{"id":947,"date":"2013-02-04T16:06:30","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T21:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=947"},"modified":"2015-09-25T20:19:11","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T01:19:11","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-apple-powerbook-fans-of-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/947\/retro-scan-of-the-week-apple-powerbook-fans-of-color","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> African American Apple Fans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/multiracial_powerbook_family_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/multiracial_powerbook_family_small.jpg\" alt=\"Multiracial Black African American Apple Fans Apple PowerBook Advertisement 1992\" class=\"retroscan\"\/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>One big happy family &#8212; and a PowerBook (click to see entire ad)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Black_history_month\" target=\"_blank\">Black History Month<\/a> once again in the US, so I thought it would be timely to share this Apple PowerBook advertisement from 1992.<\/p>\n<p>The ad appeared in the February issue of Smithsonian Magazine; I don&#8217;t think it is a coincidence that it prominently featured people of African descent.  It also prominently featured the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macworld.com\/article\/1142924\/five_most_important_laptops.html\" target=\"_blank\">PowerBook 100<\/a>, which had just been introduced a few months prior in October 1991.<\/p>\n<p>The obvious racial focus of this ad brings to my mind a couple of interesting, if racially-charged questions: What percentage of black Americans, historically, have used Apple products versus other computer brands?  Do African Americans, like other demographic groups, have their computer or tech brands of choice?<\/p>\n<p>Today, Apple is such a mainstream company that the answer to the first question is most certainly larger than it likely was in the pre-iPod era.  It would be interesting from a cultural standpoint to peek back into private demographic customer studies that Apple no doubt commissioned at various points in its history.<\/p>\n<p>As for an answer to the second question, I have no idea.  But I would love to hear from African American computer users to find out.<\/p>\n<p><center><em>[ From Smithsonian Magazine, February 1992, p.10-11 ]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong> What&#8217;s your favorite PowerBook model?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One big happy family &#8212; and a PowerBook (click to see entire ad) It&#8217;s Black History Month once again in the US, so I thought it would be timely to share this Apple PowerBook advertisement from 1992. The ad appeared in the February issue of Smithsonian Magazine; I don&#8217;t think it is a coincidence that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,40,21,27,26,10],"tags":[313,371,101,370,372,369,367,368,60,353],"class_list":["post-947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-macintosh","category-news-current-events","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-computers","tag-313","tag-african-american","tag-apple","tag-black-history","tag-demographics","tag-laptops","tag-powerbook","tag-powerbook-100","tag-retro-scan","tag-smithsonian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947","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=947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}