Last summer, when the hardware announcements at MacWorld Expo were more modest than many had hoped and/or expected, there was a fair bit of grumbling in the ranks of the Mac faithful. Apple made a point of forestalling a reprise of that by making an unprecedented announcement well in advance of the now-canceled Paris MacWorld Expo, that there would be no new hardware announced there, which resulted in speculation that a PowerBook upgrade might be announced instead at the Seybold Seminars.

However, while the OS X 10.1 release that had been slated for Paris was shifted to Seybold, there was nary a word about new or upgraded Apple hardware at San Francisco this week.

I think that this lull in the usual frenzy of hardware rollouts is in many respects a good thing. Not that technological advance is to be disparaged, but one sometimes gets the sense that change in the computer industry is more often than not for the sake of change, and not always for the better. As the industry matures, and weathers is what will almost certainly be a period of modest or even negative growth in the near-term future, perhaps it would also be timely to consider adopting at least partly a sort of Volkswagen Beetle style of development motif.

The VW Beetle, as some readers will be aware, was originally designed by Ferdinand Porsche at the elder in the mid-1930's on commission from Germany's Nazi government as a cheap car for the masses. The poor Beetle was originally saddled with the cumbersome moniker: Kraft Durch Freude Wagen ("Strength Through Joy Car") or KDF Wagen. Only a few KDF Wagens were built before World War II broke out, at which time production efforts were redirected to making a sort of jeepish military version of the rear-engine, air-cooled vehicle for the military -- the Kubelwagen -- (which was resurrected for a while in the 1970s as the Volkswagen "Thing").

Anyway, after the war, the British army ended up being in control of the part of Germany where the KDF works was located. In the interest of getting the local economy kickstarted, the KDF factory was patched up and production of the civilian KDF Wagen resumed in 1946, renamed Volkswagen, or "people's car."

The original VW Beetle has been in production continuously ever since, a model run of 55 years and counting. While Beetle Type 1 production ended in Germany in 1978 and imports to the U.S. and Canada were terminated in 1977 (convertibles were sold until 1979) in favor of the front wheel drive VW Rabbit/Golf design, the old Beetle remains in production in Puebla, Mexico, in a form factor that is not all that radically different from those first Volkswagens of 1946.

There is also a new, retro-style front-wheel-drive VW Beetle that is now sold in North America and elsewhere, but it is an entirely different car.

One interesting thing about the VW Beetle is that especially during its market heyday from about 1950 - 1970, while its form factor remained constant, the car was constantly upgraded with thousands of improvements. I doubt that there was one single part from the 1950 Beetle that carried through to 1970, even though the car looked pretty much the same beginning to end, and still does for that matter in 2001.

Which brings me back to the Mac. The iMac has been frequently compared to the VW Beetle as being a uniquely inspired, distinctive, and timeless piece of design work. Apple has been able to stick with the basic iMac form factor for more than three years -- an eternity in the computer business. As with the Beetle example cited above, I don't imagine there's a single part shared by the original Bondi Blue 233 MHz iMac, and the current slot loading version, but the basic form factor has remained recognizably the same throughout.

And as with the Beetle, which progressed from 1,200 cc engines through 1,300, 1,500, and 1,600 models, the iMac progressed from its original 233 MHz G3 processor through 266, 333, 350, 400, 450, 500, 600, and most recently 700 MHz G3s.

Arguably, it's pretty hard to imagine how the iMac form factor could be improved on within the constraints of an all-in-one desktop machine using a 15 each CRT monitor. Consequently, if the CRT is to be retained for the foreseeable future, which price competitiveness pretty much the mandates, changing the design radically would amount to change for the sake of change.

However, the iMac actually isn't the oldest basic form factor in Apple's lineup. That honor goes to the G4 Power Mac, which traces its form factor lineage way back to the blue and white G3 Yosemite that was introduced at MacWorld Expo in January, 1998. The original, 4-handle design received a color change to graphite and ice when the G4 Power Macs were introduced in September, 1999, and a modest but significant facelift with the Quicksilver model that debuted last summer in New York, but the essential design, which may be the best desktop mini tower concept ever, with its "drawbridge" access to internals, is still very similar to those 1998 blue and whites, and there would seem to be no compelling reason to change it other than merely the desire for change.

Apple's laptops, meanwhile, have metamorphosed much more substantially in the form factor lifetime of the current Power Mac and iMac. When the blue and white Power Mac was launched, there were three PowerBook form factors on the go, the 1400, the 2400c, and the 3400/3500 G3. The Wall Street PowerBook G3 came along in May, 1998, at the same time the iMac form factor was first unveiled, and it was followed by the Lombard/Pismo form factor (May 1999,/February 2000 respectively) and then the current Titanium G4 PowerBook in January, 2001. The 1400 and 2400 were discontinued when the WallStreet was released, not to be replaced until the original iBook in September, 1999, and the current iBook in May, 2001. Not much correspondence with the VW Beetle motif in portable-land.

But have Mac portable users being well-served by the changes? There is of course a committee consideration with laptops that does not apply to desktop machines--the never-ending quest for thinner, lighter computers. The Lombard/Pismo is thinner and lighter than the WallStreet, and the TiBook is thinner and lighter still. The 500 MHz iBook is a lot thinner and lighter than the original iBook.

And while the new iBook is better in just about every way compared with its bulky predecessor, the two PowerBook form factor changes in the time frame under discussion have not been without compromise. Gains in sleekness, lightness, and in the case of the TiBook --drop dead gorgeous styling -- have come at a price, namely a loss of versatility and ruggedness.

It is arguable, at least I'm going to argue it, that the WallStreet represented the high water mark in all-round PowerBook design. For folks that lug their PowerBooks around a lot, it's lighter, more svelte successors are easier on the arms and shoulders, but for all-out versatility in a PowerBook, it's hard to beat the old WallStreet.

Which is why I wish Apple had chosen to apply the VW Beetle approach to the WallStreet the way they have with the Power Mac tower and the iMac. Personally I never been especially enchanted with the WallStreet's looks (I much prefer the TiBook's styling aesthetically), but the VW Beetle was no raving beauty here. However, a WallStreet that had undergone three-plus years of refinement and upgrading the way its desktop stablemates have would be one honey of a portable computer, with built-in USB and FireWire (plenty of room for two ports and separate buses each), 500 MHz G3 or even G4 processors, a 100 MHz System bus, big hard drives and lots of RAM capacity, but also retaining two PC Card slots and two modular expansion bays. Being a very satisfied WallStreet owner, I would love to have a Mac like that.

I love the TiBook, but its deliciously sleek, slimline design has compromised it in practical terms, with only a single PC Card slot, no removable module expansion bay, as well as a number of distempers related to tight physical tolerances and its sheet metal case.

And how does the iBook fit in to this line of reasoning? Surely the new, 500 MHz machine is a major step forward from its oddly styled and somewhat bloated predecessor? Yes it is, but it's also another case of "everything old is new again."

If you compare the new iBook form factor to that of the old PowerBook 5300, you will discover that it is remarkably close in two of its three dimensions, albeit substantially thinner. I've always thought that the PowerBook 5300 had just about the ideal laptop form factor. The spectacular popularity of the new iBook seems to underscore that assertion.

I suppose that the iBook is analogous to the new VW Beetle compared with the PowerBook 5300's old Beetle. The original form factor revived, reengineered, modernized ,and sleekened, but still recognizable. It's not a bad way to go.

Charles W. Moore