Apple Event Monday!! By (no) coincidence next week is also the 30th Anniversary of Mac PowerBook launch at Comdex Las Vegas (last one in October and my first one!) 🚀 PowerBook *redefined* portables. It also solidified the Apple design group. What a story of innovation💡 1/

2/ To appreciate Monday and amount I believe (guessing) Mac will evolve, one should look back at the PowerBook innovation. 1990-1991 was peak vintage Apple in many ways. Mac had a high computer share 13% WW (best ever). ~14.4M PCs sold. 2.1M Macs. Windows 3.0 just a year old.

3/ Almost no PCs sold were portables (~300-400K). The whole problem with PC portables was that no one wanted them. They were under powered and EXPENSIVE ($5000 in 1990). While this prediction was awful in hindsight, at the time it was entirely conventional wisdom.

4/ American PC makers (built in US) struggled with miniaturization, costs, etc. Japan was land of making things small. Sony in particular. This was at a time when many in the US were deeply concerned/feared a Japanese dominance in electronics including computers.

5/ BUT out of that came Compaq in Texas (Halt and Catch Fire) who had built a remarkable business in PC clones. Compaq came out with an early portable, “lunchbox” form factor used by insurance agents and the like. The LTE released in 1989 was a hit. A travel weight of just 7lbs.

6/ It ran an original PC chip but was quickly updated with the 286, then 386. I traveled to Comdex with this one. It had an exotic 3lb NiMH battery good 2-3 hours. Ballmer used to carry 3 or 4 batteries and exhaust them all on long plane flights to Europe. Yep like 20lbs of PC.

7/ Two problems. First, Windows was terrible for portables. It had no notion of power mgmt. No ability to know if the network was down or non-existent. We did all sorts of crazy stuff with AUTOEXEC to configure things. Few used Windows at all. Just 1-2-3, WordPerfect, MS-DOS.

8/ Second, you might notice something is missing…I’ll wait… There’s no pointing device. Because no one used Windows, these laptops did not include a “mouse”. Also, no one had invented one yet.

9/ No worries. Microsoft’s small team building enabling hardware (a Paul Allen original) to the rescue (also Logitech and others). Microsoft built a track ball that literally hung off the side, gripping on to whatever plastic was there. AWFUL! Oh, there’s a kids version too 🤣🤣

10/ PC industry experimented with all sorts of ways of doing a mouse. Compaq added a screen mounted trackball to the LTE. IBM famously introduced the pointing stick (I hated that). Later Dell had both trackpad/stick. Microsoft improved it’s heinous trackball.

11/ Back at Apple portables were hurting. Apple had released Apple Portable the same time as the LTE. It weighed 15+lbs and was a ginormous beast consistent with the likes of Toshiba T1000 (!) DOS laptop (7+ lbs).

12/ Apple really needed a reset and the LTE served as much as one as failure of the Portable would. There were many issues. The biggest one was that now the company was in a hurry. Apple was strong, but the PC ecosystem was moving VERY quickly. The mantra was TIME TO MARKET.

13/ That quote is from a Case Study on PowerBook that I got to teach at Harvard Business School on sabbatical in 1998 and was super popular. You can check it out here$. store.hbr.org/product/apple-…

14/ One of the problems Apple saw was organizationally there was no significant industrial design team. Mostly vendors. Bob Brunner had been a contractor in design & resisted full time because of a lack of commitment. This project changed that and design was a key part. The case:

15/ The team embarked on a very fast schedule. Up until then Apple hardware was viewed as a goal of being perfect. Much of the project was hurry hurry pace. Super different than past projects. The case study has a recreated project timeline.

16/ Trackpad was a huge interesting design challenge. Mac portable had a bolt on. Breakthrough idea was to add a palm rest, moving keyboard up risked making device bigger but design said “we can give a feel of smaller”. Plus repetitive stress injury prevention was big. And feet!

17/ This and the amazing efforts at shrinking components led to a break through and iconic design. Difficult to explain how impressive the device was— holistic—h/w & s/w together. Also “What’s On Your PowerBook” adverts. Here’s my fav w/ Henry Rollins. Some detailed 170 photos.

18/ Reviews 💯 “Sturdy, ergonomic design, excellent weight, and a centrally located trackball make carrying and using a PowerBook a snap. Fax capabilities are closely integrated with applications software and easy to use. Remote networking software has superb security features.”

