It was another keynote for the history books, to be sure. And while we'd never downplay the importance to the continued viability and growth of the Macintosh platform of such various and diverse spectacles as Phil Schiller leaping off a fifteen-foot platform or Noah Wyle reprising his "Pirates of Silicon Valley" role as the formerly-inimitable Steve Jobs, we're sure you either witnessed these shenanigans in person, tuned in over the web, or read about the entire address in detailed blow-by-blow summaries that were probably littering the Mac webscape scant minutes after the presentation ended. So we're going to take this opportunity to ramble on and on about the true star of the show: the Apple iBook. And first, we're going to focus on the good points, of which there are many. (At heart, we're just deliciously positive and optimistic people, aren't we?)

First and foremost, Apple's iBook design strategy is clear as day: it's a portable iMac, little more and little less. The bright and clear twelve-inch active-matrix screen defaults to 800x600 resolution, which is the preferred resolution of the iMac's screen. The processor that powers the iBook is a 300 MHz G3 with half a meg of backside cache-- slightly slower than today's iMac, but a smidge faster than the Bondi models and the original fruit-flavored variety. There's USB, 10/100 Ethernet, and a 56K modem built-in; do those ports sound familiar? There's an iMac-style 24x CD-ROM drive in the right side of the unit, and even the not-quite-enough 32 MB of RAM and smaller-than-it-could-be 3.2 GB hard drive evoke the spirit of its bigger sibling. And, of course, there's the industrial design: sleek, curvy, friendly, translucent, and brightly-colored, the iBook really looks like an iMac that got hit with a shrink ray, or maybe one that just got sat on by somebody really heavy. Even Apple's upcoming television commercials tout the iBook as an "iMac To Go." And we bet that's a winning strategy; the iMac has been wildly successful, so Apple would be nuts not to plant the iBook squarely on the iMac's coattails.

Now, you've seen all the specs, but the biggest resemblance between the iMac and the iBook is not one you can determine by looking at pictures on a computer screen, and it is this: the iBook begs to be touched. At last year's Expo, hundreds of showgoers thronged around the iMacs in the Apple booth to gaze at the marvelous creation from all angles, to run their hands over the exciting mix of contrasting textures, to feel the sudden yet seamless transition from smooth ice to frosted Bondi. Guess what? The iBook is generating the same amount of tactile awe, if not more. The mix of textures is similar to that of the iMac, but the hard translucent rubber along the front edge adds a new dimension, as does the shiny metal trackpad. And that's important, because while a person that spends an inordinate amount of time caressing his or her iMac might invite some, er, unfortunate nicknames, a portable computer is, by definition, a creature of touch. And the iBook is a real joy to touch. For those of you not present at the show, you'll have to wait until demo units make it into the stores before you can fully appreciate this point.

And then, of course, there's the most compelling feature of the iBook: its AirPort wireless networking capability. Looks like we finally know what Apple's been working on with Lucent for all this time, yes? Believe us-- it really works, and it works pretty well; there appears to be a networking delay when an iBook wakes from sleep, but that's a minor annoyance and may well vanish long before production iBooks hit the shelves. So, for $99 per iBook and $299 for the wireless BaseStation, you can soon work in any room of your house with an unbroken connection to, say, your desktop Mac, and uninterrupted full-speed access to the Internet. Yes, you'll soon be able to take your iBook from your front porch to the dining room to the bedroom and yes, even to the bathroom (a true geek's dream come true!) all without wires and all without losing your Internet/file server connection. Think of what this could mean for schools. Better yet, think of what this could mean for iBook-toting kids all gathering at a single friend's house for an afternoon of Unreal Tournament netmatches.

Another thing that doesn't really reveal itself to you about the iBook if you're just looking at photographs is the legendary Apple attention to detail. For instance, there's no latch to close the thing-- it's spring-loaded, instead, so there's nothing for the kids to break when the iBook is thrown into a backpack. Similarly, there are no doors or flaps to cover the iBook's ports. That wigged us out at first, but let's face it: does anyone out there have a laptop more than a few weeks old that hasn't lost all of its port-covers due to breakage? Now imagine what would happen if that same laptop had been handled by a schoolkid on a day-to-day basis. Exactly. So the covers are gone, and instead Apple chose to recess the ports well within the case to protect them. Neat idea. There's lots more, like the translucent round power supply that lets you wind the cable like a yo-yo and the LEDs that glow different colors when the iBook is charging and when its fully charged and ready to go. As faithful viewer Stephen White noted to us in person on the show floor, even the battery isn't removable in the usual sense; since the battery's life is six hours (meaning, we figure, four hours), it's just an internal and seamless part of the overall design. Simplicity itself: who really wants to worry about carrying multiple batteries, swapping them, etc.? (When the battery does need to be replaced, it's apparently fairly simple to remove the iBook's bottom to do so.)

