rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) (12/18/90)
Just as a side comment: don't forget that it is forbidden in some countries to gives special discounts at all (e.g. Germany) since this is against anti-trust laws. So don't blame it necessarily on NeXT. Ronald ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." G.B. Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet
weigele@bosun1.informatik.uni-hamburg.de (Martin Weigele) (12/20/90)
rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) writes: >Just as a side comment: don't forget that it is forbidden in some >countries to gives special discounts at all (e.g. Germany) since this It depends on the type of discount. Apple hasn't been stopped giving an academic discount for years (that compared to US prices it isn't really a discount is another matter). Personally I think it is little use to discuss prices in a market economy. Just buy another product, or try to find a cheaper market. The result can be rather sad, of course, because a good product might not make it because of unreasonable price policies. I think that's the case with many U.S. computer products in Europe: People continue to use stone age computing facilities (like IBM PCs). Or look at the success of Atari in Germany: It's 100% due to low price policy. This policy allowed high-quality public domain and shareware to be developed by clever students and even high school students. Apple Mac had always been to expensive for them, so no real good stuff (I mean apart from using the Mac as quite intelligent typewriter) was created here. At the current prices, NeXT will be unable to attract these people. That is their decision. But maybe they want another market segment anyway. Martin Weigele, FB Informatik, Univ. Hamburg, Germany