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T-minus Seven Days (8/7/98)
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There's only one week left before the iMac is officially released, and we'll all finally see if the demand lives up to the hype. Rumors about rampant pre-orders continue to fly, fueling the frenzied anticipation of what has the potential to be one of the best-selling computers in the history of the industry. The numbers keep growing, and now Mac OS Rumors claims an Apple source says Apple has been inundated with 350,000 pre-orders for their first real consumer Macintosh in years.
It's important to distinguish between reseller pre-orders and customer ones; the alleged 350,000 pre-orders are most likely from resellers to Apple's distributors, which simply means that resellers expect to sell one heck of a lot of iMacs to customers. As for the number of customers who have actually pre-ordered iMacs from dealers, we haven't heard any combined real numbers, but three days after they started accepting pre-orders for the iMac, CompUSA reported that response was "better than anticipated." That bodes well for Apple, since CompUSA was very enthusiastic about their optimism in iMac consumer demand.
At this point, the real question is, will Apple have any chance of filling the full number of pre-orders? 350,000 iMacs is almost as many machines as they had hoped to sell in the whole quarter. Even if the rumors of Apple building nothing but iMacs (at the expense of PowerBooks and Power Mac G3's) are true, can Apple produce even close to the number of iMacs each reseller has pre-ordered?
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SceneLink (916)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 8/7/98 episode: August 7, 1998: The masses have spoken-- while Apple hoped to sell 400,000 iMacs this quarter, they have already received 350,000 pre-orders for a machine that won't even be out for another week. Meanwhile, Apple kicks into high gear to minimize the inevitable iMac drought caused by record demand, and Robert Cringely claims that not only is Apple having trouble building the systems quickly enough, they're also experiencing some pretty serious quality problems, to boot...
Other scenes from that episode: 917: iMac Drought (8/7/98) Apparently, resellers are resigned to their fate: they seem to be accepting the cold, hard fact that there's no way Apple can provide as many iMacs as they've been asked for. A Computer Retail Week article claims that several resellers are changing their "iMac Day" plans based on the "certainty" that they won't get as many iMacs as they ordered... 918: Cringing in the Corner (8/7/98) One of the pundits who claims to have actual numbers on how many iMacs Apple has been able to produce thus far is Robert Cringely, self-appointed martyr to the flaming email arrows of many a Mac EvangeLista...
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