Macintosh Portable

The Macintosh Portable was an early attempt at making a portable Mac.

Released in 1989, it was received with excitement from most critics but with very poor sales to consumers. Seemingly no expense was spared in the construction of the machine. It featured a black and white active-matrix LCD screen in a hinged cover that covered the keyboard when the machine was not in use. The mouse function was handled by a built-in trackball on the right hand side of the keyboard. Its memory was expensive SRAM in an effort to maximize battery life.

The machine was architecturally similar to a fast Macintosh Plus, using a low power version of the Motorola 68000 (68HC000) running at 16 MHz. Weighing in at 16 pounds, due in large part to the lead-acid batteries used, the machine was widely considered more of a "luggable" than a portable, and compared to the Powerbook 100 released a few years later, lacked the ergonomic layout that set the trend for all future laptops. On the plus side, it had a full travel keyboard, and battery life was up to 10 hours. The Mac Portable had a standard 1.44 MB floppy disk drive, and an optional internal hard disk.

In February 1991, Apple added a backlit screen, changed the SRAM memory to pseudo-SRAM, and lowered the price, but discontinued the model in October of the same year.

Despite being a disappointing machine in terms of sales, it was a brave attempt at making a workable portable computer, at a time when it wasn't really obvious what form such a machine should take. It was also limited by the available battery and screen technology of the day. The first truly modern portable computer was the Powerbook, but the Mac Portable was a significant step on the way, even if only to show what form such a machine shouldn't have.