ibook G3 clamshell

The design of the first generation ibooks was clearly influenced by apple's consumer desktop, the imac. The clamshell design also echoed the eMate 300. Apple continued its trend of using transparent colored plastics for the shell, and released the ibook clamshell series in several colors, starting with blueberry and tangerine. later in the series apple added indigo, graphite, and keylime.

Like the imac, the ibook G3 had a powerpc G3 cpu. USB, ethernet, modem ports and an optical drive were standard. The ibook G3 was the first mac to use apple's new „unified logic board architecture", which condensed all of the machine's core features into two chips, and added AGP and ultra DMA support. The ibook was the first mainstream computer designed and sold with integrated wireless networking.

The ibook was larger and heftier than the powerbook of the time, and yet had lower specifications. Standard features like pc card slots were absent. The line continually received processor, memory, hard disk upgrades, and new colors. FireWire and video out were later added.