This was intended to accommodate retailers, who could advertise that they could beat their competitors' price on equivalent models while at the same time ensuring that they did not actually carry the same models as their competitors.
Unlike the professional Macintosh lines, each individual Performa bundle was given a unique model number, in some cases varying only by the software bundle or the specific retailer that sold that model. The Performa 600, for instance, lacked the level-2 cache of the Macintosh IIvx it was based on. While the Performa models resembled their professional counterpart on the system software and hardware level, certain features were tweaked or removed. Professional models, in contrast, were sold à la carte with keyboard and mouse bundles chosen by the dealer or sold separately monitors sold with high-end Macintosh models typically used Trinitron tubes based on aperture grille technology. Most models were also bundled with a keyboard, mouse, an external modem and either a dot-29 or dot-39 pitch shadow mask CRT monitor. To satisfy consumer-level budgets, the computers were sold bundled with home and small business applications. The Performa line was marketed differently from the professional line. Early Performa models were not sold with the "Macintosh" brand in order to get around the authorized reseller agreements. The consumer line was given the name "Performa", and included computers similar to the professional line. The professional line included the Classic, LC, Centris, Quadra, and Power Macintosh lines, and continued to be sold as-is (i.e., no consumer software bundles or limited features). To prevent these conflicts, Apple split the Macintosh line into professional and consumer models. To reach these customers, Apple wanted to sell their computers through department store chains (such as Sears), but this would conflict with existing authorized reseller agreements, in which a geographic area had only one reseller. Consumers, however, purchased computers based on the best value, and weren't as concerned about expansion or performance. A typical reseller sold Macintosh computers to professionals, who purchased high-level applications and required performance and expansion capabilities. In the early 1990s, Apple sold computers through a chain of authorized resellers, and through mail order catalogs such as those found in the latter third of MacWorld Magazine. With a strong education market share throughout the 1980s, Apple wanted to push its computers into the home, with the idea that a child would experience the same Macintosh computer both in the home and at school, and later grow to use Macintosh computers at work. The Macintosh Performa 6400 is one of the few Performas to use a tower case. The Performa brand's lifespan coincided with a period of significant financial turmoil at Apple due in part to low sales of Performa machines. After releasing a total of sixty-four different models, Apple retired the Performa brand in early 1997, shortly after release of the Power Macintosh 5500, 6500, 86, as well as the return of Steve Jobs to the company.
The initial series of models consisted of the Macintosh Classic II-based Performa 200, the LC II-based Performa 400, and the IIvi-based Performa 600. Whereas non-Performa Macintosh computers were sold by Apple Authorized Resellers, the Performa was sold through big-box stores and mass-market retailers such as Good Guys, Circuit City, and Sears. The Performa brand re-used models from Apple's Quadra, Centris, LC, and Power Macintosh families with model numbers that denoted included software packages or hard drive sizes. The Macintosh Performa is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc.
The Macintosh Performa 5200, an all-in-one desktop