It’s late 1991, and if you ever tried to carry the original Macintosh Portable, you know it was "portable" only in the sense that it had a handle. It was a 16-pound beast. But the new PowerBook 100 (and its brothers the 140 and 170) is different. This is a machine you can actually use on a plane.
The Ergonomic Breakthrough
The most striking thing about the PowerBook isn't the specs-it's the layout. Sony (who helped Apple with the miniaturization) and Apple decided to push the keyboard toward the screen, leaving a palm rest and a centered trackball in front.
Every other "laptop" before this has the keyboard at the front and maybe a clip-on mouse or a weird side-mounted trackball. By putting the pointing device in the center, it’s equally usable for left and right-handed people, and your hands have a place to rest while you type. It seems so obvious now, but it’s a revelation.
Under the Hood
The 100 is the entry-level model, running a Motorola 68000 at 16MHz. It doesn't have a floppy drive (it’s an external option), which keeps it light-just over 5 pounds. The passive-matrix screen is a bit ghosty, but for word processing and basic spreadsheets on the go, it’s a massive upgrade from a legal pad.
The True Mobile Office
We’re starting to see a shift in how our developers work. Some are taking these home over the weekend or using them in meetings to take notes directly into a database. It’s changing the "tethered" nature of the office. I’m waiting for the 170 model to come back into stock-that active-matrix screen is supposed to be incredible-but even the 100 feels like a glimpse into a future where the office is wherever you happen to be sitting.