Macintosh LC family
The Macintosh LC is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1990 to 1997.
Introduced alongside the Macintosh IIsi and Macintosh Classic as part of a new wave of lower-priced Macintosh computers, the LC offered the same overall performance as the Macintosh II for half the price.[1] Part of Apple's goal was to produce a machine that could be sold to school boards for the same price as an Apple IIGS, [2] a machine that was very successful in the education market. Not long after the Apple IIe Card was introduced for the LC, Apple officially announced the retirement of the IIGS, as the company wanted to focus its sales and marketing efforts on the LC.[3]
The original Macintosh LC was introduced on October 1990, with updates in the form of the
Overview
After Apple co-founder
This policy led to a series of ever more expensive computers. This was in spite of strenuous objections within the company, and when a group at Claris started a low-end Mac project called "Drama", Gassée actively killed it. Elsewhere at the company, two engineers, H.L. Cheung and Paul Baker, had been working in secret on a pet project, a color Macintosh prototype they called "Spin". The idea was to produce a low-cost system in the vein of the Apple II, a product that Cheung had previously worked on at Apple as the head of design. The machine would, in effect, be a significantly smaller Macintosh II with built-in video, no NuBus expansion, and a matching RGB monitor similar to the one introduced with the Apple IIGS the year prior. The project changed direction during development, with executives dictating that the machine should have video capabilities and processing power similar to the Macintosh IIci, which was also under development at the time. In early 1989, the prototype was shown Apple executives, who liked the project but felt it was not different enough from existing models to justify further effort, and the project was shut down.[5]
Around the same time, Apple CEO John Sculley was facing public scrutiny for declining sales that was blamed in large part on the company's lack of an inexpensive Macintosh computer. Amidst promises to the press and investors that a new low-cost Macintosh was on the way, he revived the Spin project with the goal of creating the lowest-priced Macintosh that was possible. Gassée pleaded with the team to keep color as a feature of the project, and from then on the product was known internally by a new code name, "Elsie", a homonym for the "LC" (i.e. low-cost color) name the computer would later be sold as. Elsie prototypes at this point resembled an Apple IIc where the keyboard was integrated into the unit, and it had a single 800 KB floppy drive with no hard drive. The team ended up with a problem — the machine was cheap, but it wasn't a good computer, especially because the 68000 CPU was not powerful enough to display color graphics with acceptable performance.[5]
By April 1989, it was decided to split the project into three computers—the Macintosh IIsi, which would have the more powerful 68030 CPU; the Macintosh Classic, which would use a black & white display, and the LC, which would use the 68020 CPU from the Macintosh II.[5]
To keep the price down, Apple cut some corners on performance and features, and redesigned components to be less expensive. For example, the external floppy connector that was included on the IIsi and Classic was excluded from the LC, as it would save a couple of dollars for the connector. The integrated keyboard had also been dropped by this point; it was replaced with a newly designed keyboard called the
Market
The Macintosh LC was introduced to the market alongside the Macintosh Classic (a repackaging of the older Macintosh Plus) and the Macintosh IIsi (a new entry-level machine for the Macintosh II series). Due to pent-up demand for a low-cost color Macintosh, the LC was a strong seller, and in 1992, the original Macintosh LC was succeeded by the LC II. The updated machine replaced the LC's Motorola 68020 processor with a 68030 and increased the soldered memory to 4 MB to make it more suitable for System 7. However, it retained the original LC's 16-bit system bus and 10 MB RAM limit (if 4 MB SIMMs was used, the extra 2 MB of RAM would be inaccessible), making its performance roughly the same as the earlier model. The main benefit of the 030 processor in the LC II was the ability to use System 7's virtual memory feature. In spite of this, the new model sold even better than the LC.[citation needed]
In early 1993, Apple introduced the LC III, which used a 25 MHz version of the 68030 and had a higher memory limit of 36 MB, instead of the 10 MB of the LC and LC II. The LC III spawned a whole series of LC models, most of which later were sold both with the LC name to the education world and to consumers via traditional Apple dealers, and as Performa to the consumer market via electronics stores, and department stores such as Sears. (For example, the LC 475 was also known as the Performa 475.) The last official "LC" was the Power Macintosh 5300/100 LC, which was released in August 1995 and discontinued in April 1996. The LC 580 was notable for being the last desktop 680x0-based Macintosh.
