miller@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU (Brad Miller) (11/21/89)
I think the one thing people are forgetting is that whatever the affordable mac is, it's going to have to run the heavy duty software that is currently and will continue to be produced. E.g. mathmatica. Student's can't afford a IIci, but that's about the level of box you need to run it. Affordable mac? Sure. Gimme the hardware equivalent of a NeXT box, running System 7.0 / 8.0 or whatever, with 16Meg or Ram, 600Meg of disk, 32MHz 68030, a 56001 with 16bit a-to-d and d-to-a, and charge me $1500. for it. That's affordable! <<Or put another way: why make a new affordable machine, why not make the rest of the product line affordable, and then give us a new *real* high end; competitive Price/Performace with, say, Sun SparcStations at university prices).>>
dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner) (11/21/89)
In article <1989Nov20.210717.15146@cs.rochester.edu> miller@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU (Brad Miller) writes: >Affordable mac? Sure. Gimme the hardware equivalent of a NeXT box, running >System 7.0 / 8.0 or whatever, with 16Meg or Ram, 600Meg of disk, 32MHz >68030, a 56001 with 16bit a-to-d and d-to-a, and charge me $1500. for it. >That's affordable! Apple is never going to win on price/performance. That's because Apple, like IBM, doesn't even play the game. They justify high hardware margins based on their software R&D costs, and continued demand for systems. It would seem to me that if they built more factories, and took less margin, they'd wind up with MORE money in their pockets overall, due to increased sales. Obviously, Apple disagrees, so we all pay through the nose. -- Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office Internet: s-dorner@uiuc.edu UUCP: {convex,uunet}!uiucuxc!dorner IfUMust: (217) 244-1765