May 10, 1999: Lombard PowerBook Revealed

What's 20% thinner and two pounds less weighty than its predecessor? Why, the PowerBook Lombard, of course.

This fan favorite of the PowerBook line sported peppy G3 processors running at either 333 or 400 MHz and a very nice price, for the time, of $2499. The battery life was also much improved over the previous iteration, coming in at a still enviable 5 hours of use off a single battery.

The new PowerBook G3 was leaps ahead of its predecessor and a good distance in front of the Wintel offerings of the time. One thing the machine lacked, however, was a name to truly differentiate it from the previous models. Fans of the machine, and there were plenty, glommed onto the code name of the project, "Lombard," and snapped the light and inexpensive PowerBooks up. Steve Jobs first revealed the "Lombard" on May 10, 1999.