The PowerBook 190 and its companion PowerBook 190cs are

laptop A laptop computer or notebook computer, also known as a laptop or notebook, is a small, portable personal computer (PC). Laptops typically have a Clamshell design, clamshell form factor (design), form factor with a flat-panel computer scree ...

computers manufactured by

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

as part of their

PowerBook The PowerBook (known as Macintosh PowerBook before 1997) is a family of Macintosh-type laptop computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from 1991 to 2006. It was targeted at the professional market; in 1999, the line was suppl ...

brand, introduced to the market in August 1995. The two models differ only in their screen: the 190 had a 9.5"

greyscale In digital photography, computer-generated imagery, and colorimetry, a greyscale (more common in Commonwealth English) or grayscale (more common in American English) image is one in which the value of each pixel is a single sample repres ...

display, while the 190cs featured a 10.4" color display. Apple's target sales audience for this model was the college student in need of a no-frills portable computer. In terms of hardware, along with the

PowerBook 150 The PowerBook 150 is a laptop personal computer created by Apple Computer which was introduced on July 13, 1994, and released on July 18, 1994. It was the last member of the PowerBook 100 series to use the original case design, the most afforda ...

, the 190 has much in common with Apple's "professional" laptop of the same period, the

PowerBook 5300 The PowerBook 5300 is the first generation of PowerBook laptops manufactured by Apple Computer to use the PowerPC processor. Released in August 1995, these PowerBooks were notable for being the first to feature hot-swappable expansion modu ...

series. In exchange for the cheaper price point (approximately US$2,200 compared to over US$6,000 for the cutting-edge PowerBook 5300ce), the 190 was equipped with a

passive matrix Passive matrix addressing is an addressing scheme used in early liquid crystal displays (LCDs). It is a matrix addressing scheme, meaning that only ''m'' + ''n'' control signals are required to address an ''m'' × ''n'' di ...

LCD A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers to display information. Liquid crystals do not em ...

rather than a crisper

active matrix Active matrix is a type of addressing scheme used in flat panel displays. It is a method of switching individual elements of a flat panel display, known as pixels. Each pixel is attached to a transistor and capacitor that ''actively'' maintain th ...

screen. More significantly, while the 5300s ran

PowerPC 603e The PowerPC 600 family was the first family of PowerPC processors built. They were designed at the Somerset facility in Austin, Texas, jointly funded and staffed by engineers from IBM and Motorola as a part of the AIM alliance. Somerset was opened ...

processors at 100 or 117 MHz, the 190 had only a

Motorola 68LC040 The Motorola 68040 ("''sixty-eight-oh-forty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 series, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060, skipping the 68050. In keeping with general Motorola ...

clocked at 33 MHz - in fact, the 190/cs were the last Macintoshes to use a

68k The Motorola 68000 series (also known as 680x0, m68000, m68k, or 68k) is a family of 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and w ...

CPU. However, Apple offered a PPC upgrade for the 190, a heavily marketed selling point for all new 68040 Macs at the time. In addition, a rather cramped 500 MB IDE hard drive was standard, and factory models shipped with System 7.5.2. It is the only one of the 100 series PowerBooks that does not use the original 140 case design (except the PowerBook 100), thus was the only one to include a

68LC040 The Motorola 68040 ("''sixty-eight-oh-forty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 series, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060, skipping the 68050. In keeping with general Motorola ...

processor, a

trackpad A touchpad or trackpad is a type of pointing device. Its largest component is a tactile sensor: an electronic device with a flat surface, that detects the motion and position of a user's fingers, and translates them to 2D motion, to control a p ...

rather than the standard

trackball A trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes—like an upside-down ball mouse (computing), mouse with an exposed protruding ball. Users roll the ball t ...

, and along with the 150 the only ones to provide for more than 14 MB RAM expansion and larger, less-expensive IDE drives. The 190 was the de facto replacement for the

PowerBook 500 The PowerBook 500 series (codenamed ''Blackbird'', which it shared with the older Macintosh IIfx) is a range of Apple Macintosh PowerBook portable computers first introduced by Apple Computer with the 540c model on May 16, 1994. It was the fir ...

series, which was completely discontinued with the introduction of the 5300 and the only 68040-based PowerBook Apple offered. Sales figures for the 190 are unavailable, but in any event it did not suffer from reports of "exploding battery syndrome," where the similar 5300 factory-default

lithium-ion battery A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery that uses the reversible intercalation of Li+ ions into electronically conducting solids to store energy. Li-ion batteries are characterized by higher specific energy, energ ...

could short-circuit and burst into flames. Apple quickly offered a recall on all such batteries. The PowerBook 190 series used a

nickel–metal hydride battery A nickel–metal hydride battery (NiMH or Ni–MH) is a type of rechargeable battery. The chemical reaction at the positive electrode is similar to that of the nickel–cadmium cell (NiCd), with both using nickel oxide hydroxide (NiOOH). Ho ...

which did not exhibit this problem. Production of the 190 halted in June 1996, while the 190cs was sold until October of that year, when it was replaced by the

PowerBook 1400 The PowerBook 1400 is a notebook computer that was designed and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.) from 1996 to 1998 as part of their PowerBook series of Macintosh computers. Introduced in October 1996 at a starting price of $2,499 ...

cs.

Timeline

External links

* Apple's datasheets
PowerBook 190PowerBook 190cs
* apple-history.com
PowerBook 190PowerBook 190cs
* {{Apple hardware before 1998 190 68k Macintosh computers Computer-related introductions in 1995