Snippet: Ode to the 12″ PowerBook G4 ☇

Christopher Phin for Macworld:

At its best, Apple has the ability to make stuff that reaches right around the rational, pragmatic part of your brain to grab your amygdala and squeeze it till the juice runs out. The 12-inch PowerBook G4 was such a machine. Hell, is such a machine. […]

And there was something just hugely cute about the little package all that G4 power was stuffed into. It felt chunky and dense, and the iBook-inspired soft, round edges gave it a friendliness as well. Above all, though, that aluminum shell—the first time Apple had used this material, which, for a decade or more since, its Macs have been hewn from—spoke of power, of fluency, of ability.

I was using an iBook G3 when this machine was introduced, deciding that the Titanium PowerBook G4 was too expensive and too much computer for my needs. If my purchase happened a year or two later, the 12″ PowerBook G4 would’ve been perfect for me. That being said, it’s amazing how twelve years later, people still speak fondly about this particular computer.