"S O'Neill" wrote ...
Richard Crowley wrote:


And Monster and Apple seem to share the marketing concept
that "expensive is better".

I can confirm that "better is more expensive". I disagree that Apples are
merely more expensive. Monster is a different ball park.

Was that an intentional pun? :-))

[competitive, Mac-compatible hardware]

I think they tried that once and the result was flakey hardware.

It was a very startup industry and Apple came down hard on them
before they ever got to the 2nd generation of products. They were
basing designs on extrapolations of what the (unpublished) Apple
specs might have been.

One can certainly argue with varying success that that is one of the IBM
architecture's shortcomings.

Perhaps. But I don't know anyone who denies that hardware
(and software/OS, mostly) open-standards and the resulting
open-market competition are likely the single most significant
factor in the PC's continued, overwhelming market share.

Not denying that closed/proprietary was reputedly IBM/Boca's
original intent, but for whatever reason, they let it slip out of their
control and look where we are now (for better or for worse :-)