Clamshell iBook gallery

Submitted by macemx on Tue, 2010-02-02 21:05

Enter my gallery dedicated to the most eye-blowing computer ever made, Apple's Key Lime iBook G3. Upon spying the machine when it was announced – upon beholding the sheer awesomeness and awfulness of that color scheme that no other computer maker would dream of unleashing – I knew that it must be mine.

And so it was.

As with my Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh photos, I have to apologize for the unexciting quality of my shots. And as with the TAM, the color of a Key Lime iBook is hard to depict no matter how good the photog. (No mere image can match the retinal burn of the real Lime Book.)

Using this gallery: Click on a title to jump to that photo's page, or click on a photo to see a close-up without leaving the gallery page.

There are three Clamshell iBook gallery pages total.

Image 00: The professional shot A professional marketing shot of the Key Lime iBook.	Image 01: My Key Lime iBook Oh yeah, baby. This is what I'm talking about. That gaping Pac-Man mouth. Those curves. That... that green. That sci-fi, alien-blood, biohazard green.	Image 02: Top view Top o' the iBook to ye! 'Tis the green and white of an Irish Spring.	Image 03: Under the iBook There's the bottom. It's picked up a little dirt discoloration, but that greenosity still hits the eye like a lime wrecking ball.
Image 04: Left side A face-down shot showing the ports along the left side.	Image 05: Keyboard Ready to go. The surfaces have stayed pretty clean despite years of use. Nobody agrees on keyboard preferences, but I've been perfectly happy with the iBook's typing feel. Hey, check out that single speaker in the upper left! No second channel to disrupt your monaural listening pleasure!	Image 06: Right side The CD/DVD tray on the right. The button to open the tray is a feature long gone from Macs. The surrounding area picks up more dirt than most parts of the machine.	Image 07: CD/DVD tray The open tray. As is always the case with these things, it feels fragile. Yet it's held up with no problems (other than having become gradually noisier). My first DVD-capable computer (even if read-only)! What a bold step forward it seemed.
Image 08: The hinge A closer look at the hinge area. The protruding metal contacts move with the lid, and presumably control awake and sleep states. The hinge has held up great over the years; although the lid is a heavy affair, it stays up nicely. Also note the very visible screws, found in a few other places on the machine too. Apple's come a long way since in its quest to eliminate every such eyesore! (Followers of Apple lore might wonder, tongue only partly in cheek, whether every screw left visible on a shipping model represents an engineer who gets Steved out the door.)	Image 09: Ports Ports: modem, Ethernet, USB (just one!), FireWire 400, and analog AV (for headphones, or the included white three-way cable - L/R stereo and video – for output to TV etc.).	Image 10: Handle The machine's signature handle. Although it feels solid and still snaps neatly into its cradle when not held, the handle's hard plastic has unfortunately picked up some serious cracks. Only the worst, in the center, are easily seen in this photo. The handle material – and not the still-sturdy handle structure itself – is the part that's fared the worst on my iBook.	Image 11: Battery case Half view of the battery case underneath. Removing the battery requires turning two oversized releases (one of which is shown) with a coin, then lifting off the translucent plastic cover. The text you see is on a white sheet pasted inside the plastic cover. The long, white battery itself (not visible here) has a plastic tab to help in pulling it out, and has text only on its underside. The battery has no indicator lights to reveal remaining charge. The two small holes visible above the center of the battery case are for charging stations that Apple sold primarily to education customers.