Re: Apple's ways

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Ralf Quint <Ralf_Quint@hot_mail.com> wrote:

>wbdesnoy@acs5.acs.ucalgary.ca (Byron Desnoyers Winmill) wrote:
>
>>Ralf Quint (Ralf_Quint@hot_mail.com) wrote:
>>: Well, i must say, that if this would happen, the iMacs would finally
>>: get the bad reputation they deserve.
>>
>>The iMac is directed towards a particular market.  They do not deserve a bad
>>reputation for that.  That would be something akin to giving an Apple II a
>>bad rap simply because Apple was selling essentially (if you ignore the IIgs)
>>the same machine for over 10 years.
>
>Sorry Byron, but i see this as two different things.
>
>The iMacs are simply crappy hardware (ok ,the monitor is not bad for
>it's size and the video chips is ok too), out into a fancy plastic box
>to sell it with it's "trendy" look.
>
>When the Apple II came out, it was a high end, almost top notch
>system, which was easliy expandable (even with non-Apple parts), this
>was what kept the system alive for so long. And it had a very high end
>price even for those days (i couldn't afford one for myself those
>days).

I think that neither deserves a bad rap except for the pricing of the
iMac.  The iMac was designed to be the eMachine of the Apple
world so you have to judge it against something like an eMachine.
The only problem I have with it is that it isn't PRICED like an
eMachine.  It was priced above the average PC (between the
average and the premium models) and for those prices, it wasn't
worth it.  Sell an iMac at the same price as an eMachine and I
would not blink in selecting the iMac.

The Apple II, on the other hand, WAS a high end machine that
was so good that Apple couldn't seem to get rid of it.  Apple II
was unusual because the line didn't evolve like a product line
normally does.  The good hardware that commanded such good
sales and loyalty among users wasn't rewarded by reinvesting
the profits from the line into R&D and marketing.  Rather, the
success of the Apple II contradicted Apple's PLAN to place the
Mac front and center and that was because the Mac was Jobs'
baby.  So in the end, the Apple II didn't change and the prices
didn't drop until it was so old that all most people remember is
an underpowered machine in the early 1990s, a 128k Apple IIe,
the last model to die.  But to judge the Apple II by how it
looked in 1990 is unfair.  Imagine if Intel gobbled up AMD but
rather than kill it, seeing the brand loyalty of Athlon users
continue to sell the 1.4Ghz Athlon and use the profits to add
to Pentium rather than Athlon R&D and marketing.  A few years
later, Pentiums are running at next gen speeds while Athlons
are still poking along at 1.4Ghz.  Then Intel turns around and
convinces everyone that see, the Athlon sucks.  The shocking
part of it in Apple's case was that the Apple II was NOT an
aquisition from a competing company.  It was Apple's own
product that they purposefully drove into the ground.