May 9, 1997: The Clone Problem Typified

by Chris Seibold May 09, 2011

Umax, an early Apple cloner, released the clunkily named SuperMac C500 LT/140 with little fanfare. The machine offered 140 MHz of processing power, a Motorola 603e, 1.2 GB of hard drive space and 16 MB of standard RAM.

Those aren't the most impressive specs for the time but the SuperMac revealed a problem for Apple. The problem was price. Where the SuperMac C500 retailed for a mere $999, the closest Apple equivalent model, the Performa 6360, retailed for half again as much at $1500.

True, the Performa packed an extra 20 MHz in clock speed but that was the only noticeable advantage. The first sub $1,000 clone that illustrated Apple's problem with the clone makers was introduced on May 9, 1997.

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Comments

  • Yep, Apple had no idea what it was doing back then. It was lost in the desert. It was trying to be both a software company and a hardware company not realizing that every software sale to an OEM meanth a hardware loss to Apple.

    Poor design and unfocused product lines pushed many of us to buy Power Computing or Umax. I was bummed when Jobs killed Power Computing (I loved my easily upgraded PowerBase), but it had to be done for Apple to survive.

    vb_baysider had this to say on May 09, 2007 Posts: 243
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