I am amazed, but not surprised, by the news from Apple Computing which said on Thursday that it will run out of current inventory of its iMac machines before a new model debuts this autumn. It is a major marketing mistake that sent its stock sinking because the company will miss the crucial back-to-school selling season.
The Cupertino, California based computer maker has stopped taking orders for iMacs at its online store, and posted a message on the site that read, “We planned to have our next generation iMac ready by the time the inventory of current iMacs runs out in the next few weeks, but our planning was obviously less than perfect.”
“We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers,” the message concluded.
Apple also acknowledged that the new version of the iMac -- which currently looks like a lamp stand with a flat-panel display instead of a shade -- won't be available for sale until September. The blunder leaves Apple a window of perhaps months without supplies of one of its best-selling products, and means the company will miss out on much of the lucrative back-to-school computer buying season of late summer and early autumn. Schools, universities, and their students are among Apple's most important and loyal markets.
The delay took an immediate toll on the company's stock price. By mid-day Friday, Apple shares had fallen by 4 percent to $30.89 from Thursday's close of $32.30.
Personally, I was disappointed in Jobs' video show at this year's conference. Far too happy-clappy from the audience on what are very expensive monitors. I was an Apple fan for more than 12 years, starting with the Apple IIe and stopping with the Apple Macintosh IIx. It might have been different had I livewd in the US. But Apple Benelux has always been overpriced, over confident and less than helpful if you're operating your Mac in a language other than Dutch. It is a shame but the Apple Evangelist feeling of the old developers fairs in Europe has long since disappeared. In short, on the occasions I have recommended Apple to clients, I have been severely let down by the poor and expensive dealer support....so never again.
Apple should have outsourced its hardware years ago, or at least made sure that others were making similar boxes (remember Franklin?) May be this new little "bump in the road" will make them think again.
2 comments:
Too true, Apple really screwed up this time. Say what you will, but the "savior" of Apple has made a mistake that none of his predecessors did. This is almost as bad as the mistake that killed Osborne Computers back in the early 80s when they announced their new computer so early that people stopped buying their then-current computers, thereby denying the company the resources they needed to actually finish the new computer. Apple will certainly survive this, but it's the kind of elementary error that the return of Jobs was supposed to prevent.
I'm an Apple diehard, still using a Mac after almost 20 years, but really only because there's nothing better out there. I'm still mostly using OS 9, because I find using the OS X interface to be death by a thousand papercuts. OS X may have been a leap forward in terms of stability and underlying infrastructure, but at a severe cost in usability, something that Jobs perpetrated that may be even worse in the long run than this comparatively minor screw up. Apple's "unique selling proposition" has always been the usability of its interface. When Jobs fired the entire human factors organization, I really started to question whether Apple had a long term future.
My big problem is that the Mac is still the best computer out there. There have been really no significant improvements in user interface in almost two decades. I use Windows 2000 at work, and have used XP as well, and it feels worse to me even than OS X in the little niggling interface flaws. And even though I've been using UNIX for almost as long as I've been using Macs, I find Linux to be a joke in the user interface department. So for now, I think I'll stick with my old Mac running OS 9.2.2.
That said, I don't think Apple would have survived this long if they had outsourced the hardware. The hardware is where they make their money. The software is essentially a loss leader for the hardware. There may have been an opportunity for Apple to make that move before Windows 3.1 was released and move to a Microsoft-esque business model, but once Apple was relegated to a niche, there's no way they could survive that way. Not to mention that an essential part of the Macintosh experience has been made possible by the integration of hardware and software, something that wouldn't really have been possible in a Microsoft business model. To this day, you can see the effects of this in that Apple has been able to release four major versions of OS X at a time when Microsoft has struggled to release one major new version of Windows.
ralph
You need to be forthing at the mouth when Jobs gives these things and facing cupertino and bowing down and giving thanks for whatever morsel Steve has given out to the assembled masses.
Apple is a religion with one God, Steve.
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