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The Truth Is Out There (2/1/98)
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Remember yesterday's conspiracy theory, in which we surmised that the CompUSA salon-store deal was more than a little connected to this recent exodus of other national retailers from the Mac market? Well, AtAT isn't the only show on the air who is paranoid brave enough to tell what's really going on behind closed doors: O'Grady's PowerPage, Powerbook site extraordinaire, reports that in addition to Best Buy and Computer City, Circuit City and Sears are also packing up their Macs and calling it a day. And the PowerPage also mentions that this turn of events is in fact part of Apple's deal with CompUSA.
In fact, according to one of their readers, the agreement is very similar to the theory we mentioned yesterday. CompUSA, so the story goes, is now the exclusive national retail vendor of Apple Macintosh systems. Those of you who are stuck without a nearby CompUSA now must resort to internet and catalog resellers, unless you're lucky enough to have a regional reseller like Fry's or Microcenter nearby. (If things go really well with Artemis this spring, though, we at AtAT figure it's not entirely unlikely for at least one of those dropped retailers to come crawling back with promises to play nice.)
Just goes to show you, you really can't see JFK too many times, and you should never miss an episode of the X-Files. ;-)
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SceneLink (411)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 2/1/98 episode: February 1, 1998: Independent reports threaten to break the scandal of "CompUSAGate" any day now; will Steve's announcements this week set minds at rest? Meanwhile, though CompUSA builds its salon stores, it still slights Apple in the press; and Compaq, not satisfied with swallowing Digital whole and kicking IBM out of Radio Shack, deals Apple a vicious blow in Japan as an encore...
Other scenes from that episode: 412: Death By Underexposure (2/1/98) And yet, being the sole national retail seller of Macs doesn't seem to have had any effect on CompUSA's advertising biases. As faithful viewer Arthur Wagner points out, the CompUSA color insert in today's Sunday newspapers (at least here in Boston, and in the paper wherever Artie lives) is the equivalent of the CompUSA of old... 413: Compaq: No Prisoners (2/1/98) And speaking of Compaq, the Wintel juggernaut just keeps on jugging. It's been a mighty busy couple of weeks for the manufacturing giant; first they bought out Digital for almost $10 billion, the highest-priced tech buyout in history, in order to gain Digital's inroads into corporate sales...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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