iBook Turns 20: Watch Steve Jobs Unveil the World's First Notebook With Wireless Internet

[LizKat]

I would imagine this was only one of several reasons for soldered memory. Sure, you can’t upgrade, but it also decreases the chance of a customer getting a system “dead on delivery” due to dislodged RAM to zero. I would imagine dislodged RAM was FAR more common than actual bad RAM module.

Possibly. Or there was an Olympic-grade kicker working the cargo lines that day.

I'd never had anything from Apple turn up DOA before and of course immediately started thinking stuff like so this is what they mean by 'made on a monday' and it was finally my turn in the barrel?

Heh maybe it was just SHIPPED on a monday... ​

Anyway I had called Apple with some trepidation, figuring the machine would have to be shipped for replacement. It was my first customer service experience and I'd already bought a lot of their gear. So I was a mixture of disappointment and high expectations. The Apple rep was great though, she stepped me through reseating the memory and inside a couple minutes the thing had booted and I was a happy camper. I really loved those clamshells.

 

[Mactendo]

Oh, I remember that 2x2 product matrix. After a confusing bunch of models Apple had for years that matrix was a very smart move.

 

[Menneisyys2]

Still using it now and then to grab some audio CD's:

 

[tranceking26]

Not sure if anybody in the first 7 pages mentioned this, but that jump from Phil really did show courage!

 

[Romf]

The woman in this video is so annoying. Why did they invite her?

 

[Gasu E.]

Why is it needed with the amount of free wifi that's out there

It would be worth it if it got some of those people to give up those free-wifi cafe tables they hog for hours at a time, without buying anything; so that I can actually sit down while I drink my coffee.

 

[Baymowe335]

Ah Steve, the only person right now changing the world to the same degree is Elon Musk. So grateful for these incredible dreamers that push progress!

Elon Musk is building cars and doing it quite poorly while losing a ton of money.

EV isn’t a mystery to any legitimate car company. There is just not a big enough market yet and the economics don’t make sense.

 

[Shirasaki]

consumers have gotten significantly more computer savvy and understand the Internet very well.

You are giving customers WAYYYYY too much credit mate. They are not going to be “significantly more savvy”. Quite the contrary, they stay where they are, pretty much.

Well.. that was part of the strategy
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Tim doesn’t have that reality distortion field

So, he tears apart the distortion field to everybody, and shows how truly expensive Mac are. I guess this is a good thing? Not sure.

Why is LTE needed on iPhones or iPads? There's plenty of free wifi out there.

Guess the iPhone should never include personal hotspot feature or even mobile data feature in the first place.

Oh wait, what do you mean 80% of areas are not covered by wifi signal? Gtfo.

 

[emembee]

Just a remark on the first gen I had in orange. Think it ran at 800x600 but seemed plenty in those days. Natively logged into Classic Mac? not sure I remember that or not. However the keyboard was quite flaky and died after about 3 years. Also the cd drive went the same way. Think there was a modem port, Ethernet was 100 t base. Great to carry around. Locked into airport base station nicely too. One of the best was the power cable that was easy to put away! In summary, it was pretty much underpowered with small drives and ram but was a delight to use.

 

[donlab]

Only good for people living in big cities. And as others point out, free wifi is not safe. Also, I don't really think free wifi is “everywhere”, at least in Sydney.

Ubiquitous WiFi or not, a VPN secures untrusted networks. We have a cellular Apple Watch so it would seem a laptop should be doable.

 

[alexhardaker]

Wow! You could lift the keyboard up to upgrade things? Lol at the fact you had to pay extra for the WiFi-advertised laptop to work as advertised

 

[Winni]

The first laptop with wireless networking? Tim Cook take a hint, that's what innovation is.

When that notebook shipped, having wireless LAN in a notebook was actually completely useless, because NOBODY, NOWHERE actually had an access point for these things. And at that time, almost everybody was still accessing the Internet via a damn 33.6k or - with luck - a 56k modem.

Innovative? Sure. Ahead of its time? Sure. Useless in real life? Absolutely.

 

[TomaxXamot]

Wow, $1600 price twenty years ago? That’s $2500 adjusted today - more than a 15” Macbook Pro!
Mr. Tim does really good job at keeping manufacturing costs down...

Well at least it had a dedicated GPU!

 

[SSDGUY]

Wow, $1600 price twenty years ago? That’s $2500 adjusted today - more than a 15” Macbook Pro!
Mr. Tim does really good job at keeping manufacturing costs down...

Mr. Tim nothing. More like advancements in manufacturing technology and market forces.

 

[TomaxXamot]

Actually, as far as Mac goes, one thing sticks out, the Mac mini just doesn’t belong and shouldn’t exist.
View attachment 849248

How dare you! I love the Mac Mini. I think it’s important that Apple continue to offer a consumer grade, headless Mac.
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Still using it now and then to grab some audio CD's:

View attachment 849302

Is that the iBook (IceBook) G3 Dual USB? My very first laptop!

 

[myscrnnm]

And that’s just for the official grid, not counting the systems people WANT to exist. Like the “Mac Pro, but not as powerful because I really like the features, but I don’t have THAT much money”. Or the “Mac mini, but powerful enough to run 4 8k monitors”. Or the “MacBook Pro that’s super thick, with a 17 inch screen and ALL DA PORTS!”

