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Death By Underexposure (2/1/98)
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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. Think back to the time not so long ago when CompUSA was where a single lonely Mac (generally the most overpriced and underpowered model) would sit in a dark corner, mouseless, displaying either a System Error, an At Ease interface, or pure unpowered blackness on its screen. Well, there may be a wider Mac selection down at the store these days, but in the ads it's the same old story.
In this entire sixteen-page color ad insert, the only Apple presence takes up just under a quarter of page three. And that whole space is taken up by a single bundle, consisting of a 6500/250, a 15" AV monitor, and an Epson inkjet printer, all for the low, low price of $2399.93. Now, granted, it's a full four cents cheaper than the Compaq system next to it-- but do we really want to invite comparisons between the 6500's lowly 603e processor and the 333 MHz Pentium II in the Compaq? (The Compaq system lacks a monitor and the color inkjet, but this isn't the way to show that Macs can compete with Wintels in price/performance...)
Ironically, the top of the Mac ad screams, "Mac is Back!" Well, that's nice, CompUSA; now how about proving it by putting a G3 system in there next to the Pentium II's?
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SceneLink (412)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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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: 411: The Truth Is Out There (2/1/98) 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... 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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