Expansion to all-in-one market
In mid-1993, Apple introduced the
Four LC 500-series models were released over the next two years, the 520, 550, 575, and 580, with the 520 and 550 both using different speeds of the
The
The 5300 LC is the final model branded as an "LC" and was on sale until early 1997. Its replacement was the Power Macintosh 5500, which continued the practice of building education-specific models but without distinctive branding (except for the UK-only Power Macintosh ONE/225). The company did not produce another education model with its own brand name until the eMac in 2002.
Models
Desktop
Model | Processor | Bundled Mac OS | Maximum Mac OS | Hard disk | RAM | Expansion | Video RAM | Equivalent | Released/Discontinued |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
LC | 16 MHz 68020 | 6.0.6/6.0.7 | 7.5.5 | 30–80 MB | 2 MB (max 10 MB) |
LC PDS | 256 KB (max 512 KB) |
N/A | October 1990 / March 1992 |
LC II | 16 MHz 68030 |
7.0.1 | 7.6.1 | 4 MB (max 10 MB) |
430
|
March 1992 / March 1993 | |||
LC III | 25 MHz 68030 |
7.1 | 80–160 MB | 4 MB (max 36 MB) |
LC III PDS | 512 KB (max 768 KB) |
Performa 450
|
February 1993 / February 1994 | |
LC III+ | 33 MHz 68030 |
467
|
October 1993 / February 1994 | ||||||
LC 475 | 25 MHz 68LC040
|
8.1 | 80–250 MB | 4 MB (max 36 MB) |
0.5-1 MB | Quadra 605
|
October 1993 / July 1996 | ||
LC 630 | 33 MHz 68LC040
|
7.1.2 Pro | 8.1 | 250–500 MB | 4 MB (max 36 MB) |
LC PDS/Comm/Video | 1 MB | 640CD
|
July 1994 / October 1995 |
All-in-one
Model | Processor | Bundled Mac OS | Maximum Mac OS | Hard disk | RAM | Expansion | Video RAM | Equivalent | Released/Discontinued |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
LC 520
|
25 MHz 68030 |
7.1 | 7.6.1 | 80–160 MB | 4 MB (max 36 MB) |
LC PDS | 512–768 KB | Performa 520
|
June 1993 / February 1994 |
Macintosh TV | 32 MHz 68030 |
160 MB | 4 MB (max 8 MB) |
LC PDS (filled with TV card) | 512 KB | October 1993 / February 1994 | |||
LC 550
|
33 MHz 68030 |
80–160 MB | 4 MB (max 36 MB) |
LC PDS | 512–768 KB | 560
|
February 1994 / March 1995 | ||
LC 575
|
33 MHz 68LC040
|
8.1 | 160–320 MB | 4 MB (max 68 MB) |
LC PDS/Comm slot | 0.5-1 MB | 578
|
February 1994 / April 1995 | |
LC 580
|
33 MHz 68LC040
|
7.1.2P | 500 MB | 4 MB (max 52 MB) |
LC PDS/Comm slot/Video | 1 MB | 588CD
|
April 1995 / March 1996 |
Timeline
Timeline of Macintosh Centris, LC, Performa, and Quadra models, colored by CPU type |
---|
See also
- List of Mac models grouped by CPU type
- Timeline of Macintosh models
References
- ^ Poole, Lon (December 1990). "The Macintosh Family Evolves". MacWorld Magazine. pp. 168–175.
- ^ Spencer, Cheryl (December 1990). "Mac LC - What's been missing from the Macintosh line? The reasonably priced Macintosh LC with 16-bit color and Apple II emulation abilities". MacWorld Magazine. pp. 180–187.
- ^ Weyhrich, Steven. "The Apple IIGS - The Beginning of the End". apple2history.org. Archived from the original on October 6, 2017. Retrieved September 30, 2017.
- ISBN 0-8129-2851-2.
- ^ a b c d Levy, Steven (December 1990). "The Soul of a New Macintosh - The Twisted Tale of the Mac LC, the Computer That Refused To Die". MacWorld Magazine. pp. 55–62, 78–80.
External links
- Mac LC at lowendmac.com
- Macintosh LC technical specification at apple.com