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From: daveb@geac.UUCP (Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Hypercard - How About New Mac Owner
Message-ID: <1198@geac.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Aug-87 09:47:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: geac.1198
Posted: Fri Aug 21 09:47:26 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Aug-87 18:02:25 EDT
References: <36@mtunj.ATT.COM> <174400045@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: daveb@geac.UUCP (Dave Collier-Brown)
Organization: The little blue rock next to that twinkly star.
Lines: 19

In article <174400045@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu> dorner@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>Why is Apple charging the $50 in the first place?  I can't imagine they
>are going to make lots of money from it.  It's far more than distribution
>cost.

  Well, when I was on the Ability(tm) project, several people asked the
same question.  Often with a scornful tone of voice.
  The answer was "overhead".  
  A back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that sending out an
upgrade was 1/3 as expensive as sending out the whole package
originally, mostly due to burning up the secretarys' and shippers'
time validating, finding, packing and mailing quantity-one packages.
Seems we had quite a good efficiency-of-scale when sending large
shipments to distributors/dealers.
-- 
 David Collier-Brown.                 {mnetor|yetti|utgpu}!geac!daveb
 Geac Computers International Inc.,   |  Computer Science loses its
 350 Steelcase Road,Markham, Ontario, |  memory (if not its mind)
 CANADA, L3R 1B3 (416) 475-0525 x3279 |  every 6 months.