My favorite one that isn't listed here is the Outbound Systems laptop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbound_Systems My parents got me one in elementary school in the early 90s to help with my learning disabilities. From what I recall they had ripped out the guts of an SE or SE-30 and turned it into a laptop. It ran on camcorder batteries. I've still got it in my basement but can't get it to boot up at all.
Maybe you should see if one of the retro computer YouTubers might be up for a rare guest computer. Adrian's Digital Basement comes to mind here but he's kind of an Amiga guy.
He's more of a Commodore guy than just an Amiga guy, but having been a long-time subscriber of his, it seems like he'll work on anything and everything. Worth sending him an email asking if he wants it at least; I've done it before and he responds pretty quickly.
I have an Outbound too! IIRC there's a weird little 7.5v battery that I had to replace to get it to boot up (roughly the diameter of a AA battery, but 1/3 the length) -- maybe check that out?
I just looked up the outbound laptop the other day. I saw one on an airplane when I was very young and I could not understand how there was a Mac that had this funny Kanagroo logo on it.
I know they had to pull the ROM from a Mac, I’m not sure what else went into the machine.
macintosh in these days were niche devices for wealthy professionals with a narrow set of requirements. There’s a reason the company almost died, windows was far cheaper and had better performance with vastly more software for the majority of users. The rest, as they say, is history.
I’m stunned that this list overlooks the brilliant PowerBook Duo and its Duo Dock, which mechanically injected and ejected the Duo like a VHS tape. https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Duo_Dock
The Duo 280 is my all time favorite Mac. Active matrix greyscale screen worked great without backlighting turned on. Even better in full daylight.
In the mid-1990s, I could work most of the day on batteries with a super lightweight notebook. Allocate enough RAM Disk space to for a minimal Mac OS system and WriteNow for word processing. Only spin up the hard drive to save data.
Oh yeah it was a great computer. I used it to make my band's first album art using Photoshop 2.0 (using the DuoDock and a colour screen, of course). Networked with the studio's Mac IIx (running Studio Vision and Sound Tools II) using serial AppleTalk...
yeap, this PowerBook was a real gem, I had the 230 model, with dock etc, used it as subnotebook will mid 2000s - light spreadsheets and note taking! The monochrome screen was really a plus. I really miss that.
I’ve been enjoying the coverage over the last week of the 40th anniversary of the Mac. Lots of nostalgia to dig into if you grew up in 80s and 90s.
If you happen to enjoy the interesting history of the Mac and Apple, I highly recommend Jason Snell’s series “20 Macs for 2020”[1]. I just discovered it last year, but I’ve found it to be a really fascinating look at Apple and the computer industry through the lens of computers Apple released over the previous 36 years.
I've been enjoying it too as someone who only really became familiar with Apple in their 2000s renaissance with the iPod (I mean, I wasn't alive for long prior to that)
What's really wild to me is seeing the prices on these things, especially adjusted for inflation. The Macintosh XL was $10,000 in 1983, or a whopping $31,000+ adjusted for inflation!
It's quite incredible how the playing field has really levelled out these days. At least in the west, whether you're rich or not, everyone is using fundamentally the same technology. Maybe film production studios will spend tens of thousands of dollars on a specialized machine for rendering video or 3D worlds, but in most cases you're probably using the same or a similar device as the richest individuals on earth. Everyone from Taylor Swift to Elon Musk have smart phones and laptops that do the same things as mine.
Revolution in The Valley is a fun read on how the Macintosh was created, from the perspective of the engineering team, via the author Andy Hertzfeld who worked closely with Jobs but 'most of the essays in the book are about the people that did the dirty work to make the Macintosh happen, their struggles, their sacrifices and their camaraderie'. Not much unlike any modern day team working to build something hard.
The hero of this story is https://lowendmac.com/ I used to read it weekly, not certain when I stopped, but it exists in my mental list of highly esteemed websites.
As an offering of a missed strange Mac not mentioned by other comments, the OWC ModBook. Starting in 2007 (maybe '08) OWC would make your MacBook into a tablet. This may stretch the definition of "Strange Mac" since it wasn't an Apple product or a direct clone, but built in anticipation of the iPad the ModBooks digitizer was "fully compatible with Apple Inkwell®, a Mac OS X Leopard feature that provides system-level handwriting and gesture recognition instantly to all Mac applications."
