Re: The Apple II Now and Forever

[hal@budapest.math.macalstr.edu (Harold Byron Bouma)]

Jim Wong writes
> >
>>	Finally, people would also buy II's because they are a stable machine.  
> >You buy an Apple II and you know that your machine will give you 3-5 years 
> >of good service, and not be "obsolete" in a few months. Home users don't 
> >have $3000 to shell out every 2 years to keep their machines up to speed.
> 
> I can't understand why this non-argument is so pervasive.  It's utterly
> ridiculous.  Just because a new, faster machine comes out, an older one
> isn't necessarily obsolete.  What's wrong with not owning the top
> of the line machine anyway?  I've got a 4 year old Mac IIci that's nowhere
> near the "best" model, but it performs as well as my "top of the line" IIGS.

	Thats my point. Just because a machine doesn't have the latest 586  
doesn't make it stop being useful. However, many people feel that to get their  
machines to do what they want, they have to have the latest hardware and other  
bells and whistles. Our GS's do more now than 5 years ago all because of  
software, and its too bad that more people don't realize that having better  
software is a very good step to getting to the goals that they want.

> >
> >	Also, while Pagemaker is useful, how many average users can afford to  
> >buy a $500+ plus program, hmmm?? Or shell out another good sum for MS Word,  
> >Excel, and a decent painting program? Thats like nearly $1000 right there  
> >alone. Most of the advanced programs for the Mac are not affordable by the  
> >average users. Or unless you *cough* pirate them which of course by the 
> >Mac's GUI is very easy to do. "Click and drag"

> And applications that let you do as much as Word and PageMaker are just as
> expensive on other platforms.  Or nonexistent, as in the case of the IIGS

	Thats not my point. My point was that people brag about how a machine  
has XX program and YY program, like Mathematica. Mathematica costs nearly  
$1,000 or FrameMaker costs nearly as much. Most _Home_ users don't need the  
blazing power of these programs, and take the less advanced programs such as  
Appleworks Classic and Appleworks GS, which does the job that they want to do  
for a fraction of the price. And Appleworks sold very well, it was back in the  
end of the 1980's the 2nd most sold program in history, right behind lotus  
1-2-3 and the only other program to have reached 1 million in sales.

	But the lack of afordable software until recently has been missing on  
the mac. Claris's Clarisworks has been helpful to meet this need, and maybe  
other programs may soon also help fill this void.

| Hal Bouma                            | Send mail to: HBouma@Macalstr.edu    |
| Macalester College, St. Paul, MN.    | and           HBouma@Macalstr.Bitnet |
 \  Things that make you go Hmmm:  System 6, GNO, DreamGrafix, SoundMeister  /
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