Nobody really expected ex Macintosh clonemaker Power Computing Corp to succeed in re-inventing itself as a personal computer manufacturer, and sure enough, the company has scheduled a special shareholders meeting for later this month, asking shareholders to approve the dissolution and liquidation of the company. At the meeting, to be held in Dallas, Texas on January 26, the company board will first of all ask shareholders to approve the sale of substantially all of its assets to Apple Computer Inc, the deal it announced last September as a result of Apple’s exit from the clone market. Once that deal is completed, a plan of liquidation will be presented to the shareholders. Both moves have been unanimously approved by the board as in the best interests of Power and its stockholders. Apple agreed to pay $100m in stock for the assets back in September. Power retained the rights to its name, and said it planned to enter the Windows PC-compatible market with a new range of PowerTrip notebook systems. But in December, it stopped making the notebooks, saying they were too expensive to produce (CI No 3,302). The company, which sold off the last of its Macintosh clones last month, now has no revenue stream. Only last July, the company filed for its initial public offering, at which it had hoped to raise up to $30m. Those plans quickly foundered when Power failed to come to agree new licensing terms with Apple. Meanwhile, the remaining few Macintosh cloners continue to struggle. Austin, Texas-based PowerTools Corp has filed a suit against Apple and Umax Data Systems Inc, claiming $100m in damages. PowerTools alleges that the two have conspired to force it out of business. PowerTools was re-configuring basic hardware licensed from Umax, and was the first to market with clones based on the G3 PowerPC 750 chip back in November.
