The first PowerMac was released in 1994, but it had to emulate the 68k to run Photoshop, which had a serious performance hit. How could this be? Photoshop 4 used 68k instructions, and the fastest 68k based Mac was the Quadra with the 68040 CPU.

(Roughly equivalent to a Pentium - a bit slower clock but slightly more powerful instructions.) :-)Īt one time, up to at least 1996 the fastest Mac for running Photoshop, was not a Macintosh at all, but an Amiga tricked out with a graphics card and a CPU upgraded from the standard 68020 or 68040 to Motorolas last entry in the 68k line, the 68060. I suddenly felt the old Amiga fanboi inside of me pop up.