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By: Doug Landry

Yesterday, we wanted to find out more about titanium, so we visited www.titanium.org, the International Titanium Association to see what facts we could gather. We then linked it on the page for others to see.

It turns out that Brian Simpson, Executive Director of the association is both a longtime PowerBook user and PBZone reader. We sent him a few questions and he gave some detailed answers. We're sharing those below:

Did you guys know Apple was interested in titanium as a PowerBook casing material?

Brian: Just for some background information, Apple established contact with us beginning in 1999 and sent an employee to our conference that October in Las Colinas, Texas. And in the Spring of 2000 Apple purchased from the association publications containing facts and trivia about titanium. Portions of this information are what you see listed on the Apple website on the new powerbook page.

Then did you know about the PowerBook G4's introduction on Tuesday?

Brian: Having first had knowledge that Apple was looking at titanium, it still took me by surprise yesterday when the titanium powerbook was announced. One of our member companies has been in the process of building demo titanium metal cases for several Wintel manufacturers, however this project has not been sent to production as of this writing.

How is Apple doing things differently than other titanium uses?

Brian: This is an exciting time for the titanium industry. Most of the current marketing schemes for titanium products focus on the light weight, high strength, corrosion free properties of the metal. Apple, however, has approached the market somewhat differently. As Jobs said yesterday, Apple "had the power, they had the sex." And now Apple has the sex by using titanium. This is the beginning of a new marketing trend whereby titanium is being marketed for its aesthetics as opposed to its performance characteristics. The titanium industry has many new consumer-focused products in development, and we should expect to see more in the near future. I applaud Apple for its innovative marketing approach.

How can titanium help any potential PowerBook heat issues?

Brian: In regard to heat and the PB G4, titanium does not transfer heat in the same manner as other metals. for example, copper has traditionally been used as a coating on cooking appliances because its distributes heat evenly and effectively around the bottom of a frying pan. Titanium, on the other hand, will absorb the heat at the point of impact, with minimal distribution properties. Thus, in a PB G4, one should expect to feel the most heat reflecting from the case at the point of impact (where the G4 chip is located) and should not feel the distributed across the whole case (as is the way my Lombard feels sometimes!) It will be interesting to see exactly how this works out

Your overall impressions of the titanium usage itself? What are its properties?

Brian: In regard to the case itself, a few comments on titanium in general. First, I have not seen nor held the new PB G4, so I must rely on others to fill in the commentary here. The type of titanium used for the PB G4 has been described as 'CP-1", or commercially pure, grade 1 titanium. This is most commonly used in the aerospace industry, and this grade does not contain other metal alloys. The color can best be described as "gun metal gray". Is this the color of the PB G4? - it appears lighter to me. That could imply that the metal has been anodized - titanium can be anodized very easily and the result is any color under the rainbow that one wishes. The Wintel demos that I mentioned earlier have been prepared in many different colors. Titanium will scratch easily - yes, it will scratch easily, and then it will look like crap. I assume that Apple has placed some form of protective coating over the metal to ensure it does not. The existence of a coating would also help in regard to fingerprints and other dirt - CP-1 titanium has a very flat looking gun metal gray color that collects fingerprints just as easily as my Lombard does. A quick wipe will clean it up nicely, however.

Are you getting one?

Brian: I have already ordered my PB G4!

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