Outbound Laptop

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The Outbound Laptop was an Apple Macintosh-compatible laptop computer. It was powered by a 15-MHz Motorola 68000 processor. Later versions increased the clock speed to 20 MHz.

Introduced in 1989, at over 4 kg the Outbound Laptop was significantly lighter and easier to carry than Apple's own Macintosh Portable, which became available at around the same time. However, due to Apple's refusal to license its operating system, Outbound users had to install a set of Macintosh ROMs to make the computer work, typically from an older Mac. Even so, a typical price of US $4,000 compared favorably to that of the Mac Portable.

The Outbound featured a built-in pointing device located below the keyboard; it was a cylinder that scrolled up and down and slid left and right.

Another popular feature is that the Outbound ran on standard camcorder batteries, rather than expensive custom batteries, as was common for most portable computers.

The Outbound Laptop was succeeded by the Outbound Notebook in 1991. However, the Mac-compatible laptop market was essentially killed off with the introduction of the Apple PowerBook range in August, 1991.