The first Mac crippled from the ground up, the LC was designed to a new low price point of $2,500 in a 2/40 configuration. The LC was the first Mac to run a 32-bit CPU on a 16-bit data bus, making memory access slower than it should be. Although Apple had retired the 68020 chip with the Mac II in January 1990, it reintroduced it with the LC that November. To add insult to injury, Apple programmed the ASICs to support no more than 10MB of RAM.
The LC was available in a dual-floppy configuration for the education market.
Apple introduced a new color video standard (512x384 pixel) and a cheap 12" color monitor to match it. With a VRAM upgrade, the LC supports 16-bit video on the 12" monitor or 8-bit video on a standard 640x480 screen. Because of the odd screen size, some programs refused to run with the small monitor.
If anything, the LC was deliberately designed not to take market share from its siblings, the IIsi and IIci.
This page and site ©1997 by Daniel Knight.