Prices Fall As Apple Looks To Boost Its Market Share
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday March 18, 1991
Two new low-priced high-quality printers have been introduced by Apple, which has also slashed thousands of dollars from some existing lines as it tries harder to boost its personal computer sales.
The latest moves are every bit as important to Apple's future as the introduction last October of the low-price Macintosh Classic and LC models.
They radically lower the cost of laser-quality printing - by 70 per cent in Apple's calculation - making near typeset-quality output available for the first time to every Mac user.
And they will undoubtedly force other printer manufacturers to cut their prices: watch this space.
Apple's new printers are the $1,095 StyleWriter (not, in fact, a laser printer but an inkjet model, based on the same innards as Canon's very successful "Little Squirt" BJ-10 Bubblejet); and the $2,295 Personal Laserwriter LS. These prices include tax.
Both models are available immediately, though supplies of the StyleWriter are likely to be limited for the first few months.
More on the natty little StyleWriter in a moment. First, a quick look at Apple's price cuts on all major peripherals, including scanners, CD-ROM players, hard disk drives and memory upgrades as well as printers.
The top-end laser printer, the 8-pages-per-minute LaserWriter IINTX, sheds 19 per cent of its price, dropping from $9,495 to $7,995. Not bad for a printer that one year ago was enjoying good sales at a shade under $13,000.
The mid-range LaserWriter IINT, previously $7,395, will now sell for$6,495. The IINT, like its more expensive relative, is a good choice for networks. It has a slower chip than the IINTX, resulting in slower printing of documents, but can be upgraded for $2,000.
The Personal LaserWriter NT drops from $4,995 to $4,495. And the Personal LaserWriter SC sheds $600 to $2,995.
These two models are aimed at individual users rather than networks: the major difference is that the higher-priced NT model uses the PostScript page description language required for desktop publishing; the SC uses Apple's more limited QuickDraw technology.
The SC's future, even at its new low price, may be equally limited in view of the release of the all-new Personal LaserWriter LS, another QuickDraw model which undercuts the LC by $700.
The price-slashing has been extended to other peripherals. Apple's CD-ROM reader, which has not been a big seller, is down 25 per cent from $1,995 to$1,495. The AppleScanner, used to scan text or images into a Macintosh, drops a neat $1,000 - from $2,995 to $1,995.
The biggest reductions, on a percentage basis, have been reserved for Apple's range of eight hard disk drives - down 36 to 40 per cent. Typical is the external 40-megabyte HD SC 40 model, cut from $2,145 to $1,295.
The cost of a 160-meg drive, Apple's biggest, drops a cool $1,600 from$4,645 to $2,995.
The cost of an Apple memory upgrade is also down by an average 40 per cent. A 2-meg memory expansion kit, previously $595, is down to $350; a 4-meg kit is cut from $1,195 to $695.
These kits are likely to be very popular when Apple introduces its new System 7.0 operating software around mid-year. However, they are still about twice the price of similar upgrades bought from third-party sources.
It's clear that the main impetus for the reductions is Apple's drive to find new and wider markets for the Macintosh.
Of all these moves, the introduction of the $1,095 StyleWriter is probably the most significant.
For only $200 more than Apple's dot matrix ImageWriter, it produces something close to laser printer quality, yet it takes up a lot less desk space.
The StyleWriter has a separate printer body and sheet feeder, which can hold up to 50 A4 pages. The two simply click together, or you can leave the sheet feeder off and feed single pages or envelopes through manually.
You can use any paper, though the sheet feeder doesn't seem to like very thin sheets.
The StyleWriter is by no means silent. It makes buzzing and clicking noises, which are quite noticeable though not as intrusive as the ImageWriter
Technically, printing resolution of 360 dots per inch exceeds most laser printers' 300dpi. In practice, the type does not look as good as laser output, but it certainly produces documents that most people would regard as classy.
The printer is the first to use Apple's new TrueType technology, which will be introduced to all Macs later in the year with the launch of System 7.0.
Four TrueType font families - Times, Helvetica, Courier and Symbol - are included with the StyleWriter. More will be available later.
One drawback of the StyleWriter is that it is s-l-o-w - agonisingly so in some cases.
Apple claims an average page prints in one minute in draft mode, or up to two minutes for best-quality printouts.
Unlike the Canon BJ-10e, which is a battery-powered portable model, the StyleWriter needs connection to household power via a transformer. It's also bulkier than the BJ-10, which is slim enough to fit inside a briefcase.
© 1991 Sydney Morning Herald