Snippet: The Macintosh LC and a Meditation on Miniaturization ☇

Christopher Phin for Macworld:

The thing modern eyes notice about the LC, though, when you flip its lid off, is the chunkiness of all the components. It’s not just the big things that are big, either—things such as the hard disk. No, the chips themselves are hefty, thick slabs jutting up from the circuit board, and for all their dizzying complexity inside, I can’t help but think they look simple and primitive in part because of the small number of prominent pins, and because there are so few of them.

My first exposure to Macs that I personally used was in elementary school and we had a mixture of LCs, LC IIs, and LC IIIs (my first Mac was an SE). Although the former two were grossly underpowered for their time to keep costs down, these machines will always be a favorite of mine. Everything fit together just-so and you could disassemble one almost entirely without tools. Although the “pizza box” form factor mostly disappeared once CD-ROM drives were a part of the lineup (save for the Power Mac/Performa 6100s), this really paved the way for the Mac mini both in design and goal.