The portable Apple IIc
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Last month, we saw two reviews of the Apple IIGS, but it’s this model’s less powerful siblings that tend to garner more media attention. Two different Apple IIc computers selling on eBay for four digits in the last three years proved sufficient for Matt’s Macintosh, who provided one of the previous IIGS reviews, to turn its attention back to the pre-Mac era with this review of the Apple IIc:
The Apple IIc was a powerful and revolutionary computer. As Steve Weyhrich of the Apple II History site told me for another story, “The Apple IIc was to the Apple II platform what the PowerBook was to the Power Mac: a more portable version of a desktop computer — not as elegant as the PowerBook, but pretty good for 1984.” Yet its lack of expansion slots that so defined the rest of the Apple II line has often left it overlooked by peripheral developers. Could the recently announced CompactFlash interface give the model some much-needed love?
(Hat tip to Mike Maginnis)
The //c was also a extension of the Mac philosophy of “computer as appliance” into the Apple ][ world. Like with the original Macs, you weren’t supposed to *want* to expand or tinker with it — just to use it. Which makes a lot of sense, obviously, but it still is a little sad.