Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!srcsip!gorby!mnkonar
From: mnkonar@gorby.SRC.Honeywell.COM (Murat N. Konar)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Apple code broken - pisses me off!
Message-ID: <24155@srcsip.UUCP>
Date: 20 Jun 89 00:08:50 GMT
References: <4588@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> <126900028@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@src.honeywell.COM
Reply-To: mnkonar@gorby.UUCP (Murat N. Konar)
Organization: Honeywell Systems & Research Center, Camden, MN
Lines: 51


In article <126900028@p.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>
>/* Written 11:26 am  Jun 12, 1989 by mnkonar@manyjars.SRC.Honeywell.COM in p.cs.uiuc.edu:comp.sys.mac */
>> Xerox brought out the Star workstation.  It was way ahead of
>> its time and predates the Lisa by about a year or two.  They
>> were the leader in graphical interfaces.  What killed them was
>> not that they prevented others from cloning their technology,
>> it was poor marketing....
>
>This is a distortion.  Here are some reasons you are omitting:
>
>(1) Xerox wanted to sell its machine for $15-$20,000, Apple wanted to
>sell its for $10,000.  This is outrageous for a machine whose biggest
>feature was fancy word processing, typically relegated to secretaries.
>Remember, the PC did not take off until visicalc/lotus appeared,
>appealing to (high-paid) mid-level managers.  In both cases, the
>products were aimed at the wrong audience for the price.

I suspect that you would have aimed these machines at programmers
and other technical professionals?

The key here is that the number of programmers << number of office
users.  What sells office users on systems is capability and usability.
Both the Lisa and Star had great potential, but I'll agree that the Lisa 
was priced too high (probably the Star as well). But pricing does come
under the domain of marketing.

BTW, the Lisa came with (bundled) at 10K:
LisaDraw (a drawing program)
LisaWrite (word processing)
LisaProject (project management)
LisaCalc (SPREADSHEET for mid-level managers)
LisaList (data base)
LisaGraph (charting)

So the Lisa DID have a spreadsheet BUNDLED!


>(1) Both these systems are completely closed architectures: no

The Lisa was not a closed system.  It even had slots.  It had
compilers (remember the Lisa toolkit and Lisa Programmers Workshop?)
All early Macintosh development had to be done on Lisas.
      


____________________________________________________________________
Have a day. :^|
Murat N. Konar        Honeywell Systems & Research Center, Camden, MN
mnkonar@SRC.honeywell.com (internet) {umn-cs,ems,bthpyd}!srcsip!mnkonar(UUCP)