Sour Apples
by Mitch Stone, the Accidental Expert
Dedicated Macintosh-users are a stalwart lot. They have to be.
Sticking with the Mac through the gloomy days of the mid-1990s required a strong constitution. As far as many Mac owners were concerned, this period was a kind of trial—the weaklings might wash out, but the real Mac people would forgive the company its faults and remain on board.
When the company's charismatic and eccentric co-founder Steve Jobs returned five years ago, the shrunken pool of Macintosh devotees was relieved. Apple had survived a succession of boring, myopic leaders. If anyone could turn Apple around, it was Steve.
And he didn't disappoint. Jobs quickly whipped up the iMac, simultaneously restoring the company's bottom line, and its public image as a personal computer innovator. He also promised the first major overhaul of the Mac operating system since its creation in 1984. It would be called MacOS X.
Happy days had come again, or so it seemed.
Then, on July 17, Jobs made his ritual MacWorld keynote appearance on stage at the Jacob Javitts Center in New York City, to the usual hoots and hollers of approval. It's an easy house for Jobs, with everyone anxiously anticipating the release of a major OS X revision called Jaguar.
But when Uncle Steve dropped the news of the upgrade's ticket price, the cheering ceased. You could probably hear the honking of taxicabs out on 11th Avenue.
Early OS X adopters, for one, would not be rewarded for their loyalty with upgrade discounts. They'd be standing in line with everyone else for their copy of Jaguar at the full $129 price.
It didn't seem quite fair.
When OS X officially arrived on the scene a year ago last March, it could be most charitably described as "promising." Complete, it certainly was not. Early adopters had to look beyond the ragged edges and missing features to see the beauty of the first truly mainstream implementation of Unix, the decades-proven workhorse of the computer industry.
Apple nearly admitted as much, releasing a significant upgrade last September. Copies of the upgrade CDs could be scored free of charge from Apple dealers, or for $20 by mail. Keeping their customers up-to-date with the newest operating system updates at minimal cost was a venerable Apple tradition, and Apple held fast to it.
The upgrade policy announced on the stage of the Javitts Center stood in stark contrast, causing restlessness among even the most dedicated Mac owners. Apple's policy simply reflected new economic realities, many suggested charitably. But the level of grumbling grew.
This public relations fiasco could hardly have come at a worse time for Apple. The company only recently rolled out their aggressive "switch" ad campaign, featuring real people telling the world why they'd abandoned Microsoft Windows for the cool blue waters of the Mac.
The "switch" kidney punch raised a cheer among Mac partisans. And the initial results appeared promising; even with the tech industry bogged in a deep recession, Apple was hanging tough—able to report a profit and even small gain in market share.
Even more hopeful for Apple was a report by a technology research group suggesting that nearly half of the corporations they surveyed were actively entertaining alternatives to Microsoft's products. It was beginning to look like Jobs' predictions of Apple doubling their share of the PC market might come to pass.
Then they go and drop a stink bomb on the party.
Even more troubling, Mac owners who picked up new hardware even the day before the Jaguar announcement—including many of the very same "switchers" Apple had persuaded to take the Mac plunge—would be socked for the full price. Ouch.
Apple is committing a huge blunder. The company apparently doesn't understand that the newest crop of Mac owners aren't as robust or dedicated as the veterans who kept the company afloat during the darkest years, nor should they be.
These new Apple customers bought into the promise of escaping Microsoft's increasingly confiscatory and intrusive licensing policies. They expected better, not more of the same. When the next storm washes over Apple's deck, these folks aren't going to be hanging onto the rigging for dear life—they'll be running for the life boats.
Apple still has time to back down, and this long-time Apple user, and investor, thinks they should. Jaguar ships next week.
12 August 2002 |
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