oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) (10/21/87)
A previous posting claimed that Macintoshes will not flourish in a world
of cheap clones.
If you want to see the Macintosh be a continued commercial success,
there is something you can do to help:
Point out as often and as loudly as you can, that if you count the
cost of the time it takes to learn to use it, the Macintosh is much
cheaper than the IBM clones.
Unfortunately, this argument weighs much heavier in business, where
peoples' time cost real dollars, than it does with individuals who
want a computer for themselves. I'm sad about this, because there are
many programs I want to write for people, not for businesses.
Apple keeps their high end machines at around the $5000.00. As time
goes on, they introduce new machines, and lower the prices of the old
ones. It would seem that this process would eventually make cheap
macintoshes available. So far, though, Apple has decided that their
older machines (the 128k RAM Mac, the two Fat Macs.) were too small,
crippling of the software developers, and Apple cut them off the
bottom of their product line. It is a shame. a $700 fat mac would get
a lot of people into Macintoshs who can't afford an SE.
Of course, it would be an embarrassment to Apple to sell machines that
can't run the current version of the system software. This should mean
the end of the MacPlus and the SE, and the introduction of a new line
of Macs, 4Meg of main memory standard, and at least 2Meg of disk
(either as twin quad density floppies or with a built in hard disk.)
Now if it would only have no fan, but a pointed top to keep people
from covering the vents!
--- David Phillip Oster --A Sun 3/60 makes a poor Macintosh II.
Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --A Macintosh II makes a poor Sun 3/60.
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