Support this Site
Become a Six Colors member to read exclusive posts, get our weekly podcast, join our community, and more!By Jason Snell for Macworld
The weird, short life of the Mac clone era
Thirty years ago, the first Mac clones rolled off an assembly line in Austin, Texas.
If you’re not of a certain age, you might not even believe that there were once Mac clones. For most of its existence, Apple has been a singular company, selling products that were a fusion of custom hardware and custom software.
But for about three wild years in the 1990s, Apple defied its own nature and allowed other companies to build computers that ran the Mac OS and compete directly with Apple. It was an era that made some long-standing contributions to the history of the Mac, but also one that Steve Jobs dramatically ended pretty much the moment he returned to power at Apple.