27 Jun
2012
27 Jun
'12
10:38 a.m.
On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 12:43 PM, David Riley <fraveydank at gmail.com> wrote:
I don't recall much about the pricing. ?Plenty of
my friends had C64s...
The C-64 came out in the Fall of 1982 for $595 plus $595 for the 1541
disk. I think a lot of machines at that price point sold with
cassette. I don't recall the exact date, but somewhat quickly, the
prices fell to $395 for CPU and for the drive. Eventually, of course,
the CPUs were selling for $99 at toy stores, but that was past the day
when the IBM Compatible had made major inroads into the home in the
US.
When a C-64+1541 was $1200, a typical Apple II configuration was about
$2200-$2400. When the C-64 rig had dropped below $1000, the prices on
Apple II systems were essentially unchanged.
But there was a huge push to get Apples in schools
here, helped by
the fact that the state of Minnesota paid for an awful lot of Apple
II software to be developed (most of my memories of the Apple II
aside from learning BASIC were from MECC educational games).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECC
I know of MECC, but my memory from the day (not living in Minnesota)
was that Apple was extremely generous with their Apples-in-schools
program and that was also part of keeping the retail prices high - to
keep the tax credit value of the discounted/donated systems far above
manufacturing cost. As long as the demand stayed high enough for what
retail over-the-counter sales they got (and they did get them since so
many kids knew Apple that when their parents considered getting a
computer for Johnny, the choice was obvious), there was no incentive
to lower prices. Of course things changed later, but in the
mid-to-late-80s, that was the dynamic. I do believe that this
scenario kept Apple IIe and Apple IIgs prices much higher than other
"home" systems, or at least those machines below the IBM and IBM
Compatible market (8-bit, predominantly).
-ethan