paulb@ttidca.UUCP (Paul Blumstein) (11/05/86)
In article <6129@decwrl.DEC.COM> craparotta@tipple.dec.com (Joe Crap) writes: >From what I understand the //E still outsells [and outsold] the //C... > >Joe According to the latest Infoworld, the //e & //c each have 8% of the PC market. Therefore sales are about equal. BTW, the Mac leads the PC market w/12% market share. However, the graph was on individual PC models. For example, if you add up both Apples, it would surpass the Mac. Or if you add up all three IBM PCs, it will also surpass it. I remember when the //c first came out. Apple expected the large majority of sales to be //c instead of //e. They drastically cut //e production & made tons of //c's. Right from the start the sales were 50/50. We buyers of iie's at the time had a hard time finding them to buy. Apple had to scramble to correct the situation. I suspect the miscalculation came from Steve Jobs who had this strange notion about people preferring closed architectures. It will be interesting to see how the Apple pie (pun intended) is divided between //c, //e & //GS once the latter becomes readily availble. Maybe I should have thrown Mac onto the list as I suspect that it will cut into both Mac & //e sales (but not //c) once //GS specific software is available. ============================================================================= Paul Blumstein | There's no point in being grown up if you can't Citicorp/TTI | be childish sometimes. -- Dr. Who Santa Monica, CA 90405 +------------------------------------------------- (213) 450-9111 {philabs,trwrb,vortex}!ttidca!paulb
ranger@ecsvax.UUCP (Rick N. Fincher) (12/01/86)
Anyone care to guess how long it will be before the //e is taken out of production? The difference in price is not that great now and as the price of the //gs drops (and we know it will) it will be difficult for Appt lt for Apple to drop the price of the //e much further (unless they come out with a motherboard that has a Mega chip, ram and processor only on it. I think the //e will be taken out of production within a year and I think the //c will be upgraded to a slotless //gs and an internal 3.5 inch drive by this time next year, with a motherboard swap option, of course, for existing //c owners. If I were at Apple that's what I would do. If Apple does not do something like this, //c sales will plummet. The //c is an OK machine for 1984, but who in his right mind would buy it in 1988 in its present form? Putting a //gs inside a //c case will be easier than it was for Apple to put a //e inside the //c case because the //gs already has the ports. All you have to do is get rid of all the slots (except for the memory expansion slot), and the 16 pin gameport adapter, as well as the power plug for the fan, rearrange the board a little for the //c's innards, plug in the old keyb keyboard and power supply and a 3.5 inch drive and you're all set. Since a machine like this would have the desktop bus, you could even add an external keyboard. The ports (power, 2 serial, external disk RGB video, composite video, and joystick) are already there on the case only different electronics would be needed to drive them. I guess a new backplane would be needed because of the desktop bus port but ample room would be available since the serial ports would be smaller. The backplane on the //c is replaceable anyway, isn't it. Address comments and flames to: Rick Fincher ranger@ecsvax