Kudos to Apple on the design of the iBook and OS X. (Ironic that I'm writing this on a Win* laptop...)
Everything has been scrutinized to the nth degree. All the way down to the keyboard/software controls for the brightness. Apple invented the OBE (out-of-the-box experience), and they've been refining the art over the past 20 years. I honestly don't remember what it was like to boot the computer up for the first time -- two or three questions and it was all up and running. These were important configuration issues like setting the timezone and the first account.
There's also a really good idiom for administering an iBook under OS X. A handful of control panels have a little padlock icon at the bottom if they can be locked or unlocked. Unlocking is simple, and works just like su. (In fact, fink uses su to do its work all the time.)
There are the obvious coolness touches - like the pulsing glow on the front of the box when sleeping. And the orange/green tint to the power adaptor when plugged into the iBook to indicate charging/wall-power.
There are also the obligatory dislikes. I'm not immensely fond of the keyboard (Dell tends to have better laptop keyboards and a better trackpad). I'd like to have a two button mouse, but it hasn't really been a problem yet. (Not sure what happens when I start installing apps under XDarwin.) And the lack of an audio in port is a real bummer.
All told, these are minor issues. I'd prefer to have a laptop with a trackpad that requires user re-education rather than a laptop that has a nice trackpad, but hard-to-find brightness controls and can't seem to drive a VGA projector at all...
So, if you're in the market, buy an iBook. How many laptops come with Perl and Apache out of the box, after all? :-)
Update: I just found the song browser. The first thought that crossed my mind? Smalltalk Code Browser!. It really works well. (And I am such a geek, but you already knew that...)
