sho@pur-phy (Sho Kuwamoto) (09/25/88)
In article <1057@lakesys.UUCP> macak@lakesys.UUCP (Jim Macak) writes: >The suggested retail price for the Logic Board Upgrade Kit (requiring the >trade-in of the current logic board) will be $2,199. > >The suggested retail price of the FDHD Upgrade Kit is $599; the PMMU chip is >priced at $499. $2200 for a logic board swap? It's not bloody likely that I'll be getting one of those, I guess. At least not until the new roms provide a drastic difference in functionality AND the price goes down. Now. A lot of people have been grumbling about price increases, (some complaints justified, some not) and have been saying that for their money, they may as well wait and buy the NeXT machine. I have some problems with this. I thought about this issue a lot last year when I bought a Mac II. In the end, I decided it wouldn't be worth going computerless for a year, especially considering that I could always sell my computer to get some of the money back. So am I going to buy a NeXT machine this October? Not likely. I know this is the rationale that the IBM people use to justify their machines, but I do more with my machine than just stare at it and appreciate how powerful it is. What I mean by that is that anyone who buys a NeXT machine in the near future is going to be stuck with something that runs UN*X and maybe Write Now. It'll be like an updated version of using a Mac in the early days with just MacWrite and MacPaint. Perhaps it won't be as bad as I make it out, but there will surely be less software for the NeXT machine in that crucial first year, which makes it just that much less useful. If my only purpose in using a computer was to program, and even then, just for the joy of it, I suppose it would make sense to buy the most powerful machine within my price range. Like I said, this argument sounds a lot like the IBM thing, so you've been warned twice now. Sure, there are a lot of UN*X programs out there. However, if I just wanted to run UN*X programs, I would have bought a Sun, not a Mac. UN*X is great for programming on, but that's about it. Furthermore, there are just a lot of Macs around. This more important than it might appear at first. This is why I wouldn't have recommended an Amiga two years ago to a lot of people even though it was more powerful in certain ways. The only people I would have recommended it to would have been serious programmers, and people who really wanted color. For casual users, I feel there would have been more problems than anything else. There are also a lot of other IBMish arguments which could go here, like customer support, is the company going to be vapor in two years, etc. Now the NeXT case is a little different from the Amiga, becuase from rumors, not only the hardware, but also the system software might be better than Apple's. OK. The hardware is definitely going to be better than Apple's. Still, the interesting point here is that IMHO, Macs have always had the best user interface among personal computers, and this may come to an end next month. Still, I can't justify spending $4000 on something which might not be a solid investment. Thanks to the University Consortium program, and the recent price increases, I could probably sell my system now for as much as I paid for it. And in two years, I know that my machine won't be completely useless. I could sell it for some non-zero amount of money, or if it's useful enough, I feel confident that I will be able to upgrade to a fully functional machine, as long as I am willing to pay. Another factor to consider for us programmers is the money, time and energy that we've spent on learning the Toolbox. I've spent hundreds of bucks on books, and more time than you can shake a stick at working on this thing. From what I hear, the NeXT machine has a nice programmer's interface, which will make it that much more tempting in a couple of years, but not now. OK. What is the moral here? I wouldn't buy a NeXT machine until watching its growth for at least a year. How well does it sell? How is the customer support? How is the upgrade policy? Is there a lot of software available? Does the company look healthy? The Lisa was a very nice machine, but computers, unlike art, are there to be used, not apprecieated. I might sound very anti-NeXT, but that's really not the case. Nothing would be better for the industry than if this machine did well. I will either have a great computer from NeXT to buy in a year or two, or Apple will get some pressure for once in the user-friendly computer market, and they will put out amazing machines of their own. And their prices will have to go down if they get serious competition. I'm eagerly awaiting the NeXT machine, and I'm also eagerly awaiting a massive (and long overdue) rewrite of the system ROMs from Apple. These days, Apple's software seems severely burdened with the need to remain compatible with earlier software (the patch to SFGetFile for sys 6.0 comes to mind) So that's why I bought a Mac II last year. I knew that however good the NeXT machine turned out to be, I would probably end up waiting a year or two after its release to get one, in which time my original investment in the Mac II would have paid itself off, at least the way I use computers. I don't envy the computer buyer looking into the high end of the personal computer market right about now. He or she has to make the decision I made, but with one less year to use the Mac II, should he get one. And I honestly don't know what I would do if I were looking for a computer maybe six months or a year from now. I'd probably not get anything and wait around for the NeXT II or the Mac III, depending on which looked more promising. Buying a computer is tough. A computer is expensive, yet it is probably the fastest depreciating item known to man. It seems inevitable that I'll end up selling my Mac II within three years (imagine having a computer for four years), or equivalently, I'll have to pump in over $3000 to keep upgrading to something usable. Who knows. Maybe two years from now, I'll be writing to the net on a NeXT machine. A short closing statement to an already too long article. A lot of people have been turned off by Apple's new corporate image. To my mind, this is what I've always wanted for Apple: success. The price increases have hurt us all, but the more successful Apple is, the more their computers are worth. With a wider installed user base, more software, etc., the computer itself becomes more useful. And I hate to say it, but there are some advantages to the fact that Apple is now bigger than ever. I know that my $5000 investment isn't going to be useless in two years. What we have to watch out for is Apple turning stagnant and resting on its laurels. How much has the mac changed in the last four years in order to stay ahead of the game. How much has the IBM PC? The PS/2's are nice, in that when you look at their motherboards, they don't look like a sophomore digital electronics project, but that's about it. As long as macs continue to improve despite the fact that Apple is making loads of money, I'll be happy. -Sho P.S. My guess is that a lot of people aren't going to be at that bash in SF, and there are some people, like me, who don't get daily trade newspapers, etc. I don't even get the Journal and Courier, which is to the New York Times what _Truly Tasteless Jokes_ is to P.G. Wodehouse. As soon as anyone has any info about this, heck, as soon as anyone has any more juicy rumors, please post lengthy posting so as we can drool at them and wish that Apple was putting this machine out. Thank you.