Actually, as far as Mac goes, one thing sticks out, the Mac mini just doesn’t belong and shouldn’t exist.
View attachment 849248

What makes the Mac Mini not a consumer desktop? It doesn't have pro specs and doesn't have a battery to be used as a portable device, therefore...

 

[tallscot]

And today we still don’t have LTE built into a laptop. Why is that?

Cause they want to sell you a phone too.

 

[MallardDuck]

Yes, but your phone is out of battery in an hour if you do that. At least, that's the experience I have (had) with both my 5s and 7. Besides that a direct connection will be faster and more stable.



I rather keep my data private and never want to connect to unprotected networks. 4G is also way faster and more stable in many areas.

Do you want to upgrade your laptop every couple of years to get the latest and greatest chipsets with the new frequencies? Most folks change out phones that often but keep laptops far longer.

And while you're right about Cellular data being safer than Wifi, it's still far from safe - remember the Verizon supercookies?
[doublepost=1563745003][/doublepost]Looking at these, I guess I need to cut Jony a bit of a break...talk about ugly.

 

[Shirasaki]

What an amazing and tragically shortsighted viewpoint.

Advances in technology, pushed by people like Jobs and Musk and many others, is exactly what is helping move humankind forward. These technologies are helping connect the world in ways that Steve could not have imagined on that stage twenty years ago.

Wireless internet access with inexpensive and portable computing devices helped make instant global communication what it is today. For example, tell me where Facebook, video phoning, satellite connection to the farthest reaches of the third world, instant transport of money, etc would be without these “egotistical” giants? Twenty years ago, it was a miracle to load the Disney website -slowly - while walking across a stage in a controlled and scripted environment. Today, the world communicates, pays attention, and addresses issues IN REAL-TIME due to these fledgling technologies taking flight.

Where will we be with the ability to capture sunlight, store it for practical use, and end some dependence on a global oil trade in 20 years? How about bringing the miracle of electricity to drill and pump a well and cool a home in equatorial Africa without building pipelines? Will this be possible? I don’t know either, but I am thankful that people like Elon Musk are willing to take the arrows from the increasingly entitled masses to push that technology forward.

While I agree your point, the comment you quoted is not that shortsighted either. Sure, internet changes the way world communicates, and these authoritarian egotistical people shapes the world we are living today. But, poverty in Africa is still a glowing problem, despite having so many advanced technologies. I am not arguing Steve Jobs should also contribute to biology and agriculture. I think people should know which field they have changed. And what they have changed, is the way customers enjoy and create digital contents. What nexusrule is arguing is from a different perspective.
[doublepost=1563745472][/doublepost]

Pretty positive you are aware that Macs were cheaper just a few years ago, I know that prices were bearable from about 2005 to 2015, last few years Apple added $400-500 to the laptops retail price (more in the EU and other places), hell, all Apple stuff got substantially more expensive in just about 4-5 years.

Just an example
Pretty sure there even was a MacBookPro starting at $1799 at some point, too lazy to look it up.
Edit: Actually I did, twas 2014 15" MBP, in 7 years it went up by $700, $100 a year.

View attachment 849299

Wonder what software or website you are using in the screenshot?

 

[scottrngr]

I remember you could buy these at Sears, believe it or not. My ex-wife still has her tangerine one.

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

Why is it needed with the amount of free wifi that's out there

You answered your own question.

 

[jlc1978]

Do you want to upgrade your laptop every couple of years to get the latest and greatest chipsets with the new frequencies? [doublepost=1563745003][/doublepost]Looking at these, I guess I need to cut Jony a bit of a break...talk about ugly.

While Apple would never do so, a replaceable module would take care of that.

 

[Kubat]

PowerMacs G3 & G4 were true beauties...

 

[jonblatho]

Except of course, you have no idea what the access point is doing with your data between the receipt and transmission; or even if you are actually connected to the hotspot or someone who is intercepting data and passing it on to the hotspot so it appears you are connected.

Do you know how HTTPS works? Because this post implies that you don't.

If data is being sent or received over HTTPS, it doesn’t matter whether an attacker is intercepting data between a client and server, or what—if anything—an access point does between receipt and transmission of data, because the data is already encrypted such that only the client and server can understand what's being said.

There’s still some room for error in man-in-the-middle attacks, especially if a server isn’t properly configured, but to imply that you’re no/little better off using HTTPS rather than HTTP is, well, paranoia. Paranoia that sells for the VPN companies out there, of course.

 

[theluggage]

When that notebook shipped, having wireless LAN in a notebook was actually completely useless, because NOBODY, NOWHERE actually had an access point for these things.

Gosh, you're right! Nobody ever wanted WiFi!

...If only there had been an easy-to-use WiFi access point with a built in dial-up modem and ethernet released at the same time!

...and if only you could use WiFi to access 'workgroup' resources like printers and file servers so there was some point in having it even if you didn't have a fast internet connection...

...and if only large numbers of people worked in universities and larger companies that had had fast Internet access for years by then.

Then, of course, having a popular laptop with this WiFi thingy "thrown in" wasn't going to encourage places to install WiFi, is it...?