In the fall of 1991, I remember going to an Apple preview show and signing a non-disclosure agreement. The gala event was being held at the new National Gallery of Canada, a beautiful glass and steel structure–and a location aptly suited for Apple’s introduction of the Quadra and PowerBook Macintoshes. Apple would soon launch two radically new product lines to appease pent-up consumer demand for faster and more portable Macintoshes. Apple had not carefully listened to the masses, however. Both consumers and small businesses also wanted cheaper Macintoshes. But at what cost?

With the initial release of the Macintosh Classic, LC, and IIsi, ‘low-cost’ desktop Macs whetted some appetites, but generally remained pricey. Apple had to close the price and performance gap between the Macintosh LC and the Quadra 700. It was only in February 1993 that Apple started to issue true low-cost Macs to the public, with the introduction of the Macintosh LC III and the Color Classic. The Color Classic sparked off a new revolution for Apple by re-introducing the ‘compact Mac’ form factor. Put the pieces together, and you have a ‘low-cost, compact Macintosh’ - two very popular ideas. The performance gap between such machines and the Quadra series, however, had hardly closed an inch.

With the release of the stealth-like Macintosh TV, Apple acknowledged consumer demand for multimedia (merged media): television, computers, communications, and entertainment. Yet the Mac TV suffered from severe design faults and performance limitations. A new design would soon be in the works-one that would forever redefine low-end Mactinoshes. With the introduction of the Macintosh 630 series this August, Apple confidently addressed the low-end price/performance/multimedia issue. The 630 family bridges the LC-Quadra performance gap, are quite compact and sport inexpensive multimedia options. Admittedly, they do have design limitations: they use cheaper components, have limited display options and a number of serious bugs have been discovered (all correctable by software patches). But should you not expect a few design problems for a $1149 ApplePrice?

Now that Apple has finally met its goal of low-cost, high-performance multimedia, new issues are surfacing across Usenet newsgroups and online services concerning design and quality factors. Apple, under Michael Spindler’s new command, has lowered costs and cut corners on development, components, and design by implementing cheaper technologies. With an increase in custom VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) chips and ASIC’s (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) on the 630 family, Apple managed to replace over a dozen integrated circuits with just two chips. This reduces the size and design cost of the logic board and the need for heat dissipation. This effort in miniaturization means that less plastics and shielding are needed for the case and the Mac is smaller and easier to manufacture. Both the PowerBook 150 and the 630 family use internal IDE hard drives. These drives are commonly found on low-end PC clones, generally cost less and offer roughly the same performance as their low-end SCSI counterparts. Apple also introduced the AppleDesign Keyboard, a low cost replacement for all existing Apple keyboards. Is such focus on lowering cost going to affect all Macs to come?

I can see the day when yet another ‘low-cost’ Mac debuts, proudly dubbed ‘Power Macintosh LQ 9600’. Ideally, it will sport the new ‘clay’ chassis colour, include a built-in passive-matrix 16-bit colour flat screen, a TrackPad built into the fold-out keyboard and sport a 66MHz PowerPC 603. The Mac will come with an internal EIDE 2.5” 200 MB hard drive, and will include surround sound speakers in the case. An MPEG chip will be included on the logic board, along with one PCI Localbus socket.  All of this for only $949 ApplePrice. Sounds wonderful - but what’s the catch? To release such a product at a low-cost, Apple would have to wait until all these new components were available in mass volume, or opt for cheaper, poorer-quality parts. Since Apple is known to release radically new products months before competition, it is likely to assume Apple would choose the poorer quality replacements simply to reduce costs and time to market. It may be a bit unreasonable to suggest that Apple’s corner-cutting practices are unneeded, but one thing is for certain: given the current trend, future Macs won’t be just be low-cost. They will be low-quality.

Neil Yates is a regular contributor to MacSense and the President of Helix Online, a local First Class-based online service. Appearing semi-regularily, 'Technophilia' will be devoted to exploring the future of computing, both good and bad. If you have comments or suggestions for Mr. Yates, please send them to NeilYates@eWorld.com