It’s easy to think that the constant leaks about upcoming Apple products started during the age of Cupertino-obsessed blogs like, well, the one you’re reading right now. However, a recently digitized news report from February 1988 — concerning a “Macintosh Portable” leak — serves as a reminder that Apple rumors have been around for a long time.
Check out the vintage report, from a San Francisco news station, below.
Macintosh Portable leak
The interview is with David Bunnell, editor of the now-defunct Macintosh Today magazine. Bunnell, who passed away last October, founded successful magazines PC Magazine, PC World and Macworld. He was also a former colleague of Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, back when they were creating their BASIC programming language for the Altair.
Interestingly, the Macintosh Portable in the report — despite everyone’s excitement about it — turned out to be a flop for Apple. It shipped in 1989, costing the equivalent of more than $12,000 today, and was horrendously bulky.
It was later replaced by Apple’s first foray into true laptops with the form factor we know today. Known as the PowerBook 100 series, those Apple laptops proved significantly more popular with users.
Source: Fast Company
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.
