Hypercard: the missing link to the web

[Lynn Fredricks]

> If Apple had no included anything for free, (not sure how to 
> measure that) would they have charged less? Hmmm... no way to 
> test it, so it must remain a mystery. 

The point of a bundle is to justify the price you want your target customer
to pay - in Apple's case, they wanted you to pay premium prices (at the
time). Consider why Apple never themselves didn't offer a barebones system.
It was never in their corporate chemistry (certainly never in SJ's) to
pursue that kind of strategy. When he killed off the clone market (which had
players who did that), he could have simply had really basic cheap systems
made inside Apple - but that's contrary to the premium product market
strategy, and more like the white box or "value" market that Dell used to
pursue.

Within each product line (Macs, iPod, iPhone, iPad) you have very clear and
very simple differentiated levels - the low end is cheapest and sports fewer
features, but it offers a complete solution in itself for specific target
market and expected follow up sales of other products. You can only
"configure" away so much from these.

There's an extremely dry (thinking about it makes me reach for lotion!) but
very interesting book called the Strategy and Tactics of Pricing that delves
into the topic of...well, you can guess :-)

Best regards,

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

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