20 Macs

28: Performa Month

27: The 21st Mac

Stephen Hackett joins Jason to wrap up the series and discuss all the Macs that didn't make the list.

26: John Gruber, part 3

From November 20, 2020: Titanium PowerBook G4, MacBook Air, the original Macintosh, PowerBook 140/170, and iMac G3.

25: John Gruber, part 2

From August 31, 2020: The Macintosh Portable, Power Computing clones, iMac G4, Power Mac G4 Cube, iBook, Macintosh SE/30, and laying out pages at college newspapers.

24: John Gruber, part 1

From June 12, 2020: The Power Mac G5, PowerBook Duo, PowerBook 500 & 5300, Blue-and-White Power Mac G3, DayStar Genesis MP, Mac mini, Mac IIcx and IIci, and the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh.

23: John Siracusa, part 3

From November 20, 2020: Titanium PowerBook G4, MacBook Air, the original Macintosh, PowerBook 140/170, iMac G3, and to his great dismay, John learns Jason's final rankings.

22: John Siracusa, part 2

From September 1, 2020: The Macintosh Portable, Power Computing clones, iMac G4, Power Mac G4 Cube, iBook, and Macintosh SE/30.

21: John Siracusa, part 1

Two interviews with John Siracusa used for the 20 Macs for 2020 podcast, discussing the first nine entries in the series.

20: iMac G3 (#1)

It was the late 90s and Apple was on the ropes. Steve Jobs knew the company needed a lifeline, fast. And 10 months after Jobs took back control of the company, he announced the product that would fund Apple's resurgence and change its future forever.

19: The Original PowerBooks (#2)

After the failure of the Macintosh Portable, Apple took a different approach to designing a laptop. The result helped tip the balance of power between humans and computers.

18: Original Macintosh (#3)

The first Mac followed in the Lisa's footsteps and had a lot of limitations--but it changed the course of the computer industry forever.

17: MacBook Air (#4)

Apple's first attempt at the ultimate thin and light laptop was overpriced and underpowered. The second attempt resulted in the definitive Mac of the 2010s.

16: Titanium PowerBook G4 (#5)

Apple's first metallic silver laptop set the company on a path that it's been on for two decades and counting, but it also proved that the company still had a lot to learn.

15: Mac SE/30 (#6)

What's the best Mac of all time? It's an impossible question to answer. Yet three well-known Mac commentators all have the same answer.

14: iBook G3 (#7)

After a lot of speculation, Steve Jobs finally filled in the Mac's fourth product quadrant with a consumer laptop that was one of a kind. But what's a "consumer laptop," really?

13: Power Mac G4 Cube (#8)

There may have never been a Mac more aligned with Steve Jobs's personal quirks than the Power Mac G4 Cube. It was a spectacular failure.

12: iMac G4 (#9)

One of Apple's greatest design triumphs was meant to set the company up for the next decade. Instead, it became a false start--and a rejected design direction ended up being more functional, if less inspirational.

11: Power Computing (#10)

For a couple of years in the mid-90s, the Mac market was enthralled by a clonemaker with great deals and riotous marketing.

10: Mac Portable (#11)

Thank goodness there are second chances, because Apple's first attempt to make a portable Macintosh was as inauspicious at it gets.

9: Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (#12)

In an era where Apple liked to show concepts from its design lab in public, one weird Mac prototype somehow became a real product, and was unveiled at the end of the worst Apple keynote in history.

8: Mac IIcx and IIci (#13)

You know about the Macintosh, but do you know about the sequel? The Macintosh II was huge--literally. But its compact successors might be the pinnacle of late 80s/early 90s Apple design.

7: Mac mini (#14)

The popularity of the iPod led Apple to create a Mac designed specifically to tempt people to switch from Windows. It didn't go as planned, but the result was a Mac model that's been with us for fifteen years and counting.

6: DayStar Genesis MP (#15)

One of the most important developments in the history of the Mac was not created in Cupertino, but by a Mac clonemaker in a tiny town in Georgia.

5: Blue and White Power Mac G3 (#16)

Professionals were dragged out of their beige towers by an iMac-inspired Power Mac that featured a drop-down door, big plastic handles, and a raft of new technologies.

4: PowerBook 500 and 5300 (#17)

Apple follows up its groundbreaking original PowerBooks with a new set of laptops that ushered in perhaps the ugliest period in Apple laptop history.

3: Xserve (#18)

Apple had made numerous attempts to sell server hardware, including a strange non-Mac server that Steve Jobs likened to a bizarre dream. But in the early 2000s, Jobs decided to take another crack at it, and vowed that this time things would be different.

2: PowerBook Duo (#19)

The very first time Apple made a laptop that compromised in numerous ways, all in the question of being as thin and light as possible.

1: Power Mac G5 (#20)

The classic "cheese grater" design of the Power Mac G5 influences the design of the modern Mac Pro, and also represents (in the worst way) the last time Apple embarked on a chip transition.

0: Introduction

Jason Snell introduces 20 Macs for 2020, a project that will count down his list of the 20 most notable Macs of all time, one per week, with a little help from his friends.