Buzz
I affectionately dub the Macintosh Portable as the forefather of the MacBook because it was Apple's inaugural portable Mac. Running on battery power, users could easily take it on the go, much like how we now often tote our MacBooks to coffee shops for work.
In reality, the idea of a portable Macintosh was conceived before the original Macintosh was even released. The brainchild behind the Mac project, Jef Raskin, had envisioned the Mac as a mobile computer.
However, everything changed when Steve Jobs took over the project. At that time, Jobs had a different concept named 'BookMac,' where he tried to persuade Apple's board of directors to develop this device. Unfortunately, Jobs had left the company by the time the project was considered and approved for development.
After Steve Jobs departed, the concept of a portable Mac resurfaced under the name Macintosh Portable. This initial device was quite bulky, weighing over 7kg and measuring over 10 cm thick. Carrying the Macintosh Portable felt akin to weightlifting.
This Macintosh Portable boasted a 9.8-inch black-and-white LCD screen (640 x 400 pixels), which was considered quite impressive at the time. Its screen design even featured a flip-up mechanism akin to modern-day laptops. In the subsequent iteration, Apple introduced backlighting, albeit at the expense of halving the battery life.This also marks the first Macintosh machine preloaded with an operating system. Users could easily upgrade hardware components thanks to the expandable slots.
Moreover, for easy upgrades, the Macintosh Portable was designed with hinges that could be effortlessly opened by pressing two buttons located at the rear of the device.Due to its large size, the machine allows for more space to accommodate a larger battery. The battery on the Macintosh Portable provides up to 10 hours of operation on a single charge.Although the Macintosh Portable was considered innovative at the time, leading the way to the future, it still had certain shortcomings and was only favored by a specific group of users. Unfortunately, back then, unlike today, that user group lacked market influence and lacked the 'power' to make a significant impact for the product.
Moreover, the major hurdle leading to the success of Macintosh Portable was its exorbitant price tag. In the late 1989s, the Macintosh Portable was retailed for a whopping $6,500 (equivalent to over $15,500 today), and if you opted for additional options, its price soared even higher.Despite its failure, Macintosh Portable was hailed by PCWorld as one of the 24 most iconic tech products of all time.
The emergence of Macintosh Portable demonstrated one thing: Apple was ahead of its time since the late 1980s, anticipating societal shifts. Essentially, as mobile devices rise to prominence, Apple's wealth largely stems from its mobile devices portfolio.
Source: CultofMac
