Apple's Overcharging and Randy's Inability to see its faults... (was re Phonenet)

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <5r7mgt$8fs$1@europa.frii.com>,
Randy Shackelford <shack@deimos.frii.com> wrote:
>>[Apple gouging customers? Nah, that's never been a problem of
>>theirs whatsoever...]

>More typical uninformed, anti-Apple Nathanrant. 

   Did you have those rose colored glasses surgically implanted in
your face, or are you naturally this oblivious of the truth? Oooh,
claiming that I'm anti-Apple when I haven't offered up my fair
sacrifice of lies, halftruths, misinformation, and general
whitewashing of the *SACRED* company that none dare speak ill
of. Sorry, I call things as they are: APPLE OVERCHARGES. They've
overcharged continually in the past, and are still overpriced.

   Apple made a killing on the Apple II and peripherals (selling the
Disk ][ initially for $500, parts cost of initially $140 then $80 is
just one of many examples), then Macs and peripherals. Selling
Imagewriter IIs for $450 to schools a few years ago when HP Deskjets
were cheaper and higher quality, nah, perfectly reasonable. Five
years, they realized their Mac prices were way too high, so they
dropped them a bit. Even now, hardware with the fruity logo is way too
expensive-- a MacConnection catalog from 2 months ago lists a 1.2GB
fruity-logo'd SCSI HD; on the same page, there's another drive with
the same mechanism for $329, but not from the all-powerful,
enlightened saviors of the world. 

   Finally, the clones come along and are cheaper. Brainwashed idiots
claim "the cases on the clones are too ugly" and go along with the
overpriced boxes with the little fruity logo on front. You, Sir, are a
textbook example of the perfect mindnumbed consumer, pointed by the
marketing department down a narrow rut in the road, unwilling to get
your face out of the gutter. The advertising departments would just
*LOVE* everyone to be as narrowminded as these Mac-worshipers have
become, while they take a vacuum cleaner to your wallets. [This
explains perfectly your trying to become a collector of used stuff and
saying "those prices are too high"-- simply because the lion's share
has already been paid to the sacred fruit.]

   Step 1 of for recovering Macpukes: ADMIT THERE IS A PROBLEM. However,
it's going to take a major clue-by-four blow to the head to remove
that irrational Apple-worship of yours. 

>And of course it's neither here nor there since when was the last
>time you saw real localtalk boxes for sale?

   Oooh, cheezy attempt at post-rationalization detected! "Nobody's
buying that one item anymore, so let's just try and forget about this
shameful episode from Apple's past, ok?" BZZZZT! Whaddya take me for,
a sucker with a short memory? [And before you try and go senile on all
of us and wax nostalgic about the good old days when Mac and Apple II
types hung out on the same newsgroup, smell the coffee, look at the
wall calendar and notice it's 19_9_7]

   Deal with the facts: you're paying extra to watch the parade and
getting VERY defensive (some part of your mind admits it, but you're
striking out in fear that the rest of you might wake up one day) about
the voices crying out "The Emperor Has No Clothes!"

Nathan Mates

--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein