krazy@claris.com (Jeff Erickson) (04/03/89)
The results for the "Why not buy a Mac?" survey are in. I received a total
of 46 responses, none of which were from Apple employees :-(. Here are
the results for the first question:
For those of you who shout "Apple II Forever?": Why?
Total responses: 28
Loyalty/sentiment: 14
Hackability/openness: 10
Money: 9
Functionality: 8
Familiarity: 4
Power/potential: 4
Programmability: 3
"Why not?": 3
"I like it": 2
Home/education: 2
Now I'll explain the categories.
Loyalty/sentiment: This includes things like "I started on the Woz's third
Apple I back in 1975." General emotional attachment to an old friend.
Hackability/openness: The ability to get into the guts of the machine at
both the hardware and software levels. Everything is accessible and
most things are modifiable.
Money: The word "investment" was used in six of the nine responses. This
category includes both those who have spent lots of money on their setup and
those who think other things are too expensive.
Functionality: "It does what I need it to do."
Familiarity: Closer to "Money" than "Sentiment". The responder has
invested a lot of time in the machine and/or does not want to spend time
learning a new system.
Power/Potential: "Think what the II could do if Apple supported it." The
responder is impressed with what's been done with the II already, and/or
knows there could be more.
Programmability: This is significantly different from "hackability". The II
is easy to write simple/useful programs on compared to other machines.
Home/education: The II is the best machine for the home and classroom, or
the II is the best machine to start learning on.
Admittedly, there's a lot of overlap in these categories.
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A couple of individual responses bear repetition.
"...if the machine DOES go away, I'd like it to be because
it died on its own, not because Apple went out of its way
to cripple and bury the line the way they seem to now."
-- Lazlo Nibble <cs1552ao@charon.unm.edu>
"Some of us don't care what Apple does. They will keep
their II+s and keep using them."
-- Michael Steele <mikes@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
"I can't see the Apple II as a serious contender in real
computing applications, but there's no question that it's
easy and fun to learn with. I don't think we need to be
shouting 'Apple II Forever.' There will always be hackers
that want to play with Apples. It will live through these
people."
-- Larry Moss <lm03_cif@uhura.cc.rochester.edu>
"My faith is in the Apple II community to stay in the free-
flow of this mind-boggling information exchange. This is
why I say, 'Apple II Forever'!"
-- Todd South <tsouth@pro-pac.CTS.COM>
"Should the Apple II live forever? IT ALREADY HAS! In an
industry where a complete product cycle is measured in
months, it has already live forever."
-- Larry Colton <sun!pacbell!ldcol>
"I don't. I shout 'Apple Forever'."
-- Andy Nicholas <shrinkit@moravian.edu>
"Remember who first came up with the phrase 'Apple II Forever'?"
-- Alan Stein <apple!UCONNVM.BITNET>
[Hint: It starts with "A" :-)]
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Anyone has my permission to publish these results in any media, on any
service, in any newsletter, on any network, anywhere. I would appreciate
it if someone would post this to AppleLink PE, GEnie, CompuServe, etc., as
I don't have access to those services. That is, if anyone is interested.
Results for the other three questions will be posted as soon as I can
correlate them. They will probably appear over the next two days.
Thanks to everyone who responded. This was fun!
--
Jeff Erickson \ Internet: krazy@claris.com AppleLink: Erickson4
Claris Corporation \ UUCP: {ames,apple,portal,sun,voder}!claris!krazy
415/960-2693 \________________________________________________________
____________________/ "I'm so heppy I'm mizzabil!" -- Krazy Kat