An Apple spokeswoman was quoted in MacWEEK as saying, "We found that people running System 7 [with 2 MB of RAM] were restricted to one application and a modest-size file." I'm nominating this for the understatement of the month, if not the year. It was obvious to absolutely everyone almost immediately that a 2 MB Classic was only going to run a single program with a small file and no background printing or cool extensions. I think some Apple honchos should be forced to use PageMaker 4.0 on a 2 MB Classic, and then we'll see some faster Macs with more memory on the low end.
As it stands, Apple now admits that most people would really prefer more memory in a Classic, so Apple has introduced some new configurations of the Classic and LC with 4 MB of RAM and 40 MB hard drives. I'm not sure how happy dealers are going to be about the new configurations, since the new machines will be $150 more than the old 2 MB configurations. With RAM selling for about $36 per MB these days, a dealer would do better to pop in some cheap RAM rather than stock Apple's pre-configured machines. Then again, I don't know how Apple charges the dealers, so it might not be a big deal.
The funny part is that the 2 MB configurations will still be sold, although they will be "repositioned" in comparison to the machines with more than 2 MB. As my friend Charles Wheeler commented when I mentioned this to him, the 2 MB Classics should be repositioned at Toys 'R Us. RAM is cheap, Apple.
Information from:
Mark H. Anbinder -- mha@baka.ithaca.ny.us