"A 4-inch-thick, 16-pound beast that severely strained the definition of 'laptop'--and the aching backs of its porters."

Did Apple ever call the Mac Portable a 'laptop'? Did 'laptops' even exisit back then?

I agree that the Mac Portable wasn't small or that great, but it was never meant to be a 'laptop'.

Quote

JimWCB wrote:
I agree that the Mac Portable wasn't small or that great, but it was never meant to be a 'laptop'.

It was supposed to be "portable." Probably it was seen somewhat like the original G3 iMac in terms of how movable it was supposed to be.

Great list, BTW. If any of you think it sounds boring, go take a look. The descriptions are quite funny.

Yes that portable was a beast, and it cost about $6000. I remember there was this carrying harness you could buy so you could walk around and use the computer, kind of looked like a vendor's tray and shoulder harness thingy.

To be fair the older Osborne "Portable" computer was an even bigger luggable http://oldcomputers.net/osborne.html

I used to carry my Apple IIc back and forth from work and home. I kept a monitor at each location. I still have my Apple brand IIc carrying case.

"Did 'laptops' even exist back then?" I'm pretty sure the group I worked for at the time had a laptop, from Toshibi IIRC, that we compared (contrasted) with the Apple Portable.

Of course, in 1989, most PC laptops were running MS-DOS, which had much less demanding display requirements than MacOS.

#1 Windows *any version*
#2 Windows Vista.. err.. XP Service Pack 3
#3 ...

I was till using a Mac Portable in 1998 to check e-mail, connect to MUDs and view the web through Mosaic. Not a bad lifespan for a failure.

Quote

Small White Car wrote:

Quote

JimWCB wrote:
I agree that the Mac Portable wasn't small or that great, but it was never meant to be a 'laptop'.

It was supposed to be "portable." Probably it was seen somewhat like the original G3 iMac in terms of how movable it was supposed to be.

Well, the Mac Portable was smaller and lighter than many portable tv's of that age! Does anyone remember if there were any other portable computers that were smaller sizes? I remember the Sinclair and the TRS-80's, but I can't recall the Windows portables of that era.

We bought one when my wife became pregnant, because we were superstitious about ELF radiation from CRTs.

It worked fine with a bright light nearby (no backlight!), and we rarely carried it anywhere. Truly, a beast.

Now it sets in pristine condition, awaiting sale to a collector. I hope the PC Mag list ratchets up its notoriety and increases its value!

The Mac Portable was a Mac Plus repackaged to be "portable", but it was NEVER intended to be a "laptop", nor was it marketed as such. BTW: It flew on the Space Shuttle at least twice. No weight problem in space - only mass. It must have been minimally useful if it was taken into space to support the missions, as every pound of weight and every cubic foot of volume is crtically calculated for its FUNCTIONALITY and importance to a particular mission.

FYI (or rather, FHI), the handwriting recognition on the Newton 2000 (1997) works better than that of Pocket PC 2002 handhelds, which is saying something given the difference of processing power between both devices (167 MHZ ARM / 2 MB RAM on the Newton, 300 MHz Xscale, 32 MB RAM on a Dell Axim).

It is pretty easy to look back and judge an attempt with contempt, especially if all you ever did yourself was watch from the sideline. E.g. the Mac Portable was usable and was a relief for anyone who needed his computer in different places.

Too bad Apple only appears twice on the list and MS three times. If you try and fail, at least you trying to innovate. But Apple is on the list with original products. IE and WinME are both successors of rip-offs. And MS Bob, was there really anyone, outside the team who was building it, who expected it to work out? Pippin, at least, was an attempt to get with a line of products that was specifically build to exploit technology that was in the OS. I remember being at a meeting where pippin was introduced to developers. However, those developers wanted to know about the future of MacOS to get a feeling what was going to happen with their bread and butter products. Had that answer been clear, then probably more developers would have been looking into a secondary product line.

BTW, why isn't Windows 1.0 on the list? Probably because it couldn't be seriously considered a product.

The list means little to me. I think the writers had a lot of fun coming up with catchy insults. And thought they'd share it with the world.

Quote

KitsuneStudios wrote:
I was till using a Mac Portable in 1998 to check e-mail, connect to MUDs and view the web through Mosaic. Not a bad lifespan for a failure.

What? Could this thing even connect too the internet?

Quote

Guest wrote:
What? Could this thing even connect too the internet?

Why? Yes. Every Mac could use MacTCP and use one of the two serial connectors to connect to a modem. Even my very old Macintosh Plus (not even adb, yet) ran/runs apps like telnet and ftp. Even more, I got my Mac Plus from a data center a few years ago where it had been used especially to connect to computers worldwide over the internet.

Perhaps you mistake the internet with the world wide web. WWW is only one kind of internet connections. Telnet and ftp outdate WWW by many years.

The Mac Portable COULD run on AC power. These guys need to check their facts.

Up until 2 years ago, I had a Mac LC III running as a NetBSD Radius server providing dialup authentication for a medium size ISP in Ireland. try over a year of uptime. Now thats truly something.

I remember carrying an original Compaq "portable" through airports on many a trip. No need for a gym membership in that era. I received my weight training and stamina workouts on business travel.

The list does trash a few too many Apple products when many awful products abound from the first 30 years of personal computing.

Surely Dell designed a prototype 'portable' computer (hey it even folded up and had a handle) recently that pretty much echoed the idea of that first Mac portable. And everyone went gaga saying how it was a little lighter than an iMac so had to be a good idea. Just shows how perspective (or pure bias) dictates what is considered good and what is considered bad, which in itself probably accounts for the Newton being on both those lists actually.

Give me a break.

Quote

Anonymous wrote:
Give me a break.

Ever get the "click o' death"? Especially since Iomega touted the Zip (and Jaz) drive as a great backup tool?

it looks worse for Microsoft, whose flagship product is the biggest piece of garbage ever released on any computing platform.

And they've managed the supposedly intelligent business world to kiss their ass.

I just have to say: there are current 19" desktop replacement "laptops" which weigh 16 pounds - more than the Mac Portable!!

But the Portable could run 10 hours or more on batteries - something that modern luggables can only dream of! It also had a great reflective screen which worked fine with backlighting turned off (the original model didn't have backlighting, although it was added later) and in broad daylight.

http://www.lowendmac.com/pb/portabattery.shtml

Another amazing thing about the original portable is that it used static RAM, which made it more expensive but gave it even more battery life.

Apple's first true compact and light (5.2 pounds in 1991!) notebook - the PowerBook 100 - was a milestone in many ways, but the Portable was an outstanding desktop replacement that outclasses many modern equivalents.

You got a great black bag to put computer, keyboard and mouse into, it had a handle on the top, you got those plastic thingies to put into the floppy disk drive for transport, the whole package was not *too* bulky. And didn't really weigh that much. Ahem...

I remember proudly damaging my back with my original macintosh. Those were the days.

And then there was color, ah... every day a revolution. Man, only an old hat can appreciate how slowly the tech evolution seems to go now.