Apple, under Steve Jobs' direction, announced last August that they would concentrate their efforts on the two markets in which the Mac truly excels: content creation, and education. Well, that's all well and good (provided something actually gets done about them someday-- where are the Pixel-Pusher specials, with high-powered graphics capability, super-fast disks, tons of RAM, and Photoshop/Pagemaker/Illustrator preinstalled? Or a low-cost education system with easily-replaceable components for simple lab maintenance? Or, for that matter, anything to demonstrate this so-called commitment to those core markets?).

But what about the home market? Apple is implying that it's conceding that ground to Microsoft/Intel, as if that war is already lost. But MacCentral doesn't think that's wise, citing the recent Dataquest figures that show personal computers in 43% of U.S. homes. According to Dataquest, a full "10% of U.S. households plan to buy computers in the next six months." When you think about it, that's a lot of potential income. So why would Apple shrink from competing in a market that, based on technical merits and common sense, should be an easy victory? After all, you'd think home users would want, first and foremost, a machine that works and is easy to use and maintain.

The biggest reason is not the lack of an Apple presence in retail, nor is it the Wintel marketing juggernaut's total dwarfing of any Apple advertising presence. And believe it or not, we don't think it's even the massive public perception that Apple is dead or dying. Apple is not going after the home market for the simple reason that the remaining 57% of U.S. homes are no way, no how going to pay over $2000 for a computer system. The people who want to spend that much on a computer have already bought; the remainder want sub-$1000 systems, and Apple doesn't have one. Should they have one? The profit margins on such boxes are razor-thin. Is it worth the effort, especially at a time when Apple must be so careful about allocating resources? Well, think of it this way: If Apple waits another six months to go after the consumer market, that 10% of U.S. households ready to buy will already have bought-- and they'll have bought Wintel.