Apple Computer Inc has now confirmed that its lower-priced Macintoshes will be launched in October – but warns that they not be widely available until early 1991, which means that they will miss out on the traditional boom buying period in the fourth quarter – When you’re looking at selling a high volume there’s a much longer ramping period for manufacturing – we want to make sure we have enough of them before they go on the market, the company said, emphasising that Apple will not obsolete the Macintosh Plus and Macintosh SE – You can buy a 1984 Macintosh and with a couple of upgrades run the present software – customers demand this, the company notes. Apple gave no details of the new machines, but the consensus is for a bottom-end Macintosh Classic – the name seems to hark back to John Sculley’s days with Pepsico and the Cola Wars – and will have a built-in 9 black-and-white monitor similar to that on the Mac Plus and SE, selling for $1,500 with 68000 CPU and 1Mb. The present cheapest Mac is the Mac Plus, which lists for $1,800. A Macintosh LC with 2Mb 68020 CPU and 12 colour monitor for $2,600 – the cheapest colour Mac is $4,670 – is also expected but may not ship at all until January. It will have one NuBus slot, a 40Mb Conner Peripherals disk drive and will support an optional co-processor – the 16-bit internal 65C816 used in the Apple IIGS presumably, to run most Apple II applications. And the Classic may also take the IIGS board for the education market. The third new item, also scheduled to ship in October, is the SI O30, a $4,000 machine with a 2Mb 68030 processor, 40Mb disk and one NuBus slot.
