Whenever there’s a major manufacturer of a popular product in the tech industry, there’s always talk of a near-mythical prototype that would have changed everything on the spot had it not been canceled in the bean counter. For example, Sony and Nintendo’s PlayStation prototypes or any of the numerous machines mysteriously discontinued by Commodore.
Apple is no exception. They brought to market the quickly forgettable 20th Anniversary Mac and the cute but impractical G4 Cube, but somehow rejected the Jonathan, a razor-sharp mid-1980s modular machine.
After associating Apple with the Mac for so long, it’s easy to forget that in the mid-’80s it was just one of the company’s several computer product lines, and it wasn’t the most successful. His 16-bit machine was like a slimmed-down evolution of Lisa. So not all other Apple machines at the time had to be Macs either. This was going to feature Jonathan, his high-end modular machine that bridges the gap between home and business computing. This machine has a standard bus that allows the use of processor modules for various operating systems and is upgradeable with standard “books” (hardware modules that include not all peripherals). One of his would be provided by his Apple itself. This was supposed to be his first 32-bit machine for Apple, but unfortunately it proved to be too adventurous for management. Management was worried that instead of inviting Apple users into his DOS world, it would do the opposite.
What strikes us about Jonathan is how out of place it would look on a 1980s desk. It would be in his mid-1990s that a machine with these features would appear. In fact, I’ve never seen more adventurous hardware. wise. However, this is not the only story we may have seen.