From August 31, 2020: The Macintosh Portable, Power Computing clones, iMac G4, Power Mac G4 Cube, iBook, Macintosh SE/30, and laying out pages at college newspapers.

John Gruber, part 1

Mar 5th, 2021 1h 9m

From June 12, 2020: The Power Mac G5, PowerBook Duo, PowerBook 500 & 5300, Blue-and-White Power Mac G3, DayStar Genesis MP, Mac mini, Mac IIcx and IIci, and the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh.

John Siracusa, part 2

Feb 19th, 2021 1h 3m

From September 1, 2020: The Macintosh Portable, Power Computing clones, iMac G4, Power Mac G4 Cube, iBook, and Macintosh SE/30.

John Siracusa, part 3

Feb 19th, 2021 1h 8m

From November 20, 2020: Titanium PowerBook G4, MacBook Air, the original Macintosh, PowerBook 140/170, iMac G3, and to his great dismay, John learns Jason's final rankings.

John Siracusa, part 1

Feb 12th, 2021 1h 44m

Two interviews with John Siracusa used for the 20 Macs for 2020 podcast, discussing the first nine entries in the series.

iMac G3 (#1)

Dec 31st, 2020 24m 7s

It was the late 90s and Apple was on the ropes. Steve Jobs knew the company needed a lifeline, fast. And 10 months after Jobs took back control of the company, he announced the product that would fund Apple's resurgence and change its future fo

The Original PowerBooks (#2)

Dec 24th, 2020 14m 14s

After the failure of the Macintosh Portable, Apple took a different approach to designing a laptop. The result helped tip the balance of power between humans and computers.

Original Macintosh (#3)

Dec 18th, 2020 21m 44s

The first Mac followed in the Lisa's footsteps and had a lot of limitations--but it changed the course of the computer industry forever.

MacBook Air (#4)

Dec 11th, 2020 21m 42s

Apple's first attempt at the ultimate thin and light laptop was overpriced and underpowered. The second attempt resulted in the definitive Mac of the 2010s.

Titanium PowerBook G4 (#5)

Dec 4th, 2020 12m 33s

Apple's first metallic silver laptop set the company on a path that it's been on for two decades and counting, but it also proved that the company still had a lot to learn.

Mac SE/30 (#6)

Nov 20th, 2020 13m 50s

What's the best Mac of all time? It's an impossible question to answer. Yet three well-known Mac commentators all have the same answer.

iBook G3 (#7)

Nov 13th, 2020 14m 33s

After a lot of speculation, Steve Jobs finally filled in the Mac's fourth product quadrant with a consumer laptop that was one of a kind. But what's a "consumer laptop," really?

Power Mac G4 Cube (#8)

Nov 6th, 2020 24m 56s

There may have never been a Mac more aligned with Steve Jobs's personal quirks than the Power Mac G4 Cube. It was a spectacular failure.

iMac G4 (#9)

Oct 30th, 2020 17m 33s

One of Apple's greatest design triumphs was meant to set the company up for the next decade. Instead, it became a false start--and a rejected design direction ended up being more functional, if less inspirational.

Power Computing (#10)

1 Oct 23rd, 2020 23m 42s

For a couple of years in the mid-90s, the Mac market was enthralled by a clonemaker with great deals and riotous marketing.

Mac Portable (#11)

1 Oct 9th, 2020 24m 11s

Thank goodness there are second chances, because Apple's first attempt to make a portable Macintosh was as inauspicious at it gets.

Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (#12)

1 Oct 2nd, 2020 21m 59s

In an era where Apple liked to show concepts from its design lab in public, one weird Mac prototype somehow became a real product, and was unveiled at the end of the worst Apple keynote in history.

Mac IIcx and IIci (#13)

1 Sep 25th, 2020 15m 50s

You know about the Macintosh, but do you know about the sequel? The Macintosh II was huge--literally. But its compact successors might be the pinnacle of late 80s/early 90s Apple design.

Mac mini (#14)

1 Sep 18th, 2020 12m 40s

The popularity of the iPod led Apple to create a Mac designed specifically to tempt people to switch from Windows. It didn't go as planned, but the result was a Mac model that's been with us for fifteen years and counting.

DayStar Genesis MP (#15)

Sep 11th, 2020 16m 41s

One of the most important developments in the history of the Mac was not created in Cupertino, but by a Mac clonemaker in a tiny town in Georgia.

Blue and White Power Mac G3 (#16)

1 Sep 4th, 2020 16m 48s

Professionals were dragged out of their beige towers by an iMac-inspired Power Mac that featured a drop-down door, big plastic handles, and a raft of new technologies.

PowerBook 500 and 5300 (#17)

1 Aug 28th, 2020 13m 4s

Apple follows up its groundbreaking original PowerBooks with a new set of laptops that ushered in perhaps the ugliest period in Apple laptop history.

Xserve (#18)

1 Aug 21st, 2020 13m 27s

Apple had made numerous attempts to sell server hardware, including a strange non-Mac server that Steve Jobs likened to a bizarre dream. But in the early 2000s, Jobs decided to take another crack at it, and vowed that this time things would be