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From: borton@net1.ucsd.edu (Chris Borton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: More Mac prices
Message-ID: <4170@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Date: Sun, 25-Oct-87 22:14:20 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.4170
Posted: Sun Oct 25 22:14:20 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Oct-87 06:38:32 EST
References: <476@aucs.UUCP> <477@aucs.UUCP>
Sender: Unknown@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU
Reply-To: borton@net1.UUCP (Chris Borton)
Organization: UCSD Network Operations Group
Lines: 33

In article <477@aucs.UUCP> peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele) writes:
>
>[...]  And look at HyperCard. That
>must have taken a tremendous development effort, but they're practically
>giving it away. Why? Probably as a gimmick to sell more Macs. I bet that
In the 'Conversation with Bill Atkinson' at the front of Goodman's book on
HyperCard it is revealed that Bill went to Apple with his great idea and told
them if they didn't bundle it, he'd leave and give it away himself.

>HyperCard is good, but the Mac is prohibitively expensive for
>many many people. I own one, but none of my friends do, unless they happen
>to be profs with big research grants...
I was in West Germany last year, where the Mac world underwent some severe
changes.  In Fall '86 the retail price of a Mac Plus was DM 10.000, roughly
US$5000 at the exchange rate then.  This was obviously extremely prohibitive,
and the only market they had penetrated effectively was DeskTop Publishing.

In March, with the advent of the SE and II, Apple Deutschland took the
opportunity to reflect newer prices and exchange rate and lowered the Plus
retail to DM6400.  The university price is DM4200.  By the time I left in July,
two big Apple houses were competing with retail prices around DM4000. These
prices are finally in the sensible range, given the current exchange rate,
transport, and 14% tax.  But it took awhile...

At the Apple Deutschland Developer Conference in June they announced that they
had sold record numbers of Macs since March.  Gee, I wonder why :-).

Apple outside of the U.S. is gaining, but it still has a ways to go, I think.

-cbb
Chris "Johann" Borton, UC San Diego	...!sdcsvax!net1!borton
					borton@net1.ucsd.edu
"Letztes Jahr in Deutschland, noch ein Jahr hier, en dan naar het Nederland!