I
recently heard that this Christmas' retail season will be
the best since 1974 -- I even heard numbers like $100 billion
dollars will be spent on retail /e-commerce purchases. Impressive.
What about Apple? How many people are using the net to shop
for new Macintoshes? I don't have those numbers, but I suspect
many if not most Apple shoppers pop into their local CompUSA
to test drive before they purchase any Macintosh product --
online or offline. Great. Thank God for CompUSA. But have
you been in a CompUSA since Thanksgiving? Have you seen the
"demo days" folk on site at CompUSA? More importantly, have
you seen the G4's along with the iMac DVs?
I went into a local North Dallas CompUSA -- terrific sub-twenty
year old staff running around with wonderful product knowledge
and passion. There, lo and behold, was THE personal computer
of the season: a new G4 computer. My eyes lit-up (I'm told)
as I rapidly yet safely made my way past the demo-day's staff
and straight to the G4.
What's the first thing you do when you check out a new Mac?
Run the demo video (if not already running)? Look for the
applications you run at home? Look for new applications? For
me, all the above. I do all that stuff and more. Unfortunately,
this particular store's G4 was "bare bones" -- I mean three-day
old road kill had more meat on the bone than this G4 had software
on the hard disk.
What's the deal?
Imagine: you are a mega-billion-dollar-non-Microsoft company
with hotly anticipated new hardware for the Christmas retail
season. What do you do? Ship a few? Ship a few with nothing
on them other than the OS? Nooooooooooo. You load it up with
free samplers, in-store demos and teasers. Perhaps bundle
the machines with newly tuned-up versions of cool software
like (oh, I don't know) MS Office, Netscape, Internet Explorer,
Quicktime -- anything!!! But, sadly, that's not what Apple
has done.
No way!? Way.
The G4 machine arrived with ONLY the OS. Huh? What? Yep.
Only the OS. These guys at CompUSA (Lord love 'em) were trying
to figure out what software they should download from the
net to show the real power and coolness of the G4. That's
great, but isn't that really Apple's job to equip and empower
CompUSA?
Ok, maybe Apple is a little iMac happy lately with the run
away success of the iBook. I can see the reason for their
glee, but, gee whiz Batman, can't Apple do something for the
"Supercomputer for the rest of us?" Maybe Scott McNealy (Sun
CEO) was right: we don't really need personal super computers
at all to access the 'net -- we need cool apps on our lean
mean hardware accessing the net for us -- soon to be over
taken by our TV's, microwaves, cellphones, freezers and refrigerators.
I believe Scott has a saying along those lines: "The net IS
the computer." I digress.
I was curious about availability : twenty days. Seven according
to the Apple Store website. How many G4's do you suppose were
in stock at CompUSA? ZERO. None. Nada. Zip. But CompUSA is
taking orders left, right and center. Lots of orders. I thought,
"Maybe one store actually had G4's in stock; I don't want
to generalize based on my experience with just one store."
So we checked 10 CompUSA's across the nation -- none had any
G4's in stock other than the one demo loaded with only the
OS. Oh, and no Airport demo or product availability either.
No "ho ho ho" here folks.
Let's not panic. I continued to see boxes and boxes and
boxes of various iMac all over the place -- a few G3's and
of course, the lone G4. I saw the iBook spinning its nice
in-store demo video. So, perhaps it is a case of misplaced
focus, temporarily.
However, if "We're $94-share Apple" can't get this right
and balance the product load and visibility in the stores,
I suppose it may go down in history along with a certain candy
makers' inability to ship product for Halloween due to a in-house
financial software problem -- can you imagine? Major candy
maker not able to ship product in time for Halloween? Whoa.
Hopefully Apple corrects its course, and Apple's 1999 sales
don't match those of 1974.
Bio: Mark has 18 years in IT/telecom and has had
the following computers: Apple IIc, Apple IIgs, Mac IIci,
MacQuadra 610, Mac Performa 6115CD and PowerBook 170. He current
is an executive marketing manager in a large telecommunications
firm based in Dallas. He lives there with his wife and two
boys.
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I
recently heard that this Christmas' retail season will be
the best since 1974 -- I even heard numbers like $100 billion
dollars will be spent on retail /e-commerce purchases. Impressive.
