IGM - Choose it or Lose it: Titanium v. Pismo

Choose it or Lose it: Titanium v. Pismo
by Remy Davison

Be quick. If you want a PowerBook with expansion bays, that is. Stocks of 400 and 500MHz G3 Pismo PowerBooks are disappearing fast as Apple's dwindling inventory of old stock falls out of the dealer channels for ever. And ever.

It's never been a better time to buy a PowerBook - G3 or G4. When the Wallstreets and Lombards made way for newer models, the channels were almost entirely dry by the time the new 'Book hit the streets. This time, you have a choice, but only for a very limited period. Right now you can pick up a 400MHz Pismo for $1,999 or a 500MHz model for $2,200. Huge price drops by any stretch. And the $200 difference between the Pismo 400 and the iBook SE/466 just demonstrates what a bargain the 400 model is. Two inches more screen real estate (proving size does matter), less weight, more speed, better connectivity, eons greater expandability. I think you get the point.

We've already seen in a previous column how the Pismo stacks up against the year 2000's Wintel crop. But the soon-to-be-history Pismo is giving way to Titanium - a 5.3lb, G4 Mac wrapped in a silver space-age metal with the largest screen ever seen on an Apple portable.

QuickSilver

Let's consider the Titanium first. What do you get for your $2,599 in the 'base' 400MHz model? A new-generation G4 CPU for a start, which takes advantage of Altivec-enabled applications like Photoshop or SoundJam MP. Dual USB ports, plus a FireWire port. 5.3 pounds. A 15.2" wide-screen display for full aspect DVD playback; a slot-loading DVD drive; a 10GB hard drive; 128MB of RAM riding on a 100MHz system bus; a CardBus slot; 8MB VRAM on an ATI Rage 128 card; VGA out; 16-bit audio, 10/100bT ethernet, 5-hour LiION battery; S-video out and 4mbps IrDA. Plus it's wrapped in 'commercially pure' Titanium. On the top-of-the-line model, you get a 500MHz G4, 256MB of RAM and a 20GB hard drive. Oh, and that'll be an extra grand. Thanks.

Read this spec sheet before? You'd be right: it virtually carbon-copies the Pismo's. Granted, for pro users, the G4 is big news if you're working with graphics. Ditto for web page designers as, finally, you can view two real-sized web pages side by side. The weight reduction - any weight reduction - is most welcome, and the screen has to be seen to be believed. Despite the relatively modest increase in the number of pixels over the 14.1" Pismo screen, the width of the thing - and the thinness of lid and the small overall size of the 'Book itself - makes the display seem even more impressive than it really is. I'd have to say it's my second-favorite Apple display - next to the $3,999 22" Apple Cinema Display of course.

Does the Titanium justify the extra expense over the Pismo? Is the G4 CPU, the larger display and the stunning Titanium enclosure enough to warrant spending an additional $600 for either 400MHz model? That $600 could buy you a stupendous amount of RAM...almost a new iMac...a truly ginormous FireWire drive...a wicked-fast CDRW....or a media bay drive.

The Mystery of the Missing Drive Bay

Ah yes, a media bay drive. I was wondering when we'd get to that. In case you hadn't noticed, the PowerBook G4's DVD drive is fixed. Static. Immovable. A veritable Rock of Gibraltar. Whereas 1998's Wallstreets and the later Lombard and Pismo PowerBooks gave you two expansion bays, you get nothing here. Nix. Nil. Nothing. Hands up all of you who've noticed that the Power Mac G4 is now the only expandable Mac available. Remember the original Mac? No slots! screamed Steve. Closed boxes! First the iMac, then the iBook, then the Cube. Tried doing a quick battery swap on an iBook? Now it's the PowerBook's G4's turn.

OK. Take a deep breath. How many of you have actually bought expansion bays? I have, in the past: a VST Zip module for my old PowerBook 5300. And a hard drive. And I will again for the Wallstreet and Lombard we have here. But if I bought a Titanium, I don't even have the choice. While some people have argued that Titanium is expandable - via its USB, FireWire and CardBus ports, let me present some alternative scenarios to you. What if you want a backup you can just take with you? Say, a hard drive or a Zip? With Titanium, you have to have these as external modules. And, given that the power cord-less USB Zip has just emerged, it's safe to say there aren't that many around. So don't forget to pack the power cord and the USB/FireWire cables. Oh, and the drive itself, of course.

With a Pismo, this is straightforward: pack the Zip, CDRW or hard drive into the PowerBook itself. And, if you're toting a Zip, SuperDisk or CDRW, guess what? You can exchange data with PC users. Only 90% of the planet, of course, but who's counting? How many of your PC-using buddies are pounding the keys of a FireWire-enabled Wintel notebook or desktop? Be honest. I know we've only just had the electricity turned on down here in Australia, but if I ask any PC superstore for FireWire hard drives and other peripherals, they just say, "Huh?". Then I say "IEEE-1394". Now they think I'm talking about wireless networking and start banging on about "This great new technology Toshiba's just invented."

This is where I hang up.

But back to the moral of our story. How many of your aforementioned PC acquaintances have a CD-ROM drive or a Zip? Aha. Quite a few, I'd bet. And if there are just two of you with no network between you, how're you going to email that 200MB file to them? Even if it's a smallish file, they're going to start asking that hoary old chestnut again: "How come you haven't got a floppy drive?" And don't even start waxing lyrically about how the Commercially-Pure Titanium enclosure completely mitigates the need to have any form of removable storage whatsoever.

