I read this story (Birth of the PowerBook: How Apple Took Over the Portable Market in 1991) through Slashdot.

It says that in 1991 Apple took a little help from Sony in creating its first successful laptop – PowerBooks. Surprising as Sony by itself was not a player in portable computing market until very late (1997?). In any case it turned to be a great move for Apple and they owe a lot to Sony for where they are. They now beat Sony in its own terrain – portable music players.

Another interesting story is in Engadget – Apple is currently trying to poach ex-Vaio engineers to speed up their effort as they move to Intel based portables.

I started using Vaio laptops since 2000 and never turned back.