PowerBook G3 Kanga: Apple's Shortest-Lived Mac Laptop

1997 was a turbulent year for Apple -- it marked solid technological progress but also financial and leadership troubles. Let's fix up a laptop that played a quiet but important role in helping to turn the company around.
Sources:
G3 Kanga prototype photo: / kanga_dvt_unit
"Fastest Laptop Yet," Macworld, January 1998.
"High-End Notebooks," PC Magazine, January 1998.
"Help Wanted: Apple CEO," MacUser, October 1997.
"Amelio Ousted," Macworld, September 1997.
"Apple names Steve Jobs as interim chief executive," InfoWorld, September 22, 1997.
"Apple's Next-Generation Systems," Macworld, January 1998.
"Apple's G3 systems speed ahead," InfoWorld, December 22, 1997.
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Music by
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Intro music by BoxCat Games (www.box-cat.com).

[@yukisaitou5004]

"I guess Apple's engineers thought differently" well played sir

[@FaultyStreams]

I came here to say that! 😃

[@ActionRetro]

This is one if my absolute grail machines. Beautiful!

[@juanignacioaschura9437]

The best solution is not just superglue, but superglue mixed with baking soda. The exothermic reaction is potent enough to fuse the plastic parts together, creating an even stronger bond. Superglue alone won't guarantee a permanent fix, I'm learning that the hard way with many modern laptops reliant on such standoffs to keep their lids and screens in place.

[@andreg011]

How does one mix them together?

[@EGPeppered]

As someone who constantly has to deal with broken screw inserts, i'm gonna have to try this.

[@cjayduy4510]

Interesting method, im used to using steel epoxy for my clients and its usually effective, but takes time to settle. ill try this to compare

[@owmylehg7811]

@@YoureUsingWordsIncorrectly I have no clue how you get that to work. For me it sets very instantly, and I have no time to mix it up.

[@medes5597]

​@@owmylehg7811OK I know this is two years old but in case you or anyone still needs the info *you don't mix them in a separate location, baking soda is an accelerator* You mix them in situ. You add baking soda to the area that you're glueing then add baking soda and join the parts. Or the other way around. I personally had more luck with baking soda first. You have about 10 seconds to connect your parts how you wish, and the heat reaction flashes super hot for a millisecond in that time. So be careful. Hope that helps.

[@gieselats]

While watching „volcano“ (1997) Today ,I saw an apple mac g3 in that movie. Very funny. Keep up the good work. Stay safe.

[@Darkbloxer111]

It always stuns me how absurdly expensive these top of the line laptops were. $5700 in 1998 is nearly $10k in 2021 dollars. Meanwhile a new MacBook Pro 16" is a "measly" $2,799.

[@EvilTurkeySlices]

Even with inflation, computers have gotten much cheaper.

[@aviationfrk]

Thank you for rescuing the Kanga. I have one working in about the same condition, works great. Only problem I have it's picky with the power adapter that I use with it. I've found the later power adapter work better. The power adapter that came with my Bronze powerbook g3 seems to work the best with it. Other than that it is a great machine!

[@MatthewHarrold]

An iBook G4 12 inch thingy circa 2004 was my first Apple computer purchase ... for Unix stuff at University. That hunk of plastic was so much better than what preceded it, but I was also a C64 nerd, Atari 1040STE musician, and SGI Indigo weather lackey. This old stuff is laughable today. $0.02 Thanks for the geek-love.

[@jonathankleinow2073]

I remember buying "All About Chemistry" at Best Buy when I was in high school. I don't know if every song on it stands the test of time, but I still enjoy it on occasion.

[@juanignacioaschura9437]

What's unfortunate about that album is it prompted Semisonic's hiatus. It's not their finest hour, but I also enjoyed it moderately.

[@DoctorX17]

If I'm removing a rechargeable clock battery like that, I like to leave a note in that space with the battery specs [voltage, capacity, chemistry, dimensions, model number if possible], maybe also with the JST connector cut from the original in case I want to replace it later.

