Amidst the glitter surrounding the launch of the Macintosh Portable, the new Macintosh IIci, which was also announced yesterday always ran the risk of coming across as the poor relation in the expanding Macintosh personal computer family: this would be a somewhat misleading impression, for with its 25MHz Motorola 68030 processor, increased memory and built-in video support, the IIci offers the highest performance and functionality in the Mac-intosh range to date – Apple claims a 45% performance increase on the old IIcx, which the new machine strongly resembles in looks; the IIci, like the portable, is available from October and will cost UKP5,450, with an optional 4Mb memory upgrade kit at a further UKP1,235.
