PowerTower Pro: The Mac Clone That Almost Killed Apple

Apple's official Mac licensing program in the mid-90s only lasted a bit over two years, but some companies came out with clones so compelling they almost put Apple out of business.

Sources:
"For Apple, Clones and Competition," New York Times, December 29, 1994.
"Power Computing swamped by Mac demand," Computerworld, November 4, 1996.
"Mac OS Systems," MacUser, September 1996.
"Power Computing Widens the Gap," Macworld, September 1996.
"Quantum Leap," Macworld, July 1998.
"275MHz Mac Powerhouse," Macworld, September 1997.
"Apple Eliminates the Top Clone Vendor," Macworld, November 1997.
"The Vast Mac Expanse," Macworld, December 1996.
"Apple misses mark; reports $708M loss," Computerworld, April 21, 1997.
"Why Apple Pulled the Plug," Macworld, November 1997.
"Power Computing offers clones with a difference," InfoWorld, October 30, 1995.
"Apple shoots its clones and tries to go it alone," InfoWorld, September 8, 1997.

00:00 - Introduction
00:31 - One fast Mac
01:46 - Someone's been in here...
02:24 - Hard drive upgrade from a competitor
04:23 - Lots of RAM
05:10 - Add-in PCI cards
06:32 - Modular CPU card
07:18 - Something's missing...
07:49 - Time for more upgrades
09:15 - Modern PRAM battery replacement
11:37 - OS installation and peripherals
13:25 - These benchmarks suck
14:23 - Putting the power back into this PowerTower
16:01 - The Mac clone drama
19:13 - Death of a clone maker
20:38 - USB problems
21:23 - This thing was pretty badass in its day

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[PotatoFi]

I had several of those Twin Turbo cards in blue and white G3’s in my “garage pile of Macs”. I wasn’t aware that they were high-end workstation cards.

[JoshColletta]

I remember the PowerTower quite well! My local library had one specifically to provide a Mac for the public's use... amidst a group of Windows boxes that were built by a local company before those quickly became outdated and were replaced by a bunch of Gateway machines. The PowerTower never got upgraded or replaced because very few people used it for much of anything beyond running a few programs that the library only had available for Macs. In fact, I spent quite a bit of time playing Myst on that machine because they didn't have the Windows port. But it was a beast for its time! It survived for nearly a decade -- as a matter of fact, I think it was still there right up until the library moved to its current building in 2003. I don't know what became of it after that, but that move included a complete tech overhaul, and I never saw it again, so it could very well (sadly) be in a landfill somewhere.

[orionriley]

The clone era is always so interesting, it's wild to me how Apple let others build machines when nowadays it seems like the last thing they'd ever do

[Markimark]

I wouldn’t say the Apple clones nearly killed Apple, it was Apple’s stubbornness by making too many overpriced products and limited specs! Apple was also screwing retailers and educational buyers. The clones were cheaper and more customizable than the original Macs!

[GoTeamScotch]

10/10 video as always. Editing, pacing, narration, camerawork. All top notch. 👌

[patchrick]

I remember having a PowerComputing clone for a short while. It was a desktop model, not a tower. Had to be in the early 2000s when I got it second-hand. I don't think I ever did much with it, sadly, as my real Mac assimilation didn't happen until the Intel switch a few years later. Watching this video made me a bit nostalgic for physical computer media, too. I loved me a good Zip disk back in the day, and there was always something so satisfying about the (pretty much Apple exclusive) floppy eject mechanism - and the sound that came with it!

[byteme]

Interesting! I was never an Apple user, but I appreciated this trip down memory lane.

[muttBunch]

I used to use one of these back when I was a graphic artist to render complex 3d graphs in mathematics. They were definitely necessary back in the mid to late 90s for that

[frodrickfronkensteen]

I was in my early 20s and three years out of art school (SCAD) when the clones hit the market. My beloved Quadra 700 was no longer cutting it... so I splurged on a PowerComputing PowerCenter 132 (my first / sadly not last / significant credit card purchase). Did some of my best animation work on that machine (Form•Z and Electric Image). It was a solid machine. That said, the MiroMotion DC20 capture card that came with... I never was able to get it (or the warranty replacement card) working. PowerComputing compensated with a TwinTurbo video card. For the time, it was a solid performing video card and made 21" CRTs just sing with Premiere, Photoshop and Form•Z work.

Such a great era, the early-and-on 90s. It was the wild west for digital graphic design, burgeoning WWW, Mac gaming... really fond memories.

[robsquared]

This is why I like you and Action Retro.

[RetroTechChris]

What a gorgeous machine, and an outstanding tour as always, Colin! I was going to look and see if I had that cache module around, but looks like you solved it (I picked up a few boxes of misc memory at VCF East a year or so back with some cache modules).

[Wicked_He_Bad]

i love how u make videos its relaxing and good to watch everything just feels right love to see a video on old hardware running morden stuff but keeping the look with newer os from win or mac keep up the great video man

[TheTrrrMask]

The audio jack and volume dial on the CD I love that.

[MmntechCa]

I have a lot of nostalgia for these. My parents had a StarMax 3000 tower. Think it was the 200Mhz model. Thing was a beast at the time. I saw it in their basement recently. Dunno if it still works.Would be an interesting world today had these Mac clones actually taken off.

[MrDDawson]

That Sonnet Crescendo G3 card at the end. Wow I remember that being lusted after in the day. That purple colour was everything.

[steen]

Nice!

Just a heads up, when cleaning such as you did, better to spray the cloth and not the keyboard.

[angryshoebox]

Cool, cool, cool. I had a PowerCenter 150 (604 @150 mhz, 1 GB HDD, 56 MB of RAM, Mac OS 7.5.3). Man, I WISH I'd hung onto it, it would be a great retro & collector's item now.

[croissant-king]

The 'cache' card at 7:40 looks like a ROM DIMM to me, with it's HH and HL marked chips indicating Hi and Lo.

[MrJohnBos]

As an avid Mac user back in the 90's, I remember the Power Tower Pro and was very tempted to switch from my Mac IIsi. Thanks for the memory refresh. Great video.

[dmnddog]

We replaced our aging compact Macs at my college newspaper with Power Computing machines. They were not the tower models, but the horizontal desktop models. They were night and day performance-wise compared to what we'd been using up until then. We even got approved for a tabloid size printer to replace our old LaserWriter. Gosh, we felt so professional after all those upgrades, and they helped us be more creative with our layouts and graphics. Good times.