубликовано: 13 окт 2024
- A look at the most beloved notebook in Mac history: the 12-inch PowerBook G4.
One quick edit: the 1.33 and 1.5 GHz models came with 64 MB of graphics memory, but it was still underpowered compared to the larger notebooks.
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What a gorgeous laptop.
Seeing all that I/O on the side brought a tear to my eye. Ah, those were the days......
remember my 12" powerbook fondly, it was the first mac i owned after switching from windows
2005 version with 1.5GHz CPU, 1GB RAM and 64MB of graphics memory was my first Mac and I never ever noticed any lack of performance - quite contrary it was mind-blowingly fast compared to any PC laptop anyone else had at the time. To this day it's still by far my favorite Mac and the reason why I was very much excited about 2015 12" MacBook, but holy crap was that one a disappointment...
Filip Radelic I have a 2004 PowerBook G4 12” 1.33ghz with 768MB ram and the same 64mb vram. It was my first Mac also and I fell in love with it. I got it in like 2009 and it really got me into the Mac ecosystem. I was about 9 at the time and has since brought me 7-8 macs later to my current 2014 MBPr 15” maxed out. Nothing compares to the 12” PBG4 keyboard though. It’s insanely good.
OSX's optimization on the G4 systems was unreal. Solid UNIX base, paired with Altivec and graphics acceleration had these things FLYING compared to the legacy x86 code bloating up windows XP machines of the era.
@@theboldfuture2341 until 10.5. 10.5 was bloatware
@Filip Radelic well at least its still very portable..???
I miss my 12" PB G4 :-(
Several years ago, I needed a small laptop to use while day watching at an elderly relative's home with no WiFi (they only had a telephone land-line) for an old fashion modem. Found out that, this was one of the last apple laptops with an internal 56k modem. So to use dial-up American On-Line (AOL) service, I picked up on Ebay a used 12 inch Powerbook with a 1.5 GHz G4 Power PC processor and maxed out RAM of 1.25 GB running OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger). Added a wireless apple mouse because, I am right handed and all the ports are on the left.
Daily, I still carry this laptop to the office to watch during my lunch break DVD's and RUclips videos. While, I have newer apple laptops this one is just so much fun to use.
I love this video! But I hate that your channel isn’t way more popular
I have all sizes with the highest specs of these powerbooks, even the 15inch high res. Awesome machines, the true machintosh
I have a aluminium 15” PowerBook g4 2004 with airport. Still porks perfectly. Wonderful laptop.
I wasn’t a Mac user at the time but I remember seeing one of these at university and thinking it was so cool. A few years ago I picked one up on eBay to play around with MacOS 9 and it *is* still so cool. What a great machine, and this video is a great look at why it’s so cool. Thanks for making it!
Loving the details, the music, the iPod.. beautiful!
I have one. An 867, with the original battery still going strong. Has a dead key (V). One criticique was about the build quality and the case buckling and lid separating which mine has slowly started doing. Though I love it. It has a particular magic that nothing has captured since.
Mine got dropped during an attempted robbery. Major case bending, but it still works just fine.
Still remember my PowerBook G4. The design was wonderful and the integration and IO made for a flexible desktop replacement. It was also quite cool and near silent. The industrial design still holds up. Today’s MacBooks are just too similar to what’s already out there. The thinness trick can only be played so often. Although it cost a lot, the PB G4 was good value, today’s Macs not so much.
"The thinness trick can only be played so often." So well said.
I miss the 4:3 aspect ratio, where a 12" display had adequate height. I am always fighting to claim every bit of vertical space on a 13" display.
Oh, man. This machine took me through most of grad school. It was a rock. I never thought about why very much, but it's true I've never really found a successor which was as much of a generalist. It was the decathlete of laptops: might not have been the best at any single event, but nothing else did all of 'em as well.
I used to have one of these babies, wrote my doctoral thesis on it. Loved it to bits.
I remember going from the 15" Ti to this at my first job in London. Loved it, had about 3 of them before shifting to various small-ish Intel Macs.
