How the PowerBook was Born

Sabah Arif writes "Apple had no presence in the portables market prior to 1992. Its attempt at creating a laptop Macintosh, the Macintosh Portable, weighed almost 15 lbs and failed to sell. On the personal behest of John Sculley, Apple contracted with Sony to create Asahi, a smaller Portable. Apple developed two high end models in company. After 1992 and until the disastrous 5300, Apple was the leading notebook maker."

Comments

The 5300 made my gf a mac hater for life

[Billly Gates]

She went to college in 1996 and got the 5300 on super sale. Hmm wonder why?

The keyboard is missing lots of keys on it and the software is very unstable. She had alot of nerdy friends in college so I assumed they bad mouthed the mac to her like most geeks did back then. But she went on and on about problems with it and slow performance. Yes I know about the macOS upgrade and suggested it but she didn't want to hear it. She used it for one year before she left it in the closet and gave it to her mother when she decided to go back to school herself.

Today my gf is a photographer and even though her colleagues uses macs she is persistant on using photoshop with windows as a result. Amazing what one bad product experience can do. I bought an ipod a few months ago and she didn't like it because it had the apple brand on it. I educated her that is ran on windows and now she is somewhat considering purchasing one.

I suppose every company has its lemons. I heard stories of a few bad honda's as well even though they make one of the most reliable cars on the market.

But the 5300 was like a castrated emachine of its time and not something you think about when you think of apple.

Just another instance.

[Halfbaked Plan]

The history of the Powerbook is just another instance, like OS X, of a narcissistic company, detracted with irrelevant issues like wether employees can keep their dog in their cubicle, having to reach outside the company to bring in innovation. Apple, for their mythological 'wunderkid' roots, is and has been just another company full of arrogant self-aggrandizing braggarts.

Heck, they had to 'outsource' development of the Mac to a skunkworks because the regular Apple corporate culture wasn't working. The lap-busting boat anchor called the 'Portable' was a running joke until Apple hired in outsiders to build the PowerBook line.

I still have a really nice (needs more memory, though) Powerbook 165c.