And let's not forget batteries. With the Pismo, you can dump two of these LiION babies into the expansion bays. You can leave the DVD at home if you don't need it. But Titanium? Jeez, that's another thing you have to carry in your case. And where the hell did I leave that battery anyway? So unless you actually do (remember to) carry around that extra battery, you can forget the luxury of 7 or 8-hour dual battery life that you get with the Pismo. And, in case you're wondering, Titans like expensive batteries ($129).

Don't overlook other little details either. Not only are your old media bay devices still useful with a Pismo, but that old PB1400 power supply still works too (Titanium's connector is unique; it's smaller than the connectors that come before it). Although at least it's nice to know that if you bought a huge slab of RAM for your Pismo, you can transfer it to the Titanium. And that ginormous 32GB hard drive you installed still works too. I'm also glad to report that the IrDA port is still hanging around the backside of the Titanium. After all, if you haven't got an ethernet cable handy, how else are you going to zap files over to another PowerBook? Not everyone has an Airport card after all.

Need for Speed?

How fast is the Titanium? Not much faster it seems. Yes, in some Photoshop operations, it will be 2-3 times faster than a Pismo (but we're talking a matter of seconds here). For some, though, that's important (unless we charge billable hours). But I'd want to see a stream of apps - like DV apps - that effectively utilise the G4's Altivec capabilities. I think that'll happen once enough speedy G4 chips find their way onto iMacs and iBooks. These are the markets developers have chased. The G4 PowerBook will help, but when every Mac runs a G4, applications will follow. And, of course, OS X helps out in this respect as well.

So if you buy that Pismo 400 or 500, what type of speed advantage are you giving up? Not a lot. You'll see marginal speed differences. But when you take into account that the Titanium uses the same graphics card, the same memory bus, the same RAM - and the same EIDE controller, as far as I can tell - there aren't the same hardware improvements one sees with, say, the new Power Mac G4s with their faster buses and improved PCI performance. Even the Paris 2000 iBooks added real stuff to the basic iBook design: FireWire, video out, speed. But where's the quantum performance improvement on the Titanium? Previous PowerBook G3 incarnations have shown real-world, marked improvements in speed. I can really tell the difference between a 233MHz Wallstreet and a 333MHz Lombard. The performance gap between the Wallstreet 300 and Lombard 400 was enough to make Wallstreet owners consider upgrading. And the 100MHz bus, FireWire and 500MHz CPU was a good upgrade path for Lombard 400 owners.

Frame rates? Video performance improvements? Not so you'd notice. The 8MB VRAM on the ATI 128 card on the Pismo is still the Titanium's mainstay (and, lest we forget, the iBook's as well). The EIDE controller's specification is unchanged as well. But for audio users out there, the Titanium's lack of an analogue sound input port is bound to annoy. Sure, you can buy a USB microphone or audio input device, but it'd be nice if it stayed on the mobo. Ditto the second FireWire port, which is now history. Granted, this won't matter to a lot of people as you can daisy-chain FireWire devices, but some people report problems downloading DV from a camera to a FireWire hard drive on the same bus. And vice versa. Although I can understand space limitations left Apple with few options other than to drop the second FireWire port.

Titanium with envy?

Some people reckon that Pismo owners are bagging the Titanium so they can still feel their purchase is relevant. I'm not one of them. I'm just suggesting that if you need removable internal storage and like an insanely-great price on a PowerBook,you'd be crazy not to go for the Pismos while you still can.

But one thing's for sure: you can't have that glorious widescreen on your Pismo. If you've never watched a DVD on your 'Book or couldn't care less about having Photoshop palettes or an extra web page open on the other half of the screen, this is unlikely to bother you. If 14.1" of XGA resolution isn't enough for you, you must be...making a lot of money, whatever it is you and your PowerBook do.

Not that my opinion is worth a damn. The market has bought Titanium even before it's started arriving in quantity. The PC magazines have bought it (and how!), most of the Pro Mac market are wowed by it, and the PR people have gone home, content in the knowledge that their Jobs are done.

But I'm not entirely convinced. Were it possible that Apple could have delivered, say, a 500 and 600MHz G4 PowerBook, these would be genuine reasons for Pismo owners to upgrade. But now, for the first time in a few years, the PowerBooks have fallen significantly behind the 8-ball - some 200-plus MHz - behind their desktop counterparts in terms of outright performance. The Lombards were close to their Blue & White desktop G3 brothers. The 500MHz G4 PowerBook doesn't come close to the 733MHz Power Mac. I realise there are all sorts of performance compromises in a notebook - heat dissipation, stability, logic board miniaturisation, power considerations and so on - but the MHz gap in Apple's Pro desktop and portable lines shouldn't be so wide. But I guess we can blame the AIM consortium for that.

Don't get me wrong: I hope Apple sell truckloads of Titaniums (and they will). It's a great product. I just don't think the whole Mac portable market is entirely satisfied by the closed-box philosophy Titanium and iBook have on offer. Which is where Pismo comes in.

And those PowerBook users will plump for a Pismo. While it lasts. Me? I'm awaiting the next iteration of the Titan to see what the future brings. But right now, you have the choice between a $2,000 Pismo and a $2,600 Titanium. So think different. But think fast.