I got my 1.33GHZ model in 2009 as my first Mac. Got it on eBay for about $200 (a pretty good deal at the time) with 768MB ram and a 60GB HDD + SuperDrive. I used it for about a year and a half before I got a MacBook. But it’s what really made me fall in love with Mac OS. Leopard ran so well on the machine and it could handle really anything I wanted (except HD video). It was a great starter computer for my nine year old self and really taught me how computers worked. I did all kinds of software “mods” like adding support for the two finger scrolling, disabling spotlight for faster speeds, enabling transparent menu bar, and so on. It was on the original battery and could still last an hour or two the last time I used it. The keyboard is still by far my favorite on a laptop. The sound and feel are just perfection. I had so much fun using that computer and really enjoyed it. I was on a PPC craze after that an got a 1.6 GHZ Powermac G5 (🤮 such a waste imo) and a dual 1.8 GHZ G5. I used them as my desktop until leopard was fully obsolete. Loved it and felt the G5 was so powerful for my kid usage. I also liked the whole plane taking off sound on startup. After that I went from MacBook (2007 C2D 2.0ghz), 2011 MacBook Pro 15” (first new Mac, somehow avoided graphics issues and is still used today by my mom), a 2013 iMac 27” 3.4ghz quad i5 (family desktop, still used all the time and is still very fast and powerful for average use), and my current 15” retina MBP 2.5ghz i7. Absolutely love this machine and it’ll be really hard for me to transition to the new touchbar Pro because the lack of MagSafe or any of the other ports. MagSafe is one of my favorite Mac features of all time. Anyways, thanks for the nostalgia, maybe it’s time to crack my old one open and give it a go.
I loved that 12" bundle of joy - and great design.
I have one , bought it some 3 years ago and am still using it, the battery I bought just died and I will have to buy a new one. The laptop is really good. Planing on installing a CF card in the IDE as I did to my bigger powerbook 15
I have a 2019 15-inch MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM and an 8-core i9 processor. I love it. It can handle running four VMs at the same time without slowing down. It's a real work horse. That said, I would love to have my 12-inch Powerbook back just for casual use. I loved the one I had from 2005 to 2006.
In have on from eBay. With TenFourFox you can Browse the Web realativly good. But my powerbook has only 256mb of ram, so its slow as hell. But it is an really nice looking machine :D
As an architecture student, my first Mac was the 1Ghz version in 2003. Brilliantly portable, but I needed a second bigger screen (or the 15”). For creative design work, it was very capable. I used it until 2011 when its second hard drive failed after only a year or two.
I loved so much this machine that I bought 2 along with a Cinema Display 23 (which I still use today). You are so right about the fact that there is not real successor.
I love typing on my TiBook, when I do type on it, since there is the magnesium alloy frame, it feels like I'm typing on the hood of a car. Its a good feeling. I've been wanting one of these for a while though
I still have my MacBook 2009 💪💕Would like to upgrade to the new one for my birthday this week 2019 💻
U got and what ya think (i dont have it tho)
12-inch PowerBook G4, the original 867MHz model, was the first Mac I ever bought brand new. Bought it literally as we were driving out of town to go on a 3-week road trip vacation, partly for the DVD drive to let the kid watch movies on the drive.
The DVD drive failed an hour in to the drive. Wasn't able to get it replaced until after we got back from our trip.
I recently restored two PowerBooks, a 15" Titanium Model from 2001 and a 12" Aluminum Model from 2003. Running them for historical archives and some old PowerPC/68k games.
My first Apple laptop, got me through college. Very nice video, great work Stephen!
Oh yes, I love it. I have a 1 GHz and a 1.5 GHz and I still use them beside my 1.5 14“ iBook, my MacBook Pro 15“ and my Mac Pro. The 12“ PowerBook is the only one with a soul.
I love seeing these videos on older products as I was a teenager when this laptop came out and my family couldn’t even afford a household computer at that time
Had 4 of them over the years. One brand new dvi12” from 2003, others 2 used, in good condition, and one “dead”, supposedly for spare parts, but ended up working too. Loved and used for long time, 2 of them till couple of years ago. One still alive, but rarely used, as it’s now 15 years old.
One of apple’s last great, durable, “small”, amazing laptop.
i saw a powerbook g4 at a garage sale once and damn its even sexier in person
CalculatinGenius why hello there
lmao hi
did you buy it?
