rjs@trwrb.UUCP (Robert J. Suyehara) (03/17/88)
Today's Wall Street Journal (16 Mar 88) said that Apple reduced the retail price of the Mac Plus by 18 per cent to $1799. The street price should be about $1300. Standard disclaimers apply. Bob S.
gillies@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu (03/20/88)
At one point it was costing Apple $400 to produce Macintoshes at their
automated plant in the Bay Area (Fremont?) I think that might be the
price of the Mac128K. Anyway, considering that 256K DRAM chips don't
cost more than a dollar or two, I'd assume it STILL costs apple only
about $400-$450 to produce a Mac Plus. Assuming 100% markup for
wholesale profit, I think $1799 is still a fairly steep price for the
machine. I bet Apple could come down to a $1400 retail price with
very little problem.
Maybe the MacPlus will soon be the long-sought "low end macintosh", or
maybe sales are so slow this is a last-ditch effort before
discontinuing the machine.
Don Gillies {ihnp4!uiucdcs!gillies} U of Illinois
{gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu}mdr@reed.UUCP (Mike Rutenberg) (03/21/88)
I actually heard from an Apple person quite a while ago that UMC (Unit Manufacturing Cost) of a Plus was in fact lower than that of a Mac 512. I expect the UMC for the SE is about the same, since many of the components for it come from a generic peripheral pool (3.5" disks, ADB keyboards) and the machine has fewer descreet components inside. Mike -- Mike Rutenberg specializing in fast, robust software and food (503)771-5516
gillies@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu (03/22/88)
Your guess for the UMC of the Mac SE is probably correct. An article
I read (I think Macazine) said that the ADB bus was designed mainly to
REDUCE the cost of the peripheral devices. You see, ADB allows much
cheaper cabling and smart peripherals allows much fewer peripheral
components == cheaper.
The article said that ADB reduced the UMC for a mouse by $4, I
believe. The savings on the keyboard are probably the same or
greater.
Don Gillies {ihnp4!uiucdcs!gillies} U of Illinois
{gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu}