Mac Clones History: A Tale of Poor Margins and Bad Timing

https://tedium.co/2025/09/02/apple-macintosh-clones-history/

by shortformblog • 11 months ago

64 17 11 months ago

WillAdams3• 11 months ago

EDIT: Just barely mentioned is Axiotron's ModBook --- while not a clone per se (a Mac Laptop was disassembled, keyboard removed, and screen either replaced or reinstalled w/ a digitizer layer), it was a device marketed to folks whom Apple did not have a product for, and until the Apple Pencil, was the best Apple device in between the Newton MessagePad or a Wacom Cintiq for stylus usage.

robterrell2• 11 months ago

ModBook is mentioned in the article. But Outbound (another deconstructed Mac) is not.

WillAdams3• 11 months ago

Obviously should have searched --- still think it would have merited deeper discussion.

papermachelike• 11 months ago

I saw an Outbound in the early 90s if my memory is right. Their use of the tiny bar as mouse replacement looked really cool. Kinda want to play around with that as an input device.

gs17• 11 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_conversion

Wow, I thought I had been a big Mac, er, addict as a kid and somehow I never heard of these except maybe the Modbook.

inetknght2• 11 months ago

My dad worked at Motorola at the time. He told a story where Motorola security walked Steve Jobs off of the premesis. Bad times.

Anyway, my dad worked on the machines that built/tested the motherboard for motorola's clones. He'd bring home some of the broken ones that were supposed to be dumped, and he'd fix them up. I had a top-notch StarMax running some ad-hoc fixes and upgrades. Pretty sweet machine until I finally got a job and bought a Windows machine. It still works today, except that the IDE drive. I could buy a new IDE drive (if I could even find one) but the total horsepower of the machine is less than even a raspberry pi these days, and not worth the power consumption.

bobmcnamara• 11 months ago

A good IDE to SATA adapter and SSD and it should be a screamer

FirmwareBurner2• 11 months ago

Motorola security walked Steve Jobs off of the premesis

Do you know why? Sounds like a story everyone would be interested to hear.

inetknght2• 11 months ago

No, I don't know/remember why. But it was shortly after that when mac clones stopped being a thing.

shrubble• 11 months ago

PowerComputing was shipping new models faster and cheaper than Apple, and even their advertising was distinctive in the Mac magazines.

When they were kicked off Apple licensing they were allowed to sell their inventory; their last ad had some police officer paraphernalia and the slogan was “We Lost Our License to Speed”.

heuermh• 11 months ago

I had a PowerComputing desktop, sweet metal case, and good performance specs for the price. I can't recall the exact model though. Was still working fine when I donated it to a local vintage computer non-profit!

ggm• 11 months ago

I dislike the cult of Jobs, but I do have moments of respect for him in "brand" sense he had very strong drive not to "dilute the brand" and I would think most apple shareholders (I am not one consciously but who knows what tech stocks my pension fund holds) would agree. There hasn't been a time since his return to apple where a shareholder had reason to question the long term value.

I wanted hackintosh to work forever. I even ran one, somebody else front loaded the work to get it flying. It was a dog. It was a huge mistake. I'm glad I wound up accepting the apple tax into my life and just buying the mainline product.

WillAdams3• 11 months ago

Very sad that Hackintoshes are approaching the end of their workability --- I'd give a lot to be able to have a portable w/ a Wacom EMR stylus --- probably going to break down and just buy a Mac Mini and connect it to a Wacom Movink 13.

Mac Clones History: A Tale of Poor Margins and Bad Timing

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