And you copped it, right?
I have a small collection of Macintosh computers, probably my favourite is the 12-in 1.5 GHz G4 PowerBook a friend gave to me. He'd acquired it for one of his customers who then had to pull out of the deal & it was just taking up space. I found it could use a USB 802.11n wifi adapter, making for much faster downloads & connections. The TenFourFox web browser (a fork of Firefox for PPC Macs) works very well with that combination.
my friend in highschool had one and I was soooo jealous although at that time I had a 2007 intel white macbook. such a great looking machine
I picked up a 1.5ghz model around 2009 and loved it but struggled to find a use for it. I already had a 15" intel MBP as my main machine so I would just use it in bed or take it on trips for the occasional email check. The hard drive eventually died so I sold it. 10 years later and I am still enthralled with form factor and have been on the hunt for another.
Even prettier then modern MacBooks! And actually worth it's price!
This was my uni computer. Did after effects and Final Cut Like a champ! The 12” MacBook I have now is no slouch, and it handles what I need on the go, and my iMac does the heavy lifting.
the 12" powerbook G4 was my favorite laptop of all time...
I have my dad's PBG4 right next to me at this very moment! I can safely confirm that the keyboard is a pleasure to use. And it still works! Just some new software, a few tweaks, and I'm pretty sure I can use this as a daily driver. Now if I could replace the hard drive...
Absolutely torturing my poor 1.33GHz 12" PowerBook trying to watch this in 144p using TenFourFox :D This really has to be my favorite vintage Mac in my collection
My ‘04 version with a 1.33ghz is great. It has an issue where the fan always runs on high speed which meant I got it super cheap as it was like this since manufacture. Lovely little machines.
Edit: spelling
Dear RUclips, please advise why this channel doesn’t have 1 million + subs ? Get your algorithms in order please.
I really liked the Apple aesthetic from that time. Nowadays, they don't seem that impressive anymore.
Arek Plewa Technically until 2015, which is impressive
I had a 1.5 GHz 12-inch PowerBook G4 (M9690LL/A). Of the 15 Macs I've owned I would say it has been my favorite, with the Mac Plus and the PowerMac G3 cometing for second place.
I think that the 11-inch MacBook air was the true successor to the PowerBook... It had the same processor and all that as the 13-inch MacBook air but was cheaper and smaller. You also had to remember the MacBook air was designed to be used by travelling businessmen who needed power (the MacBook air was poised as the "prosumer" machine) and portability. Still, nothing beats getting the 12-inch PowerBook out of your bag and have everyone including the teacher gawk at you. They were like the airpods of 2005. I still remember the day someone actively tried to steal my 12 inch PowerBook in 6th grade while I was at recess. Those were the days...
Bought a 1.33GHz model for €25. It‘s missing three of the F keys and the battery but the case is in good condition and it works. After a bit of TLC and an SSD, I think I will take this thing to class to take notes
I bought for 30$ on ebay a lot of 2 g4 powerbook. A 17 inch that I sold, and a 12 inch that I kept. It is the 1ghz version. Very nice machine.
I love the 2017 12" MacBook maxed out. Fanless baby!
Agreed! I had a maxed out 12" 1.5ghz G4, currently own a maxed out 1.33 version as I sold my original - I bought new an i7 8GB 512GB 11 MacBook Air 2013, and the current 12" MacBook 512GB is excellent - completely silent like my G4 Cube with SSD fitted :) Love a silent machine. Also these new MacBooks have very surprisingly good speakers for their diminutive frame. To find the ancestor of the 12" MacBook we need to go back further, past the original MacBook Air way back to the 90's - one of the PowerBook Duo machines I reckon.
That was my first Mac! When I traded it in and got my first Intel machine I really missed it.
i got lots of older mac laptops, small and medium white plastic ones, several 12" alum. and 15" alum. laptops.
my best 12" alum. is 1.5 ghz, 1.25 gig memory running 10.5.0 os.
i buy and fix them up
I still have my 1.33GHz 12” with its upgraded 120GB hard drive, the laptop that got me through college
My Nostalgia for this made me buy the 12” MacBook. IO be dammed, I regret nothing!
