Re: Wozniak vs Jobs

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article shack@onyx.southwind.net (Randy Shackelford) writes...

>GR1071 (gr1071@aol.com) wrote:
>>The magazine prose at that point in time used the phrase that the Apple II
>>was a "cash cow for the Mac." Monies made on Apple II sales were being
>>diverted into Macintosh development not into the Apple II.
>
>Where do you think any company gets money for fielding new products? Hint:
>they don't pull it out of their asses, nor do they have a genie who grants
>wishes for money out of nowhere.

    Your perfectly right. Revenue to fund R&D, marketing and product
production has to come from somewhere, and it shouldn't matter where
it orginates. You pool company funds from selling products, and do
whatever needs to be done with it.

>I imagine everyone but militant Apple II users/Apple Inc. haters understand
>that revenue from existing products fuel development and marketing of new
>products.

    Yep, and by that logic revenue made off the Macintosh should have
gone into development and marketing of new Apple II's (seems only fair
if Apple II revenue fueled the Mac ;-).

    Seriously, after the IIGS came out, how much went into marketing
the machine or any other Apple II's? How much went into developing
new CPU's or other products? The Apple IIc Plus didn't take much, it
was Apple just playing catch-up with Laser (they even licensed the
ZipChip to stick inside, so to come up with something quickly). I
can't think of even many cards after GS--there was the HS SCSI, VOC,
FDHD card. The ROM 3 IIgs was a sad excuse for what should have been,
and had less improvements than probably a Mac 128 to 512e.

    I'm not one of those people who'll tell you they should have
dumped the Mac and tried surviving off the 8-bit Apple II mostly--
with the GS a top of the line product--but there was _still_ a
large and profitable market back in the mid/late 80's. Apple threw
it all away, out of spite because some people in the company
hated anything that didn't say "Macintosh" on it. Why couldn't
they have had two product lines? You can't say the market wasn't
there to support it, it was. Apple made a mistake--a mistake
that was based on emotion and not logic. I know it sounds like
a silly made up conspiracy theory, but it is the truth that
Apple tried killing the II for many years while the Macintosh
was (and still is today) like a regilion to Apple and users.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca