Ableton Forum

for me the main difference between powerbooks and ibooks is that the powerbook has an audio in, the ibook not. This is no problem as long as you use external soundcards. But it's really nice to have the possibility to just plug in a microphone/minidiscplayer/whatever and record wherever you are. Because sometimes you will have your laptop with you, but not always your soundcard.

The iBooks do have a built-in microphone, though, so in a REAL pinch you can still capture rather decent audio w/ no soundcard. (I captured my daughter's first words this way...)

Someone up there said iBooks are made of cheap plastic...well, if it is, my iBook's "cheap plastic" has held up VERY well over the last 12 months of hard use (a number of live shows, both performing and recording, about a dozen flights through the airport x-ray machines, not to mention occasionally playing host to a "Blues Clues" DVD for my son whilest I make dinner.) It may be plastic, but it ain't "cheap" plastic by a long shot.

I'm quite happy with my 12" iBook. If I had the bones, I'm sure I would have been just as happy with a PowerBook, too.

I don't think you can lose either way.

I went from G4 iMac to 12" Powerbook. I like my powerbook but I wish I waited for the G5 iMac. My advice is to wait a couple (weeks? months?) for new powerbooks to arrive. Hopefully more bang for the buck and hopefully a stronger shell.
I've always felt the build quality on the iBooks to be far better than the powerbooks these days (depsite some logic board problems, etc...).

ultrasource wrote:(depsite some logic board problems, etc...).

That issue was resolved 18 months ago, 2 generations ago.