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 Life on the frontline during wartime

by Frontline Lamb, 8 December 2000

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more."

-- Wm. Shakespeare

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

-- George Santayana

I looked up at my Web browser the other day and thought, "Haven't I been through this before?" I think every Apple dealer is thinking that about now. "Oh, God, not again." And if Apple is your main line of computers, you are probably spending your sleepless nights going over your inventory and your holiday ordering plans. And you thought Al Gore was having a bad winter.

Okay – first up, we knew that this year wasn't going to beat last year. Even though Apple was telling us that we should grow 25% this year, nothing goes up forever. Apple doesn't have anything new for us to sell; you put the same thing in a different package, it doesn't really make it new and improved. And nobody believes for a second that 500 is greater than 1000 or 1500. So we expected to hold steady at last year's levels.

But did we see this coming? We should have. The signs were there: Apple having nothing new to offer customers who are ready to upgrade; not a single megahertz in a year; aging portables and desktop models; iMacs showing their age (nobody buys 15" monitors anymore). Apple telling us that there was only one holiday promotion this year. Then two. Then three. Now every computer Apple makes has a rebate and most of them have two!

Look at it from my customers' point of view. "I bought a blue-and-white G3 two years ago that clocked at 400 MHz. Now I can only get 100 MHz faster?" But you don't have a Velocity Engine ... "What about that gigahertz Athlon over there for under $1200?"

Now look at it from mine. I make a lot more selling that no-name white box Athlon system than I do selling the Apple stuff. And I don't have to reassure the customer about Wintel's future. I knew this sounded familar! It's 1997 all over again! Did you hear about Princess Diana?

So now we just have to hope that all these Macs we have in the warehouse get moved by all the rebates. And that our customers don't read any of the financial or Mac press. But our customers are already saying that they want to wait and see what comes out at Macworld – they've been trained well. That's the great drawback of event marketing: your customers learn to wait for the next event.

My, but won't they be disapointed if all they get is a new PowerBook and iTools 2?

-- FLL