|> Evan sez:
|> >Similarly, Apple's price can be somewhat
|> > related to real-world facts about products: they guessed badly about
|> > consumer demands in basically all of the last 6 quarters; they picked the
|> > wrong time to ship a crucial OS upgrade another year late; they got nailed
|> > in the recent Japanese-currency inflation; they don't have sufficient
|> > profit margin on their products to create much positive revenue (and it is
|> > unclear whether dumping half their products will fix this); and so on.
|>
|> This seems to make sense, but I've got one question: What makes the above any
|> different from past Apple slumps when Jobs and Sculley left?
[snipped Dwaye's scenario for Apple's future...]
The scenario presented was merely a rehash of what they've been up to for
the past four years -- if they continue that way, they'll fail utterly.
If Apple wer, instead, to concentrate on the OS and a few New Things(tm) to
keep the OS interesting and a step ahead, and ditch the hardware aspect
they'd be much better off. Let someone else build the hardware (that's the
point of licencing the OS, no?), and forget about selling twenty different
Performa models and five new PCI machines each year.
If Apple doesn't bother to shift focus to perfecting what they do ship of
their OS (personally, I'm very sick of buggy version after buggy version)
and instead continues to try to do a little of everything, they will only
alienate people. They've already started (me, as you all know by now) --
with shoddy hardware and mounting frustration over the machine coming with
system 7.5.2, updated months later to 7.5.3, and now there's another
update...
In case noone's keeping count, unless PCI owners purchase the disk for
system 7.5.3 that includes the newest update, "Clean System Reinstall" will
take a good long while: clean reinstall, update, update, prune extensions
and cps. And then try again as it _inevitably_ doesn't take first time
round!
I have already done approximately 15 clean system reinstalls on this
machine since last September (three just to get to 2.0 Update). WHY?
Corrupted software, that's why. And no, I don't use a lot of (any!)
third-party extensions or cps. In addition, I happen to own _3_ System
7.5.2 system disks -- because two have corrupt installer files (all have
bad disk image files). Do you think Apple will ship new system disks to PCI
customers without charge? heh! Hell, I still haven't received my free, six
month, MacUser subscription!
The big question is: why the hell are they, essentially, shipping beta
software (and so update after update) instead of working on customer
loyalty by shipping a good one first time round? Because they're wallowing
in financial troubles brought on by not being able to ship enough hardware
to meet demand and enough good hardware to avoid having to replace a fair
percentage of what they do ship.
And they're also losing loyal customers by treating people as they have
treated me. Sure, they've replaced hardware when necessary (it shouldn't
have been necessary!!!), but they've also done their fair share of treating
me as if I don't know how to operate my computer. Contempt doesn't win
loyalty: when I first asked for a new system disk cos the cd reader
wouldn't READ the first one (but would read other cds), they promised me
overnight shipment of the cd but sent me *updater diskettes for Open
Transport* by regular mail!
And then... in "compensation for all my troubles", they sent me a little
thing called Calendar Creator, "New for System 7", copyrighted 1989, with
black and white graphics, of course (can't wait to use it), and a five-pack
CD-ROM set, the highlights of which is CNN's Time Capsule, 100 defining
moments of 1994 and a hyperstack Oxford Reference that is as easy to use as
telnet ftp. Sigh.
Do I need to repeat here how I will NEVER purchase an Apple machine again?
fran
*under construction!*
http://www.nothingness.org/katiemur
katiemur@nothingness.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~