pkovac@pro-truckstop.cts.com (Peter Kovac) (08/20/90)
I seem to have been misunderstood. The basic idea I am trying to get across is that when a person who has never touched a computer in his or her life goes to a store to buy one, that person will probably focus on a computer that they can use and has a low price. Now the IBM clones (clones include many "no-name" companies who produce computersn not just Compaq) satisfy the second criteria, being cheap. For Apple to attract these "first time" customers, it has to be able to offer a low cost alternative to these MSDOS computers. When a Macintosh user sees the new low-end Macs, that user thinks that they're going to be better than anything before them. Well, you're right. The new low-end Macs should be better than anything before them. But you have to measure this on an absolute scale, not a relative scale. A Mac Classic will be relatively cheap compared to a Mac IIfx, just as an F-16 is relatively cheap compared to the Stealth Bomber. Yet on an absolute scale, to the average person, all of these are expensive. To sum it up, the new Macs are better than the Macs before it. Yet they aren't the lowest priced computers on the market, and for that reason they may be passed up by uninformed consumers. BIG DISCLAIMER: I do not intend to compare the Mac to the PC in any area other than price. I do not own an IBM (anymore-I got rid of it and kept my SE). I just want to show people that perhaps a lower price will be necessary to get the lower market. I am sorry that I caused such a stir by these views, which I have not just made up but actually found industry analysts who think along the same general lines. UUCP: crash!pro-truckstop!pkovac ARPA: crash!pro-truckstop!pkovac@nosc.mil INET: pkovac@pro-truckstop.cts.com