henry@rochester.UUCP (04/25/85)
From: Henry.Kautz
With all the discussion back and forth about Apple's warranty policy,
and it's policy of discouraging users from poking around inside the
Mac, two points seem to have been overlooked:
1. The Mac is extremely reliable.
2. Applecare is *incredibly* cheap.
A computer is not a one-time investment. It requires regular
maintenance costs. After investing a couple of thousand dollars in my
computer, I am not about to take the chance that I'll have to plug
another thousand into it when the thing goes on the fritz. So I buy a
service contract. The standard cost of a 1-year contract on an IBM,
KayPro, what-have-you, is about 15% of the original price. If I had a
small IBM, that cost me about $2000, I'll have to pay $300 a year, just
for the computer, not even counting the printer, etc! On the other
hand, my $2000 Mac is covered under Applecare for less than $100 a
year. So those nasty, money-grubbing people at Apple are putting $200
each year back into my pocket. The cost of service contracts on the
Imagewriter and external disk drive are also cheaper than contracts on
equivalent products from other companies, although not as dramatically
less.
Why is the Mac so much cheaper to maintain? Because, of course, its a
closed box, and everything is soldered into place, and its a lean &
clean engineering job. Yes, I have to pay more to upgrade the memory
in my Mac than I would in an IBM. But that is just another cost that
figures into the total maintenance costs. The bottom line is that
the Mac is now a very good buy, and getting better all the time, as the
base price and memory upgrade price continue to fall. (And the Mac XL
is incredibly cheap, compared to an IBM XT or AT -- but thats another
story.)
---- Henry Kautz
:uucp: {seismo|allegra}!rochester!henry
:arpa: henry@rochester
:mail: Dept. of Comp. Sci., U. of Rochester, NY 14627
:phone: (716) 275-5766iltis@ucsbcsl.UUCP ( ) (04/29/85)
I don't know why everyone is so eager to apologize for Apple. As to the Macintosh being reliable, that may or may not be a statistically true statement. However, if you're the statistic, all claims about reliability become meaningless. In my case, I had a digital board fail (fortunately under warranty) and thanks to some bad attitudes on the part of both Apple and the local service people, I had a miserable time getting the thing fixed. Recently, I seem to have acquired power supply troubles evidenced by loss of focus on the display and screen width which varies with screen brightness. There are rumors floating around about premature failures of Mac power supplies, but no hard figures.. As to the desirability of a closed architecture, the choice was a big mistake on Apple's part in selling to the scientific/engineering community. Currently, the only way to get data into the thing is through the serial ports, and you can forget about adding a math coprocessor or hard disk controller. (unless you're willing to void the warranty and hack the hardware). I should note that Reed College has made a truly noble effort with RASCAL in trying to make the Macintosh a useful machine for data acquisition and instrumentation control, but nevertheless, they still have to cope with the bottleneck of going through the serial port. As a final note, due to the lack of hard disk capability in the Macintosh Finder (hopefully corrected with 4.1) and in the hardware, it is obvious that Apple did not intend for people to develop software on the machine. Again, I congratulate Reed's Maclab on putting together an editor/compile and linker that fits on one disk with room left over for programs, thus making even a single drive Mac a useful development machine. Despite the Certified Developer's Program, many among the "rest of us" have put together excellent software packages, Versaterm and RedRyder being two obvious examples. The matter of Apple restricting technical information needed to develop software on their machines is nontrivial. Two issues of Byte, for example had several letters from readers complaining about difficulties in obtaining Apple IIc and Macintosh documentation. Even Electrical Engineering Times had an article about Apple's rather bizzare attitudes towards technically adept users of their products. Since the home computer market is cyclical at best, and the business market is becoming saturated, Apple for its own sake would do well to cultivate technically-oriented customers. a -- All opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of my employer Ronald A. Iltis UCSB Dept. ECE
cmk@amdahl.UUCP (Carol Kent) (04/29/85)
> From: Henry.Kautz > > On the other > hand, my $2000 Mac is covered under Applecare for less than $100 a > year. May I display my ignorance? I've never heard of Applecare; what is it? (Apple, here's your chance for another sale! -:).
jmsellens@watmath.UUCP (John M Sellens) (05/01/85)
In article <296@ucsbcsl.UUCP> iltis@ucsbcsl.UUCP (Ronald A. Iltis) writes: > As to the desirability of a closed architecture, the choice was a big > mistake on Apple's part in selling to the scientific/engineering > community. ... I should note that Reed College has made a truly > noble effort with RASCAL in trying to make the Macintosh a useful machine > for data acquisition and instrumentation control, ... But think about who they were aiming the machine at: "the rest of us" (not me though). They weren't aiming for the scientific/engineering community, and the machine wasn't intended for data acquisition or instrumentation control (why are people trying this?). Whether this was a wise decision on their part is another matter entirely (see the fictional net.marketing.strategy or net.business). > As a final note, due to the lack of hard disk capability in the Macintosh > Finder (hopefully corrected with 4.1) and in the hardware, it is obvious > that Apple did not intend for people to develop software on the machine. Exactly. I agree with you about the technical information about the machine (i.e. the lack of it, and Apple's attitude), but again, that is their "strategy". John