The Apple Pippin was proced in a time when Apple was not the corporate giant that it is today. It was named after the Newtown Pippin, an apple cultivar. It's a smaller and a little more tart than the McIntosh apple.

At the time Apple spent a lot of time turning out products that did not necessarily have any viable commercial market. One of these products was the result of an attempt to break into the console market with the assistance of Japanese game maker Bandai.

THe Pippin was an odd hybrid device. It ran a modified Macintosh Operating System, and was pitched to the consumers as an affordable computer. But, it did not come with a keyboard. Apple had designed the AppleJack controller. This was a controller with an odd formfactor and featured four buttons, a track-ball and a directional thumb-pad.

The Apple Pippin was expensive, it retailed for $599. Compare this to the $299 that you'd pay for a Sony Playstation, there was no contest. Only 25 games came out for the Pippin, with the most notable title Bungie's Marathon. In 1997 Steve Job, upon his return to Apple, axed the project.

Apple never planned on releasing this system on its own. It was meant as an open platform so Apple could license the technology to third parties. After Bandai licensed Pippin from Apple, Apple made no effort to market the platform on their own. All marketing was to be done by the licensee.

Katz Media from Norway became the second and last company to sign a license agreement with Apple to produce Pippin systems. While Bandai was targeting the US and Japan, Katz Media focused on Europe and Canada. Katz however was a software company and therefore Bandai would produce the hardware for Katz. Bandai changed its direction during its merger discussions with SEGA and ultimately stopped producing the Pippin systems. At that time, the market was already saturated with Sega and Sony playstation.