Remembering 1990, The IIfx, & The Power To Be Your Best

by , 4:15 PM EDT, April 27th, 2001

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. 1990 seemed like a great year for Apple, and indeed, the company had a slew of great products. The IIfx comes to mind. An insanely great product, though the insanely great Steve Jobs had nothing to do with it, at an insanely high price. 1990 was also the year Apple introduced the advertising slogan "The Power To Be Your Best," which the company used for several years. For those Saturday Night fans out there, SNL parodied the phrase with a brilliant piece of satire called "The Power To Crush The Other Kids" (thanks to Observer "jetfuel" for getting that right). In any event, 1990 was in many ways the beginning of the end of John Sculley, Jean-Louis Gaseé, and Michael Spindler. No one knew it yet, certainly no one that writes for The Mac Observer, because Apple was at the top of their game with record sales and no competition in sight.

Observers Lex Jenkins and Fred Turner each sent us some great scans of Apple's advertising from this year. In particular we love the ad for the Mac IIfx. The Mac IIfx was one of the most powerful computers of its day. It was also a truly innovative computer for the time, and we might remind some folks in Redmond, Washington, as well as some politicians in Washington D.C., what innovation truly means. In any event, the IIfx was well received, but was so enormously expensive (more than US$9,995, but we ask you to let us know in the comments below if you can give us a precise price), that it never sold that well. The machine came with a 40 MHz 68030 processor, 4 MB of RAM, 6 NuBus slots, an available 24-bit graphics card, and the capacity to work with 160 MB of internal storage. Truly incredible performance for the day. Not too, that Apple was advertising A/UX, the Apple branded version of Unix that worked on some Mac models. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

From Observer Fred Jenkins.

Here are the scans of the Mac IIfx ad from the May 1990 issue of PC/Computing. It was a four-page layout with center spread of the IIfx. Page one was text only. Page four showed all the then-current Macs.

Lex Jenkins

Observer Fred Turner sent us also sent us a scan from this same period. It too features the product line from 1990 with the same picture as Mr. Jenkins', but with different verbiage. We have included it below the first four ads. From Fred Jenkins:

Since y'all have been showing the old Apple ads, I thought I'd share one off the back of a June/July 1990 Air & Space Smithsonian magazine that I had. Looks like it has the Mac Plus, SE, SE/30, IIcx, IIci and IIfx, as well as the Mac Portable.

Lex Jenkins

Lex Jenkins' Scans Click the thumbnails for a larger version
Two Kinds of Innovation Click the Thumbnail or see the Printable version	1990 Product Line Click the Thumbnail or see the Printable version
1st Half Of 2 Page IIfx Ad Click the Thumbnail or see the Printable version	2nd Half Of 2 Page IIfx Ad Click the Thumbnail or see the Printable version
Stictched together version Click the Thumbnail or see the Printable version

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Fred Turner's Scan

Different Version Of Product Line Ad With Different Text Click the Thumbnail

Many thanks to Lex Jenkins and fred Turner for sending us these excellent scans.

If you have an old Apple ad for the Mac, the Apple ][ (or clones such as the Franklin), the Lisa, or any other Apple product, scan them in and send them to us, so that we can share them with other Mac fans. We are also looking for ads from the Mac cloners of the mid-90's such as Power Computing, Motorola, Umax, MacTell, Marathon Computer, PowerTools, and any others we have not mentioned. Feel free to make your scans quite large (high resolution) as we have had many Observers ask for printable versions. Check out our other Remembering articles too.

Post your comments below.

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May 4th

Remembering 1990 With A Couch Made From 35 Macs!
April 30th

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April 27th

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March 30th

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March 23rd

Remembering 1984 With Screen Shots Of The Original Mac!
March 16th

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March 9th

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March 2nd

Remembering 1984 With Steve Jobs & The Entire Macintosh Development Team (With Pics)
February 23rd

Remembering 1984 With The Mac 128K, Apple ][c, & Education Ad (With Pics)
February 16th

Remembering 1984 With A Macintosh & Lisa Brochure (With Pics)
February 14th

Remembering 1984 With An Original Mac Magazine Article (With Pics)
February 9th

Remembering 1977 With The First (Apple I) Apple Ad!
February 7th

Remembering 1977 With Apple Ad Featuring Pre-Rainbow Logo (With Pic)
February 5th

Remembering 1980 & 1984 With Two Apple Ads (With Pics)
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Remembering Series