Hypercard: the missing link to the web

[Lynn Fredricks]

> Even if Apple gave away Hypercard to people who bought a mac 
> without it, Apple would still be paying for it. In the case 
> of all those other things, the taxpayer is paying for it, or 
> else the company that hired him is paying for it, and 
> actually he is likely himself paying for it because he is 
> probably getting paid less considering he is getting paid in 
> benefits instead of salary.

Costs do not automatically get passed on to customers in the same way. Some
business models work that way in a dollar-to-dollar sense, but most
successful ones (other than oil companies) do not.

Apple used to bundle various products either to differentiate one model from
another (esp after they started differentiating between business and home
use), to keep customers happy in key markets or, to keep customers from
looking at total solutions from competitors. 

The key applications that Apple gave away for free back when were critical
for them to maintain their hold on the education market, esp in the era when
desktop publishing was in its childhood. They could easily afford to do that
because they charged a premium for their hardware/software packages.

Best regards,

Lynn Fredricks
President
Paradigma Software
http://www.paradigmasoft.com

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