barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) (09/29/90)
In article <39445@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> lange@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Trent Lange) writes: > >The price lists from the UCLA Bookstore finally came out today. >The minimum model is $3449. > Yes, but, in a surprise move, they have just dropped the price another $100 to $3349---before even selling any! (Yeah, bookstore!) This is in line with other University prices. (Thanks, whoever is responsible.) However, danger looms on the horizon. In another surprise move, Apple has just dropped the bottom out of their Mac Plus prices. The UCLA price was just today lowered to $499 (!) (from $699, which was just a few months ago lowered from $899...) Is this an attempt by apple to undercut NeXT sales by luring folks into buying low end apple junk? As pointed out elsewhere, it causes major problems to lower prices on the high end of a product line, but much less to lower them on the low end. Apple seems to be taking this route. Still, this could backfire on them, by saturating their market for the forthcoming Mac SLC with these grossly outdated Mac Plus's---thus tying them to support for an outdated line (or screwing their customers...) The Price Wars Cometh? (no response from IBM yet, but thats not surprising.) However, NeXT users _can_ benefit. The $499 Mac Plus is a reasonable price for a floppy drive, considering it comes with a control console, a 1MB RAM buffer, and a bonus Mac emulator board. :-) >This brings up an interesting question. Does NeXT, like Apple, limit >each student to buying one machine at a given University? > >With these kinds of price differences between schools, it sounds like >it might be a good idea for students at high priced schools to have >friends at a low-priced schools buy their machines for them. > >Is it possible? If so, does any school have a lower price than >Stanford? Record low is U of Arizona, at $2995, I hear. Hey--its not too far...:-) -- Barry Merriman UCLA Dept. of Math UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet)
asd@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth) (09/29/90)
In <428@kaos.MATH.UCLA.EDU> barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) writes: >Yes, but, in a surprise move, they have just dropped the price >another $100 to $3349---before even selling any! (Yeah, bookstore!) >This is in line with other University prices. (Thanks, whoever is responsible.) Thank the school for agreeing to buy more NeXT's, that's what it takes to lower the price. >Still, this could backfire on them, by saturating their market for >the forthcoming Mac SLC with these grossly outdated Mac Plus's---thus >tying them to support for an outdated line (or screwing their customers...) Apple has been quite active in screwing it's customers. Just look at the whole Apple II line. Without that line, Mac wouldn't exist, and it sure wouldn't be as good as it is today without Apple II revenue being turned into Mac R&D. And what do they do? They sit on their asses and WON'T upgrade a system that could be easily upgradeable to be an a very powerful home/education/small business machine. If there is anybody I trust in being able to screw it's customers, Apple has my vote! >>Is it possible? If so, does any school have a lower price than >>Stanford? >Record low is U of Arizona, at $2995, I hear. Hey--its not too far...:-) That's the lowest it'll go. When I was talking to the NeXT rep, he had a price sheet with him. According to what types of deal the school makes, ie: how many it signs up to purchase, the NeXT has a few different pricing structures. There is of course retail (ick!). Then there is the basic school pricing. For a color cube, you saved about 21%. I think that the slab runs at $3995 for the basic education price. There are two other middle pricing realms (if I recall correctly), and finally the super-duper bonus price! That's what the $2995 price comes from. We here at Purdue will get that price also if a freshman engineering lab goes NeXT. That represents a 40% price drop on the slab, and for the color cube, I believe the price drop was about %35 ($9100 for cube/ monochrome monitor/dimension/color monitor) -k
edwardj@microsoft.UUCP (Edward JUNG) (10/01/90)
In article <5648@mace.cc.purdue.edu> asd@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth) writes: [stuff deleted] >Apple has been quite active in screwing it's customers. Just look at >the whole Apple II line. Without that line, Mac wouldn't exist, and >it sure wouldn't be as good as it is today without Apple II revenue >being turned into Mac R&D. And what do they do? They sit on their >asses and WON'T upgrade a system that could be easily upgradeable to >be an a very powerful home/education/small business machine. If there >is anybody I trust in being able to screw it's customers, Apple has my >vote! > Note the opposite case from my current employer for a lesson in how the reverse can be a dangerous move as well. We had a system that paid the bills called MS-DOS. It too could be upgradeable to be a very powerful system, and lots of people have been doing exactly that: making an inherently low-powered OS able to run pretending to be more high-powered. You have to hack, and spend your experts' time, and it's architecturally less elegant, but it can be done. You can catch alot of flak for doing this, as you probably well know, and you can create confusion and interference for your higher-end product lines. So this is a double-edged sword. Apple, at least, has made it very clear what you should buy if you want a machine for a certain task. Microsoft has carried its bread and butter customers along, as burdensome as that may be. Apple decided that they wanted to have a cleanly- rebuilt architecture upon which to base their future (although I don't think that the Mac architecture was built to do exactly that, it is somewhat cleaner than the Apple ][ architecture), so they made their existing customer base make the sacrifice. You tell me which strategy you like. -- Edward Jung Microsoft Corp. My opinions do not reflect any policy of my employer.
haugelan@unix.cis.pitt.edu (John C. Haugeland) (10/01/90)
A number of posters have said or taken for granted that the differences in price from one university to another are a function of how many machines that university would promise to buy. This paints NeXT in a slightly unfavorable light that I'm not sure is justified. When I asked the impression I got was that NeXT just had one educational price to the university, and the end-user price was a joint function of that and whatever mark up the university added. Now I can't claim to know this for sure, but it seems important, because it eliminates the (small) suggestion that NeXT is being venal and manipulative. I personally prefer it that way. John Haugeland haugelan@unix.cis.pitt.edu