Apple Macintosh Performa 550, 1994
Series
Introduced in October 1993 and available until April 1996, Macintosh Performa 550 featured a more powerful processor than the earlier LC 520. The Performa 550 featured only consumer applications, as opposed to other Performa variants which also included business applications, and was initially sold at a price tag on $2000.
The Performa series of computers came about as part of Apple’s efforts to expand past the professional market into the consumer market. At the time, agreements with authorized resellers, who typically sold to professional buyers, prevented Apple from selling computers in large-scale sellers like Sears. To work past this quandary, Apple split its product into consumer and professional lines. Professional lines, such as the Performa, would continue to be sold exclusively by authorised resellers and consumer lines would be sold in markets more widely accessed. The Performa largely failed as a product due to the overly-broad variety of models, many of which were underpowered and negligibly different from others.
Not currently available for use in the retroTECH Lab (awaiting repair).
From donor Jason Ellis: “Used to relieve the experience of interacting with operating systems made specifically for older computers, including System 7.5.5, Mac OS 7.6, and Mac OS 9.2.1. In some of my work, I compared my first-hand experiences with reviews and reflections published in periodicals such as PC User, Mac User, and Macworld, and in online discussion forums. There are a range of uses for these vintage computers. A few possible use scenarios:
Run game software on the original platforms that software was written for
Retrieve files and data from media that might be more easily accessed and read on a vintage computing platform than on a modern computer with specialized retrieval hardware (this could be especially true on Macs due to the way files have a data fork and a resource fork that PCs cannot easily decipher)
Provide first-hand experiences of using these computers and their software to build stronger understandings of the evolution of computing hardware and software
Provide first-hand experience for students of computer science, computer engineering, and electrical engineering who have not had experience using or studying these platforms and their software
Study user experience with these computers and their software and compare user experience with written accounts (how might our perspective now or in the future change the way we see these technologies?)
5 retroTECH Item(s)
English
Part of the Archives and Special Collections, Library, Georgia Institute of Technology Repository