October 17, 1996: Apple launches its Performa 6360 Mac in North America, sold elsewhere as the Power Macintosh 6300/160.
An impressive multimedia Mac, the Performa 6360 comes bundled with a TV/video card. It also lets users make phone calls, listen to CDs, and watch television — all of which seemed amazingly futuristic at the time. As Macs went, it was pretty affordable, too.
Performa 6360: A great entry-level Mac
The Performa 6360 used the same case as the previous year’s Performa 6200. However, Apple vastly improved the computer’s insides. The Mac came with a new “Alchemy” motherboard with 64-bit data path and 64-bit DIMM RAM, PCI slot and 160 MHz 603e CPU. It also boasted an eight-speed CD-ROM drive, 28.8K modem and color CRT monitor.
The 1996 Performa Macs jump out at me for a reason that’s not particularly common with Apple products — and certainly wasn’t at the time. That reason? A surprisingly low price point, which made them a good choice for people looking for an affordable multimedia computer.
Today, it’s perfectly possible to argue that Apple products are affordable in terms of cost versus capabilities. That argument could even be made in the 1990s, when a Mac could easily run into the mid-four figures. (The Twentieth Anniversary Mac cost $7,499 in 1997 — the equivalent of $15,130 today.)
However, the Performa 6360 shipped for just $1,499, which made it cheap even when compared to far-less-capable PCs of the era. “These Performas represent the best price/performance value in either PCs [or Macintoshes],” analyst Tim Bajarin said at the time.
The tradeoff? Performas still tended to be underpowered, although the 160 MHz 6360 considerably outperformed its predecessors. Certainly, it wasn’t the high-spec Mac that some pro-level users needed at the time. But as far as a home Macintosh that would blow away your friend’s PC went? This machine was a winner.
Do you remember the Performa 6360? Leave your comments below.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
4 responses to “Today in Apple history: Performa 6360 is a low-cost multimedia Mac”
I owned one of these, as also owned many of the Performa models, it really was a huge improvement related to the other models that had really bad shortcomings. Sometimes it had 3 times the overall performance of the 6320 or 6340.
I owned one of these! This was the computer my then girlfriend, now wife, bought for me. I was just starting out in architecture and landed a project that was too big to do as a moonlight project at the office I was working at. I was dead broke and working for peanuts and she took me to Best Buy on Saturday and bought it for me.
My first computer ever! It was a winner!
Still have mine!