Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site tesla.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!vaxine!wjh12!genrad!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxl!ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!uw-beaver!cornell!tesla!kinch From: kinch@tesla.UUCP (Richard Kinch) Newsgroups: net.micro.apple Subject: Re: Apple University Consortium Message-ID: <317@tesla.UUCP> Date: Sat, 11-Feb-84 22:25:19 EST Article-I.D.: tesla.317 Posted: Sat Feb 11 22:25:19 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 15-Feb-84 00:34:38 EST Organization: Cornell Electrical Eng. Lines: 25 Regarding the Apple University Consortium: According to Computer Systems News (national trade newspaper), the Macintosh and Lisa systems will not be available at the academic discounts until late this summer. Comment: That's a long time relative to the competition to be announcing a price/product point. The strategy with such prom- ises usually is to stall potential purchasers of competitive equipment. But the last few years shows that not even IBM is to be believed in their solemn promises of what, when and how much. The optimal economic arrangement would be to price the same com- puter proportionally to the worth to the consumer, rather than a fixed price for all customers. That's what the airlines approxi- mate with their artificial travel restrictions on budget fares. Unfortunately, the US law says you have to sell identical manufactured goods at the same price to everybody, no matter how the utility of your product varies among your customers. One of the few legal schemes to get around this is to sell computers at "academic" prices. The restriction is artificial, but it allows more computers to be sold to those who wouldn't buy at "regular" price, while requiring "regular" price from most of those who would be willing to pay more than the "academic" price.