Every month, My Mac presents the best from As the Apple Turns, one of the very best Mac web sites on the Internet today. Culling the best is no easy task, as Jack Miller writes such fantastic stuff. We want to reprint it all! But, alas, we choose a small sampling of his work and present it here as it originally appeared on the AtAT web site. Enjoy, and when your done, be sure to check out his web site for the up-to-the-minute latest and greatest! <http://www.infoxczar.com/atat>
Translucent Side of Sears (3/28/99)
Many people had their doubts when it was first unveiled, but with seven and a half months of sales history behind it, few will argue that the iMac turned out to be a phenomenal success. PC Data's monthly sales statistics have shown that the iMac has managed to stay in the top five list of computers sold at retail outlets ever since it first hit the shelves last August-- a feat made all the more remarkable by how few retail outlets actually sell the things. Oh, sure, there are plenty of local and regional resellers that carry Mac equipment, and savvy customers won't have much trouble buying an iMac if they want one, but remember that the iMac is targeted at consumers who have never owned a computer before-- and more specifically, at people who've never used a computer because they're nervous about the complexity of the things. For them, an iMac may be simple to set up, but it's not quite so simple to buy.
In addition to Apple's network of independent and regional authorized resellers, there are only two nationwide retail outlets that carry the iMac: CompUSA and Best Buy. After a fairly shaky start, the Mac shopping experience at the average CompUSA seems to have improved enough such that the shouts of rage and gnashing of teeth we grew accustomed to in the early months of the "store within a store" partnership have mostly quieted down these days. Best Buy is another story; the most positive shopping experience we've ever heard from someone who tried to buy an iMac at Best Buy was that it didn't completely suck. And these days, of course, you couldn't get an iMac at Best Buy if you wanted to; they're pretty much all out of stock following their extended bickerfest with Apple over issues of mandatory sales staff training and stocking all five flavors. All told, those computer-shy first-time buyers may have a really tough time actually getting an iMac into their homes. Just consider it more fallout from the Performa days, when Apple eliminated just about all of its national resellers due to gross incompetence. It was a good move, in our opinion, but we can't help feeling that the iMac would be selling even better if shoppers could actually find them anywhere.
So we're more than a little ambivalent about the latest rumors that Sears may be climbing back aboard the Apple ship, as dished by Mac the Knife. iMacs on display in every Sears store would definitely be a good thing, and we bet that sales would fatten up nicely. But we can't shake the memories permanently etched into our grey matter from back when we'd walk through Sears and see that lonely Performa 6400. It was in a state no demo Mac should ever be forced to endure: no mouse, five distinct System Folders, hard disk named "DCMXIZOIXOZZ," not a software demo in sight, etc. (Oh, the horror... The horror...) Here's hoping that Sears has mended its ways, and that this whole proposed reseller partnership doesn't pull a "Best Buy." If the Knife is right, look for iMacs in your local Sears sometime this summer.
Presenting: Wiggly iMacs (3/28/99)
Face it: the iMac isn't just a computer... it's a full-fledged phenomenon. We've seen the iMac's immediately recognizable contours appear in a number of nationally syndicated comic strips. People dressed their kids up as iMacs for Halloween. There's something about the shape of the machine, its elegant curves and mix of textures, the whole "iMacness" of it all that's absolutely archetypal. Mark our words: someday you'll awaken from a daze to discover you've been sculpting iMacs in your mashed potatoes only hours before the human race establishes contact with a visiting alien race who will arrive in big, glowing, iMac-shaped ships. Heck, we wouldn't be surprised to hear that someone had just discovered cave paintings made millions of years ago that depict primitive man worshipping a delicately curved mound of blue and white, which bestoweth knowledge while it intimidateth not.
