Re: WHO killed the Apple II???

["Mike Westerfield" <MikeW50@aol.com>]

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In article <0550.199908060722.002241A6@nexus.amaq.org.au>, David Phillips
<David_Phillips@nexus.amaq.org.au> wrote:


>If you look at figures put out by Microsoft Macs are 30% of his customers but
>since IBM clones are supposedly 90% of the installed base their seems to be a
>discrepancy of number there. This indicates to me that either the clone users
>are mainly Games (very likely) players and do nothing else on their machines,
>or they are pirates of the first order.

While I suspect that your analysis is at least partly correct, there are two
other siginificant factors that contribute to the higher Mac-to-WinTell
software purchase rate.

First, a lot of WinTell machines are bought for a single, well defined task
like running a cash register, scientific instrument, or some other
single-application use. Macs are bought for this sort of thing a lot less
frequently.

The second factor may not be so big these days, but it was very well
documented a few years back. The average Mac user uses (used?) 3-4 times as
many programs as the average WinTell user. The reason was less well
documented, but the published suspicion was that Mac programs, being more
consistent across applications, were easier to learn to use. The results I
saw were pre Windows 95, so I suspect it isn't as big a reason now as
then... Still, it's one more factor to consider!

Mike Westerfield