cclynn001@ucdavis.UUCP (Chris Borton) (08/27/85)
I don't have the actual message from CompuServe since I got it by word of
mouth, but I thought I'd pass it along anyway: The big news at MacBoston
came from the Boston Club, who got it from inside apple, that Apple will
release their 20M hard drive within 30 days, and will cost UNDER $700!!!
This will change things immensely! Also rumoured to be out in the
same time period is the new double-sided drive. Apparently an
internal drive upgrade and the new ROM's will be packaged for $300.
Again, these are just rumours, but the hard drive info seemed pretty
definite. If so, WOW! Anyone out there have any more info?
--
Chris Borton, UC San Diego Undergraduate CS
{ucbvax,decvax,akgua,dcdwest}!sdcsvax!sdcc6!ix924 sjl@amdahl.UUCP (Steve Langdon) (08/28/85)
In article <30@ucdavis.UUCP> Chris Borton says: > I don't have the actual message from CompuServe since I got it by word of > mouth, but I thought I'd pass it along anyway: The big news at MacBoston > came from the Boston Club, who got it from inside apple, that Apple will > release their 20M hard drive within 30 days, and will cost UNDER $700!!! This is the kind of rumour that does damage by creating false expectations. While my sources of rumours indicate that Apple is still targeting release of the hard disk in October, I think that the $700 price is completely out of the question. A more realistic estimate would be between $1500 and $2000. My hope is that the price will be closer to $1500, my expectation is that it will be closer to $2000. If you want to do the arithmetic yourself, just look at the prices of 20 Meg disks for the IBM PC line and add some allowance for the cost of a controller, power, and packaging. Then multiply by pi to get a reasonable selling price. The result will be well above $700. -- Stephen J. Langdon ...!{ihnp4,cbosgd,hplabs,sun}!amdahl!sjl [ The article above is not an official statement from any organization in the known universe. ]
jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) (08/30/85)
> If you want to do the arithmetic yourself, just look at the prices of > 20 Meg disks for the IBM PC line and add some allowance for the cost > of a controller, power, and packaging. Then multiply by pi to get a > reasonable selling price. The result will be well above $700. Ok, let's do that! Here on my desk I have a catalog for a large (and not particularly low-priced compared to some places) supplier of IBM PC hardware. The prices for ready-to-run hard disk drives, including the drive, controller card, and cables (and including the cabinet (metal) for the external drive) is: Internal External w/Cabinet 10 MB $449 $649 20 MB $599 $799 Now, I'm not saying that's what a Macintosh disk drive should cost; after all, it has to do some fairly awkward I/O through the serial or floppy disk ports (unless you connect it onto the motherboard, the way the SCSI controller mentioned in here yesterday does). You can see, though, how someone wishing for a competitively-priced hard disk drive might wish for it to be "under $900". Recently I decided to quit expanding my Macintosh and go back to using the IBM PC for software/hardware development; that's why: I can get a 10MB hard disk for the same price as a 400K floppy disk for the Mac, and it won't be obsolete in some time too short to make the investment and too long to wait for the 800K drives to come out. [I know many people will disagree with the above. Well, when the Macintosh came out, I was one of its strongest proponents. I bought one as soon as I could get one. I even tried to convince my University to change their minds (they were offended at being left out of the AUC) and buy them, but they didn't listen, for some reason, and bought IBM PCs instead. Back in those days, I wrote articles on the IBM PC for two major PC magazines, knew a great deal about the IBM PC, and felt that the Macintosh was a vast improvement. Since that time I have come to doubt it, not for engineering reasons, but for marketing-related reasons. (From time to time I have been tempted to write a long article in here on "Why I think Apple didn't do so well marketing the Macintosh," but I figure I would only get in trouble doing that.) Obviously the above is only my opinion. It may change, since it has nothing to do with the machine, only with pricing and policy, at some time in the future. However, when I see people always saying "IBM can't do better," I have to disagree. As my experience with the two companies has grown, my opinion of both has reversed entirely. Or maybe their strategies have just reversed.]