[@fluffycritter]

No PRAM battery also means not having to constantly zap the PRAM for your first troubleshooting step. That was the bane of my existence when I was the administrator of a computing lab in the 90s.

[@starchildluke]

So relaxing!

[@maxlein1246]

Good memories are bubbling up. This was my first Mac and my first laptop ever. I got an amazing deal for a fully decked out machine on what would become ebay Germany. It sported 96 MB or RAM when my classmates had at most 32 MB in their tower PCs. It was also stupendously fast at the time, I really loved the machine. Unfortunately, the mainboard died and I had to replace it. The only “limitation” was that this was the only G3-based Mac I am aware of that was not supported by MacOS X.

[@ShiggitayMediaProductions]

So much nostalgia in this video... I remember wanting a PowerBook 3400c when I was 13 in 1997, but I never got one because it was too expensive. I never used an OG PowerBook G3, but it's cool seeing how it came to be! Thanks for this video, Colin!

[@theshadowman1398]

I have the same one only with a PowerPC 603ev running at 180mhz. Mine came with nearly maxed out ram ( a 120mb module ). I replaced the hard drive with msata SSD (64 GB) in an IDE enclosure. Machine became very snappy. Has OS9 on it now will do the final upgrade to 9.1 soon I was to busy with turning my Powemac MDD in to an absolute beast. .

[@robsquared2]

I didn't even know this existed. I thought the wallstreet/pismo style was the first.

[@grantfielder]

Always excited when I see a new video from you. Thanks for the awesome content!

[@kirishima638]

Those DAMN plastic standoffs. The curse of all Powerbooks from the 90s.

[@ronlevon4294]

How nice to see Apple hardware that assemble using no glue, only one screw type all parts are easily removed. Now think about modern MacBook's, what do you need to change battery or keyboard.

[@alerey4363]

today's notebooks are discard after -insert-planned-obsolescence period here

[@ronlevon4294]

@@alerey4363 Which in Apple tern is 1 uear

[@chucklea5898]

I learn a lot about electronic history on this channel. Thanks Colin.

[@paulmuaddib451]

It's always wonderful to see ya in my notifications. 😊 Great vid, as usual.

[@mindthreatx]

I absolutely love this machine, wish I had a newly re-celled battery for it though. Watched Beverly Hills Cop on VCD with it being connected to a 120" wall projector using the very handy VGA port and the Kanga speakers acted as a proper drive-in like speakerbox to complete the experience lol I remember trying so hard to track down a 3400c because of the RocketBook article only to acquire a dead one and then learn that the G3 was housed in the same case. Found one and have been rocking it sense! Found it interesting that they used them in You've Got Mail movie as well. Those book store owners were rich! $5,700 for a laptop would've been inconceivable for me at the time and most likely even to this day lol Thanks for pointing out SoundJam! I'm going to have to load that up...

[@gamerluketech]

Your videos are so good! Keep up the good work

[@fsfs555]

I always liked the Kanga. Other than the obvious processor upgrade, there were two major improvements over the 3400: increased bus speed (50 vs 40MHz) and larger, faster L2 cache (512k @ 100MHz vs 256k @ 40MHz). Everything else was minor but did add to the experience: there was a small bump in the graphics chip (Chips 65555 vs. 65550), more base RAM, larger HDs, faster CDROMs (up to 20X), and slightly better batteries. Sadly, like the 3400, these don't officially support CardBus (you need to hack/replace the card cage to get it), which is limiting since they can't use USB or FW without it, though you can still get 802.11a/b WiFi cards for it. I have a couple of these but one has a problem where it just... stopped booting. Powers up and chimes, then sits there blankly, sometimes with the breaking-glass error chord usually indicative of a hard crash early in the boot process. It doesn't seem to be an uncommon thing, either, but no amount of standard troubleshooting brought it back, which has also been experienced by other people and so far nobody seems to know the exact cause or a solution. I put it on the shelf for now; maybe one day I'll figure it out.