19/ Design really proved itself in the creation of the PowerBook. After this project the design team was staffed/centralized even as Apple swung the pendulum from functional organization to product unit organization. Models 140/170 were all in house as would be future products.

20/ There was also a collaboration with Sony to develop the entry model 100 (3 models introduced). This cemented a long-lasting partnership. Originally PowerBook was a placeholder for fast time to market. But it sold 400,000 units in first year, $1 billion. NY Times (nice ad!):

21/ This really capped off the second peak period for Apple (and high water mark for share). One thing I observed going to MacWorld was that the Apple community drove those sales, but the community was not growing. Every Mac owner bought a PowerBook, but few new to Mac buyers.

22/ Over the next few years Apple would release innovative hardware as it transitioned to PowerPC chips. PowerBooks were always better than PCs in h/w + s/w, but struggled w/raw performance especially as OS grew. PCs didn’t catch up in portables for 20± yrs (Win 7 Ultrabooks).

23/ But then came a transition to Intel and the MacBook Air. It didn’t matter that there were many PCs smaller/ lighter (including from SONY!) and many that fit in a yellow envelope. Apple had made significant improvements in OS s/w. And like PowerBook redefined a form factor.

24/ BTW what was Microsoft doing at that October 1991 Comdex? We were busy convincing people that Windows NT would eventually ship and be better than OS/2 (this was still before the “separation”). In ‘91 it was still “New Technology”. My Comdex demo: Windows for Pen Computing 🙀

25/ The innovation in M1++ and MacOS is so deep and such a stepwise change in computing. Monday will be crazy. Watch carefully. PS: Code name for PowerBook project was “TIM” b/c “Time To Market” was all over whiteboards and (apparently) someone asked “What is this TIM?” // END

26/ Was asked to clarify definitions of portable categories. This was a huge area where reviews/stores/press spun their collective wheels debating. I couldn't find something like this on line so here you go (I just made this up).

27/ Another question: external monitors. Super interesting. Around 1992 is when presenting from a PC became a thing. Whenever you presented you had to inform ahead of time "Mac or PC", different non-adaptable connectors; getting analog sync working was awful!

28/ Mentioned in comment: mouse for HP Omnibook Subnotebook (~B5), a remarkable machine. First device to use all Flash memory (on PCMCIA cards). We did a special build of Word/Excel to fit on 4MB card w/trimmed down Windows 3.x. Amazing amazing. The mouse:

No SoundCloud, but I do have a Substack. If you liked this type of strategic look at where our industry came from and big moments, I’m writing about my journey inside the PC revolution. Please check it out—right now writing about HTML disrupting Office. …rdcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/051-html-opp….

Archived this thread with some minor corrections. Macintosh PowerBook and Laptop Innovation

I desperately wanted one of those OmniBooks when they were new, and eventually bought a vintage one, though I’ve since sold it.

Really an amazing PC. The flash stuff was so expensive and so amazing. I still have one in a box, though it was the one I bought to use, not the "signature" one we got in Office which somehow vanished.

You might want to include the footnote of the Outbound company-they were converting Mac Plus computers to compaq style laptops by literally having people mail in their computers and 5000ish $$ and taking out the Roms. They were between mac portable and PB100.

Yeah someone reminded me of that and I was searching my brain for the name.

Forgot this weird detail:

Love this series on your substack. We should all look back at our thoughts and writings from formative years and reflect as you did here

Were you on any podcast I can listen to? Thx

Jobs presenting the air using an envelope for internal mail was proper genius. Thank you for this thread.

And he knew it! The reality distortion field made it even better. 🙏

“The best camera is the one you have with you” but for laptops

“Travel” computer I was given when I worked in the HP Legal Department in 1996-1999. Amazingly small, light, (for the time) and durable. And, yes, great mouse.

It’s crazy that the iPad in the video shows the oldest the video can be is 11 years and still how much has changed in those 11 years… There should be no doubt the MX for Monday will be crazy… the M1 power in a tablet and still power efficient was a pipe dream even then

unroll. #History #Tech #Apple

Hi @kidehen I've generated a #KnowledgeGraph nugget from the #thread created by @stevesi at: linkeddata.uriburner.com/outarde/?uri=h… #LinkedData #SmartAgent

I wanted this so badly when it came out.

