Macintosh Portable
The Macintosh Portable was Apple's first portable computer .
history
The Mac Portable was Apple's first portable Macintosh in 1989 . It had a bay for a 3.5 ″ drive (with half the height) and an optional hard disk (with proprietary SCSI connection, up to a maximum of 40 MB), and up to two SuperDrives (floppy disk drives for the Macintosh format with 1, 4 MB storage capacity). Memory and a modem could be added to the internal slots. As a special feature, the built-in trackball could be exchanged for a numeric keypad, and the trackball could be installed either on the left or right in the housing. The biggest plus point were the lead-acid batteries (without memory effect), with which the portable reached a running time of up to ten hours, which is considerable even by today's standards. Even without these batteries, the Mac Portable already reached a considerable weight. The display initially got by without its own lighting, only in a later revision the device was supplemented with background lighting. Although it was not a great commercial success, the device remained in the market until October 1991 when it was replaced by the first PowerBooks . The retail price was $ 6,500.
Technical specifications
- Processor: Motorola 68000 with 16 MHz
- Work memory : 1 MB SRAM (max. 8 MB)
- Hard disk : 40 MB
- Mac OS version: 6.0.4 (up to 7.5.5 possible)
- 9.8 ″ active matrix display with 640 × 400 pixels (black and white)
- Connections: 1 × ADB , 2 × serial (RS-422), SCSI
- Weight: 7.2 kg
criticism
As with portable models from other manufacturers, the high weight significantly restricted portability, which meant that there were hardly any advantages over other Macintosh models, especially since the old cube Macs ( Macintosh Plus , Macintosh SE , Macintosh Classic ) were easy to transport . At the same time, the high price was very off-putting, the comparably fast and hardly heavier Mac Classic, built at the same time, only cost a third.
Web links
- Macintosh Portable on Low End Mac (English)