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From: furuta@uw-beaver (Richard Furuta)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: MacTari at C.E.S.  (MacIntari? Atarmac?)
Message-ID: <479@uw-beaver>
Date: Mon, 21-Jan-85 03:38:05 EST
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.479
Posted: Mon Jan 21 03:38:05 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Jan-85 06:42:56 EST
References: <1346@sdcc7.UUCP>
Reply-To: furuta@uw-beaver.UUCP (Richard furuta)
Distribution: net
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 66
Summary: 

In article <1346@sdcc7.UUCP> ee65xdh@sdcc7.UUCP (JAMES HAYES) writes:
>While is Las Vegas, I had the experience of seeing what I think will
>be a problem to Apple. A big problem.
>
>They are billed as the ATARI 130ST (128K) 
>		 -and- ATARI 150ST (512K).. {Sound familiar so far?}
...
>Overall impressions?
>
>Favorable. When I walked by the Atari booth, I mistook the display
>for a MacIntosh. My curiosity was piqued. (at least!)
>
>The Atari Finder was up and running while an Atari rep. was
>demonstrating. I wanted to play, but go caught. "DON'T TOUCH
>PLEASE!"
>
>Anyway, Apple has something to worry about.
>
>

There have been a number of articles posted to this group and to fa.info-mac
recently describing this machine.  A number of the authors have also
indicated that they think that "Apple is in trouble."

I tend to doubt it.  For one, if I remember correctly, the Atari machine is
promising to deliver in the last quarter of this year.  That's quite a time
away and given the history of this past year, I'd expect that there are
going to be many new interesting price adjustments (that will probably annoy
those of us who've already purchased Macs) as Apple announces new versions
in the line.  Second, this is capitalism we have here and Apple is talking
about spending something like $100 million on advertising this year.  I
doubt that Atari is going to even come close to matching it.

I tend to hold my judgement on a machine that exists in prototype form with
a configuration that isn't stable enough that passers-by aren't allowed to
touch.

There's a couple of pretty subtle factors that play in here, in addition to
the sledgehammer of $100 million advertising.  One is that the packaging of
the Atari system sounds like it is going to be far more traditional one with
many little pieces as opposed to the Macintosh's bundled design.  This might
not seem important to us, but I suspect that the more pieces you break the
computer into, the more potential customers you alienate.  I don't know if
Apple really understood what they were doing with the Mac's packaging, but
they seem to have wound up with a unit with an appearance that is
surprisingly non-threatening to the computer novice.  The early reports
sound like Atari's system isn't as strong in this respect.

My belief is that Consumers' Reports is right this time.  The power of the
Macintosh is that it has managed to provide an easily accessible entry for
the many people who want to use computers but who are put off by the
complexity of other systems' hardware and software.  I've heard too many
stories about people who had previously refused to use computers who
subsequently enjoyed using the Macintosh to doubt Consumers' Reports this
time.  The things that bug us, like the slowness in starting up an
application, are quite irrelevant.

The indication seems to be that Apple plans to go for the high end market
(read "business") this year (witness the fact that they actually ran that
heavy handed ad with the lemming-like business people walking off of a
cliff).  I suspect the effect of this on the low-end market is going to be
that the 128K Mac is still going to be viewed as a high quality computer by
the general public and one that one should aspire to own.  I doubt that
Atari is going to be able to get a similar kind of image for their system.

					--Rick