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All Its Macs In One Basket (2/2/98)
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It's official-- Apple's formally announced that it made a conscious decision to pull out of Best Buy, Computer City, and all other national retailers except for CompUSA, who is now the exclusive national reseller of Macintosh computers. Apple's press release has the details, complete with corporate spin. Apple is "redefining" its position in the retail space to target its core markets of education and content creation-- markets that Apple supposedly shares with CompUSA.
So what of the conspiracy theory put forth a couple of days ago, which wonders if Apple convinced CompUSA to enter the "store within a store" agreement by offering to cut off all other national Mac sellers, thus giving CompUSA a bigger slice of the pie? It's all speculation, of course, but faithful viewer Dave Brutscher confirms that all three Best Buys he contacted claimed that Apple had "cut them off a couple of months ago," which coincides pretty well with the November Apple-CompUSA deal. Has it all just been hushed up since then?
Incidentally, we at AtAT are a little tired of getting our tongues (and our fingers) around the ungainly phrase "store within a store." The acronym "SWAS" doesn't sound too great, either, and has the added detriment of being totally meaningless to those who hear it. "Salon store" is better, but it sounds like a Vidal Sassoon outlet. Instead of a general descriptive term, what if Apple named the salons with a trademark, like "AppleCenters?" Of course, given Apple's recent penchant for dull product names, the result would probably be something like "Apple Store Within A Store®" and we're right back where we started. How about something catchier, like "Mac Ghetto?"
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SceneLink (415)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 2/2/98 episode: February 2, 1998: Feverish whispers tell of a prototype G4 Powermac that leaves current G3 offerings choking on its dust. Meanwhile, Apple confirms that it's dropped all national resellers except for CompUSA, amid what can only be described as "suspicious circumstances," and James Coates uncovers a fiendish Redmond plot to deep-six Claris while Apple's down...
Other scenes from that episode: 414: Whooooooooooooosshh! (2/2/98) So, uh, you think those new-fangled G3 Powermacs are fast, hmmmmm? Zippy little numbers that let you feel the wind in your hair? Well, prepare to break the sound barrier-- Mac OS Rumors has a little sneak preview of the Mac of Tomorrow, and its performance is amazing... 416: All In It Together (2/2/98) And speaking of conspiracy theories, Chicago Tribune columnist James Coates seems to have been bitten by the paranoia bug himself, recently. In a long and rambling article, he builds his case that Apple's breakup of Claris was in fact a "ransom payment" to Microsoft. Jim's paranoid rant goes something like this: ClarisWorks Office (which Jim repeatedly refers to as "Claris Office," but we won't hold it against him) is a serious competitor to Microsoft Office, both on the Mac and the Wintel side, due to its speed and modest requirements versus the best bloatware Microsoft was able to ship...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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