Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!MITRE.ARPA!mcgurrin
From: mcgurrin@MITRE.ARPA
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: Apple II Future
Message-ID: <8812211554.AA09046@mitre.arpa>
Date: 21 Dec 88 15:54:00 GMT
References: <8812201013.aa23022@SMOKE.BRL.MIL>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The MITRE Corp., Washington, D.C.
Lines: 20

I agree with your message, and that crippling or limiting the IIGS to limit
competition with the Mac is an unsound business practice, but it is not an
uncommon one.  Wang severly limited the word processing ability of their
PC type machines since they made much more profit on their word processing
machines.  The result -- Wang's entry into the PC world failed.  Another
example is the original DEC rainbow, where one had to buy pre-formatted
disks at a large markup, since DEC had a monopoly on it.  This lasted all
of a few months until 3rd party vendors offerred formatting programs.  This
was certainly not the only reason the Rainbow never took off, but it left a
bad taste in many people's mouths, including my own.  Finally, not a marketing
decision, per se, but the 1st mass-distributed PC to use a 16 bit microprocessor
that I can remember was the TI, but it only used it in 8 bit mode.  And a 
marketing decision removed peeks and pokes from the version of BASIC they
distributed (they wanted to sell you software, not let you write it).  Again,
the TI ended up left in the dust.  Limiting your own lower end products so
as not to compete against your upper end has a long tradition.  It can work
if you are the only vendor in the field, or if your customers have strong
brand loyalty and your goal is more profit from your base, not expanding
your base.  Personaly, I think Apple has hurt themselves, pushing many
old Apple II owners over to IBM and other machines.