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Sub-$1K Mac: Still Waiting (1/7/98)
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So if you're a faithful viewer tuned in from home, you're not the target audience for the sub-$1000 home computer. Why? Because the whole point of the sub-$1K machine is to pull in the other half of the consumer households-- the ones who have not yet purchased a computer. According to analysts, the main reason those folks are staying happily in the Mesozoic era of ball-point pens, newspaper, and pocket calculators (remember all that stuff? Ah, the good old days...) is because computers cost too much. Break the $1000 barrier, analysts say, and they will come. And those analyst appear to be pretty smart people, because about 40% of all retail computer sales are purchases of sub-$1000 machines, according to Newsbytes.
Well, that's all well and good. So where the hell is Apple in all this? Nowhere. Hewlett-Packard and Compaq just announced $799 Wintels. The cheapest Mac, however, is a darn sight more expensive. Which means that of that 40% of all retail computer sales, Apple's share is nil. Zip. Zero.
Suppose Apple's happy about that? Of course not. That's why the Newsbytes article says that Apple is "seriously considering" a sub-$1000 Mac. Apple may finally have caught on to something most of us already knew: you can't abandon the home market without giving up the education market, too-- and Apple would like very much to hold onto the education market until it's pried from their cold, bankrupt fingers by Intel "migration grants." Here's hoping that a cheap Mac appears and begins to kick a little kiester. Six months late, but moving fast...
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 1/7/98 episode: January 7, 1998: (Sorry—this was before we started writing intro text for each episode!)
Other scenes from that episode: 336: Anything for a Profit (1/7/98) Who's keeping the books? It seems that there was in fact some "creative financial planning" involved in Apple's recently-announced $45 million Q1 profit. According to MacOS Rumors, Apple would have posted a small loss instead of a small profit if not for a special slush fund they had set up last quarter... 338: "I Said WHAT? When?" (1/7/98) One of the great joys of living and loving in this Age of Technology is that damn near every fool word you ever "say" via email is etched permanently in stone, metaphorically speaking. That's the sad truth that Lawrence Lessig is learning as Microsoft continues to fight his appointment as Special Master in the "Redmond Justice" case...
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