And its very nicely made too!
And really, its very good value. Just consider some older prices. yep - I have price lists!!
I even have Australian dealership buy prices for one year! But I'll stick to retail prices. Lets try 1990. Now just imagine if you had bought erhh ... Apple shares instead of a computer in 1990 - you would have done rather well. Then again, I met on Dunk Island (the most beautiful tropical island in Australia that was not rebuilt after its staff accomodation was wrecked in a cyclone). The island has its own river and rain forest, the flora and vegetation is extraordinary. I met there in 1988, the lawyer who incorporated Apple. He met jobs in his garage! He got paid $16,000 - but Jobs begged him to take the shares. He said the shares were a much much better deal, they'd make him rich! This gentleman had left a top law firm in New York, and setup in Silicon Valley - and Jobs was his first "real" client. He needed that $16,000. So he took the cash and his firm then had over 70 Bar passed lawyers in it, plus everyone. His daughter was at Harvard. He did OK. Alright - if he'd taken the shares, I guess he could have flown out in his own biz jet! But then, if he'd have sold those shares when I met him in 1988, that would also have cost him a fortune ... One has to be practical!!
And Dunk Island is for sale at the moment - the price is only $Au30 million. That's just $US21 million. A complete steal ... I just hope its not bought by the Chinese, who are look they they are putting us into the "enemy" category.
And in the USA, a 5,1 with duel 2.66Hz CPUs, cost $4,999 in 2010. That made the 2.4 one a bargain, but then, it had only one GPU ...
OK the retail prices in Australia, 30 years ago:
Firstly, the good news: you could buy a Mac SE for with a mouse (but the keyboard cost extra, the Apple keyboard was $240, but the Apple Keyboard II was just $440. I am using a later Apple keyboard - circa 2002 - its gone yellowish, but it sure still types really well. The Mac SE/30 (a souped up Macintosh Classic but with a hard disk and a 68030 CPU and also with a floating point 68882 Co-processor, 4 MB of RAM and 80 MB hard drive - just $Au8,695.
Top of the tree was the Macintosh Fx. Same processor as the Mac SE but it ran at 40Hz. Wow. It could come optioned with a 160 MB hard disk. With a two page wide grey scale screen bundle, only $23,525. They were chucking the superceded Laserwriters out then - just $3,595 for the bottom end SC model. The NT was 4,995. Opt for the better Laserwriter II NTX model - just $9,495. It came though with 2MB of RAM. It could take 12 MB. Just buy some extra RAM modules. A 4MB RAM module cost just $1,550. So add $4,700 to get to 12 MB RAM. Why not??
