October 10, 1993: Apple ships its Macintosh Colour Basic II, the final of the 9-inch compact Macs.
Often known as the Performa 275, the Colour Basic II will ultimately grow to be one thing of a collector’s merchandise, since Apple launched it solely in Canada, Asia and Europe.
A wanted replace to authentic Macintosh Colour Basic
Its predecessor, the unique Macintosh Colour Basic, debuted in February 1993. The primary Mac to return with a built-in shade monitor, the attractive machine allowed for Apple IIe emulation courtesy of a PDS card.
“In many ways, the Color Classic is the compact Mac everyone’s been waiting for since, well, since 1984,” MacUser journal wrote in April 1993.
Nonetheless, in unintended “classic” style, it harked again to the unique 1984 Macintosh in a single different means. It was a phenomenal pc, however horribly underpowered.
As an alternative of treating the Colour Basic as a beautiful retro throwback experiment (which, let’s face it, isn’t any extra area of interest than plenty of the opposite concepts Apple was attempting at the moment), Apple as a substitute compelled the pc to occupy a spot as an entry-level machine.
This meant giving it a most RAM of 10MB, which proved inadequate for many customers even in 1993. It additionally suffered from a gradual, 16-bit knowledge bus and a meager monitor decision of 512 pixels by 384 pixels. Consequently, many video games did not run correctly on the machine.
Mac Colour Basic II: Issues solved
The Macintosh Colour Basic II fastened plenty of these issues whereas retaining the unique’s kind issue. On this means, you would possibly think about it the equal of an iPhone “s” model. The design stored the identical outer shell, however inside upgrades addressed issues confronted by the previous-generation system.
The Colour Basic II doubled the CPU velocity and RAM capability of the unique, however retained the monitor decision. Nonetheless, there was little question that, if the Colour Basic was the compact Mac that followers wished since 1984, the Colour Basic II was the Mac that Colour Basic followers wished all alongside.
Sadly, Apple by no means offered the Colour Basic II in the USA for some purpose. Thus it stays considerably arduous to search out, even in the present day.
Did you might have a Colour Basic Mac? What was your favourite Nineties Macintosh mannequin? Depart your feedback under.