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No One to Blame: Apple's Earnings Warning
In retrospect, all of these things are fairly obvious. Apple could have forseen that the Cube wouldn't sell well at its initial price. All they would've had to do was ask a few people (after they'd signed an NDA, of course) if they'd buy an underpowered, unexpandable piece of art/computer for more money than a less underpowered, expandable computer and they'd have dodged that bullet. I mean come on, the thing doesn't even have analog audio (in or out)!
As for the PC industry's slowdown, there really wasn't much Apple could do about that except buck the trend. They've done it before (witness: the iMac), and had Apple introduced something that people couldn't live without (like, say, a more complete and cheaper Cube), Apple could have been one of the few computer companies whose sales actually increased this quarter, instead of being a company whose sales fell right along with everyone else.
Even Apple has said that it screwed up with CD-RWs. But Apple should've said this at least a quarter ago. How long have HP and Compaq been offering CD-RW drives? How long has it been since internal IDE CD-RW drives cost less than an evening at a downtown movie theater (with popcorn, of course)? Does anyone else offer DVD-RAM? I'll take yet another opportunity to pick on the Cube, and say that had it shipped with a combo DVD/CD-RW drive, the Little Mac That Could would be selling like hotcakes. I can guarantee I'd have one on my desk right now; when deciding what Mac I'd purchase next, I had to figure in $300 for an external FireWire CD-RW. That $300 would've been enough to put a Cube at the top of my list.
I don't have too much to say about Motorola's G4 problems, other than it pisses me off. But Apple's educational sales are another matter.
Why is Apple losing market share in the educational world? Simply put, Apple does not offer a single machine that a school needs. I'll say that again, capitalized, because it's important: Apple Does Not Offer A Single Machine That A School Needs. I work for the IT department at my school, and when we talk about new Mac purchases, the conversation is filled with the phrase "If only," and ending with the phrase "then we could buy more new Macs". If only the G4 were a little cheaper. If only the iMac had a 17" monitor. If only the Cube made sense. If only people wouldn't walk off with a PowerBook or iBook (okay, we didn't actually say that last one, but it's a valid reason for schools not buying a lot of laptops, right? :-).
The G4 is overpriced. Period. Yeah, you get a LOT of computer for your money, but at 500 MHz, Apple can't justify charging $3500, even if it is *technically* 500x2 MHz. I went to Dell's website, and configured an 800 MHz Pentium III system to be similar to Apple's bottom-of-the-line G4, and I came up with a system costing $1328. And that's with a 17" monitor. And a printer. And Office 2000. And Harmon-Kardon speakers. For $1599 at the Apple Store, you get a G4. And a mental list of other things you're going to need to buy (for example, the stuff that comes with the Dell). What school would buy a Mac for more money, just to get less stuff? Sure, you get a better OS, arguably better hardware, etc, but money talks more than anything, and Apple just ain't cutting it.
On the other hand, if Apple produced a sub-$1000 iMac with a 17" monitor, I could definitely see schools buying them up as fast as Apple can make them. The only reason my college didn't buy a slew of Macs last May/June was because we simply will not deploy systems with 15" monitors, and we couldn't afford to buy a bunch of G4s.
Apple is in a world of hurt right now, and to make matters worse, it's almost all their fault. With the exception of Motorola's production problems, every single factor leading to yesterday's warning could have been avoided. Let's hope the corrective action is swift, because Apple can't afford to wait any longer.
| Discussions? --- Interact with the writers and other readers... |
| Clarification on the Cube's Analog Audio Output | Josh Whitver |
| DVD-RAM | Ronald Justice |