gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (07/13/90)
> It's true, we did a comparison of buying a Mac to buying an IBM or > Compaq with nearly identical features and the Mac won hands down. Go > out and buy yourself a large two page display for an IBM sometime! Furthermore, when the Mac II was released, it was cheaper (under university discounts) AND faster than ANY comparably-equipped clone (only 16Mhz 80386's were available in '87). The clone needs VGA, a high-quality monitor, mouse, serial ports, MS-Windows, more memory, expansion slots, and a sound synthesizer, to equal a Mac II. However, this has not been true of the 68000-based macintoshes. Today a decent '286 PC with 40Mb hard disk, CGA color, mouse, and serial ports costs about $1500. For $1900 bucks you can get a small-screen black/white/crippled macintosh with a pathetically slow (65ms) and loud 20Mb hard disk. When the SE was released, the production cost was estimated by MacWorld Magazine to be $400-$500 per machine. Three years later, I'd guess an SE/20Mb costs Apple $550-$650 to manufacture. You'd think Apple could survive on a 100% markup.