I actually don't use a PPC anymore, but there are definitely some things I miss from computers of that era. I needed a faster machine for my work, so I had to buy a new intel machine, but honestly I think the stability is significantly worse now, and the design of the hardware itself is significantly less usable now, and the appearance of the machines is definitely not as awesome as they used to look.
Specifically, I had an aluminum powerbook 15", and I moved directly to an intel core i5 2010 MBP. The pluses are that it's faster, allows me to run modern software, and has a webcam and a camera card slot. However, there are lots of downsides.
For instance, the trackpad-as-button thing is annoying, it's not uncommon that when I try to click the mouse button it also simultaneously moves the cursor and I wind up clicking on the wrong thing.
Another example is the keyboard. This new MBP keyboard is vastly inferior to the older aluminum PB keyboards - the feel of it is much cheaper, it doesn't have the contours that used to let your fingers comfortably rest into the keys, the keyboard backlight has much more light spillage around the sides of the keys than the old PB keys had, the black keys are ugly, the white text on black keys is much less readable in low light than the PB's silver keys where I rarely ever had to turn on the key backlight.
Also, despite the fact that I opted for the high-res anti-glare (matte) screen on the MBP, the screen is actually inferior to my old alum PB's screen (when it was new). The new screens seem to be much less readable, seem to cause more eye strain, and seem to have a significantly narrower viewing angle before image distortions occur.
On top of all that, the new intel MBP is less stable than my old PPC alum book was during its prime years. I can't specifically say if it's the intel hardware, or the intel version of OS X, but in either case the result is the same. On my old alum PB I got 1, maybe at most 2 kernel panics in a year, but on my new intel MBP if I use a specific piece of software (who shall remain unnamed) I wind up getting a kernel panic about every month or two. Obviously some of the blame falls on to that particular app, but the bigger portion of blame has to fall on the shoulders of the OS that is allowing an app to cause a kernel panic.
Bottom line: I had to get a newer intel machine to do the modern tasks that I have to do, but in most other ways the newer MBP is significantly inferior to the old PPC aluminum Powerbook.
