Apple iBook G3

For today’s entry in my ongoing “Zscaler Logo on a Weird, Old or Obsolete Device” series, I thought I’d take us back… back… back… to the heady summer days of 1999, when Apple released this “Tangerine” iBook G3.

After the runaway smash success of the original “Bondi Blue” iMac (a machine which played a huge part in pulling Apple out of their “beleaguered” era and revitalizing their prestige as a brand), Apple needed a portable machine with a similar vibe… but I don’t think anyone expected THIS.

This iBook G3 has solid specs for a laptop of this era: a G3 processor running at 300MHz, 320 megabytes of RAM, a 6 gigabyte hard drive, and an ATI Rage GPU with a whopping 4 megabytes of VRAM.

Of course, its technical specifications are just about the last thing anyone actually noticed when these machines came out. Instead, the eye-popping design was all Apple fans (and detractors!) could talk about. The weird blobby shape! The eye-searing “Tangerine” color! The spring-loaded handle on the back which doubled as a WiFi antenna!

While some poor misbegotten souls laughingly dismissed this as the “Toilet Seat Mac,” the original iBook G3 is now a sought-after and highly collectable machine, much loved by anyone lucky enough to still own a working example. This particular iBook was originally owned by the last girl I dated before I met my wife, who sold it to me when she upgraded to a PowerBook in 2002. Thankfully, I’ve been able to keep it (mostly) intact for over 20 years now, other than a slightly loose DC-power-in jack (notice that I’m using the iBook’s battery to put a little pressure on the power plug).

I love that this machine is so unmistakable. While I remain primarily an Apple user today and quite like my current “M1” MacBook Pro, it’s hard to argue that laptop designs in 2022 haven’t totally blurred together - even an Apple fan like me can struggle to tell a MacBook Pro from a Dell XPS from a Google PixelBook these days… but NO ONE is ever going to mistake the Tangerine iBook G3 for anything else!

That’s it for today - have a great weekend, everyone!