At first glance users would be hard pushed to find a difference between the LC 580 and the earlier LC 575 as both ran the same processor at the same speed, could run the same System software and do the same things. A very close look revealed that there were one or two changes though.

While an increase in VRAM (to 1Mb from 512kb) increased the number of colours that could be used, system performance was pretty much identical to the older machine. The big changes though were that Apple opted for a cheaper monitor (presumably to cut costs), the memory limit was reduced to 52Mb (although there were now 2 SIMM slots instead of just one in the LC 575) and that the machine sported an IDE hard drive. IDE drives were de rigeur in the PC world but the Mac world had relied on good old SCSI. SCSI was more expensive but offered greater speed. Again, this can be seen as a cost cutting measure and the fact that the LC 580 was released for $400 less than the older LC 575 points to the fact that Apple were trying to appeal to users wallets, if not the power hungry.