Re: WHO killed the Apple II???

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

"Mike Westerfield" <MikeW50@aol.com> wrote:

>mystix@direct.ca (Herbert Fung) wrote:
>
>>...but for those who wrote because of their passion and love
>>for the platform were driven away by piracy.
>
>Sorry, but that's just not true. People were not driven away by the number
>of pirates, but by the lack of customers. I can even look at the sales
>figures and identify clearly the month when the Apple II died as a
>commercial platform for me--there was a huge drop in sales in November 1992.
>This was preceded and followed by slow declines, but the drop that month was
>dramatic. I seriously doubt this is because everyone on the Apple II became
>a pirate in that month.

I don't think Herbert disagrees with that.  He said "dropping Apple II
from the price list was the last nail in the coffin for commercial
software, but for those who wrote because of their passion and
love for the platform were driven away by piracy."  He's making the
point that for the shareware/freeware and some "labor of love
not to make a big profit" commercial folks, piracy was a big turn
off.

He's probably right in this regard.  I mean, Nathan Mates left
because of what he felt was piracy.  I'm not saying I agree with
what Nathan was all about, but he did stop producing Apple II
software because he felt hurt.  Justified or not this impression
he got, it was what caused him to stop producing Apple II wares.

>Piracy was and is a problem, but it did not kill the Apple II. Piracy takes
>a percentage of sales, not all of them. For a weak company or a weak
>platform, piracy may be the straw that breaks the camel's back, but it is
>rarely the major factor, and definitely was not the major factor on the
>Apple II.

Yes, but what about the freeware/shareware and small potatoes
commercial software folks.

As for big commercial software, I absolutely agree that Apple did
that.  November 1992 is telling since that was when the Apple IIe
was dropped from Apple's price list forever.