MCL sells Macs!

[parr@attica.berkeley.edu (Ron Parr)]

MCL is the only reason that I purchased my Mac.  I wonder if Apple
has considered the dollar value of Apple products that are sold just
because MCL exists.

Apple should realize that people who buy Macs to run MCL are not typical
Mac customers.  They aren't Mac fanatics; they *tolerate* the Mac so
they can run Lisp quickly on an inexpensive machine.

As the cost of Unix and Windows based machines drops while the performance
of these machines improves, MCL will lose its edge unless it is upgraded
to produce native PPC code.  THIS MEANS THAT APPLE WILL LOSE HARDWARE
SALES, not just Macs, but printers, monitors, etc.  They will also lose
sales of non-MCL software that MCL customers would add to their machines.

In abandoning MCL (which is essentially what Apple is doing), Apple is
not just abandoning a low-profit product, it is abandoning hardware and
software sales to an entire market segment.  This seems like a very
foolish decision.

Ron Parr
parr@cs.berkeley.edu