I might be recalling it wrong, but I believe the mouse driver for the Omnibook was in large part written by some people in MS Hardware, working with Alps for HP. A real great system and one I miss

Increíble

This would be a great laptop today. Had a terrific keyboard. Wordperfect 5.1 on a PCMCIA card. And in a pinch you could use AA batteries.

We still have @marypcbuk's Omnibook in the office!

that was such a fabulous portable; size of a hardback book so I could carry it in my handbag. Mouse-onna-stick so I could use Windows fully. PCMCIA slot I put a Motorola CELLect modem in so I could get online from the train, get email and file copy while travelling up to London

the eXecute In Place flash memory meant Windows, Word and Excel opened *instantly* but when the new file format for 6.0 came out I could patch it so documents still opened and saved. true portable computing...

Pre-Macbook, about 1996, I ordered an early IBM ThinkPad from a computer shop on El Camino near Cupertino. The shop told me only Steve Jobs was ahead of me in the queue.

There were two external monitor options available at launch for the 140/170. Radius developed a SCSI external interface, and another upstart TX company (can’t remember name now) made an I/F card that piggybacked on the RAM interface. Both supported 8 bit/256 color palette.

Splendid history thread, much obliged 🙌 The 170 was 💸💸💸 A surprise for me was that GriD patented the clamshell design, which Bill Moggridge came up with for their Compass model. I wonder how they went about licensing this to Apple, etc.

We still ask in the meeting industry - it hasn't gone away just yet. There are enough dongle variations out there that we still have to be sure. And getting them to work consistently as USB-C is turning into a video standard now is the new analog sync.

Yeah, that looks right.

Bought IBM Portable PC in 1984 to take to Switzerland during 5 years living & working there. Carried it aboard plane as luggage to be sure arrived safely (was young & strong then). PC tech evolved during those years & ended up selling it & replacing with Toshiba laptop with HDD.

Forgot "Palmtop." See, Poqet PC.

Awesome thread - thank you for posting!

Nice. Really like the old magazines articles

If you had to pick an Ecosystem: basically choose an OS and device and stick with it for the rest of time (along with whatever software/hardware iterations that follow), what would it be?

brilliant retrospective. thank you

Wondering if we don’t expect too much from next Monday #AppleEvent . M1++ sure will be impressive I guess but then, what? TouchBar removal? HDMI and SD slot are back? Then what? A tweaked enclosure? Ok. But, what else? ProMotion display?

I think the M1+ with latest screen is itself a redefinition of portable computing for macOS given the software that’s already there. No fans. Real 12+ hour battery life. All macOS capabilities. I agree that M1+ is carrying a lot but it can/does.

We will see which new chapter Apple chose to write this coming Monday. Always exciting.

My first portable Mac was the original 128k, which I upgraded to 512k with a soldering iron. It fit in an overhead airplane compartment in its Apple bag. I flew weekly with it between Huntsville, Al and either Dallas, Albany or Lansing.

The original LAN party pc.

Did you ever see Net Bunny run on networked Macs? It was written at MacHack. A bunny would run around the room from screen to screen.

Yes. There was a windows thing in the same spirit - NetDDE.

I designed & implemented the database for a 128 processor, Z80 based MPM system to run State lotterys. We were headquartered in Dallas with sites in other states. Those were crazy fun days.

So excited for Monday.

As I recall, Tim was the code name for the PowerBook 100. The 140 and 170 had their own code names. I believe it was derived from the moniker Tiny Tim because the 100 was smaller/lighter than the other two.

I included the quote from the case but yes TIM was the 100. All three launched at the same time. The case details the specifics with Sony and managing the project in great detail.

Yep, I was on dev team. Nice thread, thanks for resurrecting all these details!

Thank you! That’s what I included the case history since I wasn’t there (obv).

Super thread as always. I got a 170 as soon as I could, with a 540c next.

Fun fact: I was at Apple at this time and got to be a user tester for the prototype as they refined it. Crudely put together models running off a cable going to the brains, but fun to have been a very small part of that. Very much hoping for a souped up mini on monday.

Great thread! In your view, what does it mean if Monday's reveal is underwhelming/doesn't live up to these standards?

