Might 16, 1994: Apple launches the PowerBook 540c, among the finest laptops within the firm’s historical past.
A part of the progressive 500 collection of PowerBooks, the 540c is the laptop computer to personal in 1994. Blisteringly quick, full of progressive options, and providing the perfect pocket book show in the marketplace, it’s a triumph on each stage. Though for $5,539 (over $11,900 in in the present day’s cash), it had higher be…
PowerBook 540c: Apple’s greatest laptop computer but
The PowerBook 540c represented a serious leap ahead for Apple laptops. It was so good that, for the primary time, a large proportion of Apple’s fanbase was satisfied that it was the perfect machine the corporate was making, together with its desktop Macs.
The earlier 100 collection PowerBooks turned an enormous industrial and inventive success for Apple, serving to drive the corporate to new monetary heights. Nonetheless, by 1994, these laptops seemed much less spectacular, by way of each aesthetics and options.
The five hundred collection PowerBooks have been the perfect sequel this aspect of Aliens or Terminator 2. Of those, the PowerBook 540c reigned because the undisputed champ. It boasted the world’s first 16-bit moveable show, which Apple claimed on the time, “Could be the best display screen ever to grace a pocket book pc.”
PowerBook 540c specs
Though it solely provided 640×400 decision, the active-matrix 9.5-inch show’s skill to point out hundreds of colours on the similar time made rival laptops look positively prehistoric — notably if you factored in Apple’s QuickTime video software program and the laptop computer’s built-in stereo sound.
The show wasn’t the one massive improve, both. The PowerBook 540c was additionally impressively quick, being the primary Apple pocket book to incorporate a 33MHz Motorola 68LC040 CPU. It got here with 4MB of RAM (upgradeable to 12MB). In benchmark checks, it ran a whopping 80% sooner than the speediest earlier PowerBook.
As well as, the PowerBook 540c supported PC playing cards, 10BT Ethernet and exterior displays as much as 20 inches. A trackpad supplied an improve over the trackballs of Apple’s earlier laptops. And twin nickel–metallic hydride battery batteries provided 5 hours of life.
What’s the perfect Apple laptop computer of all time?
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