As the Apple Turns: Scene 34: Changing Channels (9/29/97)

Changing Channels (9/29/97)

Remember yesterday's episode, in which we told you about the meeting between Apple and the dealers? Well, the changes that Apple's making to the channel reseller program are pretty far-reaching. Luckily, MacCentral has a wonderful recap of these changes; if you have an attention span as short as ours, this is just the thing to help sum up the salient points in easily-digestible info chunklets.

Here's some quick points: Apple is lowering its requirement for direct purchases from $20 million to $2 million. This encourages more small dealers, and maybe fosters some healthy competition in the dealer market. Apple's also adding extra personnel to their channel force, to provide better support to the dealers.

Apple's reducing its AppleFund allowance from 1.5% to 0.5%, making less funding available to dealers for promotional use, but Apple feels that the funds have been used poorly in the past. Apple will take the extra money from this savings and funnel it into its own advertising efforts, which should help the dealers, too.

There's also a new returns policy, a revised price protection program, enforceable guidelines on how to display demo Macs in stores, and a statement that Apple will continue to sell direct to customers via Apple Club, but not to the detriment of the channel resellers. Whew! Still with us? Seriously, this is all important stuff. Sounds like Apple's taking real steps to improve the way that Macs get sold. Now let's bail on this subject before this show turns into Wall Street Week.

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The above scene was taken from the 9/29/97 episode:

September 29, 1997: (Sorry—this was before we started writing intro text for each episode!)

Other scenes from that episode:

35: Just Cloning Around (9/29/97) Rumors are flying that Steve Jobs has offered the Edinburgh-based Roslin Institute and pharmaceuticals company PPL Therapeutics $150 million for their clone license and all related technologies. When Ian Wilmut, an Institute member, bewilderedly replied that they had no license to sell, Jobs reportedly ordered Apple's legal department to force Roslin and PPL to cease and desist all cloning activities at once...
36: It Walks Your Dog, Too (9/29/97) You think the above story is outrageous? This one's even more so-- and this isn't a joke. Macintouch has posted a reader's "confirmation" of the existence of a Mac OS 8-compatible OS being developed by a German company called Omega...
37: We Are Cooler Than You (9/29/97) Hey, look, we won an EMMY!! All right!! Er, well, okay, it's not really an Emmy. It's actually the MacSites 100% Mac Award, given weekly to deserving sites entirely created on and served by Mac OS machines. Our first award!...

Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast...


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