|
|
Mac 512
|
This machine was the first Macintosh clone in the whole world.
In Brazil it is almost unknown and there are people who doubt its existence, but it really did exist!
This computer almost started a commercial war between Brazil and the United States. Apple persuaded the U.S. government to use everything it could against the Brazilian clone makers (increases in import taxes for brazilian products such as orange juice, shoes, etc.) until this machine was no longer made.
Brazil had a tradition since the beginning of the 80's of cloning computers without permission from the original brand owners (see the lawsuit moved by Sinclair against Microdigital). Apple had so far tolerated brazilian clones of the Apple II, but not this time...
There were differences between this machine and genuine Macs: Some of Unitron's macs had keyboards with black keys, some others had grey keys. Some versions had a disc drive with a button to eject the disc, others were like the original Mac and had no button in its disc drive.
The end of making Brazilian Mac clones may have been not good for Apple in the long run since it opened the doors of Brazilian market to PC clones that didn't have such restrictions.
Thanks to Ernesto Hublard from Brazil for information.
_______________________
Jonas Pachciarek Roter adds:
I would say that Apple's decision to sue Unitron was a huge mistake. Not that they shouldn't do something but how it was done.
This decision made them stay out of our market for more than ten years.
Currently Apple's local market share is still very small.
IBM's decision to tolerate clones made them stronger and is most probably the reason why 99% of the market uses IBM XT descendents.
|