Everyone knows that as the Molar Mac. They look like a tooth and were used primarily in Education. They were a decent if not hideous machine.
I learned HTML and JavaScript on one in 1998-1999. We had the option to spend study hall in the computer lab and I took it every time. I would spend an hour every day working on my Geocities site. Those were the days.
I would frankly just love to find one in decent condition to have for the memories, the transparent top grille seems to always be busted up.
It was a toss up between eMac, iMac, and molar Mac for a few years, but eventually iMac won that race and seemed to be on top for years until laptops and chromebooks took over.
It's hilarious because the eMac line is long gone and almost forgotten, but people's iPhones still autocorrect "Emacs" to "eMacs", so its legacy still lives on.
The 2013 "Trash Can" Mac Pro has a special place in my heart. I bought one for $1000 at auction from a design firm upgrading to iMac Pros in 2017.
It has been my daily driver for the last 6+ years. Upgraded to 12 cores, 128GB RAM, 2TB SSD and an eGPU - it still works surprisingly well. 6 x 4K displays. With Sonoma, I have to apply patches to get it work. So I will finally retire it this year.
But it's been the best $2k investment in computer hardware I've made in many years.
Readit News
I know they had to pull the ROM from a Mac, I’m not sure what else went into the machine.
It's wild how expensive laptops used to be
In the mid-1990s, I could work most of the day on batteries with a super lightweight notebook. Allocate enough RAM Disk space to for a minimal Mac OS system and WriteNow for word processing. Only spin up the hard drive to save data.
Reflective LCD screens are magical in daylight.
Or a Macintosh floppy disk.
If you happen to enjoy the interesting history of the Mac and Apple, I highly recommend Jason Snell’s series “20 Macs for 2020”[1]. I just discovered it last year, but I’ve found it to be a really fascinating look at Apple and the computer industry through the lens of computers Apple released over the previous 36 years.
[1]https://www.relay.fm/20macs
What's really wild to me is seeing the prices on these things, especially adjusted for inflation. The Macintosh XL was $10,000 in 1983, or a whopping $31,000+ adjusted for inflation!
It's quite incredible how the playing field has really levelled out these days. At least in the west, whether you're rich or not, everyone is using fundamentally the same technology. Maybe film production studios will spend tens of thousands of dollars on a specialized machine for rendering video or 3D worlds, but in most cases you're probably using the same or a similar device as the richest individuals on earth. Everyone from Taylor Swift to Elon Musk have smart phones and laptops that do the same things as mine.
Deleted Comment
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40492.Revolution_in_The_...
https://folklore.org
One of my favorite bits is Bill Atkinson's remarkable Polaroid photos of the Lisa/Mac UI evolution from 1978 to 1982:
https://www.folklore.org/Busy_Being_Born.html
As an offering of a missed strange Mac not mentioned by other comments, the OWC ModBook. Starting in 2007 (maybe '08) OWC would make your MacBook into a tablet. This may stretch the definition of "Strange Mac" since it wasn't an Apple product or a direct clone, but built in anticipation of the iPad the ModBooks digitizer was "fully compatible with Apple Inkwell®, a Mac OS X Leopard feature that provides system-level handwriting and gesture recognition instantly to all Mac applications."
https://web.archive.org/web/20080513175426/http://eshop.macs...
Everyone knows that as the Molar Mac. They look like a tooth and were used primarily in Education. They were a decent if not hideous machine.
I learned HTML and JavaScript on one in 1998-1999. We had the option to spend study hall in the computer lab and I took it every time. I would spend an hour every day working on my Geocities site. Those were the days.
I would frankly just love to find one in decent condition to have for the memories, the transparent top grille seems to always be busted up.
It's hilarious because the eMac line is long gone and almost forgotten, but people's iPhones still autocorrect "Emacs" to "eMacs", so its legacy still lives on.
It has been my daily driver for the last 6+ years. Upgraded to 12 cores, 128GB RAM, 2TB SSD and an eGPU - it still works surprisingly well. 6 x 4K displays. With Sonoma, I have to apply patches to get it work. So I will finally retire it this year.
But it's been the best $2k investment in computer hardware I've made in many years.