I paid like $6k for a smoking hot Mac IIfx in the 1990s. Obsolete within 5 years
Probably obsolete long before that, I would guess, but probably not so much that you couldn’t still use it effectively for quite a while.
You too!
That is exactly my issue with Apple. Their hardware and software are expensive with planned obsolescence. So you are forced to upgrade and pay another 6 grand in a few years.
You could configure a Mac II maxed out for around $22,000 back when it was new. I ran across one of those maxed out versions about ten years later, say circa 1998, and saw it was for sale for about $100. You could buy one of those now for $5. . . Newer hold their prices far longer than 10 years, often retaining 30% at ten years.
Heh, well... That Mac IIfx you bought was pretty serious box. Dang, that thing would run all the way up to System 7.6.1 and not act like a boat anchor.
Even after Apple discontinued the IIfx it wasn’t surpassed in performance until the Quadra 840av which was even more expensive than what you paid. Also, there was about year and a half long window of opportunity where you could have paid another $400 to upgrade your IIfx’s core with the 50mhz version and overclock the board and you’d own an outdated machine still faster than Apple’s new Quadra 840av. Do you remember the detractors to the Quadra 840av complaining to Apple about that?
That date range you bought it in was a time when the RISC vs CISC processor war was on a violent upswing. Huge tech leaps being done at the time. You could have even bought an Orange board to fill an expansion slot in your IIfx to add an Intel processor — Like a 486 DX2/66 or whatever it was then — and run MS Windows/DOS if you needed to.
Hey, if you still have that IIfx you might be able to sell it for several hundred bucks to a collector. I’m sure you got your money out of that if you were in desktop publishing at the time.
That's the thing, people complaining as if $5K is a lot, when that was the norm in the early 1990s. People have it great these days in comparison. My buddy bought a Mac IIfx, paid over $9k in the early 1990s. I said "why?", he said "because I can!". He was a game forum administrator, and enjoyed the task. I bought a IIci, less power but cheaper. A few years ago I bought a IIfx for my computer collection, a hobby of mine, and it cost me $50. When you pay for a new state of the art machine, you're paying for the intellectual capabilities like a lease, and not necessarily for the materials that went into it. Technology will get better and cheaper as time goes by and most machines quickly lose value; older tech gains value only if it has rarity and historical value. For instance, first year Lisa computers with dual 5-1/4 drives go for tens of thousands while second year Lisa's and later are better but go for hundreds. This new iMac Pro will probably not be a collectible, although it will be rare due to cost.
My bride bought me a 20 MB SuperMac “Dataframe” SCSI external drive for our Mac Plus in 1986. $600! Probably $3,000 in today’s dollars — half of this beast.
Technology advances are just incredible.