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When Apple first introduced the iBook in the summer of 1999, it looked like the company had hit a solid double. This portable equivalent of their popular iMac was rugged, stylish (some would say too much so), and inexpensive. Its clamshell design garnered a snicker or two from the PC crowd, but overall people were very impressed. Having owned one of these tangerine dreams, I can personally say it was a very nice little unit, though not without its flaws.Last May, Apple stepped up to the plate and hit a home run out of the park. The new revision of the iBook sports a more conservative design (mimicking the sleek TiBook) as well as a number of improvements over the original. In this review, I won't bother you with all of the amazing features of the iBook 2001. You can read the plethora of reviews from Mac, PC, and regular news outlets to get the scoop on how good of a machine it is. Since this is a gaming site, I'll try to look at the iBook from the perspective of gamers and their needs. After all, the iBook may be bringing many new users to the Mac platform, but if it can't hold its own in UT, what's it really worth? [NOTE: Apple has since rev'd the iBooks to 600MHz. This review is based on a 500MHz machine with a DVD/CD-RW combo drive.] First Impressions Before my iBook shipped, I took a trip to CompUSA to check out the unit in person. I can't say I was wholeheartedly impressed by the looks of it as it sat next to the $3500 TiBook. It seemed tiny, the white keyboard looked cheap, and my eyes weren't doing well with the screen in the harsh store light. As I later pulled my very own iBook out of its box, things were different. The once-tiny machine now looked much more like a "portable" than the TiBook or any of my previous laptops. Turning it on, I find the keyboard very usable and the 12.1" screen very crisp and readable.Some of my main complaints with the original iBook vanished immediately. The one, tiny speaker has been replaced with two (albeit still tiny) speakers. Though I admit to hardly using it, the microphone absent from the first models of iBooks is now included for any online chitchat or recordings. The new design of the iBook is an immediate crowd-gathering device in itself and never inspires remarks about toilet seat covers like before. The second USB port is much nicer, as you can now have a mouse and other accessory (printer, Zip drive) plugged in at the same time. Having a built-in CD-RW drive also means you finally have a way to get information off of the computer besides sending it over a network or the Internet.
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