Daring Fireball 15" PowerBook review

John Gruber's Daring Fireball review of the new 15" PowerBooks is interesting reading. In one good passage, he suggests that (as usual), Apple's hardware design is fantastic:

"There’s an extraordinary simplicity to the exteriors of all of Apple’s current portables....[C]ompare and contrast to the exterior of your typical PC laptop: two-tone plastic, gratuitously beveled corner edges, dozens of silly extra buttons surrounding the keyboard, and so forth. The difference is that PC hardware appears not to be designed so much as decorated. There are exceptions — IBM’s ThinkPads and Sony’s Vaios are generally pretty good-looking machines. But I don’t think they look as good as PowerBooks or iBooks, and one reason is that although they’re simple, they’re not simple enough."

Follow the link and continue reading for a hilarious and apt use of the F-word, as well as the clever turn of phrase "the ignorant mouth-breathing sort of people who touch computer displays with their fingers."

Gruber's advice on whether to buy now or after the switch to Intel-based machines is also worth reading. It's an interesting set of conjectures even if you are not considering a new PowerBook at all. All in all, the review is worth a few minutes of your time, but some readers may want to skip the more techie paragraphs.