In the mid-90s, the seminal Apple Macintosh PowerBook 500 series arrived, changing the laptop market forever— albeit with fairly cheap plastic and internals that were quickly aged out of modernity by progress. Fortunately for fans of the PowerBook 500 series, and specifically the PowerBook 520C, YouTuberBillyTheKidCENTURIONhas successfully taken a classic PowerBook 520C shell and completely overhauled the internals with a new iPad display and components from a 2015 MacBook Pro.
As Billy The Kid warns at the beginning of his video detailing the process (embedded below), this was a potentially dangerous project to undertake and could have resulted in death or injury for a less-savvy tech enthusiast. Remember, before taking on any project like this, regardless of threat level, to do your due diligence to protect yourself and your hardware!
Apple PowerBook 520C Original Specs vs Apple Macbook Pro 2015 Specs
As you can see from our comparison table up above (520C specs courtesy ofEveryMac), this is anexponentialupgrade for the ancient Apple PowerBook 502C. In its time, though, these laptops were truly cutting-edge, debuting the modern trackpad to the PC market and boasting features like optional dual battery support for extra longevity. And in terms of pure usability and ergonomics…that shell and keyboard still look pretty nice, even if they did use cheap plastic.
We recommend watching the full video from Billy The Kid if you want a deeper look at how this project was done. There isn’t very much in the way of establishing historical context, but you do get to see it come together and power on— inside and outside of the shell.
Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.
