The other day, after my son returned from his semester of college studies in Spain, I watched as he set up his well-worn 17-inch PowerBook G4 on his desk. That particular form factor actually debuted in 2003, and Grayson’s notebook, the 1.33GHz model, appeared in the spring of 2004. My 17-inch MacBook Pro was acquired in May 2006.

Why do I mention this? Well, unless you put the two side by side and look carefully, you will be hard-pressed to see any difference, and the latest MacBook Pros are pretty much the same. No, you don’t have to remind me of the tiny dimensional differences and all that. That’s not important. It’s the overall form factor, which remains unaltered.

Some tech pundits speculated that, in switching to Intel processors, Apple would take the opportunity to revitalize the case designs for all or most of their computers. That didn’t happen. While the internal layouts may have been altered to accommodate the new processor family — and this is particularly true with the Mac Pro where internal hard drive bays were doubled — they are otherwise hard to identify from their predecessors.

Now I realize it has been suggested that Apple retained the old designs to signify continuity, retaining a positive brand identification through processor switches, as if to demonstrate that it’s not important what’s inside. What counts is how well the computer performs and the value it offers to you.

That makes sense, and I’m inclined to go along with that viewpoint. Sure, it has also been suggested that Apple had spent a huge sum just in switching processor architectures, and revising form factors might have raised development costs considerably, but, now that Apple is beginning is third year of the Intel transition, isn’t it high time something change in the way Macs look?

Yes, you can cite the iMac as the harbinger of change, but remember that the basic shape is the same. It’s just a different case for the most part. Besides, Apple’s displays acquired aluminum first.

Now one of the more popular rumors is that Apple is developing a thin and light notebook for early 2008 introduction, perhaps during the Steve Jobs Macworld keynote in January. Sure, if you repeat a rumor often enough, it might even come true. Witness the iPhone, a product that had been touted by rumor sites for a number of years before it became a reality.

Of course, a tiny notebook isn’t new to Apple. Consider the PowerBook 2400 series, and even the 12-inch PowerBook G4 as examples of small portables that had some measure of success.

Thin and light also generally means well below five pounds in weight, so where would Apple take the space from if it decided to keep a fairly decent-sized LCD display, say in the arena of 12 or 13 inches?

Sure, miniaturization has taken a huge leap since the first aluminum PowerBooks appeared. It’s also possible that Apple might shave additional space by using Flash memory for all or part of its new notebook’s storage system. However, it won’t come cheap, and the size you might select as reasonably space and price efficient, 64GB, is a mite slim for today’s notebooks. Of course, if the product came equipped for an external docking station with additional desktop storage, that might compensate.

The advantage of Flash memory would also mean greater battery life, not to mention the fact that Intel’s latest chips are also more efficient in their use of current.

But would a tiny entrant in Apple’s notebook line be essentially a slimmed down MacBook Pro, thus keeping a similar aluminum case design, or represent something else altogether? Besides, how many design choices do you have for a notebook computer, other than using different components for the case and maybe moving speakers, the keyboard and trackpad around a little? Would Apple revert to Titanium, which wasn’t such a great choice because of the tendency to scratch and bend when it was used in the PowerBook? Or stick with aluminum and play the color game to give you the illusion of a difference?

What about other ingredients of a notebook, such as a track button in the fashion of the IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad?  Is that a practical input device, or just a gimmick? What about a second mouse button to accept the reality that an Apple notebook may also be the most effective way to run Windows too? Besides, Mac OS X readily accepts multi-button mice, and don’t forget Mighty Mouse.

Whether or not Apple makes its notebooks smaller, would they also be encouraged to dicker with the case designs for other products, such as the Mac Pro? Do you care whether your professional desktop workstation has a case that reminds you of a cheese grater, or is it just a matter of design efficiency? After all, the openings do help the internal cooling system, right?

Would Apple at this point revert to plastics to cut weight, or are we past that now?

There is one other factor to consider: There’s been no significant change in the designs of Windows notebooks, other than varying color schemes here and there, and Apple’s taking a bigger and bigger share of the portable computer market. So what’s to change?