Don't believe us? Well, that's your prerogative, but how else can you explain last Friday's iMac sculpture contest at MIT? After being tipped off by faithful viewer Andrea Parent, we eventually stumbled across a CNN story which tells how Apple and the school co-sponsored a contest to see who could build the "most realistic" iMac out of-- and we swear, we are not making this up-- Jell-o. There are photos of a couple of the entries, which illustrates that while Jell-o may possess the ideal translucency index for an iMac sculpture, it lacks the structural integrity necessary to do justice to the iMac's subtle curves. On the other hand, when you sculpt a Lime iMac, you get a Lime iMac.
Sadly, the article makes no mention of what, if any, prizes were bestowed upon the creators of the most realistic gelatinous iMacs, but we assume that real iMacs may have been offered in exchange for the jiggly ones. For future competitions, we admit, we're hard-pressed to come up with a better medium for an iMac sculpture contest than Jell-o.
Perhaps Jolly Ranchers? Now that's a challenge.
Settle THIS, Buddy (3/28/99)
The "Redmond Justice" hiatus is still weeks away from conclusion, as Microsoft and the government try to hash out a settlement that would cut the trial short. But there's good news for entertainment junkies hooked on the courtroom drama: neither side seems to be trying very hard. Indeed, while the details are still hush-hush, Microsoft's first settlement proposal was rejected by government representatives, who called it "minimalist," "far from adequate," and "unacceptable." So now it's up to the government to come up with a counter-offer to propose during settlement talks on Tuesday-- and even though Microsoft is arguably so likely to lose the case that they should jump at any settlement they can get, we're doubtful they're going to go for what the government is expected to offer.
According to a Reuters article, state attorneys general are planning to propose that Microsoft agree to put Windows up for auction. The plan is apparently to sell Windows intellectual property rights to the two or three highest bidders, who would then be allowed to develop their own operating system products based on Windows. An alternate government plan is to get Microsoft to turn Windows into an open-source project, which would allow anyone access to the Windows source code. Given that Microsoft has in the past guarded their source code like grim death, we can only assume that they aren't going to jump at this chance to concede their precious monopoly power. If these are the offers and counteroffers being bandied about, you can set your VCRs now, because this trial will probably be fought through to the bitter end.
"Redmond Justice" is scheduled to go back on the air sometime in April, but it appears that an even longer delay might be in the cards due to Judge Jackson's involvement in another case, which may run long. We can only hope that news of the settlement talks proves entertaining enough to hold our attention until then. In the meantime, we can't wait to hear what kinds of happy "compromises" emerge from the smoke-filled room...
Maybe It's An Excel Bug (3/25/99)
You may or may not be aware of the fact that Microsoft shipped a new version of Internet Explorer recently. And the reason that you may not know about IE5 is because the Mac version won't be out for several more months. Still, that doesn't mean that the Mac-enabled can't at least derive a little bit of entertainment from the release of this PC-only latest version; take, for example, Microsoft's claim that downloads of IE5 "more than tripled those of the previous record-setting Internet Explorer 4.0." That's all well and good, but they go on to say that one million copies of IE5 were downloaded in five days-- but shortly after IE4 came out, they had claimed that one million copies of IE4 were downloaded in only two days. Let's see, so 200,000 downloads a day is three times more than 500,000 a day; is this Microsoft Math 99‚Ñ¢?
Kindasorta. According to a Wired article, Microsoft has been forced to admit that they may have exaggerated the download numbers for IE4 back in October of 1997; it really wasn't true that a million copies of IE4 were downloaded in two days. Rather, a million copies of the installer were downloaded-- and the installer, when run, downloads the bulk of the software. (Why Microsoft insists on doing things that way we'll never understand, but we find it tremendously irritating to complete the download of an installer only to find that it's not actually a full installer at all, but another downloader.) So basically, back in 1997 Microsoft tried to make IE4 look a lot more popular than it really was.
Not that there's anything particularly evil about that-- or, at least, nothing specific to a Microsoft version of evil. After all, they were just making their product look better than it is; that's what marketing's all about. Consider the whole "G3 is up to twice as fast as Pentium II" thing, which is true, but only under very specific conditions. The reason that we find this IE4 exaggeration interesting is because it occurred at the height of the pre-antitrust-trial struggle between Microsoft and Netscape, and it shows what kind of tactics Microsoft used to make people think Netscape was on the way out. When viewed as a
piece of the overall puzzle, we just find it noteworthy, that's all...
