THIS DAY IN TECH HISTORY: Ever heard of the Apple iBook?

Apple's iBook was a big hit with consumers, who were a bit disappointed with some of the company's previous offerings in the 1990s.

Dubai - If you haven't then know this: it 'revolutionised' the whole Wi-Fi thing on a laptop

By Alvin R. Cabral

Published: Fri 21 Jul 2017, 3:14 PM

Last updated: Tue 7 Dec 2021, 1:03 PM

Nowadays, a good chunk of humanity is so engrossed with the iPhone, iPad, MacBook, iPod, iMac and everything Apple.
Back then, the company had hulking devices (including that $6,500 'portable' Apple Macintosh back in 1989). A decade later, they decided to make things a little more convenient, both from a price and carrying point of view.
The late great Steve Jobs - who was then interim CEO - unveiled the iBook on July 21, 1999. At that point, the iBook - a mash-up between the PowerBook and the yummy-looking iMac G3 - was the most hotly-anticipated machine from Apple.
And why not? The iBook was the device to debut Apple's AirPort networking card, which simply means it allowed the computer to connect to Wi-Fi, proving not just Apple's capability to innovate, but also ushering in the kind of connectivity that would make stuff like iTunes a success in the years to come.
The clamshell-inspired iBook had a 12.1-inch active-matrix LCD display, an internal 56K modem, a 300MHz G3 processor, 32MB of RAM (expandable to 160MB), a 3.2GB hard drive, one USB port, a CD-ROM drive and up to six hours of battery juice, all for $1,599 (that's about $2,350 or a mad Dh8,630 in today's currencies). Those were some mean specs (back then, of course).
Jobs at that time said that the iBook is the "'iMac to Go' for both home and school", and was "designed right from the start to use Apple's revolutionary new AirPort wireless networking for cable-free Internet access".
And it even claims to "turn my whole world around" here: