From Portable to Pismo
From the first mobile Mac to one of Apple’s most-loved models
Back in 1989, Apple introduced the Macintosh Portable. The LA Times wasn’t impressed: “It’s too big, too heavy and too expensive.” And it was, coming in at a whopping 7.3kg. That’s heavier than five M1 MacBook Pros, while its $7,300 price tag then would buy you the equivalent of 13 M1 MacBook Pros today. But while the Macintosh Portable was more transportable than truly portable, it was the beginning of a new kind of computing. It had a sharp active matrix LCD screen, a hinge to fold it over the keyboard for easier transporting and a 40MB hard drive.
The Macintosh Portable didn’t sell well – Apple predicted 50,000 sales in the first year but was well below its target after the first quarter; it cut the price by a seventh in 1990 and discontinued it completely in 1991. But its successor would attract much better reviews, tons of awards and better sales too. Apple called it the PowerBook.
You’ve got the Power
Design chief Robert Brunner wanted the PowerBook to be as easy to use and carry as a hardback book, and in an early example of Apple thinking as much about style as substance its distinctive colour and styling was designed to look more personal and attractive than other beige portable computers. It was based on the Macintosh Portable but was much lighter – 2.3kg – and more affordable at $2,500.
By today’s standards, the PowerBook 100 specs were hilariously primitive
– 16MHz Motorola 68000 processor, 2MB of RAM and less than four hours battery life if you took it easy – but the PowerBook 100, 140 and 170 were huge hits, garnering Apple $1 billion in income in the first year and $7.1 billion in 1992, making Apple the world leader in portable computing.
Apple continued to think different. The 1992 PowerBook Duo was a laptop that could become a desktop via the optical Duo Dock, and the final in the Duo series, the PowerBook Duo 2300c, was launched in 1995 with the new PowerPC architecture. The PowerBook 5300 was launched at the same time with the same processor but suffered from poor design, glitches and a propensity to go on fire. 1996’s PowerBook G3 would be more successful. There were multiple generations of G3 PowerBooks: Kanga in 1997, Wallstreet in 1998, PDQ (Pretty Damn Quick) and Lombard in 1999 and finally the PowerBook FireWire, Pismo, in 2000. Each generation delivered improved performance, portability and flexibility, and the Pismo was one of the best and most-loved Macs of any generation. It would also prove to be the very last G3 PowerBook.
The PowerBook range helped to make Apple the world leader in portable computing