Jason Snell and a collection of long-time Mac watchers count down Jason's list of the 20 most notable Macs of all time, one per week.

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#17: MacBook Air (#4)

December 11th, 2020 · 21 minutes

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)

December 4th, 2020 · 12 minutes

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)

November 20th, 2020 · 13 minutes

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)

November 13th, 2020 · 14 minutes

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)

November 6th, 2020 · 24 minutes

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)

October 30th, 2020 · 17 minutes

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)

October 23rd, 2020 · 23 minutes

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)

October 9th, 2020 · 24 minutes

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)

October 2nd, 2020 · 21 minutes

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)

September 25th, 2020 · 15 minutes

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.