Re: MEMO to Meade: How to write an honest news release

From: CLT (not_at_thisaddress)
Date: 02/01/05 

Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 10:38:35 -0800

> I'm afraid that your campaign to reform the writing of promotional
> materials is going to be a lonely one. I'll put it on my list of
> causes, but it's going to start out at #18,377. That's somewhere above
> the middle of the list.

Hi Davoud,

I don't expect to see any change, but one can hope. Newcomers are regularly
misled by advertising featuring Hubble photos and claims of 733x. (Or more
often, their parents are misled by this advertising). I'd like to say it is
only the newcomers, but it continues. SV sold achros with good mechanicals
by saying they had proprietary designs and attenuation of color. They also
charged a good deal more money. In truth, they were reducing color by
stopping down the objective and/or applying an MV filter to the objective.
They stopped after it was exposed. Did it matter? Only if you want to get
the full aperture you paid for.

Let's face it, that last phrase is what is driving this whole mess. Meade
can get more money if they claim it is an R-C derivative. R-C's are more
expensive because the surfaces are harder to produce. So if you claim it is
an R-C, you can charge more, regardless of what it actually cost you to
produce. If you simply tell the truth, that it is an SCT, you can't get
people to pay as much money. You can make another SCT that is identical in
every respect, but if you call it an SCT, people aren't as excited and they
don't pay as much. Roland pointed out how Celestron could do the same thing
by slightly changing their 14" SCT, and repackaging it for the same market.

Does that make a difference? Again, just as before, only if you want what
you paid for.

There is very little difference between claiming "semi-apo" correction for a
stopped down or filtered achro, and claiming this is an R-C design, or
claiming a scope has ED glass when it doesn't. This is Tasco level
advertising.

I talked with a man a while ago who had bought one of GMs better cars
(Olds?) several decades earlier. Afterwards, he found they had put cheaper
(Chevy?) engines in them. Was he upset? Yes. He paid for one and received
the other. From what he said, there were a number of lawsuits. People want
the car engine they paid for. The courts regularly rule that you can't
falsely advertise. Optics is too small and esoteric a field for the courts
to rule on yet. That's why we have always had horrible optics sold as
"diffraction limited," or average objectives sold as "premium." Still, if
you are going to pay for an R-C, then you should receive an R-C. If these
were cars, there would have been enough lawsuits to shake out a lot of this
nonsense.

Is the scope just as good? Well, the spot diagrams for the Cass they compare
it to are not very good. You can build a better Cass. They designed a poor
Cass to compare it to. In logic, that's known as a straw man. If I compare
the Chevy engine to a cheaper unit, it looks good and I can claim they
should pay the higher price for it. So is the scope good? Well, they are
lying to us about the optical configuration, so why am I supposed to trust
them on anything else? It is never going to be a good visual scope. Even
other SCT's that aren't optimized for photo work are going to be better. But
it will probably be a good photographic scope.

So why not simply be honest and say it is an SCT that we redesigned for
photography?

Oh yeah, then you couldn't charge as much.

It seems that's what it always comes back to.

Clear Skies

Chuck Taylor
Do you observe the moon?
Try http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lunar-observing/

Are you interested in understanding optics?
Try http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ATM_Optics_Software/

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