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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.