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Long Live the New Flesh (4/30/98)
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Strange days indeed... say what you will about Steve Jobs, but one thing he's never been accused of doing is selling low-priced products. You'll all recall, for instance, the incredibly high margins on Apple computers back in his first stint with the company. Then he went on to NeXT, where he sold incredibly expensive but impossibly cool black cubic machines that geeks drooled over but few could afford, before moving entirely into the software business, where he sold operating systems with price tags in the thousands. That attitude seemed to travel with him back to Apple, where he eliminated the price-decreasing clone market and showed signs of pushing to raise prices across the board. But now that all shows signs of stopping, as Mac OS Rumors reports that Steve thinks "the days of consumers buying expensive computers is nearly over."
Say what?! That's certainly not the Steve we all know talking. Sure, the G3's showed an incredible price-performance ratio, but most of us assumed it was merely a temporary measure meant to offset Apple's recent financial problems by boosting sales. We at AtAT never dreamed that it was the start of a whole new pricing concept at Apple, whose brand name for years has practically screamed "more expensive, but you get what you pay for." Yet suddenly we have this so-called Steve Jobs now proclaiming that "consumers want computers in the $500 to $700 range." Baffling.
It is, of course, entirely possible that Steve has been abducted by aliens and replaced with an exact replica that is more aware of current market forces than he is. Strangely enough, though, we at AtAT find ourselves inexplicably inclined to give Steve the benefit of the doubt on this one. Could it truly be that little Stevie's all grown up, or are we just more gullible than the average bear? I guess we'll know for sure when and if these alleged $500-700 Apple machines hit the market.
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 4/30/98 episode: April 30, 1998: Steve Jobs, apparently after suffering some sort of head trauma, reportedly claims that consumers want $500-700 computers instead of really expensive ones. Meanwhile, a group comes forward to claim responsibility for the "Think Disillusioned" billboard hack, and thirteen states are currently planning an antitrust attack against the Redmond Giant...
Other scenes from that episode: 662: Billboard Hijinx Explained (4/30/98) Alas, this week's "Think Disillusioned" hack of an Apple Dalai Lama billboard in Silicon Valley was apparently not the work of prescient extraterrestrials, but rather the handiwork of a group of "eccentric advertising professionals" calling themselves the Billboard Liberation Front... 663: The Tide Still Turns (4/30/98) Goodness, things in the Microsoft antitrust world seem to be moving along at quite a clip. Just yesterday we reported that the eleven states who planned to file an antitrust suit against Microsoft had grown to twelve, with the addition of West Virginia...
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