I have received many rave reviews recently from readers saying what a good deal the Mac has become. Traditionally, the Mac has had a reputation for being a stylish but pricey machine more suited to globetrotting executives than students and families on a budget. And, granted, the Apple lineup has plenty of machines that fill those high-performance requirements. But some of Apple's more utilitarian models (such as the iBook and the eMac) have seen features grow and prices shrink to the point where they are now attractive to people on just about any budget.
Having these good-value machines brought to my attention caused me to completely re-evaluate what I thought they offered, and eventually inspired me to buy one for my son's Christmas present. My son needed a computer that was fast and sported graphics suitable for his favourite games. It had to be portable as well, and tough enough for a pre-teen. He also needed the right applications to get his schoolwork done in a presentable fashion.
I anticipated that he would eventually want to plug in a large monitor for viewing his projects and would need sufficient input/output ports to attach accessories such as a full-sized keyboard and perhaps an iPod in the future. Of course, one of my requirements was that the super machine not cost too much.
Apple has slowly eliminated the G3 processor from all its machines, and upgraded them to G4 (or G5s in the PowerMac). That means the performance of the iBook, Apple's entry-level portable, has been substantially improved. Apple has also added a top graphics card, the ATI Mobility Radeon 9200, that not only displays games impressively but is also great for playing DVDs. It will also drive an external monitor, which is a big deal for me as I like to see what I'm working on. Large screens are required for editing photos, videos or music, and laptop screens just don't cut it. OK, so G4 performance, great video card, drives a large monitor - this was starting to look interesting.
Then I received reports of users getting more than six hours' use out of their batteries, while other readers brought the iBook's price to my attention - US$1,094 for the 12-inch model and US$1,294 for the 14-inch. This is almost a third of what I paid for my Titanium PowerBook with similar specs. I was sold. Especially when you consider the iBook's reputation for being tough and cool.
Then there's the software: AppleWorks 6 for word processing, and database, spreadsheet and presentation tools; the legendary iLife apps (iMovie, iTunes and iPhoto); the World Book Encyclopedia; Sound Studio for audio editing; Quicken Deluxe for accounting; good games (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, Deimos Rising and Chess); Mail, iCal calendar and scheduling application; iSynk for synchronising your contacts and calendars with Macs, mobile phones and Palm devices; iChat AV video internet telephone; plus the Safari web browser.