We have no doubt Apple's got a real winner on its hands-- again. The iMac was (and is) huge, and the iBook has the potential to make an even bigger splash. Now all Apple has to do is ship them-- preferably before the school year starts. Of course, just because the iBook has a big list of pros, that doesn't mean there aren't some arguable cons as well...

Remember once the dust cleared last May and people actually had a little time to think about the iMac's announced specifications? Eventually somebody noticed that there was no floppy, and thence came the predictions of doom. Somebody else noticed that there were zero expansion slots, and voilà-- more predictions of doom. Uh-oh, no legacy ports like SCSI, ADB, or serial-- guess what? Yup, still more predictions of doom. And yet, as faithful viewer Argonaut notes via an Bloomberg article, the iMac was the number one selling personal computer in the retail channel last month. Not a whole lot of doom there, especially since the iMac's been available for nearly a year now.

So with that in mind, let's consider the iBook's potential pitfalls. First, price. $1599 may be a great price for such a fast and stylish laptop, but it's a far cry from the $1000 ideal that Steve and Co. tried to hit. (We bet the active-matrix display had a lot to do with the differential.) Is it cheap enough to penetrate the consumer and educational market? There are also a lot of ports and slots missing; it's no surprise that serial, ADB, and SCSI are gone, but there's no video-out, so you can't use the iBook with a monitor, and there's no PCMCIA/CardBus slot, so there's no way to add any additional functionality beyond the AirPort wireless networking card. Heck, there isn't even a microphone or a sound-in jack, so forget about any kind of cool recording projects for school, kiddies-- you won't be able to narrate the voiceover for your AppleWorks-based presentation, and you won't be able to use the nifty ViaVoice voice dictation software demonstrated during the keynote unless someone hacks together something for the USB port. But at least there's a headphone jack so you can listen to CDs and MP3s on the bus...

But the way we see it, the biggest problem is the "biggest" problem. The iBook is a behemoth. We can only assume that when David Pogue referred to the iBook as "delightfully small" in his early review, he had been touring the local crack houses before settling down to write. Yes, it's a whole lot smaller than the iMac, but the iBook weighs in at 6.6 pounds-- seven-tenths of a pound heavier than Apple's professional laptop offering, and as far as we could tell when hefting the thing, it's every bit as big and at least as thick. So much for the rumors that the P1 would be a subnotebook-style minibook; we bet the Japanese, in particular, are not pleased. We can only scratch our heads in wonder while trying to determine what Apple was thinking when they decided to make an education-targeted portable nearly seven pounds in weight. Sure, the nifty handle helps, but in this day and age of physical unfitness, there are probably fifth-graders out there who couldn't even lift anything heavier than a PlayStation controller, let alone lug it to school and back.

So is the iBook doomed to fail? Hardly. I mean, have you seen this thing? Apple's probably going to sell a gazillion of them. But there's a lot of room for improvement if Apple really expects the iBook to be used as a primary computer, even by a schoolkid. And if not, we hope we start seeing iMacs and iBooks bundled together at a substantial savings sometime in the near future...

Okay, let's get this out in the open right away: we just know that there are going to be lots of people out there who think the iBook is ugly. It's definitely different-- there isn't anything out there even remotely like it. The perfectly rectangular screen and keyboard look a little strange floating in a sea of white and colored translucent curves. If anything, the iBook most closely resembles those toy "My First Laptop" thingies made by Fisher-Price and the like. Several people have already complained to us that the iBook looks too much like a toy-- but, of course, they were all adults, so we're hoping to hear some kids' perspectives soon.

One thing that's puzzling everyone is, why on earth is Apple releasing iBooks in only two flavors? Surely if the iMac can flourish in a variety of five flavors, the iBook could do the same. When the Power Mac G3 came out only in Blueberry, we wrote off the decision as Apple's choice to limit the frivolity level in the professional product line. (Granted, if that were the reason, we'd imagine that the Power Mac would have passed up Ice and Blueberry for the dark neutral tones of the PowerBook, but hey, that's just us.) But the iBook? The laptop that's obviously targeted right at schoolchildren? If anything, we'd expect there to be more flavors than the iMac's five, not fewer. And what's with Blueberry and Tangerine? The Apple boothbots claim that those two colors were chosen because they're the most popular iMac flavors. Correct us if we're wrong, but wasn't Tangerine dead last by a huge margin according to the sales numbers? Was the decision made, as Katie suggests, by a University of Illinois alumnus pushing his alma mater's colors? Or is Apple trying to get rid of their extra Tangerine plastic, as faithful viewer Shane Burgess surmises?

In any case, we'll say this: you should probably reserve judgment on the iBook's looks until you see one in person, because just as with the iMac, the iBook somehow seems quite different when it's right in front of you. And in our humble opinion, the Tangerine model actually holds a little more appeal than the Blueberry one. Hey, maybe orange is the new grey...