A chronological odyssey through the platinum and polycarbonate that defined an era.
6
Journeys
1
Artifacts
Published April 17, 2026
From the luggable-ish computing of the Apple IIc to the featherweight metal of the MacBook Air — four decades of Apple portability, traced through the machines that carried them from the desktop to the airport lounge and everywhere in between.
Bondi blue changed everything. Apple's brief experiment with translucent candy colors — from the iMac G3 to the G4 Cube — proved that design could be the product.
From expandable towers to design experiments, this era charts Apple at its most ambitious — and most troubled. The machines were extraordinary. The company nearly went bankrupt making them.
While Apple struggled through the 1990s, Steve Jobs was building something extraordinary just down the road. These two machines represent a parallel universe — the computing future that almost was, and eventually became macOS.
Five years of refining a revolutionary idea. From the original 128K to the SE/30, the compact Mac evolved from a curiosity into the computer that defined personal computing.
Apple's professional ambitions before the Macintosh — two bold machines that tried to define personal computing and failed, yet gave birth to everything that followed.
