Sunday marked the 20th anniversary of the first portable Macintosh computer, the aptly-named Macintosh Portable. While it was indeed portable, it was anything but svelte. Apple's first non-desktop Mac weighed in at nearly 16lb and was a beast at 4" thick, 15.25" wide and 14.8" deep. While the 9.8" 1-bit, 640x480 display is quaint by today's standards, it was active-matrix, an expensive rarity in the days of passive matrix portable computers. Unfortunately, it wasn't backlit. The Portable sold for a whopping $6,500 when it was launched in September 1989, and it's hardly surprising that it was never a top-seller..
History: 20 years of Apple laptops
Posted on Thursday, September 24 2009 @ 4:00 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck