Since its introduction the alluminium PowerBook series has gone through several revisions. This article attempts to detail the revisions and take a peek at what’s on the horizon.
Hopefully, providing future PowerBook buyers with some insight into the time frame of the PowerBook development life cycle and the ‘best time’ to purchase.
‘You’ve Come A Long Way Baby’
The PowerBook range of Apple portables has always been targeted at the prosumer end of the market. Placed as a solution for creative and executive professionals with both the aesthetics and power expected from prosumer users. The last three incarnations of the PowerBook series feature unique landmark changes to this ever popular range of Apple portables.
Till today the last of the PowerBook G3 series, dubbed the ‘Pismo’ is a much sought after Apple portable. Renown among long-time Apple users as one of the most resilient Apple portables. The Pismo is also the only Apple portable that featured hot swappable optical drive bays which could be swapped out to carry an extra battery pack instead of an optical drive. With an intelligent power management firmware to manage battery usage between the two batteries, this PowerBook could go twice the distance. The Pismo has also done its rounds in Hollywood, none more prominent than being the writing companion to Sarah Jessica Parker’s character ‘Carey Bradshaw’, in HBO’s Sex And The City sitcom.
The following PowerBook G4 Titanium featured Apple’s first venture into metalic casings for its range of prosumer portables. Like its namesake the PowerBook G4 Titanium sported a titanium casing. It also features the first time that Apple produced a portable that is less than 2 inches thick with a built-in slot loading optical drive.
At press time, the PowerBook G4 Aluminium is the latest of the PowerBook G4 range. It features an updated interface with all the external input/ouput (I/O) jacks running along both sides of the PowerBook G4 Aluminium’s bottom casing and an updated keyboard that is fixed to the base of the PowerBook casing. The PowerBook G4 Aluminium also features, a screen mounted WiFi/Bluetooth antenna designed to overcome the previous PowerBook G4 Titanium’s WiFi range issues. The PowerBook G4 Aluminium series is also the first in the series to ship with a fibre optic backlit keyboard feature.
The Evolutionary Process
A new product progresses through a sequence of stages from introduction to growth, maturity and decline. This sequence is popularly known as the product life cycle and is associated with changes in the marketing situation, thus impacting the marketing strategy and marketing mix. The product revenue and profits can be plotted as a function of the life-cycle stages as shown.
When a product nears the end of its life-cycle, and enters its stage of decline, vendors tend to extend the product’s life-cycle by introducing newer features or revisions to the existing product. It can be observed that the PowerBook’s development from release to refresh follows a similar patttern with market demand playing a key determining factor on refresh cycles.
Not taking into account, minor upgrades that include:
- faster CPU speeds;
- RAM increase;
- larger capacity hard drives.
Diagram 1.2 provides a visual map to the major upgrades that have been introduced into the PowerBook G4 Allu series since its introduction to the press time of this article. We may have missed a few, e.g. introduction of Bluetooth 2.0 EDR+, here and there otherwise Diagram 1.2 is generally accurate.
Buying A PowerBook
Despite its knack for being a dynamic company, Apple is not excluded from the generic product life-cycle model (exhibited in Diagram 1.1). It has been witnessed time and again, that the PowerBook range is usually introduced with basic features with more and more hardware upgrades introduced over the implementation life-cycle of the PowerBook range.
With Intel-based Apple computers on the horizon, its probably safe to assume that the latest PowerBook upgrade (as of 19 October 2005) is one of the final major upgrades that we will witness to the PowerBook G4 Allu range. Its predicted that there maybe some minor enhancements to CPU speeds, RAM and hard drive capacity but nothing major until the introduction of the Intel-based Macs, slated to be some time in 2006.
If you are a new buyer looking for a PowerBook G4, now is the time to consider buying a PowerBook G4. Following the explanation in this article, its obvious that the PowerBook G4 Allu has come of age and is peaking. On the other hand, the benefits of waiting is the promise of a faster Intel-based Mac in 2006. However, taking the product life-cycle into consideration, the wait maybe longer and more frustrating than buying a PowerBook G4 now, using it for a year or so and then upgrading to the mature Intel-based PowerBook. Applying this method ensures that you always catch the PowerBook life-cycle at its peak.