Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!xylogics!transfer!lectroid!angmar.sw.stratus.com!jmann
From: jmann@angmar.sw.stratus.com (Jim Mann)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: marketing (was: Re: Boycott 68040 upgrades that include Lotus Improv)
Message-ID: <2779@lectroid.sw.stratus.com>
Date: 18 Oct 90 16:59:00 GMT
References: <123553@linus.mitre.org> <1990Oct17.173537.6483@nntp-server.caltech.edu> <53667@brunix.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@lectroid.sw.stratus.com
Reply-To: jmann@angmar.sw.stratus.com (Jim Mann)
Organization: Stratus Computer, Inc.
Lines: 47

In article <53667@brunix.UUCP>, agm@cs.brown.edu (Axel Merk) writes:

|>The world does not go for the best, but what's best marketable. NeXT
|>is not appropriately praised by the 'leading' computer magazines
|>because everybody is afraid of the competition of a machine that
|>already does everything. The industry prefers if you pay $13000 for
|>Apple equipment to get the same you would get for $4000 for a NeXT -
|>there are more companies involved in selling the Apple equipment, thus
|>more sources push the product.

Perhaps this belongs in alt.conspiracy -- i.e., the folks at the magazines
are plotting to keep folks buying the high cost equipment rather than
a NeXT. I very much doubt if this is the case.  More likely a reviewer
simply likes best a machine that a) they are used to and b) does what they
want to do. 

There are two other things wrong with your argument, also: 

	o   The price you quote for Apple equipment is for the 
		very top of the line equipment, and even then looks like
		"list" price.

	o    You seem to assume the NeXT can, right now, do everything the users
		want to do.			

First of all, I can get a perfectly respectable Mac to do lots of things
for under $3000, including software.  Yep, I don't get all the bundled stuff
I get on my NeXT, but many people don't need all that stuff, and what software
I do have to buy is MUCH cheaper on the Mac.  That price is a big consideration
for people who don't need to do lots (if they are using their machine just
do word processing, an occasional illustration, and maybe an infrequently-used
spreadsheet) or for the home market.  

Furthermore, right now, there is a lot more choice of what software to buy on
the Mac. There are many things I can do on a Mac that I can't yet do on a NeXT.
NeXT doesn't yet have a MacProject, a MacinTax, a MacProof, SimCity (I think
games are important), educational software (important for many parts
of the home market) and so forth.

The bottom line: if I were buying a computer in the next six months I wouldn't
be buying a NeXT.  (I hope to hold off buying a machine for a couple of years,
by which point I hope this will have changed.)
                         

Jim Mann
Stratus Computer
jmann@es.stratus.com