I was never really all that impressed by the 12 inch Powerbook G4. I was always more drawn to the 17 inch Powerbook which is the one I ended up getting. For one thing I felt at the time that 1024 x 768 wasn't high enough of a resolution for Mac OS X and whenever I saw a 12 inch notebook in the shops they seemed so drab and time worn as if the display model was the same one they had used since the model was launched. I also remember the screens being kind of dim compared to the 15 and 17 inch models. I think I understood the appeal if you traveled a lot but I didn't really do that and was really more interested in something for video editing in Final Cut. Yeah Apple updated their notebooks annually back then but they were generally just speed bumps. I remember the final updates to the powerbook G4 being almost not worth mentioning though it would have been nice to have that higher resolution screen which I think benefitted the 15inch model quite a bit.
I have one of these, the original 867MHz one. I wish I had it when it was new, or that Apple would make something that has the same energy that the 12" PowerBook has, because it's hands down one of the coolest laptops ever to be produced by Apple
My first laptop! 😍 I paid $1,695 (money I didn't have in college-brother helped) and don't regret it at all. I should pick it up from my parent's...
This was my second Mac laptop, went for years, kept it till I got the first intel 15" (which turned out to be a Lemon, which apple cooperate replaced for me!) the 12" kept going for years after, well until somebody spilled nail varnish remover on it.. :( miss you buddy.
The 867 was my first mac!
I told folks I switched from Linux because I could use all the *NIX tools I loved but it was prettier.
I played so much World of Warcraft on that thing hooked up to a massive 19" crt. Installing WoW also made me realize why they didn't ship with a case-sensitive file system, which I had changed it to because I was used to it in Linux. I had to re-format back for the installer to work because they had paths with different cases and it kept saying items were not found. I thought this was sooo lazy on the devs part. 😄
Love the video! I never got this model but I appreciate it as the high-end variant of the iBook (which I adored).
Diggin' the synthwave background music…a bit grim for the subject matter perhaps, but it works for me. 😊
Great video. But what I miss is that amazing, amazing, lovely keyboard. Best keyboard on a laptop EVAR.
When I saw that keyboard, 1 Windows laptop came to my mind - the huawei matebook X/13, but even that compact beast just do not have that weird unknown sexy factor the powerbook had. If we have something as compact at the huawei matebook with the obsessively clean design macbooks have, i think it would be perfect.
Best Apple laptop for sure. Wish I had one back in the day (had the 12” iBook instead).
I think the closest we have come to this is maybe the 14 inch macbook pro. Lots of power, good port selection in a somewhat compact size. But it's still on the larger size of footprint.
I used to use one and I still own it to this day :). (I can’t really sell on my old tech, it makes me sad :) ) back in the days it was such a different laptop. People need to realise that the equivalent windows machines where big chunky black 15” plastic bricks. So when this thing came out it was like a different world :). The answer to that a few years later were the netbooks.... :)
>Hearing Stephen without Smart Speed
i love my 12 inch powerbook and my 15 inch both are solid and fun machines
The 12" PowerBook is my favorite laptop I've ever used. It was thin and light for its time, and the keyboard actually felt even better than Thinkpads IMO. I disagree with you about the display though. The 12" PowerBook had a crappy screen compared to the 15" and 17" models.
The Macbook Air 11' was a really great machine in its time.
Great video, of a mac i'd always wanted to own but never got the chance. I eventually ended up with the 12" 1.33ghz ibook. One of the biggest problems that apple currently faces and how it's seems to have affected the successor to the 12" like you say. I think that it's down to thin-ness, they seem obsessed with trying to get their machines as thin as possible which seems at odds with functionality and of course ports. it also leads to all the machines looking the same, which maybe good for system continuity but dose not bread good design.
It was a nice laptop, but it had the same problem as the iBook G4 I had before it as a student, which is that I managed to kill it through what I thought was quite normal usage. Both machines ended up with chips unseated from the logic board, and it wasn't until the unibody MacBooks (got one in 2011, still going strong) that mac laptops recovered their robustness.
