[Leica] Apple's delay

[LRZeitlin@aol.com]

Eric writes:

<<Apple pushed back the Dual 2GHZ G5 shipments 10-15 days for us mere 

mortals so they could send 1,100 of them to Virginia Tech which is 

setting them up in a cluster to become the fifth largest Supercomputer 

in the world. Other major educational institutions are getting theirs 

early too. I hear Berkley has had them for a week.>>

Apple has an obligation to the universities that choose the system. In 1984, 
Apple funded the production of the original Mac with the Apple Consortium, a 
group of universities that took orders and advance payments for the Mac. You 
didn't receive your computer until months later. (Just like Hitler did with the 
VW) At that time the Mac 128 cost $2500, about the cost of a G5 today. It came 
with only two bits of software, MacWrite and MacDraw. Still, it worked right 
out of the box and connected to the Imagewriter printer without fooling with 
dip switches. Plug and Play, the Windows innovation in '98, was available on 
the Mac in 1984. When MacBasic came out in '85, we could write our own software 
with a fairly sophisticated interpretive language. Too bad MacBasic was killed 
because of Microsoft's threat to stop developing Mac software. Microsoft was, 
and is, very protective of  the Basic language since it gave Bill his start. 
But at least we got Word and Excel before the other guys.

Pretty much the same thing is happening today. A big order to one site is a 
lot less trouble to implement than dishing the computers out at retail. Two 
more weeks is not too long to wait.

Larry Z

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