Even back around 2002, PowerBooks were still much more expensive than regular commodity laptops. I guess there’s still a bit of a premium for MacBook Pros, but they’ve evened out too. Wonder if the iPod’s success has anything to do with it.
The Amiga 1000 was a far better machine than the original Mac. No comparison. Not even close! 32-bit preemptive, multi-tasking GUI, dedicated video. Too bad Commodore blew it with the Amiga line, otherwise we may have better choices today.
Inflation doesn’t apply normally to computers. In general, it’s been my experience that any given computer’s price DROPS about half in every year. As a computer, that Apple computer should have been priced asymptotically at ZERO. However, as a collectible, I’m sure the price was reasonable. But, then again, once the proud owners opened the package, it became valueless as a collectible (well, maybe not valueless – but, it lost a LOT of its value).
There was no reason for them to open that package. It must be nice to have that kind of money to just flush down the toilet.
Apple hardware is not as affordable as comparable systems with other software. I can take a two year old PC, install Linux on it along with compiz and have a system that is just as stable and as cool as a mac - for a third of the price…
Yeah, I would have to disagree with Mo, and agree with Tim (and therefore Jeff)… Macs have always represented the “rich” alternative. People with MacIntosh, or other more recent Apple products, paid much much more for their hardware than PC people… as someone who recently capped off a 20-year career as a Graphic Designer, the Apple/PC war has been a part of my life for quite some time.
Usually, an Apple product has equated to roughly double the cost of an equivelant PC. This takes into account the times when the “latest” apple contained hardware that was as much as a year behind the modular harware available for the construction of a PC.
Unfortunately, Graphics people are NOT computer people, and most of the Graphics industry prefer the plug-and-go, no-thinkum approach, where they were trained to do their job (ie use photoshop, or w/e) and not to use a computer. Why would anyone need more than one mouse button? I will pay double for my mouse to make sure it has one button!
As a computer guy, it has been very frustrating trying to convince bean-counters and business people of 3 things;
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Macs DO crash (especially if you plug hardware into them that was not manufactured by Apple … say, a WACOM graphics tablet?!?, oh, you NEVER see THOSE in the graphics industry…)
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Macs CAN play games (although not very good ones, and not very well)
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PCs are just as capable as making graphics and sounds as anything by Apple… in fact, if you spend the same amount of money on the graphics card or audio card, PCs are MORE capable for less money. (since the mouse has more buttons, that can do cool things like open menus).
oh yeah, 5 things…
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Apples are NOT more stable than PCs just because they run off a BSD platform… especially not if you install MSOffice, and MS Explorer on them
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If you plug alien hardware and run microsoft products on a macintosh, you are NOT “exploiting” a “better answer”. You ARE taking a piece of hardware that is a year behind and cost twice as much as a PC, in order to enjoy EXACTLY the same set of problems… compounded by the lack of support available, compaired to doing the same thing on a PC.
Even back in the day, Apple computers were expensive. The Apple ][ was a lot more expensive than a Commodore 64, TRS 80 or Atari computer. (And they had lower case!) It did have cheap, high capacity disk drives though.
Hey Now Jeff,
Great story, nice to hear. I’m glad my pop keep our old TI 99/4a in our attic, however I’ll never sell it. Vintage computers are fun to see.
Coding Horror Fan,
Catto
How much would I pay for a zx80, a cassette player and Hungry Horrace?
sweet
the real question is why didn’t the person who had it in the first place open it?
i just want to high five this guy
The only reason I still don’t own an Apple: $$$$$.
Macs sold a lot into the business market the first decade. At Boeing, the engineers got PCs (shared) and the managers got Macs (for themselves). Macs were heavily used for word processing, as the best graphical version of Word was on that platform in the 80s and early 90s. Boeing used Macs to develop proposal documents, such as for the billion-dollar LRAACA program.
And the flood of PC-vs-Mac comments begin…
To be fair to history…
In early 1990, Apple intro’d 3 new Macs: IIsi, LC and Classic. All three were positioned as “value” Macs, with the LC being a very aggressive color model, the Classic being a traditional small footprint BW model and the IIsi the most powerful of the three. I think retail for a Classic was $999…which at the time was an amazing price for a Mac, even if it was only a 68K processor and all that. Over the years, all three recieved necessary upgrades to CPU and innards, just like Macs do today. Over the years, the company that I was working for at the time distributed hundreds of thousands of these machines to computer resellers and individual buyers.
But all of these were pre-Jobs and really Apple’s first attempt at being a little more value conscience. Apple has always been priced higher than the competition, if taken exclusively at the sum of the parts kind of comparison. The dreaded “ease-of-use” and cost of ownership angles do not factor into a simple cost comparison. Whether you choose to buy into that type of logic is up to you, as many people see no value in the “extra” goodness that Apple computers typically include.
We still have a 16 bit Apple Mac running Word from the 90’s…
Any chance anybody is still using an equivelant PC from that era…?
I think not …
If you buy quality it does count.
The picture of that poor soul lovingly hugging a piece of hardware is very disturbing.
High margins…
That’s how they won the financial battle to get rich but lost the war for OSs to Microsoft.
In the places where I worked, the UTC’s, Aetna’s, Traveler’s and GE’s of the world, Mac’s wound up on the desks of Graphic Designers, High Ranking executives (probably because they were cool looking since those people in those days rarely if ever touched a keyboard).
For the average Joe, the PC was their only choice, primarily because IT wanted it that way. In some companies, the influence of IBM was so great that not even clones made it through the door.
That, coupled with the high price, squarely put the Mac in primarily the Publishing nitch.
If it wasn’t for PageMaker and the LaserWriter, I fear the Mac would have withered on the tree.
Oh, by the way, I also worked for Apple in the mid 80’s…
How much for a 20-year-old laptop?! I am getting so tired of the Apple “snob” appeal. What else would motivate someone to pay that kind of money for something that would otherwise sell on EBay for 20 bucks? That is no place for a computer for the masses. I will probably never own one.
For those interested you can purchase a working APPLE IIC for under $100. The extra $2453 was for it being unopened.
I think I will save up my money for an unopened Zenith Luggable so I can poor some gasoline over light it up and new have to actually see one again.
So, what does Apple //c mean? Do you really mean Apple iic? Why are you writing it that way, just don’t want peeps to find this page via Google?