If you ’re a longtime fan of the Macintosh chopine , chance are you are a bit of a collector and a historiographer . away from their being endearing machines that pull in user loyalty , Macs continue their utility far longer than most PCs , promote hoi polloi to hang on to them . Who among you does n’t have an old Mac in your closet ?
It may be prison term to pay your closet a visit , because that car gathering junk beside your honest-to-goodness ski charge may represent one of the last surviving examples of a rare strain of Macintosh .
Many Macs are uncommon or hard to find today , but for the sake of brevity ( and for fear of the dreadedTL;DR ) , I ’ve decided to examine six of the rarified among them .
For whatever grounds — normally low production numbers or unpopularity — few of the following Macs have subsist on to the present day . If you own one of them , take it out of the closet and advert it like a taxidermied elk above your ski indian lodge mantle . ( Assuming you have a pall , of path . )
JLPGA PowerBook 170 (1992)
In 1992 , Apple construct approximately 500 multicolored PowerBook 170 models tocommemoratethe 1992 JLPGA golf game tournament in Japan . If you ever pose your hands upon this colorful machine , you ’ll have yourself quite a prize .
Apple must have had a sphere twenty-four hours picking the colors for this machine . It feature a mostly blue consistence with a ashen palpebra and base , red battery door and demarcation sliders , yellow hinge caps and trackball , and green elevating animal foot . Other than all that , it looks like a comparatively unassuming PowerBook 170 .
Color Classic II (1993)
The Apple Computer of old loved reckoner continuation , and , consequently , theColor Classic IIserved as the second human action to February 1993’sColor Classic . With a motherboard that about doubled the CPU amphetamine and RAM mental ability of its precursor , collector prize the Color Classic II for being what the original Color Classic should have been .
Of course , there ’s a apprehension : The Color Classic II never ( officially ) graced the shore of the United States . restrict to sales primarily in Japan and Canada , these rare beasts are unmanageable to detect in Apple ’s own homeland .
In that regrettable age when a undivided Mac modelcould have 15 unlike names(I’m exaggerating only slimly ) , Apple also sold the Color Classic II as thePerforma 275 . If you find out either one , enjoy it sagely , knowing that you hold in your men the end of a tenacious , proud line of 9 - in show - bearing compact Macs .
Macintosh TV (1993)
Nineteen years after its entry , Apple ’s first experiment in television receiver - reckoner consolidation persist the rarest full - production Mac ever exhaust . Apple fabricate a simple 10,000 units of the Macintosh TV before pulling the plug four month after its launch .
The Mac idiot box conflate a personal computer with a television set set , but the car failed to fulfill either role peculiarly well . It was too expensive to be a reasonable TV solidifying , too crippled to be a reasonable Macintosh , and too limited in its television set - computer consolidation to be a pragmatic cross .
Perhaps for those reasons , Apple declined to extend the lifespan of this all - in - one flop , make the Mac television an exceptionally rarefied car today . If you ’d wish to find one yourself , be warned : As the only all - fatal screen background Macintosh released in the United States , it involve a high premium from gatherer .
PowerBook 550c (1995)
One yr after the PowerBook 540c , the sleek , all - blackPowerBook 550cexpanded its herald ’s strong thrust and video display size , and even raise its CPU . voice middling safe , good ? It does — until you realize that you could buy itonlyin Japan .
Apple fans may spot a tendency among uncommon nineties Macs . At least three of them were disgraceful . You ’ve got the Macintosh TV , the Performa 5440 ( not on this list , but also relatively rare and sell only in Japan ) , and now the 550c .
weigh the how democratic these blackened machines are with collectors today , it makes you question : Why did n’t Apple just release a mainstream black Mac in the United States ? I ’ll tell you why : That would have been like launching the mini in 1930 . The world was not yet quick for such a dangerous prospect , my friend .
Interestingly , the PowerBook 170 alsoreportedlyreceivedavery shortrun of white unit of measurement to commemorate the 10th day of remembrance of the Macintosh in 1994 . I say “ reportedly ” because I can not affirm its existence ( a hypothesize photo of this political machine on the Internet is actually aprototypemodel ) . If true , the whitened PowerBooks were likely reserved for key Apple employee only .
Twentieth Anniversary Mac (1997)
Released to commemorate Apple ’s 20 class in business , Apple ’s designers on the face of it spared no disbursement in creating the Twentieth Anniversary Mac .
This futuristic motorcar pack flimsy laptop - gradation components ( and Apple ’s first desktop LCD display ) into a sleek golden - bronze case that integrated a vertically mounted candle - ROM crusade . Its keyboard even featured leather palm rests , if you ’re into that sorting of thing .
Accordingly , Apple price this limited - variation modeling as a high - end sumptuousness item . At $ 7499 per unit ( about $ 10,812 in today ’s dollar mark ) , very few consumer bought the machine until Apple drastically reduced its price the following class .
The luxury aspect of the Twentieth Anniversary Mac add substantially to the collectable cachet of a automobile that citizenry perceive ( however debatably ) as pushing the technological envelope . With fewer than 12,000 produce , it ’s difficult to obtain it unless you ’re uncoerced to sell your ski lodge and pay a premium on eBay .
Power Macintosh G3 All-in-One (1998)
There ’s an old locution that go , “ A camel is a knight design by committee . ” Similarly , thePower Mac G3 All - in - One(AIO ) was an iMac designed by committee of Equus caballus .
One could say that the AIO ’s knotty form — which seems to follow the “ tacked on ” approach — represented all that was untimely with Apple ’s hardware figure process before Jobs take over for the 2d time . Even if we do n’t screw the exact item , its design tells a story , and the story is n’t a pretty one .
This eccentric person of a Mac owe its oddment to two factors . The first is that Apple liberate itonlyto the educational market place ( in the United States , at least ) , which kept it out of the hands of the mediocre consumer . The 2d is that Apple announced the iMac a bare two months after launch this simple machine , therefore dooming the G3 AIO to relative obscurity .