[@steelsofliquid]

1:02 - Somehow the back panel of my laptop (my personal one) is separating from the main unibody shell. I dropped it twice with it in a travel suitcase on accident (by unclipping it from my backpack and not catching it in time) and used it a lot for school so then I just installed linux on my school laptop and used that

[@drewdalzell6924]

I purchased a Kanga new when they came out. I eventually replaced with with the first version of the Powerbook G4 Titanium. I really wish I'd held onto that Kanga. It was a powerhouse of a machine at the time.

[@Angelgreat]

Do the PowerBook G3 Pismo next!

[@txa1265]

Loved the Pismo! At the time I quickly sold it to get the Titanium PowerBook G4, in the long run I really miss that Pismo design.

[@anthrobug]

The PowerBook G3 Wall Street was always called Wall Street to Mac consumers, the product names are too similar so even advertisements used the code names to promote the 'newness' of the revised Powerbook G3. The two models were called 'Wall Street' and 'Main Street' in magazines and among users. I still have a G3/292 14.1" here, it was my first laptop at Apple.

[@dave4shmups]

Fantastic video as always!

[@TheOriginalCollectorA1303]

What an interesting machine, at least it was a good upgrade spec wise and not just a completely rebadged model.

[@markhuebbe]

great work... would have loved some more background information as I enjoy deep dives

[@sailcat662]

Spudger is such a fun word to say.

[@anew742]

3:20 …I kinda regret watching this while eating lunch lmao

[@jochenwuerfel]

3:04 Free spider included 😁

[@Markimark151]

The PowerBook Kanga was mostly a stopgap laptop model, since Steve Jobs was trimming the overall PowerBook lineup. At least that computer kind of helped Apple to hold people over before they launched the iMac and PowerBook G3 series lineup.

[@VK2FVAX]

PRAM does the clock and the OBP settings.

[@jdraven0890]

OMG, YOU VOIDED THE WARRANTY!!!!

[@charliekuhn1544]

I have been waiting for a video featuring the Kanga... I have two functional Kangas as well as a G4 Pismo in my collection. I have found that the older these laptop get, the more brittle the plastic parts tend to be... watch out when you let the legs out on the Kangas... I did what you did in the video and cracked the casing... I will have to address this with super glue at some time...

[@anthonypena3957]

2:20 any clue why the 3400c’s screen wasn’t working? My perfectly working 3400c chimes but does nothing afterward and I’ve not been able to figure out why. Can you suggest a fix, or is this now a parts machine?

[@tomlindo2863]

I could really use that parts machine palm rest, the clips on my 5300 broke long ago.. :(

[@TeraunceFoaloke]

well that's an interesting look at the first of the G3 series/last of the 3xxx series laptops.

[@LoftechUK]

Well put vidro

[@ACRPC-dot-NET]

I really want to get a hold of an "Old world" G3 PowerBook one of these days, a decked out Kanga would be awesome but a Wallstreet would do too lol

[@kylehazachode]

God I loved the PowerBook G3 keyboards.

[@boomblaster9470]

Please do a video with the G3 Wallstreet!!

[@ericbauer4559]

I still want a Kanga. I have my original 3400c that I had to restore using a parts machine.

[@zephyr3693]

I came here after watching You’ve Got Mail and got curious about the laptop used by Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox to message eachother. I think it was a product placement.

[@jericoba]

Well, no. It's just not casual product placement. The use of Apple by Kelly was to show her more gentle and visionary character. Fox was on the opposite side by using the IBM Thinkpad. It was deliberate.

[@MCOfan]

Hot spudger action with Colin Howzitgoin! Where da BluScuzzy at?

[@berner]

"Oh sweet, I finally saved up enough money to buy my first ever laptop! This is gonna be $5,700 dollars well spent". *_five months later_* "....DAMNIT!!"

[@fsfs555]

They also have no native OS X support. Talk about adding insult to injury. I would hope you didn't also buy a new 8600 or 9600 around the same time or you'd be doubly mad.

[@orestes1984]

Without a PRAM battery it may set the date to a weird date which will cause boot issues. I suggest you replace the PRAM battery.

[@poorfesor]

I had one of those that I upgraded with a G4 chip.

[@NavJack27gaming]

cool laptop

[@angryshoebox]

Yeah, the "subwoofer" speakers behind the display sounded more like lower-midrange speakers to my ears (I had a used 3400c/200 years ago). It was always mystifying to me why Apple soldered the CPU to the motherboard in these machines, given how much they cost.

[@fsfs555]

The CPU was soldered for two reasons: 1. the 603 was only offered in QFP or BGA packages (and the 750 only in BGA) and you can't simply socket those; they need to be soldered to something first (the only option at the time being the fairly large 288-pin PGA used in the RS/6000 and later the desktop G3s), and 2. in these there's limited space for a daughter card because they prioritized a full feature set in the smallest package (though it's laughably big by modern terms it was pretty compact compared to other 1996/7-era PCs with similar features). Other PowerBooks made it happen but that's generally because they were big-ish, had to be clever with arranging internals to get everything packaged up, and/or they emphasized CPU upgradeability (as in the 500 and 1400 series).

[@angryshoebox]

@@fsfs555 Oh definitely. But still, Apple being famous for having amazing engineers working there, you'd think they could've come up with some kind of daughtercard or daughterboard arrangement that would've worked. Then again, it probably would've raised the already sky-high prices of the 3400/Kanga 'books, I'm guessing.

[@fsfs555]

​@@angryshoebox Maybe, but these things are very tightly packed. If they used a thinner hard disk, say 12mm max (these could accommodate up to a 19mm drive), they probably could've slotted a CPU card under there but that would've reduced the maximum HD capacity when shipped (the factory 5GB drive was 17mm). Or they could've soldered the Ethernet/modem subsystem and put the CPU on a card instead of vice/versa. Also remember these are based on the legacy of the 5300, which was not the best PB design of all time. They should've designed the 3400 around the 1400 instead. But Apple was famous for bad decisions in the mid-90s, so here we are.

[@BoingoInstaller]

7:45 Add baking soda to super glue and it will be much stronger. If you need, you can do multiple layers

[@agenericaccount3935]

Timely. I suspect they just built the world’s fastest laptop again.

[@sideburn]

Can the VRAM be swapped out with one from a 3400c ?

[@atomicoverridelbc6796]

At $5,700 I think most people back then were like uh no thank you.

[@contra2099]

hello 👋 a new video 📹 ☺

[@TheGlitchyMario]

When I saw the title, I thought of Winnie the Pooh.

[@RaysGamingChannel2003]

Can this thing run Mac OS X

[@JeskidoYT]

damn they should have called the new ones G3X.

[@andresbravo2003]

Well, it's another PowerBook. How could for sure it's gonna happen...

[@brunovieira2006]

Eu tenho peças dessa versão deste Laptop, Display sem riscos, teclado, HDD, Drive de disket e as placas. Partes plasticas das carcaças estão danificadas.

[@starbase218]

What do you do with machines like this?

[@mindthreatx]

I know you're not asking me but I've used mine to connect to an old projector and watched Beverly Hills Cop VCD on with 120" image onto the wall. It was kind like watching a movie at the drive-in and the Kanga speakers, despite their age, did rather well at being speaker box lol - other than that, use it for PhotoShop 6 to edit QuickTake photos on. Looks like I need to find SoundJam now though!

[@_..-.._..-.._]

6:36 How did you not slice your finger?!? 😮 Do not try this at home kids.

[@MSClippy]

TDNC the 100$ macbook challenge when❓

[@dreammfyre]

You gotta show off some software and games my dude.

[@tituslafrombois1164]

I'd be more interested in getting some of these old machines myself if I didn't have to buy two of them to assemble a decent unit 🤣

[@Cyber_Horse_Studios87]

I still can’t believe the Kanga got a 250mhz chip while the Wallstreet only got a 233Mhz chip. Why the downgrade?

