Piracy killed the apple. / Nathan Argument

["Stephen B. Field" <sfield1@ix.netcom.com>]

Supertimer wrote

"And anyone who cares about the future of such a marginal computer system as
the Apple II should feel the same way. Piracy may well have had a hand in
the death of the Apple II as a mass-market computer, but what's done is
done, and there's no sense in shutting the barn door after the horse has run
away"



I feel piracy had very little to do with the death of the apple.  Piracy
effects all systems produced, from the apple, ibm, commodore, playstation,
nintendo, etc.  If there is a way to re-produce it, it will be copied.  Its
the nature of the game.  Apple killed the Apple.

 Back in the late 70's early 80's, the apple was the king the hill.  Almost
all new releases for game software and some business applications came out
on the apple first.  Ports were then released for various other systems such
as the commodore and IBM etc.

Apple, during that time, maintained a very strict attitude of allowing
manufacturing of their computer systems to only themselves rather than the
open system policy of the IBM Compatibles(i.e. apples lawsuit of Franklin).
Apple aggressively protected their rights to exlusive manufactuirng of their
system.  (This was perfectly within their rights, I do not disagree with the
decision to follow this policy).  This enabled apple to make huge profit
margins on the sale of their various apple systems, and more than anything
else killed the market dominance of the system.

They had an excellent policy of selling apple II's to schools all over the
U.S..  Even today there are still hundreds of school districts that still
have an apple or two in use.  This created great potential demand for the
sale of their systems.

What apple failed to do was compete with the price of the IBM clone.  While
apple was exclusively manufacturing apple computers, IBM clone manufacturers
were poping up left and right.   Selling comparable systems for much less
money than an apple system.  While apple sales were still tops in terms of
the sale of computers by brand name,(somewhere between 10%-15% of the
market).    For every 1 apple sold, some 6 pc's sold were IBM clones, the
remainder commodore/amiga etc.

If you are a software manufacturer producing software you are going to
release software for the system with the most potential sales not the best
system.  I remember the transferance that occured in the early 80's as more
and more titles were released for the IBM rather than the apple.

There is no question that apple's IIGS was a much superior machine to the
IBM XT.  However, it was much more expensive and software title availability
for the IBM greatly outnumbered the IIGS.

Apple at the time, did very little to compete against the IBM.  There is no
doubt that the system was superior, but the greed of apple at selling their
machines with markups as high as 100% sealed their doom.

I was very hopeful that apple would start to rebound following there
decision to allow for the manufacture of MAC clone systems.  This alas fell
by the wayside on the return of Steve Jobs to apple.  I think that this was
a huge mistake on his behalf.

It pretty simple, demand for any product will dictate the level of supply.
If apple would allow others to manufacture clones, market share would
increase as a percent of the total PC market.  More software developers
would in turn produce products for the apple community, albiet the MAC
community not the IIGS or IIe community.