aks@hub.ucsb.edu (Alan Stebbens) (06/27/89)
> ... While it is true that the Mac price is much > lower than the Sun (or other workstation versions), the perfomance on a > Mac does not even come close to that on a Sun. Most of the calculations I > and my collegues do will not run on even an 8 megabyte Mac II - the > programs bomb as the machine runs out of memory. Further, every benchmark > I have runs from 4 to 20 times slower on a Mac relative to a similarly > priced SPARCstation 1. So for similarly priced hardware, you get many > times the performance on a Sun over a Mac. So I suggest that you divide > your price numbers (hardware plus Mathematica software) by the improved > performance for the higher priced > version of Mathematica. In my case, > since my programs will not run on a Mac II, the benefit I get from a lower > priced package is zero. However much this is true, Mathematica had very little to do with the performance of the Sun relative to the Mac -- ostensibly you are already paying Sun for the performance increase. It makes no sense to me to pay a software vendor more money for a product just because it runs on faster hardware. Of course, one must understand the economic principles involved here: a *marketing* decision was made to match the price of the product with the perceived available amount of money (i.e., demand). There are usually two meaningful responses to an inaccurate perception of the market's demand: 1. Alternative vendors provide similar software in the lower-price niche, which is not very likely considering the incredible depth of Mathematica. 2. Resist purchasing the product, which is most likely to get the attention of Wolfram's "marketeers" (quite similar in character to "racketeers" :^). Resistance to purchasing falls into four categories: (a) Don't buy at all; unlikely if you *need* the product. (b) Buy a single copy, break any copy-protection, & cheat on the license; This, certainly, is not condoned by us, but it is a fact that some people do this. Unfortunately, this form of "resistance" is ultimately futile since it really justifies the original high price. (c) Buy the product for the hardware on which its purchase is cheapest. This is only possible if you have, or can obtain, the alternative platform, and don't mind the loss of performance. (d) Buy the product, but be a very "fussy" customer, complain loudly about the price, and generate lots of bad press. This is the only form of resistance which satisfies both the consumer's need for the product, and his/her need to express outrage and frustration with the pricing. Unfortunately, with a product like Mathematica, you almost have a captive consumer market. The low price on the Mac version is there solely to bait the demand for the higher performance platform version. The only way the price will be lowered is if the marketeers can be convinced that enough people are resisting in form (a). This is possible even if you buy the product: just tell Wolfram, Inc. that you are reluctantly buying it because you need it, but you are recommending against it for your associates solely because of the price gouging. Although Wolfram, Inc. is not all that different from most vendors, as Steve pointed out, I don't believe that reduces their moral culpability for opportunistic price gouging. Just because everyone does it, does not make it right. Alan Stebbens <aks@hub.ucsb.edu>