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From: rdeal@rucs2.sunlab.cs.runet.edu (Butch Deal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: The Fate of the Macintosh
Message-ID: <1991Mar24.222404.7549@rucs2.sunlab.cs.runet.edu>
Date: 24 Mar 91 22:24:04 GMT
Organization: Radford University
Lines: 77

>>lets consider the LC, about 3 or 4 MIPS and around $1000 (educational price)

>Yes, a cute little machine (a Macintosh II warmed over with 1 expansion slot)
>which retails for roughly $2300 (no math co-processor), and I would venture 
>to say that Apple's fate with Macintosh will rest more with the retail price
>than what the few, the proud, the starving college students can buy it for.

I think that you are under estimating the educational area.  It includes 
K-12 as well as faculty.  This makes up a substantial market.  
You are also over semplify the LC, it is very different from the MacII:
no NU bus, less bits for memory access and color, no PMMU, built in ram as
well as simm's, built in sound I/O, no unix.

>>>considers that (in theory) a software emulator could be (fairly easily)
>>>derived which would allow the NeXT to run Mac Software, it is questionable

emulators are rather difficult and expencive to produce.  I think that it
will be a long time before anyone spends the time and money to give away
a mac emulator.

>Well, poor choice of words (fairly easily) on my part with regard to this.

>What I mean is that as software emulations for the Apple ][ and MS-Dos
>world are already available for the Macintosh, I presume that it will
>only be a matter of time before someone tries (successfully) to emulate
>the Mac, though I concede the Mac is in some ways more complex which 
>might make the task more difficult.

The Mac is in may ways more complex than a simple dos box.

>I concede anyone caught doing this will at the very least need one really
>good lawyer to help them out in court, but theoretically, it is possible
>for someone to copy and use them in the creation of a software emulator,
>and then for the same person to post the emulator into the public domain
>and still remain anonymous (Internet Security isn't 100%)

I think that your remarks should stand on their own(you are your worst 
enemie), But again who would spend such a great deal of time and money
to give the product away?!?

>>It is more than a symbolic gesture, an LC is far cheaper than a big blue
>>windows speed not deamon.  When the new mac 68040's are released then
>>the 68020 machines will go down even more as well as the 68030's

>Yes, but IBM and Compact are not the only competitors.  There are a whole
>slew of third party vendure making high powered 386's and 486's which 
>RETAIL (hey, that's what Joe Consumer pays, huh? ) for around the same price
>as the Mac LC.  And, as partial as I am to the Macintosh (truly), I have
>to admit that even  Windows on a 286 looks pretty tempting when compared to
>the Mac Classic--nice machine, but soooo slooowwww...

Well you must have never run windows on a 286 then or the Classic would 
seem pretty nice.  An LC has better speed than 386 machines with windows.

>One other thing.  We already know there are Software Emulators which allow
>the Mac to run PC (DOS) software (e.g. SoftPC).  How long will it be before
>NeXT has the same thing allowing the entire DOS world to fall into their
>camp ?  With a (admittedly) very illegal Mac emulator floating around, the
>Apple Macintosh might fall upon extremely hard times...

Well you don't seem to keep up the NeXT has softPC for some time now.  I 
don't see Big Blue stock falling much why are you so sure that Mac's
will.  I don't think that there will be all that many people try to use
unsupported illegal software for their lively-hood.  

The NeXT is a unix box and I think that you should only compare it with
another UNIX box.  There  is a lot of difference between a workstation
and a personal computer(price, software availabiltiy, etc.)  People 
that have any Mac under a II are not going to be interested in a NeXT.
If they are then they didn't get the right Mac in the first place.  
I would not recomend a NeXT to a small buisiness owner for accounting
and record keeping.  I also would not recomend a Mac SE to and 
enginere for drafting, a Mac II would be far better for drafting.

If it is just speed that you want, you could upgrade your SE to faster 
than the NeXT cheaper than you could get a NeXT, and you wouldn't have 
to be conserned with legal problems.