Apple Mac Extremely Rare Pismo 400 Prototype PowerBook
Never Supposed to Leave Apple Lab ! 400Mhz/DVD/Firewire
As promised, I wanted to share some cool pics of a Pismo Prototype that I eBayed a while back, I had it for a long time and probably should have kept it, but I had to thin the collection a little in 2006.
This Unit was NEVER to be released to the public...
But this one got out ! A Rare find ! Collectors Read On
The Secret World of Apple PowerBook Prototypes:This unit was obviously a late-in-development prototype of a Pismo 400 Mhz unit; you can tell since it's in full Pismo plastics. The labels on bottom (See Pics) indicate P8 PVT (this may be one of the first Pismo units ever fully completed). The indication of "P8" is the numerical codename for Pismo...all Apple machines have both a internal "name" as well as an external numerical name during developement. For example, the iBook was P1, the iMac was C1, etc.
It's interesting to note the "PVT" in the label instead of DVT; DVT is the official name given to Apple prototypes for "Design Validation Test" (it's a prototype that's designed to test the unit as a whole, the internal electronics, the external form factor, basically the whole package). I was told, but cannot verify, that PVT stands for "Performance Validation Test"...perhaps, due to all the enhancements from the Lombard to Pismo, like airport readiness and Firewire, they were measuring some performance aspects. Early prototype units have the code EVT for "Engineering Validation Test" which is just to test the circuits, board designs, etc. before any work is done on the case design.
At any rate, as seen on the "This device is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease..." it has not been approved by the FCC or has achieved compliance with the requirements of European Directives 72/73/ECC. As the story goes, this unit went out the door with a maintenance worker and never made its way back to the lab... then DieHard snatched it up
Jobs unveiled the machine (the Pismo) halfway around the world, at MacWorld Tokyo, Japan in Feb. 2000; it would change laptops forever...