PowerBook G3 gets thinner, lighter and has a bronze keyboard

May 10, 1999: on that day came the PowerBook G3, a third-generation laptop that was 20% thinner and 2 pounds lighter than its predecessor.

But most users remember him for the bronze color of his translucent keyboard, which gave the laptop a special charm. Moreover, it was made of tinted plastic, not metal.

Although it didn’t have its own name to distinguish it from previous laptops in the line, it was given the name “Lombard” by fans and was very popular in its day. The PowerBook G3 Lombard helped win another race for Apple just a year after Cupertino returned to profitability.

1999 was a great year for Apple

The PowerBook G3 was equipped with an Apple zPppy PowerPC 750 processor at 333 or 400 MHz, had 64 MB of RAM, 4 GB of hard drive, ATI Rage LT Pro graphics with 8 MB of SDRAM, and a 14.1-inch TFT color display with Mac OS 8.6 . In addition, it could run for five hours on a single charge, and by adding a second battery, it could double the run time to a whopping 10 hours!

The new ultra-slim PowerBook G3 Lombard was the most important product in Apple’s notebook lineup in 1999 and didn’t let the team down. The specifications of the $2,499 laptop were far ahead of what competitors were offering at the time.