In response to an earlier post (I no longer know how to Quote):
Apple did produce what is in some ways a superior compact to the SE/30. It just wasn't sold in the USA. It was the Color Classic II, and it was a very capable little consumer/ education machine: 33MHz processor, 32-bit clean, 33 bus, 36MB RAM capability, LCPDS/ethernet capability, thousands of colours with a vram upgrade, built-in microphone....
Now, having said that, there are also lots of ways in which the CCII was not superior to an SE/30: no version of A/UX, for example, runs on a CCII and certainly it was not in any sense of the term a high end machine when it was introduced. But it also wasn't the cheap / deliberately crippled machines that the Classic, Classic II and Color Classic were.
So yes, the SE/30 is king of the Compact hill, but even so, it is not the fastest or (for most uses) the most capable of the Compacts. That distinction is the CCII's.
My own view is that the trouble with Apple's products at the time in question was that the company was in the business of soaking its customers by charging way too much for hardware, when it really ought to have been in the business of selling lots more computers more cheaply. Its profit margins were obscene, and though the strategy of selling low volumes at high margins kept the company in business for a few years, making good machines at less grotesquely inflated prices (like today) would have allowed for higher sales and thus there would have been no need for the crippled "low cost" line.
Apple did produce what is in some ways a superior compact to the SE/30. It just wasn't sold in the USA. It was the Color Classic II, and it was a very capable little consumer/ education machine: 33MHz processor, 32-bit clean, 33 bus, 36MB RAM capability, LCPDS/ethernet capability, thousands of colours with a vram upgrade, built-in microphone....
Now, having said that, there are also lots of ways in which the CCII was not superior to an SE/30: no version of A/UX, for example, runs on a CCII and certainly it was not in any sense of the term a high end machine when it was introduced. But it also wasn't the cheap / deliberately crippled machines that the Classic, Classic II and Color Classic were.
So yes, the SE/30 is king of the Compact hill, but even so, it is not the fastest or (for most uses) the most capable of the Compacts. That distinction is the CCII's.
My own view is that the trouble with Apple's products at the time in question was that the company was in the business of soaking its customers by charging way too much for hardware, when it really ought to have been in the business of selling lots more computers more cheaply. Its profit margins were obscene, and though the strategy of selling low volumes at high margins kept the company in business for a few years, making good machines at less grotesquely inflated prices (like today) would have allowed for higher sales and thus there would have been no need for the crippled "low cost" line.