Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!uunet!microsoft!edwardj
From: edwardj@microsoft.UUCP (Edward JUNG)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: The Price Wars Cometh? (was: Re University price differences)
Message-ID: <57836@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 30 Sep 90 22:26:30 GMT
References: <1990Sep25.052907.4351@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <39445@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <428@kaos.MATH.UCLA.EDU> <5648@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: edwardj@microsoft.UUCP (Edward JUNG)
Distribution: na
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
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In article <5648@mace.cc.purdue.edu> asd@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth) writes:
[stuff deleted]
>Apple has been quite active in screwing it's customers.  Just look at
>the whole Apple II line.  Without that line, Mac wouldn't exist, and
>it sure wouldn't be as good as it is today without Apple II revenue
>being turned into Mac R&D.  And what do they do?  They sit on their
>asses and WON'T upgrade a system that could be easily upgradeable to
>be an a very powerful home/education/small business machine.  If there
>is anybody I trust in being able to screw it's customers, Apple has my
>vote!
>

Note the opposite case from my current employer for a lesson in how
the reverse can be a dangerous move as well.  We had a system that
paid the bills called MS-DOS.  It too could be upgradeable to be a
very powerful system, and lots of people have been doing exactly that:
making an inherently low-powered OS able to run pretending to be more
high-powered.  You have to hack, and spend your experts' time, and
it's architecturally less elegant, but it can be done.

You can catch alot of flak for doing this, as you probably well know,
and you can create confusion and interference for your higher-end
product lines.

So this is a double-edged sword.  Apple, at least, has made it very
clear what you should buy if you want a machine for a certain task.
Microsoft has carried its bread and butter customers along, as burdensome
as that may be.  Apple decided that they wanted to have a cleanly-
rebuilt architecture upon which to base their future (although I
don't think that the Mac architecture was built to do exactly that,
it is somewhat cleaner than the Apple ][ architecture), so they made
their existing customer base make the sacrifice.

You tell me which strategy you like.

--
Edward Jung
Microsoft Corp.

My opinions do not reflect any policy of my employer.