Re: Apple Computer, What Are You Up To?

[Randy Shackelford <shack@onyx.southwind.net>]

Supertimer <supertimer@aol.com> wrote:

: Good point.  However, all Macs before iMac have a floppy drive.
: The iMac itself has a floppy controller on the motherboard.  What
: I'm saying is that the floppy drive, whether internal or external,
: is part of what people have been using.  Why does Apple not include
: a port on the back?  If they don't want to spend money on an internal
: floppy, an external port is at least a transition.  Why chop it out
: right away?

In effect, there is a port. Since everyone expects USB to take off so much,
and there already are USB style superdisks and Zip drives, that's good
enough. The superdisk in particular was announced when iMacs first appeared.
And that way you get away from Apple's typical price gouging on peripherals
as well. Remember paying ~$350 for your 800K 3.5 drives? While we're talking
along those lines, recall that only one Apple II model came with a floppy 
drive at no extra cost. And if you're like how Apple anticipates most new
iMac owners to be, you don't handle floppy disks and have no need for a
drive, so you don't have to buy one.

: Answer: Apple's "I say so, everyone must think my way" philosophy.
: Company policy is that 3.5" floppies are bad so all users must abide.
: Why can't Apple behave like a normal company and go with the
: customer's wishes?

There's more of that third party opportunity stuff like Apple has always done.
It could be worse, recall how utterly unexpandable Jobs' first stab at the
"information appliance" i.e. the original Mac was.
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