:-) I admit I thought of that. 1) I look at an arc of cumulative innovation. I think the M1 MBA was *huge*. So small increments on that are still on a huge base. 2) I do expect even a modest processor change to be really substantial in practice. I don't worry about "form factor".

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Any news from poor Carl Stork ? ;)

🙏🏿

Was there some project about VR in Microsoft?

Not that I am aware in 1991. VPL research was around up until then but that was a different company kind of people that were spun off Atari + Jaron.

We knew this guy :-)

Yes, it's true, his nose does look like a ...

Kids.

Was Windows for Pen Computing A real product or just a vaporware to kill EO PenPoint?

I used to run the European MS TechEd events and will always remember Brad Silverberg flying in to 1994 UK event with the one and only demo build of Win95 on his Compaq laptop and the look of sheer horror when he realised he hadn’t flipped the voltage switch and had fried it 😳

Awesome thread Steve, thanks for the memories!! (But you skipped the iBook…)

Thank you. 🙏 Skipped the Duo too!

Today felt a lot like that day in 1991 when Apple similarly accelerated way ahead of the entire industry…

Yeah the Vaio was a vastly superior machine. Xbox was born on it.

(Possibly sensitive)

This was also the high water mark for Motorola 68k family, with the 68030 being the last truly successful home computing version.

I was one of the new to Mac buyers; a PowerBook 140 was the first laptop I ever bought. A friend picked one up in the US for me, I met them at LHR to collect it from them!

Remarkably, all the latest models still cost roughly the same absolute dollars!

I should point out: those detailed photos are of one that had a missing port door, but I can't remember if it was an intentional move by users back then or if they were known to break off over time.

I may be wrong about this: There were a lot of users back then that didn't want to have to keep opening the port door in order to press the power button, so I think some of them ripped out the port door altogether, …

… but there was also a (now rare) third-party accessory called the "PowerDoor" that replaced the original port door with one that had cutouts for the power button and modem port. I know this exists as I saw it in an old "bbishoppcm" YouTube video he posted a few years ago.

This was before some manufacturers tried slide switches, and then figured out they could just put the power button near or in the corner of the keyboard so that it couldn't be pressed while closed, and put another power button on the dock (for those that supported one).

They all broke off. At least that was my experience. It was just as common on windows laptops. The Dell latitude in the photos is missing the hard drive door. Snapped off.

Oh. Thanks for correcting me.

I didn’t mean it that way. Im sure some people took them off. My duo is missing the door.

Oh. I didn't notice the "At least that was my experience" bit.

I was given a working T1100 Plus many years ago, with the original carrying case, manuals, MS-DOS floppies, and power brick. Even today, there’s so much that the laptop gets right.

I vaguely remember around this time there was a company that made unofficial Mac portables by buying a regular SE or whatever and rearranging all the components into a portable chassis and adding an LCD - they had a strange scrolling pointer in the space bar IIRC

I have one of these “Apple Anchors” :-)

I wanted a laptop with a J-Key pointer.

The Thinkpad TrackPoint was brilliant, but it worked only well when you increased the sensitivity to max in both the driver and in Windows. Then you could use it with a light touch of your finger. But with defaults it was a disaster

Loved that little IBM dot, at least until I used a MacBook trackpad for the first time.

Bonus points for using a photo of IBM’s butterfly keyboard, Steve!

Thats my own device!

I saw one in person only once, at one of IBM’s college roadshows. They parked a promotions van on Red Square at The Evergreen State College and had them out for demos.

Here you go.

One of the only PC laptops I ever thought was cool. Great engineering.

The amazing thing about this one is the keyboard lasted but the battery exploded. Still just fine plugged in. It is all mechanical. In practice the failure rate was pretty high. It fit with the classic IBM view of keyboards for sure.

Setting the bar for future keyboards named “butterfly”.

HP had a pop-out mouse on the original Omnibooks, which were innovative machines in many other ways as well, including (originally) built-in Windows, plus a suspend mode that didn’t eat battery. I loved these. Still have a collection in my garage.

Oh man I totally missed a chance to refer to that one (I still have my special edition version from the special version of Word/Excel). It worked very well and that was such a fantastic PC!!!

The original OB300 with Windows in flash was great, but my favorite ever was the 800CT, same form factor with TFT color. My favorite portable ever. I’ll have to see if mine still works. ‘Ran when parked.”

