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Today we are talking about a very weird Performa, announced in early 1994. Dubbed the “Money Magazine Edition,” this 560 is unusual, even by Performa standards.

A Very 90s Partnership

Looking at the specs, there’s not much to write home about here. This machine is just another 500-series Performa, powered by a 33 MHz Motorola 68030, but there’s more to this one, as reported by MacWEEK:

Apple and Money Magazine have made a bundle that pairs Mac hardware with a selection of multimedia finance-management software.

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Lex.Games is a website and iOS app for playing daily word games. If you like Wordle or Connections or crossword puzzles, there’s a good chance you’ll like Lex.Games.

Lex.Games offers:

• Conlextions, directly inspired by the NYT game
• Lexicogs, where you solve crossword-style clues by assembling letter “cogs”
• By a Vowel, a word jumble game where each word is missing one of the five vowels
• Letter Opener, where you form as many words from the starting letters as you can
• Six Appeal, which is like Wordle but with six-letter words

It also includes a Mini crossword; a full-size crossword; and Mind Control, which is a whole lot like Mastermind and not actually a word game at all, but who’s counting?

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A classic has returned, thanks to Matt Sephton:

A couple of days ago I was reading on Hacker News about a feature in some Linux window managers where they allow collections of tabs from different apps.

This reminded me of BeOS, but at the same time it reminded me of an app from 1992 for classic Macintosh called Stapler, and how I’d talked about that and it’s one-time spiritual successor, LaunchList, in the past. These were both similar apps that allowed you to collect and launch all the apps, files, folders, documents, related to a specific task, thus saving time. Or as Ali Rantakari so succinctly put it in 2009: “ Opening a Bunch of Stuff at Once on Your Mac”.

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This week on the podcast:

On this episode, David and Stephen explore four great applications for macOS users: CleanShot X, iStat Menus, PopClip, and Kaleidoscope.

On More Power Users, we cover a 5th utility: xScope.

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1Password Support:

An issue has been identified in 1Password for Mac that affects the app’s platform security protections. This issue enables a malicious process running locally on a machine to bypass inter-process communication protections.

This issue was responsibly disclosed to us by Robinhood’s Red Team after they chose to conduct an independent security assessment of 1Password for Mac. 1Password has received no reports that this issue was discovered or exploited by anyone else.

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Mark Gurman:

People involved in the development of the new Mac mini say it’s essentially an iPad Pro in a small box — an approach that takes advantage of the lower power requirements of the company’s in-house silicon. The current Mac mini starts at $599, and while the new model may be cheaper to make, it’s unclear if the company will pass along any savings to the consumer.

That small box is expected to be somewhere in the neighborhood of the Apple TV in terms of size, but retain its aluminum enclosure.

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In the fall of 1993, Apple released a virtual beige avalanche of updated Performa models. Let’s jump in!

Performa 275

Like the 250 before it, the 275 took the shape of a compact Mac. This time around, Apple based the Performa model on the Color Classic II, as LowEndMac writes:

First available in Canada (1993), and then Asia and Europe (and never sold in the home US market), the Color Classic II (also known as the Performa 275) shares the motherboard design of the LC III. Running at a relatively fast 33 MHz, memory can be expanded as far as 36 MB.

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This week on the podcast:

Federico is back from the beach and has some concerns about changes in iOS 18. Myke isn’t too broken up about the SuperDrive’s demise, and Stephen is still working hard on Performa Month. Also, Mozilla may be in trouble.

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That number is against just $9 million in sales, which is pretty bad, but it gets worse, according to Kylie Robison:

Once a Humane Pin is returned, the company has no way to refurbish it, sources with knowledge of the return process confirmed. The Pin becomes e-waste, and Humane doesn’t have the opportunity to reclaim the revenue by selling it again.The core issue is that there is a T-Mobile limitation that makes it impossible (for now) for Humane to reassign a Pin to a new user once it’s been assigned to someone. One source said they don’t believe Humane has disposed of the old Pins because “they’re still hopeful they can solve this problem eventually.” T-Mobile declined to comment and referred us to Humane.

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It seems that Apple’s USB SuperDrive has been discontinued, 16 years on the market, as Filipe Espósito reports:

As noted by one of our readers, it’s no longer possible to buy an Apple USB SuperDrive online via the official Apple Store in the US. The product’s webpage says that it’s “Sold Out,” and given that it’s a product introduced in 2008, it seems very unlikely that Apple will ever produce new units again.

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Sara Fischer at Axios:

X on Tuesday filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against an advertising industry coalition and its members—including CVS Health, Mars, Orsted and Unilever—alleging the group abused its influence over marketers and ad agencies to discriminate unfairly against X, prompting an ad boycott.

Woof.

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Michael Steeber, writing about a night I vividly remember:

Back in the days when software could be weighed and measured, the release of a new operating system was as big of a deal as any other hardware release. But let’s not forget: updates weren’t free. Mac OS X Panther, released on October 24, 2003 at 8:00 p.m., cost $129.

It was within this context that Apple created “ Night of the Panther,” a one-night special event hosted at all 65 U.S. Apple Retail Stores. (The first international Apple Store was still a month away.)

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