Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!world!boris
From: boris@world.std.com (Boris Levitin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: The New Macs: Greedy Compromises?
Message-ID: <1990Dec2.092106.26480@world.std.com>
Date: 2 Dec 90 09:21:06 GMT
References: <1990Nov29.005944.17800@scrumpy@.bnr.ca> <46970@apple.Apple.COM>
Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die
Lines: 43

das@Apple.COM (David Shayer) writes:

>>possible to give it the same CMOS 16MHz 68000 as the Portable?

>   Why is it that every Tom, Dick and Harry suddenly become self-degreed
>   hardware engineers after reading MacWeek? If they knew as much about
>   systems as they think they did, then they'd know that CMOS is more
>   expensive than TTL, and that you can't just drop in a faster clock without
>   upgrading all the supporting circuitry with faster (translation: more 
>   expensve) components. For Pete's sake...do you want low cost or high 
>   performance? I know...I know...I can hear you now...

>   "We want BOTH! We want fx's at Classic prices! 
>   No...we want fx's at NINTENDO prices...yeah!"

>   Well, sorry, kids. This is the real world. You pay your money, and you
>   take your choice. You don't get a discount for whining.

Your frustration with insatiable users is understandable (after all, Apple
stops treating its customers like dirt for the first time since the early
eighties, and what do you get? Gratitude? No - whining!) but NeXT, which
lives in the same real world you do (you can drive there from Cupertino)
manages to sell a 25MHz 040 machine with reportedly twice the power
of the IIfx and superior everything except color (but admittedly not too many 
software titles) for $3,500 at the educational price, and still make a profit. 
In fact, everybody expects this new price to assure the company's survival. 
This is not unreasonable. This is not whining.  This is NOW.  Why can't you do 
that?  Do you really believe that there will always be a Great Software Gap 
between you and them?  Look at the slowly-fading-away IBM micro division.  If 
you ignore the whining, irritating though it may be, you will share their fate 
(and there won't be any corporate pinstriped pointy-headed types who will buy 
YOUR products because of brand loyalty to the company in which their family 
owned stock for three generations).

>   Sigh. If we added support for the 13", you'd whine that you couldn't
>   put a 24-bit card in it...

David, be serious, that extra 256kB of VRAM costs you $25!  Instead you
make it into this big-deal upgrade, have to distribute it, have to have it
installed (at extra cost) by authorized dealers... Why couldn't you put in
this $50 part, instead of a $25 part, in the LC at the factory and be
done with it?  Look at all the public-relations damage you're suffering
because of this petty-looking decision!