On 22/10/2007, at 11:19 PM, Alex wrote:
I may be wrong but I believe that Macs were sold at UWA in the 70s
for basically close to cost to students. Obviously, Macs were
really popular for that reason and because they were so far ahead
of Windows at that time.
I was a student at UWA during the first few years after the Mac's
release in 1984 and at the time they were still very expensive even
with the education discount - trust me on this. My family bought an
educ discount 512k Mac, dot-matrix Imagewriter and external 400k
floppy drive for around $4,000 in 1985 from the Apple uni consortium
shop at UWA and my Mac II with 1MB of RAM, twin floppies and no hard
disk cost me $8,000 in 1987 also from UWA. After kicking Steve Jobs
out, John Sculley and Jean Louise Gasse for most of those years
followed a very premium pricing policy which made them FAR more
expensive than the competition.
However, this great strategy by Apple did not seem to translate
into the "real" world where businesses were sold on Windows. Could
this have been caused by Apple's pricing policy outside of the Uni
environment? I would have thought that the students going out into
the business world would drag Apple with them.
Even at the height of Mac popularity, I never saw anything on campus
at UWA or Curtin like the interest students, the general population
and my fellow Windows-indoctrinated colleagues are now showing in
Macs. In the latest uni student survey below, Apple is second only
to Dell with 23% owning Macs but the figures regarding intent to
purchase are mind-boggling: 44% say their next machine will be a
Mac. I was founding vice president of the University Macintosh Users
Club (UMUC) based at UWA from around 1985-87 and interest amongst
fellow students was *never* remotely in that league.
Is the latest upswing for Apple a case of riding on the coattail of
the iPod, which was a masterstroke of design & invention?
The free iPod with every Mac purchase has undoubtedly helped in the
education market, but a multiplicity of other factors have also
contributed: the move to intel and subsequent Boot Camp and
virtualisation compatibility which reduces the perceived risk of
switching close to zero, the plethora of "alpha geeks" and prominent
bloggers who have switched, the backlash from Vista's problematic
debut, the safe harbour from malware of the Mac platform, as well as
more reasonable pricing etc.
Here's more detail on the Student survey:
http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/10/22/apple.second.with.students/
"Apple No. 2 behind Dell in student PC survey
SurveyU.com recently surveyed one thousand students about which
computer they relied on for their schoolwork. According to the
survey, Dell is the most popular, with Apple coming in second, but
the results show that Apple is poised to take first place. With 23
percent of the vote, Apple is ten points behind Dell, but maintains a
seven point lead on the next runner-up, Hewlett-Packard, even when
taking into account the PC manufacturer's daughter companies --
Compaq and VooDoo. Apple has a large lead, however, in the other
polled statistics, with 44 percent of students saying their next
machine would be an Apple, and more than 80 percent of Apple users
bought their computers through the company's student program. Dell
took second place in those particular categories, with only 21
percent saying that they would subsequently by a Dell and 30 percent
saying their purchased their computer through the student discount
program. respectively.
"One of the things that Apple and Dell have going for them, according
to the survey, is a well-designed student purchase program, whereas
the other manufacturers -- HP, Acer, Toshiba, Sony, and all of their
subsidiaries -- lack a solid program.
"SurveyU.com found that a typical US college student spends an
average of $1290, and that the students were biased towards cost-
effective, consumer-grade laptops, with four out of five students
owning a portable computer versus a desktop model.
"Apple's "secret" weapon in the race to be number one in education
rests on the shoulders of the venerable iPod, SurveyU.com discovers.
Thanks to the recent iPod promotion -- where students who bought a
new Mac would receive a iPod nano -- Apple has gained a lot of market
share and only stands to gain more, according to statistics. This,
together with iTunes U and the newly announced "Beyond Campus", has
shown how deeply committed Apple is to the collective student body."
-Mart
------------------------------------
Martin Hill
email: mart "at" ozmac.com
homepages: http://mart.ozmac.com
Mb: 0401-103-194 hm: (08)9314-5242
------------------------------------
Martin Hill
email: mart "at" ozmac.com
homepages: http://mart.ozmac.com
Mb: 0401-103-194 hm: (08)9314-5242
-- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List --
Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml>
Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml>
Unsubscribe - <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