[@newmedia2862]

Because this amount of speed can only be handled in the Hundred Acred Wood :P

[@Ieatcrumbs]

"Apple made the most powerful laptop... And the next year they did it again" Put the word arm powered behind that and looks like you have the same exact scenario that happened recently

[@nerd2544]

pretty sure PowerPC was also RISC-based like Arm 😹😏 so history repeats itself

[@Kenlauderdale123]

and they did it again in 2020 with M1 chip

[@StenIsaksson]

But... can you play Crysis on it? ;-)

[@Kumimono]

A moment of silence for the 3400, managed to survive for decades, to end up as a donor. Such, is life.

[@paulrose319]

Be considered slow today 😴

[@kanshiramahir2565]

Did you guys know that "kanga" is hindi language for "comb" . ps: i did not translate it , i just understand hindi being from india

[@rcajavus8141]

7:35 you arent aware of instant glue and baking powder mix? just try it and you can repair any plastic housing, it solidifies instantly and is hard as a rock and can be shaped with a dremmel tool - stop "gluing" and start repairing the right way :D

[@ZephCloud]

it has better ipc that's why the speed isn't that much faster the performance is..xD

[@zonkedmc]

Every one of your sentences has the same cadence.

[@pickleeggs3340]

Thicc af

[@dineshsingh-gb6un]

Ha putahe pehle esehi circuit aati thi

[@tarstarkusz]

There was no G3 macbook that was the world's fastest laptop. That never happened.,

[@dutchbachelor]

Ehm, nah-huh... It very much was the fastest clocked commercially available Laptop at the time it was released. Pentium Laptops of that time tapped out at 200 MHz. 233s were still almost impossible to get. A couple of 266's were announced but wouldn't be available for some time. I remember this so clearly because all my PC toting classmates suddenly shut up about Mac's being slower as they were eating their hearts out when I brought the Macworld magazine that had the review in it.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@dutchbachelor Not true. Even if the clocks peeds were higher (which I don't recall that being the case), the machine is not faster. Macs are slower and have always been slower. This is why Apple always relied on things like how long it would take to apply an effect in photoshop as a benchmark. Apple simply could not compete with general computing speeds. Also, there was enormous choice with PC laptops. Their inability to run older versions of the OS made them a nightmare to manage.

[@mindthreatx]

@@tarstarkusz It's the closed minded thinking like this which prevented me from enjoying these machines during my younger years and I'd kick my ass 10 times over again and again if I could to knock me out of that toxic mindset. I think part of it was peer pressure and people saying similar things and taking it for truth when it wasn't. Either way, it was noted across multiple popular magazines at the time that this machine was indeed the fastest portable money could buy. It may have only been that way for half a year but the fact remains.

[@dutchbachelor]

@@tarstarkusz My friend, I would suggest you either come up with some real facts or set aside your bias. What did I say? It was the fastest CLOCKED, I made no claim whatsoever that they were faster in absolute terms. Neither is your statement true that the PowerPC were always slower. True, Apple very carefully went about what they were comparing, but in some areas they were undeniably faster. Simply inherent by a RISC vs CISC design. We can discuss this until the cows come home, but I won't. End of line.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@dutchbachelor Yeah, well maybe you should read my original post which never mentioned clockspeed. PowerPC ran into a brick wall, which is why they went to Intel int he first place. It hit that wall rather early. The G3 itself was only a marginal improvement over the 604.

[@UnitedPebbles]

Or dude, you put out a few grands and go buy yourself a 3d printer that can do aluminum cnc print?

[@remino]

Was that thing used as a cat bed or something? Shit, it was gross.

[@solarr2]

👍🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱😏😊😎😎👍

[@thompsonevergreen8006]

To save you time the dude chats shit and bounces about different laptops like it's going out of style if you want a restoration video this is not it

[@wesleyoliveira6570]

UwU

[@s6edge7]

100th comment?

[@gundam654]

Gororila glue is better for what your doing