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The Herd Mentality (6/22/98)
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Do you know anyone who'll buy any piece of junk they come across that has, say, the South Park kids emblazoned on it? (Not that we aren't fans of South Park; it's a random example.) Because that appears to be the mentality that analysts expect among early Windows 98 buyers; some people will buy any operating system with a Microsoft logo on it. There's some very interesting analysis over in a Reuters article on Yahoo! News.
Chris Le Tocq, an analyst at Dataquest, calls Windows 98 nothing more than "a packaging exercise" which is completely unnecessary for Windows 95 users who have a working system. But despite that assessment, and in spite of the lukewarm reviews we've seen of the product so far, he still expects over five million people to buy the $90 upgrade this year, and another eleven million to shell out the cash next year. Do the math, and you can very quickly see why Bill Gates is the richest man in the world (and climbing). The man sits at the head of an empire that can rake in obscene amounts of cash by sticking a label on a mediocre product, because it'll sell anyway.
This is not to say that we Mac folk don't follow the same instinct-- heck, slap a six-color Apple logo on a week-old baguette and wave it around at a users group meeting, and you can bet someone will fork over some cash for it. We just find it interesting that an analyst could say something to the effect of, "Windows 98 brings essentially nothing new to the party. But it'll generate $1.3 billion in revenue anyway." The point is, Microsoft is huge enough and has an installed base wide enough to generate well over a billion dollars just by packaging a collection of bug fixes and a web browser. Now that's mighty impressive.
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 6/22/98 episode: June 22, 1998: The iMac modem issue would appear to be resolved, with a 56K upgrade due in the fall. Meanwhile, Bill Gates looks to make another billion or so by selling a free web browser and a slew of fixes to bugs that shouldn't have been there in the first place, and CompUSA increases its girth by chowing down on struggling Computer City...
Other scenes from that episode: 795: The Modem That Wasn't (6/22/98) Once a plausible rumor appears both on Reality and Mac OS Rumors, that's about as official as it gets without Apple confirming it themselves. So at this point, we're totally willing to accept that the iMac will indeed ship with a software-based modem... 797: CHOMP! Mmmm, Retail-y (6/22/98) It seems like the only things that happen in the tech world anymore are litigation and buyouts; everyone's suing everyone else, and the monotony is only broken when one of the players swallows another one whole...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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