Re: Applied Engineering (was: Re: Beagle Brothers

[sheldon@atlcom.net (Sheldon Simms)]

In article <32AE62D2.491F@primenet.com>, "Charles P. Hobbs"
<transit@primenet.com> wrote:

> Paul Schultz wrote:
> [...] 
> > Applied Engineering also turned solely to the Mac (mainly accellerators)
> > and also succumbed to the increased competition found in the Mac
> > market and went bankrupt a few years back.
> > 
> Didn't they dabble with Amiga products too (like a 3.5 disk drive
> or something like that?)

I don't know, but they didn't choose their market well. They decided to
enter the Mac marketplace as an manufacturer of accelerators. This was
probably the most brutally competitive segment of the mac-peripheral
market at that time with slow Macs driving people to accelerators and
many long standing and experienced companies already in the market.

As I recall, from magazine ads and the like, AE first came in charging
their Apple II (high) prices and claiming they were the highest quality
etc, etc. Companies like Daystar Digital cleaned their clock. Then they
took the opposite approach and tried to become the low-price leader for
Mac accelerators. Problem is, so were 20 other companies.

Of course hindsight is 20/20. But I think they would have done better
if they had sold ADB keyboards, mice, and the like. At the time your
choices were Apple, Apple and Apple - all expensive. AE could have
set prices high, as long as they were 20% below Apple, and would have
been in the enviable position of having the lowest price and a big
profit margin at the same time.

Of course it was right around this time that I bought my Ramworks card.
They were having a "sale" on the 256k version. I called them up and
said I was interested in the card but I wanted the 1mb version. However,
I didn't want to pay another $200 for 756kb RAM. Would they sell me
the 1Mb version at the 256kb price plus $50? Sorry, we can't do that,
the 1Mb version is $xxx (whatever it was). I guess they were trying to
bait people with the 256kb card and then stick it to them to upgrade the
RAM. Me? I bought the 256kb and then went out and bought the rest of
the memory for $20 at a computer store.

-Sheldon

-- 
W. Sheldon Simms III - sheldon@atlcom.net