The Macintosh IIvx is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from October 1992 to October 1993. It is the last of the Macintosh II family of Macintosh computers. The IIvx was introduced at the same time as the Macintosh IIvi, Performa 600 and Performa 600CD, with all four models using the same new metal case design. Like the Performa 600CD, the IIvx could be equipped with an internal double-speed CD-ROM drive. While the IIvx shares the model designation of other Macintosh II computers, Apple considers the IIvx to be the first computer in the Macintosh Centris line. According to Apple, their lawyers were unable to complete the trademark check on the "Centris" name in time for the IIvx's release. Machines bearing the Centris name were introduced a few months later. The IIvx was described in a MacWorld Magazine review as having "the best price-to-performance ratio of any computer Apple has ever built." The list price for a machine with an hard drive, main memory, and of video memory was US$2,949. Adding the CD-ROM and upgrading to of main memory and video memory increased the price to US$3,219, which Macworld deemed to be "the best CD-ROM drive bargain ever offered". The much more powerful Macintosh Centris 650 was released four months after the IIvx for $250 less, immediately rendering the IIvx obsolete. The IIvx's base price was slashed by more than a third. Because of increasing competition from Dell and other PC manufacturers, prices of the IIvx continued to fall quickly; by the end of June 1993, the price of the 5/80 + CD-ROM configuration had dropped to $1,799, about half its original price. For a while afterwards, people who bought an expensive Mac that quickly became outdated were said to have been "IIvx-ed".
Overview
The Mac IIvx began its life in development as a proof-of-concept to see how an internal CD-ROM drive could be added to a Mac. But after Apple CEO John Sculley gave a speech at MacWorld Tokyo which promised a Mac with a CD-ROM drive, the IIvx was rushed into production. Several shortcuts were taken in its design; most notably, its 32 MHz processor was crippled by a 16 MHz bus, making it slightly slower than the popular but aging Macintosh IIci. Its serial port was limited to 57.6 kbit/s, which could cause problems with serial connections and MIDI hardware. The Macintosh IIvi was introduced at the same time in some markets but was discontinued four months later. The high-end member of the original Performa family, the Performa 600 was also based on the same architecture. The IIvx was the only Macintosh II model with a 32K L2 cache.
