Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!brunix!agm
From: agm@cs.brown.edu (Axel Merk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: software prices
Message-ID: <50411@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 19 Sep 90 20:00:00 GMT
Sender: news@brunix.UUCP
Reply-To: agm@cs.brown.edu (Axel Merk)
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Lines: 44

Could someone please explain me how people come up with these prices
in the new product catalogue (fall 1990) -- am I missing that these
programmers are geniuses or is NeXT-software-pricing based on the
Nikkei index?

$40,000 plus run-time license:PaperSight Developer's Toolkit (objects
	for the interface builder) -- their other products are
	overpriced, too. 
$25,000 NeuExpert (expert systems and neural networks)
$12,000 Flexible License Manager
$995	Displaytalk (the extension to YAP)
$395	TranScriber 1.0 (wait a minute - you can even rewind your
	sound! How many hours did it take to write this? Oh yes, this
	is medical software)
$2,500	MediaStation 1.2 (fine program, but was it so difficult to
	write? or is it that special?)
$15,200	MundoCart/Optical (wow -- a zoomable world-map!!! the data set
	was developed years ago)
$4595	XWave Version 1.0 (connects NeXTs to PCs using NFS and TCP/IP
	-- big deal)
$10,000 starting price: Worldtalk/400 (makes NeXT-mail compatible with
	X400)
$7,000	starting price: AFS 3.0 (I thought you could get this for free
	at CMU? Is the design of the interface that expensive?)


I did not even mention many painfully high (i.e. workstation-oriented)
prices (e.g. Objective DB Toolkit) that are good programs, but too
high for my taste.
On the other hand, some applications for <$100 were taken out of the
catalogue. 
How can one attrack the masses with this kind of pricing?

Why can't all applications be more like FrameMaker -- complex
applications, with reasonable academic and acceptable commercial
prices (for what they offer)?

Axel

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