Ultra-rare Apple Macintosh prototype with original disk drive set to fetch £155,000 at auction

One of only two surviving prototypes of the original Apple Macintosh computer will go up for auction this week – at an asking price of £155,000. The prototype, which was made in 1983, features the aborted 5.25-inch'Twiggy' disk drive, and is going under the hammer at Bonhams in New York on Wednesday. The Macintosh began as a personal project of inventor Jef Raskin before the late Apple founder Steve Jobs took it over. The original plan was to use a 5.25-inch drive to greatly expand the capacity of standard floppy discs. But they proved unreliable, so a 3.5 inch drive, which was more robust and small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, was chosen instead for mass production.