Released on September 20, 1989, the Macintosh Portable was Apple's first battery-powered portable Macintosh computer. It featured a fast, sharp, and crystal clear black and white 640 x 400 active matrix LCD screen in a hinged design that covered the keyboard when the machine was not in use. The Mac Portable introduced the trackball, a built-in cursor control system that could be removed and located on either side of the keyboard. It also came with expensive SRAM to maximize battery life and to provide an "instant on" low power sleep mode. The machine was designed to be high-performance, at the cost of price and weight. The Mac Portable weighed at 16 pounds (7.2 kilograms) and measured 4 inches (10 centimeters) thick so it was a heavy and bulky portable computer. The computer's lead-acid battery provided 10 hours of up time.

Although the Mac Portable received initial excitement, consumer sales turned out to be quite low due to its battery problems and heavy and bulky size.