Re: WHO killed the Apple II???

[David Phillips <David_Phillips@nexus.amaq.org.au>]

On 8/4/99 9:51 PM, sirthomas wrote:

>Ummm...  I hate to break this to you, but piracy ran and runs rampant in 
>all
>personal computer systems TO THIS DAY.  If it didn't, why would 
>Microsoft and
>others plead, "PLEASE don't make illegal copies of this disc," on their 
>CDs?


I have to agrree with this statement.. a friend of mine is a manager of a 
Harvey Norman computer store (in Australia a national chain) and he gets
regular customers buying a CD burner and a couple of hundred blank CD's.

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.

Recently a lady came to me for assistance. She wished to learn how to use the
programs on her Mac Machine. She knew nothing about computers, so I started
at the begining. When I started to show her the programs I asked for the
manuals so that I could show her how to use the manuals.  No manuals.. She
had brought the machine at a IBM dealer with the programs on the machine She
paid a lot for the machine. About 80% of what the machine and the programs
new would have cost. It was evident after I asked a few questions that they
were all pirated (Quark/Photoshop/Illustrator and so on. She did not know and
I did not have the heart to tell her that she had been conned by the IBM
clone dealer, by paying for programs she was not licenced for. I was not 100%
sure so I made like a clam. I showed her what I could and off she went.

If a IBM clone dealers will blatently copy Mac software and selling it what
are they doing with the IBM stuff. The unscrupulous dealers exist. It is a
fact of life.


David Phillips
Vice President/Secretary
Apple Macintosh Association of QLD
Brisbane Australia