I see someone on eBay wants $2400 for one!

Ah, the pointing stick. I remember, somehow, playing Star Wars: Jedi Knight on a portable with that. I would not recommend doing that.

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that love(d) the red Thinkpad licorice nub... and weirdos.

The uk press called it the central located interface touch, for reasons they were quite beyond me.

Gosh I loved that thing. But wow was it polarizing.

I remember Steve Jobs carrying a ThinkPad with that pointing stick around Pixar.

Glad the way that played out...

Loved my Easy Ball as a kid. I was far too old for it, but it felt like such a time of The Future, along with my CD ROMs if Cinemania and Encarta 😂

Used one of those. And yeah it really was awful.

Freddi Fish just blasted me back in time 😳

I nought one of those trackballs 😂

Bout to be my face tomorrow

OMG, I used to provide phone support for Microsoft for these products.  And the OG IntelliMouse and Natural Keyboards, Sidewinders too!

You need to be the head of Windows Division again, the guys are embarassing with this new bastard of a Windows 11. Adaption will be record low. You remember 7?! You should.

That keyboard looks fantastic.

I bought the Titanium PowerBook PC. 17 inch. $3000 with the base station and the Express. iSight that I used once because I didn’t know anyone else who had it. Never went back to a desktop PC. The slot held a Verizon card & I could take it anywhere.❤️

I loved that little machine so much!

But does it run Linux?

What’s on your PowerBook?

BBEdit, Think C, eventually MacPerl. And lots of source code for work. It’s best features for me were the 030, a big flat memory, and SCSI. The amount of data it could chew through was amazing (especially in a laptop!)

In early 1994 (really my Duo 220c): • MacTCP • Mosaic 0.9 • Cello • Turbo Gopher • Fetch • Red Ryder • StuffIt • Word • Excel • PowerPoint Gonna need @adamengst to help fill out :-) I reformatted my machine writing hardcoresoftware.substack.com trying to make stuff work.

Not quite what you're looking for, but you probably would have had InterSLIP for dialup with MacTCP too. And Eudora. Maybe Anarchie?

Oh Eudora for sure and SLIP. Ooh Anarchie. I should find your book!

Disinfectant? Compuserve Navigator? Time frames are fuzzy. Oh and all of the expanded books? 😀

Oh! Hard disk toolkit and SCSI Tool? (The invaluable desk accessory)

Let me know if you need an electronic copy (though it's the third edition, so probably 1995).

thank you! I do have it for sure in storage. I used it for our “Internet Offsite” (along with Bernard Aboda’s book).

I would have had all of those net utilities and Eudora for sure, plus Word & Excel. But I’m not sure I ever fired up PowerPoint, which I found very limiting. I lived by Aldus/Adobe Persuasion and their Presenter sidekick (I was a teacher.) SuperCard! Those were the days.🙂

Picked up a discounted duo 270c as the first laptop I purchased for myself. Such a fun machine. Playing centipede (Aperion) with the trackball and 256 active color screen was a blast.

At university, I got a support job with Apple on campus, mostly using their shiny new AppleScript to automate odd things for profs and sysadmins on campus. And I got “paid” with this exact laptop with its 68k Motorola processor. 1/

2/ Linux at the time ran on x86 and a port to 68k was only getting started. For my masters, I figured I would end up needing an x86 system to put linux/netbsd on it so I could mess with the kernel IP stack. So I turned to Usenet, the Reddit of the time.

3/ There I met a prof at MIT whose wife was blind and needed this exact PowerBook since it had text-to-speech. He had a color Toshiba (I think), an x86. We needed to trade. We quickly decided that we’d both mail each other the laptops the very next day, the same hour, on trust.

4/ I remember being seriously stressed and I’m sure he was, too. The laptops crossed each other in the skies, we both got what we wanted. It had to have been one of the early internet “transactions”. No blockchain, no #Web3, just simple trust in the goodness of an unknown human.

The advent of the PowerBook was an epochal turning point for the “portable” PC market. Too bad that the past Apple could not handle anything at an operational, production and distribution level. But it remains a piece of history and innovation still today!

This was all the hype I needed.

I have thudding my office museum

I was at the COMDEX event to reveal the PowerBooks. I “won” a PowerBook 140 an hour after the reveal because I was wearing one of the Apple pins they gave out at the booth. They handed me a bag, I had to sign a 1099. The laptop arrived a few weeks later via FedEx. I still have it

Amazing!

What an absolute unit. Ran one of these booting the OS off a RAM disk, and the battery life and silent running was incredible - I could take notes on all the sessions for a solid day when attending academic conferences. Bought it when Apple sent a huge lot to CostCo < $1k.

Fantastic MacBook PowerBook thread! Apple history must-read.

Very interesting

I had one of these (slightly later model) way back then and loved it. I even had our IDE (Blackbox from Oberon microsystems) running on it.

And it's amazing that Niklaus Wirth's Project Oberon runs on hardware that it pretty close in speed (25 MHz RISC5 vs. 16 MHz 68k) and memory (1 MB vs 2 MB) to the Powerbook 100.

Great thread! It's funny how journalist failed at predicting the relevance of laptops :) I think the new MBP will be good, but not a revolution. The form factor is too mature and well thought now. Let's see if they can really surprise us! The M1X is super promising, for sure.

The processor and OS architecture are a massive shift in capabilities (security, performance, battery/power, etc.) It isn't about the shape this time. It is as big a deal as moving to laptops in the first place IMO. The MBA/M1 was basically a pilot project for Monday :-)

I agree with most of that, but I think laptops are already in the 1st place. You don't see much PC makers launching desktops. All they talk about (mostly) is laptops. The M1 was/is stunning. I wonder when Windows laptops will go the ARM route. Seems the future, really.

it is no longer just enough to do ARM (actually it never was). ARM is much more about OS architecture and all the "stuff" that comes from SoC—Windows just doesn't have the capabilities and definitely won't if simply ported to ARM. Some thoughts :-) web.archive.org/web/2012030401…

Whoa. Super-interesting. Reading now, hopefully won't fall asleep (it's 1 AM in Madrid). Thanks for the replies and your insights, Steve. Always humbling to see you taking the time to chat. 👏👏👏

I think Windows on RISC-V would be a more revolutionary change.

Interesting (in light of how Apple did it): «  WOA does not support running, emulating, or porting existing x86/64 desktop apps ». How different would have the transition been with good emulation from the get go?

2 challenges 1/ apples software ecosystem had been moved forward several times (security battery etc) 2/ apple invented a chip that did emulation and techniques that were new Also watch how soon emulation goes away b/c it has downsides. MS would have kept it forever.

Thanks for this history tour! I got a cheap used PB100 as a student three years after it was introduced and loved that thing. I think I still have it somewhere...

it is amazing what the PB line did. I remember there was a Colorado company that ripped the guts from a Mac to make a portable. The PB140 was an incredible form factor, and I loved mine dearly. The Ice MacBook was another one. Form often enables function.

Steven, your tech history publishing is so great.

Thank you!

Such fantastic thread… I also recommend a look at the hp sojourn as a crazy laptop circa 1997

The Powerbook 100 was such a fantastic design. Sony really perfected the miniaturization, 5lbs was amazingly small for the time. Too bad these are really hard to keep running these days - the logic boards are notoriously fickle and the screens go bad.

Bezels!

I still have mine!

Thanks for a great read, Steve. Brought back so many memories, including the supply chain/distribution issues and exec-level drama. And great to see those articles by @peterhlewis!

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Yup had one of those little PowerBooks in the early ‘90’s - miss that little track ball!

An important device in the history of ebooks: I remember previewing prototypes of the first Voyager Expanded Books on a PowerBook 100 loaner from Apple before it was released.

It was my first laptop, bought used from someone on Craigslist. I’d load everything in a RAM disk to conserve battery.

It was my first Mac. RamDoubler, baby!

RamDoubler was legit sorcery

Great thread by @stevesi on the evolution of the Apple’s portable Macs, in advance of new models coming Monday.

Thanks - another glorious thread

unroll

I still have my Duo 230 but no idea why! 🤦🏻‍♂️👍 I'm guessing they need recapping etc? The keyboard didn't work last time I used it and the power brick went up in magic smoke 😭👍

Oh if only we had nice full travel keyboards on laptops still.

If the arrow keys stayed that way, we would not have so much problem building muscle memory for vim

Nice!