At school, i hear people constanly refering to their Dells as "powerbooks". These people act as though the phrase "powerbook" is equivelent to "notebook" or "laptop". As a result, I understand why apple wants to break away from that trend. However i have a simple 6 step solution for everyone:

1. Look at your powerbook where it says "PowerBook G4" and conjure name alternitives.

2. Sudenly notice that above your keyboard there aren't 2 rows of diffrenet plastic shape quick keys including: volume knobs, volume buttons, bass and treble faders, DSP, Dolby digital, automatic internet explorer openers, 4 power swtiches convienintly located no matter where your hands may be resting. Then observe the sleep buttons including: hibernate, sleep, sleep display, restart, logout, switch user, and shutdown.

3. Turn your powerbook around, and admire the huge glowing white apple logo, that everyone stares at every where you go.

4. Go to a coffee shop, sit down, and wait... Wait for someone with a Dell XPS to walk in with their 2 1/2 inch brick and undo all 6 screen latches and musclefuck the LCD open as the 2 weak plastic hinges creak under the weight of the metallic plastic trim and logo's that the ?designers? created... if you feel like waiting longer you can watch in horor as razor sharp lip on the screen slams down and decaptites user.

5. Apple realizes that if they continue to work on hardware production and minimalist simplistic aesthetic design, from now until the end of time, no one in the world will need to see the name mac in the title to know it's a mac.

6.Admit to yourself that one of the reason's that you purchased a powerbook was becuase the glowing apple logo. And nothing says that this computer is a mac like that!

In conclusion of this procedure let me say that the word mac in the title is redundant and erronius. It creates contraditions when discriminating this machine from PC's. Like the use of Pro in different versions of windows. Macs are beutiful and simple in design. If apple really wanted to, they could remove the apple log, remove the namesake and it still would be unique. I have seen the best of mac ripoffs, and they don't hold a candle to even the ibook models. Macs are unique and maybe MacBook will grow on me, but i will miss the hook an appeal of the phrase "powerbook".

I wouldn't be surprised if this was a negotiating point between Intel and Apple. Despite the fact that the PowerBook name pre-dates the PowerPC chip, there is an association there and even if it's unintentional, it may be something that Intel wanted Apple to get away from.

PowerBook was a great name. MacBook sucks, but honestly, if I make the assumption that anything with "Power" is out, it's hard to think of a great name to replace "PowerBook". Mac notebooks have ALWAYS been PowerBooks, so speaking as someone who has had a PowerBook since the PowerBook 100 came out, I consider last Tuesday a sad, sad day in the annals of Apple Computer, Inc.

Jeff LaMarche said on January 16, 2006:

Then you don't have a Mac laptop, you have a MacBook.

Puh-lease. If you have/had a PowerBook, everyone knew that meant a Mac. The new name doesn't do anything but take the obvious and make it stupidly so. It's a dumb name, plus now when I talk about Mac books, I have to clarify that I'm not talking about a computer, but about an actual ink and paper book. Ugh.

How about "lowPowerBook" or "LowPowerMacBook" or "LowMac" (no thanks)
or MacLowPower or MacBook (ok, some one had this idear before me ;-/ )
taking the low out becose it "negativ"
SpeedBook, (hey thats from me!)
SpeedBookPro, MacSpeedPro, MacSpeedBook, ...
now after years, speed is coming back to the AppleBooks
"ComebackBook"
and so on...

Maybe they felt it need that bit on the end? Shrug.

I guess what would it've been otherwise, PowerBook Core Duo?

How better to let people differentiate between powerpc and intel based portables (while the market has both) and also finally have "mac" in the name so that it's never questioned? i've actually heard people calling dell's a powerbook with little regard for what OS was running... but a macbook, there's no question there.

i do, however, think the new name kinda sucks. maybe it'll grow on me. (i'm not, however, very upset. doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me, though i could be wrong. we'll see when the next thing is re-named.)

Courtney