The low-profile ("pizza-box") case was inherited from the Centris/Quadra 610 and 660AV models,[2] and replaced the Macintosh Quadra series that used the Motorola 68040 processor, Apple's previous high-end workstation line.

For the consumer market, the 6100 was re-branded as a Macintosh Performa with model numbers in the 6110 – 6118 range denoting bundled software and hard drive sizes.

MacWorld's review of the 6100/60 noted that "Not only has Apple finally regained the performance lead it lost about eight years ago when PCs appeared using Intel's 80386 CPU, but it has pushed far ahead.

Notable to this generation of machines were the new startup and "Sad Mac" chimes: instead of the electronic "chuff" that was used on the previous generation machines, it played a guitar chord strummed by jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan, and instead of the "Chimes of Death" 8-note arpeggio that played whenever there was a hardware error at startup, there was the sound of a car crashing.

By this time, Apple had already released the highly anticipated "PC Personality Card" that plugged into one of the PCI slots of the newer Power Macs, featuring a 100 MHz Pentium processor.

[6] The base model was complemented by an AV version, which included an add-on card fitted in its Processor Direct Slot that added audio and visual enhancements such as composite and S-video input/output and full 48 kHz 16-bit DAT-resolution sound processing.