A Fisher-Price Laptop for Grown-Ups: Apple iBook G3 Review
The 1990s were a truly miserable time for regular computers. Everything on the market was just beige. Even Apple: usually known for having an easily recognizable lineup, marketed an army of computers that were all damn near imperceptible from one another. This all went on until Steve Jobs went on a fat trimming spree, reducing the company's confusing array of home desktops to just one stylish option: the iMac. It made waves with it's futuristic and colorful design, making the beige-boxes look like yesterday's leftovers. The machine was such a hit that Apple decided, why don't we make one for the road? Enter the iBook, the world's most refreshingly ridiculous laptop.
The iBook sought to disrupt the consumer laptop market in the same way the iMac did the home desktop market; competitive power and price packaged into a body that would make jaws drop. This was a much needed shakeup, because just like how the favorite color of desktop PCs in the 90s was beige, the favorite color of laptops in the dial up days was either black, or some random shade of gray. Chances are, your average 1990s laptop looked something like this:
Yuck. You could slap the badge of any brand of the era on this hunk of shit and nobody would bat an eye. I didn't live the Nineties' so I can't speak for how prevalent laptops were in those days, but assuming they were, I'm willing to bet that walking into meeting room would have had about a dozen or so people staring into the screens of their indistinguishable machines. So how would the iBook stand out? Easy. Take the aesthetics of the iMac an stick it onto a laptop. Sounds foolproof right?
What in the actual shit. Sure, it looks like an iMac in laptop form with it's snazzy transparent panels and colored accents, but just look at the damn thing! It looks like the LeapFrog toys I used to have as a kid, complete with a flip out handle so you can carry it around like a purse instead of in a bag like, oh I don't know; a normal, rational human being? I know people these days like to say Apple is as much of a fashion company as they are a tech company, but holy hell were they really leaning into it here.
I couldn't imagine what kind of person would feel comfortable carrying this thing around like some kind of twisted symbol of self righteousness. I know a fair share of modern MacBook users like to think they're special because their laptops have the fruit on the back, in spite of having a shitty keyboard and no regular USB ports, but I couldn't even picture the iSheep crowd looking at this and going "Yes! I want to pay money to carry THAT around!" I would feel like such a complete assbag walking into a college classroom or coffee shop with one of these. Was this some kind of joke? Did Steve Jobs wake up one morning and decide to clown everybody before the millennium was up?
Look at how proud this asshole is of his company's unholy creation. Who can blame him? I'd be grinning ear to ear too if I just went on stage and convinced a shitload of people to each pay me over a thousand dollars so they can show up at work or school carrying their toy laptops around by their silly little handles looking like complete doofuses. It's like the ultimate gag of the decade.
Oh yeah, the screen. For an 800 x 600 display, and apart from a dead pixel or two, it looks pretty good for the era! This is of course, if you can get over the fact that the screen is surrounded by roughly two inches of white bezel on all four sides. You know how some reviewers these days like to whine about how their brand-new laptop that's a quarter-inch thick and weighs half a pound is completely ruined by the horrors of half-inch thick bezels? The iBook G3 would cause those people an aneurysm.
Yet the overall bulk of the device does have some benefits. The large, empty void of rounded plastic in front of the keyboard makes for a pretty cozy wrist rest for heavy typing. Nevermind that the keyboard has a strangely "spongey" feel to it, with no defined feeling of bottoming out. This likely has to do with the fact the keyboard lifts out so you can easily add a Wi-Fi card and RAM. I'd imagine as an engineer, if you mentioned this same idea to Apple's current execs, you'd find your ass out on the streets of Cupertino before you could utter the words "user friendly".
The trackpad is smaller than a credit card and you can't do a damn thing with it other than point and click. Left click, I may add. Remember, Apple didn't discover haptics yet, and Jobs was infamous in his hatred of multi-button mice. So much that clicking and dragging the scroll bar and holding down "control" to right click were apparently better options. Think different!