Unless, of course, Apple wants to take computer design into a new direction. And that, my friends, may be the development even the rumor sites haven’t yet talked much about. Of course, this column may inspire them, but I’m more interested in whether the possibilities inspire you, the reader.

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Do you remember how it was back in those quieter times? You could have any telephone you wanted, so long as it came from Ma Bell, and, aside from some local carriers in smaller communities, they also provided your telephone connection.

You also paid an arm and a leg in terms of the percentage of your income that was devoted to phone service. If you wanted to call someone long distance, the price could be in the dollars-per-minute range. Yes, having one source for your service may have delivered great reliability, but at what cost?

When they finally allowed you to buy your phone from another company, rather than rent it at some insanely-high price, you still had to provide the carrier appropriate information from the handset so they knew what you had and how it would impact their network.

Today, of course, you have loads of options for basic phone service, and some of them use the Internet for most or all of their connections. A decent wired handset can be had for less than $10 and you can save money if you choose the same provider for telephone, Internet and TV. Such a deal!

Yes, it’s true that if you’re in a decidedly rural section of the U.S., your options are not nearly as wide. You may be tethered to a single provider for landlines and the Internet. Yes, you may be able to use a satellite dish for the latter, but that is a poor solution for Internet phone service.

The wireless carriers, however, each consider themselves the equivalent of Ma Bell. One of them, of course, AT&T Wireless, is the direct descendant of that original telephone company that spread through the length and breadth of the country.

Although the wireless companies have been dragged kicking and screaming into loosening their stiff account requirements, the basic package is still the same. You buy both the service and the handset from a single carrier, and moving to another carrier generally entails a complicated configuration process, or just buying a new phone.

Now Apple and AT&T have gotten some pretty bad press about tying your iPhone to the latter. Maybe it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, because the setup is no different than the one you’d encounter if you bought a Motorola RAZR or a Blackberry from AT&T. You might regard this attitude as hypocritical, but you also have to respect the fact that the complainants are absolutely right on.

Indeed, you should be able to buy the phone you want, and then choose the carrier you want, just the way it’s done in Europe. To make matters all the more complicated, there are two competing wireless systems in the U.S. One, GSM, is mostly compatible with the rest of the world. It’s used by AT&T and T-Mobile. The other system, CDMA, is embraced by Alltel, Sprint and Verizon Wireless.

It really doesn’t matter which protocol is superior. But it does put your phone into two distinctly separate and incompatible camps. Within those camps, there is movement to allow you to move from one carrier to another, but you are still locked into a service contract of one or two years. If you break that contract after the initial 15-day or 30-day trial period, you are legally obligated to pay an early termination fee.

Now the logic behind the fee is questionable, but at least the carriers are starting to pro-rate the charges, so if you’re near the end of the deal, you might be able to get out from under this arrangement for a smaller ransom. Usually it’s $175 at the beginning, but it is approximately $60 just before your contract ends, according to the latest terms of service from Verizon.

There are, however, sites that allow you to sell or pass off your contract to someone else for a modest fee, but that is surely a clumsy workaround for a process that makes little sense, other than to enrich the carrier.

Yes, all these companies claim they are losing money on a customer as the result of early termination, since they usually subsidize the purchase of the phone, and there are other fees that are allegedly associated with configuring a new account. In practice, a company that can’t deliver a level of service that you find acceptable deserves to lose your business and take their losses.

I mean, I pay a monthly fee to my local cable TV service for my landline phone, Internet and cable TV. If I decide to go to another company — and there are options here — I just cancel and all I have to do is return the cable TV set top boxes and we’re done. No extra fees involved. The only way they can retain my business is to earn it. Period.

If the growing complaints about the iPhone’s lock-in with AT&T bear fruit, maybe the wireless carriers will at last enter the 21st century. Maybe there will even be a widespread development of low-cost phones that support both CDMA and GSM, so you will, at last, have the cell phone freedom you deserve.

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