by If you’ve been a Mac fan for more than a few years, chances are you’ve seen or even used Apple’s most famous computer models. What you don’t often see are the machines that Apple kept to itself—the prototypes that never reached the market.
To explore this hidden world, we’ll take a look at four Macintosh prototypes from Apple, and one from an early Mac clone maker. When you’re done reading, we’d love to hear (in the comments at the end of this article) whatever tales you might have of your personal encounters with legendary Apple prototypes.
Translucent Macintosh SE (circa 1987)
Kozo TakeuchiProtoype Mac SE
During the testing process for many Mac models, Apple’s engineers routinely created a few prototypes of a particular computer with translucent plastic housing for air flow testing. Here we see this practice illustrated to stunning effect in this particular Macintosh SE prototype, although other Apple machines—from the Apple IIc to the Macintosh Portable—have been discovered with translucent testing cases.
Why translucent? With the help of a little smoke, engineers could easily see which components were or were not being cooled adequately and then make adjustments accordingly. It would take a new generation of designers to actually utilize translucent plastics in shipping products.
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