The Performa’s In-Store Demo

Doug Brown has dug up something previously lost to time. In working with an early Performa, he discovered a true gem on its hard drive: This Performa 410 was a store demo unit! This is the kiosk software that would have been running on a demo Mac inside a store like Sears or Circuit City. The machine was never wiped back to factory state before being sold, and the original owner kept the demo software the entire time they had the machine. Such a cool find! It includes a comparison between the Performa 410 and the Performa 466, so clearly those two models must have been sold side-by-side at the same retailer. Aside from that, there is a tutorial about how to use a mouse, info about a few Apple accessories, and a ton of software demonstrations about several included software and devices such as ClarisWorks, Quicken, the Global Village fax modem, AOL, American Heritage Dictionary, and SuperMunchers. There are also several demos of other software you could buy including Lotus 1-2-3,…