A History of the Mac Color Classic

The Color Classic has been lauded by many Mac faithful as what the original Macintosh should have been. The computer was made available to the general public on February 10, 1993, and was received well by reviewers.

Apple’s Performa Line, 1992 to 1997

In 1992, Apple decided that the education and design markets weren’t enough – it wanted to target mass market consumers. Rather than develop new computers for this market, Apple created a new brand and renamed three existing Macs as Performas.

MicroMac Upgrades for Color Classics

MicroMac provided several products to upgrade the Color Classic, a perennial favorite among Mac collectors, as well as many other Macs. Although pages on the company website have not been updated since 1998-2000, we provide this as a look back at some very innovative upgrades.

Overclocking a Compact Mac

Many Mac models can be “chipped” to run at a higher speed, but none of the compact Macs can. That said, some can be upgraded with third-party accelerators, so you’re not necessarily stuck with the original CPU speed – although finding those upgrades nowadays may be difficult.

Cult Macs Adored by Collectors

One of the things that sets Macs apart from other computers is their longevity. People don’t just throw them away. Macs tend to soldier on long after their spec sheets say that they’re “obsolete”. This may explain another phenomenon almost unique to the Macintosh subset of the computing world: Mac collectors. It’s understandable when you […]

A Cult Classic: The Colour Classic II

2003 – The Color Classic, introduced in February 1993, was one of the earliest Macs to merit the Road Apple label. Road Apples are defined as Macs that were less than they should have been, models crippled for the sake of marketing or to keep costs down.

Color Classic Mini FAQ

Hi! I thought it was about time to make a FAQ (or sub-FAQ) to deal with all the Color Classic (Colour Classic outside the USA) questions out there, which seem to be on a Möbius type path. So, here it is. What I have done, is combined much of my email correspondence to answer many […]

Mac Colour Classic II (Performa 275)

First available in Canada (1993), and then Asia and Europe (and never sold in the home US market), the Colour Classic II (also known as the Performa 275) shares the motherboard design of the LC III. Running at a relatively fast 33 MHz, memory can be expanded as far as 36 MB.