What's In A Name? (3/23/99)
Uh oh-- looks like Apple's playing the Name Game again. The Name Game is the way in which Apple manages to dodge clauses in licensing agreements by arbitrarily changing the names of their upcoming products; it's sort of a semantic shell game. And it's the kind of behavior that you might expect to see emerging from Redmond or thereabouts, but instead it's running rampant in Cupertino. For an example, consider the story of a Mac department who bought a Mac OS subscription license a couple of years ago, and who has now been told that Mac OS X Server is not covered under the terms of the agreement. A MacInTouch special report has the details.
The license was purchased through Claris and was set to expire in June of this year; it included upgrades for all new releases of the Mac OS until then for no extra cost. "Rhapsody Unified" is specifically included under the terms of the license, so the purchaser of the subscription license called Apple to obtain Mac OS X Server-- the closest thing to "Rhapsody Unified" that Apple has ever shipped, or is going to ship. But Apple's lawyers have decided that Mac OS X Server is not the same as "Rhapsody Unified" (which is, of course, true) and therefore it isn't included in the subscription. And since the whole subscription program no longer exists, the contract can't be extended past June, so Mac OS X can't be included either. Sound a little iffy? Apple has a point, but we're a little bummed at the way they're handling this. After all, Rhapsody Unified was supposed to ship last year; it's not the licensee's fault that Apple missed its delivery dates and changed their OS strategy. We would have liked to see them agree to provide Mac OS X Server-- or, better yet, to extend the subscription license to include the full desktop version of Mac OS X, which is much more in line with the spirit of the agreement. Somehow we doubt that's going to happen, though.
Even if you're new to the Mac community, it's unlikely that you somehow missed all the hoopla a couple of years ago when everybody and their grandmothers were predicting that Apple was on its last legs. One sign of the times was that any news about Apple-- any news at all-- would always be reported in the worst possible light once the media got a hold of it. For instance, at the beginning of the turnaround when Apple posted its first real profitable quarter in a couple of years, we were seeing all this stuff along the lines of "Rotten Apple Shows Meager Profit; Still Unable to Postpone Inevitable Demise." Heck, it was during those times that AtAT was born, as a reaction to all the melodramatic hand-wringing and psychic angst. These days, though, we're feeling like more and more of an anachronism: not only is Apple doing better, but it seems that sometimes the formerly Mac-hostile press is now exaggerating how well Apple's performing.
Take, for example, the recent Computer Retail Week article about Apple's growth in the retail sales channel: the first line begins, "Retail sales of Apple Computer systems increased 176 percent ... in January, according to the latest channel survey by Inselect ASW Marketing Services." To us that implies that the 176% boost was an increase from the previous month, when in fact CRW is talking about sales growth since January of last year. Not that 176% growth in a year is anything to sneeze at-- it's fantastic news that Apple sold nearly three times as many computers in 1/99 than in 1/98. But the wording of the article seems to have confused some people, as we're seeing some sites refer to the article and claim that Apple had almost tripled its sales from December. Some folks seem to have forgotten that the iMac (which is obviously driving these increased sales numbers) actually dropped in relative sales ranking in January, according to PC Data, so a tripling since December wouldn't be possible unless the whole market practically exploded.
Don't get us wrong; we'd much rather have the press on our side than blasting Apple's every move. Heck, we're not even sure if what we see is "spin" or just coincidence. It's just that we're still a little skittish about this whole media attitude turnaround. We're also just a teensy bit worried that following Apple's latest accomplishment-- demonstrable year-over-year growth, just as they said they'd manage-- somehow some catastrophe will bring it all down around their ears. In the meantime, though, we're going to try to enjoy the fact that Apple "posted the largest sales increase on a year-over-year basis" among all computer manufacturers. Can the good news just keep on coming?
•Jack Miller• <jackm@infoXczar.com>
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