IIRC the bookcover thing was mentioned in the mags as a marketing ploy aimed at attracting younger, non-business users
That's an interesting take on it, and I can very see it.
The 1400 was definitely at least ultimately positioned downward, but I've seen lots of different suggestions for the BookCovers, and it of course comes with a plain black one for someone who might not want to use the feature.
For what it's worth, here's a dealer talking points/datasheet:
http://www.vectronicscollections.org/gallery/ads/laptop/0049.php - from relatively early on in the system's life. The 133MHz CPU had been added, but the 8/12x CD drives hadn't, for example. I
also think it's interesting the 1400/2400 (and I believe 3400 but I haven't seen its dealer sell sheet floating around) included ClarisWorks.
ISTR that for a while the LowendBook was the 5300, 1400 the mid-range pro-sumer Book with the 3400c being the flagship of the PowerBook line.
This is incorrect. The 5300 was discontinued in August 1996 and the 1400 was introduced in August 1996. The 190, interestingly, stayed on sale for longer, until October 1, 1996.
The 3400c was introduced February 1997, and the 2400c was introduced
even further after that in May 1997.
Per EveryMac - the Duo 2300c was discontinued in February 1997, but I'm not 100% sure how true that is, in that: I don't remember seeing it discussed much at all in the 1996 MacAddicts I've seen. Perhaps it's time to download 1996 MacWorld and look through it.
Depending on the status of the Duo, this
might mean that Apple was in effect not selling a PowerPC PowerBook at all for a hot couple months. And even if you could get the Duo, it didn't have PCMCIA and you needed to add docking to it, so buying one in 1996 arguably only made sense if you were upgrading an existing ecosystem with a new machine.
The gotcha is, and I haven't seen, like, Zones/Warehouse etc catalogs from before mid-1997, is that resellers weren't really allowed to advertise prices in magazines until fairly late on. I believe 1998 is when I started seeing the bigger ones do it. I don't know what their own catalogs were like at that point, however.
It probably wasn't until the G3 Series shipped that students were taking a laptop to all their classes, if many did even then?
Maybe!
However: the original PBG3 was introduced at $5,700, followed up by the G3 Series, which started at $2,299.
The original (Kanga) was of course basically a revision of the 3400c. The G3 Series could run dual batteries, so it's certainly more practical to do all-day meetings or classes with a G3 series machine.
I suspect that the iBook was the real start of "consumer" market buyers being reasonably able to buy laptops. A college kid
might have bought a laptop in the '90s, but in reality I suspect few did. Even moreso, I don't think laptops in classrooms (at least in higher ed) were common until well into the 2000s. Like I said, the crossover for "more students bought laptops than desktops" is 2006.
I was working the computer department of a college bookstore at the time of the 1400, and Apple made kind of a big deal about the cover and how much it was likely to appeal to college students. I don't recall whether it actually did or not.
Good to know! Apple's general marketing materials don't call out college students specifically, but they do call out the customizeability as part of the 1400 having been an attempt to build a machine suitable for a variety of different buyers. (Basically, here's a system, add whatever you need to it to make it what you need.)
Do you happen to recall in general what proportion of desktops to laptops you were selling?