Trying to play games with this trackpad is next to useless since it basically forces you to learn how to use hotkeys in order to perform actions a mouse could handle just fine on it's own. So why not just plug one in? Well, chances are, if you were an Apple customer who bought this laptop back in the day, your choice of mouse may have come in two flavors; the "Hockey Puck", which sucked, or the Pro Mouse, which looked prettier, but also sucked. Remember, both of these mice only have one button, so the same problems persist, but the bigger annoyance is where they decided to put the single USB port for said mouse - on the left side of the body. This meant any mouse cable has to reach around the entire laptop in order to get to the port, even more of a problem if your mouse cables are short, like Apple's.
Other hardware quirks amount to the fact the ancient little 10 gigabyte hard drive sounds like a broken dishwasher when it spins up, and the screen occasionally fails to display the correct resolution on boot, necessitating a hard reset. The built in Wi-Fi card is so old that modern routers downright refuse to allow the computer to connect, and the mono speaker makes my CDs sound like they're getting played out of a payphone speaker. Also, did I mention the heat yet? This puppy gets HOT. You can feel the heat radiating through the body when you're doing anything remotely intensive on it, and don't even think about setting it on your lap.
Battery life was projected at 5 to 6 hours. Doing what, I have no idea. Keyword is "was" because all the batteries that went into these things have long since expired, and I had to spend nearly seventy bucks to get a sketchy replacement off Newegg. It at least works on battery power now and it does actually get around it's advertised battery life... while I'm staring at the desktop or typing a Word document. Obviously playing games on battery, even on today's laptops isn't going to bode well for how many hours you can churn out of it, but at least my Surface Book 2 doesn't slowly roast my thighs while crushing them to a pulp.
All joking aside, I can't help but like the iBook. The shape, the colors, even with the stupid quirks and it's obvious signs of age - it's fun! I actually enjoy just messing with it because it's just so insanely different feeling, even though it's no different in terms of obsolescence from any other laptop of the era. You don't see anything remotely like it nowadays, and certainly not from Apple. I still do believe though, that the looks of this device were definitely too over the top for most buyers, even with how well received the iMac was and characteristically weird the Nineties were. Apple clearly agreed, and changed the iBook to a smaller, lighter, and more contemporary design in 2001 with notable improvements in hardware.
The "Snow" iBook was an all-around better laptop than it's predecessor, yet it killed off all the character the old device had. It's just another plain-Jane laptop, but it's understandable. Most people simply aren't buying laptops of any caliber in order to stand out. Sure, they may have their own unique little details and their buyers may sticker them up to their own liking, but beyond that, four corners, a keyboard, and a screen is all anybody really cares to have. Hell, even most gaming laptops you see nowadays; with their firework displays of RGB lighting, really aren't all that outlandish looking from a core design perspective, especially when compared alongside the weird lines of the original G3.
The original 'Clamshell' iBook still looks radical even by today's standards, and while it might have been a little too whack for some people when it first came out, it's achieved iconic status today. In the case of my "Indigo" model, it's actually fulfilled a desire I've had since high school to own one of these goofy little machines, and I'm surprised it's in the shape it's in. It's a machine that's "too weird to live, too rare to die", and even though we may never see another mainstream laptop try to be as unapologetically quirky as this one did, you can't help but kind of wish for one.
What's Good
- The display, albeit dated, doesn't look half bad.
- Easy to upgrade RAM and Wi-Fi (for what either of those are worth).
- Quite nice to type on, even though the keyboard is a bit spongey.
- Battery life is decent for the era.
What's Crap
- Can't use Wi-Fi on modern routers.
- Gets quite hot, particularly when gaming.
- The trackpad sucks, and one button mice are dumb.
- Looks like something out of your kid's toybox.
Verdict
It's an old, outdated laptop with looks that will get you funny looks wherever you take it, but as a fun collector's piece, it's absolutely perfect.
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