Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!usc!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!bmwu From: bmwu@athena.mit.edu (Benson M. Wu) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: Death by Windows Keywords: low-cost Mac Message-ID: <1990Jul12.022410.24220@athena.mit.edu> Date: 12 Jul 90 02:24:10 GMT References: Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background) Reply-To: bmwu@athena.mit.edu (Benson M. Wu) Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lines: 64 Distribution:usa I have been following this subject for a while and just can't resist to put in my two cents. Please direct all flames by e-mail to me at bmwu@athena.mit.edu, not thorugh the net. I have no interest to cause another flame war after the Iran earthquake disaster. I can't agree with all the people who mention the need for a low cost mac to combat the clones. I think Apple is very short-sighted and is run to maximize short term (i.e. current or next quarter) profits. Realistically, all the new machines they put out after the MacII were incrementally better. None of them were real breakthroughs. Except maybe if you compare the IIfx to the original MacII (strictly my humble opinion). But they prices they charge is outrageous. Market share is extremely important. I think Apple is ignoring market share to its detriment. Just look at the Japanese economic invasion of the US market in the last 30 years. First they built radios and clocks. Their cost was lower. So what do the US manufacturers do? They moved to higher profit margin items such as black and white TV. In the meantime, the low cost foreign manufacturers achieved economy of scale because they have HUGE market share; their cost becomes even lower. As a result, their profit is higher and they can reinvest the profit for more R&D. What do these foreigner invest their R&D in? Of course, black and white television. Next thing you know, the US manufacturers say we better move to color television. The rest is history. One industry after another got toppled. However, there are successful US companies which fought and met the foreign challenges. Kodak, Xerox, Tektronix came to my mind. But they all slash prices to keep Market Share. Apple is doing none of this. In spite of what we say about the superiority of Mac's, IBM PC clones outnumber Mac's 7 to 1. Does the story of VHS vs Beta sound familiar? Superior technology or user interface does not mean much when it comes to the bottom line. If I were an Apple board member, I would fire John Sculley for incompetent management. Running a computer company is different from running Pepsi. lastly, I offer the following story for everybody's amusement. A friend of mine works at Motorola. He me that Apple was considering using the 96001 floating point DSP processor in the next generation of Mac's. Apple actually gave Motorola hard deadlines for making presentations and stuff. However, after 3 months of intensive works, the Motorola staff was totally demoralized when Apple told them their chief of the project doesn't know enough technical details/requiements to evaluate the Motorola presentation and have to delay their decision. Seriously, it's time they get some engineers who know what they are doing to make these technical decisions. Running a company is not the same thing as working on a spreadsheet to slash cost. ( I have deliberately try to be vague about this story due to its still sensitive nature). All I can say is that in my humble opinon, Apple R&D's team leaders are not the world's most impressive technical whizes and have been doing a pretty lousy jobs. This fact plus the outragious pricing will put the Mac out of business. Sad. By the way, is Apple really serious when it prices the personal LaserwriteIIsc for $2000. In its press release, it actually said it is designed for personal use by students. How many students out there have $2000 to blow on a printer? Come on, it's not even postscript. Sorry for the rambling. Benson Wu bmwu@athena.mit.edu