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Second Class Macs & Road Apples

The Worst Macs

Road Apples are Macs you should probably avoid, although some of them have their charms. (The Color Classic has a cult following, and Mac TV has its followers.) These are the Second Class Macs that earn two, three, or even four apples.

Apple has produced a few computers that could have provided more performance - and should have, based on the CPU they used. However, they were hobbled by other design considerations: keeping costs down.

These are Apple's more compromised hardware designs. For the most part, they're not really bad - simply designs unable to reach their potential. We divide these models into three categories:

The number of apples ranks Second Class Macs from somewhat limited ( one ) to Road Apples you should avoid at all costs ( four ).

Mac LC October 1990
Classic II October 1991
Mac LC II replaced LC in March 1992
Color Classic February 1993
Mac IIvx September 1992
Mac TV October 1993
5200-53xx and 6200-6320 several different models sharing the same flawed design, introduced April 1995 and later
'MainStreet' PowerBook G3/233, no cache May 1998
Core Solo Mac mini February 2006

If you would like to nominate another model as a Road Apple or Second Class Mac, send an email to Dan Knight explaining why. Thanks!

For another perspective, see The 10 worst Macs ever built by Remy Davison on Insanely Great Mac and What were the 10 worst Macs of all time?, a response by Charles Moore of Applelinks.

Second Class Macs is intended as a good natured look at Macintosh bloopers, not as an indictment of Apple, Inc. I'd rather have the worst of these than a Windows machines any day.

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