Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!bloom-beacon!usc!elroy!ucla-cs!lange
From: lange@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Trent Lange)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: SIMM pricing
Message-ID: <25178@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 23 Jun 89 12:46:27 GMT
References: <944@orbit.UUCP>
Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: lange@cs.ucla.edu (Trent Lange)
Organization: UCLA Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Lines: 39

In article <944@orbit.UUCP> granteri@pnet51.cts.com (Grant Erickson) writes:
>I notice you speak of the upcoming Mac IICX with the 25 Mhz processor.  I have
>heard it is rumored to have on board 8-Bit color and 25 Mhz 68030. Can you
>give any more details on this new machine. I was originally going to buy a
>IICX on the 17th, but opted to wait because I heard of the 25 Mhz IICX. I also
>heard it will be the cheapest Macintosh to produce, and thus be cheaper than
>the current IICX.

This may or may not be true, but you can bet your bottom dollar that it
will be more expensive than the normal IIcx.  The best we can hope for
is that they'll lower the price of the normal IIcx.

All computer makers seem to do this.  The relative prices of their
machines are based on their relative "power", and not on their production
cost.

I believe that the Plus and SE are good examples of this.  The Plus,
from what I've heard, is actually *more* expensive to manufacture than
the SE, because of the SE's newer design that was optimized in part
particularly for low production cost.  But obviously if they charged
more for the Plus than the SE, they wouldn't sell any of them... So
by substantially cranking up the cost of the SE, they kill two birds
with one stone (the other bird being their profit margin on the SE).

Another example is almost certainly the II versus IIx.  Besides the
Superdrive, the two machines are identical - except that the IIx's
motherboard is much less complicated, since it doesn't need to
worry about the PMMU.  But we all know which machine Apple charges
*substantially* more for...

It's all a charade, but they'll do it as long as people are willing
to pay extra for extra power, which will be always.

Trent Lange

**********************************************************************
*      "UCLA:  National Men's Volleyball, Women's Softball, and      *
*              Computer Programming Champs"                          *
**********************************************************************