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Red-Headed Stepchild (5/8/98)
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Meanwhile, the introduction of the new Powerbook G3's, affectionately known by their code names of Wall Street and Main Street, appears to have been upstaged by the surprise unveiling of the iMac. We can only imagine how the Powerbook team at Apple must feel, to see the sleek black product of years of toil finally come to completion, only to have it overshadowed by a consumer Mac that Mac the Knife refers to as looking like "an oversized Fisher-Price bath toy--" especially since the Powerbooks are available now, and the iMac is still 90 days away.
That's why we're pleased to see Apple announce that the online Apple Store just had its biggest day ever, racking up just under $2 million in sales in a single 24-hour period. (Apple's press release has more details.) The reason, obviously, is the availability of the new Powerbooks; legions of road warriors who previously either had to cough up $5700 for a first-generation Powerbook G3 or settle for a 603e chip now have the option of buying a seriously cool G3-powered laptop for less than half the price. These initial strong sales bode well for Wall Street's contribution to what will very likely be the third consecutive profitable quarter for Apple.
In fact, we think that Powerbook G3 sales are only just ramping up. The large, fold-out print ad with the "they eat Pentium laptops for lunch" theme is just the beginning; as Uncle Steve mentioned during last Wednesday's big event, a new "Think Different" TV spot (entitled "Steamroller") is slotted to show up on the tube sometime in the next three to four weeks. (Last we checked, scans of the fold-out ad were available at MacNN, and Quicktime 3 footage of the Steamroller ad had just surfaced at Mac OS Rumors.) It's gonna be a Powerbook kinda quarter.
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 5/8/98 episode: May 8, 1998: The iMac floppy issue has become largely moot, thanks to a SuperDisk coming to save the day. Meanwhile, Apple's new Powerbooks rake in $2 million in sales in a single day via the Apple Store, and Microsoft plays the "we didn't understand" game with the DoJ once again...
Other scenes from that episode: 685: The Last Floppy Word (5/8/98) It's amazing how much dust you can kick up by announcing a home computer without a floppy drive, isn't it? On the one side you've got the folks who say "good riddance" to a slow, low-capacity, often unreliable peripheral that is thoroughly unsuited to computing tasks today; on the other are the ones who make the solid point that emailing attachments and relying on a network connection for transfer simply isn't a viable replacement yet, especially within the consumer market at which the iMac is aimed... 687: You Want It When? (5/8/98) If the Department of Justice is planning on moving against Windows 98, they've only got a few more days before the software is released to manufacturers. Of course, there's still the matter of that preliminary injunction handed down last December, which requires that Microsoft make available a version of Windows 95 without Internet Explorer...
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