Mathematica pricing gouging on Sun favors Mac II

[Alfred Hartmann]

Here at MCC we have been evaluating a demonstration copy of Mathematica on
our Sun 3's, 4's, and 386i's.  [The following are my personal comments and
do not reflect the official views of MCC.]  We had originally contacted
Wolfram Research Inc. (WRI) who told us they sold Macintosh versions for
$499, but for Sun versions we needed to go through Sun.  We obtained a
demonstration copy from Sun, and after deciding to purchase the product we
put an order in with Sun.  But, Sun didn't have the pricing and, after a
flurry of confusion, finally told us to deal directly with WRI.  Well,
hold onto your checkbooks, gang, but WRI quoted us a price for the Sun of
$2400, which according to my Mathematica demo copy is

	In[6]:= N[2400/499]

	Out[6]= 4.80962

times the Mac price!  So, perceiving the Sun user community to be an elite
group of suckers, we get to pay 4.8X the going price.  Now, mind you, the
Mac version has a better front-end than the Sun version (which just runs
in a cmdtool window).  Quoting from the manual,

	"The Mathematica front end on the Macintosh takes advantage
	of the Macintosh's graphical capabilities.  On the Macintosh,
	for example, the Mathematica front end lets you use graphical
	tools to manipulate your input and output, and to insert extra
	text. . . . [supporting] 'notebooks', which contain a mixture
	of text, graphics and Mathematica definitions.  There is a
	growing library of Mathematica notebooks which serve as 'live
	textbooks' on a variety of different topics.  You can read the
	text in a notebook to learn about a topic, and then use the
	Mathematica definitions in the notebook to do calculations."


So, for 4.80962X the Mac price, you can run a less functional version
right on your very own Sun.  Wow, what a deal!  Well, to make it less
painful there is a discount possibility.  Since Sun users tend to run in
herds (like sheep), ten orders from the same herd entitles one to a
whopping 5% discount, which brings the total premium down to only

	In[7]:= 0.95 2400/499

	Out[7]= 4.56914

times the Mac price.  Baaaa-aa-aaaa, say the fleeced.  
Well, the story continues.  One of the groups here at MCC is currently
running Sun 3's, but has an order in for SparcStation 1's (you know,
the PC-priced Sun that still runs the workstation-priced $$$oftware).
Can we buy Sun 3 copies now and upgrade to Sun 4 copies when the
SparcStations come in?  Sure, no problem--upgrades are a mere $2400!
Compare this to the poor Mac user, upgrading from say a small Mac to
a Mac II,  who paid $499 originally, and still runs the same version
on the much faster Mac models.  At this point, the Sun upgrader has
paid

	In[8]:= 2. 2400/499

	Out[8]= 9.61924

times the price paid by the Mac upgrader.  'Nuff said.

--alfred at mcc.com
  Dr. A.C. Hartmann				Voice: (512) 338-3423
  Member, Technical Staff			FAX:   (512) 338-3600
  Advanced Computing Technologies Program
  Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC)
  Austin, Texas