I think that the current 12" MacBook is a perfectly valid replacement for it, though. The PowerBook G4 was never particularly fast even for the time, and the (2017) 12" MacBook isn't at all as slow as people make it out to be
I might buy one, can I still use it today for school with minor upgrades?
I had one of these from 2003 for a good 6 years or so. It really is a wonderful machine, and a terrible casualty of the Intel transition! The black polycarbonate MacBook really was a dud compared to these. Today I use a late-model i7 11-inch MacBook Air, and that runs even FCP10 without missing a beat-but it won't forever. I really was hoping the 12-inch MacBook would be a sensible upgrade path, but now apple's canned that line too. :( Apple; what happened to the small, premium and fast laptops you used to produce? Don't even get me started on your small, premium and fast phones of yesteryear!
i miss those days.
Aún tengo la mía y esta super, ¡ Te ganaste un suscriptor!
It was the first laptop I ever bought and I still have it.
Look how tiny the trackpad is🤯
I love Apple's modern trackpads
So huge.
Really cool PowerBook, i have one too. But mine ist in much worse condition. But the original Battery in mine has power for almost 2 hours, thats quite impressive.
I do have a 12" powerbook and love the keyboard more than many of the other mac keyboards. I do wish I could upgrade the processor and memory and be able to use it with at least el capitan… Oh well it's still cool having it and it is in perfect condition.
Would use one of these for iMovie and running small lines of code.
Yo tengo una y con todo y caja, siempre quise tenerla de recuerdo porque me gustaba mucho su diseño y la pude conseguir.
Excellent video, as usual
Great video, the only issue I feel is the background music. It doesn't fit the theme of the video.
I remember back then when 256mb of ram felt like 4GB of ram and 512mb ram was the sweet spot and 1024mb or 1GB was overkill
The M1 MacBook Air is truly the spiritual successor the baby PowerBook.
I want to see how the physical size compares to the 12" iPad Pro. If you ask Apple for power and portability at that calibre, that's their most likely answer.
I wanted one so bad. I bought a 15inch in 2006.
In the eraly 2000s Apple was so fascinating and wowing. Today everything that Apple does looks like they're kidding us. Everything that comes out is nothing more than a joke. I'm so sorry to say that: I used to really like Apple products. They used to cost more but they were kinda worth it. Today it's the exact opposite and they're just ridiculously overpriced.
Amen. It's a tragedy. Steve Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi by saying, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”
Now, Apple is content to sell overpriced visual sugar. Their hardware really sucks, even though Jony Ives is still a top-notch designer. Man, I do miss the old Apple.
@@RamLaska so true! I do miss it too
They have a lot of amazing products like the iPhones with 7nm chips and the new iPad Pro with the graphics power of an Xbox one
@@lightbox8019 Yeah but that power is useless lol
The Apple today is better than its ever been.
always wanted one...
Almost perfect. But what about the software. Can you see RUclips videos and Netflix?
Not sure about NetFlix but if you upgrade to the TenFourFox browser, RUclips is a doddle.
The MacBook Air 11-inch is the spiritual successor to the PowerBook 12-inch since it has more ports but Apple decided to kill it.
Really nice computers I want to get them for my collection but I don’t know where to find them
1.2 inches thick? I'm pretty sure that the 17" model was exactly 1 inch thick when it was introduced and the 12" model was around 1.2-1.3 inches
Were the keys made of actual metal or just metal colored?
I only ever got to use the iBook back then.
They are heavy plastic, but finished to feel like the metal.
12" MacBook M1 would be it.
The successor is the final 12" Macbook from 2015
I have a iBook G4 from early 2004
I coveted one of these but ended up getting on the intel train with the 2006 Macbook
I think i have seen this in the show the show supernatural not the small one but the big one
don't agree that the 12in macbook lacks so much power... maybe the 2015 one, but more recent ones are on pair with old macbook air and very close to the new one too.... The real problem with the 12in is ports and the keyboard to some extent...
The 1.5ghz PB g4 12" had 64mb of ram with a nvidia 5200 GO card, thus you are incorrect
I corrected this in the video description
Still my favourite Mac of all time. It's not thin, it's not light, but damn if those aren't just the perfect visual proportions for a notebook.