January 13, 1994: Get Your PowerPC Goodness Early

The PowerPC chip—the result of an alliance between Apple, Motorola and IBM—has powered every Mac from 1994 to the current day. When first introduced, the PowerPC was deemed so powerful by Apple executives they concluded they could charge a nearly ridiculous 51% markup on every Mac just because of the inherent advantages the chip gave them over competing products.

Oddly, Apple didn't rush to get the first awesomely powered chips into a new machine. Rather the company offered the first PowerPC chip as an upgrade card manufactured by a soon to-be clone maker, DayStar. The card was compatible with a variety of Macs and went by the not-so-inventive name of Apple Macintosh Upgrade Card. Installing the card did result in appreciably better performance, but consumers would have to wait until the introduction of the PowerMac 6100 two months later to get the PowerPC performance natively.

It was this month, January of 1994, when Mac users could finally taste the fruits of the AIM alliance, though they had to muck about in the internals first.