Macintosh clone

The Apple II and IBM PC computer lines were "cloned" by other manufacturers who had reverse-engineered the minimal amount of firmware in the computers' ROM chips and subsequently legally produced computers that could run the same software.[1] These clones were seen by Apple as a threat, as Apple II sales had presumably suffered from the competition provided by Franklin Computer Corporation and other clone manufacturers,[1] both legal and illegal. At IBM, the threat proved to be real: most of the market eventually went to clone-makers, including Compaq, Leading Edge, Tandy, Kaypro, Packard Bell, Amstrad in Europe, and dozens of smaller companies, and in short order IBM found it had lost control over its own platform.

Apple eventually licensed the Apple II ROMs to other companies, primarily to educational toy manufacturer Tiger Electronics in order to produce an inexpensive laptop with educational games and the AppleWorks software suite: the Tiger Learning Computer (TLC). The TLC lacked a built-in display.[2] Its lid acted as a holster for the cartridges that stored the bundled software, as it had no floppy drive.[2]

Long before true clones were available, the Atari ST could emulate a Mac by adding the third-party Magic Sac emulator, released in 1985, and, later, the Spectre, Spectre GCR, and Aladin emulators. The first three of those emulators required that the user purchase a set of Mac ROMs sold as system upgrades to Macintosh users. Later, multiple emulators were released for the Amiga.[3]

Starting with the sales of PowerPC Macs, a CPU emulator to run 68000 applications was built into the Mac OS. By the time 68060 processors were available, PowerPC Macs became so powerful that they ran 68000 applications faster than any 68000-based computer, including any Amiga, Atari ST or Sharp X68000. This means even a 68060-upgraded Atari ST clone or Amiga, which avoid CPU emulation, were always slower, on top of causing some programs not to work thanks to imperfect virtualization of the Mac system and remaining machine components.[4]

Connectix also released another 68k emulator for Macs, replacing the original, called Speed Doubler, supposedly reported to be even faster than Apple's. As the years went by, the emulator wasn't updated to work with later versions of the original Mac OS, however, supposedly because Apple's own 68k emulator eventually surpassed it in performance, and the OS itself relied further on native PowerPC code with each new Mac OS update.

There was also a software emulator for x86 platforms running DOS/Windows and Linux called Executor, from ARDI. ARDI reverse-engineered the Mac ROM and built a 68000 CPU emulator, enabling Executor to run most (but not all) Macintosh software, from System 5 to System 7, with good speed. The migration from 68000 to PowerPC, and the added difficulties of emulating a PowerPC on x86 platforms, made targeting the later Mac OS versions impractical.

Wary of repeating history and wanting to retain tight control of its product, Apple's Macintosh strategy included technical and legal measures that rendered production of Mac clones problematic. The original Macintosh system software contained a very large amount of complex code, which embodied the Mac's entire set of APIs, including the use of the GUI and file system. Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, much of the system software was included in the Macintosh's physical ROM chips. Therefore, any competitor attempting to create a Macintosh clone without infringing copyright would have to reverse-engineer the ROMs, which would have been an enormous and costly process without certainty of success. Only one company, Nutek, managed to produce "semi-Mac-compatible" computers in the early 1990s by partially re-implementing System 7 ROMs.[5]

Mac ROM was used in the Outbound Notebook. The Mac ROM stick is shown removed, revealing the RAM slots.

This strategy, making the development of competitive Mac clones prohibitively expensive, successfully shut out manufacturers looking to create computers that would directly compete with Apple's product lines. However, companies like Outbound Systems, Dynamac and Colby Systems, were able to sidestep the Mac cloning process by targeting high-end, high-profit market segments without suitable product offerings from Apple and offering Mac conversions instead.[6][7][8]

In the early 1980s, Brazil's military dictatorship instituted trade restrictions that prohibited the importation of computers from overseas manufacturers, and these restrictions were not lifted until 1993. A Brazilian company called Unitron (which had previously produced Apple II clones) developed a Macintosh clone with specifications similar to the Mac 512K, and proposed to put it on sale. Although Unitron claimed to have legitimately reverse-engineered the ROMs and hardware, and Apple did not hold patents covering the computer in Brazil, Apple claimed the ROMs had simply been copied.[9] Ultimately, under pressure from the US government and local manufacturers of PC clones the Brazilian Computer and Automation Council did not allow production to proceed.[10]

A PowerCenter Pro 210, a Macintosh clone manufactured by Power Computing Corporation

In 1992, Macworld published an editorial stating that Apple clones were coming, and that the company should license its technology to others so it would benefit as the overall Macintosh market grew.[17]

A UMAX SuperMac S900, a Macintosh clone manufactured by UMAX Technologies

By 1995, Apple Macintosh computers accounted for around 7% of the worldwide desktop computer market. Apple executives decided to launch an official clone program in order to expand Macintosh market penetration. Apple's Mac OS 7 licensing program entailed the licensing of the Macintosh ROMs and system software to other manufacturers, each of which agreed to pay a flat fee for a license, and a royalty (initially US$50 (equivalent to $96.03 in 2022)) for each clone computer they sold. This generated quick revenues for Apple during a time of financial crisis.[18]

From early 1995 through mid-1997, it was possible to buy PowerPC-based clone computers running Mac OS, most notably from Power Computing and UMAX. However, by 1996 Apple executives were worried that high-end clones were cannibalizing sales of their own high-end computers, where profit margins were highest.[18]

A total of 75 distinct Macintosh clone models are known to have been introduced during the licensee era.[19]

The following companies produced licensed Mac clones:

Unlike Mac clones that contain little or no original Apple hardware, a Mac conversion is an aftermarket enclosure kit that requires the core components of a previously purchased, genuine Apple Mac computer, such as the Macintosh ROM or the motherboard, in order to become a functional computer system. This business model is most commonly used in the car industry, with one of the most famous examples being the Shelby Mustang, a high performance variant of the Ford Mustang, and is protected[29] in the U.S. by the First-sale doctrine and similar legal concepts in most other countries.

While Mac clones traditionally aim to compete directly with Apple's solutions through lower prices,[30] Mac conversions target market segments that lack dedicated solutions from Apple, and where the need for a Mac solution is high enough to justify the combined cost of the full price of the Mac donor computer plus the price of the conversion kit & labor.[31][32]

The following companies produced Mac conversions:

• IBM PC clone

• Mac Clones and New O/S movie from archive.org
• Mac Clones by Manufacturer (at EveryMac.com)
• Macintosh clones (at LowEndMac.com)
• Infos on all macs and clones (incl. details on some mainboard PCBs / at MacInfo.de)
• Apple Squeezes Mac Clones Out of the Market (at LowEndMac.com)
• "Dynamac (Macintosh clone), 360 degree model", Russian Vintage Laptop Museum (museum)