Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lts!amanda From: amanda@lts.UUCP (Amanda Walker) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Mac pricing and the future of the Mac Keywords: Obscene profits, planned obsolescence, lengthy diatribe Message-ID: <1082@lts.UUCP> Date: 19 Mar 89 03:10:18 GMT References: <12101@reed.UUCP> Reply-To: amanda@lts.UUCP (Amanda Walker) Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation, Reston, VA Lines: 77 In article <12101@reed.UUCP>, wab@reed.UUCP (Bill Baker) writes: [...] they've got us. As the Mac line is constantly upgraded, we time and again face the choice of paying outrageous prices for new machines and upgrades or junking our Macs (the value of which decrease precipitously with every upgrade) and buying into another graphic-interface system, most of which are also proprietary and therefore overpriced. AAIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! no no no NO! Every time Apple announces a new machine, and upgrade programs for older machines, somebody posts an article like this (not to mention editorials in magazines and so on), and I for one am getting god damned tired of it. You are NEVER faced with the choice of "upgrade or die." Your Mac never suddenly becomes less valuable. It still runs the same software, doesn't it? It still, in fact, does just as much or little as it always did. Nobody comes around in black suits with white ties and violin cases saying, "That's a Mac Plus, ain't it? We'll just have to shoot you, then..." If your machine does what you want it to, what's the problem? If, on the other hand, what's important is that your computer be the biggest/fastest/whatever Macintosh that money can buy, then you have to pay for it. As far as Apple is concerned, you bought a machine. Your choice. If, later on, you want to buy another machine, you can, but it will cost you. If I go to trade in my car, I don't get what I paid for it. In a similar way, an older machine plus an upgrade will cost more dollars than not buying one until now would have. This is not because Apple is mean and money-hungry. Think about it. I'm a professional in the industry and I'll pay top dollar for a state of the art machine, and thereby cover Apple's development costs and provide a hefty profit to Big Red. But if Apple is going to keep reaming me for each logic board swap, forget it. Oh, come on. If you want to *stay* state of the art, you have to pay as you go. TANSTAAFL. By definition, something is only new or state of the art until something better comes along. $2000 for essentially a 68030 and a PMMU? If Motorola is charging you that much for chips, then I'm putting the money I would have spent on a Mac into Motorola stock. So buy a 68030 and a PMMU and roll your own. It's not just the hardware cost that you're paying for. There's a significant amount of design investment in even an incremental improvement like the IIx, if nothing else. You might want to try taking an economics course at your local community college and learn what resources are actually necessary to bring a product to market, especially a volatile, high-volume one like this industry. The cost of materials is not much of a factor in the early life of the product, which is all computers get, what with the way technology is moving these days. [...] you won't guarantee your machines past 12 weeks? I know the answer: buy AppleCare for the machine. So I should pay for coverage you should be providing? Computers don't break very often after an initial burn-in period. I'd rather pay for things that actually break rather than pay extra for my machine (which is how you pay for your car warranty, to use your own analogy). Why do people go crazy and demand things from vendors in this market that they wouldn't even dream of asking any other kind of manufacturer? Sigh. Enough flaming for now :-). -- Amanda Walker, InterCon Systems Corporation amanda@lts.UUCP / ...!uunet!lts!amanda / 703.435.8170 -- C combines the flexibility of assembler with the power of assembler.