Macintosh LC

The Macintosh LC (meaning low-cost color) was Apple Computer's product family of low-end consumer Macintosh personal computers in the early 1990s. The original Macintosh LC was released in 1990 and was the first affordable color-capable Macintosh. Due to its affordability and Apple II compatibility the LC was adopted primarily in the education and home markets. Together with the Mac IIsi, it introduced built-in audio input on the Mac. The "LC" name was subsequently used for a line of low-end Macintosh computers for several years and spanned the 68k to PowerPC transition.

History

After Apple co-founder Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, product development was handed to Jean-Louis Gassée, formerly manager of Apple France. Gassée consistently pushed the Apple product line in two directions, towards more "openness" in terms of expandability and interoperability, and towards higher price. Gassée long argued that Apple should not market their computers towards the low end of the market, where profits were thin, but instead concentrate on the high end and higher profit margins. He illustrated the concept using a graph showing the price/performance ratio of computers with low-power, low-cost machines in the lower left and high-power high-cost machines in the upper right. The "high-right" goal became a mantra among the upper management, who said "fifty-five or die", referring to Gassée's goal of a 55 percent profit margin.^[1]

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. By the 1990, with sales slumping, arguments broke out over whether or not the high-right goal should be maintained. In the end, Gassée was forced from the company and Michael Spindler was given his position, with the job of producing a low-cost series of machines. The result was the Macintosh Classic, Macintosh IIsi, and the LC.

The original LC was an attempt at an affordable, modular, color-capable Macintosh. As such, when compared with earlier Macs Apple cut some corners on performance and features in order to keep the price down. The LC's system specifications nearly duplicated those of the 3 year old Macintosh II. Nevertheless, the machine hit a sweet spot and, with the pent-up demand for a low-cost Macintosh, it was a strong seller. In 1991 was succeeded by the LC II, which replaced the LC's Motorola 68020 processor with a 68030. It retained the original LC's 16-bit system bus however, 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.

The success of the LC II 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 5200/75 LC, which was released in 1995 and discontinued in 1996. The LC 580 was notable for being the last desktop 680x0-based Macintosh of any kind. All subsequent Macintoshes used PowerPC processors and, later, Intel processors.

Features

The LC used a very small "pizza box" case with a PDS (processor direct slot) but no NuBus slots. It had a 16 MHz 68020 microprocessor which lacked a floating-point coprocessor (although one could be added via the PDS). The LC had a 16-bit data bus, which was a major bottleneck as the 68020 was a 32-bit CPU. The LC's memory management chipset placed a limit of 10MB RAM no matter how much was installed.

The LC shipped with 256KB of VRAM, only supporting a display resolution of 512x384 pixels at 8-bit color. The VRAM was upgradeable to 512KB though, supporting a display resolution of 512x384 pixels at 16-bit color or 640x480 pixels at 8-bit color. Most LCs were purchased with an Apple 12" RGB monitor which had a fixed resolution of 512x384 pixels, though an Apple 13" 640x480 Trinitron display was also available. Until the introduction of the LC, every color Mac had supported, at a minimum, 640x480. Many programs assumed this, and some simply would not function correctly on the LC at the lower resolution. For several years software developers had to add support for this smaller screen resolution in order to guarantee that their software would run on LCs.

Overall, general performance of the machine was disappointing due to the crippling data bus bottleneck, making it run far slower than it should have (e.g. the 16 MHz 68020 based Macintosh II from 1987, with an identical processor, ran almost twice as fast as the Macintosh LC). One difference between the Mac II and the Mac LC is the latter had no socket for a 68851 MMU, therefore it could not take advantage of System 7's virtual memory features.

The standard configuration included a floppy drive and a 40 MB or 80 MB hard drive, but a version was available for the education market which had an Apple II card in the PDS slot, two floppy drives, and no hard drive. The LC, as with a number of other Macs of the day, featured built-in networking via "PhoneNet" that used standard RJ11 phone cabling and connector boxes. Ethernet was also available as an option via the single PDS slot.

The successor model LC II's 68030 has a built-in MMU. The CPU was the only major change to the LC II; the bus remained 16 bits. A full 32-bit bus had to wait for the LC III successor a year later.

Apple IIe Card

Despite the LC's lack of NuBus slots, it did come with a Processor Direct Slot (PDS). This was primarily intended for the Apple IIe Card, which was offered in a bundle with education models of the LCs. The card allowed the LC to emulate an Apple IIe. The combination of the low-cost color Macintosh and Apple IIe compatibility was intended to encourage the education market to transition from Apple II models to the Macintosh platform instead of to the new low-cost IBM PC compatibles. Despite the LC's minimal video specs with a 12" monitor, any LC that supports the card can be switched into 560x384 resolution for better compatibility with the IIe's 280x192 High-Resolution graphics (essentially doubled).

Other cards, such as CPU accelerators, ethernet and video cards were also made available for the LC's PDS slot.

LC models

"Pizza boxes"

All-in-one

Related Macs

Timelines

Timeline of Macintosh LC models

Timeline of Apple II family models

References

External links

• Apple-History.com
• Macintosh LC Series at Low End Mac
• Macintosh LC technical specification at apple.com
• Macintosh LC II technical specification at apple.com
• Macintosh LC III technical specification at apple.com
• Macintosh LC III+ technical specification at apple.com