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Going it Alone (3/4/98)
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There was an interesting (though unsurprising) tidbit posted by our buddies over at MacCentral today. Perhaps you've seen the "Think First" print ads that Apple's been publishing all over the place recently. If so, you know that it extolls the virtues of Microsoft Office 98, and goes on to say that for a while it's only going to be available for the Mac. The thing is, it focuses so heavily on Office, it's much more of an Office ad than an Apple one. However, Apple's footing the bill. Microsoft hasn't chipped in a dime.
Our take on this is that the Mac-first release of Office 98 may have been an unpublicized clause in the Apple-Microsoft agreement from last August. Apple gets to tell people that the Mac is still a viable platform for office use, Microsoft gets the dough from all the Mac sales of Office, and everyone's happy. And actually, if this really is a consequence of that August deal, we could say Microsoft chipped in some one and a half billion dimes for this ad campaign. Never mind. ;-)
Still, it's a little upsetting to see that Apple typically carries the whole burden of advertising its products and the technologies they use. Most notably, you sure never see Motorola or IBM paying for any PowerPC commercials. It's a far cry from "Intel Inside," isn't it? Wintel manufacturers who advertise Pentium systems get a subsidy from Intel, but we highly doubt the other members of the AIM alliance kicked in any cash to strap the Pentium II to that snail's shell. Ah, well.
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SceneLink (506)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 3/4/98 episode: March 4, 1998: Angry Newton-folk plan to descend upon the Apple Store this Friday, brandishing torches and those rake-things from the old Frankenstein movies. (Yes, that's a reference inside a reference.) Meanwhile, Artemis undergoes extensive plastic surgery and emerges looking not quite as wretched as before-- and what a smile! And Apple continues to advertise other people's stuff for free...
Other scenes from that episode: 504: Bad Vibes from Newtsville (3/4/98) Well, we can't say we didn't expect it, but here comes the backlash. After all, when Apple cancelled all further Newton development last week, they effectively orphaned a slew of users and developers alike... 505: Artemis: Not So Bad (3/4/98) Okay, we're not afraid to admit that we've been more than a little edgy about how ugly Apple's upcoming Powermac G3 Home (codename: Artemis) has been described. Under the hood, the $999 marvel packs a wallop for the price, but its case been through at least a couple of redesigns in its short history, due to overwhelmingly negative feedback from testers...
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