b y C H A R L E S M A R T I N
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Dear Steve,
"What a difference a year makes?" Now where have I read that before?? :) Hey, thanks for the shirt. Of course, the iMac shirt isn't quite the black model I had in mind when I wrote you last October, but at least my suggestion to box a T-shirt in with new Mac products fell on some listening ears. And I'm already seeing the shirts in general circulation. Good going, Apple Marketing!
I would also like to deeply and sincerely thank you for taking my suggestion to give us voice, though again it wasn't quite the way I envisioned it. The volunteers from Mac User Groups and other organizations have done a world of good at restoring public interest in Apple, and the CompUSA salespeople I have spoken with are delighted to have them around. Rather than getting in the salespeople's way, the Mac volunteers beautifully complement the regular staff, helping out when a fact is out of reach or a challenge is posed, and generally doing a lot to put more "reality" into the sales presentation, which for the Mac is THE way to present it to the public.
As much as I think you and the whole iMac team deserve heaps of unmitigated praise (take a bow, everybody - seriously!), though, this note is not really about what you're doing, because what you are doing is spectacular. It's about what you're NOT doing.
Where the Hell are the USB peripherals?
Sorry, I'm not going to blame the manufacturers on this one - all they're losing is potential sales, and they know it. That's why they're working like fiends to get products to market. If reports are to be believed, Imation, Iomega, Hewlett-Packard and several others have missed a shot at 150,000 add-on sales so far and rising every day Joe iMacbuyer can't put his hands on an expansion device.
Someone at Apple dropped the ball, or at best seriously underestimated these companies' ability to get peripherals out there in a timely fashion. We are only about a week away from the 1-month anniversary of the iMac, and there is still only one printer and one scanner in the retail channel. That's it.
If we do not act very fast on this, many iMac units will be returned, and many more people will simply choose something else - yeah, it's cute, but I can't do anything with it, they'll say. And they'll be right.
And that will cost us way more than just a few iMac sales.
Apple needs to immediately do the following three things:
People who won't consider the iMac because it has no floppy drive are one thing, and I for one can handle their objections and set them to a better machine (on either platform) for their needs. But when people look at me and say "you mean I have to not only buy new peripherals, but my old ones can't even be adapted anytime soon ... or ever?" I have no answer for them. Offering feeble excuses about third parties who just didn't meet the deadline just flat doesn't work. This may not be Apple's fault, but it is Apple's problem.
Epson and UMAX and Corel, of course, are laughing all the way to the bank, as they should be. They had their act together. But Apple bears some responsibility for this embarrassing fubar, and I urge you personally and as a company to take the swiftest possible steps before this turns ugly (and just wait till the PC press works it out - I can see the headlines already, Steve, and I really don't want to go there).
The major selling point of the iMac is simplicity - no headaches. If we don't see some USB items and the cables to connect them by week's end, I will definitely feel a migraine coming on.
Sincerely,
Lynda Engstrom editor & designer Seth Hendley Elgart webmaster@nymug.org |