Subject: Apple Shafts America; or, The Computer For the Rich of Us Author: cs4911ay@unm-cvax.UUCP Date: 18 Sep 1984 1:21 pm [It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a -- ] The following is a massive diatribe levelled at Steve Jobs and his band of merry highwaymen down in Cupertino. Apple fans with sensitive constitutions, consider yourselves warned. I just received news concerning the Fat Mac, of which we have all heard so much: the Macintosh, with 512K. It has been released and is on its way, delivery date approximately three weeks (or thereabouts; delivery dates haven't been Apple's strong point lately). I also received news about its price. Brace yourselves. $995. Yes, you read right: that's nine hundred ninety-five big ones, to be removed deftly from your wallet and placed just as deftly into theirs. All that on top of the $2495 (or $2195, if you happened to get it in one of the recent sales that have started to spring up here and there) which all us Macfans have already shelled out. [Background: My friends and I who purchased Macs are not the businessmen-types that the Mac seems to be aimed at. We are but simple college students, not fortunate enough (or rich enough, as the case may be) to attend one of the schools in the Apple University Consortium, and get our Macs for dirt cheap. No, we go to the University of New Mexico, in the Land of Enchantment (Land of Enchantment? You've got to be kidding. Do you know what it feels like to live in one of the few places in the civilized world where you can still catch the bubonic plague? The PLAGUE, for God's sake!!!). Therefore, we had to spring for the big bucks, and don't get off on this account. OK, back to righteous indignation.] They have got to be kidding! When the Mac was first announced, the price was $1995; not bad, considering what you get in a Mac. Then, when it finally saw the light of day, filtered through display windows, the price had somehow escalated to $2495 -- for the bare-bones system, of course. Steep, but still within the range of those of us fortunate enough to have that kind of cash handy or to have a sympathetic loan officer. This, of course, was the 128K Mac; the fully-realized Mac was on its way, by the end of the year, just hang on, we'll get it to you, 512K, Real Soon Now, wow, gosh ... Well, they sure got it to us, all right. For the measly sum of damn near a thousand bucks extra, we plebes can get ourselves the system that should have come out in the first place. So now Apple has us all over a barrel. We all sprung our $2995 for the Mac and the printer, and shortly afterwards realized that the thing was absolutely useless without the second disk drive. So, another $495 went down the drain. Next comes the realization that with the basic 128K, the user is left with too little memory to accomplish anything significant. So, another $995 down the tubes. Thus Steve Jobs' vision of the computer that anyone can use has become the computer that no one can afford, because a workable system sells for $4485. What a bargain! Looks like Steve & Co. are standing by to rake in the big bucks; The Rest of Us can all bend over and grab our ankles. It's coming in dry, folks; no Vaseline on this one. Now, damn it, I really like the Mac -- I really do. It's got a few rough spots, but nothing a little software and minor hardware changes couldn't fix. That's what the Fat Mac was supposed to be all about, at least as far as hardware went. I, personally, wouldn't own anything else, certainly not another faceless, amorphous blob from the IBM PC CloneMakers. All in all, I think it's the best thing to hit the market since -- well, since the Apple II. And buying Apple is like buying Hewlett-Packard: once you buy one, you tend to stick with it. At least, I do, and I'm sure there's a lot of people out there like me. But pulling little stunts like this is not going to earn old Stevie Boy any new friends. I can hear Jerry Pournelle cackling away in the depths of Chaos Manor now, chortling, "I told you so!" Oh, sure, eventually the price of the changeover will probably drop -- maybe to $500. The point is, however, that it shouldn't have to. $500 is the price they should be charging now -- and even that's excessive. They should properly be giving the damn thing away for the price of labor, since the price hike in the beginning covers what the upgrade should be costing now. But they won't. And by delivering yet another shaft to the long-suffering-but-loyal followers of the Macintosh, Apple has shown that, in the end, they're not that much different from any other computer company, that they don't really give a damn about the end-user, and that the final arbiter is, as we all suspected but hoped against hope was not true, the bottom line on the ledger books. I guess 1984 is a little more like _1984_ than we might've hoped. From The Rest of Us to Apple: one extremely loud and heartfelt Bronx cheer. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Mike Conley @ University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. {ucbvax!unmvax!cvax:cs4911ay} $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ |
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