June 19, 1995: Apple releases the Power Macintosh 9500, a high-end Mac that boasts a second-generation PowerPC chip that’s much faster than its predecessor.
The Power Mac 9500 is also significant for having six Peripheral Component Interconnect, or PCI, slots. They allow owners to attach hardware using Intel’s industry-standard connection. Along with seven bays for internal drives and a swappable daughterboard, this makes the 9500 the most expandable Power Mac ever produced.
Power Macintosh 9500: A significant step up
This machine looked similar to previous Apple mini-towers like the Power Mac 8100 (which shipped in 1994) and the Macintosh Quadra 800 (which shipped a year before that). Visually, the biggest difference from the Power Mac 8100 was that the new Power Mac 9500 measured a few inches taller.
Inside, however, major changes lurked. While the 8100 used the first-gen PowerPC 601 processor, running at 110 MHz, the 9500 came in 120 MHz and 130 MHz models. This made it blisteringly fast at the time: 50% faster than the Power Mac 8100. It even proved astonishingly speedy next to a Pentium 133 MHz processor, running between 72% and 87% faster for certain operations.
Given that 1995 marked the height of Apple’s mid-1990s identity crisis, as Microsoft’s Windows 95 surged ahead, the Power Mac 9500 proved that you could rely on Apple if you were serious about computers.
Another big selling point? The Power Mac 9500 CPU connected via an easily swappable daughterboard, making upgrades easier and cheaper. Immediately, a variety of third-party upgrades and accelerators came on the market.
Even more Power Mac 9500 upgrades
From day one, upgraders could boost their Power Mac 9500 up to 150 MHz. Before too long, users could upgrade to single-processor cards that ran at up to 200 MHz. Or they could splash out for a dual-processor card featuring twin 180 MHz CPUs. With the right G4 CPU upgrade, owners of the Power Mac 9500 could still use the latest Mac operating system, OS X Leopard, in 2007, more than a decade after the computer’s release.
In terms of storage, customers who bought the Power Mac 9500/120 received a 1GB hard drive. This increased to 2GB for the higher-end Power Mac 9500/132. The 120 featured a 4x CD-ROM, while the 132 came with an 8x CD drive.
The decision to replace Apple’s standard NuBus architecture — also used in Steve Jobs’ NeXT Computer — in favor of the Intel-designed PCI connector was considered the biggest news at the time. This move suddenly opened up Macs to a massive number of standard peripherals previously available only to PC owners.
All of that power and expandability came at a price, of course. If you wanted the Power Macintosh 9500 — basically the iMac Pro of its day — you needed to cough up $5,299 as a starting price. Adjusted for inflation, that’s equivalent to nearly $11,200 today. It didn’t come with a monitor, either!
What was your first Mac?
Did you own a Power Macintosh 9500? What was the first Mac you ever bought or used regularly? 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.
3 responses to “Today in Apple history: Power Mac 9500 is faster and more expandable”
The company I worked for (a TV station) bought a PowerPC 9500 (I used it for print design mostly). I didn’t know anyone else who had anything close to it performance-wise.
June 19, 1995: The Power Mac 9500 is also significant for coming with six Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slots.
Interesting fact that 16 years later Apple introduces Intel’s Thunderbolt tech, severely strangled from birth by prohibitive Intel implementation fees. Only now, 6 years later and T/b v3 do we see any interesting peripherals becoming available for it. I am sure it would be most interesting to hear the specific details behind that introduction and Intel’s pricing/charging.
I can’t remember the street price of the 9500. The street price of the 8100 was around $3,500 – about $750 under list. It came out around a year before Apple’s flash-in-the-pan ANS machines – a pair of dedicated A/UX servers (not Macs – couldn’t run MacOS.)
The construction of the machine still had a lot of clunkiness to it – little plastic fork-shaped reset buttons or whatever (I haven’t used that 8100 in around 18 years and can’t remember their function and complex molded plastic interior combined with sheet metal parts stuffed in here and there). Plus replacing / installing hard drives required plugging in leads and whatnot. While not as bad as a Windows box, it was still possible to scrape a knuckle.
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Apple’s big step into hardware elegance happened with the putty-colored G3 desktop. Pop off the lid and the right and left sides of the frame (with their contents) swung open like a pair of refrigerator doors – four seconds from all sealed up to every square inch of it at your fingertips.