{"id":1055,"date":"2014-06-02T21:55:56","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T02:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=1055"},"modified":"2014-06-03T08:44:17","modified_gmt":"2014-06-03T13:44:17","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-performa-the-family-computer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1055\/retro-scan-of-the-week-performa-the-family-computer","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> Performa: The Depressing Macintosh"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/apple_performa_kids_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/apple_performa_kids_small.jpg\" alt=\"Apple Macintosh Performa The Family Macintosh Advertisement - 1993\" class=\"retroscan\"\/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>Ugh.  The Performa Era.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Performa line originated as a way for Apple to expand retail availability of its then-waning Mac platform.  They did so by re-branding a number of existing Mac models with the Performa name (plus some numbers that didn&#8217;t make much sense).<\/p>\n<p>The Performa line&#8217;s commercial availability coincided almost exactly with Apple&#8217;s darkest era, 1992-1997, when sales dramatically declined, market share dropped, the company was generally mismanaged and unfocused, Macs had <a href=\"http:\/\/apple-history.com\/6100\" target=\"_blank\">10 different names<\/a> for the same model, and Classic OS was getting long in the tooth.<\/p>\n<p>I remember seeing a few Performa models for sale at Sears as a teenager and thinking, &#8220;Wow, they still make Macs?&#8221;  Then I tried one out, and the OS was barely different from the Mac SE I&#8217;d last used in 1987 &#8212; some 6 years earlier &#8212; and it liked to crash a lot.  It was a depressing time to be Apple.  Whatever happened to that company, anyway?<\/p>\n<p><center><em>[ From Discover &#8211; July 1993, p.5]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong> What was the first model of Macintosh you ever owned?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ugh. The Performa Era. The Performa line originated as a way for Apple to expand retail availability of its then-waning Mac platform. They did so by re-branding a number of existing Mac models with the Performa name (plus some numbers that didn&#8217;t make much sense). The Performa line&#8217;s commercial availability coincided almost exactly with Apple&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,40,27,26,10],"tags":[97,150,101,830,691,102,847,60],"class_list":["post-1055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-macintosh","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-computers","tag-97","tag-advertisement","tag-apple","tag-discover","tag-family","tag-macintosh","tag-performa","tag-retro-scan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}