STERNLIGHT%USC-ECL%sri-nic@sri-unix.UUCP (01/24/84)
>From today's Wall Street Journal: "The Macintosh, which will retail
for $2,495, is a scaled-down version of Apple's Lisa computer. Both
are a part of what Apple calls its 32-bit line of computers. The Lisa
models will be able to use all the Macintosh software, but the
Macintosh won't be able to use all of the Lisa software. The
Macintosh will have double the memory of the IBM Personal
Computer--which means it will be able to handle more than 130,000
pieces of information at one time." ... "We priced it at a point
where we can make a normal profit on it." ... "Mr. Sculley has
taken pains to see that the Macintosh is ready on the day of formal
introduction." ... "At the annual meeting the company will introduce
the 'Apple University Consortium,' representatives of the colleges
that altogether have ordered $50 million of Macintoshes." --david--
-------OC.WBC3%cu20b@BRL.ARPA (01/28/84)
From: Bill Catchings <OC.WBC3%cu20b@BRL.ARPA> I just got back from a seminar in (sunny) Ft. Lauderdale at which the VP of Sales and Marketing from Apple spoke. (Curiously enough he was the coach of the Columbia University football team about five years ago, makes you wonder about a lot of things.) He confirmed a number of things mentioned in previous Mac notes on this list. Yes for $25 you can connect up to 32 Macs (and I think Lisas). This "network" uses twisted pair, I guess not much else could be used for $25. He also mentioned a laser printer and file server for this network were in the future. The price of the laser printer is to be under $5,000. I'd like to see that. The most important thing he had to say was that though Apple was glad to cash in on all the free publicity and excitement for the MacIntosh the more important thing Apple wanted to convey was that Apple had a "product line", the Apple System 32 SuperMicroComputer. That product line is made up of the Mac and the three Lisas. He was also very explicit about how aggressive Apple is going to be in the marketplace. They are going to offer some form of quantity discounts for national accounts. The details of this and how that interfaces with their current dealer network will be announced on Thursday. Also in this vein they are targeting Universities and select Fortune 500 accounts at big discounts to crack IBM strangle hold on the market. This should be an interesting fight. Stay tuned. -Bill Catchings -------
grzm@kuling.UUCP (Gunnar Blomberg) (02/02/86)
From the preview of the Atari 520ST in the January 1986 issue of BYTE: > We were impressed by the high data-transfer rate of both the > floppy-disk drives and the hard-disk drives we tested with the > 520ST. The speed is a tribute to the efficiency of the DMA custom > chip and the WD1772 floppy controller. I/O is quick (no endless > waiting during disk reads), [...] you can copy an entire disk [...] > in 99 seconds and copy a 32K-byte file in 16 seconds. The disk-copy > operation does not automatically format the disks, which requires an > additional 54 seconds Ok, so how much faster than a Mac is this, I wondered. I tried it on a Mac at my work and came up with the following rather surprising figures: 520ST Mac copy full disk: 99s 75s copy 32K file 16s 12s format disk 54s 36s The copying was done with the Finder (one file filling the entire disk in the first case - it takes *much* longer if there are many files). Formatting was done by formatting the disk on a Lisa and then clicking "Initialize" when the Mac got it. Interesting, isn't it? Somebody must have screwed badly somewhere (and I'm not saying it isn't me, though I can't see what I could have done differently)... -- Gunnar Blomberg (Grzm), Computing Science Dept., Uppsala University, Sweden Tel: +46 18 13 76 02 UUCP: grzm@kuling.UUCP (...!{seismo,mcvax}!enea!kuling!grzm)