🚀 go-pugleaf

Dan Pop (Dan.Pop@mail.cern.ch) wrote:
: In <docjoe-1608950821470001@ip13.wilmington.de.interramp.com> docjoe@interramp.com (Joe Ragosta) writes:

: >The reason it LOOKS like PPC is more expensive is that you don't have a
: >significant clone market, yet. IMO, that's a good thing. Clones don't save
: >that much money (current PowerMac prices are comparable to clone Pentium
: >prices) and create a huge number of headaches.

: BULLSHIT!  Nobody is forced to buy a clone.  If they were only marginally
: cheaper and considerably worse than the brand name hardware, nobody
: would buy them.  When did you hear of the last shortage of brand name PC's?

IBM thinkpads were at one point in pretty short supply.  you often see 
shortages of "bleeding edge" machines.

: If you buy something really cheap, you have all the chances to get a piece
: of crap, but most clones are good enough for their intended lifetime,
: which is pretty short nowadays.  No matter whether you pay $2000 or $5000
: for a bleeding edge PC today, it will be obsolete after one year and you'll
: need a new motherboard, _at least_.  

I dont know any PC users (myself included) who buy new motherboards every 
year.  Maybe I just hang around a poor crowd, I dunno.


: If the market share of the PC's is 10+ times larger than the market share
: of the Mac's, this is primarily due to clones, which forced the big
: name vendors to keep their prices at a competitive level.  Moreover, the
: current low prices of the Mac's are due to the competition created by the
: PC clones, which threatened the very existence of Apple, which was forced
: to abandon a decade of ludicrously high pricing policy.

I agree, Comptetition is a good thing.

: Saying that not having a significant clone market is a good thing is a
: proof of sheer stupidity.  Or are you missing the times when a dog slow
: Mac used to cost a fortune?

Uhhhh no... no...those "dog slow" macs are only dog slow when compared to 
today's machines.  For example when Apple was using a 68020 (dog slow by 
today's standard)  So were these guys (there are more I'm sure): Hewlett 
Packard, Silicon Graphics, Apollo, Sun, NeXT.  Try comparing the price 
of a 68020 mac to one of those machines.  The mac was much cheaper.  AS a 
comparison these guys used the 80286 (which is slower than a 68020): IBM 
and it's clone makers uhhh I cant think of any others. You?

I agree the price of macs was one of the primary resons behind apple's 
low market share but you were getting a better machine. 


: Dan
: --
: Dan Pop
: CERN, CN Division
: Email: Dan.Pop@mail.cern.ch 
: Mail:  CERN - PPE, Bat. 31 R-004, CH-1211 Geneve 23, Switzerland

--


*******************************************************************************
Scott L. Parrish        Graduate Student
Dept. Of Zoology        parrisc@mail.auburn.edu         WAR EAGLE!
Auburn University       parrisc@freenet.fsu.edu, scottp@iris.ag.auburn.edu
*******************************************************************************