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From: mentat@auscso.UUCP (Robert Dorsett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Apple Hates You and other Misconceptions
Message-ID: <549@auscso.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Oct-87 20:31:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: auscso.549
Posted: Tue Oct 20 20:31:32 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Oct-87 01:32:06 EDT
References: <1629@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <141STORKEL@RICE>
Reply-To: mentat@auscso.UUCP (Robert Dorsett)
Distribution: na
Organization: Austin UNIX Users' Group, Austin, TX
Lines: 46

In article <141STORKEL@RICE> STORKEL@RICE.BITNET (Scott Storkel) writes:
>Muh. I'd have to agress with Bill on this one. Apple doesn't hate you, and
>isn't intentionally shipping bad products. I'll bet the following story is
>etched into the brain of every top Apple executive:
>     
>Once upon a time in the days BM (before Mac) the was a fantastically popular
>computer called the Apple II+. Most people were pleased with the II, but some
>users wanted more memory, hard disks, higher performance, etc. So Apple set out
>to develop a new Apple called, lo and behold, the Apple III. Unfortunately they
>rushed the III into production and quality control wasn't what it should have
>been. People brought their brand new Apple III's home and they wouldn't work AT
>ALL. Turns out the chips were popping out of their sockets on the motherboard.
>As I recall Apple had to halt production to fix this problem. Meanwhile Apple's
>good rep and high stock prices went down, down, down...
>     
>Luckily the people at Apple learned from this mistake, and haven't repeated the
>III fiasco again.

Two or three months later, Apple fixed the problem with a very generous
upgrade policy (which, I believe, included a free clock).  Time went by, how-
ever, and people STILL weren't buying the ///, because the IBM had made fan-
tastic inroads in the meantime.  As a last-ditch effort, Apple both cut the 
prices of the /// (thus risking manufacturing computers that COMPETE with one 
another, a long-standing worry) and produced a somewhat souped up version, 
called the /// Plus.  Less than a summer later, Apple axed the /// altogether!
You'll find far fewer people who had even HEARD of the /// Plus than those
who owned the ///...:-)

Around that time, Apple ALSO started producing the Lisa 2.  Which was much, 
much cheaper than the original Lisa.  It slowly built up momentum, and was,
too, axed as well, just as sales were FINALLY starting to pick up (an event
shrouded in mystery, to this day).

The Moral of the Story: Apple, under Steve Jobs, did NOT, emphatically, NOT
learn its lessons.  That period extends to what, the summer of 1985?  Has 
anyone read "Odyssey," Sculley's book about all that?  







-- 
Robert Dorsett                  {allegra,seismo}!sally!ut-ngp!walt!mentat
University of Texas at Austin	{allegra, seismo}!sally!ut-ngp!auscso!mentat