Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-lcc!pyramid!gould9!joel 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 {cbosgd, ihnp4, pyramid, sdcsvax, ucla-cs} !gould9!joel joel%gould9.uucp@NOSC.ARPA