The Original Macintosh PowerBook and Laptop Innovation
This twitter thread looks at the innovation story of the Apple PowerBook and how it redefined portable computing in the 1990s. By @stevesi
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$.
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:
PPS/ 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….
