PowerBook

The PowerBook name started with the Macintosh Portable in 1989 — 16 pounds, lead-acid battery, and hardly portable by modern standards — before Apple got it right a year later with the sleek little PowerBook 100. That machine, developed with Sony, effectively invented the modern laptop layout: a palm rest, a pointing device below the keyboard, and the keyboard pushed back toward the screen.

Through the early-to-mid '90s, the 100 through 190 series added color screens, faster 68030 and 68040 processors, and steadily better battery life, turning the PowerBook into Apple's answer to a road-warrior IBM ThinkPad crowd. It's the direct ancestor of every MacBook that followed.