1977 – 1993retired
Apple II
“It put color graphics and VisiCalc in a plastic case, and never stopped being useful.”
“The little Mac that outsold them all, then politely stepped aside.”
The Macintosh LC II arrived in March 1992 as the friendly, affordable face of the Macintosh line, replacing the original LC's Motorola 68020 with a 68030 and bumping onboard memory to 4 MB. At US$1,699 — some $800 less than the LC at its debut — it put a Mac on the desk for a lot more people. It clearly landed: the LC II was Apple's highest-selling Macintosh product in 1992.
By early 1993 the LC III was waiting in the wings, and the LC II's run ended in March of that year — though it kept selling in some markets for a while after. In North America the branding faded, but the spirit lived on: repackaged as the Performa 400 and succeeded by Performa models 405, 430, and eventually 410, its DNA carried Apple's entry-level line forward.
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“It put color graphics and VisiCalc in a plastic case, and never stopped being useful.”
“Enhanced in name, eternal in our hearts — lowercase letters never looked so good.”
“News in the blanking interval: America typed its answer to Ceefax, then the sets stopped listening.”