In recent times I have often seen mentioned a specific moment in Apple’s history — when Steve Jobs came back in 1997 and started streamlining the Macintosh product line as part of the plan to save the company from bankruptcy. This bit tends to surface every time Apple introduces new hardware; there’s always someone pointing out how today’s Apple is slowly reverting to the chaotic product line the company had around 1996, before being simplified by Steve Jobs.

But just how chaotic was the Macintosh offering in 1996? I was already a Mac user then, and keeping up-to-date with Apple and tech news in general. I remember product announcements and various reviews in computer magazines. It’s easy to see, in retrospect, the huge amount of Apple hardware that was available twenty years ago compared to the post-Jobs order in the early 2000s. At the time things felt a bit different, perhaps in part due to the fact that Apple kept discontinuing Mac models and introducing new ones at a sustained pace. Another thing to consider is that not all Mac models introduced at the time were available everywhere.

Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to offer an overview of the Macintosh models Apple was selling in 1996 and make a few related observations. In a nutshell: there was some level of organisation in what many have called the chaos of Macs available back then, and despite the long list of Mac models, the families and form factors were just a few; one of the main causes that generated confusion in the Macintosh product line was the frequent rebranding, and the progressive meaninglessness of the Performa line as the consumer choice versus the Power Macintosh as synonymous of ‘Pro’ machine.

The long list

The following is a list of Macintosh models that were available in 1996. Of course, very few of these were available throughout the whole year. As I said earlier, there was a lot of coming and going. Various models were discontinued in Spring 1996, others were introduced at the same time, and so on. Still, if you keep in mind that many of these models came at least in two processor speed and storage flavours, that made for a lot of machines to produce.

(All Macintosh information was collected via the ever-useful Mactracker)

Desktops

LC

Macintosh LC 580 (discontinued April 1996)

Performa

Macintosh Performa 560 (discontinued April 1996)

Macintosh Performa 580/588CD (discontinued February and May 1996)

Macintosh Performa 5200 series (discontinued April 1996)

Macintosh Performa 5260/5270 (introduced April & October 1996, discontinued February 97)

October 1996, discontinued February 97) Macintosh Performa 5280 (introduced November 1996, discontinued June 1997)

Macintosh Performa 5300 series (discontinued between May and August 1996)

Macintosh Performa 5400 series (introduced April 1996, discontinued Feb/Sept/Dec 1997)

Macintosh Performa 6200 series (discontinued August 1996)

Macintosh Performa 6300 series (discontinued between September and October 1996)

Macintosh Performa 6360 (introduced October 1996, discontinued October 1997)

Macintosh Performa 6400 series (introduced August 1996, discontinued August 1997)

Power Macintosh

Power Macintosh 4400 (introduced November 1996, discontinued February 1998)

Power Macintosh 5200 (discontinued April 1996)

Power Macintosh 5260 (introduced April 1996, discontinued March 1997)

Power Macintosh 5400 (introduced April 1996, discontinued March 1998)

Power Macintosh 6100 (discontinued May 1996)

Power Macintosh 6200 (discontinued July 1996)

Power Macintosh 6300 (Only sold in Asia, while the consumer equivalent, the Performa 6300, was sold in North America. Introduced July 1996, discontinued October 1997)

Power Macintosh 6400 (introduced October 1996, discontinued August 1997)

Power Macintosh 7200 (discontinued March 1996)

Power Macintosh 7215 (introduced January 1996, discontinued February 1997)

Power Macintosh 7500 (introduced August 1995, discontinued May 1996)

Power Macintosh 7600 (introduced April 1996, discontinued November 1997)

Power Macintosh 8200 (introduced April 1996, discontinued March 1997)

Power Macintosh 8500 (introduced August 1995, discontinued February 1997)

Power Macintosh 9500 (introduced May 1995, discontinued February 1997)

Laptops

PowerBook 190/190cs (discontinued June/October 1996)

PowerBook 550c (Released only in Japan. Discontinued April 1996)

PowerBook 5300 series (introduced August 1995, discontinued October 1996)

PowerBook 1400c/cs (introduced October 1996, discontinued November 1997)

PowerBook Duo 2300c (introduced August 1995, discontinued February 1997)

PowerBook Duo 280c (discontinued January 1996)

Servers

Workgroup Server 6150 (discontinued April 1996)

Workgroup Server 7250 (discontinued March 1996)

Workgroup Server 8550 (introduced February 1996, discontinued April 1997)

Network Server 500 (introduced April 1996, discontinued April 1997)

Network Server 700 (introduced September 1996, discontinued April 1997)

By form factor

Here are the same Macintosh models, but divided by form factor. As you can see, things look a bit less chaotic:

A few observations