In the early Ninetees several companies wanted to jump on the CD-i wagon: Sony, Sanyo, DVS, Grundig and Panasonic (Matsushita) all worked on CD-i hardware and except for Panasonic, all of these companies also released at least one product to the market. We discovered some very interesting communications from Philips that it was also in discussion with Apple to release a CD-i player.
Philips wanted more companies to embrace CD-i. Eventually Apple was not interested to support the CD-i format, although in the final product they included support for PhotoCD. Apple thought CD-
ROM was more viable to put their effort in. Apple however licensed the Philips CDF-100 design from Philips. It was a close call or CD-i was also supported in this short-lived Apple product.
Apple
PowerCD is a CD player sold by Apple in 1993 and discontinued
several years later. It was a re-badged Philips-designed product (Philips
CDF-100) which was sold in addition to Apple's speakers and also included
a remote control. The PowerCD was capable of reading Kodak PhotoCD’s,
CD-ROM data discs and audio CD’s. It can be connected to your television, just
like a CD-I design would be able to.
The PowerCD marked Apple's first stand-alone
consumer-oriented product brought to market, which did not require a computer
for use. It was analogous to
the portable CD-I players at that time, however, unlike Philips’, Apple supported
the connection of their own macbook format as well. And while most
desktop Macs at the time included built-in CD-ROMs, the PowerCD was designed to
match the PowerBook series which would not include a built-in CD-ROM for
several more years. Its ability to be operated under battery power alone made
it not only a portable drive for computers, but gave it the added ability to be
marketed as a stand-alone portable CD player.
