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The first series of PowerBooks were hugely successful, capturing 40% of all laptop sales.

These early series would be the last to utilize the aging Snow White look, with the 190 adopting a new look along with the introduction of the 500 series. The innovative look not only unified their entire product line, but set Apple apart in the marketplace. In addition to adopting the darker grey colour scheme that coordinated with the official corporate look, they also adopted a raised series of ridges mimicking the indented lines on the desktops. Unlike the Macintosh Portable, however, which was essentially a battery-powered desktop in weight and size, the light colors and decorative recessed lines did not seem appropriate for the scaled-down designs.

The 100 series PowerBooks were intended to tie into the rest of the Apple desktop products utilizing the corporate Snow White design language incorporated into all product designs since 1986. The PowerBook 100, however, did not sell well until Apple dropped the price substantially. Hence the PowerBook 100's design does not match those of the rest of the series, as it was actually designed after the 140 and 170 and further benefited from improvements learned during their development. The PowerBook 140 and 170 were the original PowerBook designs, while the PowerBook 100 was the result of Apple having sent the schematics of the Mac Portable to Sony, who miniaturized the components. As usage of DOS gave way to the graphical user interface, the PowerBook's arrangement became the standard layout all future notebook computers would follow. In the early days of Microsoft Windows, many notebooks came with a clip on trackball that fit on the edge of the keyboard molding.

Portable PC computers at the time were still oriented toward DOS, and tended to have the keyboard forward towards the user, with empty space behind it that was often used for function key reference cards. These machines caused a stir in the industry with their compact dark grey cases, built-in trackball, and the innovative positioning of the keyboard that left room for palmrests on either side of the pointing device.

In October 1991, Apple released the first three PowerBooks: the low-end PowerBook 100, the more powerful PowerBook 140, and the high end PowerBook 170, the only one with an active matrix display.