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From: joel@gould9.UUCP (Joel West)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Should 64K ROMs be supported?
Message-ID: <945@gould9.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 20-Dec-86 13:35:50 EST
Article-I.D.: gould9.945
Posted: Sat Dec 20 13:35:50 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Dec-86 22:00:48 EST
References: <476@runx.OZ> <781@rosevax.UUCP>
Organization: Western Software Technology, Vista, CA
Lines: 39

In article <781@rosevax.UUCP>, hogan@rosevax.UUCP (Andy Hogan) writes:
> Perhaps it would help if one of the VERY nice people from Apple who
> have been contributing to this net could share some estimate of how
> many 'old' machines there still are out there.

Unfortunately, the people at Apple who are on this net are technical,
and that is a marketing question.  Needless to say, releasing marketing
info (even if they had it) from a technical division would not be a
good way to improve one's tenure.

The estimate I heard (not directly from Apple) was that at the end
of 1986, the new ROM's would outnumber the old ROM's.  We do know
that the Mac sold about 250,000 units in the first year.  The second
year was probably less, certainly sales were 'sluggish'.  Once the
Mac Plus was introduced, sales (including the 512ke) really took off.
(I believe the ratio given in an earlier Delphi digest was Plus:512ke at
3:1 or 2:1).  In short, new Mac sales in 1986 equal previous years
put together.  This ignore upgrades, which is good, since upgrades
are now (at least in San Diego) very hard to get.

Of course, the new workstations will support all the features of the
128k ROM.  And anyone who has an old-ROM machine who's too cheap to
upgrade to a 800k internal disk drive, may be too cheap to buy a
$200 or $300 piece of software.  (Nothing personal, send hate mail
to /dev/null)  It's my personal observation that the software purchase 
curve for most machines peaks in the first 6 months after acquisitionn, 
and tails off after that, when the owner is all set up and satisfied.

My view is that by next summer, those who release software for certain
vertical markets can safely ignore old-ROM machines.  Of course, no
one wants to deliberately lose sales from a market segment, and you
shouldn't do this unless there's a good technical reason to do so.
But how important is it to develop software for a 48k Apple II+ or a 
128k IBM PC nowadays, even if there were zillions of them sold?
-- 
	Joel West			     MCI Mail: 282-8879
	Western Software Technology, POB 2733, Vista, CA  92083
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