my new typewriter - the powerbook g4 🍎
In 2003, Steve Jobs introduced the 15” PowerBook series of notebooks to the world. A year later, he sandwiched the 15” machine in between 12” and 17” counterparts. 13 years later, I bought a 12” PowerBook G4. Why? How? What? And, most importantly, why?
As a kid I hated Apple products. Actually, let me be honest, I hated rich people. Apple products seemed to be unnecessarily expensive to myself and, although I would watch the Keynotes and very much want the products on offer, I resented the products for never being able to afford them. Flash forward to 2014, I got a full time job. With a full time job came an income, with an income came spending. At first: an iPhone; then came an iPad, eventually I moved onto a MacBook Air, then a MacBook Pro, an Apple Watch and finally the AirPods. I am fully indoctrinated into the Church of Jobs. I fucking love it.
obsolescence drives productivity
My biggest issue when completing any task is procrastination. Essay? Xbox. Research? League of Legends. I find that if I can do something else, I generally will, this blog was actually once of my procrastinatory efforts throughout education. Therein lies the problem. My work rarely requires me to take anything home, which means I no longer need to procrastinate anything beyond laundry or cooking or food shopping, all tasks which (for now) have a novelty and an allure. This means (probably noticeably) this blog has been neglected, as have my other previously procrastination driven hobbies such as PC gaming and programming. What this means is when I do actually want to complete tasks like OC gaming or programming or writing for this blog; I procrastinate it. We’ve reached meta-crastination, people.
What the rant above is trying to justify is my need for a device I can complete a single task on at a time with, that cannot be used for anything beyond basic writing/browsing, in some sort of attempt to force myself to write and code. I flirted with the idea of returning to the OG Google Chromebook (link to review here), however the forced-always-up-to-date software had driven it beyond the point of no return for obsolescence. The “only-web” system had fallen to the web, JavaScript and multi-meg pages had finally surpassed the already-close-to limitations Atom processor. So I decided to go deeper–more vintage, more abandoned. Enter the PowerBook G4.
With 768 MB of RAM and a 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor, the PowerBook G4 was just what I needed for single-tasking computing that cannot take me beyond the means of word processing and 2006-era web browsing. Armed with a copy of iWork 2006 and the Internet Radio (college radio at that) of iTunes 10.5.6–which not only still works, but works better than iTunes for Windows ever have/will/could–I’ve been able to return to writing and coding.
but tom, don’t you have an ipad pro, a macbook pro, and several notebooks for all this shit?
Yes, yes I do. But this thing cost me £50 and I fucking love it. After nearly breaking the damn thing to upgrade the 4200 RPM/40 GB stock HDD to a 5600 RPM/160 GB HDD and loading a fresh eBay copy of Leopard onto the thing, I’m finding myself able to sit with the PowerBook on a coffee table whilst I bash out some writing. The MbPro still gets love when I need to do some light gaming or actual productive coding, and the iPad Pro is now a work device I use for one to ones and documenting coaching. The PowerBook has well and truly found a niche in my tech-life.