Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!dptg!mtune!rkh
From: rkh@mtune.ATT.COM (Robert Halloran)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: new product intro.
Message-ID: <858@mtune.ATT.COM>
Date: 19 Oct 90 17:17:23 GMT
References: <5777.apple.net2@pro-grouch>
Organization: AT&T BL Middletown/Lincroft NJ USA
Lines: 43

In article <5777.apple.net2@pro-grouch> lloyd@pro-grouch.cts.com (Lloyd Licht) writes:
>Regarding doing away with the Apple II line with a //e emulator card?  I
>seriously doubt that very much.  It's much cheaper to go out and buy a //e
>than to buy that emulator card.
>
>2nd thought.  Why would anyone buy the new Mac II-LC and buy a //e emulator
>card?

The LC-plus-emulator package is directly targeted at the K-12 school 
market.  If Apple drops the // line, as all indications point to, dammit,
the schools will have to pick up on the LC to protect their A2 software 
investments, and once all those Macs are entrenched in the schools, Apple 
can push the software houses to do Mac ports of the stuff the kids are
currently using (and probably charge them the same three-times-as-much
for it that the LC costs over the //e solution).

For a company that talks about 'empowering' people, the fact is that a
school can empower about three times as many desktops with //e's or even
//c+'s for the same dollar amount as one LC with emulator. The fact that 
the schools are running things like Carmen Sandiego, Bank Street and 
Appleworks that DON'T NEED a Mac's horsepower, also seems to have been 
lost on the Powers That Be.  A //GS with color monitor is about as
much horsepower as most of this market needs, and Apple seems determined
to sell them much more iron at much more dollars.  Given the current
state of school budgeting, this does NOT strike me as a prudent marketing
strategy.

Gut reaction is that Tandy is gonna sell a lot of cheapie DOS boxes with
Trackstar boards; they know the school market from back in the Trash-80
days, and A2 plus DOS covers about all of the K-12 educational software
market, where the Mac, honestly, is thin in this area.

Does anyone in Apple's marketing department have a brain with more than
three neurons firing?  Or are they willing to write off the schoolrooms
to chase the boardrooms?

						Bob Halloran
=========================================================================
Internet: rkh@mtune.dptg.att.com		UUCP: att!mtune!rkh		
Disclaimer: If you think AT&T would have ME as a spokesman, you're crazed.
"Apple II Forever"?  Looks like Forever = 13 years, 6 months 
	(4/15/77 - 10/15/90) Abandoning the schoolrooms for the boardrooms......
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