Apple made its foray into the world of mobile computing in 1989 with the Macintosh Portable. This fully self-contained unit housed a black and white active-matrix LCD screen, the CPU, battery, a 3 ½ floppy disk drive, full keyboard, and a trackball. Additionally, an internal hard drive and an internal modem were both available. This computer ran at an extremely fast (for the time) 16 MHz and came with 1 MB of RAM onboard. The memory was expandable to 9 MB by means of a single expansion slot.
The early years of mobile computing actually offered a lot of features we would probably like to see in more modern hardware. For example, the battery life on the Macintosh Portable reached an amazing ten hours! Even with the most conservative energy settings, it is difficult to find a contemporary system offering half of that battery life. Of course, with the sealed lead-acid design of the Macintosh Portable’s batteries, the system did suffer from a nearly sixteen pound weight statistic. That is a far cry from the new MacBook Air’s three pounds!
Unfortunately for Apple, this model was not a commercial success. The primary complaints addressed poor viewing ability in low light conditions and long term battery issues. Regardless, the company’s efforts in this early model led the way for the future of mobile computing.